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

Overview

Galen convinces Gideon to take the Excalibur deep into hyperspace to find a mythical place of power.

Production number: 106
Original air date: June 23, 1999

Written by Fiona Avery
Directed by Janet Greek

Plot Points

• The Well of Forever is a mausoleum deep in hyperspace, where various races have left shrines and monuments to their honored dead over the millenia.
• Technomage ships have extremely sensitive sensors that allow them to navigate much further from hyperspace beacons than Alliance races can. As a result they're able to travel through hyperspace without encountering others.
• At least one race of creatures lives in hyperspace, huge jellyfishlike creatures called the Fen. The technomages have encountered them before and consider tham harmless.
• Matheson is the first telepath since the abolition of the Psi Corps to achieve a high-ranking military position. He's thus a well-known role model among younger telepaths.
• The Psi Corps has been abolished by the Senate and replaced with an organization called the Bureau of Telepath Integration, which, like the Corps, sends watchmen (all named "Mr. Jones") around to probe the minds of other telepaths and make sure the new telepath regulations aren't being violated. The new regulations are aimed at integrating telepaths into society.
• When he was younger, Galen and a technomage named Isabelle were in love. She devoted her life to finding the Well of Forever, and when she died, he promised to bring her there.

Unanswered Questions

• What personal significance does the question "Why?" have to Galen?
• What was Gideon's question?
• What answer would Matheson have found had he ventured into hyperspace at the Well?
• What were Matheson's minor violations of the telepath rules?
• Who created the Well of Forever? How long has it existed?

Analysis

• In the montage at the end of the episode, Gideon is holding a photograph titled "EAS Cerberus." That, combined with his comment to Galen that he's already made a promise to honor the memories of 300 people, suggests that he was the only survivor when his ship was destroyed nine years earlier ("War Zone").

• The Psi Corps may have vanished in name, but its spirit appears to be alive and well if Mr. Jones is any indication; he was just as willing as any Psi Cop to abuse his authority. It's even possible he was a Psi Cop when the Corps was still around.

  The new rules regarding telepaths are presumably the result of the Telepath War, and it can be deduced that after the war, the Senate decided that keeping telepaths segregated in their own shadow society was partly to blame for the conflict.

  The fact that there are watchmen like Mr. Jones suggests that telepaths are probably still required to register with the government.

• Who was Gideon playing chess with? He made his move from the side of the board, rather than the front or back; perhaps he's playing solo. If so, an obvious question is whether the board is a metaphor for something.

  The game may relate to his answer to Galen's final question ("Who do you serve and who do you trust?") Gideon may not be sure whose side he's on.

Notes

• Mr. Jones was played by Michael Beck, who played Abel Horn in "A Spider in the Web".

• Galen's elegy for Isabelle is a quote from Act 4, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's Cymbeline.

  Galen also makes a reference to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Sonnets from the Portugese" (#43):

  How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
  My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
  For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
  I love thee to the level of every day's
  Most quiet need, by the sun and candle-light.
  I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
  I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
  I love thee with the passion put to use
  In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
  I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
  With my lost saints- and, if God choose,
  I shall but love thee better after death.

• As Galen describes the Well's answers to Dureena, the game "Pong" can briefly be seen on the monitor behind Eilerson at the very start of his scene.

• Possible continuity error: Gideon quotes Galen as saying that the crew of the Excalibur is like a family to him. While it's possible that Galen said that offscreen, also possible is that the comment appeared in an episode that was produced before this one but comes after it in chronological order. The jury will be out on whether this is a glitch until after the first 5 produced episodes have aired.

• Galen's ship has a front landing wheel.

• "Fen" is often used as a plural form of "fan", as in "science fiction fan." Galen's comment is a tongue-in-cheek poke at SF fandom: "They're barely sentient. They're attracted to bright, shiny objects, but they lose interest quickly."

jms speaks

• Why two Galen-centered episodes in a row?
  The original air order would have spread out the Galen episodes, so that he would appear every second or third episode...that changed with the short order, and they all got bunched together.

• "Can (will) you tell us about Fiona Avery's connection to B5 and Crusade? I just picked up the first PsiCorp novel and she was in the dedication. Got me to wondering..."

  We brought Fiona aboard during the last part of S5 as a reference editor to keep the continuity straight, and for Crusade (about which more in a bit). There was a growing problem keeping the licensees and licensed material accurate; stuff slipped through the RPG books and elsewhere (this was before she got here). She was brought on to stop the problem, and to annoy the licensees in the sense that it's often easier not to get things right, and she has to stay on top of them and make them crazy in order to ensure that the accuracy the fans (and I) expect is maintained.

  She was also brought on with an eye toward Crusade because she has a degree in Archaeology and Crusade's an archaeological SF series. Along the way, she began writing spec scripts for Crusade which ended up being good enough to buy, and we bought 4 of which 2 were produced, Well and Patterns. The last one she did, Value Judgments, was probably the best of the bunch; it's a Bester script that Walter considered one of his best roles, and would tie in directly with the Psi Corps books.

Last update: July 26, 1999