Podcast:The Farm
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Hello. I'm Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the new Battlestar Galactica and I'd like to welcome you to the podcast of episode five of season two, "The Farm". This was one of the episodes, as I mentioned last week, that was initially pitched in the initial round of stories that we would be doing as part of the larger arc carrying over from season one. This was going to be the first time that the "A" story, which is the primary story of any episode, would be set on Caprica. And that they would be following Kara Thrace with the band of human resistance fighters that were set up in episode four. And the initial pitch and the initial story outline was that Kara would be on a mission with some of these resistance fighters as they were hunting and trying to find an airbase that they could attack and potentially get a Heavy Raider to escape with. And that she would be ambushed and all the other people, all the other humans, would be killed and Kara would wake up in a Cylon facility. And we would introduce a new Cylon at that point. And that they would be doing fertility and experimental procedures on Kara. And she would be held in some sort of Mengele-like setting and it was like a farm. A reproductive farm where they were holding other female prisoners there, human female prisoners there, as well. And that then Kara would break out and fight back and free the other humans, etc. That is still essentially the story of this episode. It hasn't changed radically, as far as the "A" story goes, except for a key conceptual change was that instead of playing that Kara knows from the beginning that she's being held in a Cylon facility, she would be less sure. It wouldn't be clear. We would play the ambiguity of her situation with the audience from the get-go, throughout the episode.
This episode, in all honesty, was probably the most convtroversial episode of the season second only, maybe, to "Valley of Darkness" for much the same reasons. This episode is dark. This is a dark tale. This is a dark show many times. And the controversy on this show was, "How dark is too dark? How much is too much? Will this episode, and epsisodes like it, scare our audience away?" Specifically, actually, interesting enough, the discussion became, "Will it scare female audience away?" Marketing and demographics and research and all that is part of television and it's something that writer/producers have to deal with all the time. The question is conceptual. What is the show? Who's the show appealing to? And who watches it more than others. Our research shows that more men than women watch the show. Which is to be expected. That's typical in the scifi genre. The question is, "How do you get more female viewers?" And you start getting into a certain amount of wrestling in terms of, well, how to define what appeals to female viewers. How to define what appeals to male viewers. What is- the question that I put to you, and you can answer it any way that you see fit, 'cause you're the audience, is this show a good show for women? This show in particular. Here is a female character, heroine, who's really put- we put the screws to all through the episode. Deals with a lot of fertility issues, reproductive issues, some of which may be potentially uncomfortable or distasteful. The question is, "Does that drive female audiences away or does it bring them to the party?" In any case, regardless of the controversies, this is the episode that we made and fought for and quite strongly believe it, frankly.
This opening sequence here with Kara and Anders is really the only remnant of the relationship that we have. At the start of the season we had grander plans. We talked about, just in conceptual terms, that Kara would meet up with someone from the resistance, become heavily involved, fall in love, and then be- have that person torn away from her at the end of the arc. Either killed or she would be parted from him. As we worked through the stories what we came to find was that we didn't have a lot of time. We had all these other stories that were also demanding viewership, demanding story time, and the Caprica story- we just couldn't keep going back to enough to really fully develop the relationship between Anders and Kara. So what we decided to do was to really kind of do it in the cut, in between the two episodes something happens. And it doesn't take a lot, I think, to fill in those blanks. In "Resistance", last week, you saw Kara and Anders in the game of Pyramid out on the court. You could see the obvious attractions, sexual tension. It goes without saying that these two are going to have some kind of relationship and given who Kara Thrace is and the way she- and my kids are here, as you can tell. Given the kind of person that Kara Thrace is, it seemed only natural that she would, of course, fall into bed with him because that's what Kara Thrace does. And Kara sleeps who she feels like sleeping with and makes no apologies for it and so they had a relationship.
This sequence I particularly like because it's not just an action oh shoot-em up sequence. It's like- director did a beautiful job with this. What's happening? What's going on with Kara? Something's wrong. And I like it because it's one of the few times that I've personally seen, in television at least and mostly and some film, where you really get that sense of being shot. "Oh my God, I've been shot." Now you- our quicker viewers there might notice that the wound jumped from left to right. That was something we knew in the editing room. It was a choice that the editor made and I- we went with. It's not a mistake. It's part of just the surrealness of what's going on. It's Kara's mind coming unmoored from its from its moorings. Unmoored from its moorings, as she goes under. And I liked the telling this story from her point of view that she takes one bullet and, man, out she goes. It's not, again I've talked about this before, but when we get hurt in this series the hurts stick. The hurts really do hurt and we don't just bounce back from them. And think that that's- it's important that a gunshot wound be treated like a gunshot wound. And I will come back for act one.
Act 1
Another key thing was gonna go on here, is of course, Adama's return to command and return to CIC. And this was something we talked about at length before the season began and what's interesting to us was to treat what happened to Adama with a certain amount of reality and a certain amount of seriousness. This man was almost killed. He was shot, point blank, in the chest. Two bullets. Was laying in sickbay for a long time. Literally a near death experience. And that he shouldn't just come back from that exactly the way he was before. And what we started saying was that Adama's changed. Adama's different. The emotions are closer to the surface. Things that the man has held down and tamped down for many years and for many reasons now come forth and are easy- they come unbridled- come- I'm not talking very- I don't talk good today. But essentially his emotions tend to burst forth without his wanting them to. And you can see it right here. Just that little beat of him telling everyone how much he means to them- they mean to him, is not something that the typical Adama would have done. He's much more stoic, much more close to the- keeps things close to the vest. And I love this little beat here where he says he feels closer to the ground somehow. And something's going on. And this will continue. You will see this aspect of Adama for the rest of the season. He has gone through a profound experience and certainly if any of us were shot and nearly killed and ended up in a hospital and came out of it, I don't think anybody's exactly the same after an experience like that. And if felt like Commander Adama is a mortal after and Commander Adama would be affected and that we should see that effect on the man. And that the man would not be so easily returned to just the way he was.
This subplot, the "B" story, it's the first time we've really done the Galactica as the "B" story. Although I guess that's not true, I take that back. (Phone rings.) Oh and there's my phone, just ringing to interrupt the podcast, but... we'll keep going. And we'll ignore whoever is trying to call me with some urgent piece of business. But in any case- that's so obnoxious. I'll try to turn it off, folks. But I don't remember how... ahh. Ok. I think I've killed it. (Phone rings.) No. I've not. Oh, whatever. Ok. In any case, this piece of business going on here, the searching for our fugitives in the Fleet was something that was actually much longer in script form. This sequence you can see we're cutting into them, they're just already in this place and we have a voiceover saying, "How long do we have to stay in cold storage?" This idea was something I was in love with at the beginning and it turned out to be one of those things that plagues you in production. I said, "Let's put 'em in a meat locker." And there was a whole thing here, a lead in, where they're in this freezing cold meat locker and Lee says, "It's one of the safest- it's the safest place in the Fleet outside of Galactica. Nobody gets in or out of this place." And Laura says, "Why?" And he says, "Well, because of that." And turn around, there's these big sides of beef hanging in the meat locker. And he says, "Those are the last brisquets, burgers, filets, and pot roasts left in the universe." And that took a beat for that, because it was reinforcing this idea that everything that they once had is now either gone or in short supply and the notion was that the meat locker was the safest place because that, the fresh beef, would be closely guarded and closely held and worth a great deal. Well, we couldn't find a meat locker. There were a couple meat lockers in Vancouver that we did scout and look at and consider but they were literally so freezing cold that the art director and the scouting team that went in there literally were freaking out. They went in, and it was just- they said it- the cold hit you like someone smacked you with a stick and we could not imagine being able to get actors and camera crews to actually work. And so we started investigating other meat lockers, other smaller ones, and then they were too small and too cramped and this went on and on and on and I finally just gave up and was willing to let it go. And I said let's just make it a storage room. But then Richard Hudolin, our production designer, came and said, "Well, how 'bout if I design the set so- I build a set and we design it so that there's a window and you can see into the meat locker, and they're on the other side." So you can still play the cold, and still play the difficulty of it, but it didn't really work too well. This actually just feels like a set, and the actors are playing cold, and they're on- the wrong side of the glass to play cold and we had an earlier beat with Lee walking through it, which got cut. In essence, it was a mess and it's a lesson to you future producers. Sometimes you should just give up and change the idea rather than try to take a half measure and make the idea sort of work. And this is an example of the idea sort of working.
This whole little bit of business here with Lee recording the message denouncing his father was also a key idea from early on and the fact that he couldn't do that. He wouldn't go that far. And that there was a point that Lee just couldn't go beyond even though he had pretty much commited himself. But that Laura, Laura Roslin would, at some point, go, "I'm gonna play the religious card and do it deliberately." And we can talk more about that in a little bit.
Now we're back on Caprica. There's her father's jacket. Now, the notion here is, to be clear, the intention, however it's reading through to you the audience, the intention was never, "Oh, let's fool them. Let's fool the audience into believing that Kara is really being held by resistance fighters and that Simon is, his name is Simon, that Simon is really a human being." I didn't think you could ever actually get that far. The audience is pretty smart. They know what the rules are. They're looking for the double-cross. They're looking for the trick. And they're looking for Simon to be a Cylon. So you'll notice that one of the first things Kara says is, "So are you a Cylon?" Not in this scene, but in the next scene. And the trick through this whole piece is not really to convince you that he's a human, 'cause you're prepared for him to be a Cylon. The trick is to introduce ambiguity. To introduce a question in the audience's mind of where we're going. Could it be true? Could he be human? Wait a minute. Maybe I'm not sure. As long as we introduce the question into your head as you're watching the scene, even though you think you know what the end of the scene is. Even though you think you know what the end of the story is, rather, he's gonna turn out to be a Cylon and that she's being held. As long as we're taking you along the ride, and making you question it. As long as you're going, "Well, wait a minute. Are you s- Am I sure that this is Cylon facility? Am I sure that he's a Cylon? Because now I'm not sure. Would he say that? Is he- I'm not sure he's acting in a certain way. Wait a minute. Why are they showing me the scene like this? Why are they telling me all these things?" The question is to make you wonder. And as long as you wonder, then we've sort of got you. As long as you're intrigued and interested and trying to figure it out along with Kara and as long as it's an open question in your mind, then the scene and the story are working and we've accomplished what we set out to do.
I like this little beat here with Katee where he leaves and it's just all lands on top of her. That she really did care for this man and they were only together a brief time and now he's gone, too. I mean, that's just great. It's a really strong performance from Katee Sackhoff in this episode.
Act 2
And we're back here in act two. Ok. Again, as we were discussing before, the question is, "How do we introduce ambiguity into the scene? And how to-" We're playing things, as you can see, mostly from her point of view. There she's being drugged. She's at their mercy. She's really held prisoner here and the question is, "What's the smart thing to do? How should she handle herself?" "Are you a Cylon?" It should come up very quickly. She should start to wonder what's going on in this place, 'cause the audience is starting to wonder. What's the game at work here? "Well, go on. There's the door." Can't walk out. It's really a mystery. It's a mystery show. What's going on in this place. If they wanted to kill her, wouldn't they just kill her? If they want information shouldn't they start interrogating her? What are they trying to do? Why would they bother with this whole scenario? So he has to come up with a plausible amount of obfuscation and lies about what's really going on and where they are and have reasonable answers to all the- her logical questions. Remembering that she has suffered a very serious wound. She's undergone surgery. She can't just jump out of the bed and start fighting people and if she is being held by the Cylons then it'd only be counterproductive so she better keep her wits about her as best she can. And again she's being drugged up quite a bit.
There's a little beat there with a magazine sitting on the counter that was going to figure a little bit more strongly into the plot later on, but we actually cut that bit in editing.
And here again, this is just the stylistic device that as she goes under we white out.
Here's Cally in the brig. Cally, as you might recall, shot Sharon last week. And this is my f- one of my favorite scenes in the episode. When Tyrol goes in to get his crewman out of the brig. And it puts him in a strange place. That he's going in to argue to rescue, or to save, the woman that shot the woman that he loved. And I like the idea of Adama calling him on that and yet that Adama is a different man, and that he would play it differently and that he is more philosophical. That he's drawn into questions of who we are, what we are, who are the Cylons, what are they? Can you love a machine? How could you love a machine? So she can't be a machi- she can't be a person, she has to be a machine. But she meant something to you and she meant something to me. Is that what she was? How could you love somebody like that? Making Tyrol face some of his darker and more- deeper demons about himself and about his relationship with Sharon. Look at Adama advancing on him like he's stalking Tyrol. You get the feeling that Adama is really stalking himself in this scene. That he's questioning Tyrol but he's really questioning himself, and they're all questioning themselves. Sharon was somebody they trusted. Sharon was somebody they loved. This was part of their family. This is someone that meant somebody to them and that person turned out to be their deepest enemy and tried to kill him and very nearly succeeded. How could he be that wrong? How could he not see that coming? And why does he still care? Why is he still, despite everything that's happened, still actually care about Sharon, and so does Tyrol. She's a ghost, and the ghost is gonna continue to stalk them. As in this lovely coda to this scene when Tyrol gets ready to leave and Adama stops him and says, "You'll see her again." And that there are many copies. And that Tyrol has to psychologically and emotionally be prepared for that at some point.
Again, it's just try embrace the world view that Galactica has that this is a real universe. These are real people. They have real emotions. Well what are their reactions to realizing that somebody they love and care about is actually an enemy. How do they deal with that? It's not just like a switch goes- they flick a switch in their brains and their whole attitude goes to, "Oh. Enemy equals hate." I think it's much more complicated than that. You would have an actual emotional response. You would have things you would have to grapple with. The psychology of it would not be so simple.
This little beat, again we're back on Caprica. This is, again, part of making the audience wonder what we're doing. Simon is annoyed, he's distracted, he's lost a patient. And she's wondering why she doesn't hear other patients, and what's going on in the hospital. And why they've lost all these other- if there are these other patients how come she doesn't hear any of them. And Simon goes off into a fairly detailed and nasty description of what happens to people who are suffering from radiation poisoning. Which is something that we did some research and looked up some sources and came up with this little bit of nasty business of what's going on out on Caprica to the people that don't have anti-radiation medication. And the anti-radiation medication is essentially the only reason that we get to play scenes on Caprica at all because the aftermath of a full nuclear exch- attack, like the one depicted in the miniseries would be extraordinarily ugly and- would just prevent us from doing any scenes back here whatsover. So we take the science fiction license that there is some medication that these people have developed to allow themselves to fight off the effects of radiation, if you've got it.
K. This was one of the most controversial scenes, which resulted in endless discussions of that you have, of is this just too distateful? Is it just too awful to suggest that a woman is getting some kind of pelvic exam? And we'll just drive women away. And my attitude was, "Oh, come on. What, are you kidding? It's nothing you don't see on ER or fifty other hospital shows." There's a constant pushback, I think, from us on the show that just says, "There's nothing that's too real, too graphic, too disturbing to put on the air." Personally I just think there are very few boundaries that you can really say, "That's a step too far." That you've really pushed the audience tolerance into a place where they're gonna turn off the show. I think there people may be offended by individual scenes. People may be put off by something you say, but are they real- do they really just grab the remote and change the channel in a pique of outrage over something? I don't really think so. I think a lot of those fears are overblown. But that's just me. What do I know?
This whole bit of business here with the Cylons interest in reproduction and biology. And ultimately the plot of this episode has to do with the Cylons drive and desire to biologically reproduce. This is a direct outgrowth of season one where the ongoing storyline between Sharon and Helo on Caprica as we started to really ser- I started to really seriously think, "Ok. What's going on down there? Why are they putting these two people together." Actually I sh- I'm jumping ahead of myself.
We should talk about this scene. This is the Kara's broken fingers and childhood abuse scene and you wan- David Eick really wanted- felt that Simon should be able to get under her skin, as it were. Much in the way Leoben did and cut to the heart of who Kara is. That the Cylons have ways of getting inside your head and twisting things around and really understanding you in ways that you don't want them to. And that Simon got in there and figured out that Kara, all of her fingers had been broken. And essentially we believe that it's by her mother because that's who we've setup. And it's a nasty bit of business. It's a nasty, horrible part of who Kara is. It goes to the notion, I've discussed on this podcast before, of, well if you're gonna make Starbuck a rogue and you're gonna make her the hotshot pilot who does things the wrong way and who's the daredevil, well who is that person? Why is she like that? It's a damaged person. It's a person who's pretty screwed up and here's one of the reasons why she's screwed up.
We're back on Galactica. And this is another example of Adama's emotions starting to get the better of him. This is something he would've never done prior to the gunshot, as he reads these words from Laura and just the outrage that boils up within him and his inability to control it resulting in him smashing this clipboard, in the middle of CIC. I mean, it's just something he'd never have done. And he immediately feels bad and guilty and vaguely ashamed of himself. But he- this is who he is now. He's trying to keep it under control as best he can.
And then Laura- there she's- how many people are gonna follow Laura to Ko- back to Kobol? And that he would just say, "You know what? Screw those people. You wanna go back? Go back."
Act 3
Now back in the next act. Laura and company, Zarek, they would have now transferred back to the Astral Queen which is Zarek's prison ship. There's some potential points of confusion in here, in jumping between the ships, when did that happen? We tried to write in all kinds of business of them being chased by Galactica and ducking into shuttles and getting from one ship to another and it just became cumbersome and time consuming and we just decided to jump ahead and shorthand it, and ok, she went between ships.
This, I think is interesting because Laura decides, as a tactic, to play the religious card, as it were. To embrace the path that she's on about being a prophet and the scriptures, which she now believes to hold some very literal truths in them. And she embraces that role publicly and calls people to her banner in the name of their faith. And then has a consequence. People start looking at her differently. They ask for blessings. They look at her as a prophet. A spokesman of the gods. A spokeswoman of the gods. And that eventually that's gonna come back and bite Laura on the ass. And I think that's interesting. I think it's- what began as something- a tactic of the moment, as something to get her through a crisis, then carries larger and more profound implications, morally, spiritually, ethically, down the line. And I think that's really interesting stuff.
Back to Caprica. This is- this scene was going to be originally at night and you would have seen them all coming in with flashlights and the headlights of the vehicles and them searching the ground. For various production reasons we couldn't do it at night. Had to do it in the daytime. I probably should have rewritten the scene so that it- I don't know. There's something about the tenor of this scene that just tells me that it was meant to be done at night. The way they're talking to each other. The lines they're saying. Even the action feels like a darkness kind of a scene. Right now it doesn't play as well, I think, in the daytime.
There was a bit of business where after this, after Sharon agrees to help- or they agree to let Sharon help them, where we were gonna cut in cold and you would be on the tarmac of an airbase someplace. And camera would pull back from the tarmac to find dead Cylons, Centurions and humanoid Cylons all over. Just literally littering the tarmac. And then pull back again all silent in one shot. And there would be Sharon standing on the tarmac with a gun in her hand looking down at all the ones she had just killed in some ambush. And she would just walk off camera towards the Heavy Raider. And we cut it, unfortunately. I miss it, but again these episodes- there's not a lot of running time and you gotta make some choices.
This is- the Fleet fractures here. This is- how many people are gonna follow Laura? Well, it turns out a lot of people are gonna follow Laura. And that that's a real problem.
Back on Caprica. Kara coming to one more time. You notice that we're- usually with her, we're always discovering things when Kara does. We never cut outside the building. We never cut down the hallway. You're with her. You only know what she knows. So as she tries to figure things out, you try to figure things out. And she has another wound, another injury.
Oh. What I was saying earlier. I'm sorry, I've been a little disjointed today. My apologies. This thing about biological reproduction with the Cylons. This all flowed out of Helo and Sharon last season. Why are the Cylons putting them together? What's the game that's going on? What are they trying to get out of him? 'Couldn't be any useful military information. I mean, he doesn't know where Galactica is or Earth or any of that. He's just a pilot. Well what are they doing? And this notion came out of long discussions about who the Cylons really are, what are the things that they lack, what is it that they want to be, what is their image of God, what does it mean to be a person? And what it came to was, they can't biologically reproduce. They cannot have children. And they have tried. And they tried, and they have tried. But they are unable to fulfill that. To fulfill that role as biological, living people. Because they can't have children. And that in their view that makes them something less than people. God created animals and plants and people, all of whom can reproduce on their own. And the Cylons can build many copies, and many bodies, and download conciousness, and do all these amazing things. But they cannot do the simple act of having a child. And that makes them something less than us. And they are determined to figure that out. So they embark on these programs. [1]And this farm that Kara is part of is one of many, that are strewn all over Caprica and the other colonies, trying to conceive, trying to figure out ways that they can reproduce. And when we presume that they're using human women and in other facilities they're using human men, and a variety of in vitro programs are being tested in test tubes and all kinds of different projects, but that the project that Helo and Sharon were caught up in was an experiment. That there was a theory. And I'm gonna pause here and come back to this later just because I love this moment.
This, to me, is a fantastic beat. Where Kara Thrace, Starbuck, our bravest of the brave pilots is scared out of her mind. She's trapped and she has nowhere to turn to and she's really scared. And that scares me. When Kara gets scared, I'm scared. And it's just an amazing performance by Katee. I just can't say enough about Katee in this episode.
Act 4
Like I said earlier Kar- Helo and Sharon were together in a very specific experiment because the Cylons came up with this idea that maybe the one thing that was missing, maybe the reason they couldn't biologically reproduce was that they lacked God's love. And that God is love, and that without love, perhaps they can never truly be people. And- so they put Helo and Sharon together as a way of trying to make him fall in love with her. They knew things about Sharon. They knew that she and Helo had traded looks, that there was something going on, that it wasn't- that there was an attraction there. So they put Helo in a situation where he's made to feel protective of her, to guard her, to care for her. She saves him, and they're on the road together for a while. They're bonding. And his true feelings for her come out and she responds and Helo does fall for her. And the amazing thing, and it's great to talk about love while there's blood spurting across the screen, but the amazing thing was that Sharon fell in love with Helo. And that she turned on her own people out of love. And that that was a wildcard that they hadn't really anticipated. That love, true love, would cut both ways. And so Helo and Sharon then went on the run and they did conceive a child. So the experiment worked. There really is a validity in this universe to the notion that there is such a thing as love. It is stronger than science. And that perhaps it is bestowed by God or by the Gods to people and even Cylons. And that there's something special about that in the Galactican universe. That love is just not a series of chemicals that react a certain way in your brain but that there's actually something of substance to it. That love is a powerful force in and of itself and it helped a Cylon- Cylons and human conceive a child. And I- that's a really interesting idea.
This scene is always been part of the concept. That you would go into a room and see the other people that are all being experimented on. These are the other experiments the Cylons are doing. There is Sue-Shaun who was also a member of the Caprica Buccaneers, established earlier, who had been captured and held and that Kara would try to free them and essentially destroy the mechanism. I don't really like this sequence even though I was a proponent of it and did a polish on it, had many discussions with it. And to me I just keep- whenever I look at this sequence I always feel like I'm in the wrong show. It's to me, the big tombs and all the stuff. I know why it's there, I know why I fought for it. I know why it's important to make it play in this episode, but I don't know. It just feels a little over the top. It feels a little cheesy in some ways. And I wish we hadn't done it or had done it differently, but again, there's no- I don't point any fingers in that criticism of it. It's self-criticism in how I crafted this particular episode. I mean, to be fair, without seeing the other people in this building, without seeing the other women being held and experimented on, any talk of it being a farm, any talk of there being wide scale experiments is just that. It's just talk. It doesn't mean anything. You have to put a human face to these other victims to understand that there was something larger going on here. So, again, I understand the undergir- the underlying logic of why we did this, but, I don't know, it's one of the least satisfying pieces of the episode to me.
I really like this, that Katee and the director made a point of her not running down those corridors, and playing her injury, playing her invalid status. That it's- she's not a superhero. She's in pain. She's suffering and it's not easy to just get out of this building for her. It's really hard. And that's great shot of her stumbling, bumbling down the corridor.
And now we get out to the- the rescue sequence. This is obviously a lot of CGI work and a lot of difficult stuff. Boom boom boom. Down Simon goes. And the the resistance is out there. And they've come to rescue Kara Thrace. I don't have a lot to say about this sequence. I mean, this is an action sequence. It's well done. It's well shot. It's a chance to see all the groovy CGI Centurions again. And the coolest thing about it, I think, is just the reveal that- coming up here, that the Heavy Raider appears and then Sharon's on the Heavy Raider. And in truth, even though I miss the scene I mentioned earlier where you see Sharon at the tarmac and you see her- the aftermath of the gun battle and that she gets to the Raider, I always liked that. But it would have spoiled this moment. It would have spoiled the beat where the Raider pops up and for a heartbeat you wonder if it's gonna help her or- you wonder if it's gonna blow her away. And then it's revealed that Sharon is on the- that Raider. That's pretty great. When the CGI Centurion in the foreground there really takes it on the chin. And then it's like, "Let's get the hell out of here."
This coming up beat with Sharon standing in the doorway of the Raider is a remarkable shot and it's completely CGI. There is no set, here. This is just Sharon standing in front of a greenscreen and people running up a ramp, also in green. There's no actual structure there. There's no set piece. There's no... nothing. It's just a CGI effect. And that's an instance where CGI did save us money. We couldn't afford to build that set, especially for a quick little piece like that. It would have been exorbitantly expensive for like, what is it, a ten second shot, a fifteen second shot. But Gary Hutzel and his team of wizards could gin up a shot there for us for a fraction of the price of building it practically.
This is, again, one of my favorite beats in the story and in the season so far. I really like this. This is intriguing to me. He went down and saw Leoben's body last season. So Adama goes back to the morgue and there she is. There's Sharon. And the- and just imagine the feelings that churn within him of this girl. This girl that he knew that was part of his family who shot him. And there she lies on the slab. And he remembers it so well. And what does he feel? It's rage. It's sorrow. It's question. It's agony. It's just all those things and look at it all register in Eddie's face. And it's a naked performance, I have to say. You don't often ask your lead male character to really break down. To really show this kind of vulnerability and raw emotion and just break down and cry and just cry openly and sob. And we ask that of Eddie here. And he does it and it just- it's just- it's heartbreaking. It's this great man, this powerful man is reduced to this by the sight of the woman that shot him. By the sight of the woman that shot him and that the human power of that, the connection between him and her, it just- I think it's great. I think it's one of the best things in the whole series. I really do. I just- I love that.
And then we're back on Caprica once again. And this is- this is a great little scene because there's a lot of exposition that has to come out of this scene. This is where we're explaining all the things that I've been talking on the broadcast about what was going on on the farm, what the Cylon plan was, how many farms are there, why are Helo and Sharon different. This is a big expositional scene. What makes the scene work, really, are these actors. Because Katee is playing a lot of leftover emotion and frustration and trying to understand what the hell's going on, but she's still in the moment of it. Helo is lost in his complicated feelings for Sharon. Look at that look on Katee's face. I mean, my God. And Grace is over her just trying to deal with these people that are- she's trying to help. And there's so much emotion in this scene that the exposition just flies past you and it means something because it means something to these people. It's not just actors standing around mouthing words that we've given them. They're actually in the scene. They're feeling what's happening to them. They're understanding what the scene is really about. And, man, if you have a cast like that. If you have a cast that can step up to the plate and deliver these kinds of scenes, boy, you have gold. And these actors are just gold. We are just really, really blessed. I can't say enough great things about our cast. And Kara is special. Kara has a destiny. She has something that Leoben alluded to and that everyone had mentions every once in a while that Kara is not just another person. That there is something that's gonna happen to her. And what do they do to Kara? They took her ovaries? They took some of her ovaries. And what are they gonna do with those? Are they do- are gonna be just growin' little Katee's back here. Little Kara's back here on Caprica. If they can figure out ways to conceive children other than falling in love. Who knows? It leaves her damaged. It leaves her having taken a loss. And it leaves her changed as well. And she wants to go after these farms and wreak havoc and vengeance down on those things and Anders has to be- this time Anders is the smarter guy. We opened the- this show with Kara being clearly the more level-headed one. The more realistic one. And now Anders at the end is the one being realistic.
I don't know why I like this little piece of business, but I do. This wasn't something that was scripted. I think we told them it was in a dumpster or something. Some hiding place. But there's something really cool about this. That it's in the water underneath the thing. And the music cue is wonderful and pulls out the arrow that we haven't talked about and even seen in quite a while. And there's something about the golden arrow in this moment that elevates it to something mythic. That this really is a passing of a torch, as it were, from one to the other. And that she would carry this back to Galactica 'cause this was her purpose for coming here. This scene now obligates us to return to this storyline. We had some question about whether we wanted to. Should Anders have died on Caprica? Should he be left behind, and he's just a forgotten man. Should he be doomed? But when Kara says, "I'll come back," she means it. And I think Kara is someone who really will take that to the bank. She will do everything she can to come back for this man. And I think it's important part of her character and so now it's important part of the show. Her connection to Anders, whether or not that could ever work out, whether or not there's really a future for them. You could debate all those things all you want. Fact of the matter is, she was here, they were together, she felt something, and she looked him in the eye and said, "I'm coming back." And she will. And, again, it's a nice little gender reversal for us that it's usually the guy- that it's usually the guy who's gettin' on that plane to get out of here. Has a job to do and, "I'll come back for you someday, honey," and, "I'll come back to 'round these parts someday if- I promise, and I'll leave you a talisman." And she leaves him one of her dog tags. Which I think is a powerful thing. It was Katee's idea. She wanted to leave something behind and they talked about it on the set and she went- soldiers- that's my daughter, by the way- that soldiers carry two dog tags around their neck at all times. One to be taken from you if you are shot or if you're wounded or killed so that they have something to identify you with. And the other one remains on you at all times. So it's a way of- it's a macabre detail, but that's what they- that's why you have two dogtags. And so by leaving one of her dog tags here with Anders it really is- it's symbolic. It's- there's a part of me here and I'm coming back. And then we have this great goodbye shot. And we're leaving the episode, not on one of our heroes, not back on Galactica. We're leaving you the audience here on Caprica with the resistance that's still trying valiantly to fight back against the Cylons.
And that is the end of "The Farm". Which- when I saw the first cut of this episode I loved it. I thought this was one most powerful and emotional shows that we've ever done. My wife watched it a couple times, even without me. And I'm very moved by this one. I'm moved by the performance of Katee Sackhoff. I'm moved by the direction of- and the cast and just the whole feeling of this show really appeals to me. It touches me. And it makes me very proud of the series. That that the series is willing to go to these places and these darker corners and to explore psychological and emotional things that I think- it's hard and is not easy for the audience to go there with you. But I think it's challenging and I think it's asking a lot of our- of the people who watch our show. It's asking them to really think about things. It's asking them to invest in some difficult situations. It doesn't offer you easy answers and speak down to you and condescend to you in any way. And I, I don't know. There's something about this particular episode, its style of storytelling, that really appealed to me. But maybe I'm just crazy. And I will, with that note, I will bid you farewell and then next time we will be discussing episode six, "Home, Part I". And take care. I'll talk to you then.
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