Recent news on Battlestar Galactica

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JUL. 16, 2007 | News | SCI FI Weekly

Battlestar Cylons May Surprise

Cast members of SCI FI Channel's original series Battlestar Galactica told reporters that they weren't happy at first to discover that their characters were Cylons, but they have come to terms with the revelation in their own ways—and hinted the Cylons may not be what they appear.

"I've always thought to myself—I don't know if I said it out loud, I must have—that I sure am glad I'm not playing a Cylon," said Michael Hogan, who plays Col. Tigh, in a news conference in Vancouver, Canada. "I'm not happy about being a Cylon at all. But I don't imagine any of us who are being picked to be Cylons are happy about it. But the scripts and what we've been doing so far are great, and the only way that I can deal with it is as a human being. So far, that's all I've had to do. And I'm not sure what's going on."

Hogan added that the new information about his character has added a level of complexity to his performance and challenged him as an actor. "For Tigh so far, it is like a mental illness," he said. "It's like the ringing in the years and visions and constantly wondering what's going on. So [in] almost ... every scene we do now, it's that thing where you're thinking, ... if you've had a personal tragedy happen to you, then you've got to carry on with life: You kind of realize, 'Isn't this amazing that I'm actually talking to people?' But this is all going on inside."

Aaron Douglas, who plays Chief Tyrol, said at the same press conference that he came across the information by chance early on and has had a little more time to process the notion. "I found out months in advance, accidentally," he said. "I found a piece of paper lying around that I wasn't supposed to read, but I read it anyways. And I said, 'What the ... is this?' And [director Michael] Rymer went, 'Oh, you're not supposed to read that.' ... So I kept my mouth shut until it officially came out, and then I phoned [executive producer Ron Moore]. 'What the hell is this?'"

Douglas said he didn't like the news at first. "Because I thought you're taking a fan favorite, a character that's very identifiable, very human, that the fans really, really like, and you're really marginalizing him," he said. "So Ron spoke to me for, like, an hour and a half on the phone, and he explained the whys and the wherefores, and I was convinced at the end. Now I've embraced it, more than Michael has, I believe. And I don't mind going down in history as one of the Cylon gods and one of the 12 Cylon human forms."

Douglas also revealed a detail about the final five Cylons that had previously been kept under wraps. "The differentiation between the seven and the final five will become more clear," he said. "We're not like them. In all seriousness. We're Cylon, but we're not connected to these guys at all." —Cindy White
SCI FI Execs Talk Battlestar's End

Bonnie Hammer, president of USA Network and SCI FI Channel, said that it was the decision of executive producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, not the network's, to end the original series Battlestar Galactica in the fourth season and that the producers made the decision for creative reasons.

"There's been some stuff online where they're saying that it was really the network decision to go in this direction and that it's been coded by a certain level of appropriate politics by Ron and David, and that's not really the case," Hammer said in a press conference during SCI FI Channel's digital press tour in Vancouver, Canada. "These are people who are passionate about what they do, and they didn't want to be in a position where they were writing beyond where they believed they had true stories and true character arcs where they could take it without diminishing the quality of the writing and the quality of the show, and that really is rare. And this is definitely a decision that they believe in wholeheartedly, as opposed to something that was fed to them for any other reasons, from ratings or finance or anything else."

Battlestar Galactica is currently filming its fourth and final season, which kicks off in November with a special two-hour event entitled "Razor." The show's additional 20 episodes will return in early 2008.

A special sneak preview of "Razor" will air on July 10 during the second-season premiere of SCI FI's original series Eureka at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

At the same press conference, SCI FI Channel's executive vice president Mark Stern echoed the assertion that Moore and Eick were not influenced by any outside sources. "Anyone who knows Ron and David knows they are anything but network lapdogs," he said. "We only wish that they would do what we ask them to do, but that's never going to happen."

As for the future of the franchise once the fourth and final season comes to a close, Stern said that it remains unclear and that everyone involved in the production is more concerned about the present and giving the show a proper sendoff. "We are as sad as everybody else is to see season four coming," he said. "As for what follows, Caprica, the prequel, is out there. We haven't really decided what we're going to do with that yet. And there's always the theme-park ride." —Cindy White