So say we all!

Day 53

Welcome to Cylon-occupied Caprica city!

I am a slave of television. I am not shamed to admit it. If you currently ask me, what’s the best thing on television, ever – the answer is simple and bears three letters, two words: BSG – Battlestar Galactica. And of course I am talking about the new series, not the seventees flop. Battlestar was filmed in Vancouver and many of its shots are shot in downtown or the two university campus areas around here. It’s perfectly fair to say: This is Caprica city. Of course as a good fan, I did some of my own BSG tourism and visited some of the locations of my favorite show. There is a whole society of the BSG fans here in Vancouver, who have spotted many locations making this a very easy trip for me. Thanks a lot, the 13^th tribe. Also I found great help from the comparative location shots here. There was also an article in the Wire.com about Battlestar Galactica Tourism, which was my purpose of life today.

It was a very rainy day, but since the locations are mainly from Cylon-occupied Caprica after the holocaust – the rain was exactly the right weather. I wanted to make it relatively easy for me, so I mainly poked around downtown. The Opera house where Caprica Six and Balthar kidnap Hera is the interior of the Orpheum theatre. I was not expecting to get anything out of the Orpheum, mainly because there was nothing on and there is tours only on summertime. Never the less I walked past it and realized that there was couple of men cleaning it, so I could sneak the lobby picture. However, I didn’t get to the place where the actual shots were filmed – but close enough. The interior of the hall would have been the temple of the five cylons, but I didn’t want to push my luck, these men were kind enough to let me in for a minute.

The next stop is the Vancouver city library, which serves one of the locations that Sharon and Helo pass while they are running away from the cylons. There is two different views of that one. The building itself is very impressive, built like a Roman colosseum.

My Battlestar tourism continued by checking out the alleyway next to Pub 340, which Helo passes through. This happens when Helo is on his own in Litmus, being watched from above by Sharon, Six and Doral and he goes down a fire escape into a graffiti covered alleyway. There was so many homeless people on this area that I didn’t feel myself safe at all. Horrible place.

The roof that you see behind the cylons following Helo is one of the downtown buildings as well and I passed that one.

Near the harbor, there is The ramp where Six and Doral talk in ‘Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down.’ This ramp is unfortunately closed for walkers so I didn’t risk my life and only took the shot from above.

Quite by accident, we visited the rose garden of the University of British Columbia, because it’s close to the museum of Anthropology. I took a shot of it completely unaware that it was the same garden where the press is talking about the Vice President issue in ‘Colonial Day’.

Finally the Final scene of Galactica has been filmed in the corner of Hornby and Hastings – the one where Angels, Six and Balthar discuss the faith of the mankind. That was a good place to conclude the tour as it was.