– Sinclair getting engaged to Sakai, which means plot disaster in the form of …
– Garibaldi gunned down and on the edge of death, the plot he was trying to stop carried out, leading to …
– A huge impact on EarthGov, with astropolitical implications that will rule the following seasons.
– Londo abruptly sucked into the web of the Shadows by …
– Mr. Morden, who has some what are those things?! companions, who help strike against …
– A Narn outpost which was the cause of some diplomatic brouhaha, now wiped out by huge, spider-like Shadow ships (see video below), causing …
– G’kar to go off on some mysterious mission (leaving beside the last we see, sadly, Julie Caitlin Brown’s Na’toth)
– Kosh, fergoshsakes, having had a very intriguing conversation with Delenn, then later visiting Sinclair in a bar, reminding him (http://youtu.be/auwSYKzQDdc) of …
– Delenn, who demonstrates what all the “Chrysalis” hinting was about, leaving …
– Lennier crying.
Crikey. Everything interesting of the past season comes to fruition with a vengeance.
In many ways, “Chrysalis” is the first of a three-part episode, with the first two eps of Season 2 needed to address most of the immediate plot points raised. But the avalanche started here will carry through the next three seasons (with loud rumblings in the plot-mangled Season 5).
Trivia note: this was actually the 12th episode shot, due to all the anticipated post-production work — meaning the actors got to spend half the season already knowing how it ended, but had to do perform this episode with references back to major events that hadn’t been acted or even scripted yet. That actually muddies some insight into the acting job done in this ep, which overall is some of the better in the season.
The episode is not perfect. The death of President Santiago lacks some impact that actually knowing the man would have helped with; it still works because of the conscious parallels JMS draws to JFK’s assassination and the reaction of the crew to it. And while Garibaldi’s attempted killer has been fit into the role over the season, it’s still just a relatively faceless bad guy, not nearly as cool as Laurel Takashima would have been if Tamlyn Tomita’d decided to stay on after the pilot episode. But even with those bobbles, it’s a killer ending (so to speak) to a shaky Season 1, and demonstrated that Joe Straczynski knew what he was doing. Very few people watching it weren’t going to make an effort to be there for the Season 2 opener.
Most Dramatic Moment: Freaking everything is dramatic, but in terms of moments … the destruction of Earthforce 1, its impact on the C&C crew watching it, followed by the consciously LBJesque inauguration of the VP.
Most Amusing Moment: A very sad “amusing,” but Londo’s panicky grilling of Morden as to WTF his folks did with the Narn base. Or, perhaps, the more trivial “nibbled to death by cats” scene (http://youtu.be/PZ66wHRhe2U).
Most Arc-ish Moment: One could argue the scene with Delenn visiting Kosh and seeing — something — to commit her to her course. But I’ll go for Kosh’s intoning to Sinclair in the bar, “And so it begins” (http://youtu.be/3qYbVQu7YAQ). Season 1 had been the baseline of “normal” for B5. Now the real story would take over …
Overall Rating: 5.0 / 5 — This ep would mean nothing without everything (good and bad, important and trivial) that led up to it. But with all of that, JMS (writer as well as exec producer of the ep) is able to just start WHAMming the audience with a baseball bat from every angle. Triffic stuff.
Lurker’s Guide: http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/guide/022.html
Babylon Project: http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/Chrysalis
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0517637/
AV Club: http://www.avclub.com/review/babylon-5-chrysalis-83930
Noise2Signal: http://noise2sig.nl/2011/05/15/babylon-5-chrysalis/
Great review! 🙂
+Fredrik Mellström Thanks!