Podcast:Dirty Hands

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Teaser

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 call episode fifteen in our, skewed way of numbering these things, "Dirty Hands". This is another of the standalone pieces that I talked about on the last podcast. As I've talked about in the previous podcasts, each season, or the last two seasons, certainly, we've done a string of standalones in the second half of the season, that were of varying degrees of quality. And I think they weren't our strongest episodes.

This episode I like, and I'm actually quite fond of, but I am virtually certain that not every member of the audience is going to agree. I think that this particular episode is more overtly political than most of our episodes are, and on some level this is the polemic that I say this show would really- never is. So it violates one of the fundamental ideas of the show on that level. That said, I'm pretty much in support of what the ideas behind this episode and felt that I could get behind them, and wanted to strongly say some things that were in this episode, so we did it. So there.

This began life in a very different way than what we ultimately ended up doing. This episode actually was a Dualla episode in the initial story break. This was a show that, again, was going to deal with the Sagittarons. In fact, I believe that this episode and the "day in the life" episode were- used to be in- we used to have them out of order to the way they are now. I think it used- the original structure was going to be He- the "Helo" episode, episode thirteen, then this episode, then the "day in the life" episode. But this episode, the scri- we had such trouble with the story and we totally reinvented the story at one point, that we swapped the air order and moved this down one because "A Day in the Life" was closer to being ready than this one was. And initially the thought was that the Sagittarion problem that was setup in the "Helo" episode, in "The Woman King", about the Sagittarons and how they were an outsider faction within the Fleet and that of the Twelve Colonies the Sagittarons were the ones that were on the outs everybody. We were gonna continue that storyline into this episode, which was going to be about- which was going to open with two civilian ships in the Fleet having an argument over the wireless and ultimately one of them fi- actually firing on the other and having civilian casualties and that prompting a crisis with the Quorum and Laura and Galactica and everyone else. And essentially it was gonna continue this thought that the Sagittarons- that old divisions within the Colonies were starting to reemerge after the New Caprica experience and that the old divisions were starting to make themselves felt again. And that if there was one thing that the- that eleven of the Colonies could agree on, it was that none of them liked the Sagittarons. And that they were gonna split them up. That they, essentially, were gonna be dispersed throughout the Fleet, that they were becoming extremists, that they were withholding food from some of the other ships, and they had their own culture and their own ways of doing things, and that they were essentially a world unto themselves, and the rest of the Colonies disliked them intensely and were gonna split them up, and you got into this whole thing about Dualla as the Sagittaron member of the ship, of our crew that we're most familiar with, and her defense of them and she was gonna be tasked to go down and deal with them as a liaison officer and at first she was essentially the mouthpiece of the government and the ma- the- seen as a traitor by her own people, and then eventually real- have more of a tug back towards her racial identity and her- or her tribal identity, depending on how you look at it. And she was going to side with them openly in almost a mutiny against Adama by the end of it, and that by the end of the episode Adama would have given them- have realized the error of their ways and have given the Sagittarons their own ship and brought the Children of Israel back to one safe vessel that they could call their own. There were interesting things about the story in concept, but we just never were able to make it work. It was a very difficult script. Anne Cofell, who's the writer, struggled with it a lot. We struggled with the break. It was just a big chunk to chew off. There were a lot of different competing ideas within that concept and within that storyline. Not the least of which was our continuing struggle to make the Sagittaron plotline work. And if there was one big misstep that I think we made in the third season was committing a lot of time and resources in the writers' room and in script into this idea of developing the whole Sagittarons into a viable storyline because we were convinced, I was convinced, that it was going to play a huge part in the finale in the trial of Gaius Baltar. And so as a consequence we had this idea of this- subgroup and we were gonna follow them and delineate them and talk about them as a culture. I'll come back after the teaser. 5:29

Act 1

Act one. As I was saying before, we had plans to do this whole thing with the Sagittarons, but it fell apart. It just is- wasn't working. And the first step on that road was this episode. 'Cause we couldn't make this story work, and I eventually just punted and said, "You know what? Screw this. You gotta throw it-" At some point you realize you're banging your head against a wall and there's fundamental reasons why a story won't work. It's not just about execution. It's not about structure. You have a very fundamental problem. This story won't work. So we regrouped. I switched the order of the episodes and said, "Ok. We're gonna take a different approach to this show." (Coughs.)

There were issues of class that were in the original concept. That were certain Colonies were considered above other Colonies. That were certain Colonies that were more equal than others, to put it that way. I liked that idea a lot. I wanted to play that. And so we went further into the idea of class as a defining characteristic of this episode, and decided it was about labor, and it was ab- 'Cause some of the issues that were involved in the original story with the Sagittarons and the work they did, and the work they didn't do, had to do with labor, and had to do with the way that the Fleet operated. And one of the things I always liked about the show, about the series, is when we get into this idea of how the system of government works, how the society functions, reminding the audience of the uniqueness of the Galactica and the Rag Tag Fleet's experience. So I was- eager to get back into that and do it in a little more overt way. So we decided that this episode is about labor. This episode is about class. This episode is about the need for workers to have unions. This episode is about class struggle and I got behind that. I was like, "OK. Let's do that episode." And once we had shifted into doing a different episode, that was about the point where we brought Jane Espenson in, who had done "The Passage" for us earlier, and who is a big fan of the show, and we really like her work, and asked Jane to take a pass at the script.

This episode, I think, opens up the world of the Fleet in a way that none of the episodes really have. How does the Fleet operate? Well, there's a tylium ship out there. There's a refinery ship out there. And they have their own world, their own reality, their own- they have their own narrative of what's happened in the Fleet that is separate from what has happened aboard Galactica. The Gala- the point of view of the audience is primarily with the people on Galactica and showing how- showing their struggles as the pilots and the military, but there's also this other group that's out there in- all these other ships and what's going on with them, and the idea that over on the tylium ship they're having a very different experience than on Galactica, I thought, was a really interesting and charged idea.

And then this idea of the book that was just mentioned here, with Baltar. We were simultaneously also talking about, "What is Baltar doing in jail?" In "Day in the Life" we didn't see him at all, and we're talking about Baltar's trial, but what's Baltar himself doing? And there was something interesting about the notion that one of the things that Baltar would be doing is writing Mein Kampf, for lack of a better analogy. That Baltar sits in his cell and is starting to have- a political manifesto is starting to be born in the mind of Gaius Baltar. And that we could dovetail that manifesto into the storyline of this particular episode. That it dealt with class. That it dealt with labor. That it dealt with a more overtly political idea. And I liked the marrying of those two ideas. That's when the show really started to work for me. That there's these fund- there are these fundamental inequities in the Fleet. There are these fundamental class structures in the Fleet. And Gaius Baltar intuitively, or consciously, taps into those things, taps into those resentments, and starts to have an impact, and starts to actually touch on those things.

And I thought there was something really interesting about centering it on Tyrol, who was a union leader back on New Caprica. What did that mean to him? What did it mean to be the leader of that movement? What did he stand for? Why did they have a union on New Caprica? Do they need a union in the Rag Tag Fleet? What's the purpose of a union? I think that in today's political environment, and I will just step outside the show here for a moment. I think that in today's political environment, unions and collective bargaining has acquired such a negative connotation in the popular media that essentially the conservative movement in the country has been so successful as demonizing unions, and demonizing collective bargaining, and demonizing the labor movement, in general, that I think it's actually a good thing to remind people of why the labor movement exists and to remind them of why there are unions. To remind them of why- how workers under the- even- are sometimes exploited and hurt and not taken- not cared for, even by caring people. I think that Laura and Adama are two of the most caring leaders that you could have, and yet they too are gonna buy into a certain class structure of how this society operates, and the people sitting over there on the tylium ship, that you the audience haven't even given a thought to for three seasons, are slaving away under conditions that probably appalling. And if you think about what's probably happening out there in the rest of the Fleet. There's probably a lot of things that people have to do every day that- they're having their children work, they're working in unsafe conditions, they're doing it with little time off, they are struggling in ways that are, frankly, unacceptable to civilized people. But, because they're out of sight, out of mind, you don't invest in them the empathy that you do with the main character. And so this is an opportunity to strip some of that away and put you into the story, and if that makes the show a bit of a polemic, so be it. That's- I'll take that criticism and I think it's a fair criticism but I accept it, because that's what we did.

I like this relationship between Laura and Baltar. That here's Baltar in the cell, and Laura comes to visit him, and she's tossing the cell, looking for the pages, and letting him know in no uncertain terms who's in charge. And I looove the fact that she lies to him. I don't know why. I always love it when Laura lies, because there's something about Mary, I think, that I just never think she's gonna lie to me. You just look at Mary McDonnell onscreen, you just- you invest such, like, truth to her, and when she's lying it's always really delicious. And I love the fact that she comple- she- just yanking his chain her by saying that no one has seen the pages, even though she's know- she knows that the book is quite widely read, and yet she's gonna fuck with him and tell him that she's the only one that's seen it.

Now, actually when we- in the draft, I was quite adamant that they actually did strip Baltar. That they stripped him completely, and he was totally naked and the pages fell out. And that there was a pissing contest between him and her that we was gonna defy her, and she was gonna take it to the limit, and that there was gonna- there was a humiliation factor involved with the fact that she was gonna strip him completely naked. And that he was gonna make her do it. The actors did not share my view on this scene, and felt quite strongly that actually he would preserve his dignity at a certain point, and that Laura would not push it beyond a certain point. And I eventually was persuaded by their argument. They felt very strongly about it and I let it go. There is still a part of me that wishes that she had humiliated him to that level, that the end of the scene was her realization that she had humiliated him to that level and regret, and that Baltar was defiant and felt victory, and yet felt shame. I like the conflicting agendas of those two things. But I don't have to do it on the set. They know the characters, on some level, better than I do, and I acquiesced to their take on the scene. And I think the scene works. I think the scene works very nicely. I think he plays it very well and so does Mary and I think it works good. Wor- (Exaggerated hillbilly accent.) It work real good. (Resumes normal voice.)

OK. So here we are going over to the tylium ship. The tyl- this episode is also directed by our, not also, but this episode is directed by Wayne Rose, who is our- one of our 1st ADs and has been with the show from the beginning, from the beginning of the series. And I like Wayne a lot and was happy to give him this ex- this opportunity to direct for the first time, and I think he did a great job, and I think that these scenes on the tylium ship are indicative of that.

This is, of course, not a ship. This is not even a set. This is a location that we're selling as a ship. This is a- I believe this is the su- a sugar processing facility, or some kind of sugar facility, that all this stuff is being done in. This is a combination shot of the practical set and Gary Hutzel's world giving us more of the Galactica feel, in terms of the superstructure and the feeling of the ship. But all of this is an actual factory. I think the factory had been shut down for a time, but it was still functional, so the conveyor belts and the equipment were all actually existing, and we could get 'em working, which was a big boon, and because of the size of the facility we could convey the size of the ship, and I like all this stuff of the way Wayne set all this up to convey the scope of the enterprise that they're all invested in. One of the things that may not be coming through exactly, that I think you have to think about it a little bit, and God forbid you, the audience, have to think about anything, but we're talking about fuel, but all you see are rocks. OK, well, where does fuel come from? It's ore. It's ore that they presumably got from either "the Hand of God" episode in the first season, or tylium fuel that they could have possibly found down on New Caprica, but in any case, it starts as rocks and has to be processed and then refined into fuel. And so the whole feeling of the place feels very much like a hard core factory. I li- again, it's like I said earlier, I like the feeling that we've never been over in this world, but that this world exists out there in the Fleet and in a real since this ship is a stand in for many other ships in the Fleet and the conditions that they have to operate in every day. I think part of the problem that we've always faced on the production side of the show is- our- the constraint of really delivering other vessels in the Fleet on our budget. In this episode, we're able to con- to deliver another ship of the Fleet because the nature of that ship is a factory. And we can go out and find a factory and make a factory appear to be a ship, but when you're going out to find, say, a passenger vessel, or you're going out to find a recreational vessel, or a yachting vessel, those ships have more specific architecture, more specific forms, that are not as easily found as you would think. It's not so easy to go out and really f- to really sell the idea of the cruise ship that is probably cruising along with Galactica. Or the giant Olympic Carrier type passenger vessel with all the different levels and accommodations, etc., etc. You end up having to build everything, and they cost you a ton of money. This location, we could use pretty much as it was, with a minimal amount of dressing, and that made the- show possible.

I like that the point of view of the story is starting to shift to Tyrol. You're starting- your sympathies are starting to go with him, as a opposed to Laura and Adama, as exemplified by the wine glasses sitting around and there's a sense of the class structure starting to develop between the two, and I thought that this was true. I though that if you really thought about how things would happen in this Fleet, a lot of the class structure would mean- would simply carry forward and be moved into the Rag Tag Fleet of the way things were back in the Twelve Colonies before the attack. And then other things were hardened and solidified in ways that no one could have imagined. These people have been in space for years now. The people that were on the tylium ship have to keep the tylium ship working. They don't have an opportunity to go do something else. They don't have an opportunity for promotion, or for study, or to go college, or to change their life. They don't just- the people on the tylium ship don't just wake up one day and say, "You know? I'd really rather be a doctor. I'm gonna go to medical school." They don't have opportunities to change their circumstance. And they're trapped. And then what happens to their children? 'Cause these people are facing a mult- a potentially multi-generational problem. They could be out in these ships for tens of year, if not hundreds of years, for all they know. Who knows how long this journey's gonna pa- last? So what do they do? Are they really- like Tyrol- well, I'll come back after the act out.

Act 2

Next act. What do they do in their circumstances, I think, is a legitimate question. It feels like what people tend to do is they continue to do the thing that they're doing at the moment. You're stuck on these ships. You were trapped on these ships. You had a job and a function. That's your job and your function. And the circumstances are such that there's not a lot of flexibility for everyone to willy-nilly change jobs, do something different. The people on Galactica, on some level, are lucky because they have a well-defined role that is needed every day. They are the military. They are the protectors. And that was the job they did before the attack, and they continue to that job. Well, the guys in the tylium ship, yeah, they refined tylium, but it was probably for a very short time and they just did it for certain reasons and getting from a to b, and then they had leave, and then they- other guys came in, and you could always leave your- quit your job and do something else. And now, that circumstance is gone. And you're stuck there and you have to continue to d- to refine tylium every day. And if there's kids there, or your family was there, or there's a kid on board, guess what? He's doing this job too. And the fundamental reality of that, at some point, butts up against the fairness of it. Does that mean that everyone is locked into these roles that can never change? And how does the society deal with that? And that- those were the- some of the driving things underneath the show.

I like this little sequence of Tyrol and his buddy because it's- illustrating Tyrol's caught in these worlds. Tyrol is still a non-commissioned officer aboard Galactica. He has a responsibility. He has to find the seals. He has to get the fuel. And yet he was connected to these people. He was the union leader down on New Caprica. His sympathies are maybe more with them than they are with the military but he is a mili- I like it because of that. And also because it's so- there's something so dramatic about the guy literally tearing his hair out and scratching himself to such a state and getting so fucked up.

There's the seal going in. I don't know what the seal does. It's a MacGuffin, it's a tech thing. It's whatever you want it to be. It does something very special for the tylium ship, let's just leave it at that.

I like this little beat with Mylo. This was, like, a really interesting creation, I think, of Jane's, of this kid who lives on the tylium ship and done everything, but he hasn't turned the whole thing on, and that that's the one thing he wanted to do. I don't know. That's like an interesting bit of insight into character that is the hallmark of a really good writer. And Jane is a really good writer.

So the tylium ship is up and going. Again, this is all a lot of specific photography. This is about having multiple cameras. This is about catching things on the fly. Wayne, being a 1st AD, I'm sure he's, if anything, he knows how to logistically setup a show. And he knows- he was very well prepared. He thought about everything. He went into these locations and into these scenes with a plan of what he wanted to do and when he wanted accomplish.

I like this idea of the child labor aspect of it. That Laura knows there's child labor going out there, and that chil- and that Laura knows that children are being- are working. That this is a reality of their situation. And that she has to- accept that as part of their reality. And that the Laura Roslin that was the Secretary of Education is long gone. 'Cause that world is long gone.

Re-imagined Series definition: mineral that can be refined to a powerful fuel, see: tylium

Original Series definition: a highly combustible fuel (see: tylium) (TOS: "Fire in Space")

Original Series definition: marriage