So the secret to getting original "Battlestar Galactica" creator Glen Larson to open up about the new SciFi Channel series ... was to ask him about "frak"?
After a Peabody, several Emmy nominations (and even a win), and inclusion on lists celebrating the best in television, Larson -- who first brought "Battlestar" to the screen in 1978 on ABC and who said he's not a big fan of the current series -- finally has something to say about the series developed by Ronald D. Moore.
"Our point was to whenever possible make it a departure, like you're visiting somewhere else," Larson told the Associated Press about his original series. That means removing a lot of what would be considered real, like modern Earth-like clothes, vehicles, and even red fire extinguishers.
"And we did coin certain phrases for use in expletive situations, but we tried to carry that over into a lot of other stuff, even push brooms and the coin of the realm."
The AP was exploring how the expletive substitute "frak" made its way into popular culture beyond the show, appearing everywhere like "Scrubs," "Gossip Girl" and even "The Office." Larson originally developed "frack" -- the "C" was removed later by Moore and his team to make it a true four-letter word -- as well as other words like "feldergarb" and "yahrens" to help remind audiences that while they were watching humans, they were still quite alien to what we know society to be like.
However, in the new series, realism was necessary, and "frak" was the only word that survived the original. Otherwise, the vocabulary from the likes of Adm. William Adama and President Laura Roslin is almost exactly like that of your next door neighbor.
Michael Angeli, an Emmy-nominated writer and co-executive producer for the series, says he likes using the word in his scrips.
"It's a great way to do something naughty and get away with it," he said. "One of the things that television shows do constantly is they battle with Standards and Practices over what can be seen and what can't be seen, what can be said and what can't be said. A lot of our characters are soldiers. That whole sort of view and that subculture, that's how they speak. They're rough and tumble, and they're bawdy ... and they swear."
"Battlestar Galactica" is expected to return with its last batch of episodes on SciFi Channel in early 2009.
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Michael Hinman is the founder and site coordinator for Airlock Alpha and the entire BlipNetwork. He owns Quantum Global Media Inc., the parent corporation of the BlipNetwork. He's a print journalist by day, and lives in Tampa, Fla.
