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								<!-- TITLE Grey 17 Is Missing -->


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


								<blockquote><cite>

								Delenn agrees to lead the Rangers, but Marcus must protect her from a

								deadly threat. Garibaldi investigates a secret level of the station.

								</cite>


								<a href="http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+Englund,+Robert">Robert Englund</a> as Jeremiah.

								<a href="http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+Vickery,+John">John Vickery</a> as Neroon.

								<a href="http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+Winters,+Time">Time Winters</a> as Rathenn.

								</blockquote>


								<pre><a href="/lurk/p5/intro.html">P5 Rating</a>: <a href="/lurk/p5/063">6.93</a>


								Production number: 319

								Original air week: September 10, 1996 (UK)

								                   October 7, 1996 (US)

								<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00009OOFK/thelurkersguidet">DVD release date</a>: August 12, 2003


								Written by J. Michael Straczynski

								Directed by John Flinn III

								</pre>


								<p>

								<hr size=3>


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

								<ul>


								   <li> The forces of light are now actively recruiting telepaths, but it's

									been a slow process.


								   <li> Garibaldi's grandmother was a police officer in Boston.  (First

									mentioned in

									<a href="012.html">"By Any Means Necessary."</a>)


								   <li> Valen originally set up the Rangers 1000 years ago, under the

									control of the Warrior Caste, but they have been inactive until

									recently.


								   <li> Grey Sector in B5 is mainly comprised of industrial units.


								   <li> No Minbari has killed another Minbari in 1000 years.


								   <li> 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.


								   <li>@@@845319895 The security forces on B5 use PPGs rather than bullets

									because bullets run the risk of puncturing the station's hull.


								</ul>


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


								<ul>

								   <li> What will be the limits of Ivanova's promise to Franklin?

								   <li> How will being chosen as leader of the Rangers change Delenn?

								   <li> Is Neroon right in suggesting Delenn is taking over control of Minbar?

								   <li> Who or what was responsible for an entire level of Grey sector being

									lost from the view of the B5 residents?

								   <li> What will happen to Grey 17 and the people there?

								   <li> What will the future relationship be between the Warrior Caste and the

									Rangers?

								   <li> Was Kosh present at the ceremony? If not, why not?


								</ul>


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

								<ul>


								   <li> 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.


								   <li> 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

									(<a href="044.html">"The Fall of Night"</a>)

									claimed to have seen. Is this just a coincidence, or is there a deeper

									relationship?


								   <li>@@@845316165 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.


								   <li>@@@845318928 Jeremiah clearly knew about Minbari religion, given

									the similarity of his view of the universe and Delenn's

									(<a href="048.html">"Passing Through Gethsemane."</a>)

									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?


								   <li>@@@845319402 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.


								   <li>@@@845319850 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.


								</ul>


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


								<ul>


								   <li>@@@845621030 Sinclair's belongings include a medal for fighting on the

									Battle of the Line, his identicard, an Earthforce insignia,

									and the Ranger brooch.


								   <li>@@@857686152 <a name="NO.paper">When Garibaldi falls unconscious,</a>

									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

									(<a href="001.html">"Midnight on the Firing Line."</a>)

									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.


								</ul>


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

								<ul>


								<p>

								   <li> Garibaldi has a big role in "Grey 17 Is Missing."


								<p>

								   <li> 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.")


								<p>

								   <li> You'll hear about Delenn's parents in

									"Grey 17 Is Missing."


								<p>

								   <li> 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.


									<p>

									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....


								<p>

								   <li>@@@844797477 <em>Why did you write all the episodes this

									season?</em><br>

									"Was there some incident that we don't know about? It seems to me that

									there must have been. "


									<p>

									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.


									<p>

									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.


									<p>

									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.


									<p>

									"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.


									<p>

									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.


									<p>

									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.


									<p>

									"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....


									<p>

									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.


									<p>

									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.


									<p>

									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.


								<p>

								   <li>@@@844381513 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....


								<p>

								   <li>@@@844393625 <em>How did they sneak the Zarg onto the station?</em><br>

									There was a line about slipping the egg into the station...don't

									remember now if it made it through the edit or not.


								<p>

								   <li>@@@852231693 Entil-Zha, whoever that is at the time, is for all intents

									and purposes the One for the Rangers.


								<p>

								   <li> <em>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?</em><br>

									I think he's closer to an understanding, but we'll see if the others all

									feel the same way.


								<p>

								   <li>@@@852231693 <em>Why did Sinclair/Valen leave the warrior caste in

									charge of the Rangers, if they aren't involved in the war?</em><br>

									Because *at the time* the Warrior Caste *was* involved, and it

									would've been a slap to them to do so.


								<p>

								   <li> <em>Do Minbari beliefs have some bearing on the true nature of the B5

									storyline?</em><br>

									It has some bearing, in a way, but more in a thematic than literal

									sense.


								<p>

								   <li> <em>Was Delenn's visit to the city as a child deeply important, since

									she only saw her mother twice?</em><br>

									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.


								<p>

								   <li> <em>What happened to Delenn's father?</em><br>

									He croaked.


								<p>

								   <li>@@@844393738 <em>Were the people in Grey 17 there by choice?</em><br>

									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.


								<p>

								   <li>@@@845974766 It's Harriet for Harriet Tubman, who ran the slave

									underground railroad around the time of the Civil War.


									<p>

									And no matter how much Ivanvoa trains, she'll never be much

									past a P1, and that's more or less useless to them.


								<p>

								   <li>@@@845974896 <em>So her ability is never going to factor into the

									story?</em><br>

									Only if one assumes everything applies only to the Shadow war.


								</ul>


								<p>

								Originally compiled by Jason Snell.