How many B5ers does it take to change a light bulb? Shari Shattuck as Julie Musante. Katy Boyer as Neeoma Connoly.

P5 Rating: 8.20

Production number: unknown
Original air week: never aired

Written by Uncredited
Directed by Melissa Gilbert

Backplot

• Garibaldi and Lochley seem to enjoy punching each other out. Kinky. If Lise doesn't keep her man interested he may never make it back to Mars.
• Bo and Mack are more than they appear.
• There is an equipment shortage on Babylon 5. Since none of the establishing documents of the Interstellar Alliance mentioned any tax levying powers, perhaps the IA is short of funds.
• A well defined visual reference can trick the inner-ear into believing that it is stationary when, in fact, it is spinning.

Unanswered Questions

• Why aren't Garibaldi and Lochley brought up on charges? Isn't assaulting a fellow officer a court-martial offense? Perhaps Garibaldi's 'civilian' status makes this a non-issue.
• What's a 'Westinghouse'? Has Elmer Fudd's diction entered into common speech?
• What's the problem with orbiting 'blind'? Besides, isn't orbiting a kind of flying? Does Lochley have un-confronted issues relating to vision loss?
• Will Bo and Mack make appearances as "Crusade" crew-members?
• Where were Julie and Neeoma? They're listed in the credits and I'm sure that I would have remembered if I had seen them.

Analysis

• The level of personal violence between Lochley and Garibaldi is beyond any rational limit. However, no one steps in to mediate or in any way reprimands them. This suggests that it is by mutual consent.
• GE owns NBC. Is the constant reference to this brand and the disparagement of their main domestic competitor a desperate attempt by the producers to get some major network air-time? Could "Crusade" be moving to a new network? A light bulb is a light bulb. The constant harping on the brand name gets in the way of the story.
• Chaos theory says that as systems become more complex the effects of actions that are initially too small to be measured become so great that no model can accurately predict the system's behavior. A Chaos Theory of Operations Management would seem to imply that a leader's (or manager's) ability to influence the behavior of an organizational entity is inversely proportional to the complexity of that organizational entity and that, eventually, the behavior of the organization entity is completely independent of the leadership's input.
• C&C is in a micro-gravity environment. the angular speed would be identical, still the people in C&C are not moving as fast as people near the outer shell of the station. Therefore, they should not be as at much of a risk for nausea. Perhaps having no outside view more than compensates.
• Londo's insight regarding the correlation of light bulb construction and 'attribute' number seems ... insightful. The Minbari construction, isolating positive, negative, and ground, would certainly reduce the possibility of a light bulb shorting out and the Centauri system of variable illumination seems better engineered than out system of a single filament and an in-line variable resistor. Is our applied technology in fact influenced, unduly, by our sexual anatomy? Freud would have a field day with this question.

Notes

• The lighting for C&C was changed radically between the pilot and the first season. The lighting in the pilot visually accentuated the rotation of the station. It was probably nausea inducing for the actors without any real motion.
• Julie Musante is named after two fans, Julie Helmer and Mark Musante. What sort of contest would you have to win in order to get this character named after you? And where did Neeoma's name come from?
• Shari Shattuck and Katy Boyer originally had fairly substantial roles in this episode. The original writing team had produced a rather wacky, campy, off-the-wall sort of episode that was substantially revised during the actual production. As a result, the writing team asked that their names be withdrawn from the credits and, unfortunately, almost all of these two fine actresses' work ended up being cut. If you look closely, through the doors into C&C in the second shot after Zack enters C&C you can just see the backs of their heads going out of the shot.

jms speaks

• It was felt that I lacked the 'common touch' when it came to humor. I bowed to pressure from TNT and allowed ... certain individuals ... to write a Babylon 5 script which Babylon Productions guaranteed would be produced. Notice that there was never anything said about it being seen. I deliberately stayed away from my office while it was being shot. When I saw the director's cut I laughed until I cried, and then I just cried. It was a mixture of "Pillow Talk" meets "Baywatch" meets World War III. It was funny, it was titillating, and it certainly got your heart pounding on several levels ... but it just wasn't Babylon 5. I did what I could in the Producer's cut, but when I was done there just wasn't a multi-level, arc-driven Babylon 5 episode in there. Great story ... some howlingly funny scenes ... brilliant parodies of some of the top-rated sitcoms of all time ... and Bruce, trying to explain to Peter and Myra how the IA would integrate the diverse economic systems of its members through a universal credit bank (their eyes glazing over as they keep these fixed smiles on their faces and Londo going, "Yes ... yes, Mr. President"). I nearly passed out. I needed to breath but I had to laugh!
• Melissa still has her copy of the director's cut. I hear that she plans to use it to blackmail Bruce if he ever gets out of line. There were some rather 'R' rated moments in the original script and that's why I thought of bringing in Melissa. I figured that she would keep things under control ... follow the script but with a minimum of on-screen nudity. Who knew that she had such a wicked sense of humor?!! If she decides to show her cut at a 'con' it will definitely be one of those shown after midnight.
• You should use Claudia Christian more.
  You're absolutely correct, but not in this episode. If we used Claudia, you'd see all that you want to see of her. She's game for it, but my feeling is that it would undermine the Ivanova character completely. I mean, isn't it nice, for once, to have a strong authority figure who just happens to be female?
• "All Alone in the Gloom" - there is a subtle sub-theme (or maybe not so subtle) about authority/sex and breaking away. Ask yourself, "Why is Babylon 5 so short of spare parts?" If you ever see the director's cut, you'll never listen to "You Light Up My Life" with the same feelings again.
• If you want some fun with your wham, and there's a lot of fun to be had in this one. Think of it as World War III with eye candy and a laugh track.
• As y'all know, next week the latest batch of new episodes begins to air. The first one up, "All Alone in The Gloom," is an absolute hoot; if you've been looking to bring in other viewers, that's a good one to start them with, because it sets up a lot of what's going to happen in this episode, it has a lot of background, and it's a lot of fun.
• Operations/Operational - You know, I consider myself something of a wordsmith. The night after I'd seen the director's cut, I just couldn't get to sleep. I knew that there were big problems with the episode as a part of Babylon 5, but the writing, the craftsmanship, was excellent. But there was just this something that kept nagging at me. When I'm writing, I'll sit in front of the computer for hours, waiting for just the right word -- the single, one word, that will say exactly what I want to say. And then, about 2 a.m., it came to me. "Operational Management" is about Management. What type of Management? "Operational" Management. But "Operations Management" is about Operations. What about Operations? Management of Operations - Operations Management. So if there was a Chaos Theory of Something, it would be Operations. I mean, a Chaos Theory of Management is just same-old, same-old. Management is the attempt to create order where chaos already exists. So a Chaos Theory of Management would be an oxymoron. So the next day we brought the actors back in and re-shot the scene with the changed dialogue. I didn't have them go into a long explanation in the dialogue. I just had them say that it was "crisper" because ... it was crisper