"Are you going to destroy Sharon and Helo's relationship or give it a stronger foundation? From my POV, Sharon's reactions and actions are consistent with the Sharon we met on Caprica. I'm not particularly mushy, but this very human story is one of the primary reasons I watch the show. That this Sharon might have PPD and PTSS is reasonable and I hope that when we see her in the Season three she will be healed and moving foward with her life outside the cage. This fan doesn't care how she gets out of the cage as long as she does. "

Their relationship will continue to grow and evolve. That's not to say it won't have the ups and downs of any relationship, but we're not looking to destroy it. The issue of the cage, what she's been doing in it, and what her future is will be dealt with in the first couple of episodes.

"Are you planning a Sharon swap? Will you swap AdorablyCylonCagedSharon with DownloadedMosesBoomer in terms of which Sharon will be onboard Galactica for the duration of the series? I pray you don't sacrifice one Sharon for another. I've never confused the two versions of Sharon and I believe you and your writing staff can make room for them both of them. "

I'm happy with the fact that we crossed each Sharon over into the other world and I'm not planning to reswap them again. There's also no plan at the moment to destory either one.

"In the season two finale, before it was revealed that Sharon didn't fess up about Cavel, was Brother Cavel going to reveal himself as a Cylon? I ask because he said something akin to the Cylons seeking greener pastures. It's unlikely he'd say he was a Cylon in the hanger bay, but I wonder if he was going to fess up in private. Was he truly there to deliver the message?"

He was planning to reveal himself and deliver a message. Whether there was more to his plan than that is speculative at this point, and anything's possible, but our feeling is that was his primary function.

"Are there no animals seen on the show on purpose? (I'm guessing its to avoid weird "alien" cats with three eyes like on Trek episodes.) So far I've only seen rats (Helo with Sharon) and snakes (in a Roslin hallucination)."

We hadn't gotten around to showing them in prior episodes, but we have talked about dogs, cats, and chickens on the show and one would imagine that they'd be very familiar looking without additional goofy prosthetics. In the first couple eps of season three, there will be at least one animal featured in a subplot.

"Why are the home worlds other than Caprica not really mentioned? Was there one planet per tribe?"

It's just a factor of Caprica having had the capital city of the Twelve Colonies. That put Laura there in the miniseries and it was natural to have Baltar there as well so as to keep the confusion factor to a minimum for the audience rather than trying to establish and identify more than one planet. Same goes for the reason Helo & Sharon put down there in the mini. So from that point forward, Caprica sort of becomes the default planet to reference and deal with. We have talked about Saggitaron and Gemenon and sketched out the particulars of their cultures, but we just haven't done a lot more with the rest of them, which is unfortunate.

"Why don't Cylon raiders fire conventional missiles anymore?"

That's a good question and Gary Hutzel brought this up himself. I think it's something we just kinda stopped thinking about as we were working on the dogfight seqeunces, because they were already so complex that adding yet another layer on top seemed overwhelming. However, I agree that it's something we've established and should try to reintegrate into the show again.

"Ron, in Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie) it says:
Quote:
"The last thing a trooper hears before a drop (maybe the last word he ever hears) is a woman's voice, wishing him luck. If you don't think this is important, you've probably resigned from the human race." --Starship Troopers, p. 161
Alot of scifi works follow this convention (Aliens, Halo, etc.) I've realized that both of the Raptor transport pilots on the show, first Boomer and later Racetrack, are female. Was this a conscious choice, to follow the ST quote? Do you agree with it?

I don't recall that quote -- although I read "Starship Troopers" a long time ago. It's coincidental that Racetrack & Boomer were women, and I never really thought of the Raptor as a transport, I usually thought of it as analogous to the Navy's EA-6 Prowler (a variant of the A-6 Intruder popularized in "Flight of the Intruder"). Dualla, however is the one who communicates most often with the pilots and I actually made her a woman because she was filling the role of another woman in the original BSG series who used to man the communication system on their bridge. That character was called "Rigel" but I didn't think that name worked in the remake, so I gave her the name of Dualla.

(As a side note, Roddenberry made a similar decision on the original "Star Trek" series when he made the computer voice a woman -- I think there's an anecdote in Stephen Whitfield's "The Making of Star Trek" where they did some research about the US Air Force deciding that pilots listened to or responded better to a female voice.)

"What annoyed me a little last season was the civilian population complaining about this and that, pressuring the government to take certain actions. You would think that in such desperate times of war, when the entire human race (or at least what's known of it) has been reduced to a mere few thousand people, that the military would basically ignore the 'will of the people' and do things their way.

"I mean the civilians have Galactica to thank for their lives. They know they are screwed if Galactica leaves them. So why do they sometimes behave like whiney babies? You would think they would be willing to do just about anything other than jump out an airlock for the military.

"I hope next season Adama will have learned his lesson: the average person is stupid. Democracy gets people like George W. Bush elected. It is not a perfect system. In such desperate times, you really can't risk the people electing the wrong person for the job, the military should take absolute power (yet allow the people to govern their daily affairs, just as long as it doesn't conflict with military interests)."

I've talked about this before, but it's worth reiterating. Adama's deference to the democratic system is a fundamental idea in the series. These people have to make adult decisions for themselves and decide what kind of life they will have or not have as the case may be. Yes, they can be selfish and petty and make bad choices, but at least they will have done them through the democratic process and have no one to blame for their choices but themselves.

Who is Adama to take god-like control of the human race? Who appointed him to that position? And what makes him qualified to make those decisions? Consider the example of Admiral Cain -- she arrogated those kind of powers to herself and look at what happened. If they put themselves in the hands of the military and live under martial law, there's no check or balance in that system, no mechanism to rein in the officer who decides to go off the reservation and consider themselves above the law (at least in the Galactica scenario).

Laura Roslin is the legal president. Adama recognizes that as part of the covenant the professional military has always had with Colonial society: that they are the servants and protectors of the people, not their masters.

"First, a BZ: Speaking as a (so far) 15-year Navy veteran with two Air Wing/Carrier tours under my belt, your show is the most faithful and compelling depiction of life on an aircraft carrier that I have ever seen on television (and in most movies). Obviously the trappings are very different, but the characters, the things they do, and their motivations for doing those things ring true to my ears. (And one small thing I loved in the pilot: the 1MC announcements about personnel working EVA.) And this is totally separate from the fact that BSG is also one of the best dramas on television in recent memory. Bravo, sir!

"Question 1: I've read in online bios that a knee injury prevented you from entering the service on your NROTC scholarship. If this hadn't happened, what community would you have wanted to join? In other words, did you want to be a SWO-dog, an Airedale, or a Bubble-head? Or something else?"

First, thanks for the praise -- it's exceptionally meaningful coming from a member of the armed forces and I really appreciate it.

As to your question, my being dropped from NROTC was a combination of things -- first and foremost my college grades, which were to say the least, abysmal in my senior year at Cornell. I essentially imploded my senior year and flunked out with only a semester to go before graduation. Oddly enough, I passed all my Naval Science courses, but basically slept and partied and slept some more through that last semester. I also failed a physical around the same time because of my knee (which I'd injured playing football).

Technically speaking, I was a Marine Option Midshipman and heading for the Marine Corps. My father was a Marine and that was a big part of the reason I went that route, but in truth, I longed to be a naval officer. I kept thinking about switching options, but there were various obstacles to doing so, not the least of which were the daunting (to me) math requirements that the Navy program required and the Marine program did not. There were also bureaucratic obstacles in the way, but the bottom line was, I was in a delay & denial mode for a lot of my college days regarding my future and I never really acted on the desire to switch.

My first preference in either world would've been to fly, but my vision wasn't 20/20 at the time and I didn't qualify for pilot training. I thought about the Naval Flight Officer program, but the Marines seemed to be limiting those billets at the time (mid-80's) and there was way too much math involved for not getting to actually fly the plane. Intelligence Officer had definite appeal, but I remember them saying that specialty was off-limits for NROTC graduates for some reason. If I had actually made the switch to the Navy, I would've opted for Surface Warfare; there was something about serving on a warship at sea that appealed to me in a fundamental (if admittedly romantic) way. Assuming I'd continued into the Marines, I would've asked for infantry officer, like my father. There was something basic, something almost primal, about commanding a rifle platoon that felt like a good way to test myself and see what I was made of.

It's interesting that I've almost never mentioned the fact that I was a Marine Midshipman -- I almost invariably talk about being on track to join the Navy. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's a bit of wishing my way onto the path I thought I would've been happier on, or maybe it has to do with lingering embarassment over my washing out of the whole program, or who knows what.

The closest I've come to making peace with this part of my past came about three years after I'd washed out. I went back to Cornell to see friends at my fraternity (K.A.) and hang out a bit, and I found a old box with some of my junk still in it. Most of it was literally trash, but when I found my old shoulder boards, I felt like I'd done something wrong by leaving them there to tarnish in a box. Men had fought and died with that Eagle, Globe, and Anchor on their collars and it bothered me that I'd tossed mine aside so cavalierly. So I put them in an envelope with a note and left them at the door to the NROTC unit up at Barton Hall. I remember I wrote something like, these meant something to me once, and please return them to the unit and hope they find their way onto the shoulders of someone who deserved them instead of lying in a box of trash. I felt better somehow after doing it, felt like I'd maybe shut the door on that chapter of my life, but in truth, I don't think I've ever really made peace with the experience and I probably never will. There will always be a sense of something left undone, something incomplete, and certain questions about myself left unanswered.

"Question 2: In the podcast for "Captain's Hand," you mention that the Pegasus engineer was not used to leading outside of the engineering spaces and, well, it showed. But it seemed to me that he also exhibited some of the ship's company vs. Air Wing mentality that so plagues so many carriers, particularly in how he dealt with Starbuck. Were you are aware of that black shoe vs. brown shoe dynamic on a carrier, and if so did it influence the behaviors of this character?"

I was aware of the blackshoe vs. brownshoe dynamics both on carriers and in the wider communities, so I definitely carried that over into "Captain's Hand." Even in my limited personal experience, I could see the (mostly healthy) rivalries among the different specialties, espcially during my summer cruise aboard the USS W.S. Sims FF-1059.