Podcast:The Oath
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| "The Oath" Podcast | ||
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| Length of Podcast: | 44:54 | |
| Speaker(s) | ||
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Ronald D. Moore | |
| Terry Dresbach | ||
| Comedy Elements | ||
| Scotch: | ||
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Hello, and welcome to the podcast. This is Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the new Battlestar Galactica, and I'm here to take you through the podcast for episode fifteen of season four, "The Oath". The smoking lamp is out, unfortunately, tonight. The Scotch is is Scotch, and it is a Scotch called Arran, or Arran, or something, A - R - R - A - N, for those of you following along at home. OK. "The Oath" is the first of the mutiny stories. The mutiny was seen by the writing staff as a key event in the second half of the final season. This is really when things- if you though things were falling apart before this, this is when the battle lines are really drawn, and this is when this Fleet might seriously tear itself apart, which is something that we had always talked about in the background of the series up unti- in previous seasons. We'd always alluded to the fact that there was dissension among the civilian ships, that there were arguments even among people aboard Galactica, but it had really never really broken out into an outright mutiny. And so [coughs] it felt like this was the time to finally bring that to fruition and really have- play the mutiny story aboard ship.
Right here at the beginning we talked about the fact. In early drafts, I think, Adama was being a little bit more- secretive about the fact that he and Laura were now sleeping together. He was- I think in the original story document he came to the door and got coffee from his orderly and sort of protected the fact that Laura was staying there, and in a subsequent draft I think I gave the note to Mark Verheiden, who wrote this episode, "Well, what if he's- Let's make it a little bit more over. He's not trying to hide it. It is what it is. Have Tigh come over in the morning, like he does most mornings, with the morning report, and Laura just like- have her just casually walk out of the back room and just play it like it was no big deal, and play the fun of Tigh's reaction," which I knew would essentially be gold, that Mike would give us a great thing, and that Mary would enjoy playing it off against him. And there was something about this that I really liked, which was to say, OK, if they're sleeping together and they're in love, and they're essentially making no bones about the fact that they're a couple, and Laura's not even trying to be president anymore, then they would just be somewhat domestic in how they dealt with all these things, and how they played together, and I like the feeling of the domesticity of the scene. And counterbalancing, or counterpointing that, would be the mutiny story getting underway.
What was important to me in the mutiny story was that you felt Gaeta's plan unvelop along with- that the audience felt the plan unveloping along with the characters. Clearly we've missed a beat, in that we've missed Gaeta laying out the plan to Zarek and all of his cohorts, but I thought it was a little bit more fun to just go with it and experience it as it happened. Another thing that we added into this episode after the fact, when we were doing the post-production on it, is you'll notice that periodically through throughout this entire episode these chirons will come up on the screen and they'll tell you what time it is and where you are on the ship. That's because when I was watching the initial cuts of this, the director's cut and subsequent cuts, I felt like- I love the story, and it was really moving, but it somehow- it felt like it was taking too long. Like you just kept feeling like, "Well, shouldn't Adama figure this out by now? Shouldn't Gaeta have- is this- are they just taking too long? Is it not happening fast enough?" And then I just hit upon the idea, well if you put a chiron up periodically that just shows you that not very much time has passed because, in truth, very little time is passing between all of these scenes, and this is actually happening at breakneck speed, that the time factor would not only orient you to- the chiron would not only orient you to where you were aboard ship but it also emphasize the point that this was happening lightning fast. And the funny thing was, as soon as we started putting the chirons up on these scenes, the whole show really started to feel like it was roaring ahead. Like you were just- it was- it's sort of a breathless pace in this episode. It's just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and events keep happening. And it's just a very, very simple trick, is just putting up- the running- clock, throughout.
I really like the way these two play off this scene between the two of them. "I'll try to make it home-" I love that. That they're just both knowing and they're both playing against their roles. Adama giving her enough rope to reel her back in, that he knows, on some level, that she might be- that she might still wanna be president again and won't quite help- can't quite help herself.
This is an interesting beat in that when- as originally scripted, I don' t think that there was Zarek taking the wrench out and taking down Laird during this whole thing. That was added later on. I felt like there had to be a little bit more brutality, something a little bit uglier up in the teaser, and so we have this beat coming up here where Zarek clocks this guy with a wrench. It was also important to feel the plausibility of the plan, that there were excuses and there were cover stories for every little event that was happening aboard ship at this moment. That Gaeta had ways of covering all the possibilities, that they had an excuse to get people off the flight deck. That he had answers for Laird's logical questions. He- but the problem was that Laird just won't vary from procedure and he just- he presses the point one step too far. That Gaeta had thought he would only go so far and then Laird takes it, unfortunately, to his own demise here. And I like the fact that it said something about Tom Zarek. That Tom Zarek knows when he has to take matters into his hands. And Tom is a guy who's participated in revolutions and in coups and moments like this and knows that you have to step up and be willing to spill some blood in order to accomplish your purposes. And the reaction of Skulls tells us a lot too. It tells us how deep the divisions really are aboard Galactica and how it's possible that the mutiny could take place at all.
I also really like this division between the two guys at the head of the coup. Their diff- their somewhat conflicting agendas. Gaeta's ideas of why he's doing what he's doing and how he wants to go about it and Zarek's much more pragmatic, much more, "Look, we're doing something illegal. We're doing something dangerous. We can't fuck around here. We're gonna- people are gonna die, and we're probably gonna have to kill 'em, and you gotta do what you gotta do." It's a great show. I mean, that teaser goes by fast. Like I said earlier, this is- when I sat down and started watching all the episodes of the second half of the season, back to back, just for my own pleasure, and I was watching them in a run, this show just- this one is one of the fastest moving shows that I think we've done in the course of the series.