brennen
/
lurkers-guide


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


								<blockquote><cite>

								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.

								</cite>


								Elaine Thomas as Lianna Kemmer.

								Tom Donaldson as Cutter.

								</blockquote>


								Originally titled "A Knife in the Shadows"


								<pre>

								Sub-genre: Intrigue

								<a href="/lurk/p5/intro.html">P5 Rating</a>: <a href="/lurk/p5/011">7.65</a>


								Production number: 111

								Original air date: May 4, 1994

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


								Written by Mark Scott Zicree

								Directed by Jim Johnston

								</pre>


								<p>

								<hr>

								<p>


								<h2><a name="BP">Backplot</a></h2>

								<ul>

								   <li> Garibaldi was a shuttle pilot on Mars before coming to Babylon 5.

								</ul>


								<h2><a name="UQ">Unanswered Questions</a></h2>

								<ul>

								   <li> Who was the assassin working for?  Who wants Santiago dead?

								</ul>


								<h2><a name="AN">Analysis</a></h2>

								<ul>

								   <li> 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.

								   <li> Everyone from his past considers Garibaldi a no-good drunk.  Why

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

									<a href="/lurk/comic/005.html">"Shadows Past and Present."</a>)

								</ul>


								<h2><a name="NO">Notes</a></h2>


								<h2><a name="JS">jms speaks</a></h2>

								<ul>


								   <li>@@@832092614 "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?"


									<p>

									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.


									<p>

									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.


									<p>

									(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.)


									<p>

									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

									[<a href="036.html">"There All the Honor Lies"</a>],

									Londo's "my shoes are too

									tight, and I have forgotten how to dance,"

									[<a href="007.html">"The War Prayer"</a>]

									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.)


								<p>

								   <li> 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.


								<p>

								   <li> 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.


								<p>

								   <li> 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.


								<p>

								   <li> 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.


									<p>

									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.


								<p>

								   <li> 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.


									<p>

									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.


								<p>

								   <li> 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.


								<p>

								   <li> I think Kemmer's name was inspired by the actor's name from the

									Space Patrol series....


								<p>

								   <li> 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.


								<p>

								   <li> 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.


								<p>

								   <li> ...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.


								</ul>