Black Market (214)

[Professor_S]

RDM Podcast Continued -

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In any case, we went through a great deal of revision and editing. We played around with structure quite a bit: where the flashbacks would take place, what order they were shown in. Oh, ah, I should say that this scene with Tigh and Lee is my favourite scene in the episode, and other people on the show agree. This scene works really well. ‘Cuz this scene is actually Battlestar Galactica. This is two of our characters coming into confrontation over something personal. It deals with actual ethical issues. Tigh, Ellen, and Ellen’s involvement in the black market. And she’s gettin’ things for Tigh, who is a senior officer on Galactica. There is a whiff of corruption here. And what does it mean? We don’t take the easy way out - Tigh isn’t shocked at what his wife is doing and promises never to do it again. He understands what she’s doing, there’s an implication, you know, who knows what else Ellen is doing with Commander Fisk - I’m not sure that’s a picture I want in my mind, but you know, okay... And Lee is also a bit dirty in this scene. Lee is also engaged in things that are probably not that above board. There’s an implication that Lee helped get the medicine for the little girl, and probably went outside official channels. And it’s a personal, emotional confrontation with people with conflicted and conflicting motivations. And, I think this scene works particularly well. It’s also extremely well acted and shot, and this scene changed very little in the editorial process. We were always kinda proud of this scene, and we always liked this scene, and this would always be the moment when you would start - look at that. Look at that look on Tigh’s face. I mean, that speaks volumes about who that man is, and the character of that man. You know, he’s a complicated, complex individual, and you can love and hate him in the very same moment. Michael Hogan has really developed a singular character within this series and within science fiction in general. I don’t know who to compare the character of Tigh to at this point, and that’s in large measure due to what Michael brings to it. And I should also just say, being critical of the show, the cast never lets you down. The cast delivers. The cast takes the material, elevates the material. The cast is right there for you. So, it’s really, again, all the things we’re talking about go back to the script and why the script isn’t working.

This scene comes out of nowhere a little bit; but there was another scene that we cut where Dualla was following Lee out of the raptor when Lee arrived back on Galactica earlier, and they had a similar conversation in that she was hinting that there was something going on between them, he didn’t want to talk about it. He was caught up in his own thing, his own demons about the girl he left behind, literally the girl he left behind back on Caprica. And, we started to sort of repeat scenes in a bad way. This is interesting in that Dualla says - puts her cards on the table to an extent and says - you know, “what’s the deal, Captain?... Major?” Oh, I didn’t mean to say ‘Major’ ‘cuz that’s gonna be a surprise later! Whatever... We cut and recut this scene - there was a lot more dialogue here where Lee explained himself more, talked more in general terms about themselves, but ultimately got to the same place where he didn’t know what to say. And we chopped all of that dialogue and stripped the scene down to its emotional essence. You’re not quite clear what’s going on with these two, neither are they. That kinda works. But again, it’s not really getting deep enough, it’s not really getting to a place where we’re explaining, or at least hinting, or making you think about what is the nature of the relationship between Dualla and Lee. Why is Lee interested in her and vice versa? What does it mean to him as a character? We had conversations in the writers’ room that dealt with things like, “well, Lee’s got the girl he left behind on Caprica, he’s seeing the prostitute, and then there’s Dualla.” So there’s the classic, sort of, there’s three women in Lee’s life. One dead and two not. What does Dualla represent in all that? What is Dualla to Lee in juxtaposition to the dead woman and to the hooker with the little girl? Is she the hope? Is she the future? Is she something more realistic? Is the hooker the hope? I mean, there’s a lot of, sort of, ways you can sit and talk about it endlessly about what it all represents. And it was all fascinating conversation; unfortunately it doesn’t quite sink into what we had. You never quite get to a place where you’re rooting for Lee and Dualla. I think that might be the central problem, is that you’re never quite rooting for her.

Again, we’re back to sort of the James Bond-ian kind of thing coming off of his wrist. This sequence, I think, moved up an act - a full act! - so that we could get a little more juice going into the early going. And enter Bill Duke. Bill Duke, is like, a great actor! I so like Bill Duke. I’ve always liked his work. He’s also a great director at this point, and having him on the show was a big plus. It’s a big plus in the episode because he brings a presence and a weight, and a threat that sort of gives you a needed discomfort, in the sense that something terrible’s going to happen. And now that we know that he’s the ultra bad guy from the tease, you’re sort of looking forward to these confrontations to see where it’s going to lead, and you know Lee’s gonna pull a gun on him. So that’s all going to the good. I think, to the bad is that the character we’ve drawn is too broad. That he’s too much of the ‘big baddie’.

[ACT BREAK]

(Second half of podcast to follow)

[Professor_S]

RDM Podcast Continued -

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I was saying he’s too - Bill Duke’s character is too much of a ‘big bad’ character. He’s just a little over-the-top. He just doesn’t fit. I mean, right down to his suit, which, you know, is a perfectly lovely suit and, sorry Glenn, who’s our costume designer - it’s really not her fault. But again, it goes to who the character is. The Big Bill Duke, with the cigar in his mouth, and entering and saying the lines as scripted - it feels pretty much like he just walked over from the sound-stage adjacent to Battlestar Galactica, and entered into our show. There’s such a sort of disconnect between the reality we’ve established and carefully cultivated and Falon’s entrance into that world and the way he behaves.

Interesting scene coming up here with - I believe we’re going to Richard. Are we going to Richard Hatch here? See sometimes I even forget where we are. No this is... no we’re not going to Richard right away.

This scene works well. This scene with Baltar and Laura is nice. I like the fact that it’s following up with the revelation of “Epiphanies”. That, you know, Laura knows Baltar’s secret. Or at least, knows in her gut, even if she doesn’t have a shred of evidence. And there’s not a single thing that she could do to actually out Baltar. I mean, what can she really say? She can’t really go around and say “Well, you know when I was dying, and they were pumping body with the cylon baby’s blood, and I had all those drugs and I was pretty much out of it? In that moment, I kinda remember this moment that I haven’t mentioned for the past couple of months and oh yeah, Baltar’s working with the cylons.” She can’t really do that. They’d say she’s crazy, there’s nothing to back it up. It’s his word versus her word. It’s also nice in that we’ve innoculated Baltar from that particular charge in Season 1, during “Six Degrees of Separation”, the episode where the other Six, the Shelley Godfrey character shows up and accuses him of just that thing, and he is ultimately exonerated. If Laura came out and started accusing him of the exact same charge now, there’d be a sense of ‘been there, done that’. And I don’t think she would get anywhere. And just she would have sort of needlessly provoked confrontation with her vice president. Nevertheless, she doesn’t trust him, doesn’t like him, wants him to go away. So this is sort of Laura’s tack, is to sort of go to him one on one, and try to get him quietly to go do something else, and try to play to the fact that she knows he doesn’t like being vice president. But it pricks Baltar’s ego. That’s the thing that I think anyone and everyone probably underestimates about Gaius Baltar is the truly [laughing] astonishing size of the man’s ego. And there’s a very straight line that can be drawn from here to the season finale, from this moment. From Baltar starting as a disinterested political player who just sort of fell into the vice presidency for other reasons, to the point where he’s going to be seriously considering a presidential run himself, kinda begins here, where the character just cannot be insulted. The character cannot be, like, told that, you know, that you’re not up to the job, or maybe you should do something else. Any implication that maybe he’s not capable of doing something, the man can react in extraordinary ways. You saw this at the end of “Epiphanies”, that the criticism in Laura’s letter prompting this reaction to give a nuclear weapon to terrorists! I mean the man is a dangerous man because of the incredibly fragile nature of his ego, combined with the amazing breadth of his intellect.

This is an interesting little scene because it brings Zarek back into the mix. It sort of has Zarek say things that I think need to be said in the episode. It’s interesting to play Zarek as the realist - the guy that’s way ahead of the curve, that knows how these things work and operate. That the black market is going to happen, that you’re foolish to try and stop it, and he’s you know... I like the fact that Zarek knows what Lee was doing here, that he sort of has his people all over the place. It’s always good to put him and Lee into confrontation, which has been something we’ve been doing since “Bastille Day”. It’s a nice little beat. And again, Richard comes through for us and gives us a nice little jolt right when we wanted it. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t quite go far enough. You know, he’s not involved enough, and he’s not interested enough. It’s a complicated, somewhat complicated backstory, with logs, Fisk went to see Zarek, there was talk that happened, Zarek’s not involved in the black market because Fisk was asking for too much of his cut, and he sends Lee on the road to this ship that... See, it’s a contradiction. We’re sort of playing that Zarek needs to tell Lee about Falon and about this ship out there where you can get anything you want. It’s sort of the hub, or the nexus of the black market. And yet everybody else seems to know about it. It’s clearly the place where all this activity’s going, but somehow Lee needs to be told by Zarek that it exists, which tends to undercut Lee’s role as an investigator. The procedural aspect starts to sort of feel a bit weak because you kinda feel like he should’ve, Lee should’ve known all that on his own, but... again, it’s an element that doesn’t work. It’s not a result of the director or the cast, it’s a problem with script. Generally speaking, while there have certainly been exceptions, things that don’t work usually can be traced back to something that doesn’t work on the page. Especially when you’re looking at an episode in a larger sense, when you’re looking at an overall sweep of an episode and why things work and they don’t work. Generally, it’s something to do with the script. Sometimes it’s a director who doesn’t get an episode or get the show. Or, you know, an actor who can’t quite deliver on the material that you’re giving them. That happens, sure it happens. There’s people that don’t do exactly what they need to do in all categories all the time. That’s just, that’s life. But, usually, in television at least, it’s more a result of the material. It’s more a result of, you didn’t give them the building blocks to create the thing that you’re trying to create. You didn’t provide the right raw materials, you didn’t give them a good blueprint for this house, and they go out and they build the house and the house is leaning to one side, and you say “oh, well, the idiotic carpenters didn’t do it right.” Well, it might be that the blueprint was off. That’s probably more in keeping than the carpenter doesn’t know how to -- [phone rings] Oh. There’s the phone. I’m sure everyone’s very happy about that. I’ll try to [ring] dim it as best I can. Sorry folks.

So Lee leaves the Richard Hatch confrontation. Again, we’re back on Cloud Nine - I’ve talked about Cloud Nine before in “Epiphanies” and how we always wanted this sort of darker, edgier place, but Cloud Nine, for budgetary reasons, we’d established that particular set and we continued to use it.

[ACT BREAK]

[Professor_S]

RDM Podcast Continued -

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Okay. Now we’re with Lee. There’s also a sort of a subplot here that got dropped, that I kinda wish had not been dropped, which is that Lee there in that raptor is actually flying for the first time since the ejection sequence, since his experience in “Resurrection Ship”. That sort of texture got lost, and his return to full flight status, and the fact that he was avoiding it, or maybe deliberately avoiding, deliberately failing some of the flight physicals because he was on some level afraid, on some level didn’t want to get back in the cockpit. That all kinda got dropped along the way, which is unfortunate.

Prometheus is the ship I was talking about earlier. The ship where you get everything you need. It felt realistic that a ship like this, and probably several ships, would exist. I mean, these people are out on their own and they have, you know, some ships have more goods than others. There’s certainly going to be high value trade in things that people want. Where does Cottle get his cigarettes? He probably gets his cigarettes from here. I like that shot, with the Galactica guys getting their own things too. The problem, again - I talked about this earlier - you’re not quite sure why this is all a problem. Why is any of this raising an eyebrow? Why is this illegal? People need things, the entire economic structure has been shattered, of course they’re going to barter, of course they’re going to be there trying to deal things. And it’s no shock that they’re deal drugs. You know, okay, no kidding. Maybe the authorities want to try to discourage that as much as possible, but it’s crazy to think it’s not going to exist.

This kind of tips us into a different territory. Now there’s, like, kids being handed around. Now there’s kids being bought and sold, is the implication. This is the only place that you kind of get to “Oh! Now I see why the black market’s a bad deal,” because we’ve got, you know, kiddies being traded back and forth. I don’t think that’s quite fair, I think, to the audience or to the characters. It’s sort of a cheap shot that we’ve gone for here. That “it’s the kids,” you know; I always hesitate to start doing that. To do something like that in order to really under-gird the point, it’s because you haven’t really established the rest of it as clearly being bad enough. It’s almost a desperation move - “well, it’s about the kids”. The kid gets caught up in it. I kinda wish we didn’t need to do that.

And again, this sequence just feels familiar. I feel like I’ve been in rooms like this with lead characters on many other movies and tv shows. I just kinda know where the scene’s going: there’s the bad guy, we’re now going to have the confrontation, there’s gonna be a lot of talk, there’s gonna be, you know, the head bad guy confronting the classic hero, telling him in very cynical terms why the hero’s view of the world doesn’t apply, the hero trying to maintain his own credibility, blah blah blah. It’s a scene that kind of writes itself. In the end the thing that does make it work, if it works at all, is that we had Bill Duke. I mean, Bill Duke gives you sort of this interesting presence and textures that you wanna watch, and I find myself always watching him. Every word he says, I’m always just watching Bill Duke, and the sort of fascinating way he plays his characters. The best thing in the whole show, in my personal opinion, is the end. Is that Lee shoots him, which is an early idea in the whole episode, that you get to that classic moment where Walker Texas Ranger, or fill-in-the-blank - Sonny Crockett - is pointing the gun at the bad guy, and the bad guy says “you won’t shoot me,” and, lo and behold, they always find an excuse for the good guy to shoot the bad guy. The bad guy goes for the gun, the bad guy makes a move, there’s some double cross, and then you always get the satisfaction, the sort of visceral blood-lust of the audience demanding that the bad guy get shot, but never quite being brave enough to just have the hero shoot the bad guy, which, you know, brings its own set of moral and ethical issues. It’s sort of like, the convention of that particular story has always been good guy won’t shoot the bad guy unless the bad guy threatens him in some way; but it’s a complete manipulation because the audience’s only interest is to see the bad guy get shot. But the audience wants to have it both ways. The audience sort of wants to be satisfied, and have their blood-lust satisfied in that, “well, thank god I got to see Walker Texas Ranger shoot this guy”, but, you know, the bad guy kinda reached for a gun, or he kinda flinched, or, you know, he double-crossed him, and that’s why the good guy’s still good. And I was interested in subverting that, and okay, you want your blood-lust satisfied? Fine. Hero’s gonna shoot the bad guy, but guess what? Hero’s just gonna shoot him. He’s just gonna execute him, and how do you feel about that. ‘Cuz again, that’s sort of the territory that I’m more interested in in the show, is presenting more complicated moral dilemmas to the audience, to not giving them sort of the pure, clean comfort of hero shoots bad guy ‘cuz bad guy did something bad. But making it more complex, where “thank god, I really wanted hero to shoot bad guy, but I’m not quite entirely comfortable with the way it happened. And how do I feel about that?” That’s territory I think the show is better equipped to explore and and the show fires on all cylinders when it does go to that territory.

Here, I think the problem is that beyond that sort of simple - what’s the word I’m looking for? - beyond the sort of diagrammed explication of the conflict and why it works and it doesn’t work that I just outlined about hero, villain, and audience expectation, etc. etc. That beyond the sort of simple construction of that as an intellectual exercise, I don’t know that we’ve delivered on the central premise here, which is that Bill Duke’s statement at the head of the show - “You won’t shoot me, you’re not like me” - when Lee shoots him, you should feel that he shoots him because “oh my god, I’m realizing that he is like Bill Duke. And oh, woah, I’m like shocked. And that’s - I don’t know how I feel about Lee, but I’m really surprised ‘cuz he’s more like Bill Duke than I thought.” I don’t think the show really says that. I don’t think we’ve accomplished that mission. That should’ve been the mission. If you’re going to predicate a whole show on this concept of this initial confrontation, it should pay off that idea.

[ACT BREAK]

[Professor_S]

RDM Podcast *Last Part* -

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And it doesn’t pay off that idea. It sets up the pieces and yet doesn’t really give you a sense of satisfaction when it’s all over with. So now we’ve caught up to the tease at this point.

It’s close. It’s kinda there. He’s saying the right things, and if the journey to get to this place had been richer and more complicated, and you felt a little bit more drift ethically and morally in the show when you get to this moment, it would work. It’s an interesting idea. It’s an interesting show conceptually, it just doesn’t quite play in specific terms, which is unfortunate. You try to make each episode the best you possibly can. I think one of the problems is, frankly, the difference between a 13-episode and 20-episode season is that it’s harder to maintain the same level of quality on every single episode. 13 is easier in that you’re -- why aren’t these guys beating the crap outta Lee, I don’t know... -- but you know, when you have 13, there’s just more of an opportunity to make each one a gem. And I think we were able to do that in the first season. There never was a point in the first season where I felt the need, obviously, to get on a podcast and say “hey, I don’t like this episode as much” and here we are. So, that alone should speak volumes about the difference between the two. That said, there’s no excuse. 20 or 22... I mean, we did 26 at Star Trek when I was there. That’s what the job is. That’s what they pay you for. That’s what you’re here to do, is to deliver every episode. To make every episode work. To make every episode a winner. To satisfy the audience every single week, and if you don’t do that there’s no sense crying about it and whining about it, and “oh, it’s so hard! Oh, it’s hard. It’s just hard,” you know “fightin’ terrorism is hard.” If you just stand around sayin’ it’s hard, well then you shouldn’t really be doing the job, and I like doing this job. The challenge is to do it better. To say “you know what? that was stupid. And I don’t know how I let that one get past the goalie and get into the net, but, you know, go back out there and don’t let that happen again. Don’t let season 3 have a weak link. Make all 20 of season 3 a gem. That’s your job, and you need to go do your ****ing job. ‘Cuz no one else is gonna do it for you.”

This... your heart should just be torn out at this point in the story. In the drama, you know if you’re looking at this in terms of puzzle pieces, this piece of the puzzle should just be devastating, and you should just be caught up in this relationship. And you should also realize that not only is this relationship screwed up and doomed, obviously, but that the thing about the backstory should tear out your heart. I mean, all of these things... this should be the emotional centre of the show. If the action and suspense centre of the show was when he shoots Bill Duke, this should be the moment when all the emotional threads come together and pay off. But it doesn’t. It’s a little too simplistic, it’s not quite - it’s just not quite there.

We go from - when we go back to Galactica, the final scene with Eddie [Olmos] and Jamie [Bamber], the Adama/Lee scene, was actually something that Mark Verheiden - [laughs] - Mark Stern came up with. But oh, we’re not there yet --

This is an interesting sort of call-back to the end of “Bastille Day” which was a similar sort of concept in that it was an all Lee story that dealt with him dealing with, wrestling with moral issues, and then gets to a place where he had made decisions and went back to tell the higher-ups about what he had decided.

I don’t quite understand this. I don’t quite understand what’s really happened in this scene. Was he supposed to wipe out the black market? Was it supposed to get to the root of the criminal enterprise? Laura’s trying to institute an economic system, she’s trying to make an official sort of trade policies - what does it all mean? How bad is the stuff that’s happening out there on the ship? Adama’s giving Lee authority over it, why? It’s a confused moment. It’s a confused moment.

This is an interesting little shot that I wish went somewhere more interesting. The somewhat - it somewhat implies that in the death of Falon, Zarek shows up and sort of takes over. That’s somewhat the implication, but it doesn’t really go anywhere. So again it’s sort of a grab-bag of things we’re trying to do here.

I like this little beat because it’s interesting to remind the audience that, “oh yeah, she’s with Billy.” You know, that there is a triangle here, which is an nice, interesting little texture.

This scene, I think had a lot to do with Mark Stern, who is our network executive at SyFy channel - the interaction between Lee and Adama. I think he wanted more in the script, a more interesting beat at the end ‘cuz there wasn’t much there. This was his idea and thank god he did, he gave that note. A lot times you hear writers, producers bagging on studio and/or network execs about interference, and dumb notes, or whatever. That’s not always true. Sometimes they add things that are quite valuable. If Mark hadn’t given us the idea for this scene and talked to us about the content of this scene, we wouldn’t have a nice ending to the show. And we have a great little ending to the show here - “You should’ve told me about the woman.” That’s a nice beat. I like the look on Lee’s face to end the episode.

So there you have it. There’s “Black Market”. There’s my sort of, you know, digging through the guts of a show and telling you all the reasons why it doesn’t work. So, I hope you’re happy now. [acts sad] I hope you’re happy that you’ve broken me down to this level. [speaking normally again] Next week, I can tell you we have a great episode. “Scar” will be something I think we’re all very proud of and very excited about and I look forward - forward! - I’m looking forward to going through the podcast commentary track on that with you. Thank you and good night!