Podcast:Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I
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Hello, and welcome to the podcast of the final two episodes of the first season here on Battlestar Galactica. I'm Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and creator of this version. And since this is the finale I'm going to be recording this podcast- I'm going to do both parts together, and for both episodes I'm going to assume you have seen the episode before you listen to the podcast, so if you don't want the episode spoiled I suggest you watch the episode first.
First of all I should say they were both designed to be shown together, it is really a two-hour movie split into two parts, and probably the most satisfying way to watch them is to record them and watch them back-to-back. However they are perfectly acceptable episodes in their own right, and each one has it's own coherent narrative that you can follow, but it's a richer meal if you chose to watch them together.
We started talking about the finale I'd say mid-way through the first season, and there were certain things that we knew we wanted to accomplish at the end of season one that I had set out, actually back in the story bible stage, and presenting it to the network and saying that these were the directions that the characters- this is where Laura and Adama were going to end up by the end of season one, and we accomplished that. This Kobol's Last Gleaming in its finale in the second part definately ends up where I thought season one should end.
Now I'm taking in more specific terms about the episode. This tease, it's one of my favourite teasers, not only in the series, it's one of my favourite teasers that I've ever done. I guess I like it primarily because most of it is non-verbal, it's very visual teaser, it's just sort of cutting back and forth between these disparate story lines. It's also an example of how things translate from page onto screen. If you read the draft of this it's described a little differently, it started in close up, it was starting on fingers, cut to a woman's mouth, cut to a gun, cut to a woman's hands, and there was this sort of rhythm of exteme close-up cuts that I was establishing the script- in discussions with Michael Rymer, the director- you can only direct the show so much on page, you have to allow the director to do his job, which is to actually direct the show. So I mean, as a writer I tend to find that I direct a movie in my head as I'm writing it, and I kind of have an idea in my head where I think the camera is, the close-ups, the rhythym of certain scenes in the editing back and forth and so on, and you have to kind of let that go, to an extent, you have to let the director and the actors and the rest of the team come in and bring their voices and their visions to the material, and this is a good example of that. This is all stuff that I wrote, eventually, the boxing match, Sharon putting t he gun in her mouth, and Helo confronting Caprica Sharon on the planet and going back and forth- the style of it, and the rhythym of it, and exactly what the shots are and how it's conveyed is really something that the director and then the editor, between them put together. And it's great 'cos you watch your material get lifted and again, your hope is that you deliver a script to a production team that takes the material and improves on it, and makes it better, and make it sing, and makes it really alive, because it's really not alive on the page, it's really just words on a page and it requires people to say the lines, and it requires other people to shoot them, and somebody else to put it all together. And on this show I had a tremendous team, and they were able to create what I think is a lovely, interesting, compelling teaser to the show.
A side note about the boxing, that we've gone through now a couple of times. The boxing I think was something that was suggested I believe by Eddy and Jamie, something that they thought of that Adama and son could be doing. All the boxing I believe was choreographed by them, and how they did it and all that was something they worked on for quite a while.
This reveal of her sleeping with Baltar was always in the original draft. I think in the earlier versions you didn't have the sort of fake-out where you think it's Lee, and I think that that also was a suggestion of Michael Rymer to for a moment think that it really is Lee, and then you see that it's actually Baltar.
I love the way these intercuts play, that you're going directly from the gun in Sharon's mouth, to Sharon being shot on Caprica and feeling all these characters are in conflict, and all these characters are at wrenching points in thier lives, and it's setting the table for larger, and more sort of cataclysmic events as you go on. I think it's also in general- it's not just the culmination of what I wanted the season one arc to be, I think it's also the culmination of a lot of plot thread that we set up, and character lines. I mean this whole line between Kara sleeping with Baltar is set up way back when she first meets him back in, I believe, Water. That's the first time she lays eyes on him and doesn't really care for him, but you could see there was a little bit of a spark, and Baltar being Baltar he was eager for his next conquest, and never quite let go of the fact that Kara Thrace wouldn't give him the time of day, and that of course made her all the more desirable to him, and the more she blew him off the more interested he became.
I also think that this is a great moment, and this is a really, really good scene because of the actors involved. Because there's really nothing going on here, I mean there's not a lot of dialogue, there's really not a scene per se. What there is is the look on her face, on Six's face, and the look on Baltar as her looks at her. You start to realize for the first time that it's actually a relationship, it's not just a hallucination in his head, it's not just a case of Baltar's imagination, and she's always playing the same note, and she's always cute and funny and making quips and seducing him. She says he can sleep with other people, she says that love is not sex, she says all those things, and then he does it and he sleeps with Kara, somebody he might actuall have feelings for, and it bothers her. That look on her face and his sort of side-long glance over at her, the look of guilt on James' face when he plays that, I think speaks volumes. It's just a tremendous little piece of acting.
And again, the tease is just this sort of lyrical intercut between different stories, it's not really just sort of handing you the plot. And I think that's why it's one on my favourite teasers, I think this teaser and the teaser for 33, which we began the season with are my favourites of the series, certainly. 33, I liked it because it was challenging, it was provocative, it sort of grabbed the audience and said "OK, catch up, 'cos we're in the middle of a crisis, and we're not gonna explain anything to you, we're not going to spoon feed you all the plot and this and that. You're just gonna have to figure it out, and we respect that you're intelligent, and that you can figure it out." And this tease is again just sort of "OK, there'll be a plot, relax. Here are the characters, watch, take it in, see where they've been, remember what's happened to them and sort of be prepare for the things that are going to come in tonight's episode."