Editing Podcast:Maelstrom

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RDM: Women writhe. [[w:Playboy|Playboy]] tells me so.

Anyway, when I'm in the room, David and Bradley and the writing staff were struggling with the story a little bit, and we knew that- we wanted Kara- we wanted to pay off what we had setup in "[[Rapture]]" and "[[The Eye of Jupiter|Eye of Jupiter]]", more specifically in "Rapture", where at the end of that show there was the [[w:Mandala|mandala]], the big circular symbol in the [[The Temple of Five|temple]] that matched the nebula- the supernova in the sky, that also matched into what Kara had painted on her apartment wall. And we wanted to pay that off, and say what that was about, and deal also with her destiny, that we had alluded to several times in the series, and her relationship with [[Lee Adama|Lee]], and then where this was all going. So they had come up with this story about going to a place and Kara having nightmares, and being drawn towards the mandala that she sees in the clouds, and seeing the phantom [[Heavy Raider|Raider]], and being pulled there over and over again, and it being the [[w:Siren|siren]], literally, a siren that was calling her to her death. And that she was having trouble resisting it, and that she was having trouble getting back in the cockpit, but ultimately the story kept having to end the same way. Which was that Kara resists the call to fall, to throw herself upon the rocks, and goes back to [[Galactica (RDM)|''Galactica'']] and I'm probably fumbling because it was a story break. It wasn't a story document. So there's really no record of it. David and Bradley probably remember better than I do what the original pitch was. But I don't believe that, I think that the best that we could do at the original pitch was that she would discover something that helped them on the way to [[Earth]]. So that ultimately she had resisted the call to kill herself and had found something on the road to Earth as a result.

So anyway the guys had pitched- were struggling with the story about, where we do with Kara, and as we were going through it, I liked the story. I liked a lot of things that they were doing with it, but ultimately it didn't quite- it just didn't take you anywhere really important. You were paying of Kara's- trying to pay off Kara's destiny in a way, and saying, "Yeah, the destiny is gonna help get them to Earth," but it didn't quite hit you. It didn't slap you in the face. Which is what we wanted it to do. What I wanted it to do, to be more in keeping with our traditional Starbuck episode of each year. And I remember this moment of being in the writers' room and saying, "Well, I mean. The truth is, we should just kill her. She should die. She should go into that. She should hear it. She should not just hear the siren call, and be tempted to throw herself upon the rocks. She should do it, and we should fuckin' kill her." And everyone looked around and we all said, "Yeah, that would be nice, but we can't do that." And I s- and eventually I s- [[David Eick]], I believe was there as well, and we looked at each other, and I said to David, "Well why can't we? Why don't we just kill her. Let's kill Starbuck." And we fell in love with the audacity of it. Because Starbuck is, of course, one of the primary players in the show, and always has been, and it was dangerous, and we all went, "Oh, Jesus. Do we really wanna do that? I mean, wouldn't that screw up the show?" and, "Oh my God, really?" And as soon as that tremor went through the room I sensed- it was like the shark smelling blood in the water. I was really attracted to doing it, because of the shock value of it, and because it was risky and it was upsetting, and it jangled your conception of what the show was, and then I just decided, "Let's go for it," and built the story that way and I pitched it to [[Sci Fi Channel|the network]] and the [[w:NBC Universal|studio]], and explained the reasons why, and how we were gonna do it. And how ultimately, we also realize, in one of those great moments, was how this was going to pay off into the overall arc of the series. How the death of Starbuck in "Maelstrom" actually propels us in a certain way towards where the show is ultimately going. And that became more attractive. And then the deeper we got into the story breaking process, and the more we talked about subsequent episodes and how this would affect character and storyline and get us to the third act of the show, as it were, the more I started to realize this was really the right decision. And to their credit, the studio and the network never blinked. They asked a lot of questions when we pitched it to them on the phone, but they dug it and they were into it, and they were supportive of it, and they were more than willing to do it. And then the next step was to pitch it to Katee Sackhoff, which as you might imagine, was-

Terry: Claustropobe, yeah.

RDM: If they don't win the Emmy this year we may have to burn down the academy. I'm not making a threat, I'm just sayin'.

RDM: Well, 'cause she's saying it's not what she saw. So she;s saying it must not be hers.

RDM: A big difference between early drafts and the final show is that Starbuck made three trips into the nebula. There are really now only two trips left. There's the initial non-sighting of the Raider, as it were, then she spends the show dealing with that, and then she goes back at the end for the final. There was a third. There was a middle passage where she went into- went on a [[CAP]] patrol once more and was going by the nebula- or the clouds at the gas giant, and she saw the Raider, but instead of saying that she saw the Raider, in that version, she pretended like she had a hydraulic failure in her cockpit and ran away, and went back home, and faked having a problem. And this scene actually followed that. That she had- she was faking having a problem, and that's when [[William Adama|Adama]] and [[Lee Adama|Lee]] really started to say, "OK. What the hell are we gonna do about this?" Now in- during the pre-production process, I remember [[Michael Nankin|Nankin]] coming to me and saying, "I wanna cut- ," 'cause the scripts are always fuckin' long. And Nankin was saying, "I wanna cut the middle trip. I don't think you need it." And I was insistent. No, you have to have the middle trip. It's crucial. These things- I mean, there's this old saying in T- drama that things go in threes. You always try to make threesomes whenever possible, triangles. You're always having three beats to a story, etc., etc., etc. And so there's this thing about being three and I thought structurally you needed the third, the middle, beat to justify where we were going. And when all was said and done and he turned in his cut I had heard, through the grapevine, from editorial, that he had cut the middle- trip, and I told him, "Well, don't get fuckin' used to it, 'cause I'm gonna be puttin' that middle one back, because it works, and you need it." And then I saw the cut. And I was so blown away by the show-

Terry: Sarah's a young woman who was- who posted regularly on the [http://forums.scifi.com/index.php?showforum=24 Scifi.com message board] and she and her fiance were recently on vacation in Mexico and they were getting ready to be married, and they were in a car accident and were both killed. And a lot of people on the board are very saddened by that and- as are we. And we promised that we would put Sarah's picture up in this hall next season, in [[Season 4 (2008)|season four]]. So anyway, and we'd like to dedicate this to her.

RDM: So this- sequence here, again, of [[Lee Adama|Lee]] going and talking to her, of her not being able to get back in the cockpit and finding excuses not to, this was all also colored by the fact that they had- she had gone into the nebula for a second time already. Or- I keep calling it the nebula. It's not a nebula. It's a gas giant. I'm sorry. It's a gas giant. It's really- I'm really fond of the fact that we've taken the Lee-[[Kara Thrace|Kara]] relationship to this point. That we had moved them through a relationship, with- they had been friends. They had been more than friends. Then they had been a lot less than friends. Now they're friends again, but is still fraided with a lot of meaning and a lot of subtext about what might have been and their- each of them having to deal with where they are, as opposed to where they wanted to be, but they're still-

RDM: -"Maelstrom". Thank you for joining us. The next episode will be [[The Son Also Rises|seventeen]]. And seventeen is only a short step from [[Crossroads, Part I|eighteen]] and [[Crossroads, Part I|nineteen]], and then that's the end of [[Season 3 (2006-07)|season three]]. So thank you for listening once more. Say good night, [http://forums.scifi.com/index.php?showuser=2926296 Mrs. Ron].