Editing Podcast:The Captain's Hand

Initially, in the early drafts of this in the story and in the first draft of the script [[Lee Adama|Lee]] came over by himself. It was more of a self-contained "Lee" show that really didn't involve [[Kara Thrace|Kara]] until a little bit later in the drama when she was pulled over to [[Pegasus (RDM)|''Pegasus'']]. The idea wa― ,in the initial drafts, was that Lee came aboard, and that the problem on board ''Pegasus'' was not― was not that discipline was too tough, it was that it was quite the opposite. It was that it was too lax. The idea was that Trammel was just a nice guy. Trammel was just everything that Lee thought his father should be. The idea was Lee comes on board this ship and Trammel's this perfectly nice guy who wants to be liked by his crew and wants to get along with everybody and just commanded with a very soft glove. And Lee found himself fulfilling the hard-ass role. He came over and yelled at guys and saw that fights were breaking out on the hangar day, nobody― hangar bay, nobody gave a shit about it. People talked back. People didn't carry out orders. There was a certain sense of "School's out on Peggy" since [[Helena Cain|Cain]] and [[Jack Fisk|Fisk]] had both been killed, and then they get this― this new commander in who hasn't had any experience commanding a ship and he just, more than anything else, wanted to be liked by the crew, because the crew had hated the previous two commanders. And then that was supposed to bring along its own problems. That grew less satisfying. As we played it out it was an odd fit because it never quite felt right that Lee was such a complete hard-ass with these guys and it cut against the grain, just, we were having trouble making that story work. So we kept working on, "What is the nature of [[Barry Garner|Garner]]'s problem? Is he too lax? Is he too friendly? Is he too much of a hard-ass? Is he crazy?" The version that we shot, the f― the draft, the filming draft is slightly different than the edited version, too. These early scenes were colored by the fact that― that [[CIC]] scene that we left a moment ago where Lee first came into Garner and found out that the [[Raptor]]s were missing, we played it where Garner immediately was on [[Louis Hoshi|Hoshi]]'s ass about something. Hoshi was on the phone with somebody at [[Galactica (RDM)|''Galactica'']] and was not informing Garner in the way that Garner wanted to be informed. And he was riding his ass and sent him to his quarters and had him arrested and there was a sense of fear everywhere. That Garner was this crazed, despot. And we were taking direction from "Caine Mutiny", was sort of an archetype for the character at that point, and the idea that we were going to play, and you can still see parts of it are still here, was that Lee appreciated Garner. That Lee liked Garner. Respected him. Thought he was trying to make the best of a bad situation. He was― he was the third guy who had to command this ship, and he was trying to bring discipline back to a vessel that had had questionable discipline. It was a somewhat Kurtz-like regime under Cain and it then it was a more overtly piratical regime under Fisk and then Garner was trying to just straighten it all out. And the idea we were going to play was Lee was slow to see that― that Garner was deeply flawed as well. And that was an archetype that was borne out of "[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046816/ Caine Mutiny]" which follows a very similar structure in that― that the [[Wikipedia:Captain Queeg|Queeg]]-

Act― act of the second. I like all this political stuff. I― I think it's interesting to see the factionalization and almost tribalization within [[The Fleet (RDM)|the Fleet]]. That there are different cultures represented within the rag-tag fleet. That they have different points of view. And this idea, that P― [[Sarah Porter]] and [[The Twelve Colonies of Kobol#Gemenon|the Gemonese]] were gonna come a-callin' because of their support to [[Laura Roslin|Laura]], when she needed it, when Laura rose up against [[William Adama|Adama]] way back when and declared herself a prophet earlier in the season. There was the implication then, [[Tom Zarek|Zarek]] saw it coming, ironically enough. Zarek was the guy who looked down the road and said, "This is a mistake. This is going to come back to― to bite you in the ass." And that Zarek was right. That Zarek is a smart political animal. He knows how these things work. And Ba― and Zarek as the― as the secularist saw the dangers of this, saw that the religious people, the fundamentalist crowd, as it were, within the Fleet, were going to want something for their support and there was a political reality to that. And I thought there was something very interesting about seeing Laura caught in that vice, where she needed their― their support. She wanted their support. And then their support came at― at a price. And how does she reconcile those two ideas? And her first instinct is, "No, I'm not banning abortion. Fuck that. I'm― I'm― that's not who I'm about. That's not what I'm about." And then sh― there's this little scene. Adama sits down, and Laura knows, "Ok. What's up? What's on the Admiral's mind?" It's interesting just to see their body language and the nature of their relationship at this point, the way these two characters have changed over the course of― of almost two seasons now. They are more intimate with each other. They're easier with each other. Adama knows this is a political issue. It's kinda the first time Adama's stepping out of his role as military commander and actually injecting himself into a political idea, and bringing something to― to― to Laura's attention.