Podcast:Scar

This page is a transcript of one of Ronald D. Moore's freely available podcasts. All contents are believed to be copyright by Ronald D. Moore, David Weddle, and Bradley Thompson. 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 transcriber Steelviper or site administrator Joe Beaudoin Jr. To view all the podcasts the have been transcribed, view the podcast project page.

Teaser

RDM: Hello, and welcome to the podcast for episode fifteen of the second season, "Scar." I'm Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the new Battlestar Galactica and this week I'm joined by the writers of this particular episode.

Weddle: I'm David Weddle.

Thompson: And I'm Bradley Thompson, and we were very happy to work on this one.

RDM: This is a good one. This is my- one of the standout episodes of the second season, I think. And I'm trying to remember how we- where this episode began in our- our- on our conversations.

Thompson: There was- you had come up with feeling that you wanted to get into the world of the fighter pilot.

RDM: Right.

Thompson: You wanted to see what it was like to sweat down on the deck, and what were their lives like. And David Eick came up with an idea that he wanted to see mano a mano between Kat and- and Kara. Kara's been out of it for a while there may be a new top gun.

Weddle: That's something that Brad and I wanted to do in some ways Act- Act- in some ways "Act of Contrition" was a first stab at that. I know from the day we came on the show Brad and I were talking about we wanted to see the life of the Viper pilots almost from the day they get- time they get up in the morning to around the clock.

RDM: Which is really weird we started also with last year's "Act of Contrition" that you guys wrote as well, which was all about the first group of new- new "nuggets" that would come into- into basic training on Galactica after the Fleet was- was on the run. (unintelligble) I- I shared their interest in this arena as well. It felt like one of the key aspects of the series, right from the beginning, was, "Ok. This is an aircraft carrier in space." And we went to great pains to try to delineate all the- the markers of what it meant to be on an aircraft carrier, how the squadrons were organized, how the ship was organized, how the pilots were treated and interacted, more or less as accurately as we could portray it. So the thought of doing a show that was all about th- the fighter pilots and all about the squadron, really getting into their lives, was always very appealing.

Weddle: One of the the things that Brad and I talked about, one of our favorite World War II movies is "Battleground" because it's the life- the war from the perspective of the grunts. Which in this case, the Viper pilots are. And they're part of a larger mission, but they don't always know the big picture of what's going on and they're caught up in just what their tasks are.

Thompson: One of the toughest things about setting this- this up so that it would be- there was one other aspect to this which was, we needed the enemy because Ron got this idea that he wanted only one battle in space. We weren't going to do a series of battles.

RDM: (unintelligble)

Thompson: Or a scorekeeping thing and there was- so we had this box to work into. So the question was, "Ok. How can we set this competition up in the framework of one fight that's going to determine everything?"

RDM: This scene- this scene that you're seeing here in the tease of them gathering all the- the possessions of the dead pilot together into a box actually lead to a scene that ultimately we cut in editing. We shot it and cut it. Where they auctioned off the pos- the possessions of the dead pilot.

Re-imagined Series definition: initial skills training; can refer to basic military indoctrination, and arms and ground training ^{(TRS: "Fragged")}; and basic flight training ^{(TRS: "Miniseries")}