Black Market (Battlestar Galactica) - Production

Production

Apollo's journey through the fleet's criminal underground culminating with the encounter with Phelan was inspired by Heart of Darkness. The writers were initially excited by the combination of this storytelling device with the opportunity to complicate Apollo's character. Moore was happy with the script when it was written but gradually came to believe the episode was deeply flawed. In October 2005 he wrote, in reference to the still unaired "Black Market", that he was "positively angry with myself at something I knew in my bones had fallen well below the bar I set for myself and for the show in general." In particular, he felt that the episode was too conventional in its story and execution. Moore attributed what he considered a drop in quality from other episodes to the second season's increased production schedule; nonetheless, he insisted that the responsibility belonged with him rather than with the circumstances or with anyone else who worked on the episode.

Moore was particularly disappointed with how the black market's illegality is established. At first, Moore notes, it is difficult to see what distinction Roslin makes between legitimate and illicit commerce in a post-apocalyptic environment. The distinction may only become clear to the audience once the child trafficking is revealed, but Moore came to regard this as a "cheap" dodge of the dilemma.