Podcast:A Disquiet Follows My Soul

TEASER

Hello and welcome to the podcast. This is Ronald D. Moore, creator and executive producer of the new Battlestar Galactica. I'm here to welcome you to the podcast for episode fourteen, as we do the numbering, here in the fourth season: 'A Disquiet Follows My Soul'. I am joined in the broadcast periodically by the lovely and talented -

Terri - not really

Mrs. Ron

Terri - Sort of.

Terri Moore.

Terri - I'm not sure you're supposed to call me that any more.

Mrs. Ron?

Terri - There's been some discussion about that, some sort of buy-in into misogyny.

Well, we don't like change here at the podcast, so we're just gonna keep doing things...

Terri - We don't like change, period, do we, Ron?

Nope. This episode is -

Terri - Wait. I have to do a disclaimer. First of all the cats are here. We're in the chairs in our kitchen and they're really, really squeaky. Oh, and my dry, unproductive cough turns out to be asthma? So I really, really apologise to everybody in advance for coughing, and I do not berate Ron for smoking, I just don't allow him to -

Even though I'm not smoking right now.

Terri - I don't allow him to do it in our bedroom. I mean, you know, it's like no big deal. Alright, that's it, that's all I have to say.

The smoking lamp is not lit out of deference.

Terri - Yeah, 'cause I have asthma.

And there is actually no scotch this time out. Actually, the change I've pitched tonight is that we are drinking gin and tonic.

Terri - 'cause that's Mrs. Ron's drink.

Mrs' Ron's drink.

Terri - but only with Aviation gin? If you have not had Aviation gin it is really -

It's mighty fine.

Terri - a superior gin.

I expect that commercial to get me a case of Aviation...

Terri - So at the conventions when you guys run up and give Ron bottles of scotch you can instead give him bottles of Aviation 'cause we already have too much scotch, but not enough Aviation.

OK. Into the episode - 'A Disquiet Follows My Soul'. Here in this opening sequence - this is Adama's daily routine and this is the first time I directed an episode, obviously, and I wrote and directed this and I sort of cut the suit to fit as they say in that I wrote the episode specifically knowing that I was going to write it - that I was going to direct it and so I was able to sort of, you know, put it within certain parameters so that I had scenes that I wanted to shoot, things that I thought I could tackle and things that I was interested in. This particular moment that's on camera right then with Adama pulling off the book from the shelf and reading the line of poetry, which is actually from Emily Dickinson, was actually a bit of serendipity. It happened impromptu on the set. We were shooting the sequence of Adama's day and all the little pieces of him starting his day and Eddie - I had written that, as part of his daily routine before he went off to work, he would usually pluck a book from the shelf and read something to himself, and he would pick a book at random and that was just part of how he started his day, and it sort of hearkens to something I used to do when I was working at 'Roswell'. For a while I used to have my assistant print out a poem and leave it on my desk every morning and then I would read this bit of verse every morning.

Terri - I never knew that. Do you like Emily Dickinson?

I do like Emily Dickinson -

Terri - So long as it isn't Bukowski.

But what I was going to say is it was completely random that there was a book of Emily Dickinson poetry on his shelf. It was even more random that Eddie pulled it off and read the particular lines that he reads that have resonance with the show. It was just something he did and he read it out loud and as we heard the lines it just fit so perfectly with the show that I kept it in the cut and really liked it.

The opening sequence in my mind was always supposed to sort of give a little bit of insight into how Adama began his day on the Galactica, every day, and to sort of get a sense of the routine that everyone after the revelations had happened in 'Sometimes A Great Notion' about Earth and the Final Five and all that that people were trying to go back to their daily lives and Adama had this great burden and he too had a daily routine that he was trying to get back into.

This sequence in sick bay - I liked shooting this a lot. This was the first time I worked with all of these actors in this capacity and I found them all charming and wonderful and they were very funny people to work with.

Terri - they were all so fantastic and supportive and excited to be working with Ron.

They were all really great. I mean they really helped out, they really were supportive, they really wanted me to succeed.

As I approached directing this scene and all the scenes, I walked the sets on my own and carried with me a little diagram of all the stages and the sets and laid out camera positions and sort of roughed in some blocking and where I thought people would move from A to B.

Terri - Because he was a little nervous about the process. Just a little.

Because I was a little nervous and I wanted to be prepared and Steve McNutt, our D.P., had suggested that I do that as an exercise - I found it very very useful. It was also interesting in that a lot of the blocking, a lot of the choreography, like in a sequence like this, was already in my head when I was writing the script. When I was writing the scenes in sick bay I wrote that we start on the screen and pan off of it and discover Cottle and the Six, Caprica Six, and Tigh and Ishay around the monitor, and in my head I sort of Panned with Ishay as she came over here, and I think it was McNutt's idea to do the curtain reveal - that was something he added into the blocking, and then sweep back and then Tyrol coming in and then that carrying Ishay back into the operating bay. So it was kind of easy to do the initial choreography on the sketchpad and then when it became time to actually shoot the episode I found it was really easier because I had the whole sequence in my head anyway.

This press conference in the original story was going to be a meeting with Adama and the Quorum but the intention was the same. It was still going to be a lot of people yelling at Adama, demanding answers about where they went from here and what they were going to do - was he really going to propose an alliance with the Cylons or not, but as I did the second - as I got into the teleplay I realised that it was better as a press conference. I didn't want to have a formal 'sit-down' where votes would be taken and that kind of thing. I just wanted them to be peppered with questions.

There is a change-up that came into this scene that was done on the set. As we had shot - we were shooting these two sequences in Colonial One and the beat with them asking about the Fifth Cylon was actually something that the actors questioned me about, because in the following scene we were blocking it with Zarek and Adama and Lee and the question came up about well who knows about the Final Five? Who knows that Ellen's the Fifth Cylon? And I said well you know and you know but you know that probably wouldn't come up and actually there was a line in the press conference where somebody asked about it and it was blown off and they kind of said, no there would be a much bigger reaction and they felt that there should be something in the press conference which kind of indicated that they knew but were keeping this secret, and I agreed and I said, you know what? You're absolutely right about that - let's work that in, and so then Jamie came up with the idea of him saying, she's the - she's dead and then them all seizing on that and then that sort of informing where he came into this scene.

This scene was shot at the - these Colonial One scenes was like on a Friday and it was all done at the end of the day, or this section was done at the end of the day; the press conference was done earlier, and here at the end of the day we got into this odd little thing where in the middle of a take Eddie changed the blocking on us, which is something that Eddie often does - he'll just feel something as an actor, like right here he chose to walk (you'll see he's walking forward to Zarek's desk) and confronts him directly, which is a great actor's instinct. It made it a much more personal moment but we had shot some of the - all the other coverage already and so that beat we were shooting Adama's coverage when he walked up and did this and I decided to keep it in in the cut and wanted to work with that but the problem became, the earlier takes he'd delivered those lines with Lee so you'll note that there's no Lee coverage there, with him, you know there's no Lee last look back at his dad or anything, and Zarek's coverage is all tied in with Adama and that's because Eddie changed the blocking and suddenly I was in deep conversations with the D.P. and the script supervisor as we were trying to figure out the angles and the lines and where everything was and which actor moved on which mark and it got very confusing but we managed to sort of muddle our way through it in the end.

Terri - You should talk about the - you know, yesterday was the auction. This last weekend was the auction.

Yeah yesterday was - this past weekend was the Battlestar Galactica auction and it was -

Terri - It was a very emotional -

Very emotional -

Terri - weekend around the Moore household.

There's the act break.

ACT ONE

Yeah the auction was very emotional because it was hard to see - at first I felt, when it was first proposed to me it was strange to have the idea of someone sifting through my attic [our Joe, nooch] and selling off all my childhood things, but as I thought more about it I realised that people would cherish them more and take care of them and they wouldn't just languish in a warehouse someplace and then I sort of embraced it.

This scene here, again. most of the blocking and choreography I sketched out in my little notepad. What I did like was - I think it was again Steve McNutt's suggestion, who really helped and guided me through a lot of this, of following Adama out of his bathroom and into the room and when I was editing it together I knew right away that I wanted to start with that 'cause I liked the idea of coming back to Adama and sort of getting back in sync with where he is in his routine, and he's taking his pain pills again and then you just hear the voices from the other room and then you just quickly follow him out into the main area. All this sort of blocking of the actors and how they line up, which is something I sort of had in my head and then, you know, I was - I felt like I didn't quite know what I was doing of how this would all lay out cinematically. I sort of saw the shots in my head a little bit but I didn't really trust it a lot and so I sort of sketched it out and then went to the set, you know, fully expecting that we would re-block it or the actors wouldn't feel comfortable or Steve would have different suggestions of where people should sit and stand and so on, but in truth we actually just kind of came in and blocked it this way and everyone kind of ran with it so it ended up sort of being cut this way in the show.

Terri - This is a lovely performance with Gaeta.

Yeah I like Gaeta.

Terri - He really does a fine job in the episode.

Yeah AJ, he really -

Terri - He really, you know, these last couple of episodes have been -

He doesn't overplay it. He just - it's nice -

Terri - No it's a really subtle performance.

It's nice to just see this growing thing coming along really slowly with AJ. Sort of, the simmering animosity starting to bubble a little bit to the surface.

Terri - He's a lovely person.

There was something, I mean it's really interesting when you're directing as opposed to when you're just a visitor on the set. When you're a visitor on the set, and as a writer/producer 'visitor' is kind of an appendage, you know, you're just sort of sitting there and you don't really have a job on the set except answer the periodic questions of people.

Terri - You're an appendage on the set? Really?

Yeah if people come and ask me a question that's one thing but if I visit the set as a writer/producer I'm just sort of taking up space.

Terri - You know, any crew who is listening to this show will be howling with laughter at the idea that you put yourself as an appendage on the set. That's just so absurd.

But - and as I was going to say, and as a result, time seems to pass very slowly. It's like, you know it takes a long time to shoot these things.

Terri - That's because time passes very slowly on the set anyway.

Yes, but when you're directing time passes rather quickly, and I actually found that sort of the days didn't seem especially long. They seemed quite containable and I, you know, it seemed like we were moving at a brisk pace to get through all these coverage. I mean, one of the things I had - was concerned about as someone who had never directed, I thought I'm gonna get really bored shooting all this coverage and these different close-ups and masters and angles. You know, it's sort of fun when you watch the scene play the first time but am I really going to want to sit and do this guy's coverage and this guy's close-up, and now do the reverse and this and that? And the truth is you find joy in all of it. There's like little things and little touches in all the performances that you keep coming back to.

Terri - I will never see my husband again.

Yes. This was interesting: shooting with the child, with this little kid playing Nicky. He's very young and of course he can't act, so you're really just trying to catch a moment of when he can be on the set - when he's not freaking out or when not unhappy or -

Terri - Which is why children should not be on-set.

And what happened was, we were shooting other scenes on this stage and around sick bay and we were kind of waiting for Nicky to kind of get into a good mood and suddenly his mom came in, real quick and sudden, and said "ok, he's in a really good mood now, let's go." And we all said, "ok - bring him in" and then suddenly the whole sound stage gets incredibly quiet - like silent, the silence you never hear on sound stage when it's not rolling -

Terri - It's because the crew knows they'll be here for the next seventeen thousand hours if they don't get this shot right.

And they rush in the child and they sit him on the bed and his parents are just off-camera and the actors just come into the marks and everyone's talking very slowly, and I'm not yelling "action", the first A.D. is just quietly saying "action", and then the camera's rolling and they do the scene and you do it a couple of times - you run it through at least as many times as you possibly can - and then he kind of, like, starts crying and then this scene's over.

Terri - Kerry was amazing.

Yeah, Kerry who plays Ishay was sitting there and keeping him amused and keeping him happy through all those takes, but you'll notice that he's not in a lot of the shots. It's really a tick. If you really broke this down -

Terri - He was off-screen crying.

He's off-screen quite a bit in this whole sequence.

Framing Cottle and Tyrol here was not something I thought of ahead of time. It was - I wasn't actually quite - I think that was a blank spot in my sort of blocking plans. I didn't really know where they should stand, and I think it was Donnelly Rhodes, who plays Cottle, wanted to walk over there. I think I had moved them to some other position and then he walked over there and it turned out that was a much better place because actually they're sort of backlit by the other lights in sick bay and it sort of presented this interesting little frame to put the two actors against.

It's worth mentioning this whole little subplot about Nicky's real father being discovered. It was something we decided in the Writers' Room because we said: "okay, what are we going to do with this?" You know, once we had decided that Tyrol was a Cylon that automatically meant that Nicky was another Cylon hybrid, and we had said very clearly on the show and in the mythology of the show, Hera was the only hybrid between human and Cylon, and I didn't want to change that. Hera's role in the firmament of the show was very firmly established in my mind and I had a specific place where I wanted it to go, and then suddenly we had this additional problem if Tyrol was a Cylon, so we did have some conversations in the Writers' Room at the end of Season Three when we decided to make Tyrol a Cylon. And the long and the short of it is, somebody just said, "well, what if he's not the father?" and we all kind of laughed and then said, "actually, that makes sense. He's not the father." And then it was like, "well who's the real father of Nicky?" and it became Hotdog.

Terri - And the Internet runs wild but there is no plan. It's all just fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, make-it-up-as-you-go-along.

There was no plan on that.

There's a missing scene right here, that will be on the longer version of this episode on the DVD, with Gaeta and Tigh confronting each other in the corridor right outside Adama's quarters.

But going back to Nicky, yeah - I mean, it's actually an example of how I run the show. I like the improvisational nature of what we do. It was very organic, you sort of -

Terri - He likes it.

I like it. You make it up as you go along, but the trick is not to just make up anything. The trick is to make up things and then figure out how they fit into the overall mosaic that you're painting. You know, you're looking at this canvas and you don't sit there and draw - sketch in the entire drawing, the -

Terri - Because any creative process has things that come up unexpectedly while you're doing it. If you're doing a painting things happen. I mean -

Yeah. And the trick is how - is figuring out how to fit them in, how to make it work in the piece, so you're painting on this canvas and you suddenly have an idea to put a cow over here and you didn't plan that when you started the painting.

Terri - Yeah, but it makes it better.

And then you say, "ok, that's great, I love the cow. But how does the cow fit into everything else?" And then you figure that out.

Terri - You don't put a cow into a cityscape.

Yeah, and you discover ways. And so we backtracked in and said "well, if Nicky - if Cally had actually had the child with somebody else, and Tyrol though he was the father," then suddenly that whole problem goes away, and it felt that it was logical and it felt - fit in with their relationship, which kind of came out of nowhere and they got married suddenly, and they got married off-camera in the missing year and so we had a tremendous amount of leeway for the exact machinations of how that would've worked out, and it became easy to say that Hotdog was the father. We did toy with other candidates. I think Figurski was the kind of guy I really wanted to do for a while, but cooler heads prevailed.

Terri - As usual.

End of the act.

ACT TWO

OK, and we're back.

Terri - I wanna know who got Mary's Chamalla pills at the auction. I wanted to bid on that. That was a lovely little item, but a little pricey for - well anyway...

This was the first day I got to work with Mary, which was really fun and a delight, and Mary had requested - the scene was just written that she was stretching in her quarters and she had requested that there be something up really high because she had this specific stretching exercise that she wanted to do. So I got that word about an hour before we were going to shoot this and McNutt and I walked over to the set and looked at it and thought about it and as we were moving furniture around I said, "well what if it's the wall, what if she could reach right up on the wall?" And he said, "oh yeah, I can make that work" and then I said, well, then I walked over and I thought, "well, ok if she's on the wall maybe I could come over here - " and then I - this is in the door, this camera position here is in the doorway to the quarters and I realised that I could have this nice shot with her against the wall and Adama sitting over there. And that's just kind of how you figured it out, and it was just sort of trying to figure out what would be nice compositionally.

I don't have a lot of background in film theory so I don't really think about it in terms of classic formalism of - you know, I know there's various ideas about triangles and, you know, things in the foreground and this and that, but I do it mostly by instinct and by just sort of what I like to see visually and so shots like this were sort of set up with - between Steve and I, and also what I found is that there's the camera operators, who are doing almost all of this hand-held, Galactica's a very hand-held show, our two camera operators are constantly sort of searching and finding interesting places to go. Like this shot was something I said, "ok I'm gonna come all - I want one master where we're gonna come all the way back, as far back as we can get in the quarters. I want to see the whole set and play it like that." But a lot of it is the actors just find - the camera operators just finding different little interesting things.

This piece of choreography is something that I stroked out - ok I wanted him to walk over here, and when he picks up the trash I use that into a transition into the pilot rec room and come back and discover Katee.

So I would say that to Steve and the crew and they would set up the lights and block it out and the actors would rehearse it, but then - I have two cameras working at this moment. And Steve said A camera is the director's camera. That's the way to think of it. He's going to do exactly what you tell him to do. That's your shot and set up everything around that. And then the B camera is sort of hunting for different things. The B camera might be dropping down, picking up the hands. The B camera's the one that you often see zooming up and getting those intense, tight, close shots on Adama's glasses, oftentimes in CIC. The B camera is usually finding really interesting angles in the moment and discovering things in performance, following dialogue in a way that you can't really plan out, and when we're cutting the show together the B camera is used a lot on this show. There's a tremendous amount of B camera work. I would that - I really had a huge appreciation for our camera team. I the camera team is a really interesting organism. I mean it really is an organism. All the moving parts and the way that they integrate with one another and - on the set and with the actors.

Terri - It's a dance.

It's a dance. They're dancing and they're getting - they all don't get in each other's way and it's very important that neither camera sees the other one, obviously, the cameras are staying out of the boom mic, the cameras are staying out of the actors' way, they're trying not to interrupt things but they're finding moments. I mean the camera team is really quite a crew.

This scene involves - what I kept hammering on this scene was I wanted plenty of coverage of the background players because this is about how people are starting slowly to listen to what's going on in the middle here and I kept wanting coverage because oftentimes when we'd be putting scenes like this together I'm always frustrated. I don't have a lot of reaction shots in the crowd.

Terri - I mean "No, Gaeta. No. No. Stop now," Gaeta's saying.

Yeah.

There is a good ad lib here at the end of this scene with - as Starbuck leaves, when Katee was exiting the scene, AJ just said, "I guess a mercy frak is out of the question?" and everyone busted up and I said, "that's brilliant, let's use that," and he kind of looked at me like, "really? OK." And I was like, "yeah, let's." And that became like the button on the whole scene.

Terri - Are they going to auction off his leg? I'll bet that would get more than Katee's, you know, flight suit.

I don't know.

This scene was meant to end on - there was a lot - I had to think about how I was going to block all this because I wanted to end - originally it was going to end inside the room, but then we got onto the day there was a moment where Steve said, "you could also shoot one through the door and see the door close, and it's more sort of a Godfather moment." I said, "I'd love that," and so we shot that.

There's a much longer version of this scene, of Zarek talking to the Quorum of Twelve, that's on the DVD. I had to - for time I to sort of cut way into sort of the last third of this scene. But this was another place where I sort of like these sort of slow tracking shots. When you can do a shot like this, to a point I find it very effective and, to me, opening on Zarek and coming round and having everyone listen to him, and that he's really speaking to a larger group than just a couple of people and you discover that it's the Quorum, but then actually the scene kind of changes cinematically as we come around here - you start noticing and focusing on Lee. You know, Lee's really the centre of this scene, and then the camera kind of goes in and finds him.

Now this is sort of going clockwise around the table. There was a different one that was going counter-clockwise around the table that set up the first part of the scene. When Lee was - the first part of this scene is actually Lee giving a speech to the Quorum in he's interrupted by Zarek. This first part of that was this counter-clockwise move, coming off of Lee, going around the other direction of the table and ultimately getting to Zarek, and then there was a cut and then you would pick Zarek and go clockwise. And I kind of liked the two counter-motions together, but, you know, the way it was finally cut we just had to cut to the chase and use this version.

Richard Hatch was a delight to work with. I always knew that about him, but Richard is - no lie - the most prepared actor in the world. I mean, Richard shows up -

Terri - Really?

He really is. Richard shows up to the table read having memorised his part.

Terri - Wow.

He's off-book at the table read, he knows exactly what he's doing, he has very few questions -

Terri - That's great.

He's really a pro. He's just an old-school pro. There's just - the man is the consummate professional.

Terri - That's nice to hear.

Yeah, it really - he's a lovely person.

It was fun working with the Quorum. You know, I would come into Colonial One in between the takes and, before it actually started I talked to all of them. I'd say, "okay this is what's going on in this scene, and I need this and this," and I sort of set the table of what the politics were and where we were in the story and what the history was. And, much to my surprise, they all kind of looked at me as if they had never heard anybody do this before and I would go - and I went back later and different members of the background players would come up and go, "you know, no one ever tells us really what's going on."

Terri - No, I remember that.

And I said, "really?"

OK, I should probably talk about this. There is a fundamental difference between this sequence and the longer version on the DVD. The scene as - this sequence as originally done was supposed to be Adama waking up in his quarters without the intercut to Laura jogging through the corridor, and what was going to happen was he gets a phone call and the phone call actually was from someone in the CIC saying that ten Vipers were off-line due to maintenance problems, and he was going to throw a shit-fit, and he goes, "ten birds? That's frakking unacceptable!" and he goes to his bathroom and he's really pissed off about it and then there's a miss - a scene that's not here where he goes down to the flight - to the hangar deck and he's walking along the flight line with Figurski, and he's chewing him a new one because he's allowed his people to kind of, you know, call in sick and there's all these lame excuses for why the Vipers aren't ready on time. Well, I was desperate to cut time out of this episode to get us to the proper running length and one of the ideas I had was, okay, I could cut the entire hangar deck sequence and then intercut Adama waking up with Laura jogging and then when the phone call came in and he reacts I cut some of the dialogue so that it's just Adama saying "motherfrakker!" and you know, getting pissed off and going to the sink and then he shows up with Laura and it'll play like somebody called him and was saying that the president's jogging through the corridors and he knows that she's not supposed to be doing that so it's more of a personal sort of thing that he's reacting to and showing up with. And so that's how this sequence now plays, but when you see the DVD you'll see it's in a very different context.

So - that's a photo double for Mary. We used Mary's photo double for several of these shots. This is obviously Mary going through the corridor. This was all, you know - I asked them to choreograph this in a specific way so that she could drive off of her right foot and come up these stairs right up into Adama. That was the shot that was in my head. When I wrote the scene, I really wanted a moment where she came flying round the Galactica corridor and ran right into Adama before she could stop, and then she'd be sort of in the heat of the moment and she'd be all breathless, and she'd be energised and happy and then...

I actually wrote that he was not very pleased, that he was more pissed off and he was very stern with her from the get-go. Eddie's instinct however was to play it softer and to play it much more intimate and I liked it when I saw it so I just went with that.

Terri - I have to say when I saw this scene that it was one of those scenes where you really, really felt how much he loved her.

Yeah. This scene is very important to their relationship in the show and it was one of my favourites. It was in the story document that I wrote. When I wrote the story outline I wrote this scene almost verbatim because I knew exactly what I wanted each of them to say to the other and it was important to Laura's character that she's gotten to the point where she just wants to live a little before she dies.

Terri - Well she looks like hell, she's clearly delusional, you know, and she's dying and he's there for her. It's really... he lets her be.

Yeah and he lets her win this argument. He lets her be and he's willing to let the fleet go to hell, really, for Laura. I mean it's - there are places where Adama goes frequently where sometimes his gut, his gut and his heart, will just send him in a different place than his head will. And he'll be guided by that and here's one of those times.

It's a great scene. I mean it was really - it was emotional to watch them play it. It was very affecting, and the crew was choked up.

Terri - Yeah, well the journey that the two of them have been on... it's been remarkable.

Yeah. Oh - interesting thing, before I forget to say, you notice Adama walks around in this episode with his hands in his pockets... well, the pants don't have pockets on these uniforms but I made it - I wanted Adama to be picking up little bits of trash over the course of the episode. It was written in the script and I wanted to use it.

Terri - You made Glenne add pockets?

He keeps picking up trash and Glenne said, "you know they don't have pockets? You know?" She's in her Canadian - "you know they don't have pockets?" I say, "I know, but can they have pockets in them, can't we just pretend they've been there all along?" She said, "yeah, okay, we can give 'em pockets. We can do that." And then sure enough Eddie - Eddie's like lording it over everyone else: "I got pockets! Look at this, I got pockets on me!" And so he took great delight in every scene he could - he's walking through the ship with his hands in his pockets, just to sort of annoy the other actors, saying he's got pockets and none of the rest of them do.

Terri - This is what a costume designer likes - a producer/director. She gives them the pockets instead of saying well we can't possibly afford that.

Yeah. I go, "yes you can."

Terri - Yeah - there are ways to say no to you people.

I brought my episode in under time and under budget, I'll have you know.

Terri - It was 'cause of the pockets.

Ah, now here's Baltar. There is a missing Baltar scene in the DV - in this version and it's in the restored DVD version. I'll talk about that there. That's my son, Robin. Who's that little boy with his hands up? That's -

Terri - What a cute child that is. Who's that adorable little boy, who didn't sleep for three days in anticipation of this?

That's Robin. Robin spent hours on the set with me. I thought that my kids would come to see me direct and that they would watch for an hour or so and then say, "okay, I'm bored," and leave, and, indeed, that is what Roxie said, my daughter. She was, like, done, but Robin wanted to stay, and he stayed all day -

Terri - He got up at, like, 6am and went to work with Daddy, and stayed all - every day.

- and then he stayed all the next day. He just sat in the director's chair next to me with his little headphones on and he watched everything, and he was just sucking it up...

Terri - And the crew was magnificent. They let him ride on the dolly and take hand-held, and Eddie took him around and let him have a little fly of the ship.

I got a great picture of Eddie sitting Robin down at the console in CIC and teaching Robin how to fly the Galactica, which was amazing.

Terri - Eddie, who had no clue what any of the buttons did but, you know - yeah: "push this one and it makes the ship jump."

And in between takes Eddie would come over and say, "hey, you know, there's more doughnuts over on the craft service table."

Terri - Yeah, don't tell Terri but there's a whole lot of crappy, junkie food coming up. Yeah, all Roxie likes.

There's Roxie. Roxie is the little kid there being held.

Terri - All she liked was that - the fact that it was craft service and that they brought you chocolate.

It was great to work with James. James and I, you know, were always really good friends, and we liked to hang outside the sound stage and smoke incessantly, and talk and drink and, you know, in our off hours and stuff...

Terri - Ron bought Baltar's cigarette case. I'm sorry - I bought it.

I bought - I own Baltar's cigarette case. And doing these scenes were just really a joy. There were a tremendous amount of extras so they were very complicated. There were a lot of choreo - you know, this was a hard set to light.

Terri - Aww, here she is. But this is where you stood up and talked to the extras too.

I walked in here and I told the extras what was going on in the story, and why they were acting the way it was, and what the politics were.

Terri - And they were so happy to have somebody talk to them.

And they were shocked and they were really, really happy because I guess most of, you know, most of the time directors just can't, just you know, just don't or won't...

Terri - But the A.D. - no it's the A.D.s talk to them, not the director. A.D.s tell them what to do.

And so this is a lot of work to do this.