By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Part of what made Ronald Moore’s Battlestar Galactica reboot so compelling was that it told a wholly original story while still providing homages to the amazing films and shows that had come before it. For example, the Season 2 premiere (“Scattered”) has a flashback scene to when a younger Colonel Tigh was about to burn his medals and quite possibly kill himself, and this chilling scene may seem familiar to students of film. That’s because this particularly depressing Battlestar Galactica scene was heavily inspired by Apocalypse Now and one of the bleakest scenes in cinematic history.
Battlestar Galactica Inspired By Apocalypse Now
Originally, producers shot many different flashback scenes for “Scattered,” and the final episode only includes a handful of them. One of them shows a younger Colonel Tigh frantically pouring lighter fluid all over his old military medals; he is preparing to light them on fire and possibly kill himself and his partner in bed, but he stopped by visiting military police. They tell him he has been reinstated in the service, and Battlestar Galactica guru Moore confirmed on the podcast commentary for the episode that “there’s a definite homage quality in this to Apocalypse Now.”
If you’re a Battlestar Galactica fan who hasn’t watched Apocalypse Now recently (or maybe you’ve never watched it at all), you may be wondering what the homage is. In the Francis Ford Coppola film, some military police show up and find Martin Sheen’s army character so hungover that they have to throw him in the shower to revive him. In “Scattered,” Tigh (apparently halfway through a big decanter of liquor) is in a similar position, though the visiting MPs don’t have to throw him in the shower.
Interestingly, the Battlestar Galactica showrunner thought that this minor divergence from Apocalypse Now’s scene made the scene more impactful. He noted that Tigh “just goes off and pulls himself together” and how this was “for our story…more effective.” In that same podcast commentary, Moore lamented that “we weren’t able to quite convey” the fact that if Tigh did light his medals on fire, “the whole place might go up.”
Obviously, the scene in Coppola’s film where Sheen’s character has to be bodily thrown into the shower is very memorable, so why did Moore think it was better that they showed Tigh being able to pull together on his own? Basically, “Scattered” is an episode where the alcoholic Tigh has to assume command of the ship after Adama is shot, and it was a surprise to audiences and characters alike that the shaky, violent drunk of the ship was actually a reliable officer with good instincts. However, the earlier flashback to before Tigh served on Battlestar Galactica foreshadows this by showing he can (unlike his Apocalypse Now counterpart) pull himself together at a moment’s notice.
When we first watched this Battlestar Galactica episode, we didn’t clock the similarity between young Tigh’s scene and the equivalent scene in Apocalypse Now. We can’t unsee the connection now, and we love Ronald Moore even more for adding such complexity to Colonel Tigh, one of the show’s best characters. As for Tigh himself, he’d likely describe taking command with the same two words Marlon Brando famously spoke near the end of Apocalypse Now: “the horror…the horror!”
