Podcast:Caprica pilot

"Caprica pilot" Podcast
[[File:{{{image}}}|200px|Caprica pilot]]
{{{caption}}}
[{{{download link}}} Download]
This podcast hasn't been fully transcribed yet
This podcast hasn't been verified yet
Posted on:
Transcribed by:	Whisper & Gemini LLMs
Verified by:	Joe Beaudoin Jr. (WIP)
Length of Podcast:	01:28:17
Speaker(s)
Ronald D. Moore	Ronald D. Moore
	Terry Dresbach
	Ronald D. Moore
	David Eick
	Jeffrey Reiner
Comedy Elements
Scotch:	{{{scotch}}}
Smokes:	{{{smokes}}}
Word of the Week:	{{{wordoftheweek}}}
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.

In the official commentary for the Caprica pilot, executive producer and co-creator Ronald D. Moore, executive producer David Eick, and director Jeffrey Reiner discuss the first episode of Caprica. They delve into the creative decisions behind the series' opening, including the provocative V-Club sequence and its origins in earlier script iterations. The commentators explore the show's distinctive aesthetic, emphasizing its realism and dramatic focus over traditional science fiction tropes, and share how this approach distinguishes it from Battlestar Galactica. Behind-the-scenes anecdotes cover filming locations, the use of multiple cameras by Reiner, and the challenges and artistry of the CGI process. They also discuss the casting of young actors like Magda Apanowicz as Lacy and the initial marginalization of Paula Malcomson's role as Amanda Graystone in the "Pilot". Key technological concepts such as paper computers and the creation of Avatars from digital footprints are explored, alongside the development of characters like Daniel Graystone (influenced by tech titans like w:Steve Jobs and w:Bill Gates) and Joseph Adama's unexpected mob lawyer background. The discussion touches upon the emotional core of the series, the Adama family's backstory, and the simmering political tensions between the colonies like Caprica and Tauron that hint at future conflicts.

Transcript

Introduction and Production Team

Ronald D. Moore: Hello and welcome to the commentary track for Caprica the "Pilot".

Ronald D. Moore: I'm Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and co-creator of Caprica.

Ronald D. Moore: And I'm joined here in this commentary session by...

David Eick: I'm David Eick, executive producer.

Jeffrey Reiner: And I'm Jeffrey Reiner, director.

The V-Club and Pilot Opening

Jeffrey Reiner: And, well, let's just talk about the V-Club specifically, since we're right here looking at naked women. So, Jeff, where did you shoot this?

Jeffrey Reiner: We shot this at an old theater in downtown Vancouver.

Jeffrey Reiner: Very elegant, almost rotting theater.

Jeffrey Reiner: You can see by the paint job that it has seen better times.

Jeffrey Reiner: Almost has a gothic kind of feel to it.

Jeffrey Reiner: And we crammed.

Jeffrey Reiner: I wanted to cram as many people as I could into it to make it almost claustrophobic.

Ronald D. Moore: How many days were you there?

Jeffrey Reiner: I think we were here for two or three days.

Jeffrey Reiner: It was a big sequence, you know, to keep this many people excited and keep the energy.

Ronald D. Moore: Is this related to the Opera House Theater that we used in Battlestar?

Jeffrey Reiner: It is.

Jeffrey Reiner: It is.

Jeffrey Reiner: It's the same place.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah.

David Eick: We're on the lead! This dance sequence was interesting because the way it was written was very ritualistic, and we hired a dancer to choreograph this.

David Eick: And this dancer who plays Hectate, is that her name wrong?

Jeffrey Reiner: Hekate.

David Eick: She not only choreographed it, but she's dancing.

David Eick: She's kind of freaky. Really great dancer.

Jeffrey Reiner: Don't they ever get tired of this? It's so sick!

David Eick: This sequence was not originally in the early drafts the way we were going to open the "Pilot", I believe that the opening of the "Pilot" was a little bit more of Lacy and Zoe and Ben heading off to the train and sort of getting a little bit more quickly into that plot.

Caprica's Origins and Creative Philosophy

David Eick: In rewrites, I think we were looking for something that was a little more provocative to open the show with, to sort of, you know, set this world apart from Battlestar Galactica and also give you a sense of where people were on this planet and in this society.

David Eick: And Remi and I and David at that point talked about it at length, and I think I was working on a draft and this notion of there being this virtual V-Club, as we called it, where the kids would go.

David Eick: This is all just places that they hack in on their own and they go and meet in these sort of underground raves.

David Eick: And we wanted it to be as strong as we could get away with on television, that they're shooting people, they're having sex, they're having drugs everywhere, and that the sort of centerpiece of it all was this sort of stylized and heavily ritualized human sacrifice show that they were all coming into where you would have women come up and be sacrificed literally on stage and blood pouring over everything and I tried to make it as dark and gruesome as humanly possible and of course the network when they got the first draft I think they blanched or maybe the studio I think the studio saw the draft and blanched before we sent it on to the network and they were like really well it's pretty dark it's a good segue into how the origin of this thing began this was a notion Ron and I had a long time ago about could you do a prequel to Battlestar if you were going to do a spinoff, you do it in such a way that wasn't like Stargate Atlantis or, know, something that felt like another ship on another journey, but would tell a different kind of story.

David Eick: And Remi Aubuchon went into the studio with a pitch of his own, and the studio actually alerted Ron and I and said, hey, we got this great pitch from this great writer that sounds a lot like what you guys have been discussing as a possible prequel spinoff to Battlestar.

David Eick: Why don't you guys put your heads together? And so we did. And it really turned out to be a great marriage, and Remi is a great partner of ours.

David Eick: And it's a bit ironic because Ron and I have been a little bit insular and sort of incestuous about our Battlestar creative techniques.

David Eick: And I think it was healthy for us to invite someone new into the mix and to open our own minds.

David Eick: And so it's a very different kind of show in a lot of ways.

David Eick: One of which, going back to that scene we were just looking at, was the idea of these flash frames.

David Eick: And I remember talking to Jeff early on about the fact that what I was seeing editorially reminded me of The Exorcist, those ghoul faces, you know, those flash frames of the white face that everyone said was subliminal.

Jeffrey Reiner: And Jeff was like, exactly.

Jeffrey Reiner: Well, it's interesting because I had never really done science fiction before.

Jeffrey Reiner: And the first conversations I had with both Ron and David were very refreshing because they kept on wanting to go away from science fiction, you know, and go for reality.

Jeffrey Reiner: And that was so refreshing and kind of got me interested in the project, especially the themes that these guys do so good, you know.

Jeffrey Reiner: They're so heavy and so poignant.

Jeffrey Reiner: And even this scene, you know, this is not far from my own life at times, you know.

Jeffrey Reiner: You get in an argument with your teenage kid, and you do things that maybe you shouldn't do.

Jeffrey Reiner: And it was very important that we never walked away from this reality, because then we could go as far as we want in the virtual world, and it grounded the whole piece.

Ronald D. Moore: That was really one of the things that we definitely did want to carry over from Battlestar, was a sense of truth, a sense of realism to the characters and the situations.

Ronald D. Moore: And David and I felt very strongly when we were developing Battlestar that we didn't want a lot of things in the frame that were distracting him, because they were quote sci-fi.

Ronald D. Moore: We didn't want silly chairs and silly hair and spandex costumes and all kinds of gadgets that whizzed and floated through the air because those just tend to distance you from the drama.

Ronald D. Moore: And we really wanted this one, even more so than the Galactica, to be a drama first and foremost that was all about the characters, that this is really gonna live and die on these people and their lives.

Realism, Aesthetics, and Technology

David Eick: - Yeah, it was funny. In creating the world, we really chose architectural points that people could relate to.

Jeffrey Reiner: they live in a modernist building, you know, but it's still, it's not futuristic, because in the 60s, they were building buildings that were very futuristic, you know, and now we look at them, and they feel kind of normal, or they're still pushing the edge, even the 60s modernism, and, but, you know, it doesn't feel like much different than our world.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, we wanted that touchstone of familiarity in that you wanted to be able to say, that's really me, you know, that's us, that's the world I live in, okay, what's happening to those people that I recognize on a very fundamental level?

David Eick: All this stuff on the virtual technology and the virtual reality of it is kind of just, It's our extrapolation of things that we see in the culture now and in technology now.

David Eick: And I think we probably stretch some areas of it to suit our dramatic purposes, but not too much.

David Eick: I get the feeling like experiences like this are not too far removed from the foreseeable future.

David Eick: I think that the idea of putting on a headset and seeing a virtual environment is something that's already with us.

David Eick: It doesn't take me too many more steps to say that there's a point where you could feel it with your senses in a three-dimensional sense and she would actually believe that you were in those environments and doing those actual things.

Jeffrey Reiner: It's funny because when she comes and reveals that she has a twin in this sequence, we did it in a very old-fashioned Hollywood technique.

Jeffrey Reiner: We did what's called a Hollywood switch where the real actress, Alessandra, walks in and we let her go out of camera and then she runs and sits down and we switch her double into the camera.

Jeffrey Reiner: So it's really an in-camera technique.

Jeffrey Reiner: It's like one of the almost old-fashioned dates back to w:Charlie Chaplin.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah.

David Eick: So now what?

Ronald D. Moore: Now we have to make sure that you don't de-rise on us again.

David Eick: Thought I'd solve that in the fail-safe protocol.

Ronald D. Moore: This particular set, I didn't see a lot of the filming of Caprica. I managed to get up there a few times, and there were some great moments when I was literally walking between sound stages of this particular scene being shot and then walking over to Galactica, which was shooting simultaneously, and I literally had two headsets on for each production, and I just got this, it was just like this kid-like thrill of walking between two of my shows, and, oh, I'll walk over here and watch this scene being shot.

David Eick: I'm Walt Disney.

Ronald D. Moore: I'm Walt Disney. Look at this.

David Eick: But this set was really cool. This was a very interesting set that Richard Hudolin and the production designer put together.

Ronald D. Moore: It's really not, there's not much to it. It's really a lot of black fabric, right, hanging down.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, you know, I had seen a photograph by a photographer, David LaChapelle, that had kind of a sacred vibe with almost an apocalyptic party feel to it. And I showed it to you guys in our first meeting.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, I remember that.

Jeffrey Reiner: And it was the stained glass windows and the kind of sacred feel that they could get away from this insanity because these guys are moving away from that insanity.

Ronald D. Moore: And this is, is this B.C.?

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, this is the University of British Columbia, which we use only for the exterior.

Ronald D. Moore: I remember there was the usual discussion about cars in this world in the early going. Okay, are we going to have cars? What are they like? Are they air cars? You know, what do they do? And at that point, David and I had gone through this enough on Galactica with various flashbacks to Caprica, and then we just kind of said, you know what, who gives a shit? They're going to be cars. And I think our mandate was, we'll make them interesting cars. Don't make them look like Fords and Toyotas. We went for exotics. We went for old vintage cars. We went for things that at least look exotic to American eyes.

David Eick: Gattaca was a little bit of a reference point for us, and also, like Ron was saying, the choices we made on early Battlestar episodes was basically, you know, you go with a Humvee, no one asks any questions.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, it's pretty simple.

Jeffrey Reiner: Joseph Adama's world is a lot more complicated visually than Daniel Graystone's world. You can see there's a lot more foreground. It's an older world. And I think we even chose different color palette where his world is more warm and Daniel's is much stark and cold.

David Eick: I really like the choice that we gave them hats and suits.

Ronald D. Moore: Hats and cigarettes.

David Eick: And cigarettes, and there was a sense that we wanted this to feel like a period piece to Galactica.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah.

David Eick: It's controversial in a way because when you're on the set, as Jeff will recall, and you're watching scene after scene after scene of guys in the hat smoking, part of you goes, wait a second, this is contrived.

David Eick: Borderline's pretentious.

Jeffrey Reiner: - Yeah, it's contentious.

Ronald D. Moore: - But it works, I think.

Ronald D. Moore: And, you know, and so you pull it back in some places and you put it in other places and, you know.

David Eick: What's nice is the mix. I think we talked about this too at the time, that it felt sort of like that moment in the early '60s where hats are disappearing...

Jeffrey Reiner: Yes.

David Eick: ...and a new kind of fashion is coming in. So you kind of see a mixture, but in Joseph Adama's world, it's still very much old school.

Casting and Character Development

David Eick: You know, in Battlestar, Ron and I fired Boxey, who was the...

Ronald D. Moore: The kid.

David Eick: ...the lone kid in the cast. And when this was being hatched, I remember thinking, "Gee, we're populating this story with all these young people."

Ronald D. Moore: Bunch of kids. And...

David Eick: And we'll fire them, too.

David Eick: How are we ever gonna pull it off?

Ronald D. Moore: I just think between Jeff's direction...

Jeffrey Reiner: Jeff comes from, among many things, Friday Night Lights, which is sort of redefined and rechristened young people on television and also just the good fortune of our casting people in Vancouver and L.A. We found two amazing actresses in Alessandra and Magda to play Zoe Graystone and Lacy and without whom I don't think this would work. I mean all the ideas and all the taffy pulling we did over months and months to make the story work and everything else that these two girls didn't pull it off it just you know and they're not just good they're great they're really like off the charts discoveries and um you know i just think we had to get lucky in that one category for this thing to work every time i watch this i still feel like this is a fairly shocking thing to do kind of i don't think you prepare the audience really at all for this i mean i think we deliberately They went out of our way, not to foreshadow what was going to happen, not to give it a sense of dread or doom. And it just happens in this one shocking flash. But get a sense of movement that leads to it. The first 20 minutes go pretty quick. A lot of story.

Ronald D. Moore: Now this scene here is actually, it says two weeks later, but this actual shot was actually structured towards the end of the piece. And in some re-editing, we moved it up. because I think one of the things that wasn't quite coming through was sort of Daniel Graystone and Amanda Graystone's sense of loss about losing their daughter, Zoe. And so we moved, this scene is actually, was supposed to be one of the penultimate scenes, right? It was going to take place just before you saw the Cylons sitting up on the table, and it was supposed, his reaction here is actually the fact that he feels like he's failed at the experiment of trying to put Zoe's consciousness in. And this was Amanda Graystone, she's, Paula Malcomson here, is actually playing her, kind of reaching out to him after a long story. But in response to some notes about, okay, know, are we feeling enough of the parents' grief, I think it was Jeff's idea to move this up, you know, late in the editing process so it functions here, whereas it was originally going to transition straight to this shot.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, and it's really effective because, you know, on some level you have to get the story going. And when the story begins with the loss of a child, your instinct as a human being is to say, well, let me spend time with that loss. But your instinct as an audience and certainly as a storyteller is to say, move it on. Let's get going with what the story is about. And so to try to strike that balance was really quite algebraic in nature. And I think that cut was really, really effective in solving that problem.

Ronald D. Moore: This guy carries a lot of weight, this actor.

Jeffrey Reiner: Brian?

Ronald D. Moore: He's the bald head.

Jeffrey Reiner: I don't know.

Ronald D. Moore: But he is.

Jeffrey Reiner: This is Brian Markinson, right?

Ronald D. Moore: Markinson, yeah.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, it's one of those things where you see casting on the Internet and you go, "Okay, fine." And you don't really even think about how much, you know, they're gonna make a difference in the thing.

Jeffrey Reiner: Right.

Ronald D. Moore: This bit with the cigarette and the lighter, and this is how Daniel Graystone and I meet. I did this almost just at a perverse sense of putting smoking in people's faces and saying, "You know what? Fuck you. You know what? Fuck you. It's not only in this world, but we're going to make a thing out of it." We're going to embrace it. It's going to bond these men. It's like, you know, the anti-smoking fanatics be damned.

David Eick: There's actually a line of dialogue later where Eric Stoltz says, I just want to sit and smoke.

Ronald D. Moore: I know.

David Eick: Smoke.

Ronald D. Moore: Do you hear that?

David Eick: Do you hear that?

Ronald D. Moore: Smoke.

David Eick: I was on the set for the first couple days on location, and one of the network guys was there. And he turned to me at one point and says, is everyone going to smoke in the show?

Ronald D. Moore: I said, oh, no, no, no, no.

David Eick: It was just a couple of people.

David Eick: David and I worked on a show around six years ago where they asked me to remove every cigarette smoking in the show, and I said, well, we'll have a 10-minute student movie.

Ronald D. Moore: Yes, Barry Diller has influenced all of us.

Jeffrey Reiner: I lost my daughter.

David Eick: People say this reminds me of The Matrix. I guess Eric looks kind of, they like the look of him.

Ronald D. Moore: All the glasses, the same glasses, yeah.

Ronald D. Moore: Now, are we allowed to talk about the fact that Eric and Esai have very different working styles?

David Eick: I think so.

Ronald D. Moore: Jeff, would you like to...

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, well, and I understand both. Eric is very prepared, very prepared. And Esai plays it probably even closer to the way I play it, which is off the, from the hip, you know? But I think when you cast people in shows, you want to, the different styles, their different methods really inform their parts and inform their characters. And I think this is a classic example. Even these two kids, you know, Lacy is very much of a method actor, and Alessandra, she walks in, she does it, and there's not a lot of effort. I mean, there is a lot of effort, but you don't see it. And I think it really helps, because Lacy really plays things very internal, and you feel the weight of the world and of her shoulders.

Ronald D. Moore: To be cut down when her life was...

Ronald D. Moore: Polly Walker is an actor who I've wanted to work with for a while. We should probably mention the fact that not because there was any issue creatively with the choice, but because in television you're dealing with finite budgets and you only have so much to work with, the casting of Polly Walker was by far the biggest, loudest fight of the "Pilot" to Caprica.

David Eick: David played that.

Ronald D. Moore: Ron called me up one time and said, do you really think this is worth it?

David Eick: I said, yeah, it is worth it.

Ronald D. Moore: We're spending a lot of capital here.

David Eick: Yeah, it wasn't even the money. It was just like everyone was in favor of it. It was just, you know, you've got a certain number of shekels you can use to make your movie. And we really, really wanted Polly Walker. And what's interesting and ironic is that of all the storylines in the final cut, Polly's or Sister Clarice's is probably the one to get marginalized the most. Not to her detriment, actually, because in series, I think audiences are going to find there's a lot of really rich, fertile stuff to uncover. But, you know, we fought so hard for her. And in the final analysis, because you're servicing story at a certain point in the cut, some of her best stuff had to go.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah.

Jeffrey Reiner: Amanda?

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah?

Jeffrey Reiner: You know, stylistically, the camera in this sequence, and in general, is very kind of a lot more staid than Battlestar, And one thing that I wanted to do was kind of build an arc where Battlestar is so immediate and so visceral. I wanted this world to be, you know, to really feel like this world was a little bit more stable. And, know, it was before the fall. And then have little moments of kind of deconstructionism within it. So we'll cut to a different side of the line and there'll be a shot occasionally that doesn't seem like it fits in. Just to kind of trigger a little tension in it, you know. But the camera's a lot more stayed.

David Eick: This is a homage to Jean-Luc Godard.

Jeffrey Reiner: It is an homage to Taxi Driver.

David Eick: No, he's a homage to Godard.

Jeffrey Reiner: I know, I realize that.

Jeffrey Reiner: I rip off him only the best.

Jeffrey Reiner: This is one of my favorite scenes. And this, I know it's Ron's favorite scene.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, I love this scene.

Jeffrey Reiner: It's just them sitting and drinking coffee and smoking.

Ronald D. Moore: And smoking.

Jeffrey Reiner: And time goes by.

Ronald D. Moore: And time goes by.

Ronald D. Moore: And nothing happens, really, until they leave. And we probably talked about this scene more than any other through the development of the script.

David Eick: I remember this was the... To me, this was the linchpin of the...

Ronald D. Moore: Well, in some ways, this is the linchpin of the show because this is where the two characters meet, bond, and many events spiral from this one sit-down, and nothing really happens in the sit-down except they're two grieving fathers that just need a moment to sit and be at peace.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, when I interviewed for the gig, I remember telling Ron, this is my favorite scene, and I was thinking, either I'll never get the gig or I will get the gig. And here I am.

Jeffrey Reiner: About five seconds. I'm jumping off a bridge myself.

Jeffrey Reiner: It was a tough scene, though, you know, to find the right tone...

Ronald D. Moore: ...without him going too far and just making them connect. I remember there were different takes of this. In some, they were more... Daniel Graystone was more obviously distraught. In other takes, he was a little colder. And this is sort of the Goldilocks one where it's sort of splitting the tune. You can kind of feel the pain, but not...

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, I never really bought him breaking down.

Ronald D. Moore: It was hard.

Ronald D. Moore: I've been only a few cubits on the books.

Jeffrey Reiner: Much to my misfortune.

Ronald D. Moore: Yes, they have had better seasons, but I've got courtside seats. Any interest?

Ronald D. Moore: The character Daniel, I think we were sort of inspired...

David Eick: ...by trying to make him versions of different software kings of the moment. There's a bit of Steve Jobs in him, there's a bit of Bill Gates in him. We wanted that sense of the man who had literally built things... ...in his parents' garage and then built an empire out of it... ...and become a major industrialist and a major figure in Caprica... ...and presumably the Twelve Worlds... ...and with the massive amount of wealth that would come with it... ...but that he was still very much, in some ways, a middle-class suburban guy... ...who had stumbled into something or built something... ...and then has trouble connecting with his daughter... ...and is wrapped up in a very sort of domestic kind of character thing. And then when he loses his daughter... ...the forces at his command would all be tuned towards trying to bring her back.

Realism, Aesthetics, and Technology

David Eick: Ron, you should talk about the paper that she uses, too.

Ronald D. Moore: Oh, yeah, the paper computers. That was something actually a friend of mine, Naren Shankar, who's an executive producer on CSI now. Naren and I went to college together. Many years ago, we were having some just sort of sit-around bullshit session and talking about things, and at some point, he literally picked up a piece of paper and said, you know, I mean, there's no reason why someday a computer can't be like this.

Jeffrey Reiner: And I said, what?

Ronald D. Moore: He said, yeah, I mean, literally, like this.

Ronald D. Moore: You know, you could write on it, you could fold it up, you could put it in your pocket, and you could unfold it, and it would all be there. And he went into this lengthy technical discussion, because he has a PhD in physics and this and that, and this whole lengthy discussion of how it would work. And I was fascinated by that idea, that you would have a computer, there's a sheet of paper. And this is going on like 20 years ago, something like that. And it always stuck with me, and it was one of those notions I was always looking for an opportunity to use in a show at some point or in a movie. And here it felt like, okay, we're in this world, how do they use their computers? It's not like Galactica where it's all cords and buttons and keyboards. It has to be advanced. It has to be more advanced than where we are.

David Eick: Oh, the paper thing.

Ronald D. Moore: The paper thing at least kind of says it's very advanced, and then you kind of get rid of it and you kind of forget, you know, without explaining it or talking about it.

David Eick: Yeah, we tried to kill it like four times.

Ronald D. Moore: I know.

David Eick: It was like it drove, and Gary Hutzel, our visual effects guy, kept like, He's still trying to kill it. This paper thing, I don't know. It's, do we really need it?

Ronald D. Moore: We have some really neat monitors now. There's some really great flat screens that you would never know.

David Eick: But there's something called e-paper now where it's real now. I sent you an email around three months ago. It's a real thing.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah.

David Eick: Something happened.

Jeffrey Reiner: This scene was a beautifully written scene and just so heartfelt. It's really, it's like probably the second or third scene that I, you know, you always lock on to scenes when you're a director. Like, what is this piece about? I just love the emotions that this avatar can feel. You know, it's almost like a rebirth of her.

Ronald D. Moore: Well, it is, you know, because she's almost dead when she first sees her.

Jeffrey Reiner: No.

Tamara: What am I without her?

Ronald D. Moore: When you read a script through direct for the first time, do you read it all the way through and then read it a second time? Do you sort of know as you're reading it?

Jeffrey Reiner: I know the first time.

Ronald D. Moore: First time.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, I mean, I'm telling you, there's signposts. This is a scene, the scene with them smoking. It just felt, you know, you're looking for things that, from a completely kind of abstract thing that you lock into. At least that's the way I work. I don't analyze the structure. It's characters, characters, characters. And this is one of the scenes, you know, that really got me. And it was interesting, the whole reveal of when she hugs her, that idea that a hug kind of heals this girl was so beautiful. And then it leads, you know, you were on the set that day, and it was like it called for special effects, and at the end of the day, I just did it again, an old-fashioned thing in camera.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, just did it in camera.

Jeffrey Reiner: And you know what? It's not gilding the lily. There's an organic... A scene that's so beautiful and organic, I think as a director, you have to adhere to those ideas.

Tamara: Put on your makeup or try it on your clothes.

Tamara: I'm not a person.

Daniel: I know that.

Tamara: I feel like one.

Ronald D. Moore: How much do you allow the actors and actresses to play with the scene? When you come in, generally, do you try to do it once it's written and then okay, let's try something, or do you kind of take the cues from them?

Jeffrey Reiner: Well, on this show, I really didn't rehearse. I don't rehearse.

Ronald D. Moore: You don't rehearse.

Jeffrey Reiner: Which kind of freaked everybody out, and why don't you rehearse? It's gonna be okay. Because I just think that there's something to be said for Discovery in the moment, and even though the first take normally doesn't work, you feel like everything counts, you know, and everything is part of the process, And just because, you know, it's the first time, it doesn't mean it can't be good, you know? It warrants that everything is inclusive of the creative process, you know? And, um, I don't know, I just think it helps the actors.

Lacy: Greystone.

Daniel: What? What are you doing?

Lacy: I... I, um...

Daniel: What?

Lacy: I gotta go.

Daniel: Lacy, why are you here?

Ronald D. Moore: These little plot points took a lot... There was a lot of massaging going on through the script and through various drafts about what Daniel Graystone suspected when, what Lacy let him see, what she didn't let him see, what he saw on the computer. There was endless discussions of what's on the paper, what's not on the paper, you know, explaining the V-Club. I think the only sort of... I kind of remember lengthy discussions with Studio Network about explaining the V-Club, explaining the rules of it and explaining how the kids got in and blah, blah. And we kind of like dispensed with most of that over the course of the development process and sort of just said, you know what, the audience will figure it out and let's just move.

David Eick: I think one of the things I liked the most about the way that we ended up structuring the script was that there's a lot of just throwing the audience into this world and letting them figure out what it all means along the way. And there's not a lot of sort of overt backstory that's thrown at it, a lot of exposition. It just feels like it kind kind of unfolds a bit and you just sort of find yourself in this world, which I kind of like.

David Eick: It's true, and music has played a large role in that. I think that when you develop a theme that sort of characterizes a certain point of the narrative, you don't need to explain it. I mean, when we go to the V-Club, it sounds a certain way, it feels a certain way, it looks a certain way, and so you don't need all those notes to, you know, I mean, you just sort of go, okay, well, here's where we are, and these are the rules, and this is how it works.

Ronald D. Moore: Now, this is Sasha.

David Eick: Roya's.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, who's going to play a role in the series, not because we designed it that way, but because the actor so...

David Eick: Punched through.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, he really...

David Eick: He's much like Helo.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, totally like Helo.

David Eick: He planned to be a big player in Galactica, and we just saw him in the "Pilot" and said, wow, we've got to do something with that guy.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, and Sasha's just...

David Eick: I remember sitting on the set with Jeff, And he came in with his shirt off to sort of demonstrate all of the tattoos that he had. And I said to Jeff, that's how I look when I peel off my shirt.

Ronald D. Moore: And David peeled off his shirt.

David Eick: I have photographs.

Ronald D. Moore: No, he doesn't.

David Eick: We'll be putting them on the Internet.

Jeffrey Reiner: This is the first time I've ever done a complete CGI sequence.

Ronald D. Moore: Is that right?

Jeffrey Reiner: I was a little terrified because, you know, I storyboarded it. And then, you know, it came back completely different from my storyboards.

Ronald D. Moore: Of course.

Jeffrey Reiner: And I said, can I at least see what my storyboards look like?

Jeffrey Reiner: And it's pretty much what I had storyboarded. Maybe not the design of the building, but it was, for me, a really wild journey. I did not believe that it would work until I saw it.

Ronald D. Moore: It's an interesting process working with the CGI artists because, yeah, you do storyboard and you give instructions and something completely different oftentimes comes back. And on Galactica, you know, I kind of vacillate between the anger of it and the sort of, like, okay, but wait a minute, maybe this works. And sometimes you go, wow, that is inspired. It's great. It's much better than what I intended. Let's go with that. And other times it's like, what the fuck were you thinking? This is not what the... What are you doing?

David Eick: It's good to have somebody to get mad at.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, it's good to have somebody to get mad at.

Ronald D. Moore: But it's tricky because they really are artists, you know? And I think, you know, we're moving to a place where you stop thinking of the people that do the visual effects work as just, you know, geeks at computers who just are slaves and do what you tell them to do. They're actually artists and they work in this other, you know, medium that we don't really have any understanding of.

David Eick: Well, I give, I mean, I'll say I give Ron a lot of credit for helping to launch my writing career. And one of the things he said was, it never fails. If I write, they're sitting, they're standing. If I write, they're outside, they're inside. If I write, they're in front of a truck, they're in front of a car. And there is a certain, I don't know, release or sort of, you know, letting go that you do. And it's because you believe that it's a collaborative medium.

Ronald D. Moore: You have to.

Joseph: We'll come together.

Joseph: Stop off for a shave.

Daniel: Nice, huh?

Joseph: Yeah, sure.

Daniel: All right.

Joseph: I met a man who offered to take us to see the Buccaneers play. What do you think?

Jeffrey Reiner: As you can see, the previous scene where they came out of school, the world is a lot warmer.

Ronald D. Moore: Sort of.

Jeffrey Reiner: You know, we put an orange filter on it.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah.

Jeffrey Reiner: And you feel sun on these people.

Ronald D. Moore: It was also Wilson Elementary School, which is where I went to junior high.

Jeffrey Reiner: What?

Ronald D. Moore: They called me. Richard called me at one point and said, hey, we're putting up signage for the school. Where'd you go to school? I said, oh, Wilson Elementary.

Jeffrey Reiner: Oh, but you didn't actually go to school in Vancouver.

Ronald D. Moore: No, no, no. Jesus Christ, no.

Ronald D. Moore: The whole mob thing with Joseph Adama, we had talked about trying to find something interesting for his life when we were serious about this story, because in the Galactica, the series, Joseph was established as being a lawyer first and then a civil liberties attorney, And that played in really well for where Bill Adama ended up, we thought. He's a military officer, and oh, a surprise, you know, his father's not only not in the military, he's a lawyer, and he's civil liberties of all things. And that sort of informed Adama's sort of idealism and sort of his political outlook. And then as we came to this show, that didn't track in perfectly with what we were trying to do. And it also felt like, well, if he's just a civil liberties attorney, he's already a hero and a good guy, and sort of where do you go from there? And there was something more interesting about him being a guy who worked for the mob. And eventually part of the story will be, "Well, how did this mob attorney become someone who was advocating civil liberties?"

Ronald D. Moore: I offered David this part of the woman smoking the cigarette.

David Eick: -He wouldn't take it.

Jeffrey Reiner: -I thought that was David.

Ronald D. Moore: No, he didn't want it.

Ronald D. Moore: These V-Club scenes have so much more life and energy to them than I ever thought we were going to get. Because usually you write something like that and you say, oh, it's a big nightclub and the energy is, you know, pulse. And it's just like pounding and there's people everywhere. And then you get it and it's like, you know, it's like five guys. And it's shot through the crowd and they're all kind of like faking dancing. And it's like, oh, that's not so funny.

Jeffrey Reiner: No, that was my mantra. People, people, people, people. I want the fire company to come in and kick people out. And much to the studio and producer Clara George. They got the people. I'm an old punk rocker, and I've been in clubs that are so crowded that you feel like you're going to pass out. So I understand that energy.

Daniel: Can't be.

Daniel: And the only thing they need is a robotic body to put it in.

Ronald D. Moore: I know, I know.

David Eick: First thing is find out if it's true. Saying you've got the MCP is one thing. Actually having it is another.

Ronald D. Moore: There is a whole subplot here that got cut for the "Pilot" that we could talk about a little bit. It's sort of hard to in specific terms, because it's something that we're probably going to come back to in the series. But there was a substantial subplot with Amanda, and Amanda was having an affair with somebody. And when we cut it together in the room, I think there was a general sense that that story wasn't working for a variety of reasons. I think there was a problem with chemistry between the two actors, which is just one of those things you can't predict. Sometimes actors just don't have chemistry together, and then when you see them trying to have a passionate affair on camera, ...and also, I think, on a creative level, I think it was probably a misstep... ...on the part of myself and Remi as we wrote this... ...to have the character of Amanda having an affair in this particular "Pilot". Because it's sort of, when you watched it, it made her very unlikable.

David Eick: It was like she was having an affair and...

Ronald D. Moore: -While her daughter...

David Eick: -While her daughter was dead.

Ronald D. Moore: And Dani was on this very heartfelt, very emotional journey... ...to try to recreate her. And she just came off as the one that she just didn't like. So we opted to lose that whole thing in the "Pilot". And unfortunately, as a result, it means that Paula doesn't have nearly as much to do in the "Pilot". And she was a much bigger character in the script, but that's also an aspect of the show that we'll probably come--

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah.

Ronald D. Moore: Track back into as we get into series.

David Eick: Here's the grandmother.

Ronald D. Moore: David, do you want to say anything about the grandmother?

David Eick: Well, this is the scene that I fought to prevent from getting cut, because we were always, of course, like with Battlestar, long and in need of trims and cuts and lifts to make time. And to me, this was the scene that made you relate to Esai's character, to the Addams family, and to this idea of longevity to it, that it had depth, that it had, you know, dimension to it.

Jeffrey Reiner: You can see the color of the walls. They're very warm, and the wood texture, which is completely opposite to Daniel Graystone and Amanda Graystone's world, which is glass and modernism.

Ronald D. Moore: Yes, yeah.

David Eick: The contrast is really specific and effective, and I felt you needed that scene to connect to Esai and to feel like you were connected to that family's plight, their story.

Ronald D. Moore: There was a scene in the script that ultimately got cut for production where you saw Amanda actually doing some surgery. I think she was in a room, and she was using...

Jeffrey Reiner: Wasn't she using the headset?

Ronald D. Moore: She was using the virtual technology?

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, she was using the virtual... Yeah, it was really interesting. It would have cost a fortune.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, she had on, like, one of those headsets, and she was in one room, and then in a separate room was the patient that was being operated on by robotic devices that were being controlled by her in the virtual world. It was an interesting kind of thing to sort of showing her in her world and also give you another sort of taste of the technology, but it was one of the things that had to go when we were making budget cuts.

Jeffrey Reiner: Everything good that, you know, Paula did, we cut.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, if it was good and it was with Paula, it had to end up on the floor.

Jeffrey Reiner: No, Paula is an amazing actress. She's probably the most dynamic and intense actress I've ever worked with in my life, and boy, she's going to be amazing in the series.

Ronald D. Moore: I liked Paula a lot. The times I was on the set, she was the one I...

Jeffrey Reiner: We'd hang out and we'd be the bad people, like smoking off to the side.

Agent Duram: My daughter didn't have a political bone in her body. Her biggest concerns in life were...

Jeffrey Reiner: This actor could read the phone book and it would make you feel like he was reading the Bible. You know, he can really... Conviction's a big word in this whole movie. You know, like the kids have so much conviction and this character, Agent Duram, that speech that he makes later about monotheism versus polytheism, He just kind of did so beautifully, you know. I mean, it was a scene that if you didn't have complete conviction, it would have never made the cut, you know, and he really nailed it. He says it like he's had personal experience with something, you know.

Ronald D. Moore: There's a great seriousness of purpose to the way he plays this. He doesn't come off as sort of the stock law enforcement guy that you just hate because he's after your characters. You get the sense that, I mean, I do, I read into it that he's really trying to protect people. He's really worried this is a guy who's really trying to do his job.

Serge: Welcome, Lacy Rand.

Lacy: May I come in?

Ronald D. Moore: We should talk about Serge on, because I think Serge is a great character.

David Eick: Serge went through some controversy over the time.

Ronald D. Moore: Serge was sort of going to be one of our nods toward the technology of this planet.

Jeffrey Reiner: It's a fine line.

Ronald D. Moore: It was very important to me and to Remi as we wrote this to sort of say, "Okay, really, this is a human drama. We want it to be very recognizable. It's very contemporary. But this is a society that is capable of these kind of virtual reality things. It's a society that you have to believe has created a Cylon by the end of the "Pilot", and that is flying around. I mean, they go to different planets. I mean, they have space travel. And so there had to be sort of elements of science fiction and sort of the futuristic technology, especially in somebody's world like Daniel's, that you could believe. And Serge was sort of our nod in that direction.

Jeffrey Reiner: okay, wouldn't a guy like Daniel have some kind of robotic servant thing that cruised around the house and did various tasks and that you could talk to it and that it would obey, you know, and then it was, well, what is it? What does it look like?"

Ronald D. Moore: And I don't remember the design process too well.

David Eick: You probably remember the design of Serge's process.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, it wasn't until, like, the fourth level design that I said I'd buy it. I thought we were going to get rid of him, and now I'm at the point where I look at the scene where she just walked in and I wish I would have shot close-ups of Serge.

Ronald D. Moore: Maybe that's where we go down the line, where we can personalize him more.

Jeffrey Reiner: But really interesting character.

Ronald D. Moore: Well, and I was pointing out that the voice of Serge, which we've carried on to the final cut, is the assistant editor.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, that's right.

Ronald D. Moore: He actually belongs to the Mensa Club.

Jeffrey Reiner: He is a certified genius.

Ronald D. Moore: I have to say, because we went through several discussions where we toyed with the idea of omitting Serge altogether.

Ronald D. Moore: Even when we got the cut, we were talking about...

David Eick: just leaving that story point out altogether, I have to say, that guy's voiceover was...

Jeffrey Reiner: John Thomas, he's going to get rich off of this series.

David Eick: ...with saving the character of Serge and the whole concept of a domestic robot as anything else, because he was so good.

Ronald D. Moore: I remember when I came on the set, we are in location at Daniel Graystone's house, and I saw that they had the cutout of Serge for the first time, and I went, whoa, that's big!

Ronald D. Moore: And Gary Hutzel had some elaborate explanation of why it had to be this size. And I kept wanting it to telescope up and down. I kept wanting it to be like a Roomba, you know, one of those little squat devices on the floor.

David Eick: Yes, the iRobot.

Ronald D. Moore: And then when you talk to it, like something would go and shoot up and could talk to you like at eye level and then shoot back down and be unobtrusive.

David Eick: And Gary looked at me.

Ronald D. Moore: God, we killed that idea.

David Eick: Yeah, he was like, oh, that's an interesting idea. I'll talk to Jeff about that.

Ronald D. Moore: You always know, once Gary says that, you're dead.

David Eick: When he says, I'll go talk to the director about that, it's gone.

Key Scenes and Directorial Approach

Ben: What's going on here?

Zoe: Pretty much anything. No limits. That's the motto. Down there's a kill zone. Get a gun. Get five guns. Walk in and start shooting. Shoot your friend. Shoot the prime minister. Shoot yourself. Whatever. Back that way are the group sex and drug dance.

Jeffrey Reiner: This is fun to have this girl grab Eric like this. I think Eric liked that. He enjoyed that. The fight scene I love doing. I wish we could do a whole episode just on the fight.

Ronald D. Moore: I know the fight.

Jeffrey Reiner: You're really sold that there's a lot of space in this place, too.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah.

Jeffrey Reiner: I don't know how many rooms you're actually using.

Jeffrey Reiner: Every room has a different vibe and a different feel to it, you know, different color. I feel like I've traveled through a large building, you know, by the time I get here.

Jeffrey Reiner: We shot everything in the V-Club handheld, which is a lot different from what we did the rest of the show.

Zoe: That's different. That's for adults.

Lacy: Zoe always said you can rationalize anything. So what you and Zoe came here for?

Jeffrey Reiner: This is a very interesting scene when the father learns that his... I don't know, just hearing it from his friend. Again, it's a scene that's very domesticated. You know, in the midst of this ridiculously unreal world, this scene kind of lays it all on the table. And as a father, I can relate to a lot of this stuff.

Lacy: Well, she's so unapologetic. She's just saying, "Yeah, here's where we go to do what we do."

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah. And it's also the kind of... I was on the subway once in New York and I was reading a Jack Kerouac book and I was young. I was like 18 years old and this guy turned to me.

Ronald D. Moore: On the road?

Jeffrey Reiner: No, it was The Dharma Bums. And he says to me, this guy looked at me across the thing and he says, Kerak is God. And I kept on thinking of that moment, you know, that idealistic kind of ideology that you have when you're that young. And I kept on going back to that guy. And then when he took out his gun and was going to kill me, I got a little nervous.

David Eick: - -

Ronald D. Moore: "Kerouac is gone, you're gonna see him now."

Jeffrey Reiner: Wow.

Tamara: Hi, Daddy.

Ronald D. Moore: You can't quite see it in the shots, but there's actually a fair amount of water in this set, too. The actual place where they're standing with the checkerboard, surrounding that is like a big border pool of water.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, there's water, which was a theme that I wanted to get into this. You know, light and water. And it also helps with foreground.

Ronald D. Moore: Something that you said, Ron, was this is a room that they designed... ...and they could have anything they wanted. And I think people are attracted to fire and water and light.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, there's something really interesting about them creating natural things... ...in this fundamentally unnatural environment.

Tamara: I am Laura.

Tamara: I'm Zoe Graystone.

Daniel: Zoe is dead.

Tamara: I know.

Daniel: And I'm so sorry about that. More than you can know.

Jeffrey Reiner: She's very good in this scene and Eric's really good. I love that line where he says, you're an avatar. You're an electric image. Is that the whatever the line is? And he's kind of walking away from her. He's analyzing her. He's a very, Eric, he really took to this role in every beat. And he really understood the arc of this character.

Daniel: Did Zoe hack some kind of rudimentary emulation software or something?

Tamara: She said it was a combination of hacks and some...

Daniel: Okay, that's enough.

Daniel: What was the purpose of this thing?

Tamara: I'm not a thing.

Daniel: I'm not going to argue with a digital image.

Tamara: There you go.

Daniel: There it is, digital image.

Tamara: The human brain contains roughly 300 megabytes of information. Not much when you get right down to it.

Jeffrey Reiner: Boy, this was a hard speech for an actress to do, wasn't it?

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, this was a big chunk of dialogue.

Ronald D. Moore: Well, that's what I mean by getting lucky with the casting, because she's, like you say, Jeff, someone who shoots from the hip in a way, but she's so proficient. She's so exact. She's so specific. And you sort of wonder, where was this woman? I mean, who is she, and where was she hiding? Because how do we get this lucky?

Tamara: Typing, synaptic scans, security cameras, test results, shopping records, talent shows, ball games...

Ronald D. Moore: This was sort of a key concept of the show, which was to try to say to the audience, it's not that somehow they have taken the original Zoe's mind or her consciousness and downloaded it into this program, which you've kind of seen before and played with, and that's even sort of vaguely Cylon already, we wanted it to be something different, where the Avatar existed at the same time Zoe did, but the Avatar was virtually a perfect replica of her because there was this idea that as you go through life in a modern society, you left so many clues and footprints of who and what you are in all these different ways, like she went on that long speech about, from parking tickets to birth control pills to CAT scans, etc., etc., And that if there was a society that was a little bit more advanced than ours is today, if you had a way to access and aggregate all that information, that perhaps you could essentially create literally the person all over again. And that person would be Zoe A, as we refer to her in the script, for Zoe Avatar.

David Eick: And at what stage in the development process did that idea hatch?

Ronald D. Moore: I think it was during a rewrite. I think I was doing a rewrite of the draft, and we were trying to explain who and what she is. And I think I just went on this run about all the things that you could add up. And it was almost as if I was writing the dialogue and I was adding up all the things in my head that you could possibly pull from in a society like this. And that just became her speech about all the footprints we leave through life.

David Eick: Do you think those things, I mean, in a real sense, do you think those elements or ingredients actually make up an individual?

Ronald D. Moore: I think on some level they would if you had enough of them and if they were specific enough. I was careful to say things like synaptic scans as well, and there were CAT scans, and there were medical things as well as sort of behavioral things. But it feels like on some level we are the sum total of our behavior. And if you could actually figure out all the things from the kind of tequila that you like to drink to the manner in which you hold your water bottle and the kind of car you drive and how you set your seat back. And if you had every little detail of how you lived your life over a big chunk of time and you compiled it and put it all together, maybe that would be you. Maybe that really would be you. Maybe you really could recreate.

Jeffrey Reiner: It's like the chaos theory. If you get enough random sampling of things, it kind of becomes a truism.

Jeffrey Reiner: And also, you know, what I like about it is that I'm sure they have DNA samples. I'm sure they have a lot of medical, you know, tissue samples. But the science, you know, it's almost above that. You know, it's like that's taken for granted. There's a magical element here. She crossed over into something else. You know, she aggregated all that pure information, but then life happened. And I think that's always in these stories. There's always a moment of the gods. There's always a moment of stealing the fire and something special happens. And that's kind of what happens.

David Eick: As we say in my tribe, why is this night different from any other night?

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah.

Daniel: What are you doing to her?

Joseph: Stop it, Dr. Riker! Stop!

Daniel: What did you do to her?

Joseph: Captured the codes that we used to create the Avatar.

Jeffrey Reiner: This is where Eric's character... Such an interesting scene, because you think he's being sucked in emotionally to it, and he is. But he has a way to kind of like... ...turn it around, you know? Now he's all business from here on. I love the way that he can play that, that he can be emotionally sucked in and really into it... ...and at the same time be manipulating the flash drive and completely... ...another part of his brain is moving the plot.

Ronald D. Moore: There were additional scenes with Polly... that we also cut from the "Pilot". And those scenes were cut mostly to make her appear less villainous. I think that we didn't really want Sister Clarice to be as villainous as she came off in the first cut of the show.

David Eick: As magnificently subtle.

Ronald D. Moore: She's great, but we had too many scenes of her.

David Eick: We had, like, too many of it.

Ronald D. Moore: Too many scenes of her doing things that were pointing you as an audience member towards the idea that she's the villain.

David Eick: Well, it was ruining the reveal later on.

Ronald D. Moore: We had to suggest that he was involved in the attack on the lab.

Jeffrey Reiner: These scenes I really like. There's so much tension in these scenes and so much...

David Eick: I've never seen Jeff so happy.

Jeffrey Reiner: Really?

David Eick: That's when he was shooting these scenes.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, because it was like we were shooting w:Cuckoo's Nest. It was like, you know, there's this sub, sub, subtext to every line of dialogue. And it was... I have to tell you, guys, that this script I changed less dialogue on set than I probably have ever changed.

Ronald D. Moore: Really?

Jeffrey Reiner: Because I think certain scenes, and they ended up not being in the show where I really needed to change it. but I think this world had a certain style and a certain vibe to it, and I just felt like for me to bring a different sense of what this world was, was wrong, you know, and I really bought into it, you know, and like the speech coming up, it would be a speech that normally I would say, hold on, people don't talk this way, but they do in Caprica, you know, and I embraced it, and the actor, you know, we talked, I said, you have to, when you talk about this, you have lived it, you have breathed it, You're not editorializing. You're not being chauvinistic in any way. You are just telling it the way you feel from your heart. And that's the way I kind of dove into the dialogue. So that's a lot to be said for the way it was written.

Ronald D. Moore: That's Jeff's way of saying that on the series he's going to be changing most of the dialogue.

Jeffrey Reiner: No, I probably won't. I think, I mean, it's hard to write material like this. It's hard to write dialogue because this is, I think this is more stylized than Battlestar.

Ronald D. Moore: This is more stylized than Battlestar.

Jeffrey Reiner: And I recognized that, and I felt I wanted to keep that formalism. Again, I wanted a more formal world. So eventually, 50 years down the line, it all breaks.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, 50 years ago, it was just a more formal world. People acted and behaved and spoke in a slightly different way. They wore overcoats, they had hats. It was just a different life.

Jeffrey Reiner: This location was a nunnery.

Ronald D. Moore: Oh, literally?

Jeffrey Reiner: It was literally a nunnery like 40 years ago.

Ronald D. Moore: This is one of the great "Oh, we wish we had the money for" moments. Because in the script, we had...

David Eick: And we hung on to as long as we possibly could.

Ronald D. Moore: We were gonna have a play the pyramid game. We wanted them sitting courtside in a real pyramid game... in a professional league and see them go at it.

David Eick: I know Jeff really wanted this right until the bitter end, but it was finally one of the things.

Jeffrey Reiner: Well, it wasn't my idea to lose it.

Jeffrey Reiner: It was a line producer, and she was right. I mean, it would have been cool.

Ronald D. Moore: It would have been so cool.

David Eick: It may still be cool.

Ronald D. Moore: Oh, I think we can do it.

David Eick: No, I mean, with the series order, we've been discussing the possibility of going in and shooting the actual...

Ronald D. Moore: Oh, yeah, that's right.

David Eick: Yeah, maybe for when it airs...

Ronald D. Moore: Season premiere?

David Eick: Season premiere.

Ronald D. Moore: Now with special pyramid game footage. Is that okay?

David Eick: Bare-ass shots.

Joseph: Sean, if you want something, anything, you just ask him.

Sean: Okay.

Joseph: Now you behave, Sean.

Sean: Okay, Dad.

Jeffrey Reiner: This next scene coming up is also something that I first read, I really got, you know. I really like the way you directed this scene.

Ronald D. Moore: This scene I looked at a couple of times and just sort of studied and went, wow, this is really interesting, the way he did this against the big blue, I assume the big blue wall was there, right?

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, yeah.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, yeah.

Ronald D. Moore: But putting them against it and just the way you composed these shots, I was really just taken with and just sort of looked at it a few times and said, wow, there's something going on here that I need to sort of understand a little more.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, this is one of my favorite scenes, and I really like the way that it came together. It's so simple and so kind of iconic, you know, and long lenses that throw off the background. So there's two guys against a kind of abstract landscape.

Joseph: You don't have to answer that.

Daniel: No, no, I just hadn't thought about it.

David Eick: It bears pointing out that this shot is my favorite shot.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, this is great.

Ronald D. Moore: This is great.

Joseph: Most of my family, including my parents, died.

Ronald D. Moore: During the production of this "Pilot", the Los Angeles Lakers were in the semifinal and then final round of the NBA playoffs. And Jeff Reiner is a big Lakers fan. And the Lakers were gearing up to face the Boston Celtics. And so as the playoffs sort of coincided with our production day, we had a dilemma, which was do we shoot the full budgeted number of hours of our day or do we leave early and go home and watch basketball?

David Eick: Right, David.

Ronald D. Moore: What do you suppose we did?

Jeffrey Reiner: I shot this "Pilot" with every ounce of work ethic that I know. It just happens that I used three cameras.

Ronald D. Moore: He used three cameras.

Jeffrey Reiner: Three cameras, captures.

Jeffrey Reiner: And it's really weird because I've been using three cameras handheld, and this one we used three cameras in a very formalistic way, you know. So you get all your shots and you capture the performance. And Joel Ransom, boy, that guy is amazing, you know. My interview with him was, hey, Joel, he was in Jordan, And I could have barely heard him. I said, hey, Joe, you mind if we use three cameras? He goes, you could use four, you could use five. I don't care. And that was our interview. And you'd never know by the lighting, would you?

Ronald D. Moore: No.

Jeffrey Reiner: The lighting.

Ronald D. Moore: Now, hold on a second, though. Bring it back to, so you had the multiple cameras.

Ronald D. Moore: You were able to get many setups in a day.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah.

Ronald D. Moore: And the Los Angeles Lakers were playing.

Jeffrey Reiner: I never watch a game live, David.

Ronald D. Moore: Live.

David Eick: And you had, well, hold on now.

Ronald D. Moore: I got calls from Clara, the line producer, who would say, hey, we wrapped at lunch.

Jeffrey Reiner: Well, that's because—

Ronald D. Moore: And I would say, we wrapped at lunch?

Jeffrey Reiner: No, well, we're just about—

Ronald D. Moore: Did we get everything?

Jeffrey Reiner: And she said, yeah, I'm pretty confident we got everything. And I would say, well, I would check my, you know, NBA.com and go, oh, right. Of course we wrapped at lunch.

Jeffrey Reiner: Well, you're going to see the key to that coming up soon. It's the infamous black room that wasn't designed as a black—it was, but it wasn't, you know.

David Eick: And by the way, I thought that art direction and production design, I love these metal things. I think it's great.

Jeffrey Reiner: God, they did a good job.

Ronald D. Moore: The set design and the set dressing in this show is brilliant.

Jeffrey Reiner: This is one of the few things that is not a location in this show, too. This is actually a set.

Ronald D. Moore: This is a set, right.

Ronald D. Moore: This was a pretty big, and the computer stuff was, you know, it takes an army to make stuff like this. You know, talk about working with three cameras, though, for a second. Because I, you know, through the years, I've gotten used to being on sets and having two cameras running. and you kind of have a...

Jeffrey Reiner: They're side by side,

Ronald D. Moore: and you kind of can just take it in. But, man, it was so bizarre. When I would come to the set, and there would be those three cameras, I literally had trouble, like, focusing and deciding what I was going to watch.

Jeffrey Reiner: Right.

Ronald D. Moore: It was just the addition of the third screen. I kind of throw off my normal rhythm of how I would watch a scene.

Jeffrey Reiner: Which you've made into...

Ronald D. Moore: Jeff has a black belt in that process

Jeffrey Reiner: on Friday Night Lights.

Jeffrey Reiner: Well, I think the idea of it is that How do you capture the moment? And I always say to directors who work for me on Friday Night Lights, is if you have one take and you know you're gonna get it, what are the angles that you're gonna get to do it? Because actors, I believe that if they're really living and breathing off of each other, it's gonna happen one or two times, and why not get it all at once? And then you shoot a master and you shoot two overs. And good filmmakers that I love, like Miloš Forman and Peter Weir, where you use that kind of technique and that's something that that i wanted to bring was that those two actors are so good with performance especially milos forman and i wanted to bring that sense to this kind of idea of science fiction this room i love and we kept on kind of deconstructing this idea and i brought you those Francis Bacon paintings and the portraits on black and it kind of scared um the network because they were so grotesque you know this isn't

Ronald D. Moore: It's not going to be too dark, is it?

Jeffrey Reiner: Well, this was eight pages of dialogue that we shot in like three hours. I remember it because the Lakers were playing the Celtics this day. And of course we shot in three hours. But I think of all the scenes that we have, this scene is so much science fiction. Science fiction is able to distill human emotions in a different landscape. And what better landscape than that, right?

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, totally.

Jeffrey Reiner: To really be nowhere.

Daniel: Nothing twisted about it.

Daniel: And I didn't do it. Zoe did.

Joseph: Zoe.

Daniel: Turns out she was kind of a chip off the old block.

Joseph: That's not her.

Joseph: Our daughters, they're gone. You know this.

Daniel: Yes, yes. But what if they could come back?

Joseph: They're insane.

Jeffrey Reiner: This sequence was interesting to shoot because it was really done as almost a one-er with choreography. And Eric has all the dialogue. I kind of planned to shoot it with two steadicam shots.

Ronald D. Moore: So you blocked out the choreography of the scene beforehand?

Jeffrey Reiner: Yes.

Ronald D. Moore: Did he basically track with it, or did he alter it?

Jeffrey Reiner: Well, we kind of worked in unison. You know, there was something that we knew that we needed a sense of momentum. And it all builds up to that 50-50 where he tells him later on.

Ronald D. Moore: Up on the stair?

Jeffrey Reiner: No, coming up where he says, I want the Vergis Corporation.

Jeffrey Reiner: So I wanted sense of movement and movement until that moment. And you can see, it's played in just these two shots.

Joseph: How can you prove or disprove that idea?

Daniel: Look, I know what I know, okay? And I know you can't copy a person. I know that she's my daughter. I know that she is my daughter. And I know it in the only place that matters. Here. The only difference between her and the Zoe that lived in this house is just that. She lived in this house instead of a virtual world. Well, I want to bring her here. Joseph, I want her to live in this world once more. I want to hold her in my arms, and I want to kiss her, and I want her to feel the sun shine on her face. I want her to see the flowers at the side of the road, Joseph. But for me to be able to transfer the virtual representation of Zoe you just saw in there into a physical body out here, I need a very special, very particular piece of equipment.

Joseph: A physical body? What do you mean? Like a robot?

Daniel: Robot is crude name for what we're talking about. This is a cybernetic life form.

Joseph: It's still a machine.

Daniel: It's cold. It's dead.

Joseph: It's cold. It's dead.

Daniel: Yes, but these are surface details.

Jeffrey Reiner: But it's all building up to this upcoming shot. I really love this scene.

Daniel: Daniel becomes so... He's being taken over by this.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah.

Ronald D. Moore: I mean, this really is where we get into the Frankenstein sort of...

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah.

Ronald D. Moore: ...aspects of the show.

Jeffrey Reiner: See, it's all building up to this one moment. They're all moving. They're all moving.

Daniel: Ever heard of them?

Joseph: Right here.

Daniel: Music starts, and they just... He moves in for the kill.

Joseph: I know who and what you are. I also know about the pit in your stomach. I know about the sleepless nights, and I know about the wishing...

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, I like this shot a lot. I like the thing in the back, the art piece in the background.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah. Well, that's one thing that you always wanted, Ron, was a sense of his life, of his past, drawings from his...

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, I really wanted to be a lot of things about him as a person in that room. And I remember just saying, you know, just put things in there. Surprise me. Find things that, you know, I didn't know about this guy and just, you know, decorate his room with it.

Jeffrey Reiner: And it's weird because the set dresser would get stuff from his travels in Africa, and they worked in this world. You know, we even came up with a tournese kind of, which you guys did in Battlestar, but, you know, what is that culture 500 years ago?

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah.

Joseph: Possibly even your wife.

Joseph: Isn't it worth trying?

Jeffrey Reiner: I think Esai's very good when he's quiet and he doesn't, you know, he's able to really get a lot across by doing nothing.

Ronald D. Moore: Well, he's someone who has a remarkable career behind him and we were lucky to get him and lucky to get Eric and, you know, both those guys. Because it's like, you know, when you're casting a series, you're looking for dynamic individuals who are going to really demonstrate some interesting fireworks between each other. And I think we have that with these two guys.

Amanda: You made breakfast.

Daniel: Excuse me. I used to cook for you all the time.

Ronald D. Moore: You guys should talk about this scene and what it was and what it became.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, this was originally Amanda here.

David Eick: had already reunited with her lover and was having, was in the throes of another affair, or rekindled affair rather.

Ronald D. Moore: And so her performance is kind of informed by that idea. And this was sort of him reaching out to her and her bearing secret knowledge of her guilt and at the very moment, but he's conflicted too because he doesn't, he's not telling her what's going on with Zoe and so on. So it was about these two characters, each of which has a secret and him waking her up and her trying to talk to him and her only really able to talk about what the agent said to her in the office.

David Eick: But it's still, the emotion of what happened is still kind of there. And I think now in this cut, Amanda's emotion sort of plays as her continuing grief over Zoe's loss and her sort of trying to grapple with that as a mother.

Jeffrey Reiner: It was even the last edit that we did a couple of weeks ago, Ron. I still found orphans from that.

Ronald D. Moore: Oh, is that right?

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah.

Ronald D. Moore: Oh, they're actually, I forgot.

Jeffrey Reiner: We cut the whole beat.

Ronald D. Moore: She used to tell him that this agent came to my office and said these things, blah, blah, blah. And he goes, oh, well, don't worry about that or whatever his response was. He said, don't worry about it. It's going to be okay. But she was at least confessing that there was a plot afoot, that the cops were, like, getting interested. And now it's all undercurrent. It's all life.

Jeffrey Reiner: It's about loss.

Ronald D. Moore: That's right.

Ronald D. Moore: And it's also about loss, but it's also about what you're not telling your partner.

Joseph: Tomas Vergis is a good friend of the Guatraus. I doubt he's sanctioned stealing from a friend.

Joseph: What if I agreed to deliver the message you wanted to Minister Chambers?

Jeffrey Reiner: This is coming up in another favorite moment. I shot their thing almost as much as I could as a gangster movie, but an old gangster movie, like a Howard Hawks gangster movie. But I love, well, I must say, this is my favorite scene.

Ronald D. Moore: This one?

Jeffrey Reiner: Next to...

David Eick: I love this set. I love this location. The big windows and that super nice alien, right?

Jeffrey Reiner: Jeff was very excited because we spoke so much about Blade Runner before this.

David Eick: The glasses.

Jeffrey Reiner: This is my homage to David Eick.

David Eick: His glasses.

Jeffrey Reiner: And this is my favorite shot coming up.

David Eick: Right over.

Jeffrey Reiner: Let's be clear.

David Eick: Here you come.

Jeffrey Reiner: It's coming up right here.

David Eick: Next shot, I believe.

Jeffrey Reiner: No?

Daniel: I don't like your planet, and I don't like your people.

Jeffrey Reiner: So you crawl under that.

David Eick: Right there.

Jeffrey Reiner: Oh, there.

David Eick: Again.

Jeffrey Reiner: Those are the glasses from the Blade Runner character.

David Eick: What else is Dr. Tyrell?

Jeffrey Reiner: Yes.

David Eick: Tyrell.

Jeffrey Reiner: Tyrell.

David Eick: David mentions Blade Runner more than any other movie at least once a day.

Jeffrey Reiner: At least once a day.

David Eick: I send Ridley Scott a check, actually, every week.

David Eick: But the sound in this scene, the cavernous sound.

Ronald D. Moore: This guy was in The X-Files, right?

David Eick: He played the smoking man.

Ronald D. Moore: And this location is actually, what, a bank?

David Eick: Is that what it is?

Ronald D. Moore: No, it used to be a bank.

David Eick: It's Simon Fraser University, their law school.

Jeffrey Reiner: But I just knew the windows and the granite were like...

Ronald D. Moore: That was power.

David Eick: And obviously Donald Rumsfeld was our inspiration...

Jeffrey Reiner: -behind casting this guy. -Totally, yeah.

Jeffrey Reiner: And this is really a poetic... You know, on paper, it was very inspirational. In television, a lot of writers rely on dialogue. You know, and you look at most TV scripts and it's wall-to-wall dialogue. Again, one of the things that attracted me to this thing was that it was cinematic. You could tell a whole-- almost a whole act without dialogue, you know?

Ronald D. Moore: I find it fun to write that way. I like painting the picture with the words, you know? And sometimes the dialogue is just this thing that I have to do... ...in order to accomplish the scene later. It's fun to write the cuts, even though, you know, nine times out of ten... ...the director will compose a different series of shots or different sequence... ...because that's in the nature of the job. But it's fun, nevertheless, to just write and imagine what the pieces visually are on the page. I find a great deal of satisfaction when you can write those kinds of sequences.

David Eick: Well, a lot of Ron's best episodes of Battlestar are passages which involve several scenes that are written along the lines of tight on hands, tight on pen, tight on eyes, tight on feet, tight on face, and this unfolding sort of...

Ronald D. Moore: There are like four people in four different situations.

David Eick: Yeah, and it's great.

Ronald D. Moore: It's also a tell, by the way.

David Eick: I know when you're riding fast, you will resort to...

Ronald D. Moore: Go to the familiar.

David Eick: I love the blood and guts.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, this is good.

Jeffrey Reiner: And, you know, the thing that keeps us together is emotion again. You know, it's like this is a couple that needs to, they need to make love, you know.

Ronald D. Moore: They just need to.

Jeffrey Reiner: I was very excited.

Ronald D. Moore: He talked about it for days.

Jeffrey Reiner: You were there, David.

Ronald D. Moore: I know, but you weren't.

Ronald D. Moore: I like the fact that he has to kill this guy twice.

Jeffrey Reiner: He's just so happy.

Ronald D. Moore: I know, the coup de grace at the end is great.

Jeffrey Reiner: But it really ends on a beautiful, I mean, God.

Ronald D. Moore: This all intercutting is genius.

Jeffrey Reiner: It's great.

Ronald D. Moore: It's really nicely done.

Ronald D. Moore: And this last moment of Paula is so gorgeous, you know?

Jeffrey Reiner: Right there.

Ronald D. Moore: These people need it.

Jeffrey Reiner: Everybody needs something else.

Ronald D. Moore: Everybody has different emotional motives in it.

Jeffrey Reiner: Very eloquent.

Ronald D. Moore: I don't remember if this little sequence coming up with the flashback to them... Was this in the draft that you read or was it...

Jeffrey Reiner: Do we add this by your suggestion?

Ronald D. Moore: No, this was always in the draft.

Jeffrey Reiner: Was it?

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah.

Jeffrey Reiner: I've never... I would never suggest a flashback.

Ronald D. Moore: But I do like this one.

Jeffrey Reiner: I really do.

Ronald D. Moore: I like this one too.

Jeffrey Reiner: I know you.

Lacy: Always in the books.

Lacy: Missed you at the club last night.

Zoe: Missed you for two hours. Sorry.

Ronald D. Moore: On the chopping block for a while, too.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, it was.

Ronald D. Moore: Because of time and, you know, you... But I like this a lot because somehow it felt, I don't know, rhythmically or structurally or something. At this point in the show, I kind of wanted to see the old Zoe one more time. And I did want a sense of how this sort of began. You know, how did these people, these kids sort of get into this whole plot?

Ronald D. Moore: And even though you don't see how Zoe and Ben got into it, just how Lacy was brought in kind of tells me a lot about the whole subculture that was going on.

Jeffrey Reiner: But it also feels like it's got the idealism of high school kids, you know, of taking things too far, too fast.

Ronald D. Moore: Too seriously.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah.

Ronald D. Moore: They take it so seriously, and it really will change your life.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah.

Ronald D. Moore: Well, Karak is God.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah.

Ronald D. Moore: There is a right and there is a wrong.

Jeffrey Reiner: You know, I don't think I ever wanted to lose this scene.

Ronald D. Moore: We had some other flashbacks that I felt that I really lobbied to kill, and I think I was successful, but this one I always liked.

Jeffrey Reiner: Without the scene, you really don't have the next scene.

Ronald D. Moore: No, but for time, it would be easy to go from the previous to this.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah.

Ronald D. Moore: And truthfully, the performance of Magda here is what I think makes it so easy to struggle to say, because she's so good.

Ronald D. Moore: And like you say, she's got this depth and this sort of soul that makes you relate to her.

Ronald D. Moore: And now this is my favorite part of the story, really, which is, Ron, I want to hear you talk about the origin of this because I don't remember it.

Ronald D. Moore: It came up in a conversation between Remi and I. And I don't remember if it was whose script we were talking about, but we were having a conversation about the draft and we were talking about this idea of the infinity symbol.

Jeffrey Reiner: We were talking and this notion came up, I think it was mine, it was about the water ring. And as she comes over, she could turn the water, I just had this inspiration, that she could turn the water ring into an infinity symbol with her finger.

Ronald D. Moore: As a way of revealing.

Jeffrey Reiner: As a way of revealing that she's involved.

Ronald D. Moore: I love that, Ron.

Jeffrey Reiner: It was so, and it's something that's so against my kind of like insert-y type of stuff, but I really bought into it.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, totally.

Lacy: So then Ben did have something to do with the bombing.

Jeffrey Reiner: This was the scene that I had the most fun shooting. Because I took a scene that I wanted to make it as small and intimate as possible, you know. And I keep on thinking of this word, I don't know if it's a word, pernicious? I kept on thinking that there's something that's so... ...underneath, you know. That's something that... And this would be a plot in most television, this plot device would be big.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah.

Jeffrey Reiner: And it would be loud.

Jeffrey Reiner: and I felt like if it's subversive, it should be as small as possible. It's like we're going to overthrow the government. You're not going to do it in front of a thousand people. You're going to do it in a whisper to somebody's ear. And I don't know. I really like this scene.

Lacy: You have no idea how special Zoe was to us.

Ronald D. Moore: Going back to Magda, she is the actress and the character that I think surprised me the most when I saw the piece cut together because I think we'd always talked about Lacy as being Zoe's friend, and she serves that function in the story.

Jeffrey Reiner: And she's the lead.

Ronald D. Moore: And now it's almost like, whoa, it's really almost Lacy's story.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, it is.

Ronald D. Moore: Really.

Ronald D. Moore: She makes such a strong impression as a character, and I really want to know what's going to happen to Lacy next in the story.

David Eick: We did talk about that at script, and we did worry about it at script, that there was the potential that we would cast this amazing actress to play Zoe and that the actress playing Lacy would be this sort of day player who ultimately was going to have to carry the series. We did talk about that. And it was just so fortuitous that we ended up not, I mean, both actresses are great, but Magda is so strong and innocent and vulnerable and sexy and all those things that you want. And now you can start thinking in terms of building a series around her where, you know, it wasn't, I mean, gosh. It's really compelling to look at. I mean, I'm always sort of, I find myself always sort of looking over to Magda and seeing this and sort of seeing how she's reacting.

Jeffrey Reiner: This scene is a powerful scene. This girl came in and did it. She did it like three times and we walked away because, you know.

Ronald D. Moore: Because the Lakers were playing this.

Jeffrey Reiner: The Lakers were playing.

Jeffrey Reiner: But it was also, you know, it's like an executive came up and said, you think she's going too far? I said, no, I think this is like, you know, we're just about to launch into the last real movement of the show. And this should be overwrought.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, I mean, from her perspective, she just comes to awareness in this dark space and no one is there. And she's all by herself. and she has all the memories and knowledge of the previous Tamara. Doesn't even know that there is such a thing as a previous Tamara. She's just Tamara, and she's in there all alone, and then her father comes out of the dark. I mean, she'd be flipped out.

Tamara: I know this is gonna take some time to... This isn't real. This doesn't feel real, Daddy. I don't feel real. I'm real. This isn't real.

Jeffrey Reiner: Looking back at that Francis Bacon painting, or even Mannerist's painting, you know, it's like this was something that elongated features and elongated emotions, and you just capsulize everything really intense moment. But this was like the first take, Ron, so he asked me why I don't rehearse, you know? Especially with young actors, with teenagers. You just get it on that first go.

Joseph: My baby!

Joseph: She couldn't feel her heart!

Joseph: She couldn't feel her heart!

Jeffrey Reiner: There's a line coming up that's Ron Roston's favorite line.

Ronald D. Moore: "This is an abomination."

Jeffrey Reiner: He loves it.

Joseph: This is an abomination.

Jeffrey Reiner: Ron Roston, the editor.

Ronald D. Moore: Ron Roston's an amazing editor.

Jeffrey Reiner: Great editor. Very good.

Jeffrey Reiner: We had quite a team. Ron Roston, Richard... and Joel Ransom. God, those guys are good. And Glenne Campbell, who did all the costumes.

Ronald D. Moore: Oh, Glenne Campbell, wow.

Jeffrey Reiner: She is something else.

Ronald D. Moore: Well, it's part of the advantage of having an infrastructure, you know, that you can draw from.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, there was a significant number of Battlestar people.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, the whole art department.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, the prop department.

Jeffrey Reiner: The prop department really sweated a lot of stuff, and they were doing Battlestar simultaneous with this.

Ronald D. Moore: Well, how about video? I mean, that carries such a story point in this.

Jeffrey Reiner: - The video's really good.

Ronald D. Moore: - All those inserts, all those computer screens.

Jeffrey Reiner: - I must say that I had just seen that movie Sunshine before this movie and kind of ripped off a little bit. I thought their computer designs were beautiful.

Ronald D. Moore: - Yeah, it was very nice.

Jeffrey Reiner: Danny Boyle, right?

Ronald D. Moore: - Danny Boyle, yeah.

Daniel: Do you really think this download is going to work?

Ronald D. Moore: I think he wants Esai or Joseph to be part of it so bad. I think it's that need of affirmation. You believe this passionately, you believe this with all your heart, that you're doing the right thing, but you need somebody, somebody to share it. You need somebody to say it's okay. You need somebody, especially someone who has a similar experience, who's also literally lost a daughter. And how could you be rejecting this? You can't be rejecting this. You're crazy if you reject this, right? You have to come to my side of this.

Jeffrey Reiner: That's half of it.

Ronald D. Moore: I think the other half of it is I'm a heroin addict, and I want you to shoot up too. I need this thing that's going to make me feel whole, and unless you join me, you're my enemy. And I know it's destructive and it's completely polarizing, but it's who I am and it's what I need. And are you with me or against me?

Jeffrey Reiner: It's also suicidal.

Jeffrey Reiner: I mean, real geniuses, they want the validation that people aren't going with them. Because if they don't go with them, they know that, okay, I might be onto something. It's like even on the set, you ask 1,000 people, what do you think? And 999 will disagree with you. And you say, okay, I guess I'm right. And then you go do it. I'm not equating myself to a genius, but I'm just saying, you know, I think there was an article about the guy who built the Segway, you know, and how hard it was and how many failures he had, you know, and he just decided to do it.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, I mean, obsessive people with a dream. I mean, that is Steve Jobs. That is Bill Gates. These are people, men that saw something, believed in it, didn't care what other people said and did it, you know, despite incredible odds. And this, and Daniel's a guy who's already done that once before. He's already built, you know, Greystone Enterprises. He's already done this once. So at this point, the fact that everyone, or at least some people are telling him it's crazy, it can't be done, I don't think that really, you know, he doesn't have much truck with that.

Jeffrey Reiner: But this is the best directing in the movie to me.

Ronald D. Moore: Why?

Jeffrey Reiner: Because Daniel is at the end of his rope, and I'm seeing it visually. He looks the most distraught. His hair is fucked up. I mean, it's like it plays on all of our understanding of Frankenstein and mad scientists. And I think in this place in the movie, you need to go there. You need to be willing to go there.

Ronald D. Moore: And this is also a place that you couldn't go until relatively recently.

Jeffrey Reiner: Here with the CGI stuff.

Ronald D. Moore: I mean, the fact that this is a tremendously emotional and crucial dramatic moment in the story. You couldn't have done this moment five years ago. the CG would not have been good enough to not distract you in the scene.

Jeffrey Reiner: Could you do it three years ago?

Ronald D. Moore: Maybe. Maybe. I don't know.

Jeffrey Reiner: Maybe two years ago you might have been able to do this.

Ronald D. Moore: But the way it's compositing, the fact that you feel like not only is the Cylon a Cylon, but you start to feel like it occupies three-dimensional space within the room. You stop wondering whether it's really there on a certain level.

Jeffrey Reiner: And I think that's the trick for the audience, to me personally.

Ronald D. Moore: When the audience stops wondering whether it's really there,

David Eick: That's when you've got them.

David Eick: But what was the key to this scene that really made the scene... ...that really hammered her at home?

Ronald D. Moore: I think it's when the robot says "Daddy."

David Eick: Right.

Ronald D. Moore: And that we came to in the editing room. And are still coming to in the editing room. It didn't speak. It did not speak in the script or in the original cut.

Jeffrey Reiner: It still gets me every time now that I see it.

Jeffrey Reiner: Eric really bought into this.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, and it's amazing, because he's buying into something he can't see. I mean, there's nothing there.

Jeffrey Reiner: Well, I was playing the robot.

Ronald D. Moore: - Were you? - Yeah.

David Eick: He's like w:Ang Lee doing the Hulk.

Jeffrey Reiner: Eric and I had a very special relationship.

Jeffrey Reiner: When I fell, those are real tears.

Ronald D. Moore: Ron, you still have notes on this fucking scene, don't you?

Jeffrey Reiner: No, I'm always giving notes.

Ronald D. Moore: I do have notes. I think that we went too far with the arms.

Jeffrey Reiner: Oh, yeah, yeah, I still have notes on the arm movement.

Ronald D. Moore: I think they're too far.

Jeffrey Reiner: I told Paul, every time I bring something up to Paul, our post-production producer, he just says, Oh, okay. He's like, all right. I'm going to see him in around half an hour.

Ronald D. Moore: I think that might be the difference between doing motion capture with an actor and doing pure CGO.

Jeffrey Reiner: If you have motion capture doing that, you could craft the performance on the stage.

Ronald D. Moore: Well, to be clear, the motion capture is like Gollum and...

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, Gollum and...

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, but I think that we should...

Jeffrey Reiner: And we're not using that technology.

Ronald D. Moore: We're not doing that.

Jeffrey Reiner: I don't think we should go that far.

Ronald D. Moore: No?

Jeffrey Reiner: I think it should just be the voice, and less is more in that sequence.

Ronald D. Moore: Well, yeah, but there are all these cuts to feature the robot struggling and dying.

Jeffrey Reiner: It's the collapse that I struggle with.

Ronald D. Moore: I struggle with the way it collapses.

Jeffrey Reiner: Yeah, it should just be like, bomb.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah.

Political Landscape and Cylon Genesis

Ben: We're going to make a new beginning. Starting tonight.

Jeffrey Reiner: I love that he has a poster of Storm on his wall. He's an X-Men fan.

Ronald D. Moore: But in a way, this was the scene that links Caprica to Battlestar. And Ron and I chose a director who had not done an episode of Battlestar to bring a whole other perspective to this.

Jeffrey Reiner: Turn down five episodes.

Ronald D. Moore: chased and could not secure and really found a way to, I mean, this is the trailer. This is the one they're using for all the teasers and whatnot, and it's the thing that links us to Battlestar.

Joseph: Oh, my last name isn't Adams.

Joseph: That changed it after I arrived here.

Ronald D. Moore: Oh, there was a whole other opening, actually, that was shot.

Jeffrey Reiner: - There was the bus opening.

David Eick: - Oh, yeah, wow.

Ronald D. Moore: I forgot about that. That's what the original opening was.

David Eick: - Right.

Ronald D. Moore: - It just occurred to me now with the kids.

David Eick: Yes, you're right.

David Eick: The original opened on a school bus that was driving through a field of flowers on Caprica, and there were these two kids, and they were both looking out the window, and they were, like, amazed because they had never seen flowers before.

Ronald D. Moore: And the two kids turned out to be Joseph Adama and his brother Sam.

David Eick: And we cut it because?

Ronald D. Moore: It just didn't work.

David Eick: I don't know if there was a...

Jeffrey Reiner: I think that the idea of the beginning was to...

Ronald D. Moore: It was very long, the beginning.

Ronald D. Moore: I think we wanted to get to the train crash with as much momentum as we possibly could and be immediate. We were all so mindful of the fact that the network had asked us to do a spin-off of Battlestar that was not so dark.

Jeffrey Reiner: We accomplished that.

Ronald D. Moore: So it's open to the V-Club.

Jeffrey Reiner: The V-Club is a good place to open.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, it has a lot of energy.

David Eick: I think the V-Club opening tells us right away it's not Battlestar. It just feels like such a... I mean, overall, the whole piece, to me...

Jeffrey Reiner: I really like the fact that it has...

David Eick: The mood is different, the style is different. The whole vibe of the show is different than the Battlestar universe is, to me.

Ronald D. Moore: I think that's a huge accomplishment of this, is to do a spin-off series... ...and not feel beholden to what the Mothership is about.

David Eick: Yeah, I mean, if it feels like it's just continuing on, it's like I was saying about Stargate Atlantis.

Ronald D. Moore: I mean, not to pick on Stargate.

David Eick: Stargate, yeah.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, but it's...

David Eick: While you're on the subject.

Ronald D. Moore: But I have, exactly.

David Eick: This is my Dirty Harry moment.

Jeffrey Reiner: I had to get a little bit of cleaning to this.

Daniel: He looks up at Daniel.

Joseph: Yeah.

Daniel: And sorry, sucker.

Daniel: Surge punk.

Serge: Program completed by your command.

Daniel: By your command.

Ronald D. Moore: It's a tradition in our "Pilots", is to harken back to the golden oldies.

Joseph: The Vergis Corporation have made certain accusations.

Daniel: If they really thought they had a case, they'd have us inquired.

Joseph: This guy who plays his assistant hero, I like that actor.

Daniel: It's been my experience.

Joseph: You can never trust a Tauron.

Daniel: Deceit is in their DNA.

Ronald D. Moore: So are we going to see the military use these things in the series eventually?

Jeffrey Reiner: Sure.

Ronald D. Moore: I think so.

'Ronald D. Moore: I like this little bit of political intrigue, the fact that the colonies at this point in their history, the Twelve Colonies are not all one. They are not aligned in an overarching federation, federal system the way they are in Galacticas time. There's no president of the colonies. There's no equivalent to Laura Roslin at this point. At this point, each of the colonies is essentially its own nation state. And the people in Caprica have enemies. And, you know, they don't trust or like the Taurons at all. They probably have other alliances and other enemies among the other 12, and those sort of tensions will be played out in the series Caprica, because ultimately we know that there comes a war. There comes a point where the Cylons were used as soldiers against the other colonies, and eventually out of that conflict grew the original Cylon uprising.

Jeffrey Reiner: Right.

Jeffrey Reiner: This scene I had storyboarded with around 30 shots, and then I walked onto the set and I said, you know, I think we should do this in a one-er.

Ronald D. Moore: And Gary Hutzel had a heart attack.

Jeffrey Reiner: We didn't use an actor, we used a special effects guy to play the silent as we did the camera... ...so everybody could get a feel for it. And it's remarkable how close the robot is to the way that guy was doing it.

Ronald D. Moore: This is a really monumental shot for them to pull off. This is really tough.

Jeffrey Reiner: Because it's not giving you any relief. There's nowhere else to hide anything.

Ronald D. Moore: No, you're just watching the CGI the whole time.

Jeffrey Reiner: This is great.

Ronald D. Moore: It's good acting, too.

Jeffrey Reiner: A little head tilt right there. I love that.

Ronald D. Moore: Right there, that sort of reaction.

Jeffrey Reiner: The foreground elements visually were just to bring tension. When you do a prequel and you know the world's going to be destroyed, there's already a black cloud hanging over. So my goal was to shoot something that was very formal but have moments of things visually that made you viscerally aware that something wasn't right, that something was not quite wholesome about it. And I think those foreground pieces triggered that, and I figured that to bring stuff in the foreground would bring a sense of tension to the surroundings. And eventually, this world, five years down the line, whatever the series takes you, you know it's going to self-destruct.

Ronald D. Moore: Now that's a series I just got to see.

Jeffrey Reiner: I got to see it.

Ronald D. Moore: I got to see 20 episodes of that.

Jeffrey Reiner: 20 more.

Concluding Thoughts

Ronald D. Moore: Well, that is our "Pilot". I think it was a good experience for everybody. You know, it was a long time coming. It was a bit of a thing to get it off the ground and shop. But I'm very proud of it. I think it's a great piece of work, and I think it's a really good launching point for the show. And thank you, Jeff Reiner, for realizing it in a way we never possibly could have envisioned it being.

Jeffrey Reiner: Well, thank you guys for your unbelievable dedication to what you believe and your ideas and your theories and it was really fun. I feel proud to be part of this. And thank you all at home for listening.

Ronald D. Moore: Now go enjoy the rest of the special features here on your DVD edition of Caprica, the Planet.

Ronald D. Moore: Caprica.

David Eick: And we have a special edition of Battlestar Atlantis.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah, Battlestar Atlantis.

Ronald D. Moore: Thank you.

David Eick: Thank you.

Jeffrey Reiner: Thank you.