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

Overview

Talia is involved in carrying out the sentence of a convicted murderer. Dr. Franklin investigates a possible medical scam in Downbelow. Londo takes Lennier for a look at the less savory sections of the station. June Lockhart as Dr. Laura Rosen. Kate McNeil as Janice Rosen. Mark Rolston as Karl Mueller. Damian London as the Centauri Senator. Jim Norton as Ombuds Wellington.

Sub-genre: Suspense/drama
P5 Rating: 7.29

Production number: 117
Original air date: August 17, 1994
DVD release date: November 5, 2002

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Lorraine Senna Ferrara

Backplot

• "Spacing" someone (tossing them out an airlock to die) is a punishment applicable only in cases of mutiny and treason.
• Evidence gained from a telepathic scan is inadmissible in court, as it violates the principles of due process.
• Very few members of Psi-Corps are trained to handle criminal cases, not for lack of demand, but because it's very a stressful field, with lots of burnouts.
• The station's indigent are denied medical treatment in Medlab if they can't afford it (cf. "Believers".)
• The station's prison is overcrowded already; there's no room for someone to serve a life sentence.
• Earth possesses the technology to brain-wipe people (cf. "Grail") and implant new memories; it's used as a punishment or rehabilitation measure in certain criminal cases. A Psi-Corps member oversees the wipe, performing scans before and after to make sure it's complete.

Unanswered Questions

• What will Dr. Franklin do with the machine? Will it ever be seen again?
• Will Franklin and Janice Rosen continue to see each other in subsequent episodes?

Analysis

• This is the second instance in the series of a mechanism for stealing life from one being and giving it to another (cf. "Deathwalker".) Perhaps the two are related somehow.
• Judging by her reactions during the scan, it seems Talia was not trained to deal with hardened criminals. Why, then, was she also stuck with the job of scanning a murderer on the Mars colony, a place that, as a major human settlement, presumably has a Psi-Corps presence? (cf. "A Voice in the Wilderness, Part 1," though admittedly the presence referred to there was not public knowledge.)
• The Centauri's claim that Earth was a lost colony (cf. "Midnight on the Firing Line") must have been a short-lived ruse, given the revelations about Centauri physiology in this episode.

Notes

• June Lockhart and Bill Mumy were in another science-fiction show together: "Lost in Space."

jms speaks

• Of all the scripts I've written, the only one that I'm less than absolutely 100% thrilled with is "The Quality of Mercy," because I wrote it while absolutely sick with the flu, and have NO memory even of writing it. As it is, though, I'm about 90% happy with it, particularly the B-story with Londo and Lennier, which came out great.

• In my original thoughts about the episode, there was more of a con man ressurectionist angle to the show, which later got dropped.

• Psi Corps telepaths are ****NOT**** allowed to scan defendants in any official way connected to a criminal act. It violates the right to due process. Even if requested, it's simply not allowed. You do NOT want to even open the door a *crack* in letting a government-regulated agency begin making determinations about who is and isn't guilty of a crime. That way lies dictatorship, Thought Police and Big Brother.

• The scan is preparatory to the prisoner being mind-blanked. It is, as the Ombuds pointed out, the death of personality, the death of one's mind. Hence the black band on the Psi symbol.

• How has your presence on the net affected the series?
  ... I was initially going to gloss over some of the legal aspects of the Psi Corps in "The Quality of Mercy," but when so many people expressed interest in how that worked, and when I saw some measure of confusion about it, I took the time to indicate how the legal aspects work when it came time to complete that script, thus answering the questions.

• The one major reason I decided to begin this interaction, despite CONSIDERABLE discourgement and disbelief from my peers, is that I think it may be of some use, and because I think that one should be willing to stand publicly with what you create, and because though many criticisms are issues of taste or subjective preference, sometimes (fairly often, actually), I learn something from the discussion, or I'm corrected in something, and that realignment is eventually reflected in the show. I'm giving some serious thought to either revamping n'grath or killing him off given the reaction (paired with my own). I won't be dictated to, but in some cases, as with n'grath, I may be uncertain, but willing to try and see if the experiment works. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, and the general perception here seems close to my own. In addition, I was initially going to gloss over some of the legal aspects of the Psi Corps in "The Quality of Mercy," but when so many people expressed interest in how that worked, and when I saw some measure of confusion about it, I took the time to indicate how the legal aspects work when it came time to complete that script, thus answering the questions.

• About June Lockhart
  No, no scenes with Bill Mumy, though some consideration was given to the notion.

• Bill kept bugging me to put him in a scene with June, but I just felt it'd get in the way.

• It would've worked, but the scene would've forever been about the mini-LIS reunion. If it isn't important to the story, it shouldn't be there.

• We do tend to try and stay open to gender stuff; usuall there's a reason why someone is male or female, so it's cast that way. But as an example...in "Quality of Mercy," the role as originally written was for a father/daughter combination. In the process of casting, we thought, why not mother/daughter? So that's how it ended up. In "Points of Departure," we have one of your requests already taken care of...a part of a war cruiser commander who could've been male or female...cast female.

• Q: What are Londo's appendages called?
  Tentisticularites?

• Are Londo's appendages in addition to or instead of human-type "appendages"?
  That would be instead of, not in addition to.

• As for the tentacles...well, there's no rules about showing tentacles on TV. I think they didn't even want to deal with it. There are some moments when they pretend they didn't see it, and I pretend I didn't write it.

• Centauri males have six.

• Centauri females, btw, have six narrow...ummm...slots on their backs, three on either side of the spine, right around the base of the spine.

  The awful thing is that the two women in props -- who were having FAR too much fun with this -- kept bringing me the tentacle to verify the shape, size, consistency, do we see veins or not....

  I tell you here and now: our staff meetings are something else.

• Actually, Centauri have six. They extend out from the sides of the body, and "fold" in over the solar plexus when not in, er, use. (We actually saw one extended for other purposes in the first season, "The Quality of Mercy.") Female Centauri have six...er...slotted areas on either side of the spine, just above the hips, three on either side.

  To go any further would probably bring in the FBI.

• Does that mean Centauri women have multiple births on a regular basis?
  No multiple births, in that sense, not any different than humans.

• "What kind of birth control do the Centauri use?"

  Conversation.

• Which of the six do they use for urination?
  That assumes the urinate out of the same organs they use for sex; ain't necessarily the case.

• We used a bullwhip sound effect for the "retraction" in QoM; when we were in sound editing, I asked for the hardest whip-crack they had...and got it put in REAL loud. Every time I hear it, I'm on the floor....

• While the TP themes in "Quality" go back through the history of SF, including the Demolished Man, among others, the basic storyline (re: Talia) came out of the pilot. At the time, I was asked -- frequently -- "Why didn't Lyta scan Sinclair to determine if he had tried to kill Kosh?" My answer then -- which is in some of the archives -- was that it would violate the right to due process, that a defendant cannot be scanned to determine guilt or innocence (in fact, I recall a rather heated debate about that here a while back). I promised that this would be elaborated upon down the road, and mentally logged in to do a show with that premise...and I'd already decided about the death penalty, and the use of telepaths in it. So "Quality" came out of that, long before "Mephisto" was even written. At one point, knowing that there were some common story areas, I called Harlan to tell him the "Quality" story, so that if there were any problems, I could revise it, but he said he saw no problem.

• Isn't brainwiping as bad as killing?
  There are actually many issues to get into in all of this. Which is really the "person," the mind, the soul, or the body? If a person has an accident, getting amnesia, which wipes out his entire personality, is that person as good as dead? Is there no difference between amnesia and death? If not, why not just kill the amnesiac? But obviously there *is* a difference. So what is the person? What constitutes death?

  We consider the actual death of the *brain* through the cessation of brain activity to be the test for death. But what if you simply rearrange those patterns?

  There is also the question of *justice*. If the person is dead, then that person cannot do much to correct the ills he visited upon society. It is simply a waste of material. So why not take someone who, in any decent society, would be executed or forced to live in a 6x9 cage the rest of his life, and give the soul, and the body, a new chance by giving the person a new personality and letting him, as the Ombuds says, "serve the community harmed by his actions"?

  Finally, if the person is dead, he's dead; let's say 5 years down the road somebody finds evidence that proves the person was innocent. There is at least the *chance* to reconstruct some of the original memories and personality profile.

  All of this, again, has to be considered in light of the fact that we are talking about a *space station* with limited space and resources. You cannot warehouse every person who kill somebody in a station that small; you would run out of space almost immediately. (If you also include basic felons and near-killings.) So what *do* you do with them? As was noted, Earth doesn't want them and won't pay to have them shipped back...what's left?

  That's the dilemma I wanted to pose in the episode...what *can* you do?

• "...the 'personality' remaining in the body will be punished for a crime that 'personality' did not commit."

  1) But again, which is the person...the old personality, the new one, or something else?

  2) Part of the new personality would be the delight in serving others.

• You will see the healing machine from "Quality" once more. Part of the reason for that story was to set up something within the B5 universe that will come in handy a long time later (but I'm *not* going to have it lying around indefinitely; it would cause lots of long-term complications).

  (Some TV shows foreshadow/set-up stuff an act or two ahead of time; we do setups a full *year* ahead....)

• There are limits to what the healing device can do, for starters; it can't repair physical damage to the body, mainly it works with disease and basic low-energy stuff; also, bear in mind that it was a device used for *capital punishment*...meaning that to save one person's life, another must sacrifice his or her own, if it's that far along, so it's not really something you can trot out everytime somebody gets nailed.

• They cannot carry out the original sentence because the body is now dead, which would tend to diminish its social acceptability.

  Dr. Franklin did not know that Mueller had yet found Rosen, or even knew of it. There are no Babcom systems in DownBelow quarters. To send a security team, when they're out searching, without cause, is neither realistic nor sensible. He did the correct thing: to go and warn her, while at the same time making sure that security knew where he was going, and if they didn't hear anything, to send in a team.

• Franklin should have had a search warrant.
  Allow me to disagree with you.

  Dr. Franklin did not require a search warrant to enter Rosen's quarters. The door was basically open, and he is NOT an officer of the law. Only officers of the law are required to have search warrants. Neither was he there to arrest her.

  Defense counsel was sitting with the defendant at the table. He had no lines, but he was there. The trial had been ongoing; this was the part where the verdict is rendered after a decision has been reached.

  The pattern of the judge passing sentence is exactly the same as when circuit court judges used to work the frontier areas of the US. Where would you find a jury on B5? Most civilians are passing through, on stop-over for only a day or two...unable to follow a long hearing. The only other ones are station personnel, which represents a conflict of interest. Your only choice is a circuit court style judge whose loyalty is owed to no one.

  The alien device was being used on humans without any kind of license, she is not a certified doctor, and it was used in the death of a human. Under those circumstances, it is within the judge s right to confiscate the device for the greater good. (You can have a unlicensed firearm in a state that requires licensing, and use it in a righteous self-defense shooting, but it will be confiscated afterward. No compensation is required because its use is/was unregulated, unlicensed, and she was/is not a working doctor.)

  It *is* due process. Even according to 20th century terms. Only problem is in understanding what due process actually *is*, as opposed to what we think it *should* be.

• Yes, part of the reason for the QoM episode was to set up the notion of an implanted personality as achievable tech.

• David: "The Quality of Mercy" title is drawn from the same source as Compton's book, Shakespeare. It has a lot to do with that episode.

• Yes, absolutely; in "The Quality of Mercy," you'll get a look at how the justice system has come to grips with the uestion of how to handle violent crimes in an environment like a space station, which has limited room for cells, limited resources, and other complications. We do plan to get into this area a bit, without getting too LA LAW about it.

• A lot of our episodes are constructed to work as mirrors; you see what you put into it. "Believers" has been interpreted as pro- religion, anti- religion, and religion-neutral..."Quality" has been interpreted, as you note, as pro-capital punishment, and anti-capital punishment. We do, as you say, much prefer to leave the decision on what things mean to the viewer to hash out.

  A good story should provoke discussion, debate, argument...and the occasional bar fight.

• There's the sense that A, B and sometimes C stories in TV should intersect. My attitude: sometimes yes, sometimes no. Depends on if you look at this as a real place or not, as opposed to a thematic exercise. What I go through in the course of a day has nothing to do with what happens to Larry DiTillio across town, except and unless it involves our mutual work. Sometimes, as in "Quality," the stories feel like they resonate, and can be used to illustrate one another, and so they're linked. In others, what I'm striving for is a sense of a "day in thed (the) life" of Babylon 5. The one kind of story is neither better nor worse than the other, they're simply different. One may like one more than the other, but to say they're "better" plots is just silly. There's NO padding in this show, no stories put in to fill out time; just stories that we want to tell, period.

• Minbari use base 11, not base 10, so twelve would be eleventy-first year, and so on.

• Minbari base eleven includes fingers and head, from which the principle of mathematics comes.

• You're also looking at this from a strictly English-speaking perspective; in German, for instance, 21 is "Ein und Zwanzig" (pardon any misspellings in there, it's been a while) which is exactly the same structure, albeit reversed, used for Minbari counting (and, in fact, is more or less what I based his "statement" on).

• Eleventy-seven = Eighteen base ten.

• One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven

  Eleventy-one, eleventy-two, eleventy-three, eleventy-four, eleventy- five, eleventy-six, eleventy-seven, eleventy-eight, eleventy-nine, eleventy-ten, twelfy

  Twelfty-one, twelfty-two, twelfy-three, twelfty-four, twelfty-five, twelfty-six, twelfty-seven, twelfty-eight, twelfty-nine, twelfty-ten.

  And so on.

  Who here still has a problem with this?

Last update: May 27, 2024