A Battlestar Galactica book update, a Spartacus revival & a Chicago sitrep

Hello everyone!  

Without a doubt, the biggest joy of this otherwise difficult year has been talking to people who worked on Battlestar Galactica, the subject of my next book (which I announced at the Creation BSG convention in September). 

Great works of art are gifts that keep on giving, and though I’ve watched and written about the show for decades, there are still new things I discover on each rewatch. In deep conversations with those who made the revived version of the show in the early aughts, I’ve likewise encountered revelations about how Battlestar Galactica was made, insights and information that has frequently rocked my world. I can’t wait to share the wild, thoughtful and fascinating things I’ve discovered with you. 

You’ll get that deep dive into the show’s creative process when the book comes out in 2028 (and in the run-up to publication, because I already know I’ll have a ton of cool information that won’t fit into the book). But for now, as a little treat, here’s a list of actors I spoke to this year for the book: Jamie Bamber, James Callis, Tricia Helfer, Alessandro Juliani, Lucy Lawless, Kandyse McClure, Mary McDonnell, Kerry Norton, Edward James Olmos, Grace Park, Tahmoh Penikett, Rehka Sharma, Mark Sheppard, Michael Trucco and Kate Vernon.

I’ve done extensive interviews with Ron Moore, David Eick, Michael Rymer, Bear McCreary and a large array of executives, department heads, writers, editors and others who worked on the show in various capacities. I’ve also interviewed folks inside and outside the entertainment industry who, in one way or another, can shed light on how the show got made, what was revolutionary about it and why was not just important then but relevant now. 

I’ll be doing more interviews next year and drawing from my 2003-2009 coverage of the show when appropriate, of course. But having these chats this year was a blast. Making BSG was a special experience for pretty much everyone I’ve talked to, and they have gone above and beyond to make time to talk to me, and I’m grateful. 

Of course, because I live in Chicago and the show’s creative personnel live and work all over the world, I’m constantly dealing with time-zone shenanigans. When I talked to Lucy Lawless, for example, it was Tuesday for her in New Zealand, but it was Monday for me in Chicago. I don’t trust these kinds of time machinations! Very suspect timey-wimey trickery is afoot, if you ask me.

That said, 2025 was hard in a lot of ways, but I have this going for me: Lucy Lawless called me from the future!

Some other news on the book front: I was selected for a MacDowell Fellowship. For about a month this winter, I’ll be dropping off the grid (and off social media, if all goes to plan) in order to hole up at MacDowell in New Hampshire, where I will go full bore on writing my Battlestar book. I’ve penned bits and pieces during the last year or so, but I am tremendously excited to plunge in to 24/7 writer-gremlin mode. They make food for you — lunch is delivered in little baskets — and you are mostly left alone to commune with your muse. I cannot frakking wait! 

In any case, all praise to the MacDowell selection committee, who looked at my application, which more or less said, “I would like to come to your esteemed artistic institution and write about murder robots” and they replied, “Frak yeah!” That’s not exactly how the acceptance letter was worded, but I am hoping that’s what the internal discussions were like.

Next item of business: If you signed up for my newsletter after reading my review of Spartacus: House of Ashur on Alan Sepinwall’s site, What’s Alan Watching, welcome (and thank you)! If you haven’t read that generally positive piece on the Spartacus spinoff, check it out. I really enjoyed writing for Alan, and I expect my Employee of the Month placard to arrive any day now. 

A Sparty Down tidbit: I was asked to moderate a Spartacus panel at the Museum of Modern Art in 2013, and that was a blast. The PR team for Starz said they'd arranged a dinner thing after the event, and I braced myself for extremely mid pasta somewhere near Times Square.

Ever been not just pleasantly surprised, but ridiculously shocked in a nearly explosive manner?

That was me, when the cast and I were bundled into a MoMA freight elevator and taken up a couple floors, where a feast in the museum's private dining room had been prepared for us. Prior to the multi-course meal, there was Champagne flowing freely as everyone mingled in the galleries. Starz had rented an entire floor of MoMA, where I wandered around talking about post-Modernist art with the lovely Peter Mensah, one of the actors from the show. Without question, it was one of the most delightful nights of my career.

Lucy Lawless called me from the future, and in the past, Manu Bennett and I hung out near the Warhols. Gratitude!!

Another piece I am proud of: For Vanity Fair, I wrote about the Broadview ICE facility, which is just a few miles from my house. The Broadview ICE building isn't big; it's a squat, dismal square with boarded up windows and doors. And yet there are, at times, hundreds of people inside, reportedly held for days under inhumane conditions, without reliable access to working restrooms, food, showers, menstrual supplies, water, medical care, beds or legal representation.

I went to stand shoulder to shoulder with my fellow Chicagoans at Broadview many times this past fall, and this piece chronicles what it was like when I first began going. 

You know that scene in BSG’s third season, when people in balaclavas arrive to drag Laura Roslin away from her students at the New Caprica school? I had to pause that scene and take a few deep breaths during my recent re-watch, because scenes exactly like that have played out in Chicago for months (and they’re also playing out elsewhere in the country). There are too many examples of brutality to count. People who would do this would do anything. To anyone. 

At one point, myself and other Broadview protestors helped a young woman who was with a friend; they were trying to find out if the first woman’s fiance, who’d been taken by ICE that morning, was inside Broadview. Due to the manner in which he was grabbed, they were concerned about whether he was physically OK. I will never forget the sobs of that young woman. I will never forget how a bunch of strangers tried to help her (we were able to confirm that he was inside and would be deported soon). 

I will never forget seeing the white zipties around the wrists of people — our neighbors — who were in the rented ICE/BP vans and buses that drove by us and into that grim facility. I will never forget the cloudy November Saturday when clergy and citizens walked down Beach Street and tried to stand (and sing and dance) closer to the ICE building. Many, many cops with gas masks and various weapons blocked our way. I didn’t put on my gas mask in time, and I inhaled the thick cloud that erupted when pepper balls were launched by cops. I couldn’t breathe right for two days. 

People I know, on the streets of their neighborhoods and at Broadview, have been teargassed, subjected to flashbangs, and hit with pepper balls and other “less lethal” rounds. People in Little Village organized a rally and march that was one of the most energizing events I've ever attended. At one point I was protesting next to a gigantic frog while Public Enemy and Kendrick Lamar played. I saw neighbors at Broadview and met brilliant, funny, interesting new people. After hundreds of people attended a moving Mass outside Broadview, I put a marigold on a fence that had become an improvised memorial, and I cried.

So many things happened there; all the things. Every time I try to write about the surreal, heartbreaking, stupid, amazing and brutal things I witnessed this fall, floods of words come out but they don’t capture what I want to say. Maybe I should just let these these pictures do the talking.

Why did I keep going to Broadview? Why are people fighting back and organizing all over the country? Lots of reasons, of course, but this is a unifying one: Most people don't want this. They don't want masked men tackling hardworking people, tossing them into unmarked cars and disappearing them. They don't want armed men going room to room in a school and dragging a terrified teacher out in front of young children. They don't want a single father being shot and killed after dropping his toddler at child care. They don't want federal agents deploying teargas 59 times in two disorienting and scary months.

At Broadview, being around my fellow Chicagoans, in all their raucous, chaotic, angry, helpful, creative glory, was therapeutic. The people who showed up for their neighbors on the streets, who took Know Your Rights and ICE documentation trainings, who assembled whistle kits and formed neighborhood patrols, who came to Broadview — and that last group is well described here — they came from all walks of life and protested in all kinds of ways. However different we may have been in some respects, they felt how I felt, and to be around them was a relief. 

For more eloquent thoughts on these kinds of topics, I’ll point you to Kelly Hayes’ Organizing My Thoughts, which has been a vital resource for some time, but especially this year (this post in particular is a great example of why it’s essential reading). Read Dan Sinker on what it was like this fall and how to help with whistle kits. Subscribing to both Kelly and Dan’s newsletters is a good idea. Bonus shoutout to online friend Emily, who is coordinating the making & delivery of thousands of whistles. Another shoutout to the great Bree Bridges, who sent me a ton of whistles and is sending more to folks all over all the nation. More whistle resources are here and here. 

It might seem like a swerve to cite Mr. Rogers here, but Fred Rogers was an incredible person, and the Catholic and Buddhist parts of me both think he was a saint. Anyway, he said “Look for the helpers,” and the day I was coughing and choking on chemical irritants launched by agents of the state, and then my car was towed, strangers helped me. When federal agents fanned out all over the city and suburbs to terrorize people just going about their lives, people came out of their houses, sometimes in their pajamas, and told them to fuck off. Legions of Chicagoans stood outside schools every day, so that kids could think only about homework and recess and Halloween costumes, and not whether their parents would be snatched up and never seen again. 

Chicago-area journalists (the Chicago Tribune, Sun-Times and other local publications, but also indie press like The Triibe, Unraveled Press, South Side Weekly and Block Club Chicago) did spectacular jobs in frequently chaotic and difficult situations. (Please support local, independent media if you can – there's a great list here.) Whistle kit-making parties were held at bars and restaurants that had little business because many people were terrified to leave their homes. At Broadview, when the impromptu and well-stocked resource table was torn down by local cops, some of the younger protestors went through what the cops threw in a Dumpster, retrieved what could still be used, and set up a new table on a different corner. I fucking love those kids.

Regular people were the helpers, and it helped. And it’s not over but, many people in many places are coming together to do what they can, to share the tactics that worked, to bolster, encourage and spell each other. To quote author, political philosopher and professor Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, I do not regret to inform you that we are going to win. 

A few Mo’ things:

• Alice Wong is gone, and she was one of my favorite people, and I will continue to aspire to be like her. Her books Disability Visibility and Year of the Tiger are wonderful.
• I’m on the board of the survivor nonprofit Callisto, and if you could see your way clear to tossing them some money, that would be greatly appreciated. 
• Also, I’m a member of Authors Against Book Bans, which you can now donate to and buy merch from. 
• Food banks in your area can use donations of all kinds, especially cash, but if you can't afford that, some food banks need folks to sort and pick up food and do things like that. Here's a national directory of food banks. Locally, The Greater Chicago Food Depository and the Westchester Food Pantry (just a couple miles from Broadview) are good organizations.
• If you want to give my first book, Burn It Down, as a gift (or recommend that your library acquire it), that would be swell. 
• Last but definitely not least: Local nonprofits ICIRR and Pilsen Community Arts House have done incredible work on many fronts this year, and if you can spare cash for them, that’d be wonderful. 

I am ending this year grateful. For my friends. For my family. For the people I met or reconnected with during Operation Midway Blitz. For getting to write about things I care about. For the perspective that history and good storytelling provides.

You see, when it comes to not just Battlestar Galactica but life, when you look at the long arc of history, yes, all these things have happened before. 

But we all have choices to make. And depending on what we do and who we choose to stand with, the worst things don’t have to happen again. 

Love you. Stay safe. See you on the other side.