Episode 211

Goes

Episode #211 - "Resurrection Ship, Part 1"

Created by John Larocque on March 18, 2005
Last revised: January 5, 2006

49,605 survivors in search of a home called Earth.

The Cylons were created by man. They evolved. They rebelled. There are many copies. And they have a plan.

Synopsis

Ron Moore's Commentary

1/4/2006 -- Question: Adama has some radical shifts in his thinking in these first two episodes. Is part of that a result of his near-death experiences?

It is in large part a result of his near-death experience, but also it's partly from the evolution of the relationship between him and [President] Laura [Roslin]. They're in a completely different place now, at one point Adama moved a coup against her, he put her in jail. Then [it became], `We need to put the family back together.' His understanding now is that she has a take on things that are worth listening to. At first blush [what Roslin suggests in part one of `Resurrection Ship'] is antithetical to everything he believes. But they both have to grapple with the uniqueness of their relationship. There is no other authority out there. There is no judicial system. There is no backup. It's just the two of them and what they believe is right and wrong. They have to evaluate each decision and make each decision for the remainder of the human race, and balance that with what they think is right. (source: Chicago Tribune)

1/4/2006 -- The journey that character was on, [Laura] wasn't thinking of the presidency or anything like that, and the responsibility to lead was thrust upon her. She grapples with the fact that the survival of literally the entire human race is on her shoulders. She's moving in a direction where she's more apt to take harsher measures and do things she'd never do before. The weight of these decisions weights heavily on her. The fact that she's dying has brought [her situation] into sharp focus. She doesn't have a lot of time left. She wants to leave the fleet and the civilians in a good place, and she knows that Admiral Cain is an incredibly dangerous person. She could not die in peace knowing that woman was in charge of the fleet and wrecking everything that she and Adama have achieved. (source: Chicago Tribune)

Commentary

10/14/2005 -- One thing that has become apparent in recent days is just how committed we are around here to maintaining the quality of the show and our incredible dissatisfaction when those goals are not met. I found myself not only dissatisfied last night, but positively angry with myself at something I knew in my bones had fallen well below the bar I set for myself and for the show in general. I won't go into it now (maybe later) but it was one of those situations where I looked at something and had to listen to the voice inside my head say "You screwed this one up." Nothing pisses me off more than not making a show the best I think it can be and in this case, there was no one to blame but myself. The only solace I take from it is the knowledge that it does still piss me off and therefore I am still doing something I'm passionately engaged in. Far too many writers, producers, directors and actors I've known have been stuck doing things that they either didn't care about or actually loathed, and I've been extremely fortunate in always being emotionally engaged in the projects I've worked on. [ Ron's comments appear directed towards the discarded script for episode #218, "The Raid" ]

1/4/2006 -- Question: Adama has some radical shifts in his thinking in these first two episodes. Is part of that a result of his near-death experiences?

It is in large part a result of his near-death experience, but also it's partly from the evolution of the relationship between him and [President] Laura [Roslin]. They're in a completely different place now, at one point Adama moved a coup against her, he put her in jail. Then [it became], "We need to put the family back together." His understanding now is that she has a take on things that are worth listening to. At first blush [what Roslin suggests in part one of `Resurrection Ship'] is antithetical to everything he believes. But they both have to grapple with the uniqueness of their relationship. There is no other authority out there. There is no judicial system. There is no backup. It's just the two of them and what they believe is right and wrong. They have to evaluate each decision and make each decision for the remainder of the human race, and balance that with what they think is right. (source: Chicago Tribune)

1/6/2006 -- We often find ourselves with episodes that are running ridiculously longer than anticipated no matter what our best efforts at holding the line at the script stage. This one in particular was a good 20 minutes longer. It's a lot to cut out of a show, it's essentially two full acts... We really felt that completely eviscerating the show by cutting 20 minutes out was wrong, and this time, another option opened up before us... Because the show leant itself so neatly into simply chopping it in half, we were able to really make two dynamic interesting episodes about it, instead of having to cut out the guts out of all the things we loved. We were able to preserve everything we liked, and also because neither episode was quite up to time, we had a chance to actually go back and shoot additional scenes. It really worked out to everybody's benefit and we got a lot more bang for the buck and we were able to go in and really goose up additional scenes that we felt were lacking even back at the script stage and flesh out the whole show. (source: Resurrection Ship, Part 1 podcast)

1/6/2006 - In the original draft and in the original cut of "Resurrection Ship," you never saw this mission of Kara's. Kara simply went off-camera in "Pegasus", did this stealth thing, doing the recon mission against the Cylon fleet, and then she showed up, sort of in the middle of the battle... It was OK, it would have worked, but it wasn't as good as being able to see the recon mission. In this case, you did want to go and see the stealth ship do its thing for once. By shooting additional scenes, we were able to then go in, shoot this stuff in the cockpit with Kara, and then we had additional funds available, because we were creating a whole other episode to do some neat visual FX work to really go see the resurrection ship. (source: Resurrection Ship, Part 1 podcast)

1/6/2006 -- There was even a version we considered at the script stage where they actually did shoot at each one other, where the Vipers started opening up at each other, and exchanged gunfire for a few moments before Kara's stealth ship came in. But ultimately I felt that once these guys actually pull the trigger and once these guys actually shoot at each other, there was really no going back from that. That there was no way that they would ever really be able to get along with each other ever again in any kind of realistic way. So I was glad we pulled that out. (source: Resurrection Ship, Part 1 podcast)

1/6/2006 -- This little beat was something that we were able to restore, the game of chicken between Narcho and Kat. We were able to put that back in when we did the big recut. It's also an interesting dynamic. We're starting to establish that Kat is the next hotshot pilot behind Starbuck, which will play very strongly in subsequent episodes, especially "Scar". (source: Resurrection Ship, Part 1 podcast)

1/6/2006 -- Now this is a later insert, this little piece of business here. Where "boom, boom," you go in and there's all these naked Sixes hanging out in the resurrection ship, which is such a great actout. Gary Hutzel who is our visual FX supervisor was really tickled on the idea that were going to have all these naked Sixes hanging out on the resurrection ship. He needed more time to work that shot up to really make it work. So that was something that he slipped in after all the footage was shot. (source: Resurrection Ship, Part 1 podcast)

1/6/2006 -- Cain, in the original story and the original script, had a plan to attack the resurrection fleet. And part of her tactic was to use the civilian fleet as a decoy. That idea is still in this episode, but a key difference was that, in the early days, Cain required civilian ships to purposely set themselves up as bait, and she needed Laura to approve it. And it all came down to an idea of whether Laura could trust Cain to ultimately come to the rescue of those civilian ships... In that storyline it came down to Laura essentially realizing that she was dying very soon, she didn't have very long to live. She had to make sure that they wiped out the resurrection ship, because that gave the fleet the best chance of survival. And there was some line to the effect that Laura, having faith in that eventuality, if there's one constant in the universe, it's that what goes around comes around, and Cain would get hers in the end. It wasn't a really great resolution and we struggled with it...

In the original, after Laura agreed to let the civilian fleet be used as a decoy, Cain of course broke her word and would not protect the civilian fleet. The fundamentals of the old story were that Cain was not going to protect the civilian fleet which she said she would, and that was when Adama would have to stand up to her and take her down himself. I eventually pounded out a different version of the script where the assassination plot was going to be the big turn. The asassination plot worked better, it was a better choice to play it this way. That Laura -- Laura -- comes up with the idea of killing Cain, and that Adama would be taken aback by it. It's one of the dymanics that I love in the show, the reversal of the traditional roles of playing against type of who's the hawk and who's the dove... There comes a point where Laura looks at the situation coldly and says, "Given who this woman is, and the way she's behaving, this can only end one way, and you've got to kill her." And I love the fact that Adama's reaction is just, "Has the world gone mad?" (source: Resurrection Ship, Part 1 podcast)

1/6/2006 -- [Baltar] is finding less and less satisfaction with the fantasy life that he sort of invented for himself, and that [Number Six] has sort of invented for him. And he's becoming more rooted in the reality of the Galactica world, for good or for bad. Part of that is an outgrowth of his developing relationship with Gina. (source: Resurrection Ship, Part 1 podcast)

1/6/2006 -- This is a pretty dark story. In part this was sort of a result of the network giving a note at some point in the process, "Why is Cain so bad?" ... You can justify everything she did in "Pegasus". The woman really didn't do anything wrong by her own lights and the way she read the law and the way she read the situation. She acted in the way she thought best to protect her ship and her crew. Even the shooting of her X.O. was something in a combat situation she thought had to be done. The network felt like, given where we're going with Cain by the end of the resurrection saga, we need somthing really dark to justify the fact that Adama's thinking about killing this woman, and that he's actually gonna get to a place where he's going to say, "Yeah, go assassinate that woman." We need something nasty in there... The story of the Scylla was a pretty good way to go. (source: Resurrection Ship, Part 1 podcast)

1/6/2006 -- There was a whole show that was abandonned about going on a raid, called "The Raid," where they were going to infiltrate a Cylon base and get inside. And once they were inside they got some kind of clues about this resurrection ship and where was it and if they could knock it out that would really be a major boon to them. That storyline ultimately fell apart and didn't go anywhere, but we held on to the idea. Then that idea became the kernel of what was so important that Cain was going to destroy, come hell or high water. (source: Resurrection Ship, Part 1 podcast)

1/6/2006 -- This is one of my favorite scenes of the season, this scene between Laura and Adama. The performances here are just tremendous. You really get a sense that these two people in this scene have walked such a road from where they began in the miniseries, where they barely gave each other the time of day, to the point where Adama had relieved her of the presidency and instituted a military coup, and Laura had broken out and led a rebellion, and they had gone to Kobol. They had just travelled such a journey, and now in the middle of this other crisis, Laura is dying, and Adama's there to give her a glass of water and just be there with her... When Eddie goes away, he wipes away a tear. It's such a small, intuitive actor's instinct at work, and it's so honest and it touches me every time I see it. (source: Resurrection Ship, Part 1 podcast)

1/6/2006 -- Case Orange is actually a reference to a battle plan of the American Navy prior to World War II. Case Orange was a certain idea of what the Japanese would do and what they would do in response. Downfall is a reference to a film about Nazi Germany and the last days in Hitler's bunker... That little beat where Cain is saying, "Terminate Adama's command, starting with Adama," is an homage to Apocalypse Now. (source: Resurrection Ship, Part 1 podcast)

Commentary

When the original script for #218 ("The Raid") was scrapped, the production made the decision to expand "Resurrection Ship" into a two-part episode.

"She's lost perspective. People ask, 'Is she insane? Is she psychotic?' I hope that's not how she came across because that was never the intention. I think some individuals can appear to be that way, but this is a woman who did what she had to do in order to survive during some very brutal conflicts. Along the way, Cain lost her sense of judgement as well as her sense of reason and rationale. That was all very interesting for me to play. Usually in TV you're given one characteristic and you dare not stray from that, so it was neat to have such a difficult, fascinating woman to play. In [Resurrection Ship] it really comes to light the path of sadism that these people have gone down and we're fully able to see exactly what happened to this group aboard the Pegasus. There were some pretty difficult choices they had to make, too, in regard to the Cylon prisoner Gina and that whole dynamic." -- Michelle Forbes (Cain) on 1/7/2006 (source: TV Zone)

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