Battlestar Galactica: Season 2-04: Resistance

Here's excerpts from this week's podcast for "Resistance".

This story was always conceived - we kept calling it the Kent State episode, where Tigh's repressive leadership would essentially result in the deaths of civilians. There would be an explosion of outrage in the fleet. This would prompt the prison break of Laura Roslin, and the start of a counter-coup, or counter-revolutionary movement within the fleet, and at the end of the episode would culminate in the return of Commander Adama to the Galactica. And that was always the concept of the show.
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Here's the guy that was in love with Boomer. Here's the guy who protected Boomer. Here's the guy that everybody on the ship knew was involved with Boomer. So wouldn't he be under some kind of suspicion?
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This plotline about Cally ultimately being Jack Ruby, I believe was suggested by our co-executive producer Toni Graphia, who wrote this episode. Toni's idea, in one of her drafts, as we started talking about Sharon, and what would happen to Sharon, somewhere along the line came this idea of a shocking end to Boomer, that Boomer would just get shot and killed. And it was a great instinct... What we wanted to play was a little bit close to the reality of some of these events, as close to reality as we could get, in that there would be tremendous amounts of anger and conflicted emotions about having her on the ship at all. From this point forward, even though Cally's not talking about Sharon, it's essentially that there's that Cylon woman in there, representative of all the problems that we have gone through on Galactica. As a perseon and a representative of her race, everything these people have gone through can be tracked back to her. So wouldn't there be tremendous amounts of ill will toward her?
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This scene serves a couple of purposes, some things we're going to develop later in the season are beginning her with this relationship between Dualla and Lee. We also liked the idea that Dualla had a special relationship to all the pilots, because she was literally the voice on the phone. She was the voice that called them home, and the voice that told them it was OK, or the voice that told them where danger was, and that she had this almost informal relationship with all the pilots on the ship, and this little scene is a nod in that direction, where they've established this routine each day of her happening to fall in with him as we walks back toward the brig. The guards deal with it, they like her, nothing untoward ever happens. But it is also a subtext that maybe there's something else here, and this little look here at the end from Kandyse.
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There has to be a real marriage here. There has to be some back and forth psychologically of what she provides to him, in the way of some kind of comfort. And yet at the same time, that she's "comforting him", there's also a bit of the twist of the knife, and there's also a bit of manipulation. Some of it conscious on her part, some of it unconscious. I think there's a part of Ellen that doesn't really understand what it is she does. I don't think she consciously is trying to get him to do specific things, so much as she does react to the moment, and reacts to weakness in a very predatory way. She sees weakness in her husband, and it makes her almost go on the attack, almost like a pack mentality kind of thing.
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There was also this idea that Toni and I discussed. We were talking about, who are these resistance guys, where do they come from? Are they just going to be a bunch of other army guys, because that's not that interesting. Are they survivalists? That's almost interesting. Then somewhere in our conversation, one of us popped out with, maybe they're basketball players or something. And we both just started laughing. And I thought, that's actually kind of great. I kind of liked the absurd quality of that, that these guys would be a pyramid team. And then there was something that started to make sense. Like, oh, it's a pyramid team, and they're out doing high altitude training, they're in the mountains, that's why they've survived. It means they're not like crackerjack army special forces guys, which makes them interesting as well. And pyramid being the game that [is part of] Kara's backstory -- she wanted to be a pyramid player before she became a fighter pilot. It provided a certain connectivity to her story. And it was also great to opportunity play the attitude involved, and see the game. We decided to go for it. It's just one of those odd, absurd moments, that in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, that you might happen across the L.A. Lakers or something.
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This little running thing with Corporal Venner, which comes to head here of course, when he ultimately aids in the escape of Laura Roslin. We talked for quite a while about who Venner was, and Venner sort of being representative of a more spiritual type of person in the fleet. He comes from Geminon. We've established that Gemininon is more "fundamentalist" planet in our mythos, and he would have a special connection to Laura, and that religious connection was going to override his sense of duty to the command. But you're seeing the whole command starting to fracture along different lines anyway under the leadership of Tigh. And I think the episode in some ways underlines how fragile this situation is. What's important to remember is that there is no higher power for these people to deal with. There's no fleet back there, there's no headquarters to deal with, there's no judicial system, there's no governmental structure at all. There's no replacements coming for any of these guys, there out by themselves. So essentially, right or wrong, anything that happens, they're going to wake up the same people tomorrow and nobody's going to change any of that.
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At a much later date, I started going, this really isn't Kent State, it's a misleading type for what this episode is about, and what happens here. A more accurate description of this sequence is the Boston Massacre, in that a group of soldiers pinned in a situation that they're unprepared for, and a tragedy happens. In the Boston Massacre, a group of British redcoats, before the outbreak of the Revolutionary war, were backed up against a building in Boston with a mob, and the mob grew ugly and started throwing things. The situation got out of control, and somebody in one of these situations, like in that situation aboard the Gideon, squeezes off a shot. And it's really kind of key to the idea that you'll note we didn't show you who squeezed off the shot, where the first shot came from. Was it one of the civilians? Was it a Marine? How did that Marine fire off the shot? It doesn't matter, but the mistake is made. One shot goes off, and then the other Marines, in this situation they were completely unprepared for, fire back on instinct and people are killed. That's not Kent State. Kent State is a very different political situation, a very different setup. It carries with it a great, heavy political connotation. This is truly a little bit more the Boston Massacre, which then became a propaganda thing. The Colonists used it as a weapon ("There was a massacre, they fired indiscriminately into this crowd"), but the truth is actually more complex.
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This little beat, I love it because it's so oddly twisted. What is going on with these two? What kind of relationship do they have? There's some vaguely violent sexual thing that happens between Tigh and his wife. You get the feeling this ain't the first time, and there's tragedy in the air, and then there's anger and then there's sex. It's interesting sometimes how those dots are connected.
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He comes over, and he seems to be taking blood tests from Tyrol, Tyrol collapses, and suddenly "He's dying, Sharon. He has moments to live, and I want to know XYZ." Baltar has suddenly gone much darker, and it's all laid down, the pieces are there. Cally getting in his face, Tigh getting in his face, and the pressures that he's under, and the constant harping from Six. And finally this man starts to turn. And from this point forward in this season, he will slowly but surely start turning in a different direction. It doesn't mean he's become and out and out villain or bad guy, but certainly he's started to take a more aggressive, less kid-glove approach with everybody, and he's starting to advance his own agenda very strongly.
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I'll be trying to get back do "Fragged" at some point. I think "Fragged" is one of my favorite shows of the whole season, I'd love to do commentary on that. I've been playing around with doing podcasts, things for you guys on other topics. There's a podcast report in my car on the way to work, I've been trying to record writer's meetings with varying degrees of success. Because of the audio quality, you may or may not be able to hear. I'm going to also attempt to get back to my blog, which is still neglected, and which "tortures me", because I feel I've made a promise to keep that up, and I just haven't been able to, as much as I would really like to.
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