Podcast:The Farm: Difference between revisions

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This whole bit of business here with the Cylons interest in reproduction and biology. And ultimately the plot of this episode has to do with the Cylons drive and desire to biologically reproduce. This is a direct outgrowth of [[Season 1 (2004-05)|season one]] where the ongoing storyline between [[Sharon Agathon|Sharon]] and [[Karl Agathon|Helo]] on Caprica as we started to really ser- I started to really seriously think, "Ok. What's going on down there? Why are they putting these two people together." Actually I sh- I'm jumping ahead of myself.
This whole bit of business here with the Cylons interest in reproduction and biology. And ultimately the plot of this episode has to do with the Cylons drive and desire to biologically reproduce. This is a direct outgrowth of [[Season 1 (2004-05)|season one]] where the ongoing storyline between [[Sharon Agathon|Sharon]] and [[Karl Agathon|Helo]] on Caprica as we started to really ser- I started to really seriously think, "Ok. What's going on down there? Why are they putting these two people together." Actually I sh- I'm jumping ahead of myself.


We should talk about this scene. This is the Kara's broken fingers and childhood abuse scene and you wan- [[David Eick]] really wanted- felt that Simon should be able to get under her skin, as it were. Much in the way [[Leoben Conoy|Leoben]] did and cut to the heart of [[Kara Thrace|Kara]] is. That the Cylons have ways of getting inside your head and twisting things around and really understanding you in ways that you don't want them to. And that Simon got in there and figured out that Kara, all of her fingers had been broken. And essentially we believe that it's by her mother because that's who we've setup. And it's a nasty bit of business. It's a nasty, horrible part of who Kara is. It goes to the notion, I've discussed on this podcast before, of, well if you're gonna make Starbuck a rogue and you're gonna make her the hotshot pilot who does things the wrong way and who's the daredevil, well who is that person? Why is she like that? It's a damaged person. It's a person who's pretty screwed up and here's one of the reasons why she's screwed up.
We should talk about this scene. This is the Kara's broken fingers and childhood abuse scene and you wan- [[David Eick]] really wanted- felt that Simon should be able to get under her skin, as it were. Much in the way [[Leoben Conoy|Leoben]] did and cut to the heart of who [[Kara Thrace|Kara]] is. That the Cylons have ways of getting inside your head and twisting things around and really understanding you in ways that you don't want them to. And that Simon got in there and figured out that Kara, all of her fingers had been broken. And essentially we believe that it's by her mother because that's who we've setup. And it's a nasty bit of business. It's a nasty, horrible part of who Kara is. It goes to the notion, I've discussed on this podcast before, of, well if you're gonna make Starbuck a rogue and you're gonna make her the hotshot pilot who does things the wrong way and who's the daredevil, well who is that person? Why is she like that? It's a damaged person. It's a person who's pretty screwed up and here's one of the reasons why she's screwed up.


We're back on [[Galactica (RDM)|''Galactica'']]. And this is another example of Adama's emotions starting to get the better of him. This is something he would've never done prior to the gunshot, as he reads these words from [[Laura Roslin|Laura]] and just the outrage that boils up within him and his inability to control it resulting in him smashing this clipboard, in the middle of [[CIC]]. I mean, it's just something he'd never have done. And he immediately feels bad and guilty and vaguely ashamed of himself. But he- this is who he is now. He's trying to keep it under control as best he can.
We're back on [[Galactica (RDM)|''Galactica'']]. And this is another example of Adama's emotions starting to get the better of him. This is something he would've never done prior to the gunshot, as he reads these words from [[Laura Roslin|Laura]] and just the outrage that boils up within him and his inability to control it resulting in him smashing this clipboard, in the middle of [[CIC]]. I mean, it's just something he'd never have done. And he immediately feels bad and guilty and vaguely ashamed of himself. But he- this is who he is now. He's trying to keep it under control as best he can.

Revision as of 18:03, 27 October 2006

This page is a transcript of one of Ronald D. Moore's freely available podcasts.
All contents are believed to be copyright by Ronald D. Moore. Contents of this article may not be used under the Creative Commons license. This transcript is intended for nonprofit educational purposes. We believe that this falls under the scope of fair use. If the copyright holder objects to this use, please contact transcriber Steelviper or site administrator Joe Beaudoin Jr. To view all the podcasts the have been transcribed, view the podcast project page.

Teaser[edit]

Hello. I'm Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the new Battlestar Galactica and I'd like to welcome you to the podcast of episode five of season two, "The Farm". This was one of the episodes, as I mentioned last week, that was initially pitched in the initial round of stories that we would be doing as part of the larger arc carrying over from season one. This was going to be the first time that the "A" story, which is the primary story of any episode, would be set on Caprica. And that they would be following Kara Thrace with the band of human resistance fighters that were set up in episode four. And the initial pitch and the initial story outline was that Kara would be on a mission with some of these resistance fighters as they were hunting and trying to find an airbase that they could attack and potentially get a Heavy Raider to escape with. And that she would be ambushed and all the other people, all the other humans, would be killed and Kara would wake up in a Cylon facility. And we would introduce a new Cylon at that point. And that they would be doing fertility and experimental procedures on Kara. And she would be held in some sort of Mengele-like setting and it was like a farm. A reproductive farm where they were holding other female prisoners there, human female prisoners there, as well. And that then Kara would break out and fight back and free the other humans, etc. That is still essentially the story of this episode. It hasn't changed radically, as far as the "A" story goes, except for a key conceptual change was that instead of playing that Kara knows from the beginning that she's being held in a Cylon facility, she would be less sure. It wouldn't be clear. We would play the ambiguity of her situation with the audience from the get-go, throughout the episode.

This episode, in all honesty, was probably the most convtroversial episode of the season second only, maybe, to "Valley of Darkness" for much the same reasons. This episode is dark. This is a dark tale. This is a dark show many times. And the controversy on this show was, "How dark is too dark? How much is too much? Will this episode, and epsisodes like it, scare our audience away?" Specifically, actually, interesting enough, the discussion became, "Will it scare female audience away?" Marketing and demographics and research and all that is part of television and it's something that writer/producers have to deal with all the time. The question is conceptual. What is the show? Who's the show appealing to? And who watches it more than others. Our research shows that more men than women watch the show. Which is to be expected. That's typical in the scifi genre. The question is, "How do you get more female viewers?" And you start getting into a certain amount of wrestling in terms of, well, how to define what appeals to female viewers. How to define what appeals to male viewers. What is- the question that I put to you, and you can answer it any way that you see fit, 'cause you're the audience, is this show a good show for women? This show in particular. Here is a female character, heroine, who's really put- we put the screws to all through the episode. Deals with a lot of fertility issues, reproductive issues, some of which may be potentially uncomfortable or distasteful. The question is, "Does that drive female audiences away or does it bring them to the party?" In any case, regardless of the controversies, this is the episode that we made and fought for and quite strongly believe it, frankly.

This opening sequence here with Kara and Anders is really the only remnant of the relationship that we have. At the start of the season we had grander plans. We talked about, just in conceptual terms, that Kara would meet up with someone from the resistance, become heavily involved, fall in love, and then be- have that person torn away from her at the end of the arc. Either killed or she would be parted from him. As we worked through the stories what we came to find was that we didn't have a lot of time. We had all these other stories that were also demanding viewership, demanding story time, and the Caprica story- we just couldn't keep going back to enough to really fully develop the relationship between Anders and Kara. So what we decided to do was to really kind of do it in the cut, in between the two episodes something happens. And it doesn't take a lot, I think, to fill in those blanks. In "Resistance", last week, you saw Kara and Anders in the game of Pyramid out on the court. You could see the obvious attractions, sexual tension. It goes without saying that these two are going to have some kind of relationship and given who Kara Thrace is and the way she- and my kids are here, as you can tell. Given the kind of person that Kara Thrace is, it seemed only natural that she would, of course, fall into bed with him because that's what Kara Thrace does. And Kara sleeps who she feels like sleeping with and makes no apologies for it and so they had a relationship.

This sequence I particularly like because it's not just an action oh shoot-em up sequence. It's like- director did a beautiful job with this. What's happening? What's going on with Kara? Something's wrong. And I like it because it's one of the few times that I've personally seen, in television at least and mostly and some film, where you really get that sense of being shot. "Oh my God, I've been shot." Now you- our quicker viewers there might notice that the wound jumped from left to right. That was something we knew in the editing room. It was a choice that the editor made and I- we went with. It's not a mistake. It's part of just the surrealness of what's going on. It's Kara's mind coming unmoored from its from its moorings. Unmoored from its moorings, as she goes under. And I liked the telling this story from her point of view that she takes one bullet and, man, out she goes. It's not, again I've talked about this before, but when we get hurt in this series the hurts stick. The hurts really do hurt and we don't just bounce back from them. And think that that's- it's important that a gunshot wound be treated like a gunshot wound. And I will come back for act one.

Act 1[edit]

Another key thing was gonna go on here, is of course, Adama's return to command and return to CIC. And this was something we talked about at length before the season began and what's interesting to us was to treat what happened to Adama with a certain amount of reality and a certain amount of seriousness. This man was almost killed. He was shot, point blank, in the chest. Two bullets. Was laying in sickbay for a long time. Literally a near death experience. And that he shouldn't just come back from that exactly the way he was before. And what we started saying was that Adama's changed. Adama's different. The emotions are closer to the surface. Things that the man has held down and tamped down for many years and for many reasons now come forth and are easy- they come unbridled- come- I'm not talking very- I don't talk good today. But essentially his emotions tend to burst forth without his wanting them to. And you can see it right here. Just that little beat of him telling everyone how much he means to them- they mean to him, is not something that the typical Adama would have done. He's much more stoic, much more close to the- keeps things close to the vest. And I love this little beat here where he says he feels closer to the ground somehow. And something's going on. And this will continue. You will see this aspect of Adama for the rest of the season. He has gone through a profound experience and certainly if any of us were shot and nearly killed and ended up in a hospital and came out of it, I don't think anybody's exactly the same after an experience like that. And if felt like Commander Adama is a mortal after and Commander Adama would be affected and that we should see that effect on the man. And that the man would not be so easily returned to just the way he was.

This subplot, the "B" story, it's the first time we've really done the Galactica as the "B" story. Although I guess that's not true, I take that back. (Phone rings.) Oh and there's my phone, just ringing to interrupt the podcast, but... we'll keep going. And we'll ignore whoever is trying to call me with some urgent piece of business. But in any case- that's so obnoxious. I'll try to turn it off, folks. But I don't remember how... ahh. Ok. I think I've killed it. (Phone rings.) No. I've not. Oh, whatever. Ok. In any case, this piece of business going on here, the searching for our fugitives in the Fleet was something that was actually much longer in script form. This sequence you can see we're cutting into them, they're just already in this place and we have a voiceover saying, "How long do we have to stay in cold storage?" This idea was something I was in love with at the beginning and it turned out to be one of those things that plagues you in production. I said, "Let's put 'em in a meat locker." And there was a whole thing here, a lead in, where they're in this freezing cold meat locker and Lee says, "It's one of the safest- it's the safest place in the Fleet outside of Galactica. Nobody gets in or out of this place." And Laura says, "Why?" And he says, "Well, because of that." And turn around, there's these big sides of beef hanging in the meat locker. And he says, "Those are the last brisquets, burgers, filets, and pot roasts left in the universe." And that took a beat for that, because it was reinforcing this idea that everything that they once had is now either gone or in short supply and the notion was that the meat locker was the safest place because that, the fresh beef, would be closely guarded and closely held and worth a great deal. Well, we couldn't find a meat locker. There were a couple meat lockers in Vancouver that we did scout and look at and consider but they were literally so freezing cold that the art director and the scouting team that went in there literally were freaking out. They went in, and it was just- they said it- the cold hit you like someone smacked you with a stick and we could not imagine being able to get actors and camera crews to actually work. And so we started investigating other meat lockers, other smaller ones, and then they were too small and too cramped and this went on and on and on and I finally just gave up and was willing to let it go. And I said let's just make it a storage room. But then Richard Hudolin, our production designer, came and said, "Well, how 'bout if I design the set so- I build a set and we design it so that there's a window and you can see into the meat locker, and they're on the other side." So you can still play the cold, and still play the difficulty of it, but it didn't really work too well. This actually just feels like a set, and the actors are playing cold, and they're on- the wrong side of the glass to play cold and we had an earlier beat with Lee walking through it, which got cut. In essence, it was a mess and it's a lesson to you future producers. Sometimes you should just give up and change the idea rather than try to take a half measure and make the idea sort of work. And this is an example of the idea sort of working.

This whole little bit of business here with Lee recording the message denouncing his father was also a key idea from early on and the fact that he couldn't do that. He wouldn't go that far. And that there was a point that Lee just couldn't go beyond even though he had pretty much commited himself. But that Laura, Laura Roslin would, at some point, go, "I'm gonna play the religious card and do it deliberately." And we can talk more about that in a little bit.

Now we're back on Caprica. There's her father's jacket. Now, the notion here is, to be clear, the intention, however it's reading through to you the audience, the intention was never, "Oh, let's fool them. Let's fool the audience into believing that Kara is really being held by resistance fighters and that Simon is, his name is Simon, that Simon is really a human being." I didn't think you could ever actually get that far. The audience is pretty smart. They know what the rules are. They're looking for the double-cross. They're looking for the trick. And they're looking for Simon to be a Cylon. So you'll notice that one of the first things Kara says is, "So are you a Cylon?" Not in this scene, but in the next scene. And the trick through this whole piece is not really to convince you that he's a human, 'cause you're prepared for him to be a Cylon. The trick is to introduce ambiguity. To introduce a question in the audience's mind of where we're going. Could it be true? Could he be human? Wait a minute. Maybe I'm not sure. As long as we introduce the question into your head as you're watching the scene, even though you think you know what the end of the scene is. Even though you think you know what the end of the story is, rather, he's gonna turn out to be a Cylon and that she's being held. As long as we're taking you along the ride, and making you question it. As long as you're going, "Well, wait a minute. Are you s- Am I sure that this is Cylon facility? Am I sure that he's a Cylon? Because now I'm not sure. Would he say that? Is he- I'm not sure he's acting in a certain way. Wait a minute. Why are they showing me the scene like this? Why are they telling me all these things?" The question is to make you wonder. And as long as you wonder, then we've sort of got you. As long as you're intrigued and interested and trying to figure it out along with Kara and as long as it's an open question in your mind, then the scene and the story are working and we've accomplished what we set out to do.

I like this little beat here with Katee where he leaves and it's just all lands on top of her. That she really did care for this man and they were only together a brief time and now he's gone, too. I mean, that's just great. It's a really strong performance from Katee Sackhoff in this episode.

Act 2[edit]

And we're back here in act two. Ok. Again, as we were discussing before, the question is, "How do we introduce ambiguity into the scene? And how to-" We're playing things, as you can see, mostly from her point of view. There she's being drugged. She's at their mercy. She's really held prisoner here and the question is, "What's the smart thing to do? How should she handle herself?" "Are you a Cylon?" It should come up very quickly. She should start to wonder what's going on in this place, 'cause the audience is starting to wonder. What's the game at work here? "Well, go on. There's the door." Can't walk out. It's really a mystery. It's a mystery show. What's going on in this place. If they wanted to kill her, wouldn't they just kill her? If they want information shouldn't they start interrogating her? What are they trying to do? Why would they bother with this whole scenario? So he has to come up with a plausible amount of obfuscation and lies about what's really going on and where they are and have reasonable answers to all the- her logical questions. Remembering that she has suffered a very serious wound. She's undergone surgery. She can't just jump out of the bed and start fighting people and if she is being held by the Cylons then it'd only be counterproductive so she better keep her wits about her as best she can. And again she's being drugged up quite a bit.

There's a little beat there with a magazine sitting on the counter that was going to figure a little bit more strongly into the plot later on, but we actually cut that bit in editing.

And here again, this is just the stylistic device that as she goes under we white out.

Here's Cally in the brig. Cally, as you might recall, shot Sharon last week. And this is my f- one of my favorite scenes in the episode. When Tyrol goes in to get his crewman out of the brig. And it puts him in a strange place. That he's going in to argue to rescue, or to save, the woman that shot the woman that he loved. And I like the idea of Adama calling him on that and yet that Adama is a different man, and that he would play it differently and that he is more philosophical. That he's drawn into questions of who we are, what we are, who are the Cylons, what are they? Can you love a machine? How could you love a machine? So she can't be a machi- she can't be a person, she has to be a machine. But she meant something to you and she meant something to me. Is that what she was? How could you love somebody like that? Making Tyrol face some of his darker and more- deeper demons about himself and about his relationship with Sharon. Look at Adama advancing on him like he's stalking Tyrol. You get the feeling that Adama is really stalking himself in this scene. That he's questioning Tyrol but he's really questioning himself, and they're all questioning themselves. Sharon was somebody they trusted. Sharon was somebody they loved. This was part of their family. This is someone that meant somebody to them and that person turned out to be their deepest enemy and tried to kill him and very nearly succeeded. How could he be that wrong? How could he not see that coming? And why does he still care? Why is he still, despite everything that's happened, still actually care about Sharon, and so does Tyrol. She's a ghost, and the ghost is gonna continue to stalk them. As in this lovely coda to this scene when Tyrol gets ready to leave and Adama stops him and says, "You'll see her again." And that there are many copies. And that Tyrol has to psychologically and emotionally be prepared for that at some point.

Again, it's just try embrace the world view that Galactica has that this is a real universe. These are real people. They have real emotions. Well what are their reactions to realizing that somebody they love and care about is actually an enemy. How do they deal with that? It's not just like a switch goes- they flick a switch in their brains and their whole attitude goes to, "Oh. Enemy equals hate." I think it's much more complicated than that. You would have an actual emotional response. You would have things you would have to grapple with. The psychology of it would not be so simple.

This little beat, again we're back on Caprica. This is, again, part of making the audience wonder what we're doing. Simon is annoyed, he's distracted, he's lost a patient. And she's wondering why she doesn't hear other patients, and what's going on in the hospital. And why they've lost all these other- if there are these other patients how come she doesn't hear any of them. And Simon goes off into a fairly detailed and nasty description of what happens to people who are suffering from radiation poisoning. Which is something that we did some research and looked up some sources and came up with this little bit of nasty business of what's going on out on Caprica to the people that don't have anti-radiation medication. And the anti-radiation medication is essentially the only reason that we get to play scenes on Caprica at all because the aftermath of a full nuclear exch- attack, like the one depicted in the miniseries would be extraordinarily ugly and- would just prevent us from doing any scenes back here whatsover. So we take the science fiction license that there is some medication that these people have developed to allow themselves to fight off the effects of radiation, if you've got it.

K. This was one of the most controversial scenes, which resulted in endless discussions of that you have, of is this just too distateful? Is it just too awful to suggest that a woman is getting some kind of pelvic exam? And we'll just drive women away. And my attitude was, "Oh, come on. What, are you kidding? It's nothing you don't see on ER or fifty other hospital shows." There's a constant pushback, I think, from us on the show that just says, "There's nothing that's too real, too graphic, too disturbing to put on the air." Personally I just think there are very few boundaries that you can really say, "That's a step too far." That you've really pushed the audience tolerance into a place where they're gonna turn off the show. I think there people may be offended by individual scenes. People may be put off by something you say, but are they real- do they really just grab the remote and change the channel in a pique of outrage over something? I don't really think so. I think a lot of those fears are overblown. But that's just me. What do I know?

This whole bit of business here with the Cylons interest in reproduction and biology. And ultimately the plot of this episode has to do with the Cylons drive and desire to biologically reproduce. This is a direct outgrowth of season one where the ongoing storyline between Sharon and Helo on Caprica as we started to really ser- I started to really seriously think, "Ok. What's going on down there? Why are they putting these two people together." Actually I sh- I'm jumping ahead of myself.

We should talk about this scene. This is the Kara's broken fingers and childhood abuse scene and you wan- David Eick really wanted- felt that Simon should be able to get under her skin, as it were. Much in the way Leoben did and cut to the heart of who Kara is. That the Cylons have ways of getting inside your head and twisting things around and really understanding you in ways that you don't want them to. And that Simon got in there and figured out that Kara, all of her fingers had been broken. And essentially we believe that it's by her mother because that's who we've setup. And it's a nasty bit of business. It's a nasty, horrible part of who Kara is. It goes to the notion, I've discussed on this podcast before, of, well if you're gonna make Starbuck a rogue and you're gonna make her the hotshot pilot who does things the wrong way and who's the daredevil, well who is that person? Why is she like that? It's a damaged person. It's a person who's pretty screwed up and here's one of the reasons why she's screwed up.

We're back on Galactica. And this is another example of Adama's emotions starting to get the better of him. This is something he would've never done prior to the gunshot, as he reads these words from Laura and just the outrage that boils up within him and his inability to control it resulting in him smashing this clipboard, in the middle of CIC. I mean, it's just something he'd never have done. And he immediately feels bad and guilty and vaguely ashamed of himself. But he- this is who he is now. He's trying to keep it under control as best he can.

And the Laura- there she's- how many people are gonna follow Laura to Ko- back to Kobol? And that he would just say, "You know what? Screw those people. You wanna go back? Go back."

Act 3[edit]