[1][ISMAP]-[2][Home] ### GUIDE ### [3][Background] [4][Synopsis] [5][Credits] [6][Episode List] [7][Previous] [8][Next] _Contents:_ [9]Overview - [10]Backplot - [11]Questions - [12]Analysis - [13]Notes - [14]JMS _________________________________________________________________ Overview A sharp increase in raider activity has the station on the defensive. Londo obtains a priceless Centauri artifact. A mysterious stranger visits the station's alien ambassadors. [15]Gerrit Graham as Lord Kiro. Fredi Olster as Lady Ladira. [16]Ed Wasser as Morden. (Originally titled "Raiding Party") Sub-genre: Action/intrigue [17]P5 rating: [18]9.01 Production number: 116 Original air date: May 18, 1994 Written by J. Michael Straczynski Directed by Janet Greek _________________________________________________________________ Backplot * The Minbari refused to support Babylon 5 until Commander Sinclair was named as the Earth Alliance representative. * The emperor of the Centauri hasn't been seen in public for some time, contributing to an erosion of the government's credibility in the eyes of the Centauri populace. Unanswered Questions * Who or what is Morden, and who does he represent? * What do Delenn and Kosh know about him? * Why did the Minbari want Sinclair in charge of the station? * How big and organized are the raiders? * What impact will the Eye have on Londo's career? Will he even return it to the Emperor, or will he try to use it for his own gain? * How did Mr. Reno get his hands on the Eye? * How did Morden's associates locate the raiders and recover the Eye? * Who will escape on the shuttle in Ladira's vision? When will the vision come true, if ever, and what will the circumstances be? Analysis * Delenn and Kosh clearly have some sort of perception beyond normal senses, be it telepathy or something else. Kosh's seems to be much more advanced. * Delenn's perception seems to be connected to the appearance of the triangle on her forehead. Note that this triangle was also present when Sinclair was interrogated by the Grey Council at the Battle of the Line (cf. [19]"And the Sky Full of Stars.") * Kosh recognized what Morden was immediately. That suggests previous contact between the Vorlons and Morden's people. * Kosh said, "They are not for you," referring to humans, though that's not completely clear from the episode itself. (See [20]jms speaks) * Morden and Kosh appeared to have fought, resulting in the damage to Kosh's encounter suit. Since Morden continued to go about his business, perhaps Kosh capitulated or lost the fight, or perhaps he was only interested in stopping Morden from seeing Sinclair. One interesting thing about this alleged fight is the light that shatters behind Morden as the scene ends -- just a power surge from the attack, or something else at work? * Babylon 5 may be destined for destruction, apparently with only a single shuttle escaping in time. (cf. [21]"Babylon Squared") * Where did Morden's disembodied voice come from at the end? Notes * This episode has the most complex battle sequence to date, spanning nearly an act and a half. * The raider on Babylon 5 is "Six," a tip of the hat to "The Prisoner." * Ed Wasser, the actor who played Morden, also appeared as the main C&C technician in the pilot movie, [22]"The Gathering." The same character? JMS won't say. * As Sinclair and Garibaldi left the lavatory, another person entered. From the person's appearance, it seemed to be a woman, even though they were leaving the men's room (the "Male" symbol was clearly visible on the wall outside.) * This episode's title may be a nod to Norman Corwin, one of JMS' favorite writers. Corwin's radio drama "On a Note of Triumph," broadcast at the end of World War II, examined how the war started and what lessons it carried, and contemplated what would happen once it was over. The quote in question: Signs and portents! It was no furtive tapping on the window sill at night, But clamorous pounding in the public square. jms speaks * We're retitling "Raiding Party" (which I always figured was a working title, too prosaic) to "Signs and Portents." Figured it'd be nice to have one episode title per (projected) year carrying the year-arc title. * "Signs and Portents" is the overall title for year one; but just as one may entitle a chapter in a book the same as the book itself, this episode has the year-title in it (which may signify that this one is, well, significant....). * What did Kosh mean by "they?" And who's on the shuttle? They refers to humans. There was no need to ask Sinclair, and he was under orders not to. And who is on that shuttle...is an excellent question. * Why the same old launching scene? I tend to agree re: the launching shots. There were going to be some new ones for S&P, but there were SO many new shots in that one that we just ran out of rendering time. There's some new ones coming, though, and very dramatic looking, in "Babylon Squared" and the two-parter. * I agree; Ed [Wasser, who played Morden] did a great job. He was perfect for that role. (He has an oddly Rod Serling-ish quality to his stance, I've noticed.) And he will definitely be seen again. * Ed Wasser is sort of our discovery; I pretty much wrote the part of Morden with him in mind for the role. He's great in it. * You noticed that too, huh? Surprised me, too. We'd cast him in the part of Morden, then the first day's dailies come in, and his stance, his manner, the way he looks...we all looked at the TV and said, more or less at once, "Holy shit, it's Rod Serling!" * Funny story. Saw Ed Wasser ("Morden") the other day, and asked him if he'd had any reaction to his first appearance on the show. Just one, he said. He was in a florist shop, picking out some stuff for a friend who was sick. The proprieter came over, asked, "What do you want?" Ed sorta mumbled about wanting some flowers. "What do you want?" the owner asked again. Ed -- still not getting it -- said he was looking for some nice stuff for a friend who was sick. "Yes, but what do you *want*?" the owner asked. At which point Ed finally twigged to what was going on. He said afterward that it really *is* an unnerving approach, which was kinda the point. Of course, the owner then added that he thought the scene was from DS9, but what the hell, it's an imperfect universe. * One lovely thing about "Signs and Portents," which you picked up on, is something I like to play with; implying one thing while saying the opposite. Look at all the shadow's main representative, Morden, does: he asks people what they want; he gets tossed out of Delenn's quarters; he is pleasant in his demeanor at all times, never yells, always smiles, and is courteous; he takes an action which saves one of our main characters, Londo, from disgrace and resignation, and helps in the process of scragging the bad guys in the episode. And yet everyone walks away thinking that the shadows are bad. Which was of course the intent...by the way in which they did "good." Kosh prevents humanity from achieving immortality, scares the hell out of Talia (cf. [23]"Deathwalker",) never gives anyone a straight answer, doesn't seem to mind it if people fear him...and we walk away with the presumption that he is good, by virtue of the way in which he did things that were "bad." [...] This is something I do a lot in my scripts, which I don't generally see a lot of other people doing. You *really* have to construct the script very carefully to pull something like this off...a little game between me and the audience. * Morden tried to find out what the ambassadors would like. Morden arranged to rescue an important Centauri artifact. Morden helped wipe out the crooks. Morden saved Londo's career, and asked for nothing in return. And yet we get the sense that Morden is a bad guy. Kosh destroys our chance for immortality. Refuses to get involved in the affairs of others. Is plainly studying us. Terrorizes one of our main characters, Talia, for unknown reasons. And yet we get the sense that Kosh is a good guy. If anyone should ask, I really *love* writing this show.... * Actually, the origin of "What do you want?" comes from encounter groups I've run, and from other kinds of group psychotherapy, such as the original Synanon games; you ask, "Who are you?" over and over, refusing to take the same answer twice, to peel away the fabric of what the person is. It's a slight jump to "What do you want?" (I knew that degree in Psychology would come in handy one of these days.) * Why Londo? Because he was the one who answered Morden's question correctly. Things happen for a *reason* that is suited to who the person is. G'Kar's ambitions aren't nearly big enough; Delenn knows better than to get near these guys; Kosh is against them; the EA are being kept at arm's length for now, the non-aligned worlds aren't big enough...so here we are. * There would have been more than one answer that would have sufficed, but one answer was better than all the rest. Just the right mix of resentment, nostalgia, ambition, frustration and a sense of displaced destiny. Londo was hitting all those cylinders when he answered Morden's question. * "jms, what do YOU want?" I'll have fries with that. * The working name for the sixth race is the Shadowmen. * I named them Shadows after the Jungian notion of the Shadow, which is the part of the mind which is all desire, and is destructive. * David: you hit it *exactly* on the head. Again, as you point out, stuff here operates on a lot of different levels. I try, where I can, to make a given scene do more than one thing. The hall argument is a good example of this. The script stipulated a human being stuck between G'Kar and Londo. Not any other race. Had to be a human. Because that becomes emblematic of how we're stuck between the two sides in the war, something which is *very* strongly brought home in the next batch of episodes. Obviously, the first most important thing in that scene is just the gag, the humor. It has to work on that level, and that's how it came to me first: just the gag. Then, when it came time to write it, that's when I start poking at things to see if I can layer on another level of meaning, and I saw a way to do a little (very little) visual foreshadowing of stuff to come. Didn't matter if anybody ever noticed it or not; it was never really intended to be of much note, just a little item that becomes a nice bit of irony later. * Londo does not have the Eye. If he'd failed to turn it over, his career would've been ruined; getting it back was the only thing that kept him on B5. * There's a reason Morden didn't go to the Earth Alliance. * The raiders are gone for good, yes. * _Re: Happy endings and non-happy endings_ As for "Signs and Portents," I don't quite know *how* to characterize the ending on that one. Someone gets what they wanted, but this may or may not be a good thing. I'd say basically it has an ominous ending. We do try to keep it a mixed bag...one person may achieve a niceness, but somebody else pays the price, or gets nailed. * Like Tolkien, and Jonathan Carroll, whose wonderful books start out looking very nice and comfortable...and gradually take you to someplace strange and dark and unique...I've tried to apply a similar structure to Babylon 5. It seems to be chugging along at a good clip along relatively familiar terrain. Now my job is to walk up alongside the story with a crowbar and give it a good, hard WHAM! to move it into a different trajectory. "Parliament" was just sort of a preliminary nudge. "And the Sky Full of Stars" was a good, solid WHAM! This week's episode, "Signs and Portents," is another WHAM, even bigger than the one that precedes it. There are two more major WHAM episodes: "Babylon Squared," dealing with the fate of Babylon 4, and "Chrysalis," our season ender, which is really more of an atomic bomb rather than a crowbar. So roughly about one-fourth of this season's episodes are WHAM episodes. That figure will increase in year two to about one-third. Year three (Neilsen willing) will be half-WHAM and hal-not. Year four would be three-quarters WHAM. And year five is all WHAM. * Let me dive in and take issue with you. The problem you seem to have with the show(s) is alas a part of basic dramatic structure. You have an introduction, a rising action, a climax, and then a denouement. Aside from experimental theater kinds of things, that is the basic underlying structure to all movies, plays and television series. "Twin Peaks," which you cite, really isn't a very good example because, in my view, TP *never* resolved ANYthing. Thus it became an exercise in viewer frustration that eventually was a major reason why the show was canceled. The first batch of B5 episodes tended to be a little more self contained because, remember, we're trying to bring viewers in here, and do so without startling or pissing them off. We get a little funkier the deeper into the show we get. In some cases, as with "Sky," parts of the story are resolved, parts aren't. Generally, it's our feeling that if you have an open-ended B story, you generally have to include an A story that has some measure of closure. "Signs and Portents" and "Babylon Squared" are two episodes offhand that I think are emblematic of what you're asking for. The A story in "Signs" is resolved...but that episode really isn't *about* the A story, it's about something unusual that happens with the B story that begins to set a lot of things in motion for this season. And that story is ended, but not *resolved*, if you get the distinction. * What you address in the last bit of the music in "Signs" is what I've been trying to get across. The theme music appearing there is not quite what we use otherwise. I suggested to Chris that it'd be cool to have the B5 theme there in *minor keys* or minor chords. It's a somewhat different version, and playing a theme in minor instead of major keys or chords makes it somber, sad, unsettling. We've just seen B5 explode, and doing that particular riff on the theme seemed to both of us a good idea. Play it again, then the regular theme, and you'll see the difference. * We've done a lot with themes over the season, and plan to do more, developing themes for all our characters. I like interpolating bits and pieces of the B5 theme into parts of the show; the minor-key version at the end of "Signs" has always struck me as very effective. * Re: the theme music at the end of"Signs," I think it was me (but I could be mistaken) who suggested to Chris, our composer, that he use the theme, but in *minor chords* rather than major chords. Makes it very sad, and very effective. * Overall, though, I've always told Chris to push it...to go absolutely as far with the music as he wants. If it goes too far, we can always pull it back or duck it down a little. Basically, I'm a rock-and-roll kind of guy...I like my music loud, and I like a LOT of it. This show is often wall-to-wall music. Chris often composes as much as 20-25 minutes of new music per episode; most hour shows have maybe 13-16 minutes of music per hour episode. And he is often called upon by us to do some VERY long cues. Often, TV music is just there to cover a transition (10-20 seconds), or establish a mood at the top or bottom of a scene, and get out (1 minute to 1 minute-30 seconds average). We have many, MANY cues on this show that go 2, 3, even 4 minutes. I think we actually had a 6 minute cue at one point in one episode. Check act 3 of "Signs and Portents" and see how much music we crammed into that act; it's almost non-stop. * _Re: The elevator scene_ For as long as I've been writing, I've had a very simple belief that comes across with B5 as well: try to get in one really great action moment,minimum one real nice character moment, one solid dramatic moment...and one moment or scene that's fall-down funny. I like humor. I like that characters can show another side of themselves. If there is any real test of sentience, one of them must surely be the possession of a sense of humor, since it requires self reflection. And there is always unintentional (on the part of the character, at least) humor. SF-TV has generally taken itself either too seriously, with rods up butts, the humor forced...or it's not taken itself seriously at ALL, and gone campy. This show takes itself seriously, but not in quite a way that lets it fit in either category. For me, as a viewer, I enjoy the shows that are roller-coasters, that take you from something very funny...and slam you headfirst into a very dramatic scene. Hill Street was like that, Picket Fences is like that now...why not SF? I've also found that humor can help you reveal things about the characters. The Londo/G'Kar scene at the elevator in "Signs and Portents," for instance. It says something about both of them without coming out and *saying* it. * In general, you don't see a lot of light reflecting off other objects when there's an explosion because in general those objects aren't close enough to cause a reflection. Now, in "Signs," which comes up in a couple weeks, there's explosions near a large object, and there we do get some reflected light. * To have a station commander *and* a rep for Earth can be cumbersome in many ways, when someone has to give orders. It's cleaner this way; and no different than any of the sailing vessels of the 18th century and before, when each captain was viewed as, and expected to perform as, the official representative of his country. There is, however, a second agenda at work here, which you'll find out about a bit in "Raiding Party" ["Signs and Portents"]. * There's not a lot of CGI in either "Legacies" or "The Quality of Mercy" (which will follow "Raiding Party" in the production lineup), because neither story really called for it. But there's a *lot* in "Raiding Party," some of it very elaborate. By way of comparison, in an average B5 episode, a script from beginning to end has about 60 or 70 setups (a setup is a numbered scene or shot, i.e., INT. SCOCKPIT or INT. ZEN GARDEN). "Raiding Party" has around 112 setups. That's more than in some movies. It's a *very* busy script. * Yes, we're doing virtual sets...and there's a doozy in the first little bit of act one in "Signs and Portents." * Yes, this is the actual text of a script. And a script contains scene descriptions, dialogue, directions. (Contrary to popular opinion, the actors don't just make up their lines when they hit the stage, based on loose ideas by somebody.) My scripts tend to be *very* detailed, with camera movement suggestions, optical notes, indications of dissolves vs. cuts, on and on. A typical scene might look like this: EXT. BABYLON 5 - ESTABLISHING A scuttleship unloads cargo from a transport parked alongside the station. PAN ACROSS with the scuttleship, tracking with it until it passes into the docking bay, then DOWN TO the observation dome window, where we can just see into INT. OBSERVATION DOME where Lieutenant-Commander IVANOVA stands at the console, cup in hand, staring bleakly out into the starscape as SINCLAIR comes up alongside. IVANOVA I hate mornings...I've always had a hard time getting up when it's dark outside. SINCLAIR We're in space. It's always dark outside. IVANOVA (forlornly) I know...I know.... (That, by the way, is a slight re-do of an actual shot from "Raiding Party.") A script page, single-spaced, works out to about the same wordage as a double-spaced prose fiction page, about 225-250 words per. * _Why was the ship in Lady Ladira's name instead of Lord Kiro's?_ Ladira was Kiro's aunt, and much of the family money/property is in her name. * I think that the Eye was returned the next day, so there was a goodly span between Ladira's vision, and the scene in Londo's quarters. * _What became of the Eye?_ The eye is now safely back home and on display. * I hate to burst your bubble, but the Raider ship *was* rotating. Look at it again. It's most visible when the ship is being photographed from behind with B5 in the background. You can see the round part of the ship rotating (with the docking bay at center). [29][Next] [30]Last update: January 27, 1998 References 1. file://localhost/cgi-bin/imagemap/titlebar 2. 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