z MINUS 7 DAYS …
It’s the penultimate episode of Season 3! Big external battle! Big internal battle! And the galaxy’s most awkward moment!
A-Plot: Okay,so the main plotline here is the Big Payoff for all the fanboys and fangirls, as Delenn convinces the allied worlds to contribute Lots of Ships, combined with Lots of White Stars, to be a force to reckon with against the Shadows, who are plotting a big moral-busting slaughter of refugee ships in the one sector they’ve left untouched.
And the plan works, as Sheridan leads the charge into a massive Battle of Sector 83 against the Shadows that has the fanboys and fangirls creaming their pants over ALL THE SHIPS! FIGHTING ALL THE SHIPS!
It is, in fact, very cool. And, in the end, the Good Guys drive off the Shadows, though at a tremendous cost. It’s full of coolness and awesomeness, and tons of amazing SFX and (well, like I said, ALL THE SHIPS!). The character bits sort of dwindle in the blinding light of the battle, but, for the moment, that’s okay …
(One does wonder where the Vorlons were in all of this.)
This all leads to the C-Plot. But, meanwhile, and interwoven …
B-Plot: … Franklin is still on Walkabout. But, being the kind of guy he (and JMS) is, he gets involved in a mugging, and ends up getting knifed. So all the “go on a walk until you find yourself” turns into “crawl in a pool of blood until you start hallucinating about yourself chiding yourself for being a narcisissitic, running-from-adversity, pretty-much-all-the-criticism-that-anyone’s-ever-leveled-at-you asshole (“What a bunch of self-indulgent mealy-mouthed Foundationist crap!“).
So I’ve ragged on Franklin before, and Richard Biggs along with him. But this is the big payoff episode, and Biggs hits it out of the ballpark, taking all of the “Well, Franklin’s made some mistakes, but now he’s off on a noble quest to find himself and put it right” crapola in just the right, cynical, snarky light, and kicking his alter ego in the ass to save himself and become a productive (and somewhat self-actualized) member of society again. This ep justifies all the Franklin angst and melodrama we’ve been dragged through, because the character gets dragged through worse and the actor nails it perfectly.
In the end, Franklin is back, reconciled to Garibaldi and back in charge of MedLab, but in a (relatively) healthy, non-OCD, non-stims-driven (or driven-to-stims) way. “I’m alive. Everything else is negotiable.” Bravo.
C-Plot: Sheridan and Delenn, post-smoochies last time, are sliding emotionally closer as events drive them more tightly together. Sheridan wants her to stay back on B5 during the impending battle, but Delenn deftly distracts him with Minbari custom and the promise of sex. Not that this overcomes Sheridan’s gallant impulse, but it redirects it efficiently.
After the Big Battle (and somewhat-Pyrrhic Victory), Our Heroes are trying to figure out what happens next, now that the Shadows know Babylon 5 is the center of their opposition. That leads into some somewhat-awkward fitting of events back into the Big Dream that Kosh gave Sheridan in “All Alone in the Night.” Some parts of (somewhat lamely) explained way, but there are still intimations of “the man in the middle” who is coming after Sheridan, and is, in some fashion, Sheridan’s counterpart.
(Cue creepy shots of a Shadow vessel spawning a small ship that flies off into space …)
And now we get to Delenn’s flash-forward on “War Without End.” Seems the Minbari have a courtship custom, where, when things are getting serious, She gets to hang out in His room while He sleeps, to see what His true, sleeping, relaxed, honest face is. So there’s Delenn, ogling John under the covers, liking what she sees, playing with his snow globe …
… when in walks a shadowy figure … “Hello. You must be Delenn. I’m Anna Sheridan. John’s wife.”
Shatter goes the snow globe. Gulp goes the audience. “Z MINUS 2 DAYS” goes the over-title.
Meanwhile: Marcus & Ivanova are off as scouts for Our Heroes, hanging out until the Shadows show up, at which point they’re to signal the fleet and hightail it out of there. Needless to say, things don’t go smoothly, but in the meantime we get both a nicely dramatic scene (Marcus offers to teach Ivanova Minbari, and demonstrates “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met” as a sentence, offering as a translation “My words are inadequate to the burden in my heart”) and an amusing scene (Ivanova tries to figure out how to sleep on those damned sloped Minbari beds).
Overall: A definite WHAM! episode. The space battle is spectacular, the Franklin scene justify three seasons of the character (and the two intermingled are full of joint poetry and parallelism). And, of course, the arrival of Anna Sheridan drives the next, and final, episode of the season.
Everyone hits there marks here. Sheridan and Delenn avoid mawkish sentimentality, instead coming across as an authentic couple. There’s a bit more stereotyped “star-crossed lovers” bits for Marcus and Ivanova, but those parts still work. Garibaldi gets some decent scenes, and, of course, Franklin steals the character-driven parts of the show (though, overall, everyone remembers ALL THE SHIPS! rather than his poignant psychodrama).
Most Dramatic Moment: Franklin throwing down, emotionally, with himself should probably get this. Two of the scenes are particularly brutal and effective. But, honestly, I’ll be the fanboy and turn to the heart of the big space battle, where we intercut between huge FX shots and silent shots of Sheridan, Delenn, Ivanova, and Marcus, barking orders or reacting to occurrences.
The big battle here is, honestly, one of the best in SF TV. It’s not a single ship-to-ship thing, but fleet-vs-fleet, with Sheridan giving commands (with Delenn’s support) to most effectively use his forces as the battle wears on . The visuals don’t necessarily reflect it (though they reflect the cost), but the dialog makes a huge difference here, sufficient that we can eventually fade to just the music and watch it happen …
Most Amusing Moment: Okay, for basic vaudevillian physical humor, Ivanova trying to figure out a way to sleep on the Minbari beds (and her final, and abortive, solution) win the day.
Most Arc-ish Moment: Well, that would certainly be the last 30 seconds of the episode, when we not only fulfill a time-flash-forward, but reintroduyce Bruce Boxleitner’s John Sheridan’s wife, and set up a ton of pain that will affect the rest of the series.
Overall Rating: 4.9 / 5 — It’s all just damned good, as good as B5 gets (at least from this perspective moment in the rewatch). Drama, action, occasional humor, big FX, big battles (external and internal), and big, arc-ish goodness, hampered only by some awkward filling-in-the-gaps on a past dream sequence that most viewers don’t even remember. (Rating History)
Other Resources for this episode:
Next episode: “Z’ha’dum.” Season finale. Z Minus 0 Days.
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