The release date for the DVD and Blu-ray to the final half of season 4 (season 4.5) of Battlestar Galactica has been announced as July 28.

The DVD for season 4.5 will include 13 hours of extra’s such as behind-the-scenes footage, featurettes, audio commentaries by producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, and three extended episodes that never aired on television

NBC Universal have also announced that coinciding with the release of season 4.5 will be the DVD and Blu-ray release of the entire series as a compilation set.

Fans of Bear McCreary, the talented music composer behind Battlestar Galactica, will be interested to know that the complete series releases will include two documentaries about his work.

The first documentary, titled ‘The Evolution of a Cue‘ will follow McCreary’s entire process of scoring, from the editor’s temp score through to sketching, writing, and recording the final mix.

The second documentary, tit’ed ‘The Musicians Behind Daybreak‘ will feature interviews with each principle musician and will delve into the details of the score to ‘Daybreak‘ (the series finale), and will include several music videos.

These two doco’s were directed and co-produced by Matthew Gilna, who also compiled the Bear McCreary Battlestar Galactica DVD documentary ‘‘Inside the secrets of the behind the making of the music of Battlestar Galactica: Revealed’‘.  Yep, we know it’s a mouthful – but its cool (and you can watch it in 3 parts at the end of this article).

Here are the links you need if you want to grab the DVD’s/Blu-ray’s:

Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.5 (DVD)
Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.5 (Blue-ray)
Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series (DVD)
Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series (Blu-ray)

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Alessandra Toreson is Zoe Graystone in 'Caprica'

A new preview clip to Sci Fi’s Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica has been unlocked for viewing at Discover Caprica.com.  Between now and when the DVD of the pilot is released on April 21 more clips will also become available.

In addition to the unlocked clip, check out the following two additional sneak peek clips:

Caprica – A Veiled Threat

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Sci Fi have released a short video blog ahead of the April 21 DVD release of Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica.  Affectionately titled ‘What the frak is Caprica?’, it includes commentary with cast, crew and the creators of the show.  Watch it now:

Caprica is available for pre-order from Amazon.

Here is absolutely anything the makers of Robot Chicken could find amongst their episodes that could be tied to Battlestar (by even the flimsiest of connections).

1. Frakkin Galactica

It’s taken almost a month but at last the video footage from the landmark Battlestar Galactica United Nations event has become available online.  Watch it now (in five parts):

Battlestar Galactica UN Panel – Part 1

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On April 28 Titan Books will release Battlestar Galactica: Downloaded, a full-color paperback companion to the series.

Battlestar Galactica: Downloaded concentrates specifically on season 1 and 2 as well as taking an in-depth look into the 3-hour miniseries.

It includes interviews with cast and crew, an in-depth episode guide, behind-the-scenes secrets, production design information and a look at Bear McCreary’s musical scoring.

It is available for order here.

Additional and larger images available at UGO.

This Titanium Series Figure of a Battlestar Galactica Cylon is pretty cool!

It’s made to 3 3/4-inch scale, features limited articulation and comes packaged in a specially designed display case.  The figure, base, and lid are fastened by screws (easily removed with a common Philips-head screwdriver if you want to play with the articulation).

Made of die-cast metal it also feels relatively heavy and at US $11.90 it’s pretty well priced.

Check it out at Entertainment Earth.

Ron Moore recently took the time to add his thoughts and responses to posts from fans in the Sci Fi Forum regarding the finale of Battlestar Galactica.

Whilst his responses don’t provide all the answers to the level of detail that many fans are craving, they do offer plenty of insight into the thought processes behind the finale.

Here’s a selection of key quotes from his comments (and yes, if you haven’t seen the finale, you don’t want to read this article):

On the notion that the BSG ending was designed to infer that technology is evil:

I wanted to say that I really wasn’t trying to make some grand anti-technological statement at the end of BSG.

On Ron Moore providing answers to the various different interpretations offered up by fans:

I should also add that there’s a part of me that is loath to really analyze my own work on this level because like any piece of art it can be interpreted in various ways by the audience and not necessarily have any relationship to the intent of the artist.

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In what is great news to film score and Battlestar Galactica fans, famed music composer Bear McCreary has announced La La Land Records will be releasing three Galactica related soundtracks this year.

The first will be the score to the new Battlestar Galactica prequel series, Caprica.  The album is finished and currently being mastered and will hit stores in June.  If you want it earlier, you’ll be able to buy it in May directly from La La Land Records website.

Bear McCreary: The sound of this score is much more intimate than Galactica, but I think fans will nevertheless be surprised at how lyrical, passionate and thematic it is. In fact, many of the musical shifts you heard in ‘Daybreak’ were inspired by the harmonic language I devised for Caprica.

The second will be the score to Battlestar Galactica’s fourth season.  Presently scheduled for a release in the second half of July, this release will be a 2CD set with the second disc containing virtually all the music from the Battlestar Galactica finale, ‘Daybreak’.

The third is a planned soundtrack release for the two Battlestar Galactica straight-to-DVD movies, ‘Razor’ and ‘The Plan’.  The arrangement of this soundtrack has yet to be made so the release date is some time off – it has been tentatively set to hit stores later on in the year.

But that’s not all.

Bear McCreary is also planning to release a multi-CD set of previously un-released material from all four seasons of Battlestar Galactica – as well as the score to a ’secret’ video game that McCreary says will make you “flip out” if you’re a fan of Galactica’s music.

Bear McCreary: I’m hoping to assemble a multi-CD set of un-released material from all four seasons, perhaps even including demos, sketches, out-takes, source pieces and other odds n’ ends I’ve produced for the series.  I am certain that there will be more “Music of Battlestar Galactica” concerts this year and next, one of which will hopefully lead to a concert DVD.  There are also tentative plans for more ballet performances, orchestral concert suites, documentaries and sheet music releases.  So, I guess what I’m trying to say is… I’m not done delivering the Galactica goods.

I’m also hopeful that we’ll be able to release a soundtrack album for the super-cool top-secret video game project that I scored recently.  If you guys like the score to BG, you’re going to frakkin’ flip out when you hear this!  Details will be announced as soon as I’m allowed to say what it is!

All great news for Galactica and soundtracks fans alike.

Source: Bear McCreary’s Blog

In an exclusive interview with io9, Ronald D. Moore has offered a faint glimmer of hope to Battlestar Galactica fans that whilst there are no plans to revisit the Battlestar universe that doesn’t entirely count out the possibility.  

The sets are pulled down, there are no plans for future stories, and the finale really sealed it.  Yet, digital images of the sets have been stored in the vault ‘for later’ and, well, you never know… 

From io9: 

Besides the upcoming movies and Caprica would you ever revisit the Battlestar characters? 

You know, you never say never – which I’ve really learned in this business… I can just tell you that there’s no plan to do anything like that. There’s not even like a notion in my head. Right now, there are no plans. But you never know. 

Practically speaking, the sets have been destroyed, so there’s no set to go shoot on, and that would be an enormous expense to recreate those sets. Now, I will tell you that we digitally archived all the sets top to bottom completely. So we have a virtual archive of Galactica, and all the sets and props and wardrobe and all of that. So you could theoretically go back and try and do something again. We just sort of did that and put it in the vault for later. But there’s nothing that I can see that lends itself towards that. And when you see the finale, you’ll know that we really do put a period at the end of the sentence, in terms of the story that we’ve been telling. 

In the interview Moore also discusses the alternate ending that was under consideration but that he ultimately abandoned.  Basically it involved Ellen’s character taking vengeance upon the entire fleet because Tigh had involved himself and impregnated Caprica Six – which in turn explains her erratic behavior in the latter episodes of season 4 after she had learned about the Tigh and Six relationship. 

To read more detail on this and to learn which BSG character was Moore’s favorite, head over to io9 and read the full interview here.