Commercial Break

Have you seen the new Audi S3 Sportback? It's one hell of a car.

The main features include:
* incredible fluffy dark hair
* soft kind voice
* beautiful British accent
* scruffy stubble
* lean sexy torso
* did I mention the hair?

What's amazing is that you can plug in your iPod and DID YOU SEE HIS HAIR? Swoon.

I'm way too excited about this. Yeah, it's an ad, and the things they had him say are cringeworthy indeed, but looking at him, I just don't care. He may be a sell-out, but he's such a CUTE sell-out.

Two Awesome Fan Videos

And the Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence goes to...

"Clint Eastwood" by Gorillaz - a Gaius video made by bop_radar
(There's also a stream link, but it only streamed about halfway for me)

and

"I Touch Myself" by The Divinyls - a Gaius/Six video made by nicole_anell
(It also links to Youtube, but the video has been removed from there - bastards!)

These are seriously good videos. They seem to share the same strengths:

-the lyrics fit Gaius (and Six)

-the scenes are timed to the rhythm of the song, so they actually look like music videos

-there's a lot of humor in both the choice of clips and their timing

-scenes from different episodes and seasons have been intertwined instead of simply making a chronological video

Most importantly, both videos show the creators' own reading of Gaius/Six. There's something original about the choice of clips and the way they've been arranged; the personalities of the creators come through.

More of these, please!

Farpoint 2008 Q & A

So I really wanted to do a transcript of this, because it's an awesome interview. Then I looked at the videos I could gather on Youtube and realized that it's just a small fraction of the Q & A. But I was sure I'd seen the entire interview somewhere - and then I realized that I had read Dianora's comprehensive and very James-positive LJ posts about the Q&As. Day 1, Day 2.

I still want to blog about this though. So here's what I'm gonna do: I'll transcribe the clips I have, and for the rest, I'm going to use Dianora's post as a source for my own commentary. Dianora's paraphrases and comments will be in quote tags, and my own transcripts and comments will not be. I hope this is not too confusing. If you know of more videos of this Q&A, please let me know and I'll add them to the Youtube playlist.

A big thank you to Dianora for writing such a detailed account, and to everyone who's provided videos on Youtube - the videos in question are from amezri, rubanek, and emmyl658. Amezri also has some videos of an auction that occurred later at the same event, with James being cute and hilarious. My playlist with all the videos is here. Dianora's linking to it too, but here's nnaylime's photo gallery of James at Farpoint. Great photos.

So to kick it off, an interesting bit about Baltar's insecure body language:

It's a way to show that Baltar wasn't in control of something monstrous, i.e. genocide -- he used the physical unsurety to underscore the fact that Baltar didn't really know what he was doing. And that is also related to how different BSG 2003 is from the original, where everything was more black and white -- Gaius is "a microcsom of the macrocosm of the new show."

I loved this, and it made me wonder if the sympathy I feel for Baltar has a subconscious element related to the body language. There's something childlike about Baltar, and it's not just the selfishness. He somehow acts like a puppy who's demanding and annoying one minute and totally adorable and helpless the next. Thinking about it, it must be the body language. It's awesome that he's thought of this so much.

He mentioned that there was a scene that wound up on the cutting room floor where Baltar tries to "blend in" on the basestar by being naked, but was extremely self-conscious about it. Marina [Sirtis] had mentioned earlier that when you do nude scenes you have a closed set, but he said that in his experience, it was more like people sold tickets!

:D This reminds me of the third season gag reel when he's lying naked on the couch in the basestar, smiling at the camera all talk show-y: "Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the show! Tonight on Baltar's Basestar, we have some fascinating people joining us." It was hilarious but he looked a bit self-conscious, so maybe there were just too many spectators.

He did note that he thinks sometimes there are too many issues happening in one script -- he'd love to see a concentration on fewer issues so that each one can be given its due respect, rather than rushing through a bunch of different things. He also noted that sometimes on the show plot seemed to dictate character, and he feels strongly that it should always be the other way around (me too, James!). In other words a character shouldn't suddenly shoot someone because that character needs to die; there should be a reason he is shooting someone (I felt like he was maybe referring to "Fragged" here).

Totally agreed. I think one good example is Taking a Break From All Your Worries - you've got Baltar being mentally tortured and it's horribly brutal, and the next minute you see Lee drinking away his worries because he married the wrong woman. It just somehow isn't intense on the same level, and I hate the quadrangle, and it takes away from the intensity of Baltar's scenes. I'm not sure if James is talking about that specifically, though. The shooting reference does seem like it might be about Fragged.

About playing pranks on set:

In the scene where Lucy was naked getting out of bed, it was originally supposed to be a body double, but he and Tricia kept telling her that they thought they spotted a big pimple on the body double's butt, and did Lucy really want people thinking that was HER butt? They were totally lying, but Lucy eventually believed them and decided to do the scene herself.

Heee! This was just really hilarious. Dianora also reports that he said the scene was too short and there was no sex, and I agree - I mean, what's the point of doing a very risqué threesome storyline if you can't even show it? It's the same with Razor: OMG Gina and Cain! Wait, when are they gonna show them together? Hey, this is just Cain staring at Gina while she's being tortured. Major disappointment. I know people can fill in the blanks themselves, but a few girl on girl scenes wouldn't have hurt. At least, like, a kissing scene. This is something I don't understand about censorship, because some James/Tricia scenes have been pretty graphic (torture S/M scene?) but even the scene where Caprica strokes D'Anna's arm was cut off.

So then, the first mix of Dianora's paraphrase and my transcript. Background info from Dianora:

Another instance which wasn't really a prank was -- omg, this is hilarious -- during the filming of "Pegasus." It was the scene where the Pegasus lands in the hangar deck and Cain comes out, and the whole ship is there to greet her. Adama is supposed to greet her, but EJO was AWOL -- had gone to make a call or something. The way the scene was being shot during that take, the camera only saw Cain, not Adama. So in order to help out Michelle Forbes, James started speaking Adama's lines -- in his best EJO impression, which he then performed for us. (I love that all the actors on this show have to contribute EJO impressions.)

And transcript:
Clip 1

Meanhwile, all of us were on shot and trying not to laugh, because it's kind of ludicrous. And then they shout "Cut!" And then somebody says, I think it's the director, "Does somebody want to get Eddie a glass of water?" And then they realized that he wasn't there [chuckles], and then I was in a little bit of trouble. [laughter] In the sense of wasting people's time.

The last time I tried a practical joke, it just fell totally flat, actually...

James Callis at Farpoint 2008 (the whole bit)
Clip 2 (just the bit about the prank)
Clip 3 (just the bit about Ratlab)

We were all walking through the Basestar... not Basestar, I'm in real trouble now, the cylon ship, baseship. And um, basically you know, when you've done a scene, then people come in and clean the set, and there's you know, like cleaning equipment, a broom, a mop, a bucket, and those cones to show that the floor is wet. So when everybody was, you know, we were walking thru corridors, just before the setup, I put the broom and the mop and the cone there, as kind of like... with people walking through like, 'Oh? They're doing maintenance work?' And then, literally just before they shouted action, the director went, "What the hell is in the shot?" [laughter] "What the hell is that?!" And I sheepishly went, "You know, it was me, I just you know...It's funny." [laughter] "You know James, this is not school. It's like, this is serious, this is our job. You just wasted ten minutes of everybody's time." I think that was the last time...I think, basically, this is the thing that you take from that: Youre gonna do something on set, involve somebody, a person.Then you can kind of get out of it. Don't just use objects. That was my lesson.

And otherwise, I'm not sure... Lots and lots of uh... I suppose one of the things that I find particularly amusing while it was totally stupid, is that uh.. It's not really a prank, it's just that Jamie Bamber came up to me, he was doing a very very big scenew ith Eddie James Olmos, which I think you know, they they kind of have to do every week, in that way... But it was a very passionate scene and he was very... you know, he wanted to do his best in it. He was asking me, you know, my opinion of uh... certain modes and ways, in the way that we all ask each other, you know, "Do you reckon I could do this and get away with this and everything". And I said to him, "Well, I think during the scene, one of the most important things that you can do is think that LEE spelled backwards is EEL." [laughter; James nods seriously] Which kind of fell flat on me, because then he's like, "Yeah, well, BALTAR's RATLAB!" [laughter, applause] "Since then, a lot of people called me Ratlab on the set.

End of transcript.
James does an awesome EJO impression, and he obviously likes to showcase it in many interviews. It's always a hit, but it cracks me up that it even fooled the directors. Also, I don't know how they didn't notice - James' physique is so different from Eddie's. I guess the voice was just so convincing. I also really loved that bit about Ratlab - it really fits too, he's a rat and a labrat... A pretty good one from Jamie, I must say. James seems to enjoy telling stories where he's humiliated in the end, and it sounds like he would be so much fun to work with. Well, he's fun to listen to, as well; he has the audience in stitches, and there's also a sign language interpreter who seems to almost burst out laughing while interpreting. It's a great little Q&A with an intimate feel. Watching the videos feels almost like being there and seeing him from the crowd.

He was asked about Messiahs, which is interesting but a bit too long to quote. Here's an intriguing bit:

He mentioned to Ron Moore at one point that in playing Gaius, he now truly understands the meaning of the Lord's Prayer, specifically the part about forgiving our trespasses, and that it would destroy Gaius if he ever had to say that and really think about it. RDM was into that and that's where Gaius praying came from. But he said that when filming that scene, the director told him he was playing it too genuine -- "Would Gaius really be able to do that?" -- which changed the direction of the scene.

It probably would destroy Gaius, and it's awesome that he points that out. I do wonder about that praying scene - did he really think he was talking to God, whom he doesn't necessarily even believe in and... The whole cult thing is a bit problematic for me. I mean, sleeping with lots of beautiful women, OK. But the part about being a messiah and really believing it? I don't know. I still say it seems out of character and hard to accept. Maybe the scene in The Hub where he talks about his crushing guilt and how the faith has relieved him of that kind of gives it some meaning, because we're talking about the master of "It wasn't me", and he's just looking for new reasons to think he's not really that guilty, if guilty at all, to the whole genocide thing. He's the flood! He's the hand of God! This, to me, is pure Gaius. Praying for the sick boy? Not so much.

Transcript time, and do watch the video, because his accents are really worth hearing:

Clip 4
"So they had this thing, they wrote this thing about my accent changing. And uh... That really, you know, he's a comedian(?), he's from somewhere else. And... You know, I've always found it slightly unusual that I'm practically the only person with a British accent in this show. Something that we have... glossed over, in British terms. There it is, the Brits are baddies. This speech came up and the producer, one of the producers but I won't name names, was like, "Yeah, you know, we want you to have this kind of um, we want you to have this voice, and you're talking about the farming..." And if you remember, it's all about how I was born on a sheep farm or something, tending to the cows. "Can you do a Michael Caine accent?" [looks around in disbelief; laughter] [Michael Caine accent] What? I was like, "Well, Michael Caine's like from the East End of London! They don't have any sheep farms here! [laughter] East End, what are you talking about?" He was like, [changes accent] "Yeah, but it's cool, the Americans don't, you know... Just wanna get a.... Can't you do a Micahel Caine impression?" I'm like, for god's sake, this is totally ludicrous! Then I said well, if you're talking about dairy farms, and you don't want me to do an American accent in that way, then I will do a regional British accent. And one of the places for dairy farms in England is like down in the south, Dorset, their home county's down there. [changes accent] They have a kind of strange accent down there in Dorset, so can I talk like that? Friendly, but that's kind of a bit Bristol[?], but that's down south regional accent. So I think the producer went, "But you look demented!" [laughter] "Can't you... I mean, I think... Can't you, I mean it's a little bit strange, I mean Michael Caine would be great." You know, East End switch off, oh dear. So finally, because that was the most, in that sense, that's where most of the dairy farms are, that would have been the most...normal for me. In the end I said, "Well, I'll do Yorkshire for you, because I spent 3 years in York University." [changes accent] It's a slightly duskier accent, maybe a bit more uh... It's a little bit more manly, you know what I mean? And a bit tougher. And these people are traditionally, you know, the miners, people who work with their hands... It's like, there are no dairy farms up there, but it will do.

So I felt at the time that, you know, I felt that it was ludicrous, really, I was not so into it. And then slowly, slowly, when I saw the way that they'd edited it and what had been done, I thought, "They're very clever." And I thought that certain nuances of this really worked. And one of the reasons for this thing, I believe, is to build the profile for somebody who wants to be a messiah. Because if he was going to just be the natural scientist, et cetera... Like I was saying, so many messiahs or fake messiahs in our history come from very humble roots, so it kind of made sense. Also, on that level, lots of fake messiahs sleep with everybody that they possibly can, it's aprt of their cult, and it seems very much a part of Baltar's cult as well."

Awesome accents, a lot of fun to listen to. The scene in Dirty Hands is a bit odd - it comes out of left field, but I think in the end, it worked well. The camera focuses on his mouth and that makes the dark, dusky accent more powerful. It might sort of explain why he sounds British compared to the others - if he started with an Aerelon accent, he may always sound a bit unlike the other Capricans, a bit like he comes from somewhere else. I also think that, in the end, the story of Baltar coming from a worker's planet actually makes sense in terms of his personality. There was an interesting thread at Skiffy about this - A Theoretical Exploration of Baltar's Psyche - where someone built a pretty intricate psychological profile of Baltar based on this tidbit. Just a few quotes:

Baltar is rejected by his fellow Aurelions, particularly his peers, at an early age because of his intelligence because it is so far beyond theirs, just like kids today that are gifted are often shunned, harassed, teased, and bullied. Also, to make it worse, if what Baltar is saying about Aurelion "culture" is true, he may have been rejected not just because he was super intelligent but because that wasn't seen as a good thing...

Then, not only does Baltar find that he is rejected by his fellow Aurelions, he finds that he is rejected by other colonies because of the stereotype that goes along with Aurelions. Therefore he feels very alone, isolated, unloved and rejected by everyone.

Baltar then goes about distancing himself from his Aurelion roots and adopts a non-Aurelion persona, preferring to think of himself as Caprican. He distances himself both because of the treatment and rejection he received from Aurelions because of his intelligence as well as from non-Aurelions because of being Aurelion.

It's really interesting and makes a lot of sense, in terms of his narcissism and other issues.

Moving on, the last bit about the first Q&A:

When he was in Bridget Jones' Diary he was nervous about being able to seem gay enough, but it apparently worked too well, because everyone on set thought he was gay, especially Hugh Grant, who would run away every time James tried to talk to him. (He illustrated this for us. *g*) And when James' wife came to visit him on set, Hugh was like, "Your wife? Really???" He also mentioned that his wife gets upset when he kisses other women on screen, so he has this running joke with her where whenever they're watching a love scene he's like, "Oh, look at that snogging. What great acting. That is an Oscar-worthy snog, right there."

I guess I'll have to admit that I really did think he was gay when I saw him as Tom, and this was long before my BSG fandom. I totally didn't associate him with Tom when I saw him as Baltar, and I was very surprised to hear he had played that role - it's just so different. I think he did a great job, and one that was sorta believable and not just a gay stereotype. I say this as a bisexual (I don't have a lot of gay male friends though, so your mileage may vary). Also, I'm not a fan of Hugh Grant anyway, but that really makes me think less of him.

My pet peeve with Bridget Jones: I haven't found one Youtube clip where James appears for more than two seconds. Is it because BJD is such an old movie by now that all the good clips have been removed? Or because he really appeared in that movie so little? I think I'm going to have to rent the movies and see for myself that he really did play Tom. It just feels so surreal, like part of a different life where I wasn't yet a James fan and still managed to see him on the big screen, twice.

Also - heee, "snog". It's one of those British words that I've never really used myself, but it always amuses me.

Apparently there were two Q&A's, and the next bits will be about the second one.

My question was tangential to the first one, so I raised my hand. James looked at me and said, "Dianora?" [Only he used my real name, ahem.]

As if we were, you know, close personal friends.

Major fan envy. No, but seriously, that's awesome. I think he has a very natural way with the fans in these things, and he really talks like everyone's just good friends with him. It's the same tone he has in the messages on his website. It's a great way of interacting with fans. So Dianora asked a question, and funnily enough, I have a video with just that - "James Callis answering Dia's question". The question is whether he's staying in the US or going back to London after BSG.

Transcript:
"Uh, that's actually got to do with visas, to be [true or truly honest?] [laughter] Um, I don't really know, actually. I've been totally in limbo, that's a strange thing for me, having done BSG. I left London in 2003 for a three-week jaunt to Los Angeles, I didn't know that I would get a job and be in Canada for the next five years. Essentially, we rented out our house in London so we don't have a base in London. And... you know, I actually don't know where.. I suppose, essentially, I will go where the work takes me and where somebody wants to employ me. Hopefully it will be in London or Los Angeles, but you never know." [laughter]

And then he relocated in London and got a job back in Vancouver and went job hunting to LA, and I'm guessing he's back in London now after visiting his grandmother in France... His life sounds really hectic and exhausting with all the traveling. I actually hope he gets a job in some great British drama or sitcom where I could see him and buy the DVDs, because the BBC shows at least will always be aired here. Or some super popular US show where he's playing one of the leading roles. I really want to see him in something like that.

About the Esther movie One Night With the King:

He was in the movie with Omar Sharif, Peter O'Toole, John Rys-Davies, etc., and couldn't believe he was with those guys. He went up to Omar Sharif and said, "So, Omar, I assume that when you heard I would be in this production, that made your decision to participate that much easier, hmm?" Luckily for him, he said, Omar Sharif has a great sense of humor. He said that one time Omar was wearing a funny hat for the film and James said to him, "Omar, when they said put the kettle on, they didn't mean on top of your head." He cracked himself up with that one.

Heee. :D I have a feeling this isn't a great commentary, all I can say half the time is "hee". He's just very naturally funny. I don't think that much of the movie - I've seen only a bit of it so far, and I must admit I find it pretty boring. James' role is very different from Gaius, and it doesn't have that ambiguity, so it's not as interesting to me, and I think it's a bit black and white. He does a great job though. But it's nice that he sort of honored his Jewish heritage there, even if he, ironically, was playing a guy who wants to destroy all the Jews.

Unfortunately, my last video clip:
And the whole thing was that, he was like, before you can play the piano, you have to start singing, [get your gift out?]. And so in an American accent I had to sing German love songs. [laughter; James speaks German in an American accent abit] How I ever did... And the director was very helpful, he was Australian, he went, [Australian accent] "James, if you murder the songs, the audience will hate you!"[laughter]

Dianora's bit that maybe clarifies that:

His first play was with Bob Hoskins, and James played an American, and in an American accent he had to sing German love songs. And the director was an Australian who said that if he was bad, everyone would hate him. And he illustrated all this with the appropriate accents, it was awesome. He played an artist who was supposed to come out and show these gents his pieces, and so he would try to crack them up on stage by substituting nudie pics. And the proper older Brits would just look at him disapprovingly like "James, really." This guy can't catch a break with his attempted pranks!

Heee, again. I can't believe he's done so many pranks that people haven't appreciated. Where's their sense of humor? I also agree with Dianora that James' accents are delicious and add a lot to his stories.

About doing an American accent:

He said that in London, you can be in a serious Shakespearean production, where you're spouting poetry on stage, but backstage everyone is trying to sound like Keanu Reeves. "You've got a hair trigger pointed at your head!" said in his best Keanu whilst pointing an imaginary gun. Hilarious. He noted, though, that the trick to doing an American accent is to sound as much like yourself as possible, because if it's bad, it sounds like "South Park on acid." He did get a role once where he had to use a Latino accent and he said he was "berry berry bad."

Awesome. I wish there was a clip of this. I think the British and American accents aren't actually super different, and I've been impressed with James' American in, say, the Sci Fi Q&A. I think he could do a show in American English quite well. It's not quite as natural as Jamie's, but then Jamie's half American.

He writes music, and Bear McCreary makes him feel like a loser, basically, because he's so young and so talented.

Yeah, that was my reaction to Bear too, especially since he was born the same year as me. He's done all this awesome stuff, and I've - written blogs. It just amuses me that even James, who by my standards is very successful, feels the same way. It's a bit comforting.

This part made me gasp. It's about the scene in Precipice where the cylons "ask" Baltar to sign the death list, and he refuses:

He pointed out that if Baltar were to commit that unforgivable an act with no pressure or provocation, that the character would essentially be dead and there would be nothing to even do with him any more, writing-wise, because he was so irredeemable. So all of the stuff that was in the episode -- the yelling, the gun holding, shooting Six in the head -- was all put there to accommodate James' objections. In fact, when they first started shooting the scene, when Matthew Bennett was giving him the warrant to sign, he was doing it too gently, and James said to him, "This has to feel like an al-Qaeda torture session. If this feels like anything else, I am not going to sign the effing paper." And then he was the one who requested that we don't even see Baltar's hands signing the document, so that the way it is shot, with him listening to head Six and finally signing it, is done as if in a dream, and he doesn't even realize he's doing it, almost.

So - in the original script, Baltar just... signs it? And basically all of the emotional power of that scene is all James? Doral's hardass attitude, the dreamlike thing where we don't see him sign it, the Head Six bit? That scene would be nothing without those things. I always thought that this scene referred to the beginning of the episode, where Gaius tells Laura that he's always followed "the dictates of his conscience" - one of the most ironic Baltar lines ever - and this scene is where he actually tries to follow his conscience and they won't let him. But that it was all added afterwards...

Don't get me wrong, James is a brilliant actor, but sometimes I feel like he should be a writer/director instead. Because he really made that scene. What would Baltar be without James?

There's a bunch of awesome stuff in Dianora's posts that I didn't quote, because I feel like I already quoted too much. This Q&A session is one of my favorite interviews, and I wish they did more of these at conventions. I'm going to do the FanExpo 2006 Q&A soon, even if it's a lot older. I hope he'll have some kind of personal Q&A at Starfury, because while I love the panels, they don't give a lot of time for one person to speak.

More transcripts coming soon.

The Embodiment of Evil?

Sometimes I have to wonder what show people are watching.

Apparently, this site lists Gaius Baltar as the 21st most evil villain.

In the video, we start off with Alicia Quarles, "EP Entertainment Reporter", saying: "What makes a good TV villain is somebody that embodies pure evil."

Voice-over: "James Callis plays the embodiment of evil known as Gaius Baltar..." ['evil' music playing in the background]

Wait, what? This logic is so off, I don't even know where to start. Because one person - granted, she's probably not the only one, but her opinion isn't canon just because she said so - thinks a good villain is the "embodiment of evil", and because Gaius Baltar is on this list, he must be the embodiment of evil. This is not based on anything on the show, and I don't think she's even talking about Gaius Baltar. I hope she's not.

Gaius is not the embodiment of evil. Kevin Khatchadourian is the embodiment of evil. Hannibal Lecter or Sylar might be too. But Gaius Baltar? Half of his scenes in season one consist of "Gaius feels really, really guilty for unwittingly causing the destruction of mankind, and tries to escape the guilt". Actually, half of his scenes in the entire show are all about that. When I think "embodiment of evil", I think utterly remorseless, cruel, plotting, devoid of feeling, etc. etc. Maybe others have a different definition, but "causing a lot of harm by accident" isn't my idea of evil.

Michael Emerson from Lost describes Gaius, and this time I can agree:

"He's both vulnerable and manipulative at the same time. We're never really sure if we ought to feel sorry for him or if we ought to despise him."

Thank you, Michael. So - embodiment of evil? No. Vulnerable? Yes. The whole ambiguity that he describes here is what, to me, negates the idea that Gaius is evil. If he's completely evil, we're supposed to hate him. How could we ever feel compassion for a completely evil being? If we feel compassion, that must mean that he somehow shows he is worth it. We can relate to him on some level, and that must mean he has some goodness to him.

What baffles me is that they show James being photographed at the Comic Con, but don't actually have an interview with him, not even a soundbite. If they had, maybe he would have said, I don't know, something like this:

"My whole thing about baddies, anyway, or playing somebody who's uh.. morally bankrupt... You know, you always see these people and they're always, in some strange way, very powerful, and this.. he he hee, and you know, manic laughter. I think the reality of someone like that is that... you have to go through a lot of colors in your system or in your soul before you get to be that way. And I don't believe anybody's born bad and I certainly don't think Gaius Baltar is born bad, he's just made a dreadful, dreadful mistake." (Sci Fi interview)

This is why I think evil characters tend to be dull. It might be exciting to see them plot against the goodies, especially if they fail with their plans, but just to see an evil person go about his day is not very interesting. There's no moral conflict, no human edge, it's just some writer's idea of a completely bad person, and that makes it very black and white, very stereotypical. This is one of the things that elevates Battlestar above many other shows - they had the guts to write a character who's very human, very weak, sometimes does despicable things, yet feels bad for doing them. All of this raises questions about what good and evil really are and what makes a villain.

I'll probably write more about the guilt and "evil" of Gaius in the future, but here's a quick rundown of why I don't think he's evil:

Cruelty - I've never seen him be cruel. Well, maybe once, when he almost killed Chief to get an answer out of Boomer. But then he sat on the cell floor looking so guilty that it's hard to believe that he had thought it through. He seemed shocked by the prospect that someone could have died. It doesn't make the act itself less cruel, but it shows he has a conscience that might not let him be cruel in a premeditated way. (I'll admit that he almost never listens to it in beforehand, but even if his conscience might work with a lag, it would surely kick in if he was considering something really evil.)

Evil intentions - When has he ever intended to hurt, kill, or destroy someone else? He's caused a lot of bad things, but none of them were intentional, and he always feels terrible when he realizes his own role in it. He did provide the cylons with the codes for mass destruction - but if Caprica-Six had asked him, "Hey Gaius, wanna give me the codes so I can destroy mankind?", he would never have done it. I'm not going to defend the act of giving away military secrets to anyone, but Caprica-Six was someone Gaius trusted, so you could also argue that he was betrayed to do it. That's certainly the way he chooses to see it. But he didn't sell mankind out for his own benefit, and he didn't evilly cackle as he watched it unfold. And when the cylons asked him to sign that death warrant for 200 people? He flat out refused and only signed it because he was at gunpoint. That's how evil he is.

Hate - He doesn't hate anyone. He doesn't love people either, but there's a huge difference between hate and indifference, or even hate and superiority.

Lack of compassion - sometimes it seems that way, but other times he'll turn around and be very compassionate - in Pegasus with Gina, in He That Believeth in Me with the sick child. He's narcissistic, and by definition, that means you care way more about yourself than about others. But he's not completely without compassion. It's funny that people don't say Starbuck is without compassion, and yet she can torture Leoben and kill him over and over; Laura Roslin can airlock cylons left and right and lie to parents that their baby is dead and she's not seen as lacking compassion. I'm not saying that I think these two characters are completely narcissistic and don't care about other people; my point is that all characters on the show have, at some point, done things like this.

That's one of the things I really like about Battlestar, because no one's perfect and no one's a clear cut hero and villain. It's also the thing that baffles me the most about some viewers, because it really looks like some people try to make it more black and white than it is.

YouTube Channel

I've opened a YouTube channel for this blog. Now, I'm probably not going to upload any videos, because I don't have anything exclusive to share. It's meant to be a resource for James video links all in one place, so I don't have to do the same searches every time, and hopefully helpful for others as well. If you have James videos I haven't yet added, please let me know either here or on YouTube. I'm starting with con videos and general BSG stuff he's in.

The channel is at: http://www.youtube.com/BaltarstarBlog

I've created a couple of playlists:
http://www.youtube.com/profile_play_list?user=BaltarstarBlog
More are coming.

It's not looking particularly good for the non-BSG stuff, because I haven't found anything except Chips, Sex and Rock'n'Roll. It seems like a good show, and James is great in it, so I'm not complaining. But I'm also looking for other stuff he's done to round it out a bit.

I haven't made a decision about music videos of BSG yet. Frankly, since there are so many of them, their quality is very varying, and most of them have the same clips over and over, I might just decide to not add any. But we'll see.

An annoyed side note:
Could people please stop tagging every single BSG-related video with the name of every single actor involved? This is a show with a huge cast and a huge array of characters, so obviously not every one of them is going to be in every video. It would be more helpful to only tag it with the names of people who, you know, actually appear in the video. I don't think a lot of people come to Youtube to search for the names of the entire cast and crew. It doesn't make your video look more professional, it just annoys people.

And don't even get me started about the Bridget Jones videos. I have yet to come across one where James appears for more than two seconds, yet the descriptions list him as one of the actors, so the videos come up in a search.

Also: "Recommended For You". What's recommended for me? Let's see:
The top ten list from Letterman. Bwah! OK, this will not be added, just out of respect for James and his condition while doing it.

Jay and Silent Bob Gag Reel. Um, I'd like to emphasize that I'm not really into gag reels in general, just BSG gag reels.

That all? OK. For the record, I don't really believe that they're ever going to recommend a video that is just the thing I've always wanted to see, like "The Entire Music of Battlestar Galactica Documentary", "3-Hour Behind the Scenes with James Callis", or "James Callis Talks About The Baltarstar Blog Praisingly And at Great Length". But it's still pretty amusing just how bad those recommendations were.

I started the channel yesterday, so obviously I'm still adding more stuff, but just to let you know it's out there. I also plan on doing more transcripts in the near future, starting with the Farpoint 2008 videos.

Is There a Toaster in the House?

Disclaimer: this post has absolutely nothing to do with James Callis. We apologize for any inconvenience.



My girlfriend's an avid Sims player, and recently she added a familiar-looking servant to her game family. You can find the design here - a cylon centurion in all its glory. She's made some screenshots, and I thought it might be fun for other BSG lovers to see the centurion in a domestic role for a change. Since the look hasn't been changed at all, it looks pretty menacing, but the family doesn't seem to mind. The character is named Toaster.



The family in question includes grilled cheese sims, and the preparation of a cheesecake seems like a natural chore for their servant. There's something hilarious about a centurion being used for baking and serving a cake.


Apart from being a chef, Toaster also serves as the family's loyal babysitter. The claws don't seem like the most convenient tool for handling a small child, but the baby is obviously gleeful to be playing with him.

Peekaboo.


This may look like a painful struggle, but the baby is actually being tickled by Toaster.

Aww, all warm and snuggly.

The baby has a need to sing a nursery rhyme with Toaster.

And after a while, when Toaster is around children, the idea of adoption (pacifier+phone) appears in his mind...



Time will tell if Toaster gets an adoption going.

When he's having time off, he encounters the most annoying situation. Don't you just hate it when you're writing a diary entry about garden gnomes and someone walks in?



Is it Garden Gnome Gaius* he's writing about?

*=that's what my girlfriend calls the bearded season 3 Gaius. I must admit it's pretty fitting.


The picture of the person who walked in, with a cross over her head, appears in Toaster's mind as she walks in. Privacy please!




Another version of the same situation. Note the heart with hands on the table, which somehow makes this all the funnier or me.

I might post more of these screenshots later. It's just so amusing to see the centurion in such an, um, dignified role.

The First Pictures from "Merlin And the Book of Beasts"

SideStepTheQuestion of the James Callis Appreciation Thread has found some Merlin-related links, so I thought I'd be lazy and reproduce them here.

An interview with the director, Warren Sonoda. Nothing about James here, but you can find out about the film - sounds pretty dark, actually.

"They are letting me take the more frilly fable of Camelot and dirty it up," he explains. "I'm doing a Braveheart. The Round Table is destroyed and Camelot is in ruin and the Book of Beasts is very much a weapon of mass destruction wielded by an anarchist with loose morals. It is a bit darker and more cool."

Wow. And this time James is the braveheart, not the anarchist with loose morals. Should be interesting!

A brief introduction of the film with a picture of James. Merlin bears a striking resemblance to season 3 Gaius. I like the wand-or-whatever that he's holding, very cool.

Photo 1 and Photo 2 at Mike's Critters. I see James is not afraid of snakes - in fact, there's a look of chlidlike glee on his face: "Awesome! I'm holding a snake!" And he's gotten very dirty during the shooting. Warning: if you're scared of snakes, photo 2 might produce an "is it on me? I feel like it's on me!" reaction.

And, of course, the first picture of the movie at imdb, which, ironically, still doesn't even list the movie. A very handsome picture indeed.

All in all, looks like a cool project. I'll link to more stuff as it comes up.

A New Message From James!

James has posted a message at the First Unofficial Website forum! The forum sadly resists direct linking, but it's in a thread called "Magic", started by "Merlin". Hee.

I feel more excited over this than over the other messages, because this time around, I'm one of the lupines and I feel like James is talking to me too. Three messages in four months is quite frequent contact with the fans, and the warm tone suggests we're all good friends (I know James is good friends with the site admins, so maybe that has something to do with it).

And we have a title for his Merlin project - Merlin and the Book of Beasts! The shooting has wrapped up, so I hope imdb catches up and posts some info on it soon. Sounds like it was hard work, but still a great experience. As usual, he shows appreciation for the people he worked with:

we shot an epic 100+ page script in 15 days - with mostly (99%) one camera... let me tell you for those unfamiliar with the craft of making televisual entertainment - that is a huge, almost herculean undertaking.

everybody involved with this project - was outstandingly cool and committed and (so often overlooked) some of the friendliest - easiest and just plain down right good eggs with good vibes.

---
I have yet to see a cut - but have every confidence in the crew and my fabulous director Warren - to make all the ends meet and patch up anything in need of stitching together...

In other news, he's obviously done an Audi spot and feels gleeful about it:

arrived back in uk to do a spot for audi on their audi channel - got to drive this amazingly cool sports car up and down the motorway - What fun!

If you find the Audi spot somewhere, please comment and I'll link to it. I'd be intrigued to see it. Or maybe I should just keep an eye on TV shows - maybe it shows up in a Finnish commercial break somewhere!

I might or might not muster the courage to post a reply in the thread (which he might or might not read again), but just for the record, this post was the cause of much fan glee and made my day. So thank you, James. Much appreciated.

The Galactica Quorum Interview - Now With Commentary!

I've been meaning to discuss the Galactica Quorum interview, which I transcribed but didn't comment on yet. So I think I'll comment on selected quotes in this post, because it's useful to have a full transcript without interruptions too. I really like this interview, so I might or might not react on everything he says here. I might get Jamesly babblish when I'm excited. Be warned.

James: You know, actually, I really wanted to go bald, to be honest, for something coming up. And they were like, 'You know, to be honest we can't have that, because there's too many of you who are going thru similar things, essentially it'll be like, you know, the Three Stooges.'

Wow. I can't really imagine him bald, and even if he did shave his head, I bet he'd have a full head of hair again in like two days. I've heard of his amazing beard growing abilities, and I can't imagine it being different there. I wonder who the other bald characters are (it can't be Chief, since Brian the interviewer mentions Aaron's hairdo, and James says he doesn't want to spoil).

There was something as well about... I wanted to be very different, or at least thinking that I was very different, from lots of other... science fiction stereotypes. And what Gaius Baltar has only been involved with because of the explosion and the annihilation of most of his people, it's so monstrous. I always felt like, if I played that in any way that I really knew what was going on, then I'd be devoid of all sympathy, I'd be a monster. It actually wouldn't interest me. So I wanted to play it like, it's someone who's made the wrong mistake, he put his credit card in the wrong place and it got eaten, and then it's the end of the world. Somebody who's a bit hapless.

I really like this, and it's one of the things I like about Baltar. He's not a monster; you can have long and heated debates about whether or not he has a conscience - for the record, I definitely think he does - and there are different viewpoints on how much guilt he's really feeling or what morality means in his case. But the one thing you can't argue is that he's cruel and loves to torture people just for the fun of it. He doesn't knowingly conspire against people or plot to take over the world. I don't know if he's hapless so much as incredibly self-absorbed; I don't consider him an absent-minded professor type really. He just isn't interested if it isn't about him, i.e. his attitude on politics. Jumping ahead in the interview a little, James argues that Gaius is starting to care more about people:

He's been a little heartless before - heartless, vain, narcissistic, with no consequences whatsoever at the beginning of the miniseries. He's like a rock star, scientist with all these awards, sleeps with all these women, one of them happens to be a robot, oh dear, oh dear...
[laughter]

And slowly he's coming into contact with ever more people. I think in that house that he lived in, what would he ever have to do? Roll over to the lab, sleep with somebody, be in the house. It's not very much contact, you kind of keep yourself in a bubble, a rather nasty narcissistic kind of bubble, it's totally been burst. And now he's like with everybody else, and he certainly feels for.. people.

I think it's true to an extent, but I'm not sure how far you can take that argument. That's another really difficult and intriguing question - how much empathy does Gaius really have, and how much does he care for other people? He shows empathy with Gina and helps her out, then kills a black-haired Six with his bare hands. He prays for the sick boy and visits Chief after he lost his wife, but he's still obsessed with his own role in everything. It's not like he's become driven by empathy and caring for others, he's still the "chosen one" who thinks englihtenment ultimately means finding out who he is and acting out his important role in the big plan.

So I think that, you know, I do believe the second season was better than the first season, I believe the third season is better than the second, cos collectively, we all just... You start having a language that is not even... talking, you know, there's a look in the eye, I know what you mean, you know what I mean... and we kinda go for it.

One of my favorite episodes, Baltar and Six wise, is Home, Part 2 in the second season. There's a pretty long scene where Baltar starts to question Head Six and she plays mind games with him, and James and Tricia are just brilliant, the way they play off each other's reactions. I don't think they could have done that scene in the first season, at least not as effectively, because you can tell that it's a result of leaning to read each other and react to each other better. I think the same is true of all of the couples on the show - Adama and Laura, Lee and Kara, Helo and Athena - and maybe it's a thing with the viewer as well. You know their history and the way they interact, and it adds to your reading and enjoyment of the scene. I realize James isn't only talking about romantic pairings here, but the ensemble as a whole, but I think it's especially true of actors who often do scenes together.

Asked about the scene in Rapture where Gaius kicks dead D'Anna's arm out of the way, James clearly gets excited and almost doesn't let Brian finish the question, which amused me. You can always tell he likes a question when he does that.

... Let me digress slightly to talk about musical farts, okay? [laughter] Because this is a very... Actually, it's not my phrase, it's a friend I work with in London. It's when you set up something amazing, [in a very dramatic voice] the warrior comes forward, he's got his sword on his hilt, his face is all [inhales sharply] bloody and everything like that, and then somebody farts. [laughter]

And he brings up farting like it's the most natural thing in the world. Which, of course, it is, but it amuses me how comfortable he seems about it. This was a cute story. He's just so dramatic here, which, I guess, he has to be to really sell the joke. It's like he's acting again for a moment, and then he comes back to his normal tone in a heartbeat. He can just snap into acting gear and snap out of it effortlessly.

It's like, you totally take way the awesome, you know, like that, you're... You're pulling the rug out from under somebody's feet.. and I thought that this was this huge thing, and the big moment, and you know, if you are the chosen one, there's a certain deference that Gaius certainly doesn't have. So he's gonna kick her leg, and ... "Get out of the way, you selfish cow! It's my moment now!"[laughter] And he doesn't even know how to control his own moment, which is why I did that shuttering thing about... Actually that totally was ripped from Soap. Did you ever see Soap?

I loved Soap. In a fan's life, sometimes you'll have happy moments of "Yay, my idol likes the same thing I like!" And I had that moment with this (and also when I saw that he likes to drink cola, but I digress). He talks about Burt, who was my favorite character on Soap, and how he was flailing and bulging his eyes in a scene where he's in the bath. It's a bit hard to follow in an audio file, but I know what Burt could look like when he was flailing and bulging and twisting his eyes - brilliant body acting by Richard Mulligan, and actually something I've noticed about James as well. I wonder if Baltar's body language as a whole has been influenced by that. If you're not familiar with the character, try this clip. It's not the scene James is talking about, but you can see the type of purposefully exaggerated body movement that Burt was famous for. When he's talking about the scene in Soap, James once again starts acting, and he does sound quite a bit like Burt. Awesome.

More about Rapture:

It was, as they felt, a cinematic out, for literally a gun to click by the forehead and you'd then pan to Aaron's face and he'd go, "Hello, Mr President." And I was like... I said to Michael and Aaron, I said, "You know, Chief, you hate me. And you're a kind of a bear of man, and if you see somebody like Gaius standing there, and you've got the opportunity, you're not just gonna to put a gun to my head, you're gonna smack me out.

Hee, "bear of man", I like that. And I agree about Chief hitting him. Actually, I think that line is incredibly dramatic, so much so that it comes off a little comical and I wish they'd left that out. It's just too... movie-like. Basically, it's a line no one would actually say in that position. I think Galactica seems so realistic in general because the dialogue is naturalistic enough to be believable. That might also have to do with the improvisation of the actors. But this line is just off. It's "Welcome back, Mr President", actually. I think the scene would be much better if Chief had just hit him and been done with it.

We totally made all this up about getting me back onto the Galactica. Because I was saying to Michael, Michael Rymer the director, "Well, if everybody knows about it, then as soon as I get back on the ship, I'm going to be lynched!" So then we developed this intricate thing about me being, you know, in a body bag, et cetera, et cetera,. And I remember, when we were filming it, there were some executives on the ste going, "What?! Well, where is this in the script with the body bags and tadada..." [laughter] Hey, you saw the numbers, leave this thing to us! And I think it really worked.

I hadn't thought of that. Actually, the body bag thing was always very weird to me, but now I know why. I remember watching that for the first time and wishing they had shaved him in the bag, now that he was unconscious. Too bad they didn't. There's something sad about the scene, when Tigh asks, "He's not dead?" and he's told, "No, unfortunately", or something like that. It feels pretty cold and tragic that everyone wants him dead. Even if it's almost entirely his own fault.

And listen to the man, when I'm talking, people can't even shut me up! [laughter] I'm on set saying I'd like to say less, or do less, or be... Even though this might sound like the pot calling the kettle black, especially coming from my mouth, we prefer to be on the subtler scale than not. Obviously my character has difficulty with that, because he's not subtle. But there's ways in which people can be.

His point was that they want to be subtle and cut down on the lines, and then he ends up babbling for quite a while. He notices the irony of that and adds his characteristic self-deprecating humor to it. But since the question was "do you add to the script", he could have said, I don't know, that he added the part where Baltar goes against signing the death list in Precipice. Or, you know, that he added "What have I done?" in the Miniseries. Or anything else he's ever added. I'm not sure why he didn't think of that here.

It's interesting that he's often brought up the "less is more" idea. He's said that himself and Jamie Bamber, both British, were more happy with the show being over than the rest of the cast, because the British mentality is that you end on a high note, when the show is still good. British shows tend to have seasons of only six episodes, and many prominent British shows (like my favorite, The Office UK) only ever had two seasons and a Christmas special. This is something I respect about British TV, even if a fan always wants more and more. (An example of overdoing it would be something like Absolutely Fabulous, where the first seasons were brilliant, but the last one was completely off).

That said, I find it annoying that so many Baltar scenes have been deleted, and every time I see deleted scenes on the DVDs, I find myself thinking: "Did they have to cut this?" Many of the scenes with the Adamas, for instance, are long enough on the aired version and you can tell why they cut some of it, because the cut scenes often feel like hammering the point home a bit too much. But I feel like they already show too little of Baltar. Or am I just a fangirl who can't have enough?

Asked if he thinks TV is getting dumber in the post-strike world, James ends up talking about a reality show he likes. This is a quality in James that I really admire, and one that I think is unusual in highly intelligent people. Intelligent people are often snarky. The smarter you are, the more flaws you see in other people and their behavior, and the easier it is to look down on others. But it seems like James has the opposite reaction to people - he always finds something to respect and praise.

There's some reality TV shows I love watching, I mean really love watching. I don't know if you saw Jack Osbourne and the recruits. Did you watch any of that stuff?

Michelle: I watched some of that, yeah.

James: It was just such great drama!

Michelle: He really buffed up for that too.

James: Did he?

Michelle: Yeah, cos he was a big kid, but...

James: Yeah, but he still looked big, I thought that was kind of cool in the sense of... he was very... you know what, I just, I thought he showed a lot of grace looking after those children . And I was... I don't know how old he is, but he surprised me with his maturity and his leadership. So I was like glued to this thing. It was like, it was great drama. It was kind of like Lost, but I knew what's going on.

It's always easy to earn points by mocking reality shows and people involved in them, so I really liked this. I also liked that he's so nice about Jack's weight, sort of putting a positive spin on it. By the way, I have no idea which Jack Osbourne show he's referring to - there have been so many and I couldn't find anything with "Jack Osbourne and the Recruits" on imdb.

James: I think on a very simple level, Head Baltar is just in control in a way that Gaius isn't. We've done some Head Baltar in this season coming up as well, that has been.. for me, really great. Watch out for that episode, I love it! [laughter] I mean, why would I love it? [laughs] Uh, yes.

I think he meant "I love it because I get to play against myself", but then realized he can't spoil that bit. I'd really like to see an interview where he talks about that scene, because I've been wondering how they shot it. The timing is really good and the two Baltars are just so different and delicious in their interplay.

I love his analysis of their differences:

It's almost now, thinking about it, it's like if Gaius had a hero, it might be Head Baltar, who's like in control, he knows what he wants, he's dapper, he's serious and he doesn't have the same... um... You feel like if you got hold of Head Baltar, you'd actually be able to hold something, whereas Gaius is like a fish, it's like... grab him, it's gonna... [laughter] He's like teflon, he's gonna fly out of your hands or... He's - slimey? [laughs] I don't know if slimey...

It's true, I think, that HeadBaltar is a lot of things Gaius would like to be. However, at least when he's talking to Caprica, he's also mean, mocking, cynical and much colder than Gaius. He didn't seem as tormenting or conscience-like with Gaius, it was more like "come on, get a grip", which I liked. And I would really, really like to see Head Six interact with Caprica Six, but I doubt we're going to see that.

A little Easter egg I didn't transcribe: if you listen to the whole file, there's silence in the end, and then you can hear James saying: "I hope I'm going to talk about Battlestar", and the others laugh and say he can talk about anything he wants. A cute little extra dose of his self-deprecating humor. Maybe a little true, too - what did he end up talking about? Battlestar, yes, but also Jack Osbourne, Soap, rat kings and musical farts. God bless his babbly little heart.

Thoughts on Season 2.5 Deleted Scenes

My DVDs - which are very random on the extras anyway - don't have any of the season 2 deleted scenes past Flight of the Phoenix. Tonight I saw the missing ones. I'm deeply touched by the Gaius/Gina scenes. I'm just crying over here.

It's amazing that James and Tricia really get to play four different couples on the show: Gaius-Caprica, Gaius-HeadSix, Gaius-Gina and Caprica-HeadBaltar. Each relationship is different and brings new nuances out of the characters and actors. They were good from the start, but as the seasons go on, their cooperation becomes impeccable. They react off each other in such a seamless way. I'm constantly in awe as I rewatch their scenes.

They absolutely should have kept the plot where Gaius and D'Anna conspire together to smuggle Hera out of Galactica. In the aired version of Downloaded, Gaius really does almost nothing - he feebly tells them to not airlock the baby, but is that really all? He should do more.



I love that they show D'Anna more, too. Any scene with Lucy Lawless is a good scene, and it makes sense for D'Anna to want to save Hera. The scene where she's told Hera died: awesome. Also: Gina interacting with another cylon and protesting to Hera's name - "Just call her thirteen" - also awesome. Gina looks much more comfortable with D'Anna than she ever does with Gaius, and D'Anna seems sisterly and completely natural towards her.




After seeing Razor, I almost wonder if there's something more than sisterly feelings going on here, but maybe that's just wishful thinking.

The scene where Gaius and Gina discuss Hera is important, because it gives space for their reactions to each other and the difference between Gina and HeadSix. Gaius obviously thinks they're one and the same, even asking Gina if she didn't say that Hera has a destiny and they should protect her. Gina looks at him like he's nuts. (Which he might or might not be.)



Suddenly, HeadSix appears to tell him Gina's damaged beyond repair - obvious jealousy from her, once again. It's sort of confusing even for the viewer to see Gina and HeadSix in the same scene. It confuses me more than seeing HeadSix vs. some soulless Six copy, which is weird because I know these two are not the same at all. Maybe it's just that I see them through the eyes of Gaius?


Why did they cut all of this? I think they should have made Downloaded a two-parter, with just cylons and Gaius, Gaius and cylons. That would have been perfect.

I've always read the scene where Gaius cries over the Cloud Nine explosion as the ultimate moment of guilt. Maybe I misread it, because the deleted scenes have Gaius and Adama intercut with Gina putting clothes on a crying Gaius - their goodbye. Is his heart broken? Is he capable of feeling love? It makes him way more relatable and likeable, and it really makes me feel for him. In a way, it's just his selfishness that's hurt him, because he doesn't realize that Gina is way too broken to have a relationship at this point, and he doesn't even seem to consider that Gina might - gasp! - not love him. But he's Gaius and that's his way of thinking, and I'm always inclined to feel empathy for him, because he doesn't know of another way to be.



Like Head Six often does, Gina seems to act maternal with Baltar. He just sits there like a child, helplessly, as Gina buttons up his shirt. Later, she puts his tie on as he looks away in tears.



The way the scene is edited, cutting back to Gaius and Gina in little moments, his eyes full of tears both in the flashback and in the present, is beautiful. The music is beautiful. James' subtle acting is beautiful. I can't believe they cut it.


...Not to mention Tricia's subtle acting. I was so surprised to learn that she hadn't had many roles and was brought in as a newcomer, because she really delivers. When I watch the Miniseries now, I can see she's gotten a lot better though. You can see her development in the subtlety of her facial expressions. She can express more now with just a look. I love her.

Non-James-related note: WHY did they cut the scene where Laura tells Hera, "Thank you for saving my life"? I would have liked Laura a lot more in that episode if they'd aired that. She came off as heartless, taking the baby away from her parents and not even appreciating that her life had been saved by Hera's blood. It should be a crime to cut scenes like this, and it wasn't even long. It's like they've gone out of their way to make Laura less relatable and more tyrant-like, and I'm mad. She's a great character. Mary McDonnell is a great actor, and she should be given more emotion. Look at her in The Hub, that was really something.

Non-James-related-note2: I think Katee Sackhoff is brilliant and I hope to see some of her other stuff in the future. I don't always like Starbuck, and at first I thought Katee wasn't that good. But after seeing the heavier stuff as well as the drunken slurring and giggling - it's always spot on, spot on, spot on, whatever the scene requires. I'm eager to see where they're taking Starbuck's character, too.

Other scenes they should have kept:
-Cally and Chief talking after he's attacked her. Cally plays a prank on him to break the ice. It's a great, natural moment. It makes their marriage seem a little less out of the blue.

-Lee and Dee scenes - several of them. See above; their marriage really came as a surprise to me, and if they'd aired at least a couple of short scenes with them, I might have seen it as less of a sudden plot twist and more of a story they built up over time.

The screenshots are by me, with editing help from my girlfriend.