Dragon Con 2013: Battlestar Galactica Day 1 So Say We All

I came to Dragon Con 2013 for True Blood. (See coverage here). But as much as I love True Blood, I also wanted to see the cast of Battlestar Galactica. I watched the series last year and was very excited to find out that some of the cast had decided to return to Dragon Con for yet another year. Luckily I managed to attend the first day panel and get an unobstructed view so I ended up getting wonderful video and photos of Edward James Olmos (Admiral William Adama), Richard Hatch (Tom Zarek), and Kandyse McClure (Anastasia Dualla).

Kevin Graizer, science advisor for Battlestar Galactica decided to moderate the panel which was probably the best decision ever because not only did he ask really good questions, but he also laid down some ground rules for fan questions so they would be just as awesome. The opening question was very interesting to me because it had to do with the withdrawl symptoms that the cast experienced after Battlestar Galactica ended. Since both Dualla and Zarek perished before the end of the series, Richard and Kandyse expressed an immense amount of difficulty with leaving because they weren’t able to be there to see it to the end. Edward took a different tact and actually talked about how he and the rest of the cast haven’t let go because they still spend time with one another and talk to each other whenever possible because the experience bonded them so much.

Being that this was my first panel live, I had the sense of this being a religious experience of some kind. And I don’t throw that term out there lightly. I don’t think I’ve ever had that feeling in a panel before any con that I’ve been to. But so say we all didn’t seem to be just a phrase from the show anymore. We repeated it intermittently throughout the panel for various reasons and it served to help tie together this experience we were all having from the audience to the panelists. And it also helped to reinforce this idea that Battlestar Galactica is more than simply a TV show. It means something a little more than that.