queenrikki (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
queenrikki) wrote2007-04-11 11:26 am
queenrikki) wrote2007-04-11 11:26 am
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Battlestar Galactica: Frak Party Podcast Transcript, Part One
Disclaimer: While I’ve done my best to accurately represent what was said in the podcast, I have taken some liberties in the presentation. I’ve eliminated some interjections that disrupted the flow of the questions and some stuttering or other vocal stumbles. Also, there are some bits that were unintelligible due to train noises and speaker overlap. I’ve tried my best to guess what the speaker was saying but I may have made some mistakes. The abbreviation AM is used for all members of the audience as I could not think of any simpler way to distinguish them.
Ronald D Moore: Okay welcome to a very special podcast. This is not the official podcast; there will be another one that I will narrate through the course of the episode. I’m doing this one in Barkley, California with a group of friends at a frak party. Say hello everybody.
Everybody: HElllooo!
RDM: We’re at the home of—
Terry Moore: Madeline and Scott.
RDM: Madeline and Scott. Thank you very much for hosting this. And essentially we’re going to record Act Four here of the season finale, Crossroads Part 2 and you’ll hear the show and their reaction live on this podcast and then immediately thereafter we’ll just start talking about the episodes.
TM: It’s the fans’ voice.
RDM: It’s the voice of the fans. So we’ll pause right here. *beep*Okay there we go.
AM: I occasionally torrent it. You didn’t hear that.
TM: That’s okay, we know.
*Dresden Files Commercial*
*Act Four plays*
AM: Oh…
*laughter*
AM: He’s been kidnapped by women, this is like his wet dream.
*whispers*
AM: Those are the five remaining cylons…
AM: The final five.
AM: Whoa what?
*reaction to “All Along the Watchtower Lyrics”*
AM: Ahhh.
AM: What?
AM: Ahhh
AM: They’re doing the whole song.
AM: It’s on.
*intro plays*
*reactions to Tigh’s entrance*
*laughter*
*silence at Cylon reveal*
AM: (at Tyrol) Bet you wish you’d stood up for Boomer now!
*reactions to Tigh’s speech*
*rest of act four*
*muttering unintelligible due to song*
*scream at the appearance of Kara’s viper*
AM: Woot!
AM: Yaaay!
*applause*
AM: I knew she wasn’t dead!
AM: That was righteous!
RDM: And that’s the show boys and girls.
AM: Awesome!
*unintelligible comments something about season*
RDM: That’s bullshit. There’s nothing really coming up. Okay so,
AM: To be honest with you, I like that a lot better than the end of season two.
RDM: Really? Why
AM: It shows hope, it shows Kara’s final…what her destiny really is. So it’s kinda like the two bookends. And now like how you’re saying in all your podcast about act three now, per se. So that’s why I actually like this a lot better.
RDM: Why didn’t you like the end of season two?
Random Male Pilot: No I did. I like the end of season two, but I’m saying I like this just even a lot better.
RDM: Really?
AM: Yeah, I also like what all the guys did for all the graphics, ‘cause it’s the season finale. So I really appreciate all the flying part ‘cause I’m a pilot myself so I really liked that part. Like how she came in and like surprised them and al that kind of stuff. It was really a good job.
AM: Well, the first two also seasons had been more and more bad news. Basically, an increasingly dire situations and it was something that we liked was the fact that on New Caprica basically seeing as the very last things , everything was worse than you could possibly imagine. I mean you could have done that again this time around but now we basically have no clue what’s going except there’s a lot going on and even we have our first hints of how Earth plays into the series. So, I think that’s a reason to like it so much. And even better just because it’s a completely different kind of cliffhanger.
RDM: Cool
AM: It’s not just the usual tragedy.
AM: I know this wasn’t entirely your choice but at the end of season two it felt that we were kinda cheated of that time seeing them develop on New Caprica. And this…there’s nothing that we’re cheated. We’re just waiting for going to happen. We don’t have to worry about what has already happened that we have to figure out.
AM: (I didn’t feel cheated)
AM: Last time you gambled with our perception of how character development…leaving a big gap but now, I think the biggest gap is how do you explain Tigh? He’s been there for so long.
RDM: That’s a good question isn’t it? I can only tell you…that when we, and some of this will be repeated on the other podcast so forgive the listeners at home. The idea for turning four of them into cylons was something I came up with in the room. We were talking about the season finale and the trial of Gaius Baltar and how it was going to end and we had various sort of things about the ending, you know the surprises in the trial and so on I had this sense of dissatisfaction. And I remember saying to the writers, I just wish…You know, I’ve had this recurring…thought of four of our characters walking into a room on Galactica, just drawn, just cutting to them walking into a room . And they all walk in and shut the doors and they look at each other and they say “Okay, we’re Cylons”. And it would just like click and it just suddenly happens and we reveal four people that we’ve known. And as we started talking about it well, who would those four be. We narrowed the parameters down kind of quickly. It was apparent that we didn’t want Eddie to be one; we didn’t want Adama that seemed like it robbed something from the show. So did Mary. And so when you took those two off, then it became, okay Lee…wasn’t sure what Lee gave you. We talked about Tyrol; well Tyrol seemed kind of natural. He had a certain affinity for the Cylons. He was in love with a Cylon. Something was happening to him on the algae planet where he was drawn towards the temple.
TM: He’s married…
RDM: He’s married to a human. There were various things that made sense for Tyrol. Anders seemed kind of interesting because he was drawn to Kara. Why had he survived in two resistances so far? If Kara had a special destiny where did Anders fit into that sort of pantheon? Tory was interesting because she was a wild card; we didn’t know anything about her but she had been in the show long enough to sort of justify it. And then it became, well, the real one would be Tigh. If Tigh was a Cylon, then that would be the scariest one of all because he’s the most human character. Tigh was the one, truthfully enough, that I wrestled with the most. Right up until the point where we were shooting it, I wasn’t sure and I just committed and said let’s go for it. Because Tigh…you were loosing something and gaining something. Loosing something, in that he is the most human of all the characters, other than Gaius Baltar in my opinion, because he’s the alcoholic, he’s so deeply flawed, he had killed his wife, he had lost his eye, he had suffered so tremendously and had such a human connection to Adama that if you turned him into Cylon you lost part of that. But at the same time, you gained this enormous thing because it was those very things that made it an amazing revelation.
TM: It is in a way where the season two questions…you know, but what about? How did this happen all along.
AM: I like that there was a person choice based on themselves versus where with Sharon her choice to conform or integrate had to do with her child. These are four people who had to look at each other and make a snap decision right then and there. Do we do what we’re programmed to do or do we do what we feel we should do considering we just woke up from being sleepers?
RDM: And that’s an important point. Because it was very important in the show to say that these four don’t know what this means. All they know at this moment is that like Tyrol said, a switch goes off and they have an innate knowledge that they are Cylons. And they don’t know what this means and they don’t know what their agenda is and they don’t know what they’re supposed to do and they have that moment to kind of figure out how their going to react to this knowledge that they just have. Tigh’s immediate reaction is I don’t care, I’m Saul Tigh and I’ll be that man until the day that I die. And Tyrol’s a little bit more lost and Anders is just angry and Tory isn’t quite sure which way she’s going to jump.
But to answer your question, we did talk in the writer’s room at length about the back stories of everybody and we do have a backstory that works for Saul Tigh and how this all works and laying out everything that we did. We angsted long and hard about making sure that this did all make sense, sort of, in the mythos of the show. And how it all makes a certain sense. I can tell you only that they are different Cylons from the other Cylons. And that we have kind of built that over the course of the third season that the final five were not like the significant seven, as we call them in house.
AM: Like one alien species versus another kind of thing?
RDM: Not…This is a frustrating conversation in a certain way because I have to preseAMe a lot of those storylines for season three (sic) and we’re working out those story lines. So I can only tell you that they are different and that those differences will be part of their journey of self-discovery and what it means to be a Cylon.
AM: There’s been a constantly growing ambiguity on the relation and difference between humans and Cylons and between recent and ancient history. So I’m glad to see that that’s still…I felt like this played that out and that we’re getting more from that.
AM: I’ve got to ask, why “All Along the Watchtower”?
RDM: Well, that’s a long story actually. “All Along the Watchtower” has been sort of a personal obsession of mine for a while now. When I was working on a show called “Roswell I had an episode that I wanted to do all about “All Along the Watchtower”. That all the aliens that were on Roswell had a significance to “All Along the Watchtower” and I wanted to bring in five or ten different people to do different versions of “All Along the Watchtower “for a plotline. It was a plotline that took place entirely in a music studio and that there was meaning within the song and blah blah blah. And at the end I wanted a cameo for Bob Dylan showing up and just saying “It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a song man”.
(laughter)
TM: Bob Dylan’s the last Cylon.
(laughter)
RDM: And then that sort of stuck with me. As early as season one I’ve wanted to use “All Along the Watchtower” playing on a jukebox in the background not in the familiar sort of Hendrix version but just sort of a Galactica version of Watchtower as a way of sort of saying to the audience that there is a tie between this show and our reality. That essentially, you’ve heard us say over and over again through the series that all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. And that there’s a sense of the cycle of time, that certain of these events are preordained and that there’s a cycle, truly a cycle.
If your remember in the episode “Flesh and Blood” from season one Leoben, the Cylon, is talking to Kara and he says that there is a cycle time and maybe next time through the cycle, I’ll be the interrogator and you’ll be the prisoner and that the story is the same but the players swap positions. And the idea that there was a song or verse that sort of transcended that cycle, that certain things repeated themselves. . I mean why do they wear ties? (train in the background)Why do they speak English? Why are there certain phrases…there are phrases from Shakespeare sprinkled throughout the series and there’s a certain idea that all these things repeat themselves in certain ways for certain reasons. And so, I wanted to use “All Along the Watchtower” as something that would sort of grab the audience and go, “well wait a minute, how the fuck can that be?” How could they possibly know what that is? Does it mean the show takes place in the distant future? Does it take place in the distant past and what are the connections in that? So it is a clue towards sort of the larger explanation of what Galactica says the cosmology is.
AM: So, will the Chief’s child run like a parallel frame that Sharon and Helo’s child is going to run?
RDM: It is different…Nicholas’s story is different from Hera’s story but closely related. But yes, Nicholas is also a half-hybrid child. A hybrid child rather.
AM: Of course we’re all dying to know, when they get to earth, what will they find? Will they find our world…?
RDM: Well, that’s an interesting question isn’t? Now on to the next question. I can’t give that away. Because ultimately, the show is about what they find when they get to Earth.
AM: A way to put that as a question actually, when did you start forming your idea, relative to the lifespan of the show, of what Earth would actually be in this?
RDM: A couple years ago. When I started the series, I didn’t really know what the end of the show was. But over the course of season one, I started to develop this idea of the cycle of time. And all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again, which is the first line of the Disney version of Peter Pan, as some of you may wonder. Sebastian Cabot comes on and says “Now all of this has happened before and all of this has happened again… will happen again but this time it happened in London and dudududududah.”
AM: You know, I thought it was really interesting that we saw North America and not Asia and Australia.
RDM: That’s because this show is about America (laughter). And if I showed you Africa, do you know how many members of the audience would not even recognize this planet. That is a completely ethnocentric…that is sad but it is what it does to do American television, boys and girls.
AM: I taught freshman history, I know exactly what you mean.
RDM: You know what I thought for a moment? For a while I thought, you know what? When we go to Earth in that final shot, we should not just see the tip of Africa, we should be upside down from the orientation that we normally see. And if you look at that you have no idea what you’re looking at. And I needed it to kind of like read immediately. Because it’s like less than two seconds on screen on the screen. You needed to know (snap) t hat’s earth and that’s the quickest way to tell our folks here in North America where we are.
AM: You said that the four of the final five wake up and they don’t know what their agenda is, they don’t know what’s going on. How much of that have you already broken?
RDM: At this moment as we speak, we’ve broken quite a bit of it. Because the writers have been in the writer’s room for awhile, for several weeks and we’ve talked at length about what is the course of the fourth season. Where are we going ultimately? What is the series about? What’s the end of the show?
AM: How much did you break while you were writing this episode?
RDM: Well, this episode went through quite a transition. It was all about the trial of Gaius Baltar then as I said, I was in the room and we were breaking the show and it became about the trial of Gaius Baltar and the reveal of the final four. When it got to draft…draft teleplay, it was a lot like this but there was a whole other story that had to do with the Sagitarons a long plotline that we had developed over the course of the sec-third season. It had to do with the Sagittarauns colony and their people and actually Baltar was involved in a massacre on New Caprica involving the Sagittarauns. A long intricate thing and it just wasn’t working. In some episodes, more than others, I take a pass at the final draft myself and on this one, on the finale I took a pass at it and as I was writing it I just said the Sagittaraun thing doesn’t work and I just tossed it. Which meant that we had to go back and re-edit earlier episodes and reshoot some things to edit all of that out. And I just winnowed it down to closer what this was. The things that were added in my pass at the very end were things like Laura getting cancer. Watchtower was in it, but I actually I think in Michael Taylor’s draft of Crossroads part one, in the teaser Michael was actually intercutting them at Woodstock, (laughter) listening to “All Along the Watchtower”. Which was not something that we broke, it was completely insane and I loved it when I read it. Because as a showrunner, I’m one of those guys that loves it when my writers come back and give me something that surprises me in the read. And as I was reading it, it was like “Cut to close on Tigh, sitting in the grass and pull back and he’s at Woodstock”. And I was like “That’s so fucking great, but I don’t know what it means”. Okay, I tossed it out because it was unproducable and I didn’t know how to make sense of it. But there were various sort of riffs along the way. The teaser of this episode was not the teaser originally. Crossroads part one actually ended at the point where Laura said “I have cancer”. That was the out of part one and everything that was in act four of part one was actually the beginning of part two. But both episodes were really long. Part two was twenty minutes over and part one was ten minutes over and we had a lot of footage to have to play around with and figure out and I opted to just pull up more of Crossroads part two and play that more strongly into part one to sort of save more of the material for the episode.
AM: Can you talk about some of the things that you had to cut from these last two hours?
RDM: There was more of Tory and Anders and fleshing out them sort of like eyeing each other and starting to get it on. There was more of Tigh going slowly mad. There was much more of the trial. The Gaeta thing went on a little bit longer. Every body had longer pieces on the stand. Gaeta’s went on quite a bit more. So did Laura’s. So did Tigh’s. Umm, what else? A lot of it was sort of trimming within scenes. A lot of the scenes were just significantly longer than they are on camera. In terms of actual plots and scenes, I can’t remember too much else that was actually cut that didn’t suAMive in some form. The final walk with all four of them walking towards that room went on quite a bit longer. There was actually a lot more of them at battlestations and getting ready to go. In early drafts, there were scenes of Adama and the other judges at the Tribunal deliberating.
TM: There was more Gaius Baltar after the trial.
RDM: There was more…Oh yeah that’s right. There was much more Gaius Baltar after the trial. He walks down the corridor. At one point he was chased. There were like men that were at the trial, you saw them in the audience, that were actually coming at him and pulled out knives and were actually trying to kill him. And that’s who he was running away from when he was saved by the woman and the little Manson-like cult that sort of gets around.
AM: Did you cut any scenes of the four judges deliberating?
RDM: Not that were shot. There were scenes that were written but were cut as we went through the preproduction process that we dealt with the judges a bit more. But ultimately it felt like it was more dramatic to not know what the verdict was or not know what any of the positions were and just come in cold on the judges…on the tribunal.
AM: Are you going to reveal who the fifth final…?
RDM: We are going to reveal who the fifth final Cylon is. Probably next season.
AM: Okay cool.
AM: Congratulations on getting twenty-two episodes.
RDM: We have twenty-two.
AM: Can we start placing bets on it?
RDM: Yes you can start a pool. You can start a pool on who’s the fifth Cylon is.
TM: Because you don’t know.
RDM: I do know. I do know actually.
TM: You do know?
RDM: I do know who the fifth Cylon is.
TM: Last time I asked him, he said he didn’t know.
AM: He’s keeping it from you!
RDM: I didn’t know then, but now I do.
AM: Someone we’ve seen or not seen.
RDM: I can’t tell you.
AM: How did the actors respond to the Bob Dylan lyrics?
RDM: They just wanted to know what it all meant. They were sort of like “Okay. And I really have to sing this?” Yeah, you have to kind of at least say it or hum it or you know sort of get to the place where. It was interesting, as we were going through the draft, the question was how soon would the audience pick up on the lyrics? And what’s the most recognizable lyric of all? And actually, it’s seeded in very early. There are lines, you know, about there’s too much confusion, there must be some kind of way out of here is seeded pretty early in the show. And it takes a while for sort of the build up where you start to sort of get to well, okay, how many of those lyrics add up to “All Along the Watchtower” that you finally start figuring it out.
AM: I caught it the first time but I’ve actually performed the song, so…
RDM: When did you twig to it?
AM: The first…of “there must be some way out of here". The way he delivered the line.
RDM: Really?
(chorus) Yeah.
RDM: You said “All Along the Watchtower”?
AM: I almost said…Under my breath I was going, “Said the Joker to the thief” then I was like no, no way.
RDM: Really?
(murmurs of agreement)
RDM: Oh, did you?
AM: Yeah, there were murmurs around the room the first time around.
RDM: That’s interesting. It was a question. Okay, If we bury, just bury it in dialogue how long until…? What’s the most recognizable line? Just the line you recognize?
AM: Joker to the thief!
RDM: Joker to the thief you can’t say. You just can’t. So we never quite say it.
AM: It gives it away.
RDM: It totally gives it away.
AM: I think it was the delivery that made it kind of clear…
AM: The delivery…he said it in the exact same rhythm. (singsong) There must be someway out of here.
AM: And that they’re crazy.
AM: Yes the crazy always helps.
AM: (train noises) So the actors who are Cylons, what was their reactions to finding out that they were Cylons?
RDM: Well, that’s an interesting question. We kind of called them up individually. And said that…and we went through great lengths to sort of hide all of this. In fact, we published fake pages for the end of the show, which we’ve never done. We published a whole alternate ending to the show that didn’t reveal them as Cylons but sort of made sense. I think that the idea was in the fake pages, the music really was some sort of Techno thing that was related to the power surge on Galactica and they were all kind of…there was some danger to the ship that had some sort of very Star Trek kind of techno Sci-fi problem in the end. And we called those four individual actors separately and said okay, here’s the plan and this is what we’re going to do. And they were all a bit shocked. Aaron was the one that actually ahead of time was saying “I just don’t want to be a Cylon” (laughter and awwwws). Aaron was very “You know, as long as I’m not a Cylon, that’s all I care about”. And I was like okay, guess what Aaron, you are a Cylon and you’re just have to lump it. And we talked him through it. And he was okay. Aaron was most concerned about whether we were going to loose his individuality as a character. In that, you now, the role of Tyrol was very much the common man, you know the blue collar guy, the guy down in the hanger deck and was he going to become an arch-villain. He didn’t want to suddenly transform into a different person. I said, well no that’s not really the idea. The idea is that you don’t really know what your agenda is. You just suddenly know you’re a Cylon that’s all you know. And he was cool with that once I said so. And Tigh, you know Michael Hogan, was (imitating Michael) “Hello, Really? (laughter) How’s that going to work?” And Tory was just very happy and Anders was very happy. They all went for it.
The biggest stir was about Katee. You know about Kara’s return to the show at the very end. That took a whole long, difficult…Because when Katee…we called Katee before we published Maelstrom episode sixteen where she died. And we called her up and said “Okay, we’re about to put out a script where you’re dead. But you’re not really dead and this is the plan. We’re going to take you out of the next four episodes and we’re going to take you out of the main credit title but we’re going to bring you back at the end and this is how it’s going to work and dudududah. And she was “Oh, this is so cool! Well what do we do?” I said well we’re going to try to hold this as close as we can. We’re going to try to be very tight with this information so don’t tell anybody. We’re going to pretend that you’re really dead on the show cause that’s the only way this is going to work.
AM: Actors too thought she was dead.
RDM: Actors too…well that’s what happened. Then the script was published and the crew and cast just flipped out. They were very upset. They were…
TM: Eddie was…
RDM: Eddie was very emotional. They were almost in a state of mutiny that we were killing off Starbuck. And it was very touching. They were very connected to her. But it got so bad that I got a call from the studio early one morning say okay, we hear that the set is in a real tumult up there and that they’re really upset about this and you’ve got to do something about this. And David and I said “Oh really? Oh shit.” And so we called up and heard “Oh yeah, everyone’s really pissed at you. You better not come up here for a while because they’re really angry that you killed Starbuck.” We’re like “Oh God”. So we called Eddie and Mary and we explained ourselves and said okay this is what we’re doing and this is why. And they were relieved…they were angry and then they were relieved and then they were okay. And they sort of got off on it. They were like “This is going to be so cool!” And Katee hadn’t told them and what Eddie told me was that they were all planning to take Katee out to a farewell dinner that night (laughter). And he was going to play it for all it was worth. And take her out to dinner and be crying about her leaving the show and then say (craggy voice) “And we know that you’re coming back!” and just do some horrible practical joke on Katee, so…
AM: Well I guess if you think of it like one of your co-workers has been fired. Because that’s what it’s like.
TM: And they’re a family…
RDM: And they are very much a family.
TM: They are very much a family.
RDM: And so when we shot the scenes of the Cylons being revealed and the scenes of Kara coming back it was…it was a closed set and it was after the wrap party and it was completely like after the show had wrapped. And we shot these scenes separately with just our key people who we trusted and said you know this is what’s really going on and we brought them on. And we kept the secret pretty well until just a couple of weeks ago when we sent out press screeners. Because we had to send out press screeners to get…because that’s the balance you have to do, secrecy versus getting favorable press. And as soon as we sent out the press screeners, somebody got a hold of one and put everything out on the internet, so blew all the secrets…for some people like you know, a couple a weeks before we actually broadcast.
AM: I’ve got to say that I did not believe for a moment that she was gone forever.
RDM: Well that was the…I knew it would be a tough thing. I mean we took her out of the main title credit which I thought was pretty…pretty slick. That might actually sort of give people pause. But, uh, we knew that was going to be a tough sell all the way to the end.
AM: Nobody I knew believed it.
Part Two will be posted either Tomorrow of Friday.
Ronald D Moore: Okay welcome to a very special podcast. This is not the official podcast; there will be another one that I will narrate through the course of the episode. I’m doing this one in Barkley, California with a group of friends at a frak party. Say hello everybody.
Everybody: HElllooo!
RDM: We’re at the home of—
Terry Moore: Madeline and Scott.
RDM: Madeline and Scott. Thank you very much for hosting this. And essentially we’re going to record Act Four here of the season finale, Crossroads Part 2 and you’ll hear the show and their reaction live on this podcast and then immediately thereafter we’ll just start talking about the episodes.
TM: It’s the fans’ voice.
RDM: It’s the voice of the fans. So we’ll pause right here. *beep*Okay there we go.
AM: I occasionally torrent it. You didn’t hear that.
TM: That’s okay, we know.
*Dresden Files Commercial*
*Act Four plays*
AM: Oh…
*laughter*
AM: He’s been kidnapped by women, this is like his wet dream.
*whispers*
AM: Those are the five remaining cylons…
AM: The final five.
AM: Whoa what?
*reaction to “All Along the Watchtower Lyrics”*
AM: Ahhh.
AM: What?
AM: Ahhh
AM: They’re doing the whole song.
AM: It’s on.
*intro plays*
*reactions to Tigh’s entrance*
*laughter*
*silence at Cylon reveal*
AM: (at Tyrol) Bet you wish you’d stood up for Boomer now!
*reactions to Tigh’s speech*
*rest of act four*
*muttering unintelligible due to song*
*scream at the appearance of Kara’s viper*
AM: Woot!
AM: Yaaay!
*applause*
AM: I knew she wasn’t dead!
AM: That was righteous!
RDM: And that’s the show boys and girls.
AM: Awesome!
*unintelligible comments something about season*
RDM: That’s bullshit. There’s nothing really coming up. Okay so,
AM: To be honest with you, I like that a lot better than the end of season two.
RDM: Really? Why
AM: It shows hope, it shows Kara’s final…what her destiny really is. So it’s kinda like the two bookends. And now like how you’re saying in all your podcast about act three now, per se. So that’s why I actually like this a lot better.
RDM: Why didn’t you like the end of season two?
Random Male Pilot: No I did. I like the end of season two, but I’m saying I like this just even a lot better.
RDM: Really?
AM: Yeah, I also like what all the guys did for all the graphics, ‘cause it’s the season finale. So I really appreciate all the flying part ‘cause I’m a pilot myself so I really liked that part. Like how she came in and like surprised them and al that kind of stuff. It was really a good job.
AM: Well, the first two also seasons had been more and more bad news. Basically, an increasingly dire situations and it was something that we liked was the fact that on New Caprica basically seeing as the very last things , everything was worse than you could possibly imagine. I mean you could have done that again this time around but now we basically have no clue what’s going except there’s a lot going on and even we have our first hints of how Earth plays into the series. So, I think that’s a reason to like it so much. And even better just because it’s a completely different kind of cliffhanger.
RDM: Cool
AM: It’s not just the usual tragedy.
AM: I know this wasn’t entirely your choice but at the end of season two it felt that we were kinda cheated of that time seeing them develop on New Caprica. And this…there’s nothing that we’re cheated. We’re just waiting for going to happen. We don’t have to worry about what has already happened that we have to figure out.
AM: (I didn’t feel cheated)
AM: Last time you gambled with our perception of how character development…leaving a big gap but now, I think the biggest gap is how do you explain Tigh? He’s been there for so long.
RDM: That’s a good question isn’t it? I can only tell you…that when we, and some of this will be repeated on the other podcast so forgive the listeners at home. The idea for turning four of them into cylons was something I came up with in the room. We were talking about the season finale and the trial of Gaius Baltar and how it was going to end and we had various sort of things about the ending, you know the surprises in the trial and so on I had this sense of dissatisfaction. And I remember saying to the writers, I just wish…You know, I’ve had this recurring…thought of four of our characters walking into a room on Galactica, just drawn, just cutting to them walking into a room . And they all walk in and shut the doors and they look at each other and they say “Okay, we’re Cylons”. And it would just like click and it just suddenly happens and we reveal four people that we’ve known. And as we started talking about it well, who would those four be. We narrowed the parameters down kind of quickly. It was apparent that we didn’t want Eddie to be one; we didn’t want Adama that seemed like it robbed something from the show. So did Mary. And so when you took those two off, then it became, okay Lee…wasn’t sure what Lee gave you. We talked about Tyrol; well Tyrol seemed kind of natural. He had a certain affinity for the Cylons. He was in love with a Cylon. Something was happening to him on the algae planet where he was drawn towards the temple.
TM: He’s married…
RDM: He’s married to a human. There were various things that made sense for Tyrol. Anders seemed kind of interesting because he was drawn to Kara. Why had he survived in two resistances so far? If Kara had a special destiny where did Anders fit into that sort of pantheon? Tory was interesting because she was a wild card; we didn’t know anything about her but she had been in the show long enough to sort of justify it. And then it became, well, the real one would be Tigh. If Tigh was a Cylon, then that would be the scariest one of all because he’s the most human character. Tigh was the one, truthfully enough, that I wrestled with the most. Right up until the point where we were shooting it, I wasn’t sure and I just committed and said let’s go for it. Because Tigh…you were loosing something and gaining something. Loosing something, in that he is the most human of all the characters, other than Gaius Baltar in my opinion, because he’s the alcoholic, he’s so deeply flawed, he had killed his wife, he had lost his eye, he had suffered so tremendously and had such a human connection to Adama that if you turned him into Cylon you lost part of that. But at the same time, you gained this enormous thing because it was those very things that made it an amazing revelation.
TM: It is in a way where the season two questions…you know, but what about? How did this happen all along.
AM: I like that there was a person choice based on themselves versus where with Sharon her choice to conform or integrate had to do with her child. These are four people who had to look at each other and make a snap decision right then and there. Do we do what we’re programmed to do or do we do what we feel we should do considering we just woke up from being sleepers?
RDM: And that’s an important point. Because it was very important in the show to say that these four don’t know what this means. All they know at this moment is that like Tyrol said, a switch goes off and they have an innate knowledge that they are Cylons. And they don’t know what this means and they don’t know what their agenda is and they don’t know what they’re supposed to do and they have that moment to kind of figure out how their going to react to this knowledge that they just have. Tigh’s immediate reaction is I don’t care, I’m Saul Tigh and I’ll be that man until the day that I die. And Tyrol’s a little bit more lost and Anders is just angry and Tory isn’t quite sure which way she’s going to jump.
But to answer your question, we did talk in the writer’s room at length about the back stories of everybody and we do have a backstory that works for Saul Tigh and how this all works and laying out everything that we did. We angsted long and hard about making sure that this did all make sense, sort of, in the mythos of the show. And how it all makes a certain sense. I can tell you only that they are different Cylons from the other Cylons. And that we have kind of built that over the course of the third season that the final five were not like the significant seven, as we call them in house.
AM: Like one alien species versus another kind of thing?
RDM: Not…This is a frustrating conversation in a certain way because I have to preseAMe a lot of those storylines for season three (sic) and we’re working out those story lines. So I can only tell you that they are different and that those differences will be part of their journey of self-discovery and what it means to be a Cylon.
AM: There’s been a constantly growing ambiguity on the relation and difference between humans and Cylons and between recent and ancient history. So I’m glad to see that that’s still…I felt like this played that out and that we’re getting more from that.
AM: I’ve got to ask, why “All Along the Watchtower”?
RDM: Well, that’s a long story actually. “All Along the Watchtower” has been sort of a personal obsession of mine for a while now. When I was working on a show called “Roswell I had an episode that I wanted to do all about “All Along the Watchtower”. That all the aliens that were on Roswell had a significance to “All Along the Watchtower” and I wanted to bring in five or ten different people to do different versions of “All Along the Watchtower “for a plotline. It was a plotline that took place entirely in a music studio and that there was meaning within the song and blah blah blah. And at the end I wanted a cameo for Bob Dylan showing up and just saying “It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a song man”.
(laughter)
TM: Bob Dylan’s the last Cylon.
(laughter)
RDM: And then that sort of stuck with me. As early as season one I’ve wanted to use “All Along the Watchtower” playing on a jukebox in the background not in the familiar sort of Hendrix version but just sort of a Galactica version of Watchtower as a way of sort of saying to the audience that there is a tie between this show and our reality. That essentially, you’ve heard us say over and over again through the series that all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. And that there’s a sense of the cycle of time, that certain of these events are preordained and that there’s a cycle, truly a cycle.
If your remember in the episode “Flesh and Blood” from season one Leoben, the Cylon, is talking to Kara and he says that there is a cycle time and maybe next time through the cycle, I’ll be the interrogator and you’ll be the prisoner and that the story is the same but the players swap positions. And the idea that there was a song or verse that sort of transcended that cycle, that certain things repeated themselves. . I mean why do they wear ties? (train in the background)Why do they speak English? Why are there certain phrases…there are phrases from Shakespeare sprinkled throughout the series and there’s a certain idea that all these things repeat themselves in certain ways for certain reasons. And so, I wanted to use “All Along the Watchtower” as something that would sort of grab the audience and go, “well wait a minute, how the fuck can that be?” How could they possibly know what that is? Does it mean the show takes place in the distant future? Does it take place in the distant past and what are the connections in that? So it is a clue towards sort of the larger explanation of what Galactica says the cosmology is.
AM: So, will the Chief’s child run like a parallel frame that Sharon and Helo’s child is going to run?
RDM: It is different…Nicholas’s story is different from Hera’s story but closely related. But yes, Nicholas is also a half-hybrid child. A hybrid child rather.
AM: Of course we’re all dying to know, when they get to earth, what will they find? Will they find our world…?
RDM: Well, that’s an interesting question isn’t? Now on to the next question. I can’t give that away. Because ultimately, the show is about what they find when they get to Earth.
AM: A way to put that as a question actually, when did you start forming your idea, relative to the lifespan of the show, of what Earth would actually be in this?
RDM: A couple years ago. When I started the series, I didn’t really know what the end of the show was. But over the course of season one, I started to develop this idea of the cycle of time. And all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again, which is the first line of the Disney version of Peter Pan, as some of you may wonder. Sebastian Cabot comes on and says “Now all of this has happened before and all of this has happened again… will happen again but this time it happened in London and dudududududah.”
AM: You know, I thought it was really interesting that we saw North America and not Asia and Australia.
RDM: That’s because this show is about America (laughter). And if I showed you Africa, do you know how many members of the audience would not even recognize this planet. That is a completely ethnocentric…that is sad but it is what it does to do American television, boys and girls.
AM: I taught freshman history, I know exactly what you mean.
RDM: You know what I thought for a moment? For a while I thought, you know what? When we go to Earth in that final shot, we should not just see the tip of Africa, we should be upside down from the orientation that we normally see. And if you look at that you have no idea what you’re looking at. And I needed it to kind of like read immediately. Because it’s like less than two seconds on screen on the screen. You needed to know (snap) t hat’s earth and that’s the quickest way to tell our folks here in North America where we are.
AM: You said that the four of the final five wake up and they don’t know what their agenda is, they don’t know what’s going on. How much of that have you already broken?
RDM: At this moment as we speak, we’ve broken quite a bit of it. Because the writers have been in the writer’s room for awhile, for several weeks and we’ve talked at length about what is the course of the fourth season. Where are we going ultimately? What is the series about? What’s the end of the show?
AM: How much did you break while you were writing this episode?
RDM: Well, this episode went through quite a transition. It was all about the trial of Gaius Baltar then as I said, I was in the room and we were breaking the show and it became about the trial of Gaius Baltar and the reveal of the final four. When it got to draft…draft teleplay, it was a lot like this but there was a whole other story that had to do with the Sagitarons a long plotline that we had developed over the course of the sec-third season. It had to do with the Sagittarauns colony and their people and actually Baltar was involved in a massacre on New Caprica involving the Sagittarauns. A long intricate thing and it just wasn’t working. In some episodes, more than others, I take a pass at the final draft myself and on this one, on the finale I took a pass at it and as I was writing it I just said the Sagittaraun thing doesn’t work and I just tossed it. Which meant that we had to go back and re-edit earlier episodes and reshoot some things to edit all of that out. And I just winnowed it down to closer what this was. The things that were added in my pass at the very end were things like Laura getting cancer. Watchtower was in it, but I actually I think in Michael Taylor’s draft of Crossroads part one, in the teaser Michael was actually intercutting them at Woodstock, (laughter) listening to “All Along the Watchtower”. Which was not something that we broke, it was completely insane and I loved it when I read it. Because as a showrunner, I’m one of those guys that loves it when my writers come back and give me something that surprises me in the read. And as I was reading it, it was like “Cut to close on Tigh, sitting in the grass and pull back and he’s at Woodstock”. And I was like “That’s so fucking great, but I don’t know what it means”. Okay, I tossed it out because it was unproducable and I didn’t know how to make sense of it. But there were various sort of riffs along the way. The teaser of this episode was not the teaser originally. Crossroads part one actually ended at the point where Laura said “I have cancer”. That was the out of part one and everything that was in act four of part one was actually the beginning of part two. But both episodes were really long. Part two was twenty minutes over and part one was ten minutes over and we had a lot of footage to have to play around with and figure out and I opted to just pull up more of Crossroads part two and play that more strongly into part one to sort of save more of the material for the episode.
AM: Can you talk about some of the things that you had to cut from these last two hours?
RDM: There was more of Tory and Anders and fleshing out them sort of like eyeing each other and starting to get it on. There was more of Tigh going slowly mad. There was much more of the trial. The Gaeta thing went on a little bit longer. Every body had longer pieces on the stand. Gaeta’s went on quite a bit more. So did Laura’s. So did Tigh’s. Umm, what else? A lot of it was sort of trimming within scenes. A lot of the scenes were just significantly longer than they are on camera. In terms of actual plots and scenes, I can’t remember too much else that was actually cut that didn’t suAMive in some form. The final walk with all four of them walking towards that room went on quite a bit longer. There was actually a lot more of them at battlestations and getting ready to go. In early drafts, there were scenes of Adama and the other judges at the Tribunal deliberating.
TM: There was more Gaius Baltar after the trial.
RDM: There was more…Oh yeah that’s right. There was much more Gaius Baltar after the trial. He walks down the corridor. At one point he was chased. There were like men that were at the trial, you saw them in the audience, that were actually coming at him and pulled out knives and were actually trying to kill him. And that’s who he was running away from when he was saved by the woman and the little Manson-like cult that sort of gets around.
AM: Did you cut any scenes of the four judges deliberating?
RDM: Not that were shot. There were scenes that were written but were cut as we went through the preproduction process that we dealt with the judges a bit more. But ultimately it felt like it was more dramatic to not know what the verdict was or not know what any of the positions were and just come in cold on the judges…on the tribunal.
AM: Are you going to reveal who the fifth final…?
RDM: We are going to reveal who the fifth final Cylon is. Probably next season.
AM: Okay cool.
AM: Congratulations on getting twenty-two episodes.
RDM: We have twenty-two.
AM: Can we start placing bets on it?
RDM: Yes you can start a pool. You can start a pool on who’s the fifth Cylon is.
TM: Because you don’t know.
RDM: I do know. I do know actually.
TM: You do know?
RDM: I do know who the fifth Cylon is.
TM: Last time I asked him, he said he didn’t know.
AM: He’s keeping it from you!
RDM: I didn’t know then, but now I do.
AM: Someone we’ve seen or not seen.
RDM: I can’t tell you.
AM: How did the actors respond to the Bob Dylan lyrics?
RDM: They just wanted to know what it all meant. They were sort of like “Okay. And I really have to sing this?” Yeah, you have to kind of at least say it or hum it or you know sort of get to the place where. It was interesting, as we were going through the draft, the question was how soon would the audience pick up on the lyrics? And what’s the most recognizable lyric of all? And actually, it’s seeded in very early. There are lines, you know, about there’s too much confusion, there must be some kind of way out of here is seeded pretty early in the show. And it takes a while for sort of the build up where you start to sort of get to well, okay, how many of those lyrics add up to “All Along the Watchtower” that you finally start figuring it out.
AM: I caught it the first time but I’ve actually performed the song, so…
RDM: When did you twig to it?
AM: The first…of “there must be some way out of here". The way he delivered the line.
RDM: Really?
(chorus) Yeah.
RDM: You said “All Along the Watchtower”?
AM: I almost said…Under my breath I was going, “Said the Joker to the thief” then I was like no, no way.
RDM: Really?
(murmurs of agreement)
RDM: Oh, did you?
AM: Yeah, there were murmurs around the room the first time around.
RDM: That’s interesting. It was a question. Okay, If we bury, just bury it in dialogue how long until…? What’s the most recognizable line? Just the line you recognize?
AM: Joker to the thief!
RDM: Joker to the thief you can’t say. You just can’t. So we never quite say it.
AM: It gives it away.
RDM: It totally gives it away.
AM: I think it was the delivery that made it kind of clear…
AM: The delivery…he said it in the exact same rhythm. (singsong) There must be someway out of here.
AM: And that they’re crazy.
AM: Yes the crazy always helps.
AM: (train noises) So the actors who are Cylons, what was their reactions to finding out that they were Cylons?
RDM: Well, that’s an interesting question. We kind of called them up individually. And said that…and we went through great lengths to sort of hide all of this. In fact, we published fake pages for the end of the show, which we’ve never done. We published a whole alternate ending to the show that didn’t reveal them as Cylons but sort of made sense. I think that the idea was in the fake pages, the music really was some sort of Techno thing that was related to the power surge on Galactica and they were all kind of…there was some danger to the ship that had some sort of very Star Trek kind of techno Sci-fi problem in the end. And we called those four individual actors separately and said okay, here’s the plan and this is what we’re going to do. And they were all a bit shocked. Aaron was the one that actually ahead of time was saying “I just don’t want to be a Cylon” (laughter and awwwws). Aaron was very “You know, as long as I’m not a Cylon, that’s all I care about”. And I was like okay, guess what Aaron, you are a Cylon and you’re just have to lump it. And we talked him through it. And he was okay. Aaron was most concerned about whether we were going to loose his individuality as a character. In that, you now, the role of Tyrol was very much the common man, you know the blue collar guy, the guy down in the hanger deck and was he going to become an arch-villain. He didn’t want to suddenly transform into a different person. I said, well no that’s not really the idea. The idea is that you don’t really know what your agenda is. You just suddenly know you’re a Cylon that’s all you know. And he was cool with that once I said so. And Tigh, you know Michael Hogan, was (imitating Michael) “Hello, Really? (laughter) How’s that going to work?” And Tory was just very happy and Anders was very happy. They all went for it.
The biggest stir was about Katee. You know about Kara’s return to the show at the very end. That took a whole long, difficult…Because when Katee…we called Katee before we published Maelstrom episode sixteen where she died. And we called her up and said “Okay, we’re about to put out a script where you’re dead. But you’re not really dead and this is the plan. We’re going to take you out of the next four episodes and we’re going to take you out of the main credit title but we’re going to bring you back at the end and this is how it’s going to work and dudududah. And she was “Oh, this is so cool! Well what do we do?” I said well we’re going to try to hold this as close as we can. We’re going to try to be very tight with this information so don’t tell anybody. We’re going to pretend that you’re really dead on the show cause that’s the only way this is going to work.
AM: Actors too thought she was dead.
RDM: Actors too…well that’s what happened. Then the script was published and the crew and cast just flipped out. They were very upset. They were…
TM: Eddie was…
RDM: Eddie was very emotional. They were almost in a state of mutiny that we were killing off Starbuck. And it was very touching. They were very connected to her. But it got so bad that I got a call from the studio early one morning say okay, we hear that the set is in a real tumult up there and that they’re really upset about this and you’ve got to do something about this. And David and I said “Oh really? Oh shit.” And so we called up and heard “Oh yeah, everyone’s really pissed at you. You better not come up here for a while because they’re really angry that you killed Starbuck.” We’re like “Oh God”. So we called Eddie and Mary and we explained ourselves and said okay this is what we’re doing and this is why. And they were relieved…they were angry and then they were relieved and then they were okay. And they sort of got off on it. They were like “This is going to be so cool!” And Katee hadn’t told them and what Eddie told me was that they were all planning to take Katee out to a farewell dinner that night (laughter). And he was going to play it for all it was worth. And take her out to dinner and be crying about her leaving the show and then say (craggy voice) “And we know that you’re coming back!” and just do some horrible practical joke on Katee, so…
AM: Well I guess if you think of it like one of your co-workers has been fired. Because that’s what it’s like.
TM: And they’re a family…
RDM: And they are very much a family.
TM: They are very much a family.
RDM: And so when we shot the scenes of the Cylons being revealed and the scenes of Kara coming back it was…it was a closed set and it was after the wrap party and it was completely like after the show had wrapped. And we shot these scenes separately with just our key people who we trusted and said you know this is what’s really going on and we brought them on. And we kept the secret pretty well until just a couple of weeks ago when we sent out press screeners. Because we had to send out press screeners to get…because that’s the balance you have to do, secrecy versus getting favorable press. And as soon as we sent out the press screeners, somebody got a hold of one and put everything out on the internet, so blew all the secrets…for some people like you know, a couple a weeks before we actually broadcast.
AM: I’ve got to say that I did not believe for a moment that she was gone forever.
RDM: Well that was the…I knew it would be a tough thing. I mean we took her out of the main title credit which I thought was pretty…pretty slick. That might actually sort of give people pause. But, uh, we knew that was going to be a tough sell all the way to the end.
AM: Nobody I knew believed it.
Part Two will be posted either Tomorrow of Friday.
transcript
(Anonymous) 2007-04-11 04:50 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
no subject
(Small thing: There are one or two places where it says things like "suAMived" instead of "survived", probably a find/replace typo. Just thought you should know if you wanted to fix it.)
Thanks again!
no subject