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 the traffic 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 amok 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 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 walking down the alleyway— this is obviously Vancouver. And this was really funny for a long time in dailies and in 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 do 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.
And then we're here, we're back into original material. As scripted, actually, this was a little bit more complicated— she walked down these stairs, and she stopped and she looked and it was like the remnants of— in one version, a coffee stand, and in another version, it was the remnants of a newsstand— and it was a place that she used to go to, and she remembered that area, and that sort of place.
Back here on Galactica— this was actually— this sequence where Tigh tells them what the Cylons are after, when he says, "they're actually going over here, to aft damage control, and they're going to auxiliary fire control," and he says it now, he says, "I remem— I know where they're going," and in this version of the show, in the aired version of the show, it's— you just sort of assume that, well, Tigh's encountered these guys before, y'know, he fought in the first Cylon War, this is a memory. It was more literal in the script, and in the first cut. We actually shot an entire— uh, I'll get back to that in a minute, 'cause it's the act break!
Act 2
Okay, I'll back to Tigh in a minute, because I have to, because now we're on Kobol.
This sequence, I think is really great. I think there's some people that will be quite disturbed by this sequence; I think it's really interesting and really intriguing, and it pushes the mythos forward in an interesting way, and I just think it's— but this was a controversial sequence, this whole beat of, not the Raptors flying over, but the whole beat of Adama and the baby and Adama drowning the baby, and I think there was a lot of hesitation, there was a lot of nervousness, and "oh my God, can we show this?" and "oh please—" and there was a lot of arguing and y'know, I just kept fighting for it. David and I kept fighting for it, and kept saying, "oh, this is important. This is about the threat to the child that Baltar's investing in, and you're basically setting up a mark that Adama in some way, shape, or form, is the threat that Baltar must face to fulfill— y'know, that Adama is going to be an obstacle— a major obstacle in front of Baltar— betwen Baltar and fulfilling his destiny vis a vis the child. So this is a simple, visual, clear, and brutal way of dramatizing that event, and I just felt it was great, I felt that it's part of the show, that the show has these certain no-holds-barred, really brutal quality to it, that we don't shy away from something, that we tend not to avert our eyes when a lot of other shows would avert their eyes. And so we fought about this for quite a while, but ultimately made some compromises, changed some of the cutting pattern here, jumped our— did a couple of jump cuts to get you through it, and to not linger, exactly, on the shot of the baby actually being put under the water— because we really did go for it. You'll see here coming up that there's a beat where Adama— and Adama puts the child in the water— y'know, there were bubbles coming up, I mean, it was like, blub blub blub, down it goes. The whole thing— and I don't really have a hankering for infanticide, certainly, but y'know, I did— we did kill a baby in the Miniseries, and here Adama's killing a baby, and y'know, I— there is a certain sort of classic myth to this notion. There are children— babies are killed in the Bible. Jesus is spirited out of Nazareth because Herod is— orders it all— the first, y'know— that all the Israelite children should be killed, and probably I'm screwing up my biblical history, but that was the gist, as I recall.
Act 4
Ok. Aft damage control. It says so on the chiron. And it says so on the door. It must be aft damage control. There, I think, early drafts of this had different firefights and exact mechan- different mechanics of how people got to where the positions they were, but essentially this scene didn't change a lot, conceptually, from draft to draft. I like the idea that these guys were the only guys between the Cylons and Aft Damage Control. The Cylons had essentially outmaneuvered everybody else. They had trapped people. They had fought Marines. They had depressurized certain compartments to slow the passage and now the only thing that stood between them and getting their hands on the decompression safeties was Lee and his little band. And then Laura happening, just by coincidence and luck of the draw, happens to be coming into the same area at the same time.
These are hard sequences to stage. Hard sequences to shoot. They require a lot of coverage, that is, different shots of different players at different moments. There's lots of angles to deal with. There's lots of special effects and stuntwork, and it's complicated things. If you want to make it look like something other than what tv normally is, where it's just simple little shootout and you go, "But that doesn't make any sense." And we wanted it to be as brutal and realistic as we po- as we could given the time, and budget, and all the parameters that we have to deal with on a weekly series. You're building the suspense and tension here. A nice little callback about, "Roll the hard six," that Lee comes up with from his dad, even though he doesn't know what the hell that actually means, which I think is charming and wonderful.
And then we get to actually do some real hard core Cylon Centurion stuff. These scenes really are dependent entirely on their success on Gary Hutzel and his team coming through with us- for us, in the end. We shoot all these things and you just have faith that Gary and company are gonna come through. They're gonna put Cylons in those empty corridors and that they're gonna be great and scary and wonderful.
The key to this whole sequence is that Billy misfires the gun. That it's actually- I like the notion that it was a mistake that gave them the moment of advantage. That these guys- the Cylons are comin' for 'em. Are they gonna be able to stand where all the others have fallen? I think think that's a greate shot of Cylons running down the corridors. And then we have this little bit of business, where Billy just squeezes off a round, because he's- she says, "Now take the safety off." Laura ducks. Billy misfires. What's that? Look at all the blood on the Cylons.
Sorry, I'm just watching now. It's like- I love that. I love the way the guy gets up. The Centurion gets up one leg at a time like a person would and stands there and blowing these people away. And then comes the really cool shot here, that it's just, I think, tremendous given that it's just there's no practical anything. It's just- that's all CGI. m-Boom! Right over his head. That's great. And the slide down the hall and the clanking sound, and then it's over. And you're not even sure who made it and why.
Oh. I have a cat running across my roof at this moment. There is something, a creature, is skittering across the tile roof of my house.