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								   _Contents:_ [9]Overview - [10]Backplot - [11]Questions - [12]Analysis

								   - [13]Notes - [14]JMS


								     _________________________________________________________________


								Overview


								     Garibaldi's past catches up to him, with some disastrous

								     consequences. He's blamed by some for an accident aboard B5, which

								     leads to hitting the bottle again after a prolonged abstinence.

								     Elaine Thomas as Lianna Kemmer. Tom Donaldson as Cutter.


								   Originally titled "A Knife in the Shadows"

								Sub-genre: Intrigue

								[15]P5 Rating: [16]7.65


								Production number:  111

								Original air date:  May 4, 1994


								Written by Mark Scott Zicree

								Directed by Jim Johnston


								     _________________________________________________________________


								Backplot


								     * Garibaldi was a shuttle pilot on Mars before coming to Babylon 5.


								Unanswered Questions


								     * Who was the assassin working for? Who wants Santiago dead?


								Analysis


								     * Ivanova's reluctance to stop the countdown is suspicious. Perhaps

								       she had some reason to want the launch to take place; perhaps she

								       even knew what was going to happen if it did.

								     * Everyone from his past considers Garibaldi a no-good drunk. Why

								       did Sinclair give him a second chance? (Addressed in comic series,

								       [17]"Shadows Past and Present.")


								Notes


								jms speaks


								     * "For scripts that are given to other writers do you find you do

								       much if any mental picturing of the episode? If so, how does that

								       affect the writing process between you and the other writer?"

								       No, you only get into that part of it when you're going to sit

								       down and actually WRITE the sucker. It's a matter of bringing in

								       the freelancer and (assuming s/he hasn't come up with a story

								       independent of me, which happened about 4-5 times in toto) saying,

								       "Okay, in this episode the giant blue penguins of Rigel 4 steal

								       Ivanova's shoes," or handing the person a few paragraphs to

								       several pages with detailed story notes. Then the person goes

								       away.

								       The first "mental picture" I have of it is when the writer brings

								       back an outline based on those notes. This is always hard for me,

								       as is the first draft script, because the characters rarely talk

								       like our characters talk. They don't sound right, don't always

								       behave consistently, there's bits of backstory that contradict

								       what's been established, and that has to get fixed. So it's like

								       seeing a distorted picture, and your job is to bring it closer

								       into focus.

								       (This is an inevitable aspect of freelancing. There simply isn't

								       time to learn all there is to know about a show before you begin

								       writing; you have to come in, do it fast, and then move on to the

								       next assignment if you're going to make a living at this. That's

								       the Freelance Life. I hate the Freelance Life. I like to stay

								       around, get to know the characters, rummage around inside their

								       heads and find what's there. Freelance scripts almost always tend

								       to be about the guest star character; if you look at mine, most of

								       them don't really tend to have a big guest character, with some

								       notable exceptions. I find our regular characters more than

								       sufficiently interesting.)

								       What's most ironic about the freelance situation is that you often

								       have people who say, "Straczynski oughta use more freelance

								       writers, they bring in perspectives he doesn't have." They cite

								       the "moment of perfect beauty" in Peter's script [[18]"There All

								       the Honor Lies"], Londo's "my shoes are too tight, and I have

								       forgotten how to dance," [[19]"The War Prayer"] the alien abductor

								       courtroom scene in Grail, Deathwalker's comments about how she

								       plans to create her monument...all of which are scenes or sections

								       I wrote and inserted into scripts by other people. (One of my best

								       lines for G'Kar is one I'm not credited for, in Zicree's script,

								       "The universe runs on the complex interweaving of three elements:

								       energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest." I actually saw

								       some messages noting that jms never seems to be able to write

								       something that succinct. Well, actually...I did.)

								     * We're already doing it, and have done it. We've already begun

								       integrating "virtual sets" in with real ones. As an example...in

								       the next-to-last shot in "Survivors," someone is entering a ship

								       in the docking bay. The only real object in that room, aside from

								       the actor, is a ladder. Everything else is CGI...but you can't

								       tell.

								     * In "Survivors," we attempted a cgi/composite shot out the window,

								       which looks pretty spiffy, actually. It's in the teaser. We may do

								       this in future.

								     * The *reason* we had Garibaldi go through all the hoops he went

								       through before finally falling into the bottle is because simply

								       having Liana show up and depress Garibaldi isn't, frankly,

								       sufficient motivation. I don't buy it. We wanted to strip away

								       everything he had, and leave him with only *himself*. So we took

								       away his job, his reputation, his money, his home, neutralized his

								       friends wherever possible...it was deliberate and systematic to

								       peel him down to the bare essentials, to just Garibaldi. Take him

								       all the way down before taking him back up again. Because it's

								       more dramatically interesting. It's more logical that it would

								       take something this major to drive him back into the bottle after

								       staying sober all this time. I'm sorry, I don't accept your

								       suggestion that Liana's "anger and accusations" would "drive him

								       over the edge as he deals with his guilt." He's BEEN dealing with

								       his guilt, and her showing up wouldn't be enough to drive him back

								       into the bottle again. I'm sorry, but as a producer or a story

								       editor, I wouldn't buy that from a writer as being sufficient

								       motivation. Particularly not a character who's as strong and as

								       bull-headed as Garibaldi.

								     * What do I know about alcoholics, to portray them? Well, aside from

								       a degree in clinical psychology, and some internship work in the

								       area, I come from a family with alcoholism going back at least

								       four generations, and I'm talking *heavy duty*. I am, in fact, the

								       first male Straczynski in my branch of this particular stunted

								       tree NOT to have this problem.

								       I have had far, far, far more experience with this area than I

								       care to recite...and from that perspective, I have no problem with

								       Garibaldi's portrayal.

								     * Cutter went after Garibaldi only because that's who the dying

								       worker named as being responsible for the bomb. (He didn't know he

								       was dying, and wanted to throw blame; and even if he did know,

								       what better than to nail the guy who'd hassled him before?) Cutter

								       only took advantage of the situation.

								       Luis Santiago is playing it both ways, allowing more trade and

								       certain kinds of immigration, while preserving earth *culture*;

								       this isn't the same thing as a trade embargo.

								     * The name of General Netter was stuck in as a tweak to Doug, it's a

								       tuckerism (for those who know the term). We've done it a bit here

								       and there; I kinda started shutting the process down after a

								       while, since it was getting carried away. I don't want it to be

								       obtrusive.

								     * I think Kemmer's name was inspired by the actor's name from the

								       Space Patrol series....

								     * The Drazi are a very violent, ill-tempered species; they were the

								       ones who first showed up in "Deathwalker" in a Sunhawk to threaten

								       the station; they beat up the guy in "The War Prayer;" they show

								       up here in "Survivors;" there's an episode about a form of martial

								       arts among the aliens that has a Drazi going at it...if there's a

								       fight around, you can often find a Drazi at the center of it or at

								       least nearby.

								     * I think you're taking what I said to the extreme; I didn't say

								       [the Drazi] were bloodthirsty savages, only that they had a

								       predilection toward violence, and were generally very cranky. And

								       not all great thinkers have to sit around in elizabethan garb,

								       delicate flowers watching the skies rotate. Aggressive people can

								       be good thinkers; it needn't be one or the other.

								     * ...the end of "Survivors," where Kemmer enters her ship...in

								       reality there is only a ladder there. The ship, the walls, the

								       door she enters, all that is CGI/virtual set.


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								      [26]Last update: May 14, 1996


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