After [Dee] says goodnight to Lee, she steps before the mirror, humming a little tune, which served as the basis for the Dualla theme:
Actress Kandyse McClure improvised this melody on set during production. She described that “there was no previous discussion about it, it was just kind of stuck in my head – at first I wasn’t even really aware that I was humming. It was just comforting to me in that moment – something like the hymns my grandmother would sing around the house when I was a little girl.”
Michael Nankin was so moved by it, he contacted me during his director’s cut and asked if there were a way to incorporate it into the score directly. He later told me “the humming is something that Kandyse did in one of the takes and I loved it immediately. So we repeated it in every shot thereafter. It was so haunting. It reminded me of the opening titles of ROSEMARY’S BABY, where the score is Mia Farrow’s hummed lullaby. It was haunting and perfect for the moment. I believe I called you from the set to talk about it. I insist you put it on the next CD.”
I wove this tune into the fabric of the score to Sometimes a Great Notion. Like “All Along the Watchtower” and “Gaeta’s Lament,” this theme is yet another example of the boundary between score and reality on Battlestar Galactica being blurred. Listen for it being played (usually by Chris Bleth on the bansuri) in every scene with Dualla on screen in this episode.
