Podcast:A Day in the Life
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Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the new Battlestar Galactica, and we're here to talk about what we still refer to as episode fourteen, "A Day in the Life". The Scotch for today's session is Bruichladdich, with the "yellow submarine" label, which I've yet to figure out what that really means, in regards to Scotch. And no smoking today. The smoking lamp is out.
OK. Episode fourteen. This episode does not- did not turn out as well as, I think, we had all hoped that it would. I think there's a variety of reasons why and we will discuss them today, as we often have on the shows that didn't turn out quite as strong as we had initially hoped. What's interesting, to step back and give an overview of the show and the rhythms and currents of the series. This- there's a spate of standalone episodes, some of which are more successful than others, occurring here in the second half of season three. Shows like thirteen, fourteen, and a to an extent fifteen, although I think fifteen is, in some ways, the strongest of the three. In any case, there's a trio here of standalone episodes that didn't quite come together and aren't quite as strong as I think many of us had hoped. And that parallels certain things that happened in the second season where we also had a spate of standalonish episodes that didn't quite really come together as strongly and I think- we spent some time looking for systemic reasons or managerial reasons why we come to this place in the second half of the season and tend to have trouble. And I'm not sure that there is a reason other than just bad story decisions.
I think that conceptually I liked this idea of doing the "Day in the Life" episode and centering it around Adama. The "day in the life" is a staple of television storytelling and it's always there in the writers' room. It's something that I think writers are always drawn to, which is to break from format and do a character study and the "day in the life" is a structure that provides you with opportunity to detail out all the little minutiae, which is a bit of a redundancy redundancy, but all of the minutiae in a character's day and explicating the how's and why's of their job and their friendships and their pressures and stepping back from plot and narrative and giving you an opportunity to delve into character. I think it's also a very tricky structure that appears on its surface to be simpler than it really is. I've gone at these kinds of stories a couple of times and I'm always attracted to them. They inevitably always turn out to be much more complicated beasts than what you think they would at the outset. You know, the first thing that you run into in structuring a "day in the life" type episode is that, almost by definition, a "day in the life" is not supposed to have anything very dramatic happen in it. Conceptually you're doing a show that is just a typical day and TV episodes and films are all about atypical days. They're all about the unusual thing that happened that day. The dramatic thing that happened that day. The amazing thing that happened that day. The mysterious thing that happened that day. The funny thing that happened that day. Not the typical thing that happened that day. So you're already going into a counterintuitive place when you're approaching the story. And what tends to happen through the story proce- story development process is that in order to tell that story effectively in the television format you inevitably find some device, some plot thing that will happen on a typical day that illustrates the fact that they're- in a place like Galactica something dangerous is always lurking just around the corner. And I think that's justified by not only the conflict with the Cylons but in this case just the danger of the ship itself. I always liked the idea that the Galactica was- that Galactica gave you an opportunity to present the life of being aboard a warship, especially an aircraft carrier, which are incredibly dangerous ships. They're very dangerous places to work and they have accidents and fatalities in the best of times and that- so to do a day in the life episode aboard Galactica, it was easy to say, OK, that will be an accident that day. There would be an accident, and this is just one of many things that happens on Adama's "day in the life." I think that, unfortunately, what happens in this- in the structure of the piece is that you can see us leaning over and spending more time on that story, the Tyrol-Cally story, the story of them getting caught in a launch tube and spending too much time over there, really, on a story that was never designed to be a weight-bearing member. It supposed to be a small plot device that you're following throughout the show and ultimately explodes into jeopardy towards the end to intersect with the Adama story. But as you watch the episode as aired, we spend a lot of time setting up that story and it seems like it's a story of big weight and big moment and that something's gonna happen, and "Oh my God! What's gonna happen to Tyrol and Cally?" But it's not a very exciting story. It's a small story. It was designed to be a small story. But I think because of certain problems that we were having in the Adama side of things, you start leaning on the other story because it's an easier hook. It's an easier fix to say, "Well, give us more of the Tyrol-Cally stuff because that's a straight-up jeopardy."
The Adama section. I mean, this episode began life as a concept and it was pitched in the writers' room and it might have been my idea. I don't- really recall. I will just say it's my idea because it's not a perfectly executed idea so I will take responsibility for it, essentially. And as I always say on these podcasts, when I criticize an episode or where I'm talking about an episode that I don't think has worked as effectively as we had hoped, ultimately I'm the guy in charge. These are my decisions and so I'm the one who ultimately made the wrong calls in whatever the calls were in this episode. Essentially I was attracted to doing a "day in the life" episode. I love this idea that here's the wo- that we get to know the woman that Adama was married to. Who was this woman? Who was the woman that is Lee's mother, Adama divorced, and died back on Caprica, and here's a person that we've never really dealt with in the story, and I thought, "Well, she's an interesting figure," and, "Who is she?" And I fell in love with this idea that Adama allows himself to think about her exactly one day a year. On their wedding anniversary Adama permits himself to think about this woman and to fantasize about being with this woman and to allow himself that break. To allow himself to let her- thoughts of her into- back into his life. 'Cause he never talks about her. She's not somebody that- he doesn't keep pictures around of her. He wears the wedding ring. And he's always worn the wedding ring in the show. I've always thought that was an interesting subtle touch that said a lot about the divorce man who still is wearing the wedding ring, lo many years later. And so I was interested in this concept that, OK, on the one day, he takes her picture out and she's like a real person to him. He has her in his life for one day and at the end of the day he puts the picture away until next year. And there was something sweet and poetic about that that I responded to and really liked.
I think that some of the decisions that we made, in terms of what- well the first thing that came up was, "How do you portray her." In the initial story documents, and I think the initial script, the intention was for Carolanne, or Caroline in the early drafts, what Carolanne was going to appear with Adama on the ship and we would play her sort of akin to how we play "head Six" and "head Baltar". That they're imaginary people that only the character- that the point of view character can see. And so Adama would walk through the halls and Carolanne would be walking with him and commenting on the day and, essentially, it was going to be more about, as structured, the piece was about Ada- going through one day with Adama. And as he went through is day Caroline- Carolanne went with him and commented on the scenes as they happened. So right away the first thing that came up was, "Well, OK, how do you distinguish that from 'head Six' and 'head Baltar' for the audience." 'Cause we have a lot of imaginary people wandering around the ship at this point and here's a device that's meant to convey a character's subjective point of view and really be in his head in a true fantasy sense and not convey the sense of, "Who is this imaginary person who has suddenly- or not- Who is this person who is appearing to only this character? Is Carol-" You don't want the audience to watch it and go, "OK. Is Carolanne related to 'head Six'? Is Carolanne related to 'head Baltar'? Is she a Cylon?" You had to get away from all that quickly. At first we talked about a structure whereby whenever Carolanne appeared and she would have a scene with- like, she would appear in a scene and talk to Adama at length, they would interact and then you would go back to reality and you would realize that no time had passed and Adama- if Adama, for instance was standing in the middle of the room having a conversation with Carolanne and their conversation took them across the room or over to the door, where they had an argument, then the scene ends and you res- Adama is reset back to the middle of the room where he was at the beginning. No one else in the room is aware that anything else has happened. And that was the concept to convey that these conversations and these interaction were com- were taking place completely in Adama's head. That it wasn't the same device that we were using for "head Six" and "head Baltar" wherein Baltar actually reacts and talks to his imaginary blonde partner in real time and people see him react. And so we were trying to make that distinction, but it's a subtle distinction and I think what happened was as we got deeper into the draft and into prep on the episode both the director and Eddie, Eddie Olmos, both felt that that wasn't gonna work and they were worried about it being too much like Baltar and Six and that it- the distinction would be blurred.
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