Caprica

The word around the tubes is that Caprica, the prequel series to Battlestar Galactica will be getting a DVD release on April 21, before its first broadcast on SciFi channel sometime in 2010.

Is this the beginning of the end of broadcast TV? Here’s hoping. And isn’t it appropriate that a show about the beginning of the end of mankind would be the harbinger of such a thing? Sigh.

Still, that’s still a good three months off so here’s a trailer.

Check it out. Science fiction, Dallas-style soap opera and proto-Cylon boobs.

This is all looking very promising.

Catch The Frak Up

Battlestar Galactica returns for its final season on Friday.

It’s been a while, so to help you catch up on where we’re at before we launch into the final ten episodes, we present some brief summary videos.

Part 1

 

Part 2

 

Sweet.

Battlestar Clues!

Battlestar Galactica will be back with its final episodes on January 16, but the producers have decided that's just too long to wait to mess with our heads.

They've started drip-feeding some clues about the identity of the final Cylon, which will give the fans a good six weeks to tie themselves up in nerdy little knots.

Catch all the action over at You Will Know The Truth. There are currently four clues: one text, one audio, one video, and a picture.

I've long suspected that the final Cylon is, in some sense at least, the Cylon God, who has most commonly been manifest as the Six in Baltar's head (and for a while there, the Baltar in Six's head).

Clue 1 begins with "And the fifth, still in shadow, will claw towards the light", which makes me thing that the fifth will be born as the offspring of Tigh and Six. This is also backed up by Clue 4, which is this rather disturbing picture:


Clue 2 is very obscure (Kara finding her own dead body maybe?) and Clue 3 just looks like a red herring.

More to come. Stay tuned.

Battlestar Galactica Case Mod

This is one of the nerdiest things I've ever seen.

And I want one.


You can't do that on a Mac, can you? Ha.

SciFi v Fantasy

One of my favourite nerdy podcasts recently gave some nice definitions for Science Fiction and Fantasy:

• Science Fiction concerns the human consequences of science and technology.

• Fantasy concerns the creation of alternate universes separate from our own.

The point was that the dipshits getting dressed up for conventions are Fantasy fans trying to immerse themselves in their alternate worlds.

I quite like these definitions; mainly because they put Star Wars, for all its abuse of SciFi tropes, clearly in the realm of Fantasy.

Most literary SciFi and Fantasy from the mid-20th century would fit snugly into one or other of these categories, but your modern genre piece can be a little harder to define. Star Trek sits somewhere in between, being an alternate universe filled with the consequences of scientific and technological development. Same with Stargate. And Battlestar Galactica.

Based on these definitions, I think the purest modern SciFi is Firefly. It's the only one set squarely in our universe, in our potential future, arising from our technological advances. And there aren't any aliens with crinkly foreheads.

But apparently the number of browncoats seen at recent conventions really blows the "Fantasy fans are the kooks" argument out of the water.

Fracking with Bagactica

Thought this was amusing.

Which tells you something about the kind of guy I am.