Drexfiles: Fantastic Behind The Scenes Star Trek Video Of The U.S.S. Reliant Filming Model & The Voyager Bridge Set

Doug Drexler: Old School on Star Trek: The Next Generation

Doug Drexler, one of the best visual effects guys in the business (all four modern Star Trek series, Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, and the forthcoming Battlestar Galactica:  Blood & Chrome), has released a great episode of his D-Files show on his own WordPress blog, drexfiles, and we felt compelled to share it.

It features home video footage taken by his friend and collaborator on Star Trek and the BSG series, Gary Hutzel, of the U.S.S. Reliant filming miniature and video that Doug himself took of the Voyager bridge set moments before it was torn down for good post-series finale in 2001.

Gary Hutzel

Doug gives great insight into the world of Sci-Fi visual effects and what it was like working on Star Trek and BSG.  Even if you’re not a fan of Star Trek or BSG, we highly recommend his blog as it’s very entertaining.

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TV SCOOP! ‘Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome’ Preliminary Concept Art Released!

This isn't one of the pics released, we just found it on the Internets, thought it was cool and created a title for it.

***UPDATE: DOUG DREXLER HAS CONFIRMED WITH THE THE ‘TASTIC TODAY THAT HE IS ATTACHED TO THE BLOOD & CHROME PROJECT AS WELL***

“Happy New Year Shawn! Yes! [VFX Supervisor]Gary [Hutzel] drags my bleeding corpse with him everywhere he goes!”

Check out Doug’s blog at the Drexfiles, right here on WordPress.  LOTS of fun stuff there.

Well, Battlestar Galactica fans, it looks like the highly anticipated prequel, Blood & Chrome is quickly becoming a reality.  Last month, we reported to you in our Caprica post-mortem that the pilot for the series had been green-lit and what the premise was.  Blastr.com has obtained exclusive concept art from the show’s producers (scroll down to the bottom for the slideshow) and the word is that principle shooting is to begin in late January, 2011.

Galactica SITREP did a brief interview with writer and executive producer, Michael Taylor who provides a bit of insight into these images and into the pilot:

“Those pics were just the first of the many concept art sketches we’ve been creating. They don’t necessarily reflect any particular incidents in the script; as “concept” drawings they’re helping us flesh out the new world of Blood & Chrome. And it is a new world, one that owes much to the BSG series of the past but at the same time uses CGI to open up that world in ways that we hope fans will find fresh and exciting.

As for the show’s status, SyFy has officially green-lit a two-hour pilot, and we have begun pre-production, with filming expected to begin at the end of January, or very shortly thereafter. This is the fun part for me: seeing the script take tangible shape (or “virtually tangible” shape, since practically all of the pilot will be shot on green screen) as our director (Jonas Pate), DP (Lukas Ettlin), VFX supervisor (Gary Hutzel) and a host of artists — and of course the cast that we’ll soon be gathering — bring it to life.”

We have just a few observations about this latest news:

First, it seems to us that all of this is coming together amazingly quick which means either one of two things:  SyFy is incredibly eager to wash the taste of Caprica out of its mouth and breathe life back into the most successful franchise in its history or this is a lot of wishful thinking on the producers’ part as to how fast this is all coming together.

We’d like to hope it’s the former, but this whole process seems to be going at FTL speed for us.  Goodness, the project just got green-lit it in November and the casting hasn’t even been made public on IMDb.  Then again, this is Hollywood and if, as Taylor notes, virtually all of the two-hour pilot will be shot on green-screen then you don’t have to do a whole lot as far as set dressing is concerned and we suppose it could be done that quickly.  It’s the post-production and visual effects that will take a lot longer than usual.

Which brings us to another concern, not necessarily a criticism, but a concern nonetheless:  Virtually all of the two-hour pilot is going to be shot on green screen?  Really? Are we talking Phantom Menace here?  One of the more appealing aspects of BSG was the ability to effectively mix practical sets with digital elements to the point where it was generally seamless (at least in the interior scenes) and it always makes us cringe a little when we hear about such a dramatic shift in production (especially THIS shift because we are very much opposed to the over-reliance on CG) to a franchise known for high-quality visual effects.  That being said, Gary Hutzel is in charge of visual effects again and he is a master at combining practical filming and CG effectively (see: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and, of course, Battlestar Galactica).  So, at this point we will remain less skeptical than we normally would be.

We also need to correct the Blastr.com piece we alluded to earlier.  Despite what the piece says, Blood & Chrome will not be a “two-hour pilot movie,” it will simply be a two-hour pilot episode.  The distinction needs to be made because calling it a “movie” implies by its nature that it is a “backdoor  pilot.”  A “backdoor pilot” is a made for television movie that is produced with the intention of the movie acting as a pilot episode for a potential series but is written as a standalone, self-contained story if the series isn’t picked up.  This is an important distinction because if the indications were that a project was to be a “movie,”that would mean that the network would be waiting to see how the “movie” does in the ratings before ordering episodes for the series.  That means that if it doesn’t do well in the ratings, you’ll never see a regular series episode.  If it does do well, however, it will be several months before you’ll see new episodes.

If, on the other hand, a show is planned as a conventional pilot, that means that the network heads will watch the pilot, decide if it’s good enough to order additional episodes, and then proceed from that point.  They will then air the two-hour pilot episode and shortly thereafter, air the new series episodes.  If the network heads don’t like the pilot, don’t worry about the series being canceled because you’ll never even see the pilot.  There has been absolutely no indication whatsoever that the two-hour pilot for Blood & Chrome is anything but a two-hour pilot episode and in this case that’s absolutely a good thing.  SyFy isn’t going to wait around to see how the pilot does in the ratings when they already have the established BSG audience built-in, just as they did with Caprica, so if it airs (which we are sure it will) expect that the series will follow.

Yes, we are certainly aware that Blastr.com is a SyFy Channel project, but they got this wrong and it happened for one of two reasons:

1. It was completely intentional in order to hype the pilot. This is a well-known practice in genre.  The Star Trek franchise was notorious for calling two-hour episodes “movies” or “movie-events” in the mid-to-late 90’s and in more recent years, 24 did the same thing with their two-hour episode Redemption, and in fact, they are still clinging to this notion that Redemption is a “film.”  Nah… it was just the season seven primer that aired two months prior to the season premiere to make up for the fact that the series had gone 18 months without an original episode because of the writer’s strike and they wanted to spark interest in it again.  So, again, this practice isn’t unheard of, but it’s misleading for the average audience who thinks that “movie” implies that they will be watching an original feature film on basic cable.

2.  It was just a mistake, typical of an over-exuberant blogger. We freely admit that we’ve made similar mistakes based on our excitement for a particular project.  Simply look at our rating of The Event for evidence of that.  Blastr.com is a professional site but it’s still a blog.

Finally, we are very excited about the choices in writers for Blood & Chrome if what’s reported on IMDb is accurate.  Ignore the references to Ron Moore because he has nothing to do with the new series (and we doubt Glen Larson does either), he’s simply listed as the developer as a courtesy and because he is responsible for developing the franchise and tacking his name onto the project gives it credibility.

On the other side of the coin, though, it is being Executive Produced by David Eick (and that is confirmed, it’s not just a courtesy title) and Michael Taylor as well as being written by Taylor, David Weddle, and Bradley Thompson.  This trifecta of writers was not only part of the major core of writers for BSG but they are also responsible for some of the absolute best episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as well, which has been hailed by critics as the best series of that franchise, and it revolved around an intergalactic war so these gentlemen certainly have credentials in that department.

The ‘Tastic will keep you up to date as we find out more about Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome.

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‘Caprica’ – A Post-Mortem Analysis and News of the New BSG Series

If you haven’t heard the news, last week SyFy cancelled the critically acclaimed Battlestar Galactica prequel series, Caprica, which chronicled the history of the 12 colonies (more specifically, Caprica) and the events that led to the first Cylon war. Although, heavily promoted before the series debuted in January, Caprica never lived up to its hype with audiences and its poor ratings reflected that.

Since the announcement, there has been a misguided fan campaign to keep the series alive with of all things, bombarding the SyFy Offices with apples. You see, this esoteric reference that even the folks at SyFy probably won’t get is in regards to the symbolism of the Cylons’ “original sin” (and an apple appeared regularly in Caprica promotional materials). Clever, right?

Yeah… nobody cares.

I’m going to have to concur with the “Let it Go” sentiment on this one as much as I liked the show and am a fan of BSG, Caprica was a good show but it’s far too cerebral for the franchise considering that there was very little action. Unfortunately, fans expected a shoot-em up because it was a BSG prequel and a lot of viewers just can’t get past the fact that it isn’t that type of show. Revolving it around angst-ridden, teenage girls didn’t help it either.

As is the usual case for when any genre show gets cancelled, the choruses of “the network didn’t promote it well enough,” “switching the night it aired killed it,” and my favorite, “SyFy was greedy and split the season up into two parts to double-dip on on the DVD’s” are being sung by the fans.

As noted, the claim that the show wasn’t promoted well enough simply isn’t true. SyFy promoted the crap out of it before its series debut and the numbers were miserable for season 1.0 as well. It was lucky it got picked up for 1.5.

As far as the change of nights is concerned, it was purely a defensive measure. I wrote a piece about this on last month. Networks (excluding FOX) are taking Friday nights seriously now with their programming. It’s no longer considered a dumping ground for failing shows. That hurts SyFy because they took advantage of that for years. Both Caprica and Stargate: Universe have had awful ratings regardless of the night they have aired.

As far as the split-season is concerned (again, not that they would have mattered), it’s because the 1.5 episodes hadn’t been produced. Doug Drexler (CG supervisor for Caprica) confirmed with us that they had just finished all the post-production work for the season finale on August 28th so the main reason that the season was split was that the episodes weren’t complete.

The issue of the split seasons being taken advantage of by SyFy for DVD revenue comes up all the time as if it actually has some merit. It really doesn’t. Why would SyFy intentionally cut off their nose to spite their face by damaging the series overall by breaking up the continuity of it in order to boost DVD sales for one half of a season? Not only does it not make any sense for the simple reason that SyFy can split up a DVD set into two parts regardless of whether or not the season was actually split up when it aired, but intentionally hurting the continuity and thereby hurting the ratings precludes them from future DVD releases of subsequent seasons.

My point on all of that is that what ANY fan of ANY series wants if they want their show to survive is for “X” network to be as greedy as humanly possible because that means they’ll try to milk the series for as much money as they possibly can and that means they’ll do whatever they can to make sure the series lasts a long time.

The problem was that it couldn’t build an audience because even though it was pretty good, there simply wasn’t enough exciting going on to compel audiences to tune in every week until the last four episodes and all the apples in the world can’t change that.

However, that being said, the series that every fan wants to see, the one revolving around the war with the Cylons and the twelve colonies has been green-lit.  The project called Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome will feature a young William Adama and is officially described as such:

“Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome takes place in the 10th year of the first Cylon war. As the battle between humans and their creation, a sentient robotic race, rages across the 12 colonial worlds, a brash rookie viper pilot enters the fray. Ensign William Adama, barely in his 20’s and a recent Academy graduate, finds himself assigned to the newest battlestar in the Colonial fleet… the Galactica. The talented but hot-headed risk-taker soon finds himself leading a dangerous top secret mission that, if successful, will turn the tide of the decade long war in favor of the desperate fleet.”

All things considered, it would be nice if they did a two-hour movie to wrap up Caprica in the future and tie up the loose ends. Or, even better, incorporate it into the B & C pilot like Chris Carter did with Millenium and The Lone Gunmen on The X-Files.  In fact, it would seem to be a necessity because there is so much that was going on in Caprica that was the prelude to the first Cylon war and the development of the Cylons self-awareness to begin with that it would seem counter-productive to the franchise if they didn’t.

You can watch some full episodes of Caprica, here and Netflix subscribers can watch all fours seasons of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series through the Netflix streaming service.

More fun: Hulu has all 24 episodes of the Original Battlestar Galactica (1978) available absolutely free, here.

Have the Networks (FINALLY) Started to Take Friday Nights Seriously???

In the past, Friday prime-time has been a notorious dumping ground for television shows that weren’t cancelled yet, but were on their last legs, at least for dramas.  Low-cost news magazines like Dateline and 20/20 have always found success here and of course in the last decade there have been several reality shows that have thrived here, but it’s been pretty much a foregone conclusion that if a drama winds up here, it’s not long for this world and will soon be gracing us only in syndication (if it has had a long enough run) or in your queue on Netflix.  Well, this season I’m noticing a trend of the networks taking the risk of putting new shows that they’ve invested in and some that are actually fantastic with money-making casts (see: Blue Bloods) on Friday.  They are also doing something else:  they are putting perennial solid veterans on Friday as well.  Now, I may not like or watch all of these shows (so you’re not going to see all of them reviewed or previewed) but it really is quite a change of pace for Fridays to say the least. 

The first example is (now) CBS’s Medium which has averaged 10 million per season the last six seasons.  What’s notable about this is that not only did Medium move from Monday to Fridays between seasons  5 and 6, they also switched networks (from NBC to CBS) yet still only dropped from 8.5 million viewers to 7.8 million.  It simply absurd that they kept 92% of their core audience while not only moving to Fridays but to a different network. 

CSI: NY on Fridays is the biggest head scratcher of all.  I hate the entire CSI franchise for a myriad of reasons that I’m not going to go into right now but there’s no denying its success.  Of the three shows in the franchise, CSI: NY is the worst performing of all of them but that’s kind of like saying that Tony Lazzeri was the worst run producer of the 1927 Yankees‘ three best in the infamous “Murderers Row” lineup with Babe Ruth and Lou Gherig being the two best.  Any team would have loved to have had the ’27 Lazzeri in their lineup just like any network would love to have CSI: NY in theirs.  By the way, I hate the Yankees more than I hate the CSI franchise but again there’s no denying their success. 

CSI: NY has consistently averaged 13.3 million viewers per week CONSISTENTLY for six seasons in the Wednesday night 10:00  p.m. slot which has typically been very competitive (although I must admit that with Leno on at 10:00 p.m. for a good portion of last season there wasn’t much of a challenge) and has been in the top 25 of all shows every season except one (it was #28 during the 2007 – 2008 season although it had the exact same number of viewers – 12.6 million – that it did last year when it was #23) going as high as #17 (2008 – 2009, 13.03 million).  Now it did take a dive last year falling to #44 with the 18 – 49 crowd but still, nearly 13 million is nothing to sneeze at even if you did drop in the “coveted” demographic.  Needless to say, CSI:NY is pretty much a sure-thing for CBS and they didn’t put it in the Friday night slot to cancel it.  Sorry… not with 13 million viewers.

An honorable mention needs to go out to Supernatural (and to an extent Smallville) which has been The CW’s stallion (for what that’s worth) on Thursday night at 9:00 p.m. for its first four seasons and that show is now on in the same slot on Fridays as well, but what REALLY caught my attention was not just all of the dramas on the major networks on Fridays but how Syfy has completely abandoned their original programming schedule on Friday nights that if I recall correctly, they’ve been going with for over a decade.  SyFy’s two most popular shows – the Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica and the franchise favorite Stargate: Universe – have been moved to Tuesday nights, premiering on October 5th.  This is monumental and I haven’t seen anyone take note of this.  SyFy owned Friday nights and one can only assume that this waving of the white flag was in response to the major networks actually paying attention to Friday nights again.

So why this big change in attitude towards Friday night prime-time?  Historically, the reason why the Friday night line-up has been so mediocre is because viewers go out on Friday nights and don’t normally stay in to watch television… especially the “coveted” 18 – 49 demographic.  Mind you, this is entirely speculative on my part but I have a theory:  it’s the economy. More and more people are staying home for entertainment instead of going out in order to save money.  When you’ve got unemployment at around 10% and 40% of the population who are worried that they might possibly lose their job within the next year, that’s certainly not a situation conducive to spending a bunch of money out at the club.  People are saving more, spending less, paying off credit cards and when they are spending money on entertainment it’s on long-term appliances like HD TV’s and Blu Ray players, both of which have gone down dramatically in price this year.

So, there is no question that most of the networks now see value in Friday night but the question is: didn’t FOX get the memo?

You see, FOX bothers me to no end with their programming decisions.  They are notorious for giving up too quickly on quality shows, not giving them a chance for audiences to grow and if they do throw an audience a bone and renew a show with borderline ratings, they stick it in Friday night to die.  The decisions they make at FOX are mind-boggling and reactionary on a whole different level.  Why these morons don’t understand that when you have the highest rated show of all time on three nights a week that it actually gives you latitude when it comes to relaxing a little bit when a drama doesn’t immediately perform as you hoped it would is far beyond my level of comprehension.  Hell, put American Idol on every night and use it as a lead-in for every 9:00 p.m. show.  It worked for 24!  I will remind you that this is the same network that cancelled Family Guy.  I will also remind you that this is the same network that cancelled perhaps the greatest Sci Fi series of all time, Firefly, after 11 stinkin’ episodes.  Topless Robot has a great article that explains exactly how stupid the programming decisions at FOX have been.

And this is exactly the approach that FOX is going with for both Human Target and The Good Guys, both critically acclaimed shows that had marginal ratings when the aired last season.  It’s not even remotely fair what they’re doing to The Good Guys even by FOX’s idiotic standards, premiering it on a Monday in the middle of May when all of the other shows are wrapping up, letting it run for nine episodes over the summer and then dumping it into Friday night because it didn’t catch fire fast enough for them.  Human Target on the other hand is one of the best shows on TV, period and could very easily build a locked-in huge genre audience if FOX had the foresight to give it a chance like they did with 24 in 2001 which, by the way had the identical audience numbers that Human Target had during its first season.

Now, you might be saying, “Now, waitaminute, here… how do YOU know that FOX isn’t doing the same thing that the other networks are doing?”  Nope, wrong. First, consider that we’re talking about FOX and we’ve already established what is common knowledge about their programming practices.  Second, the other networks mentioned are putting up four strong veteran dramas with built-in audiences and three new shows that they have just sunk a bunch of money into in order to develop.  You NEVER put a show with weak/mediocre numbers in a Friday slot if you want it to survive and have the audience grow.  Hopefully, because of the other networks taking Friday night seriously for once, these two great shows can be successful despite the neglect from FOX.  I doubt it, but I remain hopeful… because I really love Human Target.

Watch full epsidoes of Human Target, here.

Watch full episodes of The Good Guys, here.