Ramp Me Up, Tigh Me Down

One of the locations we’ve known about for some time but just haven’t got to yet is what we call the Cordova Ramp. In Season One’s “Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down,” Six and Doral and walking down an empty street in Caprica City, talking about love.

Located on Cordova Street, near Thurlow, the ramp is the main access to traffic coming and going from Canada Place. I’d already learned how dangerous it is to take photos without the benefit of a film crew closing off the street, so the angle of our matching shot is a little off…but spacepug lives to keep scouting another day! More pictures from our downtown location scouting trip here.

BSG’s Final Location

Don’t worry, the 13th Colony hasn’t given up on Battlestar Galactica location scouting. In fact, we’ve been very busy over the summer and will be bringing you our findings over the next several weeks. First up is the last one. Our most recent mission was to the very last location seen in the series, the downtown modern-day New York locale where the “angels” Six and Baltar watched Ron Moore read a National Geographic magazine article about Hera. As it turns out, it’ was shot in a plaza near the corner of Hastings and Hornby in downtown Vancouver.

Over delicious hot chocolate at Mink, a chocolate cafe, we discussed what we thought of the final scene. More pictures here.

Hogan’s in the House

Michael Hogan (Colonel Saul Tigh on BSG) is going to be on “Dollhouse” this week. It’s not surprising to see Hogan return to our TV screens, but there is something that makes this role a key point in the actor’s career, and it floored me when I heard it.

Canadians are familiar with Hogan, certainly. He’s been a recognizable figure on TV here for decades. But as he revealed at Dragon*Con last month, he has only just now got his first US work permit, his first LA manager, and his first LA audition. Which he nailed and got the part. Dollhouse. Think about that when you watch his performance on Friday night. Fans of BSG have known he’s a brilliant actor for a long time. Isn’t it about time he got the chance to prove it to the rest of the world?

*Special thanks to Paul, Esther and Laura for letting me hang out with them in line for the McDonnell/Hogan panel at Dragon*Con and then sit in the front row. Great to meet you!

Meetup with 13th Colony @ Dragon*Con

There will be a gaggle (a horde?) of 13th Colonists attending Dragon*Con this year, from Canada, the US and overseas.  So, we’re going to schedule our very first non-Vancouver Meetup:

Friday, September4th at 7pm at the Consuite (Room 226 Hyatt) is where we will gather, and then possibly move to an alternate location for food and/or drinks.  We ought to be easy to spot…look for some shiny 13 stickers prominently displayed and we guarantee a lively conversation about Battlestar Galactica.  For the steely eyed amongst you….Frik and Frak, our mini-mate mascots, will also be in attendance.

We’re really looking forward to meeting 13th Colonists, our blog readers, and just BSG fans, from all over!  Look forward to meeting you…So Say We All!

Spacepug

We Are Coming, We Are Coming…

…to Atlanta!  Several members of the 13th Colony will be on hand for this year’s Dragon*Con in Atlanta.  We’re not just coming from Vancouver, but places across the globe, including bloggers spacepug and gem, as well as our excellent reviewer millari.

If you’re a reader of this blog and plan to attend, let us know in the comments below.  We’ll be pretty easy to spot thanks to the spiffy new stickers Frik and Frak are showing off below!  If you see us around the con, come up and say  “hello.”  The best part of these last couple of years running this blog has been meeting fellow BSG fans from all over the world, both virtually and in person, and this is just another great occasion to do so.

And what a great year for BSG fans to gather at Dragon*Con.  Guests this year include:  Alessandro Juliani (Gaeta), Dirk Benedict (Starbuck, for the original fans), Edward James Olmos (Adama), Kandyse McClure (Dualla), Kate Vernon (Ellen), Luciana Carro (Kat), Mary McDonnell (Roslin), Michael Trucco (Anders) and Richard Hatch (Zarek, Apollo).  Also attending (just not “officially”) will be Aaron Douglas (Tyrol).

Hope to see you there!

The Cylons’ Secret

My plan was to work my way through the BSG novels.  Just by chance, I got them out of the library in reverse order.  So somehow I still ended up saving the best one for last.

The Cylon’s Secret by Craig Shaw Gardner is the best of the three, in my opinion.  One of those reasons may be that the story is set in the past, before Adama became Commander of the Battlestar Galactica.   Generally, I’m not a fan of prequels, but in this case, unexplored territory worked in the author’s favour.  Pay no attention to the cover, however, since sexy Six doesn’t even appear in the story.

We meet both Adama and Tigh when they are younger, though still scarred by many years in the military.  We also meet Tom Zarek, before he became a political activist.  It’s an engaging story.  Zarek is part of a pirate crew, salvaging outlying outposts in the wake of the first Cylon war.  They come across one planet which seems to be unaware of the outcome of that conflict, one where humans and Cylons still live side by side as they had before the rebellion. At least, the humans on the colony are unaware.  The Cylons have a secret.

Here, there are some inconsistencies as well.  Like the Cylons have laser guns instead of bullets.  Not sure how that one crept past the editors.  But these minor details don’t get in the way of your enjoyment of a substantial story.  I really enjoyed the exploration of what it must have been like for Capricans the day the Cylons rebelled, and their house servants, dishwashers and nannies all simply walked off the job.  I have an image in my mind of a dryer with legs marching out our front door.

This novel had some great characters and a good pace that kept me turning pages.  Well worth the read.

Verdict on Virtuality

Twenty-one 13^th Colonists gathered over the weekend to finally screen “Virtuality,” the long-awaited, but ultimately failed, pilot from BSG’s executive producer Ron Moore.

The overall consensus from our group was that though there were more things we liked about the show than we didn’t like, it would never have succeeded as a TV series, and certainly not on the Fox network.

I can see how Virtuality would have created some real difficulties for any network to market properly.  It’s a high-concept sci-fi drama with a mystery element, partly told through a reality show format.  The title itself is rather bland and either says nothing about the show, or gives away the big mystery, depending on what was really going on.

Longevity would have been an issue.  When you start out with such a high level of peril (rape and murder and/or suicide) in the first episode, how long can you maintain that peak?   As long as a miniseries perhaps, but not an entire series.  And once the nature or extent of the VR was revealed, what then?   Strangely, few of the characters were truly likeable, and the apparent protagonist disappears (or does he?) at the end of the first episode.

Still, the visuals were terrific, the acting was top-notch and the story was interesting.  It is worth watching if you can get your hands on a copy.

Even though Fox changed the airdate from the outright insulting July 4^th slot to June 26th, the ratings for Virtuality were dismal.  There is no chance we will ever find out how far down the rabbit hole we would have been led.

Unity, a BSG novel

Unity is not a very good title for Steven Harper’s Battlestar Galactica novel.  Sure, it is the name of a radical religious group that plays a role in the story, but that one word doesn’t really capture the essence.  The image on the cover does a better selling job, for what is  a pretty exciting tale of the race to cure a highly infectious disease.

After an overly quick end to a Cylon attack and the recovery of another Colonial survivor, many of our favourite characters start falling victim to the “plague of tongues,” which makes them shake and speak nonsense before they collapse and die.  The plague spreads rapidly and the carrier finds himself caught up in a mix of pop hysteria and religious fervor.  As always, the Cylons are hot on their heels, waiting to attack at any moment and the resulting tension ratchets up with each chapter.  There’s plenty of action, and an exciting race against time to find the cure.

Despite the medical focus, this is definitely a Starbuck story, though Baltar gets some nice development as well.  I thought the author pushed the “giggly teen crush” angle for Starbuck a bit far, but he provided compelling reasons for his choices in some interesting, if incorrect, background.  Once again, I found myself wishing I had read this 2007 book before I saw the last season of the show.

A fun read.  4 out of 5

Next up: “The Cylons’ Secret” by Craig Shaw Gardner

Sagittarius is Bleeding

Novel by Peter David.  Review by spacepug.

I’m already missing Battlestar Galactica, so I thought I would try to fill the void by finally getting a hold of the novels, starting with Sagittarius is Bleeding by Peter David.  Below is a brief (but spoiler-free) summary of the book and my thoughts.

As the story begins, Laura Roslin has been miraculously cured of cancer thanks to a transfusion from the unborn child of Sharon Valerii, but now she is haunted by dreams of blood and death.  She wonders if the cure had a nasty side effect, or is she just going mad?

Battlestar Galactica was one of my favourite TV shows.  Laura Roslin was my favourite character on the show.  Peter David is one of my favourite writers.  I should have liked this book much more than I did.

One of my usual criteria for judging any novelization is how well the writer captures the essence of the characters we’ve seen on TV.  David is certainly adept at that, as his many Star Trek novels will attest.  He does an admirable job of portraying both Laura’s vulnerabilities and inner strength.  He even gets inside Sharon’s head in a way that I found more compelling than her TV portrayal.  There isn’t a false note to any of them.

Perhaps the biggest drawback with this novel is that so much of the plot is driven by characters who aren’t in the TV series, namely Boxey and newcomer Freya Gunnerson.  The plot is well constructed and unfolds in an unexpected and exciting confrontation at the end of the book.  Almost until the end however, it seemed the plot wasn’t going anywhere.  There was no sense of imminent danger.  One of the biggest challenges in writing a TV show novelization must be that you have to create a sense of threat and intrigue, and yet are unable to truly alter the path or mindset of any of the characters in order to preserve the “canon.”   This novel was first published in 2006, and unfortunately the ending makes little sense, as events on the TV series have since overtaken these and resolved in a very different way.

It was a quick and moderately enjoyable read.  If you want to experience some of the true genius of Peter David, find one of the Star Trek: New Frontier novels.  His Captain Mackenzie Calhoun is one of my favourite creations in the entire Trek universe.  For a really satisfying BSG novel, I’m going to have to keep reading.  Next up in my sights: Unity by Steven Harper.

Space Channel streams the “Frakkin’ End”

It’s almost old news by now, but I thought I would post this one anyway…

As part of their coverage of the finale of Battlestar Galactica, Space Channel (Canada’s science fiction channel) did a one hour Fandom Forum, a live broadcast featuring an in-studio audience of Toronto BSG fans, and some “live hits” out to Vancouver for the 13^th Colony’s Finale Party.  The complete one hour program is now streaming online, broken into seven segments.

In my admittedly biased opinion, here are what I think are the best bits:

Part 1: 2:08 to 3:13 (intro to the Vancouver party)

Part 2: 4:30 to 6:11 (Ahem…Spacepug, aka Madame President, and the Hybrid)

(Parts 3, 4 and 5: Alas, no us.)

Part 6: 3:10 to 3:55 (RDM, MM & EJO thank the Canadian fans)

Part 6: 3:56 to 5:36 (Natasha interviews our Six, Baltar, Starbuck and Tyrol, plus the Hybrid)

Part 7: 3:45 to 4:41 (Wrap up from Vancouver)

Congratulations to everyone who participated, on both ends of the country.  Space was thrilled with the ratings for the show, and with their first ever fully live broadcast.  We’ve extended the invitation for them to come back to Vancouver for another special in conjunction with “The Plan” in November or “Caprica” next year, so keep your fingers crossed.