Time was that I would know
pretty much every new TV show out there, what they were about and when they would air. In fact,
it was something I prided myself on— for years my wife (Eileen) and I would
pick up two copies of TV Guide’s Fall Preview issue just so we could read about
what was coming and check off what we would or
wouldn’t watch. Now, of course, the sheer quantity of tele vi sion is so
overwhelming that I’m suddenly hearing about a show in its third season that
I’ve never even heard of at all
We’ll get back to Portlandia in
a second.
During the writing process, there
came a point where I felt like I needed a Galactica 2003 refresher, having not
watched the show since its first run. I streamed the original miniseries, which
made perfect “background noise” for the writing process, though I found myself
paying attention to it more than I probably should have been. Next thing I
knew, I was making my way through season one, with all the others streaming
before me over the next couple of weeks. The writing of the book needed to
continue, but Galactica wouldn’t. It was over.
They’d found Earth (and thank God not the Earth of Galactica 1980), and
now I was the one feeling lost. Searching. My first impulse was to start
watching the original series, but then I remembered Portlandia. Or, more
accurately, what I’d been told about it. A bit of searching on Netflix, and
there it was: season 2, episode 2— “One Moore Episode.” In it, characters
played by the two lead actors, Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, decide to
check out an episode of Battlestar
Galactica, which leads to another and another and another . . . to the point where they lose their jobs,
electricity is turned off (briefly, but painfully), and they find themselves so
obsessed that they decide to go this side of Kathy Bates in Misery on Ron
Moore’s ass to get him to write another episode. Won’t spoil things from there, but you should
check it out for yourself if you haven’t.
Needless to say, “One Moore
Episode” was pretty reflective of what I felt rewatching the series, its power
once again completely capturing my imagination, and, it being one of the few
shows (particularly in the sci-fi genre) to live up to the true potential of
the medium, standing as the model by which others are still measured all these
years later.
Personally, it’s an ironic
feeling to have, considering that I wasn’t the biggest fan of Battlestar Galactica when the original
series debuted, in 1978. I can still remember the excitement leading into
the series—at that point I was a massive Star Trek fan and had been swept up by
Star Wars along with everyone else— and I was pretty impressed with the three-
hour event “Saga of a Star World.” Unfortunately, with the exception of several
two- parters, that feeling didn’t last all that long. The series (at least for
me) felt as though it quickly fell into a certain repetition, and drove home
the notion that Battlestar Galactica was an incredible premise that failed to
live up to its own potential. And when Galactica 1980 followed as a failed
apology from ABC, that feeling remained with me. For decades.
Which is part of the reason
that rumblings over the years of a revival barely elicited a Spockian rise of
an eyebrow. Oh, sure, talk of Bryan Singer doing a new version with Tom DeSanto
was intriguing, but didn’t inspire a tremendous amount of hope in me. And
neither did Richard Hatch’s attempt to get the show revived, which felt like it
was going to be more of the same (not
entirely fair, since I didn’t know much
about it). But when word came out that Ronald D. Moore was writing a new
version, then I was interested. And to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t
because I was suddenly filled with hope of Battlestar Galactica being all that it could be (my bad), but
more because I was already friendly with
him, having interviewed him numerous times regarding his work on Star Trek: The
Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. He’d always made me feel welcome to
contact him, and my initial impulse was that I could have an interesting
exclusive on my hands.
So I contacted Ron, and we chatted about how it all came about and what he was
hoping to achieve. We probably spoke for about forty- five minutes, and
afterward I thanked him, both of us figuring we’d talk again at some point.
What neither of us expected was that my tape recorder would malfunction and the
interview was not recorded. Just to show you what kind of a human being Ron Moore is, when I told him
what had happened, he took a deep breath and we dove right back into it as
though the first conversation hadn’t
occurred. End result was that I came away from that first chat— both of them—
with more excitement in my heart for Battlestar
Galactica than I’d felt since those
days leading into “Saga of a Star World.” And, as it turned out, for good
reason. The show was everything that was suggested in the premise, the writers,
cast, and crew pulling together to create some intergalactic magic.
And more than anything, it’s
that— speaking to all of those people—
which has been the highlight of cowriting So Say We All with Mark A.
Altman. Engaging in hour upon hour of conversation, gradually piecing the story
together, and coming away from it all with not only a greater appreciation for
the show, but a true understanding that when everyone who worked on it refers
to each other as a family, you
absolutely believe it.
Prior to this we’ve written three oral histories: the two
volumes of The Fifty- Year Mission, which chronicle the first half century of Star Trek, and Slayers &
Vampires, which takes on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. But I’d be
lying if I didn’t say that there was something extra special about this
book, the enthusiastic cooperation of every one we reached out to bringing us
into the fold in a way that the
others haven’t quite done. We’ve
relived the entire journey in a way that few outsiders have, feeling as though we’ve
stepped onto the CIC of the battlestar Galactica, fought for survival on
Caprica and against Cylon occupation on New Caprica, experienced the sense of
hopelessness upon discovering the nuclear wasteland that was Earth, fearing the
loss of everything as mutiny threatened to tear the remnants of society apart,
and, of course, settling on a new Earth to begin the saga anew.
It’s been one frak of a journey
and we’d be happy to do it all over again. So say we both.
