Ron Moore Blog/February 19, 2005

This entry of the Ron Moore Blog was published on 19 February 2005. It was titled Season Two and Q & A".
==Transcript==
So it's official: we're doing a second season.
To say that this is happy news is to indulge in a display of understatement. The road to television success is a long one, littered with various hurdles, all of which must be vaulted: the studio pitch session, the network pitch, the story outline, the first draft script, the second draft script, the green-light to produce the pilot, casting the pilot, making the pilot, ordering the series, producing the series, getting the reviews, getting an audience, and then.... getting a second season. We've managed to clear that hurdle and it feels frakking good.
We've been working on the first six episodes for a couple of months now and we're gearing up to prep them for filming, probably in late March. Season Two will be heavily influenced by the end of Season One, so it's hard to get into anything remotely specific until the last episode has aired in the US. I could say... well... er... not much. Let's just get to the questions and answers.
"Will we ever get any more of the back story to the Cylon Wars?, ie What started them and how did the Colonists drive them away."
We will see more of this backstory as the series unfolds. Some of the inter-war period will be explored in the first few episodes of Season 2. Other tales of the first Cylon Wars will be filled in eventually.
"Appart from the fleet is there any chance that there are other survivers. Clearly Colonial One would not have gotten to every ship that was in transit and those that had FTL could have escaped as well."
We are talking about shows that deal with other survivors right now. Don't ask about the Pegasus -- I haven't made up my mind yet.
"Will we see any of the origonal cast appart from Richard Hatch. "
It's possible, but not yet on the board.
"Why "frack"? Where did the idea come from to make this the new F-word? Not that I don't like it, I find it amusing."
It's straight out of the original series. I dropped many other terms from the old show like "centon" (a unit of measurement) and "yahren" (year) because I felt they distracted from the mood I was trying to create and they sounded a bit silly to my ear. There was something elegantly lovely about "frak," however. There's nothing like being able to say my favorite four letter word on TV over and over again and I salute Glen Larson for giving the joys of frakking up, frakking off, not giving a frak, and frakking-A to the masses.
"I love the smoking doctor! Does he have a name? Isn't sickbay a little small considering the size of Galactica?"
I love the doctor too. The character's name is Major Cottle and I think we're only seeing one part of one Sickbay on the ship. It's worth keeping in mind that while Galactica is an enormous ship and was built to be manned by a very large crew, that she had only a skeleton complement on board at the time of the Cylon attack. That explains in large part why we see so few officers and why people like Kara are pressed into service in roles other than their primary one. There are probably several (unused) Pilot Ready Rooms aboard Galactica and possibly other Sickbay facilities as well. Dr. Cottle is our only physician onboard, but if she were fully staffed, Galactica would probably have a large medical staff and would have a sizable hospital facility.
"Why does the doctor smoke?"
Because smoking is cool. Don't let anyone tell you different, kid.
Seriously, we're showing people doing what people really do and not all of their choices are smart ones. We smoke, we drink, we have sex with the wrong partners -- we make lots of bad choices and some of them we do knowingly and in full cognizance of the risks and consequences. Dr. Cottle obviously knows the risks associated with smoking and he elects to do it anyway -- that's his choice.
I'm also frankly tired of all the anti-smoking p.c. crap that we're bombarded with these days and I decided that this was a world without all that. Call it my one sop to the idea of an idealized society, the notion that adults can make informed choices and not be nagged to death or run out of public spaces for making choices that others may not like or agree with.
"What is the rank structure? It doesn't seem consistant with the Navy."
The rank structure is derived from the original series. I didn't want to change Commander Adama to Captain Adama or Colonel Tigh to Commander Tigh, so I elected to simply embrace the co-mingled nature of the original rank structure. For our internal purposes, we've decided that the ranks are indeed a mixture of naval and army nomenclature and are basically as follows:
Officers --
Admiral
Commander
Colonel
Major
Captain
Lieutenant
Lieutenant (junior grade)
Ensign
Enlisted --
Master Chief Petty Officer
Chief Petty Officer
Petty Officer (1st, 2nd Class)
Specialist
Deck Hand
Recruit
Just to complicate matters further, there are also Marines aboard Galactica which conform more closely to the traditional enlisted Marine ranks, with Sergeants, Sergeant-Majors, etc. Unresolved is the question of whether the Marine officers would also adhere to the mixed rank structure (which sounds odd) or if they are strictly army equivalents (which makes no sense given that the "Navy" ranks seem oblivious to there being any such distinction). Aren't you glad you asked?
"Please do something about the consumables questions; fuel, food, ammo, clothing etc., where is this stuff coming from?"
Water is addressed in... uh, "Water." Fuel is addressed in "Hand of God". Other consumables will be addressed in the second season.
" Will we see the mess hall and other part of the ship such as the main Kitchen where all the meals are prepared."
I'd like to. It's a question of budget; there has to be a story point or scene so cool that we just have to build this set. The Head (bathroom to you lubbers) was built in the pilot specifically so we'd have it around during the series.
"was this the first show to ever show a Bathroom on a space ship?"
It's ground-breaking TV, baby. Talk about reinventing the genre.
" Please show more of the blue collar guys keeping everything in check on the other ships. Guys that would have clocked out and gone home had the holocaust not happened. Not really a question sorry."
We have plans for this in the second season. Cally, for instance, never planned to stay in the service and her enlistment was nearly up at the time of the attack.
"Minor question: was Galactica ever re-commissioned? As I recall, the ship was decommissioned right before the Cylon attack. It'd be nice to show the ceremony if they ever get a free moment. "
It's an interesting point. Might be something to play at some point, but more really as an "Oh, I haven't thought about it, but..." kind of thing.
"Major question: it looks like discipline hasn't really improved on the ship in the first few episodes. In some ways, it's getting worse. Adama didn't help matters at all in "Litmus" when he essentially declared himself to be above the law. "
Security and discipline are definitely problems on Galactica and they're not going away. The ship was far from the best of the best at the time of its retirement and the people on board weren't either. The discipline was lax and many procedures had been allowed to fall by the wayside. Now, this ship and its crew are forced to operate far above what they considered to be the norm and it's not an easy transition for any of them.
This was a deliberate creative choice. It's one thing for the finest ship, with the finest crew to deal with the end of the world and a long flight from a relentless enemy, it's quite another when you were just a bunch of people trying to get by. I find it a more challenging and interesting environment to tell stories in and I find these people more heroic in their actions just by the nature of the obstacles they have to overcome in their day to day existence.
"The question I would really like to see addressed is how to reconcile the underlying quest of Battlestar Galactica with actual scientific plausiability. The quest of Battlestar Galactica is to find Earth, the 13th Colony. However, it is a basic and well-substantiated tenet of science that human life here on Earth evolved slowly from a primate ancestor. Attempts to deny evolution based on the notion that human kind deserves a far more worthy origin than what evolution details, are a diservice to the pursuit of scientific truth and endeavors in our own world. There was always that reactionary sense to the original series, which drove it away from a secure standing as *science* fiction. How will the new series avoid this pitfall?"
I don't have a direct answer for this question yet. There are a couple of notions rolling around in my head as to how we reconcile the very real fact of evolution with the Galactica mythos, but I haven't decided which approach to take. However, it was a fundamental element of the orginal Galactica mythos that "Life here began out there..." and I decided early on that it was crucial to maintain it.
"My boss at my place of employment has a father named John C. Agathon who was the radar navigator of a B-24 Liberator bomber that was shot down in WWII. He spent some time running from the nazi's and hiding in farm houses until he finally managed to make his way to friendly territory. Oh and I double-checked with my boss and his father DID sustain a leg injury related to the crash.
It could just be a coincidence, but it's one hell of a coincidence. "
It is one hell of a coincidence.
"Its highly unlikley that episodes 1 thru 13 were filmed in chronological order. Can you tell us in which order they were filmed in. This might give the veiwers a little more insight as to how the cast bonded over the shooting schedule as well as explain how some preformances might be rigid in certain episodes and become more flushed out in others."
Actually, the episodes were all filmed chronologically. You're probably confusing the production order with how individual episodes are filmed, which is not chronological. Scenes within an episode are often filmed out of sequence for efficiency, i.e. shooting all the CIC scenes, then all the Hangar Deck scenes, then all the Colonial One scenes, etc.
"How did you come to decide upon Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell for their roles? This kind of project seems somewhat out of their typical genre - did either have second thoughts about taking on the project?"
Eddie and Mary were actually the archetypes for the characters when we were developing the series. David Eick and I used to sit around and talk about what kind of actors would play Adama and Laura and we always talked about these two Oscar level actors as our dream duo for the series, but we never really thought we'd get them. They've told the story themselves of why they decided to do the project, but in essence, they really responded to the pilot script and saw a lot of potential in the characters so they went for it, to our everlasting gratitude.
==Sources==
Category:Ron Moore Blog