Podcast:Occupation

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Occupation

Act 1

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.

It was- the idea was to shoot this- to do this propaganda film that D'anna was making and at the end of the propaganda film she was going to doing an exterior standup next to Laura's school tent and as she's talking suddenly, in the background of thes shot, is this flash and this puff of smoke and then you hear the boom a couple seconds later and the insurgency has hit another Cylon target and it like was "Cut. God damnit." And she starts bitching at Laura and Laura's defending what's going on and that was the way into this world that the occupation was well under way. There was an insurgency. The Cylons were trying to win the hearts and minds of the populace and some people were fighting back and some people were collaborating and the whole thing about the human security, or the New Caprica Police, was mentioned in that context. And I wrote a couple drafts of that and I think people- there was a reaction from other writers and studio/network that- the propaganda film just felt like the wrong tone and it seemed odd that D'anna was still making movies, although I kinda followed that and kinda liked that. But anyway, it was like, it was- once they had set all those pieces in motion that I knew that I wanted to cover all this territory, it was sort of easy for me to sit down and write this particular tease, which had to do with a lot of- setting up different stories. Catching them all mid-story. All these things are well under way, and playing the mystery of what's going on in each one of these scenes. By the end of the tease to bring them to some sort of crescendo.

There's a device at the top of the next act where Laura will be doing a voiceover and recording things in her journal, and that was a much later thought and there was debate for a while over whether we would do that here in the first act, or the tease, whichever way you wanna look at it. We, in editing, we had a version where- there was another version cut of this that David Eick liked quite a bit. And it was David's cut and David's a fine editor and- contributes quite a bit in post-production and David cut a different version of this where we put the Laura Roslin voiceover up here in act one. And we started- you started the voiceover much, much earlier. You were filling in backstory and you- a lot of this intercutting and R. D. Moore poetic stuff went by the wayside and I didn't like it. We had an intense discussion about it. (Chuckles.) Let's put it that way. And we still speak, and we're still happy, and we're still good friends. But I- there was something about this particular tease fit together- or, I keep calling it a tease. Technically, it's act one. There was something about the way this particular set of scenes intercut and interrelated in the first act that I really like and really fought for. I thought Sergio just delivered some amazing footage and some amazing film and elicited some really strong performances, and I really wanted to showcase the more cinematic aspects of the show and I like that this is the beginning of a season. That this sets a tone and a feeling and a mood about what kind of film we're gonna do this year and what- where the show can potentially go.

This whole bit with Tigh and the eye. In the initial draft, the first draft I was wri- backing up one step, beyond that. In the story outline, before the draft, there was no mention of this. This wasn't something we ever discussed in the writer's room. It just- we didn't really talk about Jammer later being a suicide bomber. This was something, as I was writing, I was a writing the teleplay and I was getting to scenes where we were starting to talk about how horrible the Cylon occupation had been and why they were fighting back and that there was a real strong sense of rage and injustice from some of the humans. And I realized quickly that you needed to dramatize that. You needed someone who had suffered under the yolk of the Cylons. And various little possibilities slipped back and forth in my mind and I was like, "Tigh is probably- or definitely the leader of the insurgency and the resistance, as the military leader, and so maybe he suffered. Maybe they got him. Maybe they shot him, so he has a bullet wound or something." And then that seemed unsatisfying. And then I started thinking about, well, "No, he should be-". I wanted Tigh to be a visible reminder of the cost that so many people had paid in the C- not only in the Cylon occupation of New Caprica but even further than that. Ever since the show began, all these people have been wounded in one way or another and I wanted some- I realized that if Tigh lost an eye, not a limp, not like a gunshot, not a heart thing. He loses an eye. He's maimed. He's visibly disabled. I though that's a powerful thing to have happen to one of your main characters and also that he is then the symbol of all their losses. And you would never be able to get away with it. You would always be faced with the fact that these people have paid a price, and that Tigh would walk around as a walking billboard that reminds you, "Some of us have paid a heavy price. We have all been hurt in one way or another." That that was something that would carry on through the show.

This little sequence with Anders and Tyrol blowing up the Cylon r- yes? Yes Mrs. Ron?

Terry: Last time we did a podcast, didn't we have sound?

RDM: Uh, I can turn it up a little bit. They don't like-

Terry: Or does that intefere? They don't like it? Ok. Nevermind. I'll see it tomorrow night.

RDM: No. Noone even really complains about it, anymore. I can turn it up a little bit, down low, there.

This storyline with Kara and Leoben. This was a very early idea. This was something that David Eick and I discussed when we were coming up with the finale for "Lay Down Your Burdens" at the end of season two. We had a version-

Terry: Here comes the dog.

RDM: Here he comes, now, the dog's waddling in.

We had a version of the finale last season where you got all the way to this point. You got all the way to the point where Kara-

Terry: Ooh...

RDM: -is captured by Leoben at the end of last season and put-

Terry: I didn't know it went out the other side.

RDM: (Chuckles.) Oh, yeah. Terry's react- yeah that's our. When the chopstick goes through Leoben's throat-

Terry: Oh, man.

RDM: -and it pops out the other side. And that- we actually-

Terry: Woah.

RDM: -we had to VFX that in that's a CGI effect.

Terry: Oh, that's pathetic.

RDM: Isn't it great to know that somewhere there's a guy that spent a lot of hours and did very fine work and his job was to make sure that the chopstick went through Leoben's throat. This is the magic of doing what we do! We were going to do a version of this at the end of last season. We were gonna have Kara captured by Leoben and placed into this domestic setting and we had talked about that being potentially part- one of the things that happened when the Cylons showed up on New Caprica. But the way that story structured itself out- it didn't lend itself for that to happen in terms of the timing and the chronology, if nothing else. So it got pushed into this season and it was one of the very- it was one of the things we knew were doing. A lot of things were gonna play in the storyline and we had a lot of things to work out, but this never changed. It was always this story of Kara and Leoben in this weird twisted little world that- that was pretty- that he created for her.

Act 2

Ok, now we're back on New Caprica. Oh, this is a fantastic matte, I have to say. This is a great visual effects shot of the New Caprica, the wide shot. Gary Hutzel, the guys, just they're doing amazing work these days.

Like I was saying earlier, this bit here, this voiceover of Laura is something that we actually came up with in post. This wasn't scripted. Initially part of that tea- part of that act one montage, intercut section, where you're going from story to story to story, one of those stories was this. It was shots of Laura writing, her being in a tent, her looking at pictures, talking with Tory, and by the end of it she talked about how one day they were gonna get back at these people, one day there would be a reckoning. She was keeping a journal. All the sort of things that come out much later, were all gonna be as that act one. But act one just got too big and somethin' had to go so we slid this into the second act and we made this- listen to her journal. Have her talk about her journal, and now, the theory that I had was, "Ok. Act one is more surreal. Act one is broken narrative and you're all over the place and playing all these different things. Mostly about mood and texture. And you get 'em with the- you get the audience with the explosion of the Raider at the end". And then you start the next act like this, "Ok. Now we're sort-"

Terry: Nice shot.

RDM: Isn't that a great shot? Now at the beginning of this act we will talk about the setup a little more. We'll introduce the Cylons. We'll lay the groundwork for where everything is politically. Who's up, who'd down. And what's going on. And that that was a great two-act structure. And like I said earlier, David's idea was to move the voiceover up into the beginning of the first act so that you got the audience caught up and told them what was going on right away. It's a completely valid choice, and you can go back and forth about which way is better, but I prefer this particular version.

Oh, now this-

Terry: -Remember on The Patty Duke Show, you had to show them their backs to each other?

RDM: Oh yeah. (Laughs.) When you're doing twins and doubles and stuff. Yeah this- Sergio- you're still using a lot of the same techniques. You're still splitting the frame something. There's that earlier shot of D'anna standing there and breaking the two halves of the Cavils on either side of the frame.

This is very tedious stuff. This was some of the worst days I think they had on the set, were shooting these Cylon scenes in Colonial One 'cause a, Colonial One is noone's favorite set. I have been begged, repeatedly to destroy Colonial One by the production team, on many occasions.

The Scotch tonight, for those of you who are interested in such things, is Bowmore "Cask Strength", which was given to me by a friend.

Terry: Not accompanied by cigarettes.

RDM: No. There's no smokes tonight, because I'm in the bedroom with Mrs. Ron and she forbade the-

Terry: -You know why.-

RDM: -use of tobacco.

Anyway, this stuff, this shooting the Cylon- these Cylons- double Cylons, triple Cylons in this set. They just all hated me for it because essentially everyone hates shooting in Colonial One. The ceilings are low and awkward. The lighting scheme is not the greatest one. Steve McNutt, our DP, just would love to burn this set down. Then add on top of that the difficulty of doing all these splits, and all these cross moves, and all these- lots of blu- greenscreen and visual effects setups and that's very timeconsuming and it's all very technical and the actors have to do it many, many times in both positions and then there's all these continuity issues and eyelines and it's just like a complete pain in the ass thing. And so of course I gave them like four pages of dialogue to cover (Laughs) in a set like, we kept doing that trick throughout.

All the inserts there of Laura writing were done much, much later, 'cause like I said before we had no intention of doing this much. This is actually shot from much later in the epsiode. That's actually a shot that we stole, that's part of the later sequence when Jammer is going into the graduation ceremony. And we just wanted some pieces of establishing who the NCP, the New Caprica Police was, so we added a lot of this. This is- a lot of this stuff was shot afterward, after the fact. That's actually a shot from the next episode. Again, this is all a section of catching u- we have four months of material to catch the audience up on in terms of what's happening and where.

I'm asked quite a bit about the parallels to Iraq. I've done a lot of press in the past couple of weeks and I get a lot of questions about how, "Boy, it seems like you're really doing Iraq finally. This is the occupation and the whole thing." There's certainly elements of that, and- but the truth is we sat in the writer's room and there were a lot of discussions of Vichy France and the West Bank and various occupations, even the American Colonial Era, about when British soldiers were being quartered in American houses and rights and what happened during the Boston Massacre-

Terry: You mean you were talking about war?

RDM: Yes.

Terry: Just war.

RDM: Yeah. We talked about a lot of-

Terry: Yeah.

RDM: -different historical examples.

Terry: Everybody gets so literal. And it's-

RDM: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's not-

Terry: -it's war. All kinds of wars.

RDM: -there's certainly parallels here to what's go- to what went on in Iraq, what is going on in Iraq.

Terry: Just like there are in what happened with- in World War II and every other-

RDM: Yeah. This show is- it's just taking this situation, now is more interest- I wasn't really interested as I was doing this episode, these epsiodes, oddly enough, making a political statement about Iraq. I was really interested in taking a lot of those parameters and a lot of that setting and applying it to our characters and saying, "Ok, what would Tyrol do in that situation? What would happen to Tigh? What would Laura do in that situation." That's where we spent I'd say we spent 80%, 90%, of our time, was talking in terms of what the characters would do. And the rest was usually spent about, "Ok, and the plot's gonna get us over to here. So how do we move Laura to this position by this point in the narrative and still get to the same place?" But there wer- there weren't really many, if any, political discussions about the situation in Iraq in the writers room that I can really recall. We talk about the news and we talk about what's going on in the world, and react to whatever that day's story was, but when we were going through the structuring of the episode it was- Iraq was referred to but, a lot of places were referred to as well. There were a lot of- the writers are- most of them are pretty well versed in history and they'll pull out examples of all kinds of thins. There was even, I think, David Weddle was talking about something that happened during the Romans were occupied Gaul.

This was shot much later. This is the- this is the establishing the door. There was some question- we shot these tunnel scenes, and there was some question as you looked at the footage where people were saying, "Where are they? Are they in a building? Are they in-". And I said, "No. They're in tunnels." "Well, it doesn't feel like a tunnel. Is it a building somewhere? Where are they? How'd they- if it's a tunnel where's the tunnel? How'd they get into it?" And so, eventually, it was like, "Ok, fine. Let's shoot a door. Shoot the trap door, where they actually go down into the tunnel."

We always talked about this being the core of the resistance. Anders, Tyrol and Tigh. I love that. That's just so- this where Tigh is describing how they popped his eyeball out onto the floor.

Terry: That's so gross.

RDM: It's just so- it's very strong stuff.

I totally lost my train of thought. I can't remember what I was talking about. What was I gonna tell them?

Terry: I'm not listening to you.

RDM: (Laughs.) You're not listening to me. Well there you have it. See this what happens when you just do it live.

Terry: I'm reading the Scifi- I'm reading my thread on the Scifi.com message.

RDM: We're just going with live radio.

Terry: Well I can't hear the TV, so I don't know what you're talking about.

RDM: Well I can turn it up a little more-

Terry: No, no, no. It's ok. It's alright. It's ok. I have seen it.

RDM: I was talking about the other story lines we were dealing with. In early drafts of the script the res- the focus of the resistance was not on the suicide bombing. That was a much later development added to it. Initially, what was really was going on on New Caprica was a lot more about Hera, the Cylon hybrid child and- or Isis, depending on how you name her, and the fact that the Cylons were looking for her. The Cylons started looking for her much earlier and they came to Laura's school and they were giving bloodtests to the little kids in Laura's school and Laura was getting kind of worried because she didn't know where this was going, why they were doing it, but she was having suspicions, and Simon was there, and D'anna was there, and D'anna was like on the trail. D'anna was like, had heard rumors about the Cylon child and was looking and sniffing around Laura was denying it, and then they give the bloodt- they take a sample of blood from Hera, and then Simon leaves and then Laura went to the window of then tent and pulled down a shade or did something, then you cut outside the tent and there was Anders. And Anders and a few of his guys were watching the tent and they saw the signal, and at that signal then Simon left the tent and started walking down the street, and then Anders and his guys melted out into the population, then you cut ahead and essentially Anders kidnaps Simon. And one of the things that the insurgency was doing in those early drafts was they were kidnapping Cylons, humanoid Cylons, and keeping them in like a pit, and had them tied up and were like beating information out of them and stuff. And they were keeping them all alive because they knew that if they died, they would download back to the resurrection ship, or to a resurrection facility, and tell the Cylons everything that was going on. So they had this weird, almost quasi-dungeon of Cylons being held and Simon got put in there. And that was the thing that was really freaking the Cylons out on New Caprica. That was the thing that was really scaring them, was that pe- they had members that were just disappearing. They had guys that were just vanishing, weren't being heard from again, and weren't downloading. And that was freaking out the Cylons and that was really driving them towards crackdown more than anything else. That idea- it just went away in the rewrites.

It was like one idea too many, in a show that had a lot of things going on and also as the drafts were developing I started realizing that the real drama was about the sucide bombing and about having Duck, actually initially it wasn't even Duck, it just a guy. It was just, they were doing suicide bombings and I realized as I was writing it that that was really potent and really powerful. Obviously it's very contemporary. And that that's where the drama of the show belonged. And then I, just on the page, much like I decided Tigh was gonna lose an eye on the page, I started writing a scene where Tigh and Tyrol were talking, and they were sitting in some bleachers, and as they started talking you were cutting to this Pyramid game. You saw Anders playing pyramid and then Anders is talking to Duck, one of the pilots, in Pyramid. And as you were cutting back and forth you started to realize that it was a suicide mission and he was gonna be a suicide bomber. Or you didn't even know that, it just- he was- it was a suicide mission. And that Tigh was- Tyrol- Tigh was gonna go through with it even over Tyrol's objections. And once I wrote that, the show just kept moving dramatically toward that storyline and it just becoming more and more important. There was a more full-blown version of the insurgency wanting to assasinate Baltar, and then really working hard to assasinate Baltar. And the suicide bombing was primarily for that, and then they had other attempts and- but those all went away, too, and it was like, for part one here, in "Occupation", it's the build. It's the move of life on this planet is moving towards a crisis. It's starting to get to a place where the humans are not just fighting back but they're taking the gloves off and they're gonna do anything they can against these guys. And that that was like really gonna be a marker that was- things were gonna change after that. And that's why we're telling this episode now. It's like, "Ok. You're gonna jump four months ahead in the narrative. Why?" You're jumping ahead because in four months there's gonna be this dramatic confluence of events that you'd rather tell than you would the initial opening weeks, and that's like a dramatic choice we made very early on. I wasn't interested in the first couple of months, the first weeks and the first couple months of the occupation, because essentially that was all about establishing things. It was all about making promises. It's all about giving them medicine, helping, there's an initial point of confusion and chaos where they're just trying to get settled. I was much more interested at what would happen later. What happens when the insu- when there is a full-blown insurgency and they start blowing themselves up? And what happens then? And what happens when at that point, that's when Adama's coming back and are trying to rescue them. It's because those things are all happening at the same time, in four months, that's when you tell the story.

This act-out.

Terry: That's sincerely disturbing.

RDM: That image? I know.

Terry: The whole thing. The whole s- the whole thing.

RDM: Yeah it is dark Groundhog Day. I never thought about it that way. (Laughs.) Dark Groundhog Day. I may have to write that movie. Groundhog Day II, this time, it ain't funny.

Terry: (Laughs.)

Act 3

Then back to Galactica. There was some debate, as well, about how long do you hold off Galactica and I really wanted to- my reasoning to hold it off until the third act was I wanted the first two acts of this to be set up this big story. Ok, establish where everybody is on New Caprica, what are they about, who's on what side, what's the political situation, what's going on down there. And then I wanted to give you like two acts of just absorbing all this- absorbing all this information. Sussing out so you know the political situation as well as reminding yourself who the characters were and what their relationships were about. And then go to Galactica. 'Cause Galactica, I think by the time you get to Galactica now in this structure, I think you're happy to see her and you're excited and you're like, "Oh, yeah. There's the Galactica." And the first thing you see is they're in the Vipers and they're doing the thing and practicing their moves and they're thinking about trying to get back there. And that's I think where- exactly where you wanna pick 'em up.

Helo and Sharon weren't even in the finale, in "Let Down Your Burdens", simply because at that point I had no idea- oh no. I take that back. Helo was in "Lay Down Your Burdens". It was Sharon. I'm sorry. It was just Sharon. "Where is Sharon?" was one of the big questions of "Lay Down Your Burdens". But we can talk about her later. Sorry. I was thrown by Helo. Helo's performance often just throws me. I have to- I'm gonna hafta kill that guy. No, I love him.

Terry: Stop it.

RDM: I know! The word gets out really fast.

Terry: Stop it.

RDM: He's great!

Terry: I know, but you know...

RDM: I love Tamoh. I know. I shouldn't joke like that, 'cause we're perfectly capable of doing stuff like that. Of killing actor? Of killing characters?

Terry: No. I understand that. I'm just saying.

RDM: No, I mean it's just completely plausible that-

Terry: There gonna be three hundred threads in about four minutes.

RDM: We're not killing Helo.

Fat Lee. Fat Lee is a metaphor for what happened to all of them in that year. They got soft. He got soft.

Terry: Stocky Lee.

RDM: Stocky Lee.

This storyline, that what was happening on Galactica and Pegasus, I think was- this is pretty much as it was all broken in the original story outline that this was the situation. This is really great. I like this shot coming up here.

Terry: Whoah.

RDM: Viper- that shot. The shot looking back from the nose of the Viper as it spins in space. Just some really great work here. I like seeing how all these people change and their different jobs. Dualla now in CIC.

This scene was interesting in that there were a couple versions of this scene where- I can only describe it as how much volume Adama gets, as I wrote it. There are a couple versions where he just tees off on Lee from the very beginning. There were other versions where he said very little. I played a lot with what the level of invective is that he goes after his son in this moment. But I definitely wanted him to have crossed a line we never really saw him cross before. Before it's- he's been pretty much on the defensive with Lee, with rare exception, and this time he's the offensive and it's Lee who's the fucked up one.

This is the scene I was talking about earlier. This is the- I literally just wrote this intercut on the page. I just started writing the dialogue and how would you reveal the- it was like an exercise in my head. It was, ok there's a secret here and the secret is that somebody's going on a suicide mission, and I don't wanna say even what that's what it is specifically. I don't want it to be known that it's a suicide bomb. I just want a sense of dread and that they're about to do something that will fundamentally change things. And I just started writing this little dialectic, this little back and forth between Tyrol and Tigh. And then seeing the man actually, the recruitment itself, out on the field. There's a whole sequence coming up in part II, in "Precipice" that has to do with the oracle, Amanda Plummer, and when D'anna goes to see Amanda Plummer. That was all part of this teaser, the act one of "Occupation". That's the way it was written. It was one of the many, like I said before, there were many stories I was trying to touch on in act one. Laura'a ended up getting moved into the second act. D'anna and the oracle got moved all the way into the second hour. But, that only comes up here because part of the backstory to what's going on here is that Duck- Duck says, in one of the cuts that he had seen the oracle and he has nothing to live for, and this was all playing and D'anna had just come from the oracle as well and a lot of these scenes were also interacting with D'anna and her- the fallout of her going to the oracle to be told that she will hold the baby in her arms and know true love. And so all these scenes were designed around that storyline as well.

This idea was something that we talked about quite a bit in the writers room, that Adama last season was already on a path to have a "special relationship" with Sharon. That he was already bringing her into his quarters and asking her advice like he did in Pegasus. And that given a year, a year goes by where these two characters were aboard Galactica almost by themselves for a very long time, for like a year. She had her husban- had Helo, obviously, who became her husband, and he- his son was up there, but his son was on the other ship, and the ship started to empty out. Adama let a lot of people muster out and the reasons why he let people muster out will be covered in a later episode. But Galactica had become like "a house where all the children have gone home", and somebody will track down that quote, but that in that context with nothing to do, really, and they were just like punching holes in space and going 'round and 'round the planet for days on end and most of the people that he'd become close to were now gone, were now living their lives down on the planet, that Adama would more and more find himself in a dialogue with Sharon, with the vision of the woman that shot him. Not the literal one, 'cause that was the other Sharon, for those of you keeping score, but that he had started the relationship with this woman and that he would continue it and that he would give her more priveleges. In fact, when I wrote the description of the cell, it was like, the "lifer" that had gotten special priveleges from the warden and she has curtains, and she has things, and material in there, and it's a "comfortable" existance down in her cell. And I started to believe that after a year, these two who would talk, day after day by themselves, would form a very special bond and that that bond would actually have transcended the fact that he knows that she's a Cylon and that she can turn on him at any moment. That there was a part of him as a human being that wanted to believe in her, that does want to believe in her. I think that's one of the- that's one of the optimistic ideas of this show. People are always talking about how dark the show is, but to me the show has high ideals within a very dark situation. I think that Adama, this man who has gone through so much, has witnessed so much, has had to rise above so much, and so much tragedy and horror was caused by the Cylons, but there's a part of him that wants to believe that he can talk to Sharon. That he can trust Sharon. That Sharon's a person. That Sharon is someone that he can have a relationship with. He still wants to believe that. Despite all the evidence to the contrary. I think that's ultimately an optimistic view of humanity.

This stuff with Lee and Dualla. This was the subject of much discussion of how the storyline was gonna go. The original story here was that it wasn't gonna be just that Dualla is calling him out and saying that he's gotten soft, but that Dualla herself had also gotten soft. That she had lost a step. That she was off her game. That their lives aboard Pegasus had turned into something miserable and they had really fallen into laziness and fallen into a lot of bad habits. That they were unhappy and one of the results of this arc was going to be, when all is said and done, after the rescue, after people get back on Galctica, and I'm not giving anything away by saying people getting back on Galactica, I think we're all adults. We all know that it's gonna happen. But after everybody got back to Galactica there was going to be a change in what Lee and Dualla do with their lives. They were gonna become much more spartan. They were gonna become marines. They were gonna become really hard core. That they were gonna become razors. That that was gonna be their new mission. That they had learned something and been shamed by what had happened to them in that year off, and that when the dust had finally settled they were gonna make some changes and they were gonna become hard core. And we tried a couple versions of that in script and it just didn't play. I never liked it entirely and I don't think we ever cracked it, so we didn't do it.

This thing with getting the message from the Raptor. This also was something discussed in the initial break. How this was gonna work. What the rules of it would be. As always, David and Bradley, two of the writers on the show, were instrumental in figuring out a lot of these kinds of things. They're really knowledgable in terms of military procedure and protocol and I know Brad has several friends and acquaintances that are in the military and he talks to pilots and he is a pilot and he knows a lot of the stuff, so a lot of these things were run by them first.

I like that. (Laughs.) I don't know why. I just like the way that that's phrased. "Have hope. We're coming for you." That seemed like a very simple message that you'd leave these guys. And this, this is like a really odd way to end this scene, I have to tell ya, but I love it. That Adama stands there and just says, "It's gonna be ok. It's really gonna be ok." And it say- on some level it's a weak moment, 'cause it's not like- it's essentially saying that he didn't always know that it was gonna be ok, and he's not the all-confident guy and that there's a part of him that's really relieved and really, whew, almost emotional about the fact that it's all gonna be ok. But that's why I like it. 'Cause it's an unexpected move to make with your lead, with your hero. So much tv is just, and film, is just predicated on the idea that the hero must always be strong. Hero cannot show weakness. That the hero- and when he does show weakness it's just such a noble thing that he's weak. But I don't know. There's like, there's frailties and there's things that real heroes do that make them human. I think you can show that.

Act 4

The prayer scene, I believe- oh yeah. We had to do a different version of this. Interestingly enough, the photograph there of Duck and Nora had to be digitally redone much later after we shot this scene, because of the webisodes. The webisodes, which I'm sure all of you listening to this have watched several times and showed your friends, the online webisodes featured a storyline about Duck and Jammer and Nora, Duck's woman. None of that had been done or written when this was all being developed, or shot. It was all still in the works. And so that scene, that tracking shot across Duck's quarters featured a different actress, just, I believe, and extra, one of our extras, in the photograph. And then much later, when, after we had cast Nora, and we shot the webisodes we had to go back and digitally insert her face into that photograph. If not the entire photograph. Actually, I'm not sure. This is like a trivia question someday for Gary Hutzel. I'm not sure if we actually just swapped out her head or if we swapped out the entire photo. 'Cause I know that- I think they might have redone the entire photo, because I think he did pose with Nora in the flight suit.

The bi- the Baltar-Six storyline that starts there is actually had started earlier in the original draf t and the scene that is now in the second part, in "Precipice", where they're in bed and they wake up and they're having problems. That was actually, embarassingly enough, also in act one (Laughs.) of "Occupation". So you can see that "Occupation" began life as a very bloated act one where I was doing so many different things. And act two got kicked all the way down the line into the next episode.

A lot of discussion about how this whole signal with the dog bowl works. There was- we played around with it, not just on the page, and shooting it, but in editorial inserts and stealing shots. That's a shot from "Lay-". I mean, we were doing all kinds of stuff to make this clear. 'Cause I had written it to be sparse. I wanted it to be, you followed the signal by watching it, as opposed to somebody saying, nobody ever says, "Well, I've got this guy and he turns over a dog bowl when he- when he turns over the dog bowl I know that there's a message over in this other place. So I go to the other place and I get it." And I didn't want to play it that I way. I wanted it to just be something that, hey, the audience actually had to pay attention to and had to actually watch to understand. 'Cause it's all visual. It's all about putting things in boxes and kicking over dog bowls and if you watch it you can figure out.

Terry: Were any animals harmed in the making of this show?

RDM: Many animals were harmed in the making of this show. We- I think we-

Terry: Ron...

RDM: We slaughtered and ate a pig, like every day.

Terry: You know, you think it's funny and people are gonna take you seriously.

RDM: (Laughs.) I know. PETA will be calling.

Terry: Remember- that's right.

I was joking.

RDM: No animals were harmed during the making of this film, except for the actors.

Terry: Now you gotta get them all riled.

RDM: Remember Hitchcock used to recall actors?

Terry: Ron, watch your step.

RDM: (Laughs.)

Terry: See, this is why I'm here.

RDM: Great work here in visual effects world, as duck approached the detention area. That Cylon that confronts him, the way it moves, and the way the light hits it. That's one of the best visual effects I've seen.

Terry: Oh, last time I saw this they were blank spaces.

RDM: Yeah, see how good they look? These, I gotta tell you these guys... it is criminal that our visual effects team did not win the emmy.

Terry: It really is.

RDM: I'm sorry. I don't like to complain about, "Oh, we didn't get this award." The visual effects guys was robbed. Robbed! In broad daylight.

This is as dark as the show gets. I mean, this is really putting it out there. When I was writing this stuff, I was writing this stuff with the suicide bombing, and there's Duck, and I was like emotionally caught up in it, really. It was tripping me out a bit as I was writing these scenes of him standing in the police ranks, he know he's got the belt on. What's he gonna do? And then, oh my god, he actually does it. I mean, it's really- it's really horrifying stuff. But it's true. That's why I want to do it. It really happens. People do this. Look at this.

Terry: And they believe in what they're doing.

RDM: And they believe in what they're doing and we gotta think about that and why that happens. Understanding at least part of the reasons why some of these things happen. And I also thought, "I'll never get this- I'll never get this on the air. I'm gonna get a lot of shit for this. I'm gonna have a big fight with the network. This is gonna be a real problem. I'm gonna have to really dig in." And I'll tell you what, the network never fought me. They supported it. They thought it was great. I remember the first conversation with Mark Stern, getting notes about it, him saying, "This is just unbelievable stuff. I'm proud of you guys for going here. This is a story that has to be told." And I was just like, "Wow. Wow." That's- you don't get better than that from your network. You really don't. Scifi's really been incredibly supportive of some really, really challenging material. We're certainly not, I mean look at this. The dead bodies.

Terry: Oh my god.

RDM: We're not making it easy for them. We're definitely pushing what you're gonna see in television and it's to their credit that they support us as strongly as they do.

Precipice

Act 1

RDM: This scene, which is essentially the beginning of "Precipice". We are now in the next episode, really. This scene with Laura and Baltar, I think is my favorite scene of this two-hour, and I think it's my favorite scene in a while, because as you step into this moment I don't know if there's anything more clear in your mind than Laura... I'm with Laura. She's the good guy. I hate Baltar. He's the bad guy. And this scene, when he starts talking to her, when you get to the point where Baltar is saying- he's challenging the fact that there are suicide bombings and can Laura support that? Can she really support the idea of young men and young women strapping bombs to themselves and walking into crowded places.

Terry: They haven't started talking yet.

RDM: I know.

Terry: Oh.

RDM: When they get to that point, I just think that's the moment- I love that moment, dramatically, because that's the place where, I think, you as the audience are not quite sure who you're rooting for anymore. Who are you rooting for in this scene? Is there somebody to root for in this scene? Is there somebody to root against? I mean, I think Baltar in particular, what do you feel about this? Here's the greatest collaborater of them all. Here's the man who is the titular head of the government during the occupation, under whose reign all these things are happening. And yet, what's he in here to do? He's in here to protest the fact that human beings are becoming suicide bombers. And the- look at Laura's face here. The way she can't quite meet his eyes. She can't look at him when he says that. "Waiting for you to look me in the eye." Mary plays it beautifully. It's a beatiful scene. It was one of the first scenes I saw shot on this episode. I was up there watching her do it.

Mary is one of those actors that's really interesting to watch on the set, doing it front of the camera. I like- Mary's footage is amazing. I love the way she looks in the show, but watching her do it on the set, through the different takes and how she prepares in between takes and what's going through her head and how she tries different things. It's like- it's a- I don't know how to describe it. It's like watching a different movie altogether, 'cause you're watching this movie of the actress doing a role. I find, when I'm on the set and she's on the set, I just find her fascinating. It's a really- interesting to watch the way she goes through the process.

He's quite good. He's quite good in this scene.

The tower there, with the Cylons on it, is a complete digital construct. That was really just a big light tower, with a light on it. They put in that thing entirely as well as all these Cylons obviously. I love the Cylon who foregrammed to the right as he turns and looks at Jammer here.

And this is- you can tell we're now in a separate episode. It is constructed as two stories that are very closely linked. But now we move to the story of Jammer. Once we had committed to the idea of- as I had committed to the idea of the suicide bomber in the first part, and concentrating it and making him someone we knew, Duck, the second part I wanted to personalize somebody on the other side of that. I wanted to personalize somebody who was in the NCP, who was in the Caprica Human Police force. And that too would be one of our people. 'Cause I wanted this to look at the situation. I didn't really want it to be a polemic. This- these two hours are not a polemic about how things should be and what's the answer to Iraq in ninety minutes or less. It was really looking at the situation as a whole, and ok, who are the guys- Jammer was in that building. That's one of the textures that we kept losing that I never quite was able to work back into the story was that Jammer was there during the suicide bombing. He was standing in one of those ranks, and suddenly the world exploded and there were dead bodies piled on top of him that he had to push off to stand up. And that that was part of what was torturing him through the episode. I really thought it was important that we go that side of the story, that we deal with, well ok, some of these guys that got into the New Caprica Police were doing it because they genuinely want to help their people. They genuinely think that this is a way to go. Better us- it's better that we police our own than have the Cylons policing us. And that there were- that honorable men could disagree on that idea. And that someone like Jammer could get sucked into that and suddenly find himself on the wrong end of the insurgency. To the point where he can't even reveal who he is. He has to hide his identity.

And this little scene, here, I like the fact that Tigh is being very open about the fact that what they're doing is wrong. Tigh knows what they're doing is wrong. Tigh makes no bones about the fact that he's doing something that's evil. He knows he's doing that. But he's justifying it to himself. He's going to do it.

Terry: An eye for an eye.

RDM: An eye for an eye. And the fact that he'll do whatever he has to do to win. This- why is Colonel Tigh on Galactica? Why does Adama keep him around? Because when the chips are down, and they are way down, baby, in this situation, when you are in a foxhole, who do you want next to you? You want Colonel Tigh 'cause he is gonna get your ass out of there. And he's gonna win. And he's gonna find a way to win. And he'll do whatever he has to.

Terry: If survival is your only directive.

RDM: Absolutely. Which is a whole different point. But to the question of, "Why does Adama keep him around?"

Terry: Yeah, it makes-

RDM: Adama keeps him around because he's that guy.

This is a great costuming touch, which- the hat. I love the hat on Dean Stockwell. Do you thing, in your experience, Mrs. Ron, that that is something that Glen, our trusty-

Terry: Hard to say.

RDM: Or Dean?

Terry: That's a hard one. It could-

RDM: 'Cause you're always telling me about how actors-

Terry: It could very well be something Glen handed him and said, "What do you think of this?" It's one of those little costume moments, where somebody comes, and it's frequently the actor, will come in and go, "You know, I've really been thinking about it. I need to wear a hat. I need to wear a scarf." It's something that they've latched onto that really says something about the character and ultimately helps them to play the role in a way they like. You need me to stop...

RDM: All this night vision footage here, this green stuff. They really shot this with a real night scope. This is really the thing, we're not faking this in post. They really used night scopes to shoot this. This was Sergio's idea. It wasn't in the script and Sergio called and wanted to do it. He had this vision of doing this sequence in the green light, in the night vision lens, and what I think of this scene... it's fantastic. I love it, because- I was asked about this by a reviewer the other day, "Well is that a deliberate attempt to evoke Iraq and say that this is Iraq?" And I said, "Well, no. The reason was it's how you're used to looking at it." It's the same philosophy behind why I do the handheld camera in space, when you're watching Vipers flyby. The fact that it seems to be handheld and there's a person standing out there filming these Vipers whipping by camera and having trouble in focus and keeping it in frame, intuitively tells you that it's a real object. This is really happening. The night vision, to me, serves the same function. Because you're used to seeing scenes shot at night in that palette, in that green and black, and that you know that that's a night vision thing and you're used to watching either on COPS or footage from Iraq or around the world, where troops are go- kicking in doors and going into places, grabbing people. And you're used to seeing those images. By doing it in the show it immediately evokes a sense of verisimillitude. It's a sense of truth. It's you kn- "Oh my god, I've seen that happen. That looks so real." You want it to look real. Not- it wasn't the po- again it wasn't the politics. It's about what is effective dramatically.

Ok, why do the Cylons reduce their defense perimeter to just five Cylon baseships? A year's go- four months have gone by, noone's attacked, they think they have the situation under control. They get a little cocky. They reduce their presence. They've got other things they've got to do. It's- to be honest, I'm sliding by the issue. I don't need it. If there's twenty baseships out there, it becomes an impossible force to overcome. If it's five, the odds are pretty tall, but they're not impossible. You just need to establish that at some point. There certain things you have to do to make the make the driver work. It's not a major point.

I love this idea. That Tyrol does not know that Gaeta is the source, and Gaeta doesn't know that Tyrol is the recipient. That these- this was also again part of the things I liked playing that I was like, "Ok. Let's put our people into this situation." What happens if Tyrol and Gaeta are both working towards the same objective, but they don't realize it, and they're about to kill each other. These guys are on a collision course, and you'll see where that collision course ultimately takes you, much later.

I thought Gaeta was a really interesting character in this whole saga. That Gaeta, who had idolized Baltar and thought he was a great man, and ultimately become his chief of staff, or whatever he was, to President Baltar, then sticks by him and tries to work within the system after the Cylons come. And yet wants to help the insurgency and starts to believe that his boss is everything that is evil. What happens to him and how does he try to help and what are the constraints of that? I was very interested in Gaeta and his role.

This is interesting because, as scripted, Jammer, instead of having flashbacks of the kid and the taking of Cally, was having flashbacks of the suicide bombing. And we shot pieces of footage that were about Jammer waking up. We never shot the footage of him waking up in the dead bodies, which, I really wanted to 'cause I thought that was the most horrific image, that you cut close on his face and he would be pushing an arm out of the way and then you would get up and realize the arm was severed, and he was like pushing dead bodies off of him to just stand up after the suicide bombing. That's what he was supposed to be flashing back to in that moment. And we didn't- we never- the schedule and budget, we never got to shoot him and the dead bodies, so we tried to contruct other things. He's remembering the flash, he's remembering people falling, he's remembering the paper floating down from the diplomas, and put that in here, and it just became confusing. Nobody understood what he was remembering. Noone was- we were so far afield from the suicide bombing that nobody was really making the connection back to that event. So David Eick saved us by suggesting that what he's remembering is the- oh, no. I'm sorry. It was Sergio. Sergio and David. They were both- they both saved it. Sergio shot it and put in his cut that Jammer is remembering the baby, and then David played that up even more and really went for more inserts about Jammer remembering taking Cally and that the baby was there and that that's what's freaking him out.

Back to bizarro world. Where Leoben and Kara are making nice. This is such a strange, twisted little scenario that-

Terry: (unintelligible)

RDM: I love the fact that it was very spare and that we didn't see much of it. And that you just, by implication, this whole weird head trip had been played out on Kara in this episode.

This was in the story break. The fact that Leoben would say that, "We harvested your ovary, and we have this little girl." 'Cause everyone's always asking, "Well what about the ovary? What happened to the farm? What did they take from Kara? Where did it go? What happened to that?" And this was like, "Ok. You wanna know what happened with that? Let's do this."

This little girl, this little actress, is one of the better child actors I've ever worked with. She delivers some really nice stuff. The dailies of her and Katee on the set. Katee playing with her in between takes. Katee talking to her. Her reacting to Katee. She was really fun and really, just, delightful. It's really hard to find child actors. Especially at this age. Especially at the age where they're very young and you're just asking them to do a few discrete things. In fact- that's one of the things you have to keep in mind. That you can only ask them to do very simple, discrete things.

Terry: Pretty staggering.

RDM: Oh I know. It's one of the major revelations of the show. In fact I think that was part- that was the- in the original structure, as shot and as scripted, that moment of revelation of Kara has a daughter was the actual out of episode one. Episode one ended on that moment of him, Leoben, coming down the stairs and "Meet your mother," Kara's reaction, boom. To be continued. That was the end of part one.

Terry: Oh. It's amazing 'cause she's in the middle of that bizarro world.

RDM: Yeah, and she's totally disconnected from everybody else.

This Lee-Adama stuff... this was pretty much always there. I'm trying to remember... I don't recall going through a lot of revisions on these scenes. It was nice. Well, it's not nice. It's a trick. I needed still cover some other exposition for later events and so I made Adama get up and walk out of the room, and he's walking out of the room to avoid talking to his son. So Lee is continuing to go at him, but basically I used this as a chance to get some exposition, because as Adama's walking away he's talking about the fact, "Oh, and did you know that the Centurions are- can't distinguish between the Cylons and that they did this deliberately because they were worried about their own Cylon up- their own machine uprising." And that's essentially only in the show because you gotta set up the fact that when Sharon walks into the detention center later, to get the codes, which is actually in a much later episode, but- (Laughs.) Anyway. Actually, no, it does play in this. You need to know that. I needed to setup something about Sharon, and the fact that the Centurions could not tell our Sharon from any of the other Sharons, and so I used this little moment to get Adama to say that. But it worked in the scene because emotionally he's trying to get away from Lee and he's walking away from him and he's trying to change the subject. He's trying to talk about something else, so he does this, what seems to be a meaningless piece of exposition about, "Oh the Centurions," and what they can do and what they can't do. And it never takes you out of the scene, and we still get to the same end point where Lee changes his mind and gets Adama to see that he's asking too much. It still gets to the same place, but it's a nice way of slipping this card in at some earlier part in the script where later, when Sharon does need to get past a Centurion, and- without getting caught, you've laid in the predicate for it. You've established why she can get past that Centurion. And you did it in this very offhand way earlier in the script. It's just a trick. It's just one of the little tricks of screenwriting. You find little ways to set- it's all about laying down cards and picking them up later. So you lay down this card here in this scene about how- seemingly meaningless talk, Adama says, "Sharon can go do this thing," and then later you pick that card up. 'Cause the audience remembers. If the audience watches, they remember almost everything. It's really surprising. It's just little references and little tweaks early in the show. If you pay 'em off correctly later, they all fit together and the audience appreciates the fact that they're rewarded for following along.

In early drafts of this, this was different. The plan was different. I'm trying to recall what we- what we originally did, but I don't think- it wasn't that Adama- the idea that Adama sends Pegasus off was something we did much later. I'm trying to recall, in fact I'll look up here on my computer what it was I did in the first draft in the Adama-Lee stuff. Racetrack... Tyrol... Leoben... Yeah, there's nothing better than listening me to me look around on my computer for information. Essentially, the difference is that Pegasus was actually going to go, and do the rescue mission, and not Galactica. And that that explains certain things that will happen in later episodes. But the whole idea that Adama sends Pegasus off with the civilian Fleet to safeguard the remnants of humanity in case they fail then goes back and fights the Cylons on his own, is not what initially happened. We were always talking about having Pegasus back there, which, then it would be they were transferring people onto Pegasus because Pegasus was the most powerful battlestar and it was the strongest battlestar and you would send the strongest ship into the fight and that'd explain why Pegasus was there, when it needs to be there in "Exodus" and not Galactica. But that didn't really play. It didn't play strongly and it was confusing and the idea that Adama lays down the law to- or Lee lays down the law to Adama, and he listens to him, is more provocative.

I love this scene. This is where Tigh and- Laura confront Tigh. I like the fact that Laura walks out of that Baltar scene and actually is agreeing with Baltar, if you think about it. She walks out of that scene and she goes and confronts the insurgents and says, "This has to stop." And then when he says something about her being on the side of the Cylons and she slaps him, I mean, we've never Laura ever hit anybody. She won't carry- she wouldn't touch a gun. She's not that kind of person. But that idea that she was on the Cylon side, that she would hit Tigh. And then this, I love this. This is just the long shot of just Michael Hogan. Michael Hogan is the unsung hero of this show because Michael Hogan is a very modest man and Michael Hogan does not do a lot of press. He doesn't do a lot of interviews for press. He doesn't do-

Terry: He turns them down?

RDM: He turns them down.

Terry: Really?

RDM: All the time. And he gets a lot of them.

Terry: Why?

RDM: Michael- Michael is- he has this belief that it's not about that. It's not about what he has to say.

Terry: Really?

RDM: It's not about what he's has to say as a person. He doesn't think it matters. What matters to Michael is what Michael puts onscreen.

Terry: As an actor?

RDM: I know, it's astonishing. (Laughs.)

Terry: I'm sorry.

RDM: I've stood outside the-

Terry: I love all of you, you know that.

RDM: I've stood outside the production offices in Vancouver with Michael, smoking cigarettes, and stood out there and Mike would say, "No, I just," and I'd say, "Michael, you gotta do this publicity thing." He's like, "No. You know what? I'm just not about that. That's not what it's about for me. I just think it's a great show."

Terry: That's impressive. But you know what?

RDM: He loves the show. He just wants the show to stand for itself and he's not into promoting Michael Hogan.

Terry: I mean, everybody's different. And they all have their different responses to that kind of thing, but it makes sense when you look at his performance.

RDM: It's a very brave-

Terry: It's a very internal-

RDM: -it's internal. It's very brave. It's very vulnerable.

Terry: Yeah.

RDM: And his performance in this opening is just fantastic. He's really- he's the one I identify- of all the characters, I identify with Tigh the most, in this opening.

Terry: Oh. In this opening.

RDM: In this opening two-hour, I'm just so with him emotionally.

Terry: Really?

RDM: So... connected.

Terry: Why is that?

RDM: I don't know why. As I was writing it I felt the same way. Here's the man who's been maimed.

Terry: I mean- and he's also the one that really comes off as, as far as I'm concerned, the worst of what happens in war.

RDM: Yeah.

Terry: What people can become legitimately. They can become what-

RDM: He goes to this place.

Terry: -the same thing that the people have done to them.

RDM: Yeah. And I really had sympathy for that point of view. I didn't want to judge him for it. I was really- I wanted to understand and I wanted to be there and know why you would do this kind of thing. What can happen to you? What could affect you as a human being? Where would you be that you would do this? And it was just so horrific and just was with him the whole way.

Terry: Hmm. That's interesting too, because you- we tend as a culture to expect people to behave always the best in the worst possible circumstances, and they don't. That's one of the reasons why, in my opinion, Moore is so scary because people do really bad things in really bad circumstances.

RDM: Yeah.

Terry: It's human nature.

RDM: Well there's a point we can all be driven to.

Terry: Yeah.

RDM: There's a point we can all be driven to.

Terry: That's why it's- I don't understand everybody's shock and dismay at some of this stuff that goes on anymore.

RDM: No. Well, read any hist- any study of war will tell you that it's an ugly game.

Terry: Extraordinary circumstances.

RDM: It's- it is, yeah, the definition of extraordinary circumstances.

Terry: That's disturbing.

RDM: Yeah, the shot of-

Terry: That's a hard thing to do with a kid and it's really a hard thing to- a position to put a kid in.

RDM: Yeah, I know.

Terry: (unintelligble)

RDM: I know. She's referring to the shot of Kasey laying on the landing with blood coming out of her head. I know. I completely agree. It's a hard thing to do. Here's Kasey lying in the hospital bed afterward. But ask- I don't know. When I was writing it, I wanted to really put the fear into Kara and into the audience, because I'm asking a lot here. We're asking to- for Kara to cross over the idea that this is a trick. She has to emotionally move past the place where she is suspecting that it's all bullshit and she can just write it off, and it doesn't matter. She's been holding this child at a distant- arms-length, and when the child is hurt and you think you might be the parent, that there's a moment where you sit on the other side of that hospital bed and you accept the coffee cup from Leoben and suddenly you're just a parent. And I needed it to be really graphic and really horrific to take the audience with her, so that they're not going, "Oh. Come on, Kara."

This is a fun scene, too. This is like Cally, God, you've gotta love Cally. She's like... just this little wisp of a nymph of a girl, and she is like just such a fireball. One of her first episodes she was biting the ear off of a prisoner-

Terry: It's true.

RDM: (Laughs.) -on the Astral Queen. It's a gun shot.

Terry: It's like seeing your sister in these insane circumstances.

RDM: I know. She's so hard core. I just love Cally. (Laughs.) She's just somethin' else. And now put her in the detention center, and she's just gonna get in Sharon's face. "Frak you, Sharon, you stupid frakked up toaster." And Tyrol married her. Just remember that. What does that say about Tyrol? (Laughs.) These are the two women in Tyrol's life.

Terry: Oh, that's true. I forgot. That's right.

RDM: The Cylon and Cally. Yeah, that's them. Those are the women that Tyrol-

Terry: Some men like their women feisty.

RDM: Some women- like really strong, feisty women. What kind of strange men are they?

Terry: I have no idea.

RDM: (Laughs.)

Terry: Masochists, clearly.

RDM: Some men are just damaged and need help.

Terry: (Laughs.)

RDM: This is the next suicide bomber. Oh great, that made it in. The security camera footage was something I tortured the visual effects guys about quite a bit, because the first iteration of it- yeah it's in black and white, but it still looks really good. And they kept beating them up and making them go back in and degrade the video image and make it look like crappy VHS, which is what I said I wanted-

Terry: They must have loved that.

RDM: -with the streaks and they just- Gary is a pro about it. Every time we would tell Gary, "(unitelligble) look worse," Gary's like, "Oh yeah. Absolutely. I totally agree. I totally see it." And then the next time he's like, "Yeah, I think we can go a little further." But I can hear that it's taking the content of his soul every time that I do it.

This is a great shot. This is- Sergio wanted to do this three- this is a three-sixty around the room. Camera never stops and we're doubling, we're doing the digital duplication over and over again. And he's timed it really well. But this was like- talk about torturing your actors. This was like putting your actors in a room and turning out the lights and hitting them with cattle prods randomly. Because it's just so tedious. And it's- takes so fucking long.

Terry: I mean I guess you have to constantly go from one to the other.

RDM: It's one- and you have to time that it's a motion control shot, so the camera is on a fixed movement and they have to time their line correctly and they have to listen to the other line, and they have to look in the right direction. And then we have to do it again. You have to sit over here now, and there's a wardrobe change in between. And wardrobe takes so goddamn long-

Terry: Hey!

RDM: -and like do everything.

Terry: It does not.

RDM: How long does it take to change a costume? D'anna has to do a costume change. How long does it take?

Terry: Well, once you have to get to get her off the set, that's usually what takes so long, is getting her off and on the set.

RDM: And how long does it take to change the costume?

Terry: Oh, I think you can change your clothes. You do it every day.

RDM: Well...

Terry: Five minutes? Ten minutes?

RDM: Well why does it always seem to take like twenty, thirty minutes?

Terry: Because hair and makeup steals them a lot of the time.

RDM: Oh, it's hair and makeup...

Terry: No! No, no. They get a lot of stuff done then they at stop at craft service, they go to the bathroom, they- somebody comes u- a producer, comes up to tell them about the latest brilliant prose he's written for them.

RDM: (Chuckles.)

Terry: And all the time the poor wardrobe people are going, "Where's the actress and why isn't she here?" See. Blame wardrobe, always blame wardrobe.

RDM: Well, they can't fight back, so that why I beat up on them.

Terry: Oh, excuse me? I think I-

RDM: Well, they can fight back. They dont-

Terry: I think I worked with you...

RDM: That's true. Ooh. Actually, sometimes they can fight back and they have claws.

Terry: Very long, sharp ones.

RDM: This beat here where- where Doral-

Terry: Oh my god. I forgot about this.

RDM: Well I cut it at some point. Doral shoots Caprica-Six and down she goes. We clearly scripted this and shot it and it was in the initial cuts, as this show was coming down it was still too long, even at two hours and I had to- well, it's two hours, that's not unreasonable. It's two episodes. So I had to make cuts. And one of the cuts I was making for time and for other reasons was in this scene I cut that moment. I cut the moment where he shoots Caprica-Six.

Terry: That's Caprica-Six?

RDM: The one that got shot was Caprica-Six, yeah. Now we're in his head-

Terry: Now I'm understanding something here. So there's- so within the models, there are numerous models-

RDM: -of each one.

Terry: So like there's a lot of Caprica-Six's, there's a lot of-

RDM: Well there's a lot of Six's. There's one-

Terry: I know there's a lot of Six's.

RDM: There's one Caprica-Six.

Terry: I thought she got blown up by the nuclear bomb.

RDM: Yes. That's the continu- the soul, the person-

Terry: Ohhhh. I see.

RDM: -that was Caprica-Six is the woman that was actually with him...

Terry: So there's always a Caprica-Six.

RDM: Caprica-Six continues. She just moves into other bodies.

Terry: Ok. I get it.

RDM: Now-

Terry: I didn't know that.

RDM: The thing here was that I cut the moment of Doral shooting Caprica-Six and James Callis was very upset and because shooting Caprica-Six in many ways-

Terry: -was his motivation-

RDM: -moves him. It's the fear of it. It's the shock of it.

Terry: Yeah.

RDM: The visceral shock of the blood and the murder.

Terry: And losing the Six that he really did love.

RDM: And then having the experience with head-Six, as they call her in the writer's room, or Number Six is how I refer to her, the fantasy Six.

Terry: Right.

RDM: It's the combination of those two events that really makes him sign the document. James was very concerned all the way through that Baltar never become a complete villain.

Terry: And I think he's right.

RDM: And I think he is right. And that's why, when he asked- and it was very late in the process. I showed it to James, and James- and he was very upset by the fact that we had lost that moment of Doral shooting Caprica. And I was like, "Well, you know what? I lost it for time, but I also think that it doesn't matter b- I think it's important to cut it anyway because nobody responds to the fact that she gets shot and that's a big deal in the Cylon world, blah, blah, blah." But he pressed the point, and I started to realize, you know what? No, it's more important to protect the character, Baltar. It's more important that Baltar- that we understand why Baltar does these things, so it was very late in the game when I restored that edit back into the show.

Terry: He does go on, doesn't he? What about this thing with Boomer? (Laughs.)

RDM: This is all about me going on.

Terry: I understand. What about Boomer becoming-

RDM: An officer?

Terry: -back in the Fleet?

RDM: We wanted- it was something we talked about in the writer's room. We were- we didn't want to keep Boomer in this jail cell. We felt like, that story had run it's course. I didn't want to just keep making Boom, sorry, not Boomer now, I've screwed it up, Sharon- didn't want to keep just having Sharon be the woman that sits in the cell all day. There was nothing interesting about that. We had done as much as we could with that. And that there was something more interesting about, again, the idealism of the fact that if there's a point where Adama wants to believe in her. Adama wants her to be in that uniform again.

Terry: Well it also makes the Cylons ever so much more interesting and less one-dimensional.

RDM: Absolutely. And that- and it's important to me and it's important to me as a storyteller that Sharon now be worthy of that.

Terry: Oh... my... God.

RDM: Oh, Ellen and-

Terry: Oops. Yeah.

RDM: (Laughs.)

Terry: You guys know what that is, right?

RDM: "The twist" and "the swirl". Ok. This is a complete homage to Seinfeld, because I am a complete Seinfeld nut.

Terry: Raymond Shaw, are you listening to this?

RDM: I was into- I watch Seinfeld a couple of times a night. As my wife will testify.

Terry: Well, a couple is putting it mildly.

RDM: A couple is putting it mildly. So "the twist" and "the swirl" is a complete homage to Seinfeld, I just totally cop to it, and am proud to do it.

Kate Vernon. Kate Vernon, this is a difficult thing to act- ask an actress to do. It's sexual, it's overt, it's tawdry. It's weak. She's bruised. She's in a- it's Dean Stockwell, who's much older than Kate is. And it's a difficult role to play. And Kate just delivers such a great performance for us that- I'm really proud of her. I think she really embraced what this material was and just was very naked and it's hard to watch some sections of the next few episodes with Ellen, because it's a very-

Terry: Raw.

RDM: -raw. I mean, look in those eyes. She's just brave. And considering where that story began, where that character began.

Terry: Yeah. Women throughout time who've ended up in bed with their captors as a way of survival and the conflict that it creates within them. It's really interesting.

RDM: Now we're back here.

These are real beards. Just to- for nothing else than to talk about for the moment.

Terry: Huh. Wow.

RDM: Nice shift of tone, this the real beard of- (Chuckles.)

Terry: Should I have one of the animals do tricks or something to kill the dead space?

RDM: (Laughs.) No. I suddenly at a loss.

Terry: Call out the garbage man?

RDM: See? I'm not used to doing a two-hour. The two hours are a little scarier.

Terry: Oh is this two hours?

RDM: This is a two hour.

Liberty. Roll over. Roll over, Liberty.

Terry: Liberty?

RDM: Saturday Night Live! Chevy Chase doing Gerald Ford.

Terry: I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe we should name one of the cats Liberty. Justice.

RDM: No. I'm going for Trouble and Strife.

Terry: Yeah, I don't think so.

RDM: Trouble and Strife. Those should be the names of the cats.

Here we are. Ellen gets the map. Tigh wants to burn the map. Ellen pockets the map. Ellen gives map to Cylons. Ok. What happens now? How bad is this about to get for one Ellen Tigh and for one Colonel Tigh?

Terry: Probably pretty bad, given what show they're on.

RDM: Yeah.

I had some conversations with Michael Hogan about, what's the intention here? I mean, when he heard he was losing his eye and getting a limp, he was like, "Ok. What are you going for? What's the deal here? What's this all about?" 'Cause Michael's Canadian and his "y'know" and the "about", "y'know", kind of comes through with Michael quite bit it.

Terry: Hey... that's Scottish, honey.

RDM: Eh? Oh, sorry. Yeah. My accents are suspect.

But when I explained to Michael that I'm going for the walking wounded, the symbol for all the losses that they've taken, then he just ran with it. He was totally cool with it after that.

Terry: Speaking of good performances.

RDM: Oh yeah. A.J., he's just great. You really- and wait till you see him in "Collaborators". Episode four, but the third episode broadcast.

This whole storyline now dealing with the rounding of the pris- from this point on we're doing homages to other pieces of work. This is now about pace and rhythm and visuals and moving you through what's going on. This interior argument among the Cylons I thought was fascinating, given this context. Here's the guys with the hoods over them being marched into the trucks for the death squads, and yet there's internal dissent, and it was all about, again, providing texture and also saying that the situation is not so easily read. That there are two sides to everything. That their world view of what they're going through and how they view these situations. You're with them, very much, in this scene. There's Cally, but, emotionally you're with Sharon and you're with D'anna and you're dealing with their issues. And then, all these prisoners, they're in the background because that's the perspective of that world. And then, enter Tom Zarek. Which I think is really a nice, little grace note as we approach the end of the second hour, to suddenly bring in Tom. It's like, "Oh, woah! Wait a minute!" I like the fact that he and Laura can connect in this circumstance and joke with each other and be easy with each other. That's one of the better- that is completely CGI right now.

Terry: Really?

RDM: There's no plate. It's not a real forest or anything.

Terry: Very nice.

RDM: Completely CGI.

Now we're at the river. We had to figure out what New Caprica looked like. There was a- it was definitely a challenge to try to differentiate New Caprica from Caprica, which you saw extensively in season one.

Terry: By the way, I really like where Anders is going.

RDM: I know. Anders has really developed into one of our major characters.

Terry: Yeah.

RDM: For somebody that was-

Terry: -who brought a lot of depth.

RDM: -A lot of depth. I think the actor has really become interesting in that he's really provides a lot of nice textures into the show. He's really good in this two-parter. In this two-hour. In these two episodes. Whatever you want to call them. I'm so into Anders. Here's this guy, this, pyramid, this athlete, who became a resistance leader and then got rescued by this pilot and now he's doing a second resistance on another planet.

Terry: Well, it's so heroic.

RDM: It's very heroic.

Terry: It's the guy in the French Resistance.

RDM: He reeks heroism.

Terry: Oh yeah.

RDM: But that's a nice little beat there.

Terry: Yeah.

RDM: You really- as an actor, he hugs her and then he's like, "What am I doing?"

Terry: Woah! Yeah.

RDM: Why are there trucks on New Caprica? You know what? Because we need trucks on New Caprica. (Chuckles.) Because I didn't want to do landspeeders and hovercrafts and all that kind of crap, which would really take you- if suddenly these were shots of hovercraft and air vehicles moving around the scene, you would be taken out of the drama.

Terry: You know, I have to say. I read these things all the time and it's like I've watched this- this is my third time watching this episode. I never think about that kind of thing, 'cause I'm actually watching the development between the two people. So what kind of trucks-

RDM: Well, but see, if I put hover- If I put like-

Terry: -so what they're driving- It seems so- I don't know-

RDM: Well, that's exactly-

Terry: I just don't- It's a non-issue.

RDM: That's exactly why I do that. Because if I put a shot in there-

Terry: I'd be going, "Oh, look. Hovercraft."

RDM: Yeah. You would be taken emotionally out of the moment.

Terry: But I mean it's not just this one, it's all movies. I just- Crews used to go crazy because I wouldn't notice continuity errors. I just don't-

RDM: I think you're either into it or you're not.

Terry: If you're listening to the actors-

RDM: If you're involved- If you're involved in the scene emotionally-

Terry: Yeah, and what's the saying in Hollywood? If you're noticing the-

RDM: If you're noticing "fill in the blank"-

Terry: -then we've done a really-

RDM: That's right.

Terry: -then we're doing a bad job.

RDM: That's right. There's a lot of continuity errors in great films. In Casablanca, in Citizen Cane. There's continuity errors and all kinds of mistakes, but you don't see them.

Terry: If you're doing your job you don't notice them. And you don't really think about the fact that, "Oh, look. There's trucks." I guess if you've watched the episode seventy five hundred times, perhaps, I don't know.

RDM: This sequence, this leading up to the Cylons shooting them is an homage t- is a deliberate homage to The Great Escape. This is like the end of the movie when Richard Adenborough-

Terry: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

RDM: -and the other guy are captured and they're taken out in trucks and the Nazis say, "Get out and have a five minute break."

Terry: Yeah.

RDM: And they all just walk out, and it's like, "It was a great moment. We really tried." And they're looking at the mountains and then suddenly-

Terry: They turn around.

RDM: they turn around and machine gun. It's a different context and we play it a little differently, but this little interlude with Laura and Zarek, it takes you in a different place. It's the same trick. It's the same sort of structural idea. You take the audience over here a little bit. You get 'em involved in this little lighter moment. It's a little bit more of a joke.

Terry: They clearly have never seen The Great Escape.

RDM: They've never seen The Great Escape.

Terry: (Chuckles.)

RDM: And you're intercutting with the river. And then... all hell breaks loose.

I love this. I think this is one of the really interesting elements of the show is that Jammer, the collaborator, Jammer saves Cally.

Terry: Well, but that's kind of what I was saying about Ellen Tigh, again. You just- people in extraordinary circumstances... you cannot predict what they're going to do.

RDM: No. You can't.

Terry: And that- and it will always be that way. That is human nature.

RDM: He lets her go.

Terry: That's why you try to set up extraordinary circumtances.

RDM: So what do we feel about Jammer? How do you judge Jammer? Judge Jammer. Tell me the good and the bad of him. I think it's a complicated picture. I think people make complicated choices in complicated situations.

Terry: Well we were talking about that with the whole business of shaving the heads of the women who slept with-

RDM: -with the Nazis.

Terry: -the Nazis. And your initial thing is to condemn them, but at the same time you think, "Well you really are asking ordinary people to choose between- to make a conscious choice between life and death."

RDM: Yeah.

Terry: Is that it, it's over?

RDM: That is it. That is the end of our season premiere. I think you're gonna like the next one.

Terry: You are.

RDM: I think "Exodus, Part I" and "II" is pretty good.

Terry: You really are. How far have I seen? Episode, like, seven?

RDM: You have seen up to episode ten.

Terry: Ten? It's really good.

RDM: Up to episode ten.

Terry: It's really, really good.

RDM: Well, thank you for listening to the podcast, as always. And enjoy the show, and we will talk to you next on "Exodus".

Terry: Goodnight.

RDM: Goodnight.