A quick link to a great interview with Michael Trucco (Sam Anders) from Slice of SciFi. I like Michael because, well, he doesn’t take himself too seriously, but onscreen he gives great serious. He’s totally cognizant of the initial reaction of fans and how he had to “earn [his] wings” with them in addition to like, doing his job as an actor. Great stuff.

Interview

(NB: the interview takes awhile to get to (minute 36 or so), but it’s worth it if you’ve never heard of Slice of SciFi. They’re a great site to keep you up to date on all things scifi, in all formats - tv, film, games, books. Check them out!)

A new site design for a new year. All kudos and many, many thanks to Kristin Smith, who answered questions, helped me choose a design, and then customized it for me - your hard work is very much appreciated.

The 4th and final season of BSG starts tomorrow, and I’ll miss it - I’ll be on the road driving to Massachusetts for a few days. I look forward to seeing it when I get back next week though, and to seeing how we all like it. I’ve seen some spoilers around, and yes, I’ve glanced at them - don’t know how reliable they are, but even if they’re not, the end of the adventure will be a rousing, exciting fun-filled months. Enjoy the premiere everyone - talk to you on the other side.

From the darkness, you must fall
Failed and weak, to darkness all.

One thing that’s always fascinated me on BSG is the lack of poetry - in fact, most forms of traditional art. The above quote, from “Final Cut,” is one of the only references to poetry throughout the series, with the obvious exception of Starbuck’s wall poetry in her old home on Caprica. Is it a coincidence that it’s Starbuck who both writes the poetry and quotes the verse, and is also seen to be interested in painting? It’s hard to say.

What’s even more interesting though is the link between the lack of poetry and the apocalyptic universe in which the fleet resides. Plato claimed that his perfect Republic would include no poets because they were tricksters and liars; today, we tend to look at poets as messengers of a compressed truth about the world we live in, but to Plato, a poet’s use of troped language was the very opposite of truth and so had no place in the perfect Republic. In BSG, the only poetry that we see is linked to death: Kataris’ verses as a portent of doom for Tigh, and Starbuck’s words written on the wall of a home that has been obliterated.

To survive an apocalypse is to survive the end of all things, but it is also to be the witness of a new time since the apocalypse is both end and what comes after. Perhaps the reason that there is such a lack of poetry - of art - in a post-apocalyptic world is linked to the new vision of poetry as an essence of truth, or a representation of the world. If there is no world, and no truth, if those have been destroyed, then what is there to tell or represent?

In other news, it looks like the writers’ strike may finally be ending, which is great news for the writers and TV fans alike.

(FYI, Starbuck’s wall read:

Methodically
Smoking my
cigarette
with every breath
I breathe
out the day
With every delicious
sip
I drink away the night
stroking my hair to
the beat of his heart
watching a boy
turn into a
Man)

This site had some scoopy type stuff on Season 3 DVD’s for BSG. The release date is March 25th, about a month before Season 4 starts up (good timing guys!), but most importantly, the DVD’s will contain a great deal of ‘extras’ - including the webisodes that were unavailable to non-US watchers. As I pointed out in Frak You!, while the webisodes are not absolutely integral to the main storyline, they do demonstrate a couple things that we’re seeing more and more of on the small screen - attention paid to characters and arcs that would normally be deemed secondary, and a rounding out of multiple viewpoints, viewpoints that don’t necessarily accord with the major one the show is invested in. I think it’s great: the different viewpoints of the characters in those tiny webisodes gives texture to their actions in the actual aired episodes, making them seem more fully realized. For actor’s, it’s a chance to show the work they do to bring a fully realized character to life - except that now, the stories that the actor prepares for the character are actually being filmed instead of staying in their head.

Also of interest are Ronald Moore’s podcasts of the episodes, and there’s a tonne of information in them for your above-average fan, or anyone interested in seeing how all the components of telling a modern day story work together. And I’m guessing that if you’re reading this, you’re more than likely one of those kinds of people.

BSG season 4 won’t start airing until April 2008. Whatever you say about Ronald Moore, he’s got guts to let the show go that long without new episodes aside from the one-off Razor. Lesser shows would wither and their fans scatter; I don’t think that will happen with BSG, although that may be partly because season 4 will end the epic story. It’s still an interesting business move though.

In other news, I’m busily going through all the things that didn’t make it into the book for lack of space, so look for new exclusive content in the new year!

To all who celebrate the season and all who don’t, I wish a healthy and happy time.

So NBC finally made good on their promise to pull tv shows from iTunes, including Battlestar Galactica. NBC wanted to charge $2.99 for each download; Apple said, “no, $1.99 is the winning number.” Hard to believe that anyone would refuse to take business advice from Apple… The whole thing reminds me a lot of trying to watch The Resistance during the 2006 hiatus - Canadians (in fact anyone not in the U.S.) were just plain out of luck trying to grab the content from the actual source and had to rely on other means to find out what the webisodes were about. (In a prelude to the writers’ strike currently ongoing in the U.S., the writers for The Resistance were in a position of uncertainty regarding whether they would make any money off the webisodes, because entertainment legislation hasn’t yet caught up to the Internet age.)

I think NBC is cutting off its nose to spite its face, because with iTunes, they were making some money (granted, not as much as they wanted), could track interest and, with a bit of data collection, really do some good work figuring out their different target audiences. Now, although they’ve decided to sell the shows through their own service, unless they do some serious work and come up with a way for people to buy them that’s just as easy and accessible as iTunes, they’re going to have a hard time controlling who does what with their intellectual property.

The Toronto Globe and Mail did a feature story about BSG and just why it’s so popular. It’s not a new episode and it doesn’t abate anxiety over the writers’ strike, but it’s something. I was interviewed as part of the article. If you want to read it, my publisher has the whole article on their site.

The site has undergone a bit of a redesign. Bear with me as it’s a work in progress.