brennen
/
lurkers-guide


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


								<blockquote><cite>

								An archaeologist smuggles ancient artifacts onto the station, unleashing

								a living weapon.

								</cite>


								<a href="http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+McCallum,+David">David McCallum</a> as Dr. Vance Hendricks.

								<a href="http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+Teague,+Marshall">Marshall Teague</a> as Nelson Drake.

								</blockquote>


								<pre>

								Sub-genre: Action

								<a href="/lurk/p5/intro.html">P5 Rating</a>: <a href="/lurk/p5/004">6.33</a>


								Production number: 101

								Original air date: February 18, 1994

								<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00006HAZ4/thelurkersguidet">DVD release date</a>: November 5, 2002


								Written by J. Michael Straczynski

								Directed by Richard Compton

								</pre>


								<p>

								<hr size=3>

								<p>


								<H2><A NAME="BP">Backplot</A></H2>


								<ul>


								<li> <A NAME="BP:1">Ikarra 7,</A> now a dead world, was a thousand years

								     ago home to a highly advanced space-faring society.  Their

								     technology was organic: tools and artifacts made of living tissue yet

								     immune to decay.  Invaded over a dozen times, they finally built 12

								     devastating organic warriors to protect them.  Programmed to

								     destroy any but "pure Ikarrans", those warriors repelled the last

								     invasion and went on to kill any Ikarran who deviated from the ideal

								     (ie all of them).  A

								     <a href="004.weapons.html">transcript</a>

								     of the scene in which this is discussed is available.


								<li> <A NAME="BP:2">Organic technology</A> is, according to archaeologist

								     Vance Hendricks, "The one trick Earth hasn't been able to crack.

								     The ability to create living ships that thrive in the vacuum of

								     space, to create weapons that produce their own power through

								     internal generation, like a firefly lights up at night."


								<li> <A NAME="BP:3">The Vorlons</A> have organic technology, and it's

								     suspected that the Minbari do as well.


								<li> <A NAME="BP:4"><B>Sinclair:</B></A> "The last time I gave an

								     interview they told me just to relax and say what I really felt -

								     ten minutes after the broadcast I got transferred to an outpost so

								     far off the star maps you couldn't find it with a hunting dog and a

								     Ouija board."  It's not clear whether or not this was a joke.


								<li> <A NAME="BP:5"><B>Garibaldi:</B></A> (to the reporter) "...and

								     after walking 50 miles, we finally made it out of the desert.

								     Later when he was put in charge of Babylon 5, Commander Sinclair

								     asked if I'd come work security.  I said yes - it's been a great

								     time..."


								<li> <A NAME="BP:6">Garibaldi</A> has been fired from 5 different jobs

								     for "unspecified personal problems".  His assignment on Babylon 5

								     is probably his last shot in Earth Force.


								<li> <A NAME="BP:7">Garibaldi</A> was in Earth Force during the E/M war,

								     but not on the Line.


								</ul>


								<H2><A NAME="UQ">Unanswered Questions</A></H2>


								<ul>


								<li> <A NAME="UQ:1">Who</A> invaded Ikarra so many times?  What was so

								     valuable about it?


								<li> <A NAME="UQ:2">Why</A> is Sinclair so prone to heroism (read:

								     suicidal bravery)?  He's deliberately put his life on the line

								     three times now in the past year (cf <A HREF="000.html#AN:10">"The

								     Gathering"</A>, <A HREF="002.html#AN:3">"Soul Hunter"</A>).

								     Garibaldi suggests an answer: when the war ended it took away the

								     direction it gave his life, as happened to many veterans.  So now

								     he's "looking for something worth dying for because it's easier

								     than finding something worth living for."  Sinclair's not entirely

								     satisfied with that answer, and resolves to give it more thought.


								</ul>


								<H2><A NAME="AN">Analysis</A></H2>


								<ul>


								<li> <A NAME="AN:1">A "Bio-weapons" supplier</A> backed Hendricks'

								     original expedition to Ikarra - they must have had advance

								     information about what was to be found there.


								<li> <A NAME="AN:2">Ivanova</A> has little faith in the ethics of big

								     government organizations (cf <A HREF="006.html">"Mind War"</A>,

								     <A HREF="009.html">"Deathwalker"</A>).


								<li> <A NAME="AN:3">Franklin</A> appeared to seriously ponder the image

								     of great wealth Hendricks offered, before the guards took him away.


								<li> <A NAME="AN:4">A team</A> from Earth Force Defense, Bio-weapons

								     Division confiscated the Ikarran artifacts just as the dust from the

								     weapon-chase was settling. Earth now has bio-tech of its own to study.


								</ul>


								<H2><A NAME="NO">Notes</A></H2>


								<ul>


								<li> <A NAME="NO:1"><B>Garibaldi:</B></A> "The commander's a hands-on

								     kind of guy, he'll grab any chance he can get to take out a ship -

								     he's like that."


								<p>

								<li> <A NAME="NO:2">This episode</A> occurs right around the 2nd

								     anniversary of Babylon 5 going on-line.


								<p>

								<li> <A NAME="NO:3">In a poll,</A> 75% of "Interstellar Network News"

								     said B5 wouldn't last 5 minutes.  Lloyd's of London put the odds at

								     500 to 1 against it lasting one year.


								<p>

								<li> <A NAME="NO:4">The "Narn-Centauri negotiations"</A> are to occur in

								     the near future.


								<p>

								<li> <A NAME="NO:5"><B>Sinclair:</B></A> "How sharper than a serpent's

								     tooth." (His reply to Garibaldi's joking guess that Sinclair's

								     interview would get him shipped off the station and himself

								     promoted into Sinclair's position.)  This is a quote from

								     Shakespeare (King Lear.)


								<p>

								<li>@@@884367861 Dr. Hendricks says to Franklin, "There's a Martian war

									machine outside, and it wants to speak to you about the common cold."

									That's a reference to H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds," in which

									the Martian invaders are killed by common microbes.


								<p>

								<li> <A NAME="NO:6"><B>Sinclair:</B></A> "When you become obsessed with

								     the enemy, you become the enemy."


								<p>

								<li> <A NAME="NO:7">At the last,</A> the Ikarran begs forgiveness from

								     the "Great Maker".


								<p>

								<li> <A NAME="NO:8"><B>Franklin:</B></A> "I'm starting to wonder if what

								     we just saw is a preview of things to come" (re: Pro-earth groups).


								<p>

								<li> <A NAME="NO:9"><B>The Interview</B></A><br>

								     <B>Reporter:</B> "After all that you've just gone through, I have

								     to ask you the same question a lot of people back home are asking

								     about space these days.  Is it worth it?  Should we just pull back,

								     forget the whole thing as a bad idea, and take care of our own

								     problems, at home?"<br> <B>Sinclair:</B> "No.  We have to stay here,

								     and there's a simple reason why.  Ask ten different scientists

								     about the environment, population control, genetics - and you'll

								     get ten different answers.  But there's one thing every scientist

								     on the planet agrees on: whether it happens in a hundred years, or

								     a thousand years, or a million years, eventually our sun will grow

								     cold, and go out.  When that happens, it won't just take us, it'll

								     take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-tsu, Einstein, Maruputo, Buddy Holly,

								     Aristophanes - all of this.  All of this was for nothing, unless we

								     go to the stars."


								<p>

								<li> Ikarra may be an Australian Aboriginal word.

								     <p>

								     The Australian DSTO (Defence Sciences and Technology Organisation)

								     developed the anti-submarine weapon "Ikara" in the 1950's. It is no

								     longer in use in the Australian Navy, having been fired for the last time

								     in 1990. The Brazilian Navy may still use a variation of it.


								     <p>

								     Since the DSTO has a tradition of naming its products after warlike

								     Aboriginal animals, it's plausible that the word refers to an animal.


								<p>

								<li> A slight visual gaffe: When the bioweapon self-destructs and falls to

								     the ground, its head is facing to the left (away from the camera.)  But

								     when Sinclair watches him turn human again, Nelson's head is facing to

								     the right (toward the camera.)


								</ul>


								<H2><A NAME="JS">jms speaks</A></H2>


								<ul>


								<li> We'll definitely be dealing with the aspects of how fighting in a war

								     can affect you.  And this isn't just a vague promise: watch the end of

								     the third (currently) scheduled episode, "Infection," for a scene

								     between Sinclair and Garibaldi that really deals very straightforwardly

								     with this issue.  It's a conversation you wouldn't expect to see in a

								     show like this.


								<p>

								<li> [Infection] has a lot of action, which you'd expect, and a big

								     conclusion, which you'd expect.  What you *won't* expect, I think,

								     is what happens afterward, in a conversation no one generally has

								     in TV after big action stuff has gone down.  And it's something to

								     chew on, I think....


								<p>

								<li> Thanks.  Sinclair's final speech there is the simplest truth about

								     space exploration that I can think of...and the most

								     compelling..and the most overlooked.  As Henry Kissinger once said,

								     "It has the added benefit of being true."


								<p>

								<li> Sorry; there's no one more critical of my work than me, and when it

								     comes to "Infection," I'd just kinda prefer it if it kinda vanished

								     in the night.  I feel that way about only two episodes out of 22,

								     so that's not too bad, I suppose.


								<p>

								<li> "Infection" is definitely not indicative of the season overall; that

								     is, in my view, one of our weaker, possibly weakest episodes.


								<p>

								<li> And like I said...I have problems with "Infection" as well, so there

								     is no flame from me.  I guess part of it is knowing what was in the

								     script that should've been carried off better, but wasn't.  And part

								     of it is my fault; I tried to use the Nelson/machine as a metaphor;

								     it wasn't supposed to be about the Nelson/machine, but about the kind

								     of people who would create it, the kind of people who would sell it,

								     and the kind of people who would confiscate it even KNOWING what it

								     was (and of course the kind of people who would *use* it).

								     Unfortunatly, when you put  somebody in that kind of suit, that

								     *becomes* the story, and from that point on you're pretty much doomed.

								     It was also in places too much an obvious metaphor, and the "hand of

								     the author" is showing too much.  It was the first script written for

								     this season, after the long break after the pilot, and I think I was

								     trying to find the characters' "fingerprints" and getting into the

								     flow of the series, which took a script or two.


								<p>

								<li> The problem with "Infection" from a writing POV is that it was the

								     FIRST one written for this season, and I was having a hard time

								     finding the "fingerprints" of the characters again after so much time

								     had passed after the pilot (it was nearly a year between the revising/

								     shooting of the pilot, and the writing of the first series script).

								     As on *any* show, it takes a while to get up to speed once you hit

								     series.  That was the real problem, and there wasn't any  real way to

								     get past it except to write it, re-acquaint myself with the characters,

								     and move on.  I probably would have opted out of doing it had we had

								     more scripts on hand, but we didn't.  And oddly, many on the

								     production team *liked* the script quite a lot, and kept saying it had

								     to be done.


								<p>

								<li> I'd slice this a little finer and suggest that it wasn't so much the

								     *stupidity* of racism and the whole genetic purity aspect, but the

								     IMPRACTICALITY of such ideas.  If you follow the idea to its logical

								     conclusion, *nobody* is pure.  Which was kind of the point.


								     <p>

								     And oddly enough, there's a pro-genocide discussion in "Deathwalker."


								<p>

								<li> I allow a small smile...in the course of any given script, I put in

								     little things that I figure nobody will ever notice, but which for me

								     help just a bit to keep on track with the character, and which may

								     resonate to anyone paying attention.  You cite Sinclair's line about

								     joining Garibaldi "on the LINE," and Garibaldi noting that Sinclair

								     keeps putting his life "on the LINE," and the similarity to the

								     phrase "the Battle of the Line."


								     <p>

								     It was a throwaway...but a conscious one.


								     <p>

								     He's still fighting the same battle.  He's never stopped.  In one way

								     or another, he keeps putting himself out there, caught in a loop....


								<p>

								<li> Actually, the reporter's question was *not* (from a 2258 point of

								     view) stupid.  Earth is far enough from the other major races not to

								     have to worry about iminent invasion.  At the time of the story, there

								     is a VERY strong isolationist movement growing back home, which you'll

								     hear more about as we go in.  Space travel is *expensive*, even in

								     2258, and there are still a lot of problems to be resolved back home.

								     While the Earth administration in Earthdome keeps pressing to go

								     further and further, various nation/states in the Earth senate are

								     taxed further to finance explorations which they don't always share in

								     equally, the Mars Colony is threatening secession...things are falling

								     apart by degrees.  So in light of all that, the question is

								     *absolutely* valid.


								<p>

								<li> The ONLY reason that they were able to pick up the blasts in

								     "Infection" was because they were SO powerful that they registered on

								     the station's sensors.  Ordinary PPG blasts don't show up.


								<p>

								<li> I have nothing to do with the description applied to the show by

								     others.  In that episode, the affected person isn't "turned into" a

								     machine.  It is sort of a living armor-like compound that grows over

								     the person's body, and begins to influence the person in question.

								     That is the sum and substance of it; he isn't transmuted, his biology

								     isn't changed, his brain isn't replaced, and so on.


								     <p>

								     My suggestion: judge the episode based on the episode, not on what

								     choice of words someone else used in trying to synopsize the episode.

								     Because Moby Dick can be summed up as, "A nut chasing a big fish."

								     But there's obviously more to the story than that, and it's not

								     entirely accurate.


								</ul>


								<HR>

								Originally compiled by Matthew Ryan <i>mattryan@pobox.com</i>