The Battlestar Galactica Bible

Everything you wanted to know about the writing behind the reimagined series.

Librarianship and Vampire Slaying

Billie Doux reminds us of some great lines from Buffy:

Buffy: “You’re like a textbook with arms.”

Willow: “How is it you always know this stuff? You always know what’s going on. I never know what’s going on.”
Giles: “Well, you weren’t here from midnight until six researching it.”

Giles: “I’m just going to stay and clean up a little. I’ll be back in the Middle Ages.”
Jenny: “Did you ever leave?”

Buffy: “I mean, I can’t believe you got into Oxford.”
Willow: “It’s pretty exciting.”
Oz: “That’s some deep academia there.”
Buffy: “That’s where they make Gileses.”
Willow: “I know! I could learn and, and have scones.”

The Clone Wars goes dark in second season

It’s hard to know whether to love or hate the television show, The Clone Wars. Whatever there is to love is undone by much more I find myself loving to hate. There’s Jar Jar Binks, of course. And the new jedi padawan, Ahsoka “Snips” Tano, who is equally deserving of a Great Pit of Carkoon type fate. The biggest problem for the show, however, is it’s place in the time-line. Whatever fertile ground the Clone Wars period may offer for narrative points, any dramatic tension is diffused in the reality that we know how the story will end. In truth, it’s hard to care. Yet, it is still Star Wars. And the show isn’t getting some of the highest ratings on the Cartoon Network for nothing. It’s high production values and invigorating velocity have kept it above some of the other television chaff.

The “darker” second season may rescue some of these faults. The new trailer, first unveiled at Comic Con, introduces bounty hunters into the mix and a tone much closer to the inevitable live-action conclusion. While Cad Bane may be more Jonah Hex than Boba Fett, the mercenary world of rogues and blasters-for-hire should bring in all new kinds of awesome.

The second series will begin in the US autumn, later this year.

The Epic Journey: Battlestar Galactica Season 4 Promo

The Sci-Fi Channel has released a promotional trailer for the next season of that great cerebral space opera, Battlestar Galactica. The show is one of my favourites and in my opinion, offers some of the most under appreciated content on television. Tracking the surviving colonists of a post-apocalyptic war between humanity and a race of machines, the series is able to transcend the standard genre tropes to deliver something with real drama and nuance. There are the grand ineluctable CGI battles and swirling dogfights, but the show never relies on these – preferring dark, claustrophobic corridors and space that is just as much dense with fear and doubt as it is with robotic enemies.

Season Four, the final season for the series, begins on January 16th.

Pilot clip for Buffy the Animated Series leaked online

With its dank crypts, leathery flesh and febrile devotion to veiny gore, Vampire mythology has never particularly resonated that well with me. Of course, there are some notions cast within that world that have potential, but the central premise of an unchecked and inextinguishable compulsion for immortality, funneled through the bloodletting, rituals and orthodontically-driven violence of a chthonic race gets mostly a meh from me. I’m not haemophobic by any stretch, some healthy bloodsport is always called for, especially in the service of a good narrative. And there’s much to be said for the Gothic texture and lantern-burnt, Dickens-like zipcode of the settings that can often cradle tales of vampirism. Even the the idea of outcasts with superhuman power, excluded from daylight and humanity because of an irredeemable curse has much purchase. But for all that, its a sub-genre that I’ve mostly stayed away from.

The densely accoutred universe of undead that writer and producer Joss Whedon crafted was an exception. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer and later spin-off Angel, Whedon did not take the narrative conventions as certainites and charted a series with a cast more befitting a teen 90210 drama than what might be common to the horror-derived genre. The television show exhibited an easy balance of self-mockery and pathos; mixing irony, acidic patter and characters that defied cheese and cliche. The misfit melancholy, character-based laughs, and all from within a unique supernatural world that offered enough whiplash commentary of our own, pitched the series above other fare.

The last episode aired in 2003 but even before the shows hellmouth-collapsing finale, talk of an animated version has been around since earlier than 2002. Buffy the Animated Series was to have a simpler starting point – set in the original shows season one (but with some “season seven point five” continuities, such as the inclusion of Dawn) – with less complicated backstories for wider audience appeal.

With most of the original characters providing voices and artwork from Eric Wight – who had been involved in animation for the wickedly cool Batman cartoons – the concept seemed strong. The networks, however, were not as convinced. Despite the already cult status of the Buffyverse, the show has seemed to be trapped in a development purgatory. And talk of the show seem destined to remain nothing more substantial than the interweb EVP of over-caffineated Whedon fanbois.

But no longer. Recently, an abridged version of the pilot was leaked onto Youtube and it’s worth eyeballing (for those interested, the three and a-half minute promotional pilot can also be downloaded in different formats on this page of the shows dedicated fansite). With petitions amassing and the attention of a sucessful Dr Horrible, Whedon and Jeph Loeb might be able to get this into full production.