Intersections in Real Time
Reviewed by Arlo Vinchenzi, Imperial Pain Technician
Click HERE, HERE, HERE to see pictures from the episode.
Well, this was a VERY simple episode. Sure, it was artsy, intellectual, had a good point to make and really made it, but in the end, the plot can be summed up as thus:
Captain Sheridan is tortured and interrogated.
That's it.
Really.
The first time I saw this episode, I was like, "Okay, this is all fine and dandy, I get the picture, they're torturing him, like I didn't know that already, now can we PLEASE go somewhere ELSE? Cut to the station, cut to the fleet, heck, cut to the Festival of G'Quan on Narn, I don't CARE, just CHANGE THE FRAGGING SCENERY!"
I'm not sure if Straczynski was trying to make US feel the same disconnected, unending, trapped hopelessness that Sheridan was feeling, but in general it's not a good idea to torture your AUDIENCE!
The second time, however, knowing ahead of time that it was going to be like that, I got a bit more out of it. I got the "1984" references (a wonderful primer for those in...my line of work...), I liked the performance that Wayne Alexander put on as the "doomed" Drazi (a wonderful bit of irony--he ALSO played the INQUISITOR in the Season Two episode "Comes the Inquisitor"! yikes.), and there are some good lines that I did not remember from the first time:
Interrogator: "You've been interrogated before?"
Sheridan: "Yes."
Interrogator: "Anyone I know?"
Or...
Sheridan: "You CAN fight the system!"
Interrogator: "But can you win?"
Sheridan: "Every time I say...NO."
(LOVE that line!)
There were some delightfully scary things in it, too. Such as: using his father to control him, how he has to be REALLY broken, for real, in his mind, in case he gets scanned, how they will kill him afterwards, when no-one cares, in the night, and of course the ending. He keeps hearing about this "Room 17" (a "1984" reference), where prisoners die, and when he is finally dragged off there, after ALL this hoo-ha--tears, prayers, shaking voices, a stretcher and everything--
--it turns out to be EXACTLY the same type of room! Just the interrogator has changed. He starts asking exactly the same questions.
And so it continues...
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