Time Travel

"Battlestar" has to find a way to capture an audience that has never matched its acclaim. The Peabody- and Emmy-wining series, often called the best-written show on television, returns on Jan. 16 with the first of its final 10 episodes. A two-hour TV movie directed by star Edward James Olmos will follow that and then, in 2010, the prequel series "Caprica" will continue the tale of humans and Cylons. Unlike "Galactica," that new series will not have a ragtag fleet of survivors fleeing the Cylons in space -- it begins its story before the massive attack that nearly wipes out the humans, which means Moore will have to find a way to replace the inherent urgency of the current series.

Orci, the "Trek" film writer, said that "Star Wars," with the presence of Lucas, has largely stayed the same since the 1970s, while "Battlestar," with the arrival of Moore and the reboot of 2004, could hardly be more dramatically different from the less-nuanced 1970s series starring Lorne Greene. "We're trying to do something in the middle, something that holds on to everything that makes 'Star Trek' what it is but also take it into a new place. One thing about the original show was its inherent optimism, and we very much wanted that in this movie. This is a future you would want to live in. And we hope it's a future people want to watch."

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geoff.boucher@latimes.com