Editing Podcast:Occupation

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|download link= http://media.scifi.com/battlestar/downloads/podcast/mp3/301-302/bsg_ep301_302_FULL.mp3

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|transcribed by= [[User:Steelviper|Steelviper]]

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|rdm= Y

|mrsron= Y

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It was- the idea was to shoot this- to do this propaganda film that D'anna was making and at the end of the propaganda film she was going to doing an exterior standup next to [[Laura Roslin|Laura]]'s school tent and as she's talking suddenly, in the background of thes shot, is this flash and this puff of smoke and then  you hear the boom a couple seconds later and the [[New Caprica Resistance|insurgency]] has hit another Cylon target and it like was "Cut. God damnit." And she starts bitching at Laura and Laura's defending what's going on and that was the way into this world that the occupation was well under way. There was an insurgency. The Cylons were trying to win the hearts and minds of the populace and some people were fighting back and some people were collaborating and the whole thing about the human security police, or the [[New Caprica Police]], was mentioned in that context. And I wrote a couple drafts of that and I think people- there was a reaction from other writers and studio/network that- the propaganda film just felt like the wrong tone and it seemed odd that D'anna was still making movies, although I kinda followed that and kinda liked that. But anyway, it was like, it was- once they had set all those pieces in motion that I knew that I wanted to cover all this territory, it was sort of easy for me to sit down and write this particular tease, which had to do with a lot of- setting up different stories. Catching them all mid-story. All these things are well under way, and playing the mystery of what's going on in each one of these scenes. By the end of the tease to bring them to some sort of crescendo.

This whole bit with [[Saul Tigh|Tigh]] and the eye. In the initial draft, the first draft I was wri- backing up one step, beyond that. In the story outline, before the draft, there was no mention of this. This wasn't something we ever discussed in the writer's room. It just- we didn't really talk about [[James Lyman|Jammer]] later being a suicide bomber. This was something, as I was writing, I was a writing the teleplay and I was getting to scenes where we were starting to talk about how horrible the Cylon occupation had been and why they were fighting back and that there was a real strong sense of rage and injustice from some of the humans. And I realized quickly that you needed to dramatize that. You needed someone who had suffered under the yolk of the Cylons. And various little possibilities slipped back and forth in my mind and I was like, "Tigh is probably- or definitely the leader of the insurgency and the resistance, as the military leader, and so maybe he suffered. Maybe they got him. Maybe they shot him, so he has a bullet wound or something." And then that seemed unsatisfying. And then I started thinking about, well, "No, he should be-". I wanted Tigh to be a visible reminder of the cost that so many people had paid in the C- not only in the Cylon occupation of New Caprica but even further than that. Ever since the show began, all these people have been wounded in one way or another and I wanted some- I realized that if Tigh lost an eye, not a limp, not like a gunshot, not a heart thing. He loses an eye. He's maimed. He's visibly disabled. I though that's a powerful thing to have happen to one of your main characters and also that he is then the symbol of all their losses. And you would never be able to get away with it. You would always be faced with the fact that these people have paid a price, and that Tigh would walk around as a walking billboard that reminds you, "Some of us have paid a heavy price. We have all been hurt in one way or another." That that was something that would carry on through the show.

RDM: No. No one even really complains about it, anymore. I can turn it up a little bit, down low, there.

This is very tedious stuff. This was some of the worst days I think they had on the set, were shooting these Cylon scenes in ''[[Colonial One]]'' 'cause a, ''Colonial One'' is no one's favorite set. I have been begged, repeatedly to destroy ''Colonial One'' by the production team, on many occasions.

Anyway, this stuff, this shooting the Cylon- these Cylons- double Cylons, triple Cylons in this set. They just all hated me for it because essentially everyone hates shooting in ''Colonial One''. The ceilings are low and awkward. The lighting scheme is not the greatest one. [[Stephen McNutt|Steve McNutt]], our [[Wikipedia:Cinematographer|DP]], just would love to burn this set down. Then add on top of that the difficulty of doing all these splits, and all these cross moves, and all these- lots of blu- green-screen and visual effects setups and that's very time consuming and it's all very technical and the actors have to do it many, many times in both positions and then there's all these continuity issues and eyelines and it's just like a complete pain in the ass thing. And so of course I gave them like four pages of dialogue to cover (Laughs) in a set like, we kept doing that trick throughout.

RDM: Yeah. This show is- it's just taking this situation, now is more interest- I wasn't really interested as I was doing this episode, these epsiodes, oddly enough, making a political statement about Iraq. I was really interested in taking a lot of those parameters and a lot of that setting and applying it to our characters and saying, "Ok, what would [[Galen Tyrol|Tyrol]] do in that situation? What would happen to [[Saul Tigh|Tigh]]? What would Laura do in that situation." That's where we spent I'd say we spent 80%, 90%, of our time, was talking in terms of what the characters would do. And the rest was usually spent about, "Ok, and the plot's gonna get us over to here. So how do we move Laura to this position by this point in the narrative and still get to the same place?" But there wer- there weren't really many, if any, political discussions about the situation in Iraq in the writers room that I can really recall. We talk about the news and we talk about what's going on in the world, and react to whatever that day's story was, but when we were going through the structuring of the episode it was- Iraq was referred to but, a lot of places were referred to as well. There were a lot of- the writers are- most of them are pretty well versed in history and they'll pull out examples of all kinds of things. There was even, I think, [[David Weddle]] was talking about something that happened during when the [[Wikipedia:Gallic Wars|Romans were occupying Gaul]].

It was like one idea too many, in a show that had a lot of things going on and also as the drafts were developing I started realizing that the real drama was about the sucide bombing and about having [[Tucker Clellan|Duck]], actually initially it wasn't even Duck, it just a guy. It was just, they were doing suicide bombings and I realized as I was writing it that that was really potent and really powerful. Obviously it's very contemporary. And that that's where the drama of the show belonged. And then I, just on the page, much like I decided Tigh was gonna lose an eye on the page, I started writing a scene where Tigh and Tyrol were talking, and they were sitting in some bleachers, and as they started talking you were cutting to this [[Pyramid (RDM)|Pyramid]] game. You saw Anders playing pyramid and then Anders is talking to Duck, one of the pilots, in Pyramid. And as you were cutting back and forth you started to realize that it was a suicide mission and he was gonna be a suicide bomber. Or you didn't even know that, it just- he was- it was a suicide mission. And that Tigh was- Tyrol- Tigh was gonna go through with it even over Tyrol's objections. And once I wrote that, the show just kept moving dramatically toward that storyline and it just becoming more and more important. There was a more full-blown version of the insurgency wanting to assasinate [[Gaius Baltar|Baltar]], and then really working hard to assasinate Baltar. And the suicide bombing was primarily for that, and then they had other attempts and- but those all went away, too, and it was like, for part one here, in "[[Occupation]]", it's the build. It's the move of life on this planet is moving towards a crisis. It's starting to get to a place where the humans are not just fighting back but they're taking the gloves off and they're gonna do anything they can against these guys. And that that was like really gonna be a marker that was- things were gonna change after that. And that's why we're telling this episode now. It's like, "Ok. You're gonna jump four months ahead in the narrative. Why?" You're jumping ahead because in four months there's gonna be this dramatic confluence of events that you'd rather tell than you would the initial opening weeks, and that's like a dramatic choice we made very early on. I wasn't interested in the first couple of months, the first weeks and the first couple months of the occupation, because essentially that was all about establishing things. It was all about making promises. It's all about giving them medicine{{podcastref|medicine|0:26:08}}, helping, there's an initial point of confusion and chaos where they're just trying to get settled. I was much more interested at what would happen later. What happens when the insu- when there is a full-blown insurgency and they start blowing themselves up? And what happens then? And what happens when at that point, that's when [[William Adama|Adama]]'s coming back and are trying to rescue them. It's because those things are all happening at the same time, in four months, that's when you tell the story.

This is the scene I was talking about earlier. This is the- I literally just wrote this intercut on the page. I just started writing the dialogue and how would you reveal the- it was like an exercise in my head. It was, ok there's a secret here and the secret is that somebody's going on a suicide mission, and I don't wanna say even what that's what it is specifically. I don't want it to be known that it's a suicide bomb. I just want a sense of dread and that they're about to do something that will fundamentally change things. And I just started writing this little dialectic, this little back and forth between [[Galen Tyrol|Tyrol]] and [[Saul Tigh|Tigh]]. And then seeing the man actually, the recruitment itself, out on the field. There's a whole sequence coming up in part II, in "[[Precipice]]" that has to do with the [[oracle]], [[Amanda Plummer]], and when [[Number Three|D'anna]] goes to see Amanda Plummer. That was all part of this teaser,  the act one of "[[Occupation]]". That's the way it was written. It was one of the many, like I said before, there were many stories I was trying to touch on in act one. Laura's ended up getting moved into the second act. D'anna and the oracle got moved all the way into the second hour. But, that only comes up here because part of the backstory to what's going on here is that [[Tucker Clellan|Duck]]- Duck says, in one of the cuts that he had seen the oracle and he has nothing to live for, and this was all playing and D'anna had just come from the oracle as well and a lot of these scenes were also interacting with D'anna and her- the fallout of her going to the oracle to be told that she will hold [[Hera|the baby]] in her arms and know true love. And so all these scenes were designed around that storyline as well.

This idea was something that we talked about quite a bit in the writers room, that Adama last season was already on a path to have a "special relationship" with Sharon. That he was already bringing her into his quarters and asking her advice like he did in ''Pegasus''. And that given a year, a year goes by where these two characters were aboard ''Galactica'' almost by themselves for a very long time, for like a year. She had her husban- had Helo, obviously, who became her husband, and he- his son was up there, but his son was on the other ship, and the ship started to empty out. Adama let a lot of people muster out and the reasons why he let people muster out will be covered in a later episode. But ''Galactica'' had become like "a house where all the children have gone home", and somebody will track down that quote, but that in that context with nothing to do, really, and they were just like punching holes in space and going 'round and 'round the planet for days on end and most of the people that he'd become close to were now gone, were now living their lives down on the planet, that Adama would more and more find himself in a dialogue with Sharon, with the vision of the woman that shot him. Not the literal one, 'cause that was the other Sharon, for those of you keeping score, but that he had started the relationship with this woman and that he would continue it and that he would give her more privileges. In fact, when I wrote the description of the cell, it was like, the "lifer" that had gotten special privileges from the warden and she has curtains, and she has things, and material in there, and it's a "comfortable" existence down in her cell. And I started to believe that after a year, these two who would talk, day after day by themselves, would form a very special bond and that that bond would actually have transcended the fact that he knows that she's a [[Cylons (RDM)|Cylon]] and that she can turn on him at any moment. That there was a part of him as a human being that wanted to believe in her, that does want to believe in her. I think that's one of the- that's one of the optimistic ideas of this show. People are always talking about how dark the show is, but to me the show has high ideals within a very dark situation. I think that Adama, this man who has gone through so much, has witnessed so much, has had to rise above so much, and so much tragedy and horror was caused by the Cylons, but there's a part of him that wants to believe that he can talk to Sharon. That he can trust Sharon. That Sharon's a person. That Sharon is someone that he can have a relationship with. He still wants to believe that. Despite all the evidence to the contrary. I think that's ultimately an optimistic view of humanity.

This stuff with Lee and Dualla. This was the subject of much discussion of how the storyline was gonna go. The original story here was that it wasn't gonna be just that Dualla is calling him out and  saying that he's gotten soft, but that Dualla herself had also gotten soft. That she had lost a step. That she was off her game. That their lives aboard ''Pegasus'' had turned into something miserable and they had really fallen into laziness and fallen into a lot of bad habits. That they were unhappy and one of the results of this arc was going to be, when all is said and done, after the rescue, after people get back on ''Galactica'', and I'm not giving anything away by saying people getting back on ''Galactica'', I think we're all adults. We all know that it's gonna happen. But after everybody got back to ''Galactica'' there was going to be a change in what Lee and Dualla do with their lives. They were gonna become much more spartan. They were gonna become [[Colonial Marine Corps|marines]]. They were gonna become really hard core. That they were gonna become razors. That that was gonna be their new mission. That they had learned something and been shamed by what had happened to them in that year off, and that when the dust had finally settled they were gonna make some changes and they were gonna become hard core. And we tried a couple versions of that in script and it just didn't play. I never liked it entirely and I don't think we ever cracked it, so we didn't do it.

This thing with getting the message from the [[Raptor]]. This also was something discussed in the initial break. How this was gonna work. What the rules of it would be. As always, [[David Weddle|David]] and [[Bradley Thompson|Bradley]], two of the writers on the show, were instrumental in figuring out a lot of these kinds of things. They're really knowledgeable in terms of military procedure and protocol and I know Brad has several friends and acquaintances that are in the military and he talks to pilots and he is a pilot and he knows a lot of the stuff, so a lot of these things were run by them first.

I like that. (Laughs.) I don't know why. I just like the way that that's phrased. "Have hope. We're coming for you." That seemed like a very simple message that you'd leave these guys. And this, this is like a really odd way to end this scene, I have to tell ya, but I love it. That Adama stands there and just says, "It's gonna be ok. It's really gonna be ok." And it say- on some level it's a weak moment, 'cause it's not like- it's essentially saying that he didn't always know that it was gonna be ok, and he's not the all-confident guy and that there's a part of him that's really relieved and really, whew, almost emotional about the fact that it's all gonna be ok. But that's why I like it. 'Cause it's an unexpected move to make with your lead, with your hero. So much tv is just, and film, is just predicated on the idea that the hero must always be strong. Hero cannot show weakness. That the hero- and when he does show weakness it's just such a noble thing that he's weak.  

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RDM: No. There's like, there's frailties and there's things that real heroes do that make them human. I think you can show that.

 

The bi- the [[Gaius Baltar|Baltar]]-[[Number Six|Six]] storyline that starts there is actually had started earlier in the original draft and the scene that is now in the second part, in "[[Precipice]]", where they're in bed and they wake up and they're having problems. That was actually, embarrassing enough, also in act one (Laughs.) of "[[Occupation]]". So you can see that "Occupation" began life as a very bloated act one where I was doing so many different things. And act two got kicked all the way down the line into the next episode.

Terry: Now you gotta get them all riled up.

This is as dark as the show gets. I mean, this is really putting it out there. When I was writing this stuff, I was writing this stuff with the suicide bombing, and there's Duck, and I was like emotionally caught up in it, really. It was tripping me out a bit as I was writing these scenes of him standing in the police ranks, h- we know he's got the belt on. What's he gonna do? And then, oh my god, he actually does it. I mean, it's really- it's really horrifying stuff. But it's true. That's why I want to do it. It really happens. People do this. Look at this.