Battlestar Galactica Podcast: Two Must-Listen Installments
If you’re a super-duper-dork fan of Battlestar Galactica, you no doubt know about the podcasts where show creator Ronald D. Moore drinks scotch, smokes pot (well, once) and pontificates on each episode, usually in fascinating detail. This season’s podcasts have been spotty, but he just posted two new ones covering the last two shows of 2008, and they are two of the best I’ve heard.
While it’s always great to hear Moore, this time he invited in the episodes’ writers: Jane Espenson for 4.11 “Hub,” and for the finale, 4.12 “Revelations,” the writers David Wettle and Bradley Thompson.
Here are some minor revelations from 4.11, all spoilers, but none really dealbreakers:
- It sounds like Billy is not the final Cylon. They refer to wanting to bring him back one last time for the season, and while it didn’t happen, that implies they weren’t planning anything bigger for him.
- That Model Eight who was flirting with Helo in 4.11? She’s not coming back.
- … But it sounds like Boomer is.
- When Lucy Lawless agreed to reprise her role as D’Anna, the Model Three, she only did it on the condition that she come back to life totally unredeemed and just as duplicitous as before. So don’t expect her to get warm and fuzzy anytime soon.
But the best moment comes in the podcast for 4.12. One of the writers (I think it’s Wettle, but forgive me if I got it wrong) talks about the scene where Adama, who’s just found out that Tigh – his best friend and the other half of the most reliable relationship in his life – is a Cylon. In the episode, Adama completely breaks down, as his son, Lee, struggles to help him. Wettle (or Thompson) explains the inspiration for this:
This to be is very much about my dad … . My father was a soldier, and he was like John Wayne when I was a kid. And when he was dying of cancer, I took him down to the ocean, and a three-foot wave knocked him down, and I couldn’t get him up. I couldn’t get him on his feet. And he was fine with it. But I was like, “Get up dad! Get up!” I couldn’t take it. So this scene is incredibly personal to me.
He did that memory justice.
