WIRED has listed several hypothetical experiments that would advance science significantly, if only they weren’t so creepy and wrong. For example, something called “embryo mapping” would see doctors insert a tracking agent into a human embryo and monitor its development more precisely and definitively than ever before. The result could help scientist direct the evolution of stem cells, and potentially advance research into Parkinson’s Disease, for example, significantly.

Plus, it’d make  really cool sci-fi story. As do the others. Just imagine your favorite director, actors and visual effects artists teaming up to produce movies based on:

1. Optogenetics – beams of light control brain cells of conscious human beings
2. Ape man – cross-breed a human being with a chimpanzee
3. Separating Twins – separate twins at birth and then control every single aspect of their upbringing

There’s more, of course, and we encourage to read the full list. Unethical in real life, but compelling fodder for science fiction.

Photo credit: Bartholomew Cooke. Image based on photo by photo researchers.

“There’s no guarantee, for example, that the historic ratings success of Battlestar Galactica will translate to the new spin-off series Caprica. But if I know the Sci-Fi Channel, viewers may not even get a chance to set a season pass for Caprica before it’s blasted out the nearest airlock.”

And that’s exactly what happened.

Think about that date for a second. We first heard about Caprica in 2008. Nearly three years later, the network still hasn’t finished airing the first season. You’d think that a network called “SyFy” would be the ONE network unwilling to treat science fiction programming like space junk.

AMC’s ambitious remake of the short-lived, beloved television series, “The Prisoner” has finally aired (Part I at least). What did you think? Sound off in the comments below. Be seein’ ya!

Warning: The comments likey include spoilers. You have been warned.

Hide your gerbils! ABC’s re-imagined visitors have finally arrived. As their massive ships hover above Earth’s major cities, the scaly aliens attempt to infiltrate human society in very attractive costumes. The idea of seemingly benevolent aliens isn’t new, but it’s more compelling than clearly-defined good vs. evil. How will the contemporary Vs compare to their cheesy 80′s counterparts?

In a word: Pretty frakking well (OK, three words).

Warning: Some spoilers follow. If you don’t want to know, here’s the short, spoiler-free version of this post: It’s doing well and we like it. For the spoiler-rific version, keep reading.

First, the numbers. The November 3rd premiere posted a 5.0 rating/13 share in adults 18-49 and 13.9 million viewers total. In fact, it beat out the premiere of Fox’s heavily-advertised “The Cleveland Show” from Seth MacFarlane as well as “NCIS.” The second episode was seen by 10.7 million viewers and drew a 3.8 rating among adults 18-49. That’s a 27% drop from the premiere; not unexpected as 80′s nostalgia and pure curiosity inspired many of those initial 14 million viewers. Still, a 3.8 rating and 10.7 million pairs of eyeballs are enough to keep “V” on the air.

The story is just as promising. By the end of the first episode, we learned that the visitors have secretly existed among us for years. A resistance group has formed and one of the main characters, Ryan (filling the Robert Englund role as the cooperative visitor), is revealed to be a visitor, unbeknownst to his fiancée. In the 2nd episode, we’ve meet a foul-mouth priest and the FBI agent’s son who’s decided to become an agent for the visitors.

In other words, it’s moving along briskly.

This revamp of “V” is sexy, fast-paced and contemporary. Working with themes that Alien Nation and Battlestar Galactica addressed so keenly, “V” transcends the camp of Kenneth Johnson‘s vision. Red jumpsuits and Yoko Ono-style sunglasses have been replaced  with smart suits and uniforms. More importantly, ABC is keen to address religion, trust and social class during prime time. Here’s hoping they’ve got the stones keep it going.

Go ahead, tell me that isn’t the scariest damn thing you’ve ever seen. It was an episode of The Bionic Woman that coined the term “fembot,” and they appeared in two multi-part episodes. The fembots didn’t have AI, but relied upon their programming. Plus, they didn’t mind when people dramatically tore off their faces to reveal the mechanics beneath.

The mindless, murderous fembots are creepy, evil and infiltrated my dreams for weeks when I was young. It’s the removable face that gets me. This also explains my fear of mannequins and CPR dummies.

Look here for more on why robots suck.

The Stepford Wives

Written by the great Ira Levin, The Stepford Wives is part satire and part commentary. In the story, a young New Yorker moves to Stepford, Connecticut. She notices that the men of Stepford are married to impossibly beautiful and conciliatory women. Of course, the cyber-shit hits the fan when our heroine discovers the truth — those men have taken to killing their wives and replacing them with fawning robots. Above is what Bravo calls the movie’s scariest scene, and we agree.

Levin’s novel is a modern classic and the 1975 film adaptation by Bryan Forbes is terrific and damn creepy. Too creepy in fact. Artificial intelligence that drives murderous men to build high-tech sex toys? No, no. That’s not what we want!

All I’m after is a pit droid to change the oil in my Saturn. Maybe a bending unit to make hilariously rude comments. Levin’s robots are submissive and eerie. Bryan’s actresses are emotionless and distant. And they’re all coming between me and my own Twiki!

Look here for more on why robots suck.

Artificial intelligence research has progressed by leaps and … oh, who are we kidding? It sucks! A robot that can navigate a maze of pink Post-It Notes? Really? That’s the best we can do? Where are the cylons? Where’s Daryl Hannah in Bladerunner? Heck, where’s Bender?

I’ll tell you why we don’t have those things yet. In fact, it’s because of them! Every time we get a new movie like I, Robot or that forthcoming Bruce Willis stink bomb, it features sentient, pissed-off androids whose only motivation is to destroy human kind. Sure, it makes for an exciting movie but it hinders the MIT AI lab!

“Sure, I’ll fund your project,” says the wealthy investor. “It looks incredible. Here’s a a check for 10 million dollars. Who do I make this out … Hey, wait a minute. Aren’t these robots just going to rise up and enslave us?”

“Well no, Mr. High Profiled Investor. That’s just fiction and …”

“Don’t pull that over on me! I’ve seen The Stepford Wives!”

With this in mind, we’re begging sci-fi writers everywhere. Please write docile, helpful robots into your stories. We’re talking R2. We’re talking Rosie. But don’t do it for us, do it for these pathetic souls.

Look here for more on why robots suck.

Elizabeth Montgomery

She’s best known for playing Samantha on Bewitched, but I enjoyed her performance as a soldier in the Twilight Zone episode, “Two.” She and Charles Bronson play the only people on Earth after a long and bloody war. The catch: they’re members of opposing armies. Eventually they learn to abandon their hate and begin life anew. It’s a fun yet predictable episode, and Elizabeth turns in some nice acting, despite the fact that her character doesn’t speak.

Anne Francis

Angelina Jolie has nothing on the lovely Anne Francis. Most famously, Anne played Altaira “Alta” Morbius in the classic Forbidden Planet. This landmark sci-fi movie was loosely based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest and was nominated for academy awards, pushed special effects forward and featured the first appearance of Robby the Robot.

That’s all well and good, but for me, Anne never looked as charming as she did in “The After Hours.” In this episode of The Twilight Zone, Anne wanders into a department store to buy a thimble for her mother. She’s brought to the mysterious 9th floor which houses just one counter, one employee and one thimble for sale. As she investigates the “rude woman” who waited on her, she becomes agitated and is asked to rest in a back room.

She wakes up after the store has closed and returns to the 9th floor, where a group of mannequins seem to call her name and surround her. At last she realizes that she herself is a mannequin who has returned after enjoying her turn living in the “real world.”

It’s a creepy episode that moves along briskly and features an absolutely beautiful Anne Francis.

Mariette Hartley

No wonder Spock fell for Zarabeth … she was played by Mariette Hartely. When he and Bones tried to follow Kirk through the atavachron in the episode “All Our Yesterdays,” Zarabeth was waiting, having been exiled there. It isn’t long before she gets a certain science officer’s green blood boiling, and we don’t blame him.

She also played Sandra Horn in The Twilight Zone’s “The Long Morrow,” in which her beauty inspired an astronaut to endure 40 lonely years in space.

Catherine Schell

Fans of Space: 1999 will remember the beautiful and talented Catherine Schell who joined the cast as a regular in season 2. She also appeared in Doctor Who in 1979 and currently runs a hotel in France. Who knew?

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “No Barbarella?!” That’s right, no Barbarella. Why? Eh, that character was too cartoonish, too over-the-top. Not that Jeri Ryan in that Starfleet uniform wasn’t silly, but you know what I mean.

Was there anyone that we missed? Let us know.

When The Plan was announced at the end of Battlestar Galactica’s run, I feared that it would be a lame attempt to recapture the glory of the series (see “After M*A*S*H“). Now that the teaser trailer is out, I’m starting to get excited about it. There are references to several episodes in the brief clip which need a thorough examination.

One thing is clear: Cavil was behind everything. The genocide, the plot’s shocking moments, the works. In Kobol’s Last Gleaming, Boomer shoots Adama twice in the chest. Ultimately he survives. In the trailer, we see Cavil reprimanding her for botching the job and not shooting him in the head. We can only assume that took place after she was assassinated by Cally and resurrected on the base ship.

Later, we see Cavil and Six conspiring to discredit Baltar’s Cylon Detector. As you’ll remember, the test required plutonium, which Six suggested be taken from one of the Galactica’s nuclear warheads in the episode Bastille Day. Baltar estimated that it would take over 60 years to test the whole fleet (numbering almost 50,000 people at the time) in the episode Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down. Plus, it supposedly produced a false negative on Boomer, so it was indeed discredited.

In another scene, Cavil is telling a battered Ellen that the cylons will attack the fleet at 33-minute intervals, which was the premise of one of our favorite episodes, “33.” Speaking of Ellen, we even see Saul (with both eyes intact) debating the ethics of killing Ellen. “Some would call that murder,” he says to Cavil. Of course, Saul goes through with it in the episode Exodous, Pt. 1.

In season one, Doral stormed the Galactica with a suicide vest, posing as a reporter. In the Plan clip, we see Cavil handing him that vest.

After viewing the trailer and seeing the familiar stories from a new perspective, I’m hopeful that The Plan will avoid being gimmicky and offer a compelling look at the collection of stories we’ve come to know as the genocide of humanity. Edward James Olmos directed, and we know he has a deep affection for these characters. Here’s to November.

* “Zaprudering” is a neologism derived from the Zapruder film, the amateur 8mm film that is the only known visual record of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It’s used here to indicate painstaking analysis of the trailer.

“… My heroes are Jonathan Swift, and Albert Schweitzer. Many of them are unknown people I’ve met which I consider remarkably brave, patient and understanding. But I have less of that collection of heroes than an overwhelming affection for humanity. I think the human race is just a fascinating creature.

I know that humans, even today, capture and torture people and commit war and all of that. But that’s because they are still children and children are violent. But I refuse to think any other way about the human race but that they are beautiful children. They will, in the end, persevere.”

- Gene Roddenberry

I’ll never forget the time had the privilege to meet Mr. Gene Roddenberry. One fateful day back in 1978, my father clipped an article from our local newspaper that the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, was coming to speak at our town’s high school. I had been addicted to Star Trek ever since I first started watching television and my parents knew I’d be excited to hear Roddenberry speak about how he created the show, as well as his other projects. To say I was excited was an understatement.

I marked the date on my calendar and counted down for weeks until the night arrived when we went to see him speak. I was only nine years old at the time and somehow expected that everyone in our town would attend the event. After all, this was the great Gene Roddenberry and he was to talk about the best thing to ever hit television, Star Trek. I felt crestfallen when only about 1/3 of the auditorium filled that evening to hear him. If this seems strange, you have to remember that up until the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979, Trek was considered a second rate kids show seen only in syndication at all hours of the night. The series was still establishing its status as cult hit, which is probably one reason why Gene was appearing in small towns like Laconia, NH where I grew up, giving lectures to barely filled halls.

None of this mattered. I sat raptured and listened to him speak for a little over an hour about his early career in the military and how he later sold the idea of Star Trek to NBC by couching it as a western in space. He told funny stories about on-set antics and the classic tale of how Nichelle Nichols almost left Star Trek after the first season, but decided to stay at the behest of Dr. Martin Luther King.

Prior to that night I had always imagined Gene to be someone of tall stature and forceful voice. It surprised me to learn he was a humble man, who spoke quietly about his creations and who often dotted his remembrances with humor and gentle wit. He thoroughly enjoyed his career as a writer and producer, but hated having to cow tow to network TV executives. He fully believed in the power of the human spirit, but acknowledged that man’s history had been littered with cruelty and destruction. He closed his speech and then treated us to blooper reels from all three seasons of the original Star Trek series.

When the applause had finished and the lights came up, my father asked if I wanted to try and meet him. At first I was afraid and thought it was best to simply leave. My dad reminded me that I may never have this chance again and so I agreed. We walked to where Roddenberry stood talking to fans and after a few moments, my dad introduced me and I got to shake Gene’s hand. I didn’t realize then how lucky I had been to actually meet the creator of Star Trek in person, but I know now. Roddenberry’s talk inspired me to do well in school, dream about what the future of the human race held, and solidified me as a Trekkie for life. For all of this and more, I am deeply grateful.

From one wide-eyed kid to another, thank you Gene, you are missed.

The first television serial that grabbed my attention was V. If you’re unfamiliar, I’ll explain the plot’s basics. Aliens arrive on Earth in enormous ships and convince humankind of their altruistic intentions. Of course, they’re really reptilian bad guys who want to replenish their planet’s exhausted natural resources by robbing Earth of her own.

Also, they eat gerbils.

V was replete with 80′s cheese and typical sci-fi conventions and plot twists (who can forget the V baby?). When we first heard of the pending remake, we were cautious. Could it possibly be good?

I know you can’t judge a project by a 90 second trailer (The Phantom Menace is proof of that), but these clips have gotten us excited. Above we see the ships arrive and human kind’s terrified response. Here’s what V has going for it:

1. The Aliens are sexy. Morena Baccarin plays Anna, the alien leader. I’ll be quite happy to stare at her for 40 minutes a week. Not to mention Lisa on the New York mother ship, played by Laura Vandervoort.
2. It’s not on Fox or SciFi. Fox has a hair trigger when it comes to under-performing TV shows (not to mention a very broad definition of “under-performing”), and SciFi’s scheduling is managed by a monkey. I feel that ABC will give it a shot it wouldn’t enjoy elsewhere.
3. The special effects look good. That brief scene of the shuttle taking off from a landing pad looks great. BSG set a standard for FX on TV. It seems ABC is answering the call.
4. Religion is front-and-center. BSG demonstrated that heavy-handed religious themes in a prime-time television show, when done right, are compelling. The clip above suggests that we’ll find a similar tactic in V.

We’re still not 100% convinced that this is going to be good, but we’re certainly encouraged. Let the invasion begin! Watch another clip after the break.

For more of our thoughts on the popularity of sci-fi “reboots,” check out Episode #31.

If you love the Oscars, but hate having to stay up until 2am, and wish they’d give awards in your favorite BSG categories, then have we got the episode for you! The long-awaited Toastie Awards are being handed out and you have a front row seat right next to Jack Nicholson (as a seat warmer).

Join Dave, Jen & Ged as we announce the best and worst of the Sci-Fi Channels’s Battlestar Galactica as voted by you, our nine listeners. This is a fun one filled with suspense, drama, comedy and a few twists & turns so you won’t want to miss it.

Warning: The Toasties contain spoilers for all four seasons of BSG, so if you don’t want to know who frakked whom or who bought that big space farm in the sky, then don’t listen.

Original post date: 4/11/09
Duration: 33’33″

Links for this episode:
Rolling the Hard Six
Lucy Flawless Fan Site
Billy Crystal Opens the 69th Academy Awards
Old Glory Insurance

Announcing the first (and last) annual Toastie Awards for our favorite science fiction show, Battlestar Galactica. What just are the Toasties you ask? The Toasties are a fun and completely arbitrary award bestowed on our very favorite parts of BSG. We’ll be handing out Toasties like algae during episode 28 of The Sci-Fi Cast and we need your help!

We have some pre-determined Toastie categories that we’ll be mentioning during the podcast, but we’d also love to hear your nominations for any and all funny BSG categories you might have. We encourage you to post them, along with who you think should win, either in the comments thread of this post or by tweeting them to us @scificast. Be sure to include the search term #bsgtoastie in your tweet so we don’t miss it when categories and nominees are tallied.

Here are some of the Toastie Award categories we’ll be mentioning during episode 28. If you’d like to add nominations for fun categories, go for it! We’ll pick the best fan categories and announce the winners for each in our podcast the week of April 13th.

Toastie Award Categories:

• Best episode of BSG
• Best Tag Line or Saying
• Fan Favorite Character
• Best Frak
• Best Death Scene
• Sexiest Cylon
• Best BSG Shock
• Most Annoying Character
• (other fun ones you nominate!)

You know who they are. They’re the ones typically written into stories to give the plot that “human” touch, but who usually end up grating on your nerves like nails on a chalk board. Sci-Fi writers love them, and with very few exceptions, fans almost always hate them. They come in all shapes, sizes and ages and we’ve dug though our repressed memories to bring you a list of the best (or worst) of them. Here are our picks for some of the most annoying children in sci-fi.

Star Trek’s Alexander Rozhenko
Cousin Oliver. Olivia Kendall. Spike Fonzarelli. Seemingly unrelated characters with one thing in common: They appeared on prime time TV shows to increase the cuteness factor. It’s a problem as old as television itself:  Adorable child actors become awkward teens (or suave leads grow a gut). Desperate, producers have enlisted cute kiddies to revitalize shows like The Brady Bunch. And The Cosby Show. And Happy Days.

And Star Trek.

When everyone’s favorite Klingon, Worf, did the nasty with K’Ehleyr, the result was Alexander Rozhenko, who returned to the Enterprise to live with dear old dad in the episode New Ground. Worf … and the rest of us … were never the same.

I love Michael Dorn’s Worf. When he’s in costume, I believe that he is that character. By contrast, Brian Bonsall just seems like a litte boy with a turtle on his head. Whether he was taking the fall for some other kid’s imaginary friend or receiving messages from his full-grown future self (you knew that had to happen eventually), poor Alexander’s stories rarely moved me to an emotion beyond impatience. The pinnacle was the episode A Fistful of Datas, in which the holodeck went crazy (Again. Why they didn’t just dismantle that damn thing is beyond me) and the crew dressed like cowboys in the wild west.* Ugh.

I’m sure you were a good kid, Alexander, and you did have your tender moments. But all in all, I wish you had remained where no Klingon child had gone before.

Battlestar Galactica’s Hera
Not since V’s “Star Child” has there ever been such an important, and utterly annoying child character on a major science fiction show as BSG’s Hera. Hailed as the key to the survival of both the cylon and human races, Hera ended up being little more than a deux ex machina that mattered little and usually got underfoot.

The child of Karl “Helo” Agathon and Sharon “Athena” Valerii, Hera could often be seen running through the Great Opera House in Laura’s visions and generally getting kidnapped every half a season or so. The show often centered around plots having to do with Hera or her parents but Ron Moore and company never gave us a reason to grow fond of the little tyke. We’ve counted a grand total of perhaps 3 lines of dialog for Hera in the entire four seasons of BSG and that just doesn’t cut it. In the end, even the ill-fated Boxey had more dialog than Hera did which made the final mission to rescue her in “Daybreak” even more difficult to swallow.

Star Wars’ Anakin Skywalker
If ever there was a poster child for the most annoying kid in sci-fi history, Jake Lloyd’s Anakin Skywalker has to be it. Born on the desert world of Tatooine as the son of a junk-yard slave, Anakin would later grow up to be the biggest heavy in a galaxy far, far away – Darth Vader. As a child however, Anakin had more in common with the Little Rascals than the Dark Lord of the Sith. Lloyd’s portrayal as Anakin had a whole range of annoying habits, the least of which was not knowing how to act.

Anakin also had tendencies to wear head protection that was 3 sizes too big, say annoying things like “Wizard!” all the time and piece together protocol droids for fun. But perhaps his worst trait was his in-ability to actually shed tears for his poor, abandoned mother. Upon learning the Jedi have agreed to whisk him away for life, young Anakin runs off to his room to pack yelling “Yipee!”, never for one second thinking “What about mom?” Call us crazy, but it’s no wonder this self-absorbed, sand rat eventually grew up to be the asthmatic villain that subjugated an entire universe.

*At least Counselor Troi looked good in her leather pants.

It’s difficult to believe that in just a few short weeks, the Sci-Fi Cast will celebrate its one year anniversary. When we look back, it seems like we’ve been watching and discussing Battlestar Galactica in our podcasts forever. In reality we only started with the launch of season 4, not bad when you consider just how frakking long seasons of BSG really are.

In episode 25 we discussed how disappointed some of us had been with the quality of BSG in the run-up to the finale. Now that the series is finished, I decided to go back and check our ratings for the last half of season 4. You can see in the chart above how each of us rated the last 10 episodes. Dave and I gave the last half of the season an average of 7 out of 10. Jen scored slightly higher with an average of 8 out of 10. All three of us had trends for season 4.5 that were heading downward. In other words, we all thought the episodes, in general, were getting worse instead of better.

What does this all mean? Not a heck of a lot, really. I think it’s safe to say we all enjoyed the finale and overall the entire season. We just wish Brother Cavil had returned to stir things up right after “The Oath” instead of waiting until the final minutes of season 4. Oh well, you can’t win them all. There’s always “The Plan” coming this fall. Guess we’re back to waiting again…

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the series finale of Battlestar Galactica, ‘Daybreak’. If you don’t want to know what happens, then you should stop reading now.

Though I am not religious today, I was raised Catholic and the topic of religion interests me. After 16 years of Catholic school (that’s right), I feel I’m qualified to comment on the subject. There’s so much that’s ripe for comment here. For example, the humans are polytheists while the cylons belive in one God. The humans tend to keep their religious beliefs to themselves, while the cylons are missionaries.

However, I’m going to talk about how the show depicts God’s relationship with both human and cylon. Today, there are many people who subscribe to the belief that God is a hands-on kind of guy, directly affecting the lives of we humans. “God will provide,” you might hear some say, or even “Why would God do this?” In this scenario, God himself* makes things happen in our lives, and does things to people. He’s active.

Others feel that God is passive. Consider a child playing with a top. He gets it spinning good and fast, then lets go. The top turns and spins, traveling across the floor, powered by nothing but its own momentum.

In much the same manner, some say God “sets us down” and lets us go. This seems to be the notion adopted by the writers of BSG (me, too). Over and over humanity is set down and given a chance to get it right. Angelic Six and Giaus watch the top spin from a distance, hoping that it’ll travel in the right direction. When the whole thing falls apart, they then step into a more active role, pushing humanity towards their next opportunity to try again (Kobol, Earth I, Caprica, Earth II).

Others have commented on the religious aspects of BSG more elloquently than me, and I suggest you check those articles out. The best TV shows are thought-provoking and leave a legacy that extends beyond their run on television. BSG stands proudly among them.

*I use “himself” as a gender-neutral pronoun in this instance.

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the series finale of Battlestar Galactica, ‘Daybreak’. If you don’t want to know what happens, then you should stop reading now.

With the airing of last night’s series finale, Battlestar Galactica has passed from the realm of “what is” into “what was”. Even though the show ran for only 4 short seasons, its run lasted almost 6 full years. Watching the end of BSG last night among my friends, I was reminded that as with the end of many great TV series, it’s not always about the destination, but rather the journey.

Overall Daybreak was a very satisfying end to the grand experiment that was Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica. The finale was filled with much of the action that has been missing in recent weeks, a final confrontation with Brother Cavil, and answers to some important questions about Kara, Baltar and Six. The parts I enjoyed the most were the ones I knew were coming – the heart-pounding attack on the colony, learning the fate of Galactica itself and particularly the final moments between Bill Adama and Laura Roslin. I’ve really enjoyed the Laura/Bill subplot since the very beginning and their last flight together to find their “cabin on the hill” was moving and everything I had hoped it would be.

In contrast, Starbuck’s story line left me disappointed. From the series’ inception, Katee Sackhoff’s skillful turn as Starbuck made even the most stubborn old-school BSG fan a convert. Her performances as Kara Thrace proved to be a favorite of mine time and time again, until her fateful encounter with the Eye of Jupiter. Her “death” in Malestrom fundamentally changed Starbuck’s character and not in a good way. Call her what you will, angel, ghost or guardian, Kara Thrace died, was reborn and sent back to the Colonials a shell of her former self. It’s now clear that Moore’s intentions for the character were meandering at best, and deeply unsatisfying at worst. Starbuck started BSG with a bang but ended as only a whisper on the wind, and for that I’m sad.

On the good side, Tory finally got what was coming to her, Cavil ended up buying it even if he did take the coward’s way out (something very out of character for him), Sam was sacrificed at the altar of technology and the fleet finally found Earth. Not the ball of radiation soaked sand that Starbuck originally led them to, but the lush green Earth of eons past. With this discovery, humanity decides to make a clean break from the fleet that has sustained them since the genocide of the 12 colonies and fans out across the planet to start anew.

I honestly didn’t think coming into the finale the fleet would find a new home, but I’m glad I was wrong. These scenes on Earth were a welcome change from the dark, gray days on New Caprica or the nuked earth of Crossroads. How sad that even this crowning moment was scarred by the main characters deciding to take separate journeys from each other. It would be great to think of Bill, Lee, Galen, Baltar, Six, Sol and Ellen sitting around some campfire on a young Earth toasting marshmallows and finally getting a chance to relax, but that’s just a fantasy. Lee is left utterly alone. Tyrol decides to isolate himself and become the sole inhabitant of Ireland and Adama would rather spend his days grieving over the body of Laura than be with his surviving son. Bittersweet to the end.

Although I still believe the final season of Battlestar Galactica to be the weakest of the entire season (especially the run-up to the finale) in my heart, I can’t fault the series. On its worst days, BSG was head and shoulders above where 99% of other TV dramas reside. Those shows usually rack up undeserved awards and accolades for being nothing more than the cop or doctor show of the week. Battlestar Galactica gave viewers a fresh look at subjects like politics, terrorism, morality vs security and religion. I feel sorry for anyone who won’t take a chance on Galactica simply because they “don’t like sci-fi”. They will never know what they’re missing. Although I wasn’t blown away by the finale as some seem to have been, I did enjoy it. And although I didn’t find the final destination to be everything I had hoped for (probably a self-constructed impossibility), none-the-less I still had a hell of a fun time getting there. For that, I will always be grateful.

Caprica

We’ve been expecting Caprica, the BSG spin off series. While watching the trailer, we’ve gathered that Joe Adama (Bill’s dad, Apollo’s granddad) loses his daughter in a train crash on Caprica. The wreck also takes Daniel’s daughter. Daniel is a scientist of sorts whose focus is on high tech and artificial intelligence. Grief-stricken, he creates artificial replacements for the dead girls. But that’s not all …

What hath Eric Stoltz wrought? Why, it’s the first cylon!

Of course, this is all conjecture based upon an extremely limited amount of information, but it looks like Caprica will focus on the moral, religious and social ramifications of a world at the height of its technological achievements.

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

Also waiting in the wings is Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. Written and directed by Edward James Olmos, The Plan tells the story of the destruction of Caprica from the cylons’ perspective. It will air on SciFi* and be released on DVD sometime in 2010.

Some familiar toasters will return, including Michael Trucco, Aaron Douglas, Dean Stockwell, Tricia Helfer, Grace Park, Rick Worthy, Matthew Bennett, Callum Keith Rennie, Michael Hogan and Rekha Sharma. I can’t help but think that this could have been the bulk of BSG’s fifth season, and I’m glad it’s not. While I would have considered it a re-hash if used as a season of BSG, I’m more than happy to watch it as a stand alone movie. Bring it on!

*We refuse to use the new name until the change becomes official

The Doomsday Machine from Star Trek: TOS

Who wouldn’t be afraid of a giant space robot that looked like the tornado that swallowed Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz? Now imagine that tornado swallowing more than just houses. The Planet Killer from Star Trek The Original Series was so massive it gobbled up whole star systems, spaceships and anything else that got in its way including my favorite childhood hero, Captain Kirk.

The Doomsday Machine is one of my all-time favorite Star Trek episodes perhaps because of the story’s incredible sense of danger. The Enterprise is sent to investigate a missing starship Captained by Kirk’s friend Matt Decker. Kirk and Spock find Decker alone aboard his badly damaged ship. Still in shock from his ordeal, Decker tells of a monster that killed his crew and destroyed the entire population of a nearby star system. The monster turns out to be an automated and seemingly unstoppable alien weapon that destroys whole planets. Of course, we learn the weapon just happens to be on a collision course with the heart of the Federation and must be destroyed at all costs.

Spock and Decker return to the Enterprise and once there, Kirk is cut off from his ship by the Doomsday Machine. The story follows Kirk, Spock and Decker’s attempts to destroy the weapon and features tense battles both on and off the bridge of the Enterprise. The episode was written by Norman Spinrad, and directed by Marc Daniels and is a great example of drama that results when Kirk and Spock are out of their element. It’s difficult to put into words why this gigantic destroyer of worlds was so scary as a kid. Perhaps it was its automated, faceless nature that made it so creepy. All I know is that it gave me more than a few nightmares late at night.

Bionic Bigfoot from The Six-Million Dollar Man

Take one bionic hero, put him all alone in the deepest California forest and mix in the legendary Sasquatch and you have “The Secret of Bigfoot”, perhaps the best episode of The Six-Million Dollar Man. The story follows Steven Austin as he searches for a pair of missing seismologists in the rugged mountains of Northern California. Once on the scene, Steve and Oscar Goldman learn that the scientists disappeared under mysterious circumstances when tracks of the legendary Bigfoot are found nearby.

A local Native American guide adds some much needed credibility when one of the missing pair turns up in extreme shock. The guide lays eyes on the terrified man, and chillingly explains “He’s seen the Sasquatch!”. As a kid, I distinctly remember diving under the covers at this moment in the story. After a scary night attack on the team’s camp, Steve pursues the trail of the Bigfoot and a battle royalé ensues. Turns out Bigfoot’s bionic too and twice as strong as Steve! He’s the guard dog of an elaborate alien complex deep in the mountains designed to keep meddling scientists and bionic astronauts at arm’s length. Steve eventually gets captured by the aliens, befriends them and helps stop a major earthquake from destroying all the cities on the Pacific coast line, but all that was just window dressing for the real star of the show – Sasquatch himself.

It’s no surprise that Kenneth Johnson, the writer behind “The Secret of Bigfoot” would draw on the headlines and mythos of the day to create this all-time, fan-favorite story for the bionic man. Growing up in the 70′s, it was impossible to get away from documentaries, movies and news reports about Bigfoot, the Yeti and the Loch Ness Monster. I credit Steve Austin’s run-in with André the Giant’s Bigfoot as the reason why, even to this day, I don’t like to step into the woods alone at night.

The Dragon from Space: 1999

If there was a scifi show that felt creepy on its own, it was Gerry Anderson’s Space: 1999. The series followed the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha as they hurtled across the universe. Due to a freak accident, the moon gets blasted out of Earth orbit on Sept. 13th, 1999 and Alpha goes with it. With its poorly lit sets, cold & sterile production design and a tendency toward dark story lines, the series always felt eerie and disconnected. In 1975, writer Christopher Penfold brought “Dragon’s Domain” to the screen, the first real monster story the series featured and it was a whopper.

The story, which could be a forerunner of Ridley Scott’s “Alien”, centers on astronaut Tony Cellini and his fateful encounter with a fierce creature. In 1996, Cellini is selected to head the Ultra Probe, a special mission to explore a new planet discovered out beyond Pluto. Cellini and his team make the journey without incident and arrive at Planet Ultra only to find a strange spaceship graveyard in orbit. Cellini makes the decision to dock with one of the derelict ships and what comes aboard could easily be described as pure evil.

Once the docking hatch is opened, a giant, green eyed, tentacled beast appears and promptly begins to kill the crew. The team tries to flush it back out into space or destroy it with their blasters, but the alien possesses a kind of mind control which compels them to approach. One by one the crew is pulled to a bizarre and gruesome death, all except for Cellini who manages to make it to the command pod, jettison himself and perform a brilliant maneuver to slingshot the pod back to earth in a mere six months.

Although Cellini survives to tell his incredible tale, he is practically laughed out of the space program, in part by Helena Russell, the chief medical officer of Moonbase Alpha. When Alpha encounters the very same space ship graveyard on it’s journey through inter-stellar space four years later, Cellini bolts for an Eagle to confront the creature and settle the score once and for all.

I remember watching Dragon’s Domain when I was just six years old. I also remember that I didn’t really sleep well for at least a week. Everywhere I looked I saw that giant green eyed monster with its tentacles reaching out to grab me. The thing also made a horrific scream, which I still remember, as it beckoned the crew to their deaths. As one might expect, re-watching the episode now on DVD is less traumatic, but the story is still intense by today’s standards. I’m not sure how I got the viewing of Dragon’s Domain past my parents as a kid. By the time they figured out how it had traumatized me, it was too late. Oh well, like all good ghost stories, it might have been scary, but it was still fun!

If it was closer to April I’d swear this was a April Fool’s joke. SciFi Channel is changing it’s name. To SyFy. (I’ll pause for you to go from disbelief to a curse laden diatribe.)

Don’t believe me? Here’s a article in the NYtimes about the pending rebranding.

Morons. Moronic fraking morons. So moronic I should have guessed Bonnie Hammer is behind it. And they are going to change the nature of some of the programming.

“We couldn’t own Sci Fi; it’s a genre,” said Bonnie Hammer, the former president of Sci Fi who became the president of NBC Universal Cable Entertainment and Universal Cable Productions. “But we can own Syfy.”

The entire thing reads like a stupid marketing joke. I better stop here before Dave figures out how to bleep blog posts.

In order to understand what I mean, we must look at another sci-fi show – Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. DS9 lasted seven seasons and was often guided by the pen of writer, Ronald D. Moore. Today, we know him as the driving force behind BSG, but back in the late 90′s Ron was the lead writer in charge of Paramount’s dark sheep.

As a fan, I consider the final 2 seasons of Deep Space Nine to be near perfect in tone, drama, character development and ultimately, resolution. Like any series, there were occasionally weak episodes, but on a whole, the final two season of DS9 were simply wonderful. Heading into the final season, Ron Moore and company knew they had to pull out all of the stops to bring the varied plot threads of the Dominion War together in a satisfying way. The final half of season 7 is a non-stop roller coaster ride that stretches from the decadent “Changing Face of Evil” to the masterful conclusion of “What You Leave Behind“. One episode flowed seamlessly into the next until you arrived at the final 2 hour finale and wondered how it had all gone by so quickly.

Heading into the final half of season 4 of BSG, I had hoped Galactica would be like the end of Deep Space Nine. Each story building on the previous one, with heightened drama, increasing tension, and my fingernails worn down to nubs. But where DS9 gave us gradual and steady resolutions by delivering one clever, action packed episode after another, Galactica has turned into a depressing string of set-up stories that haven’t delivered emotionally or viscerally.

The last truly good episode of BSG this season was “The Oath” and to a lesser degree “Blood on the Scales”. These two episodes represent the best of Galactica. All pistons are firing – characters are motivated and in the thick of things, there is gritty action skillfully woven in between clever character development. After “The Oath” I was dying for the next episode.

What followed after “Blood” were 5 episodes of dialog heavy exposition that have left me, and others disappointed. Instead of building the action to a head, Moore has stalled it and attempted to save it (hopefully) for the final two hours. The problem is that no matter what happens in the last 90 minutes of BSG, it won’t make up for the previous 6 hours of wasted screen time. Deep Space Nine spent its final six hours in the trenches with the Klingons and Federation fighting for the very survival of the Alpha Quadrant. Battlestar Galactica has spent the last 5 episodes explaining the cylon origin story and keeping the bad guy as far away from the fleet as possible.

As we move into “Daybreak Part 2″ of Battlestar Galactica, we find Adama willing to risk his life, his ship and a sizable chunk of what’s left of humanity to save, not the fleet, but a little girl. This wouldn’t be so bad if we were emotionally invested in Hera, but we’re not. We only know her from passing shots as she plays in day care or running around the Great Opera House of Roslin’s visions. Why the final mission isn’t to rescue Kara or Laura is something I don’t understand.

My only hope is that in the series finale Moore returns to those themes and techniques that made Galactica great. The show has precisely 2 hours left to pull out all the stops and prove to us the last quarter of season 4 hasn’t been for nothing. I take solace in the thought that as with so many other television shows, it’s often not so much the destination, as it is the journey. I just wish Ron had remembered to take his trip with a bit of his former DS9 self instead of the plot-heavy, slow as molasses Moore of “No Exit” and “Daybreak Part 1″.

Some television shows die slow and painful deaths as they linger far past their creative high point. Shows like Twin Peaks, Xena: Warrior Princess and The X-Files petered out over time until they were mere shells of their former selves. Then there are shows that, either by their own hand or by external forces, go out on a high note. Shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Futurama and Farscape all ended while fan interest was high and characters had room to grow. For me, Battlestar Galactica is somewhere in between.

While I throughly enjoy watching Galactica each week, there is a big part of me that wants the show to end. With the ever-increasing delays between seasons, and the unresolved nature of some of the basic plot lines (Baltar, Kara, Earth), I think I’m finally ready to bid this rag-tag fleet goodbye. Don’t misunderstand me on this point. When the series finale airs on Friday, March 20th one of the finest dramas on television will go off the air. But I’d much rather have Adama, Six, Kara and the rest of these wonderful characters go out in a blaze of glory than spend the next 2-3 years limping along like President Roslin on Kamala.

From the moment it was announced, Battlestar Galactica burst onto scene with a hail of controversy thanks to Ron Moore’s “re-imagining” of the series. Fans and network execs didn’t like the idea of cylons looking like humans, or Dirk Benedict’s cigar-smoking, chauvinistic character Starbuck, being played by a woman. It’s amazing how petty those arguments seem now. Put simply, Moore took the best aspects of the original Galactica and jettisoned the junk. The result was a gritty, dark and often realistic look at how human beings react when under enormous stress. Moore gave us a universe filled with deception, sex, cool swear words and mythos that will be looked to as the science fiction TV water mark for years.

I don’t know how the show will end, but I do know that no matter what happens, Battlestar Galactica has been that rare gem in the vast wasteland that is episodic television. From week to week, each episode felt like cinema instead of boob tube. Incredible writing combined with imaginative and detailed art direction, fine actors, compelling music and convincing SFX to keep us tuning in and on our toes. In the end, what more could anyone ask from a TV show?

So say we all.

io9 blogger Annalee Newitz identifies five key points:

1. Men are treated as sex objects
2. Men are abuse victims
3. Male friendship is predicated on drunkenness and violence (Hello, Bill and Saul!)
4. Male leaders are often weak and make decisions based on intuition
5. Men and women are equals (my personal favorite. A soldier is a soldier).

Sure, Number Six prances around in sexy outfits, but she also completely dominates Baltar. Go and read the full article. It’s a good one.

Many years ago, I went into a movie theater with my father to see 2001: A Space Odyssey, and left utterly baffled by what I had seen; baffled and amazed. To young Dave, 2001 didn’t make a bit of sense but also grabbed my attention like nothing else.

Today, love it. In a recent episode of The Sci-Fi Cast it received a beating, and friend-of-the-show Louie Mantia also gave it a poor review earlier this week. With that in mind, I want to share why I love my favorite movie.

First things first: By definition, it’s impossible for one’s opinion to be right or wrong. I know there are legions of people who dislike 2001. The point of this post is not to persuade. If you hate this movie, by all means, hate it! I’ll not condemn you for doing so.

When I first saw 2001, as I said, I left the theater baffled.

What the hell was that?

It didn’t make any sense.

I have no idea what just happened.

Even today, I lack a solid interpretation of what 2001 is about. Of course, that was by design. In a 1968 interview with Playboy magazine, Kubrick stated:

“You’re free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film — and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level — but I don’t want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he’s missed the point.”

That was the tipping point for me. I didn’t understand the story, but was so enthralled by the rest of the movie that I felt compelled to try and understand it. Or, more to the point, discover if there even was a story.

After reading the book by Arthur C. Clarke and repeated viewings of the film, I’ve come to the following understanding of the story.

THE STORY

The film begins at dawn, somewhere in prehistoric Africa. However, the story begins before that. A race of aliens travel an incomprehensible distance to plant two monoliths: One on Earth, and one on the moon.

The first is planted next to a small tribe of pre-historic humanoids (we’ll call them “apes”) while they sleep. When they awake at dawn, they freak.

This is one of my favorite scenes. It’s easy to dismiss it as a bunch of monkeys going nuts over the sight of a black box. But think about it — this is the first time any of them have ever seen anything so “perfect.” It’s got 90˚ angles. It’s completely black and its surface is perfectly smooth. What’s ordinary to us was utterly foreign to the apes; something they’ve literally never seen before.

Why is it there? Many people think that the monolith itself somehow prompts the apes, or shows them what they need to make the next great leap in their evolution … the use of tools. But I think its function is different.

The monolith offers a challenge to their thinking. In trying to understand this completely alien object, the apes must dramatically alter their thinking and assumptions about everything in their environment. One of the apes, whom the book calls “Moonwatcher,” is idly fiddling with some bones as he has probably done countless times before. However, he’s doing it with a fresh perspective, and notices that one bone can have an effect on another. Specifically, one bone can break another. He’s made human kind’s first tool.

It doesn’t take long for Moonwatcher to try and use his new tool as a weapon. Typically, Moonwatcher and his tribe would go to the watering hole for a drink, and occasionally come across a neighboring tribe, there for the same purpose. This meetup would result in some shouting back and forth but that was about it.

However, Moonwatcher brings his bone with him and uses it to kill a member of the rival tribe. Two things happen: The members of the rival tribe are dumbfounded — nothing like this has ever happened before — and more importantly, Moonwatcher stands erect on his hind legs. Another first.

At this point, humankind has made a quantum leap in its development, thinking and understanding of the world. No longer hunter/gatherers, defenseless against the attacks of predators, they have reached the end of that point in their evolution.

Then, in the most dramatic jump cut in the history of film, Moonwatcher tosses humankind’s first weapon into the air, only to have it turn into his latest: An orbital gun platform hovering above the Earth. His tools have evolved with him, and in fact, are quite “human” in their own way.

Humankind has mastered its terrestrial life. In fact, he has begun to venture into space.

That’s where things are different.

In space, he must eat “baby food.” Without gravity, he must learn to walk again (remember the trouble the flight attendant has while walking across the ship; Kubrick lets us see her struggle intentionally) and become “potty trained” all over again, as Dr. Floyd struggles to figure out the Zero G toilet. Kubrick is telling us that, in a way, humankind is still in its infancy.

Additionally, humans lose control of their tools in space. A pen escapes Dr. Heywood R. Floyd’s pocket and floats aimlessly during flight.

While surveying the moon, a team uncovers the second monolith. Their reaction is much different than that of their ancestors. There’s none of the fear, the wonder. They stand around for a bit. Take pictures.

This one was programmed to send a signal to its creators when exposed to sunlight. Of course, that would only happen when human explorers reached the point of being able to excavate such a large object on the moon.

They discover that the signal traveled to Jupiter, and send a team of astronauts to investigate 18 months later. The team boards the Discovery and travels through space along with HAL 9000, the ultimate tool. In fact, HAL is the central nervous system of that ship, and the humans are merely the maintenance crew. They needn’t be there at all, in fact.

But remember, man loses control of his tools in space.

HAL makes a mistake, and the humans decide to turn him off. The battle of man vs. tool has begun, and the humans win. By deactivating HAL, man has evolved beyond the need for tools.

Again, they’ve reached an endpoint in their evolution. The next step, as before, will be unfathomable.

The alien forces that challenged prehistoric man to reach beyond himself, and invited contemporary man to a meetup beside Jupiter, are waiting for Dave.

This is where many people understandably throw their hands in the air and walk away from 2001. If you thought Act I and II were weird, than Act III is just plain ridiculous. But here’s how I understand it.

In the book, Dave travels an incomprehensible distance across unknown dimensions to where the aliens originate. Kubrick presents this journey with the crazy colors and tunnel. Suddenly, we see Dave in a Victorian hotel room.

WTF.

In the book, we learn that the aliens set up the “hotel room” (don’t take it literally) to make Dave feel at home. However, the information they used to construct the room (radio waves or whatever) took a very long time to travel from Earth to them. In fact, by the time Dave himself arrived, the aliens were using data from the Victorian period. Hence the look of the room.

Clarke also describes boxes of nondescript, tasteless, blue food that isn’t much to eat but keeps Dave alive.

So how long does Dave spend in the hotel room? That doesn’t really matter, nor can the question be answered. There’s really no time in space. That is to say, there’s no chronology that can be measured without a reference point. In New York City it might be 12:00 noon, but on the surface of Jupiter … or wherever ever Dave is … that doesn’t matter.

Still, Kubrick shows the passage of time. Dave looks up to see “Old Dave.” Are there really two Daves in the room? No. Kubrick is showing us that Dave has spent time in the room.

While eating, Dave knocks his glass into the floor and it breaks. The glass has shattered (the body) but the wine (the spirit) remains.

Humankind no longer needs its body, and makes the next quantum leap in evolution. The Starchild is born.

WHAT I LOVE

Many people complain, “This movie is slow.” They’re right. In 2001, spaceships don’t zoom across the stars at breakneck speeds, banking and roaring as they go. Instead, Kubrick’s spaceships do what spaceships actually do: They travel in a perfectly straight line in a laborious manner. It’s understandable why a generation of moviegoers bred on flashy films like “The Fast And The Furious” have trouble with sitting through a slow scene. But they’re slow for a reason.

As I said in the podcast, each shot is composed as if it were a gorgeous photograph. They’re just gorgeous.

There’s no CGI in this movie (almost … save Dave’s journey beyond the infinite). It’s all hand made. These are real sets and real human beings. All SFX Scenes from the Movie are cut together in full length and in chronological order. There are no green screen Clone Troopers here!

Plus, 2001 has tremendous science images. From HAL’s status panels to the guesses at tech that we have today (like webcams), it still holds up after more than 30 years.

More than anything, what I love about 2001 is the challenge. It sparks discussion and thought. What I’ve described above is my own interpretation. Yours might be completely different, and I’d love to hear it.

This is a movie I like to watch on a quiet day when I can sit on the couch, draw the curtains, focus my attention and travel beyond the infinite.