Podcast:Collaborators

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Teaser

Hello, and welcome to the podcast for episode four, technically, of season three. This is the episode, "Collaborators". I'm Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the new Battlestar Galactica series. This week we're coming to you live, well sort of live, from my office on the Universal lot instead of at home. So those of you who look forward to the sounds of children and kittens and Scotch clinking in glasses will unfortunately be disappointed this week. You'll just have the sound of Diet Coke, but I'll smoke in my office anyway in defiance of California state law.

Anyway. "Collaborators" is an interesting episode in that, it may well be, and it's hard to say this with a straight face, but this may well be the darkest episode of Galactica that we've done. And that's sayin' somethin'. I've also been interested that a lot of people have told me, that have seen this episode, on the show and at the studio and other people who get advance copies for one reason or another. A significant number of them have told me that they thought that this is one of the best episodes in the entire series. Which kinda surprises me. I mean, I like this episode a lot. I think it's a really interesting, provocative piece of work, but I am surprised at the- I guess the depth of feeling. I mean, I've had people come up to me, here on the studio lot, working in departments that I don't even really interact with very often, and have stopped me to say, "That your lighter doesn't work." (chuckles.) To stop me and say how much they liked this episode. And how moved they were by it and there- People have talked about personal experiences or family experiences that had to do with the Holocaust and how some of these things echoed into that or people that knew people in France after the war and it's been interesting to see the reactions to this.

This episode came out of an early discussion of what the initial handful of episodes were going to be. And one of the first things we said was, "Ok. Well what happens as soon as they get back? And given everything that has transpired aboard- on New Caprica with people collaborating and other people in the resistance. What happens when you throw them all back together into the ships of the Fleet? Would they just carry on? Is life just- move on as normal?" And that seemed a bit of a stretch. And then we started talking seriously about primarily what happened in France after the Nazis were driven out and liberation came. There's the famous newsreels of women who had slept with Nazi officers being paraded in the streets, their heads being shaved. Those- there was a time, a small time period immediately after the liberation where people were settling scores. And it seemed like that would happen in this circumstance, too. Given the setup of a chaotic escape. The thrust- being thrust back into the ships of the Fleet. The central government trying to get itself together and figure out who's here and who's not. That essentially in the emotion of those first hours, if not those first days, people would be settling some scores and would be going out and saying, "You know what? Some of what you people did, you guys did, was fucked up and you're not gettin' away with it."

Initially this sequence- well, there's a lot to talk about in terms of what the early story was. Let's just talk about this sequence here with Jammer getting tossed out the airlock. In the initial drafts, Duck and Jammer- we had transposed the roles. This was going to be Duck. 'Cause Duck was going to be the collaborator and Jammer was going to be the suicide bomber, and then as we went through various revisions we decided that these were better roles for these particular characters. Actually at the suggestion of Aaron Douglas, who pointed out that given who Jammer was, and the way we had played him, had just seemed like Jammer was a little bit- better for this kind of a role. That he was- he had- we had painted him a bit weakly in "Valley of Darkness" and then he was a guy that could get led astray and make the wrong decisions and then end up in this position. This sequence, to me, is one of the toughest we've ever done, 'cause essentially we're opening the episode with a murder. And it's not just any murder. It's a murder of one of our characters, who we've established, who we've come to know over the seasons, who we know tried to do something heroic, and he's being killed not by faceless, bad, evil vigilantes out there. Our guys are right in the thick of this. Tigh, Tyrol, Anders. And the we have Connely and then we have Barolay. Excuse me, Connor and Barolay to round it out. But there was something about opening the show with this kind of sequence to really send the message that we're not kidding around. That this one- you're gonna go for a ride here, and it's not going to be an entirely pleasant ride. That this is gonna be about the line between vengeance and justice. It's gonna be about responsibility. It's gonna be about the truth. It's gonna be about a lot of difficult things. And that we weren't really gonna shy away from them.

And this sequence just is a- it's a hard one to watch. When I was watching this in dailies I remember this was brutal. We were, like, "Oh my God. This is gonna be such a brutal opening to a show." And that's sayin' somethin', again, for Battlestar Galactica you know it's sayin' somethin'. And we- I wanted to play every beat of this. I didn't want him to face it stoicly. I wanted him to beg for his life. And you get to that interesting moment there with Tyrol when he says to Tyrol, "I saved Cally." I think that's where you, the audience, go, "Well wait a minute, maybe there is a way out here." 'Cause he did save Cally. We saw him save Cally. We remember him saving Cally. It's not just a ploy. And Tyrol goes over there and asks him if it's true. Tyrol says, "If that's true..." and then Connor rightly points out that, "Well, wait a minute. Maybe he did save Cally. But does that make up for all these other deaths? What about all these other people that died, including his son? Does saving Cally make up for that?" And I think that's a hard question. And I think their answer is, "No. No it does not." Not in this circumstance. Not in this world. Not with these people. And so, he's given the ultimate punishment of- he does such a great job. That look on his face when- the look on Jammer's face when he's looking through that glass window, just before he's sucked out into the void, is just wrenching and heartbreaking and- and then you're back to these guys. And what have they done? The toll of what they're doing and how it weighs on them. The man that lost his son is a stand in for many of the people that died down on New Caprica that we never saw but we refer to. So it was important to have somebody in this scene who had a direct connection to loss. That it wasn't all theoretical. That just as- in the same way that Tyrol's loss- or Tyrol's victory of having his wife be saved is personal, we needed somebody in the scene that was also had paid a price that was personal.

This little sequence is the setup for a runner that will be lasting all season is that the ships are more crowded now. We've lost ships in the exodus from New Caprica and now a fair number of civilians are now living aboard Galactica, forcing a lot of changes in how we do business and where the civilians live and they're a little bit more in our face this season.

I like this tease-out a lot in terms of the humanity of it. That we just left the execution scene, you come immediately to the family life of one of the men. And he raises the question, "Did somebody help you? And who was it?" And she doesn't know, but it did happen. And did happen the way that Jammer said it happened. So now he has to live with the knowledge that he just killed the man who did save his wife's life. And that's a difficult thing. And I don't think there's an easy answer for that. I don't think the- again, I've said this many times, the show doesn't try to answer all these questions for you. How do you feel about Tyrol and what he has done, given the fact that there's his wife, who is now alive, thanks to the man that he just sent out the airlock? But does that heroic deed make up for the grim things that Jammer had participated in as a member of the NCP? And the answer is there on Tyrol's face. I don't think there is an answer. He doesn't know. He's torn.

Like I said earlier, this show went through a lot of changes. Let's see, where you even begin? The initial storyline for this episode did not open- it opened with someone being airlocked on another ship, on the Monarch as I recall, and Tyrol was involved with a bunch of other people that- from the resistance or from New Caprica. They were killing Duck in that version, which later became Jammer, but the full blown circle and the formality of it had not really been established in the first draft. We were still playing with, "What are the storylines?" And the show was actually gonna concentrate more on a lot of other storylines that are happening.

Act 1

Act one. The many storylines we were following. One of them had to do with Baltar, which this is now the beginning of the Baltar storyline. We're gonna play a whole running story aboard the Cylon baseship for a good chunk of the season and what we started to do in the first draft was play a lot more over there. There were more scenes about Baltar integrating with the Cylons, trying to figure out what was going on with the Cylons, what kind of society were they, working out different thin- kinks in his relationship with Caprica-Six, beginning to establish a relationship with D'anna, etc., etc. There was a lot of material that we just- Ultimately I just broomed out when I was doing my pass on the show in favor of this very simple- just posit him as alive. Posit that he's over there and that he's being held in a room and that they're not really talking to him too much.

I love this little sequence in that- there's a little dream sequence with- on Colonial One and the way that Baltar starts to realize that it's a dream. This beat, I believe- I'm trying to remember. In the draft, she didn't kiss him. In the draft it was- she says, "You know, I've always wanted you." And he goes, "Really?" And then she shoots him. She, like, pulled out a gun and like shot him between the eyes, because I thought that would be interesting to see that Laura with a gun is something we've never, ever done. And I believe it was- I think they shot a version that way, but I believe it was, and I could be mistaken here, I shouldn't- I might get in trouble. I think it was either Mary or James or both, but on the day they come up with this idea in conjunction with the director, Michael Rymer, of doing the kiss. That she would come over and kiss him on some weird wish fulfillment level of Baltar's subconciouss and that that would shock him out 'cause he knew that that couldn't possibly be true.

The set and the style here. We had a lot of discussion about what the interior of the Cylon baseship should look like. It felt like this was the place where we had to go into science fiction more strongly than we do in the rest of the show. In Galactica proper, and on the civilian ships, and on Caprica, they are clearly human, they are clearly close to what we see in our everyday lives. It's all very familiar, very naturalistic, as I'm always saying. But when we went over to the Cylon baseship, I couldn't find a way to justify it being anything other than alien to our point of view. That there didn't seem to be a reason why the Cylons would construct the interior of the baseship to look anything like the interior of Galactica, and yet I didn't want it to look like the starship Enterprise, either, that it was all slick and whatever. So we went for the odd juxtaposition of the slick high-tech quality of it with abstract furniture piece like the bed that you- or the daybed that you just saw. And this- a lack of geography, as you'll see over there. It's hard to get a handle on exactly where you are in the Cylon baseship.

This storyline with Kara and Anders was also much bigger in the initial draft. We deal- like I said we dealt a lot with Tigh, we dealt a lot with Kara, and a lot with Baltar, and Laura, and Zarek, as well as the collaboration storyline and what happened to those people. But as I was going through the draft and as we work throught the revisions I just wanted to focus it on the collaboration story more than anything else. And even this, even this storyline, is setting up Kara's involvement in- as a member of the Circle. We're telling you that there's trouble in the marriage, 'cause, hey that's a big surprise given everything that's happened, but it's also part of the motivation of why she goes and joins the Circle herself.

The initial storyline on the Circle, there wasn't a Circle in the initial storyline. It was more about there's a group of vigilantes out there they are working together to carry out retribution with some sort of acknowledgement by Zarek, the titual president. Laura and Adama were working to get him out of office. There was a time pressure that he was under to get all these things done. And at the end of the show it wasn't Laura who issued the call for reconciliation, it was gonna be Zarek. It was actually something he did to spite them. That he put out this blanket pardon for all these acts that people had done, which is- actually, I take that back. I believe that Zarek did not sanction them in the first draft. I think in the first draft there was just, this was happening out there in the Fleet. It was just a genuine, grassroots vigilante movement. And that at the end- but he approved. He completely approved of what was happening and Laura and Adama essentially took him down and wrested control away from him, but in his final act before he relinquished power he issued a blanket pardon for everyone who had participated in the vigilantism because he felt it was needed and justified and certain things had to be done and it was like his finger in their eye before he left office. But as I was working it through that seemed unsatisfying on a couple of levels and I started to gravitate towards this idea that Bal- that Zarek had sanctioned the Circle and had sanctioned the executions and had written a presidential orders making them happen. And then that seemed a logical extension of that motivation on his part was then, that he would try to justify it to Laura at the end and say, "You can't- this is ridiculous. What do you think is gonna happen? You gotta take these guys out now or it's gonna beco- you're gonna be wrapped up in trials forever." And that Laura would take from that message, given everything that had happened, that Laura was gonna be the one to then issue the pardons and a blanket amnesty.

This storyline was something that- it was also a late developing storyline. We always knew that Gaeta was gonna be a key man in this story. It was always gonna be the vigilantes were going after Gaeta. They were gonna make a couple of attempts in the early drafts where they took a swipe at him. They tried to get him and he somehow got away and then he was on notice. And people- there was more security, and then they tried again and that time they were really gonna succeed. And Tigh had been brought in by that point. And Tigh, in the original drafts, was not the ringleader of the circle and he was not really involved in these early beats. But later in the story he was brought in and he actually saved Gaeta more than Tyrol did. It was really Tigh remembering the whole thing about the dog bowl that saved Gaeta in the early drafts. But as we were working it through I realized that actually it was a little bit better to keep- I wanted Tigh to be in on this from the beginning. And that Tigh was almost the ringleader of that jury and was bent on vengeance because that made more sense in terms of the fact that he had exacted the ultimate price from his own wife, and why would he let anybody else get away with anything else? And that he would be- it would just seem more consistent with the character that he was much more hard core from the get-go.

And this whole little runner too about Tigh trying to come back into CIC, this was written more as an idea that he was drunk. That he had come back and was a little loaded when he came in. And I think that Michael Hogan didn't want to play him drunk in this particular beat, because his instinct was that- we shouldn't be excusing Tigh's behavior here and the way he treats Gaeta and the way he talks as just the alcohol talking. He wanted it to be genuinely where the character was and I think that's actually a pretty good impulse.

This little- this is a little mini-arc that we're starting here about Tigh and Adama and their estrangement from one another and Tigh's complete inability to fit back into the Galactica structure. This will play itself out over several episodes, actually. But we just kept asking ourselves, again, "What would really happen?" How could Gaeta walk back into CIC? As much as he wants to, could Gaeta ever resume his post, and under what circumstances?

Now this, the meeting of the Circle, is something only developed in later episodes. In early drafts it was alluded to that they had met and they looked over evidence but you never really saw it. And I felt that it was important to see that these people took this seriously. That they weren't just crazies. They weren't running around just offing people willy-nilly. There was a system that they took to heart. That they were trying to behave like a jury. That- and the show is starting to- the show starts with this idea that, ok, there's vigilantes and they've gone crazy. And then you start peeling the onion back a little bit. And little by little you start realizing that actually it's not that simple. It's- they are meeting. They are working as a jury. And that Tigh- Tigh of all people, slams that guy's head to the table because he's not a- he doesn't he himself as a nutjob here, either. It's important to all these people in this room to believe that they are doing something that is just. That they are operating on the side of right. They are not people that are doing this because they think this is all about vengeance. They're doing it because they think this is the right thing to do. And as you then- the next layer you find on top of that is that the President of the Colonies has authorized this and that this is all done under legal circumstances.

Just a small touch here that I thought was important. It was important to me that neither Seelix nor Tigh nor Tyrol wear their uniforms in these scenes. That this was- even though it was legally sanctioned, this was not something that was done under their military- under the guise of it being a military operation.

Act 2

We played around with a lot of this, in terms of editing, of where these scenes fell. The central idea was that Gaeta was gonna be tough. That is was- here's somebody the audience likes. Here's somebody that the audience, if they know the backstory or they watched the recap, knows was genuinely a good guy. Here's a good guy who was trying to do something in a tough position. But what would everyone else think? And what would happen because nobody knew that he was the informant. And who would believe him?

And this was- there was also something in this show about random chance and luck and how if you're unlucky you could get swept up into something without really ever being guilty of something. And if you were in a system- if you're in a system where the state, in this case Zarek, essentially say- points a finger at somebody and says, "That person's bad. Look at the evidence in secret. Decide, and then go execute him." That's essentially what happens here. With no real chance for that man to prove his innocence or to even face his confronters or to have any true day in court. It's essentially, "We have the evidence. We're gonna make the decision and that's it." And what happens when through random chance or through just bad luck or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, an innocent man is swept up into that. Because the great irony, of course, is that Tyrol was on the other end of that dog bowl signal. He knows there was a signal. But Gaeta hasn't had a chance to tell him. And Gaeta doesn't even know that he's the guy to tell. Gaeta doesn't know who was getting those signals. It's like here's these- here are these people in the first couple of days after the exodus and everything's still being shaken out and Gaeta doesn't know that his life is hanging in jeopardy. Gaeta's trying to tell people what he did, but nobody really believes him.

This is also imp- was a key thing that- when Anders walks out because Anders has had enough, 'cause he's just had enough of killing and death and he's seen too much and he finally can't take it anymore. That when he leaves they don't just keep going. That it was important to Tyrol and to the others that it's a jury and the jury needed one more person and they weren't gonna keep going if they didn't have that person.

The mood here on the Cylon baseship is intentionally more surreal. A little stranger. It's not as naturalistic. It's not as edgy and hand-held as we typically go. The camera still has a little bit of life in it, so it doesn't break completely with our style, but the idea was Baltar is "Stranger in a Strange Land" here. No literally, but he's an odd- he's odd man out over there. And what's he gonna do? And where- what are his circumstances? And to- instead of laying out everything that was gonna happen on the Cylon baseship in the first episode, decided it was more interesting to play it as more mysterious. Play from Baltar's point of view. You don't get to see the Cylons talking about him. You don't get to see anything, really, outside of the confines of this room, here in the first episode. So you're really with the prisoner wondering, "What is this world I have landed in and what are my options?" And you start immediately hearing about divisions. You start hearing about arguments. That there's- his life is hanging in the balance and decisions are being taken someplace else. And it's interesting that D'anna comes to see him before Caprica-Six does, or any of the Sixes.

The set design of this, I was talking about a litle bit earlier. There were a lot of different concepts. It was a fine line deciding at what point did we want it to be straight up scifi in it's feeling, traditional science fiction with flashy lights and all kinds of gear. And at what point did we want it to pull back from that and be more austere. And we settled on this idea that the backgrounds are opaque in terms of you don't know the functions or the purpose of any of the lights you're seeing or where those doorways go or even what the rooms are foor. There's just rooms. And you'll see in subsequent episodes you'll see hallway- you'll see more of the Cylon baseship as the show goes on. But in the initial setup it's just unclear what that world is. Because I think that with the Cylon baseship, a little go long way and also no matter what we show you on the Cylon baseship you're inevitably going to be somewhat disappointed. And I'm sure there will be losts comment about, "Oh... we had such high hopes for the interior of the Cylon baseship, and this is all we got." And that's one of the things that we intentionally said, "You know what? We're gonna take that hit." Because we wanna tell the storyline over there, and that requires us to build some sets. And we had to build those sets in the same area where we once had the Pegasus, which also drove us to get rid of Pegasus. 'Cause you only have so much stage space to deal with. And we knew right away that no matter what we came up with, no matter what concept we put into that Cylon baseship, inevitibly it was never gonna be as cool or as interesting as what your mind's eye imagines. What you project into the baseship and what you thought was the interior of the baseship will always be far more mysterious and interesting than anything we could possibly produce. And we just decided, "No. We'll take that hit 'cause we wanna tell a story over there."

I like that little beat with Adama and Lee. The reference to the jump-rope and losing weight again. There was a longer section of that scene leading in where Lee and Adama walk through the crowded halls of Galactica. Literally there were people- some people sleeping in the halls 'cause the ship was so crammed full of civilian refugees and them talking about how it's a little bet- it's nicer to have a noisy crowded ship and dealing with some of the- they were talking more concrete terms about some of the refugee problems and supply problems and you had a sense of them putting things together and then eventually you got to that place where the first reports were coming in that people were going missing.

I like that Gaeta has yet to put his uniform on here in this scene in the rec room. He's not really one of us yet. He's back on the ship and his position is a little uncertain. And everyone's watching him and everyone watches him and Kara together. And I like the idea that Gaeta is trying to tell people, "I did a good thing," but the truth is, who would believe him, really? I mean, if you're one of the people who's living on New Caprica and you're looking at Gaeta and you think Gaeta is Martin Bormann, who- Martin Bormann was one of Hitler's inner circle, you don't have to think. You don't have to really see a picture Martin Bormann doing somethin' nasty. You just know that he was one of the in-guys with high-Nazis. That guy was a evil and should go down. And essentially the analogy here. That Gaeta is damned just by the fact that everyone knew that he was still worked for Baltar. And he's telling people what he did. And he's telling people about the dog bowl. He's telling people that, "I was trying to help the restance." But noone believes him. And the thing is, because of the circumstances and random chance, he's not telling it to Tyrol and he has no idea that Tyrol is the one guy on this ship that he should be saying that to. But how could he possibly know? And how could he know that Tyrol's out there getting ready to vote on his death.

This scene over to Seelix. This is how Seelix realizes that Kara is a potential vote, and probably a potential guilty vote, given the previous scene.

Re-imagined Series definition: nerve center or "bridge" of a battlestar, see: Combat Information Center

Re-imagined Series definition: the process of using the FTL engines to make an near-instantaneous apparent faster-than-light transport of a ship from one point in space to another