Contents: Overview - Backplot - Questions - Analysis - Notes - JMS

Overview

ISN sends a team to do a second story about Babylon 5. Jeff Griggs as Dan Randall.

P5 Rating: 7.56

Production number: 408
Original air week: February 17, 1997
DVD release date: January 6, 2004

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Stephen Furst

Plot Points

• Clark has reinstated the Earth Senate in some form. It has begun investigating alleged alien influence in the entertainment industry and extracting confessions and lists of collaborators from writers and directors.
• Sheridan's father was a diplomat. The family farm has been burned to the ground, and his father's whereabouts are unknown.
• Earth, according to ISN, is slowly retaking Mars from the rebels who took over when Clark's forces attacked ("Severed Dreams.")

Unanswered Questions

• Will the newscast prove convincing to people on Earth?
• Where is Sheridan's father? What about his mother?
• What names did Sheridan give his father?
• Is Garibaldi's salvage business as it appears, or is he using it as a cover for other activities?
• How did Randall get into the cryogenic freezer area? If it's really restricted as he says, someone must have let him in.

Analysis

• Psi Corps presumably now knows the fate of the telepaths; two of their names are plainly visible behind Randall (see Notes.) Will the Corps try to come after them? What about the allies of the Shadows, who may have some interest in the telepaths' implants? If Shadow ships were left behind (not unlikely, considering there were lots of them buried underground) they'll need pilots who've gone through the proper preparation ("Messages From Earth") and the telepaths are ready-made candidates.

• Garibaldi seems to have turned against Sheridan completely, going so far as to allude to him as "the devil." Is that a direct result of his programming (or whatever was triggered by the message in "Epiphanies") or is there some other reason?

• ISN's new title sequence reflects the provincial, Earth-centric views of the Clark government: after a flight through space, the sequence ends up centered on Earth and the Moon.

Notes

• The newscast was broadcast on April 12, 2261. Four historical events were cited as taking place on the same date: Yuri Gagarin's flight into space (April 12, 1961,) President Clinton's establishment of a "Commission on the Future" in 1999, the start of construction of the first lunar colony in the Sea of Tranquility in 2018, and the founding of the Psi Corps in 2161.

• The confession of the director bore strong resemblance to the confessions extracted by the House Un-American Activities Commission in the US during the 1950s. In that case it was Communists and homosexuals, not aliens, but the focus on entertainers was the same, as was the practice of demanding lists of collaborators. Those who refused to cooperated were "blacklisted," and found themselves unable to get work in Hollywood.

  In fact, the names cited are based on actual people blacklisted in the 1950s. Beth Trumbo is likely a reference to writer Dalton Trumbo, Adrian Mostel to producer Adrian Scott and actor Zero Mostel, and Carleton Jarrico to writer Paul Jarrico.

  Paul Jarrico died in an automobile accident on October 28, 1997, the day after receiving a standing ovation at a Hollywood ceremony honoring the surviving blacklisted screenwriters.

• Two names are visible on the cryogenic freezers during Randall's report. One, Carolyn Sanderson, is Bester's love ("Ship of Tears.") The other is John Flinn III, one of the show's directors.

• The psychological phenomenon of hostages sympathizing with their captors is the Stockholm syndrome, not the Helsinki syndrome as stated in the episode. Some readers have commented that both names are correct, but that appears to not be the case according to psychological literature. For example, "Stockholm syndrome" appears 30 times in the journals of the American Psychological Association from 1887 to 1999, but "Helsinki syndrome" isn't mentioned even once.

• The newscast misspelled Yuri Gagarin's name; it was spelled "Gargarin" on the screen.

jms speaks

• It's a good and creepy episode. I like it when things get creepy.

• Stephen has directed before, yes, though he hasn't done that much episodic TV work.

  The final shot was strictly described in the script; the monitor POV, the relative positions of everyone, the slight fisheye look and the absolute silence.

• Was Garibaldi's flashback shot in advance?
  Somtimes, yeah, we'll gang together shots in one location that will spill across several episodes, and definitely did that in Garibaldi's case. I just figure out what's coming, and write those specific additional scenes prior to the rest of the scripts.

• Where did the Starfury model Sheridan was looking at in the war room come from?
  Actually, I think the Starfury model was an illegal one we confiscated.

  Waste not, want not...

• Was the psychologist reading from a teleprompter?
  Actually, no, he wasn't reading off a teleprompter at all. His eyes may have been moving, but there was no reading involved.

• "In the Delenn/Sheridan interview, there is a change in the vocal acoustics of the journalist for the "new" questions he asked."

  And not just in the voice quality...look at the footage again. He's sitting in a different chair, in a different room.

• About the names cited in the confession
  Yes, they're based on the real names of writers who were blacklisted, Dalton Trumbo and Paul Jarrico.

• Parks (the person who's naming names) was also named after one of those who testified before HUAC.

• Were the names dubbed in?
  Only Jarrico was dubbed, because it was mispronounced.

• It's a period too few people really know much about, and it never hurts to point to the past in order to warn about the future.

• This ep is one that'll be discussed a lot, but not rewatched a lot, because it's just really hard to watch, knowing what's coming. It really does tend to upset people.

• If it's a little close to home...you have to remember I came out of journalism, that was where I cut my teeth as a writer, working for newspapers and magazines. You see a lot of the tricks, some good, some not so good, used for purposes that are sometimes good or not so good, distortions on the left and distortions on the right. So it wasn't hard to just tweak it a bit.

  Thing to remember, though, is that this isn't ISN as we've known it in the past, at least not to this extreme. If anything, this ep should point to the difference between journalism, albeit biased, and propaganda, which is all ISN is now, and how only an informed viewership can prevent the one from sliding into the other.

• Aren't there networks besides ISN?
  ISN is the one network that can handle *interstellar* broadcasts, which reqire a massive amount of energy, logistics, setup...there are other, local, planetary networks around Earth, and a few specialized channels for military and some commercial use...but ISN is the biggest, and because of that is very much in Earthgov's pocket.

• It was most definitely difficult and painful for me to write. I I am as much involved with these characters as anyone else, and doing this kind of thing to them is hard. And you have to put yourself in the minds of those doing this, and that's a dark place to be.

  And yeah, I know people who were harmed in the blacklist, and I've seen others, and myself, sometimes harmed by those who like to twist things around to their own benefit.

• "FWIW, that was your most courageous episode yet, IMHO."

  I appreciate the sentiment, so don't take this as lack of gratitude on my part; I'm happy you perceive it that way.

  But courageous? No.

  Courageous as an apellation belongs to the South American writers who insist on telling the truth about their governments, who risk death on a daily basis for doing so...and to other writers doing similar work in other countries.

  Yeah, it was kind of a shot to the midsection for some groups, with a certain element of biting the hand that feeds you, but the truth is, ain't nobody gonna come to my door in the middle of the night with death squads, take me away, and torture me. If you want to hear about real courage, join PEN International, or Amnesty International. They can always use the help.

• "This B5 episode should be required viewing in University media and history classes."

  Funny thing is, I've since received several requests from instructors at various colleges asking if they could use the show in their classroom to illustrate the points raised. Kinda nice....

• I don't make any blanket condemnations of journalists. For one thing, there's a difference between portraying journalism in a relatively free society, and one that's operating under a dictatorship, a la President Clark. It's the difference between journalism and propaganda.

  In "Midnight on the Firing Line," we had a reporter there doing a straight-ahead story; in "Point of No Return" we had the Good Journalists fighting to reveal the truth even as Clark was shutting them down.

  There have been favorable portrayals; it's just that under the current regime, they don't have access to the media.

• I am definitely *not* anti-reporter...I'm against the *control* of truth by any government or political agenda. We are made stronger by a multiplicity of voices, and the more those voices are allowed access to a level playing field, the more often the truth will come out to play.

  The third name was Jarrico, after Paul Jarrico, also blacklisted.

• The ISN cameras are not capable of autonomous operation, but they can be progammed within a parameter set. The wand is a control device to change those parameters. Thus, one operator, two cameras (or more!)

  There was a distinct anti Minbar/Minbari sentiment among this particular crew, as evidenced by the later parts of the show, and it isn't hard to imagine that the bumping was at the behest of the wand wielder. If Lennier was simply annoyed, advantage ISN. If he reacted violently, advantage ISN. I'm sure that footage will be used on another ISN propoganda broadcast. (You can see it on Channel 134 of your cable)(Oh, sorry, Channel 134 is not availbale in all sectors after curfew)

  George Johnsen
  CoProducer, B5

Last update: May 27, 2024