Podcast:The Road Less Traveled

Teaser

Hello, and welcome to the podcast for episode 407, "The Road Less Traveled." I'm Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the new Battlestar Galactica, and I'm here to welcome you to the podcast, as always. Let's see... the Scotch for this evening is Macallen Cask Strength. In other words, the strength of a cask, however strong that is. And the smokes are Marlboro lights. The smoking lamp is lit. I'm also doing this podcast outside this time. For no apparent reason, other than it allows me to keep the smoking lamp lit without any problem with leaving residue inside. And also just because I feel like it and what the fuck. It's my podcast, I can do whatever I want.

Ok. This was- 407 is the episode that began- it's clearly a two-parter episode. It wasn't always designed that way. When we started working on this episode we had broken all the other episodes earlier and the famous story document that I've been quoting in these podcasts doesn't have very much in the way of this particular po- this particular episode. I'll pull it up here real quick. To do a quick- do a quick recap of where it- what it said. "Episode five. Kara's Earth exploration mission goes badly." Yeah, you think? "Tensions mount between Kara and her volunteers. Kara's reliance on instinct, rather than a carefully planned course to Earth makes many uneasy, and they begin to wonder if she may be a Cylon agent. Anders, who volunteered despite objections from the other Final Four reveals he's here to protect Kara, not to become the husband again, but Kara, being Kara, objects, exacerbating the tension. Anders' sense of invincibility takes a hit when the mission encounters Heavy Raiders, which do not retreat this time. The rations- nearly destroy the battle and the ship in disrepair. Kara's dogged refusal to return to the fleet sparks a violent mutiny." And then it goes on. It talks a little bit about the [clears throat] Cylon story, and I can't really get into that, 'cause actually some of the Cylon story is used in a later episode, so I'll kinda skip over that. But that's really all that we had for this episode going in- the door. Then we sat down and actually broke it. I'd say that the biggest significant changes had to do with the fact that in the first draft we didn't have Helo over on the Demetrius. I've talked about this before. It was kind of a network note, which I thought ultimately was to the good, which was to give Helo a little something more to do. That we hadn't been using him that effectively, and it was their suggestion to bring him over to this episode- or- I'm sorry. It was their- suggestion to do something more with the character and so I decided, "Well, let's bring him over to the episode." His role in this show, as XO, is actually going to be- [coughs] Oh. I see how strong a cask is. Wow. That's quite a kick. I'd forgotten that. That's why I like it. His role as XO was gonna be taken up by Gaeta, which as events will eventually unfold, will be ironic indeed. Gaeta was gonna be the XO of this mission, and actually the confrontation was going to be between Kara and Athena. We had decided that Gaeta was probably not gonna back her play too much. He was gonna struggle to be Kara's XO aboard Demetrius but clearly there was already tensions built-in between him and Kara, dating back to "Collaborators" from last season. But we thought that it would it was gonna be more interesting, actually, if Athena was really the one who was leading the mutiny and leading the discontent against Kara. We thought there was something kinda cool to play with. The idea that the crew [exhales smoke] would accept Athena- or had accepted Athena, and would actually be willing to follow Athena and- had more faith in her, the Cylon, than they did in Kara, who they really didn't know who or what she was. In reality- there was something interesting playing of the idea that [clears throat] literally better the devil you know. They had lived and worked next to Athena for quite a while. They- she had been accepted as the crew. She'd had Adama's faith, and she'd never betrayed that faith. And that the crew at that point would be more than willing to accept her, and then not knowing what Kara was- where Kara could be a Cylon. Kara could be some- could be something else. Kara could be any number of things. But they had no idea what she really was. And that she was acting weird and crazy and taking them off into directions that they didn't really wanna go, and that eventually the crew would actually back Athena's play against Kara over anyone el- [clears throat] over Kara herself. Which I thought was kinda cool. And the en- the episode actually was going to end with I think Athena and Kara pointing guns at each other. I think Athena was going to attempt to relieve her of command. Kara was going to- was gonna fight against that and I think the cliffhanger act out was actually the two of them pointing guns at one another. [exhales smoke]

Here back on Galactica in Baltar's lair there's all these little trappings that we've come to now associate with Baltar's lair. I should make one comment about this set. This is kind of a cool set. This is supposed to be down in the bowels of Galactica someplace and we built this on the stage. This is actually on stage, just right around the corner from the CIC. If you go out that door where the stairways are leading up to, there's a hatch there and that co- that hatch connects to the corridor that then wraps around CIC. Even though we play them as very, very different areas of the ship. One of the things I learned when I directed my episode this season was just how much everyone hates this set. [laughs] Not the design of the set, or the way it looks, but it's not a great place to shoot, unfortunately, because of the way it's designed and set up. It's just difficult to get lighting in and out and when you're changing lighting in between setups when you're moving a camera you oftentimes have to redo the lighting and there really aren't many points of access into the set, and as a result it slows everything down. Not to mention the fact that it's always crowded with people and that people are- the more people we have, the more complicated the coverage is, the more difficult the camera angles become, and as a result this set is one of the least popular sets among- it used to be Colonial One. They used to all hate Colonial One, because you would go into Colonial One and bang your head, and everybody was banging their head and people were like bitching and moaning about it all the time and it was just a nightm- it was also a difficult place to light and shoot in, but eventually they got over that. And now it's like, "Oh, yeah. Nobody minds shooting in Colonial One. They all hate Baltar's lair more than anything else on this ship."

Anyway. Once we brought Helo over to Demetrius the question became, "What is Helo's role?" If he's gonna be the XO, 'cause he's senior, what do we play him as? And I really took inspiration here from The Caine Mutiny. The Caine Mutiny I really like as a movie. It's been one of those films that's talked about quite a lot in writers' rooms over the years. Especially on all the ship shows that I've done and various mutinies and various ideas of what sparks mutinies and- we even discussed Caine Mutiny during the- during the "Captain's Hand" episode when Lee was the XO to the commander of the Pegasus. Whether- how far we were gonna go along the lines of a mutiny there. The role of Helo- Helo's role is modeled very much on the role of the XO on the Caine, and for those of you who haven't seen the film- oh, I'm blanking on his name. He's one of the great old actors who plays the XO to Humphrey Bogart's captain. I should, like, look it up on imdb or something. But I'll let you do that. That'll be some of your fun homework is to figure out by yourself who played that role. In any case, his role was about a good officer who sees the problems of his commanding officer and is trying to keep his- he acknowledges and knows that his commander is screwed up but he's trying to be the loyal officer, even though bit by bit he's drawn into the circle of mutiny, and ultimately it's the XO who has to make the final play against Humphrey Bogart in the middle of the typhoon, and we sorta liked- I sorta liked that arc. I thought that arc works really well, and so Helo's arc is modeled very much on that idea. He's watching the crew of the Demetrius bit by bit come up against the commander, questioning her more and more. The commander's doing more and more questionable things. Helo's trying to back her as long as he possibly can, and eventually he just can't back her any more.

Originally in this little tease open here with the Heavy Raider, Helo actually fired on the Heavy Raider, and Kara told him to stop firing. [clears throat] Chewed him out and I think she actually confronted him pretty severely. Got in his face when they came back aboard Demetrius. I kinda pulled back on that 'cause I kept feeling like, "Well, but-" It's one of those things that's kinda always tricky. There's a certain convention that when you shoot at ships and hit them, they blow up, unless for reasons of the plot you don't want them to blow up, in which case you fire at them and they're only wounded, or they're only damaged rather, and then you get away with it. And it's always kind of a- it's a bit of a device as far as I'm concerned. And so I'm certainly not above using it, and I have definitely used it in the show before, but this time out it just felt wrong. It felt that the rhythm and pace of what we were doing here that you wanted Kara and Hotdog to come right up on the Heavy Raider but not fire on it. Play the mystery of it. Play the damage of it. And have them get in close, ready to fire at a moment's notice, but never quite firing on it. Right here where Leoben is talking to Kara over the wireless. We actually shot footage of Leoben saying the lines, but I opted to cut them out because they were- we don't have an interior to the Cylon Heavy Raider. That's one of the things that's plagued us over the years is everyone once and a while we'll write a scene where we have an interior set for the Cylon Heavy Raider where somebody's being transported here or there or everywhere, and you wanna cut to the inside and see them in there, but we don't have a set like that. And every time it comes up we're talk about building the interior of it and then the cost estimates come in and I always blanch and I always say, "Ok. Fuck it. We're not gonna build the Heavy Raider interior." So, as a result, we never have it, and part of me wishes that we had built the fucking thing back in, what, season two, when it first- when we first wanted to and then we would have had it sittin' around, but- you just never quite- I never quite found the episode that I felt justified taking that kind of budget hit on.

That's the end of the tease.

Act 1

Act one. Wish I had my Zippo with me. I didn't bring my Zippo. Just- I should stop for a moment here and talk about this Demetrius set. I have to say, I've been involved with a lot of shows where new spacecraft interiors have been built. Certainly Star Trek we built new spacecraft interiors all the time. Klingons, Romulans, you name it, we built a lot of bridges, a lot of crew quarters, a lot of corridors, a lot of transporter rooms, and engine rooms, etc., etc. over the years. and we built other interiors on- this show. But this Demetrius set- when I walked onto the stage and saw the set that the art department had put together for this episode, I was really- I was genuinely blown away. This is an tremendous set. It's really practical. It's multi-dimensional in that it has many layers that you can shoot through. It's- has a practical second story. It has ladders. It has hatches and gangways. It fee- you feel like you see a lot more of the ship than there actually exists on the set. It's just- it's moody. It's dirty. It feels exactly like it's supposed to be, which is a recycling ship, where they presumably recycle all the waste and various trash from like all the other ships in the civilian fleet. I assume Gala- we've established that Galactica pretty much has her own recycling station, but- this ship recycles waste and produ- byproducts for the entire civilian fleet. So it's really a stinky, horrible, nasty place to live. Which is part of the conception. We said we're gonna stick these people out on this boat- out on this tub for a couple of months, and we wanted the tensions to build believably to the point where they would mutiny against Kara where essentially people are going crazy in there. And we really wanted an unpleasant place to live. And when I saw this set I was just blown away. I just was like, "Oh my God." So I went in to the- I walked, literally, from the soundstages back to our production office and I put the word out to- I said, "Gather the entire art department. I wanna talk to 'em." Which, of course, terrified everybody. The word quickly went out that I wanted to see the art department in- together. Which never happens. And before I- they could all gather them somebody came up to me and said, "OK, they're all worried they're getting fired or something. Is something wrong?" I said, "No, no. Jesus Christ. That- it's nothing like that. And so- just bri- just tell 'em it's ok." And they all came in and sat down and I just told 'em, "That is one of the best sets I have ever, ever seen, and I just salute you guys. It's a tremendous amount of work. It's a- just wonderful and you guys are really taking what we wrote on the page and just delivered an extraordinary piece of material out there that we can use over and over again." I was very impressed. It's just- it's a singular achievement and our production designer, Richard Hudolin, deserves a tremendous amount of credit for that set.

This storyline with Tyrol and Tory actually was a little bit bigger at the story level. I think we had much more of a Tyrol doing- getting obsessed by Cally's death, investigating, and trying to figure out how it could have happened, and he was putting together all the little clues and trying to puzzle out, "Well what did she do? I mean, the log says that she opened the door twice and how could that have happened? And the keys were over here and the keys were over there and-" There are aspects of the suicide that didn't quite add up to him, but there was nothing he could put his finger on. It seemed suspicious and he was going slowly nuts, and Tory was gonna divert him into the world of Gaius Baltar and the cult that he was forming. But ultimately I kinda felt like there wasn't that much to really obsess around. I mean, it was really just like a log and some clues, and I didn't really want it to become an episode of CSI where he was trying to look for DNA samples or he was doing a lot of tech stuff. It felt like it was gonna devolve into a lot of tech talk rather quickly. And so I opted to pull back on the Tyrol obsessively studying Cally's death scenario. I sent it in a slightly different direction.

It's probably worth mentioning Tyrol's shaved head, which you might have noticed in this. Actually this came from the actor. This came from Aaron Douglas. Aaron called and basically said, "Hey, I wanna shave my head," and, "You guys OK with that?" And I kinda went, "Hmm. Really?" And then we talked about it. I talked about it with Mark Verheiden, the co-exec who was also writing this episode, and we kinda went, "Yeah, cool. Alright." And I think the concern was- I remember Mark saying, "Well, you know, I am a little concerned in that the Mr. Clean look may not go over too well. I've tried- I've worked with actors who've done the Mr. Clean thing before and I think it might look silly." I said, "Well, let's not go Mr. Clean." Which, to me, implies a bald, completely bald, shiny pate, as it were, and I said, "Let's have it so it's- he's shaved it but it has that little, little, tiny bit of stubble," which is what Aaron was going for anyway. And I thought it actually would serve- us well to push the character into a place where he is losing it a bit and going completely inward and being completely detached from Nicky and being detached from the world and being completely caught up in his own reality in the aftermath of his wife's suicide, and I thought it worked pretty well for the character. It's certainly a startling sight.

Anders and Leoben. I like the suggestion that there's more than a little jealousy involved when he sees Leoben next to him and that he just kinda goes at him first thing up and pulls him outta here and that they pull Leoben out of Kara's quarters and take him down to the brig again. I think the original idea was more about Anders coming on this mission to be Kara's protector and to be there to look out for her in defiance of the wishes of the other final four Cylons. I think we shifted off of that because that seemed one-note for him. It seemed like it didn't quite track into caring about his own discovery in terms of being a final four Cylon and what it meant for him, and what's he supposed to be going through. We never really address why Anders came on this mission. I think it is- I think on some level that is still the basic character motivation. He goes in order to protect his former wife, but I think there's also a part of him that feels, intuitively, that Kara holds some key to divining what they're all about, where they've come from, what the final four are all about, and that he kinda knows that the fact Kara has evidently come back from the dead at the same time that they all realize that they were Cylons cannot be a coincidence and so he opted to go on the mission. We don't really play the conflict anymore with other final four Cylons. I think it's- easy to make the leap that the final four might have objected. It's also easy to say that they might have supported the decision, and I think in the current configuration of the show it's not quite as important to know either way. [clears throat]

I like this little beat, 'cause we- I kept wanting to have little moments within the episode where we were emphasizing his nature as one o- as a true Cylon and wondering whether Leoben knows anything about him. Is Leoben toying with him? But I never wanted to come right up to [unintelligible]- to really put it into stark relief. I never really wanted Leoben to say something overtly that said that he knew that something was up with Anders, or that maybe Anders had a secret. I was pretty clear in saying that, "OK, Leoben does not know. And neither do any of the Cylons- other humanoid Cylons." 'Cause we had pretty much played that the other humanoid Cylons had seen Anders over a span of time, as they had seen all the other four final four Cylons over a span of time, and none of them had ever acted in any possible way like they knew something special about them. That felt like it would incredibly complicated trying to justify or rationalize why they would've been pretending all this time not to say anything about Anders. So this scene with just the two of them alone was kinda the first time to give us a chance to really nail that home. Say, OK, no Leoben is not hiding something here. He's really- not pretending to protect Anders for some deep purpose, but that there were things that Leoben, who's the more mystical, the more in tune with the sphere- the music of the spheres, as it were, he's- he can say things to Anders that do strike chords, that do actually land with Anders and give him moments of questioning who he and what he is and what it all means.

Do do do. [absently, killing time]

And that's the end of act one.