By Your Command Vol 2 (“Battlestar Galactica” Guide)

‘Grab your gun and bring in the cat … Boom, boom, boom!’

Battlestar Galactica was one of the most successful telefantasy revivals of the early 2000s, gaining the approval of high-profile critics and a host of devoted fans, and continuing to inspire discussion and debate long after its final episode aired. In this book, Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore use behind-the-scenes production material and in-depth analyses of screened episodes and draft scripts to trace the complete history of the reimagined series. They explore how it updated concepts introduced in the original 1978 series to present a television drama that interweaves political and religious themes into the traditional space-opera format in a way that is highly relevant to the 21st Century viewer.

Like the original series, reimagined Battlestar Galactica poses difficult questions about the legitimacy of war, the value of love, the perils of leadership and, ultimately, what it means to be human.

With a foreword by Matthew Bennett, who played Aaron Doral, Cylon Number Five, in the series.

‘”By Your Command Volume 2″ bigger than Volume 1 is understandable because the two other series only ran one season each, while the reboot was 4. So, it stands to reason there would be more to cover. Stevens and Moore delve into the whole new universe including the prequel Caprica, with many different perspectives that should help anyone understand this updated adaptation. Even though the original and reboot are similar there were too many differences for me to ever enjoy the most recent telling of Battlestar Galactica. Caprica is a bit different and I thank the authors for their input that changed my perspective on that show “By Your Command Volume 2” is filled with a wealth of information that unlike my view, may change other’s opinion of this series.’ Gary Roen, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

672pp. A5-format paperback book – AVAILABLE IF ORDERED DIRECT FROM TELOS
ISBN: 978-1-84583-061-8
Published 6 February 2015

620pp. 6×9-format paperback book – AVAILABLE IF ORDERED FROM AMAZON
ISBN: 978-1-84583-922-2
Published 13 December 2015

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Alan Stevens has written, edited and developed numerous publications on telefantasy series, including Doctor Who, Blake’s 7 and The Prisoner. He is also co-author of the Telos books Fall Out: The Unofficial and Unauthorised guide to The Prisoner and By Your Command: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Battlestar Galactica Volumes 1 and 2. Since the early 1990s, he has produced a number of documentaries, serials and dramas for radio and independent audio release, including the Blake’s 7/Doctor Who spin-off series Kaldor City and the Gothic horror time-travelling adventure Faction Paradox. He is currently based in the South East of England, and runs his own audio production company, Magic Bullet Productions (kaldorcity.com).

Fiona Moore was born and raised in Toronto, but has lived in the UK since 1997. She has a doctorate in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford, and is currently Senior Lecturer in International Human Resource Management at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has written non-fiction on a wide variety of subjects, from the identities of Taiwanese businesspeople to the culture of drag queens, and is also co-author of the Telos books Fall Out: The Unofficial and Unauthorised guide to The Prisoner and By Your Command: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Battlestar Galactica Volumes 1 and 2. Her fiction and poetry have been published in, among others, Asimov, Interzone and Dark Horizons.