Thanks to Titan Books for sending us these exclusive extracts from the BSG season 4 companion book, out now to coincide with the release of the direct-to-DVD "The Plan." No, they won't explain that whole "Opera House" thing, but they are pretty fascinating.

So here are five things you never knew about Battlestar's final season:

1/ As the production began the casting process for an actor to play Starbuck¹s father, they realized that they needed a performer who could not only act, but was also an accomplished musician. That¹s not a small thing to ask, and at one point, the production thought they might have a solution get musician Bear McCreary to play the part himself! McCreary agreed to audition. "I thought, he¹s about the right age, he's a good looking guy, he'll look good on camera, and he can play." laughs director Michael Nankin. "Why not?". During the audition, however, it was mutually decided that music
was where McCreary¹s considerable talents lay! "For the good of the show, and of humanity in general," McCreary jokes on his blog, "I didn't get the role"

2/ Aaron Douglas does an extremely good impression of Edward James Olmos, to the extent that if Olmos was away from set when a read-through has been scheduled, Douglas would stand in and read Olmos' lines

3/ The interest with going the whole hog in blowing Gaeta's leg off was influenced by the question of who may have been directing the episode. "There was a rumor that Quentin Tarantino was interested in doing an episode and his schedule only allowed him to direct during the dates that 'Faith' would go into production," explains [episode writer] Seamus Kevin Fahey. "So, there was a small element of making it this bloody, awful, insane, Tim Roth squirming in the back of Mr. White's car-type teaser. It didn't work out, but I remember that being a germ of inspiration while working on those scenes. Director Michael Nankin did an amazing job with that sequence. It's so brutal. I loved it." Presumably if Tarantino had directed, someone would have also had to lose an ear.

4/ The ship, the Battlestar Galactica, was absolutely integral to the series. Besides lending her name to the show, she was where most of the action of the series had taken place - and so choosing the right way for her to make her exit was important. "Once we had decided that Galactica was going to get to Earth in the distant past, the question was, 'Well, what are we going to do with the ship?" says Ron Moore. "We played around with that quite a bit in the fourth season.". The writers discussed various options before making the decision to send Galactica and the rest of the fleet into the sun. "At one point we talked about maybe burying the ship, and maybe in a flash forward to contemporary times, there were these mounds of unknown origin in Central American," recalls Moore. "That was something Bradley Thompson was talking about. We were going to have someone digging into one of these mounds and discovering metal - and there would be the side of the ship. We also had a version where Adama decided to burn the Galactica, like Cortez burning his ships when he got to the New World"

5/ Ron Moore, a self-confessed Navy buff, says the scenes portraying the build-up to the attempted mutiny aboard the Demetrius were specifically influenced by the Caine Mutiny, a 1954 film set aboard a US destroyer and starring Humphrey Bogart. In the film, the crew are successful in their attempt to remove the single-minded Captain Queeg (Bogart) and are court-martialled on their return to port. Moore was also interested in the look of the Caine, which was a run-down, clausrophobic ship, and the Demetrius also took on those properties, Moore was so pleased with the resulting set that he called the art department together to praise them personally. This initially caused panic amongst the crew until they realised the summons was for good news, not bad.

Battlestar Galactica: The Official Companion Season Four on Borders.

I honestly didn't know what to expect when I took the ten-minute cab ride from the Convention Center to the House of Blues, where Bear McCreary and the Battlestar Galactica Orchestra would be performing. I suppose, as much as anyone can be a fan of television incidental music, that I'm a fan of the music on Battlestar Galactica, but I was at a loss to see how such music could sustain two hours worth of concert. The only stuff I could actively remember was the opening music with the hymnal singing and the drums, that sort of Irish music they played when people were sitting feeling sad, and "All Along the Watchtower", which I wasn't even sure counted as orchestral music. (In case it's not clear, I know absolutely nothing about music.)

What piqued my interest upon my arrival was a sign outside the House of Blues announcing Edward James Olmos and Grace Park as the evening's masters of ceremonies. If nothing else, I would at least be able to get in a little stargazing. After some not particularly brief confusion over the House of Blues's photography policy, whether I could bring my 20-year-old friend with me into the show (I couldn't), and a misadventure that may or may not have involved me swiping a Coke Zero from the VIP area (I'm still not sure what happened there), I was standing on the floor beneath the stage, waiting for the show to begin.

It was hard to tell who were the local music fans and who were the BSG diehards in for Comic Con, although I guessed those wearing the T-shirts with toasters on them or the word "Frak" were among the latter. I appreciated the simplicity of a shirt that has nothing more than a pretend curse word on it, but none of this did much to dispel my worries that tonight was basically just a nerdy novelty act.

But then, a good hour after my ticket said the show would start (which is admittedly pretty good for your average concert), I heard a voice. Thankfully, it was Edward James Olmos, introducing himself in Spanish over the microphone. I suddenly realized that this really was going to be Edward James Olmost leading us through the night's activities, not Bill Adama. He was not here to recite a greatest hits of his work on Battlestar Galactica. There would be no talk of toasters or skinjobs, how all this had happened before and would happen again (although considering there were concerts on Thursday and Saturday as well, he actually missed out on a good advertisting opportunity there). He did lead us all in a hearty round of "So say we all!", but that seemed to be the exception that proved the rule. And no, I'm not sure where my life can go now that I've chanted "So say we all!" with Edward James Olmos. I'm pretty sure I've peaked as a nerd.

In any event, he was here because he genuinely loved the music of Battlestar Galactica. This was equal parts out of an obvious appreciation for great music (he spent much of his time castigating the people sitting in the balcony for not joining the standing section down below, which he felt had better acoustics) and out of his feelings for the show itself. This was just another manifestation of the same open, unreserved passion that had led him to talk a few hours earlier about Adama/Tigh team-up movies and a Blade Runner crossover.

The show began with an opening act called Brendan's Band. I was now really starting to suspect that, for all my doubts, these people had come to rock. The band played six songs that were hard, fast, and loud, and not a one had even a whiff of Battlestar Galactica about them. It was only with the last song that the opening act acknowledged the driving force of the night's events, as they sung about all the troubles on Caprica and Aerilon. To be sure, the presence of Bear McCreary's brother (the titular Brendan), wife, and who I would soon discover were other members of the Orchestra made it clear why Brendan's Band had gotten the opening gig, but even so. Brendan's Band had come out and rocked hard, by and large just playing whatever music they felt like playing. Maybe this wasn't going to be entirely geeky evening after all.

Not that Edward James Olmos could ever be considered too geeky, but most people lack his gift to turn obscure references to a low-rated genre show into the height of badassery. It was as though he was actively challenging himself with the seemingly least cool material he could work with, as he decided to just read the Orchestra's songlist, all of which were met with thunderous applause. I could understand - perhaps - the crowd wildly applauding a title like "The Cult of Baltar." But "Precipice"? "Epiphanies"? I might be able to explain at length the geopolitical tensions between the Twelve Colonies of Kobol prior to the Cylon genocide (I can), but even I was dumbstruck by this response. Did everyone else assembled in the House of Blues actually know the music well enough the recognize the pieces by title? Or was the applause just Comic Con's conditioned, Pavlovian response to the name of any creative work whatsoever being said out loud? (Hell, I had heard a similar reaction to Gossip Girl the day before, so it's certainly possible.) Or was Edward James Olmos's passion really that infectious? (That was probably it.)

He was interrupted midway through, first by the entrance of Grace Park, who is about a foot taller than Edward James Olmos and at least twice as pretty. (At least.) Before he could even resume his list, Bear McCreary jumped out onto the stage. His flowing hair and messianic pose made him look unmistakeably like Gaius Baltar addressing his followers, something I was far more comfortable with than I probably should have been. Bear just about summed up the tone of the evening with his greetings, which began with two heartily exhuberant screams of "So say we all!" which was quickly followed by a rather sheepish, "Hi, everybody." He was clearly here to be the charismatic leader, but I'm not entirely sure it was his natural role. Thankfully, he was far more at home as conductor of his orchestra, as I fast discovered.

Because then the band played. Edward James Olmos had noted the musicians here had been responsible for every single note of music played on Battlestar Galactica, with not a substitute or replacement among them. Their expertise was readily apparent, but I was shocked by their enthusiasm. They all looked like they were experiencing the giddy thrill of performing together for the first time, and it was hard not to get lost in the moment. I recognized some of the music (particularly when Bear McCreary's wife reentered to provide that haunting singing), but even that which I didn't was unmistakeably Battlestar Galactica. The crowd was going wild, and the energy in the musicians' performances was unbelievable, particularly that from the violins, flutes, and other instruments not typically associated with rocking the fuck out.

It was then that I properly understood. This was the Battlestar Galactica Orchestra, the group that had done the incidental music for a basic cable science fiction show, and they were all rock stars. At that moment, Battlestar Galactica was suddenly no longer nerdy. It was cool, and not cool in a nerdy way, nerdy in a cool way, or even frakking cool. For those two hours, as Bear McCreary's orchestra rocked out in the House of Blues, Battlestar Galactica was fucking cool, simple as that.

Images by AmyR_81 and Arrow Of Apollo on Flickr.

Bernard Herrmann

Herrmann is one of the most celebrated composers in Hollywood history, having scored classics from Citizen Kane to Psycho to Taxi Driver. He makes our list for his groundbreaking score for 1951's The Day The Earth Stood Still (pictured above), with its prominent use of the theremin. After this movie, use of the eerie, otherworldly, electromagnetic instrument became the signature sound of sci-fi scores.

Louis and Bebe Barron

The Barrons took Herrmann's innovation a quantum leap further with their score for 1956's Forbidden Planet, which featured not a single traditional acoustic instrument. The husband-and-wife team's collection of all-analog burbles and bleeps sounds delightfully retro today, but the movie's all-electronic score was, at the time, controversial. Still, the sounds ideally complemented the tale of an isolated planet beset by an invisible monster.

Jerry Goldsmith

Goldsmith's 1968 score for Planet of the Apes swung the pendulum back toward traditional orchestration for sci-fi movies. Well, sort of; his tense, percussive score (echoing Charlton Heston's attempt to hold onto his sanity) included a Brazilian instrument called a culka that sounds like hooting monkeys. Goldsmith would go on to write many other memorable sci-fi scores, notably, Alien (1979) and the majestic theme for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), which would be reworked for TV as the theme for Star Trek: The Next Generation.

John Williams

With the original Star Wars (1977), John Williams became the gold standard of sci-fi composers. His Wagnerian use of leitmotifs created instantly memorable themes for the major characters, and his grand opening fanfare is so thoroughly evocative of the movie that it instantly transports viewers back to the sense of awe and wonder they felt when they first saw that imperial cruiser fill the screen. Williams has scored just about every film Steven Spielberg has made; his five-note theme for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) became a character in itself.

Vangelis

The Greek new age composer is best remembered for his electronic score for Chariots of Fire, but his work on Blade Runner (1982) was similarly stellar, a mix of electronica, noirish brass, and traditional orchestral sounds that matched the movie's polyglot futurism.

James Horner

Yes, now he's known for syrupy goo like Titanic, but he got his start as a scrappy Roger Corman factory worker (Battle Beyond the Stars, 1980). He soon graduated to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), where he expanded on Jerry Goldsmith's score for the first movie to include nautical themes (fit for all those Moby-Dick references in the script). His elegaic music surrounding Spock's death and funeral was an early sign of Horner's ability to create music tearjerking enough to make a Vulcan cry. (Genre fans will also recall Horner's memorable scores for 1983's Krull and Brainstorm.)

Alan Silvestri

Silvestri, who's scored nearly every Robert Zemeckis film, is a disciple of John Williams who has a knack for creating a grandiose sound that makes his patron's movies seem bigger and zippier than they are. Case in point: his first big job, the Back to the Future trilogy (1985/89/90). Heard now, it instantly evokes Marty McFly zipping along on his skateboard, or Doc Brown firing up the time-traveling DeLorean. Silvestri's other genre works include Predator, The Abyss, and both Lara Croft movies.

Danny Elfman

Elfman, whose work is so closely associated with Tim Burton that he seems to be the musical portion of the director's brain, combines a reverence for traditional movie orchestration with an irreverence toward classical melody, bred perhaps of his days as the frontman for Oingo Boingo. The result is a frenetic, jumpy, off-kilter sound that's nonetheless grand and majestic, a sound that makes Elfman's music instantly recognizable, not to mention well-suited to such Burton genre pastiches as Ed Wood (1994) and Mars Attacks (1996).

Basil Poledouris

Poledouris created stately, mournful scores for movies with rugged, damaged heroes (the Conan the Barbarian films) and lent a gravity to Paul Verhoeven's science fiction films (notably, 1987's RoboCop and 1997's Starship Troopers) that helped ground their deadpan satire in real human emotions.

Bear McCreary

The ubiquitous 30-year-old composer (who'll be performing the score from Battlestar Galactica this Saturday at a free concert at Los Angeles' California Plaza, as well as next month at Comic-Con) is the sci-fi scorer of the moment, thanks to his television work on BSG and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. His tension-filled scores, mixing traditional orchestration with less orthodox instruments (accordion, bagpipe, duduk, erhu), is completely integral to his shows; particularly BSG, where his Middle Eastern/metal rearrangement of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" (familar and strange at once) was key to understanding the plot and characters.

Popularizing The Word "Frak"
Yes, yes. It's like "fuck" but in space. We get it already. "Frak" has become nerd cliche by this point, overused to the point of becoming annoying, especially on non-nerdy TV shows when they want to drop a little geekage for one of their characters. Like all good TV show catchphrases - and that's really what this one was - it's had it's day, and it's time to slowly let it slink into the shadows at least until Caprica.

Being Treated As Art With The Self-Conscious Capital A
The one sour note in the finale? That would've been the epilogue, where AngelSix and AngelBaltar practically looked into the camera and said "It's not just science fiction, do you see? It's actually about the real world!" before we get Jimi and the robot clip show. Galactica has always had a tendency to get its pretension on, and that's one of the things that made it so wonderfully ambitious... but along the way, everyone else started getting very indulgent of that pretension. Yes, it transcended its SF roots to become a human drama that anyone could enjoy, but the self-congratulatory SciFi Channel specials? A little bit too much, even for self-promotion. And don't get me started on the UN thing.

That Music
Yes, people may have had a problem with the use of "All Along The Watchtower," but that's not the music I'm talking about here. Bear McCreary is a fine composer whose work on the first couple of seasons of the show (and, for that matter, on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Eureka) was amazing. But as his work got more ambitious on BSG, it also started to overpower some of the scenes, or just take the viewer out of them altogether with unexpected touches (All I'm saying is this: Bagpipes are never a good idea. Especially digital bagpipes). Although he managed to keep things under control in the finale, I dread to think where he would've gone if the show had continued for a fifth or sixth season.

Lee Adama In General
Where to start? With the way that his character never really gelled in any particular direction (even when that direction was "directionless")? Or how about the weird lack of purpose that he served in the show all along (Was there ever really an Apollo-centric story arc that didn't feel tacked on to some other plot?), or Jamie Bamber's performance that regularly mistook frowning for emotion? But, no; I'd rather talk about the lasting impression that I'll have of Lee Adama from the finale: His giant, giant hair. You can tell the true impact of a character when the thing that he'll really be remembered for is that he was fat for a bit during the show's third season, and it was this spirit of style-over-substance that must have led Bamber and the show's creators to send Apollo off with a hairstyle that can only have been a tribute to the late '70s era that spawned the original show in the first place. Not for nothing was he one of the few characters who didn't really have any kind of dramatic moment in the series finale; anything else might have made you suspect that he was there for some reason other than to look good. Dualla could've done so much better.

Battlestar Galactica
Okay, this is slightly unfair; I thought BSG was a wonderful show, despite all of the above, one that engaged my heart and my mind and poked and prodded in all the right ways, questioning and exciting and entertaining (if you can use that word for such a constantly depressing, pessimistic show) at all times. But if there's one thing that the finale accomplished, it was finishing the story. By the time it was done, I felt as if everything that needed to be said had been said, and said beautifully... and then there was the trailer for Battlestar Galactica: The Plan (and, for that matter, the trailer for Caprica). Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that the show needs an epilogue or a prequel spin-off, and the fact that it's getting both just feels more than a little like SciFi can't say goodbye to such a successful show, and have no problem with a little bit of graverobbing to try and keep the good thing going a little longer than it should. I'd love to miss Battlestar Galactica; I just don't feel as if I'm going to get the chance, sadly.

I think possibly one of the problems with this episode was that it explored incredible betrayals enacted by a character - Boomer - whose entire life has been all about betraying everyone who has loved her. So there was a bit of a "no duh" feeling about the scenario, as well as a lot of skepticism about why Tyrol wound up trusting Boomer again.

Intercut between Boomer's many perfidious (and lascivious) scenes was a Starbuck subplot that reminded me of the worst moments on the poop ship when Starbuck totally lost it and started painting her cabin and dancing with Leoben. Didn't Star Trek: TNG teach us never again to do the wise piano player routine, even if it isn't on the holodeck and doesn't include Brent Spiner singing?

The point is, the episode was really uneven. Amazing and disturbing things happened, and there was a cool plot twist, but unfortunately there was a lot of randomness too. Let us now delve into the full WTF that steered the lives of Boomer and Starbuck in "Someone to Watch Over Me."

If you recall, Boomer was the first sleeper cylon that we learned about way back in season one. She was an officer working with Tyrol, having an affair with him that nobody was allowed to know about because he was technically reporting to her. They were hot and tragic, but there was never a sense that they were planning a future together - it seemed mostly like they were having a torrid sex thing. Then Boomer got all freaked out, and they broke up, and then her cylon circuits turned on and she shot Adama. Though Adama recovered eventually, Boomer didn't. Cally, Tyrol's soon-to-be cheating and snot-faced wife, assassinated Boomer before there was even a trial.

On Friday we learned that as Boomer died, she whispered, "I love you Chief," to Tyrol. We also learned that Tyrol has been pining for Boomer all these years (which we sort of already guessed), and now that she's arrived on Galactica with Ellen all he wants to do is get busy with her. So he starts visiting her in prison, sharing freaky "cylon projections" with her - basically they go to a virtual world together, which is apparently the dream house they designed back in the hot affair days. Boomer claims she's missed Tyrol every day and goes to this dream house of theirs, where she's also whipped up a fake child whose main characteristic appears to be collecting stuffed animals and making Tyrol cry as he bares his teeth.

After all this domestic brain bonding, Tyrol of course wants to protect Boomer from extradition to the cylon ship where the rebel cylons want to try her for treason. Remember, Boomer is the sole Number 8 who sided with the Cavil cylons - and she's also having sex with Cavil, who seems to have sex with everybody, including Ellen, his daughter/mother. All I can say is: Gross. And it only got grosser.

In fact, the more disgustingly manipulative Boomer got, the better this episode was. The scenes where she shows Tyrol their dream house and fake kid felt incredibly over-the-top, and despite all her protestations to the contrary, I think Boomer was doing it purely to frak with Tyrol. Her scheme works, too. Rather than letting the humans extradite Boomer, he basically goes nuts. He engineers a power outage on Galactica, knocks out a handy 8, and switches her with the imprisoned Boomer.

Yay, Boomer is free! That means she can go beat the shit out of Athena, tie her up in a locker, and pretend to be her when Helo comes home looking for a little mid-day hump. (See clip.) This scene is so twisted and awesome that it almost tipped the episode over into the mega-zone. After gratuitously doing Helo, Boomer wanders over to the daycare center, grabs Hera, drugs her, then packs her in a food supply box which she loads onto her sneaking-away ship as Tyrol glows with "you made me a fake daughter" pride. When a bleeding, scantily-clad Athena stumbles into the Bay to tell the truth, it's too late: Boomer's got the kid, and she basically blasts a hole in the ship as she jumps away to good old Cavil.

So basically Cavil totally played everybody. He let the Fleet think that Boomer fled his ships with Ellen, but in fact he'd let Ellen go just to get Boomer into the Fleet again. Tricky! Even Ellen was fooled.

Now the ship is injured even worse than it already was, the president has passed out (or died?), and everything is going to hell. So of course Starbuck is spending all her time getting drunk in the bar, listening to this piano player who may or may not exist. Let's call him Piano Man, in honor of Billy Joel.

Piano Man basically has a long therapy session with Starbuck, in which she tells him all about her dad (boo hoo - he was a Piano Man too and he left her family one day and never came back) and her whole I-burned-my-own-dead-body problem. In response, he pats her on the head, teaches her to play piano again just the way daddy did, and says things about how not knowing what the hell is going on is actually a great thing (and it had better be, if you want to enjoy these parts of the episode).

Either Piano Man is actually Starbuck's dad, or is a dad-related figment of her imagination, or something even weirder. The point is, after a bunch of really long scenes that don't involve beatings or sex, Piano Man finally gets Starbuck to play this tune that's been in her head. And it's part of the freaky-haunting music by Bear McCreary you've been hearing throughout the whole show. It's also obviously some kind of Final Five alarm noise, because as soon as Starbuck plays it Tigh does his whole dramatic chipmunk face with the buggy eye.

All the Finals run over to Starbuck at the piano and start asking, "Where did you hear that music?" And mysteriously, Piano Man is gone. It's just Starbuck there, with some notes on a sheet of paper - notes whose pattern match a pattern that Hera was drawing right before she got Boomer snatched! Whoa!

Meanwhile, Anders is still in a coma but his brain is creating really awesome screen saver patterns on the flat screen monitor that's showing us his "brain waves." Maybe those brain waves will turn out to be in the same pattern as Starbuck's song? Tune in next week, to find out whether Hotdog will get another line.