I've argued that Battlestar Galactica's narrative and formal elements emphasize the reproductive potential of hybridity across media (both humans/machines and television/the internet). Like the Colonial leadership, who, for the sake of their species' survival, must forge an uneasy peace with an enemy that threatens from within, BSG's official relationship with its army of fans takes the shape of a multiplex negotiation. In this encounter, the show's permeable textuality and its convergent strategies go hand in hand. As the industry as a whole gets turned on to audience "engagement," it's more common to venture into these murky waters from the terra firma of monetizable metrics, but the BSG franchise (along with other "cult" television programs) was at the forefront of this trend, making ancillary materials freely available on the internet since the reimagined series premiered in January 2005. In addition to the aforementioned commentary by showrunner Ron Moore in the form of a blog and audio podcast and the more anarchic space represented by the show forum, the SciFi Channel's official website offers an extensive menu of video content {http://scifi.com/battlestar/video/} as part of its so-called "broadband network" ("SciFi Pulse"). In recognition of digital commodities' divergence from a traditional economy of physical scarcity, season one's DVD extras, for example, are mirrored online (under "Features"). And a selection of deleted scenes (renamed "bonus" scenes for season three, when they also aired on television) compromises the priority and linearity of the episodes' narrative, here without the stabilizing frame of Ron Moore's authorial voice. In addition, there's an array of web-native promotional content, including co-producer David Eick's often humorously self-reflexive video blog, interviews where cast members answer fans' questions (also under "Features"), and a series of original webisodes tied into the premiere of season three. By using the internet to recycle and rework the show's text and to put the show's metatext in intercourse with fans, these elements invite us to fall in love with Battlestar Galactica and to involve ourselves in its propagation in turn.
However, the SciFi site's design also places limits on fans' ownership and authorship of these materials. Its video and interactive features are built in javascript and flash, and external and embedded functions make it impossible to save and share the exclusive content without specialized hacks (unlike Comedy Central's "Motherload" interface, for one, which makes videos "grabbable" for other pages). And some components, like the webisodes, are blocked for all but U.S. IP addresses. The official website is thus an artifact of a double-edged relationship with fans, genuinely wooing us with an expanding transmedia text and participatory opportunities, and then exerting protocological control once we've been coaxed into proprietary space. Ron Moore articulates a version of this Janus-faced approach when answering, in his blog, a question about fan fiction: "If you want to write a story about Starbuck being Adama's illegitimate daughter and how she's carrying on an illicit affair with Laura... be my guest... ([BUT] it should go without saying that there is a very bright and bold line between writing for fun and writing for profit and only the foolish would care to mess with NBC-Universal's legal department)" (Moore) – needless to say, the legal and (hetero)normative bounds of (girlslash) fan production are not nearly as "bright and bold" as he claims. In this section, I'll discuss one initiative in more detail: a fan filmmaking contest dubbed Videomaker that exemplifies this dance of permissiveness and containment. I will then contrast it to fan works, particularly music videos, created in the context of LiveJournal communities, demonstrating that the show's open networks, like the Fleet's networked computers, are vulnerable to fan media and their technologies of seeing.
However, the SciFi site's design also places limits on fans' ownership and authorship of these materials. Its video and interactive features are built in javascript and flash, and external and embedded functions make it impossible to save and share the exclusive content without specialized hacks (unlike Comedy Central's "Motherload" interface, for one, which makes videos "grabbable" for other pages). And some components, like the webisodes, are blocked for all but U.S. IP addresses. The official website is thus an artifact of a double-edged relationship with fans, genuinely wooing us with an expanding transmedia text and participatory opportunities, and then exerting protocological control once we've been coaxed into proprietary space. Ron Moore articulates a version of this Janus-faced approach when answering, in his blog, a question about fan fiction: "If you want to write a story about Starbuck being Adama's illegitimate daughter and how she's carrying on an illicit affair with Laura... be my guest... ([BUT] it should go without saying that there is a very bright and bold line between writing for fun and writing for profit and only the foolish would care to mess with NBC-Universal's legal department)" (Moore) – needless to say, the legal and (hetero)normative bounds of (girlslash) fan production are not nearly as "bright and bold" as he claims. In this section, I'll discuss one initiative in more detail: a fan filmmaking contest dubbed Videomaker that exemplifies this dance of permissiveness and containment. I will then contrast it to fan works, particularly music videos, created in the context of LiveJournal communities, demonstrating that the show's open networks, like the Fleet's networked computers, are vulnerable to fan media and their technologies of seeing.
