Bradley Thompson

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Bradley Thompson
Role:	Writer / Producer
BSG Universe:	Re-imagined Series
Date of Birth:	September 02, 1951
Date of Death:	Missing required parameter 1=month! ,
Age:	74
Nationality:	USA
[{{{site}}} Official Site]
IMDb profile

Bradley Thompson (full name Hugh Bradley Thompson, Jr.) is an American television writer and producer. Working almost exclusively with his longtime writing partner David Weddle, he is credited on twelve episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and fifteen episodes of the Re-imagined Series, on which he served as supervising producer during the fourth season. After Battlestar Galactica, Thompson and Weddle continued their collaboration across multiple productions including CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Falling Skies, The Strain, and For All Mankind.

Career

Thompson attended the USC School of Cinema, where he met David Weddle in an acting class. In an August 2005 interview, Thompson recalled that the class was also attended by Richard Hatch, who was then starring in the Original Series:

I met (my writing partner) David Weddle in an acting class and we discovered we were both at USC School of Cinema. It was the same acting class that Richard Hatch frequented. Richard was doing the original Battlestar Galactica at that time, and everybody in class was in awe—he was a WORKING ACTOR! And all the class ladies would go to parties and watch him when the show came on. Of course, while they were adoring him, they were ignoring me, so I didn't like the show very much. But they would have ignored me anyway, so I guess I wasn't giving the show a fair shake.

After leaving USC, Thompson spent several years designing fiber-optic manufacturing equipment in what he called "a sweatshop in Van Nuys." He asked Weddle whether he could adapt Weddle's play "Memoirs of an Awkward Lover" into a screenplay; Weddle agreed, and the two ended up collaborating on the project together instead. The adaptation did not sell.

Prior to Battlestar Galactica, Thompson and Weddle also wrote for the short-lived anthology series Ghost Stories (1997) and The Fearing Mind (2000), as well as the 2002–2003 revival of The Twilight Zone.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

The break into professional television came through Weddle's 1994 biography of director Sam Peckinpah, If They Move... Kill 'Em!. Deep Space Nine executive producer Ira Steven Behr, a Peckinpah devotee, read the book and invited Weddle to lunch at Paramount. Weddle brought Thompson in, and together they pitched story ideas for the show.

Their first credited story was the fourth-season episode "Rules of Engagement," for which Ronald D. Moore wrote the teleplay. Their first credited teleplay was the fifth-season episode "The Assignment." After their second teleplay, "Business as Usual," Thompson and Weddle joined the writing staff for seasons six and seven, writing two episodes from the final nine-episode arc of the series. In all, they are credited on twelve DS9 episodes.

Thompson appears in an uncredited background role as a holographic guest at Vic Fontaine's lounge in the series finale "What You Leave Behind."

Thompson was announced as co-author of a DS9 post-series relaunch novel, Walking Wounded, but the project was abandoned in 2005.

Battlestar Galactica (Re-imagined Series)

In 2002, Thompson and Weddle were invited to a private screening of the new Battlestar Galactica miniseries that Moore had written. Thompson later described the experience:

We expected it to be like so many other remakes of failed series—but hey, Ron wrote it, it'll be worth a look. Oh, boy, was it! It blew me away. We told him so. And found ourselves invited to lunch—we thought, to talk about old times—but soon we were talking excitedly about where he was taking the series and where the character relationships could go.

When the Re-imagined Series went to series in 2004, Moore brought Thompson and Weddle onto the writing staff. Thompson called Battlestar Galactica his "dream project" and "the best job I ever had," citing both the premise of carrier pilots in space and the collaborative writers' room. He also credited the series' actors with contributing meaningful insight into their characters:

Actor input is an important part—if it's good and doesn't conflict with some other uberstory, we gleefully steal it, bend it and use it.

Thompson and Weddle initially served as story editors on the first season. They became co-producers as of the second season, took on greater producing responsibilities during the third season, and were elevated to supervising producers for the fourth season. They wrote fifteen episodes across the run of the series and co-wrote all ten installments of Battlestar Galactica: The Resistance, the webisode series bridging Season 2 and Season 3.

Thompson and Weddle were initially slated to write a BSG television movie with Ronald D. Moore, but had to withdraw from the assignment after being hired as writers and supervising producers for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. That television movie was eventually produced as The Plan.

Post-Battlestar Galactica

In 2008, Thompson and Weddle joined the writing staff of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation mid-way through Season 9 as writers and supervising producers. They were promoted to co-executive producers for Season 10, and wrote nine episodes across three seasons. An episode they wrote for Season 11, "Fracked," won the Environmental Media Association's 21st Annual Environmental Media Award for Television Episodic Drama.

In 2011, Thompson and Weddle joined the writing staff of the second season of Falling Skies on TNT as co-executive producers, continuing in that role through the third season.

In 2012, they acted as co-executive producers on the BSG prequel television movie Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome and on the pilot for the Syfy series Defiance. Their work on Defiance reunited them with former Deep Space Nine and Battlestar Galactica production personnel Gary Hutzel and Doug Drexler.

From 2013 through 2017, Thompson served as one of eight executive producers across all four seasons of The Strain, the FX adaptation of the horror novel series by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. He and Weddle co-wrote nine episodes of the series.

In 2018, Thompson and Weddle re-teamed with Ronald D. Moore on the Apple TV+ alternate-history drama For All Mankind. Thompson served as co-executive producer on the first season and executive producer on subsequent seasons. He is also announced as executive producer on the planned spinoff series Star City.

Writer credits for Battlestar Galactica

Season 1

• Act of Contrition
• The Hand of God

Season 2

• Scattered
• Valley of Darkness
• Flight of the Phoenix
• Scar
• Downloaded

Battlestar Galactica: The Resistance

A series of webisodes bridging the gap between Season 2 and Season 3.

Season 3

• Exodus, Part I
• Exodus, Part II
• Rapture
• Maelstrom

Season 4

• He That Believeth in Me
• Revelations
• Sometimes a Great Notion
• Someone to Watch Over Me

See also: Episodes written by Bradley Thompson

External Links

• Bradley Thompson article at Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki.

References