Podcast:Blood on the Scales

"Blood on the Scales" Podcast
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Transcribed by:	Steelviper
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Length of Podcast:	45:23
Speaker(s)
Ronald D. Moore	Ronald D. Moore
	Terry Dresbach
Comedy Elements
Scotch:
Smokes:
Word of the Week:
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Teaser

[voiceover from teaser, "Previously..." can be heard]

Hello, and wel- ooh, that was a little too loud. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. This is Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the new Battlestar Galactica here to welcome you to the podcast for episode sixteen in our- numbering scheme, "Blood on the Scales". This is part two of the mutiny arc and- I- Let's see. First things first. The Scotch is actually bourbon. Woodford Reserve, once again. The smoking lamp is out as I am ensconced up in Lake Tahoe at a rented cabin on the Caprica writers' retreat. So this is actually cross-pollination of Galactica and Caprica for probably not the last time. But that's where- I is. And that's where I will be for the remainder of the podcast.

So, here we go. The mutiny arc was one of the more fun arcs that we had to plot out for the course of the final season, 'cause it was really supposed to take everything down to the absolute rock bottom that the characters could possibly endure. And, yeah, after not having found Earth and having that taken away from them, the idea was then to go even further. And now take the loyal the loyal to the crew, shatter the family, threaten the ship. Take all the fundamentals as far down as you possibly could. And the mutiny arc was designed to do just that. To really like shatter us from within. You'll notice that once again we're putting the chirons up on the episode which- to really emphasize the speed of which all these incidents are taking place and to show that it's really, like, bookin' along. Which is- to maintain the relentless pace that we had established in the first part. [coughs]

We did reshoot chunks of this- moment and the act out of the previous scene. Not a lot, but we needed to go back and- In the original cut of "The Oath" it took way too long for the Raptor to get the hell out of Dodge, so we wanted to emphasize why Adama was staying behind to guard the airlock and giving Laura a chance to get away. And also we just wanted to rejigger some of the choreography on that standoff so it played a little bit more smoothly with the flash grenade and all that coming in.

I think in early drafts of this sequence, of the Raptor sequence, I don't think Laura made the phone call and tried to warn off Hotdog. It happened a little bit more- a little faster, but I wanted to slow it down and I think I wanted to milk the tension out of this a little bit, and I also wanted Laura to make a plea to Hotdog so you could kinda declare who was on whose side. There was also some debate back in forth about whether the- this missile fire that's coming up should hit the baseship or not. And I kind of went back and forth, I think, in all honesty. I couldn't- at first I was kind of adamant that the missile should not hit the baseship. That it seemed too provocative and it would have initiated more and more hostilities, but I think- Angeli talked me into going with it because it seemed like it gave a little bit extra juice, a little bit extra fire here in the opening seconds of the tease, and it also rammed home the seriousness with which the situation needed to be taken by the Cylons on board the baseship.

Nice to see Captain Kelly back. You all remember that he was the LSO that was ult- that was convicted a while back of planting bombs around Galactica. These episodes, the mutiny arc, was really a chance to bring back a lot of players. We saw Gage and Nireem from Pegasus, Narcho, Private Jaffee. We really kinda wanted pull out all the stops 'cause we needed people to line up on either side. And of course, right up front here was the question of who was gonna be who in the Vipers, and it was nice to say that Hotdog was gonna be one of the good guys. And so that allowed us to firmly put Hotdog on the side of the angels and Narcho on the side of the villains.

We're definitely cheating, right here, in terms of how did the Raptor get aboard the baseship, despite that near miss. And we deci- I just opted to jump ahead. I mean, we had various little scenarios of how it slipped into an airlock and got on board, and I think there was even a shot that was planned at some point of watching the Raptors zoom through the inside of the ship. But those were all dropped for time and budget and they didn't seem necessary and it seemed pointless once you- once the- Raptor escaped from the Viper's clutches, as it were, it seemed kinda obvious it was gonna get aboard the baseship, so you really didn't need to tap into any of that.

There- in early drafts there was a stronger Laura-Tory confrontation here. There was even a point where Laura slapped Tory. Which, as much as we- much as we love to slap Tory, of course, it didn't seem in unnecessary, and it seemed out of character for Laura in that moment. I like the fact that, really, Laura's one moment of- I like all that. Sorry, I just stop and listen. I like that Laura's one time where she actually physically hit somebody was Tigh, during the New Caprica arc when he was accus- when they were having their argument about suicide bombing, and that was the one time that she just crossed that line and actually hit somebody, and I always thought that was really great.

I'm trying to think if- there weren't a lot of changes through all this. I mean, there were- I looked back through my notes on the drafts. There were dialogue changes in this kinda scene. It was a much- I think I felt a little uncomfortable with the insignia as we went through development, of Adama turning over his pins, his pips, to- Gaeta, and there was much- there was much- there was a bigger deal made out of it and I think I wanted to downplay. I almost fought to lose it at one point, but it was a nice symbolic gesture.

That's one of the few times I let battle stations slip through instead of action stations. I'm usually pretty- it's one of those nitpicky things that I obsess on in my obsessive ways was the term "action stations" versus "battle stations".

The- whole notion of Laura moving the baseship deeper into the Fleet was predicated on the idea that Gaeta's not trying to just slaughter civilians. He's- his whole purpose of the coup is to take over in some kind of legitimate way and therefore when the shooting stops, he's gotta govern this Fleet. He's got- he and Zarek together have to somehow, some way find a method or find a legitimacy so that people actually listen to them, the Quorum actually listens to them, the Fleet captains actually listen to them, and they are in essence, the new leaders of the rag tag Fleet. If they didn't plan on doing that, they wouldn't go through any of this stuff. If they were just trying to take over just Galactica, they've done that. But it's not just about Galactica. It's about the future of humanity, and I think that both the characters of Zarek and Gaeta took that charge very seriously. They wanted to be the next leaders of the human race.

End of the tease.