Battlestar Galactica

Episode #202 - "Valley of Darkness"

This document is ©2005, John Larocque. All rights reserved.

47,874 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

In the hallway, a Cylon appears and slices Flyboy with its claws. Kat, Apollo and Hot Dog run to the nearest open hatch and climb the ladder. Apollo shoots at the Cylon to no effect, and then its head explodes as a Marine enters the hallway and fires off an explosive round. "We've been boarded, sir. Don't know how many, where they are, where they're headed." A second Marine tells Apollo, "Our standard ammo doesn't even make a dent. Explosive rounds are the only way to take 'em down." Apollo asks, "How many rounds you got?" "That was our last one." Apollo gives Hot Dog a note to send to CIC. "Marines, let's go toaster shopping." In CIC, Gaeta sends a message to the fleet. "We have been boarded by a Cylon raiding party. Do not approach or attempt to dock with Galactica. Keep a safe distance until we have secured the ship." The signal is jammed by the Cylons.

In the brig, there are gunshots and screaming in the background, and Laura orders Venner to open the door. "You know I can't do that, Madam President." "Corporal Venner, I have no intention of being locked in this cell and shot like a rat in a cage. Open the door!" He unlocks the cell door and she thanks him. Apollo's party arrives and opens the door to the brig. "Don't shoot! It's Captain Adama. I have a fire team with me... We've been boarded. This deck is crawling with Cylons. They're trying to get to the magazines." Laura asks, "How can we help?" "Stay alive and don't get shot. Leave the Cylons to us. OK, sickbay is the safest spot. It's farthest away from any potential targets and it's designed to function as a disaster shelter in case the ship were lost."

He hands Billy one of the Marine's sidearms. "You ever handled a weapon before?" "Pelt gun from my uncle when I was, like, ten." "Principle's the same. Real ones just make a bigger noise." He tries to hand Laura a gun but she refuses. He assigns Venner to accompany her to sickbay with one of the Marines. "Remember, just head away from the sound of gunfire." Laura asks, "What about you?" "We're heading towards the gunfire. OK, listen up. There's a small arms locker on causeway bravo, two decks down. We're gonna go get some explosive rounds, and then we're heading for the magazines." "Good luck, Captain. May the Lords protect you."

Helo and Starbuck are walking on a street in Delphi. He tells her, "We should probably head out of the city, try to scout one of the outlying airbases, see if we can find a Raptor." She comments on the lack of dead bodies. "That's not exactly what I expected. Thought I'd be stepping over decaying corspes in the streets." "Yeah, we saw a few bodies here and there... Cylon Sharon said they had troops picking up the bodies. Transporting them to mass incinerators." "Your girlfriend's from a lovely family. Good people, great values." He told her she fooled him. "I've been here for months. By myself, on the run, one step ahead of the Cylons. With the Cylons, I guess, actually. She seemed so real, you know? Same grin, same laugh, all the little things. I fell in love with a machine. So just call me an idiot and let's be done with it." "You're an idiot. But the Cylons have a way of making all of us look like idiots." Kara decides to make a pit stop at her apartment. "I got something I gotta pick up."

In CIC, Gaeta tells Tigh, "The Cylon virus spawned itself in our subsystems before we broke the network. I have teams cleaning each subsystem, but it'll be at least an hour before we can restore main power." TIgh asks Kelly, "Where are the Cylons?" "Looks like they split into two forces, one moving forward..." Tigh interrupts. "I've seen this before. These are their objectives." He shows Kelly and Gaeta a map, pointing to secondary damage control and auxiliary fire control. "If they're successful, they will override their decompression safeties and vent us into space. And once we're all dead, they'll turn the ship's guns on the fleet and wipe it out once and for all." On Kobol, Baltar has another waking dream and encounters Adama on the surface. "God. How in God's name did you find us?" "What do you have there?" A child appears in Baltar's arms. "Well, it's a child, obviously." "Can I hold it?" "Please." "Is this the shape of things to come?" "That's my understanding." "Only one thing for it then." Adama walks toward the stream. "Commander, where are you going? Come back! Commander! Please!" Adama drowns the baby in the water.

Later in the forest he discusses this with Number Six. "He killed our baby." "Our baby?" "Adama. I saw him drown the baby. Why would anyone want to drown a baby?" "Gaius, the answer's all around us." "What happened here?" "Human sacrifice." Around the forest, he sees many human skulls. "Not the fairy tales your scriptures would have you believe." "I thought Kobol was supposed to be a paradise or something. Some place where the gods live with the human in harmony, or..." "For a time, perhaps. Then your true nature asserted itself. Your brutality, your depravity, your barbarism" "So the scriptures are all a lie. It's all just a lie, just a cover-up for all this... savagery." "Exactly. All of this has happened before, Gaius. And all of it will happen again. Mankind's true nature will always assert itself." "Adama. So he will try and kill our baby." "Only if you let him, Gaius."

Apollo's party heads for the weapons locker and spots dead bodies. "Keypads dead." They open the door and someone is inside. "Don't shoot, I'm human!" Kat asks, "Jammer?" "Yes sir, it's me. Jammer. Spec 3." Apollo orders them to find those explosive rounds and asks, "What the hell happened here?" "I don't know, sir. I was here in this fort. I just came in here to hide. Cylons everywhere." "All right, settle down. You're going to be just fine." Kat shows him a munitions case with only six rounds. "You're kidding me. That's it?" "Didn't have much to begin with, sir. The other fire teams must have cleaned the locker out right before us." "Six rounds. There are five of us. OK, well, each of you guys take one. I'll take the reload." Jammer didn't expect to be given a round. "I'm just a knuckledragger here. I don't know the first thing about fighting centurions."

On Caprica, Kara shoots the lock off her apartment and kicks open the door. "You never have your house keys when you need 'em." Helo is looking at her paintings. "These yours? You paint these, Kara?" She turns on her music player and listens to a piano recording. Helo wonders how she got power. "Batteries. Kept turning off the power. Something about not paying a bill... You know, I never really liked this place anyway. Air conditioning doesn't work in the summer. Heater doesn't work in the winter. The rent's a crime." She says the recording is her dad, while Helo cooks himself a package of noodles. They sit back on her couch, she puts on a leather jacket and lights up a cigar. "After they attacked, I never pined over any of my old crap. Never missed it... Everyone I know is fighting to get back what they had. And I'm fighting 'cause I don't know how to do anything else." She later finds her truck keys and asks, "Tired of walking?" "OK." They head downstairs to the parking lot, Helo laughs and they drive off in her Humvee.

Laura and Venner are 60 meters from sickbay and see dead bodies. She checks the pulse of one of the fallen crewmen. Dualla is there and tells her, "She stopped breathing a while ago." Billy is surprised to see her. "Dee? Oh my gods, Dee. Hey, are you all right?" "Yeah, I was going to the head. Went back to my rack. I forgot something." "Oh my gods, you're bleeding. Are you shot? Hey. Dee, look at me." She is shellshocked and is not listening to him, and Laura advises, "Try using her rank." "Petty officer Dualla, look at me." "Hey, I'm glad to see you. I've been here in the dark a long time." Laura comments, "It's probably a concussion. Corporal Venner, we need an alternate route to sickbay. We don't want to walk into gunfire. We want to go away from the Cylons." "We can all go in all the way on the starboard side. It's a lot farther." "Good. Starboard." In CIC, Kelly tells Tigh they've contained the threat to auxiliary fire control. Tigh responds, "Trust me, they're still heading for the aft damage control... There is nothing between the last two Cylons and the decompression safeties. If you know any prayers, now's the time."

On Kobol, Cally tells Tyrol, "Tarn getting shot, it wasn't your fault. You know that, right? Talk to me, mother-frakker!" "Mother-frakker?" They both laugh. "Socinus better appreciate this... I hope he's OK." "He'll be fine. He's a tough kid. We just gotta get him the medkit." Eleswhere, Crashdown takes issue with Baltar for getting lost. "Crashdown, I'm getting a really bad feeling about this place." Tyrol and Cally arrive, Crashdown asks, "Where's Tarn? What happened?" and Tyrol tosses him his dogtags. "Cylons." Seelix tells Tyrol that Socinus is not going to make it, and Tyrol insists on giving him another shot. "I can't change that he's gonna die, Chief. It's gonna be slow and painful. And we can spare him that, if we give him the morph from my kit and the one you brought back." Socinus asks him, "What's goin' on, Chief?" "Well, you know. Just listenin' to the birds." He tells him he has something for the pain and that a search party has arrived to take him back to the Galactica. "I'm goin' home?" "Yeah, you're goin' home." Then Socinus dies.

Apollo finds more arms from another arms locker and phones up CIC. Kelly informs Tigh, "It's Apollo. He's on Deck 12, Abaft Frame 8-6. That's between the Cylons and aft damage control." Apollo tells Tigh, "Five armed defectors. We haven't seen anything but bodies between here and the hangar deck." Tigh instructs him to take his men and proceed without delay to aft damage control. "You get to aft damage control and get there right frakking now, mister. Get there before the Cylons, or we lose this ship." Elsewhere, Venner tells one of the Marines, "The sickbay's about 20 meters through that hatch." Billy has the firearm in his pants and Dualla reaches down and puts the safety on. One of the Marines tells Venner, "The hatch won't open. The other side's been depressurized." Laura instructs him to find another way to sickbay. "We have to head toward aft damage control."

Apollo has reached aft damage control and they take a defensive cover position. Jammer tells him, "I'm not really cut out for this, sir." "Me neither. Sometimes you got to roll a hard six." He orders his troops, "Head shot. Reload. Head shot. Reload. OK, they're coming. Everybody down!" Elsewhere, Dualla takes the saftey off of Billy's gun. He withdraws the gun and accidentally fires, alerting the Cylons. A firefight ensues and two Marines are killed along with the last three centurions. Jammer tells Apollo, "We did it! We got 'em all! They don't look so big now, do they?" He looks at the bodies of his comrades and remarks, "They look big enough." Venner asks if Laura's been shot. "I don't think so." He shows her bullet holes in her blazer. "The gods must be watching over you."

Billy and Dualla reunite in sickbay. "How do you feel?" "Better." "I thought you said..." "Forget what I said, and listen to what I'm saying. You listening?" She pulls him down and gives him a kiss. Tigh informs Apollo and Laura, "Doc Cottle's on his way. He'll be here any minute." She says to Apollo, "He's going to be all right. You know that." "Yeah, I know that." She asks Tigh, "I assume there's still a cell waiting for me." "That's right." Tigh tells Apollo, "I can't believe you sided with that woman against the Old Man. I wouldn't do that if you put a gun to my head. And you did. As far as I'm concerned, you're not fit to wear a uniform." "You're right about that part. I am not fit to wear the uniform. Maybe I never was. Then again, neither are you. This isn't my ship. And it sure as hell isn't yours. It's his. And when he wakes up, he'll decide what to do with the both of us." Apollo leaves and Tigh comments, "Thank the gods I didn't have kids."

Ron Moore's Commentary

7/15/2005 -- "Scattered" in its initial draft was just much too big to sustain one episode, so we essentially divided it into two and created another action storyline for part two, which is "Valley of Darkness," which as you'll see at the end of this show, the Cylons are on the ship. The Cylons have boarded Galactica, and that's our cliffhanger ending for episode one. And that becomes the primary action storyline of part two. But all the other tales that happen in part two apart from the Cylon boarding were actually all supposed to be in "Scattered", and there was just no way that the show could really support that. It was too much to deal with, so we split them into two shows. (source: Scattered podcast)

7/22/2005 -- We wanted to add a little bit more texture, a little bit more pathos, a little bit more of humanity into the show. And we loved this storyline so much we knew it could sustain a little bit more discussion of Helo and what he's going through, and Kara's reaction to it, and a little bit more about their friendship. And it's moody and it's interesting. It gives you just a little more bit insight into the struggle that he's going through, and that she's just starting to deal with herself... This season is the first time that Katee and Talmoh have worked together since the minsieries. It's the first time Talmoh has worked with anybody except Grace for a very long time. It's just kind of fun to see that relationship. It's interesting to know now that Kara and Helo go back aways, that they had a relationship, that they were friends, that there's a pre-existing relationship between these two pilots. (source: Valley of Darkness podcast)

7/22/2005 -- When [Tigh] says [the Cylons] are actually going here to aft damage control and they are going to auxilliary fire control, he says "I know where they're going." In the aired version of the show, you assume that Tigh's encountered these guys before. He fought in the first Cylon wars. This was a memory. It was more literal in the first script than in the cut... We did shoot a whole scene with Tigh and Adama that was set in the same period as the flashbacks that you saw in "Scattered," and it was a drinking scene between the two men... Tigh and Adama, on the night before Adama goes back to the fleet, are getting really drunk. And they're sitting there and trading stories.

And it turns out that Tigh was on a ship called the Brinnock, and the Brinnock was boarded by Cylons. They tried to decompress the ship and kill them all, and turn the guns of the Brinnock against the other ships in their escort fleet. It was his first taste of real ugly, hand to hand combat and saw dead people for the first time. And then it turned out that Adama had gone through something similar on the Galactica... In his backstory, I always felt that Galactica was the first ship that Adama was assigned to during the first Cylon war as a pilot. And that he went through a similar experience and Galactica lost a lot of men. A lot of good men died when the Cylons got on board. But it is essentially that flashback was what informed the audience how Tigh knows what their plan is. (source: Valley of Darkness podcast)

7/22/2005 -- This was a controversial sequence, this whole beat of Adama drowning the baby. I think there was a lot of hesitation and nervousness, and "Oh my God, can we show this?" and there was a lot of arguing. And David and I just kept fighting for it and kept saying "this is important." This is about a threat to the child that Baltar is investing in. You're basically setting up a marker that Adama in some way, shape or form, is the threat that Baltar must face. Adama is going to be a major obstacle, between Baltar and fulfilling his destiny, vis à vis the child. So, this is a simple, visual, clear and brutal way of dramatizing that event... We fought about this for quite a while, but ultimately made some compromises, changed some of the cutting pattern here, did a couple of jump cuts to get you through it, and not linger exactly on the shot of the baby actually being put in the water. We really did go for it. When Adama puts the child into the water, there were [originally] bubbles coming up. I mean it was like blurb-blurb-blurb-blurb down it goes, the whole thing. I don't really have a hankering for infanticide, certainly, but we did kill a baby in the miniseries, and here Adama's killing a baby. (source: Valley of Darkness podcast)

7/22/2005 -- Part of the myth of the Colonies' backstory is this notion that Kobol was a paradise, in the same way that Eden in the Judeo-Christian tradition was paradise, and that man left paradise and has been on a fall ever since. I think it was intriguing to go back to Kobol to find paradise, and to find out, far from Eden, some really nasty horrific things happened there. There was human sacrifice, there was barbarism, there was brutality. Man fled paradise. He was driven out by the wrath of God for the things that he did, which in some ways, is a basic retelling of Genesis... These guys did some really nasty untoward things, and then they had to leave. (source: Valley of Darkness podcast)

7/22/2005 -- This is my favorite scene of the season and it's one of my favorite scenes of the entire series. I love this whole bit of texture that we go to Kara Thrace's apartment. I love the way the two actors react to it. Katee and Talmoh actually went in there on their own and did a lot of this painting on the walls and canvases. And Katee was very involved in what Starbuck's apartment would be like. I like the fact that she painted, and that she had this weird, bohemian existence that is antithetical in a lot of ways to what it is to be a fighter pilot in the military and that there is this other aspect of her. We've heard some not so great things about her mother. We've implied them in season one episodes. But then her father is a musician and plays piano, and that she still has his cassette tapes or discs and listens to them. In fact, this leather jacket that she's going to pick up in a minute and put on is supposed to be her father's jacket. It's mentioned in the script, it's not really mentioned in the dialog, it's just a bit of background texture on the character and tells you something about her. There's a mood about this scene. This scene doesn't move the plot forward, except in a tiny way later when they get the car keys. The character aspect of it, what it says about Kara Thrace, I think is fascinating. And there's something great about the fact that at the end of this scene, all they do is sit there and rest and take a break. Because these guys have been on the run pretty much since the pilot. (source: Valley of Darkness podcast)

7/22/2005 -- There was also a significant story cut here. There was a whole bit of business here when Lee calls in to Tigh and tells him where he is and what he's doing, and Tigh says, "Where are you? What are you doing?" And he says, "We're down here, I've got these Marines with me," and Tigh mainly goes, "Let me talk to Private Kelso." And Lee says, "What? What are you talking about? I'm in command of this mission." And he says, "No you're not, I'm relieving you as of this moment. Give me Private Kelso." And Lee says, "What's going on? I'm the officer, you give the orders through me." And Tigh went off on him under the stress. "You have disappointed everybody in you're life. You can't be counted on. Now give me frakking private!" And Lee, shocked by that, told him, "This is my comand, you have orders, you give them through me," and Tigh had to acquiesce to that and finally give it to him. At the end sequence, when they're both next to Adama's bed, there was an exchange between Tigh and Lee, part of which is still there. Lee said, "Did my father really say those things about me?" because Lee assumes that Tigh is parroting something that he heard Adama say. But no, it's actually that the Old Man thought that "his sun rises and sets on you. And I don't know for the life of me why." ... It was one of those things that ultimately I was wrong about. When I saw it in the cut, I didn't like it either, felt it wasn't appropriate, and decided to cut it. (source: Valley of Darkness podcast)

7/22/2005 -- At some point we had to decide, do they have cars on Caprica? Well, it is a sister world to ours, but what's a car gonna look like? Is it just gonna be just a Ford or something? There was lots of discussion, but finally we said, "You know what? Whatever." She's got a car, let's give her something tough, and a car I like, so we went for a Humvee kind of vehicle. Because it just became too tedious and annoying to try and come up with the futuristic car ("It's a Caprica car, it's not a recognizable car".) Who cares. This feels like something Kara would drive. (source: Valley of Darkness podcast)

7/22/2005 -- I'm very happy on balance of all the reshoots that we did, that we added them into the show, that it does provide a little more humanity into it, and just get to spend more time with these characters I think is the biggest plus that came out of the effort to go back and really keep working on this particular episode. Overall, "Valley of Darkness" now feels like a full meal, it feels like a richer meal, it feels like we've really expanded the language of what was really happening in this particular episode... I'm very proud of "Valley of Darkness". A tremendous amount of time and effort went into this piece by a lot of people to make it all that it could be. In the end, I think it's a really good one. I think it's a worthy episode, and it doesn't suffer from the sophomore slump. I think it really does carry forward, and it feels like season two is really going places and doing things that season one could only hint at. And the characters all seem deeper and richer and the show just feels like it's really hitting on all cylinders. (source: Valley of Darkness podcast)

8/11/2005 -- Question: Did you think up "motherfrakker" or did Nikki Clyne? I have to know. Consider your answer wisely Mr. Moore, for it may doom your wild maned demigoguery to the vales of mediocrity. I think it was Nikki, though. It sounds like something thought up in a spur of the moment. Plus, Aaron's reaction to it seemed genuine.

Well, I certainly don't want my maned demigoguery to be doomed to the vales of mediocrity, but, alas, yes, I came up with "motherfrakker." This and every other variation of my favorite four letter word will continue to be provided for you and your children to memorize and quote at the dinner table as part of my on-going effort to destroy the underpinnings of western democracy as we know it. (Well, a guy's gotta have goals...)

Commentary

This is the poem written on Kara's wall:

Methodically
Smoking my
cigarette
with every breath
I breathe
out the day
With every delicious
sip
I drink away the night
stroking my hair to
the beat of his heart
watching a boy
turn into a
Man

Kara is driving a Humvee vehicle. It's licence plate is Delphi FB 42 E3.

Kate Vernon is listed in the guest cast, even though she doesn't appear in this episode.

According to Gaeta, the Cylon virus spawned itself in Galactica's subsystems before they broke the network. This is the reason for the intermittent power failures.

Tigh remembers the Cylon tactics from the first Cylon war. Their plans is to overide the decompression safeties and vent them into space, and then turn their guns against the other ships.

Baltar has a vision of Adama trying to kill the baby. According to Number Six, this will happen only if Baltar lets him.

Baltar sees many human skulls and is perplexed. "I thought Kobol was supposed to be a paradise or something. Some place where the gods live with the human in harmony." "For a time, perhaps. Then your true nature asserted itself. Your brutality, your barbarism." Number Six describes the Colonial scriptures as "fairy tales" and affirms that it's a coverup for human savagery. "All of this has happened before, Gaius. And all of it will happen again. Mankind's true nature will always assert itself."

"After they attacked, I never pined over any of my old crap. Never missed it... Everyone I know is fighting to get back what they had. And I'm fighting 'cause I don't know how to do anything else." This is what Kara said to Helo at her apartment.

"Talk to me, mother-frakker!" This is Cally with a previously unused form for the expression frak.

Venner attributes Laura's survival to divine prividence. "The gods must be watching over you."

"I can't believe you sided with that woman against the Old Man. I wouldn't do that if you put a gun to my head. And you did. As far as I'm concerned, you're not fit to wear a uniform." This is what Tigh thinks about Lee's actions in the season one finale. Lee replies that neither of them are fit to wear the uniform and that his father would decide what to do with the both of them.

"Thank the gods I didn't have kids." Tigh is grateful he never started a family.

"Throughout the series, Lee has come to see his Dad more honestly and come to appreciate his humanity and the similarities they share... They are two guys who love and respect each other without saying it. Then to see his Dad gunned down without having the opportunity for that puts him in an emotionally tortured place. His only priority is to see his Dad recover. That is the only thing on his mind and everything else falls to the side." -- Jamie Bamber (Apollo) in June 2005 (source: Dreamwatch)

"My character is constantly moving. Starbuck doesn't feel comfortable sitting still or allowing her brain to pause because then she has time to think, especially about the past, and she doesn't like to do that because that's where her pain is. So she'd always rather be physically and/or mentally challenged and looking ahead. However, in this scene we see her stop and not have anything to do. Starbuck sinks into that moment and takes advantage of it. As a result, we see a very different side of her. Her line at the end of the scene is quite telling and it's one I made up on the day of filming. She says, 'Everyone I know is fighting to get back what they had, and I'm fighting because it's all I know how to do.' It's kind of handing the scene to audiences on a silver platter, which is something I don't like to do with dialogue. However, this was such a painful moment for my character that I actually wanted her to say that out loud." -- Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck) on 12/21/2005 (source: Cult Times #124)

"That to me, personally, is not art; it's just a bunch of scribbles on the wall. But that would make sense for her. It is a very angry type of free crazy erratic art, I guess. What I liked more, which is something I chose to do, was the poetry. That made sense to me; that she wrote her feelings down in poetry... I wrote the poems too. I just said that I wanted to go in and spend some time in the apartment and use some paint and paint the poems on the wall, so I think I did like three of them on the wall." -- Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck) on 10/5/2006 (source: IGN TV)

"Season Two features the first piece of music written by someone other than me or Richard (or Stu Phillips' original BSG theme.) I performed a solo piano piece composed by Phillip Glass for episode 02." -- Bear McCreary (composer) on 7/27/2005 (source: SciFi Dimension)

"If you ever talk to any other composers, you are going to hear a term called 'temp love,' where they fall in love with the temp music. That happens sometimes. The funny thing is, in this case, the score worked so well with the [Socinus death] scene that it actually began to take on a life of its own, separate from Season 1. It worked so well with the music, I didn't even want to rescore it. The editors had clearly listened carefully to the piece and let the edit follow the dynamics in the score. All that works out to the composer's benefit." -- Bear McCreary (composer) on 8/3/2005 (source: SyFy Portal)