On last Friday’s episode of Battlestar Galactica, the crew of the Galactica finally ran up against a problem that is the bane of aerospace engineers: metal fatigue. Fatigue can affect anything built with metal that is subjected to stress, but airplanes and spacecraft can be particularly vulnerable. As shown on BSG, metal fatigue starts with tiny cracks you can’t see. Subjected to repeated cycles of stress, these microscopic cracks grow. Left unchecked, they can cause a structural member to fail abruptly, sometimes with catastrophic results.

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There’s a lot going on in January for science fiction fans—the start of the last ten episodes of Battlestar Galactica, the series finale of Stargate Atlantis*, the release of Outlander (which is either going to be embarrassingly bad or Totally Awesome) and more. Io9 has put together a handy day-by-day breakdown of January so you can buy your movie tickets, set your DVR, and get in line at the comic-book store at the right time.

*The nice people at SciFi sent me a screener of the last two episodes, and I can tell you now the penultimate episode of Stargate Atlantis on January 2nd is one of their cleverest ever in terms of storytelling.

Getting impatient for the January 16th kickoff of the final episodes of Battlestar Galactica? To tide us all over until then, SciFi is releasing a 10 webisode series called “The Face of The Enemy” that takes place nine days after the mid-season finale. The webisodes are a few minutes long and are being up put up every two or three days, with the third currently the most recent. The action centers on fan-favorite Felix Gaeta, who finds himself stuck on a raptor stranded in deep space. Revelations abound, so don’t watch it unless you’re caught up. (Those new to the show can watch this “Catch the Frak Up” 13-minute video instead that covers the last 3.5 seasons, hilariously narrated by Katie Sackhoff, who plays Starbuck) Check out the webisodes at the Battlestar website, or on Hulu.

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!