And the Sky Full of Stars

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"And the Sky Full of Stars"
Babylon 5 episode
Episode no.Season 1
Episode 8
Directed by Janet Greek
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Production code106
Original air dateMarch 16, 1994 (1994-03-16)
Guest appearances
Episode chronology
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"And the Sky Full of Stars" is the eighth episode of the first season of the science fiction television series, Babylon 5 . It first aired on 16 March 1994.

Contents

Title

The episode title is derived from a line from Babylon 5's pilot episode: "…and the sky was full of stars, and every star was an exploding ship — one of ours." [1]

Plot

Two men meet aboard Babylon 5, and prepare a device. They gain the help of Benson, a security officer, who provides them with a power cell in exchange for paying off illegal gambling debts he owes. That night the two men abduct Commander Sinclair and use the device on him. Sinclair finds that he is trapped within a virtual reality illusionary environment, in which one of his captors demands to know what happened to him at the Battle of the Line, the final battle in the Earth-Minbari war ten years earlier. Sinclair was leader of a squadron of fighters which was ambushed by Minbari vessels. While the rest of his squadron was wiped out, Sinclair managed to survive, though having lost a day's worth of memories. His captors want to know what he saw, in order to discover why the Minbari suddenly surrendered after Sinclair's disappearance.

Meanwhile, security chief Michael Garibaldi discovers that Sinclair is missing, and orders security teams to search the station. When he learns Benson is on one team, and that his gambling debts have been paid off, Garibaldi suspects Benson knows about Sinclair's disappearance. Benson returns to Sinclair's captors and begs for help, but they kill him and throw his body out through an airlock. The body is later found by the station staff, allowing them to narrow down the likely area where Sinclair is kept.

Meanwhile, Sinclair struggles to fight off his captors' influence on him, but they eventually break through to his subconsciousness. Sinclair relives his experiences of the Battle of the Line. After his fighter was damaged, Sinclair was taken aboard a Minbari vessel and was taken to the Grey Council, the ruling body of Minbar. Sinclair demanded to know who they were, and pulled the hood off one of them, to reveal Delenn. The Grey Council knocked Sinclair out, scanned him, and returned him to his ship so as to be found by human forces. The trauma of reliving the event for Sinclair enables him to escape his bonds, slamming the device into one captor, shocking him, and stunning the other one. As Sinclair runs, he is still heavily sedated and experiences hallucinations of the Grey Council instead of the regular station staff, and threatens to shoot any that cross his path. Garibaldi sets off to stop him, as does Minbari ambassador Delenn. At the Zocolo, Garibaldi tries to convince Sinclair of his hallucinatory condition, but when Delenn appears, Sinclair recognizes her. He breaks out of his trance in time to kill the pursuing captor.

Dr Franklin helps purge the sedatives from Sinclair's body. Learning that Earth's government has taken custody of the surviving captor, Sinclair tries to interview him before he is taken away, but discovers he has no memories of what happened. Sinclair goes to see Delenn, who asks if he remembered anything he saw; Sinclair feigns that he had forgotten it and leaves, only to record his memories in his personal log that night. A Minbari official approaches Delenn to see if Sinclair had remembered anything, saying that if he should ever recall his encounter with the Grey Council, he must be killed. [2]

Production, Visual and Sound Effects

Cast

The role of Knight Two was played by English actor Christopher Neame. Neame appeared in a number of BBC dramas, including a number of roles in series set during World War 2. He played Lieutenant Dick Player in Colditz , Flight Lieutenant Jim Curtis in Secret Army , and also played Marc Antony in The Cleopatras . Neame later moved to the United States and appears in guest roles in a number of series, including Star Trek: Enterprise . The role of Knight Two was originally offered to Walter Koenig, best known for he portrayal of Pavel Chekov in the original Star Trek series and films. Koenig was unable to accept at the time for health reasons, but was later cast as the recurring character of Bester in "Mind War". The role of Knight Two was then offered to The Prisoner star Patrick McGoohan, who likewise wished to accept, but was not going to be in the country at the time of filming, and also had to decline the role. [3]

Actor Judson Scott played the character of Knight One. Scott is known for playing Khan's chief henchman in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan , and became friends with Ricardo Montalbán, who played Khan. Scott has appeared in a number of stage productions, and in television science fiction and action series. His roles have including playing the lead character in the short-lived series The Phoenix (1982 TV series) , Lieutenant James in the 1984 series V , and several characters in the Star Trek franchise. [4]

Sound and Visual Effects

The Babylon 5 makeup department involved in this episode, consisted of the team from makeup design company Optic Nerve. The team – Everett Burrell, Greg Funk, Mary Kay Morse, Ron Pipes and John Vulich – won the 1994 Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Makeup for a Series for episode 5 of the season, "The Parliament of Dreams" [5] The initial design for the Minbari characters was created by production designer Steve Burg, with the Optic Nerve team finalising the design. [6]

For its visual effects scenes, Babylon 5 pioneered the use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) scenes – instead of using more expensive physical models – in a television series. [7] This also enabled motion effects which are difficult to create using models, such as the rotation of fighter craft along multiple axes, or the rotation and banking of a virtual camera. [8] The visual effects were created by Foundation Imaging using 24 Commodore Amiga 2000 computers with LightWave 3D software and Video Toaster cards, 16 of which were dedicated to rending each individual frame of CGI, with each frame taking on average 45 minutes to render. In-house resource management software managed the workload of the Amiga computers to ensure that no machine was left idle during the image rendering process. [9]

The flashback sequence from the Battle of the Line contained a large number of CGI sequences, with 25 scenes in the space of one and a half minutes. For comparison, the entire 90-minute pilot episode only had around 55 CGI sequences. [10] The Starfury fighters were designed by Burg as a function-driven design for a plausible zero-gravity fighter. The positioning of the four engine pods at the extremities of the craft was inspired by Ron Cobb's design for the Gunstar fighter from The Last Starfighter . [11] The basic shape of the Starfury's wings was inspired by an earlier unused design by Burg for a military robot fighting machine, which he had originally designed for Terminator 2 . This was merged with the multi-engined configuration to form the Starfury design.

Despite having a similar wing configuration to the Star Wars X-Wing fighter, this was purely coincidental. Burg recollected, "The X-Wing is a very long needle shaped craft from most angles, whereas the Starfury is a very blunt shape. The X-Wing is also very much configured like a WWII fighter. Ideal for the 'Star Wars' universe but not what we were going for on Babylon 5." [12] Burg also points out that the Starfury's wings/struts were not aerodynamic: they were there to lever the engines away from the center of mass. [13]

The Minbari cruisers were designed by the animators at Foundation Imaging, with Ron Thornton contributing to the design. Thornton indicated that the design was influenced by the proud and impressive appearance of the lionfish, but was also designed to be more vertical, like the sunfish. [14]

Music for the title sequence and the episode was provided by the series' composer, Christopher Franke. Franke developed themes for each of the main characters, the station, for space in general, and for the alien races, endeavoring to carry a sense of the character of each race. [15]

Reviews

Rowan Kaiser, writing in The A.V. Club , points out the dichotomy between an episode which, on its own, fails to answer the question of why the Minbari surrendered; and the episode as part of a larger story where there will be a payoff for what we see here. He writes, "There's no way to understand 'And The Sky Full Of Stars' as an episode that exists on its own ... We now know that two of our main characters were involved, but precisely what they were involved in is a mystery." [16]

He continues, "In that sense, 'And The Sky Full Of Stars' is a disappointment on an individual level. It started to move toward giving us a resolution as its main point, but it didn't give us that. Yet I still find 'And The Sky Full Of Stars' to be compelling on its own ... In the end, we get more information, but full answers are lost." [16]

Elias Rosner, writing in the entertainment magazine website Multiversity Comics, in intrigued by the questions that the episode raises. He comments, "What is Delenn up to? Why is a member of the Grey Council acting as an ambassador? And why can he never know what they did to him? The questions are raised and they're all good ones. Certainly the strongest part of the episode." [17]

While Kaiser regards the episode as moving "entertainingly quickly", [16] Rosner finds the episode not very engaging. [17] He does feel it is redeemed by a frank discussion between Sinclair and Garibaldi about how people lie out of insecurity: "Everyone lies. The innocent lie because they don't want to be blamed. The guilty because they have no choice. Find out why he's lying." [17]

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References

  1. ↑ Straczynski, J. Michael (1993-02-22). "Babylon 5: The Gathering". Babylon 5. Babylonian Productions. PTEN/Warner Brothers.
  2. ↑ Straczynski, J. Michael (1994-03-16). "And the Sky Full of Stars". Babylon 5. Season 1. Babylonian Productions. PTEN/Warner Brothers.
  3. ↑ Straczynski, J. Michael (13 March 1994). "JMS: "Mind War" was mind blowi". JMSNews. J. Michael Straczynski. Archived from the original on 2022-04-08.
  4. ↑ "Starfest 2003 Guests". Starfest.com. Archived from the original on 2006-11-17.
  5. ↑ "Television Academy: Babylon 5: Awards & Nominations". Television Academy. Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Archived from the original on 2022-04-09. Retrieved 2022-04-05.
  6. ↑ "Interviews: Steve Burg, page 4". B5 Scrolls. Tom Smith. 2019. Archived from the original on 2022-04-08.
  7. ↑ Britt, Ryan (11 July 2019). "5 Things that Babylon 5 did that changed science fiction forever". www.syfy.com. SYFY Media LLC. Archived from the original on 2021-10-09. And though this may seem shocking now, in the early and mid-'90s, CGI was not the default for sci-fi special effects. Most big sci-fi shows and movies (like Star Trek) all still used physical models, which are notoriously more expensive. But all of Babylon 5's spaceships and space stations were made in a computer.
  8. ↑ "Interviews: Ron Thornton". B5 Scrolls. Tom Smith. 2016.
  9. ↑ "How 24 Commodore Amiga 2000s created Babylon 5". GenerationAmiga.com. GenerationAmiga. 30 August 2020. Archived from the original on 2020-09-22.
  10. ↑ Straczynski, J. Michael (13 March 1994). "Joe does not learn math in one episode..." JMSNews. J. Michael Straczynski. Archived from the original on 2022-04-18.
  11. ↑ "Interviews: Steve Burg, page 8". B5 Scrolls. Tom Smith. 2019. Archived from the original on 2022-04-08.
  12. ↑ "Interviews: Steve Burg, page 9". B5 Scrolls. Tom Smith. 2019. Archived from the original on 2022-04-08.
  13. ↑ "Interviews: Steve Burg, page 10". B5 Scrolls. Tom Smith. 2019. Archived from the original on 2022-04-08.
  14. ↑ "Sharlin Cruiser". B5 Scrolls. Tom Smith. 2019. Archived from the original on 2022-04-08.
  15. ↑ Straczynski, J. Michael (11 October 1993). "Next up is "Survivors."". JMSNews. J. Michael Straczynski. Archived from the original on 2022-04-06.
  16. 1 2 3 Kaiser, Rowan (29 June 2012). "Babylon 5: "The War Prayer"/"And The Sky Full Of Stars"". The A.V. Club. G/O Media Inc.
  17. 1 2 3 Rosner, Elias (11 July 2018). "Five Thoughts on Babylon 5's 'And the Sky Full of Stars.'". Multiversity Comics. Matthew Meylikhov.
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