So Say We All

by Mark A. Altman

  We sort of knew from the beginning of season three, once we started talking about New Caprica and the occupation and the occupation is going to end, Baltar is probably going to go on trial. The question just became, when were we going to do the trial episode? As we got into it, we decided we didn’t want to do it right away. It felt like a big idea, the trial of one of our key characters for treason and the possible execution and all that. So we sort of put a pin in it and said, “All right, that’s going to be the season finale. We don’t really know what’s going to happen between here and there, but somehow Baltar’s going to get captured or he’ll be traded back to them or something. Through some mechanism, our characters will get their hands on Gaius Baltar again, and then we’re going to have the trial of the century. That will be the end of the season.” And we just left it at that.

  It sort of hung out there on the writers’ board. That was really the only pointer that we had toward what the end of the season was going to be. Everything else was kind of embroidering on the fallout from New Caprica and continuing to advance different character relationships and plot ideas. Just always in the back of our head saying, “Eventually we’ll end the season with a trial.”

  MARK STERN

  When the idea of the trial was pitched to us, it just didn’t feel like it was big enough. Or special enough to end the season. What they came up with instead, I absolutely loved.

  RONALD D. MOORE

  We had done an initial break on the finale—on the trial—and the writers were pitching it to me in the room. I remember just feeling like it wasn’t enough. I was kind of dissatisfied. It worked perfectly well as a story, but it didn’t feel like it was a season finale. It just wasn’t big enough, which I think surprised me and surprised everyone, because we’d been assuming that was the big, slam-bang ending to the season. I said that it felt like we should reveal a Cylon or something, but that wasn’t very big. Then I said, “Maybe we should reveal four out of five of them in one big shock moment,” and people were taken aback, because the four would be among the crew.

  MARK VERHEIDEN

  So the enemy was living amongst us the whole time. That really threw an emotional wrench into all the relationships. Not just people who had specific relationships with those characters—the last Cylon characters—but also the relationships between the crew and their commanding officers. How could you have let this happen? How could you not have known? Were you in league with them this whole time? Who else is going to come out as a Cylon?

  Ron and David had come to us and said, “We think we should pick X number of significant crew members to realize they’ve been Cylons the whole time, under deep cover.” That led to a three-day summit in Lake Tahoe, where all the writers got together. We sat down with a whiteboard and we’re trying to figure out what would be the most interesting combination of characters to have this revelation be about; who could we use that would be the best way to achieve what we wanted to achieve by making this big series-changing revelation. That was a really fun exercise in running through all the options we had.

  RONALD D. MOORE

  I literally sketched out this image. I said, “We can just cut to four characters in different parts of the ship, and they all start going toward one room, you know? They just all walk into that room and they look at each other, and suddenly they’re like, ‘We’re Cylons,’ and that’s how we would do it. They were all called by some unknown force or some trigger and we just really shock the audience.” People were surprised in the room, and some of the writers were reluctant that it might be too many, but as we talked about it, we got more excited.

  MARK VERHEIDEN

  After that, it became planning on how to get to that place, and choosing who would be the best people to be Cylons, knowing that there were a few cast members who would absolutely not want to play that part. They were never on the table, really. Mr. Olmos, for example. I don’t think that would have flown. I don’t think President Roslin was interested in being a Cylon.

  RONALD D. MOORE

  We sat there for a few hours and dug through all the possibilities—the whole cast and recurring cast. We got to the core group of four kind of quickly, and then just kept talking about other possibilities.

  Those who were chosen to be a part of the final four of five Cylons turned out to be Aaron Douglas’s Chief Tyrol, Michael Trucco’s Sam Anders, and, most surprising of all, Michael Hogan’s Saul Tigh and Rekha Sharma’s Tory Foster, a character introduced as a presidential advisor to Laura Roslin, who, more than the others, truly seemed to embrace the sudden revelation of what she is.

  BRADLEY THOMPSON

  We knew that we were eventually going to have to explain who they were. I was actually up in Vancouver when they were doing a lot of that. We put everybody up on the board. Everybody was a possibility. It was like, “Who would give us the best stories if these guys turned out to be Cylons?” That’s how we picked them. Ron wrote them on the board and said, “Okay, these are the guys.” After we’d done all our discussions about it, he said, “Sleep on it, because tomorrow that’s going to be real.”

  RONALD D. MOORE

  People came in and out, but we sort of figured that Tyrol was a good one, because he was such a human character. He was just such a guy. The idea was mind-blowing, but we hesitated, fearing we might lose that quality about him, but we didn’t.

  AARON DOUGLAS

  (actor, “Chief Tyrol”)

  My initial reaction to being one of the Final Five was that you’re taking somebody that the fans love and you’re going to turn him into somebody that they don’t; they’re going to hate this guy. But I didn’t really understand the nuance and just how bloody smart sci-fi fans are that they can vacillate between, “Okay, now I’m on their side. Oh, now I’m on these guys’ side,” and just go back and forth. You know, “Okay, I like the humans, but what they’re doing right now is just full dick mode. I’m going to hope that the Cylons do something cool here and put them in their place.”

  Ultimately what I’ve come to is that if you want to humanize the Cylons, I don’t think anybody does a better job of that than Colonel Tigh and Chief Tyrol. The chief is such a likable guy and he’s not nefarious and he doesn’t have the ulterior motives. He’s just trying to do the best he can and he’s a fairly simple guy. Shit just goes wrong and he keeps plugging away. He’s kind of an easy guy to root for and then you find out he’s a Cylon and you go, “Oh, shit, can I still like him? Yeah, I can.” It makes them not ultimately just evil for the sake of being evil. A lot of us were just doing the best we could with the hand we were dealt, and it doesn’t matter that we were born tens of thousands of years ago or created whenever.

  I thought you need to play him the same way. He fundamentally doesn’t change in one way, but in another he still wants to do what’s best by everybody or do the best that he can. I’m really happy that they discovered it when they did, and told us when they did, because if we had known from the outset, that would have really changed how the role was played. You know, if they said early on, “By the way, you’re a Cylon, but we’re not going to reveal it until season four.” That would have detracted from the character for sure.

  RONALD D. MOORE

  Rekha’s character of Tory was kind of an easy one, because it was, “Okay, another character that joined us later and, oh, she’s been really close to the president; that’s a good position to be in.”

  REKHA SHARMA

  (actress, “Tory Foster”)

  That character, I felt, was very much about the brutal reality we lived in. And, for me, supporting a female president was awesome, especially being her right-hand gal and blatantly saying things that don’t want to be said. It’s all about these tough calls. She’s someone who has to learn to be brave enough to do the job, because she’s never done this before. All of the people in our story before the war began were doing regular jobs, and everything changed. I can’t remember what Tory was before, but it was certainly not the chief of staf
f to the president. It’s, like, okay, a big opportunity and these are big shoes I’ve got to fill, and this is a big crazy time in the world and I’ve got to step up. It was this balance of creating a rapport and a friendship and really getting to know the president. Then finding how we trust each other and how we work together and being strong enough to say, “Actually, don’t do that.”

  The revelation that she is actually a Cylon was a total shock. I knew something was up the day I read it, beginning when I was getting ready for work and Eddie said to me, “Have you read ahead?” I was like, “No.” Then he just laughed, sat in his chair, just laughing. “Better pull up your socks and get ready.” I was like, “What’s he talking about?” He said, ‘You go to the office before you leave today and you get the next script. You take it home and you read it. Just you wait. Just you wait, little girl.” So I went in and got the script, took it home, read it that night, and literally squealed with joy. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Then we proceeded to have no idea what it means. Many theories were going around. Nobody would say whether or not it was true. I thought maybe they planted a chip so that we think that we’re Cylons, but we’re actually not, and it’s a whole ruse to take us down or something. We didn’t find out until moments before we actually shot the scene.

  Then, she almost became afraid of herself in the beginning. It took her to this very still place, where I was almost afraid to do anything. You just stay still, you don’t move too much. All of these feelings were arising inside of her. One thing, for instance, was sexuality. She was all of a sudden having an affair with Anders. We were, like, what the hell is going on? Clearly in the world, he’s not her type. He’s a jock, she’s an intellectual. But they were inexorably drawn to each other. So she’s coming alive in an unknown way to herself. Then she starts to feel strength, power, that she’s been so afraid of coming from the outside, and now she realizes she has that power. She decides to embrace it. From that point, she was just looking for truth.

  I love the metaphor of it. To learn that you’re your own enemy and the thing you’ve been fighting against your whole life, but filled with the fear of annihilation, because I’m surrounded by people who would like to kill me.

  RONALD D. MOORE

  Sam was kind of an easy one, because we met him on Cylon-occupied Caprica and that was just an easy way to posit that he was a Cylon. Then the question became, what would that do to his relationship with Starbuck?

  MICHAEL TRUCCO

  I’m deeply gratified I got to step into that role as a Cylon and take that character on that much of a strange journey. That could’ve been a very one-off, ancillary character. Could’ve been the eye candy that she sleeps with and then she kicks to the curb. But I was given the permission to inhabit this character and given the storylines to make something of them. I look back now on the journey, and ending up to be one of the Final Five was like being knighted. I felt like, you know, take a knee and have a sword touch both shoulders, because you’re going to be part of the lore of this show for the rest of its life.

  After he realized it, I remember a scene specifically in the little hallways when Starbuck was like, “If I ever find out you’re a Cylon, I’ll put a bullet through your head.” Suddenly Anders was filled with paranoia. His confidence shifted to one of fear. So I was initially confused, but other people had different reactions. Michael Hogan was just pissed. He was like, “C’mon … are you fucking kidding me?” He was genuinely mad. If you ever watch Tigh as a Cylon, he’s just mad. Aaron Douglas was, “Of course the chief’s a Cylon.” With that sort of resigned irony. Me? I was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Time out. Ron? David?” I call them on the phone and I’m like, “What about all those things where I was fighting?” They’re like, “Yeah, you know, you’re a Cylon.” So I had to take that confusion and I realized that I played Anders more paranoid. My biggest fear was my own life, because I believed that if Starbuck found out I was Cylon, she would put a bullet in my head.

  As a character, nothing felt different inside. That was the genius program of the Cylons: that they were, for all intents and purposes, human. They had the flesh and the blood and the bones and they had the soul and minds. All that programming was so sophisticated that we thought we were human. If they didn’t click that thing in our heads, we’d still be going on as humans. But then you find out you’re a Cylon with emotions and feelings, and feeling pain.

  RONALD D. MOORE

  When Adama was shot in season one and Tigh took over and ran into all kinds of problems, we thought there might be repercussions between the two of them, but thought it more important that Adama give him a pass, and that said more about their friendship than anything else. He just wasn’t going to call him on the carpet for any of the things he’d done; Adama was just going to keep up and keep moving. Then, of course, when Tigh revealed himself to be a Cylon … The thing to shake him deepest was to threaten his ship and the friendship and trust he had in Saul. We went right at them there toward the end.

  MICHAEL HOGAN

  There’s the wonderful scene in the CIC after I find out this news, wondering what am I going to do? Terrified. Adama gives me an order and says, “Tigh, are you all right? I gave you an order.” “Oh, I never felt better in my life.” Lifts up a gun and shoots, and I think he shoots Adama, right in the eye, by the way, and down he goes. And that’s the nightmare that Tigh is living with ever since, right? The fear he could actually do that.

  RONALD D. MOORE

  Saul was a tough one. That was the one where we were like, “Boy, what are we doing here? What does this do to his relationship with Adama once we do?” The thing that attracted me the most to him was what it did to that character who had been the most anti-Cylon of all of them. He had led the resistance. He had lost an eye, for God’s sake. It just really turned that character inside out.

  MARK VERHEIDEN

  Tigh was the one that was maybe the most difficult to finally land on, because, just from a structural standpoint, and what we’d established from his life and his history with Adama, it took a little bit of backfilling to make it clear how he could have been a Cylon, and then all this time has essentially been a sleeper agent within the fleet. The others had come in a little later, so it didn’t feel quite as tricky to do that. I think we actually did episodes where we saw them in their younger days. I can’t remember if Tigh was in the episode where we met Adama’s wife or not, but we certainly suggested that they’d known each other for many years. That was the logic issue we had to deal with when considering the change of making Tigh one of the Cylons.

  EDWARD JAMES OLMOS

  No one knew who the Cylons were going to be ahead of time. There are a couple of people that said they knew because they had gotten to read the script earlier than anyone else. I believe that, but in essence the majority of us did not know who the other Cylons were. So they wrote it and we started to do a table reading and people got very angry. The most anger came from Michael Hogan. He said, “This is bullshit. I’m not going to do this. I’m not doing it,” and he stood up and walked out. He was very angry and frustrated. He couldn’t believe that they had done this to him. He ended up bringing that anger to the performance. If you watch him when they finally meet inside the hangar, the four them, he is so angry. He hates the Cylons, but as time goes on, he learns that he’s actually the father of all of them. He was the first one. He helped create Cylon number one.

  MICHAEL HOGAN

  At the time, someone told me there was a poll online of all the people that had been on Battlestar Galactica that could be Cylons, and apparently Tigh was second to last. Just least likely. And on set, everybody’s teasing each other and it was close to zero hour to find out who were the Final Five. At that point Eddie looked at me and said, “You’re hearing the music.” “Come on, Eddie. Frak off, man. Not you, too, for God’s sake. Let’s get on with it.” Then Michael Rymer was there and he said, “Ron Moore hasn’t talked to you?” I said, “Rymer, not you, too, man.” Then Ron
flies to Vancouver to talk to me, and in the long run, I think it’s absolutely brilliant they chose Tigh, because if he’s not chronologically the oldest human being alive … seriously, there’s only some thirty-thousand-odd of us left, so if he’s not the oldest he is certainly the most dangerous. He’s got more battle combat than anybody in the fleet. He’s fought the Cylons hand-to-hand, etc. And he’s the most loyal. So he’s dangerous. So you’re like, “What’s going to happen here? Tigh’s a Cylon?”

  RONALD D. MOORE

  What would call them in? What do they hear? What would it be? And somebody said, “Music. What if they heard a song?” I immediately said, “And it’s going to be ‘All Along the Watchtower.’” That was something I’d wanted to do in an episode of Roswell. Never got made, but I’d become sort of quasi-obsessed with that song. I said, “The lyrics are crazy and weird and it’s perfect, and we can have all kinds of interesting things going on. And there are coded messages in the lyrics.” It had something to do with all of this has happened before, all of it will happen again. Next thing you know, we all got really excited by it and that became the big thing that we were going to do at the end of the season. Which is so ironic, because now most people probably think of the ending for that season as the revelation of the four out of five Cylons, and they forgot that was the trial of Baltar.