Reborn "Galactica" can do battle with the best of sci-fi

SAN JOSE, Calif. — "Battlestar Galactica" is redefining science fiction on television — and gathering new fans beyond traditional sci-fi circles.

Don't believe it? Check out a few episodes of the show — the highest-rated original series in the history of the Sci Fi Channel.

You won't find self-contained episodes in which everything wraps up nicely in less than an hour. You won't find silly dialogue, laughable plot predicaments or anything resembling a Tribble. Instead, you'll find a show that can hold its own against anything else on cable — yes, we'll even invoke "The Sopranos" here — in its compelling, multilayered drama and suspense.

"Battlestar Galactica" is huge in Seattle, the No. 2 market for the show after Sacramento, Calif. Ratings here are more than double the national average.

The show isn't an exact remake of the 1978 laughably cheesy series that starred Lorne Greene, Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict. Instead, it's been "reimagined" under the vision of Ronald Moore, the series' executive producer.

Moore spoke here in March at the Game Developers Conference. He sat down with The Seattle Times to talk about science fiction, gender roles and why in the season finale (editor's note: spoiler alert if you haven't seen the episode) the show jumped a year in time. Here are some highlights from the interview:

Q: The show is really huge in Seattle. Why?

A: I would assume it has something to do with the confluence of all the technology that's up there and science-fiction fans. That's been a common thread forever. People who like science fiction like technology and vice versa. One would hope that Bill Gates is watching us, but one never knows.

Q: The season finale just blew people away. I frankly thought that you were crazy, which might have been the reaction you were expecting from people.

A: That was part of the attraction to do it, to really take a risk at the end, to really hang it out there and really go for it. I kept saying when we were doing it that this is a bet. We're taking a big risk, and we're going to change up a lot of things. Some of the audience is not going to like this, but we have to believe in what we're doing. You don't get any points for doing half measures.

Q: You've compared the next season to Vichy France.

A: The ending of season two was definitely influenced by that. Here's Baltar, the president, who is going to surrender and try to work with the Cylons under occupation. The Cylon march at the end is a direct reference to the Nazis marching into Paris.

Stepping into the third season, we're going to take another time jump ahead a little bit. The occupation is full bloom, insurgencies are cropping up, there's a government that's trying to maintain order. You could make analogies to Vichy France and a lot of other places.

Q: The show's serialized format with broader story lines is more interesting than the self-contained episodic format.

A: That was very important to me, and it's a struggle, because networks in general are kind of resistant to serialized storytelling. They prefer episodic so that they can repeat them in any order and it's easier for new viewers. But ... I'm more invested as a writer in following characters over a course of time.

Q: What character do you find the most interesting?

A: Baltar is fascinating to me and I'm very engaged with that character and all his flaws and foibles, especially since James Callis took the role. On paper, I didn't think it was very funny. It was never intended to be very funny, but he brings such wit and humor to it that the whole character lives in a different way.

Q: The characters' weaknesses are so apparent. You don't have the superhero space traveler who can take on anything.

A: It was part of the concept of doing the show, to say that the group of survivors aboard Galactica are not going to be the best of the best. They're not going to be the Enterprise. They're going to be these guys that were stuck out on this old ship that was being retired, and they're probably second- or third-rate people — but those people become heroes in this context.

Q: Why did you make Starbuck a woman? (The character was a man in the old series.)

A: It just opened up a lot of doors and a lot of ways to tell this story, and I realized that was going to enable me to keep the Starbuck character. The character of the original is very clichéd: hotshot pilot, the drinker, the womanizer, cigar smoker. It works in the old one because Dirk Benedict has this innate charm, and is a wink and a nod to the audience.

We weren't going to have that kind of vibe at all. But by making it a woman, all those attributes suddenly become more interesting because you're not used to seeing them portrayed by a woman.

Q: And you can still have her be the hotshot pilot and the drinker.

A: She sleeps around, she does it because she wants to do it, and because of the nature of the show it meant that that was going to be a deeply screwed-up character. A person who actually has all these attributes is really damaged in a lot of fundamental ways, so it made her more complicated and interesting.

Q: I love that you can take a female character and make her screwed up in ways that female characters aren't normally.

A: They're not usually permitted to be like that, especially in this genre. People ask me a lot about sex in the show, too, and it's always struck me how strange science fiction as a genre is. There's a wide acceptance towards the fetishization of women in science fiction. You can dress them up in leather, S&M outfits, and you can fetishize them as objects, but if you just have sex with them, if it's just like they're people and you allow their sexualization to be co-equal with men, it flips the fans out. It's so fascinating.

Q: Do you think the show can appeal to the mainstream viewer?

A: The challenge to the show at this point is ironic in that the name, I think, now holds people back from the show. Initially, the name "Battlestar Galactica" got the show made and it got people to tune in. Now we've gotten to a place where literally the viewers that would like this show won't watch it because of the name. And it's hard to jump over that, because I think the people that would really like this show are the people that watch "The Sopranos," "The Shield," "Nip/Tuck," "Six Feet Under." If you like classic, high-quality dramas I think you'll like this show, but "Battlestar Galactica" on the Sci Fi channel just doesn't register.

Q: Maybe you should call it "Chicks in Space."

A: Almost. We're almost at that point.

Kim Peterson: 206-464-2360 or kpeterson@seattletimes.com