Joel Watson drew this strip for HijiNKS Ensue, his thrice weekly webcomic about technology and geek culture:

Naturally, this spurred an immediate demand for an actual Team Edward James Olmos shirt, and Watson has not disappointed. The Team EJO shirt is available for $20 at the HijiNKS Ensue store.

[HijiNKS Ensue]

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.

Oh, and this one-on-one interview with Olmos contains some spoilers for "The Plan," because we talked specifics with him. So go buy the DVD, watch it and come back to read this, if you're concerned about spoilers.

What's left?

So Olmos has been very vocal about saying that he'd like to make more BSG movies like "The Plan." But what would they be about? He explains:

Simple questions, like what happened to the [final] five during this period of time? Where were they coming from 2,000 years ago? How could they be around for 2,000 years, and yet the understanding of Caprica is that the robotic trend on Caprica was started 57 years ago? How did that work? That question comes into play, and I would love to see how they answered it. That, to me, would be explosively unbelievable. I would love to have that question answered. I would also love to know what is going to happen to the people on the Earth. What is going to happen to Adama and all the different people? What happened to the Raptor that got them to the point of finding their dream space? That, to me, is just two simple ones I can think of off the top of my head.... To me, there's still a lot of beautiful story that's waiting to be unleashed in this world.

Don't download "The Plan!"

Actually, when we asked Olmos about forthcoming DVD movies, he first paused to express his displeasure with everyone who downloaded "The Plan" from the Internet before its release date. Seriously, if you're planning on grabbing this DVD from a file-sharing service, imagine Admiral Adama getting pissed at you — because he is. In a nice way. "People don't understand that if they want to see this universe again, they have to participate by voting, by casting their dollars. If they don't cast their dollars, they won't see any more of these."

So what's the deal with Starbuck?

So speaking of unanswered questions, we had to ask Olmos what was going on with Starbuck at the end of the final episode. He says "I would love to know that," and he would imagine that question being answered along with "the full story of what happened to Lee" after the show ends. Adds Olmos:

I talked with Starbuck about this. She felt that she went with Anders, that she transported herself like an angel, and she went into the sun with Anders on the Galactica. So she went back with Anders. That's her idea.

Love is the key to "The Plan"

Olmos says "The Plan" not only explains what the Cylons' goals were, but also why they weren't very successful in achieving those goals. The reason for the Cylons' failure? It has to do with encountering a human emotion they weren't prepared for: Love. That's why you see the version of Cavil who's living on the surface Caprica finding himself unable to kill Starbuck, when he has a clean shot, towards the end.

Rick Worthy is the catalyst

As we've mentioned, the TV show's most underused Cylon becomes the most memorable character in "The Plan": Cylon Number Four, aka Simon (Rick Worthy), gets a great arc involving one of his model marrying a human and adopting her daughter in the fleet, while another of his model is on Caprica with the resistance. Olmos says Simon's story is "the catalyst" that helps us understand what happened to the Cylons. It illustrates the theme of love, since Simon's love for his wife and child changes him, but it also shows how the Cylons are unexpectedly having huge divergences between different copies of the same model.

Humor is part of "The Plan":

Olmos says he enjoyed bringing out the humor in Jane Espenson's script (which has some incredibly funny moments, especially the ones involving Aron Doral and his teal jacket.) Like much of BSG, the DVD is incredibly dark, but with some moments of strange levity. Olmos says it's important that the humor comes out of the irony and the situation, and that way the comedy doesn't seem forced. Olmos says he was probably chosen to direct this because he had already made humor happen when he directed the episode "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down":

Like when Baltar is making love with Six, and then Starbuck comes walking in and sees him with his pants down and all his privates being exposed, and he's humping away on Six, but you can't see Six. All you can do is just see the doctor there humping. It's hysterical. Because we the viewer understand it, but the situation is one where by now Starbuck thinks the doctor is just out there where the buses don't run.

What you won't see in "The Plan":

Olmos is a huge fan of Dean Stockwell, who plays Cavill, and he says people don't appreciate what a great performer Stockwell is — Olmos has been a fan of Stockwell's since he saw the 1948 anti-war movie The Boy With Green Hair, starring a young Stockwell as a boy with the power to stop war. In "The Plan," Cavill befriends a young quasi-orphan boy, and the boy's costume is an exact replica of Stockwell's costume from Green Hair. Olmos had the costume hand-stitched to match.

But Olmos wanted to go further with the reference: He wanted the boy in "The Plan" to have green hair, and both the studio and writer Jane Espenson refused to let him.

People would have just been in shock, like 'What the hell is that about? And in essence, it would have been a statement that would have reverberated throughout the entire planet for centuries to come. And would have augmented something that needs to be understood, but in turn, the studio and the writer were afraid of it, they just thought "That's crazy." They didn't want it, they thought it was a stupid thing to do. It would be all about, "What? Why did the boy have green hair?" And it would be about the boy with the green hair. It should be about that. It should be that deep and in the context. So may be they'll let me paint CGI green hair and put it on him. From the time he raises his head to the time he dies, he has green hair, and nobody says anything about it. And the audience just has to deal with it. Let them deal with it.

Want to meet Olmos yourself so he can explain more of the ideas behind BSG? Enter the "Dinner With The Admiral" contest over at UGO.

Top image from Gateworld.

The Plan debuts on Blu-ray and DVD on October 27th.

Jay Chou, the Taiwanese singer and actor and star of Initial D, The Curse of the Golden Flower and Kung Fu Dunk, has been chosen to replace Stephen Chow as martial artist Kato, chauffeur and ass-saver of Rogen's inept superhero Green Hornet. Michel Gondry, who took over from Chow as director, is excited about the choice:

Jay is incredibly unique and charming and fights like a wild dog!

Whether ot not wild dog fighting is necessary for the movie itself remains to be seen.

The Green Hornet is currently in pre-production and targeted for release next summer.

'Green Hornet' casts Kato role [Variety]

Updated: Hollywood Snitch talked to Edward James Olmos at Wizard World in Chicago, and the Battlestar Galactica actor revealed his involvement with the film:

"I'm on my way to do 'The Green Hornet,'" Olmos told me. "It'll be a lot of fun with Seth [Rogen], Nicolas Cage and Cameron Diaz."

So what Hornet role has snagged Bill Adama's attention? There's no word yet, but /Film speculates Olmos may have signed on to play Gunnigan the Daily Sentinel editor with a hair-trigger temper and a special loathing for Sentinel reporter and Green Hornet nemesis Mike Axford.

[Hollywood Snitch via /Film]

So the BSG TV movie, "The Plan," is airing some time this fall, and it retraces the first two seasons of the show from the point of view of the Cylons. And, we've been hearing, the Machiavellian Brother Cavil will take center stage. So we asked Park if we'll come away from "The Plan" with a greater understanding of her character's sudden love affair with Cavil in BSG season four. She says yes:

Are we going to understand more about Cavil and Boomer's relationship? Yes, we are... It's kind of fun because it would get scripted one way, and then Eddie (James Olmos) would have us do something in the middle of it, and it would kind of change it, so it would either make it more intimate or creepier... It's not a normal relationship at all. And I don't think she understands it fully herself. What's really cool about is that because you have the seeds planted way back then, you realize... it makes way more sense later on why she's with him. She kind of inexplicably is drawn to him again, and they're a couple again.

And she says the TV movie explains a lot of stuff that we never really saw about Boomer, including how she got into the position she was in. Boomer never really knew that stuff, so we, the viewer, never knew either. At the time, she had come up with her own explanations, in her own head, for that stuff. But now she's learning that the official explanation is something different, and she's having to revise her own internal version of events.

She also says that it was really "quick and dirty" when Athena shot Boomer. She knew it was coming, and yet it was still shocking when she filmed it from both sides. "To me, that's really good storytelling."

We also talked to writer Jane Espenson about how this TV movie makes us see Cavil in a new way:

It's not until fairly late in the series that we start seeing Cavil as a pivotal villain among the Cylons. He turns out to be the one who erased the Final Fives' memories and left them on Caprica to live through the genocide, and he's the one who wants to enslave the Centurions and exterminate the humans. The sudden Cavil-centric villainy at the show's end feels a bit surprising. So will we discover in the TV movie just how important Cavil was all along?

Says Espenson:

This is going back and saying, "Okay, if Cavil is such a big villain, what was he doing during seasons one and two of Battlestar Galactica?"... He was up to something. He had found himself in this situation where they didn't think they needed a plan, because the plan was "Everybody dies." And now he's got to make it up as he goes along.

And we talked to director Edward James Olmos, who said William Adama isn't really in the TV movie that much. And he says it was "fantastic" to go back and relive the moments from the early years of the show, because he could paint with a fantastic pallette. "It took me eight months to edit it." And he says we'll realize how bad things really were, in those dark early years. And Olmos really believes that more BSG TV movies are inevitable — if we can sell half a million units of "The Plan." You'll do your part, right?

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.

When asked whether he thought The Plan would be the last we've seen of BSG, Olmos was adamant that there will be another film:

As a matter of fact, I've got to tell you right now. Because of you all, what you're doing, because of the love for that world...I can guarantee that this will not be the last movie.

Olmos told the press roundtables he believes the "Plan" DVD will sell so well, the economics will guarantee more movies. Plural. And he notes that they photographed the Galactica sets in insane detail, so they can recreate them digitally any time they want.

So what could the next Battlestar Galactica hold? When one fan noted that Bill Adama is still alive at the end of the series, Olmos half joked that he'd considered Adama's further adventures on Earth:

In fact, I've got the entire script around them. I know exactly what happened to him. Let me put it to you this way: when we next see Adama, it will be in a very rustic log cabin and there will be a knock at the door and it will be his old friend Colonial Tigh saying, "We have a problem."

And then there's Olmos' idea for BSG/Bladerunner mash-up:

If you watch the series from the beginning, the miniseries to the end. The last thing that David wrote, Trisha, Number Six, says, "This has all happened before and it will happen again." And Baltar says, "Maybe it won't. Maybe we'll learn." At that very moment, I want to put Blade Runner in, and you'll see a direct descendant of Adama take on the Replicants.

While it's unlikely that either idea will make it to the screen, it's clear that the gears are turning in Olmos' head for a new BSG project. and at the press roundtables for "The Plan," Olmos elaborated on his idea that BSG is really a prequel to Blade Runner — making Caprica a prequel to a prequel. The ending of BSG "led right into Blade Runner like a glove." When you've watched the full run of both Caprica and BSG, "you're going to be able to lay it down and it runs into Blade Runner."

So what's going on in "The Plan?" Olmos says it started out feeling like a clip show, but then they pounded on the script until it became a coherent story that will take your breath away and make you want to watch the whole show from the beginning, all over again. He made sure your pressing questions were answered — including one question that nobody had thought to answer originally: Who put that note on Adama's desk? We'll discover the truth at last.

We also got a chance to talk to Ronald D. Moore in the press roundtables, and we asked him about Cavil — it felt like Cavil suddenly became the main villain of BSG in its final episodes. Will "The Plan" finally show us how Cavil was the main villain of the piece all along? That was part of the reason, says Moore:

We were looking for a point of view of to do in "The Plan," with the concept of doing the Cylon point of view on the first couple of years. He was a natural fit to do that with, [and it] helped solidify his mposition in the mythology of the show.

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan airs this Fall on Syfy. [L.A. Times]

Talking to an audience during an appearance at last week's The Envelope event held by the LA Times, Olmos explained what to expect from the TV movie

I gotta tell you, not to give anything away, it is exactly what you think it is. You see the complete opposite of the first 281 days of what we went through ... seen through the eyes of the Cylons, and it is breathtaking. It's fantastic. It's not fun, but I will say that you will sit there [gasping]... The Plan is exactly that. It was how they planned to do what they did and what happened. It was monumental. All I can tell you is it's an extraordinary look at the Cylons, how they masterminded what they did.

Explaining a little too much, perhaps - Do we really need the minutiae of what happened when, after all? - but Olmos promises that it'll make you go back and watch the DVDs of the series:

"I couldn't have imagined this kind of a situation happening at the end of a show, where you would actually start at the beginning. That's a masterful piece of understanding, Ron [Moore]. Genius. Because after you see The Plan, you'll want to go back and view the whole series again.

Of course, you might want to wait until you've seen The Plan on DVD - it's going to feature more than thirty minutes of additional footage that won't be shown on SyFy when the movie debuts in September.

Battlestar's Olmos reveals why The Plan will leave you gasping [SciFi Wire]

One of the rules of writing good fiction is that you don’t have to be true to how things work in the real world -you can have teleportation and lightsabers and horses with beaks (well, if you’re a mok, anyway) - as long as your story is internally consistent: If your character can teleport, you can’t trap him on Rikers Island, unless Rikers Island has been lined with some kind of teleportation-stopper. It’s a good rule, and from what I saw, BSG abides by it.

But I think there's another rule, and that is that even if they’re internally consistent, the things that happen in your story have to correspond to a certain degree with what makes sense in real life. A lot of people knocked The Deathly Hallows because Harry Potter spent so much time wandering around the forest, but I have to say that if I were seventeen and the fate of the world rested on my shoulders and all of my dads were dead, I’d probably wander around the forest for a while myself, and I hope no one would hold it against me. So while it may have made for a boring story in parts, at least you couldn’t say it was totally unbelievable.

Whereas, on the other hand, HOW THE HELL DO YOU NOT KNOW WHO IS A ROBOT?

I’m sorry. That was what killed BSG for me, and I think that’s fair. I’ll explain why.

Basically, the BSG universe is just like ours, including the fact that they wear neckties, except that they also have faster-than-light travel. Now, I hope you will pardon me for saying so, but I assume that because they have neckties and faster-than-light travel, they also have, like, CAT scans or MRIs (I know they only have one doctor, but I’m pretty sure you don’t need to go medical school to learn to operate either of those).

And if you’re going to tell me that you can’t use a CAT scan or an MRI to identify robots - robots whose lower backs glow red during sex, so it’s not like there’s nothing robotty going on there close to the surface - I’m going to tell you you’re a delusional fanboy who needs to stop hating on Star Trek: The Next Generation, because while that show certainly stretched the limits of credulity, it never pulled this kind of pivotal-plot-point bullshit. Captain Jean-Luc Picard wouldn’t have stood for it.

Commander William Adama - i.e., Edward James Olmos - on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have a problem with it. If it were a first offense, I’d probably let it slide. But it’s not.

I recently watched Blade Runner: The Absolute Fucking Director’s Cut, For Real This Time. While that film has its merits (most of them aesthetic), it too suffers from the problem noted above. You can’t expect me to believe that the only way to peg a robot strong enough to throw Harrison Ford across a street is by looking in its eyes and asking it questions. Actually, Blade Runner does BSG one better, or worse - I’m supposed to accept that Dr. Eldon Tyrell is a genius, but it never occurred to him that making robots that look just like humans was a bad idea? At least the human-looking Cylons built themselves.

If I’m ever in charge of building robots, I’ll tell you what: They won’t look just like humans. They won’t even have skin. I won’t explain why. I think it’s pretty obvious.

Anyhoo, who was in Blade Runner? That’s right: Edward James Olmos.

So I think it’s fair to say that he unequivocally sucks at handling Robot Threats. If I ever have to appoint a robot czar, it won’t be him. I’ll probably make him Secretary of Education, and charge him with repairing our troubled high schools. That seems to be where his strengths lie.

Josh Wimmer is better known here as commenter Moff, and can often be found at scribblescribblescribble.com/blog.

Top image courtesy Ken Conley/kwc.org

After leaving the crew on a burned-out, radiation-saturated wasteland, I didn't think it could get any lower for the last of the human race. But Olmos reassures us that the final half-season of BSG is going to be a teary-eyed bloodbath, telling fans it'll be:

“Emotionally, heartbreaking. I’m telling you this for a reason, because I don’t want you guys to think you’re going to go through this without getting yourself really twisted … it’s brutal what happens to us. Not many of us make it.”

Olmos also revealed some details about the BSG movie that he'll be directing. While we've reported this film will follow the Cylon point of view, one of the main characters is going to be Aaron Douglas, or Chief Tyrol (who was in attendance in at the BSG panel). The movie will spend some time focusing in on the Chief's story over the last few seasons.

And finally, according to TV Addict, the whole panel movie name dropped Blade Runner again and again, as if that movie was an important clue to the ending of BSG. Olmos was very intent on talking about the twist behind Harrison Ford's Deckard (discovering he's a replicant). What could this new obsession mean? I highly doubt that Adama is a Cylon, since Ronald D. Moore has stated time and time again that it won't be Adama. My guess is, it's another main character but in the Adama family (as Blade Runner was quite big on the family ties). My money is on Lee or his mysterious younger brother Zak who we know will be appearing in the last few episodes of BSG.

[TV Addict]

According to Galactica Sitrep, the TV movie has already offered a contract to Dean Stockwell, who plays the atheist cylon Brother Cavill. Other actors that the studio is approaching include Michael Trucco, Aaron Douglas, Grace Park, Michael Hogan and Katee Sackhoff. What do all of those actors, except Katee Sackhoff, have in common? Well, they're all very good-looking people. Oh yeah, and they play cylons. Could we be getting some juicy cylon backstory? (But how can we do that without Tricia Helfer?) Espenson seems to have an interesting handle on the cylon culture, and the fact that the cylons can share memories and traits among different members of the same model. [Galactica Sitrep]

Frak used to be much more polite: According to the Battlestar Wiki, "Frack" - the official spelling of the word for the original 1970s version of the show, according to the Writer's Guide - didn't always mean "fuck":

"Frack" is a Colonial expletive, roughly analagous to "shit" or even the milder "rats" or "darn" of the Original Series.

The first use of the "Frak" spelling? A videogame: Frak! was a game released for the BBC Micro, Commodore 64 and Acorn Electron released in 1984, all about a caveman called Trogg jumping around platforms trying to find keys. When he died, he yelled out "Frak!" in anger. Does this mean that the final Cylon in Battlestar Galactica was actually a caveman, and we are all ancestors of toasters? Think about it.

"Frak" didn't make it through to Galactica 1980: In deference to the more kid-friendly time slot of the third season of the original show, even "frack" was deemed to be too risque for the audience. Its replacement in the faux-curse stakes? "Felgercarb".

Japan's latest two-wheeled craze is fracking mamas: According to the Digital World Tokyo blog, a new bike brand may seem slightly familiar to Galactica fans:

Battlestar Galactica fans on a budget might get a kick out of this Japanese Mama Chari (or 'Mom's bike') named for their favorite pseudo swearword.

The ¥49,000 ($450) bicycle comes with a sturdy child seat in front of the handlebars, three gears and that all-important oedipal epithet right there on the frame for the world to see.

Image from FilmFodder.

Frak [Urban Dictionary]

[Zach Mandt's blog, thanks to cde]