Podcast:Pegasus

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Teaser

Hello, and welcome to the podcast for episode ten, "Pegasus", of season two. I'm Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the new "Battlestar Galactica" and I'd like to welcome you to the podcast. This one's a lot of fun for me, this is a episode that I've been thinking about for a long time, literally since I agreed to do the project. There's a couple of things you should know going into this: this is the one hour version of "Pegasus". We struggled mightily to get this show to time, and when the footage was complete, I believe the Director's Cut was a good 15 minutes over. Which is a bit of a problem, because that's more than an act's worth of material, and as we tried varying ways to get this down to the hour running length, I kept feeling like the best version of the show was the longer version. So we actually explored for a while the possibility of showing a 90 minute version of "Pegasus", and there was various discussions with the network back and forth. Ultimately, one of the problems was, we had an episode that was too long for an hour, and too short for 90 minutes. We could never quite plump it out to the point where it could be a 90 minute show, and it was always very difficult to pare it down to an hour show. So we finally got it down to an hour, rather than pad it out and just make it slow to get to 90 minutes, we compromised and decided to go with the fastest barn-burner of an episode that we could, in the one hour.

And, uh, fortunately, Universal Home Video has agreed to show the larger, the longer version of "Pegasus" in the season 2 DVD set so there's something for all of you to look foward to. So there will be periodic references to that throughout the show, but I'll try not to dwell on too much on that.

This episode obviously has its genesis in the roots of the show itself, which is the Original 1978 Series. They did an episode in the original Galactica called "Living Legend, Parts I and II", which featured the return of the Battlestar Pegasus. Er, not the return, but meeting the Battlestar Pegasus, and its commander— uh, Commander Cain who was played by Lloyd Bridges. It also introduced the character of Sheba, who was Cain's daughter on Pegasus. And at the end of that, of the original series's two-parter, Pegasus and Cain kind of vanish and it's not clear whether they're alive or dead, but Sheba, the commander's daughter, stays aboard and essentially becomes a somewhat romantic interest of Apollo. Sheba was a character that is not present in this version of the show. I felt that Sheba ultimately was too cute of a character concept; that you'd run into another Battlestar and that commander also would have a child as the commander of his airgroup, or in this case her airgroup. I just felt it was one step too far, it pushed the reality of the show across the line, where essentially then the show is winking at the audience and sort of going "Yeah, they did it so we're going to do it too; it's kind of cute isn't it? That, you know, two commanders and two kids and the kids are gettin' into it!" You know that, I— I just couldn't go there. It worked for the Original Series, I will give the Original Series that, that it— within the context of their show and within the sort of parameters of how they chose to tell stories and their characters it worked perfectly fine. It just didn't feel like it was going to work very well in our episode.

The choice of Michelle Forbes to play Admiral Cain was the subject of much discussion. We went through a lot of actresses' names. We went through a lot of sort of testing, internally about who we would use and what the possibilities for her. I had worked with Michelle Forbes on "Star Trek: The Next Generation", where she played Ensign Ro, and other people knew her from her film work. And there was something really interesting about going with a— not an older woman, but a slightly younger woman. That she would personify this character. It seemed like an interesting challenge, as opposed to going to someone older, you know, and more experienced, in some ways, there was something that I really liked about bringing in the younger admiral, the sort of fast-tracked admiral, who then comes in and takes command of Galactica, and the entire Rag Tag Fleet.

I should say that in the original, in "The Living Legend, Part I and II", Commander Cain did not outrank Adama. That story was similar only insofar as there was, there is a "Battlestar Pegasus", they do meet up with it unexpectedly, and that there's an admiral Cain who's a bit of— more of a hardass character than Commander Adama. There story was very different; it had to do with Cain's obsession with attacking a particular Cylon outpost or base, as I recall, and his determination to attack that Cylon base despite Adama's misgivings and Cain even manipulates the tactical situation at one point; he's out flying Vipers, himself, for some reason, and you know is destroying ships in order to force Adama to attack the Cylon base, which Cain has been advocating all along. We didn't use any of that for the show. We just sort of started with the premise of Cain showing up. I'll be back.

Act 1

We started with the premise of Cain showing up and being a hardass. I like that. I like the kernel of that. That another battlestar comes on the scene and their commander is a tougher one than ours is, and is a bit of a crazy person. On top of that, what I thought was even more interesting was then to say, "Well what if that commander shows up and they outrank Adama? What if that commander shows up and takes command of the Fleet away from Adama?" Which would happen. And suddenly I realized that was a more interesting tale. It's one thing to run into the crazy man, or woman in this case. It's one thing to deal with that other commander who's a little out of control and you have doubts about, but it's another thing entirely when that crazy person comes and takes over your fleet. As I said earlier, there's a lot of things that did not make it into the one-hour version of "Pegasus". There's a whole leadup to this scene with Adama and Laura and Tigh walking through the hallway, and that's where they talk about who Admiral Cain is. They talk about the fact that Cain was a very young Admiral, had been promoted over several people on the Commander's list. Was sort of an up and comer, and a bit of a tough one in that she had taken command of Battlestar Group 75 only recently before the attack.

Michael Rymer shot this episode. Michael Rymer had directed, of course, the pilot, and 33, and Kobol's Last Gleaming, and the opening two-parter of this season. And this is the next two-parter that Michael shot for us. And there is something about Michael's footage. There is something about the way he shoots the show, the performances he elicits from the characters, where he puts the camera, the lighting schemes that he comes up with in conjunction with our dp Steve McNutt, that in many ways makes it unique and distinctive. When I see the dailies on the show, I've said a few times I can always tell Mike Rymer's. It's like Michael just has a particular voice for this show, and it shines through on an episode like this, which I just think is a great, great, episode.

We had varying storylines and drafts dealing with the interaction between Laura and Cain. In one of the drafts Cain in this moment did not even address Laura as president, just said, "It's a pleasure." I kept playing a card where Cain never quite acknowledged Laura as the president and there was a scene that we wrote at one point where Cain went over to talk to Laura because there was also a subplot of ships in the fleet holding back supplies, not delivering fuel, etc, because they weren't getting spare parts, they weren't getting help when Pegasus is helping Galactica after they arrive and the civilian fleet is getting fed up. And they go on strike. There's like a strike. They're not going to deliver fuel supplies to Pegasus until they get some of their needs met. And Cain got very upset and goes to confront Laura, and in that scene Laura's like "Hey, well what do you want? You're not helping these guys out." And Cain makes it very clear to Laura in that moment that she doesn't accept her as the president and this is a military operation and she'll take what she needs from these people if need be. As this script went through the development process that just became one of the subplots that went away, thank god, because we have enough subplots as it were with the footage that we did shoot.

(sound of a zippo lighter)

This dinner sequence- that's my (exhales smoke) third cigarette of the night, and yes they are just cigarettes for those of you keeping score at home. This, not dinner sequence, sorry. This drinking scene with these three principles actually is much longer and tried to answer all the basic questions about Pegasus and we do here what- how they escaped the initial Cylon attack here by blind jump to just jump away to nowhere. The next question that was asked in the dinner party scene was "How'd you avoid the Cylons infecting your computer systems, taking them over, shutting you down like they did all the other ships in the miniseries?" And the answer was that as Pegasus was going in for the overhaul, most, if not all of her computers were offline and the network had been shut down. And essentially that combined with being lucky enough to avoid the first strike and Cain's initial order to just jump somewhere safe. And then they came to realize later on that the Cylons were able to infiltrate the computer networks. How they came to understand that is something we never got into, but I think you could fill in various backstories of how they eventually figure that out on their own.

I like this scene a lot because this is the "Who is Cain?" scene and "What has she gone through?" and I thought it was really important to understand that she is the way she is for reasons. That yeah, she was always a hard-charger on her own, and that she was probably hell-on-wheels to deal with, and to be under her command, under the best of circumstances, but that they had gone through something as difficult and challenging and horrific as what Galactica had gone through. And that she's not the way she is just because she's a bad person.

Michelle does just a great job with this role. I'm just- I'm so pleased that we cast her as Cain.

You might- if you're a fan of the old show you might have always thought that this would be one you would want to see again. I know that there's a lot of fans of the old show who wanted to see Pegasus again, that thought that was the best episode of the original series. And I knew that. I always felt the same way. It was the most memorable episode to me. I saw the Original Series when I was a kid. 1978, I was in the eighth grade and I watched the show religously. And I remember "Living Legend". I remember Lloyd Bridges, man. Lloyd Bridges shows up in that episode with a swagger stick, baby, I mean he is doing his Patton thing, just like balls to the wall, no holds barred, he's just going for it. He's going to grab that scenery and he's going to CHEW IT, he's going to chew it until it just can't be chewed anymore. And it's great. It's a really great larger than life performance. And it's very memorable within the canon of the original series. So as we approach this series, I always knew it was one I was going to want to take a crack at, was, ok, and then at some point they're going to have to run into Pegasus as part of the mythos. A key part of the mythos in my mind. And I was asked first season by various reporters and people, "Are you going to do Pegasus?" And I just said, "Yeah, I think so. Maybe." But I wanted to wait until I could do it right. And I'm glad we waited until the second- the middle of the second season, because by this point the show has matured to the point where I think we can do this episode. Where we've had enough happen within the show to these people, these characters have gone through enough things that there's material to mine in this kind of an episode. 'Cause ultimately Cain comes over here and she gets those logs and she starts saying, "You guys are a bunch of fuckups. I mean, you've got your son as the CAG. You've got Kara smacking people around. You've got a guy who's fraternizing with the enemy. You've got two of 'em fraternizing with the enemy for that sake. And the secretary of education, and what? And your XO?" What Mike Rymer said when he read the script was he loved the fact that Admiral Cain comes over here and everything she says is right. She's right. She's absolutely right. She should take command and these people have been screwing up. It's just great that she doesn't come over with some sort of false, crazy, over the top agenda that doesn't make any sense. Her agenda is quite simple. Hit the Cylons. Hit them hard. Keep hitting them. Do whatever it takes to accomplish that mission. And looking at the way Galactica has been run up until this point, she goes, "What the hell is this? This is ridiculous. This is no way to run a fleet." Which, is fair. That if Galactica did find themselves back in the Colonial Fleet, which is what they say at the hangar deck, "Welcome back," they would find themselves under a lot of investigation and start taking a lot of criticism for they way they ran their show- ran their ship. Because they made a lot of decisions that you could argue with, and I think that's one of the great things about the show is that people have made a lot of questionable choices in what they choose to do.

I really like the fact, in the show, that Adama just gives up command. He doesn't question it. He doesn't argue with it. There's no question of her right to do it. There's just a sense of loss. There's a sense that he's lost something.

This little story... we wrote this little story, this little backstory and Anne Cofell, who is the writer on this episode, came up with this little tale about shooting the guy in the head and then that he suddenly bursts out laughing and kind of takes the curse off it, in that moment. He just suddenly laughs. And its such a disturbing laugh, and the actress does- and the actor does just a great job with it that you're not quite sure what she's thinking here. "What are you feeling in this moment?" You're not quite sure what you're supposed to take away from that, but it's disturbing. Just when you thought it was going to be just "Ooh, the spooky story," he laughs that maniacal laugh and you suddenly are much more concerned and worried and disturbed than you were a moment ago. And it's because he's laughing about it and trying to cover it and yet there's truth to it and it's all about layers of deceit and deception and twisted motives and really, really screwed up dynamics. And it's that thought that's more frightening than just the fact that she shot the guy. The frightening thing is that you don't know what the hell any of them are capable of or what any of them are thinking or feeling and that's a dangerous, dangerous situation.

Act 2

I'm really impressed that we were able to keep this little sequence in the show. This notion of the "scorecard" keeping tally of the raiders that they've killed on the ship and the stuff that goes on here with the pilots and then Lee getting called away by the CAG. I thought for sure we were going to have to lose this whole sequence when we were making the cutdown from the 9- from the really long version down to this- down to the one hour. And I'm glad we didn't. Because it's great to see the two groups starting to mesh together a little bit and see the new camaraderie of the pilots and the chilling aspect of what their CAG is like. And I love the fact that their CAG is such a big, fat prick. (Laughs) It's just like- you just hate him. In fact there's a line that got cut right there where Kara says, "Is it too early to start hating him yet?" There were in earlier drafts the tension between the Galactica pilots and the Pegasus pilots continued to escalate even beyond this point, where after the initial "Thank god we're all in this together," they found themselves in very different camps that the sort of looser, "We'll figure it out and we'll deal with the consequences of figuring out," Galactica crew versus the more by the book and much harsher, much tougher-minded Pegasus crew that isn't screwing around. There's a scene that was cut just before here where Cain goes down and sees Sharon, wants to see theGalactica cylon and what's up with that. And it was a really interesting scene that lead out to this. But, it got cut.

I like the expectation here that the Cylon prisoner on Pegasus could be anybody, and it might be fun and who knows where you go with the Baltar line at this point. You don't- there's no indication and there's no foreshadowing that there's going to be something dark on the other side of the cage.

Laird, Pegasus deck chief. I don't know why we didn't cast a guy with a Scottish accent (laughs) or play it with a Scottish accent once we named him Laird, there would have been a nice homage to Jimmy- to Jimmy Doohan, who was, of course, Scotty in the original Star Trek series and passed away... not at the exact moment when this episode was filming, but it was in the air, and it would have been nice to have made him Scottish, but we decided not to.

Things happened. You ain't heard the- you ain't heard nothin' buddy because you won't find out what things happened until part two. You can tell that the pace of the show is just relentless. We're just being really brutal with these scenes. We're moving from scene to scene, trying to give you the juice of each one, which in some ways you can argue that it makes for a tighter more compelling drama, but my feeling on the longer version was it was a richer meal, you just got more textures, more flavors, a greater sense of the complexity of some of the relationships. You saw more ramifi- more of the consequences and ramifications of Pegasus showing up, how it affected more characters' lives, and that's why I was really attached to the longer version.

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")}

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: Executive Officer, e.g. Saul Tigh

Re-imagined Series definition: abbreviation of tally-ho; the sighting of an enemy target, such as a craft, landmark, or position ^{(TRS: "The Hand of God", "Scattered", "Maelstrom")}

Re-imagined Series definition: the senior pilot on a battlestar