Blogs / Science Not Fiction

Okay, if you’re not caught up on your BSG, stop reading now! I’ll pause for a moment in case your eyes are like mine and tend to skip ahead for a few words anyway…. So, for those of you who have seen the mid season finale, there is a rumor swirling around about the Battlestar Galactica series finale, which boils down to the idea that the radioactive wasteland the cast was bitterly strolling around on was not in fact Earth, i.e. the ball of rock you and I live in, but a different planet that got smashed up in an earlier war. Humans left this Earth Mark I to settle on Earth Mark II, which is as yet unseen in Battlestar, and which is the rock we live on, you and I. Upon hearing this, I just had to get my nerd on.

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Space Opera is one of my favorite sub-genres of science fiction, and in recent years has gained a new lease of life (I recommend reading The New Space Opera anthology for good snapshot of the current state of affairs). Like all definitions, saying what exactly is and isn’t space opera can be a highly subjective exercise, but for me, works of space opera all try for a certain grand sweep: the canvas is broad, often involving a good chunk of at least one galaxy. The themes are big–space opera is where entire space-faring civilizations can collide–and awesome technologies are frequently brought into play.

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We’ve mentioned the upcoming Battlestar Galactica movie before, which will follow events in the human’s home system during the timeline of the main television series and it’s interstellar exodus. The script is being penned by Buffy veteran Jane Espenson, who has given us a (spoiler free) peek behind the curtain by writing on her blog about the process of getting the script down to size during preproduction.

Nowadays, many TV shows spend as little time as possible on the opening credits, racing to the main action after a few seconds. There are reasons for this (shorter credits can mean more time for the actual show for one), but a side effect is that there is less room for a theme to hit its stride. This is a pity, as a great theme can not only pull you into a program’s world, it can also become a shorthand for the entire show’s vision: just whistling the first few notes of The Twilight Zone theme still speaks volumes, nearly 50 years after the show first aired. So, as nod to a fading art, here are my favorite science fiction TV themes from the good old (pre-1980) days:

• The Twilight Zone: (1959) Yes, it has those distinctive notes, but also has Rod Serling’s mesmerizing monologue.
• Doctor Who: (1963) Not only a great theme in itself, it is an important composition in musical history that introduced electronic music to a mass audience.
• Star Trek (1966): William Shatner’s “Where no man has gone before…” monologue might have been a little too much Horatio Hornblower without the fast-paced music that evoked adventure on the high frontier.
• Captain Scarlet: (1967) Actually, I love the theme music of all Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s classic Supermarionation shows such as Thunderbirds or Stingray, but Captain Scarlet’s theme wins for being the perfect expression of space-age pop.
• The Six Million Dollar Man: (1974) It just doesn’t get any more iconic than this. Incidentally, Bruce Peterson, the test pilot whose real-life crash provided the film for the introductory sequence, was none too fond of seeing the accident that cost him an eye and his testing career constantly replayed on television.
• Battlestar Galactica: (1978) While I prefer the re-imagined version over the original in many respects, have you ever tried humming the new theme music? The sweeping orchestral score of the original perfectly set up the grand tone needed for the space opera that followed.

The L.A. Times Show Tracker blog has broken the news that the Sci Fi channel will air another Battlestar Galactica stand-alone movie after the final season wraps up in 2009.

Edward James Olmos, who plays Commander Adama, will take the helm as director, and several cast members that play cylon characters have already been attached to the project. Written by Buffy alum Jane Espenson, the movie will follow events in the Colonial’s home system following the cylon attack and the exodus of the Galactica and its rag-tag civilian fleet.

I have been laid low for the last few days by some dreadful lurgy I caught on the plane back from San Diego, but people have been hard at work behind the scenes putting together this edit of the video of our “Science Behind Science Fiction Panel” at this year’s Comic-con. From left to right you have Kevin Grazier (science advisor to Eureka and Battlestar Galactica), Jaime Paglia (co-creater and executive producer of Eureka), Phil Plait (Bad Astronomy blogger) and myself. We talked about how science makes its way into a script, how scientific accuracy is maintained (or not) and the value of retconning. Enjoy!

We had a great panel yesterday chewing over how great science can make science fiction. Thanks to Jaime Paglia, co-creater and executive producer of Eureka (Eureka’s third season premieres on the SCIFI channel on Tuesday), Kevin Grazier (science advisor to Eureka and Battlestar Galactica), and our very own Bad Astronomy blogger, Phil Plait.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to have some video from the panel before long: what’s clear is that on Battlestar and Eureka, while making a good show that people will want to watch is obviously their first priority, the producers and writers really do care about getting the science right — which means lots of grist for Science Not Fiction to blog about in the months to come. Yay!

Just out of a Comic-con panel celebrating 30 years of the Battlestar Galactica franchise. Present were Richard Hatch (who plays Tom Zarek in the new series and played Apollo in the original); Bear McCreary (who composes the music for the show, and told us that Ron Moore was very specific, for reasons as yet unannounced but which will become clear, about using Dylan’s “Along the Watchtower” as the background music to the season three finale, in which four humans are revealed as cylons); Kevin Grazier (Battlestar’s science advisor and panelist on DISCOVER’s “Science in Science Fiction” panel later today); and, interestingly, Tom DeSanto (best known as the producer of X-Men and Transformers.)

DeSanto was just weeks away from filming his own TV relaunch of Battlestar Galactica in 2001: set construction had begun and FOX had agreed to a pilot. A confluence of events (including 9/11 and problems with X-Men 2) caused the deal with FOX to fall through. This series was intended to be a continuation of the 1979 show, not a complete re-imagining from the ground up, as happened in Ron Moore’s version. DeSanto sketched out the premise of this version: about five years after the end of the original series, the rag tag fleet had a vote and decided to stop searching for Earth, opting instead to build a giant spacestation near an asteroid field. Before long the Cylons are forgotten in the pursuit of commerce and “pleasure domes.” Until another twenty years pass and the Cylons return… Richard Hatch would also have returned in this version — this time as a human being converted into a Cylon hybrid.

One thing remains constant across all the continuations and re-imaginings: no one appears willing to resurrect Galactica 1980.

Confirming it’s status as the science-fiction mecca, Comic-con has completely sold out. As I type, we’re working away here to give con-goers a great panel on Thursday about how great science can inspire great science fiction, with insights from Jaime Paglia (executive producer and creator of Eureka), Kevin Grazier (science advisor to Eureka and Battlestar Galactica) and our very own Phil Plait (creator of the Bad Astronomy blog). The official press release is after the jump, and if you can’t make Comic-con this year, don’t worry, we’ll be blogging all the latest news from the floor.

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It slides into view, slowly filling the frame: a giant spaceship, bristling with nacelles, antennas and other devices of unknown purpose. A deep rumbling pushes your sound system’s bass response to the limit. After a length of time, as determined by a complex interplay between how much awe or menace the director is trying to convey and the size of the special effects budget, a collection of glowing engines finally passes into view.

Whether it’s an interstellar freight transport, a Colonial Battlestar, or even a Star Destroyer, one thing is for sure: it’s honkin huge!

By comparison, Earth’s current mega-space project, the International Space Station, is puny. (more…)

A recent episode of the “This American Life” podcast (episode #329: “Nice Work If You Can Get It”) opens with an amusing rundown of what astronauts actually spend their time doing now that there are almost no manned spaceflights. The answer was mostly: go to lots of meetings in Houston.

The more interesting revelation was that the astronauts get their vicarious space thrills by watching Farscape and Battlestar Galactica. Aside from being “hugely jealous” of the capacity for interstellar space flight, one of the astronauts pointed out that classic BSG Viper/Star Wars X-Wing Fighter design is pretty dumb:

“All of those shows assume that there is some sort of magical gravity thing so that when you’re in your vehicle, you know, everybody’s all walkin’ on the floor. Well, not in our space program.

“They’ve got fighter jet flying. They have pointy noses and wings and they make them look like fighters. None of that is any advantage when there’s no atmosphere.

“You could be a box and have the same maneuverability. The Borg had it right. They’re a big cube and they’re perfectly maneuverable, as opposed to the little star fighter with the pointed nose and the wings and the engine in the back.”

Are you into Battlestar Galactica? Are you rich? If you answered, “Yes, extremely,” to both questions, I’ve got an important piece advice for you: Go buy yourself a life-size replica of a robotic cylon. For only $7,900 (I say “only” because we’ve already established that you’re financially endowed), you can have a 300-pound, seven-foot-tall fiberglass figure–complete with Kitt-style, sweeping-red-light eye slit–made by “Robot Man” Fred Barton himself.

Not having that kind of cash just sitting around (yet), I haven’t bought myself one of these, so I’d be interested to hear how the thing looks. Unfortunately, there don’t yet seem to be such realistic toy versions of the skin-job cylons. Then again, considering how weird it is to have life-like dolls around, maybe we’re better off without them.

Lee Billings has an interesting essay in SEED this month on how extraterrestrials would locate Earth from elsewhere in the universe.

“As the probe approached, gaps in the clouds far below revealed continents scattered amidst a world-girdling ocean. In a vast cosmic desert, this was an oasis. The probe sampled the atmosphere, finding abundant oxygen and traces of methane. Chemistry dictates that the two reactive gases could never coexist for long; something was replenishing them. Analyzing starlight reflected off the land, it saw regions absorbing light at wavelengths corresponding to no known non-biological process. Perhaps this was vegetation. The spacecraft also detected powerful, modulated radio emissions from the surface—almost certainly a sign of substantial technology. There was life on this planet, and at least some of it seemed intelligent.”

The probe he’s talking about is the 1990 Galileo spacecraft detecting Earth on its way to Jupiter. No mention of any guideposts set up by the gods or the 12th Cylon, but a fascinating piece nonetheless.

Here be spoilers!

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Some of the characters on Battlestar Galactica have been tooling around on a sewage recycling ship recently. Not surprisingly, the onboard accommodations are less than four star. Still, however the characters might feel about it, whenever I’m watching a show with scenes set on a spaceship, the messier the interior looks, the happier I am. Unless a spotlessly clean spaceship is being used for specific plot point (“A key member of the crew offends the obsessive-compulsive plant people of Nebulan Six by failing to use a coaster when ritually offered a glass of ice-cool Krotj”) the problem is that spic and span spaceship interiors break down my suspension of disbelief just as quickly as watching a cardboard background tremble at the approach of a castmember. (more…)