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B5 Rewatch: 4×11 “Lines of Communication”

Why ever would you mistrust our new best friends, the pleasingly-named Drakh?
Why ever would you mistrust our new best friends, the pleasingly-named Drakh?

Time for another bridge episode, in which Things Happen, but more as a chain of events than as a unified chapter in the saga.

A-Plot: After the War to End All Wars, there are … wars. Or at least battles, as various of the weaker races are getting someone or someones nibbling at their frontiers, bushwhacking ships, and otherwise causing problems. Delenn catches wind of this and is cheesed to find out that the Minbari — who have traditionally protected these folk — simply aren’t. It turns out the Grey Council’s breaking (courtesy of Delenn herself) is causing the three castes to edge toward civil war, with the Warrior Caste leading the charge. (Of course, we hear all of this from some Religious Caste members, so take it with a grain of spoo.)

Delenn checks out a squadron of White Star and goes hallooing off in a likely pattern. They run across a Pak’ma’ra’ ship being taken down by some Evil-Looking Evil Ships — at which point the Guest Minbari if the Week, Forell, holds a gun on Delenn and convinces her to have the fleet follow the Drakh vehicles to their mothership.

Turns out the Drakh are refugees — but powerful ones — who are simply looking to carve out a place to live. Forell fills in Delenn on all the horrors of the cold civil war going on back home (his own family was ejected from one Arctic city and most of them died on the way to another). He’s proposing an alliance between the Religious Caste Minbari and the Drakh, as leverage against the martial strength of the Warrior Caste. (The Worker Caste can, as always, go pound sand.)

The Drakh ships have a sort of yellowjacket look to them, thus adding to their friendliness.
The Drakh ships have a sort of yellowjacket look to them, thus adding to their aura of friendliness.

One of the Drakh come on board and, sadly, the “if it looks evil, it probably is” vibe is strong with them. It’s a nasty-looking specimen, given an interesting aspect by a blurring field around it that causes it to seem not entirely in real space. It and Delenn chat, and she realizes that, yeah, these guys are refugees all right: the last ones to depart Z’ha’dum before blowing it up. They’re former Shadow followers and, as the B-team, are mostly out to wreak havoc — and, once they figure out who Delenn is and her role in the defeat / departure of the Shadows, to seek vengeance.

Space battle, yadda-yadda, the White Stars escape, though not without one of them being taken out by the Drakh (who are no push-overs). Once in hyperspace, Delenn orders the ships to turn around and, when they unexpectedly return, blows the Drakh mother-ship to flinders.

Delenn wraps things up (after Forell dies from battle wounds) as noting that (a) there are still bad guys in the galaxy, and (b) she really needs to visit Minbar to figure out WTF is going on.

B-Plot: Franklin and Marcus try to get a handle on what’s going on with the Martian rebels — who, in turn, don’t trust the B5ers one bit. Most of the folk there are actually allies up from Earth, and there are lots of conflicts going on about the tactics to use — most notably, terror bombings that kill civilians as well as EarthGov security forces. Fortunately, Number One, the 90s Rock Star leader of the Rebels, is against that, so the gosh-that’s-quick romance between her and Franklin doesn’t have a moral ambiguity to it.

Franklin gives a stirring speech (with Marcus’ help) to the Rebels, and gets them to play along with B5, work to oust President Clark, and to stop the bombings for now. That done, Franklin can go play doctor with Number One, while Marcus stands guard, playing with his … pike.

C-Plot: Sheridan is fed up with EarthGov propaganda being broadcast at B5, mostly because a lot of it is about him. A lot of it is also laying the groundwork for another Earth attack “errand of mercy” against the station.

ISN REPORTER: … as reports continue to come in about the harsh conditions aboard what was once the shining beacon of EarthForce, Babylon 5. Messages smuggled out indicate that humans continue to be subjected to cruel oppression by alien groups aboard the renegade outpost. And every day more people are asking, “When will Earth intervene? How much longer can we allow our citizens to endure this mistreatment?”

After kvetching about it for a while, he decides to go into the propaganda biz himself, setting up the War Room as a new broadcast center, the Voice of the Resistance, with Ivanova as the reluctant “voluntold” star. If they can get their message out, he’s convinced, the will of their EarthGov and EarthForce opponents will be weakened.

Ivanova is not amused.

Meanwhile: Delenn reminds Sheridan (and the studio audience) of Sheridan’s change since being at Z’ha’dum.

Overall I guess there’s a story in the A-Plot, barely, but really this is more revelations, discussions, and moving of the chess pieces to discover what the new board looks like. In the end, we have a new enemy, a crisis developing among an ally, a strategy to deal with another enemy, and Franklin has someone to lock lips with.

The introduction of the Drakh is logical, even cool, as an idea, but they never come across as more than dime store alien villains, esp. once the blurring effect stops being used. They are not as menacing, nor as interesting, as the Shadows, and their potential development as “Oh, that’s us if our side had lost”never has time to gel in the Great Plotline Reshuffle of Season 4.

I keep waiting for Number One to break into a glam-rock power ballad.
I keep waiting for Number One to break into a glam-rock power ballad.

The Mars bits are vaguely interesting, but I never found Number One credible, as written or as cast. She’s just too strikingly gorgeous — and (I believe) the only female resistance fighter we see. The debate over terror as a tactic is given pious short shrift — there’s no plausible argument made for it aside from “We’ve got to show them we mean business,” and it’s condemned mostly for pragmatic public relations reasons.

Sheridan’s Voice of the Resistance the idea is a new and noteworthy step on the road to independence.

One interesting idea played with is the social and political fall-out from major events.  The Minbari are falling apart, the traditional patterns of power and balance thrown all out of whack by the breaking of the Grey Council and the impact of the Shadow War. The Mars Resistance, on the other hand, isn’t quite sure what it wants: a free Mars, Clark eliminated, or an overthrow of EarthGov.

Characterwise, there’s not a lot to say. Delenn gets some of the best lines, both her reminder to a worried Sheridan as she’s about to embark (“John, it pleases me that you care for what I have become. But never forget what I was, who I am, and what I can do”) and her command to take out the Drakh mother ship (“End this”). Everyone else goes through their paces, and only the oddly breakneck pace of Franklin and Number One mashing lips (and other body parts) really stands out as being off.

In sum, like “Racing Mars,” this is entertaining TV, but nothing special.

Most Dramatic Moment: Having narrowly escaped the Drakh into hyperspace, Delenn decides to teach them a lesson for their destruction of one of the White Stars, by turning back around and kicking their butts.

Most Amusing Moment: Marcus and his pike, standing lonely guard.

Most Arc-ish Moment: Delenn and Sheridan come to a temporary parting of the ways, as she heads back to Minbar to clean up her mess, and she lets him focus on his work without worrying about her.

Overall Rating: 3.5 / 5 —   (Rating History).

Other Resources for this episode:

Next episode:  The return of G’Kar and Londo, and the Voice of the Resistance gets its debut in “Conflicts of Interest.”

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