Have you ever read the Bible?

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

A couple of weeks ago, I was checking out ddt73’ LJ and that was when I heard of BSG’s Bible for  the first time.  He discussed it on his journal back in October and posted the most relevant information about Lee and Kara as well as a link to the whole thing.   So, yes, I’m shamelessly plagiarizing him and proposing we discuss it a little bit.

It's interesting to notice what changed and what didn't.I’ve selected some points that caught my attention. How do you feel about how the characters were envisioned? How much did things change? How do you feel about the changes - should they have stuck to the original plan or did they make the right choice?

 

1) William Adama

Adama believes in the military, believes it's a noble profession. But, like his father, he's also a fierce advocate for the liberties and freedoms on which the Colonies were founded. This duality in his personality have often put him at odds with, the military establishment and has definitely held him back and prevented him from making Admiral.

2) Lee Adama

He applied to, and was accepted to test pilot school, the highest honor for any pilot and a sure sign of his rise to the top. He was at test pilot school when the orders came in to report aboard Galactica.

Lee Adama has his father's strength of character and a virtually inviolable code of ethics. He can be stubborn and difficult, often drives his pilots too hard and himself even harder. He rarely gives anyone a break and never gives himself one. He's a young man with a lot of anger, a lot of resentments and a lot of frustrations who knows not what to do with them.  But he's also a fair and decent human being whose deeply felt sense of right and wrong have kept him afloat when so many around him have sunk. He's the kind of man few would call friend, but many would follow into the jaws of hell. He is his father's son.

3) Kara Thrace

Kara hated taking orders. Hated military protocol. Hated the rules and regulations that were part and parcel of the military life. Her record at the Academy and then at flight school was littered with demerits, reprimands, and negative evaluations by her superiors. She drank too much, gambled too much, broke curfew almost daily, somehow always managed to be involved in any bar fight at the local watering holes and had a reputation for leaving a string of men with broken hearts and broken backs after sexual encounters that were more akin to a game of tackle Pyramid than lovemaking. Simply put, she was a disaster as a military officer. But no one could argue with her flying.

Kara thinks with her nerve endings. She not only wears her heart on her sleeve, she'll throw it at you if you're not pay ing attention. A rule-breaker by nature and a hell-raiser by preference, she nevertheless not only respects, but reveres the traditions and customs of the military service.

4) Kara , Zac and Lee

Lee made time to come visit [Zac] and it was then that he met Kara Thrace for the first time. She was the polar opposite of Zak - where he was quiet, reserved, almost painfully sensitive, she was brash, loud, and had a thick hide. Lee liked her immediately. Maybe liked her too much. And he was pretty sure that she felt the same, but never seriously considered anything further. Lee wished them well and left to rejoin his squadron.

It was there [at the Academy]that Kara met Zak Adama and fell in love for the first time in her life. There'd never been a lack of men in her life, but she'd never seriously considered the possibility of a long-term relationship. Zak was different. Something about him touched and moved Kara, made her want to break all the rules of the heart she'd lived by all her life. When she met Zac’s  brother,  she briefly thought she'd made a profound  mistake. While Zak touched her maternal instincts, made her want to protect and nurture the shy, young pilot, his brother touched her in a deeper and more womanly way. Lee Adama's entire carriage and attitude was a challenge to Kara Thrace, and Kara Thrace had never walked away from a challenge. But then the weekend passed, and Lee left to rejoin his squadron, and Kara firmly put aside the feelings as the momentary wandering of a rogue's heart.

5) Laura, Adama and Lee

Adama's instincts and feelings about civil liberties (which he inherited from his father) will put him at odds with Laura's increasingly tough stance and we will realize that it is Adama who is the idealist at heart. But it is the relationship with his son, Lee, that convinces Adama to go along with Laura's harsher measures. Lee's position as Laura's military advisor and Adama's chief pilot puts him in an ideal situation to be liason between the two and Lee's own instincts tend to agree with Laura at every turn. As Adama finds himself trying to reach out to the son he's been estranged from for so long he'll find himself listening to Lee's opinion and advice and then finally agreeing to do things that he never would have done otherwise.

6) Kara and Lee

Their friendship and attraction for one another will quickly find them waking up together after a stressful night that turned into something more. Each will be wracked with guilt and mixed feelings and they will  avoid talking or dealing with what happened, and each in turn will be driven toward other, more unexpected, people (Lee/Laura and Kara/Baltar).

 

Comments

[ddt73.livejournal.com]

Yes you did SHAMELESSLY plagarize me! Then again I found the bible somewhere, so the beat goes on I guess. :P

Having read this after seeing this the whole series from start to beginning, I think the Quad of Doom in season three was the realization of #6. They slept together in UB and the next day marry other people. It's like number 6 taken to another level. The similarities are unmistakable.

Back in season one seeds were planted for a Lee & Laura and Kara & Baltar ships. On one hand I would have found these ships odd for different reasons, at least there was no chance they would have lasted. No chance Lee and Kara would have married either of them.

My beef with the show looking back is the death of Kara. I listened to the podcast and it looked exactly like it sounded. An idea that RDM came up with on the fly and made it happen. He had no idea what it really meant, and the show suffered cause of it. You can't kill a major character and bring them back like they did without having planned it out majorly in advance. You need a plan from beginning to end what it means and how to handle it.

Instead RDM never figured out what it really meant. I think this is why everything that happened from Maelstrom to Crossroads 2 were ignored where it concerned Kara and Lee. We never saw the scene where Kara finds out Dee left Lee, or he defended Baltar, or that he left the service. How about where's Kara mind was BEFORE she went into the mandalla? The point of going into the mandalla was to face death, instead she acts on her return like she knew she was going to Earth. How about the fact she tells Lee not to freak out in Crossroads 2, but yet she thought she was only gone a short period of time. How about the fact the fleet is far from where it was when she returned?

Any way my point? I think when RDM and co sat down to write season four, he was stomped on how to handle all of the above, so he put off dealing with these issues, and in the end gave up trying to make it make sense, and just obsecured the issue.

I'm not against a show changing course, but if you do , you better make sure it fits into the grand design. Or you wind up with what we got in season four.

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more. The one thing I really can't come to terms with is Kara's death. That's when the show lost its direction. I hate that they killed her and , even though , I love having her back, I hated the way they did that. I also hated the poof, but it wouldn't have happened if they hadn't killed her in the first place. And it always disappointed me that they had decided to go in that direction for shock value rather than because of the plot. And it clearly showed in the way they didn't really know how to deal with the mess they created.
But now, after reading their so-called bible, I'm even more disappointed because one of the things they were so adamant about was the fact their show was going to be so different from other sci-fi movies because it was supposed to be a drama about regular people dealing with the end of their world. In their words , there would be no "parallel universes, time-travel, mind-control, evil twins, God-like powers and all the other cliches of the genre. Our show is first and foremost a drama. It is about people. Real people that the audience can identify with and become engaged in. (...)Our characters are not super-heroes. They are not an elite. They are everyday people caught up in a enormous cataclysm and trying to survive it as best they can." And then they decide that one of the main characters is not a regular person anymore, she is an angel or whatever. She came back from the dead. She might as well have had super-powers.

[ddt73.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more. Total mind meld here lol.

This is EXACTLY my problem with what they did with the show. There's no other words to say, you nailed my thoughts perfectly. It's almost kind of scary!

[ninety6tears.livejournal.com]

It's weird, I feel like Lee sounds very self-righteous and unlikeable on the page, but I can't say that Lee isn't really like his character description. It's like Jamie always brought something to performing him that made him seem kind of innocently visceral, like he could never help doing whatever he thought was right even if he had his unease about how it would be perceived. Lee could have easily come across as this really intolerant ball-buster, and he is a really stubborn character, but he has some soft edges.

I'm still confused about whether we're supposed to assume that Kara and Lee only met once or twice prior to the events of the miniseries. From how they act with each other at the beginning I find it impossible to imagine they weren't semi-good friends at some point while she was with Zak.

[ddt73.livejournal.com]

I think you're right about it seeming like they met one or twice (in the series bible). However by time it got to series, it's obvious their back story was enhanced. In the Mini Series script, their reunion on the flight deck was more like fellow viper jocks reuniting and less sexually charged then it was played, this alone tells me they wanted to add more to the back story. Too bad we didn't get the whole back story.

[ninety6tears.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the more I think about it there are ways they know each other that just wouldn't make sense. From Lee's "This looks familiar," the picture in Kara's locker, etc. I mean, there's good reason for all the academy!fic we assumed might be canon earlier on.

[ddt73.livejournal.com]

Exactly, we are missing the part of their relationship from what we saw in Daybreak till after Zak's death when they went their separate ways till the decommissioning.

It's funny the first thing we ever hear them say to each other is a dangling plot thread.

Anyway you slice it they had a friendship for at least a little while before the miniseries.

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

It is interesting to see the original ideas.

I think with Bill they actually did stay pretty close to their original conception. He is much more of an idealist than Laura. As it turned out they didn't use Lee as a middleman between them once Laura started getting more ruthless - that was exactly the point in the series where the Lee-Laura relationship was dropped and the Adama/Roslin relationship took off. Bill started to fall in love with Laura and respond to her decisions far more personally and directly, doing things he never thought he'd do along the way. I'd say it was the Pegasus arc that initiated these changes.

Personally, I'm delighted that they changed their plans rather than pursuing a Laura/Lee romance and a progressively more ruthless Lee. If they had paired him up with Laura ideologically, I'm pretty sure I would have come to disagree with him as profoundly as I disagreed with her, and I think he would not have remained a favorite character for me. As it was, it was Bill who fell in love with her and who began to accept her harsher decisions (torture, genocide, assassination), though he almost always felt deeply troubled by them and often either reversed them himself or was grateful when someone else took the decision out of his hands. He called off the Cain assassination (in part because of the plea Lee made for him to think about what he was doing, in part because it was Kara and Lee he was sending in there to pull the trigger). He talked Laura into giving up her plan of stealing the election. He raised objections to the idea of using biological weapons against the Cylons and covered up Helo's crime when he sabotaged that genocidal plan. I can't remember whether he gave his consent to the plan to kidnap the Agathon's baby (I feel like he did?), but I know he seemed pretty disgusted to find out what had happened to Hera later on.

Then again, he did personally participate in Baltar's torture, he threatened to shoot Cally in the head in order to break a labor strike, and he suggested that Baltar didn't deserve a trial and should be shot instead (though of course in the end he voted to acquit Baltar because of Lee's arguments, and he also came to a reasonable settlement in the labor strike by the end). In short, I think they pursued their vision of his character arc and Laura's, but by taking Lee out of the middleman position they allowed him to remain a voice of opposition to both Bill and Laura when the situation seemed to call for it. I'm very grateful for that.

I'm also very glad they didn't pursue Kara/Baltar. I'll take Kara/Sam over that any day.

I vastly prefer this version of the Zak/Kara/Lee interactions pre-mini and I wish very much they had left it at that. Although I still think it's odd that they envisioned Kara and Lee as having only known each other for one weekend. The actors just were not playing it that way in the miniseries, and some of their lines ("same old Lee," "this feels familiar") implied a more long-standing relationship, it seems to me. *shrugs*

I think Kara does wear her heart on her sleeve. I *don't* think Lee frequently pushes his pilots too hard. I'm willing to be proven wrong on this, but I don't remember any scenes of him being harsh with his pilots or over-demanding. This cuts both ways, though, in that I also can't quite see his pilots following him into the jaws of hell because of his personal charisma. Kara, yes. Bill, yes. But Lee just doesn't seem to inspire that kind of visceral loyalty. I guess maybe in "Valley of Darkness" we saw Kat and Jammer follow him through some pretty tough situations, but I love the nervousness and humanity he shows in those scenes, very different from the man described above.

[skieswideopen]

Personally, I'm delighted that they changed their plans rather than pursuing a Laura/Lee romance and a progressively more ruthless Lee. If they had paired him up with Laura ideologically, I'm pretty sure I would have come to disagree with him as profoundly as I disagreed with her, and I think he would not have remained a favorite character for me.

Yes, this. I loved the Lee & Laura friendship in season one, but I"m so glad they didn't go this way. I like do-the-right-thing Lee.

[ddt73.livejournal.com]

I would have taken Baltar and Kara over Kara and Sam. I just hated the Kara and Sam ship. They took pyramid boy and chained him to Kara. At least if they had put Baltar and Kara together, it never would have lasted.

I think the description of Lee above is kind of accurate, just softened a bit. Also I think you are wrong about the loyalty he inspires, just look at Six of One. I don't think he would have been as good of a CAG as he was if his pilots weren't fiercely loyal to him.

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Hee! Well, yes, if the goal is to put Kara in a crummy relationship which will implode so she can get out of it sooner, then Baltar is a pretty good bet. I just can't see Kara loving him in any sense whatsoever. Sam at least was a decent person.

And I'm willing (happy!) to think that Lee inspired great personal loyalty in his pilots. They certainly always showed him respect, as in the salute in Six of One as you mentioned. I just feel like on screen we generally didn't see those moments where people (other than Kara) did the impossible out of personal loyalty to him. What was his relationship with Kat? Hot Dog? Racetrack? Any subordinate pilot? I may be wrong, I just don't feel like the show spent much time on that, or on the "ball-busting" aspect of his leadership described in the sketch above.

But I don't want to argue the point too much - it's probably just a question of emphasis and softening some of their initial character ideas, as you say. And certainly Lee's crew on the Pegasus followed him into a desperate battle that wound up risking their lives and destroying their ship. We just didn't really know any of them, but still, they did follow him.

[reginaspina.livejournal.com]

Lee's crew on the Pegasus followed him into a desperate battle that wound up risking their lives and destroying their ship. We just didn't really know any of them, but still, they did follow him.

Also, when Lee's imprisoned/on parole during the Tigh's martial law phase of the show (before he escapes with Laura) his pilots seem awfully rowdy about wanting to play poker with him, bringing the game to the brig, etc., which suggests to me that he was a leader they both trusted and liked.

I also think of the way he breaks up the fight between Kat and Kara in "Scar" as evidence of his personal charisma. Sure he's soft-spoken and can be gentle, but he can also settle these two volatile pilots with a shout. (That's one of Lee's alpha-dog moments that I really love.)

I think it's really easy to fall into the trap of thinking that Kara was 100% correct in "33" when she yelled at Lee about saying "be careful out there" and I don't think she is. Lee has a different leadership style from Tigh, say, but it doesn't make him any less of a leader.

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Very good points. You're right. I think his leadership style turned out to be different from the one initially described, but his leadership itself was shown to be effective and there were some scenes where we saw the pilots responding to him as a charismatic person, so I was mistaken in what I said earlier about that. I think you pointed out some of the strongest examples, especially during Season 2. He was able to be "alpha" when he needed to be, as you say, but often in a quiet and understated way ("must have been lively"), and in preparing for battle he could exhibit self-deprecation (Valley of Darkness) or compassion ("Starbuck, are you OK?") that didn't make it seem like he was someone who regularly pushed his pilots too hard. I'm very glad they went in this direction with Lee's leadership qualities.

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

I remember a scene where he is briefing the pilots and talking about numbers and how number one is the only number they needed to remember because they only needed one mistake to get people killed and that everybody would have to practice till there were no more mistakes. Adama heard him and said something about him pushing them too hard or something. But despite that, I agree with you that he didn't seem like a particularly pushy guy. Or at least he didn't sound like that. But then again, we didn't really see many scenes like that. I think he was probably very demanding, though. In the sense that he is by the book, he is one of the best, he does his best and he expects people to give their best, as well. In Valley of Darkness, the pilots are laughing and joking about the battle and he says something like "What are you laughing about? We failed. We let one in." And it turned out that they had been boarded because of that. But when it came to fight the cylons aboard, despite his own fear, which he didn't really try to hide, he went towards the shots. And he led the men there. So I think, the pilots would follow him because he was good (and that inspired confidence), he was demanding but fair and supportive, and he led by example. I think those are great qualities in a leader. More important than just barking orders or being unnecessarily harsh or mean.

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Yes. There's also the "cut the schoolyard crap and do your frakkin' jobs" dressing-down he gives the Pegasus pilots in Captain's Hand. That's the harshest I ever saw him get, but I felt like he still managed to keep his demeanor professional. Though certainly he was in the middle of a big fight with Kara at the time.

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

There is also the fact he was able to count on several people's help when he plotted to get Roslin out of the brig. And I totally agree about the "Be careful out there" moment. I always loved him for that. And never really understood why so many people saw that line as a sign of his difficulty in adapting to the position of CAG instead of his personal style. I think he got the respect of the pilots and the crew very quickly mostly because he was fair. And set the example.

[ddt73.livejournal.com]

I don't think he's a ball buster. This aspect of his character has been greatly softened I think. Only time he was like this at all is when he was pissed off at Starbuck at times.

I think he's tough as he had to be as CAG. Leadership in the military you have to be tough, only question is how tough?

I remember when he was out on "parole" after he got arrested for pointing the gun at Tigh's head. His pilots wanted to know when he would be back again. It's small events but it's clear they are loyal to him, more to him then Tigh that's for sure lol.

Problem with this show is it spent little time showing the relationships among the pilots. It's funny they have a number of episodes showing stuff going on around the fleet, but only one where they really look at the pilots (Scar).

All we can do is glean little details where we can.

I base my opinion that Lee was looked at as a great CAG. His pilots seemed loyal to him.

You're right though they didn't show his relationships with individual pilots over then Kara. They should have put more emphasis on this, but I think there's enough circumstantial evidence to say he was the "type of leader others would follow into hell".

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think you're right. You and QoT make very good points. I think it was mainly the style of his leadership that changed from its initial conception, but the effectiveness of that leadership does come through in the series in many of the scenes you have mentioned. Yay!

[ninety6tears.livejournal.com]

Kara/Baltar just would not have been convincing at all, and I have a feeling they realized this pretty early in the game and decided to practically make the brief pair more of a joke.

That's a good point, Lee really isn't the strictest when it comes to how he treats the pilots. He wasn't particularly friendly with them, but I always got the feeling he was the kind of leader you wouldn't be scared to go to if you made a little mistake, and that Kara did more of the ball-busting.

It's interesting to consider the fact that he was initially supposed to have a relationship with Laura, and be more of "his father's son." They were on the right track to creating his strong moral compass, but probably hadn't realized yet that his ideas would sometimes oppose his father's, and eventually Laura's.

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I think Adama changed quite a bit.Yes, he perhaps more of an idealist than Roslin. But idealist is not a word that I would ever use to describe him. And I never saw him as a champion advocate for freedom. I think he is too much of a military man for that. I see him as someone who is not in favor of authoritarian regimes or against civil liberties or movements, but who is far from passionate about it. Military life is about rules, obedience and duty. This role of someone who is passionate about ideals was played by Lee and caused conflicts between them because it led Lee to question orders and to disobey them. Besides, the initial conflict between Adama and Roslin was never about the fact she was ruthless and practical and he was softer and idealistic.

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Yes, the initial conflict between Bill and Laura was about the fact that she betrayed their agreement about dividing military from civilian decisions and ordered one of his officers to commit mutiny and steal an important military asset for a mission that seemed to be based on hallucinatory craziness. I can really see Bill's point of view on that one. But I find it interesting that when Bill and Laura reconcile on Kobol, he says to her something along the lines of: "you interfered with a military mission and you broke your word to me" and she says "it's the second one [the dishonesty] that really bothers you, isn't it?"

I have always thought of Bill as a romantic and an idealist, it's just that I don't agree with his ideals as often as I agree with Lee's. You are right that he doesn't value freedom and democracy as highly as Lee does, but he has a baseline respect for the democratic (and judicial) process that is much higher than Laura's, in my opinion, and he certainly defends other ideals -- integrity, loyalty, self-sacrifice, and restraint in the use of force. Bill proves himself willing to take actions which seem irrational or very unlikely to succeed because he "can't live with" the alternatives, which strikes me as an idealistic world-view. He decides to reunite the fleet because he can't live with a divided family. He decides to return to New Caprica no matter the cost. He decides to spare Cain's life because humanity has to prove itself worthy of survival. He tells Laura that she will destroy everything worthwhile in herself if she stoops to stealing a democratic election. He is willing to undertake a suicide mission to recover one child. *shrugs* He doesn't strike me as a very pragmatic decision-maker a lot of the time :)

[anamarya.livejournal.com]

I agree with the whole content of your comment but I really liked this:
I have always thought of Bill as a romantic and an idealist, it's just that I don't agree with his ideals as often as I agree with Lee's. because is always nice to see your ideas put down by other people, especially when you are kind of uncomfortable in expressing those ideas.

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

Hmm.. You make good points but it is still difficult for me to think of him as idealistic. Yes, he is ethical and loyal and he has integrity and respect for law and democracy as a rule. But I think he is more emotional than idealistic. And his conflict with Laura didn't really start when Kara stole the raider because of Roslin's request. He was very reluctant to accept her as the lawful president at first. And to give up the fight and put the survival of what remained of humanity first. That was neither practical nor idealistic. It was emotional and military and suicidal. But he is a reasonable man and he eventually came to his senses and heard her. When Lee suggested that they should negotiate with the prisioners of the Astral Queen exchanging work on the water planet for a reduction in their time, since they were headed to a parole meeting on something anyway, Adama was strongly against it. His prejudice that they were criminals and his responsibility with regards to the safety of the fleet was more important than respect for the prisioners' rights and I guess he would have preferred to simply force them to do the work. And he seemed angrier than Laura when Lee agreed to the elections. Laura didn't like it because it certainly made her job more difficult, but she respected him for his principles. When Laura suggested that they had Cain killed, he didn't object in the least. He didn't go through with it because it went against his personal values and because of the disapproval he saw in Lee's face, I guess. Deep down, an emotional decision. And one that could very well have backfired hadn't Cain, who was not idealistic at all, decided to back down as well.During Baltar's trial, he didn't really believe he deserved a trial and he appeared to accept at face value the sham of a trial the president wanted. But again, after he had that very emotional blow out with Lee, he insisted on listening to his arguments for very personal reasons not because of principles or ideals. And Laura became more and more ruthless, for lack of a better word, with time, probably because of her fear of dying before she had fulfilled her mission. It's also interesting that Adama seemed to get closer to Laura as he realized that she was much stronger and capable of making harsher decisions than he had believed.

All in all, no character in BSG was unidimensional.

[anamarya.livejournal.com]

To answer the implied question, I found the document by accident a couple of weeks ago. There are clearly points that are changed and for the most part the change was (imo) for the best.
In the mini I did get the vibe about Lee/Laura but that was dissipated during the first few episodes of S1. Another good change (as discussed previously) was the Kara/Gaius plot. I mean, at least one can like Sam. Gaius on the other hand....
One of the things that remained pretty much like originally planed was Lee. Lee at the beggining is pretty much the one described there plus the duality that they mention in respect to Adama but I always saw it more in Lee.