I was going through my old files the other day and came across the "alternate" (i.e., fake) scenes we put together for the end of Crossroads 2, the season three finale, in an attempt to keep our major revelations from entering internet spoiler-ville before the show actually aired. Now that we're half way through season four, hopefully a discussion of events in season three (going all the way back to what we were doing in November/December of 2006!) won't be considered a spoiler...
The whole process of writing these alternate scenes was interesting. On the one hand, you don't really want to waste much time on something you have no intention of shooting. On the other hand, if the scene isn't at least vaguely convincing, everybody will know it's a ringer and you wind up calling MORE attention to the moment. Further, the cast and crew were going to prep the show, at least at first, off these bogus scenes, so they couldn't be wildly divergent from what we were actually planning.
In this case, we had two revelations to mask. The unveiling of four of the final five Cylons, and the back-from-the-dead reappearance of Starbuck. Now, speaking for myself here, I always assumed that people were more or less expecting Starbuck to come back at some point. But the revelation of the four new Cylons, THAT was going to be the real eye-opener.
So our first bogus scene basically fudged that revelation. Instead of the four realizing they're actually Cylons, they come to believe the Cylons brainwashed them back on New Caprica to (possibly) do bad things. (Remember, this is the bogus version. Tigh, Tory, Anders and Tyrol are Cylons, honest, no foolin'.) The scene between the four in the locked room became a rather expository examination of how this might have been done. It actually made sense contextually, because events prior to this scene (the music) certainly pointed toward SOME sort of Cylon revelation.
Starbuck's resurrection was easier to hide; that scene, which wound up being shot in our Vipers on what we call a "green screen" (special FX) day, just didn't exist in the script. (There were a couple different versions of THAT moment too, but that's a discussion for another time.) However, that left the released script without an ending. So the bogus version closed with a completely invented moment. After the Cylons have reappeared and our pilots are getting ready for battle, Lee rushes back to his quarters to grab a flight suit only to be confronted by Tigh, who promptly conks him over the head with a whiskey bottle (!). Leaving Tigh to wonder if the Manchurian Candidate mechanism had finally been triggered, and leaving poor Lee bleeding out on the floor.
As a season ender, not exactly riveting, but like I said, when you're in the middle of a hectic production schedule, you're scrambling hard enough to get the real script finished, you don't want to spend days crafting bogus material. Anyhow, it's all just a curious piece of BSG trivia now...
