| "Miniseries, Night 2" Podcast | ||
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| [[Image:{{{image}}}|200px|Miniseries, Night 2 (Battlestar Galacticast)]] | ||
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| Posted on: | 18 December 2018 | |
| Transcribed by: | Joe Beaudoin Jr. | |
| Verified by: | Pending | |
| Length of Podcast: | 1h09m25s | |
| Speaker(s) | ||
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Ronald D. Moore | |
| Terry Dresbach | ||
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Tricia Helfer | |
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Marc Bernardin | |
| Comedy Elements | ||
| Scotch: | ||
| Smokes: | ||
| Word of the Week: | ||
| Legal Notice | ||
| All contents are believed to be copyright by the speakers. Contents of this article may not be used under the Creative Commons license. This transcript is intended for nonprofit educational purposes. We believe that this falls under the scope of fair use. If the copyright holder objects to this use, please contact the transcriber(s) or site administrator Joe Beaudoin Jr. To view all the podcasts that have been transcribed, see the podcast project page. | ||
Summary[edit]
- Tricia and Marc discuss part 2 of the Battlestar Galactica mini-series. What’s the origins of Number Six’s red dress and her look? Are you a Baltar or a Starbuck? The big Cylon reveal, unboxing the mystery of Boxy (sic) and more.[1]
Takeaways[edit]
- For Halloween, Tricia Helfer dressed up as Messenger Six, as she has a screen-used red dress, while Katee Sackhoff (Kara Thrace) dressed up as her Longmire character, Vic Moretti.
- Six was originally envisioned as a Carrie Anne Moss/The Matrix's Trinity-type character.
- Marc Bernardin believes Billy Keikeya to have committed a "dick move" by informing Laura Roslin that one of the ships she's abandoned had Cami aboard.
- Gaius Baltar held the "idiot ball" when failing to inform everyone that the Cylons look human, and he was (unwittingly) responsible for the Fall of the Twelve Colonies.
- Marc and Tricia question how Adama was able to make the deductive leap in discovering that Leoben was a Cylon at Ragnar Anchorage.
- Marc discusses how fans can hold two irreconcilable viewpoints regarding a show:
- That the show runner has a plan and knows where the show is going at all times.
- That the show runner will be responsive to fans and their desires.
- The "Battlestar diaspora" of previously unknown talent having started from BSG, and have spread outward into other shows (Tricia Helfer, Katee Sackhoff, Callum Keith Rennie).
- The two callbacks that Marc refers to as "sour notes:"
- The "by your command" at the Miniseries' end, which Tricia notes being confused about, as they didn't know who was giving them the "command" to follow.
- Boxey, who was later dropped in the series as that character didn't fit into the tapestry.
Transcription[edit]
Syfy.com Advertisement[edit]
Tricia H. (0:05) Listen up you frakkin' toasters. It's Tricia. You can now watch all seasons, all episodes—the entire series of Battlestar Galactica for free in the Syfy app and at Syfy.com.
Marc B. (0:17) For free? Tricia that's crazy pants. Now listeners is of Battlestar Galacticast have no excuse but to follow along and catch up on the show.
Tricia H. (0:25) That's right, Marc. You can download the Syfy app on the device of your choice. Or you could just head over to Syfy.com and watch it there.
Marc B. (0:34) Every episode of Battlestar Galactica for free in the Syfy app. So say we all!
Tricia H. (0:40) Yep! And after you're done watching all those free episodes, don't forget to come back here to Battlestar Galacticast for Marc and my breakdowns. I guess we do have a plan.
Podcast[edit]
Case Orange (0:52) All ministers should now go to Case Orange. Repeat: This is an official Colonial government broadcast.
Marc B. (1:08) Hey everybody, welcome back to the Battlestar Galacticast. I am Marc Bernardin in here with...
Tricia H. (1:13) Tricia Helfer.
Marc B. (1:14) Hurray for Tricia Helfer.
Tricia H. (1:17) And a lot of Tricia Helfer's cats.
Marc B. (1:19) And yes, there's there's a table full of cats here.
Tricia H. (1:23) If you hear any tinkling, it's not Marc and I.
Marc B. (1:26) Totally! Or if you hear any sneezing, that's me. But awesome. Okay, so we're here to talk about the second part of the Battlestar Galactica miniseries. But before that, How are you doing, Tricia? We don't have to jump right into business, we can say "Hey!"
Tricia H. (1:41) We can say, "Hey!"
Marc B. (1:42) Yeah.
Tricia H. (1:43) I'm doing good. I'm recovering from Halloween.
Marc B. (1:46) Yeah, we can talk. I mean, even though you guys are listening to this until December/January.
Tricia H. (1:50) Right.
Marc B. (1:50) It was Halloween yesterday.
Tricia H. (1:52) I just fucked up by doing that.
Marc B. (1:53) It's all right. It's time travel. pretend like you're living in the past with us.
Tricia H. (1:58) Yes, and we're going to FTL!
Marc B. (2:01) Faster than light back to the past!
Tricia H. (2:03) So you just did what they did. We talked about—last episode—of the first time that that Apollo says FTL, FTL faster than light.
Marc B. (2:12) Faster than light. So I'm handicapping it.
Tricia H. (2:15) Yes.
Marc B. (2:17) What did you dress up as for Halloween this year?
Tricia H. (2:20) I dressed up—I have not dressed up for Halloween for 15 years.
Marc B. (2:25) Wow, why this year? What was the occasion?
Tricia H. (2:28) I, you know, just—I decided I was going to finally do something on Halloween and go to a party. Go to Michael Rosenbaum was doing a Halloween party.
Marc B. (2:40) Very cool.
Tricia H. (2:40) So he was kind enough to invite me. So I went and it was a buddy of mine's birthday. So he came as well and Katee [Sackhoff] came, and I keep putting the effort in and I have one of the [Messenger Six] Red Dresses. So all I need to do is go buy a white wig and that's what I did. I went as Number Six.
Marc B. (2:58) Well done.
Tricia H. (2:59) Yeah!
Marc B. (2:59) Anybody guess it was you?
Tricia H. (3:02) I had one person, Brandi came up to and she goes, "You know, I just said to my husband, she does a really good Tricia Helfer." And then she goes, "On second look, it was you!" So...
Marc B. (3:15) Amazing.
Tricia H. (3:16) Yeah. But Katee—I didn't feel quite as lame as I thought it was going to feel because Katee came as Vic Moretti, her Longmire character. So, and my buddy came, went as Gaius Baltar.
Marc B. (3:28) Well, well, at least two of you did just—you just raided your closets ultimately.
Tricia H. (3:33) Yes. And it was I—he's bald. So I put a wig on him, cut it and everything. And he was he stayed in character in every photo, I think almost every single photo. He ducked down so—
Marc B. (3:43) Well done.
Tricia H. (3:44) —[so] he was shorter than me.
Marc B. (3:47) He gets it.
Tricia H. (3:48) He gets it.
Marc B. (3:50) Yeah, I went as George Washington, from the Hamilton's.
Tricia H. (3:55) I saw them. Very good.
Marc B. (3:58) Thank you very much. amazon.com deliveries of perfectly fine Hamilton costume.
Tricia H. (4:03) Ok, for next year. I'll know that I can go to Amazon.
Marc B. (4:07) They did all right by me. I was afraid of the like, you know, one size fits all. But you know, it all worked out in my favor. I'm not a one size guy. But yeah, it was. It was fun. I went to—Jimmy Lee, the co-publisher of DC Comics, throws a big la dee da at his house and they were circus clowns and magic acts, and
Tricia H. (4:28) Oh wow.
Marc B. (4:29) It's nuts. He kind of goes all out. And and I was the only Hamilton, so I felt pretty good about that.
Tricia H. (4:35) That's good.
Marc B. (4:36) I betcha you were the only Caprica Six.
Tricia H. (4:38) I was. Yes.
Marc B. (4:39) Nice. Well done. Well done us.
Tricia H. (4:41) Yeah. We did it!
Marc B. (4:43) For killing a three-month old holiday. Like you guys have no business.
Tricia H. (4:49) Still recuperating today, I think.
Marc B. (4:51) Yeah.
Tricia H. (4:51) A couple days later!
Marc B. (4:52) These these holidays are harder and harder every year. Especially the ones with booze.
Tricia H. (4:57) Yes. My mind was tequila.
Marc B. (5:00) No, tequila is not my friend.
Tricia H. (5:03) I get *very* happy on tequila.
Marc B. (5:06) I—my problem is, is that I get too happy and then don't remember things.
Tricia H. (5:10) Oh god, that's what happened to me. Exactly what happened to me. I know by my Uber receipt and I got from a 12:04[A.M.]
Marc B. (5:19) Well, that's not bad.
Tricia H. (5:20) And my friend who brought me, he's like, "I'm making sure you're getting home." And then we made pizza. And just we're stupid 'til like five in the morning.
Marc B. (5:30) Yeah, I think tequila equals—like the math of tequila—always ends with 5 A.M.
Tricia H. (5:35) Yeah,
Marc B. (5:36) Whatever the numbers before were equals 5 A.M.
Tricia H. (5:38) And a mystery bruise or two.
Marc B. (5:41) The last time I drank tequila was in Park City. It was covering Sundance for EW. And this must have been, God, 15 years ago. And all I remember was we did a shotski. Did you ever do a shotski? Where they take a ski, an old wooden ski and then they glue, like shot glasses to the ski and then you feel each shotglass with tequila, and then like five people stand underneath and tip the shotski into mouths.
Tricia H. (6:05) Oh, wow.
Marc B. (6:06) The problem is that if all five people at the same height, that's great, but if there's one dude who's like five inches shorter than everybody else, you're just covered in tequila trying to catch it in your face, and I'm getting on you. You're smelling tequila and drinking tequila and like absorbing tequila in your skin. And I remember dawn the next day, and I'm—I still have missing time in between there. I'm like, you know, this is not a good drink for me. Bad things happen.
Tricia H. (6:35) I would say interviews for Lucifer because my my first episode back [to the show] aired recently, and it was like, you know, she's missing like four months of time while mom inhabited her body. And I'm saying in the interview, "You know, it's like when you blacked out from too much alcohol. And you're like, you start phoning your friends the next day, like 'What did I do? What did I do?'." And then I'm like, "I'm not making myself sound very good in this interview."
Marc B. (6:57) I'm the classiest name in the world. I say that to myself every morning: "I'm the classiest name in the world. We can do this today, you guys."
So awesome. Excellent. Well welcome back everybody.
We've been talking about the part two of the Battlestar Galactica miniseries, which picks up kind of directly after Apollo's "death".
Tricia H. (7:21) Yes.
Marc B. (7:21) Where [Commander] Adama is kind of stricken by "Oh, dear god, I think my son has exploded in a Cylon attack." The rest of the fleet, like it's it's a very intense moment.
Tricia H. (7:32) It is.
Marc B. (7:34) And it's, it's funny because so much of, you know, we're getting into this place of I mean, the show lives in a place of our tragedy and recovery from tragedy, and the effects of tragic events. And we never quite see it land on Adama like it seemed as if he's just trying to be busy enough to not have to deal with it. You know, it falls on everybody else like once once you see Katee's face, Aad you just see the "Oh dear God, did he just die? Did I not tell him the things I wanted to tell him? I'm going to pray for him even though I don't seem to be a pray-ey lady." Like it's an *intense* moment and Adama pushes through he does that thing that that people do.
Tricia H. (8:17) And you know he may do it more because he's—I mean military. He's trained as well to have the delayed reaction, or have the reaction but push it down.
Marc B. (8:28) Right let's have to get it done.
Tricia H. (8:30) Yeah, have to get it done.
Marc B. (8:31) You know, and so much of the beginning of this is in the, it's in the wake of death, like there's bodies on the on the tarmac, we just see them body bags. There's you know, a beat Starbuck looking at the picture when we fold out, and we see that's her and Zac, and then there's Lee on the other side. It's the "this war is not going to come without loss for—either for the people that we know, let alone the sort of disparate billions that must have died on the Colonies. It's, no, it's hammering its landing home here.
Tricia H. (9:01) And this is where they're about to make the decision to jump.
Marc B. (9:07) Right.
Tricia H. (9:07) Out to, you know, to Ragnar with—without all the rest of the ships—right?
Marc B. (9:12) No. I mean it's it's they don't know. At least Adama doesn't know yet what happened to the Colonial Fleet, like he thinks they're all just gone. And so it's his decision to okay we have to get bullets, we have to get guns, we have to be able to fight back. So we're going to go to Ragnar, which is leaving—unbeknownst to him—just Colonial One and the President [Laura Roslin], and Lee [Adama] to just, "Okay let's figure it out." You know, Boomer makes her way back and lands on Colonial One [with the survivors from Caprica], so you get that little reunion there, and Baltar is brought back into the sort of orbit of political power. And watching him deal with what—even though he's a narcissist—he's still feeling guilt. Like he's still dealing with guilt.
Tricia H. (9:52) Oh, yeah, that's right. I see him deal with the guilt. He pushes through in his own right. Yeah, he pushes through but you do see that it is the landing on him and the incredible guilt that he is feeling.
Marc B. (10:08) Yeah. And he saw that and then tail-end of the last episode when Baltar's still on Caprica and he's waiting to get onto the—onto the Raptor. We saw our first shot of "Dream Six." Was there a designation when you guys were working, like "What do we call this version of Six?"
Tricia H. (10:25) We actually took, because of the miniseries it was you know, Caprica Six to begin with. And then no other Six I don't think is seen until the very end. When when all the—when you realize Boomer's a Cylon, and Leoben was, and Doral was and... So I just I, when we actually when we were filming it, I actually thought that that character just changed, and was the same character. I think we—the fans started calling her "Head Six." That's what we ended up going because we just called her Number Six and Caprica Six and Number Six. And then we just started following the fans and fans call their "Head Six," it's like.
Marc B. (11:06) Makes all the sense in the world.
Tricia H. (11:09) Although they didn't write that in the scripts, they didn't say Number Six.
Marc B. (11:13) Why? What were the discussions that you were privy to about? Red? Why red? Why not green? Why not blue? Why?
Tricia H. (11:23) I think, the dress we're talking about?
Marc B. (11:27) Yes.
Tricia H. (11:27) Um, you know, I think it was really, I get—again, I don't know, I wasn't privy to the discussions. But for what—you know, the documentary style filming, the darkness that everybody's [wearing]. You know, they're in their military uniforms, you—even Roslin and Billy here and what I'm looking at right now—they're all in dark color suits and things like that. So they wanted Six to really pop and red against all the, you know, the dark and the gray walls of Galactica and all that, red stands out completely, right? And then with the white hair she was originally written in the miniseries—she was originally originally written Carrie Anne Moss in "The Matrix."
Short black hair, very stiff, you know. And then Michael Rymer—I think we talked about this in the last episode—I didn't have much acting experience so there wasn't much in terms of real to go on. So he Googled me and saw a modeling shot that was a very ethereal, and very light blonde hair and it was maybe a bathing suit shoot, but the light was very kind of ethereal looking and and that's why I got my hair dyed white, because of a damn old modeling shot.
Marc B. (12:10) Oh really?
He saw some picture one time; he said, "We need that person."
Tricia H. (12:42) Yeah, so I think about—I think the red is literally just because if it was a blue or green it would it would not stand out as much in front of the backdrop and all the other characters as this ethereal, you know, Head Six. "Who is she? What did she...? How was she...?"
Marc B. (13:00) Yeah, I mean it. And the show is very smart about not ever tipping, to certain degree like what this is. You know, it gives you—it asks and answers its questions immediately, where it's, 'I think it's a chip in your head that's telling you to think these things." And then you kind of said, "Well, no, it can't be a chip in your head." But everything that's that Head Six knows is only things that Baltar knows. Like she doesn't offer any new information. She just offers different ways to *think* about information he's already got, which is this, this perfect little dance of deception and seduction, and giving the audience to believe what they want to believe, while still playing fair with it. And not ever, not ever tipping its hand. The show never tells you she's not real.
Tricia H. (13:48) No.
Marc B. (13:48) Even though she fundamentally has to not be real, but it doesn't matter, because the drama exists like and because it's all in Baltar's head, it's all his little versions of happy insanity. That—it makes it magnetic to watch and watching him seduce himself is the perfect analogy for a narcissist.
Tricia H. (14:15) First time we see him—Well on the plane, when he's first on Colonial One but also in the CIC and I think it's Gaeta comes up and interrupt him.
Marc B. (14:29) Yeah.
Tricia H. (14:30) And that was just like, when I was re-watching and I was like, "Oh man, wow, like so good he's literally like he's being pleasured." And Gaeta comes up.
Marc B. (14:43) Oh hello!
Tricia H. (14:45) James was so good at the comedy aspect of it. Yeah.
Marc B. (14:49) And it's so necessary to it like the comedy, a) in a show this bleak you need some runner of levity to cut through this—just levels of kind of punishing grief.
Tricia H. (15:04) It's like it gives the audience a moment to breathe. Yeah, that's what you know, the comedy breaks in, in the, you know, heavy shows like this. That's, that's what it's for.
Just because the audience is like sitting there. It's like that, you know, when you're you're you're holding your breath and you're like, what's next—and then all of a sudden, oh, I can breathe. Oh, no shit, now what's happening? They're jumping again. You know, it's but it—it allows the audience to breathe.
Marc B. (15:15) Yeah.
Yeah, no, absolutely. And one of the things that I loved about—especially this part of, a) The show is a macro, but even in the micro, the idea that we're seeing Laura Roslin's first real moral dilemma, you know, we're seeing her have to decide. Once she's presented with the idea that half—not half, a third of the fleet that she has now doesn't have FTL drives—and they're not all going to be able to make the next jump. And then they get the Cylon warning. Oh, there's a Cylon Raider—it's scouting us. The entire fleet will be inbound, we have to go [and] we have to go now. And the show, it's giving you this moment where you see her me this little girl and they're sitting in in the the arboretum on this sort of generation ship that's got a greenhouse and, "Oh, hey, what's your name? Where are your parents? Oh, you're adorable. You're a muppet girl and you're wonderful. You have a doll and the doll is cute." This kid is going to die.
Tricia H. (16:24) Yeah.
Marc B. (16:25) And and you see the calculus working on her face and she begins to realize, "We don't have time. Like we started moving people off the the non-FTL ships to the FTL ships, but we're not going to get them all."
Tricia H. (16:37) And she's already fought with Adama to to stay longer. Adama wanted to already jump and abandon the fleet to get the you know, the—more guns and come back to the fight. She already convinced him to stay while Boomer went out and grabbed other ships. Right. And now so she had her moral line on that said no, we're saying.
Marc B. (16:58) yes,
Tricia H. (16:59) But then the shift. You see the shift when she realizes exactly what you were saying is now we've run out of time. And I have to now do what I said we weren't doing.
Marc B. (17:10) Yeah, you know, you know—
Tricia H. (17:11) The hour ago or whatever it was—
Marc B. (17:13) The math of survival, the we can save tens of thousands by sacrificing thousands. And you want to believe that every life is worth the same as every other life. But at some point, when you're faced with this kind of tragedy, it's a game of numbers in a way. Like, if the human race is laying in the balance, then you have to save as many as you can. Or you lose everybody.
Tricia H. (17:36) Or you lose everybody. Exactly.
Marc B. (17:37) You know, so watching watching her deal with that. And then the moment it like, Billy pissed me off a little bit in this moment where she's like, "Okay, we're gonna do it." He says, "Oh, yeah, by the way, one of these ships that doesn't have FTL Drive, that little girl is on." It's like, you know what, Billy just swallow that.
Tricia H. (17:56) Don't let her have that. That guilty conscience .
Marc B. (18:01) Just be a good number two just like this will be the this will be the burden that I shoulder and never tell you about because you have to be President. I will live with this. Billy, don't be an asshole. You're being an asshole, Billy.
Tricia H. (18:13) Billy being an asshole.
Marc B. (18:15) Billy don't be a dick. Rule number one: don't be a dick. And that right there is a dick move, Billy.
Tricia H. (18:21) I just moved to the next chapter, becaues I realize we were already watching. Yeah, Paul Campbell. You were a dick.
Marc B. (18:31) I don't know you Paul at all. Maybe we'll get you on the show at some point.
Tricia H. (18:34) I just did a Hallmark romance movie with him.
Marc B. (18:38) Yay!
Tricia H. (18:39) He's got such a baby face where he's just a couple years younger than me, but not by much. Literally two, three or something. And when I first got the offer, I'm like "Yay, Paul, yeah." Then I'm like, "I'm gonna look like his mother, or his aunt, his older sister.
Marc B. (18:54) Has he aged into his face at all.
Tricia H. (18:56) He hasn't. He still has the baby face completely, but he's got some wrinkles now so I'm like.
Marc B. (19:03) Okay, just an old baby.
Tricia H. (19:07) Benjamin Button/
Marc B. (19:08) You're just weird looking now!
Tricia H. (19:12) Such a lovely guy but yes, I'm—next time I see him, I'm going to tell him he's such a dick.
Marc B. (19:18) But I do—I love the relationship that Billy and Roslin do have. In that it's there's—You can tell there's history there and you can tell those there's a connection there and a lot of its unspoken. You know that that Billy knows things about her she's never said, you know, and she trusts him in a way that... I'm not gonna say doesn't feel earned because we never see it, but we know that there was there's a history between them leads them to that place.
Tricia H. (19:43) Yeah, he gets—he knows that she has cancer.
Marc B. (19:45) Yeah.
Tricia H. (19:46) Before she even says that just because of—
Marc B. (19:48) Yeah.
Tricia H. (19:48) —so he knows her. So you know that there's that history that they've been working together. There's that, you know, shared language that they don't have to—
Marc B. (19:57) Totally. It reminds me, did you ever—[are] you a West Wing fan? A West Wing watcher? If not, you should be,
Tricia H. (20:02) I will I need to go back. It was, West Wing was on when I was modeling and just jumping all over—
Marc B. (20:08) The world.
Tricia H. (20:08) —the world. And a lot of time in places, you know, without English speaking. And I just wasn't very good pressing the VCR because that was kind of awkward.
Marc B. (20:20) I remember. Yeah, that was that was old school that was VHS at hoping the time worked out. Right. Yeah, but the relationship on that show between the President—and I guess Martin Sheen, President Bartlett and his sort of personal aide, Charlie Young played by Dulé Hill— remind[ed me], like, there's a similarity there of the—especially in the West Wing, the President has MS but hadn't ever told anybody. But Young knows because he's spending like hours, you know, weeks on end in the same room with the same man all the time. He just knows, like there's always been something off and I get it. And I'm not surprised and what do we do? It's not like, "Oh, god, he's got a thing." It's, "What do we do? What's the next step?" And I love that level of intimacy between people who don't feel as if they should have that level of intimacy,
Tricia H. (21:11) Right? You expect it, you know, like with a married couple, or you know, longtime friends or something like that, you know, best friends from childhood where you can kind of finish each other's sentences and, and you just inherently know what they're thinking. Right? But when it's in more of a business relationship, it is nice—
Marc B. (21:29) Yeah.
Tricia H. (21:29) —to see that.
Marc B. (21:30) But it also underscores the idea that this show, as with most workplace shows, are about families, like ad hoc families, like families that are thrown together by circumstance and employment and disaster and tragedy or opportunity, or whatever it is. But it's, we are forced to be all [that] each other has. And so how are we going to rely on each other in ways that we were never prepared to, you know, like Galactica at this point, like yes, we will always—crewmates on the Battlestar Galactica—but we were never the only ones that anybody has left. You know? And to the gravity of that. I feel like so much of this show, so much of —not to say most shows, because most shows don't do this well—but the idea that: it's us against the world, or it's us against the Cylons, or it's us against fate.
Tricia H. (22:20) Yeah.
Marc B. (22:20) And we're all we have.
Tricia H. (22:22) And everybody has to play their part. Every you know, everything becomes, not cut and dry, but it's like, you fall... you fall into place... you have to fall into place.
Marc B. (22:33) Yeah.
Tricia H. (22:33) In a situation like that. I think. Otherwise, you know, there has to be a clear chain of command. There can't be too many cooks in the kitchen. Right?
Marc B. (22:43) Yeah.
Tricia H. (22:44) It's just... and I think some of the things just fall into place on their own. Like, that's kind of the order that it would naturally be. And then there's, but like, if one person doesn't fall in line—
Marc B. (22:59) Yeah.
Tricia H. (22:59) —it can upset the entire kind of dynamic
Marc B. (23:02) Because if there's chaos—and there's chaos around you—it's like, "Listen, everybody has to be on board. Everybody has to pull their weight, everybody has to agree—or it's over." You know, like, especially in these life or death situations, especially when the fate of humanity is on the line. You have to [say]: "Listen, I get we have problems. I get we might have different philosophies about stuff, [but] the world is ending."
Tricia H. (23:27) Yeah, you—see, we've had so many natural natural disasters lately and, and shootings. I mean, it's so much going on—fires and everything lately—that it has that... There's been so much divisiveness (or however you say the word) in the country, but when something like that happens, people band together, you know, you'll see the good in people in times like that, right? But this is—this takes that even so much further, right? It's not just okay. Some people have died, and people are losing their homes. It's the entire human race—
Marc B. (24:04) Yes.
Tricia H. (24:04) —is going to be extinguished, you know?
Marc B. (24:07) Yeah. Like the little things fall by the wayside. I think, you know, the, the petty differences that people have that feel like everything when it's just business as usual, but when you're pressed to the end of—the end of hope, those things fall away.
Tricia H. (24:23) Yeah.
Marc B. (24:23) Well, they should fall away. When they don't, that's when you have problems. That's when, you know, Baltar's narcissism becomes an issue. And it's like, dude, if you would just help in a real way.
Tricia H. (24:35) He would just come forward with the knowledge you have and—
Marc B. (24:39) Yeah, like, and again, we talked in the first episode about how much of this show, how much of these characters are about people with secrets. You know how much everybody's holding on to something that nobody else knows. And, you know, Baltar is holding on to a whopper of a secret, which is, "Oh yeah, by the way, I gave this Cylons the key that unlocked all of this." And she could in—like, it's one of those to sitcom plots to a certain degree. I remember hearing hearing [it] referred to on *Friends* as the "idiot ball." Like, every episode some character has to carry the idiot ball, which is the if you just said that thing you should say everything is fine, but no, somebody's got to be the idiot who doesn't do what they're supposed to do. If Baltar would just say like, "Listen guys, I'm sorry, it was me. I didn't know I was co-opted and confused by a[n] artificially intelligent sorceress."
Tricia H. (25:34) "And by the way, they look like us."
Marc B. (25:35) Yeah, you know that now, right. So... duh!
Tricia H. (25:39) You know, but you know, on the flip side, what's done was done, right? Like so what does he gain by coming forward at that point, and saying, "I was the one that gave away the defense codes. I didn't know." Like, maybe he leaves that part out, but somehow figures out a way to tell, to let everyone know that Cylons look human. A little bit earlier than they find out, you know? Adama figures it out in Ragnar station with Leoben, but there's a good stretch of time that—
They don't know.
—they don't know. And he could have put his hand up and said [something].
Marc B. (26:18) I mean, I suppose that that's part of the problem, which is, if he's going to be the first person to say, "Oh, yeah, it was a Cylon. It totally made me do all of this." And they look like, "So do they really? Show me some proof that they really do. Do they really though?" But he also reminds me of like a kid who broke a lamp and doesn't want to own up to it. And then that one small lie becomes compounded and compounded and compounded to the point where, "Dude, if you just said that you broke them laughing was cool, but now you blamed it on that person, who then blamed on that person." And now there's a conspiracy of people lying about the one, you know, yeah?
Tricia H. (26:51) If you're gonna lie, you got to be really damn good at it, because it starts to—it just compounds and you you gotta remember your [lies]. You have to have a really good memory.
Marc B. (27:01) Yes.
Tricia H. (27:01) Because you have to remember all the lies along the way, and if he just telled the truth...
Marc B. (27:06) You're okay. Like it would have sucked to be for you for a while, they wouldn't have like taken—they wouldn't have airlocked you if you would just said, "Listen guys I was—you know, they're human now, right? They look like us. One of them made me give up secrets."
Tricia H. (27:18) Right. "I didn't know I was the guinea pig."
Marc B. (27:20) "Yes, I was the first person they met, and I'm clearly—"
Tricia H. (27:23) How would I know that they were, that she was a Cylon? And I'm still a genius scientist. You still need me.
Marc B. (27:29) Yeah. Like so much becomes easier for him if he just comes clean at the beginning. But that's his big secret.
Tricia H. (27:35) Yeah.
Marc B. (27:35) By the time we get to the end of the miniseries, we are introduced to Adama's big secret, which is: there's no Earth. Like he gives this amazing speech because he realizes that it's, the quote is: "It's not enough to live. You have to have something to live for. So let it be Earth."
"There's a 13th colony that only I know about. It's kept at the highest secrets of government. That's where we're going." That's his life. That's his secret. It's kind of amazing that, to be part of this family, you have to be duplicitous in some fashion. You have to be unwilling to part with a little bit of truth.
Tricia H. (28:13) Yep. You have to. So we just said you need to tell the truth, but...
Marc B. (28:19) By the way...
Tricia H. (28:20) Sometimes you don't.
Marc B. (28:22) Yes. If you're on a television show and do drama for four years, the truth is your enemy... [and] lies become you.
Tricia H. (28:32) Yes.
Marc B. (28:33) Yeah, I mean, it's it's, it's funny, especially we're now watching the moment where we're Roslin first meets, meets Baltar, and knowing full well that in two seasons, they're going to be switching places in ways that are horrible, but it's it's one of those like in small moments. great calamity... woke up/ How often—and it's funny like I we're re-watching the show as we're going and so I'm not as far ahead so some of my memories so fuzzy—How much did you get to work with with Mary [McDonnell]?
Tricia H. (29:13) Oh almost not at all, until the later seasons yeah I mean 'cause I was predominantly just with James, with Baltar, for definitely the mini series. I mean, the odd scene here and there, yes, but... and then, well I guess other people. When I start when especially, when I was Head Six and other people started being [there with Baltar while he sees Head Six], you know the whole gags of no one can see. He's being very happy in the corner.
So I was on set but it wasn't really Mary, because—you know, she's on Colonial One a lot, you know, I was separate from the politics part of it and the decision making part. Not me, the character you know, Six was so, it—Yeah, I don't think... I barely... I think I only worked with Katee like in the finale of this first season.
Marc B. (30:03) Aww.
Tricia H. (30:04) Oh, you know my memory's fuzzy, too. So as I'm going along watching I feel like "I lied in the second episode, in the second podcast I lied. I worked with Katee earlier." But no I was very sheltered in terms of working just with Baltar for most of—definitely until the second season, I think.
Marc B. (30:22) Until the occupation stuff when—
Tricia H. (30:25) Yeah.
Marc B. (30:25) —the actual Six model shows up on New Caprica, and then you're actually being able to interact with people. Not just, "Oh, I'm a pretend person."
Tricia H. (30:35) I definitely was getting tired of Head Six by the mid-second season, before we got to Pegasus and stuff. I was like, "I don't have anything to say. I don't have my own storyline." Just like, "I'm sad."
Marc B. (30:47) "I have no agency."
Did you guys have like Cylon meetings?
Tricia H. (30:54) We did have Cylon meetings, we did actually. Jumping ahead to the second season when we were shooting "Downloaded," and it was the first time we kind of saw the Cylon society and how they interact and things, right? And it was down on Caprica and Lucy Lawless was—Stop me if I already said this, I'm getting confused and you moderated the panel...
Marc B. (31:22) Tell them the story. Tell it to the people.
Tricia H. (31:26) Lucy Lawless had recently joined the show and we were all sitting there: James, and Grace, and Tahmoh, and I were all sitting there and we're discussing like, "Okay, so if this happens in—" It was all about the downloading and the regeneration tech and all this kind of stuff. And Lucy's in the corner, she's reading a book, and she's laughing at us. She's like, "You guys are like really take this seriously, like just say the lines dude." And but then when we came back the next season and she had come on in more of a regular role and was joining the show. She was right there. And she hadn't watched any of it beforehand. So then she kind of—
Marc B. (32:08) I'm just a guest star. I'm just swanning in, and swanning out.
Tricia H. (32:11) Exactly. And then she had watched some of it and she comes back. She's like, "I totally get what you guys were doing because you have to." You did have, we had to have little pow-wows, you know, you block the scene and we'd have our discussion. You know, if again, I mentioned it was one of the most collaborative shows—the most collaborative show I've ever been on. And so a lot of discussion, but then once it went to the grips and they were all lighting and and stuff, you know a lot of times actors they go well you have to go back and change your finished getting ready or whatever. But so often, if we were all ready, we would just stay seated there, out of the way and continue to talk about: 'if this is going on, [etc.]" Or like, because it got so complicated at some point that like you're, you know, you really had to digest it and talk about it and go over and over and over. And here's somebody else's perspective. And there was one—I think was in the final, it was in final season, it was one of the last episodes. I can't remember what it is, I'll remember when we get there. But it was one thing that I was like, "This doesn't seem right the number of years or whatever." And I called up Ron, I'm like, "I think this is wrong." And he calls me back. He's like, "Holy shit. You're right." And it had nothing to do with me. It was like something, was something about, like, the timeframe of something, but it was just like, and those little things. But it helps when you're actually invested, and all the actors and characters are all invested. Because you, I mean, an actor takes the script, especially in like later seasons as—the actor is kind of the, you look at it from your perspective, right? So sometimes you do have a, you know, pick up something that was a mistake, because, you know, not very often, but sometimes there's a mistake because it's like, they're writing the episode on the whole and something squeaks by and you know, the actor is looking at it from a much smaller perspective, right? You're looking at it from your own perspective. So sometimes you do catch little things here and there but anyway, I digress. I'm just trying to say that...
Marc B. (34:17) We're totall allowed to digress. I'm super smart, you guys.
Tricia H. (34:20) I picked up on a writer's mistake.
Marc B. (34:23) Way to go Ron. I saved your bacon, buddy?
Tricia H. (34:29) I was totally expecting to get the call back going like, "No, Tricia."
Instead it was like, "All right, you got that one."
Marc B. (34:38) Well done. "Thanks teammate!"
I also appreciated in this episode, a little bit of where you've been exposed to Adama as the sort of like lion in winter. The I used to be, you know, I was a hotshot fighter pilot, you know, Starbuck is the best anybody's ever seen. You know? She reminds people of me when I was younger. We're getting to see a little bit of like what's left in the old lion. You know, we get the scene with him and Leoben when they're trapped—a missile in Ragnar goes off and they're stuck in the bowels of the station. And it's just the two of them. Were Adama is both like Batman and Muhammad Ali at once where he's like, figuring out like, "Oh, wait, you're a Cylon?" I don't quite understand how he comes to that conclusion.
Tricia H. (35:28) I don't either. Wow, Adama's really smart!
Marc B. (35:30) Yeah.
Tricia H. (35:31) It's because he's because—Yeah, well, it's because Leoben is affected by whatever sort of gas or whatever that they had there that doesn't affect humans.
Marc B. (35:41) Yeah.
Tricia H. (35:41) So but yeah, but that Adama figures it out...
Marc B. (35:44) Totally. That he's like, "Oh, no, the last time I saw [a Cylon] was a toaster." But and maybe their silica pathways couldn't handle the gas of the nebula. Sure, whatever.
Tricia H. (35:54) But to make the jump to—
Marc B. (35:56) The deductive leap to–
Tricia H. (35:57) —that this thing, this person...
Marc B. (36:00) Who's like just seems to have like a bad fever—
Tricia H. (36:03) Right.
Marc B. (36:03) —is actually a robot. Okay.
Tricia H. (36:06) He [Leoben] might have had the flu.
Marc B. (36:07) Sure he's, yeah, he's just having a rough, rough couple of days.
Tricia H. (36:11) But then we, then we see him, and then we see him—the animalistic side—
—the fighter side come up, too. When I was watching this, I forgot how kind of brutal that fight [was]. God.
Marc B. (36:15) Yeah.
Yeah, like it's the— And it's very, I mean there's an overt symbolism to it, but the "nobody gets out of this without blood on their hands." And the last episode we saw you know Adama push off to Tigh, like "Tigh, you deal with locking these hundred men in a compartment, and venting them to the atmosphere, like that's you, I gotta do this." Now it's "there's blood on my hands too. Nobody's going to get out of this alive without getting ugly."
Tricia H. (36:48) Yeah, everybody, especially you know all the powers that be. They all have their moment in the miniseries or few moments of that decision, of that moral what—and you know it makes you think, "What would I do in that scenario?" You know, you'd like to think that you would be the one that stands up and, and makes the right choice. Or are you the type of freezes and you don't really know—
Marc B. (37:13) No.
Tricia H. (37:15) —you know, you don't really know until you're going through a car [crash], you know you're spinning on the ice. Do you keep your calm and do what you're supposed to do and turn the wheel opposite. Or, you know, do you keep your calm or do you lose your shit and just freeze? Yeah, and that's, you know, at least for me watching it, you go you just faced with—you see them go through it. You go, "Well, would I be courageous? Or would I be hiding in the closet?"
Marc B. (37:45) I think, you know, most—more of us than would like to admit—are Baltars who wish they were Starbucks.
Tricia H. (37:52) Right?
Marc B. (37:52) You know, like I think most of us are cowards. In a way, only because we've never been confronted with the realities of this kind of chaos, in this kind of dilemma, but... our lives are not such that it—most people don't volunteer to be firemen, or police officer, or soldiers—like most people aren't lining up to potentially put their lives in danger for other people. Most of us are not heroes.
Tricia H. (38:19) Right. Yeah most of us are not down in Puerto Rico right now to help restore—
Marc B. (38:24) But most of us wish that we were and that the outlet we get from stuff like this, where it's "Oh, I wish I was would it be great if I could? I'm pretty sure in my self of selves I would like to be Adama punching a Cylon to death with a flashlight." When most of us aren't.
Tricia H. (38:44) And then we fill in the rest of the gap there Marc—
Marc B. (38:47) I know!
Tricia H. (38:48) —there has to be "us"-es out there.
Marc B. (38:53) There has to be "us"-es. Otherwise, if everybody's a hero then nobody is.
Tricia H. (39:02) You know what I realized about myself? Like two years ago, I did—throughout like, I'm the type that does stay pretty calm in the face of something happening. Um, but I realized I had like, two years ago, a friend of mine, I became one of the nervous giggling, like laughing, laughing when I'm scared. I've never done that in my life before. And then a friend of mine, we were down with Starbuck, (Katee), and another friend of ours, Sian, and a couple other people and we were hiking, and Sian fell. We're kind of scaling on the side of this cliff. And she, she fell and she, I mean, I was right behind her. I was too far to grab her. But I mean, she would have just pulled me off too, because we've sat on like a [one] foot ledge, but I did go to reach for but I was just too far behind. But I saw her fall and she could have, she could have died. I mean, it was like a 15 foot drop into a dry lake bed with lots of rocks. And so she was breaking something like on the way down. She was breaking like, legs, you know, ankles, whatever. But she miraculously landed.
Marc B. (40:17) She won't hate you for three more months.
Tricia H. (40:20) She miraculously landed kind of side crotch on a tree that had been like a dead tree, laid-over horizontal. And so once I realized she was okay, everybody else's "Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay?" and I can clearly see she's okay. She's alive. Nothing's broken. And I started laughing, and I couldn't stop. I still laugh when I talk about it. And she looked like—because then your brain goes back and processes what was happening in that moment. And in that moment of watching my friend go, "Oh my god, my friend is maybe about to like seriously get hurt." She looked like a flying squirrel. Once again I digress.
So I became I always thought of myself as this person that like, doesn't stress out in situations. Like I keep a level-head and then freak out afterwards. But somehow in my 40s I become the laughing scary person. The person who laughs at the most inappropriate time.
Marc B. (41:27) I mean, but that person is so much fun to be around.
Tricia H. (41:30) Not for Sian. She's like, every time you call me a flying squirrel, I want to punch you.
Marc B. (41:36) Well then, stop falling. Stop making me laugh.
Tricia H. (41:41) Yeah, okay,
Marc B. (41:42) So yes, so some people need to be heroes. Some people need to be squirrels. And you know, fake decides who is whom.
Tricia H. (41:54) Yes. I'll drink to that.
Marc B. (41:57) One glass of wine in and squirrels!
Tricia H. (41:59) Squirrels! Flying Squirrels! Roslin is not a flying squirrel.
Marc B. (42:03) No she is a tiger mom.
Tricia H. (42:07) Yes I like that, "Tiger Mom."
Marc B. (42:09) She's a tiger mom. You know like it's we're also getting into the beginning of with Baltar realizing that. I mean he knows and Adama knows that now—in our time, is a very small, close knit circle of people know—that Cylons look like us. It's the beginning of the witch hunts.
Tricia H. (42:30) Yes.
Marc B. (42:31) You know.
Tricia H. (42:31) The first one is well, obviously Leoben and then Doral.
How did they figure out Doral again?
Marc B. (42:35) Right.
Um, they don't. That's Baltar needing a person.
Tricia H. (42:42) Oh, right.
Marc B. (42:43) He basically sentences him to death because he needs a scapegoat, because he realizes, or Head Six tell him, that there's a—
Tricia H. (42:50) A device.
Marc B. (42:52) —a little device the little Roomba that's hanging on the ceiling of the CIC.
Tricia H. (42:57) The hanging Roomba that we see me carry in my purse, Baltar.
Marc B. (43:01) Yeah. Put it all together, buddy. But he decides that we need somebody who's going to have to be a Cylon.
Tricia H. (43:08) Yeah, he just randomly picks Doral, doesn't he?
Marc B. (43:11) He's like, "Oh, that guy will do."
Tricia H. (43:14) Yeah, I remember you going. I mean, for me watching it, I knew Doral was so I don't, I guess have the—but when you were watching that, were you going—
Marc B. (43:21) He's just a guy.
Tricia H. (43:22) He's just a guy. He's just a PR guy like leave him alone.
Marc B. (43:26) Yeah. But then once you get to the end of the miniseries and you realize that he is actually a Cylon. And then, you know, you start re-watching the stuff from like, and watching the things that he does: to plant seeds of division and seeds of doubt. "And is Roslin really the person who should be leading this? Is she really the one who should be in charge? I didn't vote for her. Like why why are we following her orders?" Like I know, now I see why he was doing that. Now I see why he was second guessing everything because he wants them to fail.
Tricia H. (43:59) Yes. You don't. Yeah it's on rewatch: you don't notice it the first time you know, like always just been a PR guy.
Marc B. (44:06) He's just being an asshole. But
Tricia H. (44:07) Yeah.
Marc B. (44:08) So no you're an asshole with a plan. The worst kind of asshole: an asshole with a plan.
Tricia H. (44:17) Wasn't it David Eick on one of the panels said that this whole plan thing, that was just like a sound bite that they decided was like, "And they [the Cylons] have a plan."
Marc B. (44:27) Which I mean—
Tricia H. (44:27) That Doral clearly had to have a plan, so.
Marc B. (44:30) It is. It would be frightening I feel to most TV viewers to know how much of this is made up on the fly.
Tricia H. (44:39) I know Ron always said he's out as a five year thing and that, you know, like, he had to have a lot of the story in his head from the beginning. But it evolves as you go along. And you know, we talked about last episode that in the Series Bible, I had one line that I was told my backstory was "machine as woman" and he said that because "I haven't figured out everything about the Cylons yet." So Ron had a plan.
Marc B. (45:04) There's a plan.
Tricia H. (45:05) But—
Marc B. (45:05) There's a great quote, I heard an interview with Damon Lindelof, who was talking about his time on LOST, in the weird position that he ran into with the fans, which was, they wanted two things to be true at the same time, which couldn't possibly be to the same time. Which are, "I want to know that you as the show runners know where it's going at all times. That you knew what it was going to be, that you had a course that you plotted, that you were steering for that that course. And [2.] we want to know that the fans have a voice and that you're responsive to the way we feel about the show." And those two things are mutually incompatible.
Tricia H. (45:39) Yeah.
Marc B. (45:40) We either have a plan or we're responsive, but you can't—
Tricia H. (45:43) You can't have both.
Marc B. (45:43) You can't have a responsive plan or plan to be responsive. That's not a plan. You know, and so like television is an evolving sport. You know, every, every year you go into the show, you have an idea for what it's going to be. Every time you sit down to break a story. You have an idea for what It's going to be. Every time you deliver a script, that script is not quite the idea that was going to be, that doesn't quite fit in. And then the actors on the stage will make it something different than you planned it to be. And then in post you discover things that weren't there. Like it's all—not to say improvisatory, if that's even a word. We'll make one up, fine.
Tricia H. (46:18) I understood it.
Marc B. (46:19) Improvisatory. But it's, it's always in flux. It's a, not that it's a moving target, but the way you're getting to the target is always different than you imagined you would.
Tricia H. (46:30) Yeah, you have to be a little bit better at like flying by the seat of your pants type thing in television than in a film, because a film things change as you're going along as well. But you know, the story beginning middle and end.
Marc B. (46:43) Right.
Tricia H. (46:44) TV, you don't, you know, again, the writers have have more idea but even that's in flux a little bit.
Marc B. (46:50) Totally.
Tricia H. (46:51) And as a writer, do you find this as well? That you—I think it was, two of the writers of Battlestar said that once you're, once you've got your cast and you're a season or two in, or whatever, you actually start, you start writing with the actor's voice—
Marc B. (47:09) Oh, for sure.
Tricia H. (47:10) —in your mind as opposed to just, when you're creating something for the first time, you've got your own, you know, it's like adapting. Or, you know, like watching Game of Thrones compared to reading the books. Like reading the books, you have a visual for everything in your brain. Now, when you're watching it, things are slightly different. But do you find yourself as a writer writing with the character's face and voice in mind?
Marc B. (47:24) Totally.
Tricia H. (47:32) Or your original idea of the character?
Marc B. (47:34) I mean, when when I'm writing, I'm always—I cast a thing, the perfect cast in my head. And those are the people I'm writing for.
Tricia H. (47:41) So you actually have a visual of a real actor.
Marc B. (47:46) You know, and sometimes it's like, "You know would be the perfect actor for this? Sidney Poitier at 40 years old. You know, that is the thing that I want." At some point you may or may not get that. You may or may not you know ever get to a guy who that person. But when you're writing, it's—Okay, it helps me. It helps me plan. It helps me hear the voices in my head. But it always changes once you have an actual actor cast, and even—because I just came off of Castle Rock, and we were working for a long time and just the hypotheticals. And especially when it's not my thing, like it's somebody else's show that I'm just helping execute. But even still, once you get Melanie Lynskey cast, I know what she sounds like, I know how her voice works. Once you get André Holland, it's I understand how that dude speaks, and I can you begin to write for the actor, knowing what they're good at, knowing what their strengths are. It's hard to do it in a vacuum, because it's always hypothetical, but it changes immediately. Once you're, "oh, that person" and then you start seeing dailies, and you're like, "Oh, they're good at that. They can do the humor. I didn't know they could do humor."
Tricia H. (48:51) Right? And they start writing in a little bit more humor.
Marc B. (48:53) Totally. Or they have a chemistry in a way we didn't expect them to have a chemistry. So that can help inform episode eight and we're just working on [episode] two and like it's—
Tricia H. (49:01) The chemistry is something that is so exciting: you cannot put your finger on, you cannot make chemistry. And it doesn't necessarily just have to be in, in romantic relationships. It can be in you know, Billy and Roslin or whatever, you know, like any—and sometimes you're surprised by two characters will just, there's a dynamic there. There's a chemistry that you didn't even know was going to be there.
Marc B. (49:26) No. It's like holy—like on screen together, they either are amazing or sometimes horrible.
Tricia H. (49:32) Or something's off.
Marc B. (49:33) Doesn't work at all. And then here's, here's what's not going to happen. They're not going to fall in love and they have nothing in common. They're going to be antagonists because every time they're together, it's a war and we can use it. It all becomes tools for the toolbox, but we don't know [until we see the actors].
Tricia H. (49:51) It's not necessarily—it's not at all relevant to, if the actors like each other or not. I mean, you could have married couples that have terrible chemistry on-screen. You assume because they're married, that they would have great chemistry or you can have people that really hate each other behind-the-scenes. And for some reason that chemistry comes out as, as great. So it's an indescribable quality that you just can't, you can't purposely create.
Marc B. (50:15) Totally.
Tricia H. (50:16) It's just: it is or it isn't.
Marc B. (50:17) And it's easy, especially as, as a member of the sort of troglodyte writer tribe, to imagine that beautiful people will always have chemistry with each other, because they're beautiful. So well, no. No, it turns out is not entirely what makes that work. Doesn't hurt, but still—
Tricia H. (50:38) Yeah.
Marc B. (50:39) Which also explains why, "Wow, that girl is beautiful. Why is she with that guy?" Chemistry!
Tricia H. (50:45) Chemistry!
Marc B. (50:47) There it is.
Tricia H. (50:48) Yes. And usually with a cast, like with Battlestar, the cast just really gelled. I'm talking about the chemistry, not the people. It's you know, with a large ensemble cast. It's awesome when there's just—it all works and everybody, you just, like that, you believe them as that character and there's chemistry just left, right and center.
Marc B. (51:12) Yeah,
Tricia H. (51:13) You know, with all this cross chemistry all over the place, and that's usually a sign of "Okay, somebody's got—somebody got it, right."
Marc B. (51:21) Yeah, it's it's also amazing. And we talked about this in the first episode, the fact that so many of the members of this cast had never acted before, you know, or had only done a couple of bit parts here and there. They were not like, once you get Eddie and Mary, and you get and again, Michael Hogan, who is a veteran Canadian actor. But everybody else was kind of learning it as they went to a certain degree. And to be able to put together a bunch of people, some of which this is their first gig, for them all to be this good. And for them all to work together and some of it is the license of, these are our big names. Everybody else? We're gonna have to [be the] best person we can find.
Tricia H. (52:01) Yeah.
Marc B. (52:02) And this person is awesome. What have they done before? I don't care. They're great. And I think, you know, I've also heard it referred to as like, putting together a baseball team. Like not everybody's going to be a slugger, not everybody's going to be a pitcher. Like everybody's got their thing that they're great, and together they make a great team. You're casting that room. You're casting that cast for: the you're awesome at this and you will complement that person who is awesome at that, and we won't know until we start connecting the dots of our amazing everybody will be together, and apart, and that together and—
Tricia H. (52:36) Right and then the collective is elevated.
Marc B. (52:40) Yeah, you know, and then you know two, three seasons in you start pairing people you would never pair before and release, "Oh shit, that's great. Why didn't we put them together before?" It's an alchemy that I don't quite understand yet. But when it works, it's phenomenal.
Tricia H. (52:57) Yeah.
Marc B. (52:58) It's phenomenal.
Tricia H. (53:01) Just watching the scene right now with Eddie beating the crap out of Leoben.
Marc B. (53:05) Which is so—
Tricia H. (53:07) Callum is so good. Not just as Leoben, but he's such a good actor.
Marc B. (53:13) Yeah, like I've seen him in a bunch of stuff after this, but it's always a little bit of: "Yeah, that's right. Like you're from Battlestar." Like it's, as a early adopter of this show like watching the Battlestar diaspora begin to like leave and infiltrate the rest of the world, let's—
Tricia H. (53:29) What does "diaspora" mean?
Marc B. (53:30) It means the—from the small center, the spread of something. You know, so there's the cultural diaspora of like, Los Angeles and the Mexican immigrants who were here, they built this small town and through that, and you start to see the effects of those people and the culture and the names of the streets and the holidays and all of that stuff. Watching the people from Battlestar who started this tight knit group of people that half of them I hadn't known their names before going on—watching where they go and watch them sort of like, plant their flags and sink their claws and teeth into other roles. It's like, I remember them when they were kids. Oh yay! That guy was on Battlestar. That's the beginning of my history. We started these people, and watching as they have just evolved into, like amazing talents and like top flight. Like this dude is going to be on that show. Of course I'm going to watch that show because it's got that person whom I love.
Tricia H. (54:28) Right.
Marc B. (54:28) And I love them from this, from the Battlestar.
You know, we're eventually going to get to this point, you know, where we've sort of got it on the background, we're not paying that close attention.
Tricia H. (54:42) I don't know about you, I'm watching.
Marc B. (54:43) Well, I mean, but we finally get, you know, the big Adama-Roslin confrontation, like once, once the fleet—once what's left of the fleet, you know, FTL once they jumped into the Ragnar Nebula, and once you get Apollo and Adama, and Roslin and Tigh, once you get all of these people on the same ship. Then you finally get that sit down that you were kind of always hoping for, which is: "Okay, here's the president of the Colonies and the last surviving commander of a Battlestar, in a room together," and watching. Like that's there's so much dramatic juice there.
Tricia H. (55:22) Oh there is.
Marc B. (55:23) And watching Mary just kind of smackdown Eddie, it's so delicious. "I don't know why I have to keep telling you this, but the war's over.
Tricia H. (55:35) "The war is over."
Marc B. (55:36) "We lost."
Tricia H. (55:38) Yeah. She's about to tell Adama that right here.
Marc B. (55:41) Now it's so good. Because she's, she's been through it. Like she's been, "I've had to sentence thousands of people to their deaths because this thing happened. It's not happening. It's over."
Tricia H. (55:55) Do you think you know, Adama is always going to see the military route first, right? That's what he's trained for. Do you think Roslin gets to that place to realize that the war is over first? And like you say, pointing it out to Adama, do you think it's just to do with the fact that she has had to make this choice of leaving a bunch of these people behind that didn't have the FTL. You know, the ship that doesn't have the FTL drives? Or is it also because she knows, you know, Adama also knows that she was 43rd in succession to become president. But because she's in that was her job was dealing with the 43 people above her—she's the Secretary of Education, right—and the 43 people above her, and these are a lot of them, friends of hers and things like that. The fact that you know, they both know that all of those people are gone. But it's Roslin's life, and now she's elevated to President where she never thought she would be. Do you think she kind of comes to that conclusion that "43 people ahead of me are dead. And we've just had to leave thousands of people to certain death and all the Colonies [are gone]." I don't know?
Marc B. (57:13) I mean, I think the the tonnage of it has landed on her before it's landed on Adama. You know, like I think he does. There's the bit at the end of the first part of the miniseries where he said, "I'm taking command of the fleet," because this Battlestar's down and this commander's over in—"general, what's his name is gone." Like, I'm the last one. So I'm taking commanded the fleet, but it still hasn't landed on him that, like hasn't been confronted with the actual, these are people who are going to die. These are people who have just died, you know, like, he's lost a couple of pilots. He's, you know, at least before this, he thought he lost his son. It's personal for him, but it's not. He hasn't. He hasn't framed it yet.
Tricia H. (57:54) Right. He's still in the military mindset.
Marc B. (57:56) The war I gotta fight—
Tricia H. (57:58) Right.
Marc B. (57:58) I'm a soldier. That we're under attack. Like it's time for defense and defense-is-offense and let's go to work and not run. You know, whereas Roslin is like, "Listen, buddy, it's—I've been talking with people who have been like, survivors from attacks. I've been confronted with a very harsh reality of 'Oh, shit it's done. It's time to go.' My—one Battlestar cannot defeat the Cylon hordes. It's not possible." You know, like that. It's funny that the logic of combat is not dawning on Adama, until she makes it clear. That's funny.
Tricia H. (58:38) The odds are not in our favor.
Marc B. (58:41) You got one ship. You got like 100 Vipers. And these guys? C'mon.
Tricia H. (58:47) They're clearly the superior power at this point.
Marc B. (58:50) Yeah, like you can, you can go out in a blaze of glory. And I think that maybe she even sees a little bit of that the—and Adama will directly respond to that in his big speech to the troops later, but the idea that it would have been easier if we didn't have to be the survivors. You know, like—
Tricia H. (59:05) Survivor's guilt.
Marc B. (59:06) —survivor's guilt of being the ones who didn't die. And then the existence of having to survive without home, without family, without resources, like on this [uninteligible] ship on nothing but [uninteligible] ships. For the foreseeable future, it would have been easier if we had just been caught in the attack. We wouldn't have to do this work.
Tricia H. (59:27) We wouldn't have to. We wouldn't know any different.
Marc B. (59:29) Yeah, like we just wouldn't, we would be at peace. And you know, all we want is peace, and that peace was easier than this peace.
Tricia H. (59:35) But you didn't die and who you know, so you've got to pick up the pieces and you've got to keep carrying on.
Marc B. (59:43) Totally, like fate has chosen you to be one of the last remaining. So what are you going to do with that? You know, and it's, it's, again, Episode Two of a miniseries about a show in which we're trying to convince people to watch.... while asking these massive, heady, intellectual, philosophical questions about, about destiny and fate, and life versus death, and decision versus inaction, and all of these things. It's, I mean, I cannot think of another pilot episode for a TV show that was asking me this much.
Tricia H. (1:00:19) Yeah, I mean you really faced with with a lot of it in the miniseries.
Marc B. (1:00:23) Yeah, like and it's all there. The show what eventually deep in it, and broaden it, and drill down on certain parts of it, but everything the show is going to be is the— the seeds that are planted here.
Tricia H. (1:00:35) Yeah, it's laid out that this is: we're dealing with—
Marc B. (1:00:41) It's all bad.
Tricia H. (1:00:44) So bad.
Marc B. (1:00:45) It's all bad.
Tricia H. (1:00:46) A little few moments of lightness here and there, but it's all bad.
Marc B. (1:00:52) "We'd better start having babies." [laughter] "Is that an order?"
Tricia H. (1:01:00) Yes, it's gonna have to be.
Marc B. (1:01:03) Which is an amazing little couplet of, like, these two old men. "All right, you're gonna make me have some babies, boss. All right."
Tricia H. (1:01:12) Line 'em up.
Marc B. (1:01:12) Here we go. Come on, Doc Cottle. We need a couple of operations. I'm havin' some babies.
Tricia H. (1:01:18) We need to reverse something that I haven't done in a while.
Marc B. (1:01:20) Oh boy. Pipes need to be re-opened.
Tricia H. (1:01:25) Yeah, but well, what—if that's the case, then at least they're not being rude to the older women that can't have babies anymore.
Marc B. (1:01:37) No. I feel like there's in the awful "Handmaid Style" version of the future.
Tricia H. (1:01:43) Exactly.
Marc B. (1:01:43) There's room for everyone.
Tricia H. (1:01:45) There's room for everyone.
Marc B. (1:01:49) Everyone has a place in this fucked up version of the future.
Tricia H. (1:01:53) Yes. The other thing too is that is that everybody's allowed to—everybody has a secret, but everybody is allowed to be themselves.
Marc B. (1:02:03) Yeah.
Tricia H. (1:02:04) In it, you know that the gender equality, and the race equality, and except against Cylons. But it's, that was just sort of we didn't make anything of it and I think that to me is really beautiful.
Marc B. (1:02:22) Yeah, it's that old saying: "There are no atheists in foxholes." Like, guys, we don't have enough people to afford to be racist, or sexist, or homophobic, or whatever like.
Tricia H. (1:02:34) Right? We, again, we all just have to work together.
Marc B. (1:02:38) Yeah, you know, I think that might also be a little bit of the vestige old Star Trek and Ron, of the: "Humanity, while we have our issues and while in this version of the future, we all have our wants and our foibles and our problems and whatever, but there's a part of us that's pushed past those sort of petty surface issues and just decided to discriminate for different issues."
Tricia H. (1:02:58) "For different issues."
Marc B. (1:03:00) Like again, like humans are humans and we will always find ways to cordon each other off in certain degrees, and we will always find ways to overvalue and devalue people for reasons that don't seem to make any sense, but these reasons here are not racial, or sexual, or whatever. They're specious. Okay, we are not fans of the Cylons. And we will speak of them in slurs, and we will treat them in such ways that feel very reminiscent of like World War Two and internment camps, and all that stuff. Like it's, it gets very heady and, especially in the second season when we're holding Cylon hostages and using them for various ugly human things. It's awful and it's horrible, because that's what humans do when left to... their own devices.
Tricia H. (1:03:54) Yeah, for a supposedly—the superior animal on Earth, mammal on Earth, we really are a miserable—
Marc B. (1:04:03) God, we're the worst.
Tricia H. (1:04:04) —group of beings, aren't we? I mean...
Marc B. (1:04:09) There's some person who, I remember—I want to say was like, again like Plato or something. But uh, it wasn't it didn't go that far back, but the quote of like I think it's like "Democracy is the best form of government next to everything else, which is horrible" or something like that. It's the, "it's better than everything else, but it's still horrible." Like, yes, humans are the paragon of animals the divine work of whatever. We're still horrible.
We're the worst. We're just all we have.
Tricia H. (1:04:40) We're manipulative. We're cunning, we're.... Yeah. I sometimes look at my cats and I just go be like, I love —I think that's part of the reason I love animals so much as they don't have agendas. Like, can you just get so tired—I get so tired of people, and agendas and manipulations, and whatever.
Marc B. (1:05:03) Let me tell you, with opposable thumbs comes all the bad stuff. [Were it] not for these fuckin' thumbs, everything would be great!
Tricia H. (1:05:17) And there would be an alpha, and he would pee on things. When things didn't go his way like Caesar [the cat] over there.
Marc B. (1:05:24) You....!
Tricia H. (1:05:28) I completely sidetracked.
Marc B. (1:05:30) So way to go humans! Thanks for all of that.
Tricia H. (1:05:38) Thanks for peeing, bastard. Humans.
Marc B. (1:05:41) Way to go, us.
Tricia H. (1:05:42) Yeah.
Marc B. (1:05:44) You know we're sort of cresting to the end of the miniseries as we're watching in the background. And again, it's the it's the cheese sauce in the broccoli of, "Oh, wow, this is the most amazing space battle I think I've ever seen." You know, movie, TV—doesn't matter which medium you're talking about. It's unbelievable.
Tricia H. (1:06:02) It still really holds up.
[Unintelligible], you know, 10 whatever years and it still does really hold up.
Marc B. (1:06:03) It really does.
Yeah, I mean, I think some of it is the speed that it's all moving. That like, you know, even though you can't quite render the way you can today, what we're doing 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it's moving so fast, you can't focus on where it's not quite right. You know, the cameras moving in such a way that the motion of the camera detracts from any imperfections of the effects and but it's, God, it's so great.
Tricia H. (1:06:33) Filming explosions and things like that are always so funny.
You're on—it is helped so much by the movement of the camera. When the cameraman is moving opposite. You know, when he's jerking the camera around that sells it because if it's just left up to the actors in something like that. Like when, you know, when the ships hit with one of the missiles or whatever, and everybody's slammed to the side. And undoubtedly every odd take there'll be somebody that just has like has not paid attention to the way the way you're supposed to be slammed, and they'll go the complete opposite way, and you're like, "Really?"
Ninety-nine people went that way and one goes that way it doesn't—physics doesn't work like that.
Marc B. (1:07:14) "Back to one everybody."
There's this amazing clip online—I'm sure there's more than one—but from the Star Trek: The Next Generation, where they had motion-stabilized a lot of the like, "Oh my God, the Enterprise is being shot at!" and so it's just literally watching actors go, "Whaaaa?" Just bouncing and kinda moving, and the ship isn't moving, the camera's not moving, it's just them acting like idiots. It's the funniest thing I've ever seen.
Tricia H. (1:07:45) You feel like an idiot too! Like you—
Marc B. (1:07:48) Have to?
Tricia H. (1:07:49) Some of this stuff is like—Oh, when you're doing a car scene. And it's what we call it the "poor man's filming" when it's a... You're not actually—it's bad enough when you're on a truck bed. You're actually moving, you're not driving but you're on a flatbed being hauled. But when you're just in a studio and they've got lights and green, you know, green screen, like outside the car windows, and you've got a big piece of timber underneath the car, and a grip on each end. And they're just rocking the car.
Marc B. (1:08:24) Hollywood magic.
Tricia H. (1:08:25) Hollywood magic and there's some times like that where you're like, I feel so dumb right now.
This is this is this is the hardest part of the job when you feel dumb doing it. Not dumb, but you know what I mean? Like when you're, you're having to—Yeah, pretend there's an explosion and you're the idiot that goes the wrong way. "Ugh, Tricia!"
Marc B. (1:08:47) "Here we go again." "All right, fine." "You check the car." "No, I got this line. It's okay."
Tricia H. (1:08:56) Yes, but yes, so cameraman really help in these things.
Marc B. (1:09:01) I mean, it's just it's so good. And then it's funny because this is one of the first times that I can remember watching and thinking, "Oh, hey, that's how these ships would actually move in space." Because you know, I grew up watching Star Wars and like, that is that is how fighter jets work in atmosphere, but in the independence of air and aeronautics and all that stuff, is drifting through space. It's how do you not drift to space? Yeah, and watching all of these things and you know, thousands of Cylon Raiders and hundreds of Vipers running at each other, and watching them all operate according, to what feels like, astrophysics... is just like it's the first time I'd ever seen it. The first and the first time counts for a lot.
Tricia H. (1:09:41) It does.
Marc B. (1:09:42) You never forget your first time.
Tricia H. (1:09:44) Of most anything.
Marc B. (1:09:45) Of most anything.
Tricia H. (1:09:46) [Unintelligible] You beat me to it. I was just about to say that.
Marc B. (1:09:46) I stepped on your line, I'm sorry.
Oh, hurray for wine.
Tricia H. (1:10:00) I think there's—there's—Do you hear the truck? "Beep. Beep. Beep."
Marc B. (1:10:06) Nobody else can hear it though.
Tricia H. (1:10:08) We've got supersonic hearing.
Marc B. (1:10:10) We're just killing it in here. So yeah like we're we're cresting on this, this sort of awesome moment of Adama—unlike Roslin to a certain degree—is unwilling to forsake any of his pilots. It's combat landings everybody, we're not leaving a single person behind, even though we see bodies floating out into the ether just shattered by Cylon missiles, but—and this awesome bad-ass moment where Apollo's Vipers shot, lost an engine. He's just drifting. "Leave me behind! Go on without me!" And Starbuck does the [unintelligible].
Tricia H. (1:10:48) Yeah when I was re-watching this, I forgot about this. This is awesome!
Marc B. (1:10:52) This is so bad!
Tricia H. (1:10:54) "Coming in hard!"
Yeah. So you know, so he, it's interesting cuz he, that dilemma right? Okay, we're going to leave thousands of people because we have just five, but here we're about to get blown up, but I'm not leaving those two pilots.
Marc B. (1:11:12) No.
Tricia H. (1:11:13) Right is that that the game of split-seconds, right?
Marc B. (1:11:17) It totally is. And I think that—and maybe it's a math we don't really hear him go through—but the idea that there's, while there are only 50,000 people, I've got a hundred pilots—
Tricia H. (1:11:28) And we need them.
Marc B. (1:11:29) And we need them. This is a finite supply of people and we're going to lose one or two, or five or ten, every time we go out on a mission. I can't afford to lose any more than I have to lose.
Tricia H. (1:11:39) Right. When is it they start training new pilots?
Marc B. (1:11:42) I don't think it's 'til like the second season, when they start you know, just getting—"All right, you ever fly anything? You look kind of smart, you can fit in the uniforms we still have leftover. Can you fly anything?"
Tricia H. (1:11:54) Yeah, they have to start taking, you know, regular people.
Marc B. (1:11:58) Yeah.
Tricia H. (1:12:00) Yeah, they're running out. And so maybe that is the decision. It's—
Marc B. (1:12:03) Yeah.
Tricia H. (1:12:04) —like he's done the math in his head. He's like, the pilots, unfortunately are more important than just the general civilian at this point.
Marc B. (1:12:10) Yeah, like pilots can also have babies.
Tricia H. (1:12:14) They can!
Marc B. (1:12:15) But the normal people having babies can't all be pilots.
Tricia H. (1:12:22) Very well put, Marc.
Marc B. (1:12:25) It feels as if the entire cast was there during the "So say we all!" speech. Did you hide in the background?
Tricia H. (1:12:30) I was not there.
And hearing Eddie—Eddie is literally is on screen right now doing the "So say we all!" and that was, I think we've all heard his story of how that came about. Right?
Marc B. (1:12:32) But I have not. Should we save it for Eddie? Should we let Eddie tell his own story?
Nnnnooooooooooo!
Tricia H. (1:12:34) Yeah. We'll let Eddie tell his own story.
Marc B. (1:12:49) I will say that I was working for Entertainment Weekly at the time. And they—and I got invited to the United Nations... when they had this big like Battlestar Galactica symposium at the United Nations, so Eddie's there and Mary is there and Whoopi Goldberg was the moderator and Ron was there. And—
Tricia H. (1:13:08) Most of the lead cast, but James and I were on set. We were stuck on the set.
Marc B. (1:13:11) I don't think Katee was there. I remember it. I very much remember, you know, that chunk of people and I think there were some also happening but you're in the the General Assembly Chamber of the United Nations, and they had put little placards in front of every desk that usually has like "Nigeria" and "Belgium" and whatever, but it was like "Gemenon" and "Caprica" and whatever. And I stole one. I have a Gemenon plaque at home. But being in that room, at that time listening to people talk about things like prisoners of war and torture, and war crimes, and through the prism of Battlestar, and then for Eddie to like, before the night's over, like lead a rousing chant of "So say we all!" in *that* room. It's just like everybody says "So say we all!"
And they're all crying 'cause, "Adama told me 'So say we all!' And I don't know what I'm doing with my career, and this is all bullshit, and I want to lead the charge." It was like there's a handful of things that being a journalist has let me do, and that is like high among the "Holy shit!"
Tricia H. (1:14:19) That was pretty cool.
Marc B. (1:14:20) I was in the UN with Adama. So say we all! And then there was alcohol. But that was the closest I got to feeling—as I'm imagining the main cast was feeling—at this moment. Oh, oh, this is the show.
Tricia H. (1:14:42) And we're... Okay I'm gonna chant, too!
Marc B. (1:14:45) Yeah.
Tricia H. (1:14:45) Yeah, but yeah it's so powerful here with all the bodies in front and, I mean so much loss and... but you've got it. You know, his mission here is to not have all these people just lose hope.
Marc B. (1:15:04) Yeah.
Tricia H. (1:15:05) Because when people lose hope, then they're not going to continue on, they're not going to make that smart decision. They're not going to, you know, and he's the leader of the charge there.
Marc B. (1:15:14) Yeah, it's "We all have to focus. Like, if we lose that focus, it's it's life or death, like every day is life or death. And it's not enough to just live you gotta live for something." So—
Tricia H. (1:15:27) And this is when he talks about Earth.
Marc B. (1:15:28) Yes, this is the you know, "highest members of the government and the military are told about a secret military blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Earth."
Okay.
Tricia H. (1:15:38) And everybody's looking. Yeah, everybody's—now they've got, we see Roslin here. And she's like, does she know in that moment that he's making it up?
Marc B. (1:15:48) I think she does. Because when she goes to him later and says, like, "Listen, I was close with Adar." (We don't know how close she was with Adar, hubba-hubba.) But and "he never spoke about an Earth like, there's never been a mention of the highest members, the highest positions of government know about this. No—"
Tricia H. (1:16:05) No.
Marc B. (1:16:06) "—you just made it up." I love this, this moment towards the end where Tigh's extending an olive branch, as much as he possibly can. Just saying, "We'll start with a clean slate, you're a hell of a pilot, way to go saving the old man's kid. Thank you for everything." She's like, "You're a bastard."
Tricia H. (1:16:24) I know. And his face is shaking, it's so hard for him to own up and say that, and you know, extend the olive branch. Starbucks just like—
Marc B. (1:16:37) Nope.
Tricia H. (1:16:38) "I'm the hotshot here, you bastard."
Marc B. (1:16:40) Like don't ever give her permission to speak freely.
Because that freedom is not freedom you want to pay for. "You're a bastard. You're dangerous. You're horrible. You're an asshole."
Tricia H. (1:16:50) Katee's got that—Katie's just like [unintelligible]. She will blurt out whatever she's thinking.
Marc B. (1:17:00) But yeah, it's so great. And again it's the, in any other show this moment would have been the like, "You can be my wingman anytime, Maverick. Way to go out there."
Tricia H. (1:17:10) Yeah, all "love-love-love" each other.
Marc B. (1:17:12) "So okay! You and I together, we're going to make it a better Air Force, whatever, yay team!" Nope.
Tricia H. (1:17:18) Nope. "You're a bastard."
Marc B. (1:17:20) "How's the wife, bastard?"
Tricia H. (1:17:25) Yeah
Marc B. (1:17:26) It's pretty great. Yeah it's just we're—and we're going to get to, you know we're not going to do a real time on this, whatever, we're just about done—but we get to the great reveal at the end, when you—we finally get back to Ragnar and we see that Doral, who they had left there because, again, somebody's got to be a Cylon. And it must be him... and he's a Cylon! What!?
Tricia H. (1:17:49) He's a Cylon.
Marc B. (1:17:51) Then we watch all the other Cylon models come trooping in and, and then the big reveal, you know this episode is that... what... Sharon Valerii is—
Tricia H. (1:18:00) What!?
Marc B. (1:18:00) "You didn't!?" Yeah, we did.
Tricia H. (1:18:05) Yeah. Um, that scene was actually really quite hard to film because—filming technology has gotten better, even by design like a year later we started filming... Hair's falling out.
Sorry, that was not necessary.
Marc B. (1:18:21) That's great on audio! (laughter)
Tricia H. (1:18:26) The having the multiple characters? It was really—that was like a tennis ball and you know, C-stand with a tennis ball and it was it got a lot better in subsequent seasons. Just in that couple of years, it was a lot easier to—you could then put another person in and and that type of thing. And so you're actually looking at something at aside from a tennis ball. But yeah, that scene in particular was just like. there was so many C stands with tennis balls. And you're talking, and I do feel like that scene, we all come off as a little bit robotic. I don't think it was the best acting in that scene. Personally, I when I watched it, I was like—
Marc B. (1:18:28) Okay.
Tricia H. (1:18:32) —we're only okay.
Marc B. (1:19:13) How long did it take to shoot?
Tricia H. (1:19:15) I only took like, half a day or something because it was so technical. The technical stuff takes a long time to film. Because you just, you know, it just does and, you know, even setting up. Wait, why's it not working and you know, so stuff like that just goes, it goes wrong. And but yeah, but that you know, of course, the big reveal of Boomer is what that scene's all about. And, and that was also Doral.
Marc B. (1:19:49) I will say that that that scene has one of the two sour notes for me in the miniseries, and they're both callbacks to the original show. That feel pandering in a way that it didn't need to be. So it's the the "by your command." The line that everybody says at the end which is what the Cylons used to say in the '78 series, which we don't know who they're talking to.
Tricia H. (1:20:15) We didn't either at the time, like who—?
Marc B. (1:20:17) Is the thing we all say?
Tricia H. (1:20:18) Am I saying it to Boomer? Is like she—is she like the boss or...? And they're like "no," and I'm like, "Well then, who am I saying it to?
Marc B. (1:20:25) Who's the you're—that has command? Whose the you're-ing?
And it was the inclusion of Boxey. This little kid that they rescue off of Caprica that it seems as if maybe Boomer and Chief we're going to adopt, but not really because we never see him again. But it's—
Tricia H. (1:20:42) You know why that was? It's because it took us a year to go back to film the start of season one. And the kid hit puberty.
Marc B. (1:20:55) He turned into a little man.
Tricia H. (1:20:56) He turned into a little man like within that time frame. Okay, well maybe Boxey's just not going to be that involved.
Marc B. (1:21:04) Are you going to be my mom? My name is Boxey, Boxey McNasty.
Tricia H. (1:21:04) Yeah. "Boxey McNasty!" Well, he's hit puberty so his mind was going down that way anyway.
Marc B. (1:21:20) "Boomer, how you doin'?"
Tricia H. (1:21:21) But yeah, you're right, those two—"You're not my mom."—those two things do feel like they're like throw, you know, yeah, throwbacks to it and maybe we're going to get to it. Maybe we're not. We did go back and like there was more "by your command"s.
Marc B. (1:21:38) I think once we we've lived in the sort of Cylon world a little bit, then it touches back on it, but it was one of those like, "Hmmmmm..." It doesn't quite feel a part of everything else. It feels so separate and so untethered to the rest of the reality of the show. So why?
Tricia H. (1:21:54) Why? Right.
Marc B. (1:21:55) I mean, I get why because you're still trying to appease people for whom "Starbuck a lady? What are you talkin' about?" "Boomer's a lady? What—? Huh?"
Tricia H. (1:22:05) Yeah, so here's "by your command." You remember that right?
Marc B. (1:22:08) Here, that's for you. I'm going to introduce a daggit at some point later. But yeah, man. Okay, so this is this is the miniseries.
Tricia H. (1:22:21) This is the miniseries.
Marc B. (1:22:23) This is the beginning of a amazing, long, wonderful voyage into a distant past. *Spoilers!* It is kind of great that it's like the second episode of the podcast, [and] we're spoiling the show four years down. Four years hence. All of this has happened before. And all this will happen again. So yes, we will see you in the very next episode of the Battlestar Galacticacast. I have been Marc Bernardin.
Tricia H. (1:22:54) And I am Tricia Helfer.
Marc B. (1:22:56) And yeah, be good. See you soon.
Tricia H. (1:22:58) "33" is next.
Marc B. (1:23:00) Yesssss... Get into it for reals. Okay, bye.
Tricia H. (1:23:05) Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
External Links[edit]
- BATTLESTAR GALACTICAST EPISODE 2: NUMBER SIX'S RED DRESS, BALTAR VS. STARBUCK, AND MORE (web.archive.org backup link)
References[edit]
- ↑ Battlestar Galactica: Mini-Series: Part 2 (backup available on Archive.org) (in English). (18 December 2018). Retrieved on 22 October 2019.