brennen
/
lurkers-guide


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


								<blockquote><cite>

								A traveller comes to B5, seeking the Holy Grail.  A series of unexplained

								attacks on several Lurkers may be linked to Ambassador Kosh.

								</cite>


								<a href="http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+Warner,+David">David Warner</a> as Aldous Gajic.

								Tom Booker as Jinxo.

								<a href="http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+Sanderson,+William">William Sanderson</a> as Deuce.

								</blockquote>


								<pre>

								Sub-genre: Mystery

								<a href="/lurk/p5/intro.html">P5 Rating</a>: <a href="/lurk/p5/015">7.43</a>


								Production number: 109

								Original air date: July 6, 1994

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


								Written by Christy Marx

								Directed by Richard Compton

								</pre>


								<p>

								<hr size=3>

								<p>


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

								<ul>

								   <li> Babylon and Babylon 2 were sabotaged.  Babylon 3 blew up before it was

									finished.  Babylon 4 vanished without a trace in front of witnesses.

								   <li> The Minbari highly value people who spend their lives searching for

									something.  Delenn seems to believe that's true of Sinclair.

								</ul>


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

								<ul>

								   <li> Delenn seems to consider Sinclair a true seeker.  What is he seeking?

								   <li> Why didn't the feeder want Gajic?

								   <li> What happened to Babylon 4?  (cf.

									<a href="020.html">"Babylon Squared"</a>)

								</ul>


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

								<ul>

								   <li> Perhaps Delenn's comments about Sinclair simply refer to his

									search for the truth about the Battle of the Line, if she realizes

									he knows something of what happened to him.  Or there could be

									a deeper meaning.

								</ul>


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

								<ul>

								   <li> This episode features the series' first

									CGI alien (the na'ka'leen feeder, pictured above.)


								   <li> The transport <cite>Marie Celeste</cite>, which Thomas boarded at the

									end of the episode, is a reference to a sailing ship

									found adrift on the sea in 1872 by the crew of the ship <cite>Dei

									Gratia</cite>.  The <cite>Celeste</cite>'s crew was missing, as was her

									single lifeboat, but there were half-eaten

									meals in the mess hall and other evidence the crew had left suddenly.

									Investigators found that Captain Morehouse of the <cite>Dei

									Gratia</cite> had

									dined with Captain Briggs of the <cite>Celeste</cite> the night before

									departure, and Morehouse and his crew were tried for murder.  There was

									no hard evidence, and they were acquitted.  The missing crewmen were

									never found.


								</ul>


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

								<ul>

								   <li> In an earlier version of the story, it was indeed Kosh who appeared out

									of nowhere and scragged the Feeder, saying, "Some things we do not

									allow," but it seemed kinda un-Kosh-like on one level, and it repeated

									the Deathwalker finish, so it was dropped.


								<p>

								   <li> The grey-alien trial scene from "Grail" will be excerpted for a

									two-part "Sightings" on alien abduction.


									<p>

									I'm *still* laughing.


								<p>

								   <li> The human won the case, but damages awarded were minimal.


								<p>

								   <li> Yes, this Christy Marx is the same as the one who writes games and

									has written comics as well.


								<p>

								   <li> Actually, Christy has gone on record (otherwise I would not have

									noted it myself) that the trial scene at the top of "Grail" was

									written and inserted by me, since it was a bit short.


								<p>

								   <li>@@@852230750 Yeah, it's a lovely scene.  I dropped it into Christy's

									script because it was something I always wanted to do.  I just figured,

									okay, if these things really ARE happening, and it gets found out, and

									we make contact with aliens, and find the ones responsible....

									somebody's gonna want to sue their butts off.  So it became a very

									logical extension of the judicial system (tongue somewhat in cheek).

									And...well, it was a hoot.  I'll forgive much if it's a hoot.


								<p>

								   <li> Actually, it was Christy Marx, who wrote Grail, who named Aldus after

									Mira [Furlan]'s husband.


								<p>

								   <li> I don't think I've really said that much about "Grail."  The trick,

									though, is that I don't approach the episodes in quite the same way

									that a viewer does.  I have somewhat different agendas and goals, and

									there are times when hassles in *doing* the episode -- which in no

									way affect the show itself - - affects my *perception* of the episode.


									<p>

									I did a small screening of "Grail" here about a week ago, to get some

									other reactions, and they were all very positive; they enjoyed the

									episode quite a bit.  (Similarly, there were people who thought that

									"Infection" was one of the best of the season.)  There is *no one* who

									is harsher in critiquing the episodes than I am.  I want each one to

									be absolutely perfect.  And sometimes that means that I see flaws that

									no one else ever will.


									<p>

									In any event, I definitely want people to come at this from an open

									minded point of view.  For reasons that have nothing to do with

									Christy's script, it still isn't one of my all-time favorite episodes;

									if I said otherwise, I'd be lying through my teeth.  But different

									opinions are what makes horse races, and as stated, most of those

									who've seen it so far *do* like it, so at the moment I'm considerably

									outnumbered....


								<p>

								   <li> John Flinn, who is our DP, has at various times also been an actor,

									and so we used him to play Mr. Flinn in the episode as well.  A

									cameo by yet another member of our talented and multifaceted

									production team.


								<p>

								   <li> There were no asymmetrical aliens in the pilot, but there's a real

									dandy coming your way in the B5 episode "Grail."  You want nonhumanoid

									aliens, you *got* non-humanoid aliens....


								<p>

								   <li> Yeah, the Feeder is pretty cool; wrapped up Foundation's rendering

									machines for the better part of a week just to pull that one off.


								<p>

								   <li> On the feeder being sentient...neither Sinclair nor anyone else on

									"our" side of the story ever heard it speaking; all they knew was that

									it was a killer, and it was dangerous, and had to be stopped.


								<p>

								   <li> <em>Who let the Feeders out?</em><br>

									Stupid bureaucrats who couldn't afford to maintain a quarantine

									enforcement team in the sector.


								<p>

								   <li> The hardest part is always writing Kosh, because you have to be very

									careful how much you use him, and what he says.  Too much and he

									loses his sense of mystery, and you don't want him spouting fortune-

									cookie type aphorisms.  He has a very deliberate way of speaking in

									which everything, every smallest nuance and inflection means something,

									but sometimes not what it appears to mean, or comes at it from a very

									different angle than normal conversation.  So I go as minimalist as

									possible, to get the meaning down to the smallest number of words

									possible.  And in one scene, one of only two he appears in, I got him

									down to *one word*, and that one word -- and it's a totally inoffensive,

									neutral word on its own terms -- should scare the hell out of

									*everybody*.

									<p>

									Ah loves this show....

									<em>(Editor's note: the word in question is "Good.")</em>


								<p>

								   <li> At one time we were working out what the time-reference would be on

									B5.  One of the early things we talked about were cycles, but in

									fairly short order I decided against it because it didn't seem to mean

									much.   But this was, sadly, after "Grail" had been produced, and we

									couldn't dub over the cycle references with anything else, so it

									stayed.  It won't be appearing anywhere else henceforth.  One of our

									few continuity glitches.


								<p>

								   <li> After "Grail," we had a discussion with Chris about funny music.  We

									do not anticipate further discussions.  (In a full season of music for

									B5, this is the only discussion we've had of a critical nature, which

									is extraordinary for any series; he's done a lot of wonderful work for

									us . . . .)


								<p>

								   <li> Yeah, it was a bit of *really* perverse humor...Jinxo survives all

									five Babylon stations, and leaves thinking all is well...on a ship

									named the Marie Celeste?

									<p>

									We're a sick bunch, but we're fun.


								<p>

								   <li>@@@846702468 "...what company in their right mind would name one of

									their ships the "Marie Celeste"?


									<p>

									Dunno, but I'd bet good money that whoever it is, it's an Australian

									company.  Nothing frightens those people; they're fearless.


								<p>

								   <li> I would love to have David Warner do another episode, though it

									would have to be an alien, for obvious reasons.


								<p>

								   <li> And the grail story was fairly self-contained, not much in the way of

									arc related stuff there.


								</ul>