Podcast:Colonial Day

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Teaser

Hello and welcome to the podcast commentary of episode eleven, Colonial Day. I am Ronald D. Moore the executive producer and creator of the new Battlestar Galactica and tonight we're going to be talking about the eleventh episode of the first season Colonial Day. This was- essentially began life as our West Wing episode and we'd always wanted to do an episode that really took place in Laura Roslin's world and really dealt with the politics of the fleet and Galactica and the people and the survivors of the human race and how that would evolve over the course of the series.

As I was developing the show early on and setting up the major players I felt very strongly that the President should be a very important player in the show. In the original Battlestar Galactica there was a Quorum of Twelve, which is reprised in this episode, of political leaders of The Twelve Colonies which before the attack of the Cylons in the original Galactica the Quorum of Twelve was the political quasi-military leadership of the Twelve Colonies.

Before we delve further into that, because I tend to digress a lot in these as long time listeners will know, this is Cloud Nine which is actually the college of VC University. We definitely wanted to get outside of Galactica, go explore another ship in the fleet and we decided that if we had at least one vessel that was set up in some sort of arboretum type setting that had a dome on it, a place where you could create- that had recreated some sort of Earth-like or colony-like exterior that would be a nice place to open a show up, it keeps the show from getting too claustrophobic, but it prevents or it allows us to stay within the fleet instead of having to go and make up the colony- the planet of the week idea which I was very much opposed to doing from the get-go. I didn't want the show to be about going to alien worlds constantly that happened to look like Canada. I wanted to essentially use Caprica- the story-line on Caprica to be location driven in Vancouver and we would essentially be saying that Caprica looks an awful lot like Vancouver but as far as other planets- I think it starts to beg credibility at a certain point when all the planets in the universe look like Canada. I'd never really wanted to go to other planets in this series and I definitely didn't want to explore other aliens and so the idea of having at least one ship in our rag-tag felt that had a certain sort of exterior feel to it allows us to have it both ways; we can go outside and we can do a few- some episodes like this where the characters get to go outside and be in the trees and get a different sort of visual sense without it really breaking the reality of what we had set up so far.

And there are the sirens and the dogs which I'm sure you've all come to know and love in my little home here in California and I'm er... yeah isn't it great? There they go, the public services, my tax dollars at work.

In any case the West Wing episode was something that we had talked about from the very, very earliest going, I always wanted to do something that was more political that dealt with the practical realities of trying to govern and run a society that had- run the remnants of a society that had just been destroyed and unlike the original series I didn't want the political leadership of our rag-tag fleet to really be straw men for Adama to knock down over and over again, because that was essentially the dynamic developed in the original series. The Quorum of Twelve would come up with some lame-brain idea, 'Hey let's go make peace with the Cylons' or 'Hey let's stay here on this planet' where obviously the Cylons were gonna come in five minutes and Adama being wiser and smarter would always find a way to beat them and cooler heads would prevail and Adama and Apollo would save the day. I didn't really want to do that because I didn't like the message of it, I didn't really like the notion that, 'what you really need is just a good, smart military who can control and run everything'. I just didn't like that, I liked playing the natural tension between the civilian and the military authority in this situation, I wanted to really explore what it meant to be a democracy in these circumstances and a republican form of government in these circumstances. And I thought it also said something interesting about the society- the Colonial society, that they do value and treasure and place great emphasis on the fact that their government is still with them. I mean the entire Laura Roslin plot line throughout the series is really a tribute to the fact of how strongly these people believe in their system of government, how fundamental the notions of democracy and representation and the vote and equal rights and- the sort of things that in this country, the United States, are also built into our culture. We have this fundamental belief in the Constitution, a fundamental belief in the Bill of Rights and there is argument about margins of it but we have this undeniable belief system. I wanted the rag-tag fleet and in essence their society to mirror our society in that way but then I wanted an ability to test all of those assumptions, I wanted this circumstance and this set of problems to continually challenge and really provoke those ideas.

Act One

I was talking a moment ago about how I wanted the situation that the Colonial survivors find themselves in to really challenge and provoke their notions of society and freedom and I think that idea of a situation that is so dire, that is so fraught with peril, that puts at risk the very nature of existence is an interesting one and how it tests the system of governments and governance and the social rules that people operate in, that idea, that challenge to the fundamentals of the system, is something that I think we're going through right now. I think that the situation in this country, the War on Terrorism, the assertion of executive power in all circumstances, the march- the long march toward extreme authoritarian governance has begun in this country and the idea of how we fight back against that- or what are the places that we choose to fight back and what are the places that we choose not to fight back, what are the places and what are the areas of power and society today in our culture are we willing to hand over to security, are we willing to give up freedoms in which areas in order to provide security. I think those ideas are in the show 'cause those ideas are in the culture right now.

Back to the show onscreen here, this sequence of Kara and Lee getting on Cloud Nine and just relaxing and stopping to literally smell the roses as it were- used to be a pool, in first draft there was a scripted- there was a large pool that also opened the show, there were people diving into the pool because Cloud Nine was like a cruise ship and banquet facility and convention and meeting place and so on originally, before the holocaust, and in this sequence- instead of her spraying him with the hose, which she's about to do here, we had Kara just stripping off her clothes and going skinny-dipping and Lee sort of being scandalised by it but then jumping in as well because we wanted to just give them a moment. It was like, 'give these guys a break, they've had a long difficult season too' and it just felt like 'okay now they're standing out there, it looks beautiful, it is beautiful, let them enjoy themselves and have a little bit of fun'.

This is the lead-up to the meeting. I mean, all these sort of security things, the screeners, the marine guards, the procedures that you see them following, they are intended to be redolent of the familiar security procedures that travellers and people going to various meetings have to experience today, again the notion here is to have this mirror our society, we're not trying to create a new cool-spacey-wow-weird society, this is a recognisable place, with recognisable customs and functions because we're trying to convey a certain idea here and we want you to think about the ideas and enjoy the drama rather than really being distracted by some of the trappings of what the genre sometimes brings.

This whole little bit of business, well not here but what we're leading up to, the bit of business with Zarek and will Laura Roslin shake Zarek's hand in public is inspired by- Yasser Arafat came to the White House for the meeting with Yitzhak Rabin to sign the Oslo Accords there was a lot of speculation whether Rabin shake the hand of Arafat and the symbolism of that and what it entailed and the carefully choreographed maneouver where Clinton got the two men to shake in the famous photograph and video on the White House lawn- I always liked that there was something interesting about just the symbolism of a handshake, what it says, how it conveys- and so I made this whole little bit of business of Zarek come up and Tigh won't shake his hand and Ellen who is becoming a little bit more of a player and a little bit more cunning decides to shake his hand and get her picture everywhere and it would make news and that would start to advance her agenda, which we start to learn is a separate agenda from everybody else and again Ellen is her own person, her own player, Ellen is a survivor in a literal sense and in a larger sense, Ellen is someone who is going to find a way, somehow, someway, to survive and to keep moving up the ladder and she sees him as a possible way up that ladder.

Just a side-note about media because this is certainly the show that features media more than any other in this series, it's a bit of a push frankly, we're pushing what I think is the reality of the show slightly to make it feel a little bit more familiar and a little easier to play. We established in the miniseries that there was a group of reporters and press aboard Galactica for its decomissioning ceremony and presumably a lot of them were either on Laura Roslin's transport or left behind aboard Galactica, in any case there was definitely a press contingent that survived the initial Cylon holocaust. So I didn't think it was straining credulity too far to say that they would continue to function in those roles, I mean what else would they do, they're media people, they're experienced broadcasters and journalists and they would presumably try to cover the events that are happening around them. I think there may be a little too many of them in some cases and perhaps sometimes we stretch a point to try and give ourselves a sense of a press corps because we're trying to convey a certain feeling of politics, a certain importance of the White House, to sort of root you in what the archetypes are supposed to be, but more or less I think it plays fairly real.

Again, this is another location at the University of British Columbia where the Quorum of Twelve is meeting, as I started to talk about earlier the Quorum of Twelve is an idea that was in the original series, I never quite figured out exactly how you got on the Quorum of Twelve there seemed to be an implication in the original series that Adama was a member of the Quorum and I'm not sure if commanders of other Battlestars were or if Adama was unique, I'm sure there's fans of the original series who might have a better answer for that than I do, my impression from watching the Pilot and the episodes was that the Quorum seemed to represent each of the twelve colonies and there didn't seem to be a determinate of how one got to the Quorum or exactly what its powers were, it seemed to be a large Grand Council as it were which is a very familiar science fiction riff frankly that happens a lot. It happens a lot in Star Trek, in Trek there were many occasions where you would encounter an alien society and essentially instead of trying to stroke out the complexities of its government and do it by bi-cameral legislation and legislature and the judiciary and how the executive evolves and blah blah blah you would just say 'well, there's the Supreme Council or there's the Grand Council or there was the- ' whatever they were called there was some body that usually sat around tables and nodded a lot because they were mostly extras and there would be the leader of the council and that was how you typically dealt with alien cultures. Galactica has a similar sort of riff in the original, there is this Quorum, it makes sense there is twelve, they seem to be some kind of senate I guess would be the closest sort of approximation you could run to. In the new series the way I've started to construct the Government was that the Quorum of Twelve is somewhere between the Senate and a cabinet, there seems- I guess it can't be the cabinet I take that back- it is essentially some kind of glorified senate, each of them represents their colony which gives them a massive amount of power- just one person per colony in this setup- so the Quorum would have a tremendous amount of say- the rules of voting, is there a filibuster, does it take a simple majority to pass things- in this episode it takes a simple majority to elect a Vice President- does it take a super-majority to pass constitutional amendments etc etc, there's lots of detail work to go on at some point. But again I really wanted to play the reality of what they would have to go through, Laura can't run the entire civilian fleet by herself, any sort of society needs some sort of governmental construct, it needs some sort of beaucracy, it needs some sort of designated hitters for education and security etc etc. There are anarchists listening to this right now who I'm sure will argue that point.

This episode I also wanted to start to get into the fact that the colonies or the colonists, the survivors are not just nameless, faceless and all think the same thing, there are divisions. There are colonies or survivors of colonies who believe one thing, there are survivors of colonies who believe something else, Laura Roslin is not the perfect leader, she is not the most popular President they've ever had, she's never even been elected to this post so she's not, I think, someone who holds the post by acclamation, she's somebody who holds the post because everybody ahead of her in the line of succession died and I think that gives- her hold on power's a bit tenuous as a result.

Act Two

A fair question that comes up is why hasn't Laura designated a Vice President well before now? I think that is a fair question, Mary McDonnell asked me the same question, and I think the answer is simply that there hasn't been a whole hell of a lot of time since the holocaust until this episode there is really only a matter of weeks and they have had a lot on their plates, a tremendous amount has happened to these people in a very short amount of time. She's only now starting to get to the point where she can even think about putting a government together, to convene a Quorum, to establish a beauocracy, to try to bring some order to the chaos of the refugee flight into the stars, so I don't think it's pushing things too far to say they haven't had a natural Vice President until now. I mean in practical terms what would have been her legal authority to appoint a Vice President if their systen of government says that it has to be nominated and approved by the Quorum in this kind of circumstance. Presumably the Vice President was elected by the people under normal circumstances and then if everybody else is dead, much like when Spiro Agnew resigned as Vice President in the early 70's and Nixon nominated Gerald Ford and he was confirmed by the- I think the House I'm not positive whether it was both Houses of Congress or not but in essence he was confirmed- so we're in a similar kind of deal.

This sequence to me is one of the more interesting in the show because of the ideas that are present in it, not just Tom Zarek and his agenda being one that I'll talk about in a moment, but also what it says about the fleet, think about what's happening throughout these ships, here are all these survivors, they're all stuck in these vessels, they ran away, they're all happy to be alive, they're all scrabbling to eke out a day to day existence, conditions vary widely on all these ships and what do they do? What are they doing with their time? This is shining a light on one of the conceits of the show which is that everybody on a ship like this would continue to do their jobs. I mean, why is this guy continuing to be a gardener? Why are the bartenders continuing to be bartenders? I mean, he's bringing up a valid point, these people are all in some way living a fantasy, they're all sort of trying to maintain the veneer of the world that they once lost, which I think is a really interesting idea and again I think it's emotionally true. I think that they would try to hang on to their past lives, I think the journalists would want to behave like journalists they don't want to start digging and- not even digging, creating hydroponic plants and becoming labourers and all this. I mean whether that's practical or not, it may not be practical at a certain point, I think that their initial impulses and their initial instincts would drive them towards continuing their old professions, continuing their old lives and trying to hang on to what they had as best as possible. I mean even here at Cloud Nine they're still going to the bar and hanging out and they're still behaving much like they would have behaved back home and yet home is gone and none of that's real.

This whole subplot that is illuminated here with the building assasination attempt on Laura Roslin that was established earlier with the tease and the assembling of the gun and the smuggling it through security and now we've got this guy- the show initially was- wanted to be just The West Wing, let's do just a political show, make the stakes Laura, Laura's position, make the stakes democracy and all that and I think that there came a point where that grew unsatisfying, we felt we needed a little something else, it is Battlestar Galactica, there is a certain sort of tension and jeopardy component to the show and so now we have the barfight, (dogs start to bark) we have the underlying tension between- I apologise for the dogs, they're going crazy I'll shut the window, I hope it doesn't bother too many of you and I hope the rest of you are dog lovers- anyway guys, the feeling was we needed a little something else, a little more juice in the show, so there was this sort of underlying plot that may or may not be attached to Tom Zarek as he seems to be manipulating events and possibly getting ready to assassinate the President. I think that as far as it goes it works, I think it certainly- it delivers the tension and the jeopardy beats when you need them structurally in the script, I'm not sure that it's entirely successful, I laid most of that blame to myself because I'm the head writer, and I sort of construct these things and guide them through the process. I don't know that I ever really solved the problem of balancing the political and the jeopardy in this episode, I think that the jeopardy starts to take over here and you feel like we're really going somewhere- and I'll be back in a moment-

Act Three

Like I was saying before- now we're back on Caprica of course- and before we- let's just put off talking about Caprica for the moment- the jeopardy component of Colonial Day I don't think is entirely satisfying, I know I was never satisfied with it, it's never really a full-blown assassination attempt, we never have the sniper rifle or weapon with Laura in the cross-hairs and you're building the tension of will they get to the sniper before he pulls the trigger and will Lee Adama knock her down and we never really play any of that because I didn't really want to, I didn't really want to play that, I just felt like that was a little too easy, it was a little too predictable, I didn't find a lot in that that really interested me personally and yet I did acknowledge that there was a need for some kind of jeopardy and tension in the show beyond the political. So I sort of went with the assassination thing to an extent and I think that in overall feeling, the episode kind of falls between two ideas a little bit, I think I really like the Laura story, I love Mary in the show, I'm really intrigued with the political dynamics of it but the politics of it never quite spin, it never becomes quite dire enough to sustain it, the political situation takes a while to set up, it's a lot of complicated ideas, there's maneouverings back and forth and I never found a way to really make that story so dynamic and so intriguing and so fraught with jeopardy and tension that you really felt like you didn't need anything else and yet the assassination story is never really in the line of fire or something, like I said you never look through the cross-hairs of the sniper and you're never really playing that all the way either. So I think the episode is a little soft as a result it never quite becomes a barn-burner of an episode, all that said it has some of my favourite bits in it. I mean I really like this storyline on Caprica, I think it's satisfying and it moves the Caprica storyline along quickly, I like the performances a lot in this episode, I really like the direction, this was directed by a friend of mine J. Pate, he and his brother Josh were the creators and showrunners behind a little show that I worked on briefly called G vs. E or Good Versus Evil which is how I came to meet my partner David Eick and that show used to be on USA and then it migrated to the Sci-Fi channel, it only lasted really one season but it was great, it was just a great episode, they were really, really smart, young, very young, directors and writers and this episode works in large measure because of the work that J did on it. I think he brings a lot of tension to these scenes, he really knew how to shoot like I said what was not the greatest assassination conspiracy show and he kinda gives it a lot of life and I think that these scenes work because of the director elevating the material and the actors also elevate the material within it. This stuff is all fairly straight ahead, I mean you've seen riffs on this for years and years and years, this works because J makes it work, he knows where to put the camera, he knows when to go to people, it's edited well, you've got three good actors in the room, I mean this little bit with Kara is tremendous, the wink, adding the right note of cynicism and jeopardy into the scene.

Again, I love getting to comment on the fact that Jamie threw that briefcase across the room, that's completely his own doing, it's just like we were watching dailies and Jamie picks up the briefcase and FLINGS IT ACROSS THE ROOM! And I just love that. Jamie, he really can go for it, he really- there's a lot bottled up inside Lee Adama which I think is fascinating because on the surface you don't think that Lee is a violent person, or that Lee really could explode and in the moments that we let Jamie cut loose with the character you really do, your head kinda snaps back and you go 'Woah'.

This little beat here and the later beats that are coming up between Laura and Gray are- illuminate another part of the character that I'm really fond of which is that Laura Roslin who is the Secretary of Education and seemingly a very genteel, a very quiet woman who had liked to stay behind the scenes, never wanted to run for office but had been around politics for quite a while, had been in the Office of the President for quite a while, had been in the Mayor's Office and knew how to throw elbows and knows what to do and that Laura, when push come to shove, will shove you. And that she shoves Gray out the door is in-keeping with the same character who put that Cylon out that airlock, I think Laura says a lot of good things and that Laura believes a lot of good things that she says about freedom and about right and wrong, she's a very idealistic person, but she's very, very practical and pragmatic. I think she's a pragmatist first, I think one of the interesting things about her vis à vis Adama is that Adama really is an idealist. Adama is this warhorse military leader who is going into retirement and who has dealt with the practical realities of men and women in combat and you would think that would make him almost cynical but I think Adama is a bit of an idealist, I think he believes in things y'know the Articles of Colonization which is their version of the Constitution and whatever their Bill of Rights is and those sort of ideas of freedom and democracy and liberty, I think Adama believes in those things passionately. I think Laura believes in them but Laura's a pragmatist first, Laura gets things done, Laura figures out how to accomplish- how A leads to B leads to C. And I think that who Laura was before the holocaust- I think Laura was a quiet person, I think she kept to herself a lot, we've established that she took care of her mother as her mother was dying of cancer which was I think- if you think of Laura as a caregiver who had to function in that role and also be a public figure I think you realise that this was a woman who led a very solitary very internal existance and then the world ends on the same day as she finds out she gets cancer and she gets elevated into the Presidency and I think that's a fascinating story.