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[07/21/06 - 12:00 AM]
Live at the San Diego Comic-Con: "Battlestar Galactica"
By Brian Ford Sullivan (TFC)

Please note: As a courtesy, please do not reproduce these comments to newsgroups, forums or other online places. Links only please.

2:15 pm: Huzzah! I've made it just in time for the final batch of intros. An elated crowd welcomes Edward James Olmos, James Callis, Lucy Lawless and Aaron Douglas as well as executive producers David Eick and Ronald D. Moore (not to mention network executive Erik Storey). Mary McDonnell had been listed as appearing, but no such luck.

2:16 pm: The season three trailer currently in rotation on Sci Fi runs except there are some audio troubles.

2:18 pm: The moderator - TV Guide's Lisa Chambers - asks if it's true that one of the 12 Cylon models will be permanently killed off. "There is a model that will be discontinued - or boxed as they say," Moore says, "and it is somebody that you know. It won't happen at the beginning of the season, we won't get to that until fairly late in the run of the third season. We're [also] telling a story that takes place almost entirely aboard one of the Cylon base ships over the course of the first 10 episodes of season 3. You'll get to see inside the base ship, where we're explore their society... what they're about. One of our main characters will be on the Cylon base ship with them, you can probably guess who that is. And it's a pretty interesting storyline. There's a lot of nudity."

2:21 pm: A question about Lee and Adama's relationship to Eddie gets prefaced by him saying, "I want to tell you I'm not the type of guy that's going to tell you get a life. People who say stuff that should get their assholes checked." Oh no he di'nt! As for the actual question, "Things between Lee and me get worse. I can't begin to tell you what these guys at the end of table [pointing to Moore and Eick] are doing to us... They love Cylons, I don't know what's wrong with them. All I can say is what you saw at the end of the second season becomes the lighter moments [by comparison]... I'll tell you this is the darkest show I've ever been with."

2:22 pm: Eddie makes a joke about "Brokeback Galactica" to which Douglas adds, "I can't quit you."

2:24 pm: Attempt two on showing the season three trailer, audio problems fixed!

2:27 pm: Moore jokes about an upcoming sex scene involving Baltar, "All I can say is there's a lot of visual effects involved."

2:38 pm: Douglas is asked about his character's role in season three, including having a kid with Cally. "Well, he thinks he's the father," he jokes, drawing lots of "oooooohs" from the crowd. Eddie chimes in with "all I can say is Cally and the Commander," proving once again he's got a future doing standup in the Catskills. Douglas adds, "I'll be fighting Cylons... surprisingly. And um, fixing things."

2:41 pm: Lisa asks about the decision to leap ahead one year at the end of season two. Moore says he originally came up with the idea while working on the short-lived series "Carnivale" on HBO and it came up again during their planning for the election between Baltar and Roslin, which in turn lead the whole idea of settling a "New Caprica." "If they go down there and you're only down there a week and the Cylons show up, the whole thing kind of feels like a jerkaround," he says. "But if it was a year, then it would be a year without the Cylons and that's not 'Battlestar Galactica.'" So there would have to be some sort of leap in the story and the question then became about how they'd make the transition - start season three "one year later," do "one year later" as a coda to the end of season two or do - as they wound up doing - a transition in the middle of a scene to show a year has passed.

2:42 pm: Moore on the new season: "It's four months later [from the finale], the occupation is in full swing, Baltar is still the titular president under sort of the occupation government, there's an insurgency that's formed on New Capria, the Galactica is off somewhere else, plotting, figuring out, struggling with the idea of can we come back and rescue all these colonists with literally two Battlestars at half strength, and our characters that are down on New Capria - some have taken sides, some are plotting with Lee, one in particular is missing a vital part of his anatomy." Another set of "ooooohs" from the crowd.

2:44 pm: Eick on the "Capria" spin-off: "Right now it's a script... We're thinking about a way to explore the mythos, sort of reverse engineer things, go back before these stories and investigate what happened." He also confirms that the "Caprica" concept was brought to him by Remi Aubuchon and that it would be Remi's baby, meaning it wouldn't divert his and Ron's energies away from "Galactica."

2:45 pm: Eddie gives some surprising details about season three, including some of the methods that will be used to fight the Cylons: "You get the psychology of say suicide bombers... using that method to forward, trying to fight until the very end of what they believe in, why they're using this philosophy, in the spirit of killing themselves to take out an enemy. It becomes a really incredibly dark journey when you step into this world for the third season, much more so than seasons past. So this year please don't watch it."

2:47 pm: Lisa gives way to fan questions. First up, the panel is asked what their favorite character or character arc is that's not their own. Lucy sings the praises of the Starbuck/Tigh relationship and says to stay tuned for a great moment in which they start to "get" each other. James's fav: Sharon/Helo. Eddie's tops: Lee. Aaron's response: "I don't read scripts and they stopped letting me watch dailies."

2:50 pm: Eddie gets some props for his HBO movie "Walkout."

2:51 pm: Moore confesses his wife is a regular on the SCIFI.com boards (as "Mrs. Ron") and in turn reports back to him on the fans' reaction.

2:52 pm: More Moore on the new season: "It's going to be an interesting season. We're going to lose some people that I think we're all very fond of. There's going to be some losses... and some victories. There's going to be some breakthroughs in some of our relationships - there's going to some pairings that I think you've been waiting to see."

2:57 pm: Eddie's answer to "Battlestar's" Emmy snub: they won a Peabody award this year.

2:58 pm: Some final spoilage by Eddie: "In the show this year we are going to touch the issue that is most affecting the planet, which is the pandemic... which is coming, and we all know it's coming and yet nobody is really preparing for it, the pandemic of the bird flu... And in this case we use it in the same way that the English used it against the indigenous people here in the United States of America. And the human beings use it against the Cylons. And we spread a pandemic amongst them and it's incredibly difficult to take, the psychology of it. It's just incredible. And then you realize what else are they going to do, there's nothing left."

2:59 pm: Good news, the "Bones" panel will be held in the same room as "Galactica." Be back in a few...





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· BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (SCI FI)
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