Podcast:Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I

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Teaser

RDM: Hello, and welcome to the podcast for episode 19, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part One". I'm Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the new Battlestar Galactica, and this is the podcast, so, as always, no whining. We're joined this week by my- by- back by popular demand, my wife, who made a guest shot appearance not too long ago, Terry Dresbach is here. Say "Hello" Terry.

Terry: Hello.

RDM: That's about the extent of her commentary.

Terry: (laughs.)

RDM: No, I'm sure she will chime in whenever appropriate. "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part One", as the name implies, is the first of the two-part finale for season two. Yes, Terry?

Terry: Why don't you tell them what room you're in?

RDM: Oh. I'm in my office at home.

Terry: Which is about ten feet by ten feet.

RDM: (Laughs.) Ten by ten.

Terry: We just bought this house in August. And we just moved in so we have boxes all over the place, still. And there's a rug, and a desk, and two leather armchairs, and a couple of french doors, and the d- the porch where Ron paces and smokes all those cigarettes. Which he can't do while I'm in the room.

RDM: Yeah, so there'll be no smoking tonight. The smoking lamp is out.

Terry: Yeah, the smoking thing has got to go. And- yeah, and he's got his little tv screen, and his dvd player, and this little, tiny silver box that's about four inches by three inches with which he records these high-tech podcasts. So I just wanted you guys to have the lay of the land. The kids are sleeping about ten yards down the hall, the dogs are sleeping outside the door.

RDM: And it's l-

Terry: Maid's gone home.

RDM: Maid's gone home, and it's late. And there probably won't be any garbage truck this time of night.

Terry: Although I called them and asked them to stop driving down our street.

RDM: Yes, I'm hoping- I'm still hoping for an appearance, and anyway, here's (swirls ice and scotch in glass) the scotch. "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part One". The finale for any season is always something that takes a great deal of time, thought, and energy. It's also something that usually develops fairly late in the season. We almost never know what the finale to a season is before you get into the back- back half of the season. And sometimes not until you're- up until the l- very last minute. Case in point, the f- the grand finale of Star Trek: The Generation, "All Good Things...", was an episode that we wrote, like, at the very last minute in the month before production.

Terry: Which is how all television shows work.

RDM: Yeah. This one, we started discussing about midway through the back ten. The concepts of this episode all came out of continuing plotlines that we had established over the course of the first two years. First and foremost is the election. Ever since "Bastille Day", in fact, when Lee confronted Tom Zarek and gave Zarek a pass on- after the hostage situation came, and said, "Well, you're right. We do have a democracy and we are going to have an election," and confronted Laura with this fact, we had essentially been promising the audience that at some point, I think nine months from that point, we were going to have a presidential election. Then various political storylines have swirled around it ever since. We'd always talked about the fact that we would do the election this year, but "in what context, and how, and who's going to when, and why, and what will the issues be?" was something that was always floating around the office and never had a real satisfying resolution. Mostly because elections, by their very nature, are not that dramatic, really, on tv and film. It's a lot of politicing, and speechmaking, and addressing crowds, and people with picket signs, and "I like Laura! I like Laura!", and those things weren't that interesting. And you had to find a really compelling issue that the election could swirl ar- center on, and that all the events could swirl around and make it work. So once we came up with idea of finding an alternate planet, I realized that that was the thing we should marry. That the election should basically swirl around the idea of finding a new planet that had the potential for permanent settlement, and whether or not the rag tag fleet would settle on this planet as being the defining issue of the election. And that if not for that issue, Laura Roslin would have won, going away. And because they find the planet, and because Baltar starts to advocate that position, it'd change the dynamics of everything.

Just a word about this scene here with Laura getting the giggles before a committee meeting. I like this scene a lot. There was some debate. David Eick, my producing partner, did not like like this scene. (Laughs.) Actually, he and I had fairly energetic discussions about it a couple of times because he didn't buy the whole laughing thing from Laura, and didn't like the way it played, but I love it.

Terry: It's great.

RDM: It's great. And I fought for it because I like it because it sets a specific tone at the beginning of the show, that Laura is winning. Laura is doing very well. She's relaxed, it's fun, you almost never get to see Laura having fun. She and Adama are very close. She's using his- his quarters aboard Galactica to prep for the debate. She gets the giggles before committee meetings she said. It humanizes the character, and just gives a certain sense of confidence, and hopefulness, and that victory is just around the corner for these people, and then of course, it being Galactica, you basically fuck all that up, as quickly as you possibly can.

Terry: You swear on these things?

RDM: I swear on these things... constantly.

Terry: (Ugh.) How do these people listen to you?

RDM: I don't know. I don't know how their children listen to it either.

Terry: (Laughs.)

RDM: Their kids learn to curse, drink, and smoke from me, I hope.

Terry: No more smoking.

RDM: No more smoking. Not tonight.

Terry: People are complaining that it's coming into their rooms.

RDM: I know.

Terry: Through the computer.

RDM: As soon as Terry leaves. (Whispers: Then we'll smoke.)

Terry: But see I read all the boards every single day.

RDM: Don't tell them that!

Terry: I start every day, with a cup of tea, and the boards.

RDM: Don't tell them that. That's not true. She never reads the boards.

Terry: Then I report everything that's said to Ron.

RDM: No. I don't pay any attention to it.

Terry: (Laughs.)

RDM: The other major plotline, of course, that's getting established in the tease is Kara returning to Caprica. This was something that essentially since "The Farm" was something we had promised. I mean, once Kara laid down that mark and gave Anders the dog tag, she has to go back for him, and it was a question of how and when and under what circumstances, and how we could justify it, and make it plausible, and what would be the outcome of it. And the key idea in that sequence is that they found a way to link up the Cylon Heavy Raider's computer system into a Raptor, and that we had established- sort of established that the Raiders had abilities to jump f- a lot farther than any Colonial ship did, and could get back to Caprica in just a few discreet jumps, and by slaving that computer... blah blah blah technobabble technobabble to the Raptor technobabble technobabble they had a way of making it happen, especially if Sharon was working with them. In initial drafts, in fact, right up until we were shooting it was going to be that they were going to take the Heavy Raider itself, and that the other Raptors would be slaved to the Heavy Raider, and we were going to build a Heavy Raider interior, and put the characters piloting the Heavy Raider back to Caprica. At the last minute we had to- we were way over budget on this episode, on thes- this two-parter, just monstrously over budget and then som- we had to make some hard decisions and started cutting sets, and visual efffects, and the interior of the Heavy Raider was something that I cut at the last minute. Said "Okay, you know what? Let's just lose this- this set. It's not that important. We'll put 'em all in Raptors and we'll just move the computer off the Heavy Raider onto the Raptor and just go with it." And you know what? You don't miss it in the story at all. So it was actually a good decision.

I like this little beat here in the tease with Lee in the ready room. I like the way he walked into that scene, the way he seems to be-

Computer: (AOL "You've got mail" sound.)

Terry: Oops.

RDM: Oh, and Terry's on the computer. Isn't that charming?

Terry: I'm sorry. (Laughs.)

RDM: Maybe you should mute that.

Terry: (Continues laughing.)

RDM: I like the way that Lee comes in here and he is now the commander of the Pegasus. And it's nice to see him in his new element and see that he's behaving and being treated like the commander over on that ship and that slowly but surely the Pegasus is becoming his.

It's always interesting when Sharon is out of the flight suit. There's something very fragile-looking about Grace in those- in the wife-beater t-shirt, and the handcuffs, and she- she looks very fragile and vulnerable a lot of times in these shots, which is really interesting considering that she's a Cylon, and we know what the Cylons are capable of.

This tease in another one of the intercu- grand intercutting tease- teasers that I like to do. I did this in "Kobol's Last Gleaming" last season and a lot of other ones. I like the rhythm it gives to these sequences. They become very visual. It pulls you into a lot of different storylines quickly.

This storyline is- I don't know what to say about the Cally-Tyrol story. It's shocking and we'll talk- I guess we'll talk about that- more about that in a few minutes.

This little beat with the presidential debate is influenced a lot, just by presidential debates, and all the small, detailed observation of them down through the years. The podiums, the crowd, the way the mod- moderator talks, the traditional walk across the stage so that Laura and Baltar can shake hands, and that they always seem to be saying something to each other up on that- up on the stage that the audience never got to hear, and I thought it'd be fun that she would tell him, "I'm going to wipe the floor with you." (Switches to "Baltar voice":) "Oh, you must have lost your mind." And her confidence is such that she grins at that and tells him, "You- you must really be in trouble." And there was Baltar's acknowledgement of that, self-acknowledgement of that, that he really does think he's going to lose is evident, I think, in this scene.

The Cally-Tyrol storyline will be controversial. There's no question. It came out of something that David Eick actually suggested about Tyrol seeing a psychologist or a therapist in the show and we wanted to just start with him- he suggested, "Let's start with Tyrol having just completely had some kind of psychotic meltdown or break in between episodes and you're coming into this guy who had some kind of really, psychotic lapse, and did something outrageous. Either tried to kill himself, or try to kill somebody else, and what would that be? It would be a peeling back the onion as you look back and try to figure out where his- his problem came." And he started talking to Aaron Douglas about it fairly early. And I was struck by that. I thought it was a really interesting idea, and I wanted to incorporate it into this show. And it became a question of, "What is that about, and what does he do?" And the first question was, "Well, what does he do?" And instead of starting with the therapist, I wanted to start with Tyrol. And I just- I literally just started playing the beats in the teaser. I was just writing the sequences. He's asleep. The Hangar deck's empty. And then this- this moment happens, where he comes awake.

Terry: This is always so hard.

RDM: And he beats Cally.

Terry: I have seen this three times... and it's just- it's just as har- (gets louder) I said, I've seen this three times and it's always really, really... really hard to watch.

RDM: It is.

Terry: Mainly 'cause it's him. It's-

RDM: It's him and it's her.

Terry: Yeah.

RDM: And that sort of nightmarish "What have I just done?" quality, and "Oh, my god" her lying there with the blood all over her, and then this next shot... of him carr- this shot, of him- of Tyrol carrying carrying Cally through the hau- the hangar deck. I think, actually in the first draft of this, I take it back, I did start it in the the therapis- in this therapy session. He was talking to Cavil, and he was describing what had happened, and it was all had taken place off camera. And I think it, yeah, it was a note... it was a- I think it was a David note, later, on the second draft. He said, "Let's see it. It's just such a shocking thing he's describing, it's so horrific. We should see it." And I was like, "Yeah. You know what? We should." But they- but the- the sense memory that I'm twigging to was when I was writing the Cavil scene, so I was writing the therapy scenes with- with Tyrol I remember just making up the story as I was writing it, and it was waking up and shattering Cally's jaw.

Here comes a beep. Wait for it...

Act 1

Terry: See, I'm trying to get him to figure out a way to not have these beeps, like, to say something like "Cut," or, I don't know. Can't you say something so it's not "beep"?

RDM: Well I try to say- I try to say "Here it's coming," but the beep marks the- marks the tape.

Brother Cavil... started with the idea of a character... well it's hard to even talk about Brother Cavil in part one, but essentially, I should probably talk more about his origins in part two.

Terry: It's really- (Unintelligible.)

RDM: But there was something really interesting about writing the priest who didn't believe in God. There was something just fascinating about it. I just kinda liked that idea, and start- and I wrote this scene- these scenes with that in mind. Here's the priest who comes to aid you on a spiritual matter who thinks that prayer is a waste of time and that praying to the gods isn't going to do a damn thing for you and the real problem is that your just screwed up, kid. And I thought that was a fun, interesting character. To put that character and pair him with Tyrol, the one guy that's the son of a priest that has the religious beliefs, one of many people that has the religious believes, seemed like an interesting idea. And then we started looking for an actor, and Dean Stockwell's name came up, and it was immediately we all went, "Well, that'd be great, but you're never going to get Dean Stockwell." And, sure as shit, we got Dean Stockwell. And he was...

Terry: Had he seen the show?

RDM: I don't think he had seen the show until the show was pitched to him, and then I think he either read some press on it or he might have seen an episode, then he read our script, and then he went, "Boom. Yeah, I want to do it. I want to play the character."

Terry: That's so cool.

RDM: And he was an amazing guy on the set. He just- everyone loved him. Michael Rymer, the director, talked about what an incredible professional he was. He impressed all the cast members, he was prepared, he knew his lines, he had a specific take on the character, he really breathed the script in. I didn't get a single note from him, and he did the script as scripted. He just like- he just enriched the character as he did it, but he basically took the part as read and ran with it, which, was just great.

Terry: It's Dean Stockwell.

RDM: It's Dean Stockwell. He's been around forever. I mean he was like telling stories from the "golden age".

Terry: Disney movies?

RDM: Oh way back when. He like starred as a child actor.

Terry: Yeah, that's right.

RDM: I like this little beat with Kara and Lee. Her getting ready to go on the mission. This is one of the scenes that kind of- there were a lot of scenes that got cut, and came back, and got shifted around in the editing process because "Part Two" was so clearly, clearly too long and we were trying to juggle timing issues all the way through editing 'cause we didn't know if we were going to be able to get them to approve a ninety-minute or at one point we were trying to get a two-hour finale for episode twenty, and as a result we kept sometimes stealing scenes from episode two and shoving them into "Part One" to make more room in episode two, so then part one would get smaller, I mean it was all this complicated moving scenes back and forth. And that scene with Kara and Lee lived and died like several deaths before it finally stayed in.

I like Laura here a lot. This- Laura's attitude about Baltar, the way she works with her campaign manager, the way she's kind of eating her peanuts or whatever. There's a-

Terry: What is her campaign manager's name?

RDM: Tory.

Terry: Ok.

RDM: Tory Foster, I believe.

I like this idea of Baltar is hitting her on the religious thing. That Laura has positioned herself as being the religious prophet and Baltar's hitting her on that charge, and that it's sticking, and he's getting some traction on it, but it's not enough. I love that line. "The mob is not usually in the habit of electing ungodly apostates..." (Laughs.) "who denigrate people of faith." (Laughs.)

Terry: Did you write that, honey?

RDM: I did write that, and sometimes I'm tickled by my own things.

Terry: (sarcastically) No!

RDM: No.

It's interesting pairing Zarek with Baltar. I mean, there's just something great about that. And let the hand of God change his fate, and of course, the very next scene, we do see that the hand of God reaches in and chains the- changes the fate of them all.

The Raptor mission back to Caprica was something that I thought would be a primary cord going through "Part One", sort of provide- there's very little action in part one, as you might have known by now. The only really action you have in part one is at the end, 'bout when they do get to Caprica. But I like the laying this bit of pipe in here of the mission back to Caprica, gives you that military tension and impending conflict all the way through the show, because part one is very talky. "Part One" is a lot of setup. And I typically like "Part One"'s better than "Part Two"'s because they're- they are more setup and they are more character and they are more dealing with where people are, where they're going. And "Part Two"'s are usually all about resolution and getting things tied up in neat little bows and they're not usually as interesting, to me personally as a writer, as the beginnings. I'm interested with how things began, how one thing leads to another, seeing how the threads are interwoven.

There's a lot- and we're following up here with the baby. The rammifications and the fallout of the baby between Helo and Sharon. All these issues I wanted to- I wanted to bring as many things to the table for the finale as we could. All the little plotlines that you've been following, and maybe thinking that we had dropped and weren't thinking about anymore, everything from Gina, and the nuke, and the baby, and Caprica, and the election, and Tom Zarek, and Cally, and Tyrol and their relationship, and just really the whole- the whole nine yards. I want to just play as many of the continuing plotlines as we possibly could into the finale, 'cause I think those are the times when the show really lives best for me, when the show is really touching on all the different lives of all the different people, and showing how they're all intertwined and how they all are involved in a single overarching story. Like this. It's really- it was really fun to be able to leave Racetrack behind in a complete accident. There's nothing underhanded here. So whatever conspiracy theorists there may be out there, there's really no other explanation for this except an accident. They are going off on a mission, and the Raptors all jump, and one jumps into the wrong place. And shit happens. Sometimes there's just a software glitch. And this happens all the time. In the real world, carrier strikes are sent out, and ofttimes a plane has to go back to base because something's gone wrong or they went the wrong way, and this is just one of those times when they're- they just had a hiccup in their software and so these guys are stuck in this nebula and it's just it's- just sheer blind luck that they blunder into this planet. And the great thing, though, is that I had another ch- I had a character like Racetrack that I could play that with. Here's a character you've sort of been following intermittantly over the last year or so and she becomes your window into that storyline instead of just inventing a whole new redshirt-type character who's just going to come in, do one function, and leave and never be seen again. Here's somebody that you've had some- spent some time with. And so you're invested- you're a little bit more invested in her story that you are with just a faceless- or a nameless guest star of the week.

Terry: This is such a great scene.

RDM: Yeah. I really like the way this plays between Tyrol and Cavil. They're an interesting pairing, just of characters, of men, of actors, the way they look is interesting, the counterpoint one to the other.

Terry: He's very funny in this. Thoroughly.(?)

RDM: He is very... Oh he's amazing in this.

Terry: Nice dry humor.

RDM: Yeah. Just watching Stockwell's reactions, his face is endlessly fascinating to me. He- it's very expressive. And yet it does very little, with so- he just- the lift of an eyebrow, his eyes narrow slightly in certain times. It's all almost like it's been- that, he just kinda the way he opens his eyes a little bit and says that line, somewhat ironically.

Terry: Well, his intonation.

RDM: It's the intonation, the rhythm of it. It gives the impression of being both elaborately and meticulously planned, and yet being completely off the cuff and in the moment.

Act 2

RDM: And now we're back. This was kinda interesting. When I- again this went through a few drafts. The first draft was all about the therapy session, and I- and Cavil telling Tyrol that he wanted to strike out at somebody who was trying to screw with his mind and he wanted to kill himself in his dream and Cally had woke him up and stopped him from carrying out his- his desire to kill him- to commit suicide and then we decided to show the act itself, and then the next step from that was, Mike Rymer ca- said, "Well I still don't understand," in his Australian accent, "I still don't understand why he's doing it."

Terry: (Chuckles.)

RDM: "I mean- it's just- I don't- I don't get it. I don't know why he's (unintelligble). It just seems like the most obvious thing is he's- he's killing himself because he thinks he's a Cylon. Right?"

Terry: (Laughs.)

RDM: And I thought that was brilliant. It was a brilliant suggestion, that Tyrol is trying to kill himself because he's afraid he's a Cylon, just like Sharon was a Cylon. That he has- that- it's haunt- it's literally haunting him, and the thought that he might hurt somebody is tearing him up inside, he might Shar- someone, a sleeper agent like Sharon and do something like that is so frightening to him, he'd rather kill himself. And then the irony of that being that he wakes up and indeed does hurt somebody. I mean it's- it's an interesting sort of swirl-

Terry: Well, and he was close enough to Sharon, and knew that she didn't know that she was a Cylon, so that he seems like the one character that really can be frightened that there can be something going on in him that he doesn't really know.

RDM: Yeah! Yeah.

Re-imagined Series definition: the process of using the FTL engines to make an near-instantaneous apparent faster-than-light transport of a ship from one point in space to another

Re-imagined Series definition: used to signify a civilian transport vessel over a certain gross weight/mass, i.e. Colonial Heavy 798

Re-imagined Series definition: in military parlance, directive to continue the attack; otherwise used to refer to journalists ^{(TRS: "Maelstrom")}