Battlestar Galactica’s Best Actor Who Made a $200,000 Mistake On Set

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 25 seconds ago

Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica Remake was a show that was all about planning. Not only did the showrunner have big plans (more or less) for his modern sci-fi mythology from the start, but characters like Commander Adama had to constantly plot and plan to stay one step ahead to the nefarious Cylons.

As it turned out, however, Adama’s actor, Edward James Olmos, is not much of a planner in real life, and often makes spontaneous decisions to bring his on-screen characters to life. Unfortunately, this resulted in a costly Battlestar Galactica mistake during the episode “Maelstrom” when the actor accidentally destroyed a $200,000 model.

Adama gets angry

For the history of this is insanely expensive Battlestar Galactica mistake to make much sense, you’ll need some important context. “Maelstrom” features Commander Adama’s detailed model of an ancient sailing ship in his quarters, but this is more of a Starbuck episode… at least, until the heartbreaking moment when this likable character apparently dies ( don’t worry, she’s getting better…sort of). Starbuck was basically the girl Adama never had, and the episode ends with Adama completely in mourning destroy the model ship before breaking down into uncontrollable tears.

This is, without a doubt, one of the most powerful moments in Battlestar Galactica history. It’s also a scene that contains the show’s most expensive mistake. In 2012, Edward James Olmos revealing a secret to Planet Comicon attendees: namely, that he completely improvised that scene. Adama simply destroys his model ship (not unlike Captain Picard destroys his model ships in First Contact) was never in the script and the actor decided to go for it on the spot.

For Olmos, this kind of killing improvisation was just another day the officeand considering how great the scene turned out, it’s clear that the actor’s instincts regarding this scene were perfect. And as far as he knew, the model ship he was destroying was something made by the production staff, so it wasn’t a big deal if he destroyed it as surely as if Roslin had thrown him out of r airlock. What the actor didn’t know at the time, though, was that the show had rented this model out of a museum, and it was worth a cool $200,000.

This is expensive Battlestar Galactica mistake more understandable when you consider that most of the time, the show uses its own cheap replicas rather than the real model. With that said, Olmos did not sound so contrite when telling this story to the conference attendees. According to the actor, his reaction to the news that he had destroyed the one-of-a-kind (and extremely expensive) model was, “What did you put in the scene for? I’ve just been told that my (character’s) daughter is dead, what did you expect?’”

There is a special logic to his response! Perhaps the producers found this expensive Battlestar Galactica a mistake, but Olmos saw it as an opportunity to create an unforgettable moment for his character. This is not the first time the actor has presented a stunning piece of improvisation and it certainly won’t be the last. Or, as the Cylons might say, this has all happened before, and it will all happen again.