Podcast:Downloaded
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Hello and welcome to the podcast for episode 18, "Downloaded". I'm Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the new Battlestar Galactica. And tonight we're going to talk about one of my favorite episodes, "Downloaded", the Cylon point of view show. And as always, as I mentioned on "Captain's Hand", there will be background noise. You will have to suffer through and NO WHINING. You'll just have to be tough enough to listen to the podcast.
Anyway, the Cylon point-of-view show is something I wanted to do very early in the season. We started talking about it as an early concept of what we wanted to do. I wanted to do an episode that was told almost entirely from the Cylon point of view, to really get inside their society for the first time, see how they operated one-on-one, with each other, without Galactica being involved. Our first attempt at this was something called "The Raid". "The Raid" was going to be a story where there was a satellite— sorry, a space station- there was a space station out there someplace where the Cylons were meeting. They were meeting to discuss their problems with the humans- the human problem was being discussed. What we started talking about was sort of doing a version of the Wannsee Conference, which was the conference in the Second World War where the Nazis got together at a place called Wannsee and they came up with the Final Solution to the problem of the Jews. There was a wonderful HBO movie called Conspiracy which was just- tremendous piece of work which I thought would be an amazing sort of episode for us if we did that. To do sort of the Wannsee Conference with the Cylons coming up with the Final Solution, but the problem was that the Cylons had already come up with the Final Solution. They'd already devastated the human race, committed a massive genocide so that the stakes weren't quite the same. We kept working on "The Raid" and working on it and working on it and it was going to circle around that they're on this space station and then the B story was on Galactica and Galactica was going to be aware of the space station. They were going to try to infiltrate a group onto the space station to raid the archives or the computers or something on that space station and get information about Earth. The idea was that the Cylons, like Sharon had said in "Home", the Cylons knew more about Earth's religion- about the Colonial religion than the Colonials did and may have ideas about where Earth was and they were going to infiltrate that space station while the Wannsee conference, or a version of it, was going on at the same time. Caprica-Six was there and she's starting to have hallucinations about Baltar. And she was going to see the people coming on board and trying to infiltrate the station and ultimately she was going to let them go and they were going to come back to Galactica with more concrete information about Earth.
We struggled with the story. Several drafts went through and they just didn't work. It didn't like it. It didn't like the space station. Didn't like the parameters of the story. The Wannsee Conference didn't hold up for reasons I mentioned a moment ago. We eventually abandoned that story. However, the notion of doing a Cylon point-of-view show was something we were all in love with. The network really liked it too. And so we kept talking about it. And then we decided- we came to this idea about following Caprica-Six, as she's come to be known, and Sharon. And follow them through the process of being downloaded and having them wake up and see what happened to the two of them and then constructing a story that took place in Cylon-occupied Caprica that was all about Caprica-Six and Boomer, the two sort of heroes of the Cylon, as we call them in the show. And see how they would ultimately come together and sort of settle on a different direction for the entire Cylon nation.
This idea here of the birthing chamber... well, I'll get to that later. Here's like one of the great ideas... was the notion that Caprica-Six would be hallucinating Baltar, in the same way that our Baltar hallucinates Caprica-Six. There was a delicious symmetry to that idea. There was something really interesting and something really profound in sort of- this sort of duality of these two characters. That they both had been changed in a fundamental way by their experience with one another. They were both at the epicenter of this massive genocide, of this horrific event that had altered both of their civilizations forever in fundamental ways. And these two were at ground zero of that idea and that it would affect both of them profoundly. That Baltar's guilt and Baltar's psychosis, as it were, was sort of born out of that event. And that it would also affect Six. That it would affect that woman as well. That she was- she's a Cylon, she's a machine, but they're so close to being human and in some ways it's hard to even differentiate them from human beings. That their psychology- the psychology of Caprica-Six would also be altered by that event especially since one of the sort of fundamentals of who and what she is was her belief in God, her belief in a loving God and her desire to be loved and what did it mean to that character to have participated in the destruction of all these innocent people. To have used the man that she professed to love in such a profound way. That she had used her love for him and his growing infatuation, or possibly love for her, was used and twisted to commit this horrific event. How would that affect that character? And then that Sharon, when Sharon who thought she was a human all along, the ultimate sleeper agent came to wake up back on Cylon-occupied Caprica... How would she adjust? Would she just become a regular Cylon like all the others or would she struggle with it? How would she fight against it? Could she ever integrate herself back into Cylon society? And it was a very provocative, very interesting idea. That's really the roots of this episode.
And there's the other Sharon and then she just totally loses it. She completely flips out, which I think is great. (Laughs) She just starts screaming. Grace- and I have to say right up front, Grace and Tricia and James do such a good job in this episode. I mean they really- each of them are playing nuances of nuances of these characters. James is playing a hallucination for the first time, where he's been on the other side of that for so long. Trish is playing this complex Six that is really a character that we have not seen, in truth, since the miniseries and now she's back and how does she grapple with all that. And Sharon, y'know Grace is playing the character that we haven't seen since "Resistance". And they're making them all very distinct and individual and it's an amazing performance from all three of them. I can't say enough about the cast, as usual.
Act 1
Present day. Cylon-occupied Caprica. I did take a pass- I took a pretty significant pass through this episode. I love this little- I came up with this whole little sequence here of the Cylon Centurions doing their version of Arbor Day... planting a tree. There was something so odd about that. I had to fight to keep it in the show. It was an expensive shot and everyone kept saying "Oh no, no. Why don't we just cut the Cylon Centurions planting the tree?" and it would save us all this time and money. I don't know, I was tickled with the idea and just kept insisting that it go back into the show. (Laughs)
It's great that we brought Lucy back. That we've established Lucy's character in "Final Cut" as sort of the Cylon that no one knew on Galactica. We definitely wanted to play her down on the planet. One of the questions that sort of comes up in this episode is a legitimate one, which is "OK, why don't we see all twelve Cylons?" 'Cause logically you'd see all twelve Cylons, you would think. And we just didn't want to do that. I mean that would blow so much in the show and give away so many things about who the Cylons are and who all the other Cylons are in the fleet. All the surprise would be gone. So we took the concede in this show that we would just concentrate on Dorals, Sharons, D'Annas, and Sixes. We talked about having Simon in the show as well. There's some background of photo doubles that sort of look like Simon that we pass on by, but we didn't really want to give away- we didn't feel the need to really have Simon as a character in the show. There wasn't really a role for him to play, and it was sort of a waste of money and waste of the actor's time really to just come have a cup of joe at the coffee shop or something. So there are some quick pass by's of the character of something like Simon, but he's not really in the show.
This sequence- we talked- we've been waiting for the birth of the child all along for two seasons now and we wanted to just jump in. And, oh my God, the child's being born prematurely by C-section and you're just jumping into the middle of a crisis with- that something has gone wrong. It seemed realistic and just seeing them amidst of a crisis. This storyline actually has more scenes to it that we cut somewhat for time, but also because we just wanted to spend more of our time down on Cylon-occupied Caprica. There was whole subplot that was attached to this, where the Lucy Lawless character was also on Galactica and she was interviewing the President about the rumors that the child had been born. And ultimately she was going to help try to kidnap the child off of Galactica in collusion with Gina. And one of the problems that we found was just confusion. There was too many Cylons for once. We had all these Cylons down on Cylon-occupied Caprica that you were trying to keep track of and trying to keep them all straight in your head. And then you were also cutting to Galactica and playing with the D'Annas there and the Six in his head and the current Sharon. It was too much. It was too many Cylons- too many Cylons, Mozart. And so I opted in the edit- in the cutting room to just eliminate virtually all of that storyline and make the Galactica B story just the bare bones of what was necessary to tell that story. So the whole D'Anna's attempted kidnapping of the baby, the Gina sequences, all that were cut. They just confused the issue of who's who and who knew what and the story plays much better now. 'Cause now the focus is not so much in trying to keep the Cylons straight as it is to the drama that's happening down on Caprica.
What interests me about- well, there are many things that interest me, but one of the big things that interests me about the Caprica storyline is this idea that there are different points of view within the Cylon, for the first time. That they're not monolithic. They're not the Borg, ok? They are both similar to one another and different from one another. The Sixes all share certain commonalities of personality and archetype. The D'Annas all share certain personality traits and archetypes. But beyond that they have their individual experiences and their individual motivations and their individual life experiences. And I thought it was interesting to then say ok, here's this society that is essentially gone on a relatively homogenous way, that while there are multiples of each of them and they have all had their own individual life experiences, they haven't really faced a situation where there was a genuine difference... where there was a really- there was a model or two that stood out from the rest. They were somewhat interchangable. This was a situation where there two distinct models who had done something definitely heroic, in their point of view. That Caprica Six had been a key player in the downfall of the Colonies and she had helped bring about the Cylon plan and had been wildly successful and was a hero to her race. And Boomer is sort of looked at in the same way. She had been on Galactica. She had been a great sleeper agent. She had shot Adama, he almost died, and she had carried out her plan even though she was struggling with the fact that she thought she was human all along. And that that sort of fundamental distinction between them and the rest of the Cylons was going to cause a problem. It was going to cause the body politic of the Cylons to sort of react and try to move those sort of viral ideas away from the rest of the body and that the plan would be to put them together in some way that would eliminate both of them. That ultimately Sharon would get boxed and Caprica Six would be driven mad by the knowledge that the man she loved, Gauis Baltar, was actually still alive.
This is also an interesting way to just give us backstory on Sharon, because this is the life that Sharon thought she had. All of this is made up, as the character says in the scene. This was the life Sharon Valerii had accepted as her own. She lived in this apartment on Caprica. She had her things, her photographs, a family she thought she loved. And none of it was true. It was all this lie that she had been programmed with to carry out this mission to then kill and betray the people she loved. And Boomer was having an incredible amount of trouble with that. She couldn't break away from that thought and she naturally gravitated back to what she knew. She went back to her apartment and tried to resume that life, even though she knew it was impossible. She stubbornly was not going to just move on and become one of them, and that too was causing a problem with the Cylons. They didn't want to have this person in their midst that was acting differently so they would send in somebody to try to talk her out of it. But they still had not quite crossed the threshold of just killing her or just taking harsh measures. There was still this idea that they love one another, that they're better than human beings, that they're something special. They're the children of humanity and they're not like us. They would deal with their problems in a different way. They would let Sharon continue to live in her apartment and then they would try to work with her, they would try to talk with her, they would send in this Caprica Six to go deal with her.
There was a lot of playing around in editing with when Baltar appears and under what circumstances, when you would see him and when you wouldn't see him, to sort of give the phantom idea... it's played so it's clear to the audience. David Eick, my producing partner, did a lot of editing in this episode in that arena where he played a lot with when Baltar appeared, when he didn't appear, and what the emphasis of the scenes were. I kind of did a- what you talk about as a macro pass through the show: working on the large supporting members, playing with the structure, eliminating the Galactica stuff, deciding where to emphasize the story. And then David really took a tremendous hand in working through all the detail work on the scenes. So a lot of this is his hand at work.
This little gag here I like a lot, which is something I came up with in doing my pass. She throws the picture, the shard of glass hits her on the cheek, and that creates a moment where she could bond with Six. But, it's actually another piece of deception. I never wanted to lose track of the fact that this was Six. She was manipulative. She was duplicitous. She was a woman of secrets. A woman who is capable of a lot of lies and she was sent here to deal with Sharon and get her out of that apartment. She very coldly and calculatingly in that moment when Sharon threw the picture frame against the wall, she determines that this is a moment that she can manipulate Sharon's human emotions. Her conscience, her Baltar, calls her on it and then helps her one step beyond that. Baltar knows how to manipulate human beings and that is part of Six. It's the part of Six that understood how to manipulate Baltar, is now talking back to her.
(Tries to get lighter to ignite) Oh no, my lighter. Oh there, thank God. Woo, that was close, huh? (Takes a drag) Gotta love these Zippos. (Exhales) But sometimes they are a little cantankerous.
This is David and Bradley's script and this whole little gag of setting up the cigarette, the clothespin, the bomb and all that... pure David and Bradley. They do a great job with all this. They really are a pair of the key players on the show. They come up with so many of the textures and thoughts and specifics that work on the show, that it's just a pleasure to work with both of them.
This is supposed to be the back of one of the military trucks that we've established that they've had. It's also the return of Anders on the show. We've talked about Anders ever since Kara left Caprica in "The Farm". This is really the first time back to where we see him doing his thing. He's fighting an insurgency on this planet. He's battling the occupation. He's willing to do whatever it takes to kill these guys and whatever form to kill these guys. And that was interesting.
Act 2
There was a scene here. Here's Baltar's house from other episodes obviously. There was a scene I wrote where, and Dave and Bradley took a pass at as well, where they actually went to the rubble, the wreckage of Baltar's house overlooking the water. They played this scene amid the ruins of Baltar's house which I thought was really interesting, we all wanted to do but ultimately we had to cut it. We couldn't afford to do it. We couldn't afford to create that location virtually or practically, both for scheduling difficulties and in terms of the days out and all that kind of thing, and also just sheer dollars and cents. This was already an expensive episode and we couldn't afford for the additional cost and time to go out and find a location to play as Baltar's house. So unfortunately, we couldn't go there.
I love that she's just lying to her so much. She's really still working for the Cylons here. She's trying to manipulate poor Boomer. She's trying to get back- Caprica-Six is trying to get back into the graces of her people. She wants to be a good Cylon. She thinks of herself as a good Cylon. She did a good thing. She helped... she was a hero. And now she's trying to be a hero again. It's just this little hiccup here, where suddenly she realizes something else is going on- that "Wait a minute... Baltar's alive?".
It's the doubt. It's the question of "Who am I?" that I think is fascinating with Caprica-Six. She's a person in a way. She's a machine who thinks she's a person. Well, does that make her a person? I guess it's a matter of perspective. It's her confusion over what she is, what she wants, what she believes, what's right and what's wrong, that create this interesting dynamic within the character that I think is just endlessly fascinating to play.
Now there's a great line coming up here... back in Galactica (unintelligble). (Laughing, repeats line) "I don't make suggestions. If I want to toss a baby out an airlock, I'd say so." It's a good line. I think it was David and Bradley's line. I love the way Mary gives it. I just love the way Mary gives that line it's just so ironic and it's so knowing that she has tossed so many of these frakkers out the airlock. You know, why not a baby? But it's a heavy thing... they're struggling with what to do with this infant, this child. What do they do? One of the things I really like about this episode is that they're thrust into this situation before they thought they would. They thought they had some time to think this over, some time to sort of deal with this issue. It is such a human failing that if we think we don't have to deal with an issue right now, we tend to wait. We tend to wait until we actually deal with it. And then suddenly that day comes and you're just not prepared. You're like, "Oh my God. What are we going to do with this child? How- are we gonna let Sharon raise it? I mean what the hell are we gonna do? And everyone's going to want this kid? And what does this mean? And aren't the other Cylons in the fleet going to come looking for it? And oh my God!"
This relationship between Helo and Sharon is a lovely relationship. It's gone much farther than I think anybody ever thought it would. As I've said, as I've openly admitted to, I didn't know where the hell this was going when we first decided to bring Helo back to the show and marry him up with Sharon down on Caprica. I'm so glad we did. I just think it adds so much to the show. It's just become one of the fundamental threads of the entire series.
See there's a Simon sort of walking away down on Caprica.
Uh cars. This question has come up before: "What do you do about cars and vehicles?" How do you handle the fact that if you're going to see ground vehicles on Caprica, you're going to have to get existing cars. We're not going to go out and create brand new vehicles every week to create "Ooh space cars! Or Caprican cars!" I mean the whole aesthetic of the show is that they're basically us, that they look a lot like us. Well, that's all well and good, and then put a Ford in the picture, put a Must- put a Toyota in the picture, and it kind of takes you out of the show a little bit. It just does. It's just one of those interesting lines that cars are just kind of a strange thing. We got around it a little bit by giving Kara a Hummer in an earlier episode. Well, we couldn't have them all having Hummers so when we went down into the parkade, as they call them in Canada, or the parking garage in the States, what are the cars you see? Someone had the suggestion of doing- I believe this came from Gattaca, I'm not positive- I believe the reference somebody made was Gattaca- I didn't see Gattaca, but the reference was one of the things they had done in that movie was to use European cars... sort of eastern European-looking cars. Things that were recognizable as motor vehicles but still had a slightly different aesthetic than what you're used to seeing on American television. That's kind of the way we opted to go. Those are somewhat more European models. They feel different enought that it doesn't feel like "OK, they're just Fords and Toyotas". And yet they're still obviously cars and we didn't put like wacky headlights on 'em. We didn't put big silly designs on the end. They're different enough.
Again, Lucy comes in and just gives us this wonderful other dimension that she's not a mustache-twirling villain. She's coming from a place where it seems like she's trying to help or she actually cares about Sharon. She's not just coming and saying "You will be a good Cylon or we will box you." But Baltar's starting to suss out the situation that there's more to it than that.
And again there's more smoking because, hey, smoking's good. We're trying to corrupt America's youth whenever possible.
We cut away from that a little bit because Anders (laughing) actually took a puff of the cigarette before he put it in the clip. We had trouble cutting around that in the editing room because every take he kept- he took the cigarette and he took two puffs on it and then he put it in the clothespin. We realized "Well actually doesn't that blow the whole timing gag?" They've timed out how long the cigarette takes and then Anders blows it by taking a couple of puffs. We kept having to cut around it. We finally found a way to get out of the scene slightly earlier before he actually took those additional drags.
This was a very complicated sequence to play out the intercut between them going upstairs, Anders planting the bomb downstairs. All these bits and pieces have to relate to one another and the timing has to work just so in order to make this all believable. Now you can see they're going up the stairwell there. The theory was that when Anders blows the building, the building comes down but the Cylons are sort of in this somewhat protected area... they're sort of- Sharon, Caprica-Six, and D'anna are in this stairwell. The idea was the stairwell came down in its own sort of protected way and fell into the bottom of the parkade and that's why they survive and none of the other ones did.
This sequence went through a lot of machinations chiefly because we were already way over budget and we kept having to parse out exactly- I mean we had endless discussions about EXACTLY how many cuts of the Cylon Centurion, from which angle, where he was going to be standing, how to cut this this sequence. There were more shots and then we kept having to cut back and cut back. We eventually had the bare number of shots that we could get away with to make this sequence work. Again, it works really well in large part because Gary Hutzel and his visual effects team simply won't let it work badly.
He looks. Anders shoots at him. Now, there was an additional piece here where the Cylons started shooting back. You can see the gun comes out and Anders ducks his head. In the original cut, he just blasted that whole car with a fuselade of bullets. But we couldn't afford to show that so we had to cut it before it happened... we had to blow it up before it happened.