VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Even if you never watched the 1970s version, widely viewed as a "Star Wars" rip-off, the title "Battlestar Galactica" can't help but conjure an impression of robots, lasers and a cult of viewers donning homemade space costumes.

	Edward James Olmos, left, Jamie Bamber, right, and Michael Hogan, background, in the July 22 episode. Click photo for larger image. Related articles TV Review: Fasten your seat belts for a turbulent second 'Battlestar Galactica' season The cast of characters

There's no doubt the new "Battlestar Galactica" will appeal to that niche audience, but to dismiss it as a show only for the convention-attending, action figure-collecting fanboys (and girls) is to give this dramatic series short shrift.

The show, which begins its second season Friday at 10 p.m. on Sci Fi Channel, has enough political intrigue to satisfy fans of "The West Wing," more religious allegory than any program on television, enough action and plot twists to rival "24" and the kind of character drama "Lost" fans crave.

The story of a band of human refugees in space fleeing genocide garnered a strong following in its first season, averaging more than 3 million viewers weekly, a high number for Sci Fi Channel and other cable networks with a similar reach.

But with its geeky title and memories of the original series' red-eyed walking-toaster robots, it will come as no surprise when the new "Galactica" is shut out of major Emmy categories when nominations are announced Thursday.

Even two-time Oscar nominee Mary McDonnell ("Dances with Wolves") had laughed at the prospect of starring in the show: "In our preconception of things, which is quite often incorrect, we didn't put my name and face with this pristine sci-fi world, 'Miss Earth Mother goes sci-fi.' It didn't quite mesh."

Then she read the script.

"From the outset, I found it extraordinarily relevant to the issues we're facing right now," McDonnell said, "in terms of war and, in particular, in terms of how we perceive ourselves in relation to the concept of enemy. I think we are in the process of desperately trying to evolve that into a more sophisticated understanding of what that means, and we're not doing a very good job of it. We're still pointing fingers."

Executive producer Ron Moore, the architect of this "re-imagined" "Galactica," was approached by executive producer David Eick with the idea of re-starting the franchise.

"It was close enough to 9/11 that when you're watching this pilot [for the original series] from the 1970s that deals with the almost complete annihilation of a race and a series about the survivors who run off into the night with enemies pursuing them relentlessly, you realize this is a show that could be done in a really interesting way today with thematic ties to the audience."

He said the goal was always to appeal beyond the core sci-fi audience. To that end, sidearms don't fire lasers, they shoot bullets. Characters communicate using telephones -- with cords!

"It's a drama first and the science fiction is second," Moore said. "It's just about a bunch of people in a fantastical situation."

Rather than flee from terrorists, the humans in "Galactica" are on the run from Cylons, robots created by humans long ago to do their heavy labor, to be their soldiers. Then the machines rebelled against their creators.

"The Cylons see themselves as the children of mankind, and on one level they look up to us and emulate us. They have made their bodies almost identical duplicates. They've taken the notion of spirituality and improved on it with one god instead of many," Moore said. "And part of their theology is that children cannot truly become adults until their parents are dead."

Click photo for larger image.

The humans in "Galactica" worship a pantheon rather than a single god. McDonnell's character, President Laura Roslin, is fighting cancer and experiences drug-induced hallucinations that make her believe she's doing the will of the gods.

"Galactica" challenges viewers by making the monotheistic Cylon (read: bad guy) religion more familiar, although Moore said there are no exact parallels.

"You can't really say the Cylons are Muslims; they don't really have those trappings at all," Moore said. "It's not really Christianity because there's no resurrection story. The humans are not really Americans or Christians or Hindus. We borrowed from a lot of different traditions."

The new show was also influenced by the original "Galactica," which drew from both ancient Greek and Roman myths (characters named Apollo and Athena) and Mormonism (the notion of a lost tribe and a quest).

"It's provocative and unusual to see [religion] dealt with on television ... and it's unusual for science fiction, where everyone tends to be secular, and they don't believe in any God and any faith," said Moore, who previously wrote for "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and HBO's "Carnivale." "Right now there is a tremendous amount of interest in religion. A lot of conflict has to do with religion within this culture and other cultures and their religions. It captures the zeitgeist in some ways."

And starring North Vancouver as Kobol

Beneath a canopy of 100-foot tall Douglas firs in Lynn Canyon Park last month, almost the entire cast of "Galactica" rehearsed a pivotal scene in the new season's seventh episode. This park in North Vancouver will play the role of the planet Kobol, believed by Colonials to be the birthplace of man.

Director Jeff Woolnough calls, "Action!" and Lee "Apollo" Adama (Jamie Bamber) motions to Kara "Starbuck" Thrace (Katee Sackhoff) after he hears a rustling in the brush. Several characters appear, and happy reunions abound. Just as suddenly, tempers flare and one character attacks another.

After the blocking run-through for the crew of 130 -- their vehicles line the side of a dirt road; they traipse down a park hiking trail to the shooting location -- the director calls out, "That's a one-er," meaning this complicated scene that involves 11 characters can be filmed in one take. It can't, but the actors and crew get a hearty chuckle from the notion.

Some publicists go out of their way to portray a TV show's cast as a happy family. No PR juicing is necessary here. Between takes, star Edward James Olmos delivers a birthday gift to Bamber's trailer, where Bamber's daughter, Isla, has just turned 2. McDonnell playfully interrupts a reporter's interview with Olmos, saying, "Don't believe a word of it!" Sackhoff whines jokingly -- no diva, she -- about the bugs crawling on her for a scene that requires her to feign sleep on the forest floor.

Not that this cast is a bunch of Pollyannas, either. Some give voice to understandable concerns. "Galactica" is currently filming a 20-episode second season with a one-month summer hiatus, keeping the series in production through December (10 episodes air this summer, another 10 in January). Bamber fears for his career prospects ("I wonder if there are other things in acting I'm missing out on while sitting here being Lee Adama") and Olmos worries about whether Moore can keep up the quality of the scripts.

"The writing has just gone through the roof this year," Olmos said. "The first seven episodes we've done this season have been better than any of the episodes in the first season."

Olmos plays military commander Adama, who's frequently at odds with President Roslin. She begins season two imprisoned.

"Season two is about, what do you do when you've declared martial law and the military takes over and the government has been destabilized?" Moore said. "It's the great balance of liberty versus security."

Olmos, whose character was last seen lying in a pool of his own blood, marveled at Adama's second season evolution.

"It's going to be kind of hard to distinguish who are the bad guys and who are the good guys," he said, before letting loose with a string of off-the-record spoilers.

Such forthrightness is not unusual. In a Post-Gazette interview seven months before the "Galactica" miniseries aired in 2003, Olmos cautioned fans of the '70s "Galactica," saying, "If you're a staunch purist, then you won't like it."

At first, many did not. Fans especially objected to changing the gender of Starbuck from a man in the original series to a woman in the update, but Sackhoff said those complaints have died down.

"There's always gonna be someone somewhere that hates you, and that's fine," she said. "I'll let them hate me from the basement of their mom's house. I'm just kidding."

Reinventing the future

Even original "Galactica" star Richard Hatch, who spent almost three decades trying to revive the original, eventually got on board and now appears in the remake as a recurring character, revolutionary Tom Zarek.

"I've always believed in science fiction not as a bunch of monsters and crazy scenarios, but science fiction ... about people and mysteries of the universe and layers of the human heart," Hatch said at a January news conference. "This show goes in that direction."

Moore said it was always his intent to move the franchise away from genre conventions.

"We didn't want the production design to overwhelm the drama," he said. "It looks a little different around the edges, but you get the idea that [Galactica is] an aircraft carrier in space."

During a tour of the show's four soundstages at the Vancouver Film Studios, production designer Richard Hudolin emphasized the notion behind the show's look. In the mini-series that preceded the new series, Galactica was scheduled to be mothballed, turned into a museum like the U.S.S. Intrepid aircraft carrier in New York.

Like a battleship, Galactica is more functional than full of gee-whiz technology. Its doors don't automatically woosh open; they move on hinges. There's no commander's chair in the CIC (Command Information Center), and no view screen or window to view space battles.

"Information comes to them on monitors," Hudolin said, standing near the command center's plotting table. "We've never had a show where they look at a screen and see Cylon ships. We know they're there because of blips. It's based more in reality because if you research warships, they don't want all of their equipment exposed where a missile could come in just so you have the view out. CIC is protected in the belly of the ship."

That emphasis on reality carries over to the characters and stories.

"We don't have aliens with bobbly heads," said actress Grace Park, who plays two versions of the human-looking Cylon, Sharon "Boomer" Valerii. "We don't find fuel and food in an instant. It sets the stage for saying, 'We know this is what you [the audience] know is reality as humans on Earth know it.' "

For her part, McDonnell relishes telling friends about her current project and watching their reactions.

"Their eyebrows just go up," McDonnell said, laughing at the inherent skepticism about a show called "Battlestar Galactica." "In the science fiction world, people are able to write about or push up against ideas that are necessary for us right now. We've got to start exploring the concept of enemy as self, the concept of other dimensions, the metaphysical. We have to get a handle on how we feel about God, because all of this stuff is what we're fighting wars over.

"I think I give people a bit of a lecture, to be perfectly honest. If people are not tuning in because this is science fiction, they're being rather foolish and missing a good thing as far as I'm concerned. That's my arrogant little response," she said, laughing like a good-natured Earth Mother who spends her days pretending to lead a rag-tag fleet through outer space.