'Galactica' set for final showdown
Like all good things -- life, love, that particularly good chorizo empanada you had for lunch -- even Battlestar Galactica must come to an end.
The Peabody Award-winning series, hailed as one of the decade's finest TV offerings, is spooling up the faster-than-light drive for its fourth and final season, premiering tomorrow night on sci-fi channel Space.
It's the beginning of a bittersweet last leg for the cast and crew, including stars Katee Sackhoff and Grace Park. On screen, there's been much friction between their characters; Sackhoff plays tough-but-vulnerable ace pilot Kara (Starbuck) Thrace, while Park's Sharon (Boomer) Valerii (please, we call her Athena now) is a Cylon, the race of androids who destroyed humanity's homeworlds.
But in person during a recent visit to Toronto, they're as close and comfortable as sisters, alternating between finishing each others' sentences and ragging on each other without mercy.
"It's like having friends without trying," Vancouver native Park said of shooting a series as tight-knit and intense as Battlestar. "You see some of these people more often than you see your own family, and you have experiences that are deeper than the things you'll have with most of your friends."
What began as a huge TV gamble -- resurrecting the name and premise of a cheeseball 1970s Star Wars ripoff and giving it a gritty, politically aware edge -- has paid off with mainstream recognition, a ferociously devoted fanbase and significant fame for its stars.
Fame that includes a recent GQ magazine photo shoot featuring Sackhoff, Park and Canadian former supermodel Tricia Helfer (who plays smokin' hot Cylon Number Six) posing on motorcycles. In leather chaps. And bikinis.
"You get close. Literally," said Park, turning to coo at Sackhoff: "Your skin is so soft."
"Grace is laying on my back and Tricia's ass is my face," recalled Sackhoff. Fans, enjoy the mental image. GQ, enjoy the readership spike.
Between talk of how the writers' strike had some fearing Battlestar wouldn't come back ("We were drinking Irish whiskey at 9:30 a.m. on the last day because we pretty much thought it was the end," said Park) and a wild tangent about Sackhoff's brother biting the head off a crab that attacked him ("Do you think that crab was like, 'What the f---! Normally I go in the pot first!' "), we revisit the inevitable question: Why does political and religious commentary like Battlestar's have to be cloaked in a shield of sci-fi?
"It allows people a sense of comfort, to be talking about heavy issues but in the back of their minds to be able to dismiss their emotion toward the issue as science fiction," said Sackhoff.
"Everyone talks about it, but not addressing it directly," said Park. "And being able to do it in green flight suits and jetting off into space and FTL drives makes it that much easier.
"If someone gets their back up too much, someone else says, 'Look, it's called Battlestar Galactica.' "
It's not all metaphysics and Iraq war pokes, of course. But fans tuning in tomorrow night to discover what's up with Starbuck's miraculous return, find out whether or not the fleet will locate Earth and learn the identity of the final Cylon are going to have to wait awhile.
Sackhoff and Park, who were shooting Episode 14 of 20 at the time of our talk, said even they don't know the answers yet. They will come, though. All in good time.
"I think there's a tremendous freedom in what (the show's creators) want to say, but they know that they need to wrap it up, and they've got a lot of loose ends that need to be tied up," Sackhoff said.
"There's no way that we're going to be disappointed."
The last Cylon? Even the writers might not know
It is this TV season's "Who shot J.R.?" or "Which Simpsons character is gay?" Who is the last, yet-to-be-revealed Cylon in the Battlestar Galactica universe?
Of the 12 models of androids who've infiltrated human society, seven were identified over the first two seasons, and another four in Season 3's shocking finale, including crusty Col. Tigh and goodhearted Chief Tyrol.
But who is the final Cylon? Is it Admiral William Adama? President Laura Roslin? Apollo? Starbuck? Baltar? Some Viper pilot who has only been half-glimpsed in a couple of episodes?
Forget about prying the secret out of series stars Katee Sackhoff and Grace Park, though. They can't even agree with each other about who it is.
"We're already fighting about it," Park said. "She (Sackhoff) thinks she knows, and I think it's not true."
"Oh, I think it's not true, too," Sackhoff countered. "But I know. We all know. You think it's not real, I think it's real but they're going to have to change their minds."
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hang on a second. Change their minds? About one of the series' biggest surprises?
"I think they're going to have to just pick a person out of thin air when we get to that episode, and make it make sense, or everyone's going to find out," Sackhoff said.
Plugging ears now! Don't want to hear that something so significant to the Galactica story arc could be decided on a whim at a writers meeting!
"It's not that casual, and you want to believe that something so great was contrived, that they meant to do it," Sackhoff said. "But I think that sometimes the things that are so great in life are by accident."
CBC to cut Calgary Newsworld unit, hire more Alberta reporters
CBC News is shutting down the Calgary unit of its 24-hour Newsworld television service as of the end of May, and introducing additional positions for newsgathering, the public broadcaster said Thursday.
Staff in Calgary were told that the decision will result in 32 redundancies.
However, 25 new positions largely reporters, camera operators and other field production posts will be created in Calgary and Edmonton as part of an ongoing attempt by CBC News to boost newsgathering and local coverage by putting more "feet on the street."
The two hours of programming Calgary's Newsworld unit produced each weekday will be shifted to the Toronto bureau.
"We came to the position for reasons of organization and technology. Doing the couple of hours of Newsworld out in Alberta didn't make any sense any longer. We could do it more efficiently or effectively in Toronto, where we do the other hours," CBC News publisher John Cruickshank said Thursday afternoon.
"What we're centralizing is the production piece and the advantage we get is to decentralize the newsgathering. That's the front lines of the business," he said.
"We have to spend taxpayers' money wisely and efficiently. We won't retreat from seeking efficiencies and making sure that the investment gets made in great reporting."
According to Cruickshank, the new jobs will be "multimedia," with individuals hired into television positions, "but we'll be looking for people who can file for CBCNews.ca" as well.
Cruickshank said he expects the new jobs will result in Alberta being better represented across all media lines of CBC News.
"This is really going to increase the ability to get Alberta news on Newsworld, on [CBCNews.ca] and certainly improve the local shows," he said, adding that the new positions will put "more people in the field in Alberta for The National as well."
Watchdog criticizes cuts
However, Thursday's announcement was criticized as another step "in a long-term trend towards a centralization of CBC's operations in Toronto" by the group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.
"It moves CBC into a model of a metropolis, Toronto, and a hinterland, the rest of Canada," Ian Morrison, spokesman for the Canadian content watchdog, told CBC News.
While Morrison commended the creation of the new positions to tell Alberta stories, "that is at a grassroots reporting level, not at a resource-allocation, editorial decision-making level," he said.
"I think it would be a great idea to reduce the bureaucratic over-burden, particularly at senior management levels within the broadcast centre in Toronto, and to deploy such resources to use Mr. Cruickshank's words for grassroots, people on the street."
New Kids on the Block to Reunite
BOSTON - They may be pushing 40, but the New Kids are returning to the block. The Boston boy band New Kids on the Block, which sold 70 million albums in the 1980s and early 1990s, has reunited and plans to release a new album and go on tour. The reunion comes 20 years after the release of the group's multi-platinum album, "Hanging Tough."
The group released a new photo Wednesday and reportedly will appear on the Today show Friday morning the same time an unmarked countdown clock on http://www.nkotb.com ends.
"The fan response to this has been incredible," band member Donnie Wahlberg told the Boston Herald.
Wahlberg said he was convinced to get back together with his former bandmates Joey McIntyre, brothers Jordan and Jonathan Knight and Danny Wood when they decided to record new music. Wahlberg said he wrote 80 percent of the new material with McIntyre and Jordan Knight.
"I had no interest going out on a nostalgia tour and singing the same material," said Wahlberg, 38.
But he added, "We absolutely will do the old songs for sure."
Producer Maurice Starr formed the group in Boston in the 1980s, hoping to recreate the success he had with another teen group from the city, New Edition.
At the height of their popularity, New Kids sold out world tours, marketed millions of dollars in merchandise and spawned a Saturday morning cartoon.
The group disbanded in 1994. Wahlberg has acted on television and in movies, while Jordan Knight, McIntyre and Wood released solo albums. Jonathan Knight became a real estate developer.
Seinfeld unhurt after Hamptons car wreck
EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. - Jerry Seinfeld was in a harrowing rollover wreck but was unhurt after the brakes on one of his vintage cars failed.
Seinfeld was driving alone when the brakes on his 1967 Fiat BTM stopped working Saturday evening, East Hampton Town Police Chief Todd Sarris told the New York Post. Seinfeld tried the emergency brake, to no avail, and then swerved to keep the car from careering into an intersection, Sarris said.
The two-door sedan flipped over and came to a stop just yards from the highway, Sarris said, adding that the comic's maneuver "probably avoided a very serious accident."
The wreck was attributed to mechanical failure, and no summonses were issued, Sarris said. Seinfeld, 53, did not require medical attention and returned to his East Hampton home.
"He was a little shocked when he walked in and it started to dawn on him what happened," his wife, Jessica, told the Post.
The comedian took the crash in snide.
"Because I know there are kids out there, I want to make sure they all know that driving without braking is not something I recommend, unless you have professional clown training or a comedy background, as I do," the Post quoted him as saying. "It is not something I plan to make a habit of."
The sitcom star, who co-wrote, co-produced and starred in last year's animated "Bee Movie," is also an auto aficionado. He told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in November that his favorite car in his collection is a 1955 Porsche Spyder.