Editing Podcast:A Measure of Salvation
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You'll note that [[Lee Adama|Lee]], we're positioning here as the harder ass of the- the hard line, hardliner, of the group. He's in his t-shirt as opposed to in his [[Uniforms (RDM)|uniform]]. Again this is a nod towards the direction of a slight shift in Lee's character. That he's becoming more of the warrior. A little less upright and neat in the way that, say, [[Karl Agathon|Helo]] is playing. This turned out to be, ultimately, a very big Helo- a very important episode for Helo. | You'll note that [[Lee Adama|Lee]], we're positioning here as the harder ass of the- the hard line, hardliner, of the group. He's in his t-shirt as opposed to in his [[Uniforms (RDM)|uniform]]. Again this is a nod towards the direction of a slight shift in Lee's character. That he's becoming more of the warrior. A little less upright and neat in the way that, say, [[Karl Agathon|Helo]] is playing. This turned out to be, ultimately, a very big Helo- a very important episode for Helo. | ||
This was- this beat here with [[Simon]] being brought down the corridor and ultimately interrogating Simon. This used to come out of a very different set of circumstances. They went in and dealt- brought out a [[Number Six|Six]], one of the Six's came out, and started to talk to them because they had- oh that's right. There was- in fact, we shot this. I'm sorry. We shot a whole scene where, essentially, after that meeting in [[William Adama|Adama]]'s quarters they were talking. Adama said, "Somebody needs to go down there and talk to them. Who's gonna get them to talk?" That, "Why would they ever tell us anything." And he said, "Well I know someone who might be able to get them to talk." And we had [[Kara Thrace|Kara]]. We cut to Kara. Kara went into the cell and had a conversation with the sick [[Leoben Conoy|Leoben]]. And it was a reversal and a play on the fact that she had been held prisoner by Leoben and that now she was the interrogator once again. And it was a way for her to turn the tables on him and she was using the fact that he was dying and she had a way to keep him alive as her way to torture him. Leoben was trying tap back into her mind, into her psyche, and screw with her head again and talk about [[ | This was- this beat here with [[Simon]] being brought down the corridor and ultimately interrogating Simon. This used to come out of a very different set of circumstances. They went in and dealt- brought out a [[Number Six|Six]], one of the Six's came out, and started to talk to them because they had- oh that's right. There was- in fact, we shot this. I'm sorry. We shot a whole scene where, essentially, after that meeting in [[William Adama|Adama]]'s quarters they were talking. Adama said, "Somebody needs to go down there and talk to them. Who's gonna get them to talk?" That, "Why would they ever tell us anything." And he said, "Well I know someone who might be able to get them to talk." And we had [[Kara Thrace|Kara]]. We cut to Kara. Kara went into the cell and had a conversation with the sick [[Leoben Conoy|Leoben]]. And it was a reversal and a play on the fact that she had been held prisoner by Leoben and that now she was the interrogator once again. And it was a way for her to turn the tables on him and she was using the fact that he was dying and she had a way to keep him alive as her way to torture him. Leoben was trying tap back into her mind, into her psyche, and screw with her head again and talk about [[Kacey]], talk about [[God]] and her destiny, and ultimately the other Cylons in the room were listening to the whole thing, and when Kara was saying that they had a way to keep them alive, but they had to help them. They had to give up information. What happened was that one of the Six's copped to it and said, "Oh, he- I'll talk, I'll talk, I'll talk." And they take the Six away, and then the Six came into this scene. In the script we star- I started to feel like that was a mistake. That it was weird and unusual for Six to roll over so quickly and we weren't using Simon very effectively. We hadn't used him as a character in the show in quite a while and it f- it just felt more interesting, somehow, to bring [[Rick Worthy]] in and have him be that guy that rolled over. So we made that change before we shot it. And then when in the cutting of the episode, it felt like you could get to this idea that the Cylons wanted to live and were afraid of dying 'cause they knew that they would not be resurrected and that you could bring in one of the prisoners and have him just spill his guts, as it were, without going through the whole machinations with Kara and Leoben, which ultimately they didn't feel right. When I saw the scene it was ok but it just didn't feel like it went anywhere and it felt like a tangent in the episode and it didn't feel quite right so I opted to cut it fairly early in the process. Now it's just a cleaner, faster line because you're getting to the heart of the drama. I mean, the point of the show is not to deal- to dip back into the Leoben-Kara storyline. The point of the show is really to get to this idea of the [[lymphocytic encephalitis|virus]] as a biological weapon. And so this act is all moving rapidly towards Lee giving this- Lee having this epiphany and realizing what the virus could give them a way to wipe out the Cylons permanently. Which takes us to a scene with [[Government of the Twelve Colonies#Executive Branch 2|the President]]. | ||
These scenes about the biological weapon and about the morality of using the biological weapon, here, and later with Adama and Laura, mimicked very closely a lot of the arguments that happened within the writers' room. We discussed these issues at length about what would they really do, and there were certainly writers who felt rather strongly that, "Well, why wouldn't they use it? Isn't that the thing that you do? I mean, my God. The Cylons [[Fall of the Twelve Colonies|wiped out their race]], been pursuing them. They're the implacable enemy. And why wouldn't you use this weapon? They'd be fools not to." And then there were others who felt, "Well, wait a minute. If genocide is just tit for tat, what does that mean about us? And aren't we better than them?" And, "What are we saying?" And it felt like a really interesting moral conundrum. And it raised some difficult issues. I was really- like this idea of Helo as the voice of that. That Helo, the man who had fallen in love with a Cylon and fathered [[Hera|a child]] with one, stepping back, "Ok, now wait a minute. What are we doing here? We're no different than they are. Is that what we're about?" I think it's a l- I think it's an interesting argument. I'm not sure there's a clear answer to this argument. I'm not sure that there's a clear answer to the right and the wrong of what they're debating here. Which, to me, is what the show is all about. That it's not about giving you the answers it's about raising the questions. What is the right choice in this circumstance? What is- Is genocide ever justifiable? Can- is there a line beyond which you cannot cross and still be a moral person. And- or does that all get wiped away if you say that the stakes are survival and the very legitimate argument that, "Hey, if you don't survive, all the moral conundr- all the moral quandaries go away and are pointless if you're not around to argue them. So doesn't the s- your own survival outweigh everything else?" And it does come down, on some level to whether they're people. Are they people? If they're a race of people, it's genocide. | These scenes about the biological weapon and about the morality of using the biological weapon, here, and later with Adama and Laura, mimicked very closely a lot of the arguments that happened within the writers' room. We discussed these issues at length about what would they really do, and there were certainly writers who felt rather strongly that, "Well, why wouldn't they use it? Isn't that the thing that you do? I mean, my God. The Cylons [[Fall of the Twelve Colonies|wiped out their race]], been pursuing them. They're the implacable enemy. And why wouldn't you use this weapon? They'd be fools not to." And then there were others who felt, "Well, wait a minute. If genocide is just tit for tat, what does that mean about us? And aren't we better than them?" And, "What are we saying?" And it felt like a really interesting moral conundrum. And it raised some difficult issues. I was really- like this idea of Helo as the voice of that. That Helo, the man who had fallen in love with a Cylon and fathered [[Hera|a child]] with one, stepping back, "Ok, now wait a minute. What are we doing here? We're no different than they are. Is that what we're about?" I think it's a l- I think it's an interesting argument. I'm not sure there's a clear answer to this argument. I'm not sure that there's a clear answer to the right and the wrong of what they're debating here. Which, to me, is what the show is all about. That it's not about giving you the answers it's about raising the questions. What is the right choice in this circumstance? What is- Is genocide ever justifiable? Can- is there a line beyond which you cannot cross and still be a moral person. And- or does that all get wiped away if you say that the stakes are survival and the very legitimate argument that, "Hey, if you don't survive, all the moral conundr- all the moral quandaries go away and are pointless if you're not around to argue them. So doesn't the s- your own survival outweigh everything else?" And it does come down, on some level to whether they're people. Are they people? If they're a race of people, it's genocide. | ||
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This is all great stuff, I have to say, for James. There was a lot more of this torture sequence. There was a lot more of the sex. I should actually make a mental note here to be sure and preserve all that for the deleted scenes so that you can enjoy the full pain and sex of it all. But essentially the fundamental idea that here's a man being tortured and his mind is this woman having sex with him and the going back and forth between one kind of physical sensation to try to take the place of another physical sensation. On some level he's either imagining or literally experiencing himself having sex with [[Cylon-Related_Hallucinations#Baltar.27s_Internal_Six|Six]] while he's being tortured and then that's making it all possible for him to mo- transcend the moment of what's happening to him in the torture room. Again, there were more pieces of this. It was more graphic. It was harder to watch. All the things that we like to do. Then you- there was a lot of negotiation and back and forth and cutting and this and that. But- this was actually one of the easier conversations with the network, even though there was arguing back and forth about how much was gonna be in there, we didn't fight it too hard. We understood their point and they weren't asking to radically gut the scene. They just were asking for things like less pelvic thrusts and, "Could you use this angle instead of that angle." When Six takes her top down here you could actually see her nipple in one shot, which none of us really noticed but the Standards and Practices guys did. "Y'know there's a quarter of her nipple at the bottom of the frame! You can't have that on tv!" Yeah, 'cause God forbid. You can't have a [[w:Janet Jackson|Janet Jackson]] moment in [[Battlestar Galactica (RDM)|''Galactica'']] or the world would come to a fuckin' end. | This is all great stuff, I have to say, for James. There was a lot more of this torture sequence. There was a lot more of the sex. I should actually make a mental note here to be sure and preserve all that for the deleted scenes so that you can enjoy the full pain and sex of it all. But essentially the fundamental idea that here's a man being tortured and his mind is this woman having sex with him and the going back and forth between one kind of physical sensation to try to take the place of another physical sensation. On some level he's either imagining or literally experiencing himself having sex with [[Cylon-Related_Hallucinations#Baltar.27s_Internal_Six|Six]] while he's being tortured and then that's making it all possible for him to mo- transcend the moment of what's happening to him in the torture room. Again, there were more pieces of this. It was more graphic. It was harder to watch. All the things that we like to do. Then you- there was a lot of negotiation and back and forth and cutting and this and that. But- this was actually one of the easier conversations with the network, even though there was arguing back and forth about how much was gonna be in there, we didn't fight it too hard. We understood their point and they weren't asking to radically gut the scene. They just were asking for things like less pelvic thrusts and, "Could you use this angle instead of that angle." When Six takes her top down here you could actually see her nipple in one shot, which none of us really noticed but the Standards and Practices guys did. "Y'know there's a quarter of her nipple at the bottom of the frame! You can't have that on tv!" Yeah, 'cause God forbid. You can't have a [[w:Janet Jackson|Janet Jackson]] moment in [[Battlestar Galactica (RDM)|''Galactica'']] or the world would come to a fuckin' end. | ||
This little riff of- that he goes on about [[ | This little riff of- that he goes on about [[God]] and our knowledge of God being imperfect was something that I actually- I think it was one of these things. I was sitting in bed watching tv with [[Terry Dresbach|my wife]] late at night when I shouldn't have. Getting ready to go to bed and I had this jag in my head about all this stuff and I just walked out and went in my office and just wrote it down. And thought it was gonna work in the torture scene, and then I woke up the next morning, looked at it and actually it was ok. So I put it in the torture scene. Sometimes you don't find ideas and speeches on the page. Sometimes you find them in odd moments and I think I was watching [[w:Project Runway|''Project Runway'']] with my wife, actually. We were watching it on [[w:TiVo|TiVo]] in our bedroom late at night and doing something completely different and my mind was mulling over the show at the same time and I came up with that whole line about God and our knowledge of him being imperfect because it's based on these half-remembered myths and if we all knew the mind of God we'd all be Gods. And I just wrote it all in a stream of conciousness as I- when I came into my office and then worked it into the show. And that's how a lot of these things fall into place. A lot of times I'm doing something else and talking to somebody else, I'm watching something else, and without even really knowing it there's a part of my brain that's working on the show and comes up with these little lines of dialogue or character moments or structures or story changes that I'll go off and I will scribble them down as fast as I can. | ||
This is so, like, [[Gaius Baltar]]. I mean, this is really pushing the character and who he is and what he's about and his strange surrealistic experience one step further into the reality and the fantasy of it all. And which is real? Which is real to him, and which is objectively real? | This is so, like, [[Gaius Baltar]]. I mean, this is really pushing the character and who he is and what he's about and his strange surrealistic experience one step further into the reality and the fantasy of it all. And which is real? Which is real to him, and which is objectively real? | ||
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This scene I like a lot. There's- so often my favorite scenes in the show are the one on one scenes between [[William Adama|Adama]] and [[Laura Roslin|Laura]] as they wrestle with some fundamental question of morality or ethics. It really plays to both their strengths. The actors really commit and they find textures and moments and really intriguing bits of business in between. I always love the- it just seems like this is the show at its best, when they really, these two people really wrestle with a dilemma. | This scene I like a lot. There's- so often my favorite scenes in the show are the one on one scenes between [[William Adama|Adama]] and [[Laura Roslin|Laura]] as they wrestle with some fundamental question of morality or ethics. It really plays to both their strengths. The actors really commit and they find textures and moments and really intriguing bits of business in between. I always love the- it just seems like this is the show at its best, when they really, these two people really wrestle with a dilemma. | ||
I'm sorry. I'm watching this again, myself. 'Cause I haven't seen it in a little while. | I'm sorry. I'm watching this again, myself. 'Cause I haven't seen it in a little while. | ||
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There was a version of this where [[Sharon Agathon|Sharon]], early in the story plotting or first drafts, that Sharon was the one who went in and somehow got into the Cylon prisoners and shot them all in the head, and secretly did it. But, again, I felt in subsequent drafts that it was wrong for Sharon to do that. I wanted Sharon to not be the one to take that action and betray the [[Uniforms (RDM)|uniform]] that she so recently put on, and I gave it to [[Karl Agathon|Helo]]. There was a scene that was cut where Helo, in the [[Pilot ready rooms|ready room]]. Adama was briefing [[List of Pilots|the pilots]] and telling them exactly what the plan was and why they were doing what they were doing, and Helo was standing there and he opted out at that point. He said, "Permission to be relieved, sir?" Adama relieved him as [[Executive officer|XO]] and he walked out of the room. And that's why Helo is not in the [[CIC]] sequences and why nobody's looking for him. In the cut I didn't feel like the scene played particularly well. I also thought in some ways it gave away what was gonna happen and I didn't want to give it away. So I cut the scene and now it's just- there's a slight discontinuity. Like, ok, they're all in CIC. Doesn't Adama notice that Helo's not there? And yeah. That's true. That's a legitimate criticism. But I think you also, in the drama of the show I think you're moving past it. | There was a version of this where [[Sharon Agathon|Sharon]], early in the story plotting or first drafts, that Sharon was the one who went in and somehow got into the Cylon prisoners and shot them all in the head, and secretly did it. But, again, I felt in subsequent drafts that it was wrong for Sharon to do that. I wanted Sharon to not be the one to take that action and betray the [[Uniforms (RDM)|uniform]] that she so recently put on, and I gave it to [[Karl Agathon|Helo]]. There was a scene that was cut where Helo, in the [[Pilot ready rooms|ready room]]. Adama was briefing [[List of Pilots|the pilots]] and telling them exactly what the plan was and why they were doing what they were doing, and Helo was standing there and he opted out at that point. He said, "Permission to be relieved, sir?" Adama relieved him as [[Executive officer|XO]] and he walked out of the room. And that's why Helo is not in the [[CIC]] sequences and why nobody's looking for him. In the cut I didn't feel like the scene played particularly well. I also thought in some ways it gave away what was gonna happen and I didn't want to give it away. So I cut the scene and now it's just- there's a slight discontinuity. Like, ok, they're all in CIC. Doesn't Adama notice that Helo's not there? And yeah. That's true. That's a legitimate criticism. But I think you also, in the drama of the show I think you're moving past it. | ||
The whole fight with these guys kep- was always problematic. Like I said earlier, there was- the idea was they were going to push the beacon out at this point and the beacon was gonna scare away the Cylons, but it just didn't work conceptually. It was like, "What? The Cylons running away 'cause they see the beacon? What? Why?" And so it just didn't work. It was one of those things we put on the page and then we watched it on screen and go, "Well, that's stupid. That doesn't make sense. How can we get away from that?" So we just opted to just get the hell out of this battle as quickly as you can. Just move it, just bring the fighters home, [[ | The whole fight with these guys kep- was always problematic. Like I said earlier, there was- the idea was they were going to push the beacon out at this point and the beacon was gonna scare away the Cylons, but it just didn't work conceptually. It was like, "What? The Cylons running away 'cause they see the beacon? What? Why?" And so it just didn't work. It was one of those things we put on the page and then we watched it on screen and go, "Well, that's stupid. That doesn't make sense. How can we get away from that?" So we just opted to just get the hell out of this battle as quickly as you can. Just move it, just bring the fighters home, [[Propulsion_in_the_Re-imagined_Series#Faster_than_Light_Travel|Jump]] the fuck out of here and wrap up the show and get on. 'Cause it's not about the battle. It's not about how they get out of the battle. It's about the fact that they almost did this horrible thing, and barely got away with it. | ||
And I like the ending here that they all know that He- these two were expecting Helo to get taken away and then next scene implies very strongly that Adama has a pretty good suspicion. But that Adama knows in his heart that what they were doing was wrong, or at least in his opinion it was wrong, and he's not gonna go after Helo for it. And they opt to let this one go. That as Adama says in the next scene, "All I know is that we didn't commit genocide today. And that's a good day." And that they weren't gonna follow up on it. I think we had scripted lines for Laura to be going af- wanting to find out who tha- who did that, and she had a pretty good idea who it was and she wanted them punished, and so on. But it just seemed harsh and unnecessary and the show has brought you along so that you understand Helo's motives and what's going on, and I don't think you wanna see him thrown in the [[brig]]. And I don't think you wanna see them chasing after him. And we never really were interested in doing that. It's a much more complicated idea in a complicated show to keep it like this. | And I like the ending here that they all know that He- these two were expecting Helo to get taken away and then next scene implies very strongly that Adama has a pretty good suspicion. But that Adama knows in his heart that what they were doing was wrong, or at least in his opinion it was wrong, and he's not gonna go after Helo for it. And they opt to let this one go. That as Adama says in the next scene, "All I know is that we didn't commit genocide today. And that's a good day." And that they weren't gonna follow up on it. I think we had scripted lines for Laura to be going af- wanting to find out who tha- who did that, and she had a pretty good idea who it was and she wanted them punished, and so on. But it just seemed harsh and unnecessary and the show has brought you along so that you understand Helo's motives and what's going on, and I don't think you wanna see him thrown in the [[brig]]. And I don't think you wanna see them chasing after him. And we never really were interested in doing that. It's a much more complicated idea in a complicated show to keep it like this. | ||
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What do they say here? | What do they say here? | ||
I'm turning it up (unintelligible). Oh, the [[lymphocytic encephalitis|virus]]. Right. Beacon- I mean, it's not the biggest revelation in the show. 'Cause I think you get that all the way along. The beacon must have been left behind by the [[ | I'm turning it up (unintelligible). Oh, the [[lymphocytic encephalitis|virus]]. Right. Beacon- I mean, it's not the biggest revelation in the show. 'Cause I think you get that all the way along. The beacon must have been left behind by the [[Thirteenth Tribe]]. What is important is that the Cylons are going for [[Earth]] too and that the humans now it, and now it's a race. This would- the idea of it being a race was something we talked about in the beginning of the season. That eventually the Cylons were gonna go for Earth too, and that now it's a race. In fact, it was an idea that we almost put into the end of the [[Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II|season finale]] for [[Season 2 (2005-06)|season two]], that it was a race for Earth. But subsequently we changed that whole storyline and it went very differently. | ||
Ok. Well that's the podcast for "[[A Measure of Salvation]]". I hope you enjoyed it. I'm rushing because I've gotta get this to [[w:FedEx|FedEx]] as quickly as possible. Hopefully I make it. Hopefully you get this on Friday. If not, it was just because I missed the cutoff. I will talk to you next week for episode seven, "[[Hero]]". Good night, and good luck. | Ok. Well that's the podcast for "[[A Measure of Salvation]]". I hope you enjoyed it. I'm rushing because I've gotta get this to [[w:FedEx|FedEx]] as quickly as possible. Hopefully I make it. Hopefully you get this on Friday. If not, it was just because I missed the cutoff. I will talk to you next week for episode seven, "[[Hero]]". Good night, and good luck. | ||
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