Wondering how to last the next six months (at least) until Battlestar Galactica returns to our screens? You could do worse that spend some time over at Battlestar Revealed, a site that attempts to piece together various sources to work out the remaining mysteries created by Ron Moore and crew.

While the site may be guilty of being perhaps too literal in dealing with the show - Does anyone else really think that the scenes in the Opera House are meant to be flashbacks to when the actual Opera House existed, rather than metaphorical dreams or visions? - there's a lot of food for thought in the arguments that it constructs around the identity of the Final Cylon, the importance of the Lords of Kobol and, maybe most interestingly, the way that the show's been constructed by the writers:

Now when you analyse the scene in which D’Anna gets off the Raptor and requests the four from the fleet, it makes perfect sense that this is a scene in which the writers have had to “dig themselves out of a hole”. At first glance it appears as though D’Anna does indeed recognize the Final Five but its clear that it was filmed in such a way as to continue the charade that the Final Five humans are the same five that the cylons call the Final Five.

It’s never conclusive that she recognizes any of the other four. She did recognize Baltar, he was the only one connected via his head character at that time. He was already on the baseship which is why she only requested the four from the fleet. She simply used a mind trick to fool the colonials into thinking she knew the other four. When she starts speaking, both Tory and Tigh are looking extremely worried which is why she appears to focus her attention on them - leading you to think she already knows who they are. Tory then effectively gives herself up and in a scene that we don’t see, she tells D’Anna who the other three are. This is how she appears to know the identity of the other three when Lee tells her that he has them in the launch tube.

Another piece of clever production, designed to dig themselves out of a hole and at the same time maintain the illusion that the Opera House figures and the Final Five humans are one and the same!

[Battlestar Revealed]

The LA Times spoke to Grace Park, the show's turncoat Cylon Athena (and more loyal Cylon Boomer, as well as many, many other Sharons), who seemed to have an idea of what's going on:

I just heard about the first Battlestar movie being greenlit... A TV movie, but still! But this — it's like, yeah, it's over but we're ready to move on but nobody's manager or agent has been called. It's supposed to start in August.

The reason that no managers or agents have been called may be that the rumored prequel direction of the TV movies will ultimately turn out to be true: In which case, the movies will follow up on the flashback sequences from Razor with an all-new, all-cheaper cast. That would be an interesting decision from show creator David Eick. It would mean that he's betting fans are more interested in the show's mythology and backstory, than they are in the characters.

Alternatively, another reason that managers and agents are still waiting by their phones could simply be that Park's source is wrong. Elsewhere in the same Times story, a SciFi spokesperson is quoted as saying

[The channel would] love to see the continuation of 'Battlestar' with a special event akin to Razor but the idea is still in the discussion stage.

Does that mean all of the movies are in the discussion stage, or just a Razor-esque one? Does anyone actually know what's going on over there? And, more importantly, if they do make the spin-off movies, will one of them be a remake of The Love Guru with Baltar in Mike Myers' place?

Is a 'Battlestar Galactica' TV movie deal nearly done? [LA Times]

For those who have been spending the first half of Battlestar Galactica's final season expecting to see deceased presidential aide Billy Keikeya again - perhaps in a shock revelation as the show's final cylon - then we've got some good news and bad news for you. The good news is, the writers want to bring Billy back as well. The bad news, it's not going to happen.

Speaking during one of the latest podcast commentaries, executive producer Ron Moore explained,

I think we [the writers] were all kind of intrigued about bringing the Billy character back, he was one of our favorites and long dead and it would be kind of cool to see him again in the last season... But there was some scheduling conflict with the actor Paul Campbell, and he wasn't available.

Okay, we'll admit it - This doesn't mean that we have no chance of seeing Billy again; Moore has been known to mislead fans on his podcast commentaries, after all (*coughStarbuck'sdeathcough*). But if he really wanted to keep any potential Billy reappearance a surprise, it's unlikely that he'd start bringing up the subject at all.

If you're wondering why he brought up the subject, it's because the role that equally dead character Elosha played as Roslyn's hallucinatory spiritual advisor in "The Hub" episode was originally going to be filled by a ghost Billy. When Campbell's lack of availability changed that plan, writer Jane Espenson detailed the amount of work that created to fix the script:

In a hallmark of what I consider really fine writing, I just did a global search and replace on the name. I did not change the lines. The only thing I did... I added 'Cue the celestial trumpets.' That one phrase that Elosha has was all I did to change it.

As Moore says in response, "There you go. That's how finely detailed this stuff is."

Battlestar Galactica Commentary Podcast [Scifi.com]

For just $3 per month, you too can join the ongoing fight against the Cylons, thanks to Universal Digital Platforms Group and Glu Mobile. Those are the two companies behind the new cell phone game based on Ron Moore's revamped Galactica, launched on Friday. The game - described by Glu Mobile's Senior VP of Global Publishing, Jill Braff, as "a compelling space-shooter that lets gamers experience the excitement and atmosphere of the 'Battlestar Galactica' universe anytime, anywhere" - is available on multiple carriers, including AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.

It's still not 100% clear if Friday's announcement is the reality behind those rumors about SciFi's Stargate game, but it's definitely a clear sign that SciFi and Universal are serious about keeping the franchise alive after the series comes to a conclusion in 2009.

Battlestar Galactica Mobile Game Unveiled [Digital Spy]

The lifesize replicas of Galactica's villainous mechanoids - available in both Glen A. Larson Original and Ron D. Moore Updated flavors - are the latest creations of Fred Barton, who describes himself as "America's Robotman". Barton's company, Fred Barton Productions, produces "museum quality, famous movie and television robot replicas, sought internationally by private collectors and museums," and now they're turning their attention to... well, this:

The Cylon Centurion replicas were both molded and hand-sculpted to perfection in Barton's Los Angeles studios using an original costume from the 1970s and a computer generated, automated foam-cut Cylon, which was scaled to the imposing height of seven feet. The body is made of 100% fiberglass. The classic Cylon Centurion boasts a "reflective showroom finish," while the Cylon from the current series bears a "distressed multi-tone finish." Both incorporate synchronized stereo sound and lighting effects, advanced electronics and red LED light effects.

Yes, that's right — Those long-incomplete "Original Starbuck meets new Starbuck in a Cylon concentration camp and they can only keep warm by taking off their clothes and making sweet sweet love under the watchful gaze of their robot captors" cosplay nights can now be more complete than you ever imagined, and only for the admittedly substantial price of $7900. Pricey, yes, but somewhere out there, someone just read that last sentence and thought to themselves "Finally, my dreams can come true."

Let's Sell Some Cylons! [THR Live Feed]

Designed by Pierre Drolet, this cylon model looks pretty badass. (Omigod I am so funny with the ass joke.)

Mojo explains:

From the back, we see that the large power cell/backpack has been faithfully reproduced. Perhaps the biggest surprise was, against all odds (and the office betting pool), Pierre actually managed to keep a hint of the original skirt! Now, instead of it being an actual, fabric skirt designed to hide deficiencies in the costume, we have a piece of flexible armor, further protecting the mechanisms within.

Wait, are those skirts or . . . hotpants? Am I watching The Apple? So confused.

Clean your mind by checking out more cool cylon photos at Mojo's blog.

Anatomy of a Cylon [Darth Mojo]

Check out the front and back of the sheets, and bid away. We also took a look through the store portion of her site and noticed she's selling autographed copies of her Playboy appearance from last year, which sports some NSFW Cylon coin-slot action. All proceeds to go Tricia's favorite Kitten Rescue charity, and we're resisting the urge for a bad joke right here.

Quantum Mechanix specializes in "Imagination Made Real," and they'll be offering up this handmade ship sometime later this year, next to the cool schwag they already sell like replicas of Captain Reynolds pistol from Firefly, customizable Battlestar Galactica dogtags, and that nifty "How To Spot A Cylon" poster we already coveted. Although this Cylon Raider replica will probably set you back a bit further than any of those.

They'll only be making 500 of these, each one made to order, and the coolest feature is that you can plug it into the wall to active the red sweeping Cylon eye at the front of the ship, and the random firing engine lights in the back (check out the video below). So you'll be able to film this thing as a realistic movie miniature, without blowing your entire budget on CGI effects. Of course, they don't a Viper model yet, so your Raider will have to battle it out with other Raiders, or you can do a mashup and stick an X-Wing or something else in there.

Cylon Raider Filming Miniature [Quantum Mechanix]

• Any vehicle from the Star Trek Universe: Dilithium Crystals. This is an element created just for Star Trek that powers everything from the U.S.S. Enterprise to a Klingon Bird of Prey. Dilithium had to be mined, just like we have to drill for oil, and could be hard to come by. Of course, when Star Trek: The Next Generation came out the writers decided to just cheat and make it something that they could make synthetically, thereby killing any future "we're out of gas!" storylines.
• The Time-Traveling Delorean from Back to the Future: plutonium, gas, and/or garbage. Doc Brown's time-tripping Delorean actually has an engine that does run on gas, although when he came back from the future he'd converted the flux capacitor to run on a Mr. Fusion device, thereby eliminating the need for plutonium pellets for driving through the decades. Just toss some trash inside, and you're good to go.
• Anything in the Battlestar Galactica universe: Tylium. In the world of BSG, both Cylon and Human ships run off of a fictional ore called tylium. It's only found on certain planets, and has to be mined, just like dilithium crystals. But unlike the crystals, it also has to be refined and turned into a gasoline like substance. No idea what kind of mileage you get out of it, but it also powers their "faster than light" drives, so it must pack quite a punch.
• The TARDIS from Doctor Who: artificial black holes, radiation, life force... take your pick. The TARDIS in the world of Doctor Who looks like a giant blue phonebooth, and travels through both time and space. However it's actually a sentient being that draws its power from one of several different sources, depending on what season of the show you're watching. In the current incarnation of the show, the Doctor has to stop periodically near a space-time rift and suck up the leaking radiation in order to keep things going. A sort of interstellar pit stop, if you will. Photo by lizardian.
• The Spaceship Heart of Gold from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: a cup of hot tea. The Heart of Gold ran on an infinite improbability drive that took it through "every point in the universe at once" when it was switched on. Not too shabby. All it took was an electronic brain and a good Brownian motion generator, like a cup of tea, and you're off. Probably the cheapest form of travel ever invented.
• Anything in Star Wars: your guess is as good as ours. While you sometimes see strange hoses and gizmos hooked to the ships before they launch, it was never made clear in these movies what they run on. George Lucas apparently never wanted us to get bored by the details, so you could fill in the blanks on your own for this one. Lando was running a gas-mining facility on Bespin in The Empire Strikes back, so maybe he was in the spaceship fuel business. We may never know, so be careful with whatever you put in the tank of your X-Wing.

• As always, extinguish all smoking materials while refueling and be sure to hold on to your receipts. Your own mileage may vary.

• Barbarella: This movie was all about sex, from the opening credits where Jane Fonda strips down in zero gravity, to her encounter with Dr. Durand Durand's sex organ called "The Excessive Machine." Which is basically a piano that plays with your genitalia. It's supposed to kill her, but of course Barbarella breaks it, oh my. She also has super-sci fi sex in pill form, which manages to curl her hair a bit. There's even a character named Dildano, in case you had any doubts about all the sex.

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• Demolition Man: This movie has a scene where Sylvester Stallone gets it on with Sandra Bullock's character through some high-tech sex helmets. You put them on and "think" about sex, so no bodily fluids are exchanged. That way you can do the nasty and stay "pure." Thankfully, it saves us from seeing them writhing around in bed together. A sad Stallone retires to his apartment to knit (no joke), but he gets a wrong number video phone call, so you can still see some boobies. He probably wrote that scene in himself.

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• Liquid Sky: In this 1982 cult-classic, fashion model Margaret has a troupe of tiny aliens following her around and sucking up the endorphins released by the people she has sex with, because that's where they get their fuel from. Must make finding a service station a bit rough. She has trouble hiding the ever-growing body count until the aliens help her out and start vaporizing them for her. Where else could you get a line like, "I bet you $300 I can fuck Margaret and not die!" spoken by a woman?

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• Battlestar Galactica: There's a lot of sex going on in this show, because apparently Cylons are equipped with a horny circuit that's been switched into overdrive. Except for that short, balding guy. We've never seen him try to do the deed. Plus, Cylon's spines glow red during sex, which you think would make detecting them a bit easier than the iffy blood-test solution that Baltar comes up with. Plus, Starbuck gets strapped down and has an ovary removed in a Cylon reproduction farm, which means they're just having sex for the fun of it.

  
  

• Moonraker: James Bond ventures into outer space, has slow-motion fights with laser beams and while wearing a spacesuit, manages to turn Jaws into a good guy, and also gets down with some zero gravity action with Dr. Holly Goodhead. The film's effects are pretty laughable at this point (the space shuttle has LASER BEAMS, for god's sake), but that sex scene made it all worth it when you were ten years old. Plus Q gets off a good one-liner at the end when the Prime Minister video calls Bond to congratulate him and they sex him and Dr. Goodhead floating naked under some silvery space sheets. M says, "What's he doing?!" And Q, staring at a flight path quips "I think he's attempting re-entry!" Zing.

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• Species: Scientists get a message from the stars in this film, and it sounds suspiciously like spam. "Free unlimited fuel now! Ask me how!" They follow the instructions, which involve splicing human DNA with alien DNA, and it gives birth to... Natasha Henstridge. She escapes into the wild with her supermodel good looks, and the fact that she changed her haircut. What a disguise. Even one of the scientists assigned to track her down doesn't recognize her, and they have sex. She's like Clark Kent with that damn hair. Anyhow, she's hot, struts around naked, and doesn't hesitate to kill people who get in her way.

  
  

• Demon Seed: This 1977 film featured a sentient computer named Proteus that also controlled every aspect of the house that his creator's wife lived in. As he begins to go HAL-style crazy, he tells the good doctor's wife that he just wants to have a child, and she agrees! There's some cyborg/robo sex going on, which has to be seen to be believed, including the robot's line "If you prick me, do I not leak?" If your house starts pleasing you sexually, it's either time to move, or to re-appraise your property.

• Sleeper: In this Woody Allen film, Allen mistakenly gets put into cryogenic freeze and wakes up 200 years in the future, where all men have been rendered impotent, except those of Italian descent. Orgasmatron booths are popular destinations, where instead of making a phone call you get off, and "intoxication orbs" are passed around at parties, which appear to make the holder experience sexual bliss. Sounds like a decent future to me, thank god my great-grandmother was Italian.

  

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Let the speculation begin.

Image Pushkin Fine Arts Museum, Moscow

It's by Giulio Romano, an Italian painter of the late Renaissance. Titled "The Battle of Zama," it shows the Romans defeating Hannibal in Tunisia. The palette is too bright for it to be a perfect match with the "Monclair" of the First Cylon War, but the graphic organization, with the banners, the mayhem, and the three distinct vertical masses in the background, are similar.

Of course, the dude who created it may disagree. But you've got to admit the resemblance is amazing.

Photo Eike Schroter/SCI FI Channel

Heroes

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• There's going to be a fairly high body count when Season Two: Volume Two ends next week, including one of the main characters. Although if we've learned anything, it's that no one stays dead on Heroes.
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• Looks like Naomi isn't dead, despite having a knife hurled into her back by Locke at the end of last season.
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• Remember that mysterious freighter we told you about? It'll be bringing in a slew of Naomi's friends, which she phoned up on her walkie talkie at the end of last season.
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• If you remember the end of last season, then you recall that the show had jumped forward in time a great deal. A heavily-bearded Jack was living a life of booze and oxycontin addiction, and had been off the island for some time. According to some insiders, we'll be jumping both forward and backwards in time not only all season, but until the series wraps.
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• The first ten episodes will be all about the newly discovered Cylons, there were a few hints about that during the season four preview at the end of Razor, including Colonel Tigh leveling a gun at Admiral Adama on the command deck.
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• There's going to be a new Six named Natalie, although it's unclear if that means she'll be another actress playing a replacement Six, or simply another Six. The problem is, everyone knows what that famous face looks like around the fleet, so that would make it hard to have Tricia Helfer in some new Six boots.
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• We'll see who the final Cylon is before the end of the season. Can we issue a collective "duh" on that one? If they didn't give that up, there would probably be some minor rioting, millions of angry internet threads, and Ronald Moore's house would probably be reduced to ashes.
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Spoiler Chat [E! Online]

• Everything You Need to Know About Razor. Here's the crucial background from season two episodes that shed light on the plot twists in Razor.
  
  
• Everything You Need to Know About the Flashback Webisodes. SciFi has aired a series of two-minute webisodes that flash back to the first cylon war. Here are the ones you must watch.

• Gay Cylons Can Be Your Allies and Friends. Will you still think so after tonight's episode?

• Leaks from Starbuck's Mouth for Season 4. Here's what Katee "Starbuck" Sackhoff told fans at a recent convention. You'll want to know after Razor.

According to http://roadrunnerdm.livejournal.com/84288.html">Roadrunner's LiveJournal:

• Starbuck will be locked up in the brig for "some time." Not exactly the sort of reception you'd expect for returning from the dead.


• Leoben will be back in Starbuck's life, and they'll be spending some quality time together on a beach... on Earth. At least they won't have to jockey for a good spot on the sand.


• Starbuck will have a lot more scenes with Laura Roslin, and with the Cylon ladies as well. One thing Starbuck has never really done is have a girl's night out.


• Starbuck believes that she is a Cylon, although Katee herself doesn't buy it. One thing is for sure, if Starbuck turns out to be a Cylon, half the audience will have expected it, and the other half will be searching for Ron Moore's house with torches.


• Kate Vernon will be reprising her role as Ellen Tigh, although she's not the 12th Cylon. Since Saul has always been torn up about having to kill her, this will most likely be some sort of guilty flashbacks coming from the bottom of a bottle.


• Lee Adama is still a civilian in season four, although it's unclear if that means for the whole season or not. After the way he resigned last season, it's hard to see him putting a uniform back on. Of course, that doesn't stop him from hopping into a Viper whenever he feels like it and taking off.


• She also made it fairly definitive that she won't be coming back to Bionic Woman at all, strike or not. Apparently there is no love lost between her and series star Michelle Ryan.

News dump from Burbank conventions [Roadrunner]

Razor Flashbacks: The Sci Fi Channel has been airing original "flashbacks" in a desperate bid to get people to watch Flash Gordon. Er, we mean a thinly veiled marketing ploy to see what you'll get if you buy the DVD. Frak, actually we mean in an effort to bring the fans a little backstory about the First Cylon War. These short episodes can be seen on the Sci Fi website, and will also be part of the longer Razor which goes on sale December 4th. So what do these six clips tell us?

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• Day 4,571: Young rookie "Husker" Adama gets some action in his rack, and we find out that the familiar "What do you hear? Nothing but the rain" exchange came from his own commander. He fears that with rumors of a Cylon surrender on the horizon, he won't get to see any action in this war. Movie watching veterans know that's usually when the roof caves in.
• The Hangar: Husker's wish comes true as he prepares to launch out on his first combat mission. However, he spies his girlfriend on the floor of the flight deck, having just returned from her own patrol with half of her face blown off. He growls out "Let's do this" while waiting in the launch tube.
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• Operation Raptor Talon: One of the best battle scenes ever on BSG, webisode or not. Husker and his wingman shoot down several old school (yep, they look just like the ones from the old TV show) Cylon Raiders before witnessing the destruction of the Battlestar Columbia. An angry Husker chases two Raiders into the atmosphere of a nearby planet, which results in a catastrophic collision and his Viper plummets to the surface.
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• Free Fall: In a bit of a ridiculous scene, Husker bails out and goes toe-to-toe with a Cylon (old school too!) in mid-air while they both free fall. Remember the scene in Moonraker where Roger Moore's James Bond and Jaws fight in mid-air? You get the picture. Adama and his toaster-buddy crash through the ceiling of a building on the planet's surface and Adama goes medieval on the Cylon's ass (well, his face really) with an iron rod and "kills" it. Then he realizes he's in some sort of a Saw-like torture chamber and grabs the Cylon's gun.
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• The Lab: With gruesome Cylon/Human body parts hanging all over the place like a perverted flesh fair, Adama tries to figure out what he's stumbled into. He sticks his arm into some murky water in what looks like a Cylon birthing chamber, and of course something grabs him from underneath. A creepy looking man floats to the surface and looks at Adama before vanishing. Was he really there? A disembodied voice tells Adama "All of this has happened before, and will happen again.
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• Survivors: Adama struggles to free a group of humans from Gemenon locked inside the Cylon laboratory, but only succeeds in opening the door a few inches. As the room starts to come apart around him, they urge him to save himself and to remember them. He flees the collapsing laboratory, leaving the humans trapped behind.
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• Escape: Stumbling out of what turns out to be a Cylon ship, Adama watches as it takes off into the atmosphere with the humans still aboard. He tries to call in support, only to hear that the war is over: the Cylons have surrendered. Cut to an older Commander Adama on the flight deck of the Galactica, two days before the decommissioning ceremony. He surveys the museum-ready ship and reflects, standing in front of an old-school Cylon encased in lucite, not knowing that he's about to revisit the past in a big way.
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While these clips show us some cool scenes from the First Cylon War, they unfortunately show very little. Plus, isn't it a little coincidental that Adama just happens to be the one who discovered the first hybrid Cylon/Human and didn't see fit to mention it until now? But, there are a lot of coincidences in the BSG universe, so we'll take it in stride.

One thing to note: all of these flashbacks take place 41 years in the past, which means that Adama has to be about 60 years old or so by now, which sounds about right. Kudos to Nico Cortez, who plays a fairly convincing (and relatively smooth-cheeked) young Adama. He even gets the raspy voice right.

• Midway through Season Two, the Galactica encountered another Battlestar that survived the Cylon attack: the Battlestar Pegasus. It's a much newer ship than the Galactica, is twice as big, has a ship-building facility onboard, and superior firepower.
• Pegasus is commanded by Admiral Helena Cain, an iron-fisted woman who defines the term "hardass." She's skeptical of everyone and everything, and doesn't tolerate anything less than perfection.
• Cain's Executive Officer is Colonel Fisk, who serves as the whip for Admiral Cain. He drunkenly tells the Galactica's Colonel Tigh that Cain killed her previous XO for not following orders. It's unclear if he's joking or telling the truth.
• The Pegasus has a Cylon Number Six model in captivity in their brig. This model is later freed by Baltar, and she executes Cain with a point-blank shot to the forehead.
• Colonel Fisk assumes control of the Pegasus after Cain's death, but is later killed by a man running a large black market in the Colonial fleet. After he dies, Chief Engineer Barry Garner assumes control, although he quickly proves that while he's a whiz at solving engineering problems, he's not much of a commander. He dies saving the ship, after which Admiral Adama promotes his son Lee to commander, and gives him the Pegasus as his first command.
• Commander Lee Adama sacrifices the Pegasus in order to save the Galactica and the Colonists fleeing from New Caprica. The ship is destroyed in a massive firefight, although the crew is able to abandon ship.
• Razor takes places between seasons Two and Three: Lee Adama is the commander of the ship, but through a series of flashbacks we're told how the Pegasus evaded destruction during the initial Cylon attack, and what happened to them up until their encounter with the Galactica.