Post by koenigrules on Jan 13, 2005 17:13:27 GMT -5
www.nowplayingmag.com/content/view/597/2/
More Galactica Talk: Characters and Caprica
Written by Scott Collura
With the new and improved Battlestar Galactica's first season set to debut tomorrow night on the Sci Fi Channel, Now Playing grabbed executive producer Ron Moore for a nice chat about the show. Yesterday, he discussed the season two script order, and today the writer-producer discusses what we can expect from Galactica over the next several weeks.
The show, of course, details the aftermath of an all-out attack by the robotic Cylons on the 12 Colonies of Kobol. With a mere 50,000 survivors left from the holocaust, Commander Adama (Edward James Olmos) leads his "ragtag fugitive fleet" in an attempt to flee the Cylon threat. But one unexpected aspect of the new show - and a major point of divergence from the original 1978 version - is that Moore and his writers have actually decided to go back to one of the colonies on a weekly basis, even while the Galactica continues to travel further and further away from its homeworlds.
"This is an opportunity to go outside and do some exterior work without having to do a planet of the week type series, which I was really opposed to," says Moore. "So it really kind of gave me the best of both worlds."
This planet-bound subplot details the travails of Helo (Tahmoh Penikett), one of the Galactica's officers who was stranded on the world of Caprica in the miniseries. Moore says that the decision to bring back Helo was made late in the game.
"It wasn't until after the miniseries had premiered and we were starting to talk seriously about the series itself. There's a continuing storyline on Caprica all the way through and eventually in the finale Starbuck [Katee Sackhoff] goes back as well," Moore says, while also revealing that Sharon (Grace Park), revealed to be a Cylon at the end of the mini, joins Helo on the planet in the series. "It was pretty much a hopeless situation [on Caprica]. There was nothing the Galactica could do in the face of the destruction but presumably there were pockets of survivors here and there who had to be abandoned. [Helo] embarks on a very solitary journey with the other Sharon and it's really a mystery. Why is she doing what she's doing and what are the Cylons about? Why isn't he running into other people, why aren't they seeing other dead bodies, what's going on on Caprica?"
Moore explains that he also plans on fleshing out the characters back on the Galactica now that he'll have the time to do so.
"In the series you have the opportunity to make them a little bit more rounded," he explains. "The miniseries was one event really: Here's the attack and the cataclysm, and I had an opportunity to really set up all the characters because I always thought of the miniseries as a pilot. And it was important to me to really tell the audience up front in very stark terms who these characters were, and this is the characters that we're dealing with. And they're not square-jawed heroes, and they're all flawed people. Now as you go to series, you just have more opportunities to play different colors and different aspects of the characters and different situations, and put them in different groupings and sort of watch the humor and play the lighter stuff as well as the darker stuff."
Case in point: The unlikely pairing of heroic Starbuck and cowardly Baltar (James Callis) that begins to develop in the early episodes of the first season.
"That's the kind of thing where you throw a moment in a script and wonder if it's going to go anywhere, and you watch dailies and see how the actors respond and what the chemistry is like between those two," says Moore. "And then you go, 'O.K., I want to keep playing this and we'll see where it goes.'"
We'll have even more from Ron Moore tomorrow, so check back then unless you're stranded on Caprica, in which case, we understand.
KR
More Galactica Talk: Characters and Caprica
Written by Scott Collura
With the new and improved Battlestar Galactica's first season set to debut tomorrow night on the Sci Fi Channel, Now Playing grabbed executive producer Ron Moore for a nice chat about the show. Yesterday, he discussed the season two script order, and today the writer-producer discusses what we can expect from Galactica over the next several weeks.
The show, of course, details the aftermath of an all-out attack by the robotic Cylons on the 12 Colonies of Kobol. With a mere 50,000 survivors left from the holocaust, Commander Adama (Edward James Olmos) leads his "ragtag fugitive fleet" in an attempt to flee the Cylon threat. But one unexpected aspect of the new show - and a major point of divergence from the original 1978 version - is that Moore and his writers have actually decided to go back to one of the colonies on a weekly basis, even while the Galactica continues to travel further and further away from its homeworlds.
"This is an opportunity to go outside and do some exterior work without having to do a planet of the week type series, which I was really opposed to," says Moore. "So it really kind of gave me the best of both worlds."
This planet-bound subplot details the travails of Helo (Tahmoh Penikett), one of the Galactica's officers who was stranded on the world of Caprica in the miniseries. Moore says that the decision to bring back Helo was made late in the game.
"It wasn't until after the miniseries had premiered and we were starting to talk seriously about the series itself. There's a continuing storyline on Caprica all the way through and eventually in the finale Starbuck [Katee Sackhoff] goes back as well," Moore says, while also revealing that Sharon (Grace Park), revealed to be a Cylon at the end of the mini, joins Helo on the planet in the series. "It was pretty much a hopeless situation [on Caprica]. There was nothing the Galactica could do in the face of the destruction but presumably there were pockets of survivors here and there who had to be abandoned. [Helo] embarks on a very solitary journey with the other Sharon and it's really a mystery. Why is she doing what she's doing and what are the Cylons about? Why isn't he running into other people, why aren't they seeing other dead bodies, what's going on on Caprica?"
Moore explains that he also plans on fleshing out the characters back on the Galactica now that he'll have the time to do so.
"In the series you have the opportunity to make them a little bit more rounded," he explains. "The miniseries was one event really: Here's the attack and the cataclysm, and I had an opportunity to really set up all the characters because I always thought of the miniseries as a pilot. And it was important to me to really tell the audience up front in very stark terms who these characters were, and this is the characters that we're dealing with. And they're not square-jawed heroes, and they're all flawed people. Now as you go to series, you just have more opportunities to play different colors and different aspects of the characters and different situations, and put them in different groupings and sort of watch the humor and play the lighter stuff as well as the darker stuff."
Case in point: The unlikely pairing of heroic Starbuck and cowardly Baltar (James Callis) that begins to develop in the early episodes of the first season.
"That's the kind of thing where you throw a moment in a script and wonder if it's going to go anywhere, and you watch dailies and see how the actors respond and what the chemistry is like between those two," says Moore. "And then you go, 'O.K., I want to keep playing this and we'll see where it goes.'"
We'll have even more from Ron Moore tomorrow, so check back then unless you're stranded on Caprica, in which case, we understand.
KR
