Brendan Costanza
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| Brendan Costanza | ||
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Name |
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| Birth place | {{{birthplace}}} | |
| Birth Name | Brendan Costanza | |
| Birth Date | {{{birthdate}}} | |
| Callsign | Hot Dog | |
| Nickname | {{{nickname}}} | |
| Introduced | Act of Contrition | |
| Death | ||
| Parents | ||
| Siblings | ||
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| 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. He is a veteran of the Second Cylon War, having fought in various engagements with the Cylons since his training post-Fall, and is the only known surviving member of his graduating class.
Biography
Costanza is a Fleet Academy washout, surviving the Cylon Holocaust. He is recruited as a Viper pilot trainee after an accident kills 13 pilots. While Kara Thrace, his flight instructor, washes him out with the entire class by Lieutenant Thrace (Act of Contrition), Costanza is reinstated after Commander Adama ordered his and other nuggets' return to flight training status.
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 Thrace, Costanza and his fellow nuggets on a training flight. Instead of obeying Thrace's orders by returning to Galactica at full throttle, Costanza returns to assist Thrace as a wingman. This act almost gets the young, inexperienced pilot killed, but buys Thrace time to dispatch all eight Raiders in a situation where, if not for Costanza's distraction of the collective enemy fighter group, Costanza'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, Costranza is led to sickbay, but not before Captain Lee Adama removes his own Viper flight wings from his uniform and pins them on Costanza for his bravery (You Can't Go Home Again).
Costanza develops a bond with Louanne Katraine ("Kat") and Perry ("Chuckles"), members of his training group (Act of Contrition).
Costanza 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 the Fleet (Scattered). After returning to Galactica, Costanza survives a brief run in with a Cylon Centurion that boards the ship. With shipboard systems unreliable, Apollo orders Costanza to personally report the situation to CIC (Valley of Darkness).
While flying CAP, Colonel Tigh orders Costanza to intercept a Raptor carrying the escaping President Laura Roslin. After Captain Lee Adama continues their escape after Costanza fires a warning shot across his bow, Tigh orders Costanza to stand down rather than shoot Captain Adama's Raptor down (Resistance).
Costanza is one of the pilots, along with Captain Adama and Thrace, 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 Captain Adama and Thrace practicing handgun marksmanship on the firing range when a Cylon computer virus nearly suffocates the trio. Later, Costanza 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 Costanza 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).
After the discovery of New Caprica, Costanza remains in the Fleet above the planet, who are later forced to leave when the Cylons arrive. Four months later, Costanza leads Blue Squadron in the attack on the New Caprica ship yard. He and his wingman, Redwing, provide cover fire for resistance members attempting to enter the facility by destroying many guard tower emplacements (Exodus, Part II).
After the exodus from New Caprica, 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).
With other pilots, he is responsible for shepherding civilian ships through a massive star cluster. In one of the outbound flights, Costanza loses the Adriatic (The Passage).
At a mission briefing he complains about a rash in his pubic region. Captain Agathon teases him about and says that he hopes the girl was worth it, moving to the next seat (A Day in the Life).
During an underway replenishment operation near a gas giant, Costanza is assigned to fly as Thrace's wingman during a routine CAP. It is on one of these CAPs Thraces believes to have made visual contact with a Cylon ship, though Costanza and Thrace's gun camera see nothing (Maelstrom).
Two weeks after Kara Thrace's death, Costanza is present during the daily mission brief conducted by Major 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).
After the Battle of the Ionian Nebula, he plays a "strip poker" variant of Triad with Margaret Edmonson and the tattooed pilot, before Lee Adama's send off party (Six of One).
Notes
- Actor Bodie Olmos is the youngest son of Edward James Olmos (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 Thrace, Costanza 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).
- Costanza 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.