I am terribly sorry that this one is so late. After Saturday's news, I simply could not do anything for a few days.

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Recap and discussion of 4 x 18 – Intersections in Real Time

This episode is one that makes me squirm. I have some problem with interrogation and torture that I cannot explain. Perhaps I was tortured in a past life. I took notes but I cannot describe this episode in detail.

I will talk of something else then get back to it.

My husband was in the USAF before I met him in 1978. He was an Arab linguist who flew on missions out of Athens, Greece for 2 years. Part of his training was a trip to survival school in Washington state sometime when there was snow on the ground. They had to survive several days in the wild with little food. AND they underwent a mock prison camp experience.

He said that it only took about 15 minutes at the ‘camp’ to forget that it was an exercise. I don’t know how many days it lasted but there were interrogations and my hubby was defiant and refused to answer the questions, refused to cooperate with his captors. He said the man doing the interrogation finally said to him that he would get himself killed if the camp were real.

I thought of that when Sheridan was being interrogated. I watched him come close but he never wavered, not really. WE didn’t know that he wouldn’t. We got so angry that we sat with clinched fists and glared at the television. How could such a banal man as the interrogator be so thoroughly horrible?

JMS said: This was one of the elements that made the episode interesting for me; most SF tends to ignore the darker sides of the common person. They deal with the big bad guys, the evil federations and Darth Vaders and all the other major forces out there, but all too often the real damage is done not by the single Evil Leader, but by the ten million people who *follow* him, the bookkeepers who track the bodies and the trains and the pain by placing the right figures in all the right columns, who make the trains run on time, who run the gulags, who build the new state empires that will be built with slave labor, any or all of whom could say, as many have, "I was just doing my job."

In light of the real news this week and the perils of living in a world somewhere between Clark’s Earth, the 1930s in Nazi Germany and 1984, this episode was hard to see, hard to listen to.

I was reminded of his encounter with Sebastian as well.

Compare what was said to Sheridan:
Sebastian: "You are linked at the hip. Just as bad as she is. But you are not just a dreamer, you are a soldier. How far are you prepared to go? How much are you prepared to risk? How many people are you prepared to sacrifice for victory? Are you willing to die friendless, alone, deserted by everyone? Because that's what may be required of you in the war that is to come…
What about the people you work with, the people you call friends? Are you willing to sacrifice them? What about your family, what about your God, what about truth, what about blood, what about right, what about wrong, what about your future, what about faith, what about sin, what about hell, what about death, what about life?"

Interrogator:
"No! You have no rights. There's no courtroom here, Captain. No tribunals, no attorneys, no justice, no mercy, no fairness, no hope, no last minute escape. You will walk through that door when you confess and not one second before…
"You will co-operate with the state, for the good of the state and your own survival. You will confess to the crimes of which you have been accused. You will be released and returned to the society a productive citizen if you co-operate. Resistance will be punished, co-operation will be rewarded."

But he did resist and he said no, finally understanding that all that really mattered was what he said and did.

There was this exchange
Sheirdan: You know, it's funny, I was thinking about what you said, that the preeminent truth of our age is that you cannot fight the system. But if, as you say, the truth is fluid, that the truth is subjective, then maybe you can fight the system. As long as just one person refuses to be broken, refuses to bow down.
Interrogator: But can you win?
Sheridan: Every time I say "no."

I finally breathed when he said this. We probably all did because we knew that he might die but he would not give in.

*

Questions:
1. Did this episode upset you? Just curious.
2. Was any of it real? One site asks that question and I wanted to ask you.
3. Do you think he is important enough indeed that they will keep him alive?
4. When he sees Delenn, it she in his head or is she a projection of some kind?
5. Was the Drazi the man in room 17 dressed as an executioner… I can never tell but I think so.