As the Centauri war escalates, a Narn warcruiser seeks help from Babylon 5. Earth takes a position in the war. Keffer makes a terrifying discovery. Kosh takes a drastic step to save a life. Roy Dotrice as Frederick Lantze. John Vickery as Mr. Welles. Rick Hamilton as Mitch. Robin Sachs as Na'Kal.
P5 Rating: 9.40 Production number: 222 Original air date: August 15, 1995 (UK) November 1, 1995 (US) Written by J. Michael Straczynski Directed by Janet Greek
Think twice before reading what's below if you haven't seen the episode -- major spoilers follow!
Welles, on the other hand, is very much caught up in the management of the NightWatch. He has no conscience pangs about the betrayal of individals. While he is a co-director of The Ministry of Peace, he probably has more real power than Lantze because of what he is managing. He is also gifted with the art of manipulating people as shown with both Zack and Sheridan (although the latter is more aware of the manipulation and capable of defending against it.)
Might Sheridan's less starry-eyed view of the Vorlons be due in part to the training he's been getting from Kosh, the point of which (for a while, anyway) was to help Sheridan and Kosh understand each other? Put another way, has Sheridan learned to fight the legends he believes Kosh's appearance is intended to evoke?
Sheridan's movement away from the station's axis is due to three factors. First, the tram wasn't exactly at the axis, so it was revolving at some speed. Just as a rock flies in a straight line if you swing it on a piece of string then let go, Sheridan would have moved toward the ground even if he'd just stepped gingerly out the door.
Of course, he didn't; he leapt. Depending on whether the door was facing into or against the station's spin, this might have either accelerated his descent or slowed it. The fact that he appeared to not leap very hard suggests that the door was facing spinward and he wanted to stay in the air as long as possible.
The final factor is the atmosphere, which rotates in the Garden along with the ground and everything else. As Sheridan fell, he would be pushed along by air revolving at speeds closer and closer to the speed of the ground; this would tend to accelerate his fall, since it would cause him to revolve more quickly. So the longer he fell, the faster he would be going. That effect would probably be fairly weak for most of the fall, so it might not have accelerated him to high enough speed to cause serious harm when he hit the ground.
Unfortunately, his inertia would keep him from achieving ground speed even with the push of the wind, so as Ivanova said, he would have hit the ground as if he'd fallen out of a car on the freeway, even if his rate of descent alone wouldn't have been enough to hurt him seriously.
In any case, Sheridan is probably quite glad Kosh chose that moment to make an appearance.
This stuff is going to involve every one of our EFX divisions, compositing, makeup, prosthetics, costuming, practical effects, mattes, CGI; the visual EFX meeting was the biggest we've ever had, and everyone's both sober and excited. Because there are only two options when you go for something this substantial: either you're going to do something truly amazing, or you're going to massively fall on your face. For our EFX people, this is kinda like boarding the wildest ride at Magic Mountain and leaving off your seatbelt on a dare...it's one hell of a ride, but boy is it dangerous.
But as Ron Thornton pointed out: no guts, no glory.
This is also going to be a Janet Greek-directed episode, who for various reasons was only available to do our first episode prior to this, but she's kind of our good luck charm, and we wanted someone who's done as much for us as she has to come in here and helm this...because it could probably break a less experienced (on B5) director.
*****
Okay. Here it is. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna reveal Kosh.
I'm not kidding. Bail now if you're looking in and don't want to know.
No backsies.
I mean it.
Last chance.
Okay, this is it.
"If he leaves his encounter suit, he will be recognized."
"By who?"
"Everyone."
"The First Ones taught the younger races, explored beyond the rim, built civilizations...."
Kosh is what you're pointing at when you say "That's Kosh."
"Yes, the Vorlons have been to Earth, the Vorlons have been everywhere. The Vorlons *are*."
They *are*.
"For centuries, the Vorlons have helped the younger races, guiding us, and --" "And manipulating us?" "It is, as you say, a matter... of perspective."
They *are*...a matter of perspective.
Each race who sees them, sees something out of their own past, their own legends, religions, faiths. A being of light, if you will, but a Drazi sees the Drazi version of that, Droshalla; the Minbari see the Minbari version of that, Valeria; humans see a human version of that.
It is the mirror in which we see our beliefs reflected, but is it the progenitor of those beliefs...or an implanted image that overlays that vision on top of the true form of the Vorlon? Is it revelation, or is it manipulation?
The Vorlons are a cypher. The Vorlons are a matter of perspective. The Vorlons are guides...or users, emissaries or puppeteers, who wish to be seen a certain way, so that we will react properly.
Is this good, or is this bad?
And the truth is, even though you have seen a Vorlon, have you seen THE Vorlon, the one behind the image that dances somewhere between your optic nerve and your brain?
Or to quote a message I left long ago, paraphrased from memory, "The hand Sinclair sees is not the hand Sinclair sees, and the hand Sinclair sees is not the same hand someone else in the room sees, and is not even the hand that that person sees."
The Vorlons Are.
Actually, no, not really; Kosh is what you see when you look at him. And if a Drazi looks at him, the Drazi sees something different than a Minbari; yes, a being of light, BUT....
Is that what they actually ARE, or how they have programmed us to react when we see them? As Sheridan said, have we been *manipulated* to seeing them a certain way, seeing a certain image? We may not be seeing what they ARE, but what they WANT us to see.
It goes a heck of a lot deeper than what it seems.
And in each case, re: Kosh, what they saw was not the *head* of their belief, but in essence a supporting being of light; it wasn't G'Quon, but G'Lan that G'Kar saw, which was a being that story tells us served G'Quon. So you wouldn't see the head of the religion, since there can only be one of those, and lots of Vorlons, but each tends to have a supporting cast, for lack of a better term. Those are what we perceive the vorlons to be.
And remember, we didn't see any other human's POV of Kosh but Sheridan's.
And who said they reproduce anymore?
Believe it or not, this one answer may add another layer to a scene in one of the last episodes of this season. You can infer it backwards once you see it, but now you'll have it going in.
The problem with pointing to the Nazis or the Gestapo exclusively is that it allows us the safety of saying, "Well, it happened just there, and only once, *we* could never fall for that."
Wrong.
In musical terms, it's almost a tonal piece, taking elements to which we respond, almost subconsciously, and then rearranging them into something that is, one hopes, a new construct. You can find here echoes of Vietnam, of Kennedy, of Chamberlain, of WW II, of Korea, of the Mideast; in a way, it's a thematic piece that touches how we have come to think of war, and conflict, across the development of the 20th century, and the role of the individual in that regard.
We have learned to think of war as something now on a huge scale, an entity in itself. Once upon a time, before the gatling gun and the automatic rifle, combat was something individual, even in larger wars, one person against the enemy...and that person was honored, one person could turn the tide against the enemy. In a world in which weapons of mass destruction exist, where then is the individual? Where then the bravery, the struggle, the triumph...and the failure? Where, fundamentally, is the responsibility?
All of that is intertwined with the storyline, and to communicate that I'm not averse to taking elements of history that resonate with that theme and reworking them, knowing that on a cellular level, we *recognize* that aspect, we've seen it...but now in a new context, we can see it differently, discuss its implications, *learn* from it.
This is one of the things I rarely talk about, because it's the kind of thing that is best left simply implied, or implicit, in the work, and because if you have to draw attention to something in the work, somehow I think it lessens it, because it works best unspoken. And because I guess it sounds kinda presumptuous, and high-falutin' and self-indulgent. But it's one the things that matters to me in the context of the story.
Didn't want to be heavy-handed about it, so I figured those who got it, got it; those who didn't, would see a nice candle scene which sets the mood, even if they don't get the full thematic/symbolic aspects that others would get.
(not a Talmudic scholar, but I play one on TeeVee....)
We've established that klaxons go off elsewhere in the station during an attack to warn civilians, but they aren't going off in C&C because they make it impossible to concentrate, as per military tradition (see "And Now For a Word" to confirm this).
There wasn't time to call Draal, and they can't begin relying on him for every problem; they have to be able to hold their own. You would only bring in Draal on something really major.
For the growing use of montage/intercutting...it's really just a process of continuing to learn my craft. So I try out and experiment with different techniques. While I love dialogue, and lots of it, I'm also coming more and more to appreciate moments where you *only* play the visuals, and the music, and get out of the way of the Moment.
Originally compiled by Jason Snell.