You can not select more than 25 topics
Topics must start with a letter or number, can include dashes ('-') and can be up to 35 characters long.
297 lines
17 KiB
297 lines
17 KiB
|
|
[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
|
|
|
|
Delenn agrees to lead the Rangers, but Marcus must protect her from
|
|
a deadly threat. Garibaldi investigates a secret level of the
|
|
station. [15]Robert Englund as Jeremiah. [16]John Vickery as
|
|
Neroon. [17]Time Winters as Rathenn.
|
|
|
|
[18]P5 Rating: [19]6.93
|
|
|
|
Production number: 319
|
|
Original air week: September 10, 1996 (UK)
|
|
October 7, 1996 (US)
|
|
|
|
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
|
|
Directed by John Flinn III
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
Backplot
|
|
|
|
* The forces of light are now actively recruiting telepaths, but
|
|
it's been a slow process.
|
|
* Garibaldi's grandmother was a police officer in Boston. (First
|
|
mentioned in [20]"By Any Means Necessary.")
|
|
* Valen originally set up the Rangers 1000 years ago, under the
|
|
control of the Warrior Caste, but they have been inactive until
|
|
recently.
|
|
* Grey Sector in B5 is mainly comprised of industrial units.
|
|
* No Minbari has killed another Minbari in 1000 years.
|
|
* Delenn's father died ("passed beyond the veil") 10 years ago
|
|
because he was heartbroken about the Earth-Minbari war. Delenn's
|
|
mother entered the Sisters of Valeria.
|
|
* The security forces on B5 use PPGs rather than bullets because
|
|
bullets run the risk of puncturing the station's hull.
|
|
|
|
Unanswered Questions
|
|
|
|
* What will be the limits of Ivanova's promise to Franklin?
|
|
* How will being chosen as leader of the Rangers change Delenn?
|
|
* Is Neroon right in suggesting Delenn is taking over control of
|
|
Minbar?
|
|
* Who or what was responsible for an entire level of Grey sector
|
|
being lost from the view of the B5 residents?
|
|
* What will happen to Grey 17 and the people there?
|
|
* What will the future relationship be between the Warrior Caste and
|
|
the Rangers?
|
|
* Was Kosh present at the ceremony? If not, why not?
|
|
|
|
Analysis
|
|
|
|
* Tension among the Minbari castes is increasing. Some members of
|
|
the warrior caste think Delenn is a religious zealot who is trying
|
|
to grab hold of military and political power. The warrior caste is
|
|
unhappy about the religious caste building warships without
|
|
telling them; believes the Rangers should be commanded by one of
|
|
them, now that Sinclair has left; and is unhappy about non-Minbari
|
|
being trained with Minbari in the Rangers. However, Neroon's
|
|
experience with Marcus may change some of these perceptions.
|
|
* Delenn's mother joined the Sisters of Valeria. Valeria is also the
|
|
being that Minbari who were present at Kosh's appearance in the
|
|
garden ([21]"The Fall of Night") claimed to have seen. Is this
|
|
just a coincidence, or is there a deeper relationship?
|
|
* Jeremiah's group must have contained some highly skilled computer
|
|
hackers. Getting the lifts to pass by their level would be the
|
|
least of their troubles; since the station spins to simulate
|
|
gravity, lower levels have greater apparent gravity. Everyone
|
|
below their level would be expecting slightly lower gravity than
|
|
they'd actually experience. Perhaps the difference would be too
|
|
slight to alert people in a residential sector, but presumably
|
|
industrial operations would be affected if gravity was off by a
|
|
few percent.
|
|
* Jeremiah clearly knew about Minbari religion, given the similarity
|
|
of his view of the universe and Delenn's ([22]"Passing Through
|
|
Gethsemane.") Yet in that episode, Brother Edward clearly hadn't
|
|
learned about Minbari beliefs, implying that the Minbari aren't
|
|
generally open or forthcoming about them. How did Jeremiah learn
|
|
about Minbari religion?
|
|
* Garibaldi's makeshift gun couldn't have worked as shown. Even if
|
|
the steam were enough to detonate the gunpowder in one of the
|
|
bullets, the first one to go off would almost certainly have been
|
|
the one closest to the back of the pipe, where the heat was
|
|
greatest; all the bullets would have been propelled out the pipe
|
|
at once, and probably at low speed.
|
|
* Franklin's backup file on the underground railroad is code-named
|
|
"Harriet." This is probably a reference to Harriet Tubman, an
|
|
escaped slave who was instrumental in running the original
|
|
underground railroad in the United States.
|
|
|
|
Notes
|
|
|
|
* Sinclair's belongings include a medal for fighting on the Battle
|
|
of the Line, his identicard, an Earthforce ensignia, and the
|
|
Ranger brooch.
|
|
* When Garibaldi falls unconscious, the surrounding rubble includes,
|
|
among other things, a newspaper with the headline "Santiago
|
|
Elected." That may indicate the amount of time the cult spent
|
|
sequestered in Grey 17; Santiago's re-election took place three
|
|
years earlier ([23]"Midnight on the Firing Line.") It's unlikely
|
|
the paper dates from Santiago's original election; unless his
|
|
previous term was less than a few years, the previous election
|
|
would have happened long before Babylon 5 was constructed,
|
|
possibly even before Babylon 4 vanished in 2254.
|
|
|
|
jms speaks
|
|
|
|
* Garibaldi has a big role in "Grey 17 Is Missing."
|
|
* Lennier will be getting some more screen time shortly, in the next
|
|
batch of episodes. (There's some very nice stuff with him and both
|
|
Delenn and Marcus in "Grey 17 Is Missing.")
|
|
* You'll hear about Delenn's parents in "Grey 17 Is Missing."
|
|
* The Jeremiah thread was one of those things that looks great on
|
|
paper, but when you get it into a camera...I dunno, it's one of
|
|
those weirdnesses that happens in television. Sometimes you've got
|
|
what you think is an average script and it just roars to life
|
|
on-camera, and something that looks great on paper, but in real
|
|
life...ehh...I'm happy with all the other stuff in the episode,
|
|
but the Jeremiah thread didn't come off as it should've.
|
|
I think in part it's also my fault, in that my brain was gearing
|
|
up for the stuff that begins ramping up starting with the next
|
|
episode, and the Grey 17 thing was something I'd wanted to do for
|
|
a long time, and there wasn't going to be a chance to do it down
|
|
the road, if at all, after this season, so I went for it. As for
|
|
the Zarg, that's also one of those things that didn't come off
|
|
visually as I'd wanted. So overall, I'd agree...of all the season
|
|
3 eps, this one is probably the least effective of them all. But
|
|
one in a season, that ain't too bad....
|
|
* _Why did you write all the episodes this season?_
|
|
"Was there some incident that we don't know about? It seems to me
|
|
that there must have been. "
|
|
Nope. No incident. The situation with year 3 was that *so much*
|
|
was being paid off, and set up, and foreshadowed, and required
|
|
such intimate knowledge of where the show was going, and where
|
|
it'd been, that it made it nearly impossible to bring in any
|
|
outside writers.
|
|
There has never been any series in television history where every
|
|
episode was utterly beyond criticism. Some are better, some are
|
|
worse, some are average. There are many Twilight Zones by Rod
|
|
Serling that are utterly brilliant. And some that just fall flat.
|
|
That's the nature of the beast. Sometimes something will look
|
|
great on the page, and fall flat on the stage. (And sometimes it
|
|
happens in reverse; you think you've got something that won't
|
|
work, and somehow the filmed version just takes off.) There's a
|
|
lot about Walkabout I like; and there's some stuff that just
|
|
didn't work out. You try something different here and there, and
|
|
sometimes it works, and sometimes it don't. TV, or any form of
|
|
writing, is the constant process of trial and error. It's not like
|
|
one day you forget how to write, or you're writing bad...you very
|
|
rarely fall below a certain facility once you reach it.
|
|
There's not a writer alive who has turned out nothing but terrific
|
|
stuff. Now, one could turn out a lifetime of mediocre stuff, by
|
|
not trying...but I think it's better to shoot high, and sometimes
|
|
fall, knowing that you'll get something great one out of every
|
|
five tries, than not try at all and just do okay.
|
|
"Grey 17" is the same thing, for me. There are bits in that I like
|
|
a lot. And some parts of it just fell down dreadfully. That's
|
|
simply the nature of the beast. I thought I'd try something
|
|
different in the tone of "Grey" and while most of the writing
|
|
works (mostly), the production fell down on a couple of aspects.
|
|
It happens. It doesn't mean anything.
|
|
On the other hand, the following 3, "Rock," "Shadow" and
|
|
"Z'ha'dum" are some of the best stuff we've done. The preliminary
|
|
P5 survey has "Z'ha'dum" as the best episode of the entire series
|
|
to date. Did I suddenly learn to write better? If there were a
|
|
problem with being tired, then by all rights you should see a
|
|
descending order in quality. But these last 3 are some of our best
|
|
work.
|
|
The real key here is something I heard someone say a while back
|
|
about TV: a flaw, or a flop, or a misstep happens by accident as
|
|
often as by inability; but real quality is never an accident. So
|
|
the latter is more indicative of the level of the show than the
|
|
former, since accidents or missteps *always* happen.
|
|
"Walkabout," for me, is a good episode with a very few clunky
|
|
parts; for me, it's a middle of the road episode. "Grey" falls a
|
|
bit short of that, for me. But then, I'm very hard on my shows; a
|
|
lot of folks have liked "Walkabout" a *lot*. I didn't much like
|
|
"Infection," but many did; and some shows I love dearly, like
|
|
"Geometry," don't catch on. It's subjective. And where you say the
|
|
battle falls short, others like it...so on one level, I'd caution
|
|
against applying your standard as an objective one that is somehow
|
|
more true than another, and thus asking "what's wrong with *you*
|
|
that I had this opinion?" If everyone on the planet shares that
|
|
opinion, then you've got something. Otherwise....
|
|
And there are always some people who don't want the character
|
|
stuff at all, they want battles...and some for whom the CGI is of
|
|
secondary interest to the plot...and those who want arc stories
|
|
*only*...and those who like the stand-alones. Some of it is a
|
|
function of what you want.
|
|
Anyway...point being, and I went around the barn a few times to
|
|
get there, no, there's no "incident" and I don't even know what
|
|
this could refer to. Some episodes work better for some people
|
|
than others. That will happen whether you've got 1 person or 50
|
|
people writing scripts. I caught a lot of *very* negative comments
|
|
on Peter David's script, which you cite (as well as many positive
|
|
ones). The Brits in particular seem to uniformly dislike that one.
|
|
And in the P5 surveys, the freelance scripts are *all* in the
|
|
bottom third of the rankings. So it's really not a question of
|
|
freelancers or no, it's just that TV is variable, as is any kind
|
|
of writing. Not every episode is going to work for you. Nor should
|
|
you expect it to. I'm very much an X-Files fan...but there are
|
|
some scripts that work better for me than others. Doesn't mean
|
|
anything other than that show didn't quite jell for me. That's the
|
|
nature of TV.
|
|
I'm sure somebody will cite this as being defensive about it, but
|
|
honest and true, I'm not. I'm just trying to explain it from this
|
|
end of things. My prior exec producer said, "You're doing *real*
|
|
good if, in a season, you've got one-third that are pretty good,
|
|
one-third that are okay, and one-third you never want to see again
|
|
the rest of your natural life." I think we do a heck of a lot
|
|
better than that, and that's a heck of an accomplishment.
|
|
* I think it's about 3/4ths of a good episode. Where it falls down,
|
|
for me, is the Zarg...I just have this constant desire to go to
|
|
everyone's house and personally apologize....
|
|
* _How did they sneak the Zarg onto the station?_
|
|
There was a line about slipping the egg into the station...don't
|
|
remember now if it made it through the edit or not.
|
|
* Entil-Zha, whoever that is at the time, is for all intents and
|
|
purposes the One for the Rangers.
|
|
* _Does Neroon's revelation at the end of the episode mean that the
|
|
warrior caste is now more willing to fight beside the religious
|
|
caste?_
|
|
I think he's closer to an understanding, but we'll see if the
|
|
others all feel the same way.
|
|
* _Why did Sinclair/Valen leave the warrior caste in charge of the
|
|
Rangers, if they aren't involved in the war?_
|
|
Because *at the time* the Warrior Caste *was* involved, and it
|
|
would've been a slap to them to do so.
|
|
* _Do Minbari beliefs have some bearing on the true nature of the B5
|
|
storyline?_
|
|
It has some bearing, in a way, but more in a thematic than literal
|
|
sense.
|
|
* _Was Delenn's visit to the city as a child deeply important, since
|
|
she only saw her mother twice?_
|
|
You're right that it was a big deal to them, but it doesn't really
|
|
center in the story much, so I don't know if it'll ever be
|
|
explored. It's just background detail at this point.
|
|
* _What happened to Delenn's father?_
|
|
He croaked.
|
|
* _Were the people in Grey 17 there by choice?_
|
|
Depends on your definition, but basically, they were there as part
|
|
of this cult...but any good cult leader knows you should make it
|
|
just a *bit* hard for them to get out.
|
|
* It's Harriet for Harriet Tubman, who ran the slave underground
|
|
railroad around the time of the Civil War.
|
|
And no matter how much Ivanvoa trains, she'll never be much past a
|
|
P1, and that's more or less useless to them.
|
|
* _So her ability is never going to factor into the story?_
|
|
Only if one assumes everything applies only to the Shadow war.
|
|
|
|
Originally compiled by Jason Snell.
|
|
|
|
[29][Next]
|
|
|
|
[30]Last update: October 18, 1997
|
|
|
|
References
|
|
|
|
1. file://localhost/cgi-bin/imagemap/titlebar
|
|
2. LYNXIMGMAP:file://localhost/lurk/maps/maps.html#titlebar
|
|
3. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/background/063.shtml
|
|
4. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/synops/063.html
|
|
5. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/credits/063.html
|
|
6. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/episodes.php
|
|
7. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/guide/062.html
|
|
8. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/guide/064.html
|
|
9. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/guide/063.html#OV
|
|
10. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/guide/063.html#BP
|
|
11. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/guide/063.html#UQ
|
|
12. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/guide/063.html#AN
|
|
13. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/guide/063.html#NO
|
|
14. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/guide/063.html#JS
|
|
15. http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+Englund,+Robert
|
|
16. http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+Vickery,+John
|
|
17. http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+Winters,+Time
|
|
18. file://localhost/lurk/p5/intro.html
|
|
19. file://localhost/lurk/p5/063
|
|
20. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/guide/012.html
|
|
21. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/guide/044.html
|
|
22. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/guide/048.html
|
|
23. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/guide/001.html
|
|
24. file://localhost/lurk/lurker.html
|
|
25. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/guide/063.html#TOP
|
|
26. file://localhost/cgi-bin/uncgi/lgmail
|
|
27. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/episodes.php
|
|
28. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/guide/062.html
|
|
29. file://localhost/home/woodstock/hyperion/docs/lurk/guide/064.html
|
|
30. file://localhost/lurk/lastmod.html
|