Frakking hilarious Battlestar Galactica recap (video)

If you haven't yet, you must watch the frakking awesome 8-minute recap of Seasons 1-3 of Galactica. Helo features rather largely in it due to his plot-heavy arc.

It's up over at Scifi.com or IMDB for international fans.

I've also uploaded the early Helo promo pictures from Season 1 that surfaced a few weeks ago to the site's Flickr for ease of browsing. All of them are watermarked, unless fans have photoshopped them, like this terrific one above.

Helo in the BSG Collectible Card Game

Even if you're not a gamer, I thought you might like to see the Helo cards in the Battlestar Galactica Collectible Card Game. Critical Gamers recently reviewed the game.

BSG-122/175-Uncommon -- Helo, Flight Officer (Personnel)

BSG-123/175-Common -- Helo, Karl Agathon (Personnel)

BSG-124/175-Rare -- Helo, Raptor ECO (Personnel)


See the other cards in the game.

If you want to learn how to play, the official site has some pointers.

Five-Minute Battlestar Galactica Miniseries comic

Kira has made a hilarious comic strip version of the BSG miniseries using stills from the show, but has added her own witty dialogue. It's definitely worth checking out for a good laugh.


See the 5 minute BSG Miniseries comic.

The site also features the "The Top 10 Reasons Battlestar Galactica is Better Than You", which is rather amusing as well.

Battlestar Galactica's Mission Statement

Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonell both said that Battlestar's "mission statement" written by Ron Moore is what convinced them to do the show. It was inadvertently (or, rather, without Moore's knowledge) stapled to their copies of the miniseries script.

I was wondering what the statement said and luckily was able to find a copy thanks to BattlestarGalactica.com. It wasn't quite what I expected. Here are some excerpts:

Battlestar Galactica: Naturalistic Science Fiction
or Taking the Opera out of Space Opera

Our goal is nothing less than the reinvention of the science fiction television series. We take as a given the idea that the traditional space opera, with its stock characters, techno-double-talk, bumpy-headed aliens, thespian histrionics, and empty heroics has run its course and a new approach is required. That approach is to introduce realism into what has heretofore been an aggressively unrealistic genre.

Call it " Naturalistic Science Fiction."

Story

We will eschew the usual stories about parallel universes, time-travel, mind-control, evil twins, God-like powers and all the other clichés of the genre. Our show is first and foremost a drama. It is about people. Real people that the audience can identify with and become engaged in. It is not a show about hardware or bizarre alien cultures. It is a show about us. It is an allegory for our own society, our own people and it should be immediately recognizable to any member of the audience.

Character

This is perhaps, the biggest departure from the science fiction norm. We do not have "the cocky guy" "the fast-talker" "the brain" "the wacky alien sidekick" or any of the other usual characters who populate a space series. Our characters are living, breathing people with all the emotional complexity and contradictions present in quality dramas like "The West Wing" or "The Sopranos." In this way, we hope to challenge our audience in ways that other genre pieces do not. We want the audience to connect with the characters of Galactica as people. Our characters are not super-heroes. They are not an elite. They are everyday people caught up in a enormous cataclysm and trying to survive it as best they can.

They are you and me.

Most of the statement concerns itself with the visual style of the show and its production, however.

Read the full mission statement.

Another BSG filming location identified

In perusing the BC Film Commission's website, I discovered quite a few familiar locations in the BSG verse. Many already identified, but a few new ones as well. What especially jumped out at me was the "Waterfall Building" featured in the miniseries, "Epiphanies" and "Black Market."

Roslin visits the doctor in the miniseries and again in "Epiphanies":

Vancouver's Waterfall Building was designed by Arthur Erickson with Nick Milkovich Architects. It is now home to the Elliot Louis Art Gallery. If you'd like to see more, you can watch a slideshow of the building's interior and exterior at the gallery's website.

In "Black Market", Lee watches his girlfriend run down the stairs and then pause before the glass-faced building below.

Though I doubt we were meant to recognize Roslin's doctor's office, it would have added a bit of nuance if we were: Lee's pregnant girlfriend running to see the doctor after Lee's rejection of her and their child.

Read about the whole Waterfall complex in the article, "Erickson's Urban Waterfall" from Architecture Week.

Previous posts on BSG filming locations:

- Where in Vancouver? I mean Caprica.
- Where in Vancouver... update!
- BSG Shooting locations on Google Earth
- Helo in "The Alibi Room"

BSG novelizations compared

In a recent blog essay, Timothy Sandefur thoughtfully compares the two Battlestar Galactica novelizations: the original novel by Glen Larson and Robert Thurston, and the novelization of the new miniseries by Jeffrey Carver.

Although both series feature the genocide of the human race, Larson’s original was much gentler; the Cylons were bumbling fools, for one thing (mostly because Universal ordered him to avoid human casualties as much as possible so as to make the show child-friendly).

And far more humans escaped the destruction of the home worlds: Larson says in the book that the fleet is comprised of more than 22,000 ships, far more than in Moore’s version. (Moore hasn’t told us how many ships there are, but there are only about 50,000 humans surviving in his version.)

Read the rest of the essay.

Of course, only Jeffrey Carver's novelization features Helo and thus its superiority to Larson's version should come as no surprise.

Miniseries novelization now available

The BSG miniseries adaptation by Jeffrey Carver has finally hit the shelves. So if you're looking to fill the hours before S2's return, this could be one way to do it!

Also available in hardcover and as an abridged audio book.