Podcast:Escape Velocity
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Hello, and welcome to the podcast for episode 406, "Escape Velocity." I'm Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the new Battlestar Galactica. And thank you very much for joining our podcast. The Scotch for tonight is Glenmorangie, this is the port wine finish twelve year old Scotch. The wife and kids are downstairs, and in deference to the tots the smoking lamp is out. Ok. Episode four, to those of you counting at home, episode six to me, was yet another of the episodes that I've referred to before that were also broken in one fell swoop at the very beginning of the sea- or not, broken, at least the basic story outline was [clears throat] conceived at the very beginning of the season. The script for this, by Jane Espenson, was begun in tandem with several other scripts and there were changes that happened on the fly in Jane's script, as we were making- as I was making changes to other episodes. Notably, there was a good deal of interaction back and forth in terms of plot, having to do with the previous episode, Michael Taylor's episode of last week, episode five. Notably in the quorum scenes that are to be coming up.
Ok. Here at the very beginning, the idea of doing a service in the temple and establishing, one of the few times that we've really actually seen any of the polytheistic worship of the Colonies, was something I'd liked from the very beginning of the story as we broke it, and Jane really developed the actual service and the language that they're using and the formality of the ritual. I liked the idea from the get-go of saying, "Ok. You know, we've talked a lot about the polytheistic belief system of the colonists, and how usually in- just in contrast with the monotheism of the Cylons." And the irony, it seemed to me, at this point in the series, was that in some ways we knew more about the Cylons' conception of God and the Cylon belief system, and how it worked in practical terms, than we really did the Colonials. And this was like a great opportunity to go into that world and really actually play a service and I was also intrigued by the thought of showing a polytheistic religious service on television. Typically these services are all in the Judeo-Christian tradition. You don't get to see a lot of variety in tv's portrayal of belief. I like the idea of validating and underlining the fundamental [clears throat] validity of the Colonial belief system.
This is a great little beat here with Laura and Eddie- or [chuckles] with Mary and Adama- with Laura and Adama. She's obviously alluding to the fact that she herself is gonna be dying, and she's starting to grapple with that in practical ways, and Adama really doesn't wanna think or talk about that. There's also this beat the wigs. The- Laura's wig. We had a scene that made it to script and I believe it was in this episode, originally, although I could be wrong about that, where we were going to see Laura looking over examples of wigs that they had dug up through the fleet. That essentially the wigs are made of- I remember having these discussions that the wigs were made of human hair and presumably there's still barbers around and they would collect the hair, and that people would be making wigs from them. Much as they do today. But they would be made of real human hair, presumably.