Editing Podcast:Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down
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Anyway, we were talking earlier about [[Saul Tigh]] and his background and his wife, and in the first [[Cylon War]], that Tigh had been a combat veteran. That essentially after he'd had a couple of ships shot out from under him as a chief, that he was selected for officer candidate school, and that he essentially was dragooned into being a pilot because the [[Colonial Fleet|fleet]] was running out of pilots. So he became a pilot and flew several combat missions in the first Cylon War. And the war came to a close, and Tigh, along with many other officers, was discharged at the conclusion of hostilities, and found himself suddenly without a job, without a career. And he hook— he got work as a deckhand on a freighter— on an interplanetary freighter that just sort of plied a very boring route back and forth between a couple of the [[The Twelve Colonies of Kobol|Colonies]]. And it was on that freighter that he began to drink, and it was on that freighter that he met [[William Adama]]. William Adama was a younger man than he was, had been a pilot in the first Cylon War, but only at the very end of the war, and hadn't seen as much combat as Tigh was. And that by the time Tigh had met Adama, he was already damaged, he was already a scarred man, he had already seen a great many very, very ugly things and had survived them, and the war had left deep, damaging marks upon the man. But the friendship that grew between the two of them lasted for many years, and that when Adama got back into the ser— each of them was out of the service and each of them was hoping to get back into the service, and when Adama did finally get back into the service, he reached out and pulled his old friend Tigh back in with him, and essentially their career paths stayed— they had a similar career path after that, and were very close, and Adama kept him around, and he was a good officer as long as he sort of kept his drinking under control. | Anyway, we were talking earlier about [[Saul Tigh]] and his background and his wife, and in the first [[Cylon War]], that Tigh had been a combat veteran. That essentially after he'd had a couple of ships shot out from under him as a chief, that he was selected for officer candidate school, and that he essentially was dragooned into being a pilot because the [[Colonial Fleet|fleet]] was running out of pilots. So he became a pilot and flew several combat missions in the first Cylon War. And the war came to a close, and Tigh, along with many other officers, was discharged at the conclusion of hostilities, and found himself suddenly without a job, without a career. And he hook— he got work as a deckhand on a freighter— on an interplanetary freighter that just sort of plied a very boring route back and forth between a couple of the [[The Twelve Colonies of Kobol|Colonies]]. And it was on that freighter that he began to drink, and it was on that freighter that he met [[William Adama]]. William Adama was a younger man than he was, had been a pilot in the first Cylon War, but only at the very end of the war, and hadn't seen as much combat as Tigh was. And that by the time Tigh had met Adama, he was already damaged, he was already a scarred man, he had already seen a great many very, very ugly things and had survived them, and the war had left deep, damaging marks upon the man. But the friendship that grew between the two of them lasted for many years, and that when Adama got back into the ser— each of them was out of the service and each of them was hoping to get back into the service, and when Adama did finally get back into the service, he reached out and pulled his old friend Tigh back in with him, and essentially their career paths stayed— they had a similar career path after that, and were very close, and Adama kept him around, and he was a good officer as long as he sort of kept his drinking under control. | ||
[[Ellen Tigh]] is never even mentioned by name in the pilot, but she was clearly someone of great importance in Tigh's life. And we had talked about various scenarios of bringing her back, and we had always sort of resisted them for the primary reason that— um, well, to be honest, y'know, it's a bit of a contrivance. Ellen's showing up in the series is definitely the writers' hand. It's us– it is us pulling on a string and making a character appear. I think you get a very limited number of those with the audience. I think the audience will grant you a couple of "gimmes". They'll let you slide by a few of these kind of things, but you can't do it very often. So essentially by having Ellen Tigh show up, we're really raising the bar pretty high before we ever do it again. So it's pretty unlikely that anybody else is going to have a family member that's still alive. I mean they're– after all, they're less than fifty thousand survivors out in our [[The Fleet | [[Ellen Tigh]] is never even mentioned by name in the pilot, but she was clearly someone of great importance in Tigh's life. And we had talked about various scenarios of bringing her back, and we had always sort of resisted them for the primary reason that— um, well, to be honest, y'know, it's a bit of a contrivance. Ellen's showing up in the series is definitely the writers' hand. It's us– it is us pulling on a string and making a character appear. I think you get a very limited number of those with the audience. I think the audience will grant you a couple of "gimmes". They'll let you slide by a few of these kind of things, but you can't do it very often. So essentially by having Ellen Tigh show up, we're really raising the bar pretty high before we ever do it again. So it's pretty unlikely that anybody else is going to have a family member that's still alive. I mean they're– after all, they're less than fifty thousand survivors out in our [[The Fleet|Rag-Tag Fleet]], and the odds of anybody, ''anybody'' on ''Galactica'' knowing someone on one of those ships is pretty long. And then we— but as we decided to do it, we decided to make it a plus in the episode, and the fact of her survival is so unlikely that it helps fuel the paranoia of "is she a [[Cylons (RDM)|Cylon]], or isn't she?" | ||
Which brings us back to the discussion of paranoia and why this episode went in the direction it did. In the first couple of drafts, it was— Ellen showed up, and her task was essentially to stir the pot. That her influence on her husband, on Tigh, was such that she would cause him to start questioning things that Adama was doing. That there had already been this sort of notion that was out there in the Galactica world that any of us could be a Cylon, so anyone ''could'' be a Cylon, so who could it be? And we were always interested in the idea that Adama and Tigh would start to suspect one another. But they were such good friends, and they had such a deep backstory, that it was hard to get over that hill. So we felt that maybe Ellen starting to whisper in Tigh's ear would cause him to start to suspect Adama. And we had a couple of plot devices that— and they were devices— that were constructed in order to make some actions that Adama took look suspicious. There was something about a [[jump]]— that he was making the fleet take a jump to certain coordinates, and he wasn't telling anybody, and some convoluted reason why that I can't even recall at the moment, and their fuel resources were getting low, and why was Adama taking them over ''there'', and she starts whispering into Tigh's ear, and he's sort of suspecting Adama, and then Tigh's actions, and being suspicious of Adama were catching Adama's attention, and Adama started getting suspicious about Tigh, and in essence, it just became sort of a downward spiral that our two heroes, our two buddies, our two friends were starting to go at each other's throats. And frankly, it just didn't work. The honest truth is we just could not make that story work. And there were a couple of drafts of it, and [[IMDB:nm0900599|Jeff Vlaming]] is a good writer, and really tried to sell it. But we just couldn't sell it. I didn't believe it got to a point where they were pointing guns at each other, I just didn't. | Which brings us back to the discussion of paranoia and why this episode went in the direction it did. In the first couple of drafts, it was— Ellen showed up, and her task was essentially to stir the pot. That her influence on her husband, on Tigh, was such that she would cause him to start questioning things that Adama was doing. That there had already been this sort of notion that was out there in the Galactica world that any of us could be a Cylon, so anyone ''could'' be a Cylon, so who could it be? And we were always interested in the idea that Adama and Tigh would start to suspect one another. But they were such good friends, and they had such a deep backstory, that it was hard to get over that hill. So we felt that maybe Ellen starting to whisper in Tigh's ear would cause him to start to suspect Adama. And we had a couple of plot devices that— and they were devices— that were constructed in order to make some actions that Adama took look suspicious. There was something about a [[jump]]— that he was making the fleet take a jump to certain coordinates, and he wasn't telling anybody, and some convoluted reason why that I can't even recall at the moment, and their fuel resources were getting low, and why was Adama taking them over ''there'', and she starts whispering into Tigh's ear, and he's sort of suspecting Adama, and then Tigh's actions, and being suspicious of Adama were catching Adama's attention, and Adama started getting suspicious about Tigh, and in essence, it just became sort of a downward spiral that our two heroes, our two buddies, our two friends were starting to go at each other's throats. And frankly, it just didn't work. The honest truth is we just could not make that story work. And there were a couple of drafts of it, and [[IMDB:nm0900599|Jeff Vlaming]] is a good writer, and really tried to sell it. But we just couldn't sell it. I didn't believe it got to a point where they were pointing guns at each other, I just didn't. | ||