RONALD D. MOORE
I would have to say that the actor that changed the conception of the character the most, now that I think about it, is Tahmoh, who played Helo. We never had any intention of keeping him in the show. He was a guest-star character. He was supposed to come in the miniseries and he was going to die on Caprica. There was no such thing as Cylon-occupied Caprica. That wasn’t even part of the story or part of the bible. You were never going to cut back to Caprica. What happened was when we saw the miniseries all put together at a DGA screening—we were watching the show projected on a big screen, and it was a huge moment. I remember after it was over, David Weddle—who I saw there with Bradley Thompson, first time since Star Trek—and I were having a conversation about, “God, Helo was really fucking good, wasn’t he?” “Yeah, it sucks that we killed him.… Is there any way…?” We kept talking that night and then it just kept coming back up in our discussion about, “Is there any way we can bring Helo back in the show?” Because we really liked him. “What if we cut back and saw Caprica?” At the same time the network was pressuring us to do some planet shifts so that everything wasn’t claustrophobic on the ships. And I didn’t want to have a Star Trek series where they just kept running into these Earthlike planets and go down and have an adventure.
TONI GRAPHIA
(co–executive producer)
Early on there were a lot of discussions about the fact that this could be a very claustrophobic show if it only takes place on the ship. But then there was Helo left behind on Caprica. I think there was a plan that at some point he would get picked up, but we started thinking, “Geez, it would open the show up more to just leave him on the planet. Have him there for a while so we could use the sun, the trees and daylight.” But then we were like, “But there’s radiation down there, so how is that not killing them?” And we literally had to make up—and it sounds a lot easier than it was—antiradiation meds, and they give themselves shots. It protects them against the radiation, like a vaccine. We just made up those fixes as they went along, and there had to be a certain amount of believability or we would have lost the audience there. But having Helo on Caprica? A great addition to the show.
MARK STERN
Going back to pick up that story was great. One of the things I loved about the show was they really respected all their actors. You would spend time with all these different characters and really flesh their lives out and see all different facets of them. It was a true ensemble in that respect. Also, if you sit down and kind of binge them, you really see how these actors grow. Tricia Helfer probably most of all, but Grace Park as well. When they play multiple versions of themselves, it really pushes them as actors and you can see their development, which is really cool to watch.
RONALD D. MOORE
So then we started saying, “Well, if we cut back to Cylon-occupied Caprica and told a story with Helo, that would get the network off our back and then we get to have Helo in the show again at the same time.” And so it kind of came out of our desire to have him.
TAHMOH PENIKETT
I didn’t expect to come back after the miniseries. As far as I was concerned, I was playing a very heroic and upstanding moral character and then he dies at the end. The planet is supposed to explode, so I didn’t expect to come back. I was having a good scene with Grace Park and I remember Edward James Olmos approaching me on the day, and he was there just observing us. He wasn’t actually acting that day. We were shooting in Aldergrove and were doing this incredible scene with Grace Park and the planet’s about to explode and there’s only so many seats on our Raptor. I feel like I’m not going to survive, or I feel like Gaius Baltar’s life is better than mine. I make a very heroic and selfless decision, and Helo gives up his seat.
So I thought I was done, but Edward James on that day that we were filming, came to me and I remember him saying, “Listen, the producers love you. They’re going to bring you back.” Even early on in my career I knew that I couldn’t put any weight in that. I was very gracious and very accepting of that huge compliment from this legend who I’d always looked up to, but I didn’t depend on it. I actually went and did a Canadian television cop series right after that, which ultimately ended up getting canceled. When I did get the call from Ron’s office saying we want you back, we’ve got an idea for a storyline, I was more than flattered and excited. I was over the moon and just couldn’t wait to do it.
RONALD D. MOORE
I remember the early writers’ room meetings where they were asking me “So where are we going with this story” and I was like, “I have no fucking idea.” It’s just something we came up with. I wrote “33,” all I knew was he was on the run, they were chasing him, he had to have antiradiation medication in order to survive, and he was going to run into another Sharon and that was going to tell us that, “Oh my God, there’s more than one Sharon? He doesn’t know!” I knew that was a great setup to … something. That Sharon coming at the end of that story and rescuing him from another Six, that the audience would kind of go, “Wow. What does that mean?” And that’s all I knew. We didn’t stroke out the master arc, we just sort of did it episode by episode. It was, “Okay, what’s the next step? What should they be trying to do in this episode? We know that she’s a Cylon, he doesn’t. When is he going to find out? How long can we hold that off? What’s the plan? Well, there has to be a plan. They’re after something. What are they after?”
CARLA ROBINSON
(writer, Battlestar Galactica [2004])
I came onto the show with virtually no knowledge of anything regarding Battlestar Galactica. I remember on the old show they wore capes, and Lorne Greene’s eyebrows, which I thought were a character themselves. But I remember on my first day in the writers’ room I said, “Okay, these Cylons, the humanoid Cylons, they’re full-grown. We see them. They’re already made. Can they get pregnant?” It got really quiet in the room. I remember thinking to myself, “Oh, Carla, you just suggested that a robot get pregnant. How stupid!” At that point I figured I might as well ride it off the rails and I said, “How about if we get one pregnant with a human?” Again, it got this weird quiet. And Ron just said, “We’re going to look into it.” We walked outside and David and Bradley were with me, and they said, “I think he liked that thing you said.” I said, “Well, I hope it wasn’t too stupid.” I had no idea at the time that the human-Cylon hybrid baby would become such a point of direction for this show.
DAVID WEDDLE
Going back to the idea that the Cylons can’t reproduce, Ron says, “They have the equipment to reproduce and they fuck like crazy, but they can’t have babies, so maybe the occupation of Caprica is a ploy.” It’s an experiment that they’re coming up with to try to sexually reproduce, because maybe they get a theory that what they’re missing is, biologically, they can’t experience love. So maybe if they use a Sharon and she becomes a girl in danger, Helo falls in love and maybe they can make a baby and maybe it works. She gets pregnant, but what the Cylons don’t understand is that if she gets pregnant, she falls in love with him and goes off the reservation and is no longer with the program.
RONALD D. MOORE
While we were talking about that, there was chemistry between the two of them. We had played that in the miniseries that there was sort of a quasi kind of thing going on between them, but it hadn’t really been acted on. Now they’re alone, they’re isolated. Why would the Cylons do this? What could they possibly want from Helo? He can’t know where the Galactica is, he has no idea, so that can’t be it. He doesn’t know some supersecret military intelligence, he’s just a navigator. What else could it be? Why would they set up this scenario? Why would she kiss him? Why would they sleep together? What if it’s about having sex? Why sex? Well, sex is a big thing with the Cylons; we’ve been playing that. What if it’s about reproduction? Wait a minute, reproduction! It’s about having children. Maybe they can’t have children. Maybe that’s the thing. Maybe the desire to have children is a biological imperative and
it’s what would make them closer to their conception of God. That’s what it is! It’s about the Cylons can’t have children. It just came out of many hours in the writers’ room and arguing different ways of going at it.
It’s the best part of what we do. I love the improvisational nature of that. The joy of discovery. You’re there together, you’re working at a problem, you’re hearing different ideas, you’re trying them out. We put things up on the board and take them down, because they would fail, but you kept hunting, you kept searching, and you find it. It’s just unbelievable. It’s a high. Everyone’s just excited and thrilled, and then you’re just scared that someone’s going to say no. Then you’re scared the network’s going to hate it or something. If they do, then you’ve got that battle to fight. But that’s the great thing in the writers’ room, man. There’s nothing like that. There’s nothing like coming in there with nothing and going “What the hell are we going to do with this guy?” and you just create it out of nothing. Wonderful, wonderful experience. It changes so much. Just like, “God is love” changed the mythology of the show. It was just such a small one, but the show pivoted on both those moments.
TAHMOH PENIKETT
Caprica’s a nuclear wasteland. It’s done. They’re moving on. You see in “33” everyone’s trying to escape, which is why that episode is so brilliant. Now you’re in space, you’re trying to get away, and when it cuts to Helo, I think the audience is just like, “Oh my God, we did not expect to see that guy again, this is fantastic.” Not to say it was monotonous in any way on the ship, but it really broke the almost claustrophobic confines that the directors and the writer and the actors really captured, where there’s only forty thousand of us and we’re running for our lives. We’re in a bunch of spaceships stuck in deep dark space.
But Helo’s arc over the course of the series was huge, man. You see examples of who this man potentially could be, who he was at his heart, but he’s still a young man. He didn’t make those decisions without fear and trepidation and doubt. When he gave up his seat, that’s all there. That was what was beautiful about him: that fear, that conflict was there. Most of us have that in life when we make really big decisions. It’s rarely a hundred percent. Because of that, we saw him continually be challenged when he would go against the grain, because he was incapable of doing wrong. He’s often referred to as a moral compass on the show, and it’s a suitable term, because he really could see both sides of an issue. Both sides of the war, the battle, the conflict.
He was in love with a Cylon, who he was having a child with. That conflict, that prejudice, that bigotry that they faced was a continual thing against him, a continual challenge. But as a man his perspective was always broadening and being forced to grow, because he was married to a Cylon, because he had a child, because he potentially was a prime example of what the future could be, which was love, and harmony and tolerance. Like I said, it was not an easy ride and he faced doubt and people doubted his loyalty and his conviction many times. But he was arguably the most solid and grounded individual on that ship.
There comes a time when Helo is faced with whether to be complicit and allow biological warfare to be used against the Cylons to wipe them out, and he can’t do it. You see that conflict between him and Roslin, him and Apollo. I’d see people at conventions when things like that were happening and they’re like, “You know, I hate you. I don’t like your character,” and then other people would say, “I love you so much, you’re the bravest character I’ve ever seen.” But every time I say, “Do you realize that the show would have been done if I didn’t do what I did? We wouldn’t even be here right now discussing this. The Cylons would have been gone.” Again, that speaks volumes about how much people believed in the show and how moved they were by the performances. They got really passionate about it, man.
Arising from the Sharon/Helo relationship on Cylon-occupied Caprica was her pregnancy—something that shouldn’t have been able to occur. It creates a serious divide on Galactica, between people thinking the birth should be aborted for humanity’s sake, and others believing it was Sharon’s decision (despite the fact that she’s a Cylon). As a result it examined the whole abortion issue, with Roslin deciding for the sake of their species, abortion needed to be outlawed regardless of her personal feelings on the subject. Of course, this being Battlestar Galactica, the path from there was not a smooth one, with the baby being born, then, under Roslin’s orders, Sharon being told the baby had died and been cremated (she wasn’t, just placed elsewhere). That betrayal would become an issue later on in the series. At one point, when their child is taken to a Cylon ship, Helo has to shoot Sharon so that she will download again on the vessel and find their child.
RONALD D. MOORE
The pregnancy became a huge part of the mythology; that idea of the Cylon drive toward Cylon reproduction became one of the defining characteristics of the whole show and the whole race.
MARY MCDONNELL
When Roslin made the choice to ban abortion, obviously you’re trying to save the human race. There’s got to be babies, right? That was very hard for me personally to get behind. I made the assumption that the secretary of education, a woman who was deeply invested in the education of children and the promotion of life, and teachers being able to live their lives, and young women being able to protect themselves, obviously would be pro-abortion. My thought was that Laura had to go against something that had been a given for her. To make those decisions requires a cutting off of the rest of her, which would force her to hesitate and therefore the quality of ruthlessness developed. It all came back to her ideas about how to survive as a species. Those moments came from learning how to separate the actions from the self. She did not have that quality going into the situation.
MARK VERHEIDEN
I remember when we talked about it, there was a show called Everwood that had done an episode that dealt with abortion. It turned into kind of a cause célèbre for a little while about doing that sort of hot-button topic on a show. We had no problems. I don’t recall any issues with actually tackling that particular subject, because, again, we were one step removed. We’re not saying it’s about your little girl in Middle America. We were talking about a completely different situation where President Roslin had to make a difficult choice that went against her personal morals. A choice she felt she had to make for the survival of mankind. Again, we did things we were able to do or at least not run into as much trouble doing, because of the one step removed of science fiction.
RONALD D. MOORE
As soon as you see the word “abortion,” it’s controversial, so the network and the studio certainly started getting a little nervous when it was brought up, but they didn’t really, to their credit, pressure us not to do it. The trick for us was, it was interesting about Laura, the liberal president who, forced into this situation, would look at this with different eyes and come to a conclusion that she really despised, but that made sense in terms of the survival of the human race.
GRACE PARK
The whole baby thing had a fantastic setup, including the idea that they were going to abort it. So when it’s dead, there’s the grief and you’re fighting for something. You’re thrashing against something. And then the absolute betrayal when you find out the baby is alive and was taken from you. Yet the joy and the brilliance that the baby is still alive; it’s the hope that ideally pulls you through.
The man with the wrench on Galactica was Chief Galen Tyrol, who, having risen and fallen elsewhere owing to a tragic mistake made by his deckhands, found himself on the battlestar, more or less starting his career over. Writes Moore, he tried to “keep his head down and forget about what had happened. But he didn’t stay anonymous for long. Adama liked to walk the flight line every day, checking out his birds as part of the morning routine, and he soon spotted Tyrol and his affinity for the fighters and the deck gang. It wasn’t long before Adama restored his rank and made him Chief of the Deck.… Tyrol had found his home and his pl
ace.”
The same could be said for Canadian actor Aaron Douglas, who had scored a few guest roles and bit parts in films prior to being cast on the show, but truly got to demonstrate his acting prowess as the chief.
AARON DOUGLAS
(actor, “Chief Tyrol”)
In 2001 or 2002, I guess I didn’t really have a career, I was a reader in casting sessions. I would be the person standing beside the camera reading opposite the person auditioning. I was reading for a woman named Maureen Webb, who is a Vancouver casting director. She was in negotiations to do Battlestar Galactica, but it was Bryan Singer’s Battlestar Galactica, the continuation reboot or whatever it was. That went okay, and then I was a reader for these casting directors who ultimately cast our show, Coreen Mayrs and Heike Brandstatter. They were having the Vancouver search for all the characters. I was a reader in the session and afterward they’d go, “Oh, Aaron, it’s your turn to read for Apollo.” I originally read for Apollo, which I didn’t get, which is great, because Jamie had to go to the gym and I didn’t.
Then I get a callback. That would be November–December 2002. And then I got a callback in January 2003 for the role of Gaeta, which I also didn’t get. Which is great, because Alessandro Juliani is a fantastic actor and does a great job of Gaeta and he’s got all that tech talk, which I don’t like to do. I was on the outside looking in and they got to the end of one of the sessions, and Michael Rymer turned to Eick and said, “You know, you got a lot of old dudes in the show. You should find some more younger guys.” Because Chief Tyrol was supposed to be a contemporary of Colonel Tigh. Eick said, “How about Aaron Douglas? He doesn’t have a role right now and we really like him.” Then I obviously got it, read the pilot, and the chief character was pretty small. Rumor has it that the chief was supposed to die early in season one. Chief finds out that Boomer is a Cylon and she whacks him before he can run off and tell anybody. But they liked me, because I ad-libbed so much and they liked what I was doing. So they decided to keep him around. The rest is history, as they say.
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