Trivia / Battlestar Galactica (2003)

• Acting for Two: "Copies" of the Cylon models, significantly Boomer/Athena. "Head" characters like Baltar also had to play for two. And of course, Number Six is both a Cylon and a head character, which meant scores of disparate characters had to be played by the same actress.
• Actor Leaves, Character Dies:
  • Billy Keikeya's actor Paul Campbell wasn't under contract and was constantly unsure whether he wanted to stay on the show, preventing his character from being involved in any significant plot arcs. The writers eventually got fed up with this and killed off his character. Unfortunately, because the build-up of the third leg in the Love Triangle, involving Dee and Apollo, kept ending up as deleted scenes, this came across to many viewers as an especially abrupt Murder the Hypotenuse in favor of the pretty boy over the awkward geek; with Dee dumping him out of nowhere and suddenly jumping into a relationship with Apollo all in the same episode where Billy got shot (perhaps marking the beginning of the Hate Dom which grew for Dee's character).
  • While at the time it was unclear whether Cally's death was the writers' idea or whether Nicki Clyne had wanted to leave the show, it emerged years later that Clyne had asked that Cally be killed off so that she could devote more time to her membership of the NXIVM cult.
• Ascended Fanon: After stumbling across a fanfic that teased with the idea of a Helo/Racetrack pairing, Leah Cairns decided to incorporate the unrequited feelings for Helo and the jealousy towards Athena into her character's backstory.
• Cast the Runner-Up:
  • Grace Park originally tried out for first Dee and then Starbuck, before Kandyse McClure and Katee Sackhoff got the parts and she was cast as Boomer. The producers were so impressed by her Dee audition that they let her try out for Starbuck, and she was one of two finalists for the role. Subsequently, she didn't need to read for the role of Boomer, and, thinking it was a minor role, got a pleasant surprise when she read the end of the Miniseries and learned her character was a Cylon and a major role.
  • Lucy Lawless was originally offered the role of Ellen Tigh, but she felt that she was wrong for the part. The producers so wanted her in the series, however, that they later wrote the role of D'Anna Biers with her in mind.
• The Cast Showoff: Gaeta singing in the infirmary. Alessandro Juliani is a trained opera singer with a Bachelor's degree in it, as well as having worked with the Vancouver Opera and singing his own parts in other roles.
• Contractual Immortality: Commander Adama is not going to die. After beating a superhuman replicant to death with a flashlight in the miniseries, he's pretty much indestructible, and Edward James Olmos is also the highest-billed actor in the entire series.
• Deleted Scene: invoked Many, from many episodes. Some of them were still considered canon by the show runners, even to the point of being referenced in Previously on… montages as if they had appeared in episodes. Depending on the viewer, this either makes the show Better on DVD or just plain confusing.
• Development Hell: This seemed to have been Syfy's strategy with regards to Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome. The network had been flip-flopping over whether the series would be on TV or online, and were being silent on a release date (even though the actual filming and visual effects were done) for a long while. Eventually, the first two mini-episodes were released online in November 2012.
  • In the end, a new spin-off TV series never fully materialized. All 10 webisodes were eventually released online via Machinima on YouTube, and were then stitched together into a full-length movie that aired on Syfy in early 2013 and was later released to home video.
• Dueling Shows: invoked Overlapping with Fandom Rivalry, a large portion of Farscape fans still deeply resent the show. It was not helped that Battlestar effectively took over Farscape's spot in the lineup, and the reveal of Battlestar was within weeks of the announcement of Farscape's cancellation. Many especially took umbrage with comments by SciFi execs that Battlestar was conceived to fill their need for a "sexy, edgy, space-based scifi drama," which was exactly what they had just cancelled.
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • Tricia Helfer initially bleached her hair platinum blonde but eventually switched to a wig as the process was damaging her hair. This actually made it easier for her to play various copies of Six who have different hairstyles such as Gina Inviere or Natalie Faust, both of whom have Helfer's natural sandy hair colour, or the raven-haired Six in "Torn".
  • Jamie Bamber dyed his sandy hair darker so he'd look more like Edward James Olmos. Olmos also wore blue lenses to increase the resemblance between them.
  • Katee Sackhoff grew her hair out between the second and third seasons for the New Caprica arc. She did Kara's Important Haircut in "Torn" for real and on camera.
  • Several male cast members grew beards during the hiatus between seasons two and three to reflect the poor living conditions on New Caprica.
• Enforced Method Acting: The entire cast were lead to believe that Starbuck really was Killed Off for Real in "Maelstrom". Edward James Olmos was so upset by this he trashed Adama's model ship on-camera in grief. According to Katee Sackhoff some castmembers were so upset about the decision they threatened to quit until the writers revealed their plans to bring the character back.
• Executive Veto: SciFi Channel explicitly told Ron Moore and David Eick that they couldn't show any live people on board the Olympic Carrier when it's destroyed, so they didn't. However, every time the ghost of the ship is brought up it usually comes with a pointed reference that, yes, there were people on it when it was shot down even if we didn't see them.
• Fake American:
  • Jamie Bamber, who plays Lee/Apollo, is British (though his father is American and he claims to have been raised partly in Detroit). Most of the cast, though, are Canadians, so they sound almost like Americans. However, Canadian English still occasionally creeps in, such as with Tricia Helfer's pronunciation of "resources" as "ree-zources."
    • Bamber did very well, but sometimes things crept in. In "Hand of God", when he’s attacking the station, he’s saying "clear" but it comes out like "klee-uh".
  • At the end of "Final Cut", Lucy Lawless, who otherwise used her natural Kiwi accent, affected a Canadian/American accent for the Number Three in the cinema.
  • invoked Granted, it's worth noting that one could understandably disagree with the cast being called "Fake Americans" as none of the characters are even "American" to begin with. According to the DVD Commentary for Razor, Jamie Bamber only did an American accent because it would have been too weird for him to have a different accent from his screen father, since he already doesn't look anything like him.
• Fake Mixed Race:
  • Averted with the infant actor for Hera Agathon being half-Asian.
  • In full effect with Lee Adama, whose actor isn't Latino while Edward James Olmos, who plays his father, is. Hand Waved slightly as Adama's late wife is played by a white actress and Ellen Tigh says that Lee looks like her. Also, Jamie Bamber dyed his naturally sandy hair brown and EJO wore blue contact lenses so that they would look more alike.
• Foiler Script: Mark Verheiden's blog explains that decoy scenes were written in the script for "Crossroads, Part II" to cover the episode's two big revelations. First, instead of realizing they are Cylons, the Final Four realize the Cylons brainwashed them on New Caprica to be Manchurian Agents. Second, instead of the episode ending with Lee meeting the resurrected Kara, he is brained with a whiskey bottle by Tigh on his way to grab a flight suit and the episode ends with him bleeding on the floor.
• Hypothetical Casting: When the casting agents were asking for "a Mary McDonnell type" for Laura Roslin, and wound up getting Mary McDonnell. Apparently, the same thing happened with Edward James Olmos for Commander Adama. Cooler still, the role was written for Mary McDonnell...they just never imagined they'd actually get her.
• Line to God: Moore records live podcasts for each of his episodes, responding to viewer critiques over a cigar and brandy (which his wife chews him out on), and also included them on the DVDs. He doesn't mince words when responding to buzzkill fans, either.
• The Producer Thinks of Everything: The ending, where the Colonials find ancient Earth and abandon their technology, framing the entire story as an origin for mankind was in the series bible from before the first season even began.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Brendan "Hot Dog" Costanza, one of the pilots first introduced in "Act of Contrition", is played by Bodie Olmos, son of Edward James Olmos. In the "Last Frakkin' Special" aired before the finale Bodie mentions how much he enjoyed the opportunity to work with his father.
  • Kerry Norton who plays Layne Ishay, one of the medics in Galactica's sickbay, is married to Jamie Bamber who plays Apollo.
  • Olmos's wife Lymari Nadal appears briefly in the Miniseries as a woman asking about the status of her husband after the Cylon Attack. She makes a surprise return after seven real-world years in the post-series movie The Plan, where her character is expanded on: her name is Giana O'Neill, she joins the deck crew, and her husband is actually one of the Simon-model Cylons.
• Real Life Writes the Hairstyle: Starbuck eventually growing her hair long was because Katee Sackhoff was fed up with having to keep her hair short for the role.
• Recycled Script: Two Season 3 episodes which are definitely not fan favorites are often criticized for their perceived similarities to episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This is likely in part due to how series creator Ronald D. Moore originally cut his teeth with regards to television writing with TNG.
  • "Hero" and "The Defector" (the writing of the latter, ironically, credited to Ron Moore) both revolve around someone in a small ship being chased by the enemy and seeking refuge under questionable circumstances. In both cases, subsequent review of the data shows that the enemy was shooting to miss, and as a result the crew realize that the enemy was allowing the fugitive to escape to further their own sinister motives.
  • "A Measure of Salvation" and "I, Borg" both involve the crew capturing a member (or members) of the enemy, and then plotting to return him/them to their own kind with a genocidal virus.
  • There's also the Season 1 episode "Litmus" and TNG's "The Drumhead" both involve an explosion occurring aboard the ship, and a female officer being assigned to head up an investigation, only to start going crazy and accusing everyone in sight of being a collaborator, finally ending with her accusing the ship's commanding officer.
• Recycled Set: The Pegasus interior sets were originally made for an attempted Lost in Space reboot on The WB in 2004, and were later recycled within the Galactica series for the interiors of the basestars. This is what ultimately led to the decision to have the Pegasus destroyed.
• Screwed by the Network: While Sci-Fi was nothing but supportive of the show during its production, they had some strange ideas when it came to broadcasting it, such as allowing the UK to air the first season six months ahead of North America, splitting the DVD releases of seasons two and four in half, fiddling with the show's time slot for the first three years, mandating the Title Sequence be curtailed to make room for more commercials (this one was eventually vetoed by a fan outcry), and airing the two halves of season four a full year apart to eke out a de facto fifth season.
• Stunt Casting: Richard Hatch, who played Apollo in the original series, advocated for a sequel series for years. When the Sci-Fi series was greenlighted, a retool rather than a sequel involving him, Hatch was initially (and loudly) upset. Ron Moore won him over and Hatch was cast as Tom Zarek, one of his more memorable and well-received roles.
• Throw It In!:
  • Edward James Olmos contributed a ton of these moments through ad libbing, particularly one memorable scene where in a fit of grief and rage over Starbuck's death he destroys the model ship Adama had been repairing for the past three years. This was a case of Truth in Television because Olmos himself was genuinely upset and angry over Katee Sackhoff's departure from the cast (or so he believed). The ship was a loaner from a maritime museum and was worth over $100,000, unbeknownst to him. Luckily, it was insured. A Lampshade was even hung on this after a fight between Adama and a subordinate in his quarters when the ship gets trashed again:
    Adama: Do you know how many times I've have to repair this thing?
  • After a heated fight between Gaeta and Starbuck, she storms out, and Alessandro Juliani (playing Gaeta), without turning around to look at her, threw in this snippy line:
    Gaeta: So I guess a pity frak is out of the question, then?
  • Olmos was also responsible for the very first kiss between Laura Roslin and William Adama, kissing Mary McDonnell without warning anybody about it beforehand. Fortunately, she rolled with it.
  • During Baltar bringing up Gaeta trying to kill him at his trial, James Callis threw in “And you missed, butterfingers!”
• What Could Have Been: Has its own page.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: In its early seasons the show promised an intricate and mysterious backstory for the Cylons, as well as more mystery and intrigue for the Colonial fleet as they attempted to find the lost planet of Earth. The opening credits even teased "[The Cylons] have a plan ...". The writers would later admit what most fans suspected, that there was no such plan (the credits were mandated by the network) and that they had continuously written themselves into corners with less than graceful plotting (the infamous reveal of the Final Five among other things).
• You Look Familiar:
  • Ryan Robbins, who plays the officer that gets blown up along with Armistice Station in the opening scene of the Miniseries (Boxey's dad), later reappears in Seasons 3 and 4 as Charlie Connor. He was only on screen as the Armistice Officer for less than five minutes and was under heavy age-enhancing stipple makeup, making him barely recognizable.
  • John Mann, who played Galactica's original CAG, turns up as a hustler in "Black Market", only for his scenes to have been cut from the aired version of the episode.

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