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RDM: Hello again. I'm Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the new Battlestar Galactica.
Eick: And I'm David Eick. I also work the show a little bit from time to time.
RDM: (Chuckles.) And we're here to do the podcast commentary for episode seven, "Home, Part II". As we said last week, this was originally all one episode. And as development went on we just realized that there was just way too much story to try to tell this entire tale inside of one hour so this got split up into two piece.
We're still in the recaps from last week. A side note is these recaps are endlessly worked over (laughs) in the editing process, back and forth.
Eick: Yeah.
RDM: There's endless discussions from everybody. From the editors and us to the studio and the network of exactly which elements should be reprised from last week and it's all having to do with, ok, new viewers to the show who may not understand the storyline versus people who just need to be refreshed and brought up to date. And so these little sequences- actually as I'm watching this I'm realizing that's- I don't even remember which pieces are in the recap anymore because I get so bored with the process of arguing about the recap that at as certain point I just ignore it and it's like, ok, the recap will tell people something.
Eick: Yeah. They'll bring something to the table.
RDM: They'll bring something.
Eick: This is also- this episode is in the category of "be careful what you wish for" in a way, 'cause as Ron was saying we learned early enough that we were able to do something about it the episode was too long or had too much story to tell in one episode, but what it really had was about an episode and a half. And so we were able to come up with a strategy, pitch it to the network, get the network to approve us, extending this to a two-parter, which was, in its own way a victory because it didn't have the kind of definitive plot engine that you would have in last year's episodes four and five to make that case. And they finally said yes. And Ron and I were in Vancouver, "Yeah," high-fiving each other, slamming beers, whatever we were doing to celebrate having gotten this approval, but of course we were about to embark on the first day of prep on episode six and realized we had to basically come up with half an epsiode to flesh out episode seven that would also have a backwards domino effect into episode six. So by the time we were sitting at dinner that night, basically rebreaking these two episodes and wondering how they were gonna get accompli- how they were gonna get written before we actually had to shoot them, it was one of those, "Uh oh. What did we just step in." And- so.
But this, I remember this scene showed up. This sce- this teaser showed up a few days later. Ron had gone back to LA. I was still in Vancouver and I was so thrilled with it because it was exactly what you want to start an episode like this with. It was a very changeup approach, rhythmically. It was a series of scenes- the cut is really pretty faithful to how it was written. In which we're seeing disparate pieces of activity and business that are, in a sort of magical way, linking these two very far away places. And I just thought it was really powerful and a way of starting an episode that even if you hadn't seen episode six, there's still this compelling mystery being unraveled to you that would make you interested in episode seven.
RDM: And I actually enjoy writing these kinds of sequences. This is reminicent of, in some ways, of the beginning of "Kobol's Last Gleaming".
Eick: Yeah.
RDM: Where we started with a lot of silent, just visual shots of all the different story elements that were happening in that episode. This is a little simpler in that you're going back and forth between two groups of people in- one group going somewhere, the other group looking for them. And there's just some, I don't know, I really enjoy the intercut of it and finding the little thematic ties and what it- you're telling the story visually instead of with dialogue and a lot of tv- so much of tv is just talking heads-
Eick: (simultaneously) Talking heads.
RDM: -and people telling you things endlessly. And it's always interesting when you can try to- especially start an episode just visually. To just make it film. To just tell- show it instead of tell it.
Eick: So although there was a lot of shuffling of scenes, basically what we- and so it was quite this scientific but by and large the first half of this episode was all brand new and the second half of the episode picked up where we had left off the original second half of episode six. So it was a bit of a mental jumble and a lot of email, a lot of phone calls, a lot of flurry and we were fortunate that episode six was directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan, who had done episode five last year, and this year's episode seven was directed by Jeff Woolnough, who'd done episode ten last year, "The Hand of God". So we're dealing with directors who knew the show and who were pretty intimate with the characters and with the style and the do's and don't's of Battlestar Galactica and that helped the process because we were able to continue to refine the script as we went without running the risk of having the director hopelessly confused. This also- this episode was uniquely difficult, production-wise. Probably the most difficult episode we've done of the series, production-wise, with possible exception of the finale last year, because of the exteriors and because of the number of characters in all the scenes. And when you're working on an eight day schedule and just having to cover the dialogue and the reactions and the different points of view of every scene, well, when you've got two or three people in a room it's one thing. When you've got eight people standing on a hillside, you can shoot all day and get a page of film. So it's it was a real challenge.
RDM: How many days out was this?
Eick: This was six days out, two days in, and that was after a lot of struggle. It was originally seven days out, one day in.
RDM: 'Cause there's a pattern that we do in each episode. Generally our pattern is five days in, three days out. But that's just- for budgetary reasons you look it at that way 'cause days out are generally more expensive than days interior on the stage and so you apportion yourself a given number as a pattern, week in, week out. So to really upend it and go- to go six out and two in really changes a lot of the dynamics of how you're shooting the show, how you're budgeting the show and it's hard. And then add rain to the sequence, which I added.
Eick: (Laughs.) It was out, it was out, it was in-
RDM: It was out, it was in. There was lots of complaining about the rain. Well, can we do the rain? We gotta have these big sprinklers out there and hose them down and it makes the cast miserable and everybody gets miserable. But if they're just tromping through the woods and that's all that there is, it just didn't have the same sense of-
Eick: Well, during the Hercules and Xena days, Rob Tappert used to say women on horseback was the cheapest special effect. (Laughs.)
RDM: (Chuckles.)
Eick: The second cheapest special effect is rain.
RDM: Rain.
Eick: Rain looks great on film, it adds a whole dimension to the scene, you're pulled into the drama in a different way because there's just this inherent desperation to everything because everyone's wet and trying to survive. And- so I'm thrilled we kept it. It was not the episode you would ideally do that.