New Episodes Of Battlestar Galactica?

sawilson writes "I was surfing over at scifi.com and noticed a link to a story called ' New 'Galactica' To Look Ahead'. I loved this show, and never missed an episode." I liked this show when I was little, but recently watched a marathon of it, and was pretty disappointed. (I'd like to see a marathon of Buck Rogers and see if (A) It was as cool as my childhood wants me to think it was and (B) If Erin Grey was as hot as I remember). The new Galactica is tied to Bryan "X-Men and The Usual Suspects" Singer, so it certainly has potential.

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Hatch is Still In the Running

[Robotech_Master]

Richard Hatch is still trying, and still has hope. He has a brief trailer that he's made on credit cards and lunch money, and he shows it at conventions--he showed it at VisionCon here in Springfield, Missouri earlier this month, and also the previous year when he and Jack Stauffer were both con guests.

I don't know about what happened in Luxembourg--I wish I'd heard about this pre-con, so I could have asked him about it--but the rights thing over Galactica is such a huge mess that, if it was more than a couple years ago, I'm not surprised, and I really wouldn't blame Richard for it. Apparently Glen Larsen discovering that he had some residual rights to some elements of (but not all of) the show via the episodes he wrote knocked the whole thing into a cocked hat, and nobody knew exactly who had what rights anymore. Hatch has been trying the best he can to get the whole thing ironed out, and it will be interesting to see what comes of this new wrinkle. One thing's for sure--Hatch's fans can swing a lot of letter-writing power. Call it a "snail-mail Slashdot effect." The Sci-Fi channel abruptly dropped their plans for a Galactica update last month--though I'll admit it might have been due partly to Singer's sudden interest in the franchise.

As far as creative vision is concerned, Hatch is clearly no duffer. He's actually written--and I don't mean Shatnerly-ghost-written, I mean written--a trilogy taking Galactica into the future, and the storyline of that trilogy is roughly the way the new show would go.

The trailer is really slick, with some great footage (albeit perhaps a bit of overacting), a special appearance by Lorne Greene, and CGI done by volunteers that looks incredibly polished. There's one shot of a Viper zooming through an open tunnel in one side of a starship and out the other that never failed to elicit gasps of awe from the audience. It's amazing how slick and polished it looks--you'd swear it was from a finished product. Hatch tells stories of screening it to studio execs who were sort of embarrassed going in, expecting to see someone's home video, and then had to pick their jaws up off the floor when it showed.

There are some still frames from the trailer on the BattlestarGalactica.com website, but due to SAG rules (having to do with the actors actually having to be paid and stuff), they can't put the whole thing online or otherwise make it available. So they screen it at cons.

Hatch has always expressed a willingness to work with whoever got the rights--even Larsen, though Larson rebuffed him (and Larsen's involvement with the Singer version doesn't give me a whole lot of hope). Hatch can also swing most of the still-alive original cast--even the reclusive Dirk Benedict. All he wants is to ensure that the new series has the same things that kept people watching the old series--the original cast in their original roles. All the other proposed BSG projects have been planned to focus elsewhere--on other elements in the BSG universe. Hatch can understand that the studios might prefer to swap in new faces, but all he wants is that there should be a segueway from the old to the new, with more than lip service paid to the original. One of his great fears (and mine, too) is that they'll do a recast and remake, a la the Lost in Space movie that Bill Mumy lobbied for and was then shut out of.

The problem with Hatch, as I imagine the "suits" in charge of studios see it, is that he's a starry-eyed dreamer, with a Vision. That so overshadows the other aspect of him--his business sense, and ability to make much out of limited resources--that it's no wonder the suits get scared. After all, other dreamers with creative vision in the past have made major holes in studio pocketbooks--just look at Kevin Costner.

Still, the open letters and interviews posted to the BSG site lately do give me hope, especially the fandom.com interview with DeSanto in which he says he respects and admires Hatch for keeping the fandom alive and would like to see his trailer. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

(Another trailer Hatch showed at the con was his new project, The Great War of Magellan . This one is also an unfinished teaser, but the storyline looks promising and it has quite a few interesting faces in it--Hatch, Jason Carter, Brad Dourif . . . have to wait and see what develops there, too.)
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Answers....

[nagora]

A) No.

B) Oh, yes.

TWW