Feeling the lack of new episodes of Battlestar Galactica already? Never fear: fill the void with the thoughtful wit and considered wisdom of Jamie Bamber in Part II of the mini press conference I and a handful of other journalists attended at Long Island sci-fi convention I-Con last Saturday. [Read Part I here.] My press colleagues and I agreed that the coolest thing about this very cool guy was the new -- and very un-Apollo -- beard he was sporting, but much of what he had to say was tres cool, too.

On the similarities between himself and Lee:

JB: I say he's like me, but he's like me in the sense that he is desperately aware of being perceived to do the right thing, and I think I'm the same in that regard. There's an identity, you think of yourself in a certain way, and when Lee makes difficult decisions, or makes mistakes, as he often does -- the whole affair when he was married to someone else -- you see his own sense of his self go for a meltdown, and then he has no strength. That's hell -- he was in hell in those sort of episodes -- and that's quite similar to me, I think. If I feel I've let myself down in any way in life, there's nothing more scary.

He expresses himself in an entirely different way than I do. I try to pitch Lee's voice a little deeper in my chest than I express myself because I know I'm quite exuberant with my language and the character isn't that way -- he's much more codified and speaks when necessary. He's not Starbuck, who enjoys chirping in left, right, and center, which is more like I am in everyday life, I think. There are differences between us, definitely.

On working with Richard Hatch, the original Apollo:

JB: When I first heard he was doing the show, I was apprehensive because I thought he was going to be bitter. But I've never seen that bitterness. He was just very generous. Thrilled to be involved in what we were doing. Very complimentary about what we were doing. And I guess as it's evolved, I've become a bit more sure of what I'm doing. At the beginning, that apprehensiveness was a sign that I was a little intimidated by the idea that the original Apollo would be there with me, and that he'd been so vocal about his own continuation idea ... and I wasn't necessarily sure at the time that we were going to be such hot stuff, you know? But now that I'm very proud of the work that we're doing and I'm very pleased with the stuff that I've been allowed to do, you know, we come at it from a much more solid place and he's very much part of the furniture. His character is a huge part of our show. I love spending time with him. A very interesting man; he's got a lot to say and most of it extremely insightful, interesting. He's been through a lot. He's an interesting guy. He's had a lot of hard times, and its made him wise, I think, in some ways.

On his recent guest appearance on Ghost Whisperer:

JB: It was kind of freaky. I was playing a guy who committed suicide because he was about to go to his ten-year high-school reunion because he's a washed-up football star and his greatest days were when he was at high school. So he commits suicide, and then his body is then taken over by a kid he was at school with who had cerebral palsy or something. And so I was playing my ghost, my ethereal spirit of this dead guy, and also playing my body being inhabited by a kid who had been disabled. It was crazy. It was a lot of fun. There was a bit of humor in it, which I'm grateful to try and tackle. It was hard work -- I worked really hard for that week. But it's odd to do someone else's show ... it's a different experience. It made me feel very grateful for the sense of belonging that I feel in the world of Battlestar. ... I thought Jennifer Love Hewitt was adorable, she's a really classy human being and her crew worship her.

On Lee's future romantic prospects:

JB: I think he's all romanticked out for the time being. Getting left by your wife after the longtime love of your life kills herself, I think that would put him on a hiatus for a while, I hope. I know a lot of people didn't really go for the more romantic storylines and the love quadrangle, but to me that was one of the things I was proudest of with Lee. I think the reason why people don't like it is they don't like to see larger-than-life heroic characters brought to their knees by the heart. But that's the truth of life. I think that's the most vulnerable part of our anatomy for most people, and it was very interesting to put Lee there.

Our relationships in the show are never purely the relationship, so they're not soap-operatic in that sense, because they always have a social repercussion. Because these characters are pivotal within the fleet, their relationships are much more than affairs of the heart -- they affect the very social structure of the fleet. They're more interesting than people have made them out on those message boards, and I disagree with the overall prognosis of going soap-operatic. Hamlet is the example I always go back to. There are affairs of the heart in Hamlet, but they happen to occur within a castle with huge political ramifications, and everything is internal and personal and yet social as well. If you can combine those three elements, then what you've got is perfect drama -- it's not soap opera. Soap opera tends to be purely on one level, on a personal level, and therefore, there's no implications or ramifications as to what's going on. If you can make sure that the affair has an impact on the wider world in the fleet, then it makes more dramatic sense.

On life after Battlestar Galactica:

JB: I don't think I'm shocking the world by saying that this is probably going to be the last year for Battlestar. Life moves on. I just moved to L.A. and I'm excited about producing some stuff of my own, and then trying to develop material. I've learned a lot from the guys who make Battlestar -- it's been a huge learning curve, but it's going to stand me in better stead than I otherwise would have been.

Thanks to my pal Bonnie-Ann Black for transcription services above and beyond the call of duty.

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