Podcast:Occupation
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Act 1
RDM: Hello, and welcome to the podcast for episode one and two of season three of Battlestar Galactica. I'm Ronald D. Moore, developer and executive producer of the show. And it's my distinct pleasure to welcome you here to the launch of season three. We're very proud of the season. We think we've got a- what I think is the best start to a season that we've had so far. I think that, arguably, "33" which led the first season was just a standout episode in my mind and one that I think that we've never quite matched in a lot of ways, but I think that in all fairness the first couple of episode after that weren't our best. You could feel us struggling and figuring out what the show was. And then in the second season I think we opened well again, but we had these very disparate story lines with people in very separated geographically, very far away from each other, and the storylines took a while to build back to a point where the family was reunited by "Home". This season, the opening two-hour I think is the strong- one of the strongest things we've done. I think that the following episodes are equally good and that we've got just- I just feel very, very happy with where the show is at the beginning of the year.
Joining me this evening is my wife, Terry, Mrs. Ron-
Terry: Hello.
RDM: -for those of you on the Scifi board. We are also joined by our new kittens, who have yet to be named. Who are scampering about the bedroom.
Terry: Maybe we should do a contest.
RDM: Yeah- uh, no. We're not going to have a "Name the kitty" contest on the bulletin boards. That's all we need.
Terry: (Laughs.) (To the kittens.) Hey, hey, hey, cut that out.
RDM: Ok, so here we are. We're still in the recap from last season, here in the first episode and there was a lot to recap to bring people up to date on what happened. We covered quite a bit of ground in last year's season finale, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II" and this is one of our more extended recaps, as a result. This episode opens with one of our lyrical, impressionistic scenes. Er- we're not even there yet, I forgot. Because this is- we edited this as a two hour as opposed to two separate episodes. We're not doing the teaser first.
One word about that, these were designed as two separate episodes. I wrote them both as the first two episodes of the season and actually the reason that these became a single two-hours as opposed to two separate episodes actually has a lot to do with the third episode, "Exodus", which was so big that- it was just a massive story and it worked really well and the action was great and we were really thrilled to have it, but it was so big we really wanted to split episode three into two parts. And because of that, we were looking for ways to not stretch the storyline out. We realized, well, if we sold the network on the idea that the opening two-hour- that we would open it with two hours, it was a way of not stretching out the storyline into five weeks. And it would still only be three weeks to get us to the conclusion of the New Caprica story. Essentially it was a decision that was driven a lot by how we wanted to structure other episodes. Nonetheless, when all was said and done, the first two- I did write them together and I wrote them simultaneously and I did have them very interrelated in my mind as the first two hours of what I envisioned as a three hour movie to the end of "Exodus". And so when we decided to make the two hours- see there's the cats knocking things over. That'll be your torture for this evening.
Terry: (Laughs.) Oh, man.
RDM: But remember, no whining. No- the podcast- you gotta be tough enough to listen to the podcasts.
Terry: I'll drown the kittens if they make to much noise.
RDM: Ok, in this open- intially this was gonna be a different open. The opening of the show now, like I was talking about a minute ago, is very impressionistic. It's all these scenes. You're setting up these flashes and all these characters and what's going on. And it's a way of drawing the audience into the episode. It's a technique that I really like to do. I like to write like this. I like to start on an image, then write the next image, then when I see the next images, and then start to repeat them, and then start to discover what those people are doing as I'm writing it. It's just an interesting way for me to start a piece of work. But this wasn't the original open to this episode. This episode was actually structured to open with the inside of a propaganda film that D'anna was going to be shooting on New Caprica, 'cause we had established that D'anna's Cylon character had posed as a filmmaker, or reporter, rather, in the Fleet in her first episode in the second season, so I- there was a- I did write a version that had D'anna- it was- I actually called it up on the computer for a change. It was like, you started in New Capr- exterior New Caprica, dawn. Then you started hearing and you saw the city. Then darkness beneath it, a trouble-filled sky with heavy clouds and you'd hear D'anna's voiceover saying "Four months ago our city was cloaked in fear. Shrouded in darkness. Besieged on all sides." Blah, blah, blah. And you went through this whole little thing about how horrible things used to be and then, of course, suddenly the sun comes out and she's like, "And then hope arrived in the most unexpected of forms. Old enemies come to bring hope where there was hopelessness. And so slowly the tide of fear began to to turn." And it was essentially- and then you would see the Centurions marching into New Caprica, handing out candy and stuff. And it was-
Terry: Y'know, I'm gonna take them downstairs.
RDM: Oh, and now the kittens are being removed from the room.
It was- the idea was to shoot this- to do this propaganda film that D'anna was making and at the end of the propaganda film she was going to doing an exterior standup next to Laura's school tent and as she's talking suddenly, in the background of thes shot, is this flash and this puff of smoke and then you hear the boom a couple seconds later and the insurgency has hit another Cylon target and it like was "Cut. God damnit." And she starts bitching at Laura and Laura's defending what's going on and that was the way into this world that the occupation was well under way. There was an insurgency. The Cylons were trying to win the hearts and minds of the populace and some people were fighting back and some people were collaborating and the whole thing about the human security, or the New Caprica Police, was mentioned in that context. And I wrote a couple drafts of that and I think people- there was a reaction from other writers and studio/network that- the propaganda film just felt like the wrong tone and it seemed odd that D'anna was still making movies, although I kinda followed that and kinda liked that. But anyway, it was like, it was- once they had set all those pieces in motion that I knew that I wanted to cover all this territory, it was sort of easy for me to sit down and write this particular tease, which had to do with a lot of- setting up different stories. Catching them all mid-story. All these things are well under way, and playing the mystery of what's going on in each one of these scenes. By the end of the tease to bring them to some sort of crescendo.
There's a device at the top of the next act where Laura will be doing a voiceover and recording things in her journal, and that was a much later thought and there was debate for a while over whether we would do that here in the first act, or the tease, whichever way you wanna look at it. We, in editing, we had a version where- there was another version cut of this that David Eick liked quite a bit. And it was David's cut and David's a fine editor and- contributes quite a bit in post-production and David cut a different version of this where we put the Laura Roslin voiceover up here in act one. And we started- you started the voiceover much, much earlier. You were filling in backstory and you- a lot of this intercutting and R. D. Moore poetic stuff went by the wayside and I didn't like it. We had an intense discussion about it. (Chuckles.) Let's put it that way. And we still speak, and we're still happy, and we're still good friends. But I- there was something about this particular tease fit together- or, I keep calling it a tease. Technically, it's act one. There was something about the way this particular set of scenes intercut and interrelated in the first act that I really like and really fought for. I thought Sergio just delivered some amazing footage and some amazing film and elicited some really strong performances, and I really wanted to showcase the more cinematic aspects of the show and I like that this is the beginning of a season. That this sets a tone and a feeling and a mood about what kind of film we're gonna do this year and what- where the show can potentially go.
This whole bit with Tigh and the eye. In the initial draft, the first draft I was wri- backing up one step, beyond that. In the story outline, before the draft, there was no mention of this. This wasn't something we ever discussed in the writer's room. It just- we didn't really talk about Jammer later being a suicide bomber. This was something, as I was writing, I was a writing the teleplay and I was getting to scenes where we were starting to talk about how horrible the Cylon occupation had been and why they were fighting back and that there was a real strong sense of rage and injustice from some of the humans. And I realized quickly that you needed to dramatize that. You needed someone who had suffered under the yolk of the Cylons. And various little possibilities slipped back and forth in my mind and I was like, "Tigh is probably- or definitely the leader of the insurgency and the resistance, as the military leader, and so maybe he suffered. Maybe they got him. Maybe they shot him, so he has a bullet wound or something." And then that seemed unsatisfying. And then I started thinking about, well, "No, he should be-". I wanted Tigh to be a visible reminder of the cost that so many people had paid in the C- not only in the Cylon occupation of New Caprica but even further than that. Ever since the show began, all these people have been wounded in one way or another and I wanted some- I realized that if Tigh lost an eye, not a limp, not like a gunshot, not a heart thing. He loses an eye. He's maimed. He's visibly disabled. I though that's a powerful thing to have happen to one of your main characters and also that he is then the symbol of all their losses. And you would never be able to get away with it. You would always be faced with the fact that these people have paid a price, and that Tigh would walk around as a walking billboard that reminds you, "Some of us have paid a heavy price. We have all been hurt in one way or another." That that was something that would carry on through the show.
This little sequence with Anders and Tyrol blowing up the Cylon r- yes? Yes Mrs. Ron?
Terry: Last time we did a podcast, didn't we have sound?
RDM: Uh, I can turn it up a little bit. They don't like-
Terry: Or does that intefere? They don't like it? Ok. Nevermind. I'll see it tomorrow night.
RDM: No. Noone even really complains about it, anymore. I can turn it up a little bit, down low, there.
This storyline with Kara and Leoben. This was a very early idea. This was something that David Eick and I discussed when we were coming up with the finale for "Lay Down Your Burdens" at the end of season two. We had a version-
Terry: Here comes the dog.
RDM: Here he comes, now, the dog's waddling in.
We had a version of the finale last season where you got all the way to this point. You got all the way to the point where Kara-
Terry: Ooh...
RDM: -is captured by Leoben at the end of last season and put-
Terry: I didn't know it went out the other side.
RDM: (Chuckles.) Oh, yeah. Terry's react- yeah that's our. When the chopstick goes through Leoben's throat-
Terry: Oh, man.
RDM: -and it pops out the other side. And that- we actually-
Terry: Woah.
RDM: -we had to VFX that in that's a CGI effect.
Terry: Oh, that's pathetic.
RDM: Isn't it great to know that somewhere there's a guy that spent a lot of hours and did very fine work and his job was to make sure that the chopstick went through Leoben's throat. This is the magic of doing what we do! We were going to do a version of this at the end of last season. We were gonna have Kara captured by Leoben and placed into this domestic setting and we had talked about that being potentially part- one of the things that happened when the Cylons showed up on New Caprica. But the way that story structured itself out- it didn't lend itself for that to happen in terms of the timing and the chronology, if nothing else. So it got pushed into this season and it was one of the very- it was one of the things we knew were doing. A lot of things were gonna play in the storyline and we had a lot of things to work out, but this never changed. It was always this story of Kara and Leoben in this weird twisted little world that- that was pretty- that he created for her.
Act 2
Ok, now we're back on New Caprica. Oh, this is a fantastic matte, I have to say. This is a great visual effects shot of the New Caprica, the wide shot. Gary Hutzel, the guys, just they're doing amazing work these days.
Like I was saying earlier, this bit here, this voiceover of Laura is something that we actually came up with in post. This wasn't scripted. Initially part of that tea- part of that act one montage, intercut section, where you're going from story to story to story, one of those stories was this. It was shots of Laura writing, her being in a tent, her looking at pictures, talking with Torie, and by the end of it she talked about how one day they were gonna get back at these people, one day there would be a reckoning. She was keeping a journal. All the sort of things that come out much later, were all gonna be as that act one. But act one just got too big and somethin' had to go so we slid this into the second act and we made this- listen to her journal. Have her talk about her journal, and now, the theory that I had was, "Ok. Act one is more surreal. Act one is broken narrative and you're all over the place and playing all these different things. Mostly about mood and texture. And you get 'em with the- you get the audience with the explosion of the Raider at the end". And then you start the next act like this, "Ok. Now we're sort-"
Terry: Nice shot.
RDM: Isn't that a great shot? Now at the beginning of this act we will talk about the setup a little more. We'll introduce the Cylons. We'll lay the groundwork for where everything is politically. Who's up, who'd down. And what's going on. And that that was a great two-act structure. And like I said earlier, David's idea was to move the voiceover up into the beginning of the first act so that you got the audience caught up and told them what was going on right away. It's a completely valid choice, and you can go back and forth about which way is better, but I prefer this particular version.
Oh, now this-
Terry: -Remember on the Patty Duke show, you had to show them their backs to each other?
RDM: Oh yeah. (Laughs.) When you're doing twins and doubles and stuff. Yeah this- Sergio- you're still using a lot of the same techniques. You're still splitting the frame something. There's that earlier shot of D'anna standing there and breaking the two halves of the Cavils on either side of the frame.
This is very tedious stuff. This was some of the worst days I think they had on the set, were shooting these Cylon scenes in Colonial One 'cause a, Colonial One is noone's favorite set. I have been begged, repeatedly to destroy Colonial One by the production team, on many occasions.
The Scotch tonight, for those of you who are interested in such things, is Bowmore "Cask Strength", which was given to me by a friend.
Terry: Not accompanied by cigarettes.
RDM: No. There's no smokes tonight, because I'm in the bedroom with Mrs. Ron and she forbade the-
Terry: -You know why.-
RDM: -use of tobacco.
Anyway, this stuff, this shooting the Cylon- these Cylons- double Cylons, triple Cylons in this set. They just all hated me for it because essentially everyone hates shooting in Colonial One. The ceilings are low and awkward. The lighting scheme is not the greatest one. Steve Mcnutt, our DP, just would love to burn this set down. Then add on top of that the difficulty of doing all these splits, and all these cross moves, and all these- lots of blu- greenscreen and visual effects setups and that's very timeconsuming and it's all very technical and the actors have to do it many, many times in both positions and then there's all these continuity issues and eyelines and it's just like a complete pain in the ass thing. And so of course I gave them like four pages of dialogue to cover (Laughs) in a set like, we kept doing that trick throughout.
All the inserts there of Laura writing were done much, much later, 'cause like I said before we had no intention of doing this much. This is actually shot from much later in the epsiode. That's actually a shot that we stole, that's part of the later sequence when Jammer is going into the graduation ceremony. And we just wanted some pieces of establishing who the NCP, the New Caprica Police was, so we added a lot of this. This is- a lot of this stuff was shot afterward, after the fact. That's actually a shot from the next episode. Again, this is all a section of catching u- we have four months of material to catch the audience up on in terms of what's happening and where.
I'm asked quite a bit about the parallels to Iraq. I've done a lot of press in the past couple of weeks and I get a lot of questions about how, "Boy, it seems like you're really doing Iraq finally. This is the occupation and the whole thing." There's certainly elements of that, and- but the truth is we sat in the writer's room and there were a lot of discussions of Vichy France and the West Bank and various occupations, even the American Colonial Era, about when British soldiers were being quartered in American houses and rights and what happened during the Boston Massacre-
Terry: You mean you were talking about war?
RDM: Yes.
Terry: Just war.
RDM: Yeah. We talked about a lot of-
Terry: Yeah.
RDM: -different historical examples.
Terry: Everybody gets so literal. And it's-
RDM: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's not-
Terry: -it's war. All kinds of wars.
RDM: -there's certainly parallels here to what's go- to what went on in Iraq, what is going on in Iraq.
Terry: Just like there are in what happened with- in World War II and every other-
RDM: Yeah. This show is- it's just taking this situation, now is more interest- I wasn't really interested as I was doing this episode, these epsiodes, oddly enough, making a political statement about Iraq. I was really interested in taking a lot of those parameters and a lot of that setting and applying it to our characters and saying, "Ok, what would Tyrol do in that situation? What would happen to Tigh? What would Laura do in that situation." That's where we spent I'd say we spent 80%, 90%, of our time, was talking in terms of what the characters would do. And the rest was usually spent about, "Ok, and the plot's gonna get us over to here. So how do we move Laura to this position by this point in the narrative and still get to the same place?" But there wer- there weren't really many, if any, political discussions about the situation in Iraq in the writers room that I can really recall. We talk about the news and we talk about what's going on in the world, and react to whatever that day's story was, but when we were going through the structuring of the episode it was- Iraq was referred to but, a lot of places were referred to as well. There were a lot of- the writers are- most of them are pretty well versed in history and they'll pull out examples of all kinds of thins. There was even, I think, David Weddle was talking about something that happened during the Romans were occupied Gaul.