Battlestar Galactica: Season 2-07: Home Part 2

Here's this week's excerpts from the podcast. David Eick commentary is indicated with DE.



During the Hercules and Xena days, Rob Tapert used to say women on horseback was the cheapest special effect. The second cheapest special effect is rain. Rain looks great on film, it adds a whole dimension to the scene, you're pulled into the drama in a different way, because there's this inherent desperation to everything, because everyone's wet and trying to survive, so I'm thrilled we kept it. (DE)

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There's a tremendous amount of information actually about the Cylons, what they know, what the mythos is in the show that comes out in these two episodes. And a lot of it are things that we've talked about for a couple of years and just never really brought out. This was a really good opportunity to do that.

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This Baltar/Six plot, it was a late developer in the script -- that shot's right out of Scandal, which I love. This whole storyline with Six telling Baltar that he's actually just crazy is something that I think dates back to season one. We were in love with this idea that at some point, Six would change the game, and tell Baltar, "You know what? Just kidding. You're nuts. There's no chip in your head, you moron, you're just having a psychotic break." And it was a really delicious idea and I always wanted to play it, and for some reason it went in and out of a couple of storylines, and then we kind of forgot about it. And then we were working on this script and had to flesh this out into a full-blown episode on its own. And then the question came, what is Baltar doing during all this? ... I love that he just goes off in such a typical Baltar rant there, James off doing his thing, and then suddenly she's laughing. And this is really closer to how Tricia actually looks. Trish wears her hair in a ponytail quite often and wears sweats, and this is kind of who she is. It's kind of fun to just suddenly change the character so completely, and he would be so taken off stride by just how natural she is, and that she seems perfectly genuine that she's telling him that he's just crazy... The look on James' face. He conveys fear so well.

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This scene was one of the few times that we've actually run up against broadcast standards and practices and they slapped us back down. We argued to no avail. The original line that Tyrol has coming up here is, "Topography is for pussies." And then I added in the beat later where Adama says, "And Adar was a prick." And they wouldn't let us say either one. I actually called broadcast standards and made some whole eloquent pitch about, "Well, it's context." He's not calling someone a pussy. It's not used as an epithet. It's really just sort of a general statement of life. And then Adar is a prick is a joke. It's not harsh, it's not demeaning. And they just kind of went, oh that's really interesting, no you can't say it. It's just really annoying, and it's so arbirary. And it's cable so it's like they really do just make up their own rules. There's no FCC, it's just whatever.

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This is a high pressure air blaster I was very adamant about us using all throughout prep. I was being told it was impossible because it could cause an embolism. It's blowing so hard into your flesh that it can cause an air bubble and kill you. But I had to have it, and I felt the actors had lived very rich lives. If something were to go wrong, they would die with their boots on. I'd seen it in a James Bond movie the first time called Moonraker, in which Roger Moore is in a contraption that's simluating the G-forces you pull in outer space. I didn't know how they did it until we had our prep meeting here. I said, in Moonraker how does Roger Moore's cheek ripple. Our special effects guys said it's a high pressure blaster, they're dangerous. And I said, how dangerous? Define dangerous. (DE)

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In early drafts of this, I really didn't have Adama reacting to Sharon. Eddie was talking about this scene he was shooting in Episode 205 where Adama weeps at the corpse of Sharon ("Why?"). He had just got through shooting that, we're on the set, and he said to me, "I love doing that scene, because now I know, if I ever saw that character again, I wouldn't stop at anything until she was dead." And I was sitting with my draft of this episode which had him showing up at this location and sort of dismissing her presence. So this scene came into being... [and I said], "Yeah, you're right. He wouldn't stop at anything until killing her. I'll be right back." (DE)

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"And you ask why?" What does that mean? It's an interesting creepy moment. It's a legitimate question. How did she know that? I don't know. Write it in... [Re: Eddie's saying, "they're stronger than we are."] I did like that. When you read it in the script, it made perfect sense.

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The ultimate moment which has since been cut was Eddie saying they're stronger than we are. It struck a chord of confusion that I didn't really ever see, and it was actually a network note that I thought was valid, which was that, does that mean she just gave him the heart attack? Is he referring to her in a literal sense, being stronger than him, or in a greater sense? Had it been covered a little differently, I think it would have resonated but we were so limited by the coverage that we had for good reason.

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Adama's the one who doesn't want to navel gaze. What's past is past. He owes his life to Laura, which I think is an interesting and unacknowledged truth in the show. That Laura saved all of them back in the miniseries... What I like too about that scene about the two of them, is it's the first time that they use each other's first name. He calls her Laura, she calls him Bill. It's the first time they ever did that.

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There used to be a Cylon attack after this whole thing with Sharon went down. The centurions came and attacked during the upcoming planetarium sequence. And we eventually cut that... We changed this very moment right here, where Adama gets the gun. It was a late change in the editing room. Originally he took that gun and put it to Sharon's head. And we were playing the beat of will he shoot Sharon or not. And then we just made that lift within the last week, so it plays out more emotionally here, instead of putting another gun to another person's head.

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A lot of struggle too with Zarek and his responsibility for what happened. Eventually the way this all works, it feels like essentially that because Meier did it, went for this assassination attempt, even though Zarek had told him not to, you kind of feel like you can let Zarek off the hook now. It's sort of why they don't slap the cuffs on Zarek and throw him in jail. The characters don't know of anything that happened or why, but we the audience know that Zarek did try to stop it and then it didn't work.

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This notion of the constellations is something that I came up with. I wanted to connect it to our present day mythology of the zodiac. The show is replete with symbols and references to zodiacal things. Somehow, these names for these Colonies are not random, there is a connection, and here's the connection. That these people of the thirteenth tribe looked up into the sky and made up these constellations and assigned them to their brethren, the lost tribes.

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Sagittarian has this prominent arrow and there was this whole mythological story which goes along with his father and why the arrow was bestowed upon him. So it seemed like, well, if the arrow is the thing, then if you put it back in Sagittarius' bow, it is the trigger that gets you to the map of Earth. (DE)

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Now Jeff did do a fairly faithful interpretation of the end of the film Brubaker which I was watching here in my office a couple of days before we shot this. It's a direct lift, there's no shame about it. I wanted there to be a sense of a polite applause... Michael Rymer saw this yesterday and he said, "Isn't that kind of the same scene as the [end of the] miniseries?" Yeah, kind of. But what I liked about it in the movie Brubaker and what I like about it now, is it speaks to a sense of tradition or ritual. That to demonstrate respect you would clap in unison. And I don't really know why that would be and I don't know that it requires explnation, but it seems to work. In Brubaker it was Yaphet Kotto's praise for Robert Redford, now it's Eddie Olmos' praise for Mary McDonnell. (DE)

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