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Mostly Battlestar Galactica Related

Some of you may be aware that, this past weekend, Jamie Bamber, James Callis, and Mary McDonnell were in Paris to appear at a panel and accept an award for Battlestar Galactica at the Jules Verne Festival. Jamie, fluent in French, spoke in the language at the panel discussion and most of the interviews he participated in. But, lucky for people such as I who only speak English, hobbitofkobol at 3xcusemyfrench has posted the video of their interview with Jamie here at their site as well as here at Daily Motion and has provided subtitles for the French portion of the interview (before he grew tired of struggling with the words and caved in and did the rest of the interview in English ;).

I'm extremely grateful for the translation because the first question is a variation on one I left on their post over at battlestar_blog when they were asking for suggestions for questions. His answers to the all the questions helped reinforce my more positive feelings about the finale. But if you hated the finale, his thoughts may make you feel a bit better about it. (Oh, he also addresses the "damn pigeon". ;)

Here is a collection of videos from the panel discussion on Sunday. Mary and James answer the questions in English and I particularly enjoyed hearing their thoughts on their character arcs. James won't cut Baltar any slack. ;)

Edward James Olmos and Kandyce McClure appeared at a convention this past weekend. locker_monster posted a recap of their panel here. I'm pointing out this post because one comment in particular by Eddie that intrigued me - there were some scenes left to shoot between Adama and Tigh and he was never called in to do them. I haven't listened to the podcast for Daybreak yet, has there been any mention anywhere why we didn't get some closing scenes between Adama and Tigh? I thought perhaps we'd see some in the extended cut, but I guess not.

Pilot School is a great collection of pilot scripts for a lot of TV series. Included in the list is the script for the BSG mini series. It's a great resource for writers as well as fans of television.

And non-BSG related and a bit of old news, I stumbled across this article about the Amazon debacle/glitch from several weeks ago. I didn't realize they were blaming some woman in France for what happened. The article also nicely sums up the problems in Amazon's use of algorithms in sales ranking.
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    daybreak777
    Thanks for all of the great links! I am particularly curious to hear what Mary and James have to say.

    I did listen to the Daybreak podcast. I fell asleep on parts of it but I think that the scene with Adama and Tigh in Adama's quarters was meant to be their good-bye. I know, but I think that's what he said somewhere. Gosh, it's all fuzzy in my memory. I don't remember RDM saying anything about scenes between them that didn't get shot.

    Maybe someone else remembers that?

    Jamie is totally irresistible and charming in his interview. Even though a lot of what he says puzzles me he's so geninue and humble. Goodness, that's attractive. :-)
    asta77
    I'm wondering if Eddie was referring to an earlier version of the script? Though stating he was waiting to get called back to shoot scenes implies they were filming the final version. I know they were running out of time on filming, but you would think they had an hour to squeeze in at least one farewell scene between Tigh and Adama. Unless Ron felt it was unnecessary, but then I would love to hear an explanation as to why. Adama showed time and time again he loved Tigh more than his own son and even Lee got a goodbye! ;p

    I'm still trying to make sense of some of what Jamie said, yet I find it very soothing and reassuring! :)
    beccatoria
    Thanks for the link - that was a pretty interesting interview. I found myself charmed by Mr. Bamber (dude, he was speaking French; I was lost...)

    I did enjoy all he had to say about Kara and the bird and Lee's moment of clarity at the end.

    To be honest, I wasn't really all that enamored of his comments on the tech stuff. Mainly because I was always pretty clear on what they were intending and he confirmed it - a sense of peace and possibility; conflating an idealised naturism with not having two homes and five holidays and atom bombs and dismissing dissent as "you love technology too much." Which, yeah, I probably do, but I also love being likely to live past the age of thirty and knowing how our universe was formed.

    I was interested in his view that if repetition is inevitable, is it in fact better to choose an extremely primitive, agrarian culture for 150,000 years to slow the repetition; it was something I did wonder whether it was intentional and so it was gratifying to hear him comment on it.

    Again I find my disappointment to be more tonal than practical. Ultimately, I still feel that instead of discussing the problems and necessities of technology in an interesting and conflicted way, the way the show usually manages to do these things, it fell into a very simplistic, moralistic trap.

    But hey. At least he confirmed my reading of the damn pigeon! Which I will continue to make fun of because, well, it's funny, but honestly, never really had a serious problem with except that I felt it was, perhaps, indicative of RDM's prioritisation of imagery and emotion over thought in the finale but...on its own...a metaphor about a bird is always going to be more about imagery and emotion, and in that storyline (as opposed to one of the pre-eminent issues of our times), it's an appropriate choice.

    Edited at 2009-04-29 07:18 am (UTC)
    asta77
    I know ditching the technology wasn't Jamie's idea, but I can see it resonating with him. His comments regarding technology and the world going to hell because of it is in keeping with remarks he made at Dragon Con two years ago and which negates arguments that Ron influenced Jamie's view of the finale. Yet, it still surprises me he has such a bleak view of our future. Maybe it's because he has children. I always expect parents to have more hope about, if not their future, their children's future. And I appreciated/was amused by his declaration of hypocrisy because I know he's very attached to new gadgets and his Iphone.

    I don't always agree with Jamie, but my feelings for him (in the non-creepy way) do make me more inclined/open to his POV. And I think he viewed the finale from a more existential and emotional perspective than the fans who were looking for solid answers and a resolution more consistent with the established narrative.

    And you know I agree with you in that the ending itself isn't a problem, but how we got there is. I really wish we saw more discussion about the choices they made and more explanation for what Kara is and why she had to die and come back instead of wasting time on arcs that went no where, like Caprica's pregnancy.
    asta77
    You're welcome. :) I thought it was pretty cool to have that many scripts in one place like that.
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