Guide Page: "The Coming of Shadows" (original) (raw)

Winner of the 1996 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

Note: this episode is more momentous than most. Think twice before proceeding to the spoilers; it's worth seeing unawares.

• I love "The Coming of Shadows." It's one of those episodes that just knocks the breath out of you. You know those moments when you're in the passenger seat of a car, and the person driving is doing something crazy, and your foot automatically keeps searching for a brake pedal that isn't there because you know something awful's going to happen? That's the feeling you get all through that script. This episode, like "Sky," "Signs," "Chrysalis" and "Revelations" again changes the direction and ratchets everything one notch tighter. It's also a very visual script, and I like that, since I sometimes do rely too much on dialogue from time to time, and it's good to go in a different direction.
• Kosh's brevity is one of the things I like best about him; in the year two episode "The Coming of Shadows," he has just two words in the whole episode...but they're guaranteed to give just about anyone the willies.
• The G'Kar-Emperor thread was similar to the King Arthur legend: Arthur's and Mordred's armies are poised for battle but make one last attempt to negotiate, but a soldier raises his sword to kill a snake and everyone attacks.
  There's another applicable metaphor for the sword story; you'll see it a little later this season. Very good catch, btw. "This season" refers to season three.
• I generally don't let the actors know what's coming unless it's important to the current performance. Otherwise you risk having the actor play the *result* instead of the *process*. Had to make one divergence from this recently, so that Peter could understand better a sequence in "The Coming of Shadows," which you'll understand when you see it.
• We're also taking advantage of some of the recent Hubble photographs to scan them and use them as backgrounds in some far-space shots; there's one in "The Coming of Shadows," for instance. Real space is *very* nice looking in places.
• I may not have been clear in my meaning when I said "accellerating the arc." This doesn't mean doing anything ahead of schedule; it just means that now we begin cranking the story into a higher intensity level. We've been kind of floating toward our destination...now we begin the process of accellerating. If you recall Literary Structure from English Lit 101, there's the Introduction, the Rising Action, the Complication, the Climax, and the Denouement. Year one up through about the first eight episodes of year two are Introduction; we are now in Rising Action stage. Remember that this is structured like a novel, and you'll generally have some idea of where you stand in the progression.
• I ended up giving Peter info on "Signs" prior to shooting "Chrysalis" last season; that was the biggie there. For "CoS" in order for the scene to match what's going to happen several years down the road in the series, I had to kinda give him the context of the dream, and what was really happening in that scene, and what caused it, and how he got to that place with G'Kar's hands around his throat.
  He seemed quite...astonished.
• Yeah, on several levels, writing "The Coming of Shadows" was hard; there were times I felt as though I'd just jumped onto the back of a runaway dynamite truck. Halfway through that story you can feel the arc kinda moving underneath you, like some huge, dark fish about to break surface.
  The only way to make a viewer feel a character's pain is if you feel it in the writing, and a lot of that came through. I live with these characters running around in my head 24 hours a day...and when I'd finally finished "Shadows," it was as if they all sorta stopped and looked at each other, and at me, and said, "Gee, thank you EVER so fucking much, jeezus, why don't you just go pluck somebody's eye out while you're at it?"
  To which the only reply is, "Now that you mention it...."
• The script for this episode is in JMS' "Complete Book of Scriptwriting."
  What might be interesting, next time you pick up the book, is to fire up a copy of "The Coming of Shadows" and go through it with the script in hand...it's a good way of seeing how you lay out a show shot-for-shot. And since there's stuff there that was cut from the episode, you can also judge on what was left out, and why, and whether it hurt or helped.
• Not all Centauri dreams come true; however, the ones in which they see their deaths tend to be pretty accurate.
• Turhan originally came in to audition for Elric in "Geometry;" we wanted someone with more menace (Ansara), but we were all just blown away by how wonderful and sweet and nice a person he was, and as he left, I told John Copeland, "I'm gonna write a part just for him."
  So I did, and we cast him, and everyone on the set loved him...to the point that, at the end of the shoot, they were saying, "You BASTARD, how could you bring this WONDERFUL man in here and then KILL HIM OFF SO WE CAN'T HAVE HIM BACK?!"
• Are the Rangers a reference to the Chuck Norris series, "Walker, Texas Ranger," with which you were involved, or to the Rangers in Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings?"
  For me, the concept of the Rangers isn't tied to Norris; that isn't the reference I was talking about. Being on that show, I kinda had to look into the history of the Texas rangers in general, and being the curious kind of guy I am, I widened out into the Army Rangers, and other sorts. I'd been looking for a kind of name to attach to this group, and the more I thought about it, the more it fit.
  As far as the costume is concerned...it's not medeival based; if you look at the ranger's outfit, than go look at a Minbari warrior outfit, you will discover a LOT of points of comparison. It was *designed* to echo Minbari warrior caste clothes, to reflect the fact that these two sides are working together. Go fire up "Legacies" and look at his uniform, then look at the ranger. You'll see the similarities in silhouette and line in various places.
  Of course I've read and enjoyed Tolkein. But as I've said, I have no interest in doing LoTR with the serial numbers filed off. I've dropped references to it in dialogue, but the structure of the story has nothing whatsoever to do with LoTR. Basically, a lot of people have come up and said, "Oh, this is the same as Foundation," or "This is the same as LoTR," or "This echoes a lot of Dune," or "This is obviously a Homeric tale," or "There's a lot of Star Wars here." It uses the same tools as all mythic structure fiction uses. Hence it resonates. But I didn't sit there and think, "Hmm...Gandalf left, so I'll have Sinclair leave." That's just plain silly.
  It's really a matter of what you bring to the table, that affects what you see in the story.
  The roots of the symbolism and structure of B5 go back a hell of a lot longer than this. Here...I'll give you one free.
  G'Kar is in many ways my Cassandra figure, who in the Greek tales was granted the gift of prophecy...all the disasterous things she predicted would come true...but she was cursed by the gods that NO ONE would ever believe her. And later, when the war was at its height, she ended up in the service of.....
• One could certainly argue the position that those who become Rangers are drawn to Minbar for that purpose, and speculate about what might be propelling that.
• The broach worn by the Rangers was designed by me and Ann Bruice, our costumer. I sketched (dopily and badly) what I had in mind, which was a stylized human and minbari on either side of a gemstone, both wokred (worked) into the same metal, and holding the gemstone.
  She then took this drawing that looked like it had been drawn by a drunk five year old and translated it into a striking piece.
• The Rangers actually owe more to the Lone Ranger and the Texas Rangers in general.
  FYI, Sinclair called Delenn "old friend" as far back as the 2-hour pilot.
• Londo, in his vision, sees the shadow vessels, but he does not know (in his present tense version) that that's what they are. He's had this particular dream for years now, long before meeting Morden.
• It didn't show up in the script, and probably won't, but the Emperor probably did have a vision of his death, and the Vorlon.
• Re: your question...at this juncture, I think I'd have to choose "The Coming of Shadows" as the one episode I'd use to represent the series. That one episode came out so close to perfect, so close to what I saw in my head when I wrote it, that the difference is no difference at all. It has all the elements I'd feature in a B5 discussion...the CGI, the characterization, the complexity, the politics, the language, the performances.
• The handclasp used in "Coming of Shadows" was a traditional clasp used by Romans, usually in order to check if the other person was carrying a knife.
• Because to some extent the roman civilization is one of the sources for constructing the Centauri, I adapted their handshake (checking for knives) as their greeting; "I offer the hands of friendship."
• There's a difference between what I believe dreams mean, what the Centauri believe dreams mean, and what dreams mean to the Centauri, in that universe, and what they mean to me in our universe.
  I suspect the truth lay somewhere between Shroedinger and Jung.
• Thanks. That scene [the attack on the Narn outpost] in "Coming of Shadows" is one of my favorites; it does, as you say, convey that sense of wonder which is one of my main goals with this show.
• Re: parallel visuals between MotFL and CoS...yes, precisely. In some ways, they were set up as mirror-image parallels of one another, to show how the wheel turns, to quote G'Kar. The opening council meeting, the attacks, the determination to kill the other, alternately Garibaldi or Sheridan having to stop them by calling on the question of consequences if followed up on...it shows CoS as sort of the "dark mirror" of the first episode. Everything we saw when we first thought we knew what the series was has now totally reversed and been turned on its head.
  They also focus on one of the main questions that B5 addreses itself to: what is important to you? what are you willing to sacrifice? how far are you willing to go to get what you want? For me, a large measure of defining WHO we are is by WHAT we are willing to do, and what we want, and the means by which we pursue those goals. The other theme of course is sacrifice, which recurs throughout the show in one form or another.
  Sometimes, I think, people get so caught up in what's happening and why that they miss what it's *about* on a more cellular level. And that's the question of who we are. Identity. The importance of *one single person* and the ability of that person to act as a fulcrum, intentionally or otherwise, upon which vast events can turn. Choices. What you value most. Those, to me, are the issues most worth exploring. We're told every day, beaten down with the notion that we're powerless, that we can't change things, you can't fight city hall...and of course it's not true. You can fight. And sometimes, you can even win.
• Sinclair didn't send the same letter. Same greeting, to keep the recipient secret.
  Only the Ranger knew who got what.
• The emperor falling scene, as with those around it, were shot as written, down to the slow-motion notation, the close on his head hitting the floor, the women clutching one another...all in the script. But it takes someone as skilled as Janet to take what somebody else might screw up and elevate it into something truly nifty.
• Slow-motion (or camera overcranked) is almost always indicated in scripts. I like slow-mo. It can add a dreamlike quality to a shot, and prolong a sense of imminent trouble.
• You left out my favorite quote from the show, from the Emperor: "The past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us ...and our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
• The centauri veiled telepaths are mainly wired into one another.
• I'd say that Turhan was probably emperor for about 30 years or so.
• The emperor said exactly what, in the hallway, Londo said he said.
• The emperor was referring to Londo and Refa. And if the Centauri telepaths suspected or picked up anything, to tell anyone would almost certainly lead to a quick demise. When you're that high up in the royal court, you learn to keep your mouth shut.
• [Emperor] Turhan's death was exactly as stated, natural causes. If it were anything else, we'd have at least nodded in that direction at some point. It's not fair to do so otherwise.
• Didn't the Narn behind Londo and Refa hear them?
  The Narn was just passing quickly through scene, in a hurry, and couldn't have heard what Londo and Refa were quietly discussing.
• Your feelings about the war starting are exactly what they should be, and what I wanted to achieve with "Shadows." In SF TV, very often, as you state, it's "Yeah, let's get a war on! Blow stuff up!" But to hear of a *real* war...it's very, very sobering. When we hear that Gulf troops were being sent into the Mideast, when we heard of soviet troops sent into Prague...your heart stops for a moment. When Kennedy put American ships in a Cuban blockade and the world held its breath ...THAT is what it feels like to step into possible or real war. All you can think of is, "How the HELL did we get into this, and how the hell do we get OUT of it?" And that was at the emotional core of "Shadows."
• Why not use the healing device from "Quality of Mercy?"
  The alien healing device was specifically used in treatment of illness; the Emperor suffered massive damage to his heart and othe internal organs, which simply restoring some life energy wouldn't help.
• Not a contradiction. I don't believe in omniscient or all powerful devices that function like literal deus ex machinas and heal everybody all the time. It was stated *plainly and clearly* that the device was used in healing terminally ill patients. They cannot undo physical damage from gunshots (the regen packs and other devices were used to heal Garibaldi's wound, and the alien device was used to raise his life energy level enough to bring him out of the coma). The emperor suffered a massive attack that destroyed parts of his heart. Can't be fixed by this device.
• You may tell your friend that the city hit in "CoS" was CGI, not a model.
• The Sanctuary is where Sheridan and the Emperor had their lengthy conversation; it's *all* a virtual set except the floor.
• The Sanctuary is entirely a virtual set. It's all blue-screen, no walls, no windows, no stars, no nothing. I made sure to ask Foundation and Mitch to blur the walls a bit in close up to give it the correct depth of field. (Much of the CGI/background work is done by Mitch, our effects guy, who works independent of Foundation, who was also the main EFX guy on Predator, ET and others.) Because that was a LONG scene, the rendering time was just hideous.
• The Sanctuary set has ALWAYS been entirely virtual, except for a small grating on the floor as a marker. The walls, the windows, all of it. Virtual. We've actually done this a number of times. I haven't said anything before because whenever I mention there's a virtual set, and where it is, people look at it and say, "Oh, yeah, I could tell it was virtual." Because they knew ahead of time. So I stopped mentioning it.
  We're sneaky that way. You've seen, and will continue to see, sets that don't exist ANYwhere. Hell, you know that bazaar shot in the main title sequence? The second floor? Doesn't exist. Digital compositing and virtual set melding.
• The area where the reception was being held is the Rotunda.
• On the chance that the datacrystal might fall into the wrong hands, I had Sinclair deliberately avoid using Garibaldi's last name, and avoid Delenn's altogether (since she has only the one). The Ranger was told to deliver the crystals at the cost of his own life if necessary...but sometimes such orders don't end well for the messenger. So both messages began the same way.
• I'm very happy at the reaction. I was telling John Copeland a bit ago, when we finished the episode, "Maybe we ought to superimpose a crawl before the first frame of the teaser saying, "JUST IN CASE YOU THOUGHT WE WERE KIDDING.""
  An aside on the jms/kosh discussion, for whatever interest it may have....when Ardwight comes in to do Kosh, they call me in to direct his performance so that it matches what the intent is now, and how it will be interpreted later. From where I sit in the control room, I can't see him, I can only hear his voice. So it's kinda like talking with Kosh there, and me saying, "Okay, can you try 'In Fire' hitting the second word harder, and with a sense of some anger behind it?" And between takes, he's still in Kosh-speak mode, muttering, "How will this end, how do I know talk to my agent...go on, get out, buzz off ...."
• There are some episodes coming that are about as intense as this, though not as much *happens*, in the sense of a bunch of events affecting lots of people in different places.
  Yes, intentional parallel structure to "Midnight," which is why I included the shot from that episode in Londo's dream. I like irony.
• Yes, "CoS" is a deliberate mirror-image of "Midnight," partly to illustrate the notion that "the wheel turns," as G'Kar says...yes, it does, and if you forget that it eventually turns on *you*, you'll be ground beneath it.
• I will tell you a true and secret thing, re: Londo's dream, and looking up into a blue sky to see the ships passing overhead.
  Ever since I was a kid, I've had that image in my dreams, of standing out in the open and looking up as strange dark ships pass overhead. It's always been an unnerving image, and I really wanted to use it here to see if it would have the same effect on others.
  The other single most recurring image is to be standing at the bottom of a long set of stairs, in a basement, and the door at the top of the stairs is thrown open, and there's gunfire, and guards, and flares in the night beyond, and more ships firing down.
  Don't be surprised if this shows up as well, someday....
• We nailed a piece with Michael before he left for New York; when we shot "Points," he had long since returned to NY and was in the process of pursuing other things.
• What was with the human and Minbari in the throne room?
  They were discussing possible use of a world on the fringe of Centauri space for something of, they hoped, benign use.
• One of the problems we had with the Hugo last year was that whereas only a couple of TNG episodes were good enough to get nominated, eight B5 episodes made it to the final cut. Because folks went for their favorite episodes, and they had a number that year. The result was that the choices got split so much that TNG won, since it had fewer good or great episodes that season. ("All Good Things" won with, I think, 57 votes; the top two B5 episodes on the list had 32 and 27 votes between them, enough right there to have won if combined. That was for "Signs and Portents" and "Chrysalis," with "And the Sky Full of Stars" at 21, "Babylon Squared" at 19, "Believers" at 10, "Mind War" at 9, "Voice in the Wilderness" at 8, and "Soul Hunter" at 6.)
  So basically, we lost because we had too many solid episodes to choose from.
  As a result, a lot of folks this year have been campaigning to have participants go for "The Coming of Shadows," which is the highest rated episode in all the informal polls on-line and elsewhere from that time period. It's the one nearly everybody seems to agree upon.
• Congratulations on winning the Hugo.
  Thanks; that was the one where we felt we really hit our stride.
• The Hugo is a marvelous reward to everyone who's worked so hard on the show these last 3+ years. We're very proud.
• Did you think you were going to win?
  I honestly didn't know how it was going to work out. I figured (correctly, as it turned out) that the main opposition would be Apollo 13. Which for my money would've been a good selection. (Is it SF? The description John Campbell and, I think, Heinlein gave for SF is "the impact on humans of technology." It even uses the Analog Magazine approach of finding a technical solution to a technical problem. If Apollo 13 doesn't count that way, what does? Is it fiction? Nnnnnooo, I suppose, though certainly elements of it were fictionalized for purposes of drama, and I guess that counts somewhat.)
  Anyway, that dispute aside, and I can see why it's not a clear issues for a lot of folks...understand that I've never won a major award before. I've been up for Ace Awards, the Writers Guild Award, the Gemini Award (the Canadian equivilant of an Emmy), the HWA Bram Stoker Award, others...but hadn't won, and as a result, you get very guarded about these things. So I didn't know for sure until the words left Roger Corman's lips.
  And I have to say...this show has won a lot of awards in different areas, Emmys and others, but this one, for me, means the most. Even Warners is excited about it, and is taking out a double-page ad in most of the trades this Friday, with others to appear the following week. (We encouraged them to also congratulate the nominees for the award as well, since they were all very deserving, it was stiff competition.)
• The reaction at the [WorldCon] to B5, at the awards and elsewhere, was quite amazing. Everywhere the show was mentioned at panels, it appaarently got applause. The attending fans were *extremely* friendly, went out of their way to be nice. The two B5 panels I gave (the second one added on when the first one wouldn't fit into the room provided) were extremely enthusiastic. I think the two presentations I gave that day totaled about 2,500-2,600 people total.
  When the winner was announced for Best Dramatic Presentation, and I headed for the stage, for a moment I thought we were having an earthquake, or there was a sudden thunder...but it was the fans applauding and stomping their feet enough to make the ground shake. It was deafening down where the nominees were, and I noticed a couple of them looking around with a "what the hell is THAT?" look on their faces.
• Reader congratulates JMS on the Hugo and adds that she did so in person, but he didn't seem to hear her then.
  Thanks...I'm not sure I heard much of anything that night....
• See the Notes section for the vote tallies.
  What's interesting, in noting the number of votes in the nominations, is that if we hadn't withdrawn the second Hugo nominated B5 episode, "The Fall of Night," DS9 wouldn't have had a nomination at all. They moved into the nominations when we withdrew "FoN."
• How many nominations did "The Fall of Night" receive?
  I don't know offhand; my guess is that it was #5 in the overall nominations list, because (I understand) they had to jump past #6 (The Long, Twilight Struggle) to get to #7 (the DS9 episode) to find a non-B5 candidate for the nominations list. So we had 3 out of the top 6, and apparently two more B5 episodes were high up on the list, I think in the top 10.
• Is this the first TV episode to win since Harlan Ellison's "City on the Edge of Forever" from the original Star Trek?
  Actually, no, two episodes of TNG also got Hugos.
  But what *is* significant here is that in 43 years, only 7 Hugos have gone to dramatic TV series; 3 to the original Twilight Zone, 4 to Star Trek (old and new). This is the first Hugo in 43 years to go to a science fiction TV series other than TZ or ST.
• Where will you display the Hugo?
  I was thinking of putting the Hugo on display in my bedroom, but I decided it was 'way too Freudian.
• Have you taken it onto the set?
  Absolutely, I took the Hugo out on the very next day, Tuesday. The whole place was very excited about it.
• B5 received another award at WorldCon.
  Yeah, the Shadow Hugo (an ominous name for what's basically a coaster-shaped circuit board with a bronze plate on it) went to B5 from Sci-Fi.Com, which was actually the first SF award B5 has gotten, beating the real Hugos by about 24 hours.
  The reason they had to come out of the SFFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) suite to give me the award had to do with my feelings toward SFFWA, from which I resigned over their attitude toward media writers and the dramatic nebula (bottom line: all media writers are hacks, and it's not real writing, and even though media work, scripts, are eligible for membership, or were then, they're not eligible for the Nebula because it isn't really writing).
  Actually, what I said to the folks from scifi.com was..."I wouldn't go in there for the presentation if I were dying of lung cancer and they were offering free chemotherapy at the door." Nothing against many of the SFFWA members, many of them are fine folks who're taking the rap for a provincially minded leadership, but after the grief I got from SFWA over all this before, the hate mail, the vindictiveness, the resignation (to this day they still haven't had the guts to print my letter of resignation in the Journal), I just couldn't go in there for the award.
• ...sigh...I'm gonna regret this, I know it, I just know it....
  C'mere. Siddown. Lemme 'splain.
  I resigned SFWA (back before it became SFFWA) for the reasons you cite, and over the whole Dramatic Nebula issue, which was for me the defining moment and the proverbial straw across the equally proverbial camel's back.
  A number of us -- me, D.C. Fontana, David Gerrold, Mike Cassutt, Harlan, others -- attempted to get SFWA to restore the Dramatic Nebula, which had been dropped for a number of years. In the course of this, I received more abusive, vitriolic, hateful pieces of mail and email than I can begin to describe to you. It rivals or exceeds *anything* ever sent to me in any flame war. All from other SFWA members. One quote I remember vividly is emblematic of the whole: "I work my ass off writing for pennies a word, while all you hacks in TV churn out crap for thousands of dollars a page. You and your LA buddies will never get a Dramatic Nebula as long as I'm alive."
  And that was the nicest letter I got.
  It was explained to me, in mail, email and the SFWA journal, that scriptwriting wsan't really *writing*, it was just typing. That TV writers weren't really writers. That you can't read a script unless you're trained, so you can't vote on it. That since TV/film is often a collaborative form, you don't know who contributed what, so how can you give a nebula? And there's George Martin's argument, that SFWA should give Dramatic Nebulas to scriptwriters when WGA allows prose writers to join.
  And the responses to this...it *is* writing, you *can* read the script easily, it's just the margins that are different. Editors often contribute structure and ideas and other material to the books they edit, but I don't see that stopping regular nebulas. And SFWA was built around a particular *genre*, anything in that genre is or should be acceptable; WGA is built around *form*, the script, and any genre within that form is acceptable. We're talking apples and oranges here.
  I was even willing to remove myself from all future DN consideration to remove the notion that I was doing this to get one myself. It was the principle, for one vital reason:
  At that time, SFWA allowed scripts to qualify you for membership in SFWA. Scripts were fine as far as SFWA was concerned as long as it brought in more in the way of membership dues. If it brought money INTO SFWA, then it was writing, and qualified script writers to join SFWA. But when it came time to give out the dramatic nebula...nope, suddenly it ain't writing no more.
  It was a clear contradiction, and a bald-faced double-standard. Hypocrisy at its most blatant.
  So finally, when the move to restore the Dramatic Nebula was vetoed, I quit. The final irony being this: over the 10 years or so I'd been a member, I'd written maybe 7 or 8 letters to be published in the SFWA Journal, which appears quarterly or monthly, I forget now. There were (and are) people who had something in almost every issue, often for pages at a time. I sent my letter of resignation to the Journal, and it has never to this day been printed. Because once it became clear that I was no longer going to continue paying dues (though I was still a member at the time of the letter, and for several months thereafter, until my prior payment ran out), they really had no interest in hearing anything from a scriptwriter. They later tried the exuse that it was too long, but it was exactly the same length as the majority of letters that appeared in the Journal.
  In fighting for the rights of script-members of SFWA on the DN issue, and the perception of scriptwriters in general, I was insulted, abused, targeted, slandered, ridiculed, threatened and harrassed. While there are many fine individuals who belong to the group, as an organization is is provincial and small minded and insecure and jealous. Any John Norman GOR novel would theoretically be eligible for a Nebula, but 12 Monkeys would not. If an SF novel sells 35,000 copies, it's a great thing; 100,000 is a *terrific* thing, much ballyhooed by the SF establishment. B5 has a hardcore audience of between 10 and 15 *million* people.
  So bottom-line...yeah, I left SFWA because I got tired of the contempt the organization and many of its members held (and still hold) for scriptwriters. When it came time to accept the Science Fiction Weekly's award for "The Coming of Shadows," I stepped into the SFFWA suite (where they were to be given out) just long enough to find the guys involved, and get out again. And the award was presented out in the hallway, because I didn't want it to happen there. As I told the organizer, I wouldn't go into the SFFWA suite for this if I were dying of lung cancer and they were offering free chemotherapy at the door.
• The promo for the Hugo-commemorative rerun had a "Winner 1996 Hugo Award" overlay. Was it hard to get WB to do that?
  It was their idea. They're impressed that we got the Hugo.