Weekend wrap, part two

Let's start with the GDD folks.

Brian Markinson has joined Twitter. Go follow him. He will be back on The Killing tomorrow (9 pm, AMC), and he says he is done filming Continuum for the season. Spoiler TV has tons of info about the show here. The two-hour pilot airs on Showcase on May 27.

Two new episodes of 10,000 Days with Peter Wingfield have been released. You can watch them on Facebook or at 10kdays.tv.

Duke with Kendall Cross premieres on the Hallmark channel tonight at 8 pm and airs again at 10 pm. Here is the synopsis:

Marine Sergeant Terry Pulaski, a once proud man, is now a broken shell of himself having returned from Iraq with both PTSD and a disabling injury. Terry struggles to be a good father and husband, but his challenges leave him feeling like a burden to his wife and daughter. With his dog, Duke, in tow, he decides to leave his family behind. Years later, a homeless Terry needs help for an aging and ill Duke, so he reaches out for help at a nearby veterinary clinic. Will Duke be able to help Terry reach out again to try and reconcile with his estranged daughter?

Michael Taylor on NDB Radio (podcast)

Caprica writer/producer Michael Taylor was on NDB Radio yesterday and the podcast is now up on BlogTalkRadio.com. It's about an hour long and if you're a fan of Deep Space Nine, Battlestar Galactica or Caprica, you'll want to give it a listen. He talked about two of his episodes of DS9 ("The Visitor" & "In the Pale Moonlight"), Razor, Admiral Cain, the hybrid and his prophecy, and a bunch of other stuff.

He didn't give out any spoilers for Caprica 1.5, but did say that there will be more action & suspense and that issues related to living in the virtual world as opposed to the real one will be explored a lot more than in the first nine episodes. (There's a quality teaser if there ever was one.)   

Not to forget, about 10 minutes into the podcast, there is the first real bit of information about the other Battlestar spinoff, which (if it happens) will take place between the two shows. Good news: Taylor wrote the outline. For details, head over to NDB Radio.

Jane Espenson talks about Caprica

Jane Espenson talked to io9.com about Dollhouse, the Buffy comic book, Battlestar webisodes, and Caprica. The interview is here.

Is there any chance you could just do a funny horror/science fiction comic every month? In your spare time? It seems like all your writing projects lately are more serious.

Spare time is starting to seem like something I imagined once. But when you see my episode of Dollhouse, I think you'll see that there's still some funny going on. And — you heard it here first — Caprica is absolutely going to have moments that will benefit from a very light touch.

Congrats on becoming the showrunner at Caprica. Do you get a lot of input in crafting the first-season character arcs in Caprica, as the showrunner? How much of that stuff was already in place when you came on board?

I'm pleased to say that I will have a lot of input in crafting season one of Caprica. Ron is still the ultimate king of us, and I hope that doesn't change, but I will be getting a lot of my ideas in there. We also have an amazing staff — Michael Taylor, John Zinman and Patrick Massett, Kath Lingenfelter, Matt Roberts and Ryan Mottesheard — and they will be contributing mightily.

The thing that intrigues me most about Caprica, from what I've read so far, is the idea that these super-powerful robots, the Cylons, actually come out of human grief. Does this give you the chance to look at the Cylons in a whole new light?

Oh, yes, of course. Caprica is going to shed light on the Cylons, of course, but also on the history and culture and beliefs and prejudices and lives of the human colonists. This is great rich material. All that, plus strong characters and at least ten flavors of conflict — it's the coolest thing ever.

The Sci Fi Channel and Ronald D. Moore have both talked about the hope that Caprica will reach more female viewers. Do you feel a lot of pressure to make it more female-friendly? Or, conversely, does that open up opportunities to do different types of stories?

Huh. I like this question. It has never occurred to me that I would write different types of stories to attract women viewers. Maybe there is some truth to the idea that war stories traditionally held less appeal for women since it wasn't a real-life arena in which women were well-represented, but even that has to be changing, don't you think? Isn't a good story pretty universal? At any rate, the stories on Caprica are simply going to kick ass and I certainly expect some of that ass to be female.