Fan Expo Vancouver 2013

Fan Expo is returning to Vancouver April 20th and 21st and once again, 13th Colony is thrilled to be playing a part!  Vancouver’s Battlestar Galactica Fan Club will join local chapters of the 501st Legion (Outer Rim Squadron), the Ghostbusters of BC and Can’t Stop the Serenity Vancouver to offer con-goers a glimpse into Vancouver’s fan scene.

And we’ve got another reason to celebrate! After having to cancel late last year, Michael Hogan (new BSG’s Saul Tigh) will make it up to the Vancouver fans by appearing this year.

We’ll have plenty of Battlestar Galactica (classic and reimagined) items and costumes on display. We’re out to meet and greet fellow BSG fans who might not be aware we’re here and we’re awesome!

BSG Locations website goes live

Finding shooting locations for the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica TV series in and around Vancouver has been a favourite past time of 13th Colonists for a few years now.  Having inspired a couple of particularly ambitious ladies to take the idea and run with it makes this blogger very proud indeed.  Check out www.battlestarlocations.com  for the most comprehensive centralized source of BSG locations info, with great site pictures and screen shot comparisons.  The designers have done their homework, and put in the hours finding sites.  They’ve had info directly from the source, BSGs Locations Manager Kent Sponagle, but these ladies have put in the hours in the woods trying to find just the right trees!

We tip our hats to them for finally finding one of our most elusive locations – where Laura’s dream sequence from “Flesh & Bone” was shot.  Turns out it’s in Robert Burnaby Park in nearby Burnaby, BC.  We’ve already scheduled a Locations Scouting Mission to head out and confirm their find!

13th Colony will continue to explore new locations and produce new video files (Yes, we know you’re waiting!  We’ve got several more episodes shot and waiting in post-production.) and we’re thrilled to be able to share all that with the new Battlestar Locations website.

Congratulations to Anne & Mo.  Job well done.  So say we all!

Guided Tour of Kobol

When the Colonials visited Kobol in Galactica’s second season, it was pouring rain, the Cylons were close on their heels and the future of humanity was at stake. In our world, summer is finally here and it’s time for some outdoor events. How about a relaxing but geeky day in the park?

We’ll admire the Gates of Hera on Kobol, we’ll find where Caprica’s Jordan Durham took a tumble, and we’ll go into the trees in search of Laura’s dream sequence. Bring your cameras, wear good walking shoes, and bring a snack. Depending on the weather, it can be cool in the trees. We’ll have to walk a couple of kilometres, including some uphill. Believe me, it’s worth it. It’s a beautiful spot to sit and ponder the future of humanity.

On Saturday, July 23rd, we’ll meet at 1pm in the parking lot at the north end of the park, next to the Cleveland Dam. Here’s a map.

If you want some background on the BSG and Caprica locations within the park, check out Episode 3 of the 13th Colony Video Files.

This event is also set up on our Meetup page.

Walking on Kobol

Episode #3 of the 13th Colony Video Files is up on Youtube.

Episode 3

Capilano River Regional Park in North Vancouver was a popular location with the producers of Battlestar Galactica.  They went back several times for Battlestar Galactica, The Plan and Caprica.

We’ve done something different with this episode, trying to give you an impression of how close together some of the various locations (and different planets!) really are.  From the parking lot off Capilano Road, you can get a clear view of The Lions, which were seen in Caprica‘s “The Heavens Will Rise” and in Battlestar Galactica‘s Season Two episode, “Home Pt 2.”  A short walk to the south where there are some picnic tables and a wooden fence is where Jordan Durham was shot later on in “The Heavens Will Rise.”  If you walk over the Cleveland Dam, turn left and walk up the hill, you will see a trailhead on the left that heads off into the trees.

You are on Kobol!  The first 500 metres of the Upper Shinglebolt Trail is where several sequences for Season Two of  Battlestar Galactica were shot.  We know The Plan was in there filming scenes at the camp of the Caprica resistance, and we suspect this is where Sam Adama and the Graystones went into V-World on horseback, looking for Zoe.

We’re going to take a couple of weeks off before we do the next episode.  It is winter in Vancouver, so it’s raining almost constantly.  Wonderful atmosphere for Cylon Earth, but much harder to shoot in.  I’m holding out for some sunshine! So Say We All!

13th Colony on Twitter

While a few 13th Colonists have been on Twitter for awhile now, Vancouver’s Battlestar Galactica Fan Club now has it’s own Twitter account @13ColonyofKobol

Just because BSG and Caprica are no longer on the air doesn’t mean that the 13th Colony is going away.   We’ve got some exciting new adventures planned for 2011, and will continue to share them with our members across the globe, perhaps with some new formats.

In late January we’re planning to revisit the shooting location of the Fake Cylon Earth the fleet arrived at mid-way through Season 4 of BSG, where the Final Five found their birthplace and Starbuck discovered her ship and her self.   Just as Starbuck built a big bonfire on the beach to destroy what she found, we’re going to have a bonfire in her honour, offering up our own cardboard viper to the Gods.  It’ll be epic.  Frakkin’ cold, but epic.

Of course, you can still find us over at Meetup, Facebook, and of course, here on WordPress.

Here Be Dragons, Literally

by spacepug

Plenty happened on the penultimate episode of Caprica, titled “Here Be Dragons” including, you guessed it, dragons.  They delivered a high body count and some unexpected twists, but it felt like true characterization was sacrificed in favour of a blistering pace.  Not my favourite episode by any means.

The following is a recap and review and therefore CONTAINS SPOILERS.

Sam Knows the Truth

Heaven in a Holoband

by spacepug

For an episode ostensibly about robots, there was an awful lot of girl power on display in “The Heavens Will Rise,” the latest episode of Caprica, directed by Michael Nankin.  Our Avenging Angels are still world-building.  Clarice is still scheming. Amanda makes a key move. Evelyn’s pulling strings. We meet the lovely and dangerous Fidelia.  But there is one woman at the heart of the story…Lacy Rand.

Zoe may have been the apple of Clarice’s eye, but Lacy is the chosen one.  Like Starbuck before her, we are watching this brave young woman be forged into a leader.  The biggest regret I have about Caprica’s cancellation is that we won’t get to see her truly come into her own, but it’s clear we’re going to see her get well enough on her way.

What follow is a recap and review, and therefore CONTAINS SPOILERS.

She's Got the Power

Humanity Wins, Barely

A review of the new Battlestar Galactica Board Game by Gem

Recently, five 13^th Colonists got together for our inagural Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game experience. When I originally wrote this review it got a little novel-esque, so I’ve done my best to chop it down a bit. Hopefully, you’ll still understand the gist of the game without begging the Gods to spare you.

The objective of the game depends on whether or not you’re a human or a cylon (a fact that can change mid-way through the game). At the beginning of the game, each player is secretly assigned a team, so unlike many board games, you win as a team, not individually.  As a human, there is one way to win: travel eight units of distance and jump to Kobol. As a cylon, the goal is to prevent the humans from reaching their objective. This can be achieved by running the fleet out of essential resources  (fuel, morale, population, food), or invading the Galactica with centurion boarding parties, and last but not least, by destroying the Galactica altogether.

Battlestar Switcheroo

Being sneaky, eh? While a group of 13th Colonists were out this past weekend scouting around for shooting locations in one of the parks on Vancouver’s North Shore mountains, we discovered something interesting. One of the most famous features of the North Shore mountains are “The Lions” named because when they are covered in snow, they look like two reclining lions. Our beautiful Lions Gate Bridge is named after this natural formation, as is our local CFL football team, the BC Lions.

In the world of Battlestar Galactica, it appears on Kobol and is seen as below:

In actual fact, they’ve pulled a switch on us, reversing the shot from how it appears in nature, as seen from this picture we took from the north end of Capilano Park, near the Cleveland Dam.

Ha!  Very clever, but we’re on to you…and as a result of our most recent foray into the woods, we’ve also closed in a couple more shooting locations, so stay tuned and we’ll have more pics for you in the coming weeks.

Can’t See the Planet for All the Trees

by spacepug

A brave group of 13^th Colonists headed Into the Woods this past weekend, in our continuing search for Battlestar Galactica shooting locations. We’d been tipped off by someone on the show that Kobol scenes in Season Two were shot in Capilano Park and Lynn Valley on the North Shore. We’ve covered most of the trails in Capilano and a fair portion of Lynn Valley. Four scouting missions so far, two to each park, and we have yet to positively identify a single shot. We know we’re in the right areas. We suspect we’ve come very close to locations doubling as Caprica and New Caprica as well. There are just so damn many trees. Plus, more than two years have passed since shooting and “the big wind storm” of December 2006 could have changed the landscape quite a bit since then.

We even utilized the most up to date technical tools to help us. I thoroughly recommend the iTouch for wandering through a forest and trying to match screen shots to actual trees. Unlike my iPod, the larger display screen is big enough that there is no risk of tripping over a random tree root while trying to get the right perspective. My foot is healing nicely, now, thank you. Doubt if that use for the iPod & iTouch was foreseen by the genuises at Apple, but they would be proud.

Except for coming up with a new technobabble phrase, “good fern density,” we came up empty. And the kicker is the local newspaper published a story the very next day indicating the BSG crew had been shooting on the North Shore woods all of the previous week, just in a different river valley. That will likely be our next destination, but it is obvious we could spend all summer looking for trees and still never be sure we’d found the correct sites.

So, blog readers, we’re turning it over to you. Do you know where this swing set from “Flesh & Bone” is? Note the red posts and the teeter-totter (see-saw, in some countries) in the background? Should be easy to find, right?