Podcast:Scattered
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Hello and welcome to the first podcast of the second season for the episode "Scattered". I’m Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the new Battlestar Galactica. Thank you all for tuning in and for listening to the podcasts, which I will try to continue to do for as much of the second season as I possibly can. <chuckle> This episode of "Battlestar Galactica" to kick off season two went- underwent a great deal of changes all the way from concept on to final broadcast. Initially, we had a different plan to open the second season instead of doing a direct pickup on the cliffhanger ending from last season’s finale "Kobol’s Last Gleaming". I wanted to do something a little different and not come back directly to the cliffhanger and actually do a completely separate sort of episode that was an episode set some time in the distant past. I won’t tell you too many details about that episode, because it’s still sort of on the drawing boards and still something we’re considering doing at a later date. But in essence, what is now "Scattered" and the subsequent episode, episode two, "Valley of Darkness", were actually going to be episode number two, and then as it worked out we decided not to go that way and decided to open season two a little bit more traditionally with a direct pickup into the cliffhanger. That said, "Scattered" really wasn’t going to, I didn’t want "Scattered" to directly pickup the cliffhanger.
Still, I was still kind of like fighting against that notion and wanted to really kind of ah subvert the audience’s expectations of what we were going to do. And the episode in script form actually picked up or opened with an open scene in a bar on Caprica twenty years ago and you just kind of cut into this scene it was a bar filled with a lot of people, televisions and on in the background giving commentaries on pyramid games etc. And you went over, and there was Colonel Tigh at the bar, a much younger Colonel Tigh with hair, and he was doodling a Viper weapon systems on a napkin. And some guys came in, you realized they were crewmen from another merchant freighter that he was on and ah they were taunting him in some way and a fight broke out. And the fight got pretty ugly and Colonel Tigh ultimately has a man down and is about to break his neck when another man rushes up behind him and is about to hit him with a bottle and possibly kill him and you hear the chick chick sound of a shotgun and you pan off and there is Adama. And this was how Adama and Tigh first met. They met in a bar in between the wars. The backstory to the series is that the initial Cylon conflict was fought forty years ago and in that war both Tigh and Adama were young men who did not fight together, they fought in separate ways on separate vessels, had separate experiences. And after the war was over, both men were discharged along with many other service people out into the civilian world and they both sort of happened to sign up aboard the same civilian tramp freighter that was plying the trade routes in among the colonies and that was how they met.
In any case, that’s how I wanted to open this episode. We were going to open this show with just that scene and show how the two men met and then come into the scene you’re watching now where Tigh takes command of Galactica and Adama’s been shot and there is all this chaos. And the episode was going to continue to sort of flash back onto their relationship of the early days of Tigh and Adama and how the two men met and what meant to each other, what it was that Adama saw in Tigh for the first time and sort of really go through the creation of the friendship. And counterpointing that with events in the current day Galactica where Adama’s life hangs in the balance and Tigh is making decisions based on, in part on things that he learned from Adama way back in those days. And we shot those sequences. Those sequences were shot and ah edited together, and we looked at them. But ultimately, we didn’t like them. We just didn’t feel, they weren’t quite the show, frankly. And um, and really not through any, you really can’t point your finger at any particular person (missing) maybe me because it was my concept. And you know. I don’t know that I created or had the writers of this episode Bradley Thompson and David Weddle; I don’t know that I gave them really a rich enough environment to really tell that back story. In any case, when we watched the cut, we all kind of felt, and the director included, that it was, it would just be a better story to tell the tale in a more linear fashion. And that we would still use that material, still use the flashback material that we had. But instead of making it these objective points of view, we were going to tie them, we were going to change them into subjective points of view. That is, we would tie them directly into Tigh’s experience. They would be from Tigh’s memories instead of sort of the audience watching these events happen as if you were just cutting back in time. We would tie them all to Colonel Tigh specifically. So as you watch the show, you’ll see that there are many places where we're going directly off of Tigh. You know, you’re creating these flashbacks now in a subjective way. Tigh is thinking about Adama. You can see it subliminally there in the teaser. He’s thinking about Adama along the table. He’s remembering the moment he met Adama. It’s informing his decision now. So it really kind of changed the tenor of the episode, instead of it being this sort of dramatic device that was sort of counterpointing present day reality with past events. It became more of a character study of Colonel Tigh because now you’re sort of going inside Colonel Tigh’s head. And sort of, you know, living with him – his experiences as seen through the prism of his relationship with Adama.
Now I apologize, because my DVD, <laughter> my DVD copy of "Scattered" is screwing up slightly. So it’s freezing periodically. And I’m having a little trouble. I think it’s my home system more than anything else. My handy dandy home system that I just got. In any case, I am now at the section where Dualla, where the fleet is jumping away in any case. Dualla is just saying jump, there we go. So the roots of this story, even before the cliffhanger, this idea that the fleet would be lost and scattered across a vast section is actually something that predates season two. It actually is something that was in one of the first log lines for the series way back when I was sending up a list of potential storylines to the network saying that these are the shows that we would do if you would take us to series and on them were ideas like "33" you know the idea that the Cylons come back every thirty-three minutes was one of them. The riot aboard the prison ship was one of them. And the fact that there would be a jump and the fleet would be scattered across a vast expanse was one of them. This is a little slightly different instead of all the ships of the fleet being scattered and lost, it’s essentially that Galactica is really the one that’s been lost. You know it’s Galactica that has jumped to a different location than the rest of the fleet. You’ll notice I’m in the main title sequence here. The main title sequence you’ll note has changed this year. We have lopped off the second part, the sort of upcoming scenes section with the drum beats and all that in favor of keeping just sort of the beginning and making it a little bit shorter. And I’ll talk a little bit more about that when we come back on act one. And hopefully my DVD will continue to function. <quiet> Boom… Galactica.
Act 1
Ok. Act one. As I was saying, before I get into the Baltar-Six stuff that you're seeing now, we also changed the main title theme back to the UK version, which was always the preference of the producers and everyone on the show and there was some internal debate about which was the best main title, what's the best theme music. I think end of the day, basically everybody agreed that the theme that we had season one was not as evocative and interesting as the UK version so we all agreed to do that. The reason behind losing the second half was to just make the whole thing a little faster to get through the main title a little quicker, and also there were complaints. There had been- some people just don't like seeing scenes from the upcoming show. I really dug it. I always- I was always a big proponent of it and really liked it. I know that David Eick, my partner, also loved it too, but, there were legitimate people that just said, "Well, we don't wanna be spoiled. We don't wanna see the scenes that we're coming up on." So we decided to lose it.
So there's David and Bradley, who wrote the episode. And we're back in Baltar's head down on Kobol. One of the interesting things about this season in the way that this all begins is that there were so many plot threads to pick up from last season, from the end of Kobol. And we made the decision very early on- I really did not want to wrap all the storylines up in a nice, neat little package in the first hour. It didn't feel right. It didn't feel with- it would work within the parameters of the reality we've created and it was just far less interesting to try to bring all these people back to Galactica and get 'em back to where they were. Hit the reset button, as it were. So, we really opted to tease out the storyline. And the storyline kept getting bigger. I think initially there were going to be five episodes that would be dedicated to all these plot threads of people on Kobol, Kara on Caprica, and the people on Galactica, and Laura not being President and Adama being shot. All those things, I think, were initially going to be resolved in way or another by the time we got to, like, episode five. As we started developing the scripts, two of the scripts just became unamanagable as single, one-hour episodes, and this is one of them. "Scattered" initially- oh, and as a side note: If you're listening to this I hope you're into being spoiled because we're going to be talking about not just things coming up in this episode but things coming up in subsequent episodes so, fair warning. There will be spoilers given away here. "Scattered" had encompassed in its storyline not only- it just had this entire piece of material in that most of the action that was going to be in part- in what is now the second episode, in "Valley of Darkness", most of that storyline was also in "Scattered". All the action that takes place on Kobol in "Valley of Darkness" having to do with what you'll see in that one, the death of the- well, I just gave it away. (Laughs) In essence, what happens to Socinus in part two is all- was all gonna be in "Scattered". What happens to Kara and Helo in the second episode was also going to be in "Scattered". The eventual wrap-up of all the events on Galactica was gonna be on "Scattered". But we just couldn't do it. It was too many things to manage in a one-hour episode. An hour- we've always struggled with the length of our scripts and the length of our episodes. There's only, if you look at it, there's really only about forty minutes and change of actual program content and our scripts tend to run in the- in the early drafts they're always in the fifties. Usually we like them to be in the low fifties, fifty one, fifty two, fifty three. Sixty page scripts are not unheard of. An ideal page script for us going into shooting is usually about forty six, forty seven pages. Sometimes we make that, sometimes we don't. But even when we make that, and I think we did on "Scattered", I think we- in the final draft of "Scattered", I think it was around forty seven, forty eight pages. The shows are still too huge. They're still too long. The style of storytelling, I might have talked about this before, just requires spending more time on character, creating moments, really taking your time as you go through the show. And that just expands. And so "Scattered," in its initial draft, was just much too big to sustain one episode so we essentially divided it into two and created another action storyline for part two, which is "Valley of Darkness," which as you'll see at the end of this show the Cylons are on the ship. The Cylons have boarded Galactica and that's our cliffhanger ending for episode one. And then that becomes the primary action storyline of part two. But all the other tales that happen in part two, apart from the Cylon boarding, were actually all supposed to be in "Scattered" and there was just no way that the show could really support that. It was just too, too much to have to deal with. So we split them into two shows. Same- similar thing happened with episode six, which was going to be the place where all the storylines were wrapped up and Laura was eventually restored to the Presidency, and Adama's back, and everybody gets back home. Episode six became much too large to sustain one hour as well, so we split that into two. So now, essentially, season one and the storylines that we began in season one don't really end until episode seven of the second season. Which is great. It's a really, in a way, that's like- we have a twenty episode first season, if you want to look think about it like that.
Ok. Back to what we're dealing with here. This is Lee and Laura and their troubled and conflicted relationship now that Lee has sided- Lee very dramatically sided with Laura aboard Colonial One last season, and Laura did not back him up and I think that embittered him in certain ways and creates tension in their relationship because Lee was expecting her to be there for him. He put a gun to Tigh's head and then she immediately went, "Ok, I can't do this. I can't have Colonial officers shooting each other. This has gone too far." She has to stop.
All these scenes on Kobol, as are all the show, all the shows scenes are shot in Vancouver. You'll note that Kobol looks greener and more lush and the colors a little bit more saturated. This is a great piece of editing right there. That's actually two different pieces of film. That's really wonderfully done. All the scenes on Kobol are shot, obviously, in Vancouver, but so are all the scenes on Caprica and it's really a question about how you light it and how you digitally color time these shots to make them feel like two different planets. And our DP, Steve, is very, very talented and has been able to deliver two completely different looks to what are- what is essentially the same basic group of locations. If you look at this location closely and you went back and looked in the first season on- in say, episode one, "33", and episode two, "Water", the scenes on Caprica. They were shot in very similar terrain with very similar trees, very similar foliage. It's not that different. What is different is the way he chooses to light and shoot these scenes which gives you a vibe and a feeling that you are in different environments. Caprica is theoretically undergoing some nuclear winter, or at least drastic climate changes, so it tends to- the lighting scheme tends to be much more blown-out, much more ghastly, for lack of a better word. Whereas here on Kobol, the once home of humanity where it was once paradise, it's much more vibrant, verdant, green environment. Very Garden of Eden-type.
This storyline of what happens to the people down on Kobol is really one of my favorites of this season. It's a really interesting tale of this Raptor, that the survivors of the Raptor crash, led by Sam Witwer, who plays Crashdown, who was a small character that we established in "33" last season, we just need- essentially we needed a guy to replace Helo because Sharon was a Raptor pilot and a Raptor's piloted by two people. So Sharon needed to fly with somebody and we needed another character so I came up with this guy, Crashdown. And the initial guy- stories on Crashdown were very small, he was supposed to be a little funnier, a little more of a joker, didn't take things quite as serious, and looked a bit buffoonish and silly in some sequences and- but we really grew to like him and to like Sam over the course of the year and started use him more and more. Sam's a very talented actor. Very dedicated to the profession, and really interesting guy. And by the time we got to "Kobol's Last Gleaming" and this party had gone down, I didn't really know where this story was going, but I was fascinated with the idea that Crashdown would be in command of a infan- what has become, essentially, an infantry unit. They're troops now, down on the ground, and that Tyrol would be his Chief Petty Officer, who starts to lose faith in him in that Crashdown is not really up to that task. As dedicated as he is as a character and as much as he wants to lead those men, he finds that there are many shortcomings that he can't quite handle, and it's a dark tale of what happens to those people on Kobol, and I just think it's wonderful. And I'll come back to that later.
We're back on Caprica. You can already see that the color tones here on Caprica, even though this is an interior, are very different. It's much more yellows and golden. It's a different color scheme. That brief shot of the exterior of the museum was much more blown-out. The color hues are much different than what you saw on Caprica. There was some debate, internally, about, when we saw these dailies, about how much blood was on Katee's face in this sequence. There were some people that were going, "God! There's so much blood. Why didn't you wipe off her face? You look just so horrible and scary and awful." Personally, I love it. I think she looks great in this whole sequence. The fact that she's got blood all over her face from the fight with Six. It just speaks to the violence of the world that she's living in and how desperate things have become and her raw emotion and her anger toward Sharon. I mean, this is an interesting dynamic. He's in love with the enemy now, and is trying to protect the enemy. But he's still a Colonial officer. She just got here, and knows immediately that Sharon is not "one of us" and knows that she has to die. I mean, it's a great, very operatic in many ways, storyline.
This was all shot, I think, at the same location we shot "Kobol's Last Gleaming" at. As I recall, we had to go back in. It was a very difficult to get back into these locations one more time. That's the shot I really like.
I really like her in that angle with the blood and the grime and just the look on her face. I think she looks great, actually, in a twisted, odd kind of way. I think she's really attractive in this whole scene, which might speak to my own strangeness more than anything in the objective reality. As I said, this really the only sequen- the only Caprica sequence in part one. And that was because we only had a few Caprica scenes to go over both parts and we felt like we needed- I think the second scene of- that's great. And this is my (chuckles)- I threw that line out, like, in a meeting and everybody just liked it and I just kept laughing when I said. Ok we're going to go to part two- act two now.