So, yeah, after the game-changing “Interludes and Examinations,” and the epic “War Without End” double-episode, almost anything that could come along would be anticlimactic. Which, sadly, “Walkabout” is.
(And, yes, it was originally supposed to come after “Interludes and Examinations,” and makes in some ways more sense there, but the vagaries of PTEN’s mid-season hiatus force the rearrangement so that the two-parter wouldn’t be split across multiple months.)
A-Plot: My recollection of the “Franklin goes off to find himself again” arc is not very favorable, and this episode does nothing to encourage me in rewatching it.
There’s nothing really good here. Franklin is apparently magically over withdrawal from stims and, while everyone else is fighting the good fight, has decided to take a “walkabout” through the station to see who he really is. He tries to explain it all to Garibaldi, but it still comes across more as mumbo-jumbo and psycho-babble than anything real.
It doesn’t help that, of all the gin joints on all the levels of Babylon 5, he has to step into Cailyn’s. She’s a sultry bar singer Down-Below, far too talented for that kind of a dive (we keep being told). Of the things that date B5 to its mid-90s origin, any time they deal with contemporary music is one of them. Even if you argue that Cailyn’s music is sort of classic Billie Holiday blues, the orchestration by Chris Franke is very, very 90s light soul jazz. (To be fair, Erica Gimpel sings quite well. And actually acts pretty decently.)
Franklin, of course, falls for Cailyn, who seems to pick up on that fast and ends up inviting back to her room. After a bit of sex, and her finding out that he’s a doctor, she hits him up for some narcotics. He refuses, so she sneaks out his ID card after he falls asleep. Next thing you know, there she is, collapsed on the floor of her quarters, unresponsive.
So, a “drugs are bad” tale for Franklin? Naw. Turns out she has a fatal disease, only 6 months to live, so she’s spending it Down-Below where she can offer up her talents to make the folk there feel a bit better. She just needed more narcotics for the increasing pain, but Franklin feels like an ass for having misinterpreted. He asks the folks in MedLab to give her whatever she wants, then heads on his way, like Bill Bixby, missing only some sad piano music at the end.
(No, really, I was missing sad piano music. Instead, I got more 90s jazz, even over the end titles.)
It’s an annoying plotline on any number of levels. Franklin’s very smug about his “walkabout.” He’s irritating in his relationship with Cailyn, which is layers upon layers of cliche. It’s irksome that his love interest would, of course, be a black woman (and, yes, mid-90s, but it’s still irksome). And then he decides to leave, rather than support her over her remaining months. Which is just as well, because the refracted glass “looking at Franklin’s (shattered) soul” bit was reaching the breaking point.
The idea of going walkabout on B5 is also annoying. I mean, it’s just not that big of a place, and it’s very centrally organized. I mean, sure, 250,000 people, “all alone in the night,” but it just doesn’t feel that big.
Plus, every minute spent with Franklin trying to “find himself” is a minute not spent with the heating-up war against the Shadows. That was part of JMS’ master plan, to spread things out a bit — and Franklin’s fall and rise during his walkabout is a very personal story for him. Unfortunately, for me, it just comes across as too annoyingly conventional.
B-Plot: Back in “Ship of Tears,” Our Heroes figured out that those massively powerful Shadow ships were potentially vulnerable to telepathy. With Lyta’s return to the station, Sheridan is determined to put that matter to the test. He sets up a battle between the White Star and a Shadow ship to see if she can put the kibosh on the bad guys.
After some initial shrinking back from mental contact, Lyta summons her inner “I’m upset about Kosh being killed” and paralyzes the Shadow ship they take on. The White Star manages to take it out, huzzah, even though that means shutting down the jumpgate engines in order to reroute power, Scotty, er Lennier!
(I love the way the Shadow vessels shrivel up when they “die”.)
In the end, the remaining Shadow vessels flee, which is — dammed encouraging.
This particular plotline is fairly good — there’s some nice space battle-battle, a bit of suspense, and some general advancement of the War arc. But it’s also a bit disjointed, with time split with other plotlines, and ends up feeling more like a check-the-box “We’ve confirmed the vulnerability of the Shadows to telepaths” kind of meta-plotline advancement than a decent story on its own.
That said, Minbari telepaths seem kind of … twitchy.
C-Plot: The G’Tok — the Narn cruiser that B5 protected from the Centauri — is back for a visit. This leads to amusing seen with Londo, but more importantly, it’s another possible resource for Sheridan to take out on his “experiment” against the Shadows. G’Kar discusses it with Na’Kal, her captain, but Na’Kal thinks it’s a fool’s errand, and that all remaining Narn ships need to be slowly gathered so that they can eventually take back the Narn homeworld.
When Garibaldi hears about this, he wigs out, and basically throws the (Narn holy scriptural) book at G’Kar, pointing out that B5’s forces protected the G’Tok even though they might not have, and that G’Kar needs to either lead or stop pretending he’s part of the team.
It’s a good story line, delineating the conflict between rash boldness and over-cautious hesitancy, as well the need to act in unity and follow a leader. G’Kar and and Garibaldi both play well here, and it marks an advance forward on both G’Kar’s storyline and on the alliance that Sheridan is building.
D-Plot: The Vorlons have asked that B5 keep quiet about Kosh being killed, which they’ve agreed to do. Part of the illusion is dispatching a new Vorlon representative to B5, who will also be known as “Kosh” (even though he flies a red spaceship and has a more menacing-looking encounter suit). He certainly has the Vorlon crypticism down cold.
Meanwhile, Lyta has returned, shocked and heartbroken that “her” Kosh is dead. As far as she knows, nothing of him remains — at least not in her own head.
When she reports to the New Kosh, he is quite cross with her, largely because she’s the messenger with a bad message: she wasn’t there to stop the killing (not that she could have) and Kosh’s mind wasn’t aboard her body at the time. He’s completely gone. That isn’t good enough for the New Kosh, who, once he’s done Vader-choke-holding her, calls her a failure and tells her to follow him.
Lyta later explains to Sheridan that the Vorlons are really upset about Kosh’s death: death, for them, is quite unusual, and, for all their strengths, they are “fragile” creatures.
In the end, Lyta learns a bit more about Sheridan’s dream before Kosh’s death, and has a couple of instances of hearing Old Kosh’s voice while Sheridan is around. Eager to get back in the Big V’s good graces again, she reports to the New Kosh that it’s possible there’s some trace of the Old Kosh left …
(Apparently, based on one of the novels and confirmed by JMS, New Kosh is named Ulkesh. But I like calling him New Kosh. Other nicknames on the boards at the time were Diet Kosh and Darth Kosh.)
This plotline is so much more interesting and intriguing than the A-Plot it isn’t even funny. New Kosh is even creepier and more cryptic than the old one. Lyta’s post-Vorlon Homeworld relationship with Kosh was ecstatic, religious, obsessive, highly intimate. At the moment, though, she’s not only feeling guilt over not having been there to help, but is now beholden to a much more abusive master. The question is, when will she realize it.
Overall: Workmanlike acting, but nothing special, except for maybe Jerry Doyle calling G’Kar on the carpet. The plot is working overtime in too many directions to really gel completely, and the writing is, for the most part, fairly pedestrian. The space battles are not nearly as tense as they should be. Only the scenes with New Kosh got my blood pumping.
Most Dramatic Moment: Garibaldi throws down with G’Kar (see video above).
Most Amusing Moment: There are a number of amusing lines, but the introductory sequence between Londo and Garibaldi, dealing with the former’s upset over a Narn cruiser floating around out there.
LONDO: And what guarantees will you give me that the cruiser will not open fire on a Centauri vessel as it approaches Babylon 5, hmmm?
GARIBALDI: The same guarantee I gave you when I said that none of the other Narns would break into your room in the middle of the night and slit your throat.
LONDO: Mr. Garibaldi, you have never given me that promise.
GARIBALDI: You’re right. Sleep tight.
And here’s that scene (along with arrival of New Kosh).
Most Arc-ish Moment: Lyta reports back to New Kosh that it’s possible there’s still some old Kosh floating around out there somewhere — or, rather, in someone …
Overall Rating: 3.3 / 5 — Entertaining TV, but a mish-mosh of plots and over-emphasis on a very non-inspiring love story. (Rating History)
Other Resources for this episode:
- Lurker’s Guide
- Babylon Project Wiki
- IMDb
- AV Club (includes next episode)
- J Paul Halt (some of the better analysis I read on the ep, and more positive than mine)
- TV Tropes
- Sci-Fi Musings
Next episode: “Grey 17 Is Missing,” the one episode Joe Straczynski has apologized for.
(Google+ links to this post here and here.)