Oh, and there will be spoilers for "Daybreak Parts 2 and 3" in this post, in case you're still waiting for the DVDs before watching it.

Templeton's mega essay more specifically tars "Daybreak" as "the worst ending in the history of on-screen science fiction." And he has clearly thought about this for months, amassing a docket of evidence that the BSG-boosters will have a hard time refuting. And he admits that part of the reason why the ending seems so bad to him is that this was such a fantastic series, for so much of its run — this wouldn't have felt nearly as much like a letdown otherwise.

I'm not going to attempt to summarize Templeton's whole argument here — it's really worth going and reading the whole thing properly — but he makes a few really great points that I haven't seen anywhere else. First of all, BSG is not just a space opera, it's a mystery, and the answer to all of the show's riddles is one of the chief attractions of the final episode. The fact that the answers tended to be either "God" or "because we said so" was, to be honest, a bit disappointing. And because Ronald D. Moore decided to build the last two seasons around "big mysteries" instead of character-driven storylines, you can't excuse his failure to pay off those mysteries by saying the show is really all about the characters.

The other problem with God turning out to have been such a huge force in the show's narrative arc, Templeton notes, is the Ghostbusters rule: "If someone asks you if you are a god, you say yes!" (And the corollary is that gods, at least in science fiction, usually turn out to be false.) Templeton has a huge, exhaustive list of all the plot contrivances and happenstances that end up being laid at God's door, including everything Head Six arranged during the course of the series, and it's quite an impressive list. It's fine to have a Supreme Being set the story's events in motion and cause trouble for our heroes, but not quite so great for God(s) to swoop in and solve all our problems at the end of the story.

There's also the always-tenuous relationship between science fiction and our reality — not to mention between science fiction and science. And once you look at the science of "Daybreak," it does start to look a bit dodgy. There's the fact that Galactica's humans and the cave people of prehistoric Earth are able to interbreed, for one thing. And then there's Ron Moore's total misunderstanding of who Mitochondrial Eve actually was and why she's significant — she's not the most common recent ancestor for all humans, who cropped up much later. But turning Hera into Mitochrondrial Eve means that the show has to take place 150,000 years ago, or about 100,000 years before humans started to develop any kind of technology. And that, in turn, means the Colonial fleet left absolutely no mark whatsoever.

Templeton also has trouble with the "collective unconsciousness" idea that all of the stuff we see in the series, from Bob Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower" through to the clothes and telephones our heroes use, somehow filtered down through our ancestral memory so that we could reinvent it all today. And the hoariness of the cliche of "ancient astronauts" visiting our primitive ancestors.

(A side note: Katee Sackhoff has said there's a line of dialogue she refused to say in the final episode. After she puts in the notes to the magic song and jumps the fleet to Earth, President Roslin asks, "Where have you taken us?" And in Moore's script, she was supposed to respond: "Somewhere... all along the watchtower." But she and Mary McDonnell kept giggling when they got to that line, so it ended up getting cut. Thank goodness.)

Here's what I always come back to when I think about the BSG finale, though — I feel as though Moore put us on notice with the final episode of season three. When we first encounter the mysterious Bob Dylan Cylon signal, and four totally random characters turn out to be Cylons, and Starbuck comes back from the dead, the show is basically hoisting a giant sign saying "You Are Now Leaving Storytelling Logic. Please Drive Safely." And anyone who stuck with the show for its final season after that really can't complain, because we were duly warned.

Anyway, the whole thing is very much worth reading and debating: [Brad Ideas]

In Virtuality, Siena Guillory plays Rika Goddard, the ship's exobiologist who's trapped in a passionless marraige with Roger, the ship's psychologist and producer of the fake reality TV program the ship's crew stars in. And Clea DuVall (Carnivale) plays Sue Parsons, the ship's brash pilot who's already drawing comparisons to Starbuck. Both actors went on a conference call with reporters today and talked about how they approached their characters in this TV movie (which could spawn an ongoing series). Virtuality airs this Friday night at 8 PM on Fox.

I hadn't realized, until listening to both actors, just how much of Virtuality was improvised. Apparently Peter Berg (Hancock), who directed the pilot, is a huge believer in letting actors run with their scenes and create their own interpretations of their characters.

One of the coolest parts of the pilot is Sue Parsons' relationship with some of the other female characters, especially the computer scientist and reality-TV show host Billie Kashmiri. Sue is constantly sniping at the naive, privileged Billie, but then after Billie suffers an extreme trauma inside the virtual-reality world (which feels real even though it's just VR) Sue and Billie suddenly share a moment of closeness, and they have a really intense scene together, which feels like it could be the foundation of a really interesting friendship. You don't see such complex relationships between two women in science fiction all that often.

So I asked DuVall what she thought was going on between the two women, and whether it was in the script, or improvised:

It was in the script, and also improvised. It was a combination of the two... I thought a lot about my character, because she's kind of a hardass and kind of a jerk, and a handful to deal with..and I really tried hard to understand her and why she was so guarded and so protective of herself. And [I tried to think] what it was about this girl that really ticked me off... I sort of went inside myself and tried to find the parts of myself that I don't think are there, the jealousy and the competitiveness, and I used that, I used my own personal shortcomings, to fuel this character. But then understand, but then being able to see her as human and seeing the parts of Billie that were like me.

So was Sue angry at Billie because she saw Billie as a younger version of herself? DuVall explained:

[Billie was] somebody that was given the position they were given, because they had certain advantages that I wasn't given, and that jealousy of being born into good stock. Versus having to fight tooth and nail to get there, because my character was put through the ringer so much to be there even though she was one of the most qualified.

Meanwhile, Siena Guillory says Rika Goddard "hates having her privacy invaded" (in the reality TV show) but "she's also desperate for adventure." Rika is an "introvert but oversexed," she adds. "The fact that we're geeks doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to be handling our emotions, so we're all prone to exploding emotionally."

Both actors raved about the creative freedom they were given during the shooting of this pilot. "Of course I said everything that was in the script, but being able to build on it and find things that were in there [was terrific]," says DuVall. "Them trusting us so much also gave us the confidence to trust ourselves."

"They were so brave and didn't assume that the audience was stupid," adds Guillory. "They lent us that bravery and allowed us to inhabit the roles."

And even though Virtuality is about being trapped inside a cramped spaceship, and trapped in the not-quite-real performance of reality TV, and even trapped inside virtual-reality modules that turn into a horror show, Guillory says the show, in the end, is about limitless possibilities:

It's all about the fact that the possibilities are endless, and that's what the whole show is about. There are no limitations, and everything we grew up with here on Earth, in terms of "This is your life, and this is who you are, and you will die [isn't necessarily true]. And you can be anywhere and be anyone, and anything is possible and it's incredibly dangerous and exciting.

As I mentioned, Virtuality airs this Friday at 8 PM on Fox.

It turns out the stakes for the Phaeton's mission are even higher than we realized, since the Earth will be uninhabitable within a century — or will it? Is that just a trick? Either way, the pressure is making our heroes crack, and having to deal with it live and on hidden camera all the time isn't helping. Too bad their main safety valve, the VR modules, is being overrun with nightmares.

So what do you think? Were the VR worlds what you wanted? What about the suits? I kind of like the fake advertising, though it's been done before. I guess we'll have to wait for the air date for the final verdict. Virtuality will air June 26th on Fox.

[via Cinemablend]

I'm not convinced by James D'Arcy's advice, I have to admit.

Virtuality premieres June 26th on Fox.

[YouTube]

Talking to Moviehole, Hatch suggests that whoever ends up making the BSG movie reboot should take a page from JJ Abrams' playbook:

[They s]hould go further back like Star Trek [where it] was still the characters we love, but they went back twenty...thirty... years to when they were just kids. But with Battlestar, they're just going to go back to the same timeframe we saw in the series' and recast those roles. I don't think Star Trek would've been successful if they had recast the Star Trek characters at the same age as they were in the previous films. By going back, it gave that film a window so fans could expect a change of cast... I recently saw the original Battlestar movie on the IMAX screen, as part of the 25th anniversary convention, and let me tell you, it was born for the IMAX! Even with the bad matte paintings on the original, it still looked amazing on the big screen! If they did it today, a full-blown movie of Battlestar, I think it would be amazing... so long as whoever does it understands the characters, the heart & soul, and mythology of it. I just hope they really get it.

But that's not all that Hatch was talking about; as well as suggesting that Ron Moore's version of the franchise may continue past The Plan TV movie ("It's never the end if fans want more. It's a money game. If they realize people want more, believe me, they'll make more of them - they did it with Babylon 5, and a number of other sci-fi shows"), he also offered up his takes on a couple of this summer's sci-fi movies. For example, he didn't really dig Terminator Salvation:

If I was an actor of Christian Bale's calibre, would you not look at that script and say ‘there's something wrong here'? ...I don't understand why Bale wanted to play Connor. What they should've done is make the focus the John Connor character Or make the focus the John Connor character and the Marcus character. Why did Christian Bale do this movie!?
He had similar misgivings about X-Men Origins: Wolverine:

The trailer looked great, but the movie just didn't work. When you get someone that gets the story, and the characters, of something it's rare. What's happening with these big franchises is that some very talented actors and writers are being hired but they mightn't be right for this particular story. Films are made for all the wrong reasons sometimes.

If you somehow don't end up with a cameo on the next version of Battlestar Galactica, Richard, you should look into movie criticism... The world could always do with some more bitter, disillusioned critics.

Hatch On Galactica Movie [Moviehole]

So you mentioned that you got involved with Virtuality to do something to for the genre similar to what BSG did. What will Virtuality change, what does it have to offer to the world that BSG did?

For Virtuality, I think our focus is more technological. It's more about the technology we are already dealing with and how that will change our lives. I would say that, that reality is the internet. The technology which enables us to communicate with other people. We conduct a lot of our lives though websites dating sites, facebook, email, phone links that allow us to get in contact with people on the other side of the world. But there's no physical contact. In other words we're already living our lives in a kind of virtual reality. This is what the show Virtuality looks to explore. How that kind of technology will change us... In that sense, it's a very different kind of show than Battlestar, a very new show. But with a cultural reference that is just as profound... It's looking ahead.

We read a lot of rumors about the show getting changed from the original pilot script? Did a lot of things change?

The show that will air on June 26 is not really changed at all from what we shot. On the other hand, the show did start out as a one hour pilot. NBC Universal and Fox the airing network [asked us] to turn it into a two hour movie. In a way, that had to change the nature of the script that had been widely circulated on the internet (for the original one hour show). It deepens the draw in some ways, it complicates it in others. I think when Fox saw the end result, they thought, "wow this is a very heady mix." Or as one Fox executive said, it's "Very cool but kind of dense."

Clearly they were afraid that it was not the kind of network material they were used to. Initially Peter Berg, our marvelous director, said, "I think I can boil this down to an hour, and maybe that will make it an easier sell for you guys. Let me try." So they gave him the legway to do that, and he did it in a one-hour cut. It turned out very interesting, but very different — and it would have to be. To make a two hour movie from a one hour, you have to make a lot of changes and focus on different things.

In the end, I don't think Fox found that [one-hour cut] more compelling than the two hours. There were compromises made along the route. There are things Ron and I would love to change, or Pete would love to change if we had the opportunity or the budget. The chance to reshoot some stuff, to work even better as a two hour. But what you will see is essentially what we set out to make, for better, hopefully, and for worse too. It's a show that we're all really proud of and we think is really cool. But I should say that it looks more like an indie move than Mission Impossible 3.

We read that the gay couple might have been edited out or removed?

None of that is true. I think that was at the point where the network said, "Gosh this is very cool but I don't know if this is for us." They basically took their hands off. They didn't give us any budget to do some of the things we wanted to do, but they said, "Do what you want."

Fox's involvement at this point is giving us great help in terms of promotion on the web. And the rest is pretty hands off. It's been put out on a night that I've heard is sort of the graveyard/boneyard of television. You won't see a billboard or a bus shelter sign. There is no overt promotion in that sense, but we have a wonderful publicity department at Fox, who really love the show and is helping us push it on the internet as much as we can. We cannot squawk that anyone messed with it, we can always [see] the things we didn't get to do [and] the things we wanted to make it even better, but it's still very much the show we set off to make and that we made. We hope people dig it.

How much time do your characters spend in the virtual world and is it different for each character?

Every astronaut on the show has their own personal reality module. A chance to create a space that is unique for them, and they occupy it on their own. They can share it or leave it if they want to. But by and large, they are considered private spaces. In the course of the show, I would say we spend about 10 - 20% in these environments.

Because we're meeting the group for the first time, we're setting a lot of balls in motion as far as the plot and what the story and the situation is. So it requires us to spend a lot of time in the reality of the spaceship. Also it's expensive to produce these virtual realities. They were all created digitally — there are no real back drops to these virtual environments. Everything was created in the computer. We are creating a true virtuality. And that's expensive. We get windows into our characters' experiences, which are kind of mind blowing in some places. But the meat of the show takes place in the reality of the spaceship. But by the end of the show, you may start to wonder what is real and what is not. Which is one of the themes of the series as a whole.

Could you describe one character's virtual world?

One of our characters, he name is Billie Kashmiri (Kerry Bishe) she's a young computer scientist on the ship. And she's kind of shy, she's still finding her confidence she's in with a lot of seasoned astronauts. What is her virtual reality? She's created a alternate ego for herself. She's very much a Buckaroo Banzai, a character who is a rock n' roll superspy. It's very funny and tongue in cheek. It's whimsical, and kind of James Bondy. We get to see a bit of it. So in a way, her environment is an expression of who she is, or who she wants to be. It tells a lot about her, but is also a lot of fun for the audience to see. The other characters' environments are more serious, exploring issues that they are grappling with perhaps, situations in their lives. Secrets, even. But it can be a restful retreat, from environments where you can work through issues to pure wish fulfillment and entertainment.

We heard that the movie will no longer become a series. Is that true?

I can't confirm that. Fox has not given us the official word. I have to be honest, I think the scheduling of this the way it is... it does not look good. The chances are very slender. Slim to none — who knows? It would take pretty much a miracle for that to happen. It would take millions of people watching, on this night when people normally aren't watching television in general. I can say if a lot of people watch it and like it, and make their feelings known whether it's writing a letter to Peter Rice, or even better, to someone like Mark Stern at the Syfy Network, who really does love the show. It's part of the NBC Universal family, and I think they'd love to put it on if they could afford to put it on. If they could find backing, that would be amazing a miracle. Neither Ron nor I are holding our breath for a miracle. We're just happy people have a chance to watch what we made.

Wilson did a guest-blogging spot over at BSG special effects supremo Darth Mojo's blog, and he explained exactly how to cope with a Cylon uprising, in particular:

In the world of Battlestar Galactica, human beings have sadly neglected their faithful robot servants and, as a result, have been decimated by a massive robot uprising on their homeworld of Caprica. Life must go on, however, even post-robot uprising. Therefore, in a spirit of helpfulness and support I have assembled a few key tips on surviving Cylon encounters. Enjoy, and good luck out there!

BE A GOOD ROLE MODEL

Most robots are misunderstood and do not start out as innately violent beings. Before they decide to attack, they must first judge humankind as unworthy. So, as a sentient being, try to set a good example. Don't hit your servant robot, call it names, or force it to wear silly outfits. In many ways, Cylons are like gullible, rosy-cheeked little children – except with lethal cannon-arms and cold emotionless hearts of battle-hardened steel.

KEEP AN EYE ON THE ROBOTS, FOR THE GODS' SAKE!!

If a rapidly evolving race of aggressive robotic creatures rebel and disappear into space for forty years, be sure to assign a person to follow them. This way, you can ensure that they aren't lurking in the empty wastes of the interstellar void, building a massive, glinting robot army bent on the complete eradication of humankind. Heck, go ahead and assign two people.

The best part is where he explains how to tell if you're actually a Cylon sleeper agent. (For example, if "you can't listen to Bob Dylan without wishing for more sitar.") Check it out. [Darth Mojo]

Here's the gallery, which also includes a photo of the ship's captain, Frank Pike, acting out a Civil War scenario on horseback via the ship's virtual reality modules. And a picture of visual effects supervisor Gary Hutzel in action. After this post had already gone up, producer Michael Taylor sent me a bonus image showing the Phaeton's workings, which is now in the gallery.

And because the gallery software doesn't seem to be able to give you a high enough resolution of it, here's that explanation of the Phaeton's physics:

Having read the script to this TV movie (which still could become the pilot for a new series if the stars align just right) I'm incredibly excited to see it play out on screen. Here's the official description:

The crew of the Phaeton is approaching the go/no-go point of their epic 10-year journey through outer space. With the fate of Earth in their hands, the pressure is intense. The best bet for helping the crew members maintain their sanity is the cutting-edge virtual reality technology installed on the ship. It's the perfect stress-reliever until they realize a glitch in the system has unleashed a virus on to the ship. Tensions mount as the crew decides how to contain the virus and complete their mission. Meanwhile, their lives are being taped for a reality show back on Earth in the World Broadcast Premiere of VIRTUALITY airing Friday, June 26 (8:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX.

The possible series (possible), which will be airing as a two-hour TV movie on Fox, follows a crew who is on a 10-year mission, all the while visiting their own virtual reality dream sequences and having their lives taped and aired back on Earth for reality TV. I'm actually really excited to see what Jimmi Simpson and Clea DuVall are going to bring to the table, since both actors are pretty good at "troubled and disturbed" character acting. Yes that's McPoyle I'm talking about, so we're rooting for positive feedback from the audience and maybe, just maybe, it will come back as a series. But probably not.

The crew of the Phaeton is approaching the go/no-go point of their epic 10-year journey through outer space. With the fate of Earth in their hands, the pressure is intense. The best bet for helping the crew members maintain their sanity is the cutting-edge virtual reality technology installed on the ship. It's the perfect stress-reliever until they realize a glitch in the system has unleashed a virus on to the ship. Tensions mount as the crew decides how to contain the virus and complete their mission. Meanwhile, their lives are being taped for a reality show back on Earth

Virtuality will air Friday, June 26 8 PM on FOX.

As I've said before, when I first heard about Virtuality, I wasn't that excited, because the concept sounded too much like a whole show of holodeck episodes. But about a year ago, I reviewed a huge chunk of the pilot script (it was pretty much the whole thing) and I was an instant convert.

Yes, Virtuality is the story of the crew of the Phaeton, a deep-space exploration vessel, who use virtual reality to distract themselves from the claustrophobia and boredom of deep space (until something inevitably goes wrong), but there's way more to it than that. For one thing, the ship really is incredibly claustrophobic and slow, not roomy and zoomy like the Enterprise. For another, the crew are forced to take part in a "reality TV" show that's broadcast back on Earth... and the ship's therapist is the reality-show's producer. It's seriously twisted, demented stuff. Oh, and the menace that wreaks havoc in their virtual reality world is a bit scarier and more insidious than a bunch of Worfs in cowboy hats.

Also, it's directed by Peter Berg (Hancock and the upcoming Dune) and stars genre veteran Sienna Guillory (pictured above) alongside Clea DuVall, Jimmi Simpson, Joy Bryant, James D'Arcy, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and others.

So it's fantastic news that the pilot will finally air on Saturday, July 4. I'm guessing this is the original version of the pilot, since it's two hours long. There were reports a while back that Fox was asking Moore to revamp the pilot - possibly to make it one hour long, and also to remove "controversial" elements such as the fact that two minor characters, Manny and Val, were gay and married to each other. Here's hoping that I'm right, and this is the original pilot, not some eviscerated version.

Let's be clear, though - it seems exceedingly unlikely that Virtuality will get to become an ongoing series. (I'd say that's been clear for months, unfortunately.) It's just barely possible that if the TV movie has out-of-the-park ratings - doing much, much better than you'd expect from a Saturday night on July 4 - that Fox will reconsider killing the series. But honestly, I'd say that's not terribly likely. So I'm just glad we're finally getting to see all the Virtuality that will ever get made.

Caprica is out on DVD, and digital download, today.

Bloody Disgusting broke the news on Thursday that Eric Heisserer has been hired to rewrite the script for the movie, and when the writer confirmed the story on his blog, he revealed that it was more than just slight script doctoring:

We are all so much in love with Carpenter's film, so protective of it, we're doing all we can to avoid stepping on its toes. I jumped at this job because I hold the Carpenter adaptation to very high standards, and I knew it would be a challenge to create a comparable companion piece. Sort of a "Nobody better screw this up, especially me" mentality. Lucky for me, the people at Strike and the director have the same standards. This is a "from scratch" rewrite assignment for the most part, as was my work on A Nightmare on Elm Street. I can't say any more on that. I have the highest respect for both Ron Moore and Wesley Strick.

While we're waiting for more information on what the prequel will be like now that Moore is no longer involved in the project, we must admit some sadness at being robbed of seeing a terrifying alien shapeshifting dog with a glowing spine as he humped someone's leg.

'The Thing' Prequel Script Getting Rewritten! [Bloody Disgusting]

The pilot episode will launch on DVD on April 21, but until then these clips will have to tide you over. I have to say, I'm really impressed with Paula Malcomson, who plays Amanda, the wife of computer genius Daniel Graystone. The robot butler is amazing, and so is the "other-world tennis," but Malcomson really shocks the hell out of you when she slaps her daughter Zoe square in the face.

Besides the upcoming movies and Caprica would you ever revisit the Battlestar characters?

You know, you never say never - which I've really learned in this business... I can just tell you that there's no plan to do anything like that. There's not even like a notion in my head. Right now, there are no plans. But you never know.

Practically speaking, the sets have been destroyed, so there's no set to go shoot on, and that would be an enormous expense to recreate those sets. Now, I will tell you that we digitally archived all the sets top to bottom completely. So we have a virtual archive of Galactica, and all the sets and props and wardrobe and all of that. So you could theoretically go back and try and do something again. We just sort of did that and put it in the vault for later. But there's nothing that I can see that lends itself towards that. And when you see the finale, you'll know that we really do put a period at the end of the sentence, in terms of the story that we've been telling.

What about the endings that you brainstormed that didn't get made for BSG? Can you talk about those at all?

There was a different ending that we had, it was all about Ellen aboard the Colony. She was sort of turned by Cavil, because she found out that Tigh had impregnated Caprica Six, and that deeply embittered her. And she sort of became dedicated to the idea of destroying Galactica and the fleet out of revenge. And [she and Cavil] got Hera, and then the final confrontation became very personalized between Tigh versus Ellen, and should they forgive.

That was the story, generally speaking. We didn't have a lot more than just what I spun out to you, when the writer's strike hit. Over the course of the writer's strike, I rethought about it and thought, "That's not going to do it. It's not epic enough. It's not interesting enough." That's when we decided to start over, and reinvent the last arc of the show.

And I know it's not really fair to ask but really quick just curious, who's your favorite character on BSG?

Baltar. Baltar's probably my favorite character.

Were you ever worried when you started to spin that character off into the deep end, that you'd never be able to bring him back?

Yeah but that was always the challenge. I always liked doing that. I always wanted to kick him out, and then see if I could reel him back.

When did you figure out what you wanted to do with the ending? Because I heard with President Roslin, you knew about her tragic family backstory almost from day one, but waited to show it. Was it like that with the finale?

That was in the show bible, actually. That was in the original show bible that I wrote up. I wrote all these these character bios, and that was in the character bio and we just never played it or had a point to it. The focus of the flashbacks was sort of to say, "This is where the character's ending," and to [help us] understand where they ended and why. [And to do that, you need to] understand who they were, and see that it's all connected together. That story of losing her sisters, and the subsequent events that you see in the finale, really are the connective tissue that took Laura to Galactica, which also mean that's why she is where she is.

When did you know when you wrote the finale that this was what you wanted to do?

It came much more naturally. Over the years, David and I had lots of ideas about the finale. When we were plotting out the fourth season, that was when we in earnest started taking about how it was going to end. And it changed several times over the course of the fourth season. It wasn't really until we were in the room, breaking the final episode, that the flashbacks came in and we started talking in concrete terms about exactly how it ends, and the specific ends of each character, and exactly where Galactica is going to end up.

Let's talk about the fan reaction to the final episode. As with all things in this genre, there will be people that love it and people that speak out against it. How will you address those who may leave unsatisfied?

Well, all I can say is: We're happy. This is what we wanted to do, this is the story I wanted to tell, and this is the end of the chapter. You get to the end of the book and you may not like the ending, but this is what the author chose to tell you. I'm very proud of it. We were all proud to do it, and so we just hope the people share this feeling. But [for] the people that don't, there's nothing we can do about it.

How about fan theories over the show, like mention of a missing Cylon named Daniel? After his name was mentioned, the fans just went wild online. Did you intend for that to happen, and was he supposed to inspire this big fan-driven backstory?

You know, the Daniel thing is going to be one of the great fiascos of the show, in terms of what fans thought and what the truth was. Because Daniel was not intended to be anything more than an interesting bit of backstory in that episode. And that's how we approached it. It was just a story that Cavil and Ellen tell each other, that sort of goes to the idea of who Cavil was and how deep his resentments were, and his jealous nature - and [we wanted to] do a Cain and Abel allegory. That was all it was.

And then after the show aired. I started picking up all this stuff about how fans were obsessing about Daniel and how [people thought] Daniel was Kara's father, and he was the big surprise. I started thinking, "Oh shit, slow down people, I don't want you to really get invested."

I usually don't like to go out there and say, "Oh, that's a bad theory," because part of the enjoyment of watching the show is coming up with ideas. But this was gathering such momentum, I didn't want people to be going into the finale and really be waiting for the Daniel shoe to drop, when there's no shoe. It's one of those things where you're inside the show, [and] you look at it, and go one way. And then it's broadcast, and an audience sees it, and then they seize on this piece that you never really anticipated, and then you're sort of amazed. And you're saying, "Slow down, no - come back."

Well we listen to every single thing you put up there, because they usually do come back at some point, so I'm not surprised that name-drop took off.

Yeah, I kind of feel bad about that. It's like, "Oh man." [Laughs]

First off - lookin' good, Stoltz. I'm still glad he's a part of this series and playing the slightly creepy genius who brings back Grandpa Adama's daughter from the dead... as a robot.

We've seen Caprica's trailer and how it just barely overlaps with the BSG characters, but I'm really interested to see how the story behind the final Cylon on BSG, will play out on Caprica. Because right now, I'm a bit confused by how Caprica's centurions overlap with the ones the Galactica crew found on Earth, and how the Final Five fit in, exactly.

[Yahoo]

Goldfarb was right — Future Kill is probably the worst theatrically released movie of all time. (Although, did Nine Deaths Of The Ninja ever appear in theaters?) It starts out as a post-apocalyptic mutant gang movie, then veers sharply into Porkys/Revenge Of The Nerds territory with an elaborate subplot about frat-boys playing pranks on each other. Then the frat-boys get framed for the murder of a mutant leader by Splatter, our dickless armored former nuclear scientist and current psycho-killer.

It's all the work of writer/director Ronald W. Moore — who I'm guessing is the reason why Star Trek/Battlestar Galactica scribe Ronald D. Moore always includes his middle initial in his credits. [IMDB]

Bloody Disgusting is reporting that Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. (Zien) is in the running to direct RDM's new movie.

But more interesting than that, BD found out that the main character of this Thing might be R.J. Macready's brother, who was played by bad-ass, flame-throwing Kurt Russell in the John Carpenter's movie.

Hopefully, this movie will explain a little of the backstory about the Norwegians that were hunting down that dangerous alien dog.

[Bloody Disgusting]