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

Overview

Earthgov decides Sheridan's fate. Delenn makes a remarkable proposition to the League of Non-Aligned Worlds. Garibaldi searches for Lise. Denise Gentile as Lise. Rance Howard as David Sheridan. Beata Pozniak as President Luchenko. Walter Koenig as Bester.

P5 Rating: 8.90

Production number: 421
Original air week: October 20, 1997

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Tony Dow

Plot Points

• Delenn has overseen the coming together of the nonaligned worlds, the Centauri, the Minbari, the Narn, and Earth into a new Interstellar Alliance, and Sheridan has been elected its first president. The Alliance, which among other things promises to share advanced technologies like artificial gravity with Earth, is a confederation whose members retain most of their sovereignty, aside from certain rules of conduct. Its armed forces are the Rangers and the White Star fleet, and its temporary headquarters are on Babylon 5 until permanent facilities are built in the Minbari city of Tuzanor (novel "To Dream In the City of Sorrows.")
• Sheridan only used 30 telepaths out of 100 to attack the destroyer fleet ("Endgame.") The rest, including Bester's lover Carolyn Sanderson, remained on Babylon 5.
• Clark has been succeeded by President Susanna Luchenko of the Russian Consortium.
• Ivanova has been promoted to captain and reassigned to shake down an experimental new Earth military vessel, a Warlock-class destroyer, for one year.
• Londo has been asked to return to Centauri Prime; the Regent is ill and after his death the royal court plans to name Londo the next Emperor.
• Garibaldi and Lise are together, and she has apparently inherited some or all of William Edgars' money.
• Sheridan and Delenn have been married.
• Sheridan's father has been released; Clark's forces never captured his mother.

Unanswered Questions

• Did all the nonaligned worlds join the Alliance?

Analysis

• Delenn's reply to Lennier's comment about unrequited love can be read either of two ways: that she is indeed oblivious to his feelings for her ("Ceremonies of Light and Dark") or, more likely, that she loves him too, albeit not in the same way she does Sheridan. The latter interpretation seems to have been lost on Lennier if true.
• Sheridan knew about the telepath virus ("The Face of the Enemy," among others.) How many more have been told? Will its existence become common knowledge, and if so, will the fact that it's known to be possible prompt enemies of the Corps to start trying to duplicate it?
• Bester goaded Sheridan about Garibaldi by telling him that only a scan performed by a member of Psi Corps would be admissible in Earth court if Garibaldi's memory were used as evidence. The implication was that since Bester controls the Corps to some degree, no Corps telepath would cooperate. But Lyta is now a Corps member, officially anyway ("The Exercise of Vital Powers") and is certainly no friend of Bester's. To refute her credentials in court, he'd have to reveal the deep-cover program he's using to give her the appearance of Corps membership.
• Sheridan told Bester he knew what it was like to lose someone, only to find them again and lose them again, clearly a reference to Anna ("Z'ha'dum.") He said he'd never wish that on anyone. But in a sense, he's putting Delenn through the same ordeal over a much longer timespan: she lost him at Z'ha'dum, got him back thanks to Lorien, and knows that in 20 years she'll lose him again ("Falling Toward Apotheosis.")
• The Alliance was most likely what Delenn was referring to in "War Without End part 2" when she told Sheridan that they'd built something that would endure for a thousand years. Whether that figure was just a generality on her part or reflected additional knowledge about the future isn't clear.
• Sheridan and Londo have followed similar paths: both of them rose up against their own governments to fight Shadow influence, and both were helped in their quests by resistance movements working against those governments (the Mars resistance in Sheridan's case, the Narns in Londo's.) Both of them arranged to have the captive populations freed after defeating the old order. Are their fates going to be similar as well? Londo sacrificed himself to kill his Keeper and allow Sheridan and Delenn to escape ("War Without End part 2.") Will Sheridan make a similar sacrifice to save someone? One could argue he already has, by dying on Z'ha'dum to save Centauri Prime ("Z'ha'dum.")

  All the major ambassadors on Babylon 5 have been offered leadership roles of some sort, in fact. In addition to Sheridan and Londo, G'Kar was offered leadership of his people in "The Long Night." Delenn was elected leader of the Minbari in "Babylon Squared." And Sinclair became leader of the Minbari of 1000 years past in "War Without End part 2." Kosh is apparently an exception, though for all anyone knows, he already was the leader of the Vorlons.

  Perhaps not coincidentally, all the major ambassadors have been willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Delenn was willing to die to stop the Minbari civil war ("Moments of Transition.") Londo was ready to give up his life to save Centauri Prime from the Vorlon planetkiller ("Into the Fire.") Sheridan ordered a suicide run to stop Earth from being razed by a defense platform ("Endgame.") G'Kar offered to return to Narn and face certain death to save the families of the Narn on Babylon 5 ("A Day in the Strife.") Kosh forfeited his life when he arranged for the Vorlon fleet to attack the Shadows ("Interludes and Examinations.")

• Ivanova apparently only gets promotions when her commanding officers leave: she went from Lt. Commander to Commander when Sinclair left Babylon 5, and from Commander to Captain when Sheridan resigned Earthforce.
• Has Babylon 5 reverted to Earth ownership? If so, who's in command now that Sheridan is no longer a member of Earthforce? Presumably Corwin is in charge temporarily until a new commander is assigned.

Notes

• Both Clark and Sheridan were succeeded by Russian women after their deaths (though Sheridan didn't remain dead.) Both women have similar first names.
• President Luchenko's comment about "the better angels of our nature" was a reference to the last line of Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address, in which he urged the United States not to lapse into civil war.

jms speaks

• "If this had been it, I would've walked away with a great big smile and a full heart."

  Exactly..it doesn't *end* the story, as people kept saying, "Oh, the arc is being finished in year 4," it provides a sense of *resolution*, which is different altogether, and leaves plenty of room for other planned stuff.

• President Luchenko's accent sounded fake.
  I love comments like that.

  Beata, who played the President, is a native-born Russian.

  Ed. note: Beata Pozniak was actually born in Gdansk, Poland, not Russia. The accent is her own, however.

• If Marcus had survived, it would have been a copout.
  As for Marcus, that's precisely the point. If we do what we do to Ivanova, then let her get bailed out, then do the same for Marcus, it becomes a double-cheat, and that's not fair to do to the audience. If you bail her out but only at great cost to someone else, it's not a cheat on either level.

  And yeah, generally, if you follow the threads, you can pick up on where things are going. It's something I learned on Murder, She Wrote, where at the end, when the killer's been revealed, you should be able to back up the tape, watch it again, and this time see all the little bits that point to his (or her) identity. It's basically about playing fair with the audience.

• It was hard doing that to the character [of Marcus], but it was the only way to handle the situation with any integrity and honesty. Very hard to write.

• Marcus was a martyr waiting to happen, looking for something worth throwing his life away on because he could find little worth in his own.

• "In the scene with Franklin and the very upset Ivanova, when she uses the word "boffed" (like Marcus), was this intended as just a cute scene or a hint that the transfer would have had lasting effects?"

  No, nothing more was intended than what was seen.

• Why did Lennier tell Delenn what Ivanova said?
  Because Lennier is quite familiar with the concept of unrequited love, and because hope burns eternal.

  Which is probably the most damnable part of unrequited love.

• Was the shot of Claudia Christian at the end from another episode, inserted when she decided not to return?
  No, that's a new shot (Claudia at the window). She was shot for that episode for that voice-over...we just changed one line. The basic thrust was that she was going to take some time to *decide* whether to take on B5, or to take on a Warlock class destroyer. So we just went with the decision.

• What was different about the closing shot?
  The only really different thing about the shot is the length of it; usually our shots average 5-8 seconds; that one was about 15 seconds, so you have more time to get used to what you're seeing, and absorb it, and make it real.

• Everything's wrapped up now. What's left to do in season five?
  Things that *could* show up (leaving in some ambiguity just to keep some surprises):

  The start of the telepath war
  The start of drakh war
  Londo's fate on Centauri Prime
  The first year trying to make the Interstellar Alliance work
  Inter-faction fighting among the Alliance members
  The development of Mars as an independent state
  The legacy of William Edgars' black projects
  Fallout from the civil war, and the feelings about it
  How Lennier, Sheridan and Delenn will get along now

  How's that just for starters?

• Will we see Luchenko again?
  Would love to use her again.

• The Rangers are independent in authority, answering only to Delenn and Sheridan and the members of the Alliance council and advisory board. (In roughly descending order.) But their jurisdiction is exclusively in interplanetary situations between various member races. Each member race has the sovereign authority to govern its people in its own way.

  The closest comparison is that overall, the states are free to enact their own laws, but the US Government has sole claim over international matters. Except here the states would have far more autonomy than is currently the rule; more like pre-Civil War America.

• If you'd known there'd be a fifth season when you wrote the episode, would Delenn's speech have changed?
  I don't know if I would've done her speech differently or not, to be honest...knowing it now, I'm not sure how I'd improve it.

• Is Sheridan and Delenn's bed horizontal or tipped up in the Minbari style?
  They will alternate, as you'll see soon....

Last update: December 6, 1999