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

Overview

Two-hour TV movie. Covers the Earth-Minbari War in more detail, including Delenn's involvement and the death of Dukhat.

P5 Rating: 8.94

Production number: TNT MoW 2
Original air date: January 4, 1998
DVD release date: December 4, 2001 (barebones)
                  August 17, 2004 (full-featured)

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Mike Vejar
Novelization by Peter David
Music by Christopher Franke

Note: This guide page assumes prior knowledge of the first four seasons of the show, since the movie originally aired after season four was complete. There are spoilers here for the series.

Plot Points

• Londo was among the Centauri delegation to Earth at the start of the Earth-Minbari War. He advised Earth's leaders not to seek contact with the Minbari, or if they did so, to send only one ship so as not to appear threatening. Earth's military leaders, full of hubris after the victory over the Dilgar ("Deathwalker") ignored that advice and sent an expedition, led by the Prometheus ("A Late Delivery from Avalon") to gauge whether the Minbari represented a threat to Earth's expansionist ambitions.

• The Rangers existed during the thousand-year interval between the previous Shadow War and the present, but weren't well thought of by Minbari in general. They were poorly funded and had few members. Their head at the time of the war, Lenonn, attempted to persuade the Grey Council that the Shadows were awakening and that the Rangers should be granted more funding and manpower, but his word alone wasn't persuasive enough.

• Kosh and another Vorlon, probably Kosh's replacement ("Walkabout") were present both on Minbar and onboard the Grey Council's ship and consulted with Dukhat. After his death, Delenn spoke to both of them on a few occasions, though in typical Vorlon fashion they offered little in the way of decipherable advice. Their presence was known only to Dukhat, and later to Delenn and Lenonn, but not to the rest of the Grey Council.

• The Grey Council was on its way to Z'ha'dum, to verify the truth of Valen's prophecy, when the Prometheus attacked and began the war ("Atonement.")

• The Centauri refused to provide Earth with weapons or support during the war, fearing the wrath of the Minbari. The Narn, however, were more than happy to sell modified Centauri weaponry. G'Kar personally closed the deal with the Earth government, noting that if the Minbari discovered the weapons, they'd likely identify them as Centauri in origin and attack the Centauri anyway.

• At one point during the war, while Sheridan was serving as first officer aboard the Lexington, a Minbari ambush in an asteroid field killed the captain and left Sheridan in charge. The ship was disabled and its support vessels destroyed. He ordered his weapons officers to remove the warheads from three tactical nuclear weapons and plant them on nearby asteroids. Then he sent a distress signal, which drew a Minbari cruiser into the area. Two of the nukes were sufficient to destroy the cruiser, which later turned out to be the flagship Black Star. His victory boosted flagging morale among Earthforce.

  This incident has been referred to several times during the course of the series, first upon Sheridan's arrival on the station ("Points of Departure") and later, in more detail, in "There All the Honor Lies."

• After he destroyed the Black Star, Sheridan was sent on a secret mission. Accompanied by Franklin and G'Kar, he was to meet with Lenonn, the head of the Rangers, to attempt to arrange peace negotiations. Unfortunately, Londo learned of the meeting and, mistaking it for an arms shipment thanks to G'Kar's involvement, arranged for a Centauri sneak attack that killed Lenonn. The Minbari captured Sheridan and Franklin, but Delenn ordered them released after Sheridan relayed a message from Lenonn indicating that Earth hadn't been responsible for his death.

• After scanning Sinclair with the triluminary ("And the Sky Full of Stars") the Grey Council learned not only that he had a Minbari soul, but specifically that he had Valen's soul. Delenn volunteered to watch Sinclair after his memory was wiped, to ensure he never learned what had happened to him.

• Londo watched most of Delenn and Sheridan's conversation in the Centauri prison cell ("War Without End part 2.")

Unanswered Questions

• What was the Omega incident? (See Notes)

Analysis

• Dukhat's ritual line during Delenn's induction into the Grey Council, "Will you follow me into fire, will you follow me into darkness?" was a reference to Valen's founding of the Council. The questions also occur in the Minbari rebirth ceremony ("The Parliament of Dreams") suggesting that the founding of the Council was considered a rebirth by the Minbari (not unreasonable, if it gave them new hope in their losing war against the Shadows as well as fundamentally altering the structure of their society.)

• According to "Points of Departure," Sheridan destroyed the Black Star by mining the asteroid belt in Earth's solar system. The implication here, however, was that the attack took place far away; at that point in the war, it's said several times, the Minbari were only attacking outlying colonies and minor, poorly-defended worlds. Of course, it's possible they were making occasional forays deeper into Earth space as well, possibly to force Earth to spread its defenses thin.

• It only took two nuclear warheads to knock out the Black Star. Why didn't Earth start attacking the Minbari with nuclear weapons as a matter of course? Perhaps it was simply that any incoming missiles or ships were destroyed before they could get close enough to be effective, though on a few occasions (e.g. the Battle of the Line) Starfuries did seem to get as close to the Minbari cruisers as the Lexington's asteroids were. Was the Black Star only vulnerable because its defenses were down due to the Lexington's apparent lack of power? If so, that implies the Minbari have some way to counteract the effects of nuclear explosions.

• The meeting between Lenonn and Sheridan took place on an outpost world in the Epsilon system. That may be the same system where B5 was eventually built (it orbits Epsilon 3.) That makes some sense, as B5 is located in neutral space bordering the major races.

  In the novelization, the meeting place was described as an abandoned Drazi colony (which doesn't preclude it being in the same system as B5, of course.)

• How did Sheridan and Franklin get away from the Minbari cruiser? Did the Minbari really take the time to drop them off at some neutral location from which they could find their way back to Earth? Unless it was done in secret, that would presumably have attracted some attention -- two humans arriving on a Minbari ship wouldn't have been a common sight.

• When the triluminary glowed for Sinclair, Delenn immediately knew that it meant he had Valen's soul. Why, then, did it take her another fourteen years, until "Atonement," to recall that the triluminary also glowed for her, and to thus deduce that she was somehow related to Valen as well?

• Delenn's promise to watch Sinclair explains why the Minbari insisted that he be the one to head Babylon 5 ("Signs and Portents.") Putting him in a position in which he'd be forced to have contact with her simplified her task greatly.

Notes

• Londo claimed to have had 4 wives. One of them, depending on how his statement is interpreted, could be the Centauri Republic itself. The other three were Timov, Daggair, and Mariel, the last two only for a short while before Londo had their marriages annulled ("Soul Mates.") Of course, he also claimed to have been fond of all his wives, which didn't appear to be true of Timov, Daggair, or Mariel.

  Another wife may have been mentioned in "A Voice in the Wilderness part 1." Londo told Garibaldi about marrying a dancer in his youth, then regretting it soon after. She may have been one of the three wives from "Soul Mates," or not; it was never made clear.

• One detail about the attack on the Grey Council's ship was left out: the appearance of Soul Hunter ships, as shown in "Atonement."

  In the novelization, a Soul Hunter appeared, and the Minbari made a wall of their bodies to prevent him from getting to Dukhat's body. Delenn was among those forming the wall.

• According to the novelization, the Omega Incident was an unjustified attack on a Dilgar ship by Captain Jankowski. The attack led to Earth's involvement in the Dilgar War.

• During the series, Ivanova wears one earring; it's one of a pair of lucky earrings. She gave the other to her brother Ganya before he flew out on his final mission.

• Londo quotes the human saying, "Pride goeth before a fall." Though widely known, this is actually a misquote of Proverbs 16:18, "Pride goeth before destruction and an haughty spirit before a fall."

• The brief glimpse of a gunner onboard the Prometheus after the order to fire was given was from "A Late Delivery from Avalon."

• The story is framed by the old Londo Mollari ("War Without End") telling the tale to a group of Centauri children before Sheridan and Delenn are brought before him. (See jms speaks)

  According to the novelization, the children are related to Urza Jaddo, who Londo was forced to kill in "Knives." Londo promised to care for Urza's house, thus the presence of his relatives in the royal palace.

• Filming ended June 30, 1997.

• A slight glitch: When Captain Sterns was killed, his blood floats into the cabin since there's no gravity (which is logical since the Lexington had no rotating section.) But another crewman had blood running down his face, which wouldn't happen without gravity.

• Continuity glitch: While Sheridan was on the Minbari cruiser, his uniform's stat bar was sometimes on and sometimes dangling.

• A sample chapter from the novelization is available from the publisher's site.

• This movie was released twice on DVD, once as a barebones edition along with "The Gathering" and later as part of a collection of the B5 Movie Collection.

jms speaks

• We've finished the producers' cuts of the two TNT Movies, and have come through without notes. Everyone loves 'em, and agrees that while Thirdspace is very cool, In the Beginning is the best thing we've ever done. On every level: acting, writing, the directing, sets, costumes...everything. This one's got Hugo written all over it. (Which makes it hard to look at, but there you are.) Maybe even Ace.

• It's a very moving and emotional movie in a lot of places, which was the goal. If it doesn't touch you, there ain't much point to doing it.

• How much did it cost?
  If "it" means the series, it's always been under $900 thousand per episode. If "it" means ItB, the production cost was just a tick under three million bucks.

• TNT will show the pilot movie. The theory is to do the prequel first, then the pilot, then the series through one run at least, then the second original TV movie to freshen the cycle, then onward.

• In the Beginning will air in January, on a Sunday, in a 4 hour block the other half of which is the original B5 pilot, and then it will go to daily M-F runs of the first 4 seasons at 6 or 7 p.m.

• TNT is a commercial cable network, so there will be commercials. As I recall, the running time to which I wrote the scripts was 94 minutes 10 seconds.

• We got the ratings, and I can't release them yet, that has to come from TNT, but suffice to say they're dancing in the aisles over at TNT. Again, I can't give specifics yet, but they had a very specific rating in mind that they felt was the best we would probably get, which we beat handily, and they felt that the pilot, being a rerun, wouldn't do that well...and it ended up doing as well as the maximum they'd hoped the prequel would get.

  They're stunned.

• Turns out we virtually tripled our regular audience, and *built* each quarter hour, which means folks were jumping in all through, and those who came, stayed.

• There were a number of big fans of the show in TNT programming who kept bugging management to pick up the show, do the movies...and whose necks were on the line if it didn't work...who are now dancing in the aisles.

• Is "In the Beginning" a linear story?
  Never said it was linear, only that it predates B5.

• No, the movie won't be linear per se, but broken up by Londo's narration, which will collapse some events together so we can cover the whole history of the war in about 2 hours.

• Plans are to have Dukhat in the B5 prequel.

• Will Delenn's makeup be the version from the pilot?
  No, we're using the series makeup, rather than add one more permutation.

• It made more sense to put it in line with the series, since there's 22 of the first season, and only 1 of the pilot.

• You may not find out who built the Great Machine in the series, but that will be one of the features of one of the planned TNT movies. And there will be more on the Valen/Sinclair transformation as well.

• ItB contains surprises and turnarounds for many of the series veteran fans, and it does a great job of laying the foundation for the first two seasons for the newbies.

  It's a most elegant dance...and I'm actually kinda proud of it.

• Will ItB spoil some of season one's mysteries?
  That's an interesting question. When I sat down to write In the Beginning, my feeling was that I should look at the long term. Would the hole in Sinclair's mind be the same mystery it was in season one, or would it be kind of known thereafter? If so, then do you want to play with the mystery, or set up what actually happened? I figured, okay, let's go for the latter...let's let the audience know (which will mostly know by now anyway), and set up the background, with the characters not knowing the first season. I took basic greek tragedy as my model, with ItB functioning more or less as a Greek chorus that sets things up.

  If you want to play it as a strict mystery, then no, probably don't go near ItB...but frankly, if I were going to start someone off on B5, I'd definitely want to start with ItB, which sort of skims in and out of the overall storyline in a beautiful fashion.

• "I know you probably couldn't have made a movie about the Earth-Minbari War without giving away the ending, but I was kind of hoping the details would be left more vague than they were for the benefit of new viewers."

  I came to that part of my decision-making process, and realized that in 2, 5 or 10 years, the secret ain't gonna be secret anymore...so why not play into that, and make the audience aware up front, which adds a different kind of tension, like seeing the bomb under the table when the characters eating dinner don't know it's there.

• Sheridan and Franklin had already met when Sheridan arrived on B5.
  Yeah, in my notes on Sheridan I had him meeting Sheridan before, but never did much with it at the time...we never see the first time Sheridan and Franklin meet in the second season, and when we do they're hanging out pretty casually, as people who've met each other before might. Bear in mind, also, that there's about 11 years between the two incidents, and at best they were casual acquaintances on one mission.

• From coproducer George Johnsen
  The Nova Class Dreadnaughts have been around for quite a long time, but are getting a "sprucing up" for further development. As we discovered in our own navy, there is a need for several classes of ship of varying sizes.

  The Omega Class are the next development in that series. The habitat section was added, as well as more armored sections. There is a further development of that class under discussion. You can also see some design elements of the class contained in the Cortez.

  The newer ships under development are all of smaller classes, like the Olympus Class Corvette, the Badger heavy fighter, and the Cotten Class Deep Penetration Tender. We will see these participate heavily in the second of the TNT movies.

• How long between the war and Londo's recounting of it?
  It's 35 years from the time in which Londo is speaking, and Anna and Sheridan weren't married during the war, they were married after.

• Didn't you promise no cute kids or robots?
  Hello...is anyone there...? I always said that in relation to SERIES REGULARS AND RECURS. Every time we have a kid on the show, and we've had several, somebody throws this at me without once remembering that this applies to series regulars/recurs, like Wesleys or the bots from Buck Rogers.

  And then somebody gigs me for something I didn't say.

• Spoiler for "War Without End part 2"
  The Londo scene in question is the one that takes place moments before Sheridan and Delenn are brought in, and then allowed to escape. (War Without End.) He can't exactly see to their execution since they outlive him in story continuity, now can he?

• The karmic point of no return is the whole of his [Londo's] life, from ItB's events through the bombing of Narn, which led to the death of hundreds of thoudands or more.

• Londo's first wife was a dancer, who he was forced to divorce by his family.

  Adira reminds him of her a lot.

• "But that still doesn't explain the "cared for them all deeply" part in relation to the other three..."

  We remember what, and how, we choose to remember.

• "Did you consider putting the scene of the hunter confronting the Minbari at the battle of the line into the movie?" (Ed. note: not the Battle of the Line, but the initial attack on the Grey Council ship, as mentioned in "Soul Hunter.")

  Yeah, for some time, in fact...but the logistics involved in staging a full-scale assault, dozens of soul hunters, the fight itself, would've taken up about 10-15 minutes minimum, which would have had to come out elsewhere, and I can't find 15 minutes in that movie that's expendable. One can only do so much in the amout of space, and time, and money, one has.

• There wasn't time to do it in the movie...it would've taken about 10-15 minutes to set it up and pay it off properly, and I couldn't find 15 expendable minutes in ItB. There's a brief window after the body's death where the soul hunters can still move in, so there was time...we showed their ships moving in in Atonement, and to do so again here would get in the way and really confuse new viewers.

• About Kosh and Ulkesh, the other Vorlon
  No, I wouldn't call them friends. They had a certain respect for one another, but Ulkesh always thought Kosh was soft, and Kosh always worried that Ulkesh was dangerous. In their own ways, both were right.

• It wasn't so much a case of Ulkesh turning against the effort, but finally hitting the end of his patience with the humans, and his predecessor's decision to let the "natives" get out of control.

• Were Kosh and Ulkesh near the top of the Vorlon power structure?
  It's not a hierarchy as you or I would understand it...and the weird thing is, though I kinda know how it functions, I'll be damned if I can figure out how to explain it in words.

• Zha is the usual reference for the future, whose meaning changes depending on whether it's a suffix or a prefix, and what it's up against. Isil-zha usually means change, changing the future, coming of a new age; entil-zha is the one who creates or guides the forces creating the future; and z'ha'dum (with the broken zha) is the death of the future, or the dark future.

  Kosh and Ulkesh were contemporaries, though Ulkesh was the more military of the two, very isolationist, while Kosh was the curious one, interested in the younger races, and more willing to extend himself (with sometimes unfortunate results). Kosh always worried what Ulkesh would do without his moderating presence...and ultimately had to be the one to take him down to allow the younger races to step forward.

• About the sequence leading up to the Battle of the Line
  Yeah, I'm real happy with that sequence, starting with the top of the act and straight through to the President's speech...I think it's one of those moments when we committed art.

• "In the "2 years" montage in "In The Beginning", we see an Earth Alliance ship ram a Minbari cruiser amidships, blowing a hole through its middle. Does this mean that Sheridan's was not the only ship that destroyed a Minbari battleship during the war?"

  Sheridan was the only one to score a *victory* against a Minbari war cruiser. Meaning he survived. Ramming one, and dying in the process, ain't a victory...at best it's a draw.

• "I nearly cried when the President asked the military to "hold the line" so that a pitiful few hundred could escape. In that single moment, you feel that even if the Minbari had done it, those few refugees would have sired a people who, eventually, would have made it. Just at that moment, you see the echo to the ball of light flying into the encounter suit a million years hence."

  It's a very moving scene, even for me. There's something in particular about a female president making that request, and giving those orders, that is especially strong. I don't know why that should be, but somehow it is. We as a people tend to forget our own strength, and as Londo says, our stubborn nobility. We only seem to remember it when we stand on the edge of the abyss, when it's almost too late to do anything about it.

  "I always have felt this show is about him."

  Yeah, in many ways, it is.

• Will Sinclair even be mentioned?
  Nobody said he wouldn't be mentioned; using the footage we shot from "And the Sky Full of Stars," he's in the last part of the movie. Bear in mind that at the time he was a squadron leader assigned to Earth as part of the defense network there, so didn't have a great deal to do with the larger parts of the war.

  Basically, each character (with the exception of one or two) gets one or two scenes in the movie (we have a lot of them, remember). To bring Michael out from New York, at first class airfare, plus accommodations, salary, for one or two scenes (one of which we already *had* him for) was impossible under the budget, much as we discussed it and would've been interested in doing so.

• How do you work out using footage of an actor from one episode in another episode?
  You just call up their agent and work out an arrangement.

• I think if you add up all the footage from other episodes, it's probably less than about 5 minutes total.

  I figure, if we shot it right the first time, why redo it? Also, if we take the position that this "happened," it should be identical, and a restaging wouldn't be identical.

• Did Sinclair undergo a "preliminary psi probe" as assumed by Delenn in the novelization?
  I don't have the book in front of me, but if that refers to the one after his capture, then yes.

• "There was one notable flashback scene [from "And the Sky Full of Stars"] that did not make it into the movie, in which Sinclair rushes Delenn and pulls her hood off. Also we never saw Sinclair surrounded by the Grey Council and blasted by the staff. Given how "In the Beginning" progressed I'm not sure how those scenes could have fit in."

  This happened shortly after the events shown.

• "That would be the only place they would fit, but then I wonder why a Grey Council member would blast Sinclair after they already know he has Valen's soul."

  Remember that Sinclair was going for them at that moment, and the blast didn't hurt him, only knocked him out...they were deliberately *not* trying to hurt him.

• About the novelization
  Peter did a fine job with the book. He added a few bits here and there, for which he should get the credit, and overall did a very good job of it.

• I think that most of the inconsistencies you note are primarily due to the translation from script to print, prior to Peter seeing any of the actual footage (it's never stated in the script, for instance, that any of the Grey Council have seen Valen).

  While Entil-zha has a vague translation, which is what is stated in "Dream," we've translated isil-zha ever since Marcus appeared in the show...Franklin asks while they're in medlab, if you recall, and he points to the center stone and says it's called isil-zha, meaning the future.

Last update: May 27, 2024