Media encoding in science fiction television: Battlestar Galactica as a site of critical cultural production

Production studies and media encoding

Murdock (2003) argues media production is a site of agency and contestation in the current terrain of cultural labor. This characterization of media production is at odds with scholarship that considers production in relation to the impact of ownership on media texts. However, Caldwell (2006) reminds us that television is not merely an aesthetic and textual object but also an institutional and industrial activity. Far from offering an example of agency and contestation, Caldwell argues that the ‘critical agency’ we attribute to the producers of film and television is actually a corporate textual strategy. While political economy approaches to production have been important in understanding issues such as media ownership at the macro-level, a smaller number of production studies focus on the micro-level of people who work on the sets of television and film. One study that stands out as a model for our examination of BSG is D’Acci’s (1994) work on the production processes in the television show Cagney & Lacey and the intersecting roles and struggles between creators in the production process.

Levine (2001) argues that cultural studies scholars must consider more carefully ‘the roles of discourse, knowledge, and daily practice in cultural production’ (p. 67). Notably, the production environment is characterized by Levine and others (Roberts, 2010) as one of ‘constraint’ – through limited time, money, and creative control. However, creators in different parts of production, especially actors, producers, writers, and directors make daily decisions that shape meanings in the media text. Levine (2001) finds meaning-making processes and critical analysis are relevant to production studies, as those involved in the production process also derive meaning from (and attribute meaning to) their texts and characters: ‘The fact that actors tend to discuss their characters as living beings, often as beings with experiences parallel to their own, is a telling reminder of the fluidity between lived experience and cultural production’ (p. 76). Recent production studies that rely on interview and ethnographic ‘set’ studies have found that media practitioners bring varied, complex, and (often) politicized motivations to their creative work (Levine, 2001; Lotz, 2004; Saha, 2012). Furthermore, Caldwell (2008) notes creators analyze texts as part of a marketing strategy that shows critical engagement through behind the scenes specials, DVD commentaries, and entertainment news interviews. The challenge for the academic researcher is to push beyond these ‘back of the DVD interpretations’ in order to uncover deeper, more personal creative motivations.

With this in mind, we empirically investigate the politics of making BSG and explore the critical agency of individuals involved in media production. We examine the practical aspects of television production, BSG as a site of political commentary, and the cultural politics of gender and race. Our goal is to understand the motivations, negotiations, and critical intent that operated to ‘encode’ this television text. The interviewees were remarkably candid about the challenges and considerations that impacted production and willingly discussed tensions with networks, disagreements about character development, and frustrations with external pressures on their work lives. However, we also found that interviewees were selective about the issues their metaphors engage with, and at times distanced themselves from controversial discussions, such as those pertaining to racial representations.

Constraints and agency producing BSG

Certain organizational constraints impact the decisions that writers make. In the case of BSG, the constraints mentioned most frequently in interviews were notes from different departments and stakeholders and operational constraints caused by the use of both physical and digital props and sets. Once the writers complete a script, a number of stakeholders, including executive producers in Los Angeles and Vancouver, the director, the studio, the network, and departments such as props and costumes, give feedback or ‘notes’ about the story elements and technical and financial feasibility. Showrunner Ron Moore offers this description of the pre-production process:

When they get the first draft they are all starting to come up with an initial budget and estimates about where we might shoot this and possible locations, how big the cast is. And then from that point on you are still re-writing the script continually with all the notes from the director and still more notes from the network and the studio and actors and all that. And how do you now carve the script down to something that’s producible in the days allowed for the budget that we’ve been given and that everyone’s happy with. Then you do that with every single episode. (Moore)

At times the negotiations around this process present significant barriers. While filming of individual episodes does occur in sequence, the entire production process for any given episode overlaps a great deal, with episodes being planned and shot before the preceding episodes are through post-production. Writer Jane Espenson explains how practical details can force writers to reconceptualize and revise a script and offer a space for other involved parties to impact the script:

I had a scene set inside a heavy raider, and [Props said], ‘No, those only exist virtually’. I also had someone in a corridor littered with exploded Centurion parts, and they’re like, ‘Well, Centurions are computer-generated creatures, we don’t have Centurion arms to lie around in the corridor’. (Espenson 2)

These exchanges also illustrate the collaborative nature of television making. In general, these many stages can improve the quality of the production.

Some creative conflicts between the network and the producers were not easily resolved. Ron Moore offers an example of a negotiation with executives at SyFy. In one scene, Moore intended to show Adama and Roslin smoking pot. The network refused to allow it, even after Moore offered a number of concessions provided it could still be evident that the actors were actually getting high. When the network again refused to approve the scene, Moore stepped up his negotiation:

And I just lost my cool and started yelling at them through the phone and cursing at them and it scared them, totally shocked them. And they said, ‘well, let’s see how that looks in dailies’. And that’s the last conversation I had about it. So, at some point you do have to throw a fucking fit. You know? (Moore)

While this disagreement had the potential to pose a significant standstill, Moore notes that, for the most part, the process is more collegial. Moore argues that ‘you truly have to pick your battles’, commenting that not all notes received from the network are destined to disrupt creative vision. Often, there are ways to address the concerns raised by other parties, and maintain the creative direction of the episode. This is most often how conflicts are resolved – through strategic negotiation, with agents at different production levels having significant say in how the final product is shaped.

While writers and executive producers have the most impact on a show’s writing process, there are others who have collaborative impact in certain aspects of production. Notably in our study of BSG, actors discussed having a profound knowledge of their characters, making them sensitive to scenes that produce significant departures from their character arcs. However, there was a clear hierarchy articulated in terms of who had the ability to speak out about the direction of the show and the framing of particular characters. Brad Dryborough, who plays a minor character on the show, said he did not always feel comfortable speaking out. He recalls more established performers, such as Mary McDonnell, being actively engaged in the shaping of their characters and often demanding that scenes be altered to accommodate their personal interpretation of their character. Pearson (2010) noted a similar pattern in the Star Trek franchise, where ‘star’ cast members often had more input in character elements.

According to interviewees, the reason that this negotiation can take place is due in large part to the fact that BSG is broadcast on cable rather than network television. This upholds other studies of cable television, which find that cable productions generally come with greater creative autonomy (Perren, 2011). Lotz (2004) finds that while pressures to conform to ‘residual norms’ in television production did still impact decisions, overall cable production teams had significant creative freedom as compared to television production for networks. This point is reiterated by a number of interviewees. For example, actor Tahmoh Penikett notes that the types of politically sensitive topics BSG addressed would not be accepted on a major network with a mainstream viewership:

This show would not have been made. I don’t think if we got onto network television. Just, you know, the parent companies and what have you, they’re multinational corporations, they don’t want to deal with subjects like this. They would tone us down in a second. (Penikett)

Writer David Weddle similarly claims that the splintering of the audience by cable has produced a space for greater diversity in the range of shows that can be produced. He states that since cable shows don’t presume a mass audience ‘you don’t have to lower your product, your content, to the lowest common denominator’. Like Penikett, Weddle also suggests that BSG could not exist as it does on a major network, where playing to a general and mainstream audience would inhibit the program to a great extent. Weddle’s writing partner Bradley Thompson notes that SyFy consistently allowed BSG to tackle tough subjects, such as suicide bombers and abortion. While other shows might feature this material, the distinction made by our interviewees is that BSG creators try to write narratives that avoid offering moral claims.

BSG as a space of cultural critique

BSG creators claim the ethos of creative openness, morally ambiguous storylines, and irreconcilable complexity enables the show to tackle challenging social issues. Showrunner Ron Moore considers social engagement and problematizing notions of good and evil to be cultural goals of the show: ‘I feel like the show is best when it asks questions and doesn’t try to give you what the answers are …’(Moore). Espenson explains that sf offers a ‘thick metaphor’, allowing for fairly explicit critiques to be hidden in fantastical narratives:

Oh I think the thicker the metaphor, the more there are robots, or monsters, or big dinosaur puppets […] the more there is eye candy and clear science fiction or fantasy elements, the more you can get away with. In a way, sort of the more heavy handed you can be, the more overt you can be, because people are distracted. (Espenson 1)

In part, this is a continuation of the idea of sf as a genre where cultural critique can be waged directly due to the settings and scenarios inherent in the text. Thompson explains,

… the nice thing is, you know, it’s concealed by the blanket of science fiction. ‘Well, it’s not really us doing all of these things, it’s these people on the other side of the universe and their political systems are different and they have this aspect or that aspect, and okay, it makes us uncomfortable, but it isn’t really us’. And of course it is us. (Thompson 1)

While technology is ever-present – in the ships, the cylons, and the weaponry – it is thematically minimized in the show. Thompson explains that the focus is on the human aspects of the narrative such as ‘loyalty and friendship and betrayal and love and revenge and religious fanaticism and political systems and oppression’ – narrative aspects that an emphasis on fantastical technology could easily overshadow.

BSG is defined by the propensity of the program-makers to push the boundaries of their critical metaphors. An example raised in a number of interviews was a scene in which a human suicide bomber intends to blow up a coffee shop (and with it six cylon engineers). For the show’s creators, this ostensibly terrorist act being carried out by a human (rather than the cylon ‘enemy’) offers a space to empathize with the subject position of the terrorist, complicating our attitudes about the ‘other’ in a post-9/11 context. For writer Weddle, putting the responsibility of terrorist attacks in the hands of one of the show’s heroes produces a complex narrative around notions of resistance and oppression that resonates with present-day geopolitical issues. Weddle explains,

I mean the way Al-Qaeda talks about us, the way we often talk about terrorists, we do the same thing. We demonize. We make them less than human. They don’t have the same values; they don’t care about life, etc. What we’re trying to do is not really morally come down and say, you know, make a judgment … But to just examine the issues from odd angles, so that hopefully people would examine them and see them in a fresh light. And argue with each other, amongst themselves, about the morality of things like that. (Weddle 1)

The show’s creators claim that the challenges and issues they portrayed do not directly mirror contemporary geopolitics, instead complicating our perceptions of current events.

For BSG writers, constructing the story in a way that raises questions rather than imposes answers allows engagement with the audience and encourages dialogue about critical issues. In essence, the creators express resistance to a one-way reception model for their media product, preferring the idea that meanings are negotiated and plural. The actors also invest this level of critical meaning-making into their interpretations of the show. Actor Grace Park, for example, describes BSG as being about ethical questions:

It’s about people being stuck in their patterns, […] and finding all the walls of their own selves until they’re willing to either break them down or to step outside [them]. And it’s about a group of people that are constantly doing that. (Park 1)

These descriptions mirror critical readings that an academic textual analysis might offer. Notably, the creators also engage in this type of ‘reading’. They clearly imbue their cultural work with social and political meanings – not just making a show, but engaging in a form of cultural critique. Weddle and Thompson both echoed Moore’s BSG show bible during their respective interviews, noting that sometimes people make bad decisions for good reasons, or good decisions for bad reasons. This embedded narrative ideal frames the way that writers discuss their show as a critical text.

As a space of cultural critique, BSG is set slightly apart from contemporary issues, with creators careful to state that the critique is not directly applicable. This displacement is an important one for the individuals we interviewed. While the politics of BSG are self-evident, the interviewees often reiterated that no direct statements of judgment or morality are made. Despite the show’s engagement in challenging, politicized subject matter, the interviewees make a case for the show’s political neutrality. This resistance toward expressions of explicit politics is most evident in interviews where the creators are pushed on contemporary issues such as the portrayal of racialized and gendered identities in popular media.

Narratives of ‘gender neutrality’ and ‘agro-masculinity’

Similar to our discussions above, show creators viewed the narratives on BSG as a site to engage with gender and racial representations. Interviews with show creators illustrate a clear sense they are producing roles for women which offer unprecedented equality of representation in terms of visibility, heroism, and physicality. The portrayal of women in sf is an issue addressed by many scholars throughout the history of the genre on screen and off. For example, Larbalestier’s (2002) work on women and ‘battle of the sexes’ stories in sf literature documents limiting and problematic women characters in sf literature from the 1920s onwards. On screen, Inness (1999) argues roles for women in sf were limited portrayals historically. They appeared on screen ‘as little more than curvaceous sex kittens, just waiting to seduce or be rescued by the next man who landed on their planet’ (p. 103). The Barbarella character was a quintessential sf woman from the 1960s. Inness (1999) finds a shift in the 1970s, where modern sf heroines became increasingly portrayed as tough, capable, and powerful leaders. This trend continues with the women in BSG, who in many cases have full and complex character development. Sharp (2010), for example, concludes that Starbuck’s character development ‘from a simple masculine woman into a violent, nurturing, loyal, treacherous, intuitive, empirical and decidedly unformulaic character’ (p. 76) brings new life and power to the character of the sf soldier and the sf woman.

Moore suggests that producing quality roles for women was part of his creative vision early in the development of BSG when he controversially changed the gender of the pilot Starbuck from male to female:

The [original] rapscallion Starbuck just seemed like such a cliché and I didn’t know what to do with that. As soon as she became a woman, it was just a different dynamic. It was like a different thing. I expanded it out … So it was truly a gender-neutral world that didn’t play those games. (Moore)

Moore’s switching two of the characters, pilots Boomer and Starbuck, from male to female received serious pushback from male fans and the original Starbuck actor, Dirk Benedict. The blogs lit up almost immediately with abusive responses from fans. Moore was referred to as ‘she-male’ and the women were referred to condesendingly as ‘girls’ and labeled ‘butch’ (Mainon and Ursini, 2006). Benedict (2004) wrote an essay on his website called ‘Lost in Castration’, where he lambasted the show and noted the male characters had become ‘weak’ and the female characters ‘decisive, bold, angry as hell’. Kungl (2008) attributes this response in part to be a reaction to not just a woman playing a role usually played by men, as Captain Janeway’s character in Star Trek: Voyager, but instead a woman playing what was previously a specific man’s role. This reaction reinforces the extent to which critical engagement with gender norms in television operates as a necessary and challenging path for Moore and his collaborators.

Writer Jane Espenson highlighted how Moore outlawed the term ‘bitch’. She argues this shows the extent to which BSG offers a critical attitude toward gender relations. Moore added,

The 12 colonies don’t seem to have been very patriarchal. It seems to have been a very gender-equal sort of society. So that sort of informed how we look at the world and how we look at our characters. […] I have never seen that tendency on this show, to weaken female characters. (Moore)

Actors contributed to this dynamic. Espenson notes actor Mary McDonnell, who plays President Roslin, was very protective of her character as an example of the effects of having a male-dominated writing staff upon character development. A number of interviewees mentioned McDonnell’s careful crafting and control of her character discussing how McDonnell fought to ensure that her character was being presented appropriately and demanded changes to scenes when she felt her character played into patriarchal gender dynamics. While men working on the show made an effort to produce a gender positive television world, McDonnell’s policing of the power dynamics between her character and other characters indicates that the show’s creators were not always successful in their development of female characters (Russo, 2007). In this context, the lack of representation in the writers’ room contributes to a lack of transformative critical politics in the show.

While Park speaks encouragingly about the roles for women, she expresses some misgivings about the way that creators characterize ‘gender neutrality’. Specifically, she argues the entire series is characterized by an ‘agro-masculinity’, and that all characters, whether male or female, play into this angry, aggressive masculinity. For her, this leaves little space for other types of gender performance or non-violent performances of strength. Park describes a tendency in which ‘neutrality’ essentially equates to assimilating to the dominant culture – in this case, a violent, militaristic masculinity. Notably, not all participants considered this kind of strength distinctly masculine. For example, Espenson describes a memorable moment early in the series where fighter pilot Starbuck’s ship crashes:

… she’s sitting there and her hand is cut and burned, and she’s trying to get her glove off … she’s trying to pull her glove off with her teeth. You rarely see an injured woman who isn’t collapsing and crying, but who is dealing with the wound in a very practical way while clearly in great pain. There was just something so strong about that. (Espenson 2)

For Espenson, Starbuck’s actions in this scene stand as an example of the series’ dedication to strong representations of women.

‘Race is not a factor in Galactica’: writing color-blind and critical encoding by actors

We found less consistency among the interviewees when we asked about the role of race in creating the show. Some saw the characters on the show as directly engaging in the politics of racial representation. This was especially the case among actors. Others, usually writers, did not agree that the show directly addresses issues of race. The interviewees generally agreed ‘race’ is represented as humans and cylons: ‘we would never think of robots as a race. But in our world of Battlestar, it’s really a metaphor for all the different races or ethnicities’ (Park 2). Some of the interviewees tended to be reluctant to delve directly into the politics of racial representation. For example, writer Thompson claims, ‘race is not a factor in Galactica’. This reluctance to engage with race in contemporary Earth terms is reflected in many of the interviews. Writers and casting directors working in the upstream part of the creative process convey a commitment to the relations of racial representation in terms of on-screen diversity. The actors we interviewed shared this view. However, some, mainly from minority groups, viewed their individual roles and work as directly challenging traditional norms of racial identity.

Weddle states that racial divisions are played out between the various human colonies (through elements of speech, class, and religion), but that these tensions are never related to contemporary Earth definitions of race, such as skin color:

So we address those issues in a one-step removed … which I think is great. If you start writing in our earthly terms, you know, all the baggage of the history of various ethnic groups gets dragged into it. […] When you take it one step removed in another universe, I think it has a way of throwing it in high relief so you can examine it in a fresher, clearer perspective perhaps. (Weddle 1)

In terms of the relations of representation (Gross, 2001; Hall, 1996; West, 1990), we find significant diversity in BSG when we consider the supporting cast and major on-screen roles. The show’s cast is more diverse than much other mainstream television programming at the time. Lauer (2007) explains the politics of difference between humans and cylons is often represented in ‘us’ versus ‘them’ racialized terms. However, interviewees claimed an explicit goal of the show is color-blindness while acknowledging the parallel goal of an ethnically diverse cast. Actor Tahmoh Penikett sees the diversity of the cast as a potentially transformative contribution to media representation:

If you look at our cast we have a South African girl, Kandyse McClure, we’ve got a Korean who’s one of the leads, we’ve got Edward James Olmos who’s a Latino, you know, from East LA … I think it’s great that our show’s received the critical acclaim it has and is such a quality show with such a diverse, ethnically diverse cast. We’re actually really getting represented and I can’t help but believe that that’s going to change things a lot. (Penikett)

This type of on-screen diversity is similar to an approach taken up in the prime time drama Grey’s Anatomy where the show’s creator argues that race was never a casting consideration, and that characters were not framed according to race within the series (Long, 2011). Long (2011) adds race-blind casting is not always as progressive as it sounds because it ‘ignores intersectional specificities among groups of men and women and the systemic power relations through which these differential experiences are produced and maintained’ (p. 1079). By pursuing a strategy of ‘color-blindness’ in their portrayals of race, BSG’s creators run the risk of falling into representations that can be highly problematic when read on today’s terms (Nakamura, 2007; Nishime, 2011).

Nakamura (2007) points to a stereotypical representation of Asian identity in a scene where Park’s character literally interfaces with the computer system by inserting a communication cable into her arm. When we showed Nakamura’s critique to writers Weddle, Thompson, and Espenson, they tended to disagree with it. Weddle strongly resisted Nakamura’s reading of the scene as a reinforcement of Asian stereotypes (vis-a-vis computing knowledge). He argues,

We play our universe as if there is no … skin color and whether someone is of Asian background or African American. Of course, they wouldn’t be African American from our colonies, but black or Asian or Hispanic. The society is color-blind in that sense. (Weddle 2)

Weddle reiterates that the series is not an allegory for contemporary American race relations. He argues that Sharon is not meant to represent Asian American experience, but could be substituted for any ethnic group. Espenson understood how Nakamura could come to her analysis. However, she ultimately rejected the racial reading of the scene and argued that it is problematic to impose the actor’s Asian identity onto an analysis of her actions. Actor Grace Park who plays the human/cylon Sharon has a different take on how she plays the role. She views her engagement with the character as challenging racial (and gender) stereotypes and a mode of critical encoding:

I feel like I’ve always played her a little bit more setback because of her situation she is a Cylon. I find that it’s unique to have a person like her out there a lot, and plus being Asian and that’s like a different take on it, we don’t have a lot of the typical Asian stereotypes associated with it that we might be willing to play with if it wasn’t a spaceship right so I think in that way its unique, but at the same time she’s exploring a lot of these things that people explore on their own anyway but without using the Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese as a background or back drop, I think it makes it fresh yet totally accessible. (Park 3)

These differing responses to Nakamura’s arguments illustrate how much room there is for interpretation by individuals of the intersections of race and the production process, further underscoring the range of individuals who contribute to the work of meaning-making in the process of television production.

The interviews show a concerted effort to cast for diversity. For example, Moore said they noticed some days there were ‘an awful lot of white faces on set’. They made conscious efforts to hire background characters to avoid ‘casting too strongly in one direction’ as he put it. The producers did run into some location-based problems in terms of their color-blind casting objectives in that diversity in Vancouver, BC, is quite different than diversity in Los Angeles:

… some of it is just the fact that you are doing it in Canada. Which it is just, it doesn’t have like a huge African, African Canadian population to draw from. So sometimes that is limiting your pool, but there is a larger Asian pool in some … casting sessions than others. Some of it is just specific to the locale. (Moore)

In this way, the differences between the writing context (Los Angeles) and filming context (Vancouver, BC) did play out in the look of the show in some ways, reflecting the different cultural frameworks of diversity between Americans and Canadians.

Scholars of BSG often praise the show for engaging in challenging issues; however, we found the series falls short in some ways on issues of race and ethnicity. In terms of the relations of representation, the show has a diversity of actors in on-screen roles. However, in terms of the politics of representation, some creators do not engage (at least directly) with racial issues in the same manner as gender, and indeed are highly resistant to critical race readings of the show.

Conclusion

Interviews show complex and ongoing negotiations between the social agents at work in the creation of BSG. When discussing television, whether sf or not, it is important to remember that we are not just talking about texts. Such programs involve situated actors who inhabit political economic spaces. Creators struggle with the moral and political nature of the stories they create within the constraints of social structures and social relations. In doing so, they actively participate in their own acts of meaning-making in the production process. BSG was also an emergent field of practice where the negotiations between the various cultural producers over media encoding were complex, sometimes contradictory, and revealing of the network of social relations producing media. We found that this program does not offer a clear master code for its metaphors. Our interviewees produced readings of their stories, characters, and metaphors, and at times were resistant to alternative readings that offered to destabilize their own media encodings.

Scholars and interviewees agree the metaphor of sf enables critical engagement with sensitive contemporary political and social issues by creating a cultural distance between the ‘real’ world and the imagined world. Our interviews show how the various creators were aware of this mechanism and used it to work on issues of gender, religion, and the war on terror. However, that same distance also enabled a disengagement with other critical issues, such as race.

We found much more variance in how the writers, actors, and producers viewed the role of race in the show. Actors Grace Park and Tahmoh Penikett saw their characters and the show as opportunities to challenge and break stereotypes at the level of the politics of representation. Others tended to engage racial politics of the show more in terms of casting and diversity at the level of the relations of representation. The value in BSG is in its contribution to a shift toward what Moore describes as ‘naturalistic science fiction’. The BSG writers have created stories that challenge and confront viewers’ preconceived notions about war, terror, and resistance without providing easy answers. As Espenson puts it, ‘… you never feel like you’ve been handed a moral cheat sheet’. What is clear from this study is that the meaning-making or encoding process is a complicated one, with many agents actively negotiating meaning throughout the complex and often hectic process of production.

BSG is part of a turning point in cable television in the 2000s. Audiences expect more from the content they choose to consume. There becomes a higher threshold of allowable risk in the representations and issues creators wrestle with. The creative vision from showrunner Ron Moore detailed his goals in the show bible. This concrete attempt to address issues of representation is important for how we study and understand the television landscape. As the role of the showrunner becomes more important to the brand of a show, the presence or absence of a progressive show bible is something to be interrogated in future studies. As encoders of cultural texts, the writers, actors, and producers of BSG provide a valuable source for critical cultural discussions. The production studies scholar must also remain cognizant that these creators do not exist outside of the social structures in which they produce their work. While they may appear to be cultural critics, they are also participants in a production process with a range of economic, social, political, and cultural aims. Within this process, they are both constrained by production structures, as well as the conscious and unconscious knowledges, biases, and goals of all participants.

Television production exists on a cyclical apparatus of creation, interpretation, and recreation in which we work to understand society further, so it is vital that work continues to be done here. If we are to understand what work television does to reinscribe flawed or problematic understandings of race and gender, scholars must continue to push for more critical and nuanced investigations of the process of popular media encoding. The resistant conversations we had with writers about critical readings of race in BSG, as well as overt discussions of how to portray women on screen, illustrate that the encoding process is very much a product of the people involved at the day-to-day level of television production that have the most impact in how and what representations and conversations happen on screen, whether in sf or any other genre.