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THANK you. I've mentioned elsewhere that I was going more for
the roots of this. Though the Dante thread you mention is closest in
many ways (again, you dig into archetypes you end up with similar
structures, that's the nature of the beast), it was Orpheus going into
the underworld for his wife, and losing her, that was in the back of my
head when I was blocking out that part of the story. (You can also
toss in Christ's temptation by the devil, and descent into the
wilderness, if you want.)

This will probably get me in trouble, but...on the one hand, I
am always delighted and impressed with the breadth and depth of
analyses and thought of the larger group of SF fans, and the
insightfulness with which they apply those perceptions.

On the flip side of this discussion...for a certain percentage
of them, that breadth and depth is only or primarily within SF and
mainstream fantasy. The wellspring of material from which to draw when
making comparisons is not often as broad as it should be in classical
literature, mythology, medieval studies, and so on. They see a drop
into a chasm, they think "Oh, Gandalf." Not understanding that the root
of this goes back way, way, way further...to Orpheus and his kindred
spirits.

I was copied a note from someone on another newsgroup who
insisted that everything in the show had an elvish/Tolkein base,
including and *especially* the names of everyone, citing the Agamemnon
as meaning something or other in LoTR elvish. The symbol is RIGHT
THERE, in the name, Agamemnon, and the whole unfortunate history of
that character and his wife, and the Cassandra character (which is at
the center of G'Kar's character)...and yet she says, "No, no, it's all
a clue, it means this thing over here."

My background is as an SF fan myself, so I offer the above
without stereotype or pejorative intent. But as well as reading SF, I
spent most of my early adult life reading from classical sources.
Goethe's FAUST informs Londo in many ways, as well as the history of
early Rome, and Hegelian notions on the role of conflict, and the
divine role of the emperor. You're talking to someone who read
Plotinus' The Aenneads just for kicks, and whose favorite character was
Zeno and his paradoxes. You want to talk Plato's perfect forms? The
Socratic method of teaching? Greek tragic structure as embodied in
Oedipus? The overall work of Sophocles? The Bible? I've read that
one cover to cover twice...anyone else in the room who's done that,
raise your hands and tell me you didn't fall asleep halfway through
Numbers and Deuteronomy, the two most boring books in the whole darned
thing.

There was a period in my life -- from around 1976 through 1981
-- when I devoured everything I could in these areas. Mythology.
Existentialism. Zen. 18th century literature. I took part time jobs in
libraries so I could get access to the widest possible range of books,
especially new ones in areas that interested me. A lot of the details
have washed away over the years, but the cumulative *sense* of that
remains. I can still remember how excited I was when a brand new
translation of the Inferno, the Purgatario and the Paradisio came out
(from Penguin, I think), putting it all back into the proper lyric
form, and I devoured them, one day each, then read them all again using
the footnotes and marginalia.

All that time, I never knew I was preparing myself to write this
show, because it could *only* be done with a generalist background,
knowing a little about a lot of areas...just enough to get into
trouble, ususally, but still the grounding is there.

Funny thing...about two, three weeks ago, I got an email from a
woman who is a professor of medieval studies at a major university, who
said she'd been nudged into watching the show by her graduate students,
and is now a big fan of the show. She said that as she watched, she
"clicked" constantly on the sources from medieval and classical
literature, mythology, and other deep well sources, and was pleased to
see them being used in a contermporary or futuristic venue.

Anyway, it's what I've always said about this show...you see the
paradigm with which you are most familiar. Sometimes that's great,
and sometimes it's a curse.

jms