[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] "On Story" is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

"On Story" is also brought to you in part by the Bogle Family Vineyards, six generation farmers and third generation winemakers based in Clarksburg, California.

Makers of sustainably grown wines that are a reflection of the their family values since 1968.

[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story," a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators and filmmakers.

This week on "On Story," writer and creator Ronald D. Moore discusses his process from concept to completion on his celebrated epic science fiction series, "Battlestar Galactica."

- It was the moment I was watching it, just a few months after the 9/11 attacks, and watching the show at that moment, it had a completely different resonance than it did when you first saw it.

And I realized if you did that show in that moment, you could do a show about what we were going through as a society.

You know, the things we were experiencing and the debates we were having about civil liberties versus security and, you know, freedom and the civilian versus the military authority and terrorism.

It was like, "Oh, this could be a really interesting, relevant science fiction piece."

[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] [typewriter ding] - When I went back to watch "Battlestar Galactica" again after not having seen it in a long time, it was like this is as good as anything that came out in the timeframe of "The Sopranos," et cetera.

So, just curious, when this show was getting launched, you know, how was it being viewed?

- When it launched, I think it took a lot of people by surprise, what it was.

I think the network was at a moment of complicated transition and so the group that we kind of pitched and sold it to had shifted and changed by the time we actually made the miniseries and went on the air.

And to everyone's surprise, the rating went up on the second night and that was the first kinda indication that we had done something, people had responded and we were on sort of a different trajectory.

- Did the network change their tune like pretty quickly when they saw numbers climbing or...?

- It was a torturous process to be honest.

There was a moment in time when UPN, which is not with us anymore, the late UPN, expressed interest in possibly picking up the show because SyFy was hemming and hawing so much and it was clear that maybe they weren't gonna do it.

And so I got word from David again over Christmas break of whatever year that was saying, "Well, UPN might pick the show up, but they need an episode, they need like a script for the first episode, the first season as an example of what the show is.

Can you do it?"

So I said "All right, I'll write a script."

And all I had was like a sheet of log lines of potential episodes and it was like, you know, we visit the prison ship and, you know, there's a murder mystery episode, and one of those log lines was the Cylons are pursuing the fleet and the fleet has to jump away every 33 minutes.

And that was all it was.

And I sort of looked at that one and thought, "Well, that's a cool idea."

And for the first and only time in my career, I sat down and just wrote "Fade in" and just wrote the script without an outline.

And it turned out it's 33.

It was one of the best things I ever wrote even to this day.

It is, I'm very proud of that episode.

[audience claps] And that was the script that then UPN was excited, which got SYFY channel go, "Well, I guess we want this."

And then they got excited about it and that's how the show got picked up for the first season.

But every season was like a debate.

It was always on the bubble.

Ratings were never fantastic, they were always [bleep] about it.

The performance, eh, is not so good.

So they cut the budget and it was always like, you were always worried you're gonna get canceled before the series was over.

- I had gone back even further and watched the original "Battlestar Galactica," which I was shocked, was not as cheesy as I remembered it and was actually good.

I'm curious, what made you wanna do that show again?

- David Eick again had called me, he was a producer at the time at Universal on a deal and he said, "Universal has this title in their library, "'Battlestar Galactica'.

They want to try to reboot it.

There's been various attempts that haven't worked.

Would you be interested?"

I said, "Let me take a look."

But I hadn't seen it in a very long time.

You know, it was in the '70s and I remember I did see it in its original run as a kid, but hadn't seen it in many years because there was only one season, and as a result, it wasn't syndicated and, you know, people just didn't see it for decades literally.

So I said, "Let me go rent the pilot and watch it again."

So I went to Blockbuster.

I got a VHS tape, and I watched it over that weekend and I was struck by, it was better than I recalled.

It was really trying to do something interesting.

And it was also the moment I was watching it, 'cause I was watching it like January, February, 2002.

So it was just a few months after the 9/11 attacks, and watching the show at that moment, it had a completely different resonance than it did when you first saw it.

And I realized as I was watching it, if you did that show in that moment, you could do a show about what we were going through as a society, you know, the things we were experiencing and the debates we were having about civil liberties versus security and, you know, freedom and the civilian versus the military authority and terrorism.

It was like, "Oh, this could be a really interesting, relevant science fiction piece."

So I said I was in and then I decided, yeah, it shouldn't be "Battlestar Galactica" in name only.

It should actually have the superstructure of Galactica.

It is an aircraft carrier in space.

There's a ragtag fleet of civilians that are, you know, following along that it's protecting.

The Cylons are pursuing this and they're looking for this lost colony called Earth.

So that was the general framework.

And then I kind of went through the characters one by one and tried to figure out what I did with each individual character.

Very informed by the post 9/11 experience.

You know, the Olympic Carrier in the story is a ship of civilians that showed up, it missed the original jump with the rest of the fleet and then suddenly shows up later.

And the question is will they shoot it down knowing that there's a very good chance that it's filled with innocent civilians?

And that was something directly that during the 9/11 attacks, that was all this speculation about whether they could or would be able to shoot down a civilian aircraft over the skies at that point.

And it was such an intense moral dilemma that it felt like we were gonna do a version of that, and I wanted to play that.

I wanted to play how the president and the commander, the military authority would struggle with that issue and ultimately make a very difficult choice for the safety of all of them.

But it was also complicated by the fact that the audience knows that Gaius Baltar is not like acting on the side of the angels necessarily.

That he's got this woman that keeps appearing to him and speaking on behalf of God.

You know, that there's a God out there somewhere that wants him to do this thing for some purpose that we feel is probably nefarious.

[eerie music] - Do you want children, Gaius?

- Let me think about that for a minute.

No.

- Procreation is one of God's commandments.

- Really?

Well, I'm sure someday if you're a good Cylon, he'll reward you with a lovely little toaster of your very own.

- I want us to have a child, Gaius.

- I always wanted the audience to sort of get to uncomfortable places where they were worried about what might happen and they weren't sure who to root for and why.

And so this was a good example of that.

I wanted the audience to struggle with this.

Like, "Wait, I-- Yeah, they have to protect the fleet, but Gaius is a bad guy and wait, is this the right thing to do?"

- He does add an element of totally not knowing which direction something was gonna go or has he actually conned them?

Did he get away with conning them or is it-- It is constant, which, to me became a really interactive piece to the show.

Like I was no longer just watching, I was really involved in trying to figure out his psychology, which I think I'm still trying to figure out.

- Well, in the original "Galactica," there was a Baltar and Baltar was a member of the council as I recall.

And he had betrayed the colonies to the Cylons for reasons that are never made clear.

As I was looking at the show again and examining the characters, I wanted there to be a Baltar, but I had to-- Well, but why would he do this?

Why would anybody do this?

It never made sense what the Cylons could possibly want, give this guy to make him do it.

So I started thinking about a guy that betrayed the human race by accident, that his own sort of flaws as a human being led him to do something, you know, that created this tragedy.

So in the miniseries, you see that he's been having this affair with this, this incredibly attractive woman, you know, and who he would come to know as Number Six.

And he's this gigantic towering ego and he's brilliant, but he's so flawed as a character.

And then he has this amazingly terrible secret of what he has done and what he is responsible for.

And as I was creating the character, it seemed like, once we see him betray and do it and, you know, that he didn't understand it, how do we still have a window into his mind?

He's not gonna be able to tell anybody, he can't talk to anybody.

And then started thinking, well, what if she appeared to him periodically?

And say, oh, she could just like appear and talk to him 'cause she's already talking on behalf of a God and she's already evoking sort of religious ideas in the supernatural.

And then it became in the writer's room, they said, "Well, what is she really?"

And I said, "You know what?

I don't wanna figure it out yet.

What's important is how we play her and what she tells us about Gaius Baltar and how he responds to her.

And then let's weave in the rest of this stuff as the show goes forward."

And there was a lot of, you know, improvisation in the writer's room.

You know, I deliberately said there's a lot of things about this show we're not gonna worry about yet.

We're not gonna worry about when we get to Earth or what Earth is like or how that's all gonna end.

Let's just get from here to here and let's like figure out the best story right now.

- You were thinking of this seducer always.

- Yeah, I knew she was gonna be the first Cylon we met and that she was gonna be the audience's, you know, first encounter with the new version of the Cylons that weren't just, you know, chrome mechanized robots and that she would keep appearing to Baltar.

And then, you know, as I was developing the show, the choice to make them human, that was a production problem.

Like David and I were having a realistic conversation about how we're gonna do this show and how are we gonna do Cylons.

In the original series, the Cylons were stunt guys in chrome suits and they would walk around and they had the, you know, the light.

And we knew that the audience at that point would not accept that.

Like, okay, they're gonna have to be more complicated.

They're gonna have to be like full on, you know, animatronic puppets or something, which is wildly expensive, something we couldn't really do on a TV series budget.

You could do one of them.

Like you'd probably build one, we said.

- But you'd keep killing the same one?

- You'd have to keep killing the same one.

And then at some point I said, "Well, what if they were human?

What if they looked human?

We just cast actors and why would they look human?"

And I started thinking out loud with David and said, "Well, maybe they used to be the chrome robots that we know from the original series and there was a Cylon war and they went away and they have evolved and they have evolved towards a place deliberately to look like human beings and why would they do that?"

And I thought, "Well, why would they do that?

Why would a robot want to look like a human being?"

It kind of feels like the robot feels like, "Well, I was created by man and man was created by God.

Maybe this is like part of God's plan."

Like the robots get this idea of, you know, a greater being and that the robots thought that they were better than human beings.

That they were, you know, mankind's children is what they kind of say in the show.

And that the children of mankind can only grow up to be adults once they have killed their parents.

And their parents are flawed because the parents believe in many gods.

And the Cylons realize there's really only one God.

The Cylons want an absolute truth.

The Cylons don't like the idea of the many gods that have different opinions and shades of gray and, you know, have different aspects to them.

Cylons seek an absolute truth and that absolute truth leads them to the logical conclusion that humanity must be wiped out.

- So that incredible production challenge created one of the best questions of the whole show, which is the dilemma of what is a human?

You know, that's great.

- It's a classic example of how a lack of money.

[Barbara] Right.

- Does, it really does.

It happens, you know?

And it's frustrating and I, you know, there's many times we were cursing the lack of production funds, but a lot of times it does force you into something better.

It makes you get creative, it makes you come up with a better solution.

[typewriter ding] - Cylons on an intercept course.

They'll be in weapons range within... two minutes.

[alarm beeping] Radiological alarm.

- Radiological alarm.

- From where?

- The Olympic Carrier, sir.

They've got nukes on board.

- Madam President, we have to eliminate the Olympic Carrier immediately.

- There are 1300 people on that ship.

[Adama] We don't know that.

Cylons may have captured them already.

- She's not gonna do it.

She has to do it.

- It's not her decision, Gaius.

- No?

- It's God's choice.

He wants you to repent.

- Look, at this point, there's no choice.

It's either them or us.

- Repent of your sins.

Accept his true love and you will be saved.

[tense music] - I repent.

I repent.

- A lot of stuff going on in that scene.

All the things that we just talked about, but also sort of, it also highlights, you know, one of the hallmarks of the show, which was the visual style of the show.

It's a very handheld, it's very long lens.

"Star Trek," by the time I left, I was really tired of the visual look of the show.

I felt it was very stained and very boring and just everything was on a tripod and long shots and not a lot of energy.

And I really thought that if you did a show that was much more verite and much more docu-style, it would have a sense of reality.

It would have a sense of, you know, truth.

[typewriter ding] - Here's your dilemma.

Turn off the pain, you feel better, but that makes you a machine, not a person.

You see, human beings can't turn off their pain.

Human beings have to suffer and cry and scream and endure because they have no choice.

So the only way you can avoid the pain you are about to receive is by telling me exactly what I want to know, just like a human would.

[tense music] - I knew this about you.

You're everything I thought you would be, but it won't work.

I won't tell you anything.

- Maybe not.

But then you'll know deep down that I beat you.

That a human being beat you and that you are truly no greater than we are.

You're just a bunch of machines after all.

- Now we're really getting into the reason why we did the show.

This is happening in a context, in a world, you know, and Abu Ghraib was in the news.

I don't think it was literally at that moment, but it had been happening.

There were these questions of how far, you know, we as a society would go to get information out of detainees that might protect and save other lives and what are those lines?

You know, debates that we're still having obviously to this day.

But this one was also complicated by something that was specific to our show, which was is this a person at all?

He looks like a person, he sweats like a person.

He's going to, you know, scream in pain like a person, but is it a person?

And that was like one of the questions that hung over the entire series was would the colonials ever accept the Cylons as people?

As people.

They could be intelligent, they could be self-aware, they could be, you know, they could be sentient on a certain level.

But did they have a soul?

Which was a very important thing for the colonials.

- When they open the hatch and just shove him out, I was shocked actually when I first watched it, because it just felt so wrong and brutal.

And even that the president was making that decision and to see Katee Sackhoff's face or Starbuck's face, you know, it was sort of appalled like, the way that that got handled.

I'm curious, like seeing this through to the end, what did SyFy think about this.

[Leoben spluttering] - This is not your path, Starbuck.

You have a different destiny.

- Don't interrupt me.

You see, I'm gonna dazzle you with my poor human brain.

You see, I think that you're afraid.

You're afraid that we're a long way from home.

What if you don't transfer all the way back?

What if when you die here, you really die?

It's your chance to find out if you're really God or just a bunch of circuits with a bad haircut.

- I'm not afraid of dying.

- Somebody's programmed you with a fairytale of God and streams and life ever after, but somewhere in that hard drive that you call a brain is a beeping message: "Error, error, does not compute.

I don't have a soul, I have software.

If I die, I'm gone."

[water splashing] [tense music] - So this is the stuff that was tough for the network.

We're essentially waterboarding him.

We're putting his head in a bucket.

The network really had a problem with it because it was graphic but it was also, they didn't want to see one of our heroes doing something like this.

And I said, "Yeah, well that's the show.

That's why we're doing it 'cause you're trying to like, we're talking about things that are happening in the real world and there's a lot of people that are heroes that are doing, you know, things like this and we want the audience to have to look at it."

What was really important was that Starbuck be the one to do this.

And she does take a journey in the episode.

By the time the scene you're talking about with Laura comes around, she has traveled a road with this guy.

And as much as she doesn't wanna admit that he's a person, she's starting to feel that way.

And that was an interesting question for the audience.

But at the end, when Laura comes on, Laura has not traveled that road with Starbuck and she comes in as the president and this is a machine and we're done with this machine.

[bleep] this machine and throw it out.

And that was it, and it said a lot about her and it was about the shock of Starbuck like taking that blow and the audience who had also taken the, gone down the road and had this journey and thought of him in a different way and suddenly like, "Oh my God," you know, and so there was an emotional impact to the end of that episode.

[typewriter ding] - What's your name?

- How long have you been hiding aboard this ship?

- Am I not allowed to know your name?

- Why were you hiding aboard this ship?

- I had a mission to perform.

Listen, it's a small thing.

Can you just tell me who you are?

- Tell me about your mission and I'll think about it.

- My mission was to conduct sabotage.

- What kind of sabotage?

- God, you stink.

Can we get some air in here between you and the humidity?

- I am not here to play games with you.

You said you wanted to cooperate.

Either start talking or we are done.

- Okay.

But...

I really want to know your name.

- So this is from like the third or fourth episode of the first season.

And Leoben, the Cylon character's name, has been captured.

At this point they know that the Cylons look like us.

It was very difficult to get this show made because of the subject matter and what our heroes were gonna do and what they were capable of doing in this conversation, which is, you know, more or less a two-hander of two characters through a lot of it.

And this is kinda the beginning of that relationship.

And I wanted to set up up front that he was a different Cylon, he had a different point of view than the ones we had kind of encountered and really call back to the religious aspects of the show.

And that, you know, she was gonna be dealing with a difficult, you know, detainee and how to interrogate him was gonna be a challenge.

And also starting to hint that there was something special about her.

So this is like where the seeds of that were first planted.

- And it also, you get a really great sense of her and you just sort of feel like I'll follow this person anywhere, you know?

And at that point, it's like it becomes your fighter jet show.

- I was, you know, trying to figure out who is Starbuck?

If I'm gonna say that-- She's still based on that original construct.

Carouser, gambler, drinker, best pilot in the fleet.

Dangerous, but fiercely and intensely loyal.

Who is that?

Well, it's probably a very damaged person.

At this point in the show, now I've seen Katee do quite a bit and I'm understanding Katee and I'm seeing the shades of her.

- I don't give a damn on what you believe.

- To know the face of God is to know madness.

[eerie music] I see the universe.

I see the patterns.

I see the foreshadowing that precedes every moment of every day.

It's all there, I see it and you don't.

And I have a surprise for you.

I have something to tell you about the future.

- Is that so?

- It is.

But we have to see this through to the end.

- You can't rationally explain why Six appears and says repent to Baltar and the moment he says repent, Laura does what she does.

So there's a question in the audience's mind like, "Is there something else going on?

Is there some other being involved in all this stuff or not and which way are we playing it?"

So when this character starts saying things like that, the audience has to sort of wonder, "Well, where's the show going?"

Starbuck is here to find out if he's a saboteur and does he have a nuke somewhere in the fleet?

But should she be listening to this other thing that he's saying?

'Cause maybe that has validity and also just Callum Keith Rennie who plays Leoben is so intense and so smart and so good that I think you believe him when he says that stuff.

[typewriter ding] - What is it?

- It's an update on the head count.

- Subtract how many.

- Actually you can add one.

A baby was born this morning on the Rising Star.

A boy.

- A baby.

- Yep.

[somber music] - Thank you.

[somber music] - That is the end of the show and then she goes up to the board and she adds one, and we go out on Laura's face, and I watch it and it moves me.

It was not the original ending.

I will give credit to the network for this, which I seldom do, so write this down.

Write this down, this was like a good network note actually occurred here.

That was in the script and it was shot that way, but the script ended with that scene had occurred, and then I was going out on the father, son, you know, with Adama trying to talk to Lee about what had happened.

And Lee was still buried in grief and was trying to deny it and it was a very like downbeat kind of melancholy way go out, which is what I wanted.

And network came back and said, "You know what, it's just such a downer, man."

Which was a mantra over theirs, to be fair.

You know, they said it over and over again.

But this time they said it and they were like, "It's just so heavy.

It's just, I don't know, it just seems hopeless."

And they didn't like the episode because of that.

And I went back in the editing bay with David and was looking through the show again and always loved that scene and said, "What if we make that scene the tag?"

So the last beat of the show is a moment of hope and it changed the whole complexion of the show and I'm very happy that we did that.

[typewriter ding] [Narrator] You've been watching "Script to Screen: Battlestar Galactica" on "On Story."

"On Story" is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story Project that also includes the "On Story" radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about "On Story" and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

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