brennen
/
lurkers-guide


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


								<blockquote><cite>

								An old friend of Garibaldi's arrives and tries to take part in a dangerous

								alien combat sport.

								A rabbi helps Ivanova come to terms with her father's death.

								</cite>


								<a href="http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+Bikel,+Theodore">Theodore Bikel</a> as Rabbi Koslov.

								<a href="http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+McKinney,+Gregory">Greg McKinney</a> as Walker Smith.

								<a href="http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+Oh,+Soon-Tek">Soon-Tek Oh</a> as The Muta-Do.

								<a href="http://us.imdb.com/Name?Stroud,+Don+(I)">Don Stroud</a> as Caliban.

								</blockquote>


								<pre>

								Sub-genre: Drama

								<a href="/lurk/p5/intro.html">P5 rating</a>: <a href="/lurk/p5/014">6.41</a>


								Production number: 119

								Original air date: May 25, 1994

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


								Written by Larry DiTillio

								Directed by John Flynn

								</pre>


								<p>

								<hr size=3>

								<p>


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

								<ul>

								<li>

								Ivanova's brother Ganya was killed in the Earth-Minbari war a year after her

								mother committed suicide.

								</ul>


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


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

								<ul>

								<li>

								The fact that aliens of several races -- including a Centauri -- all seemed

								to agree that humans had no business fighting in the Mutai seems to indicate

								that there is a lot of resentment toward humans among the other races, enough

								that they see the distinction between humans and themselves as much greater

								than the distinctions between each other.

								</ul>


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

								<ul>

								   <li> Walker Smith was the real name of famed boxer

									<a href="http://www.ibhof.com/robinson.htm">Sugar Ray Robinson</a>.


								   <li>@@@908906455 Guest star Greg McKinney died on April 12, 1998.

									Coincidentally, Sugar Ray Robinson died on April 12, 1989.


								</ul>


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

								<ul>

								<li>

								At one point, there was a discussion in the scene about the whole

								gills/scales/fins issue, to define kosher...but it *really* brought the

								scene to a screaming standstill, and we needed to concentrate on the

								relationships at that moment.  In addition, as we looked at it, you would

								have to get into the question of how alien gills/scales/fins compare to

								earthly gills/scales/fins, because they're going to be very different in

								many ways.  In short order it became a massive Talmudic discussion, and

								we only have an hour for the show....


								<p>

								<li>

								Babylon 5 (the show) got not a dime for sticking in the

								<a href="http://www.zima.com/">Zima</a>

								sign.  We just thought...well, it'd be funny.


								<p>

								<li>

								Yes, slappers = skin tabs, for introducing medication.  The ones in

								TKO had been stolen from B5 medsupplies.


								<p>

								<li>

								Through a miscommunication, Warners thought TKO was in the slot in which

								we'd placed Quality [of Mercy], so that went out to TV Guide, and it's now

								too late to change the order back. Doesn't matter; neither are really

								arc-stories, though it was hoped to hold back some of Susan's development in

								TKO just a tad longer.


								<p>

								<li>

								It was Larry's idea to name the character Walker Smith, after Sugar

								Ray Robinson.


								<p>

								<li>

								If the deceased has been dead for quite a while, the period during

								which one must sit shiva is greatly reduced to a day or so, I'm told.


								<p>

								<li>

								Larry wrote the shiva stuff all on his lonesome.  As for being an

								abbreviated version...apparently shiva lasts 3 days for someone

								recently deceased.  If it's been months since the death, the service

								is usually much shorter, and again, there was only Ivanova and Koslov

								who actually were part of or knew the deceased.


								<p>

								<li>

								I'm told that shiva need not last 7 full days, if the death was not

								recent, and if the body has already been buried.


								<p>

								<li>

								Now, on the samovar issue...whatever your background, if your family

								grew up in Russia and has been there for several hundred years or

								more -- and the Ivanov family has been there since at LEAST the 1800s

								-- you do become part of the culture.  That, as I always understood

								it, was part of the reason for making sure children learned hebrew,

								yiddish *and* the dominant language of the culture, to give their

								kids a fighting chance in a difficult world.  It's not so much a case

								of the culture assimiliating the individual (though certainly that

								happens as well), but the individual INCORPORATING the culture.


								<p>

								Ivanova is jewish.  Ivanova is russian.  Of the two, she tends to see

								herself as a russian first.  There's no value statement there, that's

								just the way she is.  Her parents were both russian, going back many

								generations on both sides.  Some in her family tree were jewish, and

								some were not; there was some intermarrying.  That may be part of why

								she sees herself as more russian than jewish, but it may be just a

								quirk.


								<p>

								(And to the protest of, "Well, you created her," yes, I did.  But

								there comes a time, if you've done your job right as a writer, when

								the character more or less takes over, and starts telling YOU who and

								what he or she is.  There are times I mentally turn to Ivanova and

								say, "Okay, what do *you* think?"  And she talks to me in my head, as

								do all of my characters.  It's part of making your characters real.)


								<p>

								When she went off to boarding school overseas -- part of an ongoing

								international system put into place by EarthGov to help its various

								member nations get along with one another -- she identified most

								strongly with that russian aspect in relation to those around her.

								She learned to speak English without a perceptible accent.


								<p>

								The samovar is a valued and valuable part of russian life.  It is the

								family hearth, on one level, a possession passed on from generation to

								generation.  Knowing that Ivanova was not terribly religious herself,

								he would generally not leave her any of his personal religious

								artifacts, but would dnate them to the local synagogue, while some,

								like a menorah, might go to other relatives.  People who could

								appreciate them and use them.  The samovar is a very personal object;

								to the correspondent with a fiance who is russian...*I* am byeloruss,

								white-russian, one-and-a-half generation American born.  And I can

								tell you that the biggest fights I've ever seen over bequeaths were

								over a) money, and b) the samovar.


								<p>

								The problem with this discussion is that it has very little to do

								with who Susan Ivanova *is*, and more to do with the politics of what

								a russian or a jew or a russian jew *should be*.  She is what she is,

								like it or not.


								<p>

								<li>@@@846702423

								"The remark: '...pouting in that way that only 13 can...'"

								<p>

								. . . the comment is essentially correct; ain't nobody

								can pout like a 13 year old.


								<p>

								<li>

								To the problems some have with Theodore Bikell's accent not sounding

								real...it's my understanding that he was raised in Russia.

								<p>

								Ivanova does not have an accent because she was educated overseas,

								her father wanting her to have certain advantages the rest of her

								family did not.

								<p>

								Nowhere did we say that Andrei or the rest of the Ivanov family ever

								emigrated.  They didn't.  They live in Russia.  Or lived, in any

								event.  Not everyone migrates to the US or to Israel, and not everyone

								wants to.

								<p>

								On the treel/kosher discussion...I can only shrug.  Nobody's ever

								shown that jews go forward into the future, placed them at the heart

								of a science fiction show as a regular character, nobody's shown shiva

								before in (and possibly out of) an SF series...and some folks are

								complaining that not every aspect of a treel's kosher-ness was

								discussed at dinnertime.

								<p>

								Some days, you just can't win....

								<p>

								Feh.


								<p>

								<li>

								<em>What was that Harlan Ellison book Ivanova was reading?</em><br>

								The book is Harlan's autobiography, which he plans to write around

								the year 2000, and yes, that's his photo.  (He borrowed the prop when we

								were finished and casually carried it with him to a few places, just to

								make people nuts thinking there was a book out they'd missed....)


								<p>

								<li>

								[Posted 28 May 1994] BTW, there's an interesting couple of articles

								about this episode in this week's Jewish Journal, for another

								perspective on the show.


								<p>

								<li>

								<em>Channel 4 in the UK didn't show "TKO" during the initial run</em><br>

								TKO's main importance is to the Ivanova arc, as she finally comes to

								terms with her father's death.  Do I have an opinion on C4's decision

								not to show TKO?

								<p>

								Absolutely.


								<p>

								<li>

								If the problem is showing bare-kunckle fighting to the death, then

								somebody should point out to C4 that *nobody dies* in the match.


								<p>

								<li>

								The Mutari are those who fight in the Mutai; and you *did* see Narns

								and Centauri and others hanging around the ring.  The only ones you

								won't see there are Minbari.  It ain't their thing.


								<p>

								<li>

								As I've noted before, over the long haul, as you watch episodes, you

								will see things you didn't see before.  Sometimes they're clues, and

								sometimes they're comments which now read a different way than they

								did the first time you saw them.  There's been a number of the latter

								very subtly sprinkled through the episodes aired so far...lines that

								everyone jumped on as meaning one thing, but which will mean something

								else, and lines which nobody thought much of the first time out...but

								which will elicit a wince of irony later on.


								<p>

								There's a corker in "TKO," but at the moment, it's absolutely

								invisible.  It's not a clue, it's not necessary for the story, it's

								just one of those things that, after you've seen all the rest of this

								season's episodes, you will go "Ouch," when you see it next.


								<p>

								<li>

								Actually, the idea of Zima lasting even into 1995 is hysterical.  I

								keep fighting the urge to have some guy show up on B5, "Zo then I

								zays to him, nize ztation"...and five Narns just jump on him and beat

								the shit out of him, WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAM!


								<p>

								<li>

								We've killed off all of Ivanova's close family, yes.  Maybe some

								cousins are left, but that's about it.


								<p>

								<li>

								There's a Billy Joel song, where one particular lyric (and I'm quoting

								from memory) says, "You still have a pain inside you / That you carry

								with a certain pride / It's the only part / Of a broken heart / You

								could ever save."  That's Ivanova.


								<p>

								She's had her heart stomped on a lot.  And she's been holding it in.

								Even with her father's death, she sucked in the pain, fought back the

								tears.  There is one episode, which will be right at the end of the

								year, where she finds she can't run from her pain anymore...can't run

								from the tears...and deals with them in a scene that's very moving

								and absolutely brings tears to the eyes.


								</ul>