lurkers-guide/guide/501

<!-- TITLE War Zone -->

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

<blockquote><cite>
As Earth reacts to the Drakh plague, the Excalibur sets out on its mission
to find a cure.
</cite>

</blockquote>

<pre>
Production number: 108
Original air date: June 9, 1999
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00061QJSK/thelurkersguidet">DVD release date</a>: December 7, 2004

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Janet Greek
</pre>

<p>
<hr size=3>

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

   <li>@@@929003660 Earth has been quarantined since the Drakh plague was
	released.

   <li>@@@929004549 The Excalibur has captured the first Drakh prisoner of
	war.

   <li>@@@929003660 Galen saved Gideon's life nine years ago, during the
	technomages' exodus from known space
	(<a href="025.html">"The Geometry of Shadows"</a>).

</ul>

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

   <li>@@@929003660 Why was Gideon's ship destroyed nine years ago?

   <li>@@@929003660 What are the new rules regarding telepaths?  Clearly
	they aren't exactly the same as the old Psi Corps rules; Matheson, for
	example, wasn't wearing gloves.  Who enforces the rules now?

</ul>

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

   <li>@@@929081490 How strong a telepath is Matheson?  Would he have been
	of any use in the interrogation of the Drakh commander?  Or is such
	probing forbidden by the new rules governing telepaths?

   <li>@@@929003660 Gideon referred to the Excalibur as the most advanced
	warship ever built by humans.  Is he aware of the Minbari involvement
	in the ship's construction?

   <li>@@@929004549 The Drakh commander referred to himself as a councilman.
	Is there a Drakh government distinct from the military?  What is the
	relationship between the two apparently different species who make
	up the Drakh?

</ul>

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

   <li>@@@929003660 Assuming the technomages all departed at once and weren't
	in transit for a very long time, this episode takes place in 2268.
	The technomages departed B5 in 2259
	(<a href="025.html">"The Geometry of Shadows"</a>)
	and Gideon said he'd been rescued nine years earlier.

   <li>@@@929003660 Explorer-class ships such as the one commanded by Gideon
	before he was assigned to the Excalibur were first introduced in
	<a href="026.html">"A Distant Star."</a>
	Their missions typically take them far beyond known space for
	extended periods of time, mapping out new systems and making
	contact with alien civilizations.

   <li>@@@929003660 The question of whether life ever existed on Mars is
	still unresolved in 2268.

   <li>@@@929004316 Effects oddity: the fire burning in front of the crashed
	Drakh ship is symmetrical.

</ul>

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

   <li>@@@929037218 Just for the record: I think the first one -- the only one
	written directly at TNT's behest -- is probably the weakest one,
	certainly the one I find least interesting.  It's lumbered with buckets
	of exposition, explaining things that don't need explaining, too many
	fights, too many explosions, too much swaggering around, all stuff the
	net wanted. 

	<p>
	Then we go back to the show we wanted to make...Path of Sorrows is
	terrific, Well of Forever is a solid character story, The Long Road is
	just pure fun (that's pretty much reverse broadcast order, btw)...
	there's one or two in the bunch that are a bit slower than I'd like,
	but those are the exception rather than the rule.  

	<p>
	Just to get my own feelings on this out there.  

<p>
   <li>@@@929221939 My take on #1 is that this is the weakest of the bunch,
	because this is the only one written at the behest of TNT; it's
	exposition heavy, too much swaggering macho stuff, no real depth, just
	stuff blowing up.  The ones that follow are much better.

<p>
   <li>@@@929221939 All that exposition is what TNT wanted...and one of the
	reasons was that they weren't going to rerun
	<a href="115.html">ACtA</a>
	before it...then they
	were, which made it all unnecessary...then they ran ACtA AFTER the
	ep...which makes NO kind of sense.

<p>
   <li>@@@929221939 "The mutiny was clumsy, but I like Gideon, Galen, Dureena
	and Trace.  (And from the way it opened, my first thought was, "this
	must be some of the extra violence TNT wanted.  Ugh.")

	<p>
	Ding.

	<p>
	"Will we find out why Gideon wouldn't have his exec scan the Drakh?"

	<p>
	The rules about unauthorized scans still apply.  Matheson has to
	operate even under stricter rules re: privacy now than before.  You'll
	see more on this later.

	<p>
	"The only really weak spots, to me were the " Earth in a panic"
	scenes, which looked an awful lot like newsreel footage"

	<p>
	TNT note: we need to SEE Earth in turmoil, if we just hear about
	it nobody's going to get it.  They had us insert that.

<p>
   <li>@@@929221939 "The opening scene cracked me up. Look there's a fight,
	as close to wrestling as you can get on a starship."

	<p>
	Yep.  That's one of the mandates they put on the first ep...they
	wanted to start with a fist-fight.

<p>
   <li>@@@929221939 <em>Were any of the riot scenes staged?</em><br>
	It was all real footage.

	<p>
	As for the exposition...one reason they asked for so much was
	because they said it was going to air months after ACTA, and nobody'd
	remember, and it wouldn't get rerun...then after we shot WZ they
	decided they *would* rerun ACTA before WZ...then a few weeks ago they
	decided to run ACTA -- which has all the info needed for WZ -- AFTER
	WZ.

	<p>
	Now perhaps you get a small sense of what we've been up against.

<p>
   <li>@@@930036787 "I admit, I'm one of the folks who didn't
	particularly warm to the [riot] footage. It seemed not to fit."

	<p>
	It didn't.  Moreover, the order for that stuff came in about two
	days before we were supposed to begin shooting, so we had to hurriedly
	redesign the set to include the wall monitor, and change other aspects
	of the filming, then hurriedly find some footage that would work
	(sorta).

	<p>
	"I suppose there were few options."

	<p>
	None.  What you have to understand is that we were at this
	point, in the writing of this episode, on hiatus...awaiting the okay to
	go back into filming.  And though it was never said overtly, there was
	always the undercurrent of "If TNT doesn't get this one script the way
	they want it, they may not give the OK.  So give them what they want
	just this one time."

	<p>
	I did what I could with what they demanded, and tried to fight
	as much as I could.  For instance, in one scene, where Gideon tells the
	others to meet him in the conference room, the TNT note was, "How does
	Gideon know where the conference room is?  We should have a scene where
	he's shown the conference room."

	<p>
	My reply: "He knows where the conference room is because when
	he's escorted to the bridge by Matheson, *HE CAN SEE IT FROM HIS
	CHAIR*."

	<p>
	(It was one of those bang-your-head-against-the-wall moments.)

	<p>
	The overall problem, which many folks don't understand, is that
	in a script you have a finite number of minutes and pages.  Let's say
	42 pages. Now, the script is written the way you want, kinda, with some
	nice character moments and stuff.  Then they want more exposition.  You
	can't just append it to the page count, you have to stay at 42 pages. 
	So you have to cut stuff *out* to make room for the stuff they want put
	*in*.  The first thing out the door is character, followed quickly by
	humor.

	<p>
	There was, for instance, a nice clash with the senator and the
	intelligence guy over Gideon's background, why he's the wrong person
	for the job, why Sheridan picked him specifically for the job...which
	had to go in order to put in more exposition (and lengthen the opening
	fight scene in the teaser by about a third, another TNT request).

	<p>
	For me, a lot of what makes an episode fun are the character
	moments, but there was no longer room for them...they had to go out to
	make room for dry expositional stuff or stuff blowing up.

	<p>
	Which is why I picked "The Long Road" as the one to follow in
	the broadcast order...it's one big character piece, with a fair amount
	of humor, and just fun.  A little expository in the second act, but
	nothing unreasonable.

	<p>
	Stil, I'm proud of what we did with "War Zone," because it was a
	little like someone handing you an inner tube and a tree branch and
	telling you to make a radio telescope out of it.  It ain't pretty, but
	it does the job we had put in front of us.

	<p>
	(One aside...some folks on the net picked up my comments about
	War Zone made here earlier and said I was apologizing after the fact
	for the episode, once the reactions came in...but the date stamp on the
	message, here and on the nets, clearly indicate that I made those
	statements BEFORE the episode aired.  I know *exactly* where the faults
	are in the eps, where they work and where they don't work, and have
	always tried to be the first one on record about them because that
	seems right to me.  This is, after all, about the process of educating
	people about how TV works, the decisions that get made and how you deal
	with them.)

<p>
   <li>@@@930036787 <em>Why did the scene with the senator and the
	intelligence guy have to be cut?</em><br>
	Because something had to go time-wise to make room for other
	stuff.  If we'd kept *that*, then something ELSE of similar time would
	have to go, such as Dureena's scene in the cell with Gideon, or the
	like.  The amount of air time we have per episode does not change.

	<p>
	Also...they said the senator scene was too long (which it
	*wasn't* before the big montage/video/the senator explains it all for
	you sequence was added in), and to cut stuff out of that scene and add
	it to the fight in the beginning.

<p>
   <li>@@@930036787 <em>Why did Sheridan pick Gideon?</em><br>
	Sheridan picked him for the qualities that made him exactly the
	*wrong* person from their point of view...obstinate, difficult,
	independent, not prone to following orders from home, not politically
	astute...but he'll get the job done.

<p>
   <li>@@@929221939 "Somehow I get the feeling that the reason the Detroit
	Free Press reviewer said that Crusade looked "like it came from the
	planet Cheez-Whiz" can be summed up in 3 letters.... TNT. 
	Unfortunately, if the first episode were all I had to go by I'd have to
	agree with him."

	<p>
	And I would as well.

	<p>
	That's the thing about all this...in the negative comments about
	War Zone -- and actually there have been far fewer than I'd anticipated
	-- there ain't much that I'd disagree with.  If anything, they've
	tickled me because they reflect EXACTLY what I'd said when these things
	were asked for.  It's been a massive validation.

<p>
   <li>@@@929221939 "Did they at least give you a blindfold and a cigarette? <wry>"

	<p>
	Not orally, no.

<p>
   <li>@@@929221939 "And the differences were SO transparent (the fist fight,
	the earth scenes, the posturing, etc.)  I sure wish I could have seen a
	JMS script as opposed to a "JMS with TNT" script."

	<p>
	The other 12 fit the bill.

<p>
   <li>@@@929221939 "And yet I don't recall a scene in which you fragged the
	head of ITN or any other network."

	<p>
	No, but there were occasional little hidden messages in the
	episode, as when a character says, "We've had to make some compromises
	to get this show on the road."  No one noticed that one, despite being
	rather literal.

<p>
   <li>@@@929221939 "In the scenes with the Senator on Mars I wasn't sure Cole
	was in the same room with the other two during the dialogue.  Too many
	cuts back and forth and his eyes seemed to move around oddly.  Was this
	scene editted back together from separate filmings?"

	<p>
	At one point in editing we needed some close-ups, and there
	weren't any in that part, so we kind of borrowed some from earlier in
	the sequence. We do this a lot, when there isn't coverage of some parts
	of scenes, rarely does anyone notice the eyeline difference.

<p>
   <li>@@@930036787 <em>Why does Dureena give the impression she's
	never seen the Excalibur before?</em><br>
	Actually, she never gives that impression; her reaction to the others
	seeing the ship and being impressed is to shrug and say, "It'll do." 
	She's not impressed because she's already been there.

</ul>