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Writer's Commentary – Peter David Talks the Finale of Battlestar Galactica vs Battlestar Galactica

Published Wed, 20 Jun 2018 18:30:27 -0500

Dynamite has sent over a writer's commentary from Peter David on Battlestar Galactica Vs. Battlestar Galactica #6, the grand finale of the series. It comes with by Adam "Mojo" Lebowitz and Roberto Castro. Interiors by Edu Menna.

Page 1:
Kali does the typical villain thing here. She bad mouths humanity as a whole—and indeed does make some valid points—while acting as if she had nothing to do with maneuvering the two BSGs to be engaged in violent warfare. What she's unaware of, though, is that not everything may be as it seems, but the more experienced warriors on the Pegasus are starting to realize that something is up.

Pages 2-7:
I loved writing this scene. See, I knew that in a previous issue, fans were going to hate the fact that where I left it, the two Adamas would seemingly have been fooled by Kali's machinations. Which they were, for maybe sixty seconds. And then they both come to realize (well, Gen one Adama is convinced) that something isn't right and they come together to thwart whatever it is that Kali is up to. So I'm expecting that a lot of readers are going to be sighing in relief that I didn't paint our guys to be quite as gullible as all that. In BSG, nothing is what it seems. We suddenly have our explanation of the Omega Protocol, and we can now reread the dialogue of the Vipers' encounter for what it is: Everyone has come to realize that this whole thing is a scam. They have to make it look good while waiting for the Cylons to make their move.

Pages 9-10:
Which it takes Kali about five seconds to figure out. And we also see a cutaway scene where we flashback all the way to a scene unseen back in issue #1 where Count Iblis exerted his influence on Commander Cain, thus underscoring that his mind has not been its own since issue #1. It's also a hint that Cain might be beginning to shake off the command and that he has to remember its first application to him to continue to function under it.

Pages 11-13:
Sheba is an extremely bright woman. She knows that something is wrong with her father; she knows him better than anyone. She may have been suspicious initially, but she was willing to give Kali the benefit of the doubt. But when her father had her tossed in the brig, she knew something was wrong, and now that they're in a firefight with the two Galacticas for zero reason, she's determined to discover exactly what it is. But apparently someone (guess who) is not going to tolerate her asking questions.

Page 14:
Meanwhile the other part of the Cylon scheme is rolling forward, because Kali doesn't have any means of getting word to them. They're anticipating landing in the middle of a battle where everyone was busy fighting each other and reduced the Viper fleet numbers considerably. They don't know that both BSGs are at full Viper strength and have been waiting for them. This is not going to go how the Cylons are expecting it to.

Pages 15-17:
I honestly hated killing off Sheba. But for the story to work, I had to have Cain confronted with some sort of trauma deep enough that would penetrate Iblis's mental control and free his mind. At first I considered having it be his first officer, but that made no sense; I'd only introduced the character in issue #1 and I didn't feel the fans would buy into his death so profoundly affecting Cain. But it if was Sheba, yes, the readers would totally accept it hitting Cain so hard that it would snap the mind control. When you're blind with rage, all you want to do is destroy everyone and everything that wound up making you that way, and Kali was target #1.

Pages 18-19:
I also thought it would be amusing if Iblis is standing there declaring energy weapons won't work on him and Cain, taking his word for it, flat out belts him. And THAT works. That just made sense to me for some reason.

Pages 20-22:
Cain's last decision. Griefstricken over the loss of his daughter, he does the only thing he can think of to make up for his decisions that caused her death, even though he wasn't in his right mind when he made them. I know that Cain and Sheba were both popular characters, and I felt that killing them off would ultimately give more weight to the events that occurred in this story rather than just having them meet, engage, have an interesting adventure and then go back to normal without anything of permanence happening to them.

Pages 23-24:
Always a good place to wrap up a war story: in the local pub drinking to the people you encountered. And as I was writing this, I realized I totally forgot to show what happened to Count Baltar. So he got left behind, sitting in the pub, recalling how he got dragged into this whole thing in the first place and very likely regretting it from the get-go. And as he drinks his "best wishes" to Iblis, we cut to him and show that blowing up a basestar isn't enough to kill him.

Will there be another series? Well, that's up to you guys.

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