What type of virtual worlds could we see in the movie and maybe in the series if that progresses?
You'll see kind of a range of virtual worlds. Like I said earlier, it opens in the Civil War in an action sort of piece and then there are more pastoral settings. There is a home. There are actually doctor's offices. There are rock concerts. There is quite a range of areas that we went into, which was a deliberate choice. We wanted to sort of show that we were going to use these worlds in sort of disparate ways and that they would all be sort of tailored to specific characters and what they were interested in going to do, so you'll see quite a range of virtual worlds when you get in there.
About The Plan: I saw your panel with Edward James Olmos last week. Olmos directed it. Jane Esperson wrote it. What sort of stamp did you have on the last Battlestar movie, The Plan?
I supervised and I give suggestions and follow-ups and I try to keep the story and the concepts within the Battlestar world, but I really let Jane run with it. I mean it's really her piece and Eddie's piece. I was very happy to sort of let them take the reins on this one.
He said it will be everything we expect, but does that mean there won't be any surprises?
Well, I'm not sure that's what Eddie meant. I think there are definitely surprises. It's really a piece for people who love the show. If you love the show you're probably going to be really intrigued by The Plan, because it's going to have all of these little bread crumbs and throw away lines and indicators and suggestions from other episodes. You've seen the show. You've watched the finale. You know how the story ends. Okay, here's like an additional slant on some things that you didn't know about.
I was reading somewhere that you don't really reveal the year or what the actual emergency to the earth is. Was that done intentionally?
Actually, that changed over time. Initially we didn't really specify those things. We wanted to keep it looser and kind of vague because I just thought it was more interesting than nailing down the specifics on all of that, but as we went through the process we started to nail those things down. We just started to feel like we had to answer certain questions. I think we did; I know you're going to ask me what year it is and I'm not going to know off the top of my head, so don't ask; but I think we do refer to the year and we definitely talked more about the nature of the emergency.
There was something written, a piece of dialogue, where it said, "Dry land is really expensive now."
Yes. We expanded on that idea a little bit more.
So there are just like hints?
It's kind of explicit. I mean there is a commercial for the reality show within the show. Within that commercial it kind of lays out some of the broader parameters of the mission, about what's happening on earth and why the mission has taken on a new urgency. The mission started out as just one of exploration and then something going terribly wrong back home in terms of climate change, in terms of the environment, or so the astronauts are told. That's kind of where we are.
Did you look to any other properties for inspiration, like Sunshine or 2001?
Not specifically. I mean I think we were aware of Sunshine and we sort of wanted to try to not go into it. We had seen it and we were like aware that there were certain similarities to some of it. We then kind of wanted to go out of our way to make sure that ours was different, so we were kind of like in that place.
You've got so much going on, are you having any trouble juggling everything, especially since it seems like you're adding acting to your career with that CSI performance?
I'm not really putting myself up for pilot season, let's put it that way. It's a lot to juggle, but that's sort of what's good about the way I came up through the business is I started in television and in television on an ongoing series you're constantly juggling multiple episodes simultaneously, so it's not too much of a stretch to now juggle separate projects as well.
Is everything being based in Canada making it easier?
Yes. Yes, that does make it a lot easier. The Virtuality sets were literally across the street from Caprica and Battlestar, so all I had to do was just drive across the street when I was there.
What do you think about the network climate right now, especially in light of Terminator being cancelled and Dollhouse being on the cusp? It seems like anything complex aimed at a younger audience has a really hard time staying on.
Well, I think it's a difficult time for the networks in general. I think that the scheduling kind of reflects that. I think everybody in the business has a sense that television is changing right underneath our feet. While we all say that and we all say, "Yes, we're going to be ahead of the curve and we know that TV is changing," nobody has an idea of what it's changing to. I think that that sort of anxiety and that sort of lack of knowledge about where you're going contributes to an atmosphere of panic and fear of saying, "Oh, my God. It didn't work. Yank. We can't afford the time to stick with this show. We gave it four episodes and that's it."
I think that's unfortunate, because I think there are many, many shows, many of the greatest shows on TV, many of the most successful shows on TV had rocky starts and they really required networks that believed in the process and were willing to stick by them; famously, Seinfeld. They really had to believe in Seinfeld and it turned out to be not only a critical hit and one of the great comedies of all time, but incredibly lucrative, so there is certainly a strong argument for having patience and faith and really trusting your audience and trusting your instincts and going with programming.
Unfortunately, we're in an atmosphere where everyone is just afraid and everyone is really worried about what's going to happen next week and, "Oh, my God. This show didn't perform well this week. Let's yank it." It's really tough. I would not want to be in charge of one of these networks because it would be really hard to know where the hell I'm supposed to go, how I'm supposed to program this thing.
