Battlestar Galactica

Episode #205 - "The Farm"

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

47,857 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

Anders and the resistance fighters are planning their next move. "The Cylons have a refuelling airstrip just on the other side of that ridge. There's a heavy raider, makes a regular refuelling stop every afternoon like clockwork... It's usually guarded by less than three of the mechanical varieties, and we've left it alone up until now." Helo asks, "What's the plan?" Kara replies, "Go through this gully. Approach the airstrip from the south side. Sprinkle our men through the tree line and wait for the Cylons to land the raider and hookup the refuelling hoses. Once they hook up the tylium hoses, we take out the guards and blow the refuelling station." Anders asks, "I thought you wanted the raider intact?" "They build 'em tough, believe me. Blowing the fuel will barely put a scratch in the hull, but it might give us some time to board the raider. Once I'm inside, I'll blow the brain and start working on trying to get it to..." She's interupted as the Cylons attack. She is shot and falls to the ground, and the resistance falls back into the woods.

On Galactica, Adama arrives in CIC and is greeted by a chorus of "Ah-dah-mah". "There are things we don't say often enough. Things like what we mean to one another. All of you mean a lot to me. I just want you to know that. Let's get back to work." To Tigh, he remarks, "I feel strange Like... closer to the ground." "You should check in with the doctor." Gaeta updates him on the stolen Raptor. "The fugitives docked at Cloud Nine last week. We effectively lost them at that point due to the large volume of inter-fleet traffic going to and from Cloue Nine." Tigh adds, "Right now they could be holed up anywhere in the fleet." "I want them found. She was dangerous enough as a symbol of resistance, but now with Lee helping ... I want to search every ship in the fleet. Quarantine procedures. If it's clean we keep it quarantined away from the rest of the flet. She can hide, but she can't run."

Lee, Laura and Elosha are freezing in a meat locker with Tom Zarek. He tells Laura, "I have communicated your latest message to the Quorum of Twelve. They have decided the question of openly supporting you needs more... deliberation." "I need to make an appeal to the people." "Make a strong enough argument, and the Astral Queen will be the first ship in line." Lee comments, "Like they do anytning but roll over and take orders from you." "One more bit of news I should convey. Zeus has returned to Olympus. Adama is back in command. Word just came in over the wireless." Laura says, "He's a tough old bird." "What we really need is something heartfelt. Something human and personal that will galvanize the people. Like a son denouncing his father." A bit later, Lee begins tape recording his message. "When Commander Adama, my father, decided to stage a major military coup against the President, I could no longer support him or my actions." He stops halfway through the recording. "I can't do this. Sorry everyone. I thought I could but I can't." Laura asks, "How does this thing work?"

Kara wakes up alone in a hospital room on Caprica, and she sees a doctor. "You're in an aid hospital. They brought you in yesterday morning. You got shot in the abdomen." He asks for her name and she answers, "Kara Thrace." "You were in surgery for about two hours. I removed the bullet. I didn't think you were going to make it for a while." She's in a lot of pain as he inspects her drip. "Take it easy. I know that hurts." "Who brought me in?" "A big guy called Anders. Used to be a pro pyramid player, if you can believe that." "Yeah, I know him. Where is he?" "He died... on the table. I thought he was only slightly wounded. Turns out that a piece of shrapnel had nicked his aorta. Massive internal bleeding. I'm sorry. We did everything we could do." Kara starts to cry.

Simon comes back the next morning and tells her, "I see you are sucking down fluids at a rapid pace. That's good." "Are you a Cylon?" "What do you think?" "I think you didn't answer the question." "I am most definitely not a Cylon. Of course I don't know what you would expect me to say. If I was a Cylon I certainly wouldn't admit it." "Can I leave?" "There's the door." She tries to get up but it's too painful. "Frakkin' doctors." "So I am a doctor. Not a Cylon." "The jury's still out. I would expect the Cylons to have better digs than this, though. Where is this rat trap?" "We're about twenty kliks north of Delphi. Used to be a mental institution. It's not much, but it's one fo the few places the Cylons haven't found yet." "So, what, I'm supposed to believe there really is a resistance out there?" "Time for your pain meds." She passes out.

Adama is talking with Tyrol in his quarters, and Tyrol is speaking on behalf of Cally. "She was distraught, sir. The experience in Kobol. It's shattering for all of us. I don't believe she was in her right mind when she shot Boomer." "Did you love her, Chief?" "I thought I did." "When you think you love somebody, you love them. That's what love is, thoughts. She was a Cylon. A machine. Is that what Boomer was? A machine? A thing." "That's what she turned out to be." "She was more than that to us. She was more than that to me. She was a vital, living person... aboard my ship for almost two years. She couldn't have been just a machine. Could you love a machine?" "No, sir. I guess I couldn't have." "Cally discharged a firearm without permission, endagering the life of her fellow shipmates. Thirty days in the brig. Dismissed." "Thank you, sir." "You'll see her again, Chief." "Excuse me?" "There are many copies. You'll see her again."

In the hospital room on Caprica, Kara asks Simon some questions. "How many patients do you have here? I just think it's odd that I've been here for two days and I haven't sen anybody else. Just you." "We have 223 patients at the moment. Two doctors and five teachers masquerading as nurses." "I know a teacher masquerading as President." "What's that?" "It's awfully quiet. No screams, no moans." He tells her most of the patients are succombing to acute radiation poisoning and then describes its effects. "The biggest killer in this place is infection. That's why we have you under quarantine. We don't know what you brought in with you yet. Your test result will be back this afternoon."

He then adds, "I think there may be a cyst on one of your ovaries." "Is it serious?" "Nah, it should be fine. We'll keep an eye on it. Gotta keep that reproductive system in great shape. It's your most valuable asset these days... Finding healthy child-bearing women your age is a top priority for the resistance... Do you realize you're one of the handful of owmen left on the planet actually capable of having children?" "Well, I don't want a child. So just drop it, OK?" He reminds her the human race is on the verge of extinction. "A lot of women with your history forego child bearing of their own." He points out that there were childhood fractures in each of her fingers in the exact same place between the first and second knuckles. "Children of abusive parents often fear passing along that abuse to their own children." "Get out!"

Adama is hearing Laura's broadcast in CIC. "It's religious crap!" Laura's message stated, "It seems I have been chosen to help lead you to the promised land of Earth. I will not question that choice. I'll simply try to play my part of the plan. Therefore, at the appointed hour, I will give the signal to the fleet. All those wishing to honor the gods and walk the paths of destiny will follow me back to Kobol. It is there we will meet the gods' servant with the Arrow of Apollo." Adama slams the clipboard with her message against a console, breaking it in half. Tigh wants to board the Astral Queen but Adama is willing to let them go. "No one's gonna follow her. No one's gonna believe this crap. No one's this stupid." He describes a return to Kobol as a suicide run. On the Astral Queen, Elosha encourages Laura to give the passengers her blessing and she reluctantly does so. "Laura, this is your path. The one that the gods picked for youl The one you picked for yourself." The Astral Queen sends up a signal flare and jumps. Adama comments, "Now see how many follow." Gaeta reports that twenty-four ships have jumped, and Tigh responds, "That's almost a third of the fleet." Later, Adama is in the morgue and pulls out Sharon's corpse. He is crying over her and asks, "Why?"

Anders and his team are discussing what happened to Kara, when Sharon arrives. "I know where Starbuck is." Helo asks, "Sharon? Where have you been?" "Tracking you." Anders asks who she is, and Hello responds, "She's with us." "You're the father of my child, Helo. I'm not gonna lose you." In the hospital, Kara wakes up and looks at the new scar on her abdomen. "What's this new scar?" "They had to go back in last night while you were asleep. Some internal bleeding to tie you up. Nothing to worry about. Everything's gonna be fine. Just about done with you, Starbuck... I almost said we'll be sending you back home. I guess we'll be sending you back to fight." He gets ready to put her back to sleep. Kara grabs the IV to prevent the fluid from reaching her, and pretends to fall asleep. Simon leaves and she gets out of bed and into the hallway, where she sees Simon talking with Number Six. "Pending lab results on the sample ovaries, complete removal will proceed tomorrow. If lab tests are positive, then subject will be moved to processing facility for final dispositiuon." "Is that regret I hear in your voice, Simon?" "If it is, it certainly isn't any of your concern." She goes back to her room and breaks down into tears. "Lords of Kobol, please help me."

Later, Simon wishes her a good morning. She tells him, "You know, something actually has been bothering me lately... I never told you my call sign was Starbuck." She stabs him in the jugular with a piece of a broken mirror. "You can't kill me..." "Just die!" She grabs her things and Simon's keys and sneaks into another rooom, where she finds several women connected to machines, including one of Anders' teammates. "Sue-Shaun, it's me Kara. Hold on, OK? I'm gonna get you out of here." "No. No time. Cut the power." "It'll kill you." "Can't live like this. The baby machines. Please. Please." She whispers a prayer in her ear and starts smashing the equipment. In the hallway, she hits Number Six over the head with a fire extinguisher. She is outside the hospital when another copy of Simon appears. "Hello, Starbuck." At this point, the resistance has showed up, and Kara begins running in their direction. Centurions come upon the scene and are blasted by a heavy raider being piloted by Sharon, which rescues them.

Back at camp, Sharon tells them what's been going on. "They were conducting research into human/Cylon breeding programs." Helo adds, "They call them farms. Your gunshot wound looks fine." "So farms, that's great. What were they gonna do? Knock me up with some Cylon kid?" "They were gonna try to. We haven't been successful so far." Anders adds, "Supposedly, they can't reproduce. You know, biologically. So they have been trying every which way to produce offspring." "Why?" "Procreation, it's one of God's commandments, be fruitful. We can't fulfil it if we tried, so we decided to..." "To rape human women?" "No, if you agree to bear children, it'd be voluntary, mabye even set you up with someone you like." "Like you two kids?" "We're different." "What the frak is that supposed to mean?" Helo explains, "They have this theory that the maybe the one thing they were missing was love. So Sharon and I... we were set up to..." "To fall in love? They didn't ask Sue-Shaun if she wanted to fall in love, right? They put a tube in her! And they hooked her into a machine!" "They know who you are, Kara. You're special. Leoben told you that. You have a destiny."

Helo asks about her second scar. "I don't know. I don't think I wanna know now." Anders asks how many women are in the farms. "Hundreds. Maybe thousands. I don't know. I haven't access to that data." Kara tells them, "Here's what we do. Take the heavy raider, cram it full of ground troops. Find out where the next farm is. Liberate it. And the next and the next and the next." Anders stops her train of thought. "No, that's not why you came to Caprica." He goes over to some oil barrels and dips his hand into a water hole and picks up a container holding the Arrow of Apollo, and hands the arrow to her. "Go find Earth." "What about you? You said you needed professional advice." "We'll muddle through. We've managed so far." "They'll kill you. You'll die here. You know that." "A lot of people died here. I tell you this. If I'm gonna die here, I'm gonna take out every last one of those frakkin' farms before I do." "Well, I'm not gonna leave you here." "You said you were gonna come back, remember? I'm gonna hold you to it." "I'm coming back. I said it, I meant it." She hands him one of her dogtags." Sharon tells them, "Let's go home." They board the heavy raider and take off.

Ron Moore's Commentary

8/12/2005 -- This episode in all honesty was probably the most controversial 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 is how dark is too dark? How much is too much? Will this episode and episodes like it scare the audience away? Actually, interestingly enough, the discussion became, will it scare the female audience away? Our research shows that more men than women watch the show, which is to be expected. It's typical in the scifi genre, and the question is, how do you get more female viewers? The question that I put to you, and you can answer it in a way that you see fit, is this show a good show for women? Here is a female character, heroine, who we put the screws to all through the episode. It deals with a lot of fertility issues, reproductive issues, some of which may be potentially uncomfortable or distasteful. And 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 I quite strongly believe in, frankly. (source: The Farm podcast)

8/12/2005 -- Viewers 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 we went with. It's not a mistake. It's part of the surrealness of what's going on. It's Kara's mind becoming unmoored from its moorings as she goes under. (source: The Farm podcast)

8/12/2005 -- This man was almost killed. He was shot point blank in the chest [with] two bullets, lay in sickbay for a long time in literally a near-death experience. And that he shouldn't just come back from that exactly the way he was before. And what we start 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. Essentially his emotions tend to burst forth without his wanting them to. You can see that right here, just that little beat of him telling everyone how much they mean to him. Isn't that something that the typical Adama would have done? He's much more stoic, keeps things closer to the vest. I love this little beat here where he says he feels closer to the ground somehow. And this will continue. You will see this aspect of Adama for the rest of the season. (source: The Farm podcast)

8/12/2005 -- This was one of the most controversial scenes, which resulted in endless discussions. "Is this just too distasteful?" Is it just too awful to suggest that a woman is getting some kind of pelvic exam. Will it just drive women away? And my attitude was, "Oh come on, are you kidding?" It's nothing you don't see on ER or 50 other hospital shows. There's a concept pushed back from us on the show that 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 going to turn off the show. I think there are people offended by individual scenes, people may be put off by something you say, but do they really just grab the remote and change the channel in a pique of outrage over something? I don't really think so. A lot of those fears are overblown. But that's just me, what do I know? (source: The Farm podcast)

8/12/2005 -- David Eick really 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 them in ways that you don't want them to. And that Simon got in there and figured out that all of her fingers had been broken, and essentially, we believe it's by her mother, because that's who we've set up. 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. Well, if you're going to make Starbuck a rogue, and you're going to make her the hotshot pilot and does things her own way, and is the daredevil -- who is that person and why is she like that? It's a damaged person, it's a person who's really screwed up, and here's one of the reasons she's screwed up. (source: The Farm podcast)

8/12/2005 -- 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 do hold some very literal truths in them, and she embraces that role publically and calls people to her banner in the name of their faith. And then it has a consequence, people start looking at her differently, they ask for blessings, they look at her as a prophet, a spokeswoman for the gods, and that eventually that's going to come back and bite Laura on the ass. And I think that's interesting, I think think it's what began as something, a tactic of the moment, something to get her through a crisis, then it carries larger and more profound implications -- morally, spiritually, ethically -- down the line. I think that's really interesting stuff. (source: The Farm podcast)

8/12/2005 -- There was a bit of business after they agree to let Sharon help them, where we were going to cut in cold, and you'd be on the tarmac on an airbase someplace, and the camera would pull back on the tarmac to find dead Cylons, centurions and humanoid Cylons, all over just 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. (source: The Farm podcast)

8/12/2005 -- This whole bit of business here with the Cylon's 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 I started to really seriously think, "OK, what's going on down there?" ... Why are the Cylons putting them together, what's the game that's going on, what are they trying to get out of him? It couldn't be any use for military information, he doesn't know where Galactica is or anything like that, he's just a pilot. What are they doing? This notion came out of long discussions about who the Cylons really are, what are the things 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 I came to was, they can't biologically reproduce. They cannot have children, and they have tried. But they are unable to fulfil 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 consciousness and 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, 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 we can presume that they are using human women and other facilities they are using human men, and then a variety of in vitro programs are being tested in test tubes, and all kinds of different projects.

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, is because they lacked God's love, and that God is love, and that without love, perhaps they can never truly be people. So they put Helo and Sharon as a way to try and 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 there was an attraction there. So they put Helo in a situation where he's made to be protective of her, to guard her, to care for her. She saves him, and they are on the road together for a while, and they're bonding. And his true feelings for her come out and she responds. And Helo does fall for her, and the amazing thing is that Sharon fell in love with Helo, and that she turned on her own people out of love, and that was a wild card that they hadn't really anticipated. That love, true love, would cut both ways. And so Helo and Sharon then went on their own and 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 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 Galactica universe. (source: The Farm podcast)

8/12/2005 -- And Kara is special, Kara has a destiny. She has something that Leoben alluded to, and that everyone mentions every once in a while, that Kara is not just another person. There is something that's going to happen to her. And what did they do to Kara? They took some of her ovaries. And what are they going to do with those? Are they going to be just rolling 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 on this whole thing. (source: The Farm podcast)

8/12/2005 -- 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 have been 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 an important part of her character. And now it's an important part of the show. (source: The Farm podcast)

9/7/2005 -- Adama was shot in the last episode of the [first] season and he [wasn't] back for a few episodes this year. And even when he is, he's a changed man. It has repercussions. He took a very heavy hit and it was touch and go. It changes who the man is. Not in the philosophical way, but in how he experiences life and how he will go through it. It shook him. (source: Now Playing)

10/14/2005 -- Question: Did the Cylons really just get lucky when they attacked or was it an ambush? How did Dr. Simon know Anders' name?

It was just an ambush, but the idea was that they had been tracking and planning to come down hard on Anders' resistance cell for a while. They knew who Anders was, knew that he was a resistance leader in the area, and knew enough about his relationship with Starbuck to realize they were important to one another. Internally, we talked about the idea that Anders' cell might've been infiltrated by a Cylon agent, who provided this information, but it never made it into the script.

Commentary

Kara and Anders are now involved with each other.

"She was more than that to us. She was more than that to me. She was a vital, living person... aboard my ship for almost two years. She couldn't have been just a machine. Could you love a machine?" These are Adama's thoughts to Tyrol about Sharon. Also, "You'll see her again, Chief. There are many copies, you'll see her again." Later, he pulls out Sharon's corpse in the morgue and asks "Why?"

Cally is sent to the brig for thirty days for discharging a firearm without permission and endangering the life of her fellow shipmates.

"Zeus has returned to Olympus." This is Zarek describing Commander Adama's return to command.

Zarek pushes Lee to denounce his father, but Lee couldn't do it. Instead, Laura plays the religious card, which Commander Adama dismisses as "religious crap."

"All those wishing to honor the gods and walk the paths of destiny will follow me back to Kobol. It is there we will meet the gods' servant with the Arrow of Apollo." Elosha encourages her to play the role of prophet by blessing people on Colonial One, and later the Astral Queen. "Laura, this is your path. The one that the gods picked for youl The one you picked for yourself." A third of the fleet (twenty-four ships) follow Laura to Kobol.

The injured Kara is recuperating in a Cylon breeding farm twenty kilometers north of Delphi.

"I know a teacher masquerading as President." This is what Kara thinks of Laura.

Simon brings up the importance of child-bearing to the resistance, and that the human face is on the verge of extinction. "A lot of women with your history forego child bearing of their own... Children of abusive parents often fear passing along that abuse to their own children." Simon knows that Kara is a child-abuse survivor, and cites childhood fractures between her knuckles. She undergoes an operation when the Cylons remove one of ther ovaries.

Kara kills Simon when he betrays himself by calling her Starbuck. "I never told you my call sign was Starbuck." At her request, she cuts the power to one of the breeding machines connected to Sue-Shaun (a Caprica Buccaneer). She is rescued by Sharon (on Caprica) and the resistance who have hijacked a Cylon heavy raider.

"Procreation, it's one of God's commandments, be fruitful." Sharon (on Caprica) explains the reasons behind the Cylon breeding farms. Helo explains, "They have this theory that the maybe the one thing they were missing was love." He and Sharon were set up to fall in love, so that they could succeed where the breeding program had failed.

"They know who you are, Kara. You're special. Leoben told you that. You have a destiny." This is Sharon to Kara on the special role she is going to play.

Kara wants to use the heavy raider to destroy the breeding farms but Anders stops her, reminding her she came to Caprica to retreive the arrow and "go find Earth." She gives him one of her dogtags as a reminder of her promise to come back for him.

"Anders is everything that Starbuck has ever wanted in a man and she falls in love with him in a single day. That just doesn't happen with her. Usually she has sex with a guy and then throws him away, but this is someone who doesn't allow her to get away with much. Anders challenges her; he doesn't put up with her crap and meets her eye-to-eye. He has strength and dignity as well as a duty to fight the Cylons that attracts my character to him. Of course, she then has to leave him behind. Once again, Starbuck loses someone she loves. There are so many emotional places that she goes while on Caprica, and it helps explain a lot to the viewers about not only why she's screwed up but also why Starbuck continues to be screwed up." -- Katee Sackhoff on 12/21/2005 (source: Cult Times #124)

"[Kara's] very confused about her feelings toward Lee. In her heart of hearts she's probably in love with him. But that love is wrapped up with her guilt about Zak and now conflicted feelings about Lee's father. And Starbuck is intimacy phobic. She has many lovers, but never lets anyone get too close to her. So if she and Helo remain on Caprica for some time, anything could happen." -- David Weddle (writer) on 4/1/2005 (source: Chicago Tribune)