lurkers-guide/guide/084

<!-- TITLE Intersections in Real Time -->

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

<blockquote><cite>
Sheridan faces an inquisitor from Earthdome.
</cite>

<a href="http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+Alexander,+Wayne">Wayne Alexander</a> as Drazi.
<a href="http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+Birk,+Raye">Raye Birk</a> as William.
<a href="http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+Gray,+Bruce">Bruce Gray</a> as Interrogator.
</blockquote>

<pre><a href="/lurk/p5/intro.html">P5 Rating</a>: <a href="/lurk/p5/084">8.08</a>

Production number: 418
Original air week: June 16, 1997
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000DGBEY/thelurkersguidet">DVD release date</a>: January 6, 2004

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by John LaFia
</pre>

<p>
<hr size=3>

<h2><a name="BP">Plot Points</a></h2>
<ul>

   <li>@@@866580699 Sheridan continues to be held in an interrogation center,
	most likely on Mars.

   <li>@@@866580699 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."

   <li>@@@866580699 Among the weapons Earth purchased from the Narn during the
	Earth-Minbari War were paingivers
	(<a href="005.html">"The Parliament of Dreams."</a>)
	The paingivers appear to work as well on humans as they do on Narns.

</ul>

<h2><a name="UQ">Unanswered Questions</a></h2>
<ul>

   <li>@@@866828767 Was the interrogation real, or was it all in Sheridan's
	mind like the interrogation of Sinclair in
	<a href="008.html">"And the Sky Full of Stars?"</a>

   <li>@@@866783581 Was it really morning?

   <li>@@@866948664 Is Sheridan's father still being held?

</ul>

<h2><a name="AN">Analysis</a></h2>
<ul>

   <li>@@@866617559 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
	(<a href="083.html">"The Face of the Enemy"</a>)
	it's strange a telepath hasn't been brought in to pull military
	information from Sheridan's head.

<p>
   <li>@@@867089577 In
	<a href="083.html">"The Face of the Enemy,"</a>
	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.

<p>
   <li>@@@866828327 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.

<p>
   <li>@@@866828616 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
	<a href="068.html">"Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?"</a>
	The knowledge that Delenn is still out there, awaiting his return, is
	an island of stability Sheridan can cling to.

	<p>
	The interrogator clearly knew of his relationship with Delenn -- not
	a big secret after the ISN report in
	<a href="074.html">"The Illusion of Truth."</a>
	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?

<p>
   <li>@@@866951349 "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.

<p>
   <li>@@@867001429 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.

<p>
   <li>@@@867173945 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
	<a href="#NO.poison">Notes</a>)
	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.

</ul>

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

   <li>@@@866650292 The interrogator mentioned that Sheridan had been
	interrogated once before.  That referred to
	<a href="043.html">"Comes the Inquisitor,"</a>
	in which Sheridan was interrogated by Jack the Ripper (played by
	Wayne Alexander, who played the Drazi in this episode.)

<p>
   <li>@@@881045445 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.

<p>
   <li>@@@867001429 <a name="NO.poison">The interrogator</a>
	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.

<p>
   <li>@@@866951349 Perhaps simply by coincidence, this "1984"esque story
	is the 84th one-hour episode.

<p>
   <li>@@@867570277 Taking numerology to an absurd extreme, add episode 84 to
	room 17 and you get 101, the mystery room number from "1984."

</ul>

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

   <li>@@@867048518 <em>About the title</em><br>
	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.

<p>
   <li>@@@858187727 As this has the potential to be a very cool and somewhat
	experimental episode, I'd rather say nothing until later.

<p>
   <li>@@@864893341 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.

<p>
   <li>@@@866949567 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....

<p>
   <li>@@@866783933 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?"

<p>
   <li>@@@866999499 "You understand the concepts of breaking down a human
	psyche."

	<p>
	(shrugs)  Well, sure...I work for Warner Bros.

<p>
   <li>@@@866620204 <em>Warner Bros.' wacky scheduling is actually appropriate
	this time.</em><br>
	Yep...it is that.  At last I have a proper cliffhanger and a
	proper wait afterward.

<p>
   <li>@@@866949714 <em>Why do people do end-of-season cliffhangers?</em><br>
	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.

<p>
   <li>@@@868631882 <em>Was Bruce Boxleitner's beard for real?</em><br>
	Bruce had some time between episodes, and began to grow the beard for
	real, and we darkened it down for later acts.

<p>
   <li>@@@866999499 <em>The costumes and set design were ripoffs of "The
	Prisoner."</em><br>
	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.

<p>
   <li>@@@866617925 <em>Was the Drazi really there?  He was played by the
	same actor who played Jack.</em><br>
	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.

<p>
   <li>@@@867175103 Yes, the Drazi was working with the EA the whole time,
	rendering Sheridan's "victory" impotent.

<p>
   <li>@@@867048567 <em>What was the message of this episode?</em><br>
	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.

<p>
   <li>@@@867168871 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....

<p>
   <li>@@@867168871 "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?"

	<p>
	Usually at 3 in the morning when I can't sleep....

<p>
   <li>@@@866949540 <em>Why doesn't Clark just have Bester reprogram
	Sheridan?</em><br>
	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.

	<p>
	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.

<P>
   <li>@@@866999499 <em>But if Clark is in control of the Corps, no other
	teep would scan Sheridan, right?</em><br>
	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.

<p>
   <li>@@@867168871 <em>Did Sheridan say very little to avoid giving the
	interrogator anything to use against him?</em><br>
	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.

<p>
   <li>@@@867168871 <em>The interrogator looked like an ordinary
	person.</em><br>
	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.

<p>
   <li>@@@872709849 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."

	<p>
	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.

<p>
   <li>@@@867513059 <em>Referring to
	<a href="043.html">"Comes the Inquisitor"</a></em><br>
	"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."

	<p>
	Which is what the Inquisitor said he would have to face.

<p>
   <li>@@@867447827 <em>This story must have been based on
	"Closetland."  There were a bunch of similarities...</em><br>
	The one room;  

	<p>
	Interrogations usually take place in one cell.  Take a look at "Midnight
	Express," or any of a dozen or so other interrogation movies.

	<p>
	the two main characters;  

	<p>
	Closetland had just two; here we had others, a second interrogator, the
	Drazi, others.

	<p>
	the taunting with food and drink;  

	<p>
	Standard fare for any such interrogation.

	<p>
	the recorded message about cooperation and rewards;  

	<p>
	ditto

	<p>
	the talk about breaking the body to then break the mind; 

	<p>
	ditto again

	<p>
	the ruse of taking the prisoner to another room, yet having it be just
	another prison.

	<p>
	Where did this happen in Closetland?  It didn't, from what I dimly
	recall of the thing.

	<p>
	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.

	<p>
	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.

	<p>
	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*?

	<p>
	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.

</ul>