lurkers-guide/guide/011

<h2><a name="OV">Overview</a></h2>

<blockquote><cite>
Garibaldi's past catches up to him, with some disastrous consequences.
He's blamed by some for an accident
aboard B5, which leads to hitting the bottle again after a
prolonged abstinence.
</cite>

Elaine Thomas as Lianna Kemmer.
Tom Donaldson as Cutter.
</blockquote>

Originally titled "A Knife in the Shadows"

<pre>
Sub-genre: Intrigue
<a href="/lurk/p5/intro.html">P5 Rating</a>: <a href="/lurk/p5/011">7.65</a>

Production number: 111
Original air date: May 4, 1994
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00006HAZ4/thelurkersguidet">DVD release date</a>: November 5, 2002

Written by Mark Scott Zicree
Directed by Jim Johnston
</pre>

<p>
<hr>
<p>

<h2><a name="BP">Backplot</a></h2>
<ul>
   <li> Garibaldi was a shuttle pilot on Mars before coming to Babylon 5.
</ul>

<h2><a name="UQ">Unanswered Questions</a></h2>
<ul>
   <li> Who was the assassin working for?  Who wants Santiago dead?
</ul>

<h2><a name="AN">Analysis</a></h2>
<ul>
   <li> Ivanova's reluctance to stop the countdown is suspicious.  Perhaps
	she had some reason to want the launch to take place; perhaps she
	even knew what was going to happen if it did.
   <li> Everyone from his past considers Garibaldi a no-good drunk.  Why
	did Sinclair give him a second chance?  (Addressed in comic series,
	<a href="/lurk/comic/005.html">"Shadows Past and Present."</a>)
</ul>

<h2><a name="NO">Notes</a></h2>

<h2><a name="JS">jms speaks</a></h2>
<ul>

   <li>@@@832092614 "For scripts that are given to other writers do you find
	you do much if any mental picturing of the episode?  If so, how does
	that affect the writing process between you and the other writer?"

	<p>
	No, you only get into that part of it when you're going to sit down
	and actually WRITE the sucker.  It's a matter of bringing in the
	freelancer and (assuming s/he hasn't come up with a story independent
	of me, which happened about 4-5 times in toto) saying, "Okay, in this
	episode the giant blue penguins of Rigel 4 steal Ivanova's shoes," or
	handing the person a few paragraphs to several pages with detailed
	story notes.  Then the person goes away.

	<p>
	The first "mental picture" I have of it is when the writer brings
	back an outline based on those notes.  This is always hard for me, as
	is the first draft script, because the characters rarely talk like
	our characters talk.
	 They don't sound right, don't always behave consistently, there's
	 bits of backstory that contradict what's been established, and that
	has to get fixed.  So it's like seeing a distorted picture, and your
	job is to bring it closer into focus.

	<p>
	(This is an inevitable aspect of freelancing.  There simply isn't
	time to learn all there is to know about a show before you begin
	writing; you have to come in, do it fast, and then move on to the
	next assignment if you're going to make a living at this.  That's the
	Freelance Life.  I hate the Freelance Life.  I like to stay around,
	get to know the characters, rummage around inside their heads and
	find what's there.  Freelance scripts almost always tend to be about
	the guest star character; if you look at mine, most of them don't
	really tend to have a big guest character, with some notable
	exceptions.  I find our regular characters more than sufficiently
	interesting.)

	<p>
	What's most ironic about the freelance situation is that you often
	have people who say, "Straczynski oughta use more freelance writers,
	they bring in perspectives he doesn't have."  They cite the "moment
	of perfect beauty" in Peter's script
	[<a href="036.html">"There All the Honor Lies"</a>],
	Londo's "my shoes are too
	tight, and I have forgotten how to dance,"
	[<a href="007.html">"The War Prayer"</a>]
	the alien abductor
	courtroom scene in Grail, Deathwalker's comments about how she plans
	to create her monument...all of which are scenes or sections I wrote
	and inserted into scripts by other people.  (One of my best lines for
	G'Kar is one I'm not credited for, in Zicree's script, "The universe
	runs on the complex interweaving of three elements: energy, matter,
	and enlightened self-interest."  I actually saw some messages noting
	that jms never seems to be able to write something that succinct.
	Well, actually...I did.)

<p>
   <li> We're already doing it, and have done it. We've already begun
	integrating "virtual sets" in with real ones. As an example...in the
	next-to-last shot in "Survivors," someone is entering a ship in the
	docking bay. The only real object in that room, aside from the actor,
	is a ladder. Everything else is CGI...but you can't tell.

<p>
   <li> In "Survivors," we attempted a cgi/composite shot out the window, which
	looks pretty spiffy, actually. It's in the teaser. We may do this in
	future.

<p>
   <li> The *reason* we had Garibaldi go through all the hoops he went through
	before finally falling into the bottle is because simply having Liana
	show up and depress Garibaldi isn't, frankly, sufficient motivation.  
	I don't buy it.  We wanted to strip away everything he had, and leave
	him with only *himself*.  So we took away his job, his reputation, his
	money, his home, neutralized his friends wherever possible...it was 
	deliberate and systematic to peel him down to the bare essentials, to
	just Garibaldi.  Take him all the way down before taking him back up 
	again.  Because it's more dramatically interesting.  It's more logical
	that it would take something this major to drive him back into the 
	bottle after staying sober all this time.  I'm sorry, I don't accept 
	your suggestion that Liana's "anger and accusations" would "drive him
	over the edge as he deals with his guilt."  He's BEEN dealing with his
	guilt, and her showing up wouldn't be enough to drive him back into 
	the bottle again.  I'm sorry, but as a producer or a story editor, I 
	wouldn't buy that from a writer as being sufficient motivation.  
	Particularly not a character who's as strong and as bull-headed as 
	Garibaldi.

<p>
   <li> What do I know about alcoholics, to portray them?  Well, aside from
	a degree in clinical psychology, and some internship work in the area,
	I come from a family with alcoholism going back at least four 
	generations, and I'm talking *heavy duty*.  I am, in fact, the first
	male Straczynski in my branch of this particular stunted tree NOT to 
	have this problem.

	<p>
	I have had far, far, far more experience with this area than I care
	to recite...and from that perspective, I have no problem with
	Garibaldi's portrayal.

<p>
   <li> Cutter went after Garibaldi only because that's who the dying worker
	named as being responsible for the bomb.  (He didn't know he was dying,
	and wanted to throw blame; and even if he did know, what better than
	to nail the guy who'd hassled him before?)  Cutter only took advantage
	of the situation.

	<p>
	Luis Santiago is playing it both ways, allowing more trade and certain
	kinds of immigration, while preserving earth *culture*; this isn't the
	same thing as a trade embargo.

<p>
   <li> The name of General Netter was stuck in as a tweak to Doug, it's a
	tuckerism (for those who know the term).  We've done it a bit here
	and there; I kinda started shutting the process down after a while,
	since it was getting carried away.  I don't want it to be obtrusive.

<p>
   <li> I think Kemmer's name was inspired by the actor's name from the
	Space Patrol series....

<p>
   <li> The Drazi are a very violent, ill-tempered species; they were the ones
	who first showed up in "Deathwalker" in a Sunhawk to threaten the 
	station; they beat up the guy in "The War Prayer;" they show up here 
	in "Survivors;" there's an episode about a form of martial arts among
	the aliens that has a Drazi going at it...if there's a fight around, 
	you can often find a Drazi at the center of it or at least nearby.

<p>
   <li> I think you're taking what I said to the extreme; I didn't say [the 
	Drazi] were bloodthirsty savages, only that they had a predilection 
	toward violence, and were generally very cranky.  And not all great
	thinkers have to sit around in elizabethan garb, delicate flowers
	watching the skies rotate.  Aggressive people can be good thinkers;
	it needn't be one or the other.

<p>
   <li> ...the end of "Survivors," where Kemmer enters her ship...in reality
	there is only a ladder there.  The ship, the walls, the door she
	enters, all that is CGI/virtual set.

</ul>