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"Behind the Script of Hostile Elements" by Kevin Patterson
When we started kicking around story ideas, one thing Dan recommended is that we try to come up with some sort of crime besides murder for Frank to investigate. Being a Midwesterner myself, I knew a little about what went into flood prevention after the so-called "Great Flood" of 1993, and there was in fact somebody who sabotaged a levee by driving a truck into it. So that was how the initial idea for "Hostile Elements" came about.
From that point on, the episode had a very labored genesis in my head -- it wasn't until almost a month after I came up with the premise that I was actually ready to start writing. I knew that the saboteur, Michael Pellier, would be someone who thinks he's doing God's work by causing these disasters, but for a while I was really stumped for a way to flesh out his character, especially since he would be doing this alone and couldn't have much dialogue with anybody until Frank confronts him at the end. I eventually hit upon the idea of making him a writer of religious literature, so that he could be developed through the voice-overs and the passages from his books, as well as his personal journal entries. I was a little worried that the parallels to John the Baptist were too much like Lucas Barr's fixation on the sufferings of Christ in "Via Dolorosa"/"Goodbye to All That," but it seemed to work within the story so I decided to go with it.
The Millennium Group's role in the story, helping to manipulate Pellier and then covering his tracks for him, came a little more easily. I thought it would be helpful to use their involvement to elucidate some of the power dynamics between Carol Finley, The Elder, Mabius, and Legion without giving away the AntiChrist aspect. So, we learn that Finley will obey orders but doesn't really know what Mabius and the Elder are plotting, and there's the implication that Mabius is somehow working in tandem with Legion -- which is revealed as the source of Pellier's false visions -- or at least that the two are aware of each other's actions. I also wanted to show a continuing process of reconciliation between Emma and Frank, and bring out some of Emma's doubts about the Group and her mentor. I think the episode may have been a little too similar to some of the other "Group subplot" stories from the early VS4, but I tried to make it at least a little different by having Frank not get involved until he hears that the Group is involved, so that he's sort of going after them instead of just happening onto the same case as Emma and/or Finley. At the same time, I didn't want him screaming "The Group did it!" at every turn; I figured that he's realized by now that that isn't going to get him anywhere.
One theme I wanted to bring out in "Hostile Elements," both through Pellier's writings and the characters' actions, is that good finds victory over evil not through violent confrontations and such but by achieving clear spiritual knowledge and understanding. The "miracle" at the end, when the bombs mysteriously fail to detonate, is made possible by the fact that Frank has figured out what forces are at work here and why Pellier has had these destructive visions, and then also helps Pellier to come to that same understanding. So the spiritual victory is the cause of the temporal victory, which I think is something of a reversal of the way we typically look at human conflicts.
So in a sense, Pellier was right when he said that humanity has to defer to higher powers such as God or fate and that a modern-day John the Baptist is needed to lead people to spiritual truths. But he was wrong about the specifics: his fate wasn't to commit this final act of violence, and the modern-day John is not Pellier but Frank. That's why the light seems to "shine through" Frank at the end; the divine is at work, but Frank is its instrument in this case. It was intentional on my part that the characters discuss these ideas throughout the episode; what I hoped to do was to create some amount of apprehension, that perhaps a future of violence and destruction is inevitable, and then turn the tables by showing that at least in this case, the will of the higher powers were for the violence and destruction to be prevented.. The challenge, I think, was finding a way to bring these ideas out in the script without hitting the readers over the head and without making the characters and dialogue seem too awkward.
Originally, I had intended for Frank to discuss these things with Finley in the third act, as I consider her to be the best cipher for these sorts of ideas now that Peter Watts is gone, but I decided it would be more interesting from a character standpoint to use Emma instead. In "Genesis," Emma is pretty deep in denial about the Group, and in "Gestalt" and "Sala Del La Morto" we see that there is still a great deal of personal animosity between her and Frank but that some of it is starting to fade. So I thought this would be a good time to show her starting to lose her patience with not knowing what the Group wants from her or what agenda she's serving, while at the same time starting to realize that there is a larger picture to be seen. I also wanted to show that Frank still takes these things very seriously; it always annoyed me in the third season when he'd dismiss the Group's beliefs as "cult propaganda," because I thought he really ought to know better than that.
If there's one thing that I wasn't very satisfied with, it's that the plot progression felt a little too simplistic. A lot of the first act is spent with Frank, Emma, Finley, and Sheriff Delaney reconstructing the crime, and their investigation doesn't amount to much more than sending out copies of Pellier's letters and getting a hint from a publishing company. It left more room for dialogue and characterization, but I wasn't entirely confident that I'd done a good job with either. On the other hand, I've gotten a fair amount of feedback from people saying they really liked the dialogue and the character of Michael Pellier. In fact, I'd say that in general, the readers seem to have been a lot more pleased with "Hostile Elements" than I was. However, while there may have been a little too much subtext and not enough text, I think that it at least turned out to be an entertaining episode, and I'm pleased that people enjoyed it.
TRIVIA:
- The title "Hostile Elements" is something of a play on words. At first, Dan didn't like it because it sounded a little too much like the title to a Tom Clancy spy thriller. My idea was that the "hostile elements" were not simply the human ones such as the Group, but also the "elements" of the natural universe that cause something like a flood. (At one point, I'd even raised the idea of doing a series of four natural disaster episodes involving the traditional four elements of air, earth, water, and fire.) By the time I was finished, I wanted to change it to just plain "Elements," since, as Finley points out at the end, the elements don't seem to be so hostile after all, but by then Dan and Matt had decided they rather liked the original title!
- The names of two of the engineering team members, Howard O'Donnell and James LaBadie, were meant to echo the names of two regular alt.tv.millennium contributors, Jean Ann Donnel and Horace LaBadie.
- My first draft had Mabius leading the break-in at the police crime lab and assassinating Pellier. However, Matt suggested that Mabius shouldn't be doing this sort of "grunt work" now that he's ascended in status within the Group, so I substituted Blaylock.
BLOOPERS:
- The scene on the flood wall with the countdown to midnight would technically require everyone to have their watches synchronized. I was aware of this when writing it, but decided to let it go. Nobody ever called me on this, so I guess I got away with it.
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