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RDM: Hello, and welcome to the podcast for episode fifteen of the second season, "Scar." I'm Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the new Battlestar Galactica and this week I'm joined by the writers of this particular episode.
Weddle: I'm David Weddle.
Thompson: And I'm Bradley Thompson, and we were very happy to work on this one.
RDM: This is a good one. This is my- one of the standout episodes of the second season, I think. And I'm trying to remember how we- where this episode began in our- our- on our conversations.
Thompson: There was- you had come up with feeling that you wanted to get into the world of the fighter pilot.
RDM: Right.
Thompson: You wanted to see what it was like to sweat down on the deck, and what were their lives like. And David Eick came up with an idea that he wanted to see mano a mano between Kat and- and Kara. Kara's been out of it for a while there may be a new top gun.
Weddle: That's something that Brad and I wanted to do in some ways Act- Act- in some ways "Act of Contrition" was a first stab at that. I know from the day we came on the show Brad and I were talking about we wanted to see the life of the Viper pilots almost from the day they get- time they get up in the morning to around the clock.
RDM: Which is really weird we started also with last year's "Act of Contrition" that you guys wrote as well, which was all about the first group of new- new "nuggets" that would come into- into basic training on Galactica after the Fleet was- was on the run. (unintelligble) I- I shared their interest in this arena as well. It felt like one of the key aspects of the series, right from the beginning, was, "Ok. This is an aircraft carrier in space." And we went to great pains to try to delineate all the- the markers of what it meant to be on an aircraft carrier, how the squadrons were organized, how the ship was organized, how the pilots were treated and interacted, more or less as accurately as we could portray it. So the thought of doing a show that was all about th- the fighter pilots and all about the squadron, really getting into their lives, was always very appealing.
Weddle: One of the the things that Brad and I talked about, one of our favorite World War II movies is "Battleground" because it's the life- the war from the perspective of the grunts. Which in this case, the Viper pilots are. And they're part of a larger mission, but they don't always know the big picture of what's going on and they're caught up in just what their tasks are.
Thompson: One of the toughest things about setting this- this up so that it would be- there was one other aspect to this which was, we needed the enemy because Ron got this idea that he wanted only one battle in space. We weren't going to do a series of battles.
RDM: (unintelligble)
Thompson: Or a scorekeeping thing and there was- so we had this box to work into. So the question was, "Ok. How can we set this competition up in the framework of one fight that's going to determine everything?"
RDM: This scene- this scene that you're seeing here in the tease of them gathering all the- the possessions of the dead pilot together into a box actually lead to a scene that ultimately we cut in editing. We shot it and cut it. Where they auctioned off the pos- the possessions of the dead pilot, which grew out of something I remember from history and fictionalized history as well where in the- in the Royal Navy back in the Napoleonic War era when members of the crew died, officers or enlisted men died, they would take all their possessions and they would take them up onto the deck after the battle and they would auction them off to the other members of the crew, and it was a way of saying goodbye and it was al- or carrying some pieces of their memory forward and also in a practical sense there was gear to be had. There's extra shirts and there were buttons and all kinds of- of things that people actually wanted.
Thompson: Especially in a- in a civilization such as we've got here in the rag tag fleet, a skin magazine or-
RDM: The skin magazines, yeah.
Thompson: That would be a very rare thing. They're probably not making a whole lot of those anymore.
RDM: And we did shoot that aspect of the- of the sce- sequence. This scene was going to then cut to Lee holding up the skin magazine from Beano and it was like, "Ok. How much do I have for this?" And there was a big rowdy scene. I think when we cut it together and put it in the show my feeling was that it f- it was too big. That the- that the- the energy was too up and it didn't quite read as a quasi-memorial Irish wake kind of an event. It was a little bit too much of a- of a balls-out party. And it felt- we were so early in the show that it pulled you out of the fact that these guys, these new guys, are stepping into a situation where people get killed all the time.
Thompson: What wasn't really obvious with that- with the scene that was cut was that these guys are really overcompensating for that loss. They're- they're really- their big partying and all of that stuff-
RDM: Yeah...
Thompson: -was really to hide their grief from one another. (beeping in the background)
RDM: Yeah.
Weddle: What I love is- is we're really focusing on those bunks are being emptied and filled on a- if not daily basis, weekly basis, and this is an ongoing atrophy that's eating at these people day in and day out and other episodes we would never normally focus on that. It's great to take the microscope down to these pilots themselves.
Thompson: One of the nice things that Michael Nankin brought to this- many nice things he brought to this show was the- the little moment you saw earlier with the- putting the tag of Beano on the new guy-
RDM: Oh, yeah.
Thompson: -Jo-Jo-
RDM: Yeah, I love that.
Thompson: -which is... *grunt like being punched*. It's almost like that moment in- in- in- when the- whey they bring the- when the guys climb into the body bags in Apocaly- not "Apocalypse Now". The Kubrick film.
RDM: Oh, "Full Metal Jacket."
Thompson: "Full Metal Jacket."
RDM: Oh, yeah yeah yeah.
Thompson: They get there and they're in the body bag and you go, "Oh. Wait a minute. Oh. I'm in a dead guy's bunk."
RDM: Yeah. (zippo lighter)