‘Battlestar Galactica’s’ Ron Moore discusses ‘A Disquiet Follows My Soul’
By: Maureen Ryan
Date: January 23, 2009
Source: The Watcher
Note: This is a snippet of an interview with RONALD D. MOORE where he mentions AARON DOUGLAS / CHIEF TYROL. To read the full interview, click HERE.
Why did you need to establish that Nicky is not the Chief’s baby?
Well, we’re starting to sort of resolve some of the plot threads and provide answers to things and one of the questions was, “Is Hera the only hybrid, the only Cylon-human child, or not?” If Nicky was a Cylon-human child, what does that mean? Now there’s two of them. It was important to the mythology of the show that only Hera be the only one. We had always sort of said that.
So you had to sort of retrofit…
Yeah, we had to retrofit that. We knew that was going to be a problem back when we decided that Tyrol was a Cylon. We said, “OK, how are we going to deal with that?” And [someone] said, “Well, maybe at some point we just find out Tyrol’s not the father.” And we all kind of laughed. And then we said, “Actually, that’s a very elegant solution to it.” We just say, “Tyrol’s not the father,” and we move on.
And that’s kind of how the show is. We take these gambles, then we take time to make sure it fits in with what we’ve got. Or we try to at least address it and make it fit into what we’ve got, so the mosaic is still consistent.
Does that meant that Cally cheated on the Chief? Were they together when she had her fling with Hot Dog?
I think Cottle says [the child was conceived] before they got married. I think she had some kind of relationship with Hot Dog, before she and Chief got married. But that all kind of falls into that missing year of time in between the end of Season 2 and the beginning of Season 3.
You know what, honestly, I would feel bad if, retroactively, Cally was a cheater. She went through enough.
I don’t think she was cheating. The intention was not that she was cheating on Tyrol. It was that she had some kind of relationship with Hot Dog, you know, before or concurrent with, as she and Tyrol were getting together. In my mind, Tyrol, like, in a moment, proposed to her. And she was stunned and said yes, but she had probably slept with Hot Dog three weeks before or something like that. It was one of those kinds of circumstances.
Got it. Because, you know, the Compendium of Bad Things that Happened to Cally …
[laughs] I know.
I’ve been re-watching the earlier seasons, and I developed this theory that you guys would sit around and go, “What’s the worst thing that happens in this episode? Can it happen to Cally?”
[laughs] I know.
So I just hoped that, you know, even in death, bad things would not continue to happen to her.
No, no. She wasn’t a cheater. It was just one of those things.