Explore the A shaped halls

This week Sci Fi offers up a new panoramic tour of the Battlestar Galactica sets at scifi.com/battlestar/tour

You will need Quicktime 7 installed, either for Apple or PC.

The virtual tour consists of 35 linked medium resolution cubic panoramas. I found 35 locations during my visit, but there may be even more tucked away. All of the sets are dramatically lit as if ready for shooting. If you see something interesting, often you can simply click to go there. Many of these locations are the same hallways recycled into three virtual decks and you'll recognize this corner or that corridor from dozens of episodes. A noticeable omission is the sick bay.

Here's just a few highlights.

Make your way into the hangar bay and you'll be able to climb into the cockpits of both the Mk II and Mk VII Vipers. Don't look too closely, you might spy some vinyl duct tape inside the Mk VII. Now there's a spaceworthy airtight seal. Alas you can only look at, but not touch Kara's pristine Viper. No touching the mythos bub.

Stand behind the podium in the pilot's ready room and look left. There's an LSO landing scoreboard with a list of pilots. Helo is listed at the top as a Mk VII Viper pilot.

Wander into Adama's quarters and stand behind his big leather desk chair. Browse the bookshelf behind and you'll notice one of the hardbound book spines is just barely readable. The book is Exploring Our Living Planet by Dr. Robert Ballard of televised shipwreck discovery fame, such as the Titanic. The National Geographic Press logo at the spine's bottom is disguised by a faux Colonial publisher sticker. (Many of Adama's other books are volumes from the Reader's Digest Condensed series)

A big thank you to the crew at Sci Fi and BSG for compiling this virtual tour for fans. It's a nice respite of geeky fun from the villager's blood lust to airlock Gaeta.

eol,
ThP

A quartet of Galactica interviews

Galactica.TV has four interviews up tonight with; co-executive producer Jane Espenson who wrote the upcoming 4.18 episode Deadlock, the most complete transcript of Ron Moore and David Eick's January conference call interview, an interview with Grace Park from last Thursday where she talks about the hectic wrapping of Battlestar, her highlights from the past four seasons, a mention of the movie The Plan and why Katee hates the series finale (I'm joking!), and last but not least...

coincidentally many fans are making comparisons lately between the most recent episode The Oath and season two's similarly action packed Valley of Darkness. In the first two season two episodes, a gung ho Viper pilot Flyboy makes his first appearance diving into a ferocious furball. It is to be Galactica's first ever encounter with a Cylon heavy raider and getting rid of it proves to be a harrowing experience. The damaged raider crash lands into Galactica's starboard hangar bay turned giftshop. A boarding Centurion quickly reacquaints itself with Flyboy by first eviscerating then back flipping him in Galactica's darkened hallways. Terrified Kat, Hotdog and Apollo wear Flyboy's blood spatter for the remainder of the episode.

Galactica.TV has an hour interview with Michael "Flyboy" Tayles from 2006. He relates a candid funny perspective as outsider actor turned insider and talks at length of his before, during and after experiences with Battlestar's production. We hardly knew ya. Of course, Jammer, Kat, Dee and Billy were in those episodes too and now are all dead. Maybe disembowelment by giant killer robot isn't such a bad way to check out after all.



eol,
ThP