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

Overview

Garibaldi takes on a new job. The resistance's counter-propaganda broadcasts begin. Sheridan proposes a plan to protect the Non-Aligned Worlds from raiders. Tim Choate as Zathras. Denise Gentile as Lise Hampton. Mark Schneider as Wade. Charles Walker as Ben.

P5 Rating: 8.04

Production number: 412
Original air week: May 5, 1997

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by David Eagle

Plot Points

• Wade and his group still consider Garibaldi expendable.
• Lise Hampton, Garibaldi's ex-lover ("A Voice in the Wilderness") divorced her first husband and eventually married one of the richest men on Mars, William Edgars. Among other things, Edgars is the owner of the largest medical research center on the planet.
• Some medical researchers believe that one of the genes responsible for telepathy in humans has the potential to mutate into some form of communicable disease, lethal to other telepaths. There may be a cure, but there are those on Earth who'd rather the basis of the cure be destroyed to rid Earth of telepaths.
• Sheridan has proposed to assign the Rangers to patrol the borders between the various parts of alien-controlled space, protecting civilian transports from the Drakh ("Lines of Communication") and others.
• The Centauri have had contact with the Drakh in the past, but long enough ago that nowadays they're considered little more than legends.
• Zathras had nine brothers, all named Zathras but with slightly different intonations.

Unanswered Questions

• What exactly was the substance Lise was picking up?
• Were Wade and Lise and their contact telling the truth about the telepath virus, or was the substance something else entirely?
• Who were the gunmen? Were they with Psi Corps, or were they rogue telepaths? What did they mean by the phrase, "To the future?" (See Analysis)
• Why didn't Garibaldi fire at the telepath?
• Did Wade know about Garibaldi's past association with Lise? Was she part of the test, to see how emotional stress would affect his performance?
• Does William Edgars' job offer conflict with whatever plans Wade and his cohorts have for Garibaldi, or is his employment just another part of the plan?
• Why didn't Edgars show Garibaldi his face?
• What was in the message Lise left for Garibaldi?
• Why did she send it using her maiden name?
• Did G'Kar and Londo take Sheridan up on his offer?

Analysis

• If Garibaldi takes the job, will he be working close to William Edgars? That would imply he'll also have frequent contact with Lise, which likely wouldn't be easy for either of them.

• His consideration of the job offer is at odds with the glimpse of his programming, if that's what it was, in "The Illusion of Truth." In that flashback, Garibaldi recalled being drilled over and over with the idea that he worked for nobody but his captors. Of course, if Edgars is involved with his captors, that might not be inconsistent.

  It's also possible his captors want to get him close to Edgars, and that by taking the job he'd in fact be following their implanted orders.

• Edgars claimed to have checked up on Garibaldi. Checked up on him how? Garibaldi himself has said on more than one occasion that his past is checkered at best, and his history isn't too closely guarded a secret (for example, the Senator knew about him in ("The Gathering.") Maybe Edgars was taking Garibaldi's performance as security chief on Babylon 5 into account, or maybe his "checking up" involved talking to whoever captured Garibaldi ("Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?")

• The Daffy Duck cartoon Garibaldi was watching (1953's "Duck Amuck!") can be viewed as a metaphor for his situation; depending on what was done to him after his capture ("Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?") he may well no longer be in control of his own fate, and is certainly being influenced by forces he can't detect.

• If the researchers are correct and the human telepathy genes can indeed mutate into a lethal virus, what are the parameters? Likely it's something that's telepathically transmitted. For example, it might cause a telepath to broadcast noise on whatever medium telepaths use to read thoughts. Telepathic interference can cause physical effects (Ben Zayn doubling over in "Eyes," or Lyta's bloodied eyes in "Walkabout") so it's not inconceivable that telepathic broadcasts of the right type could kill someone attuned to them.

• Which begs the question, was this some kind of genetic timebomb intentionally implanted by the Vorlons when they modified humans to give them telepathic ability ("Z'ha'dum?") Since the Vorlons, according to Morden, created human telepaths to use as weapons against the Shadows, perhaps the Vorlons also put a time limit on human telepathy so it wouldn't remain once the upcoming conflict with the Shadows was resolved.

  That would put a different spin on the disappearance of Narn telepaths ("Ship of Tears.") The Book of G'Quan was probably correct about the Shadows killing most of the Narn telepaths. But maybe the reason the gene never resurfaced in the Narn population wasn't that it wasn't strong enough, as G'Kar supposed, but that it was only designed to last a few generations, and once the previous Shadow War was over, its time simply ran out. Of course, that assumes the Vorlons implanted telepathy into the Narn.

• The threat isn't limited to Psi Corps; Ivanova's latent telepathy makes her vulnerable to any sort of disease that's transmitted between telepaths.

• The fact that Wade was cooperating with Lise in her effort to get the vial into her husband's hands implies that he's at least somewhat sympathetic to telepaths, and perhaps to the Psi Corps. If he were one of the people who wanted to see all telepaths dead, presumably he'd've arranged for the vial to quietly vanish on its way to Lise. That ties into the apparent contradiction mentioned above between Garibaldi's programming ("The Illusion of Truth") and his consideration of Edgars' job offer.

• The telepathic assassins' closing phrase bears some similarity to a description of another telepath: Talia Winters in "A Race Through Dark Places."

  Lurker: You tipped the balance. I felt it when we were joined. You're more than you think you are.
  Talia: Then what am I?
  Lurker: The future.

• The last time Garibaldi resigned, even briefly ("In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum") he offered up his gun, his station ID, and his link. So did the security staff who resigned rather than join Nightwatch in "Point of No Return." Why did Garibaldi keep them this time? Was he perhaps intending to return at some point?

• Sheridan said of Garibaldi, "I don't like the company he's been keeping." How does Sheridan know what kind of company Garibaldi has been keeping? Is he having Garibaldi watched? And is he referring specifically to Wade's people? If so, what does Sheridan know about them?

• Was there a reason Sheridan kept the lights in his office low when he met others there, or was it just a directorial touch?

• Franklin commented to Ivanova that Mars was cold. But in "Racing Mars," the tunnels where Franklin and Marcus were staying were noted as uncomfortably warm. Significant, or was Franklin simply referring to the surface, which is indeed cold?

Notes

• In "Babylon Squared," Zathras complained, "Zathras warned, but nobody listens to poor Zathras." In this episode, that's doubly true: even Zathras doesn't listen to Zathras.
• G'Kar's artificial eye is now brown, rather than red like his natural one or blue like its initial color ("Atonement.")
• The onscreen logo displayed while Garibaldi spoke to William Edgars read "EI" (presumably short for "Edgars Industries" or some such.) Underneath, it read, "Mars - Phobos - Deimos." Phobos and Deimos are the two moons of Mars. Presumably this implies that there are people living or working on those moons, which in fact are little more than large asteroids and would thus be attractive for microgravity pharmaceutical research.
• William Edgars' voice was played by Efrem Zimbalist Jr.
• The telepaths' PPG blasts penetrated the floor of the air duct. In "Grey 17 Is Missing," Garibaldi commented that PPGs are used rather than traditional guns because they don't penetrate hulls. Of course, an outer hull is likely quite a lot thicker than an air duct wall, and likely made of material with a higher melting temperature, so this most likely isn't a contradiction.

jms speaks

• BTW, there's another example of a long single take coming up soon, on Epsilon 3, which is all I'll specify. I kinda wanted the scene to play itself out, without cutting, and to show just how amazingly capable some of our actors can be. We're talking here almost 4 minutes of footage, not one cut in the whole thing, very fast dialogue, and not a single muffed line, with the performances working wonderfully. You'll know it when you see it.

• Our cast invariably comes in knowing full scenes, and can hit them without breaking or blowing a line. So we have a tendency at times to just let the master play out, keeping the intensity, which can sometimes be broken by too much cross-editing. (Note that the Zathras/Ivanova scene a few episodes back is *entirely* one shot, four minutes.)

• Re: Daffy...I knew that cartoon, and had that definitely in mind when I wrote the script. Took some maneuvering to get WB to let us use that much of it.

• Re: the cartoon...I'm a big WB cartoon fan, and knew that one very well, and there were two places where it would've fit with the story; the other one, which I almost used, was when you see two Daffy's arguing with each other.

  Re: the CGI...we've been fairly conventional with the CGI in recent seasons, we're trying to get a bit more adventurous.

  The Lise flashback material is all exactly as was filmed for "Babylon Squared." I think we used a few more pieces of the original footage, but it was all stet.

  Why didn't we see what happened to Delenn, since she left in the previous episode?
  Re: Delenn...these episodes happen close to one another in time, so you have to allow travel time for her to get to Minbar.

• Lise was the typical "woman in distress."
  Re: Lise...well, everybody can't be a fighter; we've had guys and the occasional female character who isn't used to being shot at. I daresay I'm not terribly used to being shot at, and someone who's mainly a civilian would probably react about that same way. It's just a matter of showing that diversity realistically rather than saying, "Okay, let's have a helpless female now." Having every female (or male) hard-nosed and laughing off PPG bursts is as unrealistic as its opposite.

• Was there anything important in Lise's message?
  No, nothing you need worry about.

• Why didn't Edgars show his face?
  As we'll learn shortly, he doesn't want his face seen around.

  But we'll see him soon enough.

  (And the voice belongs to Efram Zimbalist Jr.)

• Did the PPG blasts melt through the air conditioning duct wall?
  This is substantially correct. The PPG blast is extremely hot, and will melt through the plastic coating and the metal lining inside the tube. The entire energy of a PPG will not come through the tube (unless by some coincidence the exact same area is hit twice or three times), and I believe that this was propoerly portrayed in the sequence. Even if it isn't the entire energy blast, it will hurt like hell and de-mobilize an individual meat packet (person) for the bad guys to come get later.

  It did take a *very* long time to burn through the bulkhead door to allow them access to the hallway, and said door did mildly glow in the affected areas prior to melting through. The station hull is even more heat resistant.

  George Johnsen
  CoProducer, B5

Last update: February 15, 2000