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

Overview

An alien refugee may hold useful secrets about the Drakh plague, but isn't willing to give up its information easily.

Production number: 101
Original air date: August 18, 1999
DVD release date: December 7, 2004

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Mike Vejar

Plot Points

• Dureena was sold into slavery by her parents when she was young. At one point, she was taken to Praxis 9, a seedy colony outside of Alliance jurisdiction; she may have been auctioned off there.
• The Rangers divide their time between enforcing the laws of the Alliance and searching for information that might help Earth fight the plague.
• The government of Marata 7, a world outside the Alliance, has destroyed all its people's art and music and literature, on the grounds that it's ideologically incompatible with the goals of the state. One copy of the planetary archives was smuggled offworld by a Maratan named Natchok Var; a copy of his copy is now in the hands of the Excalibur crew.

Unanswered Questions

Analysis

• Gideon told Dureena that slavery was legal on Praxis 9. But some of the slaves were Drazi, and were thus presumably Alliance citizens; what, if anything, does the Alliance do when its people are held by nonmembers? Perhaps slavery is legal among the Drazi as well, and the Alliance is simply practicing its policy of nonintervention by allowing the situation to persist.

Notes

• Max likes to watch pornography involving aliens, including titles such as "Snow White and the 7 Narns" and "Who's My Little Pak'ma'ra."
• Gideon's quip about Mozart is originally from Tom Lehrer's spoken introduction to the song "Alma," which is in his "That Was The Year That Was" album. In Lehrer's case, however, Mozart had only been dead for two years.

jms speaks

• The show was rated as having sexual content and adult language. Why?
  No, this is actually pretty stupid...there's one shot where they think a nipple is visible (it isn't, we were very careful in editing) and another where they think a Eilerson says "goddamnit," but he doesn't.
• About governments suppressing art
  I think you also need only read the ongoing battle over the National Endowment of the Arts to realize that the battle is still an ongoing one.

Last update: May 27, 2024