The Battle of the Line

The following page is devoted to the events at the Battle of the Line as recalled by Sinclair during his drug-influenced VR experience in "And the Sky Full of Stars."

See also "Points of Departure."

Unanswered Questions

• How did the Minbari appear out of nowhere? (see Analysis)
• Why is Sinclair important to the Minbari?
• Why was he tortured?
• What was the talisman held up in front of him? (cf "Legacies", Babylon Squared")

Analysis

The Minbari singled out Sinclair for capture before he prepared to ram their cruiser

• All the Starfuries around Sinclair are destroyed with one, sometimes two Minbari beams. However, a fighter spent several seconds on Sinclair's tail and fired over twelve laser beams at him, all of them missing.
• The only two Starfuries that suffered a damaging shot before being destroyed were also the only two that made notable flight maneuvers: Alpha-7, who was out in front, and Mitchell, who peeled off after the attacking fighter and went on to shoot at a cruiser. The Minbari may have been listening in on their ship-to-ship chatter, deliberately damaging those two ships in the process of determining which was the one they wanted.
• Once his squad had all been shot down, cruiser fire finally hit Sinclair's Starfury, but it only damaged his engine strut. Cruiser fire had earlier taken off the engine struts of his comrades. After this, all enemy fire ceased. Clearly the Minbari could have destroyed him then if they'd wanted.
• Conclusion: One fighter was sent to herd Sinclair away so maximum-strength lasers could be used on his squad. A disabling shot was then fired at his engine strut in preparation for taking him aboard. Then Sinclair set up for his ram.

Minbari Cruisers are impossible to detect before they're close enough to open fire

• Sinclair's squad took neither defensive nor offensive action when Alpha-7, in advance of the rest, was destroyed by cruiser fire. There was nothing for them to do but take note that enemy transmissions were present and drift forward until visual contact was made.
• When first spotted, the cruisers had already matched velocities with the Starfuries and killed their engines. They were also perfectly positioned so that pilots would have to attack into the sun. This, with Sinclair's exclamation, "It's a trap!" definitely paints the battle as an ambush. The means of hiding remains a mystery.

Something significant may have happened to Sinclair just before the cruiser captured his ship.

• Recall Sinclair's earlier accounts of his experience, he always says "something passed in front of my eyes."
• A wisp of smoke is mentioned in the Line synopsis. This effect is hard to catch without a freeze-frame VCR, but once it's been identified it's impossible to miss, even at normal speed. If it was something significant, then Sinclair's change in expression and throwing up of arms may have been in reaction to that rather than to the looming cruiser.

The scenes of Sinclair standing within the grey council circle were not two different events, but the same event remembered twice

• The first Grey Council scene is the only one Sinclair remembers out of order from the rest, and comes right after he has been given a dangerously higher amount of the mind- affecting drugs. The second scene comes a while after the drugs were boosted, and he remembers it in order with the rest of his experiences.
• The important elements of the first scene are all present in the second: confronted by grey figures, shouted questions, getting zapped. However, the zapping is incomprehensible in the first scene: why dramatically appear to Sinclair only to knock him out again immediately thereafter? In the second scene, there is a clearer reason - he had just seen the face of a Council member.
• There are some details present in the first scene that were absent or different in the second, but these differences are insignificant: one-by-one lights, oddly echoing voices, being shot in the chest rather than the back, and...
• ...Sinclair is in full uniform in the first scene. This is flatly impossible, since a fighter pilot wouldn't wear much more than scrubs underneath a flight suit. (In "Believers", for example, Ivanova is seen putting her uniform jacket back on after returning from a flight.) However, this is exactly the kind of detail that people tend to fill in by subconscious "guessing" when memories are incomplete.

The exclamation "I know you. I know who you are. I know you." may be the key to understanding that scene

• Sinclair suffered a mind-wipe during his experience on the cruiser. He was examined and confronted by a group. Perhaps it was necessary to prove to this group that the mind-wipe was effective.
• If this is correct, then the scene reads in the following way:
  Sinclair is presented to the Grey Council. "What do you want? Why are you doing this? Who are you?", he asks, obviously having forgotten the answers to all these questions. He is now safe to release. But wait, he's pulled the hood off of a Council member, and even worse, he vaguely recognizes her! He's obviously on the verge of remembering his experience, which won't do at all. ZAP.
• Under this interpretation, Sinclair's re-use of exactly those words, again at the sight of Delenn's face, would make her certain that he was reliving that same experience of almost-remembering.
• Alternately, it may be that "I know you. I know who you are. I know you" was not uttered by Sinclair at the Line, but rather he said it within the VR experience when confronted with a face that he now recognizes, while deep within a long-unseen memory.

Notes

• The CGI of this sequence is incredibly detailed and subtle. In shots of Sinclair's face after the battle begins, exploding Starfuries can be seen reflected in his visor. Starfury wreckage haunts the edges of some scenes. Also, unlike normal B5 space scenes, these images were deliberately crafted with much blurring and streaking, to enhance the dreamlike feel.
• When Sinclair's Starfury tumbles, the number 20 is visible painted on top. 20 is also the maximum number of Starfuries visible at any one time during this sequence.
• The phrase "What do you want?", eerily repeated, occurs later in the season. (cf "Signs and Portents")
• The triangle visible on Delenn's forehead is similar, though less ornate, to the one on the forehead of the Councilman who appears in her quarters at the end of the episode. (cf also "Signs and Portents")

jms speaks

• Yeah, it was an off-the-cuff reference to General Billy Mitchell. (Didn't really mean that much; just thought it wuz cool.)
• Also, check the readout on Sinclair's screen as he's trying to engage the enemy. You'll see "Negative Lock" popping up. One problem in fighting the Minbari vessels is that they have a kind of stealth tech that makes it very hard for our weapons to lock on.
• The CGI won't look as good in slow motion because we step-printed them deliberately, in order to give them a more dream-like appearance. For us, this wasn't about the ships, it was about one of the men in the ship, which is why we kept him in sharp focus, and went to step-printing whenever we went outside (and since we're seeing this from his memory, clearly he wouldn't actually have *seen* most of this, it's his *sense* of what happened). You'll get plenty of clear CGI in "Signs and Portents."

Last update: June 10, 2018