| By Sean Elliot, Ifmagazine.com,
on 04-12-2006
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Favoured : 119 |
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is one of the most talked about dramas on television today. With a Peabody Award to their credit, the creators behind the series, Ron Moore and David Eick continue to forge ahead and break new ground in what is viewed as the Science Fiction genre. Eick is always happy to talk about his baby, and in this third part of iF MAGAZINE’s exclusive interview we find out how he really feels about the characters he helped create
iF MAGAZINE: Was it tough to kill certain characters this season?
DAVID EICK: I think in the case of Ellen Tigh, there needed to be damage, measurable permanent damage to some of our people as a result of the events on New Caprica. In the case of Tigh, I remember Ron [Moore] walked in one day and I asked him how the writing of the two-hour premiere was going. He said, “Well, I think it’s going really well. Tigh lost an eye.” I was shocked that Tigh lost an eye, but he had a really interesting point that he felt the need for some visual evidence of what happened. It wasn’t just going to be a fantasy that ten episodes later when everyone is sitting in the poker room having a good time, there still has to be some legitimacy and some respect paid to those we left behind and the casualties we suffered and the emotional trauma experienced. So, the missing eye does that every time you see the man. I don’t want to make an off-hand comparison, but the people who survived concentration camps in World War II have tattoos on their arms. Any time you see a human being with those kinds of marks it takes you back and you will never forget and that’s sort of the point you aren’t supposed to. Beyond that we also needed to have some consistency in how we treat the people we care about, in that they don’t get off the hook just because we care about them. For example, if we say the rules of engagement are "we are at war and if you collude with the enemy you die period," if you start making exceptions to that rule you lose. That means even if the collaborator is someone we love, even if it is the wife of the guy leading the resistance you still have to do it. You can’t make exceptions. The only way you make that point, and maintain the degree of reality and conviction about your storytelling is to not be a hypocrite when it comes to things like that.
iF: Who do you enjoy writing the most?
EICK: [Laughs] It’s funny because Tigh is my favorite character. I’m not talking about actors or performances but just the character themselves; my favorites are the ones that for whatever reasons intersect with my personal taste the best are Starbuck and Tigh. If I were guess to Ron’s favorites it would be Baltar and Tigh. The common link there is Tigh. [Laughs] We both really, really love that character. I think because we both really love him so much, we feel the freedom to push him in directions that you wouldn’t push a character that you didn’t care so much about because we feel like he can do no wrong on some level. I’d admitting that may be a weakness in our point of view, but I’m being honest about how we come to the character. Ron and I are by our very nature argumentative people. We’re both strong willed. We are absolutely in lock-step with each other when it comes to the big issues of making this show. Within that there are always a thousand arguments and reason for us to struggle to make the show as great as we can. We don’t always agree how to go about doing that, but if there is one thing we’ve never disagreed about, it’s Tigh. On any level concerning that character there has never been a broken point of view other than a shared point of view. We realize things simultaneously, like in the second season, we went for four episodes where every single f**king thing the guy said was wrong. Every move he wanted to make: wrong, every decision he wanted to make: wrong, every point in the strategy he want to espouse: wrong. Wrong, Wrong, Wrong! We realized that we were indulging a sort of fetishistic perversion. We just got such a kick out this guy being wrong, but after a while he can’t always be wrong. The guy is the XO, he should have a point of view occasionally that doesn’t spell out disaster and ruin for everybody. So, we catch ourselves when we go too far with it. Ron and I definitely do thing to amuse us, and it all comes down to Michael Hogan. There is nothing the guy can’t do. When there is nothing an actor can’t do, and you don’t feel the choke chain of limitation when you are writing, you’ll explore things you would never explore ordinarily. Michael Hogan, for all the times he was wrong, not a peep. Never did he ask, “can’t I be right this time? Why do I have to be such a drunk? Why can’t be nicer?” The guy is such a consummate pro.
iF: I love seeing Lucy Lawless play such a sadistic Cylon in this. How do you react to it?
EICK: I love it too. In episode six she’s really great.
iF: You guys really wrote her character gonzo in season2…the quote “God loves me” right before her head gets caved in by a rock.
EICK: People don’t know this about Lucy, but she has an incredibly perverse sense of humor and she is extremely well read. There are all sorts of kinky references in her own mind when she approaches something like that. She reads a lot of Science Fiction/Fantasy and Religious novels and she is very informed by spiritual writing and she has a great deal of intellectual curiosity as a human being. She’s constantly digging up wack s**t and sending to me or emailing it to me. It’s great when she does a line like, “God loves me” she is so convincing and she is such a zealot and its not milked. For someone who made her name on XENA, which everyone talked about the camp value of it, the truth is she is nothing like that on this show. It was appropriate on XENA, but there is no evidence of it on this show even though she is playing an extreme character. She has really had to find a tightrope to walk, and she has done it so expertly. I just thought the scene with Amanda Plummer in one of the opening episodes, that Lucy was so understated and so broken up inside about what he destiny was and being such a nervous wreck about the baby and the dreams, that it was all there and so dimensional and it was such a layer performance. I’ve always known that about her acting talents, because she did stuff even on XENA that I think she didn’t get as much credit as she deserved for it. She really brought her “A” game to this show, and I am doubly proud because I was the one who started making noise about bringing her on the show. It’s always nice to look like a genius. [Laughs]
Source Link: http://ifmagazine.com/feature.asp?article=1781
Last update : 04-12-2006
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