Battlestar's Michael Trucco teases The Plan, Caprica

Monday, May 11, 2009

Battlestar's Michael Trucco teases The Plan, Caprica

Michael Trucco, who played Samuel Anders in SCI FI's Battlestar Galactica, told SCI FI Wire a bit about the upcoming DVD movie The Plan and added that he wouldn't be surprised if his character turned up in the forthcoming prequel series Caprica.

"I mean, because it's possible, right?" Trucco said in an exclusive interview Thursday in Pasadena, Calif. "The Cylons, once we saw them in Battlestar, we realized, 'Oh, they've been around for a long time.' So it's certainly possible, and it would be kind of cool."

Caprica takes place more than 50 years before the beginning of Battlestar Galactica and examines the origins of both characters and storylines later explored in the acclaimed series.

Trucco said that there are no plans to revive his character or reintroduce him on the show, but that he would be interested to see how they marry the mythologies of the two series. "I don't know if they would ever do it, like, as just a cameo," he speculated. "Like maybe a walk-by in the background—'Wait, wasn't that ... ?' But, no, no discussions. Nothing has been discussed in terms of if we want to bring some of the Cylons from Battlestar back into Caprica. But who knows? The show still has yet to be aired and take off, and if they decide that's a storyline then we'll do it."
Trucco spoke exclusively to SCI FI Wire at the site of an ongoing charity auction in which paraphernalia and props from Battlestar Galactica are on sale. The following is an edited version of that interview. The two-hour pilot of Caprica is now available on DVD and the Web; Caprica kicks off on SCI FI next year. Battlestar Galactica: The Plan is due in November.
Are events such as the Battlestar auctions sort of a stopgap for the show, since it seems to live on with Caprica and The Plan, the upcoming DVD movie?

Trucco: It does sort of hammer it home that it's over. The alternative [with the props] would have been to store them, which is costly: It's time-consuming, it's space-consuming and financially consuming. I think [executive producer] Ron [Moore] was pretty adamant about not resurrecting the series, one of those "We're going off the air. No, we're not! We're coming back. Oh, no we're not!" He didn't want to play like that, so he said this was the end of the show. So as far as I know, this is the end of the show. That's not to say they couldn't revive it; I think they could. From a fan standpoint, I think they could, and it would be viable. We're done with this version as it is. Caprica will take on as, a prequel, the themes of Battlestar Galactica, and I think it's going to do a great job. I saw the pilot, and I thought it was fascinating.

How would you describe The Plan? Is the film a coda for the series?
Trucco: Whereas Caprica is a true prequel, 50 years before the beginning of Battlestar Galactica, The Plan is less a coda: It doesn't extend the story beyond what we saw in the finale. It actually picks up the story between season one and season two. It's actually prequel to the entrance of Anders, my character, and Cavil, Dean Stockwell's character. The movie is told from that perspective.

But the thrust of it is what happened before season two, when suddenly on this planet, Caprica, Starbuck finds this guy Anders and his band of resistance fighters, former teammates of the Caprica Buccaneers. Then, later in the season, we find this mysterious Brother Cavil, and this movie is going to answer questions [about] the moments before that, where we came from and how we came to get integrated into the story. It's going to weave its way in through storylines that we've already seen, [and] it's going to make you want to go back and go, "Oh! I want to watch that episode in season two again. Wait, Cavil was standing there the whole time?" We're going to use footage from stuff that's already been shot, but then they'll integrate it with a shot that will tie in [the fact] that Cavil was just around the corner hiding behind a tree in the forest, long before we even met him.

Was it tough to retrofit either your character or what the performance would be, since this pre-dates experiences the character has later in the series?

Trucco: Retrofit is a good word, because we're going back in time. They even had to rebuild sets that we had since long destroyed. From season two, we had exteriors we shot on the forest, and they re-created these sets that we had shot a year and a half or two years earlier, and here we are back on the same set. They hired almost virtually the same background actors; they got a lot of the same day-player actors; we're all wearing the same thing. We cut our hair back to what it was like [then], and it was like being in a time machine; it was amazing. It was like, we did this in season two, and here we are going back to that moment in time, and it was a really interesting experience. That was when I first started on the show, so, yeah, you had to kind of erase all the baggage that came with Anders through the finale and start to put myself in the space of Anders the human that I started with, this character that I thought I knew before this big reveal that he's a Cylon. I had to put myself back in that frame of mind.

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Enjoy The Prologue From My Upcoming Book.. "Strolok"............by R.Goldberg

"WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOUR RACE WAS TARGETED FOR EXTINCTION?"

The Sun is a powerful force in our Universe. It brings us light, warmth and a promise of a galaxy beyond the stars. Often we associate massive flashes of light with the reflection of our Sun's light bouncing off of another surface.

This is not always the case though, especially if you believe that we are truly not alone in the Universe. When we witness things that we can't readily explain we sometimes turn our heads and shrug our shoulders in a display of apathy.

A display such as this occurred on Friday January 29, 1982 at the Crater Lake National Park just outside of Chemult, Oregon. The snow had been falling steadily for a period of four days. The winds had been whisking about at 40 miles per hour.
Then there was one of those unnatural flashes of light. This created an eerie silence as a lanky boy, just nine years old, seemed to appear from out of that flash. If he had walked to this point there would have been a distinct trail in the newly fallen snow.
There was no trail and as a matter of fact the only tracks in the snow were the ones that outlined his feet where he was standing.

He began to trudge through the snow wearing what could only be described as dark brown long johns. He seemed dazed yet, at the same time, very clear about the direction that he was travelling. This boy with no identity or name seemed to be on a mission that would take him to places he had never been before.
His main goal was to reach Chemult, Oregon and he had no intention of stopping until he accomplished this. As strange as it seems the extreme cold seemed to have little or no effect on him at all.

Why Chemult? What was so special about this town located at an elevation of 4,758 feet above sea level in a frozen winter wilderness in Oregon?

The town of Chemult was first opened to the local traffic in 1926 and here in 1982, with its population of only 241, offered little in the way of comfort for a nine year old boy who was all alone. This journey, although prompted by something deep inside of him, did not provide a feeling of comfort and yet he had hoped that he would at least experience a feeling of accomplishment once he reached the town.

The wind was getting stronger and he noticed a small piece of yellow paper tattered and torn from whipping about in the snow. He only stopped long enough to
pick up this paper..........it read:

.....With the winter season here there was a lot of fun to have. Travelling miles of open trails on snow mobiles skiing or simply hiking, but there are dangers of doing so. Please remember safety first. Do not travel alone and be sure someone knows where you are and where you are going before travelling our trails, and please read the safety rules and codes of ethics before hiking the trails...

Nightfall was near and he had already walked 38 of the 40 miles needed to reach Chemult. He was just off of Route 97 when he spotted an old barn just about 200 feet NE of his present location. Making his way to the barn he went in and found it to be totally deserted, it was a perfect place to rest for the night.

Morning had arrived and once awake the boy started to look around the barn in the daylight light to see if there was anything that was lying in the barn that he could use to assist him on his trek.

Over in the far corner of the barn he found an old metal locked box that had long been forgotten. It was all rusted out and the key was nowhere to be found. After several failed attempts to open the box the young boy closed his eyes, sat back on his tired limbs and placed the palm of his right hand on top of the box. All of a sudden a dull red glow appeared from his right palm and the box lid flew open. Strangely enough once the red glow disappeared all that remained was a faint thin black outline where the outside of the red mark had appeared on his palm. Inside of the box he found several items all of which were unfamiliar to him and it was obvious that they had been there
for a very long time.

The contents included a tattered passport with the picture missing, a pocket knife, a compass, an antique pocket watch with a broken crystal, a time-worn souvenir porcelain coffee mug with the words; "Atlanta, Georgia, The Peach State, A Perfect Place to Live", on it and a frayed map of the Metro Atlanta Area It was difficult to make out the name on the passport but with a couple of light brushes with his fingers he saw the name Jason Tredmore. This is now who this boy would become.

Sci-Fi Blast

Monday, May 11, 2009