"Who Are You, Doctor?"

The Doctor attempted to rub his head, but was distracted by the strangely familiar tugging sensation on his other wrist when he reached up. He spent a moment or two moving each hand in turn, noticing the way that the other was forced to follow. As his vision cleared, he was finally able to place it--of course. His hands were cuffed together. That would explain it. And likewise, the pain in his head and foggy vision would imply being knocked unconscious. He smiled. For the first time since he'd come to Babylon 5, the Doctor felt like he was finally on familiar ground.

"You didn't answer the question," the voice rang out in strident, arrogant tones. "Who are you?"

The Doctor rolled onto his back and looked up at the man in Victorian dress. "I'm the Doctor. And you are...?"

"Unacceptable!" the man shouted. He cracked his cane against the ground and pain flared up through the cuffs, into the Doctor's arms, and across his entire body.

"Ah," the Doctor said mournfully, half to himself. "It's one of those sorts of conversations, then. Yes, you look the sort. Always a bit too excited about the wrong answers, always a bit too eager to crack the whip. No, don't bother responding, I've heard it all before. You couldn't have 'sadist' written all over you more obviously if you were at a BDSM convention full of graffiti artists." With a bit of effort, he sat up. "Now I'm sorry, you had a question for me?"

"Yes, Doctor," the man said, making a visible effort to control his petulant fury. "My masters wish to know more about you. If lives are to be entrusted into your care, if the future is to depend on you, then they must be sure that you are doing the right things for the right reasons. And so I will ask, as many times as I have to until they are satisfied or you are dead. Who are you?"

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said, slowly and delicately rising to his feet. "Is it a curriculum vitae that they're looking for? My monster-fighting résumé? Let me see, I'm a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey--actually, I'm the last Time Lord from the former planet Gallifrey, it's rather a long story and you don't strike me as the patient sort. I've fought the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, the Slitheen, the Adipose, well I say I fought them but they were actually babies, so it was really more sort of giving their governess a stern talking to, I've died ten times, well, call it nine and a half, and I travel through time and space in a box that's bigger on the inside than the outside. And if you believe even half of that, you're far more open-minded than I'm giving you credit for, so why don't we just skip to the bit where you say..." The Doctor smiled grimly, gesturing in expectation.

"Unacceptable!" The cane cracked against the floor again. The Doctor staggered but did not fall. "Listen to yourself, Doctor! That's not who you are, merely what you've done! Where you're from! You're so filled with blinkered, arrogant pride over your history that you haven't even thought about the question! How can you come here, set yourself up as savior, ask people to follow you into death--"

The Doctor raised himself up to his full height. "I have never asked them to follow me!" he roared. His eyes were filled with ageless sorrow. For the first time in three centuries, the inquisitor flinched. "I have  traveled this universe for eleven hundred years, and I have seen agony beyond your capacity to understand. And where I go, I try to help. Because, well..." he shrugged. "What else am I supposed to do? Cluck my tongue and step back into the TARDIS? I've seen where that path leads, I have seen what happens to people who decide that not everyone is worth helping, and I cannot follow it. I would die first. I have died first.

"And so where I travel, when I see pain...I help. A little. Have I succeeded? I like to think so. I know there are a few worlds...well, a few galaxies...well, a few universes, no false modesty here...that wouldn't be around if not for me. But I have never...I have NEVER...told anyone that I am their savior. I've never been anything other than what I am. I'm just a traveler who's sometimes in the right place at the right time to do something good. I'm just a clever old Doctor who tries to fix things when they're broken. I might save people, but I'm no savior. I'm a madman with a box. No more, no less."

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a slim wand. He touched a button, and with a high-pitched whirr, the cuffs sprang free. He caught them before they reached the floor and handed them to the inquisitor. "And if that answer doesn't satisfy your masters, then I suggest they come and ask me themselves. Because unlike them, I'm not hiding from anything."

I Can't Watch Anything Without Developing a Crazy Fan Theory

As previously noted on this blog, I'm watching my way through 'Babylon 5', and last night I got to 'Interludes and Examinations'. For those of you who don't want to know what happens in a twenty-year-old TV series, you should probably navigate to a different page, because the spoilers are going to hit hard and fast here, but for those of you who either do want to know or have already seen the series and just don't remember specific episode titles that well, this is the episode that features the death of Kosh.

Or does it?

Because let's face it, the whole episode hinges on the idea that Kosh finally breaks the millennia-old pattern of being a lying, scheming, untrustworthy manipulative bastard who somehow still thinks of himself as holding the moral high ground, and does the right thing for once in his life even though it kills him...and then is promptly replaced a few episodes later by a Vorlon who's a lying, scheming, untrustworthy manipulative bastard who somehow thinks of himself as holding the moral high ground. And he's totally not the same Vorlon, and we know this because he wears a different outfit. And because, well, Kosh just wouldn't play emotionally manipulative games like that with Sheridan's head, not this time. That's why he appeared to Sheridan as his father and forced Sheridan to see a vision of his beloved parent dying before his eyes, to show how he was done being emotionally manipulative!

My theory is this. When Sheridan confronted Kosh in the hallway, Kosh rapidly realized that this was one time when his usual "cryptic jackass" schtick wasn't going to work. Sheridan wasn't about to back down, and no longer respected Kosh's moral authority to conduct the war in his own fashion. The thought of actually respecting Sheridan's autonomy and treating him as an equal partner clearly never even occurred to Kosh; if it did, he'd have said to Sheridan, "If the Vorlons enter the war, the Shadows will kill me in reprisal," instead of saying, "If you do this, there will be a price. I will not be with you when you go to Z'ha'dum." The former allows Sheridan to make an informed, rational decision over the value of risking the life of a friend and ally in order to make a decisive strike against the Shadow forces (as well as allowing him to prepare for the counter-strike when it does occur, and possibly saving Kosh's life)...the latter is a thinly-veiled threat, the kind a parent makes against a petulant child. (While simultaneously being the act of a petulant child: "Well, fine! If you're going to tell me what to do, maybe I'll just die, huh? I bet you'd be really sorry if I died and you had to fight the Shadows all by yourself!")

At this point, Kosh goes off, rallies the Vorlons, and they have their decisive battle...and then he walks right back to his quarters at Babylon 5. This is an action that really only makes sense if he's either a) going to fake his own death, or b) if the "petulant child" theory is correct, and he's really so into his Vorlon Pity Party that he's going to let the Shadows kill him just to make a point to Sheridan that acting like you know better than a Vorlon has serious negative consequences. (In fairness, JMS says that he goes to his death willingly because he doesn't want to risk anyone else dying to defend him, but that's really a slightly nicer way of saying, "Vorlon Pity Party" all over again. "No, I don't trust you to make a rational, informed decision that might cost someone their life. I'll just sit here and die so that you don't get hurt. Don't feel bad for me or anything. It's not your fault that I died saving your species, just because you wouldn't listen to me when I told you I knew best.")

Which is pretty much what Kosh says, at the end. And just to really twist the emotional knife in good and hard, he says it wearing Sheridan's father's face. Sheridan is forced to watch his father die, which is emotional sadism of the highest order even if he does know it's Kosh behind it. Given that, and given Kosh's history of manipulating people towards what he sees as benevolent ends without any real regard for them as people--let's face it, Kosh only acts even remotely nice in order to reward people for doing what he wants them to--I don't see any reason why we can't assume he escapes the Shadows (he's already duked it out with them once and only received minor damage to his encounter suit) and then comes back as Ulkesh in order to punish Sheridan for disobeying. (Yes, I'm aware that this will require a little work to make fit into the events of "Falling Towards Apotheosis". More on this later.)

I think that the only reason people ever believed Kosh would die for someone else like that is because he slots into the Wise Mentor role for Sheridan in the Campbellian ur-myth, and Wise Mentors always die mid-way through the story so that the hero can find his own way in the world. But if you instead assume that the younger races are not so much being taught by the Vorlons as relentlessly patronized and used as catspaws in an ancient, petty feud, it becomes pretty clear that there's no way Kosh is going to sacrifice himself for anyone. It's completely out of character for him. Whereas lying, shamelessly using guilt as a tool to make people do what he wants, and using his chameleonic abilities to appear to someone in a form that they will listen to, well...that fits right in.

Quiz: Babylon 5 Episode Title Or Prog-Rock Song Title?

Five of the titles below are Babylon 5 episode titles. Five are prog-rock songs. Without resorting to Google, which is which?

1. "Dharma for One"

2. "Midnight on the Firing Line"

3. "The Geometry of Shadows"

4. "In the Court of the Crimson King"

5. "On the Silent Wings of Freedom"

6. "Requiem for Methuselah"

7. "The Enemy God Dances With the Black Spirits"

8. "Passing Through Gethsemane"

9. "Intersections In Real Time"

10. "Stormbringer"

(The astute among you will notice at least one trick question.)

"What Do You Want, Doctor?"

I absolutely cannot get this scene out of my head, so...

Anyone walking through the Zocalo would have noticed nothing more than two nice young men. They might even have spared a passing thought to just how nice they seemed; both of them were well-kept and smartly-dressed, a far cry from the usual riff-raff and shady sorts that were attracted to Babylon 5. Admittedly, the bow tie made one of them look a little old-fashioned, but there was nothing wrong with that. Two nice young men, smiling pleasantly and having a friendly chat. Nothing to draw much attention. Nothing worth talking about. Nothing worth a second glance. That's what anyone walking through the Zocalo would have thought...because they weren't looking at either man's eyes.

"So tell me, Doctor," Morden said, "what brings you to Babylon 5? What do you want?"

The Doctor smiled. It didn't make him look younger; far from it. The smile was the weary, cynical grin of a thousand years, entirely out of place on such a young face. "'What do you want?' That's a dangerous question. Possibly the most dangerous question in existence. Well, apart from 'What does this button do?' and 'Do you think I should cut the red wire first?' Both of which tend to get some remarkably shirty and unhelpful reactions--"

"How can it be dangerous, Doctor?" Morden smiled disarmingly. It didn't make him look younger, either. Morden smiled the same way that burglars jimmied open windows. "It's just a simple question. I'm trying to help you. And I can't help you unless you tell me what you want."

"But that's exactly why it's dangerous. When I answer that question, I give you information about what it is that I value. If I answer, 'Jammie Dodgers'--" the Doctor held up a hand quickly-- "just as a hypothetical example, mind you, I have some in my pocket already, they're a bit fluffy but still perfectly good--but if I do answer 'Jammie Dodgers', then you have a hold on me. If I have something you want, or something you need, you can get it from me by promising me Jammie Dodgers." The Doctor's tone was light, his voice rattling through the words as though they were in a hurry to leave, but his eyes were as cold and dark as galaxies.

"And since you know what I value, but I don't know what you want, you can make it seem as though your offer is highly prized...and mine almost worthless. Why wouldn't I trade whatever little trifle you ask for in return for my heart's desire? And before you know it, you're asking for a little more each time and giving away a little less, and I don't even realize the value of what I've lost and what you've gained, and I don't notice how much power you have over me until I've given away an entire universe...for a single stale biscuit." The Doctor leaned forward in his seat. His smile had vanished entirely. "A person who knows exactly what people want is the second most dangerous man in the universe, Mister Morden."

Morden stared back, his own smile still present but looking decidedly strained. "It sounds like you've already made up your mind, then," he said. "That's a shame, Doctor. I think my associates would have been very interested in you."

The Doctor looked to Morden's immediate left. Then his immediate right. "Oh, I suspect they will be anyway. People like them usually are. Assuming you have a very broad definition of the word 'people', which I generally do. I'm sure I'll be seeing you again, Mister Morden. Just like I'm sure you'll be seeing me." He rose to leave.

Morden let him get almost out of earshot before his curiosity got the better of him. "Doctor?" he called out.

The Doctor turned, looking as though he wasn't obeying quite the same laws of physics as everyone else did when he did so. "Yes?"

"You said the second." Morden's voice was very steady when he asked. It was the sound of someone trying very hard not to sound nervous. "What would the most dangerous man be?"

The Doctor smiled sadly, the sort of smile given by a teacher when a prize pupil made an expected mistake. "I should have thought that was obvious," he said softly. "The most dangerous man in the universe is a man who doesn't want anything you can provide." He turned away again, and his casual, "Goodbye, Mister Morden," was lost in the crowd.

Morden looked to his left. Then to his right. If he spoke, it was nothing anyone in the Zocalo heard.

I Wish

I wish I could have met Michael O'Hare after having seen the first season of 'Babylon 5'. I wish I could have told him that he had a real gift for playing the straight man; some of his best moments in the series come when he's playing opposite Jerry Doyle's Garibaldi, pretending to be oh-so-dignified and above this kind of silly behavior, but with a tiny little secret smile that lets you know he's in on the joke.

I've said in the past that I felt really lucky to be able to tell creators like Don Rosa, Gene Colan, and Al Feldstein what they meant to me and how much I think of them as creators and as people. It's always sad to realize that no matter how many people you can share that with, there are always going to be some people that you never get the chance to talk to.

Remember that, when you're at the next convention and you see someone you admire passing by. There's not always going to be the chance to do it again.

If Series Set In the Modern Day Were Written Like Sci-Fi Series

1. The main characters' tastes in music would all tend towards 18th century classical music. Occasionally, characters would get into arguments over one person's preference for Mozart over Bach, which the other dismisses as "just noise".

2. Foolish characters or great wits would be referred to as "a regular Thomas Betterton/Elizabeth Barry"; a particularly wacky or comedic situation would be referred to as "like something Thomas Sheridan would have come up with."

3. At least one character would have an eccentric fondness for leyden jars or spinning jennys, building them in his spare time as a quirky character touch.

4. At least one character would have a desire to travel by paddleboat, horse, or railway carriage, feeling that cars and planes "lack romance".

5. Characters would frequently and casually analogize events in the present-day as being "somewhat akin to the Treaty of Westminster helping to cause the Seven Years War". Nobody would ever need the Treaty of Westminster explained to them. Nobody would ever confuse it with the Treaty of Westminster that ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War, either.

6. In a related issue, people would recognize the Prussian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian flags on sight.

7. Everyone would exclusively quote Shakespeare. EXCLUSIVELY.

8. When not wearing their professional outfits, people would dress in slightly more utilitarian versions of waistcoats, ruffs, and powdered wigs. (The powdered wigs would be smaller, for example, to show the changing times and fashions.)

9. Sports fans would follow cricket, boxing or horse racing, and would occasionally express a longing to be able to travel back in time to the days when Lumpy Stevens beat John Small only for the ball to pass through the wicket without being disturbed. They would, on occasion, insist that the sport was better before they added the third stump to the wicket.

10. If anyone ever did reference a modern-day piece of pop culture, whether in the form of music, books, comedy, theatre, movies, or television, it would be only in reference to an actual celebrity in that particular field visiting them. The celebrity in question would never actually perform in their chosen field, but at least one character would always have been a fan.

Trying Not To Talk About Babylon 5, But...

Here's the thing. I am currently going through and mainlining Babylon 5 into my brain, for a secret writerly reason of which I cannot speak at this moment. (Because it is secret. And writerly.) I never watched the show when it was on, for a wide variety of reasons including the fact that I am very apathetic about popular culture as a whole: My general philosophy is that if it's still fondly remembered by the time I get around to watching it two decades after the fact, it's probably very good and well worth waiting for. If it drops completely off the radar and everyone scorns it for being a failure that started off promising and proceeded to head downhill like a rocket-powered toboggan, it's probably 'Heroes'. (But I kid the series!) Seriously, if it's not worth watching, I probably will find out about it in the decade or so before I get around to it. It's the Planetary philosophy: "We're archaeologists. We'll dig you up and work it all out in a couple of years."

(The best part of this philosophy is that by the time I get around to watching it, the DVDs are cheap and I don't have to wait through the offseasons.)

So the point is, I have a lot of thoughts about Babylon 5, many of which I am restraining myself from saying due to writerly secret reasons. But one thing I do keep thinking about, and am allowing myself to talk about even though I'm shutting up about a lot of it, is, "Why did the series never come back?" I have heard from my lovely and intelligent wife that JMS, creator/producer of the series, doesn't really have an interest in doing more on account of how hard it was to get the first series made, and how many of the actors have unfortunately passed on, and how he's more or less told the story he wanted to tell. And while those strike me as true (because I know my wife and in addition to being lovely and intelligent, she knows metric tons about 'Babylon 5'), they also strike me as good things to tell yourself, if you're a former producer of a science-fiction series with a small-but-devoted fanbase that can't get renewed. It does seem to me that there has to be at least an element of falsehood there...because 'Crusade'. Clearly, JMS at one point felt like there were enough ideas floating around in the B5 universe to sustain a second five-year series. That series was canceled with four years of stories left untold. That suggests to me that there are more stories he at least was willing to try to tell.

The question is, "Why can't he?" Because let's face it, we live in a very different era than we did in 1999 (when the series was canceled.) Shows with cult followings and long tails now routinely make returns, from 'Family Guy' to 'Doctor Who' to 'Futurama' to 'Serenity' (which itself is probably due for another return a few years from now. Big Red Button, guys!) We live in an archival culture now, where quality television is not dependent on the vagaries of an inconsistent syndication schedule to gain a following among science-fiction fans. So why is it that Babylon 5 nostalgia isn't leading us back towards a revival of the series and an explanation of the Drakh war? At the very least, Dark Horse should be putting out a comic book of this stuff.

I think the answer is that the very thing that Babylon 5 fans loved has given the series a reputation that prevents it from gaining that kind of return following. Everyone talked, during the period the series was on the air, about its intricate continuity and long-running storyarcs. About hints that began in the pilot and slowly unfolded over the course of five whole seasons. (I used to have a button that said on it, "Doctor Who explained, Babylon 5 predicted, Star Trek...apologized for." It's funny if you're an obsessive Doctor Who geek.) The problem with this is that it intimidates people away from the show. Even in an archival era, where the series is ten bucks a season and you can get through the whole thing in a couple of months if you work at it, Babylon 5 is legendary for requiring an investment to get through. (And it's also got an entirely undeserved reputation as having a long slog of dull episodes to get through before you hit the "good stuff", by which fans tend to mean the metastory-heavy shows. Personally, I think that Season One's standalone episodes are plenty good...but I'd never have known that if I'd listened to the people telling me to watch the show.)

The long and short of it is, we are now in an era where practically every series takes its model from B5, and sci-fi fans should not be scared away from a series with storyarcs. But because it was so innovative at the time, and because so many people talk about nothing but the arc plots, I think people somehow assume they're going to be harder to follow or require more attentive viewing than any other series, and they don't know if they want to put in the effort. Which prevents the show from developing the kind of following that sells DVDs, comics, merchandising, and other stuff that would make the bean-counters in Hollywood stand up, take notice, and shove a dump truck full of money in Straczynski's face and say, "Is this enough to make the kind of show you want?" Which is probably what it would take to overcome his reluctance to dive back into it all.

Basically, what I think I'm saying is, "If you've been waiting 20 years to watch 'Babylon 5' because you were worried about having to mainline the whole thing into your brain over the course of a month or so, you don't need to be. I'm not doing that because it's the only way to watch the show. I'm doing it for secret reasons. Shhhhhh."