Caprica

In 1978, a memorable sequence from the first episode of Battlestar Galactica was filmed at the Long Beach City Hall and Library complex in Long Beach, California.  At the time, the buildings were new and futuristic.

Janet and I dropped by to see the site in 2006, and walk where Jane Seymour had watched the Colonial Peace Conference destroyed by the attacking Cylons.  Well, the Cylons were added in later, as were the matte paintings, but at least some small explosives were set off and lots of extras ran around.

I've included some screen caps from "Saga of a Star World" for comparison. - Mark

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First off, here's a shot from the episode with Jane Seymour as Serina doing her news coverage.

Here's how that same area looked in February 2006.  Kind of sparse, with no flowers planted there nor any flags flying.

 

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And a picture of a Cylon raider flying overhead past one of the Caprican buildings..

 

Here's the building in 2006 - this is the office tower for the Long Beach City Hall.

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Civilians flee the attacking Cylons and run in all directions..

A little tougher to see the match here, but keep in mind the obelisk in the middle of the scene is a prop, and the checker board pattern on the ground was also an addition.

 

If you match up the stairs on the left, you can kind of see how this compares.   The big difference would appear to be the newer buildings across the road which would probably have shown up in a shot or two if they had been there in 1978.  Of course, then the shot would have been different.

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And one last shot of the City Hall tower, yesterday and today.  

It's amazing the parallels between Caprican and Earth architecture, isn't it?

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This page was last updated on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 .

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