Brendan Costanza

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Brendan Costanza
Brendan Costanza

Name

Age
Colony
Birth place {{{birthplace}}}
Birth Name Brendan Costanza
Birth Date {{{birthdate}}}
Callsign Hot Dog
Nickname {{{nickname}}}
Introduced Act of Contrition
Death
Parents
Siblings
Children
Marital Status Single
Family Tree View
Role Viper pilot, battlestar Galactica
Rank Lieutenant, junior grade
Serial Number {{{serial}}}
Portrayed by Bodie Olmos
Brendan Costanza is a Cylon
Brendan Costanza is a Final Five Cylon
Brendan Costanza is a Human/Cylon Hybrid
Brendan Costanza is an Original Series Cylon
Related Media
@ BW Media
Additional Information
[[Image:|200px|Brendan Costanza]]

Lt. Brendan "Hot Dog" Costanza is a cocksure pilot, originally washed out of Colonial flight school, but selected as a candidate pilot (nugget) for Viper training under the command of Kara Thrace.

Biography[edit]

Costanza is a Fleet Academy washout, surviving the Cylon Holocaust. He is recruited as a Viper pilot trainee after an accident kills 13 Viper pilots. Initially washed out from Viper training under Lieutenant Thrace, Costanza is reinstated after Commander Adama ordered his and other nuggets' return to flight training status.

Hot Dog after his reckless attempt to save Lieutenant Thrace (Act of Contrition).

After the reinstatement, Costanza demonstrates an aptitude for being inventive and an overenthusiastic tendency for taking initiative. He acts more experienced than he really is and tries to be top dog. Costanza demonstrates this when a group of eight Cylon Raiders encounter Starbuck, Hot Dog and his fellow nuggets on a training flight. Instead of obeying Starbuck's orders by returning to Galactica at full throttle, Hot Dog returns to assist Thrace as a wingman. This act almost gets the young, inexperienced pilot killed, but buys Starbuck time to dispatch all eight Raiders in a situation where, if not for Hot Dog's distraction of the collective enemy fighter group, Starbuck's odds of survival would be considerably less (Act of Contrition).

Costanza ejects from his severely damaged Viper and is subsequently rescued by a Raptor piloted by Sharon Valerii and Crashdown, after which he vomits on the Raptor's deck. A short time later, after briefing Commander Adama, Hot Dog is led to sickbay, but not before Captain Lee Adama removes his own Viper flight wings from his uniform and pins them on Hotdog for his bravery (You Can't Go Home Again).

Costanza develops a bond with Louanne Katraine and Chuckles, members of his training group (Act of Contrition).

Hot Dog takes part in the attack on a Cylon tylium refinery as part of Strike Force One. It appears he assumes command of the group with the death of their flight leader, Fireball (The Hand of God)

He helps defending Galactica while the battlestar performs lengthy calculations to locate its civilian Fleet (Scattered). After returning to Galactica, Hot Dog survives a brief run in with a Cylon Centurion that boards the ship. With shipboard systems unreliable, Apollo orders Hot Dog to personally report the situation to CIC (Valley of Darkness).

While flying CAP, Colonel Tigh orders Hot Dog to intercept a Raptor carrying the escaping President Laura Roslin. After Apollo continues their escape after Hot Dog fires a warning shot across his bow, Tigh orders Hot Dog to stand down rather than shoot Apollo's Raptor down (Resistance).

Costanza is one of the pilots, along with Apollo and Starbuck, who are scrambled to intercept two Cylon raiders on a presumed reconnaissance mission to find Galactica. The Raiders are dispatched with ease, though their real mission was to relay a transmission from a Cylon agent on board Galactica to Caprica (Final Cut).

Costanza is with Apollo and Starbuck practicing handgun marksmanship on the firing range when a Cylon computer virus nearly suffocates the trio. Later, Hot Dog is scrambled with the rest of Galactica's air group to face a massive formation of Cylon forces. With the timely intervention of Caprica-Sharon, the enemy fighters are disabled and Hot Dog joyfully takes part in the Great Cylon Turkey Shoot (Flight of the Phoenix).

Costanza is among the pilots assigned to patrol the asteroid field during weeks-long mining operations. He survives the operation, though several of his fellow pilots do not (Scar).

Hot Dog leads Blue Squadron in the attack on the shipyard on New Caprica, when he and his wingman Redwing provide cover fire for resistance members attempting to enter the facility (Exodus, Part II).

Costanza is the one that suggests "Athena" as a callsign for Sharon Agathon. He appears to be one of Major Adama's senior pilots (Torn) and is a member of the boarding party sent to investigate the dying Cylon basestar found in the Lion's Head Nebula (A Measure of Salvation).

At a mission briefing he complains about a rash in his pubic region. Helo teases him about and says that he hopes the girl was worth it, moving to the next seat (A Day in the Life).

Costanza is assigned to fly as Starbuck's wingman during a routine CAP while the fleet undergoes refueling operations near a gas giant. It is on one of these CAPs Starbuck believes to have made visual contact with a Cylon ship, though Costanza and Starbuck's gun camera see nothing (Maelstrom).

Two weeks after Kara Thrace's death, Costanza is present during the daily mission brief conducted by Lee Adama immediately prior to the major being taken off flight status and replaced with Karl Agathon as CAG (The Son Also Rises).

During the opening days of Baltar's trial, Costanza is playing a game of Pyramid in Joe's bar with the nuggets Diana Seelix and Samuel Anders (Crossroads, Part I).

Notes[edit]

  • Kat is promoted to lieutenant after passing through Viper training, so presumably Hot Dog has also been promoted to lieutenant by the episode "Final Cut", but this has not been confirmed in an aired episode as yet. As seen in the episode "Scar" newly graduated cadets actually hold the rank of ensign, and presumably get promoted over time. However, Kat had been confirmed as a lieutenant at that time and Hot Dog has been a pilot as just as long as her (they were in the first batch of nuggets), so he is probably a lieutenant as well.
  • Actor Bodie Olmos is the youngest son of Edward James Olmos (Admiral William Adama) and the grandson of actor/singer Howard Keel.
  • In the DVD commentary for "Act of Contrition", David Eick and Ron D. Moore elaborate on the increased role of the nugget pilots as the series progressed:
Eick: This young actress playing Kat has proven to be--and there's Bodie Olmos, Eddie's son, in the center there who's Hot Dog, he's also become a recurring character.
RDM: Well those three in the front, Chuckles, Hot Dog, and Kat, they all became "pilots" to us. And I don't think we really had any expectation of that. The idea was we were going to do "the nuggets", "the new pilots", was just going to be its own kind of story, and maybe you might see one of these guys again later. And what started happening is the writers just started putting them in, like almost every scene that we dealt with the pilots (of Galactica) so these became our "recognizable faces".
  • During the initial briefing with Starbuck, Hotdog can be seen to be flipping his pen around his fingers in a similar fashion to "Iceman" from the movie "Top Gun" (Act of Contrition).
  • His last name is a reference to Seinfeld character George Costanza.[citation needed]
  • Hotdog is featured in the XBOX 360 Battlestar Galactica game as one of the pilots the player competes with to shoot down the most ships and become Galactica's new top gun.