A Voice in the Wilderness, Part 1

Overview

Seismic activity on the planet near the station uncovers what may be signs of an extinct alien civilization. An old mentor pays a visit to Ambassador Delenn. The unrest on the Mars Colony intensifies. Louis Turenne as Draal. Curt Lowens as Varn. 
Sub-genre: Suspense/mystery
P5 Rating: 8.50

Production number: 120
Original air date: July 27, 1994
DVD release date: November 5, 2002

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Janet Greek

Backplot

  • Before Sinclair asked him to be security chief on Babylon 5, Garibaldi was working for the security division on Mars Colony, where he fell in love with a woman named Lise Hampton. Their relationship was rocky ("I was pretty messed up") and ended when he accepted the B5 assignment.
  • The Psi Corps has a secret training facility very close to one of the Mars Colony cities.
  • There is growing lack of purpose and dissatisfaction among the ordinary citizens on Minbar.
  • One of Londo's wives was a dancer at a club, who comforted him when he was depressed. He married her that night, and regretted it the next morning and ever since.
  • The planet the station is orbiting is called Epsilon 3.

Unanswered Questions

  • What came through the jumpgate?
  • What is the function of all the machinery buried beneath the planet's surface?
  • Why was the alien connected to the machines, apparently against his will?
  • How was he able to project himself to Sinclair and Londo on the station?
  • Was the defense system designed to prevent someone from finding the machinery, or to stop someone from rescuing the alien?

Analysis

  • The alien might well be native to Epsilon 3, since he was able to breathe the atmosphere once he was disconnected from the machinery. In the shuttle, Ivanova can be seen fitting him with a breather unit, presumably since the shuttle's air is Earth-style. Perhaps the proximity of Babylon 5 to Epsilon 3 is not a simple coincidence.
  • A possible inconsistency: if the missiles were being fired from within the fissure, how could Sinclair and Ivanova safely enter it? All their cover fire was high in the atmosphere; the missiles could have hit them before they had time to react once they were underground. Of course, it's possible the missiles are only useful above a certain altitude (true of some present-day surface-to-air missiles,) but in that case, why wasn't the fissure protected by short-range weaponry?

Notes

  • The scene with Ivanova and Sinclair crossing the tunnel bears similarity to a scene from the 1956 film Forbidden Planet. (See jms speaks)

jms speaks

  • We're halfway through filming the two-parter, "A Voice in the Wilderness," which is coming along nicely. From a CGI and sets point of view, this is the largest and most ambitious thing we've shot yet, with ore of each category than in any other episode.

  • In the two-parter, btw, [Christopher Franke] went absolutely full-out and gave us some of the best scoring of the season...gorgeous stuff, second only to either "Sky" or "Chrysalis."

  • ...Delenn has quite a few moments when she's laughing, and funny, but always in a dignified fashion; it's a strange but very appealing combination. (And there's one scene she's in that is played *absolutely* straight, but is fall-down funny.)

  • It was always intended to be a two-parter, and was written that way. Background: the B5 2-hour pilot has done VERY well overseas in cassette form. Many of the prejudices in the american press that caused us problems don't exist overseas (it's done *extremely* well in Japan on laserdisk, in Germany, and England, among others). So they asked if we could do a two-parter that could be sold as a two-hour episode overseas. By all means, sez I. So I structured it accordingly.

    Bit of B5 trivia: during the dead of winter last year, I got hit by the flu as badly as I've ever been hit. Temperature so high that I was near delerious at times, but refused to go to the hospital (I don't like doctors, and I was under deadline and couldn't afford the potential time away.) We're talking mondo sicko here. It was during this time that I wrote "The Quality of Mercy," a script which I have *no* memory of ever writing. I know it's here, and I know I wrote it on an intellectual level, but the process...gone in the fever.

    It was also around this time -- either at the top or bottom of the flu, I can't remember now -- that I wrote the "Voice" two parter. And here's the trivia part...this isn't the original two-parter that I wrote. My brain already deteriorating, I wrote something that even I could see wasn't up to par. Wrote the entire two-hour script. Printed it up, and gave it to Doug and John. Before they could even respond, I looked at it and decided it had to go. So I trashed the entire script. By now we were getting very close to pre-production, and I was getting sicker and sicker...but I more or less locked myself in my office, swallowed down massive amounts of vitamins (as much as my stomach could handle), kept forcing down coffee, and wrote 12 hours a day for about six days, after which the original draft was finished. Turned it in; did some mild polishes thereafter, but what was filmed was essentially what I turned in in first-draft stage. In this case I do remember some of the process because the only way I could focus was to keep the stereo up full blast; in the writing of "Quality," it didn't help...I was beyond recall.

  • I tried to develop a basic language structure for each of the races on B5. There are certain commonalities to the structure of names. I came up with some prefixes and suffixes, and assigned meanings to them, the same as real names. For instance, Rathenn (referred to by Delenn in "Voices") and Delenn have the same suffix, which has a specific meaning. You can break it down; Ner-oon (Legacies), Del-enn, Rath-enn, Der-onn, and so forth. The various parts do have specific meanings, but I generally keep that to myself, just for amusement.

  • I try not to hype shows that I like unless I know beyond a doubt that it's absolutely kick-ass. I like "Voice" a lot; it is the point at which we really start cranking, speeding things up as we barrel toward "Chrysalis." I think the CGi is nothing less than terrific, Christopher Franke went balls-to-the-wall and did an *amazing* job with the music, the performances are good. I like it a lot. I haven't commented upon it a lot because it's kind of the weird child in the brood; when I write, I generally write tight and fast. By the third act, you're *moving*. In this case, you have to pace yourself out *very* differently, so part of my brain keeps doing this "c'mon, speed it up, speed it up" when I'm watching the first part because I'm used to a different one-hour kind of pacing.

    Kathryn says I'm nuts. But then this is nothing new.

    Anyway, I do think it's pretty cool, and does a lot with virtual sets and composite sets.

  • Re: the elevator/transport tube gag...yes, we set this stuff up WAY in advance. The first time is in the tube where he tells Talia about his second favorite thing in the universe. The second time is in "Mind War" when he gives her the mental once-over and she belts him. And then we paid it off later with her line about him always being there.

    One nice thing about the way we're doing this show is that we don't just have to set up gags within an episode; we can set them up *weeks* ahead of time, as long as the payoff is self-contained, but then when you see the earlier shows, now you get more out of it.

  • A First Contact situation is one unlike any other: you don't want junior officers around to screw it up. Remember, the Earth/Minbari War began when a First Contact situation got screwed up. EA's policy is that it's better to risk two people than a full war, and those two people have got to be command-level personnel. Soldiers get killed; it happens. And yeah, you can leave a backup person at the shuttle ...but what if *he's* the one to make actual first contact? You're screwed. Ivanova and Sinclairhave been trained in this; in "Soul Hunter," Sinclair makes reference to the rules of First Contact Protocol. If you like, I'll elaborate on this in some future episode.

  • Re: the commander and Ivanova going...remember, this is a First Contact situation, and that requires the presence of at minimum one command officer under EA regs. Two is preferred. You don't want junior officers hanging around or taking hostile stances which might provoke a fight. Remember that the last major First Contact situation was with the Minbari, which went afoul and gave us the Earth/Minbari War. EA would rather lose two replaceable officers than start another war via misunderstanding or a fouled move. This is a part of their First Contact Protocol, referenced in "Soul Hunter." (I should probably expandupon this a bit in future episodes.)

  • RE: the big bridge shot...the storyboard artist came up with 3 shots we could use. One of them was a wide shot across a crystalline ground like area, through which a path can be seen at ground level, but it was narrow and still really didn't convey the scale of what I wanted. One other was not much different. The third was a downshot designed to pull back, and though I knew it would make folks say "Krell!", I knew that it was the right shot for that scene, so chose that one and decided to live with it.

  • It's real simple. Ron Thornton showed me three variations on the Great Machine shot. Because you're looking at a composite shot, you have to shoot either sharply angled down, or dead across, and full-figured, since you have to put them into another piece. That meant either a horizontal shot, or a 3/4's vertical shot.

    Two of the shots on the storyboards were horizontal; one showed our characters way off in the distance on a ribboned path lined by crystals. It'd be pretty, but it looked like another tunnel shot, and I wanted to show something that wasn't claustrophobic. Also, we'd be limited in the camera move, and our characters would look kinda like peanuts. Not terribly dramatic. The second shot just didn't work for me, I don't entirely recall the reason now. The third possibility seemed the most dramatic...it was a high angle shot, it had depth, it would let us start on our characters and do a camera move/pullback in post production, it worked on every level.

    My second thought was, "Shit, somebody's going to gig us on the Forbidden Planet thing." Nonetheless, it was the right shot, for the right reasons, and we chose to go with it.

  • How does one come up with stuff like Londo's song? Easy, really; you start by putting yourself in the position of an alien trying to understand us. And if you step back for a second, we do some *very* weird stuff. What he says about the song is exactly right in terms of its meaning.

  • Yeah...I love Londo's song, that whole scene. The director wanted to cut Ivanova's coda after her mantra, but I really felt we needed it, and it played perfectly with her Russian character, which tends to have this unusual relationship with higher forces (he said vaguely). I love character based humor, because it's very powerful once you know the characters, and it can really blind-side you if done right. Ivanova's reaction in the core area was about as real as would probably happen, but it's funny to hear her *say* it.

  • Londo and Garibaldi really are two sides of the same coin, in some ways. There's an odd friendship there, almost grudging; Londo had little to gain by cheering up Garibaldi, except a drink perhaps, but that's what friends do.

  • I love monologues. They are a legitimate part of any drama. The MTV generation has had its tastes so thoroughly bastardized by quick cuts, lowering the attention span further and further, that any bite of more than ten seconds and they start to wander, it becomes a block of words and they blur out.

    Go rent Network by Paddy Chayefsky, watch nearly any of the TZs by Rod Serling, go see "The Lady's Not for Burning" by Christopher Fry...all chockablock with moments where you park for a moment and let fly with a chunk of dialogue that smashes your head against the wall. Not every single exchange has to be foreshortened so that you lose the *impact* of what's being said. Because people's attention spans have been greatly foreshortened, suddenly more than 3 lines at a time is somehow viewed as wrong. It ain't. Just that lots of folks are afraid to try it, afraid to rely on just the words and the actors. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. But it's legitimate.

    The monologue in particular, done right, isn't just to convey information, it's to create a mood, to paint pictures with words, to expand on the obvious. Yeah, I could've just written, "The narns hate us, we hate them, it's equal math." But that doesn't carry the same meaning, the same sense as "so here we are...victims of mathematics." The use of the word "victim" connotes, hey, it's not my fault. Yeah, the former is shorter, but you lose the rhythms, the imagery, and the *sense* of what is intended. You could say, "The narn hate us." But to say, "if the narns gathered together in one place, and hated, all at the same time, that hatred would fly across dozens of light years and reduce Centauri Prime to a ball of ash," draws a picture, lends power to the emotion.

    Point being...I like 'em, there's nothing wrong with them, and they're staying.

  • Re: your suspenders of disbelief becoming unhitched....

    You will learn how the alien knows English in the next part of the two parter. (Hint: after all, he's been there for a long while, in a high-tech machine...you'd think maybe he could monitor transmissions.)

    I don't think the Sinclair or Ivanova did automatically believe him; but they also had no real reason *not* to believe him. And granted the place was going to hell, quakes and danger. He wasn't armed, he seems rather sick, had to be helped away, almost carried...they won't turn the station over to him, they'll keep him isolated on the station, but there was no reason *not* to try and help him.

    How do you know he's a good guy? You don't. But he wasn't exactly imprisoned in that thing; it was a support, more than anything else, a was shown by the fact that they were able to get him out fairly easily.

    (And yes, your first guess was correct, it is a life support gizmo.)

    Regards to your suspenders.

  • Once removed from his place, Varn was able to lead them back to their shuttle. It's not terribly dramatic, and I figured that was a fairly logical leap, so didn't feel the need to put in a scene which would just consist of Varn saying, "Left....now right...."

  • Ivanova's line: "We don't know if we can find our way back or not," not that it was closed off. So showing them wandering around to find another open tunnel seemed not dramatically interesting; you have to pick what's important and what's not, and what will work dramaticall on screen. If she had said "there's no other way out," then you would've had to show it. She didn't. One can also argue that the alien showed them which way to get out. Either way...all you've got is one hour to tell your story. You can't show everything, you have to let your audience assume some things.

    Roy: there is a quantum difference between a computer game and a TV show. It's not "lowest common denominator," which means making the story stupid; I'm saying that if you showed the missiles at full speed, YOU WOULD NOT SEE THEM AT ALL. And, again, there's nothing nearby with which to get a sense of how fast they're going, no landmarks, so it's very hard to convey that. Again, look at space footage; the shuttle is going *incredibly* fast...but as far as we can tell it looks nearly motionless, because there are no landmarks.

    Re: not explaining WHY the Starfuries can't enter the atmosphere, we did that. Ivanova says that they're not built to function within an atmosphere. Now, I could stop the scene for a long dissertation on the relative aerodynamics of planes with wings vs. starfuries, but here you say only what you have to. You show, don't tell.

    It seems like in the same breath, it's accused of catering to the lowest-common denominator, and being over the head of its viewers by requiring them to *think* about what they're seeing.

    Which means we're probably doing it right.

  • It seems to me that every generation thinks that things are changing, usually for the worse. In some cases, they may be right. The B5 story is set at a point in time where things are very much in a state of flux. Every so often, the wheel turns. Everybody's feeling a sense of growing uncertainty, of the chairs being moved around. They're right.

  • Actually, this was not the first B5 or Sinclair had heard about the escalating problem on Mars; remember, that was the main reason that Ben Zayn had been sent to B5 in "Eyes," smoking out sympathisers with the Free Mars movement.

  • The Mars Colony situation will be raising its ugly head on and off again for quite some time to come.

    Also, the fissure wasn't created by the quakes; Tasaki mentions it was artificial, but nudged open by the tremors.

  • No, a shuttle like this, which is designed to function in alternate atmospheres, and may have to evacuate groups, has about 7 standard or most common atmosphere cannisters. Medlab has the same thing, but in larger numbers. This is SOP on the show.

  • No, the sets weren't redresses of regular sets; they were built new and entirely for the two-parter; you can get a better look at them in the second part, and some angles of the first.