Finally, at long last, we get a Garibaldi episode where he’s not snarling and snapping and rolling his eyes. That, alone, recommends this to viewing.
A-Plot: Garibaldi arrives on Mars, and is secretly escorted to see Edgars by the magnate’s button man, Wade. He encounters Lise, who tries to warn him off, but Garibaldi goes on to meet with Edgars (delightfully played by Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.), telling the industrialist that he came there to finally lay eyes on his employer, and to see if there’s something that can be done to stop Sheridan. The two determine they have common cause in wanting Sheridan stopped — peacefully — but also wanting Clark out of the way — peacefully. Edgars has Wade take Garibaldi to his quarters (leading to a lovely character bit)
Garibaldi is rousted from his room in the middle of the night and interrogated by a telepath — at Edgars’ command. The questioning confirms Garibaldi’s anti-telepath prejudice, his desire to see Sheridan safely stopped, his suspicions about Edgars, and his continued lack of memory after his “disappearance.” After being released, he’s also asked by Edgars if he still loves Lise, to which he answers no, and exits.
The telepath affirms all the previous answers to Edgars, but indicates Garibaldi is lying about the last. Of course. A bit later, the teep is killed by Wade. Of course.
The next day, Garibaldi braces Edgars for the truth. Edgars is (like Garibaldi) afraid of a world run by telepaths, and Clark rose to power both through use of the Psi Corps and aliens providing him technology. With the aliens defeated, Clark is relying more and more on the Corps. The problem is, Edgars shares, is that if Sheridan continues with his military campaign, Clark will uneash the Corps, granting them powers as his personal police that will let them take over the world.
The problem is also not just one of personal liberty for him; Edgars and his fellow megacorp oligarchs have been running Earth for generations, and the Psi Corps ascendant would disrupt this.
That evening, Lise and Garibaldi have a tearful scene in his room where she explains how she ended up with Edgars — basically, because Garibaldi was a flake and too far away. Even Garibaldi finally admitting he still loves her doesn’t make things any better, and she leave him to eat alone.
Meanwhile, Edgars is in a lab with three beds. He compassionately comforts one of them, a moaning man with lesions on his face, telling him it will be over soon. The people in the beds have been off some kind of drug for five days.
Edgars tells Wade to put the man, all of them, down; he know “the drug” works but “There’s enough pain in the universe already. Let’s not add to it unless we have to.” Very mysterious, very creepy.
The next day, Garibaldi gets back to Edgars and says he’s in — but that he wants the full story of what’s going on. Edgars agrees — but only once Garibaldi has proven himself by getting Sheridan to come to Mars so that he can be captured. Edgars says that will take the pressure off Clark. Garibaldi demurs, not wanting Sheridan turned over to Clark to be killed, but Edgars is convinced Sheridan will be in no immediate danger.
Garibaldi, after a few moments, points the way to Sheridan’s father, who’s been in hiding but who requires a special medical prescription; find him, and Sheridan can be convinced to come to Mars. Garibaldi is invited, and accepts, to be the one to contact Sheridan and set him up.
B-Plot: Sheridan continues to ride Franklin hard to get the telepaths that were “borged” by the Shadows conscious and on their feet. Franklin enlists Lyta to scan them, and discovers that she can break through to them, after a fashion. When she scans them, she can hear that scary Shadow-ship shriek, and when she suppresses that, their minds wake up. When they try it again, the implanted telepath reawakens, but then tries to kill himself from the horror of what’s happened to him; Lyta drops him back asleep.
Sheridan contacts Franklin, and wants to know when he can have the telepaths up and running. Franklin refuses to do anything more until he gets an explanation what Sheridan wants to do with them. He gets it — off-screen — and then later tells Lyta that, for the first time, he’s seen a change in Sheridan since he returned from Z’ha’dum. He also tells Lyta that she and he are leaving for Mars in a few days.
Meanwhile: The Resistance continues to grow (at least that’s what “The Voice of the Resistance” claims), with more colonies / bases freed from Earth forces, and more desertions. Sheridan is worried that things are going too well, but at least Delenn is on her way back from Minbar.
Overall: Surely the oddest title of a B5 (or any other TV show) episode, it’s from a quote by Aristotle, the definition of happiness: “The exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope.” What specifically does that apply to here? Garibaldi’s freedom from B5? Lyta’s possible ability to free the telepaths from their Shadow tech? Edgars pursuing his own vision of free “mundanes” against both Clark and the Psi Corps?
This is a great episode in terms of having (unlike much of B5) no clear good guys. Garibaldi is deeply compromised in a number of ways and, like any noir detective, less than noble in his motivation. Clark is the obvious villain, but Edgars’ conspiracy against him and the Psi Corps is hardly altruistic or virtuously pursued, and while the Corps is a clear menace, it is in turn fighting against widespread prejudice and the threat of future extinction. The viewer can oppose the teeps while being sympathetic to them, and without endorsing Edgars’ plan. The viewer can applaud Edgars wanting to take down Clark and the Psi Corps (and seeing Sheridan as a loose cannon), without agreeing that that world should be run behind the scenes by oligarchs. The viewer can understand Garibaldi’s doubts about Sheridan and fear of the telepaths (especially now that he’s not virtually frothing at the mouth), without thinking his moves here are the best he could take.
Even back on B5, we get some worry-mongering about Sheridan and how he’s “changed.” Had the season not been so compressed, this would have been an interesting theme to play with, something to make Garibaldi look less like a paranoid lunatic. Alas, might-have-beens.
(Special call-out here to Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., who, as JMS notes in the script book, had massive monologues (and lengthy dialogues) in this episode, and handled them all with aplomb.)
In total, this is not one of the “WHAM” episodes — there’s little action, and while there’s lots of backstory revelation, none of it is particularly shocking, just interesting. But there are some solid character bits here — the best Garibaldi we’ve gotten in quite some time, along with the complex William Edgars — and it makes the simple and noble B5-vs-Earth conflict something much more complex and interesting. Unfortunately, a lot of that complexity and interest will end up being rushed through too quickly to end the series this season
Most Dramatic Moment: Surely this has to go to the creepy visit by Edgars to his medical lab — the people being experimented on, his complicity in it, and yet his strange compassion for those poor souls.
Honorable Mention to Garibaldi’s noirish monologue at the beginning:
Personal Log, Michael Garibaldi. It’s started. They’re really doing it. This is what I was afraid would happen. But it’s been coming for a long time — ever since Sheridan got back. Before he went to Z’ha’dum, he never would have gone up against his own — our own — government like this. I don’t know — maybe he thinks he’s Alexander the Great. And maybe he thinks he’s John the Baptist. And maybe he wants to take over the whole operation for himself. That’s the part that worries me. That’s the part that made me come back here. Mars. I can’t believe I’m back on Mars. Three times before, this place almost killed me. I swore I’d never give it another chance to finish the job. Humans got no business being here. No business at all.
And at the end:
Mars. Three times before, this place almost killed me. And now — I’ve finally finished the job. I can’t feel anything anymore. I don’t know what I care about anymore. Except Lise. I screwed up both our lives pretty good. Now I get to make up for it, assuming any of us can ever make up for anything we’ve done in the past. Maybe we can’t. Maybe we just have to live with it, and get on with it, and do what we have to — never what we want to. It has to be done. I hope he can see that someday …
Most Amusing Moment: There is a dearth of humor in this episode, except perhaps for Garibaldi (in truest Daffy Duck fashion) intentionally goes around touching everything in his room after Wade has told him not to.
Most Arc-ish Moment: The initial revelations about Edgars and the “drug” should have been been it, but that part of the arc sort of fizzled out due to season compression. The easy alternative is Garibaldi agreeing to set Sheridan up, as that’s going to inform the next several episodes.
Overall Rating: 4.1 / 5 — A lot of talking, a lot of backstory, some solid Garibaldi. (Rating History).
Other Resources for this episode:
- Lurker’s Guide
- Babylon Project Wiki
- IMDb
- AV Club (covers eps 15-17 of the season)
- TV Tropes
- Sci-Fi Musings (home of the little videos in so many of these reviews I’ve done)
- Sundry Thoughts
- Photo Gallery
Next episode: “The Face of the Enemy” … as Garibaldi has to decide whether he’s agreed to save his friend, or betray him.
[Note: We watched a few more episodes, I didn’t get reviews written, then we took a 2+ year hiatus. So the next review is a bit of a skip …]
(Google+ links to this post here and here.)
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