November 2005

The SciFi Channel has just announced that they’ve renewed Battlestar Galactica for a third season.

While the renewal has been rumored for months, this is the first official confirmation that Galactica will return for Season 3 with a full crew compliment and 20 additional episodes.

Here’s the text from the official press release:

Galactica Renewed For Season Three

SCI FI Channel announced that it has renewed its original series Battlestar Galactica for a third season. Production on the 20-episode order is slated to begin in Vancouver, Canada, in February 2006 for premiere later in the year, the network said.

The entire ensemble cast returns for the new season, including Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Katee Sackhoff, Jamie Bamber, James Callis, Tricia Helfer and Grace Park. Also returning are executive producer and writer Ronald D. Moore and executive producer David Eick.

Currently in its second season, Galactica is a hit with audiences. The second season resumes with new episodes on Jan. 6, 2006, as part of the winter premiere of SCI FI Friday. Battlestar Galactica is from NBC Universal Television Studio.

Dark Thoughts has just posted three publicity stills from ‘Resurrection’, the next upcoming Battlestar Galactica episode (due to air on January 6, 2006). None of the shots reveal any spoilers, but it’s still exciting to see new imagery from the 2nd half of Season 2.

Only 52 days remaining until Battlestar Galactica is back on the air!

(Thanks to All about Tahmoh Penikett for finding these.)

When the BSG miniseries aired two years ago (has it really been that long?), Firefly fans were excited when they discovered that Serenity made a cameo in one of the opening shots.

But ’sburstall’, over at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, may have found something else: the original Starship Enterprise.

We haven’t confirmed this, but it seems legit. Anyone from Zoic care to comment?

(And, by the gods, this will be the last of our Trek-themed posts for a while.)

Ron Moore has updated his blog on the official Battlestar Galactica website with a tribute to his former boss and friend Michael Piller who passed away last week. (Michael Piller served as a writer, producer, and creative consultant to several Star Trek series.):

The last time I saw him was in a story break on “The Dead Zone.” It had been at least five years since I’d broken a story with Michael, and while the show was interesting, and the staff was smart and engaging, I remember mostly being struck by a sense of nostalgia. He still ran a break the same way — broke each and every scene of the entire show down into specific parts, he still had the WGA intern writing each Act in a different color and he still wore a LA Dodgers cap. I had a great time.

He’s gone now, Michael Piller. Tomorrow, I will gather in a place with other people who knew and loved him, along with some who only knew of him, and we will both mourn and celebrate him. His obituary has been written, and I can only add my personal opinion and belief that he was one of the most fundamentally honorable and decent men I have encountered in my life. And he had no malice.

I wish I could do him justice. I wish I knew how to better define and explain the man. But since he loved Shakespeare and since he personally advised me to crib from the Bard whenever possible, it seems only fitting to say to all the world, “This was a man!”

Some have said that Star Trek’s best moments — the last several seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s story arc, etc. — were often due to the influence of Michael Piller.

Ron Moore’s words make that all the more clear.

Brannon Braga — who once worked with Battlestar Galactica’s creator Ron Moore on several Star Trek series and is arguably responsible for setting in motion a chain of events that led to the creation of BSG — has announced he sees no future for himself aboard the Starship Enterprise, according to this report from the SciFi Wire.

Braga is now an executive producer on CBS’ new SF drama Threshold and has left Trek behind. “You know how it is,” he said. “You did something for a long time. Star Trek was very good to me. And I certainly did my best to contribute to Star Trek. But there just comes a point where I’m not sure what else I would have to give. I certainly could see the financial value in it, but at this point, creatively, I would not want to be involved in something that I couldn’t give to.”

One can only hope that Rick Berman, the other man who helped run the Star Trek franchise straight into the ground, will do the same.

In a recent interview with TV Zone, Katee Sackhoff seems to put an end to any future on-screen pairing with Dirk Benedict, the actor who originated the Starbuck role in Galactica ‘78:

“If you add up the amount of time Dirk Benedict spent playing the character, not the years obviously but the number of episodes, I’m more Starbuck than he is, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

It’s the kind of fighting talk that Starbuck’s famous for, and Sackhoff certainly shares her character’s feisty tendencies. She’s not afraid to say what she thinks, which is something Dirk Benedict should have known before he decided to lay into the new version of his famous character. While Richard Hatch, who played Apollo in the original series, has become a regular in the cast, Benedict has been openly critical of Battlestar’s new incarnation, and Sackhoff positively bristles when she talks about her predecessor.

“If Dirk pitched up to work on the show I’d probably quit,” she says. “I met him in Los Angeles and I thought we’d really hit it off, he was a great guy, he was very complimentary and very un-Hollywood. Then he turned around a month later and talked complete crap about the show and the actors on it. He wrote an article saying the network sold out and my character was more brash than his character.

“I felt like he’d stabbed me in the back. I know that sounds like me being very sensitive but I felt very befriended by him, then I read that about a month later.”

And, yesterday, the Huntsville Times published an interview with Dirk Benedict. It doesn’t mention the Starbuck issue specifically, but it’s an interesting read. (Benedict will be appearing at the NovaconUSA sci-fi convention this weekend.)

TV Zone: What Katee Did
The Huntsville Times: Dirk Benedict

As part of a new download service announced last week, DirecTV will soon be offering episodes of Battlestar Galactica for download.

Downloads will be priced at 99 cents each and will be commercial-free. Notably, though, fans will only be able to download episodes to their DirecTV setop boxes — you won’t be able to transfer these episodes to a computer or iPod.

More from SciFi Wire:

NBC will charge 99 cents per episode to access such series as Surface. The news coincides with a similar announcement from CBS and Comcast and follows a widely reported deal between ABC and Apple’s iPod.

NBC’s deal with DirecTV, which will offer the programs free of commercials, will cover not only NBC shows such as the Law & Order series, but also a few shows on its cable networks, including USA Network. The NBC-DirecTV programming will be available only to subscribers who purchase the new DirecTV Plus Interactive DVR, which will begin rolling out in stores and online during the next few months. NBC Universal owns SCIFI.COM.

There’s also more in this press release from DirecTV.

Stargate fansite GateWorld has released some new details about the remaining episodes in Season 2 of BSG.

The titles of the next six episodes are:
• Resurrection Ship
• Epiphanies
• Unknown #1
• Black Market
• Sacrifice
• The Captain’s Hand

They’ve also got descriptions for several new episodes. But since they’re somewhat revealing, we’ll use a bit of inviso-text to hide these spoilers from those who don’t wish to see them.

SPOILERS start

SPOILERS end

First, the bad news…

It appears the SciFi channel has taken Battlestar Galactica out of its weekly lineup for the rest of 2005, as fans wait for new Season 2 episodes planned for early January.

The normal ‘SciFi Friday’ lineup — a three-hour block of Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and BSG — has been replaced with three-episode blocks of episodes from Stargate SG-1’s ninth season.

So, want the good news?

The SciFi schedulebot also reveals a partial marathon of Season 2 episodes planned for December 20. Eight episodes, back to back, from 8am through 4pm. All Season 2 episodes, except the first two (Scattered and ‘Valley of Darkness’).

December 20 is a Tuesday, btw. So, if you’re at work that day, remember to set your TiVo!

Note to Galacticaa widget users: the widget now lists the first episode in the Dec 20 marathon as the next episode of Galacticaa. Should that change, I’ll update the widget ASAP.

Universal has just given BSG fans a sweet Christmas present. Amazon is now listing a Season 2 DVD set for BSG!

Relevant details:

• Region 1
• 440 minutes
• 3 discs
• Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Box set
• Released on December 20, 2005
• Preorder at 30% off

When we get more details about the contents of the DVD set (commentaries, bonus materials, and other special features), we’ll post them to Galacticaa.

UPDATE: And, of course, it’s probably obvious but we should mention that this DVD set will only contain the first 10 episodes of the full 20 episode Season 2 run. The 2nd half of Season 2 begins in early January.