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   _Contents:_ [9]Overview - [10]Backplot - [11]Questions - [12]Analysis
   - [13]Notes - [14]JMS
   
     _________________________________________________________________
                                      
Overview

     Sheridan faces an inquisitor from Earthdome. [15]Wayne Alexander as
     Drazi. [16]Raye Birk as William. [17]Bruce Gray as Interrogator.
     
[18]P5 Rating: [19]8.08

Production number: 418
Original air week: June 16, 1997

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by John LaFia

     _________________________________________________________________
                                      
Plot Points

     * Sheridan continues to be held in an interrogation center, most
       likely on Mars.
     * Clark believes Sheridan's credibility as a war hero is a threat to
       the credibility of the administration. He wants Sheridan to recant
       in public to restore the public's belief that "you can't beat the
       system."
     * Among the weapons Earth purchased from the Narn during the
       Earth-Minbari War were paingivers ([20]"The Parliament of
       Dreams.") The paingivers appear to work as well on humans as they
       do on Narns.
       
Unanswered Questions

     * Was the interrogation real, or was it all in Sheridan's mind like
       the interrogation of Sinclair in [21]"And the Sky Full of Stars?"
     * Was it really morning?
     * Is Sheridan's father still being held?
       
Analysis

     * With Ivanova presumably continuing the campaign to retake Earth,
       it's interesting that Clark's people seem intent on breaking
       Sheridan to the exclusion of trying to interrogate him for
       information about battle plans or other practical matters. Perhaps
       they figure that he wouldn't give up such information until he had
       gone over to their side anyway, but given the fact that Clark is
       willing to send Psi Corps units out to scan the general public
       ([22]"The Face of the Enemy") it's strange a telepath hasn't been
       brought in to pull military information from Sheridan's head.
     * In [23]"The Face of the Enemy," Ivanova quoted Sheridan as saying,
       "The person is expendable. The job is not." The interrogator told
       Sheridan much the same thing, with one exception: Sheridan himself
       wasn't expendable. But that was only true as long as there was the
       possibility of him performing a different job: communicating to
       the public that Clark couldn't be beaten.
     * The interrogator appeared to have disabled the paingivers after
       Sheridan's first exposure to them; on several occasions after
       that, the two of them were close together but Sheridan wasn't
       shocked.
     * Assuming the images of Delenn weren't telepathic projections of
       some kind on her part, Sheridan's repeated visions of her echoed
       his experience on Z'ha'dum in [24]"Whatever Happened to Mr.
       Garibaldi?" The knowledge that Delenn is still out there, awaiting
       his return, is an island of stability Sheridan can cling to.
       The interrogator clearly knew of his relationship with Delenn --
       not a big secret after the ISN report in [25]"The Illusion of
       Truth." Will the next interrogator realize that Sheridan is using
       her as an anchor, and try to undermine that directly, e.g. by
       presenting faked evidence that something has happened to her?
     * "Room 17" is probably a reference to George Orwell's "1984," in
       which Winston Smith, the protagonist, hears of people taken to
       Room 101, but has no idea what goes on there.
     * The interrogator insisted that he was telling Sheridan the truth,
       but also insisted that the truth is fluid. That means little, if
       anything, the interrogator told Sheridan can be taken at face
       value.
     * The interrogator said he thought his speech about poison was a
       metaphor for something, but he couldn't figure out what. In
       addition to the historical nod (see [26]Notes) the speech can be
       interpreted as a metaphor for what he was trying to do to
       Sheridan. First he convinced Sheridan to agree to little lies (the
       time of day.) After a steady diet of small untruths, the
       interrogator hoped, Sheridan would become more and more receptive
       to bigger and bigger lies, until he was ready to swallow anything
       suggested to him.
       
Notes

     * The interrogator mentioned that Sheridan had been interrogated
       once before. That referred to [27]"Comes the Inquisitor," in which
       Sheridan was interrogated by Jack the Ripper (played by Wayne
       Alexander, who played the Drazi in this episode.)
     * Possible continuity glitch: When the interrogator left the room
       and the loud voice started repeating its message, Sheridan covered
       his ears. At the beginning of the next act, when the interrogator
       returned, Sheridan's hands were bound to the chair. Of course,
       it's possible other people came into the room in the interim and
       forced him to listen.
     * The interrogator didn't get sick from the sandwich, he claimed,
       because he'd been eating a little poison every day and had built
       up a resistance. This has historical precedent; for instance, King
       Mithridates of Pontus, 135-63 BC, who eventually tried to commit
       suicide by swallowing large quantities of poison but couldn't kill
       himself because his resistance was too great.
     * Perhaps simply by coincidence, this "1984"esque story is the 84th
       one-hour episode.
     * Taking numerology to an absurd extreme, add episode 84 to room 17
       and you get 101, the mystery room number from "1984."
       
jms speaks

     * _About the title_
       Each act took place in real time, no time jumps...the conversation
       happened as it happened. Since you had act breaks in between them,
       those became intersections...in real time.
     * As this has the potential to be a very cool and somewhat
       experimental episode, I'd rather say nothing until later.
     * I don't usually comment on this, but...if I had known *with
       absolute certainty* that there would be a season 5, then season 4
       would have ended with 418, "Intersections in Real Time." So you
       only pull 4 episodes forward, really. You'll understand when you
       see it.
     * I like this one a lot. It takes some real chances, and it has some
       nasty twists and turns. I like that in a story....
     * Actually, one episode coming up in this batch is, according to
       John Copeland, the single most subversive thing we've ever done on
       the show. It's a *mean* episode and completely, unabashedly
       underhanded in its way of illuminating certain things. While,
       oddly enough, ending in a positive fashion, despite George
       Johnsen's comment at playback during the audio mix, "Okay, what
       sadistic m-----f----- wrote this thing?"
     * "You understand the concepts of breaking down a human psyche."
       (shrugs) Well, sure...I work for Warner Bros.
     * _Warner Bros.' wacky scheduling is actually appropriate this time._
       Yep...it is that. At last I have a proper cliffhanger and a proper
       wait afterward.
     * _Why do people do end-of-season cliffhangers?_
       It's basically a means to get the audience, which has been away
       for a long time, to come back to resolve a hanging point and
       jump-start them into the episodes. If it ends cleanly, apparently
       a lot of folks in any series will just forget to tune in the
       following season.
     * _Was Bruce Boxleitner's beard for real?_
       Bruce had some time between episodes, and began to grow the beard
       for real, and we darkened it down for later acts.
     * _The costumes and set design were ripoffs of "The Prisoner."_
       You're wrong. The costumer has never even *seen* the Prisoner, as
       far as I know, and the suit he wore was one of our standard earth
       suits which we've used before on the show, just tailored it to fit
       his form. And the set design is just your basic black room with
       chairs, nothing more. I also doubt muchly that Flinn has ever seen
       The Prisoner...which was a very well and brightly lit show,
       whereas this played to darkness.
     * _Was the Drazi really there? He was played by the same actor who
       played Jack._
       The Drazi was really there...has to be, or the ep loses some of
       its teeth. And yeah, we kinda liked the symmetry of Wayne being in
       this ep.
     * Yes, the Drazi was working with the EA the whole time, rendering
       Sheridan's "victory" impotent.
     * _What was the message of this episode?_
       The message is just that, that we *all* have to choose to resist
       from time to time, and that one individual can fight the system.
       And we are all that individual at one time or another.
     * There was a lot of give-and-take in that episode, and at times
       maybe the interrogator was near the truth, or a form of it...but
       always distorting it, using it for his benefit. Slippery slopes
       indeed....
     * "Theres alot of truth to your notion of the TRUTH. It raises
       points I'd rather not think about. Where do these notions of yours
       originate?"
       Usually at 3 in the morning when I can't sleep....
     * _Why doesn't Clark just have Bester reprogram Sheridan?_
       Because they don't want him reprogrammed; as William says, another
       teep could see that he'd been altered. They want him *sincerely
       broken*. Not just rewired.
       And yeah, I wanted this to function almost as a play in structure.
       In fact, when we shot it, we did it in full-act chunks. The actors
       would come in in the morning, rehearse it as they would a play,
       then we'd shoot it the way we'd shoot a play, straight through.
     * _But if Clark is in control of the Corps, no other teep would scan
       Sheridan, right?_
       It matters because there are plenty of alien teeps out there as
       well as human ones, and you can always get a rogue in there.
     * _Did Sheridan say very little to avoid giving the interrogator
       anything to use against him?_
       That's one reason (among many) that I kept Sheridan silent for the
       most part; a) because the less he says the better overall from his
       position, and b) the audience would want to respond for him.
     * _The interrogator looked like an ordinary person._
       Exactly. The banal face of evil. You look at most of the guys who
       ran Treblinka, or Bergen-Belsen, and they're largely ordinary
       looking guys, who could be accountants or repair men or car
       salesmen. They're *us*...and this was designed to remind us of
       that. The evil, mustache-twirling villain is too easy, and too far
       from the truth of it.
     * This was one of the elements that made the episode interesting for
       me; most SF tends to ignore the darker sides of the common person.
       They deal with the big bad guys, the evil federations and Darth
       Vaders and all the other major forces out there, but all too often
       the real damage is done not by the single Evil Leader, but by the
       ten million people who *follow* him, the bookkeepers who track the
       bodies and the trains and the pain by placing the right figures in
       all the right columns, who make the trains run on time, who run
       the gulags, who build the new state empires that will be built
       with slave labor, any or all of whom could say, as many have, "I
       was just doing my job."
       Not so much "following orders," we've heard that before, applied
       to the military...but just "doing my job." To the interrogator, he
       was simply doing his job, and doing it to the best of his ability.
       It is something he does, then he goes home to his wife and kids,
       and has dinner, and sits out on the porch trying to forget what he
       does because he thinks he *has* to do it...assuming he thinks
       about it at all.
     * _Referring to [28]"Comes the Inquisitor"_
       "It's Johnny who's "alone in the dark", facing unrelenting
       pressure to give up, knowing that if he dies under torture his
       friends may never know for certain what happened to him."
       Which is what the Inquisitor said he would have to face.
     * _This story must have been based on "Closetland." There were a
       bunch of similarities..._
       The one room;
       Interrogations usually take place in one cell. Take a look at
       "Midnight Express," or any of a dozen or so other interrogation
       movies.
       the two main characters;
       Closetland had just two; here we had others, a second
       interrogator, the Drazi, others.
       the taunting with food and drink;
       Standard fare for any such interrogation.
       the recorded message about cooperation and rewards;
       ditto
       the talk about breaking the body to then break the mind;
       ditto again
       the ruse of taking the prisoner to another room, yet having it be
       just another prison.
       Where did this happen in Closetland? It didn't, from what I dimly
       recall of the thing.
       I based this episode on a fairly substantial amount of reading and
       background in knowing about how people are treated in prison camps
       and the like. There are only so many things you can do to someone
       in a closed room to try and break them. Heck, look at William
       Saroyan's "Hello, Out There" for other similarities that *way*
       precede Closetland. I'm sorry to astonish you, but the techniques
       of interrogation existed long before B5 or ST or Closetland came
       into existence, and will continue (sadly) long afterward. The
       techniques are the techniques, and those are well documented. The
       *stories* have nothing whatsoever in common.
       Over the last ten years or so, there have been a number of films
       which have looked at the process of interrogation in South
       American and European countries, using a very similar structure to
       what was done here, because the ways in which the "problem" are
       handled are pretty much universal. They don't all stem from the
       same film, or book, or story...but rather from the realities
       involved. They did what they did, and we did what we did, for the
       same reasons: to bring this sort of behavior into the light. There
       have also been innumerable plays with a similar structure.
       In cop movie #1, a suspect is arrested, read his Miranda rights,
       brought to the station, stuck into a cell with one or two other
       people, brought into an interrogation room with one or two cops,
       goes round and round with them, and finally confesses. Cop movie
       #2 does a similar thing...now, did movie #2 take from movie #1, or
       did it just draw on what is *done*?
       No, I'm sorry, but I wasn't thinking about Closetland, or Star
       Trek, or The Prisoner, or much of anything else when I wrote this
       episode. I was thinking about this character, from this show, who
       must be made to confess to alien influence, *which has been
       paraded by Earthforce for almost a year now*. It is an absolute
       and logical extension of what has gone before. As someone who has
       degrees in both Psychology and Sociology, and who has been a
       supporter of PEN International (a multinational group that
       monitors the treatment of writers who are prisoners of conscience
       in other countires) for years, I have had a longstanding interest
       and familiarity with this area...and through my European roots
       with relatives who were in Germany and Poland when the camps were
       in full swing, and later when the Russian government beat down its
       people. I have plenty of personal background on this one.
       

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      [35]Last update: December 2, 1997

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