“Hunter, Prey”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Menachem Binetski
Season 2, Episode 13
Production episode 213
Original air date: March 1, 1995
It was the dawn of the third age… Sheridan and Ivanova are in Bay 13, which is where Kosh keeps his ship. Nobody goes to Bay 13, and indeed Ivanova warned Sheridan against doing so, but he’s curious (at least in part because of what happened between him and Kosh in “All Alone in the Night”). According to Ivanova, the maintenance crews steer clear of the place now, as the first ones to try to work there heard the ship talking to them in their sleep. Sheridan thinks that he needs to try to work harder to get to know Kosh and the Vorlons.
Garibaldi shows up wanting to talk to them both. It isn’t something he wants to discuss over a link, and definitely not something he wants to talk about in front of Kosh’s creepy ship.
Apparently, Dr. Everett Jacobs, the personal physician to President Clark, is missing, on the run, and being hunted by EarthForce security with orders to shoot to kill. Latest intel is that he’s on B5, which means the hunt is coming to them.
Sure enough, an EarthForce security agent named Derek Cranston shows up with a contingent of personnel, explaining that Jacobs had a high security clearance because of his closeness to the president, and he stole some classified information that badly threatens the Earth Alliance. Sheridan puts Garibaldi and his entire staff at Cranston’s disposal. They’re going to do a methodical search, level by level. When Allan points out that that’ll conservatively take forever, Cranston reveals that all high-ranking EarthDome personnel like Jacobs have short-range tracking implants. All they have to do is walk through with a scanner and then move on to the next place.
Garibaldi goes to Franklin, who studied under Jacobs at Harvard. Franklin thinks the notion of Jacobs being a traitor is the craziest thing he’s ever heard.
Sheridan sees Kosh in a corridor, and decides to start on his get-to-know-Kosh program right then and there. He directly but politely confronts Kosh about how the Vorlon spoke to him telepathically while he was a prisoner of the Streib. Kosh says he was trying to gain understanding.
After being briefed by Garibaldi on how the search is going, Sheridan sees a red ribbon tied to a post. He excuses himself and goes to meet with an EarthForce officer named Sarah, who works with General Hague. She reveals that Jacobs is not a traitor, and not a threat to Earth. He is, however, a big threat to Clark, because he has proof that Clark was not ill when he left Earth Force One right before it went boom, killing President Santiago. Sarah says that it’s vital that Sheridan get Jacobs safely off B5. Sheridan tartly points out that that would be a helluva lot easier to accomplish if he’d known all this before he gave Cranston free rein of the station and of the security staff. He absolutely cannot be seen to be overtly hindering Cranston, as that would be as bad in its own way as Jacobs being captured.
Sheridan reads Ivanova and Garibaldi in on this. Garibaldi immediately goes off duty and approaches Franklin. Since the doctor knows Jacobs, he’s going to help Garibaldi find him in downbelow. They’re dressed in civvies and Garibaldi is also wearing a fedora, which is a totally foolproof disguise.
Jacobs is, in fact, in downbelow. We see him trying to purchase a fake ID. However, his desperation is obvious, and that makes the merchants wary of him, as desperate people usually bring trouble. He’s mainlining stims as he’s afraid of going to sleep for fear that he’ll be caught while napping. Unfortunately, while Jacobs is able to evade security, he is unable to evade one of downbelow’s criminals, Max, who takes him hostage.
Franklin sees a merchant trying to sell Jacobs’ antique watch. Garibaldi intimidates the merchant into giving up Max. Garibaldi and Franklin are able to rescue Jacobs from Max’s sidekick Chase, but Jacobs reveals that Max has the data crystal with all the evidence on it. For his part, Max has already contacted Cranston and offered to sell Jacobs to him.
To everyone’s shock and awe, Kosh invites Sheridan to meet with him. They have a conversation that proves very frustrating to both parties, but eventually Kosh agrees to help Sheridan learn more about himself, so that the captain will be ready to fight legends.
Max returns to find Chase tied up and no sign of his prisoner. Garibaldi fires his PPG several times, always just barely missing Max, making it clear that he could shoot him cleanly any time. Max timidly gives up the crystal.
Cranston angrily asks why nobody told him that the internal scanners could be recalibrated to find a particular signal, and orders the scanners to be so recalibrated.
Sheridan meets with Garibaldi, Franklin, and Jacobs. They have until the scanners are rewired to get his posterior off the station. Garibaldi says it’s impossible, as Cranston’s people have all possible egresses covered, but Sheridan has an idea…
When the adjusted scanners are online, Cranston orders a sweep, but they don’t find Jacobs’ implant. Sheridan acts pissed that Cranston turned his station upside down and Jacobs isn’t even here. Cranston is vexed, as he was sure Jacobs was on B5. Then Kosh’s ship asks for permission to leave, and it goes, but Cranston wants it scanned. Sheridan is reluctant, as the Vorlons don’t like that, but Corwin does a scan, and they only detect one non-human life form. Cranston briefly toys with the idea of recalling the ship and searching it manually, but Sheridan’s litany of consequences to that—which boil down to “pissing off the Vorlons something fierce”—convinces him to back off that idea. When Cranston asks about Max and his offer to sell Jacobs to him, Sheridan points out that grifters are quite common in downbelow…
Once Cranston and his team have buggered off. Kosh’s ship comes back and disgorges Jacobs, who was in a medically induced coma. Franklin brings him out of it. The one life-form the scanners picked up was the ship itself, which is organic technology. Jacobs also says that while he slept, he would swear that the ship sang to him.
Sheridan gives Sarah the evidence. It’s not enough to bring charges against Clark, but it’s a very good start.
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan does quite a bit of proverbial tap-dancing and juggling trying to keep Cranston on-point and still make sure the right people find Jacobs first. At one point, he convinces Cranston that there’s a section of the station he might be hiding in called “downtown,” a name he made up right there on the spot, which he says is the area between the hull and the water reclamation system (a place where, in reality, nobody ever goes ever). That very handily delays Cranston under the guise of being cooperative.
Ivanova is God. When Cranston asks Ivanova why nobody told him about rejiggering the scanners, Ivanova sweetly replies, “You didn’t ask,” and also reminds him about the cliché involving getting more results with honey than vinegar.
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi thinks he can move easily through downbelow as long as he’s out of uniform and in a fedora because (a) he doesn’t spend much time in downbelow and (b) the people down there usually only see the badge. This is belied by the number of times he’s been in downbelow just in the show to-date, plus he, um, doesn’t actually wear a badge…
The Shadowy Vorlons. Kosh has been attending more council meetings since Sheridan was assigned, and also has obviously taken an interest in Sheridan. But it takes Sheridan pressing the point for him to actually do something about this interest.
Looking ahead. Kosh claims to want to ready Sheridan to “fight legends,” which is pretty obviously a reference to his very big role in the war against the Shadows. Given how imminent the threat is, one wonders why Kosh had to be practically put in a headlock to even talk to Sheridan about this, but whatever.
Welcome aboard. Two people who starred in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure are guests in this one: Bernie Casey (Mr. Ryan) as Cranston and Tony Steedman (Socrates) as Jacobs. Richard Moll, best known as Bull on Night Court and the voice of Two-Face on Batman: The Animated Series, plays Max, while Wanda De Jesus plays Sarah.
Plus we’ve got some recurring regulars: back from “Acts of Sacrifice” are Jeff Conaway as Allan (who’ll return in “There All the Honor Lies”) and Joshua Cox as Corwin (who’ll return in “And Now for a Word”), and back from “All Alone in the Night” is Ardwight Chamberlain as Kosh (who’ll also return in “There All the Honor Lies”).
Trivial matters. The last time the scanners were retuned to find a particular signal was in “A Spider in the Web,” used to find Abel Horn.
Hague’s cabal of EarthForce personnel trying to fight EarthGov’s creeping fascism was established in “All Alone in the Night,” which is when Sheridan, Ivanova, Garibaldi, and Franklin officially became part of it.
The suspicious nature of Santiago’s death and Clark’s just missing it has been a thing since just before it happened in “Chrysalis.” This is the first real evidence we’ve seen of the conspiracy beyond what Garibaldi learned in that episode.
Garibaldi reminds Franklin that the last time he vouched for someone, it resulted in death and destruction on a major scale, a reference to the arrival of Dr. Vance Hendricks in “Infection.”
Speaking of “Infection,” it was in that episode that we got the first mention of the notion of the Vorlons using organic technology.
While most of Kosh’s responses to Sheridan are his usual abstruse nonsense, he reacts with anger when Sheridan asks, “What do you want?” That was the same question that Morden asked the various ambassadors on behalf of the Shadows in “Signs and Portents,” and it was Mollari’s answer to it that pretty much led to the current Narn-Centauri conflict…
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“Well, maybe now you’ll admit that you were wrong about Jacobs?”
“I didn’t say I believed them.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t say you believed me, either.”
“I don’t believe anybody.”
“What a wonderful world you live in.”
“Yeah, well, the rent is cheap, the pay is decent, and I get to make my own hours. Now are you gonna help me or spend the next two days analyzing my lifestyle?”
—Franklin and Garibaldi arguing.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “You do not even understand yourself.” This episode suffers from an unavoidable problem—or at least was unavoidable once casting was finalized. There is simply no way for Cranston to be in any way convincing as an antagonist, or even as a person, when being (and I use this term loosely) “portrayed” by Bernie Casey and his wooden line readings. Cranston as written should come across as a brutally efficient professional. (As an example, look at how Michael O’Neill played Secret Service Agent Ron Butterfield on The West Wing or how Jonathan Banks played Mike Ehrmantraut on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Heck, look at how Walter Koenig plays Bester on this show…) I’d even settle for him being a bureaucratic tool, but Casey can’t even swing that. He’s just an automaton who brings absolutely nothing to bear on the character.
Casey’s somnolent performance drags the episode down a bit, but it’s still a generally effective story. I particularly like the way Sheridan dances between the raindrops, as it were, staying on Cranston’s good side and giving the illusion of cooperation while enabling Garibaldi and Franklin to do their work to find him before an army of trained security personnel manage it. And I enjoyed Tony Steedman’s portrayal of Jacobs as an intelligent, determined person who doesn’t let the fact that he’s completely out of his depth slow him down. Though it does get him in trouble that he only escapes because of the dumb luck of Franklin noticing the watch being sold. Plus, it’s nice to see the good guys getting a proper victory.
One plot point did bug me, though: why did Cranston agree to ransom Jacobs without once actually seeing Jacobs or just generally getting any proof that Max had him. Why did he just take some random shady dude at his word? Every other bit of Cranston’s behavior was that of a trained professional, but that was an amateur screwup. (Of course, if he got that proof, the plot doesn’t work, since Cranston needs to end the episode thinking Jacobs was never on B5.)
The Kosh subplot is mostly okay, but I find myself being frustrated in general on this rewatch with the parsimonious providing of important information. Knowing what’s coming, and how important Sheridan will be in the coming craziness, Kosh’s reluctance to even engage with him despite obviously knowing his importance is maddening. Having said that, I loved the whole mythology that has grown up around Bay 13, with the maintenance crews giving it a wide berth, and Garibaldi not willing to even talk about anything important in front of the Vorlon ship.
This is the last B5 Rewatch entry for 2024. We’ll be taking the next couple weeks off for the holidays, then be back on the 6th of January with “There All the Honor Lies.”
Thank you all for continuing to take this ride with me. I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect from watching B5 again for the first time in three decades, but I’m happy to say that most of the surprises have been pleasant ones, and just in general, it’s been great to re-experience this show again. Looking forward to continuing with season two and the great war coming upon us all in 2025…
We have now reached the point, if memory serves, where Straczynski writes all of the episodes for the 2 1/2 seasons. And, not coincidentally where the little side episodes that do not move the main story forward are gone. While still in that hybrid complete episode/continuing arc mode, it becomes much more the latter than the former. I am looking forward to the discussions.
We’re not quite there yet. The next episode is written by Peter David, and three episodes later is “Knives,” which is written by Larry DiTillio. After that, it’s all Straczynski until the eighth episode of season five.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I still find it kind bonkers that JMS took all that on himself.
JMS thought so, too – after the fact.
The Vorlon ship may be seamless, but that greenscreen work sure isn’t.
Jacobs kind of looks like Lee Van Cleef from back when he was on the short-lived TV series The Master
The way Bernie Casey delivers his lines makes it sound like he’s in the English dub of Gamera vs. Guiron.
Riffable moment
“Fine. No problem. You want mayo on that?”
Sure, but no pickles.
When Sheridan mentions Downtown, I really wanted to come up with a riff involving the Petula Clark song. But I couldn’t think of a fitting lyric off the top of my head.
For it’s day it was excellent CGI. Keep in mind that TV’s in the 90’s were 4:3 ratio with 480i resolution. Take a look at this beast from the late SD era:
https://crtdatabase.com/crts/sony/sony-kd-32fs170
Excellent by TV standards, yeah, but below the contemporary state of the art for feature-film CGI. Even for the day, the CG effects were visibly cruder-looking and less convincing than physical miniatures, but we accepted the tradeoff because the technology allowed for far more elaborate FX sequences than you could get with conventional techniques — longer continuous shots, more ships and locations, much freer ship and camera movement, more complex action and interaction, etc. It’s not that we found the shots more convincing on our lower-res sets; even on those sets, the artificiality was blatant. But that was an acceptable sacrifice, because it was the only way to get shots that elaborate on TV at the time.
I had the same reaction to the Arrowverse’s CGI superhero-action sequences over the past dozen years — on the one hand, they looked recognizably CG and cartoony, but on the other hand, it was impressive how much big, elaborate comic-book action they were able to pull off, so that made up for the lack of photorealism.
When Sheridan mentions Downtown, I really wanted to come up with a riff involving the Petula Clark song. But I couldn’t think of a fitting lyric off the top of my head.
Cranston: Downtown?
Sheridan: That’s where the fun is.
What screen you actually watching Bab5 on? I first watched this on what I think was like a 28 inch TV that didn’t have high-def or any of the features we take for granted today. They had no idea I would one day be watching this on a 75 inch TV with all the bells and whistles, so when it comes to the CGI I just try to use my imagination.
For this specific viewing, the DVD release on my laptop.
It’s true that Bernie Casey’s delivery is wooden, it always is. Maybe he took a few too many hard tackles in his first career. But somehow, I always seem to like him in whatever he does.
Richard Moll is also an odd casting. When this first aired, it was nearly impossible to see him as anything but Bull, who was a sweet, gentle soul. That makes it hard to buy him as a vicious thug. On the other hand, it makes it a little easier to buy Max crumbling so quickly after a few PPG shots fired in his general direction.
Garibaldi’s fedora may not be the greatest disguise, but I’m 99% sure there’s at least one Daffy Duck cartoon in which Daffy wears a similar hat when playing a detective. Even if there weren’t, Garibaldi is absolutely the kind of guy who would buy into the noir gumshoe mystique and get himself one because of his profession.
This episode also does a pretty good job at showing us that Garibaldi and Franklin have developed a friendship, probably going back to the bagna cauda incident. They’re pretty easy with each other. Also, the different ways they eat their granola bars is some nice, subtle characterization.
I assumed the fedora was a somewhat clever double bluff. Its begging to be noticed but as they’re interrogating people that’s going to happen anyway – at least this way people will remember the hat and not the face under it.
Also it effectively hides Garabalbi’s distinctive bedraggled toilet brush missing half its bristles haristyle.
“Isn’t that Garibaldi under that fedora?”
”He looks ridiculous.”
”He must be trying to go undercover.”
”What do you think he’ll do if we visibly recognize him?”
”i dunno, but I sure don’t want to find out. Pretend the disguise is perfect!”
Hey. Nobody looks ridiculous in a fedora. And Garibaldi’s is the exact same style as mine, although mine’s gray. (It’s a Stetson that was labeled as an “Indiana Jones authentic hat” when I bought it in 1985.)
But Moll was cast as Bull because he was big and intimidating, and that was Bull’s defining trait in the first season, as in the episode where he was upset that the Big Brothers wouldn’t let him mentor a kid because he was too scary. The whole joke was that he was this towering Frankenstein’s Monster of a bailiff who was a sweet and innocent soul within. But that was a departure from the meanies and thugs that Moll tended to get cast as due to his size and look. Max was simply casting to type.
I don’t disagree with you or krad. But after 9 seasons of Night Court, it was really hard not to see Bull. I guess the casting wasn’t really odd, just not successful for me because of that. Also today, with the beard, there’s some John Fetterman vibes. Overall, not enough menace for my taste.
But by 1995, I’d seen him in enough other heavy roles and heard him do brilliant work as Two-Face, so Max wasn’t incongruous to me.
Moll was, at this stage, taking roles that were as far from Bull as possible. After Night Court but before B5, you also had his voice work as Two-Face on B:TAS, and his playing the evil Immortal Slan Quince in the pilot episode of Highlander: The Series and a cyclops on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Clark really didn’t commit to the bit. All he had to do was “accidentally” break his leg or otherwise harm himself for real, then his cover story would be a lot better.
called “downtown,” a name he made up right there on the spot, which he says is the area between the hull and the water reclamation system (a place where, in reality, nobody ever goes ever).
It ends up not mattering that much, but this is a strange bit of business. Sheridan claims that they’ll have to burn through the memetic number of 47 pressure doors to search “downtown,” as those levels have been sealed off since the station went online. It doesn’t seem to occur to the searchers that if they have to burn through doors to get somewhere, then their target had no way of getting there first. Always vaguely possible he found some secret passage in, but surely this would be the literal last place to look because it’s far more likely he’s blending in with the crowd. Yet Cranston takes the bait like a sucker.
He sucked in The Maquis Pt I/II and he absolutely stinks up the joint here – HOW did Casey keep getting jobs?
This one always comes across as a bit clunky for me. It feels like the casting in general was a bit off. Ben Casey is a big part of that, but I also struggled a bit with Richard Moll and Wanda De Jesus. The plot itself covers some important ground in the movement against Clark, though, which I appreciated after “All Alone in the Night”.
One thing that this episode highlights, however, is the oddity of the Kosh-Sheridan storyline this season.
I could buy that, to some degree.
It’s an interesting contrast to Londo/Morden
Also, what little we see of the training seems to be focused on getting Sheridan out of his comfort zone and reworking his way of seeing the world, for three possible reasons I can think of (if not all at once): subconsciously teaching him to resist the Shadow’s influence on Z’ha’dum; allowing him to become a host to Kosh’s essence after his death; and actually figuring out a completely out-of-the-box way to end the Shadow War.
My biggest question was, if it was that easy to scan a Vorlon ship and detect that it was alive, how the heck was Earth unable to prove they were alive?
Also, Garibaldi said he wouldn’t be recognized by the Lurkers in Downbelow, but when he and Franklin got there, they were surprised by the lack of security personnel in Downbelow (because of the “Downtown” diversion Sheridan had arranged). So why didn’t Garibaldi worry about being recognized by his own people?
I didn’t really mind Bernie Casey’s mediocrity here, since Cranston was a one-note character anyway, just an obstacle the heroes had to work around. If they had to cast a dull actor in this one, at least they chose the role he did the least harm to. Steedman, Moll, and de Jesus all did better work, if de Jesus was perhaps a bit melodramatic.
In addition to Casey and Steedman both being in Bill and Ted, Richard Moll and Wanda de Jesus were both in Spider-Man: The Animated Series. Moll replaced Martin Landau as the voice of Mac Gargan/the Scorpion in later seasons, and de Jesus played Dr. Sylvia Lopez, the colleague and love interest of Jonathan Ohnn in his namesake episode “The Spot.”
Garibaldi’s balding spot is so blinding that covering it up with a fedora just tricks everyone
I wonder if Garibaldi simply trusted his people to look the other way if they spotted The Boss wearing his Top Secret hat?
My biggest question was, if it was that easy to scan a Vorlon ship and detect that it was alive, how the heck was Earth unable to prove they were alive?
The way I see it, the Vorlons most likely had scrambler technology, similar to what the Minbari had. We know from “Points of Departure” that the Minbari used the tech throughout the war, making them that much harder to track and hit, and Earth was never able to improve their scanning technology or crack the scramblers even a decade later. When the Tragati came to B5, Sheridan noticed they were visible to sensors and scanners, which is how he figured out they wanted to be destroyed by Earth forces in an “honorable death”.
And in this case, if Sheridan went to Kosh to ask for help, one can assume Kosh would have gone along with the plan and allow the ship to register as a life form to B5 scanners in this instance.
So why didn’t Garibaldi worry about being recognized by his own people?
They’ve never seen him with a fedora, so problem solved there.
More seriously, if he likes to go incognito sometimes, he may have trained his people not to react to him if he’s out of uniform. Or even just a generalized, “if you see a plainclothes security person in a dangerous place, assume they’re undercover and don’t react” on a better safe than sorry basis.
“They’ve never seen him with a fedora, so problem solved there.”
Nah, that only works if you wear a pair of glasses too. And if you live in Metropolis.
I didn’t go into this during the “All Alone in the Night” discussion. Kosh’s vision was not only a way to reorient the mythology around Sheridan, but it was also the first major step towards the Sheridan/Kosh relationship. “Hunter, Prey” obviously dives full into it, setting up a lot of significant steps down the line. It’s kind of a crucial element of the show’s mythology, and one that doesn’t get talked about enough.
My take as to why Kosh kinda needs to be coerced by Sheridan into working with him – even though we know he has a clear interest in the Captain – is that it’s related to things we learn much, much later. Without getting into major spoilers, we learn enough later to put together that Kosh’s interest in Sheridan wasn’t exactly sanctioned by the Vorlon higher-ups. There was some conflict of interest involved, and Kosh had to deal with that, even if he wanted to push forward with the mentorship. Whether that was already in JMS’s mind by this point or he retroactively reworked it later in seasons 3 and 4 is up in the air.
My favorite part of the episode is certainly Sheridan bluffing Cranston with the Vorlon ship. A nice game of cat and mouse where our main characters slowly get ahead of the competition and end up a step ahead of everyone else. I also dig the extended look into Kosh’s ship and the CG – which at the time certainly looked mind-blowing. I totally buy that Jacobs heard the ship singing during his induced coma. A nice bit of mystery surrounding the Vorlons that does wonders for the show’s world-building.
I’d forgotten that was Ben Casey. Since the script is designed around him assuming Sheridan is cooperative, we never see much of his darker, angrier side until the very end. That’s when his acting shortcomings become clear. As we know from DS9’s “The Maquis”, he was never convincing as an antagonist.
I liked Moll as Max, but his reaction shots to Garibaldi’s near misses looked odd. I also didn’t think much of Wanda De Jesus. Her line readings all felt wrong. She either overacted or simply didn’t convey the feeling that everything was on the line. I wonder if some of this is due to the director. Menachem Binetski only direcred this and season 3’s “Voices of Authority”. If he wasn’t asked back for more, I’m assuming he wasn’t getting what JMS wanted out of his scripts. When a director delivered, they came back for more, whether it was Greek, Treviño or Vejar.
JMS said on Usenet that he was thinking of the musical sound effects Kosh makes before we hear his words in English. If those sounds are the Vorlon language, it stands to reason that the ship would sound similar, and that a human would interpret it as singing.
The actor is Bernie Casey. Ben Casey was the title character of a 1960s hospital drama.
Yeah, I really don’t know how I made that typo. I certainly never watched that show. Though I might have caught the name somewhere else while looking up Star Trek writers on Wikipedia or something like that, thus the mixup. Looking now, it looks as if half the TOS writers worked in it.
I never saw the show either, but I picked up references to it in later pop culture, since it was pretty big for a while, I gather. They referenced in Mystery Science Theater 3000 from time to time.
I liked this episode but my enduring memory of it is watching Garibaldi, while in downbelow with Franklin, having a snack and trying and failing to get the snack bar out of the wrapper without ripping the covering too much :)
I did *not* remember that, but I did notice it on this viewing.
Just wanted to thank you.
B5 is my favourite show, I deeply love the characters and the story, and I’ve rewatched it just the past few months with my family. It’s a delight to read your articles.
You’re very welcome, and thank you!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I found Sheridan’s personal quest to learn more about the Vorlons, not to mention the lovely design of Kosh’s vessel, more interesting than the political intrigue involving Dr. Jacobs, even though we got a lot more of the latter. I thought the scene where Garibaldi intimidates Max was particularly unconvincing, and not just because he was dressed in the least intimidating costume and wielding the least intimidating weapon imaginable. I was also confused as to why Cranston had the Vorlon ship scanned for life forms instead of the tracker that I assume would have given Jacobs’ presence away (unless I missed the part where that was removed). However, I did like Steedman in the role of Jacobs, and I thought Casey was at least serviceable in the role of Cranston.
“I was also confused as to why Cranston had the Vorlon ship scanned for life forms instead of the tracker that I assume would have given Jacobs’ presence away”
Because, as Cranston explained to Zack Allan and his team, the tracker emitted a “low-level signal” that was only detectable at very short range. As we saw, Zack’s scanner picked up Jacobs when he was a few meters away down the hall, but cut off when the lift’s metal door blocked it. So there’s no way the station’s sensors would detect it through the hull of a starship several kilometers away.
Oh, okay. I guess I just assumed that the scanners only had such short range because they were portable, as opposed to the station’s sensors.
Your interpretation makes much more physical sense. But in TV-world, signals apparently have inherent “range” rather than detectors having sensitivity thresholds.
I suppose the emissions could be massive particles that have a mean free path, or something, rather than electromagnetic.
If the signal could be blocked by a metal elevator door grille, I’m sure it could be blocked by a Vorlon hull.
Sure, a Vorlon hull is likely as effective at signal attenuation as a metal lattice work, although I guess that depends on what that hull is actually made of.
This all makes more sense if one assumes that the embedded devices are actually more like RFID tags and are really intended for the purpose of identity authentication, rather than location tracking. Then the short range and the fact that they are difficult to passively monitor would be sensible design properties.
Ivanova told Sheridan in the opening scene, “In the two years since Ambassador Kosh arrived in this thing, we’ve run a few surface scans, as much as we could get away with. We could barely even get through the skin.” So it was explicitly set up in advance that sensors wouldn’t penetrate its hull. The only reason the trick fooled Cranston is that he didn’t know that.
But that’s exactly what contradicts Sheridan’s line that they couldn’t prove Vorlon ships were organic. If they did surface scans, then shouldn’t they already have known the hull was organic?
Thanks for doing this Krad, I’ve been meaning to do a rewatch for a while and this was the perfect stimulus. I don’t comment too much because most of what I think gets covered by the discussions here, but I am enjoying going back over it. Never been blind to the faults even at the time, and it’s definitely of its time (with ambitions that are ahead of its time and some timeless themes) but there is still a lot to recommend it.
I didn’t watch much Night Court when it was on, mostly catching episodes here and there, so I didn’t pick up on Max being played by the guy who played Bull. So I didn’t have that distraction. Wanda De Jesus seemed to be overacting the part a bit, but IIRC a lot of shows and movies from that era tended to do that. Very anvilicious.
As noted in other comments the CGI looked a lot better on a 24″ 480i CRT than on a 48″ 4K OLED. I wonder if upscaling/redoing the CGI for modern systems might be one of the few reasonable uses of “AI”.
Good episode. Moved the overall plots along nicely, though all the other diplomats not being present is noticeable after last week.
When I’m watching remasters of these old shows, I prefer that they preserve as much of the original special and visual effects as possible, both because it serves as a record of what they achieved and because I think it adds to their charm. Honestly, the CGI has been one of my favorite things about watching this show for the first time.
Indeed, that’s what remastering is supposed to mean — creating the best possible print from the original master, making it look as faithful to the original as possible. TOS Remastered gave a lot of people the false impression that remastering means replacing the visual effects with more sophisticated ones, but the CGI shots in TOS-R were the only parts that weren’t remastered, because they replaced the original footage rather than just cleaning it up. And that was only done because the original FX film elements had been lost so the shots couldn’t be recomposited in HD. By contrast, for TNG Remastered, they did have the original film elements and were able to recomposite the FX shots, only having the replace the low-res video animation effects.
The only way to literally remaster the B5 CGI shots would be to go back to the original animation data and render it in higher resolution. Although I understand that data has been lost, so I guess some kind of upscaling is the only possibility. Still, I find the FX look good enough on my HDTV, no worse than they did originally. (I turned off all the automatic “image enhancement” features on my TV that usually just make the image worse, like motion smoothing and noise reduction and dynamic lighting, but the set still smooths out the scan lines in SD video.)
I believe they did perform some sort of image-sharpening/enhancing on the CG sequences for the B5 remaster.
There’s a guy who has some HD rerenders of the original vfx shots using what remains of the original assets and composition files. They look pretty good! https://youtube.com/@tomsmith6107?si=DstiebGK319hbnez
That’s remarkable
I’ve always said that if I won the lottery, I’d reach out to WB/JMS and offer to fund the entirety of upgrading the CGI on B5. So I better start playing!
Upgrade the original would be great but produce new series would be much, much better ;)
Isn’t that essentially what they did for the “remastered” version? Although, I guess that would have been with last decade’s upscaling tech.
I lean toward “yes” on the AI question for this usage, though I am typically anti-AI.
There are two issues in play – one is the intellectual property issue. Upscaling shouldn’t require an external training set, so there should be no issie.
The other is labour. Would the AI in this case credibly be taking jobs from animators? I doubt it, but this is where I see room for debate.
As I understand it, there are different kinds of AI, and the kind of “AI” software that generates text or images by sampling plagiarized content isn’t really artificial intelligence at all, but is only called that as part of the hype by the tech companies trying to push it as the next big thing, which really confuses the conversation about AI ethics. I think the kind of AI that would be used in this context would be actual AI, not replacing human labor but just a tool that human artists and techs would use to assist their work.
Time to listen to the holiday classics:
Hark the Herald Vorlon sing
You’re a mean one, Mr. Morden
Delenn Delenn Delenn, I made her out of clay
I saw Mommy kissing Sheridan
Happy Holidays to all and keep the fun going.
Happy New Year to all!