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_Contents:_ [9]Overview - [10]Backplot - [11]Questions - [12]Analysis
- [13]Notes - [14]JMS
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Overview
Disaster strikes an old friend of Captain Sheridan. Dr. Franklin
offers nutritional advice to some reluctant patients. [15]Russ
Tamblyn as Capt. Maynard. [16]Miguel A. Nuñez, Jr. as Orwell.
Sub-genre: Suspense
[17]P5 Rating: [18]7.34
Production number: 204
Original air date: November 23, 1994
Written by D.C. Fontana
Directed by Jim Johnston
Watch For:
* Captain Maynard's footwear.
_________________________________________________________________
Backplot
* Sheridan's first commander, on Earth-Mars patrol duty, was Jack
Maynard, who Sheridan admired greatly. "I thought he knew
everything," Sheridan says. "He _did_, too."
* The Earth Alliance has a small fleet of huge Explorer-class ships
that travel out on the rim of known space, mapping new systems and
installing new jump gates. More specialized scout ships follow
later to perform detailed or specific surveys of these newly
opened systems.
* The Explorer ships, which are considered choice commands, can also
repair jumpgates.
* Navigation in hyperspace involves locking onto jumpgate signals.
There seem to be no natural reference points in hyperspace, so a
ship must keep its own internal navigation references or lock onto
the signals of nearby gates or it will become lost. Until this
episode, no ship lost in hyperspace had ever been rescued.
* Minbari society is built upon a strict caste structure and
obedience to superiors within that caste structure. Delenn has
challanged that organization, and the Minbari are beginning to
react.
Unanswered Questions
* _Is_ something living in hyperspace? (This isn't a new question;
it was the subject of a front-page Universe Today story in
[19]"And the Sky Full of Stars.")
* Why does Delenn feel she is more "one of us" now than she's ever
been? Is it because she views humans and Minbari as joined, and
she feels she's a part of both halves?
* How does hyperspace work in the B5 universe?
Analysis
* The appearance of his friend and mentor Jack Maynard suddenly
throws Sheridan's new duties aboard Babylon 5 into contrast with
his training and experience, kindling a strong sense of
dissatisfaction with the job. "I've been beached," he says. This
is sure to crop up again in the future. Despite his newfound
energy at the end of the episode, what Captain Maynard said is
still true; being a governor and a diplomat isn't what Sheridan
trained or even wished for. If he's itching for action when a
crisis comes up, that might cause him to look less thoroughly for
peaceful solutions than someone like Sinclair might.
* Delenn's transformation is something that's clearly a mystery to
the general Minbari population, suggesting that it is either
unprecedented or so rare as to be unheard-of. Yet she seemed to
know what she was doing, as did at least some of the Grey Council.
The Council is likely harboring many secrets that aren't simple
matters of religion and spirituality; what other technologies do
they possess that the Minbari public knows nothing about?
* Jumpgates act as locator beacons in hyperspace, providing a three
dimensional homing signal detectable for a thousand kilometers or
so there. To be useful in the featureless and chaotic void of
hyperspace it would have to provide both a relative and an
absolute reference much like a VOR does for aircraft. If the
beacon can respond to ship data requests, then range data and
traffic information could also be transmitted to the approaching
(or departing) ship. Just how this works is not explained.
* Hyperspace is a featureless place, yet it has currents and eddies
that corrospond to gravity in normal space. Sheridan says, "We
know there is a drift in hyperspace that can pull a ship down the
gravitational incline." Gravity works in hyperspace, though
apparently not in quite the same way that it works in real space.
Electromagnetic waves also propogate in hyperspace, but become
distorted rapidly over distance in a random and variable way.
Jumpgate beacons are, therefore, very short range -- more like
lighthouses in hyperspace -- and communications with ships in
hyperspace is possible only when the vessel is near a jumpgate.
* What looks like a great deal of hand-waving over the Cortez
accident can be explained upon close examination of the
circumstances. The timeline of the accident seems to be:
1. Cortez enters the jumpgate.
2. Cortez exits the jumppoint in hyperspace and attempts a
restart of her primary power system. The fusion reactor
restart fails, and the power system spikes, producing a
powerful electro-magnetic pulse (and presumably a sizable
radiation pulse) which takes out some systems aboard Cortez,
including main propulsion, navigation, and some computer
systems. Cortez is now adrift.
3. Many hours later Cortez gets some main power back and systems
running. Captain Maynard, after getting a damage report that
tells him that nav won't be back up for 48 hours, puts up a
distress call, which is received (barely) by B5. At this
point Cortez is under power, but without reference points the
best they can do is hold station against the pull of a nearby
gravity well.
4. B5 receives the distress signal, and Captain Sheridan decides
to make a rescue attempt. Cortez is effectively just
"offshore" in hyperspace, and despite Ivonova's misgivings he
feels they stand a chance of recovering her. Five fighters
are launched into hyperspace by B5, and they form up on a
line facing down the local gravity well at 1000km intervals.
5. The fighters set up the search pattern, with Cdr. Galus
(fighter group commander) and Lt. Keffer together at the far
end. This puts them about 4000km away from B5.
6. A shadow ship enters hyperspace almost on top of Galus,
colliding with and destroying his fighter. It also rams
Keffer's Star Fury, but only knocks out some systems (comms,
nav, and propulsion). Keffer begins firing (presumably on
internal references) in the direction of Galus's last
position. Cortez figures it out, and at about the same time
Keffer's fighter gets communications back online. Rather than
risk losing a good bearing back to the jumpgate, Keffer tells
Captain Maynard to take Cortez directly back to the gate,
leaving him behind in his unmaneuverable Star Fury. He is
unable to keep station and will drift, eventually losing any
reference back to B5.
7. About 24 hours later (more or less -- it seems like the next
night, end of shift in C&C, about midnight) Keffer is running
out of oxygen--but his Star Fury has succeeded in getting his
thruster systems back online. Shortly after that he spots
another shadow ship, and using that as a reference point he
navigates back to the jumpgate and returns to B5.
* This _may_ not have been as much of a crisis as it seemed to be.
Cortez, given its stated function of running about on the rim,
must carry its own jumppoint generator. The problem was the lack
of main power. Since it has already been stated that opening a
jumppoint takes a great deal of energy, the size of the Cortez
fusion plant would therefore be determined by the power
requirements for creating the jumppoint. With only partial main
power, she was unable to do so. But given the size of the ship and
its presumed independence, it is possible that Cortez could have
repaired her main power plant herself, and then opened a jumpgate
of her own. This possibility explains why Captain Maynard didn't
broadcast a mayday immediately following the accident -- he
assumed they could get Cortez out of trouble themselves. It was
only after he received the damage report detailing the slow
recovery of main power and the long repair time for navigation
that he decided to call for assistance.
* This episode further delineates the technological capabilities of
the Shadows, though not explicitly. They use the same hyperspace
the major races do. (As opposed to, for example, the Sigma 957
aliens from [20]"Mind War," who appeared to use something
different.)
* Though the Shadows presumably noticed the Starfuries and the
Cortez and realized they could be seen as well, they took no
action against the human ships. This is somewhat in contrast to
their apparent desire to remain undetected. Several explanations
are possible. Perhaps the Shadow ship was in a hurry; perhaps its
weapons aren't functional in hyperspace; or, most intriguing,
perhaps it realized that the ships were from Earth and chose to
leave them alone for that reason.
Notes
* Captain Maynard has seen a shadow ship in the past, though he
didn't recognize it as such, and now Lt. Keffer has seen one as
well.
* Garibaldi's special dinner:
Bagna Cauda (from Jeff Smith's -The Frugal Gourmet-)
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 lb. butter (1 stick) - not margarine!
5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
6 anchovy fillets, mashed
black pepper
Heat oil and butter together in top of double boiler. In a small
skillet cook the garlic in a bit of this oil until soft. Add the
anchovies, and cook till the fish turns into a paste, about 5 min.
Mix this paste with the hot oil and butter. Transfer to a chafing
dish or fondue pot to keep warm on the table (it congeals as it
cools.)
* The Egyptian blessing: "God be between you and harm, in all the
empty places where you must walk." This blessing was quoted by
creative consultant Harlan Ellison in his short story, "Paladin of
the Lost Hour."
* Delenn's speech about "starstuff" is very similar to a section of
Carl Sagan's Cosmos, as well as a section of the play The Effect
of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds.
* (unverified) As the Cortez exits the jumpgate, its hull numbers
can be read, "14286." Later, when Sheridan grants clearance for it
to leave, its number is stated as "C199."
jms speaks
* To be filed under the heading of, "What I does, I takes the rap
for; what I does not, I doesn't take the rap for," when we
discussed the hyperspace accident in our production meetings, Jim
-- our director -- asked if he could so some fratzing and
sparking, some fire...I said I did not *want* huge gouts of flame,
just a few small sparks, fine, a bit of smoke from components
burned out, fine...and that day I was over in the other facility
overseeing a mixdown of the audio...and guess what he did in my
absence? Yup.
* So many questions about hyperspace came up over the last year or
so that we figured they should be addressed; be assured, we're
staying as clear of technobabble as ever, despite my Spousal
Overunit's absolute and unshakeable conviction that *everything*
is, at its root, a math problem.
* To get in and out of hyperspace you have to know where you are and
where you're going, otherwise you'll come out even *more* lost,
hundreds of light years from home; you jump in, and you're even
further gone now.
* Once in hyperspace, you can ride the navigational beams between
beacons (narrow beam stuff, to cut through the interference, as
noted in "Distant Star"), and by corrolating the beacons, know
where you have to come out.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
* And the Cortez might've been able to locate some stars, but any
fix on its position would only have been within a few light-years,
not nearly precise enough for their purposes. They'd still be
lost.
* _Should a ship have been named after Cortez, considering what
effect his arrival had on the native Americans?_
If Cortez had NOT landed in northern Mexico, do you think it would
have remained undiscovered until now?
Fact #1: somebody was bound to discover the Americas.
Fact #2: any sufficiently advanced civilization or culture will
inevitably attempt to exploit any civilization or culture not
sufficiently advanced to fight back on a level playing field.
Blaming explorers for exploring has always seemed to me really
kind of silly; do people *really* think that if Columbus hadn't
landed here, it'd be 1994 and we still wouldn't know the world was
round and that this continent was here? It doesn't matter who
discovered it, the same result would've come. Somebody had to
discover it sooner or later.
* _Did the Cortez spin to produce gravity?_
Yes, it rotated to create its gravity, as you can see quite
clearly in the episode.
* (He coughs and speaks in his Executive Producer Voice:) "I *LIKE*
the opening title sequence."
Now...onto other matters.
We re-mixed the narration and music today in the titles, and it's
a LOT better. I slightly shifted the placement of some of the
lines, and Bruce's rendition is very nice. Really carries the
weight. Look for it to appear starting in episode #4.
* Actually, we just redid the narration with Bruce yesterday, and
it's MUCH better. We'll be able to get it in starting in episode
#4.
While we were at it, btw, we took the opportunity to re-do the
faceplate shot in the main title sequence. It was fine, but it
could've been better. Now it is. Expect it around the same time as
the new VO.
_________________________________________________________________
Originally compiled by Dave Zimmerman
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15. http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+Tamblyn,+Russ
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