"By Any Means Necessary" is the 12th episode of the first season of the science fiction television series Babylon 5. The storyline involves a major industrial dispute involving the workers aboard the Babylon 5 station, its political ramifications back on Earth, and how Commander Jeffery Sinclair resolves the crisis. It first aired on May 11, 1994.
Title
The episode was originally planned to have the title 'Backlash', which was changed pre-production. The title refers to the (fictional) Rush Act, which – when enacted – permits a military commander to resolve an industrial strike by any means necessary, including the use of military force.
Plot
A computer glitch causes a Narn vessel, docking to deliver cargo, to crash into another ship mistakenly cleared to leave Babylon 5. A dock worker, the brother of Delvientos, is killed in the subsequent explosion and fire. The docker workers' union, led by Neeoma Connally, insists this is a result of equipment failure and overworked crews. The former is confirmed by security; substandard microchips from a subcontractor triggered the mistaken clearance of the departing vessel. Connally demands funding for new equipment and more staff. Commander Sinclair agrees to request the funding.
Earth Central's budget for Babylon 5 provides neither funding for new equipment nor for additional staff. It does add funding for weaponry. In response, the dock workers engage in a version of the "blue flu" (a reference by Garibaldi to police union members pretending to be sick to get around anti-strike regulations). Earth Senator Hidoshi orders Sinclair to end the de facto strike. The attempt to end the strike backfires. Led by an angry Delvientos, the workers openly declare a strike.
The destroyed Narn vessel's cargo included a G'Quan Eth, a hard-to-obtain flower which Narn ambassador G'Kar needs for a religious ritual in a few days. It transpires that Centauri Ambassador Londo Mollari has the only one left on the station, which he agrees to sell for 50,000 credits, ridiculously more than market value. When G'Kar grudgingly accepts, Mollari reneges in retribution for the Narn attack on Ragesh III, during which his nephew was tortured. Seething, G'Kar arranges for an important Centauri idol to be stolen as a bargaining chip, while Sinclair is forced to endure this petty conflict as a neutral agent.
Orin Zento, the (ostensible) negotiator sent by the Earth Senate Labor Committee to settle the strike, offers nothing but empty promises and threats of retribution. The strike gives the Earth Senate the excuse that it was looking for to invoke the Rush Act, which permits a commander to use any means necessary, including the use of force, to end a strike. The strikers end up rioting when a security force moves to arrest them, with Commander Sinclair managing to end the situation before anyone gets seriously injured. Zento then has the Senate invoke the act.
After arranging for one final meeting between parties, Sinclair finds a loophole in the orders that allows him to divert excess funding from the military budget to hire additional workers and upgrade the dock equipment, as well as to grant amnesty to the strikers. When the stunned Zento protests, Sinclair notes that the phrase "any means necessary" in the Rush Act clearly allows him to fully acquiesce to the strikers' demands to resolve the situation. As for the workers, they are delighted at this unexpectedly swift victory and agree to immediately resume their duties. Later, Senator Hidoshi praises Sinclair for his cleverness and advocacy for the workers, but warns that the humiliated Zento has powerful friends who will be keen to make trouble for Sinclair.
Meanwhile, Mollari demands retribution against G'Kar for the stolen Centauri artifact. Sinclair changes the subject and informs Mollari that the G'Quan Eth is a controlled substance only allowed for medical or religious purposes, and must be impounded. Molari agrees to give up the plant. G'Kar despairs, saying that Mollari only did so because it is too late to perform the religious ceremony: it must be performed when the rays of sunlight touch the G'Quan Mountain at a specific time of the year. Sinclair reminds him that the rules of the ritual predate Narns traveling between the stars, so there is now a loophole: the light from 10 Narn years ago is still traveling and is now about to reach Babylon 5, so G'Kar can perform the ritual with the required rays of sunlight. A delighted G'Kar thanks Sinclair and assures him the Centauri artifact will be returned. As such, G'Kar makes his preparations and performs his religious observance with some careful timing for the anticipated light's arrival. Straczynski wrote, "It's a very intense script in which we basically put Sinclair through the wringer for 48 hours and try and make him absolutely nuts. And succeed, for the most part." Drennan later wrote the Babylon 5 novel, To Dream in the City of Sorrows, which follows Jeffery Sinclair's story after he leaves the station after season 1.
The Matewan Massacre referred to by Neeoma Connally was a 1920 industrial confrontation between coal mine workers and the mine company, which brought in a private detective agency to settle the dispute. Events resulted in a shootout in which several people died. The fictional Rush Act was named by Drennan after the conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
Production
Cast and filming
According to Straczynski, a number of people involved in the production, including lead actor Michael O'Hare, regard the episode as their favorite so far.
The role of union representative Neeoma Connally was played by American actress Katy Boyer, while John Snyder played the character of Orin Zento. Snyder played the second Soul Hunter in the earlier episode, "Soul Hunter". Straczynski regarded both of their performances as being very good.
The episode was directed by Jim Johnston, who previously directed the episodes, Soul Hunter, The Parliament of Dreams and Survivors. Johnston also appears as the dock worker who yells, "I say we <em>strike!</em>. The original script didn't actually include scenes of the workers striking. Johnston noticed this and requested the inclusion of a worker calling his colleagues to strike. Johnston was told the budget had already been finalised and it wasn't possible to include another day actor. So Johnston decided to step in on the last day of filming and play the role himself. About twenty members of the production staff were also dragged in front of the camera by Johnston, and appear in the episode as members of the crowd.
Commander Sinclair's unshaven, run-down appearance in this episode actually began because actor Michael O'Hare had only just arrived in California from New York where he'd had to be for the weekend. Director Jim Johnston thought that O'Hare's performance was particularly good when he was tired, so he instructed O'Hare to stay up late, and didn't allow him to shave for the rest of the week. Visual effects team leader Ron Thornton, who worked on both Babylon 5 and Star Trek episodes during his career, wrote that the Babylon 5 visual effects budgets were around one tenth of the corresponding Star Trek budgets, but that Babylon 5 effects were "...<em>much</em> more fun to do."
The design for Earth transport shuttle – seen rising on an elevator in front of the Narn transport ship before the docking bay accident – was digitally created by Thornton as a variation of a physical miniature for a shuttle which he had built before he had worked for the BBC. The original miniature had been used as a shuttle in the Blake's 7 episode, Orbit.
The freighter ships seen outside the station waiting to dock during the dock workers' strike were created digitally by Foundation Imaging artists taking parts from previously created ships, described by digital animator Mark Kochinski as "kitbashing". The central hull tubes were modelled by Thornton, and the cargo pods were created by Kochinski, who writes that some of the ships seem to have a re-colored bridge taken from the Earth president's ship, Earthforce One, which appeared in the previous episode, "Survivors".
Music
Music for the title sequence and the episode was provided by the series' composer, Christopher Franke. Franke developed themes for each of the main characters, the station, for space in general, and for the alien races, endeavoring to carry a sense of the character of each race.
Story arc significance
Reviewer Elias Rosner notes that In this episode, elements introduced in the first half of the season begin to become relevant to the unfolding of the characters, and to coming plot lines. Centauri ambassador Mollari's toying with Ambassador G'Kar is a response to the Narn capture of the Centauri outpost on Ragesh 3 in the first episode of the season, "Midnight on the Firing Line".
Author Jane Killick highlights the development of G'Kar's character – the process having begun in "Mind War" –: for the first time in the series he is portrayed as having a deeply religious character, with his role as the senior Narn official on the station bringing with it the role of being the religious leader for the Narn on Babylon 5. The Earth Senate's dissatisfaction with Sinclair's leadership style and handling of situations had been building up for weeks: Elias Rosner writes, "Things are changing back on Earth, not always for the better. What comes next is going to be an interesting time for sure. The book will have a significant role in the overarching storyline.
Writers Ensley Guffey and Dale Koontz describe this episode as "the closest thing to a monster-of-the-week episode thus far," but note the twist: that the 'monster' is the bureaucracy and budget process behind the running of the station. They describe the episode for being "brilliant for again refusing to paint a picture of the future in which all socio-political problems have been solved."