lurkers-guide/guide/015

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

<blockquote><cite>
A traveller comes to B5, seeking the Holy Grail.  A series of unexplained
attacks on several Lurkers may be linked to Ambassador Kosh.
</cite>

<a href="http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+Warner,+David">David Warner</a> as Aldous Gajic.
Tom Booker as Jinxo.
<a href="http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+Sanderson,+William">William Sanderson</a> as Deuce.
</blockquote>

<pre>
Sub-genre: Mystery
<a href="/lurk/p5/intro.html">P5 Rating</a>: <a href="/lurk/p5/015">7.43</a>

Production number: 109
Original air date: July 6, 1994
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00006HAZ4/thelurkersguidet">DVD release date</a>: November 5, 2002

Written by Christy Marx
Directed by Richard Compton
</pre>

<p>
<hr size=3>
<p>

<h2><a name="BP">Backplot</a></h2>
<ul>
   <li> Babylon and Babylon 2 were sabotaged.  Babylon 3 blew up before it was
	finished.  Babylon 4 vanished without a trace in front of witnesses.
   <li> The Minbari highly value people who spend their lives searching for
	something.  Delenn seems to believe that's true of Sinclair.
</ul>

<h2><a name="UQ">Unanswered Questions</a></h2>
<ul>
   <li> Delenn seems to consider Sinclair a true seeker.  What is he seeking?
   <li> Why didn't the feeder want Gajic?
   <li> What happened to Babylon 4?  (cf.
	<a href="020.html">"Babylon Squared"</a>)
</ul>

<h2><a name="AN">Analysis</a></h2>
<ul>
   <li> Perhaps Delenn's comments about Sinclair simply refer to his
	search for the truth about the Battle of the Line, if she realizes
	he knows something of what happened to him.  Or there could be
	a deeper meaning.
</ul>

<h2><a name="NO">Notes</a></h2>
<ul>
   <li> This episode features the series' first
	CGI alien (the na'ka'leen feeder, pictured above.)

   <li> The transport <cite>Marie Celeste</cite>, which Thomas boarded at the
	end of the episode, is a reference to a sailing ship
	found adrift on the sea in 1872 by the crew of the ship <cite>Dei
	Gratia</cite>.  The <cite>Celeste</cite>'s crew was missing, as was her
	single lifeboat, but there were half-eaten
	meals in the mess hall and other evidence the crew had left suddenly.
	Investigators found that Captain Morehouse of the <cite>Dei
	Gratia</cite> had
	dined with Captain Briggs of the <cite>Celeste</cite> the night before
	departure, and Morehouse and his crew were tried for murder.  There was
	no hard evidence, and they were acquitted.  The missing crewmen were
	never found.

</ul>

<h2><a name="JS">jms speaks</a></h2>
<ul>
   <li> In an earlier version of the story, it was indeed Kosh who appeared out
	of nowhere and scragged the Feeder, saying, "Some things we do not
	allow," but it seemed kinda un-Kosh-like on one level, and it repeated
	the Deathwalker finish, so it was dropped.

<p>
   <li> The grey-alien trial scene from "Grail" will be excerpted for a 
	two-part "Sightings" on alien abduction.

	<p>
	I'm *still* laughing.

<p>
   <li> The human won the case, but damages awarded were minimal.

<p>
   <li> Yes, this Christy Marx is the same as the one who writes games and
	has written comics as well.

<p>
   <li> Actually, Christy has gone on record (otherwise I would not have
	noted it myself) that the trial scene at the top of "Grail" was
	written and inserted by me, since it was a bit short.

<p>
   <li>@@@852230750 Yeah, it's a lovely scene.  I dropped it into Christy's
	script because it was something I always wanted to do.  I just figured,
	okay, if these things really ARE happening, and it gets found out, and
	we make contact with aliens, and find the ones responsible....
	somebody's gonna want to sue their butts off.  So it became a very
	logical extension of the judicial system (tongue somewhat in cheek). 
	And...well, it was a hoot.  I'll forgive much if it's a hoot.

<p>
   <li> Actually, it was Christy Marx, who wrote Grail, who named Aldus after
	Mira [Furlan]'s husband.

<p>
   <li> I don't think I've really said that much about "Grail."  The trick,
	though, is that I don't approach the episodes in quite the same way 
	that a viewer does.  I have somewhat different agendas and goals, and
	there are times when hassles in *doing* the episode -- which in no 
	way affect the show itself - - affects my *perception* of the episode.

	<p>
	I did a small screening of "Grail" here about a week ago, to get some
	other reactions, and they were all very positive; they enjoyed the
	episode quite a bit.  (Similarly, there were people who thought that
	"Infection" was one of the best of the season.)  There is *no one* who
	is harsher in critiquing the episodes than I am.  I want each one to 
	be absolutely perfect.  And sometimes that means that I see flaws that
	no one else ever will.

	<p>
	In any event, I definitely want people to come at this from an open
	minded point of view.  For reasons that have nothing to do with
	Christy's script, it still isn't one of my all-time favorite episodes;
	if I said otherwise, I'd be lying through my teeth.  But different
	opinions are what makes horse races, and as stated, most of those 
	who've seen it so far *do* like it, so at the moment I'm considerably
	outnumbered....

<p>
   <li> John Flinn, who is our DP, has at various times also been an actor,
	and so we used him to play Mr. Flinn in the episode as well.  A 
	cameo by yet another member of our talented and multifaceted 
	production team.

<p>
   <li> There were no asymmetrical aliens in the pilot, but there's a real
	dandy coming your way in the B5 episode "Grail."  You want nonhumanoid
	aliens, you *got* non-humanoid aliens....

<p>
   <li> Yeah, the Feeder is pretty cool; wrapped up Foundation's rendering
	machines for the better part of a week just to pull that one off.  

<p>
   <li> On the feeder being sentient...neither Sinclair nor anyone else on
	"our" side of the story ever heard it speaking; all they knew was that
	it was a killer, and it was dangerous, and had to be stopped.

<p>
   <li> <em>Who let the Feeders out?</em><br>
	Stupid bureaucrats who couldn't afford to maintain a quarantine
	enforcement team in the sector.

<p>
   <li> The hardest part is always writing Kosh, because you have to be very
	careful how much you use him, and what he says.  Too much and he 
	loses his sense of mystery, and you don't want him spouting fortune-
	cookie type aphorisms.  He has a very deliberate way of speaking in
	which everything, every smallest nuance and inflection means something,
	but sometimes not what it appears to mean, or comes at it from a very
	different angle than normal conversation.  So I go as minimalist as 
	possible, to get the meaning down to the smallest number of words
	possible.  And in one scene, one of only two he appears in, I got him
	down to *one word*, and that one word -- and it's a totally inoffensive,
	neutral word on its own terms -- should scare the hell out of 
	*everybody*.
	<p>
	Ah loves this show....
	<em>(Editor's note: the word in question is "Good.")</em>

<p>
   <li> At one time we were working out what the time-reference would be on 
	B5.  One of the early things we talked about were cycles, but in 
	fairly short order I decided against it because it didn't seem to mean
	much.   But this was, sadly, after "Grail" had been produced, and we
	couldn't dub over the cycle references with anything else, so it 
	stayed.  It won't be appearing anywhere else henceforth.  One of our
	few continuity glitches.

<p>
   <li> After "Grail," we had a discussion with Chris about funny music.  We
	do not anticipate further discussions.  (In a full season of music for
	B5, this is the only discussion we've had of a critical nature, which
	is extraordinary for any series; he's done a lot of wonderful work for
	us . . . .)

<p>
   <li> Yeah, it was a bit of *really* perverse humor...Jinxo survives all
	five Babylon stations, and leaves thinking all is well...on a ship
	named the Marie Celeste?
	<p>
	We're a sick bunch, but we're fun.

<p>
   <li>@@@846702468 "...what company in their right mind would name one of
	their ships the "Marie Celeste"?

	<p>
	Dunno, but I'd bet good money that whoever it is, it's an Australian
	company.  Nothing frightens those people; they're fearless.

<p>
   <li> I would love to have David Warner do another episode, though it 
	would have to be an alien, for obvious reasons.

<p>
   <li> And the grail story was fairly self-contained, not much in the way of
	arc related stuff there.

</ul>