"I've never understood Roslin's rationale for wanting to abort Sharon's baby in "Epiphanies". Why did she see the hybrid baby as a threat to the fleet? Dr. Cottle mentioned that the blood sample was 'odd', but how does that translate to dangerous? I've never been able to appreciate this episode because I couldn't really understand the character's motivations."

The idea was that Laura saw the upcoming birth of the baby as representing a risk to the fleet. She didn't know exactly what that risk was, but as Adama put it, "If it's good for the Cylons, then it's probably bad for us." The complicating factor was that Laura knew she was dying and that the presidency was about to be turned over to Baltar, whose judgement and abilities she had grown to have less and less faith in over the course of time. Faced with her seemingly imminent demise, Laura felt she couldn't gamble by leaving the decision of what to do with the child in the hands of Baltar and opted for the safer -- if harsher -- choice of aborting the child immediately.

"How were you able to deal with ramping up to more episodes per season? I recall hearing that HBO's "The Wire" even had to take breaks to ease new writers into the fold. BSG has a different model, with ads and other pressures... Maybe we will we see more character studies, which are more contained within themselves?"

We did take a month long break in between eps 10 & 11 in order to catch up on scripts. Doing 20 instead of 13 makes a big difference in terms of stamina and quality control. When you're concentrating on 13, you can essentially make each of them special and each of them gets a lot of attention. With 20, you're spreading yourself out more and trying to keep more balls in the air at once. I won't say that's the only reason why we had a couple of shows that I wasn't happy with this season, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a contributing factor.

"Is [the blonde woman lying on her back getting belly-button shots in "Scar"] Starbuck? There is some controversy over this question."

No it isn't and we struggled with it in the editing room to tweak her hair color and other things to make it clear that it wasn't her, but we never licked the problem. We really wanted the shot because it directly ties into the flashback shot of Anders kissing her on the stomach, so we opted to keep it in rather than lose it altogether.

"Will there be anymore episodes that reflect one from TOS?
Also, I don't know if this has been asked yet but here it goes. In the mini series, part one before the attack, as Six and Baltar were leaving the Ministry of Defense, Six told Baltar that she was meeting somebody, a person/cylon walks up to her after Baltar leaves and Six says "I was wondering when you would show up".
Who was she talking to??"

We don't have any plans for redoing any more episodes from the original series. "Pegasus" was the one that translated the best and the others all seem too distant from our structure and universe.

In the miniseries, the presumption was that Six was meeting with another humanoid Cylon on Caprica, and I was using that moment to do a cut to the original series Cylon aboard Galactica. We've talked about various possibilities over the course of the last couple seasons as to who she might've been meeting with at that moment, but nothing's really grabbed us (although, there was a mad moment when we considered revealing that she was meeting with Laura! We talked about working that in as the reveal in the "Epiphanies" flashbacks, but we couldn't come up with any rational justification for why Laura wouldn't have reacted to the Shelley Godfrey Cylon in "Six Degrees of Separation").

"Thanks for a great show its one of my all time favorites. I have three questions. Why would Adama being an Admiral not change his flag to Pegasus which is arguably the most important and powerful ship in the fleet? When will 62 make it up on to the ships section of the web site i am curious to see her specs: size, weaps, ect. In the future will we have the honor of seeing some flashbacks to the 1st Cylon War? We only get the enjoyment of two Battlestars duking it out with Base Ships, it must have been quite a light and sound show when it was fleets. Of course it is probably out of the budget ballpark "

There's ample precedent for admirals to hoist their flags aboard vessels that are not necessarily the biggest and most powerful in the fleet. Sometimes communications gear is better aboard less powerful ships or sometimes the flag officer just feels more comfortable and at home aboard a familiar ship. Raymond Spruance, commander of the US Fifth Fleet in WWII, often kept his flag aboard the USS Indianapolis, a heavy cruiser, rather than one of the fleet's carriers or battleships simply because he used to command cruisers and felt more comfortable there. (The Indianapolis, of course, was sunk late in the war by a Japanese submarine after delivering the atomic bomb to Tinian, but Spruance was not aboard.) So Adama has kept his flag aboard Galactica because it's his ship and he doesn't want to move.

I don't know when or if they'll be putting the specs on Pegasus up on the website. I hope so -- I'd like to see them myself.

Sorry all -- I'm travelling and couldn't get the podcast on "Captain's Hand" out in time for tonight's broadcast. I'll do it over the weekend and get it uploaded next week.

It's a good ep and I'm very curious to see the reactions.

There are things you hear in childhood which imprint themselves on your heart, in your brain, and upon your soul.

When I was a child, my parents used to take my brother and I twice a year to Disneyland. The behemoth that is Disney today certainly doesn't need me to sing the praises of the happiest place on earth, so I'll spare you fond memories of vacation days spent journeying aboard the Submarine Voyage or Flight to the Moon. However, I was recently downloading a compilation of soundtracks from the park and came across the original recording of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, one of the first of the audio-animatronic shows that would become a defining characteristic of the theme park experience.

The original track presented a speech by Lincoln that was actually a compliation of several different speeches and writings by the sixteenth president and presented a robotic version of him delivering the oration against a handsome backdrop of the US Capitol building while accomapanied by appropriately stirring music. The show was a particular favorite of mine and my father's, both for the theatrical experience and for the nakedly patriotic content of the speech itself. The sentiments and the philosophy it expressed were no less riveting for the nakedly manipulative presentation and the venue in which they were showcased. It was the kind of show that made you want to enlist in the armed forces on your way out the door (and if the Pentagon knew what it was doing, it would've had a booth in the exit lobby like the one in Times Square).

Several years ago, the original speech was replaced by a more pedestrian reading of the Gettysburg Address, and I pretty much stopped going to the show, disappointed that a unique piece of work had been supplanted by something so familiar (if inarguably brilliant in its text). But when I found a recording of the original speech and heard it for the first time in a long time, I was struck not only by the fact that something so well remembered could still touch and inspire me, but that the content of the speech itself was something I had so completely inhaled and made part of my political outlook, and also by the fact that Lincolns words seem particularly relevant now, during a time of tumult and debate over the role of the law in a time of national crisis and war.

It's probably also worth noting that more than a little of the politics of Battlestar Galactica can be traced back to these passages originally written by the rail-splitter from Illinois:

"The world has never had a good definition of the word 'liberty.' The American people just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty. But in using the same word, we do not all mean the same thing.

"What constitutes the bulwark of our liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoasts -- these are not our reliance against tyranny. Our reliance is in the love of liberty, which God has planted in our bosom. Our defence is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own door.

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow?

"Never.

"All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, could not, by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer that if it ever reach us, it must spring from amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be the authors and finishers.

"As a nation of free men, we must live through our times or die by suicide. Let reverence for the law be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap; let it be taught in the schools, in the seminaries and in the colleges; let it be written in primers, in spelling books and almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls and enforced in courts of justice; and in short, let it become the political religion of the nation. And let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly at its altar. And let us strive to deserve, as far as mortals may, the continued care of Divine Providence, trusting that in future national emergencies, He will not fail to provide us the instruments of safety and security.

"Let us not be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government, nor of dungeons to ourselves.

"Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."

-- Abraham Lincoln

"Having watched Star Trek for many years, and now an avid Galactica watcher; I have noticed unlike the Star Trek shows of the past...we know little about how Galactica works. We don't know much about her engines at all, what powers the ship..weapons. Is this an intentional effort to steer Battlestar Galactica away from the technobabble Star Trek would often be muddled in and focus time exclusively on the characters of the show? Will we learn and see more of Galactica in the future?"

It's a pretty deliberate choice not to reveal very much about the technical specs on Galactica. Partly it's a way to clear out a great deal of technobabble that tends to swamp action scenes and leach drama from what should be intense moments, and partly it's a way of preserving flexibility in terms of storytelling. The more we define the capabilities of the ship, the more we limit ourselves in terms of exactly what the ship can and cannot do in a given situation. Now, you can't really avoid establishing parameters as the show develops and having some sense of the limitations is a good thing to maintain continuity, but a little of it goes a long way.

"I got a quick question that may have been asked...but I was wondering what plans (if any) you have for Boxey? Now that Sharon's been killed...is he living alone? With Lee? With Kara? In an airlock? Any plans to develop him more or was he just a throwback to the original???"

Boxey is currently seeking his lost daggit and won't return until he finds it.

"With the US State of the Union [last] night, I was wondering whether or not Madame President gives anything similar on the state of the colonies - are we getting more politics a la "Colonial Day"? Maybe some elections soon? Your podcasts have seemed to indicate that we might . . ."

I don't know if there's an equivalent to the State of the Union or not, it's something to think about for the future. However, there will definitely be more political intrigue this season, leading up to the presidential election itself -- which is going to be a doozy.