By Any Means Necessary (Babylon 5)
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- For other uses, see By any means necessary (disambiguation).
| “By Any Means Necessary” | |
|---|---|
| Babylon 5 episode | |
 |
|
| Episode no. | Season 1 Episode 12 |
| Guest stars | Katy Boyer (Neeoma Connally) John Snyder (Orin Zento) Aki Aleong (Senator Hidoshi) |
| Written by | Kathryn M. Drennan |
| Directed by | Jim Johnston |
| Production no. | 114 |
| Original airdate | 11 May 1994 |
| Episode chronology | |
| ← Previous | Next → |
| "Survivors" | "Signs and Portents" |
| List of Babylon 5 episodes | |
"By Any Means Necessary" is an episode from the first season of the science-fiction television series Babylon 5.
Contents |
[edit] Plot synopsis
An accident aboard the station precipitates an illegal labor strike. The accident resulted in the destruction of cargo that included a G'Quan Eth, a hard-to-obtain flower which G'Kar needs for a religious ritual in a few days. It turns out that Londo Mollari has one, but is refusing to sell it to G'Kar.
The strike gives the Earth Senate the excuse that it was looking for to invoke the "Rush Act", a law that permits the use of force to end a strike. The strikers end up rioting when Garibali goes to arrest them, however Sinclair manages to end the situation before anyone gets seriously injured. Instead of using the military to end the strike as the Senate intended, Commander Sinclair finds a loophole in the orders that allows him to divert funds from the military budget (which had received extra funding when the dock workers did not) to upgrade the docks, as well as grant amnesty to all strikers.
Mollari waits until after it is too late for G'Kar to perform the ritual to hand over the flower (it must be performed in the sunlight that has touched the G'Quan Mountain at a specific time of the year). Mollari gloats while G'Kar despairs, until Sinclair reminds him that the rules of the ritual predate Narns traveling between the stars so there is now a loophole. The light from the Narn sun that was used for the ritual a decade ago is now about to reach the station, so G'Kar can perform the ritual with the required rays of sunlight, just several years later.
[edit] Arc significance
- Sinclair's solution to the crisis would come back to haunt him in a future episode, as he predicted it would.
- Both the main plot and subplot demonstrate Sinclair's ability and willingness to bend the rules in order to do the right thing.
- The personal hatred between G'Kar and Mollari almost escalates into violence again.
- The subplot demonstrates G'Kar's spirituality and strong religious ties.
[edit] Production details
This episode was written by Kathryn M. Drennan, wife of Babylon 5 creator and executive producer J. Michael Straczynski. In order to avoid the appearance of favoritism, Straczynski had her submit (rather than be assigned) a premise, and required to be approved by others in the production crew other than him. Unlike most writers, for whom Straczynski revised scripts himself, revisions of Drennan's script went through story editor Larry DiTillio instead.
[edit] Trivia
- "By Any Means Necessary" was originally titled "Backlash."
- The Rush Act invoked to end the strike is jokingly named in reference of Rush Limbaugh.
- Director Jim Johnston is the man in the crowd of workers who shouts "I say we STRIKE!"
- Humans and Narns have different light-years: a Narn light-year is slightly longer than Earth's (12.2 human light-years is just over 10 Narn light-years). This is a minor error since a light-year is a constant value. It is defined as "the distance that a photon would travel, in free space and infinitely distant from any gravitational or magnetic fields, in one Julian year," which comes out to 9,500,000,000,000 kilometers. Here it seems that a Narn year replaces the Julian year, therefore the definition isn't strictly held.
