Podcast:Crossroads, Part II

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Teaser

RDM: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. This is Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the new Battlestar Galactica. I'm joined here by the lovely and talented Mrs. Ron. Say hello, Mrs. Ron.

Terry: Hello, Mrs. Ron.

RDM: And we're here to do the much talked about and much delayed final podcast of season three for "Crossroads, Part II". The Scotch today is Highland Twenty-five, which was a gift from my lovely wife. The smokes are American Spirit, and the smoking lamp [lights cigarette] is lit.

Terry: See? I told you. I'd let him do it.

RDM: OK.

Terry: I have a gas mask on.

RDM: Yes.

OK. "Crossroads, II". As we talked about during the podcast of "Crossroads, I", a great deal of material that used to be in the second hour was pushed up into the first hour for editing reasons, most having to do with time. Mike Rymer, who directed both parts, his cut of the second hour was somewhere in the twenty minutes over range, which is pretty far over, when you think about it.

Terry: Just a tad.

RDM: Just a tad. So when the initial timings came in there was a great deal of panic around editorial and in the production offices about, "Oh my God. What are we going to do about this?" But when I sat down and watched the two parts together, first I was really amazed and just in love with it and thought we really- we had really managed to achieve something of this- with these- this two part finale. But also I realized that there was a way that we were going to get to time. I wasn't quite as worried as I was, say, when I asked for the ninety-minute version of "Pegasus" and last sea- the ninety minute version of last season and the extended version of "Pegasus" and all that. I just had a an instinct that I was going to get these down to time.

This sequence. The Adama shaving and Laura Roslin phone call was something that I added in my polish onto the script. I don't know why I love Adama shaving so much. There's something very mundane about it. Something very ordinary and every day that I think is-

Terry: Why is that whenever you watch any man shave, you're waiting for them to do exactly what he's going to do- ouch!

RDM: Yeah. I don't know. It was something that we established way back in "33" of him shaving, and it's a way in to scenes with him. And we've come back to it a couple of times ever since. And I just like it as a recurring motif in the show. And this phone call with Laura is actually one of my favorite things we did all season. It's just such a lovely little beat. This was originally a scene that was in part one. This scene was then going to lead to Laura going to the press conference that you saw in part one where she goes and she faces the press. And that's actually what she's referring to in the scene when she says, "I don't think I can face them." And him telling her to, "Don't let them see you sweat." And then she was gonna go and- oh and my-

Terry: What?

RDM: The tape froze up there for a second. I'm having trouble with the DVD for some reason. Uh...

Terry: Even more of a delay.

RDM: I've gotta pause here for a second.

OK. We'll try to keep going here, because the podcast has been delayed so long. My DVD copy from post is hiccuping, and stuttering, and giving me problems, so if the timings don't match out to the episode exactly, that's why.

Anyway, the Laura conversation was originally intended to essentially bridge scenes from her to c- saying that she had cancer to going to the press conference, and the reason why I liked it so much was in the nature of this conversation between Laura and Adama you really see that they're very intimate with- one one o- one another, in a platonic sense. There's a sense of these are friends. That she can call up Adama on the phone in the morning and say, "Yell at me to get out of bed." And he'll take the phone call while he's still in the bathroom and chat with her, and I think it's a lovely scene that says a lot about their relationship and how far they've come-

Terry: Yeah, I was gonna say how far they've grown.

RDM: How far they've grown since the miniseries and now that Laura's experiencing cancer again, it just- it seems like it speaks volumes about where he is and where she is in his life.

Then we have Tyrol being awakened-

Terry: Speaking of cancer, since you're done with that cigarette, can we make that the last one?

RDM: Uh, yeah. Well, I'm not even- see I've still got more here to smoke?

Terry: OK. But that's the last part? OK? That's the last one.

RDM: [Exhales smoke]. Anyway. So Tyrol wakes up in the middle of the night. Tyrol's involvement as one of the final four Cylons, of course, we'll talk about in depth later, but essentially he was- we were going to have Tyrol be one of the people that was hearing the music in part one, but at the script stage, I believe, we started switching those pieces around and it gave us one more thing to reveal in this episode, that there was somebody else who was hearing these same things.

And then we get here into this scene with Tory and Anders, the revelation that they're having an affair. Again, through the editorial process, this was originally in part one, and there was a reference to the fact that Laura was aware that Tory was having an affair with Anders in part one, after the press conference, which got cut, which I think I referred to by accident in last week's podcast, thereby giving away a spoiler, but-

Terry: Yeah. So bad...

RDM: These are the risks you take. The idea originally was going to be that Tyrol was walking his child down that corridor, and Tyrol kept walking the baby to try to get the baby to go to sleep.

Terry: Didn't I see that cut?

RDM: Yeah. You did see that cut. Terry saw that cut. And as Tyrol was trying to get little Nicky to fall asleep he kept- he would take Nicky down this one particular corridor in Galactica where the ambient noise or the rhythm of the machinery actually lulled the child to sleep.

Terry: Like driving a baby in a car.

RDM: Like driving a baby in a car, which many of us have done in Southern California, to try to get our children to go to sleep. And in one version of the story he was gonna encounter Sharon or Helo. I can't remember if it was Helo or Sharon was taking Hera down the same corridor too, and it was this thing about the two parents and raising a kid on Galactica, and they were bonding, but yet, Tyrol was gonna start to hear this odd music and it was connected to Nicky, and it was connected to him, and he started hearing something at this one corridor of the ship and then he kept going back to it, and this sequence that we shot was the second one where he's going back again after he had done it with Nicky once on his own, he had actually gone back.

We're now in the "We need a mistrial" sequence. This scene was actually quite a bit longer. There's lots of little dropped lines and pieces of dialogue. It was a great scene, and I was here when they shot this particular scene up on the set. I went up for the last couple days of production on the episode. And it was really great to see these three, all three of them, really at the top of their game. This idea of going through the mistrial was something in the back of my head for quite a while. I wanted to play at early st- at the story stage I started talking about having Lampkin manipulating Lee to force a mistrial, and that Lee would be taking actions and introducing things into evidence that then would cause a mistrial, and that Lampkin was actually manipulating Lee all the way along, paying off the line from "Son Also Rises" where you hear the voiceover Lampkin say about, "A son who's decided to-" I can't remember what the line is. "Go against his father." And I wanted this notion that Lampkin- that Lee was getting manipulated, and didn't realize it, and then realized at the last second, and then he had gone- he was in for penny and for pound at that point. What else could he do? But Lampkin was going to essentially force a mistrial on his own terms. Which is a version of what happens now, but we took out the naked manipulation of it and then forcing Lee into situations that he couldn't quite plausibly do. But this idea of the mistrial as tactic was something that actually I remember was played in a lawyer movie from a long time ago called From the Hip and there was a line in there someplace about- I remember the lawyers speculating among themselves about whether their client was, I believe John Hurt, was trying to get a mistrial because the chances of an acquittal grows or something, and that notion of a tactic to force mistrial in order to help your client stuck with me, and it was one of the things I wanted to play in the episode.

This little bit here where we discover that Anders is a nugget, and in flight training, he had more on this story. There were- we never saw him begin the process, but we had a little bit more in the episode of Anders as nugget and taking Kara's place. He literally moved into her quarters, where- her junior officer's quarters.

Terry: Is that what that is?

RDM: Yeah. She- he was in her bunk.

Terry: Wow.

RDM: And he had taken over her locker and had her things, and he was essentially trying to carve out another- a new niche for himself, but still following in Kara's footsteps in some odd way. That he couldn't quite divorce himself from the past, even as he tried to move forward.

It's in here that we hear the first line of "All Along the Watchtower." I think it's- I'm trying to remember the sequence these things go. I think Anders walks away and says, "There must be some kind of a way out of here." Or Tyrol says, "There must be some kinda a way outta here." I wanted to sprinkle in the lyrics from the song throughout this particular episode, and there internal debate about- David and I debated a lot about when would you recognize the song. And I maintain that if you didn't know the gag, if you didn't know that- where we were going, that if you put in the line, "There must be some kind of a way outta here," that that-

Terry: I didn't catch it.

RDM: -you wouldn't catch it. But funny enough, when we watched this episode at the frak party in Berkley, you- if you were listening to that tape, I don't know if you can pick it up, 'cause I haven't listened to the podcast, as usual, but s- when-

Terry: Somebody finished the line.

RDM: Somebody finished the line, "There must be some kinda a way outta here." And then, "Said the joker to the thief," said somebody in the audience, and we were sitting there, and I went, "Oh my God, they're picking up on this shit."

Terry: I wonder if that's 'cause they heard. I saw Jimi Hendrix live and I didn't pick it up.

RDM: I think if you know- if I tell you "All Along the Watchtower" and then you watch the episode, you'll pick out every single line.

Terry: That's what I think.

RDM: OK. That's the end of my teaser.

Act 1

RDM: Act one.

Terry: (Yawns.)

RDM: (Lights another cigarette.) OK. Couldn't quite resist. One last one. This thing with Laura and the diloxin treatments-

Terry: (Coughs.)

RDM: Oh... don't ham it up for them.

Terry: (Coughs.)

RDM: Talked with Mary extensively about the fact that her cancer was coming back and how she was gonna deal with it this time, and we decided that one of the things sh- that was gonna differentiate it from the first time that she had cancer was that she was going deal with- she was gonna take the conventional therapy, she was gonna take their version of chemotherapy, and deal with the consequences. In addition to doing chamalla and whatever else she was gonna do to fight it. But she was gonna essentially fight it on every front. She wasn't going to hide in any way from what she going for-

Terry: And you're not trying to make Laura look younger there, are you?

RDM: No. That's (unintelligible)- you asked me that before.

Terry: I know I did.

RDM: If we're trying to look Laura look younger in the visions. I guess it was on the boards. No. It's not. She's- it's just lighting and she's just a lovely woman and-

Terry: She's all made up.

RDM: Yes- yeah. It's just different.

There was more to this sequence. They did actually talk to one another. Sharon and Laura, in sickbay-

Terry: -I liked that.-

RDM: -and we cut that- scene out, strictly for time. They just- recapped a little bit about what they had gone through, and Sharon talked about projection and told Laura about projection for the first time, which is Cylon way of creating environments around themselves and saying how impossible it should be for Laura and Hera to share such a thing and that as they talked they said, "Maybe there's someone else who was there with us." And then that took them down to see Caprica Six.

This little trio, Laura, Caprica Six, and Shar- Athena, is definitely something we're gonna be following up in- up on in season four. Actually, as I speak to you now, I'm doing this on Easter Sunday, I can tell you that the writing staff is well into the fourth season. At this point we have broken the first, I think, nine episodes of season four. I know what all the opening storylines are and it's pretty cool. We're pretty excited about where we're going. In any case, this notion of Shar- we went through a lot of discussion about what the visions were gonna be. I think in my polish on the draft I put in the visions, and the visions were going to be- had more- that door opened in the Opera House and there was intense light and wind came out, and it was like Laura and Sharon trying to fight through the wind to get to Hera, and then Caprica Six appearing out of the wind, and all this stuff. It just got shut down for production reasons, mostly, because the location that that building, we couldn't bring in giant ritters and do wind and they were afraid of damage, and light source, and even light was tricky. Sometimes you go to locations and the building or the property owners will have all kinds of restrictions on exactly what you can and cannot do on these- in these places.

Terry: And that's a really old building.

RDM: And that's a pretty old building. So, understandably enough, they were very concerned about what crazy ass thing the people from Galactica were gonna be doing in their- location.

Terry: I'm sorry for the sound of scissors. I'm making birthday invitations.

RDM: Yes she is.

Terry: Sorry. I'll try and be quiet.

RDM: Yeah. "There must be some kinda way outta here," says Tigh.

Terry: See, I-

RDM: Which I think is great.

Terry: -didn't catch that.

RDM: This little bit with Gaeta was always in all the story versions, was that Gaeta was gonna get on the stand and perjure himself. And was gonna do it deliberately, 'cause he hated Baltar so much and was gonna sink him. In the original version of the draft this was the th- they- I'm tryin' remember. They did discredit him. They found a way to, the defense team, that is, they found a way to trap him in a lie. He actually was proven to be a perjurer, in the initial drafts. He had gotten up and they had found a way to-

Terry: Did you film that?

RDM: No. It never got filmed. We proved- I'm struggling just to remember what it was, but there was a way that they had of trapping him and pr- oh. That- I remember what it was. They had proof that he- at the time he said he was watching Baltar sign the document-

Terry: -That he was somewhere else.

RDM: He was somewhere else. 'Cause they- he had made a dead drop of information to Tyrol that they could track back and had the timeline to prove it, and that the document that Baltar had signed, the death warrant, had a dates- had a timestamp on it, or was timestamped or something.

Terry: You know, and the interesting thing about this whole thing is that- I don't know. Do you really blame him? I mean... you go to the O. J. Simpson trial, everybody's favorite trial to reference, but, how many people would perjure themselves because they're s- absolutely sure that a murderer is guilty.

RDM: Oh, and if you-

Terry: But they think he's gonna get off on a technicality.

RDM: Well that's the thing, is- at this point in the trial it looks like he's winning.

Terry: Yeah.

RDM: And he looks like he's gonna get off. And Gaeta is just not gonna let this guy go. He's gonna burn him.

Terry: And the beauty is that the law is the law. Even if somebody goes free and he's guilty.

RDM: That's right. That's the way it works. And I think- in the first draft, they did bust him. They busted him for perjury, and so essentially most of the prosecution's case was destroyed, and that was when the Sagittarion storyline that we had developed was gonna come to the fore. Somebody came to Lee at the end of part one and gave Lee a videotape of an incident on New Caprica, and the videotape seemed to show Gaius Baltar ordering Cylon Centurions to fire on a civilian population in a massacre. And it was a damning bit of evidence, and Lee had it, and Lee- the struggle for Lee was, "Does he turn it over to the prosecution, or not?" And ultimately he did turn it over to the prosecution, and then they used it in court, and it looked like all was lost, and then it turned out, through digging and plot, Tom Zarek was very involved in the show at that point, and it turned out that Zarek had actually manipulated the event, and it was Zarek who had given the order, and Zarek was- it was in some kind of power play, and in some fashion that prompted a backlash from Baltar, and that's why Zarek was in jail at the end of the New Caprica story.

End of act one.