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

Overview

The Drakh launch a devastating attack against Earth. Leads into the sequel series, "Crusade." Tony Todd as Captain Anderson.

Production number: TNT MoW4
Original air date: January 3, 1999

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Mike Vejar
Novelization by Robert Sheckley

Reader reviews of the novelization, and online ordering, can be found at Amazon.com.

Plot Points

• The telepath war took place sometime between 2262 and 2267.
• The Drakh obtained a Shadow planet-killer when their masters left. It was the only one, and it has been destroyed.
• As a result of the joint human-Minbari effort to build a new class of large warships ("Movements of Fire and Shadow") two prototypes were built, the Excalibur and the Victory. Both feature powerful weaponry, including a main gun that almost completely discharges the ship's power reserves in one burst. The Victory was destroyed defending Earth and the Drakh wiped out the Alliance's shipyard, leaving the Excalibur the only ship of its class for some time to come.
• Earth has been infected with an extremely advanced plague built with Shadow technology. It was released into Earth's atmosphere before the Drakh could adjust it to attack Earth's biologies. Alliance scientists, though they lack the technical ability to counteract the plague, have examined it and believe that it will take the disease about five years to fully adjust to human physiology. Some people will fall victim earlier, but once the disease has adapted itself, nobody will be left alive on Earth.
• As a result of the plague, Earth has been quarantined.
• The Rangers have been given a new top priority: seeking out all the worlds where ancient races have walked, in the hopes of uncovering technologies that might help cure the plague. The Excalibur will act as a research vessel and will follow up on any leads the Rangers uncover.

Unanswered Questions

• Where are the technomages?
• Is Dureena the last of her kind, or were others able to escape before the Shadows destroyed her world?
• For what purpose did the Shadows build the plague? Was it simply intended as a means of genocide, or does it do something else as well?
• Why did Galen go to Babylon 5?
• Were any of the B5 crew (Ivanova and Franklin, for instance) on Earth during the attack?

Analysis

• One element of technomage society is a group known as the Circle. It's unclear whether there's just one, but individual technomages appear to be accountable to the Circle.

• How long has the Thieves' Guild operated on Babylon 5? Garibaldi clearly learned about it at some point. Was he aware of it while he was head of security on the station? Has he told Zack about it?

• The jump points formed by various Alliance and Drakh ships looked different than earlier in the series. Was there an advance in hyperspace technology in the five years since the founding of the Alliance?

  At least one advance in hyperspace technology (Earth's, anyway) was in evidence: Sheridan ordered the Excalibur to move off the hyperspace beacon to slip around the Drakh fleet. Perhaps improved hyperspace navigation is a benefit of the Minbari or Vorlon components of the Excalibur's design; Earth-built ships were previously unable to navigate in hyperspace without using the beacons ("A Distant Star"). Whether the rest of Earth's fleet has been upgraded with improved navigation systems remains to be seen.

• What was the null-space effect that took the Excalibur from Daltron 7 to the Drakh fleet? Do the Drakh have the ability to set up an instantaneous link between two points in space? If so, that's a capability that's beyond anything the Shadows were seen to have; Shadow ships traveled in hyperspace regularly.

• The Shadow plague may be nanotechnological rather than biological in nature. The fact that it's known to be actively adapting to Earth's biology implies that it possesses at least rudimentary analytical powers; if it were simply mutating at random there would be no way to give any kind of estimate of how long it'd take to affect humans.

  Does each individual germ or nanodevice act autonomously or are they in communication with each other? Perhaps the plague as a whole is a sentient being of sorts, its component parts exchanging information as neurons do but on a much larger scale.

• Sheridan appeared to believe that on some world, there would be a ready-made cure for the plague; he didn't state the Excalibur's mission in terms of seeking out new technologies that might allow a cure to be developed by the Alliance. His assumption only holds true if the Shadows used their plague in the distant past; in that case some of the older races might have found a way to combat it. If, on the other hand, the plague was a more recent development or it was never deployed, the First Ones might not have had an opportunity to develop a cure specifically aimed at it.

• Since he seemed to have some knowledge of the whereabouts of the First Ones ("Voices of Authority") Draal and the Great Machine might be a logical place to begin the search for a cure to the plague. Exactly how much information he has is unclear; he might have only known about those First Ones who were still around when he took up stewardship of the Great Machine.

• As a key member of the Alliance, Earth is no doubt host to thousands of alien visitors of various races. Will they be wiped out by the plague as well? Will it adapt to their respective biologies at the same rate as humans', or will it leave them alone in favor of eliminating the dominant lifeforms on the planet?

• Sheridan is probably not terribly popular on Earth. He mentioned people are still wary of him from "the last time [he] led a fleet to Earth Space." He is also actively supporting Mars, which may not be very popular on Earth.

  And now, many will probably blame him for the plague the Drakh unleashed on Earth, as it was revenge for the Shadow War, a war in which Earth took little to no part. It is likely that many people will die in the plague, even if a cure is eventually found (Sheridan said some would die of it sooner than others).

  This may help explain the attitude of the academics 100 years in the future ("The Deconstruction of Falling Stars"), who seemed annoyed at the mythology surrounding Sheridan.

• How will the quarantine be maintained? There are undoubtedly some number of people on Earth who'll want to leave despite the quarantine -- maybe they don't believe the plague really exists, for example. How will they be prevented from piloting a ship off the planet?

  An Alliance blockade is a likely possibility; it'd be too risky to allow Earth to patrol its own skies since the people on patrol might very well be the ones who decide to leave.

  If there are in fact alien ships orbiting Earth shooting down anyone who tries to leave, that probably serves to make Sheridan even less popular, even among those who believe the plague really exists. No doubt some on Earth will use the situation to stir up the same anti-alien sentiment President Clark was able to tap into. If so, after a cure is found and the quarantine ends, Earth might not be a very supportive member of the Alliance. Resentment from the time of the plague may well be the seeds of Earth's later break from the Alliance ("The Deconstruction of Falling Stars").

Notes

• Technomages were introduced in the season-two episode "The Geometry of Shadows."
• The flu hasn't been cured in 2267.
• This movie acts as a bridge between the original B5 series and the sequel, "Crusade." Originally, TNT planned to premiere the movie on January 3, 1999 and begin airing "Crusade" the same week, but "Crusade" ended up being delayed.
• Drazi sex organs are located under their left arms, and include an orifice that can be used to stash small items.

jms speaks

• Just got clarification and verification: Thirdspace does indeed air July 19th, and another B5 TV movie airs November 23rd, and one more on January 3rd.

• Why wasn't the movie promoted heavily?
  I am in total darkness when it comes to understanding TNT's philosophy of promotion. They did little for this, I guess because it was the last of B5 in someone's view, promoted the hell out of the Houdini flick, which cost about 3 times more than we did...and we ended up getting exactly the same ratings. With a little real promotion, we could've done even better.

• It did 2.8, which was a higher number than they were expecting (they'd sold the ads at 2.7, which means they made money off it), and equal to the Houdini movie.

• A Call to Arms isn't a Crusade pilot, it's a B5 movie that somewhat sets the stage for the new show, but is not a part of it.

• How would you characterize the movie?
  It's very different than all the rest; I thought that River would be the better story of the last two, but Call is a better *movie*, oddly enough. It rips straight through with the action of ItB, but very self-contained.

• Why no Mira Furlan in this movie?
  Basically, I'm just trying to move around the characters because we have a huge cast, and we can't afford to have every one of them in every movie. Mira had big parts in two of the movies, so we gave some other folks a chance (like Josh Cox, who had not been in any of them, and Tracy). We even did one without Bruce (River) so we could again spread things around a bit in an attempt to be fair to the largest number of cast members.

• When does Crusade take place?
  Five years after the events of Season 5.

• About the score by Evan Chen
  I suppose we could've stayed with the safe choice, with Chris, or done a nice, safe, droning Voyager style score that you don't even notice, but we're looking to take chances, and that means some people will like what you do, some won't. Some won't like it because it's different. Neil Gaiman told me that a number of fans of any form, including his own, say they want something new and challenging that takes chances...but if they don't like the form of that chance, they blame you for somehow doing it wrong...and they want the next new thing to be just like the last thing you did.

  I can't tell you the number of people who said "why can't you just do the John Williams style music instead of this?" Because it's been done, and it's cliche, and by god we're going to push what's "expected" to try some new things. Otherwise what the hell's the point?

  "Of course, you've been through this before. I seem to recall a lot of people complaining when Christopher Franke replaced the composer for the pilot. I don't doubt that a lot of the people screaming loudest now are the very ones who complained about Franke when he started."

  I don't know about the latter, but I can sure confirm the former. And that's why I sometimes wish the viewer responses were logged as much as my own have been. When we brought in Chris to replace Stewart Copeland, you can't *believe* how much email I got from people saying to trash him, fire him, it's that "euro-trash techno- crap" most called it. "He uses sounds and banging instead of music," people complained (which he did mainly in the first two seasons), "it's distracting and it's not appropriate, get rid of him."

  But we didn't. I told people to give him time to settle into the show, and on the other hand to let them get used to a different kind of sound than what they expected. ("I guess you couldn't afford to hire a real composer like TNG uses," was another popular line.)

  Evan ain't Chris, nor should he be, nor should he *have* to be. He is a brilliantly talented composer. This is his first shot at a dramatic series, and as he settles in (as Chris settled in), I think people are going to be as loyal to what he's doing in Crusade as they were to Chris in B5. He's a classically trained composer, who threw it all away to come study jazz under some of the best jazz men in Chicago...washing dishes to support himself when he had been at the top of his field in China...because he loves music, and loves to experiment.

  In the course of Crusade, we're going to see some places we've never seen before...and thanks to Evan, we're going to hear some things we've never heard before. He's a find, and a genuine, fresh talent, and I stand behind him 100%.

  And the people who say they are fans of Chris Franke's should think twice before doing to him what so many people did so rudely to Chris when he first came aboard.

• It kind of goes to show you how thin the layer of trust goes...you'd think by now, after doing 5 years of B5, people would think to cut a little slack and give a chance, assume that there's an intent here, rather than saying suddenly I'm an idiot for not putting in the kind of music they expected.

  What's most interesting, and in some ways most galling, is the number of posts I've seen in the last day or so from people who watched CTA again, and said, "On second viewing, the music didn't bother me as much, and I kind of like it in places." Maybe they should've been a little less quick on the trigger and the condemnation.

  As for some of the comments I've seen, basically saying he should be killed (literally, someone suggested putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger) to some *very* xenophobic comments about his being asian and that's the problem, with *that kind* of music...they do not even merit a reply.

• Actually, Chris Franke is sufficiently impressed with Chen -- who has never scored a TV show before, this is his first shot and he shows much potential, we're very happy -- that he's going to release Chen's score to ACtA and later episodes via his own label.

• "Is Franke gone then with the end of B5 and is Chen the Man behind Crusade's music? Or is Call an interim step music?"

  Yes and no. If there are any other B5 TV movies, or features, we'll almost certainly use Chris. For Crusade, it's Evan.

• "Submitted for your consideration: sometimes the music and sound effects became confused - was that a weapons discharge/hit, or a techno-percussion note? Were the repeated clashing/crunching sounds at the end of the battle mood conveying music, or the sound of the Drahk hatches opening to spew out the bio-weapon? I also thought that the music was occasionally mixed too loudly."

  The first part of that is a common problem in an action show; most of the really interesting music happens at the bottom, using the lower frequencies. But the lower frequencies are also where you'll usually find explosions, clashing, crunching, banging and the like...so sometimes the two get muddy. You clear out one or the other as much as you can, but sometimes it overlaps and you get fuzziness in the track.

  As for mixing it loudly...yeah, I've generally done that on B5. I like my music loud.

• I like the music. I like the edginess of it. I wouldn't do that particular style on a regular basis, because I think it would wear thin after a while, but for this movie it was right. He's doing more thematic stuff for the series, but keeping the approach of using a variety of styles, including Chinese scales and stuff, which makes the episodes sound nifty and exotic.

  So yeah, I like it...but I also like the kind of edgy, growly stuff Ry Cooder did for LAST MAN STANDING, so go figure.

• I spot the music on everything, from movies to the episodes. That means sitting with the composer and saying "music in at 1:07:13 (one minute, seven seconds, 13 frames), out at 2:23:18." When we did the pilot, I wasn't sure how much music it did or didn't need, never having done this before, so I went drier than I should have.

  In the case of CtA, I knew we were going to have some wall-to- wall music later, so I held back a bit earlier on, otherwise you do way too much to fit in, and you over-burden the composer. River was also spare at the top.

• What's "ramming speed?"
  Ramming Speed.

  If you are approaching a target at speed X, you still have a chance to peel away at the last moment. If you are approaching a target at the top speed your engines can provide, such that you cannot turn away or be deflected, that's speed Y. Speed Y is ramming speed.

• "Seems an odd order. Why not maximum speed or full speed ahead? Does EF rules provide for ramming of other starships?"

  Because it also implies "...and we're going to HIT that ship." Ramming speed says both. You could say, "Give me maximum speed, set a course to RAM the ship," or you could say "Ramming speed." Same exact content, shorter terms. Brevity is our friend. Pedantry is not.

• Will the disease be totally implausible to people who know about biology?
  We have covered all three of the virus concerns in the way we built this particular virus, thanks to help from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which consulted with us on its design. Trust me, it's solid, and totally thought-through.

• The novelization says Galen was an apprentice to Elric. Is that official or just the author's invention?
  Yes, that's canonical.

Last update: March 15, 1999