Column Babylon 5 Rewatch Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Intersections in Real Time” An interrogator works to get a confession out of Sheridan… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on January 20, 2026 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “Intersections in Real Time”Written by J. Michael StraczynskiDirected by John LafiaSeason 4, Episode 18Production episode 418Original air date: June 16, 1997 It was the dawn of the third age… We open with Sheridan in a featureless cell. He’s unshaven and injured. Flashbacks remind us of how he got captured last time. Some uniformed personnel enter and set up a desk and two chairs, then an interrogator—he’s never named in dialogue, but his guest credit says he’s named William, so we’ll go with that—enters and puts a briefcase down on the desk. He asks Sheridan if he has any allergies or illnesses, if he’s taking any medications, and if there are any issues with his heart. They go back and forth a bit, with Sheridan trying to attack William, but they’ve put a shock collar on him. If he gets within three feet of William, he’ll get a nasty shock. If he gets within two feet of him, he’ll be shocked much more intensely, enough to render him unconscious. Eventually, Sheridan answers in the negative to the health questions. He sits in the chair opposite William, and then finds himself bound by his wrists and ankles, which William says is for his own protection. After the credits roll, we come back to see Sheridan sitting in the chair with lights on each armrest shining in his face. William comes in and removes the lights, and says, “Good morning.” Sheridan says it’s dark out, and it was light out when William was there earlier, so it can’t be morning. But then William touches a control, and the light in the corridor changes. William also shocks Sheridan, admonishing the captain to never contradict him. William also explains that he’s got no personal animus against Sheridan, he’s just doing his job. He expresses surprise at Sheridan’s recent actions, as he’d never shown any interest in politics before. He asks if there have been any outside influences on him. Sheridan says no, which William records as a lie. There are, he says, always outside influences in one’s life. Suddenly, William announces that it’s lunchtime, which is at odds with his earlier insistence that it was morning. Since Sheridan hasn’t eaten in two days, he offers him half the corned beef sandwich with mustard—but only if he admits that it’s lunchtime, despite being explicitly told that it was morning only a few minutes ago. Sheridan says it’s lunchtime somewhere, and that gets William to share the sandwich. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Truth, William explains while Sheridan chows down, is mutable. When Sheridan fought in the Minbari War, the Minbari were the enemy. Now there is peace between Earth Alliance and the Minbari Federation, so the Minbari aren’t the enemy, and Sheridan has gone so far as to take a Minbari as a lover. Then he says that it’s suppertime, and prepares to leave. On his way out the door, he announces that the sandwich is poisoned. Nothing fatal, just a bunch of toxins that William himself has built up an immunity to. After the commercial break, we come back with Sheridan writhing on the floor of the cell, having apparently spent the night puking.   After explaining that they have to break his body before breaking his mind, he invites Sheridan to sit in the chair. To Sheridan’s surprise, he’s once again bound to it. William asks if Susan Ivanova is still his first officer. Sheridan refuses to answer, saying that Earth has their records, but Williams points out that it’s only accurate up until B5’s secession. William’s bosses want up-to-date, accurate information. (Tellingly, Sheridan never does provide it.) William also offhandedly mentions that his father is doing okay. He’s also being interrogated by one of William’s colleagues. William bumped into that colleague in the corridor and asked to pass on to Sheridan that his father sent his warm wishes. William then all but bullies Sheridan into thanking him for this. After prying that gratitude out, William then holds up a confession they expect Sheridan to sign. Sheridan not only refuses to sign it, but demands an attorney and a military tribunal. William’s response is that he will get none of those things as he has no rights anymore—and is surprisingly emotional for someone who says he’s just doing a job and has no animus toward Sheridan. William also says that, if Sheridan signs the confession, he’ll be free to go—and so will his father. So the fact that David Sheridan is still imprisoned is entirely Sheridan’s fault. During their next session, William brings in a Drazi prisoner, who appears to have been pretty thoroughly tortured. He confesses to being part of Sheridan’s conspiracy to overthrow EarthGov, and names Sheridan as a co-conspirator—as well as a senator that Clark doesn’t like, who’s just been added to the whole thing for convenience. Sheridan tries to convince the Drazi not to go along with this, and the Drazi decides to stop confessing. The Drazi is then strapped to a gurney and sent to Room 17. William then continues his interrogation, asking about Ivanova and who his contacts in the Resistance are. While he does so, the lights dim, and the Drazi’s screams can be heard. Credit: Warner Bros. Television William turns on a very loud recording on a loop telling Sheridan that he must confess and leaves the room. The next day, William turns off the recording and checks Sheridan’s IV, which is how they’re feeding him now. William says that the IV will be discontinued if he doesn’t cooperate soon. All he has to do is sign the confession. Sheridan points out that, once he signs it, they’ll kill him. William says that isn’t true, they’ll keep him alive as a symbol that you can’t beat the system, which William declares as an absolute truth of our time. No, they’ll wait until he’s forgotten and then kill him quietly, not kill him soon after the confession, as that will make a martyr of him. No, they’ll let him live a happy life for some time. Sheridan is unimpressed and spits on the confession. The next day, William urges Sheridan to sign the confession. They’d prefer Sheridan alive and reading the confession in front of a live audience, as that will have more power than a recorded message, which can be accused of being faked. But William’s bosses are running out of time and patience, and they’ll settle for a faked video recording if they have to. Sheridan, however, refuses to give in. William said that the absolute truth of our time is that you can’t beat the system, but he also said that the truth is mutable, and that means that there is no absolute truth. And the system can be beaten as long as at least one person refuses to be broken. William scoffs at the notion that he can win, and Sheridan replies that he wins every time he says “no.” One last time, William asks if Sheridan will sign the confession. Sheridan says “no.” He’s then put on a gurney, and sent to Room 17, the same place the Drazi was sent. As he goes, a priest accompanies him down the corridor, reading last rites. He’s wheeled into a room with a person in an executioner’s robe and hood. After several seconds, more people come into the room with a chair and put Sheridan in it, putting another chair behind the gurney. They fold the gurney up into a desk. A completely different interrogator comes in to sit at the desk, and starts asking Sheridan if he’s has any allergies or illnesses, if he’s taking any medications, or if he has any heart issues. Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan remains defiant to the end. In fact, he’s more defiant at the end than he is at the beginning, which is the opposite effect intended. The only times he gives in are when he accepts half a sandwich and when he thanks William for the best wishes from his father. But those serve to put him more on his guard, not break him as expected. Credit: Warner Bros. Television If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Twice Sheridan sees a hallucination of Delenn, which obviously gives Sheridan strength. Welcome aboard. Raye Birk plays William while Bruce Gray plays his replacement interrogator. Wayne Alexander plays the Drazi, having previously played Sebastian in “Comes the Inquisitor,” G’Dan in “And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place,” and had the recurring role of Lorien at the top of this season. Gray will return next time in “Between the Darkness and the Light.” Alexander will next be seen as a Drakh in “Movements of Fire and Shadow.” Trivial matters. Bruce Boxleitner is, for all intents and purposes, the only regular in this episode. Mira Furlan appears briefly as a hallucination of Sheridan’s, but has no dialogue, and footage from “The Face of the Enemy” is used with Jerry Doyle and Claudia Christian as, respectively, Garibaldi and Ivanova. The title, according to scripter J. Michael Straczynski, is a literal description of the episode’s structure. Each act is in real time, broken by the intersections of commercial breaks. Straczynski credits his support of PEN International, which monitors the treatment of writers who are prisoners of conscience around the world, as well as the experiences of family members who have been victims of Nazi concentration camps and Soviet gulags as the primary inspirations for how this story developed. While there are definite echoes of similar works of fiction—1984 by George Orwell, the TV show The Prisoner, the movie Closet Land—that, according to Straczynski, is coincidental because they are all drawing on real-world instances of government-driven torture of prisoners. In Straczynski’s original plan for the series, this was to be either the end of season four or the beginning of season five, depending on which source you read. However, during the third season it was obvious that the Prime Time Entertainment Network that distributed B5 to syndicated markets was crumbling around them, so Straczynski tightened up the storytelling for season four making sure that it ended with closure on the President Clark plotline, in case the show ended after four seasons. However, to allow for some suspense, this was the last new episode for some time, airing in June, with the final four episodes held to October, as had become traditional. The echoes of all of our conversations. “Do you have any allergies or illnesses that I should know about? Are you currently taking any medication? Had any trouble with your heart? You’ll answer my questions when they are asked. Resistance will be punished. Cooperation will be rewarded.” —The start of each of Sheridan’s interrogations. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The name of the place is Babylon 5. “You just have to say ‘no, I won’t’ one more time than they can say ‘yes, you will’.”  It would’ve been very easy for this to slip into being a gimmick episode, but thanks to a great script by J. Michael Straczynski and a couple of magnificent performances by Bruce Boxleitner and Raye Birk, it very much isn’t. Some great works of dramatic screen fiction have been done with just a couple people in an interrogation room. There’s the movie Closet Land (with Alan Rickman and Madeleine Stowe), there’s the Homicide: Life on the Street episode “Three Men and Adena” (with Moses Gunn, Kyle Secor, and Andre Braugher), and there’s Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Chain of Command, Part 2” (with Sir Patrick Stewart and David Warner). What made all three of them work was a superlative combination of writing and acting—you’ll note that the seven actors listed in this paragraph are among the finest. It’s to the immense credit of Straczynski, Boxleitner, and Birk that this episode deserves to be mentioned in same breath as the other three I cited. Credit also to director John Lafia, who gives the whole thing a very theatrical feel befitting the story, which could easily be done as a stage play. What I especially like is that William’s techniques are all good ones for breaking a subject, with the misdirections, the attempts at mitigation (“I’m just doing my job”), the velvet glove covering an iron fist (giving him half the sandwich only to reveal that it’s poisoned), mixing friendliness (“I’m the only ally you have here” and conveying his father’s good wishes) with brutality (shocking him for disagreeing, bellowing that he has no rights). But while Sheridan does bend a few times, he never breaks. In fact, he’s more defiant at the end of the episode than he is at the beginning, which is probably at least one reason for William being replaced as Sheridan’s interrogator. Sheridan’s made a lot of speeches on this show, and he’ll make more, but for my money, the most effective thing he’s ever said was his response to William’s query of “But can you win?” with “Every time I say ‘no’.” Birk’s performance is what really makes it, though. He doesn’t have Secor’s or Braugher’s intensity or Warner’s or Rickman’s charisma, he really is just a guy doing a job. The biggest truism about fascistic regimes is that they start with a charismatic leader, but they’re maintained by a whole lot of people who are just following orders, just doing a job, just doing what they’re trained to do. While Straczynski has issues with the first part of that (which we’ll talk about a couple of episodes hence), he’s absolutely got the banality of evil part down pat, from Alex Hyde-White making NightWatch sound so reasonable in “In the Shadow of Z’ha’dum” to Roy Dotrice’s well-meaning stooge in “The Fall of Night” to here. Next week: “Between the Darkness and the Light.”[end-mark] The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “Intersections in Real Time” appeared first on Reactor.