Jane Espenson

(Warning! If you haven’t watched the latest episode of BSG yet, thar be spoilers ahead!)

After last Friday’s episode, a lot of us had questions about what we saw. Was that Earth? Are humans and cylons really bonded together, after all this time? Who is the final cylon? I finally took the time to throw a slew of questions toward writer and co-executive producer Jane Espenson about this episode, and she had a few things to say (though nothing quite as revealing as I had hoped).

Rather than get into what I had to say, I’ll let her letter back to me speak on its own. As you’ll quickly see, she’s not a woman of few words when it comes to this show. I’m hoping she’ll have just as much to spill when I ask her questions for our Buffy Retro Squad week next week.

Holy cow, I love this episode beyond the saying of it, and ’thank you’ to the fans who have been going out of their way to tell all of us that, too. Adama’s reaction to the reveal was stunning — my gods — and Starbuck— her face said it all. A thunderclap. Simply beautiful. You wouldn’t want more and you can’t imagine less. I’m stating the obvious when I say that a more labored reaction would’ve attenuated the emotions, given the characters a chance to gather themselves before the big blow that was to come, which certainly would be a mistake. And there’s a difference, of course, between finding out that your XO is a Cylon if he’s handing you a giftbox filled with a fertile verdant Earth, and finding out that he’s holding a cinder-planet. I think the *real* reactions are yet to come, just like in life. The beauty of this episode is in its urgency, in the tumbling breathless slide that lands us on that grim gray unfamiliar beach... It’s so gray, in fact, that I think it earns the British spelling. It’s grey, which is even worse.

And — oh — that haunting devastated city there, with the massive ruined temple and our people trying to find their footing in a strange dead city I did not recognize... that image just kills me. Every time I watch this episode, I well up with hope, and it lasts right up through that handful of soil, and then the radiation counter breaks my heart all over again. I do not easily tear up, but the race to the planet — don’t the ships look like they’re *running*? I always think of running... Anyway, that race and then the reveal brings tears to my eyes in a way I’m not sure I’ve experienced before during a television show. Someday I’ll see those images without having to blink through them. Right?

David and Bradley (David Weddle and Bradley Thompson, our writers) did an excellent job throughout this rocketsled of an episode - the writing had to be so delicate, precise and emotional... and they also did such a good job doing little things like dealing with the fallout from my episode the previous week. Baltar saying he loves living is such a gem of a moment among a cascade of gems — thanks for that, David and Brad! And then, of course, the big stuff starts happening and never ever lets up.

When we screened this episode at Ron’s house, months ago, we all sat stunned, and then agreed it was perhaps the best the show had ever produced. And seeing it Wednesday and again Friday night with fans in attendance bore that out... every time the blue clouded planet was revealed, I could hear the inhales of hope, despite the lack of indication of any continents — and I knew we were about to break some hearts. But, I hope, they only broke like mine did.

I wish we could bring you the next episode right away. In my mind the two fit together so closely so as to almost be a two-parter, and I have that awful sense of having had a phone call cut off mid-sentence with so much left unsaid.

There’s so much left unsaid.

Thanks to the fans from me, but especially from David and Bradley — these two episodes are their babies, and they are so grateful for the appreciation they’ve been receiving. We all put our hearts and tears and then more hearts into these episodes, and they become parts of us like our flesh. So thank you. Very much. We have the best fans in television.

(And you cannot trick me into revealing the identity of the Fifth by pretending you don’t care! I won’t fall for that! Not again.)

Smiling, Jane