Editing Podcast:Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II

{{podcast|author=Gougef|emailAuthor2= and [[Special:Emailuser/Steelviper|Steelviper]]|suffix=s|additionalCopyright=}}

As I was saying before, a key structural change that happened was shifting the end of the show, primarily. We moved the original night one out was the crash of the [[Raptor]], and now the the night one out is [[Kara Thrace|Kara]] taking the [[Cylon Raider (RDM)|Raider]] and jumping back to [[The Twelve Colonies (RDM)#Caprica|Caprica]] which is -I think- is a much stronger, more emotional, more personal beat. And as a result of that, that basic decision, it allowed "part II" to open up a bit, it allowed us to play all the moments of "part II" because I think that one of the the key things about show is the ability to play the moments. You're not just rushing through things. You're not just like brushing over details and  not giving the scenes themselves a chance to breath, and  to really enjoy the characters, and to play texture and detail.  And  it's as simple as,  example, in "[[33]]",  there's a shot where [[William Adama|Adama]]'s shaving in the bathroom and the camera just jumps downs watch him rinse the wa- rinse the shaving cream off his razor. And watching them eat noodles, I mean just all the little details about life and how the people interact, and being able to play moments like this in their full glory, to really give it its due, and give enough space, and not rush through the whole thing. You have to have enough room to do that, and one of the challenges of the show it to do it- to do these stories in an efficient way 'cause you've only got forty minutes to tell an hour story, I hate to tell you, but it's only forty minutes of actual program content time. And so, it's sometimes it's really hard to cram all that material in there. And, [[Michael Rymer|Michael]]'s decision- [http://uk.imdb.com/name/nm0177969/ Dany]'s decision to shift the night break opened up night two and made night two play in a much more comfortable fashion.

A couple of thing just to remind you if you, some things I said on the night one podcast which was there was a whole separate storyline going on- down on [[Kobol]] that we dispensed with which had to do with the two temples. There was a temple on Kobol and then another temple they built on Caprica to sort of emulate the original. And one of the reasons we got rid of that was strictly production. Balancing the budget versus the creative needs of the show is one of the biggest challenges of producing this series, and you always write to what the best version of the show and then you pare back. And there was just no way that we could get the temple. I'll come back in a second.

There was really- there was really no way to get the [[temple]] on [[The Twelve Colonies (RDM)#Caprica|Caprica]] and the temple on [[Kobol]] to work. They were too expensive. We could not believably make te- create temples practically on the stage, and then we were gonna CGI, do digital extensions of both sets to make it- to sell it in both locations, and it just became cost prohibitive. And likewise the surrounding of the temple and the big firefight that we were gonna do with a lot of [[Cylon Centurion|Centurions]] and hovercraft and [[Cylon Raider (RDM)|Raiders]] and all that. Laying siege, or about to lay siege, to the the temple on Kobol was another element that we just could not afford. So compromises have to be made and you're forced to think in other directions. And so this notion of the [[Arrow of Apollo|arrow]] being not in a temple on Caprica but actually being in [[Delphi Museum of the Colonies|a museum]], also seemed a little bit more real, more believable. It felt more real for society that is- has a [[Religion in the Twelve Colonies|religious]] aspect to it. A lot of people are- take their religious seriously and are practicing a faith but there's a large secular community that probably either doesn't believe or believes in a very low-boil way. That by and large a lot of "religious" items and artifacts would have worked their way and found their way into museums. So that became a much easier justification for the museum on Caprica.

And as far as the story on Kobol, that went through several iterations, and many changes. From going from two ground survey teams to just consolidating it into one, and also the decision not to put [[Lee Adama|Lee]] down there. Where was Lee's role in this drama was something that took a lot of wrangling. If Lee is down on the planet surface, it required a different kind of story down there. He's in charge. It's his command. It's his mission. It's all about Lee. And- we were talking about some conflict between him [[Galen Tyrol|Tyrol]], him and crew chief, and Tyrol questioning him in some ways, and Lee's leadership and growth. And ultimately it wasn't quite as satisfying that he wasn't back aboard [[Galactica (RDM)|''Galactica'']] when his father is shot and when the [[Government_of_the_Twelve_Colonies#Executive_Branch_2|President]] is deposed from power. It seemed like he should be back here and dealing with this story and by making that key change it allowed the Caprica s- the, sorry, the Kobol story to take on a different complexion. And as we, as you'll see, [[Alex Quartararo|Crashdown]] is in charge down on the surface of Kobol, but he may not be the best man, the best leader, for that situation. And doubt starts to creep in about who they're- who's command they're under. And what will Tyrol do? You couldn't play that, really, if it was Lee, 'cause it's- he's just a more capable, more competent leader and he's expected to fill that role every week. But by making it Crashdown it becomes a legitimate like, "Ok. Wait a minute. Who's in charge here?" kind of a thing. And it also meant that if Lee is aboard ''Colonial'' or- if he's aboard ''Galactica'' and [[''Colonial One'']] in this- on this storyline, when they try to take down the President, it forces him to have to make a choice and it meant that he could have to pick [[Laura Roslin|Laura]] over his father, and that he would go down for that, and he would be in [[brig|jail]], and that he would be there in the room in han-, literally, in handcuffs, when the final moments of the episode went down, which I though was much stronger. And moving forward, it meant that Lee is with us aboard ''Galactica'' in this world at the beginning of [[Season 2 (2005-06)|season two]], as opposed to being somewhere else that he has to be rescued and on a completely different story and having no idea what's even happening to his father, which didn't seem as satisfying.

This storyline of ''Galactica'' starting to move toward deposing the President and staging a military coups is something that had been on the drawing board from the beginning. My initial story proposals for the [[Season 1 (2004-05|first season]] as contained in the [[Series bible|bible]] and some other documents I wrote for the network, I always saw, initially, that the arc of the two characters of Laura and [[William Adama|Adama]] was going to be, ok you think at first that she's dove and he's the hawk, but in truth she's capable of far tougher things than he is capable of and he's much more civil libertarian-minded, for lack of a better phrase, than she is. That the each of them has elements of both hawk and dove and that they're driven by character things not- they're not just archetypes that you push around. He's not always gonna do the military thing. She's not always gonna do the soft and touchy-feely thing. And that the arc for the season initially was that Laura was gonna go too far. Laura was gonna get caught up in the need to maintain security in a sit- in a Flee- in a situations such as this and that would force her to crackdown harder and harder on dissent and she would winnow away basic freedoms one by one. Adama was gonna be essentially the one tasked to carry out those orders. He was gonna become more, and more, and more uncomfortable with it as the season went on. And ultimately she would go too far and he would step in and he would institute a coups and by the end of season on she was gonna be in jail. He would have taken over as the military commander and declared [[w:martial law|martial law]]. Which is exactly what neither of them wanted at the beginning. That's still where we end up. I mean, the journey along the way changed. Laura didn't really crackdown so much as she did was show teeth, show an ability to be pragmatic, show a willingness to cut- to stab [[Wallace Gray|her friend]] in the back, to shove a [[Leoben Conoy|Cylon]] out an airlock. You started to realize that she's capable of taking strong measures. But we didn't have to paint her quite so starkly as I was thinking initially, as being a badass and really going after people. It also didn't fit with [[Mary McDonnel|Mary]]'s portrayal of Laura. So what did happen is you started to see that she's perfectly capable of doing what she thinks need to be done if she thinks she's right. She's gonna do it. And the more funda- the fundamental agreement of the civilian and the military leadership in [[The Fleet (RDM)|the Fleet]] wa- seemed like the right place to play the conflict. That essentially if she breaks the vow she made in the [[miniseries]], the vow to let him have control over military decisions, that that would be the point where he would step in. He- you don't break your word to Adama. You just don't. And she did. And his a- his reaction to that is resolute and with a bit of sadness. I don't think he- he definitely doesn't want it. He doesn't want the command of the Fleet. He doesn't want to have to deal with the civilians. He doesn't want to do any of these things. But she broke her word to him. She got- she got [[Kara Thrace]], of all people, to turn against him and take a military asset away from the ''Galactica'' at the very moment that they were working on a plan to attack a Cylo- I mean. The reas- there's just so many reasons. He had to do it. He has to act against her. And she knows full well that he's gonna do that. That is also part of the story is that when she made that decision she- it was in- with her eyes wide open. She knew what it was going to mean. That he was coming for her. Which is the reason why she had the [[Colonial Press|Press]] on board, was she wanted it to be public. She didn't- she wanted people to know what was really at stake.

This standoff, in the original draft we did not get to this point exactly. When [[Lee Adama|Lee]] was down on the planet and we had a somewhat different structure, the standoff was gonna be [[Laura Roslin|Laura]] on the inside of her office. The [[Colonial Marine Corps|Marines]] on the outside, they're about to burst through the door. And it was at that moment that [[William Adama|Adama]] was shot. So were gonna leave [[Season 1 (2004-05)|season one]] with Laura about to be taken down by the Marines and Adama lying bleeding in [[CIC]] and what will [[Saul Tigh|Tigh]] do? That was the thing. the immediate question. What will he do about Laura? What does he do about Adama? Decided not to do that. Felt- wanted to play it through. Wanted to get her all the way, put her in jail. Have Adama close the door on her, and wanted to play this beat with Lee. Wanted to see Lee, push comes to shove Lee has to make a choice here. Will he subvert [[Government of the Twelve Colonies|the democracy]]? Will he participate in a military coups against the lawfully designated President of [[The Twelve Colonies (RDM)|the Colonies]] or will he make a stand? And Laura, who was willing a moment ago to go right up to the edge and see who's gonna pull a trigger first and will he make them do it, now it's entered a different zone. Now it's brother against brother. Is it- or it's [[Galactica (RDM)|''Galactica'']] people turning against- you can see the whole thing starting to spiral wildly out of control. It could be a true bloodbath at this point and that's where Laura has to step in and say, "Ok. The game of brinksmanship is over. Somebody has to blink first and it's gonna be me." But even in that moment she's still clearly in command. "Let's go."

Back to [[Kobol]]. Like I said, there was always a question what Baltar's gonna find when he went inside the temple and then when he gets inside the ruins. And after the madness of [[Dirk Benedict]] subsided, [[Michael Rymer|Mike Rymer]] and I were talking and he brought in some location photos of a place he was really interested in. He didn't know what it meant, but there was this opera house in Vancouver that seemed visually really interesting. It was a different visual language that we had been using in the show and it- when you see the ruins you expect something Roman and something Greek and Michael's notion to use this more- this feels more like Vienna in the nineteenth century than it does a Roman or Greek temple. And it said something about the culture that was once here on Kobol. That it wasn't just all people running around in togas. That there was a society. That there was a civilization. That it really was a sophisticated place where [[Religion in the Twelve Colonies#The Lords of Kobol|the Gods]], whoever they were, and man lived as one and had a certain elegance to them, which I thought was interesting. In the initial drafts he came into this room and there was an orchestra playing on the stage. And it was a recognizable piece, and he knew the piece, and there was dialogue with them walking down the aisle, much as they are now. And Baltar, it was all about him taking his place, and it was about the universe. She talks about music here and talks about the melody of life. And there was a point where the extension of the metaphor was him going up onto the stage and there was an empty chair and a violin and he didn't know how to play, but he sat down, he picked up the violin and he joined in the orchestra and you went out with Baltar playing as a member of the orchestra. And an orchestra of what? And what did that symbolize? And what did it mean? What kind of thing had he transcended? And what did it mean to take his place as the orchestra- in God's symphony, or whatever it was? And that- we talked about that at length. And there lots of discussions with [[James Callis|James]] and the director and myself and noone ever got quite satisfied with it. And then we came to this. I can- I believe it was Michael and it might have even been James. I hesitate to say whose idea it was. This idea of the child, of the cradle, of them talking about Baltar being involved with the baby. And who's baby is it? Well, it's probably [[Sharon Agathon|Sharon]]'s baby, don't you think? He's dealing with the Cylons and that the Cylons have been trying to get Sharon pregnant all season, and that God has a plan for Baltar, and is Sharon coming back to ''Galactica''? It seemed an interesting, fascinating place to go where you suddenly- all the plot elem- whoever said- made that suggestion was brilliant because it suddenly made all the plot threads start to come together in a nice, clean line. Suddenly all these disparate elements you started to line up and you start to feel that it all has a coherence, it all has resonance. It's not all random events happening for no reason. And that was something I always wanted. I always wanted this sense of the "unified theory of ''Galactica''". That these things are all relevent. And that they may not be apparent why they're relevent. And maybe you don't understand why they're relevent for quite a while, but they do. They are. They do have meaning, and they do all track in together.