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

Overview

Draal helps the crew attempt to contact more of the First Ones. Sheridan works to hide his conspiracy from the Nightwatch. Shari Shattuck as Julie Musante. John Schuck as Draal.

P5 Rating: 8.20

Production number: 304
Original air week: January 29, 1996
DVD release date: August 12, 2003

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Menachem Binitsky

Backplot

• Morden was directly involved in the assassination of President Santiago, and was in contact with then-Vice President Clark at the time.
• There is bad blood of some kind between the Vorlons and at least some of the First Ones.
• G'Kar's operatives have told him something of the Rangers, though they don't know the whole story. He suspects Delenn is involved somehow.
• The Ministry of Peace is planning to purge a number of high-level officials from the Earth government on charges of sedition, immoral conduct, and espionage. It has gained even wider powers recently, including the ability to investigate people based on past associations.

Unanswered Questions

• Why were the First Ones upset at the Vorlons? Could it be related to the reason the Vorlons stayed behind when the other First Ones left? What did they say to Ivanova?
• What does G'Kar want Garibaldi to find out from the Book of G'Quan? The book mentions the Shadows; how detailed is its information?
• How did the Machine record the conversation between Clark and Morden? Is it monitoring all communications in a vast region of space, or does it concentrate on Shadow-related conversations?
• What impact will the recording have?
• Will Musante return to the station? What did she make of Zack's question? Will she link it to the release of the recording?

Analysis

• The First Ones at Sigma 957 were annoyed at the mention of the Vorlons, suggesting that the two races had a disagreement at some point in the past. Perhaps the Vorlons prevented, intentionally or otherwise, the final defeat of the Shadows in the previous war. It could also have something to do with the Vorlons' manipulation of younger races ("The Fall of Night.") Perhaps the Vorlons didn't depart with the other First Ones because they weren't allowed to do so.
• "When it is time, come to this place. Call our name. We will be here." But what is their name? Does Draal know? Did the recognition code the White Star sent call them by name, or is this an additional hurdle to obtaining help from the Sigma 957 aliens?
• The manifestation of the First Ones bore some resemblance to a Native American totem, or an African wood figure. Coincidence, or are the Vorlons far from the only visitors to Earth?
• Ivanova was able to extract more information from the Great Machine than any normal human could have, according to Draal, and she managed to find a pretty specific recording in what must have been huge mountains of data (literally!) Is that due to her latent psi ability? What would happen if a full telepath like Lyta were to step into the machine? (See below.)
• The Shadows (if that's what they were) sensed Ivanova's "presence" at Sigma 957. That implies that the Machine was actually projecting something there rather than passively scanning, and that the projection was tangible enough to provoke Ivanova to comment that the enemy "knows my name," an odd remark in itself.
• There may be something significant in Draal's use of the term "the enemy" to describe Ivanova's visitors; he didn't say "Shadows." On the other hand, given that she heard the typical Shadow chitter and that the floating lights were in the same pattern as the glowing Shadow eyes seen by Sheridan in Kosh's vision ("In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum," and in the season three title sequence) it's probably safe to assume that she was in fact being observed by the Shadows.
• Just how much contact there was between Ivanova and the Shadows wasn't clear. Did they find out enough about her to know about the conspiracy of light? Did they have a hand in her discovery of the Clark recording? Given their apparent affinity for chaos in the ranks of potential enemies, the release of the recording and the subsequent upheaval on Earth might be exactly what they want.
• The fact that Ivanova was able to escape the Shadows by returning to the "path" that connects all living things is perhaps more significant; what does it imply about the Shadows that they're somehow excluded from that path? Does that have anything to do with their motive in participating in war after war across the millenia?
• Presumably the machine was projecting Ivanova's consciousness out among the stars; her greater-than-expected control over the machine, as mentioned above, suggests that the experience was telepathic in nature. That implies that to sense her, the Shadows must have some telepathic abilities as well; or perhaps they have a machine like Draal's that can provide the equivalent.
• The path might be related to the way telepathy works in the first place; if all life is connected on some level, then perhaps telepaths are simply beings who can make use of those connections. The Shadows' involvement with Psi Corps ("Matters of Honor," among others) suggests that they consider telepaths important; that may relate to their apparent exclusion from the path as noted above. There may also be a reason they chose to use the Narn homeworld as a base in the last war ("Matters of Honor") -- the Narn have no telepaths of their own ("The Gathering.") A more sinister possibility is that the Shadow occupation is the reason there are no Narn telepaths; perhaps the Shadows eliminated them, leaving the Narn without the genetic code for psi ability. If that's true, they may be cultivating contacts with the Psi Corps so they have an easy way to do the same to humans when the time comes.
• The assignment of a "political officer" to military units is reminiscent of the way in which the Soviet Union maintained control over military units. Each unit had its own political officer whose job it was to maintain ideological purity. These officers were tolerated at best, and were generally despised and feared.
• Another link to Soviet history was Musante's allusion to purging a number of high officials in a very public and permanent way. This brings to mind the purges experienced by the Soviet Union in the 30s -- the great show trials of prominent individuals, the mass purges of the army (which wrought such havoc over the military that, by the time that the Soviets were actively engaged in World War II, most of the experienced officers had been removed, thus weakening the Soviet army to the point where the Germans felt they could easily defeat the Soviets.)
• Why would Musante have to be recalled to Earth? Is she the low-level operative she appears to be, or someone more important? Perhaps the Nightwatch is simply short-staffed enough that they need all the manpower they can get to deal with such a potentially damaging situation.
• Delenn's denial of knowledge about the Rangers was an out-and-out lie, not a deception or a mistruth or a careful omission. Whose honor was she protecting, or does that rule no longer apply to her? ("There All the Honor Lies") Perhaps, since her transformation, she no longer feels quite so bound by Minbari tradition; on the other hand, she still seems to cite it regularly.
• Zack's uniform troubles may be a metaphor for his situation; he doesn't know where he fits in the scheme of things, and is uncomfortable no matter what he does.
• Now that Ivanova has made contact with the First Ones at Sigma 957, might the forces of light be able to use the quantium-40 (if there actually is any on the planet) that Catherine Sakai was sent to investigate in "Mind War?"

Notes

• The First Ones at Sigma 957 were first seen in the first-season episode "Mind War." Although the existence of the First Ones hadn't been revealed at that point, G'Kar's description of this race coincided almost exactly with Delenn's description of the First Ones, an early piece of foreshadowing.
• Julie Musante is named after two fans, Julie Helmer and Mark Musante.
• Musante's Earth-bound ship is the Loki, named for the Norse god of fire and mischief.
• The silhouetted figure on the Nightwatch poster on the wall during Musante's presentation bears a striking resemblance to the figure of Lenin used in Soviet propaganda posters between World Wars I and II.
• The same figure also appears to have a raven on its shoulder, reminiscent of Ivanova's appearance in Sheridan's dream in "All Alone in the Night."
• The skeletal spines sticking out of the Sigma 957 aliens' ship are made of a computer model of a human footbone replicated and arranged in rows; that earned the ship the nickname "the footbone ship" at Foundation Imaging. There are also some triceratops parts used in the model.
• Ardwight Chamberlain, who does Kosh's voice (or rather, the English translation thereof) was also the voice of the First One in this episode. (See jms speaks.)

jms speaks

• I do plan to do more with Ivanova this season, yes, and get her out of C&C a bit more often. (Especially in "Voices of Authority," coming up.)

• Where's this big war we've been hearing about?
  What we're doing in the meantime is plenty. Originally, the fourth and final episode in this first batch of four was going to be "Voices of Authority," which deals with just this question of preparing for the war in a big way, has major developments, gets into the White Star...but the CGI requirements of that episode were hideous, so we had to move it to #5 in the lineup, moving up "Gethsemane." Once we come back with new episodes, we'll hit the ground running hard on all this stuff.

  Also bear in mind that wars aren't instant; in the real world, you have to line up support, get into alliances, move all your pieces around before you can get into it. We're taking a similar path here. Also, the term "shadow war" refers to more than just the shadows as a race; they refer to what's going on back on earth as well, as metaphor as well as plot point, and that's a huge part of the next batch of eps.

• Yeah, I'd intended to end with "Voices of Authority," which is a HUGE arc episode this week, but the EFX weren't ready yet (huge requirements), so we put "Passing" in its place.

• It takes us no longer to make the episodes or the EFX really than it did before. But PTEN will not air shows out of sweeps periods, for the most part. The episodes on hand now were finished weeks, and in a couple of cases over a month ago. They sit on the shelf until PTEN decides to air them. The only thing we did was swap "VoA" with "Passing Through Gethsemane" to give that one a little bit more time. That's it.

• You should use Claudia Christian more.
  You're absolutely correct, which is why in the very first episode up in the next batch, we send Ivanova off in the White Star as its commander, and we involve her and her charactder more strongly in subsequent episodes as well.

• "Voices of Authority" - Earth begins tightening the screws on the folks at B5 to try and exert more control there. Steps are taken to help prepare for the shadow conflict. (Here, again, the "shadow war" means both the obvious, and the more subtle conflict brewing at home; it's description and metaphor.) The White Star voyages to some territory not seen since the first episode, Ivanova helms the ship, a major dramatic turning point is reached, and there is the single funniest scene in probably the series to date. A strong arc story.

• If you want some fun with your wham, and there's a lot of fun to be had in this one, go for the first one up, "Voices of Authority." If you want serious, serious wham, go for "Messages From Earth."

• As y'all know, next week the latest batch of new episodes begins to air. The first one up, "Voices of Authority," is an absolute hoot; if you've been looking to bring in other viewers, that's a good one to start them with, because it sets up a lot of what's going to happen in this episode, it has a lot of background, and it's a lot of fun.

  The next two are somewhat more straightforward, stand-alones (to some extent; there's some arc stuff there, however, which becomes more important later). Then the last two in this batch represent some of the best work we've ever done, "Messages From Earth" and "Point of No Return." They follow directly on the footsteps of "Voices," so those three together would be great for new viewers.

• If you're talking about the conference room scene...Draal wasn't put into the scene digitally. You do a split screen, with the camera locked off. In one Delenn walks over to a point just short of the line; in another you get a shot just of the wall; then Draal walks up. You then use a dissolve technique to fade him into the room on his side of the split screen. But he's not being put *into* the room, he's already there, so he's neither bigger nor smaller than he is in real life, since he IS in real life there, not added in.

• And what about the machine room scene on the planet?
  We shot two plates, first with him in the machine, then him out, never moving the camera, so it matched exactly.

• The crew you see on the White Star doesn't reflect those in other parts of the ship. Also, being fairly advanced, it doesn't require a big crew in command. You could even fly it single-handedly if it came to that.

• The First Ones sure have fragile egos.
  The other part, I think, is that they were kind of amused to see this dinky little ship getting in their face, when they *knew* the First Ones could blast 'em to bits....

• Ivanova wanted to get in the face of the First Ones, to say, "Look, you can blow me away, but damn it, listen to me." If she'd said that "more reverently," as your friend noted, it would've worked against the logic of the scene and the resolution.

• Would it be fair to say the First Ones weren't pleased to hear the Vorlons mentioned? Fair, yes.

• Well, this isn't a *literal* translation, because some words don't translate, but the *sense* of the sentence would be "the vorlons can kiss my ____."

• Was the mask image just a representation, or was it what the Walkers actually look like?
  It's certainly a form of representation, an icon, rather than the literal entity, yes.

• "So who is older, the Shadows or the Walkers???"

  The shadows, but just by a smidge.

• Why didn't they recognize Morden's voice?
  Who said they didn't recognize it?

• What's fun, for me, about the Minipax lady, is that she *clearly* knows that this is a game on one level, her comment about just rewriting the dictionary...she knows the problems aren't *really* gone, they just defined them away. But when she's in front of a crowd of folks predisposed to her message, she goes full-tilt. Showmanship.....

• A lot of the Nightwatch members looked pretty disturbed by what Musante was saying.
  Now the weeding out process starts.

• What do civilians think of Nightwatch?
  Some are scared of Nightwatch, others feel it's a good thing, and darn it, it's about time....

• On the other hand, Zack *didn't* rat out the code 7-R stuff to her in any detail. He's absolutely caught between the two sides, and not sure which way to jump.

• Parallels between Nightwatch and the Gestapo?
  While yes, there are some intentional WW II parallels here, do bear in mind that you don't have to go all the way back to the Gestapo to find this kind of mentality...Sen. McCarthy would've been quite at home in Nightwatch.

• Is Nightwatch going to clear the lurkers out of the station?
  Nightwatch has bigger goals than dealing with lurkers....

• Is the Nightwatch the same group referred to as Bureau 13 in "A Spider in the Web?"
  No, the Bureau would've been a secret organization, a la the NSA or a covert military/spy group. This is a much more public face.

• The political officer: improbable dialogue? Most of it was taken direct from political statements, public ones, made by Goebbels, Hitler, Joseph McCarthy, Stalin, and other fanatics. The kind of Big Lie dialogue people continue to fall for today. Go to a Pat Buchanan rally sometime and tell me it's unlikely dialogue.

• DLyulkin...exactly. You don't just take something and transplant it wholecloth...you change and modify it. Nightwatch was never meant to be on a one-to-one corrolation to the SS, or Stasi, or McCarthy...the whole POINT is that this kind of mentality crops up in new forms from time to time, in different names, different approaches, but at its heartmeat core the same thing. By saying it's "That over there," we can relax, since that specific incident can't recur...making us vulnerable to the next version.

• Yes, those were shadow eyes; and it was probably a raven on the poster.

• Can the machine see everywhere, or can it be blocked?
  No, Varn's people aren't first ones...and the machine can be blocked.

• My sense was that basically Ivanova jumped onto the wrong path as she fled...the shadows were in proximity, and she ended up briefly on their path, which took her to the interception of the transmission.

  The one comment that I find most interesting, repeated here a few times, is that they didn't buy the Nightwitch (as some have dubbed her) because in her address to the Nightwatch, she was not exactly what you might call subtle, and thus nobody'd believe her, and see her for what she was.

  I find it interesting because we always think we're smarter than that, when history proves *exactly* the opposite. The Big Lie, spoken not just openly, but loudly, firmly and with conviction, has been one of the most successful tactics in history. When Hitler and Goebbels stood before a crowd and blamed jews for destroying society, circulated pamphlets with ugly cariacatures, indicated that they weren't *really* human (this in actual newsreels provided to the medical profession members charged with eliminating "mental defectives and jews")...when Joseph McCarthy stood up in front of the nation waving a list of names of commies in the state department, the military, congress, showbiz, and the sciences...the public didn't suddenly wake up, hear the voice of the fanatic, and say, "Hey, this guy's nuts!"

  They bought it. Because they were primed to believe it. Because they wanted to believe it. Because they were afraid *not* to believe it. No, she wasn't subtle. Because there's a time for subtlety, and there's a time to perform grandly for your hand-picked audience and go for the Big Lie. If she were addressing a larger audience, she might softpedal her message. To the Nightwatch, she's got to hammer them, just as the Hitler Youth were hammered, as the Anti-Communist Youth meetings were hammered about the Red Peril, as Croatian or Serbian soldiers were hammered about the need to rape women of the other "race" to make the resultant babies more ethnically pure...which happened.

  Most of her dialogue was paraphrased from actual speeches given over the decades, or longer, by fanatical leaders to their followers. There's bits of Hitler, of Goerring, of Goebbels...bits of McCarthy, bits of Stalin, bits of Pat Buchanan and Rep. Dornan.

  Because people fell for it. It did work.

  It does work.

  And it will *continue* to work...for as long as people think that THEY would NEVER fall for such a thing....

• Never said they're all convinced of it. Just as all Germans weren't convined of the views advanced by Hitler.

  You don't need all of them. You just need *enough* of them.

  Preferably, enough of them with guns.

  Remember, too, that we just came out of the Earth/Minbari War about ten years ago, when we stood at the edge of extinction. The threat of a new alien race makes a good device.

• How much does Nightwatch pay members?
  Basically, it's a weekly bonus added onto their weekly salary; 50 creds is a pretty enticing bump, equal to about 50 pounds British.

• Didn't the security people already know about the assassination?
  You have to remember that all Garibaldi's people knew was that a few guys came through the station that may have been involved in the assassination. That is NOT the same thing as showing that Clark is involved. There was no apparent connection. We the audience suspect it, from what happens, but until now there has been no evidence of it. So yes, they know that Santiago is dead; that there's some indication that he may have been assassinated...but that's a long way from pointing to Clark.

• Why aren't Sheridan and company going public with this information?
  With Clark removing all the evidence, and others giving orders to drop it, and knowing Clark would stop any kind of investigation, what is there for them to do officially? They had to begin working covertly to prove it, which is what they've been doing ever since "Hunter, Prey." If you're a military officer, and you're given a direct order from your commander in chief or the Senate Oversight Committee to drop something, and you violate those orders, you're up on charges or fired.

• Was that Ed Wasser's voice? (He plays Morden.)
  It was definitely Ed Wasser.

• Did Musante seduce Zack?
  No, that wasn't the relationship between her and Zack, much as he might've wished for it. As for the walkers at sigma 957...the recognition signal is their name, which is 15,000 letters long (we had to cut this line for time). So I can't really repeat it here.

• Why did she think seducing Sheridan would work?
  Her feeling was likely that it has always worked with her in the past. He's widowed, probably hasn't had any in a long time, he's vulnerable, a perfect target.

• Basically, like many manipulative people, she projects whatever she thinks will work best with her audience. Appealing to Zack's patriotism, trying to find Sheridan's affections by flattering him mercilessly (on many levels), playing the straight-chinned leader in an address to security forces...she puts on whatever face she thinks will work.

• Why didn't Sheridan just get rid of her?
  This is the difference between TV logic and Real logic. In TV logic, yeah, she should've tossed her outta there...but we try to be rigorously real about the B5 universe. She was sent by the Senate Oversight Committee, as is their province, with the backing of several governmental offices, in an area over which Sheridan doesn't have jusrisdiction: the political arena back home. In the real world, you can't just toss somebody out the door because you don't like them...not if you're a career military officer who answers to a civilian authority or government.

• Did I imagine Marcus's line about the French?
  You didn't imagine it....

  Part of what appeals to me is the idea that the English/French animosity you often see (though clearly not in all cases) would continue not only into the future, but outside Earth. Realistically, if you go into Europe, you find people holding grudges 500 years old, or more. Seemed appropriate to carry this small one forward as well.

• I wrote that particular line; knowing the longstanding British/French "feud," for lack of a better term, it seemed appropriate.

• What does Marcus know about Vorlon theology?
  Marcus was making that part up.

• Weren't me. It was Marcus. Blame him.

• So the actor ad-libbed that line?
  Actor? What actor? I'm talking about Marcus here. I just write down what he says.

• The First Ones had Kosh's voice.
  I figured that some elements of the First Ones should be consistent with one another; others should have specific differences. Using Ardwight subliminally reinforced some of the consistencies.

Last update: May 27, 2024