David Eick and Life after New Caprica Part 1

Source: If Magazine

Starting the new season of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA in the most desperate place that the human race has been thus far on the series was a stroke of inspired genius for series creators David Eick and Ron Moore. This season is proving to be the most stirring and dramatic the series has ever been, and this is only the beginning of what lies ahead for the now greatly lessened survivors of the human race. Eick is a hard man to pin down, considering they are filming the three part season finale right now, but iF MAGAZINE managed to catch up to him and get the dish on the rest of Season 3.

iF: How did the actors react when you told them what was going to be happening in Season 3?

DAVID EICK: The reaction is what it normally is. They read the scripts and they tell us that they are excited and can’t believe it and they’re shocked. I wish I could give you a good juicy story, but they’re very supportive and enthusiastic and excited. They get ready and raring to go. I wish I could give you a good story about someone freaking out, but none of that happened.

iF: As far as future stories are you planning to return to New Caprica for the people left behind?

EICK: No. No not at all.

iF: Where did the idea for the Season 3 opening arc come from?

EICK: Ron and I always get together for dinner and a few drinks in between seasons and talk about what we want to do. This year my friend, Breck Eisner, was kind enough to get us into Club 33 in Disneyland, which is the only place in Disneyland that serves scotch. We figured what better way to break Season 3 , than to go drink scotch, ride space mountain, and then watch Monday Night Football at the ESPN Zone? That’s how we break a season, we go entertain ourselves and then we take our own fears and blinders off and see what we come up with. We came up with a number of things, one of which was wanting to do an opening trilogy, and what we came up with was four hours (but still only three episodes) dealing with the occupation of New Caprica. We wanted to flash forward a chunk of time to when the occupation had gotten awry in terms of any detent between the humans and the Cylons. Any evidence we would begin to see evidence of that manifesting itself in acts of insurgency, suicide bombings. I believe a lot of that was discussed and then into the escape and basically by episode 4 everyone that was left would be back on Galactica and we would pick it up from there. That was how that came about.

iF: Had you decided to do the RESISTANCE Web episodes before or did SCI FI approach you?

EICK: That was something that SCI FI approached us about. We knew about them while were going to be shooting episode eight, which we front loaded and shot about a third of while we shooting the opening trilogy. About a third of episode eight (or more than a third) takes place in the minds of the main characters as they are flashing back to their time on New Caprica. So, because we were going to be spending more time on those locations, we took advantage of that and use a second unit crew to shoot those webisode scenes.

iF: Any particular reason the shooting of Caprica Six in the Season opener was left out of the press kit?

EICK: No, I don’t know about that. We had some debate creatively about whether or not that rhythmically was a good end to the scene, but that was all that was about.

iF: Is Lucy Lawless going to be in the second half of Season 3 at all?

EICK: No, not the second half of Season Three. Although, the door is always open for some justification to bring her back down the road.

iF: Well, she is a Cylon so she can’t necessarily die.

EICK: Ahh, well yes and no. [Laughs]

iF: Was it always a plan to destroy Pegasus and put everyone back on the Galactica?

EICK: I’m not sure when that came about. That might have been in Ron and mine’s initial break of the new season.

iF: Where does that leave certain characters that had been promoted to be part of the Pegasus crew?

EICK: Well, basically they’re going back to a situation where they are demoted. One of the issues we deal with in the subsequent episodes is that there is no room to stand on ceremony. People basically have to suck it up and do a job and they’re lives are not about being on a career path, it’s about survival.

iF: Does Baltar ever get to come back to the fleet?

EICK: Batlar does come back to the fleet, but not in the same capacity and not under the same conditions that he might prefer.

iF: Are we still going to be seeing a new model Cylon this season?

EICK: Yes. There is the introduction of another model of Cylon called a hybrid and that will be introduced in episode five.