Coolest Day

I got a call Wednesday (yesterday as I write this) from a friend who wanted to know if I could go up to Vancouver Thursday (today) to tour the set of Battlestar Galactica. Um, heck yeah! (By the way, you can look up the characters and the ship on the site linked to in the previous sentence.)

So, I was up early and we were on the road by 7:00. The trip went well and we were in the lot of the studio by 10:00 and hooked up with the assistant to the producer. She walked us around for the day and showed us the two or three building that contained the various sets. For those that watch the show, I walked through the many hallways, the command center, Adama's headquarters, the mess hall, parts of the prison ship, and we even got to see Boomer and the President film a scene that will come out next year in season 2.

Plus, we saw the hangar deck set and were able to walk around in the Raptor (Boomer's ship) and sit in the Vipers they had there. Very, very cool. I won't describe everything in detail because it'd really lose some of the coolness. You'd be surprised to see how some of the things are constructed -- but you'd be amazed by how good they look considering what they're made from. Even up close the wooden and plastic sets look like metal, but once you touch them the illusion is broken.

As we toured everything we ran into a bunch of the actors, including those who played Starbuck, Apollo, Helo, Gaeta, the President, and we saw but didn't get to talk to Boomer. Everyone else was really, incredibly nice. We chatted for a long time with the first three, and we had a nice conversation with the President.

After all of that fun we got to see the special effects studio and see some of the scenes they're working on for some of next season's episodes. I am, of course, sworn to secrecy, but it was some cool stuff.

Tomorrow I'll have to make up for missing a day and I'm sure everyone will be horribly jealous of me when I tell them about it, but hey, it pays to have friends, right?

I've been up a long time, so I'm going to crash -- although and episode or two of Samurai Jack sounds pretty fun first.


We also had lunch.