Morgan Clark
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| Babylon 5 character | |
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| William Morgan Clark | |
|---|---|
| Affiliated with | President, Earth Alliance |
| Race | Human |
| Home planet | Earth |
| First appearance | Revelations |
| Last appearance | Endgame |
| Portrayed by | Gary McGurk |
In the science fiction television series Babylon 5, William Morgan Clark was the president of the Earth Alliance. He was previously President Luis Santiago's vice-president, and succeeded him after arranging the assassination of Santiago. He was portrayed by actor Gary McGurk. Clark rarely appeared on-screen, but is a major off-screen presence in the show.
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[edit] Early Presidency
Clark became president when EarthForce One was destroyed in 2258, killing President Santiago. He was complicit with the assassination, in order to take office. He believed Earth to be in danger of being overrun by extraterrestrial races, and so the Nightwatch, a fascist, paramilitary organization, was created to find out people suspected to be alien infiltrators.
EarthForce's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General William Hague, suspected that Clark was involved in the assassination, and began a low-level counter-conspiracy that included Captain John Sheridan. In 2260, John Sheridan and General Hague found evidence that Clark had arranged the assassination of Santiago. Hague managed to get the evidence introduced in the Senate, which caused an uproar.
At about the same time, it was revealed that Clark's forces had found a Shadow vessel buried on Ganymede. Clark was having the ship studied in order to learn its secrets. John Sheridan took the White Star back to Ganymede, and destroyed the vessel. Clark soon issued a decree of martial law using the Ganymede incident as an excuse.
[edit] Civil War
When martial law was declared, Hague began armed resistance against Clark's government. Hague was soon killed in a firefight between his ship, the EAS Alexander and the heavy-cruiser EAS Clarkston. Meanwhile, Mars rejected martial law, and Clark responded by bombing Mars.
Clark dissolved the Senate, and nationalized the media outlets. Afterwards Proxima III, and Orion VII broke away from the Earth Alliance, and set themselves up as independent states. Babylon 5 soon followed these two colonies by breaking away. This followed a battle between Babylon 5 and Clark's fleet sent to seize the station by force, in which Clark's first attempt was stopped, his second attempt was halted by a contingent of Minbari warships that arrived to protect the station from Clark's forces. Clark quickly turned the Earth Alliance into a dictatorship. ISN was turned into his propaganda machine.
Clark's government was receiving support from the Shadows and when they had left the galaxy, Clark lost one of his main bases of support. He decided that Sheridan and Babylon 5 were a threat that needed to be dealt with. Clark did this mainly through a propaganda war directed at Babylon 5, and Sheridan was a particular target of this war.
In the fall of 2261, Clark put a policy in place of killing refugees trying to leave the colonies that he was taking military action against. When Sheridan learned that in one case 10,000 innocent civilians were killed by an Earth Alliance vessel, he realized that the time had come to remove Clark. Sheridan's forces began a systematic campaign against Clark's forces, including a televised message of their own dubbed the "Voice of the Resistance". Large numbers of Earth Force personnel defected, and Sheridan scored his first major victory against Clark by defeating his forces blockading Proxima III. Sheridan himself was eventually captured by his former chief of security Michael Garibaldi and tortured, but was rescued and returned to the fleet soon afterward.
Clark decided to trap Sheridan's forces with advanced model destroyers which had been fitted with Shadow technology. When Sheridan's second in command, Commander Susan Ivanova, learned of this she engaged the destroyers with the White Star ships, leaving the rest of the Earthforce vessels behind. Captain James of the EAS Agamemnon opposed Ivanova's decision, but soon realized that Clark would have his destroyers target the Earth ships rather than the White Stars. While Ivanova managed to destroy all the vessels, some may argue that Clark scored a temporary victory as most of Sheridan's White Stars were destroyed in the attack, leaving Ivanova in a near-death state.
Eventually, Sheridan took the fleet directly to Earth, and sent a message saying that they had come home to fight against Clark's tyranny. Realizing that he would soon be captured, Clark committed suicide with a PPG. In one last vindictive act, he turned the planetary defense grid back on to Earth under a "Scorched Earth" policy. Sheridan and his forces quickly moved to destroy the platforms. One final platform was targeting the eastern seaboard of North America and Sheridan's ship was the closest ship to be in range. Unforturnally, his ship was badly damaged and had no choice but to ram the platform. Quick action by the EAS Apollo resulted in that ship destroying the platform, saving North America and Sheridan in the process.
After Clark's suicide, Susanna Luchenko of the Russian Consortium was named President. President Luchenko announced that the justice department would prosecute those who had committed crimes during Clark's reign of terror and offered amnesty to those who had followed Sheridan. Sheridan would resign in the aftermath of the civil war.
[edit] Notes
- Vice President Clark's presidential swearing-in aboard EarthForce Two is an intentional homage to U.S. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson's own ceremony aboard a plane, televised to the nation, immediately after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on 1963-11-22. (See comparison image at right.) According to JMS, it was coincidentally shot on the anniversary of Kennedy's death. [1]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Straczynski, J. Michael. "Chrysalis" commentary, Babylon 5: Season 1, disc 6.
