Battlestar Galactica Bible, The Read online

  He'd spent years fixing machines, starting with his father's ancient car, but Tyrol had no interest in pursuing life a mechanic. He wanted a life of excitement and danger, not one filled with tools and cranky engines.

  Then, entirely by chance, he assigned to temporary duty aboard the battlestar Pegasus, which was short of hands and about to participate in a series of war games. Tyrol was put into the deck gang on the hangar bay -- just another pair of hands for the Chief of the Deck, no pressure to achieve, no reason for him to stand out. But Tyrol did more than stand out, he became a star on the hangar deck.

  He had an intuitive feel for working with and repairing spacecraft, somehow always knowing what was wrong with a recalcitrant engine before anyone else. The atmosphere aboard the Pegasus in general was hard-charging demanding and the atmosphere on the flight deck was even more high-pressure. As the ship entered the war games, Vipers were being launched and recovered faster than thought humanly possible and the deck gang went without sleep for almost three days straight. Tyrol not only survived, he thrived. Something about handling the big dangerous Vipers struck a chord with him. Here was an entirely secular enterprise, a world where a machine either worked or it didn't. Tyrol fell in love with the pressure and the adrenaline of the flight line, and he decided then and there to work on the hangar deck.

  Following formal training at the Fleet Aviation Repair and Maintenance Center he was assigned to the newly commissioned battlestar Columbia as one of her first deck chiefs. The Columbia was a cranky, difficult vessel, fresh from the shipyard, and her complement of Vipers were the experimental new Mark VII's. Tyrol spent five years ironing out the problems and breaking in the new flight deck. He ran a tight crew, brooked no inattention or sloppiness among his people when it came to the job, but had little use for formality or strict protocol. He was a popular chief, liked and trusted by officer and deck hand alike.

  Then came disaster. A Viper pilot was killed when his engine prematurely ignited still in the launch tube. An investigation showed a valve had been improperly seated in the casing and Tyrol's deck gang was responsible. No one ever determined who had mishandled the valve or how it had escaped detection, but it was Tyrol's job to sign off on all work done on his Vipers and it was the tradition of the service that he take full responsibility. His sterling record was taken into account and he was not discharged, but he was reduced two steps in ranks and reassigned to the Galactica, the oldest ship in the Fleet, a far cry from the sparkling new Columbia and essentially a dead end for his career.

  Tyrol started over on the Galactica -- just an anonymous deck hand, trying to keep his head down, and forget about what had happened. But he didn't stay anonymous for long.

  Adama liked to walk the flight line every day, checking out his birds as part of his morning routine, and he soon spotted Tyrol and his affinity for the fighters and the deck gang. It wasn't long before Adama restored his rank and made him Chief of the Deck.

  Tyrol thrived aboard Galactica, appreciated Adama's old school style of command and even began to fall in love with the old ship herself. Galactica was about three decades obsolete, and constantly in need of repair, but Tyrol didn't care. If anything Galactica needed him in a way that the Columbia never would. Tyrol had found his home and his place.

  Then came Sharon Valerii. She was the youngest of the young pilots, and greener than grass. She and Tyrol started sniping at one another almost immediately. The friction became something more and even though each of them knew they were risking their careers, they soon found themselves engaged in one of the most hazardous activities of all – a shipboard affair. Two people could hardly be more different, but neither of them could stay away from the other. Tyrol calmed Sharon and Sharon sparked Tyrol. As Galactica began her final voyage, Sharon, along with most of Galactica's squadron, was reassigned to the battlestar Pegasus. Tyrol quietly put in a request for transfer to the Pegasus as well, and with Adama's letter of recommendation now in his service record, Tyrol was accepted aboard the Pegasus and he was looking forward to life back on the front lines when the Cylons attacked.

  Tyrol is old school, a believer in the customs and traditions of the service. No longer a devout man, he still retains the core faith of someone raised in a religious home. He can be intolerant and bullheaded when it comes to the job, but he is also carries around the pressure of being responsible for every man and woman on his crew.

  Lieutenant Sharon Valerii

  Sharon's first memory is that of crawling across the artificial grass in her backyard toward the family cat, Mr. Perkles. It's a vivid memory, one that she occasionally revisits in her dreams.

  It's also completely fake.

  As far as she knows, Sharon Valerii grew up with a happy, normal childhood, the product of loving parents on the mining settlement of Troy. Troy was a small, barren world on the periphery of the Colonial solar system. Her father was a middle-manager in the mine, her mother a homemaker, and she had two younger brothers. Her family had been on the closed world of Troy for two generations, but Sharon had always wanted to leave the mining settlement and seek out a grander life. She applied to the Colonial Academy, scored well on the entrance exams, and soon was aboard a commercial transport ship, on her way to Caprica for the in-person interview. Sharon was napping when the word came in of a massive accident on Troy. She awoke to the news that her entire settlement -- more than 200,000 people -- was wiped out in a series of titanic explosions which ripped away the protective domes keeping out the poisonous atmosphere of Troy. Investigation would pinpoint the cause as a hitherto unsuspected, and huge, pocket of volatile methane gas which was suddenly ignited by the mining operation.

  The disaster stunned the colonies, and amid the massive outpouring of sympathy for the dead, Sharon was accepted into the Academy on the strength of her exams alone -- and obviously, there could be no background investigation. The sudden and shocking loss of her world threw Sharon into a deep and dark depression. Her first year at the Academy was a troubled one, filled with nightmares that she could not entirely shake during the daytime. The instructors and officers of the Academy were determined to see this last survivor of Troy graduate in a Colonial uniform, so they looked the other way when her grades slipped dangerously in that first term.

  But in her second term, Sharon began to right herself, began to find the courage within to carry on in the name of her family and friends. She had been spared by fate, had been given a second chance, and now she wanted to be worthy of that chance. Her grades rebounded, and while she was never an academic star, she managed to graduate in the upper half of her class.

  She applied to flight school, hardly daring to hope that she would be admitted, but the bureaucratic wheels had been greased for this child of the doomed settlement, and she was accepted over several more qualified candidates. Flight school was rough on Sharon. Not a born pilot by any means, she labored long and hard with her technique, but once again, by the time she graduated, she had managed to earn the second chances that she seemed fated to be given.

  Her first assignment was to the battlestar Galactica, and by the time of the Cylon attack, she had been aboard for almost a year.

  Her relationship with her Flight Officer -- Helo -- was a close one, and the older man watched out for her as she struggled to make her deck qualifications. They almost pursued a romantic relationship as well, but then Sharon hooked up with Chief Tyrol. Helo was aware of the affair and the impropriety of it, but he guarded her privacy jealously and let it be known that he would exact a price from any pilot who caused trouble for her.

  Sharon is unaware of her true nature, unaware that far from being the daughter of a mining family, that she is in reality a Cylon sleeper agent, implanted into Colonial society. She slipped onto to the commercial transport just before it left Troy, fully aware of her mission and her nature. But when she awoke from her "nap" her cover program took hold from that point forward, she believed herself to a normal human being with a tragic past.

 
Sensitive and shy, she puts on a tough-chick front for the benefit of those around her. In Tyrol, she had found a man who is, quite literally, her first true love.

  What Sharon is doing on Galactica and why she was infiltrated into Colonial society will remain a mystery for some time.

  Number Six

  The Woman as Machine.

  STORYLINES

  Tension

  The key to our stories is successfully maintaining the level of dramatic tension achieved in the pilot. Simply put, we should always feel as though the Galactica and her ragtag fleet are in a state of perpetual crisis. There is a constant threat to our people from within and without the fleet which will never be resolved during the course of the series.

  Our heroes will be thrust into the roles of both military protectors and law enforcement officers, which allows us to literally play any story which could be found in an urban environment in our fleet. Serial killers, plagues, terrorist attacks, fires, mysteries -- all can come into play and all can provide us with jeopardy from within the fleet itself.

  Structure

  In order to maintain and sustain this tension, we will be emphasizing a continuing storyline which will literally continue the Cylon threat to the Colonials as established in the pilot.

  We will be using a modified continuing storyline most akin to that used on the classic TV series "Hill Street Blues." This format breaks down into three layers:

  Series Arcs

  Multi-Episodic Arcs

  Stand Alone Arcs

  The three tiered format avoids the pitfalls of Star Trek's episodic structure (which forces the writers to endlessly come up with new and wacky ways to put the Enterprise in jeopardy each week) without turning our show into a true serial.

  1. Series Arcs will literally run the length of the series and will be embroidered on week to week. They include the never-ending Cylon pursuit of the Galactica and her fleet, the task of nation-building within the fleet, the struggle between the military and civilian forces, and all the character relationships.

  2. Multi-Episodic Arcs last two to four episodes in length and involve settings and stories which hook audiences into short-term tales which wrap themselves up in the near future. For example, when we find a solar system capable of sustaining human life, we might wish to stay here for three or four episodes as we hunt for supplies, struggle to bring them up to our ships, hide from the Cylons, quell a mutiny among people who wish to stay here permanently, battle storms on planet surfaces, repair our ships, etc.

  3. Episodic Arcs have a beginning a middle, and an end within each episode. This enables any audience member to always have a storyline that they can follow which is self-contained and does not depend on watching last week's show.

  By layering all three storylines in each episode, we are able week to week and avoid the Trek pitfalls while at the same time not losing the audience that may or may not be watching religiously.

  The Cylons

  We will not be featuring a Cylon attack every week, but we should always feel as if an attack is imminent. The possibility of a Cylon attack should hang over our characters throughout the run of the series. There is no rest for our people, no respite from the danger and stress of constantly being on the run. The Cylons are relentless pursuers and we should feel them constantly nipping at bur heels.

  As a general rule of thumb, we should encounter an actual Cylon raid every third episode and in between encounters our people should constantly be studying and testing new ways of fighting their implacable enemy. It's important to note that while the Cylons were virtually invincible in the pilot, that there will be a more level playing field as the series goes on. This will be a result of the natural tendency in warfare for both sides to learn from their enemy, and develop new counter-measures for their opponents' strengths. As a general rule, Galactica's fighters are generally outmatched in combat with the Cylons, but the more we fight them, the more we learn, so that this week we have a temporary advantage and next week it's gone again. The on-going struggle will force both sides to constantly improve their technology and tactics to keep pace with their enemy.

  For example -- one storyline will involve capturing a downed Cylon raider, taking it apart and learning how to fly it as a method of getting an advantage over the Cylons during the next attack. This temporary advantage will then be erased once the Cylons learn what the Colonials are doing and develop an effective counter-measure.

  The Cylon agents within the fleet should also provide sources of tension and jeopardy. With only four of the twelve Cylon models revealed to our characters, literally anyone in the fleet is a potential Cylon agent. Terrorist attacks, sabotage, and fomenting insurrection among the people will be a staple of their stories and keep our heroes off-balance and constantly having to look over their shoulder even as they battle Cylon fighters.

  We will also be visiting the Cylon homeworld to establish their culture and society and to get their perspective on the hunt for Galactica.

  Plot-driven Stories

  Our plot-driven stories should be reality-based problems that our people could conceivably face on a journey such as theirs. They have run into the night with little more than the clothes on their backs and whatever happened to be stowed aboard ship on the day the world came to an end. Finding food, fuel, and air supplies are going to be never-ending problems as are dealing with the real-life difficulties involved with rationing those same supplies. The ships themselves are a hodgepodge of new and old, guaranteeing that maintenance issues will also be a constant headache.

  Our stories should spring from within the fleet whenever possible. In other, words, we should avoid storylines which begin with, "The Galactica discovers a strange space phenomenon which..." Most of space is empty and there aren't a lot of strange things to bump into which might, say, turn the Galactica's crew into children. Our goal is to tell human stories that are a natural outgrowth of the premise of our show, not to retread the various science fiction cliches of the genre (Evil Twins, Time Travel, Alien Body Possession, A Planet Whose Culture is Just Like Ours, Adama Meets His Dead Wife on a Planet and Doesn't Want to Leave, etc.)

  Galactica's universe is also mostly devoid of other intelligent life. Unlike Trek's crowded galaxy filled with a multitude of empires, ours is a disquieting empty place. Most planets are uninhabitable. Breathable air and drinkable water are rarities. When we do encounter a world remotely capable of supporting human life, it will be a BIG DEAL. Likewise, an encounter with true alien life will be a HUGE DEAL, and our aliens will not be the usual assortment of bumpy-headed people that are essentially human in all but appearance. Any alien on Galactica must be alien in the truest sense of the word - a creature so foreign to our ways of thinking and living that we may not even recognize it as life at all.

  However, the Cylons in our midst should be a constant, lurking threat. We have only seen the faces of four Cylon models (Six, Doral, Leoben, and Sharon) out of the twelve known to exist. This means that anyone can be a Cylon and our characters should definitely experience the fear and paranoia that will become an ever-present result of this fact. A ship breaks down, someone turns up dead, a plague breaks out, a prison ship riots -- all could be a result of Cylon sleeper agents causing sabotage and mayhem among us. How the people react to this threat among them will be one of the primary storylines of the entire series -- what will be their version of the Patriot Act? Where will liberty and security collide? How far will they be willing to go to ferret out the "traitors" among them?

  Character Stories

  Our show is, first and foremost, a drama. It is about people. Our characters should always be the most important element of every story. Breaking the traditional rule of the genre, we should sacrifice plot at every turn in favor of character. Time spent discussing the technical problems of outwitting the latest Cylon plot will be better spent dealing with the emotional fallout of the Adama/Lee relationship.

  Do not be afraid to expose our characters' faults, for in their fr
ailties also lie the seeds of their triumphs. Kara Thrace made a deeply irresponsible decision when she passed Zak on his flight exam simply because she loved him, but that same emotion, that same depth of feeling overriding rational thought, that made her bring back Lee when his ship was damaged and she should've left him to die.

  Our people are deeply flawed, deeply human characters. They are not, by nature, innately heroic or noble creatures. They are simply ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. They do not always make the right decision and they do not always do the right thing. They make mistakes, act out of pettiness and spite, and occasionally do things that are reprehensible. However, they are also capable of growth, of change, of learning to overcome their many flaws and rising to the challenges laid before them and performing great and mighty deeds.

  They are human.

  SEASON ONE

  Story Arcs

  Four major story arcs will play themselves out over the course of the first season:

  1. The conflict between Adama and Laura as they struggle to keep the rag-tag fleet together in face of mounting adversity, culminating in Adama's declaration of martial law by the end of the season.

  2. The discovery of evidence that a place called Earth really does exist and that realization that the Cylons might actually want us to find it after all.