The war to liberate Earth is over. How does the new Alliance actually become a working operation? And how does an unexpected reprieve to Season 5 work after the good stuff got cannibalized for Season 4?
A-Plot: The overarching plot is the changing of the guard at B5, and the first part of this is the inauguration of John Sheridan as the first President of the Interstellar Alliance. After having been dragooned into the position, he’s accepted his role and is, in Sheridan fashion, ready to dive into the role whole-heartedly.
Unfortunately, an assassin is determined to take him out, killing a Ranger in the introductory sequence …
Alas, the assassin turns out to be a disgruntled war criminal from the Clarke administration on Earth, turning the moral conundrum of “Hey, Sheridan, you led an attack on Earth that killed loyal Earthforce military” into “Hey, I’m a fanatic who has nothing to live for any more so I’m going to kill you …”
… defusing much of the emotional conflict. Yes, assassination-by-Starfury is fun, but in the end if feels like a sideshow.
Still, we get some good characterization on the hero side of things. In the face of an assassin, Sheridan, sporting a spiffy new beard to match his new role, expresses a Quixotic impulse to still mingle with the common folk (which sounds noble, until one considers how improbable that is in an interstellar polity).
Meanwhile, he also recruits G’kar to write both an oath of office and a declaration of principles for the Interstellar Alliance. The Narn’s enthusiasm for this is amusing, even if, tragically, the whole thing get short-circuited by that wascally assassin.
B-Plot: The second biggest part of the plot is the introduction of Capt. Elizabeth Lochley (Tracey Scoggins), arriving on the Acheron …
Lochley’s introduction is treated in a straightforward and through-line fashion. Ivanova’s “reassignment” is given lip service in passing. Lochley walks in, large and in charge.
It’s a good introduction, with emphasis on her engagement with the Telepaths. It’s a bit undermined by Sheridan making his pronouncement overriding her on the Telepath Colony, but we get a bit of additional tension from the question of what side she was on during the final Battle of Earth — and the implication that she might be associated with the forces that wanted to assassinate Sheridan.
It’s also undermined by her not showing up in most of the first episodes of the season. Too many balls for JMS to juggle …
C-Plot: Much of the season will be focused on the Telepath Colony on B5, led by the Fabio-haired Byron.
TPs in the B5verse have always had a mixed status. There’s clearly deep prejudice against them by the normal human population, but there’s also a sense of threat from the Psi Corps against the rest of humanity that’s been running all through B5.
In this case, we have TPs who are refugees — unwelcome on Earth, but not willing to join the Psi Corps. Though several are introduced, Byron is their head and spokesperson, which create an odd (but believable) gap between the normal humans that interact with them and the speaker vs. non-speakers.
In the end, Sheridan okays the TPs building a temporary colony Downbelow, overriding Lochley’s decision against it. Yeah, that will have implications in episodes to come.
D-Plot: Whatever happened to Mr. Garibaldi? Oh, yeah, he resigned from Earthforce, which makes him superfluous to B5’s operations, despite his passion to both interfere with Zach’s security arrangements and bump heads with Lochley, who puts him in his place.
By the end of the episode, he’s been recruited by Sheridan to head up the IA’s general external security, which resolves (or aggravates) the conflict with Lochley, and gives him something to do on the show going forward.
Other Bits and Bobs: Londo has a minimal presence, but a great line, warning Sheridan about being part of a regime change.
On my world, we have learned that an inauguration is simply a signal to assassins that a new target has been set up on the firing range.
Franklin’s contribution is limited to being the Good Doctor.
Meanwhile: Season 5 (“Wheel of Fire”) labored under two huge problems.
First, we got the dilemma of “This is a 5-year saga” to “This has been truncated to 4 years, so how do I distill the most important parts into the last half of S.4” to “Oh, crap, we’ve been renewed for S.5, how do I turn the remnants of what I didn’t include in S.4 into a decent season?” issue. JMS does yeoman’s duty to make it work, and S.5 has some splendid moments, but the seams sometimes show badly. (None of this was helped by JMS losing his Master Plan Notebook to B5 at a convention before S.5 kicked off.)
On top of that, there’s the elephant in the room about the departure and absence of Ivanova. Regardless of whose narrative about how Claudia Christian ended up not coming back for the season that you believe, her absence aborts any number of threads that could have been picked up — Ivanova finally coming into command of B5, Ivanova facing her telepathic abilities, etc.
Instead, we have to shoehorn in Tracy Scoggins’ Lochley, and bring back Lyta Alexander to play the TP part. Both of those are/will be handled as well as possible, and open up their own possibilities as JMS revises stuff like mad, but it adds additional complexities to a season that was already a tottering structure, to its detriment.
(JMS did intentionally set up conflict around Lochley, knowing there would be viewer resentment over her replacing Ivanova. As the other characters. whom the viewers like, warm to her over coming episodes, the viewers should, too. Clever.)
Another drag on this episode is that, with the shift to TNT for the final season, JMS (correctly) assumed a lot of first-time viewers. This episode helps establish the setting, which, perforce, slows things down a bit, too.
Overall: A solid, if not thrilling, reintroduction to the world of B5. Not an episode anyone will point to as essential, but it does what it intends to do.
Most Dramatic Moment: Given the episode’s expository nature, there aren’t any that really stand out. Maybe the Starfury showing up in the window (which ends up in the main credits as well).
GARIBALDI: By the way, just curious, which side were you on during the big fight back home?
LOCHLEY: I was on the side of Earth, Mr. Garibaldi. Weren’t we all?
Most Amusing Moment: While not being a grim ep by any means, the humor here is subtle and in passing — a few quips, that sort of thing. If pressed, I’d point to G’Kar’s unexpectedly swift swearing-in ceremony.
Most Arc-ish Moment: With a new season comes a new main title sequence, and, in my thinking, the best of the five. We lose the “The Year Is” narration (it would have been Ivanova’s turn, at last, too late), but the montage of video and audio clips (“So it begins …”) is splendid.
While driven by the “new network, new viewers” aspect of S.5, it’s still as someone who had watched from the beginning, an awesome recap of the introductory highlights.
Although, not sure about the title card. Aside from the somewhat dated CG, flipping to a sword feels … kind of off-brand.
Overall Rating: 4.0 of 5.0 — Absolutely solid episode to kick things off for the season, but so busy building those foundations that the immediate conflict — the Evil Assassin — feels rushed and stunted. (Rating History).
Other Resources for this episode:
- Lurker’s Guide
- Babylon Project Wiki
- IMDb
- AV Club (covers eps 1-5 of the season)
- TV Tropes
- Sci-Fi Musings (home of the little videos in so many of these reviews I’ve done)
- Sundry Thoughts
- Cap-That (more images than you can imagine!)
Previous episode: 4×22 “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars” [Hrm. Never did get to that review.]
Next episode: 5×02 “The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari” … where we get some deep insight into our favorite Centauri before things take a decided turn for the worse …
Reposted on Pluspora.
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