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RDM: Hello, and welcome to the podcast for episode one and two of season three of Battlestar Galactica. I'm Ronald D. Moore, developer and executive producer of the show. And it's my distinct pleasure to welcome you here to the launch of season three. We're very proud of the season. We think we've got a- what I think is the best start to a season that we've had so far. I think that, arguably, "33" which led the first season was just a standout episode in my mind and one that I think that we've never quite matched in a lot of ways, but I think that in all fairness the first couple of episode after that weren't our best. You could feel us struggling and figuring out what the show was. And then in the second season I think we opened well again, but we had these very disparate story lines with people in very separated geographically, very far away from each other, and the storylines took a while to build back to a point where the family was reunited by "Home". This season, the opening two-hour I think is the strong- one of the strongest things we've done. I think that the following episodes are equally good and that we've got just- I just feel very, very happy with where the show is at the beginning of the year.
Joining me this evening is my wife, Terry, Mrs. Ron-
Terry: Hello.
RDM: -for those of you on the Scifi board. We are also joined by our new kittens, who have yet to be named. Who are scampering about the bedroom.
Terry: Maybe we should do a contest.
RDM: Yeah- uh, no. We're not going to have a "Name the kitty" contest on the bulletin boards. That's all we need.
Terry: (Laughs.) (To the kittens.) Hey, hey, hey, cut that out.
RDM: Ok, so here we are. We're still in the recap from last season, here in the first episode and there was a lot to recap to bring people up to date on what happened. We covered quite a bit of ground in last year's season finale, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II" and this is one of our more extended recaps, as a result. This episode opens with one of our lyrical, impressionistic scenes. Er- we're not even there yet, I forgot. Because this is- we edited this as a two hour as opposed to two separate episodes. We're not doing the teaser first.
One word about that, these were designed as two separate episodes. I wrote them both as the first two episodes of the season and actually the reason that these became a single two-hours as opposed to two separate episodes actually has a lot to do with the third episode, "Exodus", which was so big that- it was just a massive story and it worked really well and the action was great and we were really thrilled to have it, but it was so big we really wanted to split episode three into two parts. And because of that, we were looking for ways to not stretch the storyline out. We realized, well, if we sold the network on the idea that the opening two-hour- that we would open it with two hours, it was a way of not stretching out the storyline into five weeks. And it would still only be three weeks to get us to the conclusion of the New Caprica story. Essentially it was a decision that was driven a lot by how we wanted to structure other episodes. Nonetheless, when all was said and done, the first two- I did write them together and I wrote them simultaneously and I did have them very interrelated in my mind as the first two hours of what I envisioned as a three hour movie to the end of "Exodus". And so when we decided to make the two hours- see there's the cats knocking things over. That'll be your torture for this evening.
Terry: (Laughs.) Oh, man.
RDM: But remember, no whining. No- the podcast- you gotta be tough enough to listen to the podcasts.
Terry: I'll drown the kittens if they make to much noise.
RDM: Ok, in this open- intially this was gonna be a different open. The opening of the show now, like I was talking about a minute ago, is very impressionistic. It's all these scenes. You're setting up these flashes and all these characters and what's going on. And it's a way of drawing the audience into the episode. It's a technique that I really like to do. I like to write like this. I like to start on an image, then write the next image, then when I see the next images, and then start to repeat them, and then start to discover what those people are doing as I'm writing it. It's just an interesting way for me to start a piece of work. But this wasn't the original open to this episode. This episode was actually structured to open with the inside of a propaganda film that D'anna was going to be shooting on New Caprica, 'cause we had established that D'anna's Cylon character had posed as a filmmaker, or reporter, rather, in the Fleet in her first episode in the second season, so I- there was a- I did write a version that had D'anna- it was- I actually called it up on the computer for a change. It was like, you started in New Capr- exterior New Caprica, dawn. Then you started hearing and you saw the city. Then darkness beneath it, a trouble-filled sky with heavy clouds and you'd hear D'anna's voiceover saying "Four months ago our city was cloaked in fear. Shrouded in darkness. Besieged on all sides." Blah, blah, blah. And you went through this whole little thing about how horrible things used to be and then, of course, suddenly the sun comes out and she's like, "And then hope arrived in the most unexpected of forms. Old enemies come to bring hope where there was hopelessness. And so slowly the tide of fear began to to turn." And it was essentially- and then you would see the Centurions marching into New Caprica, handing out candy and stuff. And it was-
Terry: Y'know, I'm gonna take them downstairs.
RDM: Oh, and now the kittens are being removed from the room.