'Battlestar Galactica: The Plan' is Finished !

Source: Airlock Alpha

It can take a long time to put together a "Battlestar Galactica" movie, especially one which writer Jane Espenson said took both her and director Edward James Olmos to go line by line through the script to make sure every aspect lined up with the backstory of the critically acclaimed SciFi Channel series.

Although work on the film began soon after the final season of "Battlestar Galactica" wrapped last year, Olmos told attendees at a Battlestar Galactica Orchestra concert Thursday night in San Diego and the next day at a San Diego Comic-Con panel that he just wrapped "Battlestar Galactica: The Plan" last week as the network gets ready for an October premiere.

"It took seven months to edit the picture," Olmos said. "It was 10 to 12 hours a day, and the hardest job I ever done. But I will say that you guys are going to love it. You will freak out, and will keep you busy for another three years."

Doing a backstory piece based on asides from characters is tough, especially with "The Plan" that covers the entire length of the series, as well as before the events first featured in the 2003 pilot.

"When we started to nail it and try to figure out what was the story, we knew they had a plan, they did this and did this, but didn't want it to feel like a clip show," Olmos said. "It felt really difficult."

Espenson, who previously did work on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dollhouse," and is the new showrunner for the "Battlestar" spinoff series "Caprica," said she was quite knowledgeable about "Battlestar Galactica," especially through some of her past writing stints on the show, but still needed some help to make sure every piece of history fit perfectly into the already established canon.

"There was a lot of watching episodes and of reading of old scripts," Espenson said. "You can read the scripts faster than watching the film, but then you have to wonder if the scene actually got shown, so I would have to go find it on film."

Another thing it allowed Espenson to do was look at different scenes already existing in the series, and take a look at what she could create on in scenes that were originally out of sight.

"We would look to see if we could continue a scene, like what happened on the other side of the door when [someone] walks into the room," Espenson said. "It's different from most writing where you let yourself go and relax so that you can hear these people talking into your ear. But for this, you can't let yourself go at all. You have to be analyzing."

"Battlestar Galactica: The Plan" debuts on DVD Oct. 27, and is expected to air on Syfy sometime in November.