Production
"The Farm" was controversial among the production team, some of whom feared that the episode was too dark and would drive away female viewers. This was considered especially important because of female viewers' historical reluctance to embrace science fiction. According to Moore, among the episodes of the second season, only "Valley of Darkness" may have had as contentious a production process. The decision to suggest that Simon had given Starbuck a pelvic exam was particularly controversial.
The outline of the episode remained largely the same from its conception. The largest change was for Starbuck to be unsure at first whether she is in a Cylon facility. According to Moore, the writers never believed they could fool the audience entirely into thinking Simon was human; rather, they sought to introduce ambiguity and then resolve it.
The first scene with Roslin and Apollo shows them hiding in cold storage aboard a civilian ship. Moore originally conceived for them to hide in a meat locker among "the last brisquets, burgers, filets, and pot roasts left in the universe" as a reminder of the magnitude of humanity's loss. When every meat locker art director Doug McLean scouted in Vancouver, where Battlestar Galactica was filmed, proved too small or too cold to film in, production designer Richard Hudolin built the cold storage room on a set with a window that would suggest a meat locker in the next room.
The scene in which the resistance encounters Sharon was written as a night scene but was filmed during the day for production reasons. Also, a scene showing the bloody aftermath of Caprica-Sharon's capture of the Heavy Raider was cut due to time constraints. The shots of the resistance boarding the Heavy Raider were all done with a green screen and a corresponding green ramp.
When Starbuck is shot, a wound on her eyebrow switches from the right to the left side of her face in an apparent mistake. In fact, the shot in which the switch occurs is a mirror image, as evidenced from the position of the steering wheel in the truck behind her. According to Moore, this was not a mistake but a deliberate editing choice to reflect the psychological trauma Starbuck undergoes.
Starbuck leaves one of her dog tags behind with Anders at the end of the episode. Actress Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck) came up with this as a way for the character to demonstrate her commitment to return to Anders.
Read more about this topic: The Farm (Battlestar Galactica)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)