'Battlestar Galactica' & 'Caprica' come to Paley Fest with Patron

When you start off a Paley Fest event with two of the panelists taking shots of tequila and the moderator joining in, you know it's going to be an interesting night.

That's what went down when "Battlestar Galactica" and "Caprica" were honored Monday night with a screening of the latter's pilot episode. Executive producers Ron Moore and David Eick were the people knocking back the alcohol, because as Eick explained, it was sort of a tradition. Before they screened the "BSG" miniseries for its first audience, they were so nervous that they decided to drink a bit. So Eick felt it was only appropriate to toast "Caprica" in the same way and hope for similar success.

After the screening of "Caprica" and the trailer for the new "BSG" TV movie, "The Plan," the panel -- which consisted of Moore, Eick, executive producer Jane Espenson, "BSG" stars Grace Park and Tricia Helfer and "Caprica" stars Paula Malcomson, Eric Stoltz, Esai Morales, Alessandra Torressani and Magda Apanowicz -- settled in to get grilled by moderator and self-proclaimed uber-fan, Seth Green.

Now, the new "BSG" telefilm is titled "The Plan" and, if you were a regular viewer of the "BSG" series, you'll remember that its title sequence ended with the phrase "and they have a plan" ...so Seth wasted no time in asking what the hell "the plan" is. Turns out, nothing really. Initially, Ron didn't even want those words in the sequence. When it was pitched to him, his reaction was "there is no f&$#ing plan!" But now that the show is over, and the new TV movie  -- which is all about the Cylons -- bears this particular name, Ron admitted there's more than a little irony there.

Seth also wanted to know if the dying leader that was prophesized to lead humanity to Earth was in fact Galactica itself. "I always thought [the dying leader] was Roslin," Ron said, but he did acknowledge that there were other explanations that could fit into the prophecy just as well. He also shared that Mary McDonnell (President Roslin) was told from the start of the series that Roslin would die before she reached Earth. However, at the last minute, the writers decided they wanted Roslin to make it to the promised land before she passed on. Good choice, no?

And what about Starbuck? Her vanishing act in the series finale upset a lot of fans and left everyone unsure of what exactly happened. Seth asked the writers if we should assume that she literally disappeared into thin air... or was she just hiding in the grass? While Jane joked that it was fairly tall grass, the consensus seemed to be that she had simply vanished.

I grabbed a little one-on-one time with Ron before the panel and grilled him for more info on the issue. He told me he had no regrets about how Starbuck's arc ended: "I gave it a lot of thought and I was satisfied with it. The choice to leave it somewhat ambiguous [was intentional]. To say that she had died a literal death, was resurrected, came back, fulfilled a function and then left, and the reasons why and exactly who and what she was beyond that [was too much]. I just thought it was less interesting every time we went down the road to give it definition and it became more interesting if we left it open-ended."

So was this the plan all along for Kara Thrace? Ron tells me no: "It was something that developed organically over the course of the series as we had gone through the different stories and started finding different elements of her character and, you know, we laid in the [comments] about her having a destiny in the first season and that was the marker that started us down this road."

Of course, Starbuck wasn't the only heavenly-type character on the show. Ron told the fans that during the first year of the show, he was convinced Six was in Baltar's head because of the guilt he had over causing the destruction of humanity, but as the show progressed, so did his thoughts on what exactly Head Six was. Tricia admitted she was confused about what Head Six was until she watched the series finale. The audience loved that. It got a big laugh.

As for "Caprica," they aren't set to start filming the series until July, but the writers and actors were able to share some scoop with the fans: "Caprica" will be more of a serialized show than "BSG" and it will lose the action-adventure element, since it's years before the Cylons become a real threat. The main drive for this show will be the advancement and evolution of artificial intelligence. As of now, the Adamas will be the only "BSG" people represented on the series, but Ron did offer "never say never" regarding ancestors of other familiar faces popping up in the future. However, for now, he wants to focus on "Caprica" establishing its own identity apart from "BSG."

What do you think? Do you plan to catch "Caprica"?

My first impression of it? Ehh. I'll have to give it time and get back to you...

--Reporting by Marisa Roffman