Podcast:Valley of Darkness
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Hello, and welcome to the podcast for episode two, season two, this will be discussing "Valley of Darkness". As those of you who listened to the podcast of episode one, "Scattered", know, "Valley of Darkness" was originally part of "Scattered". All the "B" storylines, the character lines, and what happens on Kobol and Caprica, et cetera, were all originally in the season opener, and we felt that it was just too much, too much to cram into one episode. So we basically split it into two. The significantly new element in "Valley of Darkness", of course, is the boarding action against Galactica, which is where we left off. The finale of the first episode, of course, ends with the Cylons in the landing pod. Once we split "Scattered" into two parts, everyone agreed that the simple "A" story of the Fleet being scattered and Tigh's efforts to put the fleet back together were not enough to really sustain you for two full hours. They were fine to get you through one hour, but we really couldn't attenuate that story to a place where you would go through two episodes doing it. So we had to come up with something else, and it seemed that a logical place to go, that if a Cylon Raider got through, crashed in a landing bay— in the starboard landing bay, where the museum was— that we could, as a jumping off point, we could say that that's where part one ends and part two picks up.
Episode two is also— it was a very problematic show, in a lot of— for a lot of reasons, in editing and post-production, and there was a lot of controversy about the show, there was a lot of re-editing— one could prolly fill an entire DVD with the various cuts of this episode. Starting right here: this scene, with Billy, Dualla, at the beginning is now one of the nicer textures in the show, in that it sets up this nice little subplot that we touch on later. This was actually shot much later. This was something we went back and put into the show, because there was a feeling that the show was too dark, that there was too intense, it was too violent, that there was— it wasn't enough, sort of life in it, and there weren't another other colors, as it were, to— of other textures, and human stories going on, so what we did is we shot the bookends, of Billy and Dualla in the corridor here at the beginning, and Billy and Dualla in sickbay at the end, and we also expanded the Caprica piece that I'll talk about later. Essentially, though, we did have in the original draft and the original cut, there was the sequence of Billy encountering Dualla in the corridor and them going off together, and all the action that takes place with Billy and Dualla in the action part of the story. What we didn't have was any texture about their relationship, and why they— why he found her, and why he reacted to her the way he did, why there was any kind of relationship. And the feeling— I felt that— David and I talked about this when we were getting a lot of heat about how dark the show was, and we talked about just in general, the fact that it would be nice to touch on that storyline again. And now it's like a story: it has a beginning, middle, and end. There's the setup of the relationship and what's going on with Billy and Dualla, that she's feeling a bit shut out with him, and then they run into each other in the context of the action story, and then there's a wrap-up at the end. So we created, essentially, a story out of what was just sort of a runner.
As a consequence, though, and this is a problem that I freely acknowledge, there is a sense in these opening scenes that the characters seem unaware of the danger that they're in. Which was a deliberate choice, but it was sort of accentuated now by this Billy/Dualla interlude at the beginning, where you don't quite feel the same sense of urgency that you want. I think that the show kind of opens in a lower key than I wish it did. Conceptually, the rationale here is that this is just moments, literally moments after the end of episode one. A lot of things are happening simultaneously. The Vipers are— pilots are still getting out of their Vipers, we've got a lot of immediate aftermath of the battle still going on. They're still figuring out what happened in CIC. Tigh's had time to make his way down to sickbay, but that's about it. And it's really— you had enough time for him to check on Adama and see how he is, and not much else has happened. And clearly everyone down on the hangar bay is unaware that anything untoward has happened. But I think it is a fair criticism to say that as you watch the episode now, that at the beginning it feels like too much time has passed since the end of episode one, and it feels like they're too lackadaisical, and too unaware of the fact that they have a potential danger in the starboard landing pod. And that's fair. Y'know, I mean we tried adjusting certain things, we tried to sort of up the urgency quotient, as it were in these initial sequences. Y'know, the lights are out. These guys are just walking down the corridor and have no idea what they're about to happen on, and kaboom.
It's still an effective open, I mean, and it's like, yeah, if you could— in a perfect world the whole sequence would have been designed to sort of sustain a sense of urgency throughout the entire tease in such a way that it wouldn't bother you quite as much. But y'know, I think it does work. I mean, I think you can take that leap as an audience and by the time you get the tease, certainly, I don't think you're— the end of the tease, certainly, I don't think you're thinking about, oh y'know, "what took them so long to discover the Cylons?" Hey, there's a Cylon right there; it just ripped that guy in half. So I think it kind of satisfies the bloodlust on the behalf of the audience.
Oh, and as an added texture, that number of the survivors will change week to week, by the way. That's something you might wanna take a look at. We are tracking the number of survivors, actually. And that's the end of the tease.
Act 1
We went through various differ— as I said before, we went through a lot of different cuts, and structural changes were made, that— this sequence you're following right now, the Cylons pursuing the pilots down the corridor. As I recall, originally, and I think it was scripted this way, all this took place in the teaser, and we didn't really cut in the middle of that action until a later process in editing where we were looking for a more dynamic tease-out.
These are the Galactica marines which come up here. There were more little drops, lines of dialogue and things that sort of talked more about the marines, and there was a line that was dropped where one of the marines said, "when in doubt, send in the marines," and Lee says, "that's my new motto from now on".
Now we have the sitrep, and what's kind of cool in that sequence is the hub. (sound of car passing by) That's what, this area on Galactica— gosh, sorry for all the traffic tonight— this area on Galactica where the ladders are that really don't lead to anywhere. We don't— there's not a practical second level up that ladder, but it conveys the notion of the multi-layered, the multi-leveled ship quite effectively, so we like the use the hub whenever possible. And sometimes we've remade the hub into things like the communication office in "33" of last season. It's kind of one of our swing sets, as it were, and the hub is a multi-use facility.
Originally there were— I think there were scripted— we used to have a sequence where in that space shot, you heard all the other ships talking to each other, y'know, "I can't raise Galactica, what's going on?", y'know, "I think they're in trouble. Should we send a rescue party?", y'know, and "Maybe we should— I'm sending a damage control team right now", and there were—
I'm shutting the door, in case you're wondering what all the creaking is, just so it doesn't bother you all at home and your sensitive ears on your iPods. I wouldn't want you to drive off the road as you hear from my house or something.
—in any case, now we're down here in the brig with Laura. Again, a lot of this, the structure of "Valley of Darkness" went through a lot of changes and permutations. At what point do you cut to Laura? At what point do you pick up Lee again? Whose point of view are you taking? There was a lot of just complicated editing. What is the tone of the piece? Is this story on Galactica of the Cylons running amuck in the corridors, is it a haunted house movie? Or is it something more like Aliens? And trying to strike the balance of those two ideas took up a great deal of time, and a lot of sort of playing around in editing in terms— in every aspect, in terms of how long you're in a particular scene, how much air there is in a scene, that is, how much time, gaps between dialogue, are you building suspense, what kind of music are you using, what's the sound design in the background— we had a lot of discussions about "how much gunfire should you hear in the background of all these shots?" And we felt that it was important that you kept hearing distant gunfire, so that you knew there were battles out there being fought in the passageways and corridors, even though we weren't showing them. And we're not showing them because we're following a very specific story. You're following the storyline of Lee and his team, and you're following the storyline of Laura, and her people. And you don't want to constantly be giving away where the bad guys are. You don't want to constantly just be showing Centurions mowing down Galactica crewmen— as much fun as that would be— because that doesn't really help you tell the story. You want— the story you're following is: "where are the Cylons?" and "where could they be," and "they could be around any corner."
Now we're back on Cylon-occupied Caprica. This storyline from henceforth on Caprica is really one of my favorites in the whole series. I love this particular shot of them waling down the alleyway— this is obviously Vancouver. And this was really funny for a long time in dailies and editing, because right behind Kara down that alleyway there used to be cars going back and forth— it's a busy street. There were cars constantly crossing back behind them. And she used to talk about where all the dead bodies are, and there was a line coming up later that I think we actually cut where she says, "where's all the cars?" and you could see the cars, like, behind her.
This section right here through the bars where they stop and talk is actually added scenework. This was actually shot quite a while after the initial shoot when we wanted to sort of, again, add a little bit more texture, a little bit more pathos, a little bit more of the humanity into the show, and we loved this storyline so much that we knew it could sustain a little bit more discussion of Helo and what he's going through and Kara's reaction to it and a little bit more about their friendship. And it's moody and it's interesting, it gives you just a little bit more insight into the struggle that he's going through and that she's just starting to deal with herself.
The look of all this is tremendous, and Steve McNutt and Michael Rymer I think did wonderful, wonderful work visually, in terms of giving Caprica its own particular visual language.
This is obviously— this season, the first time that Katee and Tahmoh have worked together since the miniseries. It's the first time that Tahmoh's worked with anybody except Sharon— except for Grace in a very long time, and it's just kind of fun to see they have a relationship, and that it's interesting to know now that Kara and Helo go back a ways, that they have a relationship, that they were friends, there there was a pre-existing sort of relationship between these two pilots.