Blood and Chrome -- which chronicles the first Cylon war -- had its beginning as a webseries concept, but Michael Taylor's script was so impressive that the project was upgraded to a pilot that will air in late 2011, with a series potentially happening in 2012.
As Stern explains to TV Squad, "When we read Michael's script, it was so clearly a full-blown pilot for a series. The scope is fantastic and bigger, I think, than anticipated, so we said, 'Let's do it as a 2-hour backdoor pilot.' ... We're trying to get up and running as soon as possible."
Noting that the spin-off takes place about 20 years after the events of Caprica and 40 years before the Battlestar Galactica TV series, and that the series will be green screened with actors ultimately placed within digital renderings of Galactica that were taken before that show's sets were torn down, Stern adds, "It's an opportunity to 'see them before they were famous.' Here's the Battlestar Galactica as a brand-new, shiny ship -- well, not shiny, but as a new ship that had just been commissioned. What was that like?
"This is very much an action-adventure, war series. This is definitely dealing with people who are fighting the fight. ... As you hope 'Battlestar' would do, it kind of comments on that process a little bit... but not in a preachy way, not in an issues-oriented way, not in a hitting-you-over-the-head way. Really, the fabric and the canvas of the series are people in the fight and what they grapple with when it comes to each other and what they grapple with when it comes to the enemy they're fighting. Your way into the story is a young William Adama who is not the grizzled old veteran we have come to love in 'BSG.' This is someone who is more like us, in terms of coming into this with certain preconceptions and learning as you go. ... It's very much about relationships along the way. I think ultimately the arc of the pilot and of the series is about getting Adama to be who you came to know in 'BSG,' but it's also about the deep relationships he forms. And I don't think there are any deeper relationships than the ones you form in life-or-death situations."
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