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

Overview

Ambassador Sinclair returns to pull Babylon 4 through time ("Babylon Squared.") Part 2 of 2. Michael O'Hare as Ambassador Sinclair. Tim Choate as Zathras. Kent Broadhurst as Major Krantz.

P5 Rating: 9.40

Production number: 317
Original air week: May 20, 1996
DVD release date: August 12, 2003

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Mike Vejar

An episodic soundtrack is available.

Note: this episode resolves several mysteries from past episodes. Think twice before proceeding to the spoilers if you haven't seen it.

Plot Points

• Sinclair and Zathras travelled back in time with Babylon 4. Since the Minbari would never accept a station commanded by a human (a race they hadn't encountered yet,) Sinclair entered a chrysalis using the same kind of device Delenn used to become half human. His transformation was complete, though, not halfway; to all appearances he became a Minbari. When he arrived in the past, he was accompanied by two Vorlons. He introduced himself to the Minbari as Valen, and went on to lead the war and form the first Grey Council.
• Later, he wrote himself a note describing what was to come, and what he would have to do. He also wrote a note to Delenn.
• Sinclair's transformation caused the start of the migration of Minbari souls to human bodies by linking the two species. Delenn's transformation in the other direction was, in part, an attempt to restore the balance that had been upset. (See Notes)
• "The One," explains Zathras, is really three: Sinclair is The One who was, Delenn is The One who is, and Sheridan is The One who will be. The three are a whole, consistent with the Minbari tendency to divide things into threes. (Or, perhaps, The One is responsible for that tendency somehow, maybe due to Sinclair's teachings.)
• Sheridan and Delenn, in at least one possible future, will have a son named David.
• Londo, as emperor of a wrecked Centauri Republic seventeen years after the start of the Shadow War, will be made to wear a "keeper," a creature of some sort attached to the side of his neck. It's visible only when asleep. When it's awake, it forces him to do its bidding, apparently on behalf of the Shadows. In the end, he will ask G'Kar to kill him before the keeper forces him to betray Sheridan and Delenn. But the keeper will awaken as G'Kar strangles Londo, and the two will die at each other's hands, leaving an astonished Vir to pick up the imperial emblem.

Unanswered Questions

• Who was at the door in Delenn's flashforward? (See Analysis)
• Was one of the Vorlons accompanying Sinclair Kosh? Was the other the Vorlon who later spoke to Rathenn on Minbar in part 1? The two encounter suits were the same as that Vorlon's.
• Why was there an explosive discharge when Sinclair touched Delenn's suited hand?
• What became of Zathras? Did he have a hand in the planning of the Great Machine?
• Is Sheridan's vision of the future inevitable?
• What is the price of victory over the Shadows, and why was Delenn so dismayed about it?

Analysis

• How did Sinclair get the chrysalis machine? Did the Vorlons supply it? It seemed to do a much more thorough job on Sinclair than it did on Delenn; in appearance, at least, Valen was a pure Minbari, not half-human.

  An odder explanation is that Sinclair got it from Delenn, who got it (indirectly) from Valen; in that case, the machine was never actually invented.

• When and how did the Vorlons board Babylon 4? There were two Vorlon ships next to the station when the Minbari cruisers approached it; did they come back in time with Sinclair, or did the Vorlons of a thousand years ago know where and when B4 would appear? Perhaps Sinclair called them.

• Delenn's transformation took several weeks. Presumably Sinclair's was comparable. Did it take that much subjective time to travel back 1000 years, or did the station sit unnoticed in the past until Sinclair was ready? If the former, then the Vorlons must have boarded the station while it was in transit through time (assuming they gave Sinclair the machine.)

• Why did Sinclair choose to call himself Valen? Was it simply because of the contents of his letter? In that case, nobody ever actually invented the name; it was chosen because it was the name he ended up using.

• Did the Grey Council realize that they'd captured Valen at the Battle of the Line? Most likely not, or Delenn's counterpart wouldn't have ordered her to kill him if he remembered what happened ("And the Sky Full of Stars.")

• On the other hand, if Delenn's transformation was really in part an attempt to restore the balance upset by Sinclair's change a thousand years earlier, then Delenn must have known about Valen's true nature for quite some time. Perhaps she alone recognized Sinclair's true identity at the Line, but couldn't tell the rest of the Council, who almost certainly would refuse to believe what she'd discovered.

• Why did the machine transform Delenn into a hybrid human and Minbari, while Sinclair (from all outward appearances) was transformed into a full Minbari? Did Delenn choose to only transform herself halfway? If so, has she truly restored the balance between humans and Minbari, or is there still something left to do?

• Besides Delenn and the people on the White Star bridge, how many others know Valen's true identity? If it became widespread, the information might seriously alter the face of Minbari religion; learning that their greatest spiritual leader was actually a member of a race many of them hold in contempt would probably test the faith of many Minbari.

• Sinclair flashed back to the Soul Hunter telling him that he was being used, presumably by the Minbari ("Soul Hunter.") Exactly what did he mean by that? Perhaps there was a Soul Hunter present at Valen's death, and Sinclair was familiar to them already. Or maybe the Soul Hunter found out about Sinclair's eventual identity when he peered into Delenn's mind.

• Probably of less significance, Sinclair's other memory was of Neroon ("Legacies,") who eventually ended up on the Grey Council. What impact, if any, that had on Sinclair's tenure on Minbar is unknown. Given Neroon's dismissal of the reason for the Minbari surrender at the Line ("All Alone in the Night") it seems any respect he had for Sinclair was short-lived, and that if the Council did know of Sinclair's true identity, Neroon didn't believe it. Neroon was also Sinclair's prosecutor in comic issue 3, "In Harm's Way."

• Now that Sinclair has travelled back in time, the accuracy of Valen's prophecies is probably at an end. Valen could predict the start of the Shadow War, and the breaking of the Grey Council, because he'd lived through it, but anything after his departure to the past is a complete unknown to him (unless, of course, the Vorlons have some way of telling him.)

• The appearance of two Vorlons next to an unfamiliar Minbari might not have been such a shock to the Minbari warriors who found Sinclair. In "In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum," Delenn claimed that the previous Shadow war marked the last time the ancients walked openly among the younger races. So it's entirely possible that the appearance of a Vorlon was, if not commonplace, then nothing resembling miraculous.

  On the other hand, the two Vorlons were flying above encounter suits; maybe they've been secretive all along, and even when they walked openly among the other races, always hid behind masks. That would make sense if they wanted to maintain the illusion of angelic appearance, since as Kosh said in "Matters of Honor," maintaining that appearance in front of a lot of people is a great strain on a Vorlon.

• Did Babylon 4 travel through space as well as time, or did it appear in what would later become Sector 14? If the latter, does its appearance there have anything to do with the location of the Great Machine?

• What is Londo's "keeper?" Who gave it to him? What exactly is it forcing him to do, and why? The fact that it's invisible when awake suggests that it's associated with the Shadows, who have mastered the art of invisibility.

• Does Morden have a keeper too? Is that why the Shadows treat him as an equal -- because they know he'll never betray their cause?

  Or maybe the Shadows are being controlled by some other party, though that seems unlikely.

• "We all have our keepers," Londo says. Does that include Sheridan and Delenn? Perhaps there's a connection between Londo's guest and the dream sequence in "All Alone in the Night," in which Ivanova and Garibaldi both have birds on their shoulders.

• By granting a reprieve to Sheridan and Delenn, Londo may be fulfilling one of his chances for redemption ("Point of No Return.") Morella told him he must not kill the one who is already dead; perhaps that refers to Sheridan -- who certainly qualifies as "the one" now in another context. Londo's greeting in part 1, "Welcome back from the abyss, Sheridan," tends to support this possibility, though of course it's not clear what Londo meant by that.

  Kosh's warning to Sheridan in "In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum" and "Interludes and Examinations," "If you go to Z'ha'dum, you will die," probably also ties into this, especially since, judging by Delenn's plea, it seems that Sheridan has gone to Z'ha'dum at some point in the intervening seventeen years. The "death" Kosh referred to may simply be the death of innocence as noted by Delenn, and not literal physical death.

  Londo's death at G'Kar's hand may also be the last part of Morella's prophecy; death may be Londo's greatest fear, or perhaps death with the knowledge that he hasn't righted his wrongs.

• Londo's dream in "The Coming of Shadows," in which he sees a fleet of Shadow ships flying overhead while he stands alone in a desolate wasteland, may be a vision of the Shadows' minions coming to Centauri Prime as he says they did.

• Kosh's prediction to the Centauri Emperor in "The Coming of Shadows" appears to be literally true: For Centauri Prime, the war has ended in fire.

• What were the Centauri, or perhaps someone else, trying to get out of Delenn? She refused to answer their questions, she says; what were they trying to learn? It appears the Centauri captured her, which implies there's still a conflict of some kind going on, even after the Shadows have been driven off. The presence of Londo's keeper makes it unclear that the Centauri were the ones trying to question her.

• "We created something that will endure for a thousand years," Delenn tells Sheridan. What will they create? And what happens in a thousand years -- will the Shadows return again and break up their creation, much as Valen's creation, the Grey Council, has recently been destroyed?

• In the Centauri cell, Delenn tells Sheridan, "Our son is safe. Nothing else matters." Why is David in danger, and what has Delenn done to ensure his safety?

• What could possibly happen to G'Kar in the intervening seventeen years to cause Londo to refer to him as an "old friend?" Londo, of course, may simply have been speaking facetiously -- but in that case, what was G'Kar doing in the Centauri palace?

• Is death at G'Kar's hands Londo's greatest fear, and thus his final chance for redemption ("Point of No Return?") Or is his fear more abstract than that, the fear that his death dream will come to pass as he's envisioned it?

• When Londo sees himself strangled by G'Kar in his dream, does he know that it's at his own request? How much of the context of his death does he know already?

• In Babylon Squared," the crewman who sees the blue-suited figure appear in the hallway tells Krantz, "It's back." Presumably the B4 crew had seen Sheridan appearing and disappearing, since Delenn had only recently switched places with him.

• Delenn appears in the hallway in the present time (or rather, the same timeframe she'd reached via the White Star,) so in that specific instance there was no time-shifting, just movement through space. How did she do that? Perhaps, as she implied in Part One, the Minbari have the technology for rudimentary time manipulation, so she used something from the White Star.

• The woman at the door in Delenn's flashforward causes her to drop the snowglobe in shock. Very few people would cause someone as poised as Delenn to do that. One of them, though, and one whose arrival has been foreshadowed, would be Anna Sheridan.

• Why does Delenn urge Sheridan to avoid going to Z'ha'dum? If he has already gone there by the time she is thrown into the cell with him, then Kosh's prediction about Sheridan dying if he goes there is wrong, or at least not as immediate as it originally sounded. On the other hand, the fact that they have a son is good evidence the two of them will become much closer; perhaps the arrival of Anna Sheridan (if that's who's at the door in Delenn's flashforward) will complicate their relationship, and it's to avoid finding out about Anna that Delenn tells Sheridan to stay away from Z'ha'dum.

• Are the flashforwards completely random, or might there be something guiding people to visions of certain events? The Vorlons appear to have some perception that extends beyond time; perhaps they are manipulating that perception when it appears, even briefly, in others.

• The assumption at the end of the episode seems to be that by successfully pulling Babylon 4 back in time, the crew has averted the Shadow attack on Babylon 5 in eight days, in which Ivanova sends out the distress call heard in part one. Does that mean that Sinclair's flashforward to the firefight aboard B5 has also been averted? What about Lady Ladira's vision of the destruction of Babylon 5? ("Signs and Portents") If all those glimpses of the future are no longer true, how much validity do the remaining ones have? Each of them could be from a completely different possible future, none of which will end up ever taking place.

• Was Zathras supposed to tell Sheridan, Delenn, and Sinclair about The One? Were Draal's instructions simply to not reveal anything until prompted by Sinclair?

  Where did he come up with the term, and with its definition? If he knows Sheridan is The One who will be, he must have been using the Great Machine to peer forward in time (not unreasonable, given its obvious time-bending abilities.) Will Draal be able to do the same and offer insights into the events to come? Zathras implies that perhaps he can do things even Draal can't, and that may be one of them.

• The distinction between the three members of The One echoes the migration of Minbari souls. Sinclair, after his transformation, appears to be fully Minbari, and is The One who was. Delenn is halfway between human and Minbari, and is The One who is. Sheridan is completely human and is The One who will be. Perhaps it's symbolic of a shift of power from the Minbari to humanity.

Notes

• Inconsistencies with "Babylon Squared" (B2). See also jms speaks.
  • Not an inconsistency per se, but in B2, there was no mention by Krantz of the explosion of the Shadow bomb or the presence of possibly hostile personnel on the station, which he definitely knew about in WWE2. If it's not an inconsistency, why didn't he mention it to Sinclair?
  • In B2, Krantz told Sinclair that Zathras was first seen in a conference room. "There was a flash, and there he was," Krantz said. In this episode, Zathras was discovered in a supply room by security guards.
  • Zathras tells Sinclair and Krantz that The One has stopped B4's motion through time to let the crew get off. But in WWE2, the station appears in 2258 by accident after Major Krantz unexpectedly powers up the time equipment. And the idea of faking a power drop in the fusion reactor to cause the crew to evacuate was Ivanova's, not any of The One's.
  • In B2, when The One appears in the corridor, there are audible grunts of pain; they're clearly in a male voice, not a female one.
  • When Sinclair returns to the station and removes his helmet, the B2 version of events includes a computer voice intoning, "Present time atmosphere now breathable." No such voice is heard in WWE2, though arguably Delenn was meeting him just inside an airlock, and the suit computer was referring to the fact that there was no longer a vacuum outside.
  • Delenn puts her hand on Sinclair's shoulder in B2, and her arm is draped in a red robe. But in WWE2, she's wearing much darker colors.

• Another possible inconsistency: Delenn claims that Sinclair's transformation began the migration of Minbari souls to human bodies that ultimately led to the end of the Earth-Minbari War. However, in "Points of Departure," Lennier claims that the soul migration has been going on for roughly two millenia, twice as far back as Sinclair took Babylon 4.

• The voice at the door seems to be that of Bruce Boxleitner's real-life wife, Melissa Gilbert, though of course that doesn't imply anything about which character she'll be playing on the show. However, she's been announced as a guest star in the season finale, so the flashforward may well have been only a month or two ahead.

jms speaks

• YAAAAAAGGGGHHHHH.....

  Well, I *finally* finished writing the two-parter, "War Without End," which is probably the toughest thing I've written for the series to date. Given everything that has to fit in here, and the fact that it's the other half of the B4 storyline (this ain't a spoiler, that'll be common knowledge in ads and the like), it became a pretty difficult job, moreso than when I'd originally thunk it up. It's kinda like cramming 20 pounds of potatoes in a 10 pound bag...but I *think* I got it all in, even though the initial drafts came out at about 7 pages too long. As I commented to one person, "I'm definitely dancing on the edge of my ability here." But I'm pretty sure I pulled it all off...and I think folks are going to be quite pleased.

  But *man* that was tough....

  Now, having written 16 and 17, only 5 scripts remain to be written for this season. And there's still an awful lot to fit in before the big season ender, which I suspect will raise quite a few eyebrows.

• In my last general posting to rastb5, I mentioned that from time to time, I'd try to post the occasional "letter to home" just to keep folks up to date on matters Babylonian. Now that I can catch a breather, I figured I'd take this opportunity to do so (though since it's 3:15 a.m., this'll likely be short).

  "catching a breather" refers to the script situation. I've just finished writing 316 and 317, the two parter, "War Without End," which was a very difficult task, given the amount of story and logistics that had to be put into it. While writing "Babylon Squared," to which this is the flip-side, I figured, "Oh, sure, yeah, I can get this all in on the other side, no problem," but when it came time to do it, it got awful tight, but finally I fit it *all* in. (Well, all except one teeny, tiny sentence, about where Zathras was first seen, and how, 'cause to do what I'd first had in mind would've taken another 3 pages, and I didn't have that, so that one element I'll have to just deal with later somehow. But that's it.) Hopefully, one need never have seen B2 in order to watch and follow WWE. (Which was one of the hard parts, since B2 may or may not be aired prior to this, all the background information *had* to be in the episodes, so that's a lot of background to include.)

  This now leaves 5 episodes to be written for this season. At this point, Lyta should factor strongly in one or two of these, there will be some direct confrontations between our side and the shadows, then a really nasty final episode for year three.

• "One would find it hard to believe that episodes like "Severed Dreams", "I&E","A Late Delvery From Avalon" and of course, WWE could be written by the same guy. The pace, dialog, everything are adapted so well for each episode."

  Suddenly I'm having an identity crisis....

  I like to try different styles for different moods. I also like to vary the tone of the show; one will be more comedic, as with Sic Transit Vir, others much darker, like Ship of Tears. I enjoy trying new things, risking a bit, failing on occasion, but learning in the process.

• As I wrote the episodes prior to WWE2, I kept leading up to that first kiss, over and over, but deliberately never quite getting there. I knew that when it came time to do it, I wanted to do it in just the way you describe...it would and wouldn't be a first kiss, both at exactly the same time. So there's the moment everyone's been waiting for, but not in quite the way anyone had expected.

• I knew everyone would be waiting for that first kiss, so I made sure it was different, that it was a first kiss for one of them, but not the other, that it was natural and totally unforced and surprising. So for Sheridan, his first kiss of Delenn was actually his second (by a long ways), and his second, when it comes, will be her first.

  Just can't do anything the conventional way on this show....

• Did you write WWE at the same time as B2?
  No, I didn't write them at the same time, but I did a basic outline of what the follow-up (WWE) would be, so it'd all match up when the time came to show that half of the story.

• It all has to hang together, or it's kinda useless. It just required working out the details of what was, is, and will be. Then I walked on water....

• Did Sinclair's departure from the show cause changes in the B4 storyline? Was it originally meant to go into the future?
  No, B4 was never intended to go forward in time. The aging was done pretty much as intended. And the Soul Hunter meant they're using him to create their old Leader. Still tracks. I'll have more to say about all this after everyone's seen the episode.

• The curious thing...the interesting thing...is that in just about everything I've ever written, yes, I generally follow where I want to go, end up where I want to end up, but once I get *into* it, once the characters come alive on the page, I inevitably find better ways of doing things, stronger and more muscular paths to the story, more interesting side roads.

  Also, this original story was worked out in 1986/87; that's nearly ten years ago. In those ten years, I've become -- or like to think I've become -- a better writer, learned more, written more, picked up some new tools I didn't have then. So you have a situation where the writer in 1996 looks at the writer in 1986 and says, "No, listen...there's a better way. Yes, we'll still get to Disneyland on time, you'll still have plenty of time to ride the haunted mansion...but if we go *this* way, we can stop off and also see Knotts Berry Farm, and the Winchester Mystery Mansion, and maybe even Hearst Castle on the way."

  The destination is still the same..but I've found a *lot* more interesting ways of getting there. Which, after all, is what an outline is for: a safe home base that allows you to wander off, knowing that you can always return to it if you get lost.

• Foreshadowing is tough, because it implies the audience is going to BE there x-years down the road to Get It, and you have to risk the audience going "huh?" one time too many and wandering away...but nothing good comes without risk.

• Why "War Without End?"
  As Delenn says, the war is never entirely over...there are always new battle to be fought. If it ain't the shadows, it's the shadows over Earthdome of a more human nature.

• "When dealing with an ep with a lot of flashbacks or reused footage (WWE, especially part 2), how much freedom does the director have? Does he/she have to match the style of the previously show footage (in terms of angles, close ups, pacing, etc), or is there more room for the director's own style?"

  In the case of WWE, you had to match lighting and composition pretty closely. That's about the only time it's really become an issue.

  "(one more question: if someone other than you had written "Babylon Squared", would they have to be paid royalties for the reuse of parts of that episodes script and footage in "War Without End"?)"

  Anyone who writes a scene which is reused gets residuals. Doesn't matter if it's me or anybody else, as a Writers Guild member, it's guaranteed and required. Also the actors, the director, and others get re-use fees of varying amounts depending on how long the sequence is.

• The Garibaldi scenes in part 2 were all from the first season.

• Zathras looked familiar. Was the character created by the actor?
  Well, Zathras appeared in Babylon Squared, so you might have seen him there. Beyond that...no, the actor came to what was written on the page and made it come to life, but didn't invent the character. I just sorta thunk him up. It's what I do.

• Londo looks older, but Sheridan and Delenn don't.
  No, both Sheridan and Delenn *are* made up older. If you particularly look at Delenn out in the light of later scenes in WWE2, you can DEFINITELY see the difference. With Sheridan, it's a greying of the hair, and some lining on the face. Londo, though, if you recall, is much older than Sheridan to begin with.

• It was a good sendoff. (At one point, Bruce said to me over lunch, with Michael sitting with us, "Hey, so how come HE gets to go off and become the next best thing to God and I get the crap kicked out of me?" I shrugged. "Seniority.")

• The scenes with Zathras pinned under the strut were the same scenes from B2, we didn't reshoot that material.

  The hardest shot was matching the lighting and composition in the central corridor *exactly* for the Ivanova-on-the-link scene, and the walk by seconds later by Garibaldi and Sinclair. That came out pretty seamless.

• Why does Krantz have a leather strap on his uniform, when there weren't leather straps in "The Gathering?"
  The leather strip was also present when we shot the original, Babylon Squared, in year one. I was kinda thinking at the time that the change was gradually being introduced in various divisions of Earthforce. Krantz is from the Marines division, I believe (note the brown uniform), from that part which functions sort of like the Army Corps of Engineers, overseeing the building of space stations and the like. Since it takes time to introduce a uniform change across divisions and light years, I figured some might have them earlier than others, or to try them out. So I gave Krantz the leather strip.

• The B4 insignia looks like a 3.
  Those aren't 3s, those are Bs in which there's a stylized 4.

• About the "Babylon Squared" inconsistencies
  Yes, the conference room thing is a glitch, in that I had the way to do it, but it would've meant adding about 3 minutes to the episode, and I just couldn't fit it in.

  (It basically would've involved him being hidden in the room when there's a timeflash.)

  Ivanova et al *were* working actively to get the crew to evacuate, using the fake reactor reading. If they hadn't really cared about it, they would've let the station continue running through time to its destination, or the present; they fought to stop it so they could let the crew get off.

  No, Delenn hadn't been appearing/disappearing before this, but Sheridan *had*, so it's reasonable to assume he was seen. Also, we don't know how much time passed between the sighting we notice, and the alert to Krantz.

  We couldn't match the clothing properly, so we dispensed with it.

• I know about the sleeve...and actually she didn't touch him in WWE2. It was one of those days when it was a hideous production schedule, and I wasn't on set, and it slipped by everybody else.

• The element I couldn't quite fit into War....

  In B2, Krantz says they found Zathras when there was a flash, and he appeared in a conference room.

  Now, I sketched out that scene when it came time to actually write the whole WWE two-parter. What happened, basically, was that Zathras was passing by a room where he saw the one piece he still needed to finish his repairs on the time stabalizer. He slips in, as best he can, unnoticed...the meeting goes on as he goes under a table to get the piece of equipment...he finishes just as there's another time-flash...as it ends, momentarily disoriented, he's discovered, and captured.

  This would've matched what was in B2, as I'd intended. Unfortunately, it added several minutes of screen time that I couldn't afford. I would've had to cut something somewhere else, and that script was so tight it screamed as it was. So I had to fudge how I did that and let the small inconsistency go. The only other thing I could've cut, the one moveable piece, was Sinclair trying to radio Garibaldi at the end...and I didn't want to lose that.

• No, WWE couldn't have been 3 episodes. Yes, it had enough story for it, and then some, but you can't take one storyline and stretch it out that far. I wouldn't have done it even if I could. I'd've had to introduce a B story just to break it up a little, because 3 hours of just a straight line one-story plot is murder. And that defeats the purpose of expanding it.

• Will we see Garibaldi's reaction to finding out about Sinclair being Valen?
  I think it'd be hard to just drop in Garibaldi's attitudes about Valen without it having something to do with an episode; if it doesn't move that particular episode along, it shouldn't be there. So that sort of thing is tough to pull off, making the show more unfriendly to new viewers.

• Wasn't sending a message to Garibaldi a big risk? And why didn't he tell Garibaldi before the shuttle left?
  I think his message to Garibaldi was a momentary lapse, it wasn't something he'd planned, his emotions momentarily got in the way of his reason. To do so would be dangerous, so it wasn't done by him.

• Throughout the episode, whenever there's a tachyon burst, pretty much everyone has a timeflash of one sort or another (as also mentioned in Babylon Squared).

• Why did Delenn leave the White Star?
  Mainly just a feeling she had, best to check everything out for herself, make sure things were going properly, since they were getting right down to the wire. Also, in case Ivanova got into trouble trying to get into C&C, she wanted to be closer to the situation to help, if necessary.

• When Delenn takes off her stabilizer and puts it on Sheridan, taking on his suit for whatever small protection it might offer, at that point he stabalized and she became lost/unstuck in time. So it was she who appeared in the last sequence there. She took the risk to ensure saving Sheridan.

• 1. Since you've stated that the Babylon squared time travel incident would be the only one for the entire series, is there any way we might get answers to some of the questions that seemed to be raised from the far future?

  In a sense.

  2. How much will sinclair's knowledge of the future affect what is to come?

  Sinclair has no further knowledge of the future; he knows only what he saw up through and including the White Star.

  3. The question I'm really dying for an answer to though, is this: Hasn't this episode in a sense made a large part of the arc anti-climactic? I mean, we now know that the forces of light are victorious again, at least to some degree, we know of David (named for sinclair?), we know what becomes of Londo etc. Whenever most of the major characters are in a life threatening situation, we now know that they survive it (it would seem).

  We also "knew" that G'Kar would strangle Londo...what you didn't have was context. As we saw in part two, context is everything, and getting there is half the fun.

• It's a literary...I hate to say the word trick, but it's the most descriptive. You show somebody the end right off the bat, as we did with the Londo/G'Kar scene. But how do we get there? What happens? Yes, the war is eventually won...but what *was* the price? And what does it mean to everyone involved?

  The best magic is when it's right there in your face, and you can't see how it's being done.

• What happens with the future of Londo and G'Kar...is what you see. Course, how they got there is the meat of the story.

• Showing the end of a story at or near the middle is a literary device that's sometimes used by novelists that can be very effective, if used properly. It shows you what happens, but leaves open *how* you got there, and what it means.

• The storyline began millions of years ago.

  We're coming in in the middle of the story.

  But then, that can be said of all of us.

• Does this blow the mystery of whether Sheridan goes to Z'ha'dum?
  Who said there was a mystery about Sheridan going to Z'ha'dum? Kosh seems to treat it as a fait accompli; so does Sheridan. It seems fated that he will go...the question is when, why, and under what circumstances, with what results?

  See, sometimes the story works in the shadows (so to speak)...and other times we're right out in the open, we hand you the playbook and tell you we're coming right up the middle. And *that's* when you've got to really worry.

• Sheridan wouldn't know anything of what happened after he blipped out of that future situation.

  As for David, remember that Sheridan's father is also David.

• Sheridan's stabilizer basically broke into two major pieces, the front section which fell off in the White Star, and the back half which was still clipped to his belt, and later came off as Zathras watched.

• Is David the Third Age of Mankind?
  Not as such.

• Will we see him?
  Well, I wouldn't want to preclude anything at this point.

• Were the Minbari fighting amongst themselves before Valen arrived?
  There was certainly some division among Minbari; Valen straightened a lot of that out.

• That divisiveness has been growing lately, culminating in the breakup of the Grey Council which Valen formed. There's bound to be some fallout....

• Did the Council know Sinclair was Valen when they demanded he be B5's commander?
  No, they didn't know at the time; most of them were still trying to figure the whole damned thing out; some refused to accept it, and if he was indeed bogus, wanted him killed to avoid becoming a false prophet and undoing Minbari society; some *did* believe it was him. This disagreement in a sense became the first loose thread in unraveling parts of Minbari society.

• Did Delenn know?
  She had suspicions starting from the Battle of the Line; we'll have more on that later.

  Yes, the Grey Council knows [now], but the general Minbari population does not know.

• Where did the chrysalis machine come from?
  The machine came up with Zathras from Epsilon 3. It first appeared with Sinclair, then later got into Delenn's hands. So she still has that version of it.

• Re: the Chrysalis device...it came from Epsilon 3. There was one shot that should've been made more of, where we see a long box with a silver triangle on one side being set up, and left. Unfortunately, the shot didn't make much of it (you can see Zathras putting it out there), and a later shot we dropped showing it again because it wasn't properly featured and you couldn't really tell what it was. There was so much in this episode that had to be pulled off, in a short amount of time, that sometimes things in the background don't get framed as they might be. But that's where it came from: from Epsilon 3 to Sinclair to Delenn, who still has it.

• It was on Epsilon 3, then taken into the past with B4, held on Minbar until Delenn got it, and still has it.

• And the triluminary?
  It originated on Epsilon 3.

• The Londo stuff is just incredibly powerful...very moving. As for the voice...well, we'll just have to wait a bit, won't we?

• Re: G'Kar and Londo changing positions as Sinclair and Sheridan have done, these two moving from certainty to uncertainty in either direction, that ain't bad. That ain't bad at *all*. I like symmetry, and both journeys are interesting explorations. What I've been doing in complex terms, you explained in an astonishingly few words.

• I seem to recall, after that Londo/G'Kar scene was shown the last time, posting somewhere that folks now knew *what* has happened, but they don't yet know the *context*. Very few picked up on that and thought to actually reverse what they *thought* they were seeing to what they *might* be seeing.

• Will you see Londo and G'Kar together later this season?

  Hmmmm......

  Yes and no.

• Whose eye opened during the strangulation?
  The eye was of the keeper on Londo's shoulder, you can see G'Kar's fingers gripping a part of it. It woke up.

• About G'Kar's eye
  One of his eyes had been plucked out some time before.

• Londo does not currently have a Keeper attached to him.

• You needn't concern yourself with the keeper...for a while yet.

• Vir doesn't have a keeper. They would, of course, try to take care of that detail afterward.

• It's not a shadow host, no, but one of the many things that work for them.

• Will we see Kosh in the past?
  Not exactly, not as you might think, but in a sense....

• Suffice to say that Kosh knew Valen from way, way back....

• If Kosh recognized Sinclair as Valen, why were the Vorlons so anxious to extradite Sinclair in "The Gathering?"
  He could only recognize him once he actually saw him, and that didn't happen until he arrived at B5, after which he wasn't in any condition to talk to anyone until after things were over.

• But surely they must have known he was B5's first commander?
  Bear in mind that there have been lots of folks named Sinclair in the last 900 years; that we don't know how much Valen told anyone about his prior life; that the Minbari had had little to no direct contact with the Vorlons in well over a hundred years and likely would not have told them what they found at the Battle of the Line until such time as personal contact had been made again, which only happened at Kosh's arrival...and there wasn't exactly time to make a report after he rolled into B5 for the first time.

• How did they know to meet Babylon 4? Prescience?
  Well, the other obvious solution, since the Vorlons were then out and running around and actively involved in the war of that time period, he just sent out a signal, and they got there first.

• But they accepted the station right away.
  Given that there's a massive war on, they just had their major starbase destroyed, they were left without a platform from which to stage the last part of the war...and here comes someone offering a 6 mile long, perfectly empty and eminently useable base for the last phase of the war, no charge...hell, I'd take him up on it too.

• Did B4 have more firepower than B5?
  Yeah, B4 had more firepower, and it had one thing B5 doesn't...engines that can move it forward if necessary.

• Did the Minbari recognize the Vorlons?
  They'd recognize them from legends of their own past, yes. But bear in mind that the Minbari and Vorlons had already been working together in the war effort.

• The Vorlons were called in after B4 arrived.

• When you see a LOT of vorlons together, that's when it's time to run like hell.

• How long did Sinclair live after going back?
  He lived close to a hundred years as a Minbari; they're a long lived race, and they did all they could to maintain his health as one of their truly great figures.

• Valen did not have any children. And there's some difference of opinion over exactly what Valen's final fate was.

• There are some legends about Valen returning someday, but so far they've been only legends, nothing more.

• The Valen aspect was set up in the first season, long before anything was decided about Michael.

• I'd love to someday tell the story of Valen and Zathras in the most recent shadow war. It's quite a tale, actually....

• Is this Zathras' exit from the series?
  I'd love to see Zathras again somehow....

• I'm often tempted to create Zathras' brother, Mathras, or somesuch, if only for the look of terror in their eyes when he says, of Zathras, "Ah, yes...Zathras...was the quiet one in the family...."

  Who knows, it might be something I might do someday....

• Is Zathras "the man in between" from Sheridan's dream ("All Alone in the Night?")
  No, Zathras isn't the man in the middle. Someone else is. And it isn't/wasn't Sinclair, either.

• Valen only knew what Sinclair would've known. Zathras wasn't speaking from what Sinclair had told him, but on the basis of things he'd figured out on his own.

• Sinclair went back because he would always go back and always went back; the "alternate" timeline phrase isn't quite correct... t's more like the moment when the two possible wave forms of *possibilities* must collapse into one probability or certainty, both tugging at the same time. For instance, you've got Shroedinger's cat, put into a box, with a 50/50 chance of a poison gas capsule opening and killing the cat. At the instant before you open the box, Shroedinger said, the cat is neither dead nor alive, but *both*, until you open the box and the two possibilities collapse into one. It isn't that the cat had two alternate timelines, only that there were two possibilities fighting it out to become the real one.

  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

• What happened to Babylon 4?
  B4 survived the prior shadow war, but in very bad shape; didn't last much longer after that.

• Does the future with the Shadow attack no longer exist?
  Yes. Up until that moment, the total forces available to the shadows were an unknown to us...sort of like Shroedinger's Cat, is it alive in the box or is it dead? It could be either one. If they didn't go into the past, didn't affect the outcome, it would be one reality; if they did, then it'd be another. As soon as they achieved one or the other of those two, the two possible results collapsed into the one, singular possibility.

• Will Delenn and Sheridan have to pay too high a price for their victory and happiness?
  Depends on how you define "too high" a price.

• What they were after from Delenn was info relevant to that time, some of it related to their son.

• The reason Delenn dropped the globe will be gone into by the end of the season; as for "when will (you) no longer be confused?" that's rather outside my purview. Have you considered meditation?

• Was Delenn a passive observer in her flash?
  She more just saw it as a passive recipient, whereas he was actively There.

• There's not much point to asking me "when are we going to learn who Delenn saw in her flashforward." Or similar questions. I will not throw away the impact of something happening in an episode by blowing it out in a message. There have to be surprises along the way. You'll see it when it happens.

• You'll have to wait and see who entered the room.

• Time travel isn't that easy, and at this juncture it will never happen again in the B5 universe.

• Sheridan, by taking the actions he took to keep history on track, has now pretty much assured that the events we see *will* happen.

• Events will unfold as we saw them. Sheridan might try to use his knowledge to change things...but who knows, that may just bring them about.

• Of course there's free will. But if I pull a trigger, and the bullet flies out hitting someone in the head, what happens between the moment of the trigger, and the impact, has nothing to do with free will. Sheridan made the choice -- free will -- to do what was done in WWE. There were two probable results, depending on whether he did or didn't do as asked. Once he did that, the two probabilities folded into one actuality (a la Shroedinger's Cat).

  Which doesn't mean to say he won't *try* to change things....

• What did Zathras mean when he said he was the oldest living caretaker of the Machine?
  Just that Zathras has worked on the machine, and survived it, the longest of all the others.

• From George Johnsen, co-producer
  The Zathras tool is not a speed loader, but a wrench of some sort.

  There is this wonderful electronic surplus store down the street from the stage, and the place is swarming with art directors from all over the basin. Our folks also frequent this place, and came back one day with a box marked "interesting shapes $10". At any other place in the world, this would be a box of recyclables at best or a box of garbage at worst. In Hollywood, however........ it is a box of tools for Zathras!

Last update: May 27, 2024