Neil Gaiman works some magic … as do Penn and Teller
There are two main threads. The A-plot has a dozen subplots to it, most of them delightful. The B-plot is more straightforward, and a bit more difficult to grok.
A-Plot
The Brakiri on B5 arrange to rent part of the station, in a such a way that it legally becomes “their territory” for one evening, sunset to sunrise. This isn’t just a diplomatic embassy kind of thing — weird magic stuff is going on for the “Day of the Dead,” which only happens every few centuries, son one of the Brakiri on the station want to miss out. As part of the process, that section of the station will be somehow metaphysically moved to Brakir, so that it partakes in the festival. As this includes some sleeping quarters sections (a weird thing to rent out around), some of the crew members learn a lot more about the Day of the Dead than they wanted, as they are visited by ghosts left behind during the show.
Lochley: Lochley is visited by a friend, Zoe, from when they were teenagers. Lochley apparently had quite the while JD life, living rough, involved in petty crime and drug use.
LOCHLEY: We were cold, sick, and we were hungry all the time. We did thing to survive I’ve done my best to forget. We lived in that burned-out hotel. I was scared all the time my father was going to find me. No, it was bad.
ZOE: Yeah, but … we still had fun.
It was only when she found Zoe dead of an OD (and covered in cockroaches) that she got “scared straight” — back to her overbearing Space Marine dad, back into school, and then into the military, and into the world’s most stiff-spined, upright life. It’s still a trauma that haunts her (we learn her sooper-sekrit passcode is “Zoe’s dead”). The visit ends up serving as a reconciliation between the two, and closure for Lochsley when she finally confirms that Zoe’s OD was suicide, not her being a good enough protector and friend.
ZOE: Lizzie, I do remember my death. I didn’t want to hurt you, but … yeah. I did do it on purpose. I just couldn’t go on. Don’t hate me, okay?
LOCHLEY: I could never hate you.
One added creepy note here is Zoe passing a message for Sheridan on from Kosh (!): “When the long night comes, return to the end of the beginning.” It’s been so long since we got some of Kosh’s unintelligible warnings, I’d forgotten how much I both loved and hated it.
Garibaldi: Our erstwhile security chief is visited by Dodger, the Marine that he loved and lost in ep. 2×10, “GROPOS”. As then, she’s looking for a good time, he’s busy being paranoid about what’s going on. Eventually they both relax and spend time … demonstrating you can recite Emily Dickinson poems to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”
Londo: Just as Garibaldi is visited by a former lover, Londo meets with Adira, the Centauri dancing girl he once, truly, loved (ep. 1×03 “Born to the Purple”) … before she was assassinated (ep. ep. 3×15, “Interludes and Examinations”). She was killed (by Refa, probably, possibly with Morden’s connivance) to snap him out of his personal funk and back into leading the Centauri to greatness.
It’s a tragic re-meeting, even as Londo takes it all much more at face value than any of the others. It gives us a final chance to see Londo before his trip back to the Centauri homeworld and throne change him forever — something he is very much aware of, and rues. Because the fact is, Londo could probably have been very happy being a minor, fringe noble at a thankless diplomatic posting, if he’d had Adira by his side.
ADIRA: Normality will return soon. And when this night is done … so am I. And you? You will go on to become Emperor Mollari.
LONDO: I don’t want to become emperor. I want to stay here with you.
ADIRA: Londo, I’m a dream. In the morning, I’ll be gone. And you will rule 40 billion Centauri. But not one of them will ever know you the way I know you.
Lennier: Lennier, taking a quick break from training to actually see the long-rumored Brakiri “Day of the Dead” (and, not-incidentally, wanting to visit Delenn), shows up on B5 … and is visited in the night by Mr. Morden (Ed Wasser with sharp but distressingly short hair). After learning he can’t punch the ghost out, Lennier is informed that he will end up betraying the Rangers and, by extension, Delenn, and likely die in the process. Lennier is either the smartest or dumbest person in the tale, because he chooses to ignore everything Morden has to say and sits down to meditate, leaving Morden to read the newspaper.
Interestingly enough, dead Morden actually gets an answer from Lennier that he was unable to get from Delenn, so long ago: What a Minbari wants.
LENNIER: Why did you come back here? Mr. MordenMORDEN: I’m dead. It’s my job. Why did you come back here?
LENNIER: I came for wisdom.
MORDEN: You don’t come to the dead for wisdom, Lennier. […] Wisdom. Let’s see … Delenn does not love you as you love her, and she never will.
LENNIER: I know that.
MORDEN: No, you don’t. Not in your heart. That’s the problem, you see? No one should ever want to talk to the dead.
LENNIER: Go away.
MORDEN: Sorry, it doesn’t work like that. You raised a ghost, now you have to listen to him.
Interestingly enough, most of the ghosts — Morden, Zoe, Dodger — deny they’re actually ghosts.
Sheridan shows up a bit in this story — interrupted from the B-Plot, he personally investigates the un-enterable Brakiri zone (since apparently Security is all asleep), and nearly gets beaned by a fire extinguisher he throws at the interface. Okay.
One of the weirder, less explicable parts of the plot here is G’Kar, who has some funny moments, but … well, he seems to know what’s going to happen, warning Lochsley not to “sell” the station to the Brakiri (even if it violates their religious rights), warning Garibaldi, and finally choosing to sleep in the bridge rather than his own quarters … but he gives no details, no actual reason to listen to him, just portents and alarums. To make matters worse, he later expresses regrets about having missed it all. It’s kind of sloppy writing for the character.
B-Plot
Rebo and ZootyThe most famous entertainers in the galaxy, Rebo and Zooty, come to visit B5. They’re played by Penn and Teller, and knowing them from thirty years later, they haven’t changed much. The show does a nice job of modifying their schtick, slightly, for a different pair of stage magicians.
The pair charm everyone on the station, except for Capt. Lochley, who apparently doesn’t enjoy humor and silliness (there should be some time here to her A-Plot, but there really isn’t). Even the aliens all enjoy the stage-magical hijinx of the pair (in part because R&Z have widely studied alien humor); all you have to do is say “Zooty-Zoot-Zoot!” to anyone on B5 (except Lochsley), and they burst into the equivalent of laughter.
In reality, R&Z are here to talk with Sheridan and Delenn about … going into politics. Giving up being comedians and doing something “worthwhile”. It’s an interesting take, looking back over the decades, as we see folk like Jon Stewart becoming political forces, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy leveraging a career that has included comedy to become President of Ukraine — and holding it together under their darkest hour.
Ultimately, it’s the least effective part of the episode, as we get a little homily about how important humor is, both socially to hold people together during hard times, and politically, to speak truth to power (and to serve as a canary in the coal mine). Not bad lessons, and some of the personal interplay in the scenes works well, but in the end it’s all a little preachy.
Other Bits and Bobs
As a guest-written episode (and one that written early days in the season, before Joe had the full timeline charted), it wisely avoids tying too much to live troubles in the B5verse. The telepath problem, political stresses in the Alliance … all are put into a soft focus in the background, making this a somewhat standalone (if prophetic) tale.
Meanwhile …
If this seems very non-Joe Straczynski — being a guy who is okay with writing about telepaths and aliens who wield the power of gods and technomancers who create magical effects from technology and the like, but who would never write about straight-up magic — well, you’re right. This is the single episode in seasons 3-5 which wasn’t written by JMS. Instead, it was a long-term commitment fulfilled to have fabulist Neil Gaiman write it. And Neil Gaiman writes magic.
In the end, it’s not too glaring of a matter. Suspension of disbelief — hey, we all believe in destinies prophecies and Centauri seeing their death, after all — is already established. It does create a different tone for it all, but I was able to handwave the more overt use of “magic” for purposes of an episode.
ZoeA bit of trivia: Gaiman has noted elsewhere that Lochsley and Zoe were also former lovers (perhaps another reason she ran away from home). There’s certainly that aspect to be read into their interplay, but anything overt, if it ever existed, was filed off by JMS on editing the story. If it were so, it would make Lennier the only one not visited by an ex-lover (likely because the only one he’s ever loved is still alive and otherwise involved … which then ties to Morden’s prophecy …)
There is some controversy as to where “Day of the Dead” should be placed. It was written early in the season, after only four scripts had been completed by JMS, and before all the detailed chronology was figured out; it was originally shot 11th, but shuffled to 8th during the original run because of conflicts with the NBA playoffs, and so as to let a more solid sequencing of episodes occur. This creates some minor continuity conflicts, and some oddness with G’kar and Londo being (still? again?) on B5, but other recommended options have their own inconsistencies as well. Since it’s all relatively trivial, I’m going with here, as in the original broadcast and on the recent HBO Max run.
Not only does this ep give us an opportunity for a long-promised Gaiman episode, but series consultant Harlan Ellison “shows up” as the electronic voice of Zooty (thus allowing Teller to remain mute).
Moments
Most Dramatic Moment:
Lochley — who is usually a staid rock — practically falling apart talking to Zoe about what their life together was like, how bad it was — and about finding her body.
Most Amusing Moment:
SHERIDAN: Okay, captain, let me get this straight. You sold Babylon 5 to an alien race for the nighT, who somehow transported a square mile of this station to their Homeworld, while apparently filling it with people temporarily returned from the dead?
“I thought it was a metaphor, sir.”LOCHLEY: Yes, sir.
SHERIDAN: Well, do you have an explanation as to why you did this?
LOCHLEY: Yes, sir. I thought it was a metaphor, sir. I’ll try to be more literal-minded from now on, sir.
Most Arc-ish Moment:
Surely Morden chatting with Lennier.
LENNIER: I know what kind of a man you were.
Morden and LennierMORDEN: Give a dog a bad name and you can hang him with it. You shouldn’t listen to everything Sheridan tells you. I’m surprised he’s not here tonight, since he died at Z’Ha’Dum. […] So … do you like being a Ranger, Lennier? Would you like it any better if I were to tell you that you will betray the Anla’shok?
LENNIER: You are lying.
MORDEN: I wish I were. No?
LENNIER: Sheridan did not die at Z’Ha’Dum. If you do not know the present, how can you know the future?
MORDEN: I’m talking about the future. So what if I’m not up on recent history? I’m prophetic, not infallible.
LENNIER: I think you are neither. But at least you have shown me there is truly life beyond death.
MORDEN: Not necessarily, but you’ll find that out soon enough.
LENNIER: I am Anla’shok and shall remain so until I pass beyond. I could no more betray the Anla’shok than my fingers could betray my hand. Our talk is done.
MORDEN: Your loss.
The Bottom Line
Some great dialog, some dubious plotting, a welcome break from Byron and the Telepaths.
Overall Rating: 4.5 of 5.0 — Good-to-Great stuff in the A-Plot, Interesting but Mixed stuff int he B-Plot, great lines, but also a clear sense of filling in.
Next episode: 5×09 “In the Kingdom of the Blind” — The Telepath Problem heats up, and Londo learns there’s something rotten in the heart of Centauri Prime.
Hot telepath sex, not-so-hot telepath origins, and aliens who are (gasp) keeping secrets
This ep manages to have very clear A- and B-plots, with some occasional medlab scenes to help them cross-over. And the theme for today, in very different ways, is reparations.
A-Plot: As more telepaths show up at B5, tensions continue to grow. Outcasts in Downbelow resent that the teeps get free food and meds from the station. Zack has suddenly become a jerk, and has decided he really doesn’t trust teeps — except Lyta, of course, because she’s different, which attitude doesn’t endear him to her, and pushes her into being … kind of sketchily fanatical.
LYTA: If Byron asked me to follow him into hell, I’d do it gladly with a smile on my face, because I believe in him. What could you possibly say in five minutes that would change that?
Byron’s “Turn the Other Cheek” routine is likely to end just as badly as the previous fellow’s.
There’s one briefly violent encounter where Byron lets himself get punched in the face multiple times, both defuse a bully’s anger and to teach his people about being non-violent.
BYRON: Your anger has nothing to do with me. What will satisfy your anger will never come from me or anyone else here. I’m afraid you must look for it elsewhere.
Unfortunately, the same gang ends up curb-stomping another teep found on his own — and when Byron’s teeps telepathically torture one of the gang members to find out who was responsible, Byron gets arrested for the crime (very clearly unjustly). Which mean, since Zack is being a jerk and leaves Byron to cool his heels in a cell overnight, it means that Byron’s not there to restrain his people from assaulting one gang member telepathically to torture the whereabouts of the perp, and then beating the perp to death, all in utter silence.
There’s probably a sane middle ground between Byron’s “oh, I am so disappointed with them, I am a failure as a leader” moaning, and Lyta’s “I can’t excuse what they did, but, yeah, I can totally excuse what they did,” but the script turns up the melodrama dial. Lyta’s been reluctant to dive headlong into the teep colony, but seeing her beautiful cover model brood and angst over what’s happened (a scene that is either overwrought in its acting, or Byron intentionally manipulating her), she strips down and has hot telepathic sex with him.
Yeah, it seemed a bit odd to me, too.
Not, of course, as odd as what happens next.
One, the telepaths are clearly aware that their main man is going at it with his new girlfriend. I mean, it’s not like the bead screen between the floors they were sleeping on and Byron’s quarters offered that much privacy anyway, let alone the whole telepathy thing, but …
Fetal alien being made … telepathic?
Two, finally having some hot sex (or any sex) for the first time since she was taken by the Vorlons and Made Their Agent, triggers a whole bunch of memories for Lyta, both how things were like when she was working for the Vorlons (first Kosh, then, far less pleasantly, Kosh 2), and then, before that, how things were when she was in a tank, being biologically altered, and could see, in thousands of tanks around her, other individuals, some of them babies or fetuses, for a dozen races, similarly being modified.
And, of course, those memories are all being projected into Byron, and into all the teeps who have been awakened and are watching.
Which is when things get a bit dark, because while Byron has been begging folks for a planetary colony to being his people, now he knows a deeper truth: telepathic abilities were bred into races around the galaxy by the Vorlons, to serve them as weapons against the Shadows. And while he can’t sue the Vorlons, all the younger races are on the hook for their debts.
BYRON: They owe us a place where we can be among our own kind. We’ll ask to speak to the Alliance, put our case before them, see if they can be persuaded to do the right thing.
LYTA: And if they can’t?
BYRON: Then we’ll make sure they have no other choice.
Ssssssooo much for being Gandhi?
“I’ve got a secret.”
B-Plot: Franklin hasn’t gotten much love this season, but now gets at least half an episode to play with. He’s been tasked by Sheridan to study inter-species disease, to help address potential illnesses and plagues that could jump populations. It’s right in line with his past studies of non-human physiology, and with his refusal to develop bioweapons against non-humans.
Hyach-doh. Apparently the cap-wearing was considered genocidally déclassé.
In this ep, he’s researching the Hyach, a race that wants to be in the Alliance, but is very secretive about their past. Franklin researches the shit out of them, and ultimately uncovers the secret they have hidden from the galaxy: two sentient races, capable of interbreeding, were present on their world until about a thousand years ago, when the Hyach decided it was time to exterminate the Hyach-doh, and, in fact did so.
While it looks like Franklin might be killed for uncovering the secret, it turns out the racial elders had a reason to let him uncover it: the Hyach are going extinct. Something about past hybridizing with the Hyach-doh was apparently necessary for their medical/genetic survival, but now they’ve unwittingly killed the people who might have saved them. Unless Franklin might possibly research and discover a cure …
Franklin will do no such thing, more than happy to indict the present Hyach, who have been maintaining this secret, as accessories after the fact to genocide. Only if the secret is let out will he help organize the massive, interplanetary research project needed.
It comes across as kind of a strident response to the situation — Yes, you are responsible for the sins of your fathers — but it also abruptly reminded me a bit of the debate over contemoprary reparations to Black Americans over slavery (and post-slavery racial injustice), esp. with Franklin, a Black man, serving as proxy for the Hyach-doh.
Remember when folk still thought the Vorlons were good guys?
Other Bits and Bobs: So, yeah, reparations. Byron is convinced that his people deserve a planet, not just because it would be a charitable thing, but because they are owed it because of Vorlon interference with their fates. And Franklin is sort of demanding it of the Hyach– a public acknowledgment of (and shaming about) the identity and existence of the Hyach-doh, and what happened to them.
Not sure if that synchronicity was intended, but it passed right over my head the first time.
“What, we’ve got more of THEM arriving?”
As mentioned, Zack is playing his blue-collar Everyman role a bit strong, acting as a racist jerk toward the telepaths moving into his neighborhood and making trouble. (That he is maybe a bit jealous that Lyta is spiraling into their orbit probably doesn’t help.) That Zack has, in the past, been a voice of reason when Garibaldi was going off the deep end doesn’t help it feel a bit jarring.
The teeps, meanwhile, keep getting more and more cult-like. Early on in the ep, Lyta refuses to sleep over with the gang because she feels she doesn’t belong yet. At which point, Byron violates a whole bunch of confidential boundaries, walks out into the main room, and announces that Lyta doesn’t feel like she belongs with them. Which leads, in turn, to all the teeps getting up and gathering around her and giving her hugs.
Knowing (as I didn’t when the episode aired) that Joe spent time in a cult after he left home … yeah. The signs are all there.
Meanwhile: An odd episode with only three of the twelve regular cast members present (Franklin, Zack, and Lyta).
While Patricia Tallman was not actually nude (though with only quite sheer and unreliable pasties) they still made it a closed set during the filming. JMS — who apparently was quite uncomfortable even writing an intimate scene like that (he literally has in the script, “I wonder which is more embarrassing, reading this or writing it?”) — did not visit the set during filming. Though apparently Doug Netter, leading a group of studio executives on a tour, and having missed the CLOSED SET note on the call sheet, did.
So the B5 Rewatch has been stretching on for some time, but it had been multiple months since the last time we watched. My son had put together (for a different show we’re watching only when he’s home) a Google Slides presentation to brief us on characters and dramatic situations we might have forgotten. Inspired by that, I came up with this presentation to refresh him and my wife before we started watching this ep.
Most Dramatic Moment: The Lyta-Byron-sex-flashback-Vorlons-voyeurism scene probably hits the high mark here, especially when her eyes go all black and spooky.
Lyta started this series as something of a victim, and continued along that path for the past four years, trying to find an institution — Psi Corps, B5, the Vorlons — who would support her and treat her the way she wanted. They all failed. Unfortunately, the moment she’s going to choose to finally take an independent stand … will not be a good one for her.
Most Amusing Moment: This is not a laff-riot episode, and the usual suspects for humor and humorous interaction (Sheridan, Lochley, Londo, Garibaldi, Vir, even Lennier) were not around.
Just another day in Medlab.
So the best probably comes from the pre-credits sequence, where Franklin introduces what he’s doing about interspecies diseases in a conversation with a Pak’ma’ra, which is amusing in and of itself, but gets better when Franklin tries to feed him a barium milkshake.
(The Pak’ma’ra prosthetics/movement are actually very, very good. Today it would be done with CG, but the practical FX are nicely executed.)
Lyta, Vorlons, and the tank
Most Arc-ish Moment: Lyta’s flash-back, hands-down — literally hitting big moments from her character arc, plus peeling a further lid off the history of telepaths and the not-very-nice nature of the Vorlons.
Overall Rating: 3.1 of 5.0 — The A-plot whipsaws back and forth, with a lot of obvious set-up, a lot of melodrama, and a lot of cultish weirdness. I’m probably giving it a higher score than it deserves because of the big Vorlon/flashback scene. The B-plot is a fascinating setup, but ends in a very talky way that turns out both smarmy and preachy and far too neatly wrapped with a moral bow.
Next episode: 5×08 “Day of the Dead” – Neil Gaiman guest writes, as folk on the station are visited by the deceased of their past. What could go wrong?
There is some controversy as to where “Day of the Dead” should be placed. It was written early in the season, after only four scripts had been completed by JMS, and before all the detailed chronology was figured out; it was originally shot 11th, but shuffled to 8th during the original run because of conflicts with the NBA playoffs, and so as to let a more solid sequence of episodes occur. This creates some minor continuity conflicts, and some oddness with G’kar and Londo being (still? again?) on B5, but other recommended options have their own inconsistencies as well. Since it’s all relatively trivial, I’m going with DotD next, as in the original broadcast and HBO Max.
Bester is here for the Teeps, and Lochley’s secret is finally revealed.
A-Plot: The past finally catches up with Byron and his Telepath gangcult commune, as EarthGov sends Psi Corps bloodhounds, led by Bester to apprehend them as criminals and send them back. With Sheridan trying to play nice with Alliance members (like Earth), and Lochley not having any legitimate reason to stop them (and, further, having previously had not-horrible interactions with Bester), there seems to be little way to stop it from happening.
Well, except for Lyta Alexander, who’s been helping steal liberate drugs for the Teeps, and whom Byron continues to woo to join his cult commune. She’s not your average telepath, having had her powers goosed by Kosh waaaay in the past. And, indeed, she manages to stop Bester and his goon squad at least once — but cannot reliably do so, especially when he gets his requested support from station security.
Fortunately, after Bester has captured all the teeps and is going to head back to Earth with them, Lochley pulls a deus ex bureaucratica, using a new medical regulation (from Franklin, with the toner still damp) that requires thorough examination and quarantine of any folk who have been in Unknown Space, like the vagrant teeps have been, before being allowed back on Earth. That frustrates the hell out of Bester, but assuming he still has an ally in Lochley, he’s willing to come back in sixty days to pick them up.
Lochley, in turn, while not carrying the animus against Bester that Sheridan and Garibaldi do, isn’t by any means a fan, and it’s clear that while she can’t “let” the Teeps escape B5 before Bester’s return, she will not be at all disappointed if they find a way to do so.
Sad, lonely, isolated Lyta is sad, lonely, and isolated.
But while the Telepath plot here gets solved by Lochley, it’s really Lyta’s story, and there’s a lot of heartbreaking moments as Lyta watch the teeps run down and captured, one by one, and Byron tells her he’s turning himself in to be with them, even if it means his likely death. You can see the increasing isolation she’s under — cut off from Kosh, not a member of the Corps (despite still wearing a badge), not a member of the command team any more (and relegated to sneaking station supplies to the Teeps), but also not a member of the Teep cult colony. In every scene, it grows more and more painful …
Until, at the very end, as Byron is reunited with his cult family, and they all sit around and sing a slightly creepy song about love and harmony and finding “a better place” …
And we will all come together in a better place
A better place than this
My love will guide you
My love will hold you
My love will show you the way
There will come a tomorrow
Where we’re free from our sorrows
And our love will show us the way
We are sister and brother
And we will all come together in a better place
A better place than this …
… she takes off her Psi Corps badge and, a bit uncomfortably, goes to Byron’s side.
This will not end well.
And it shouldn’t. Zack is already on the record thinking that Byron is going to be trouble, not because of telepath prejudice (he and Lyta had a thing going on at one point, remember?) but because Byron is so clearly aiming to be a martyr. Byron himself is clearly about one batch of Kool Aid from a self-inflicted tragedy. The guy is just so plainly manipulative that it’s terrifying seeing Lyta sucked into his orbit.
Some reviews try to complain that Byron and his cult band of merry teeps are being forced on us as heroes. I disagree, at least so far to date: I don’t trust the guy, even if he’s as sincere as a saint.
B-Plot: The Mystery of Lochley is Revealed! Delenn chats with Lochley, having been given the skinny by Sheridan the previous night, though nothing specific gets said. Lochley’s a bit peeved that Sheridan didn’t warn her, but also feels vaguely apologetic to Delenn. Meanwhile, Garibaldi is hanging out around the corner, taking notes.
But not for long, since in short order he’s in the brig, having stormed into Lochley’s office to punch Bester in the snoot — understandable (even to Lochley), but not to be allowed (even if she has to threaten the security team she summoned before they lay hands on their former boss).
In short order, she and Zack discover Garibaldi has been riffling through Lochley’s personnel files on the computer, so she goes down to his cell (quite a nice and sizeable room, to be sure) to hash it out — which annoyingly turns into Lochley answering all of Garibaldi’s questions.
She explains her chumminess with Bester from a past experience where he took out a rogue telepath who had killed two of her people (who had found out he was using his telepathy to win at gambling). And she explains that Sheridan chose her because it would be politically valuable to have an EarthForce officer who was on the “other side” in the war, but one he could trust both not to stab him in the back, disagree with him when needed, and back him up likewise.
As to how Sheridan would know that …
LOCHLEY: We met fresh out of Officer Training School. We hit it off, fell crazy in love, got married, realized we’d made a terrible mistake, fell crazy out of love, and split up. You see, in a relationship. you gotta take turns being in charge, but, we both wanted to be in charge all the time. We had arguments that could peel paint off the wall.
They remained friends and respectful of one another and knew they could trust one another.
It almost feels a little anticlimactic, esp. since the scene feels rushed and info-dumpy, and Lochley’s spilling all the beans that Garibaldi asked for comes across more as weak than reasonable.
(It also feels … unrealistic. None of her records — or his — indicate her marriage to Sheridan? The press — directly or via politicians and partisans in EarthGov — haven’t learned about this? It’s a kind of clever idea, but it makes no sense.)
Other Bits and Bobs: Londo is shifting into the next phase of his life, preparing to return to Centauri Prime to support the ailing Regent, and anticipating becoming Emperor — the prospect of which he’s increasingly melancholy and pessimistic about.
Things get a bit more exciting when the Centauri cruiser he’s supposed to be on is destroyed in an obvious assassination attempt. Delenn and G’kar are concerned over Londo’s safety, so Delenn decides he needs a non-Centauri bodyguard — and that G’kar is the perfect choice. The Narn is initially taken aback, but the idea of his being a necessary part of the Centauri court tickles his funny-bone, and by the end Londo and G’kar are heading off the Centauri homeworld, bickering about who gets the aisle seat.
Meanwhile, the criminally-underused Franklin is given by the writer the Alliance a new side gig: research head for medical care of Alliance species, with an emphasis on diseases and the like that can jump to other species. It’s actually a good tie-in to some of his original research (which he dumped when he learned that EarthForce was going to use it for bio-weapons). And it means he’ll get more opportunities to do something in the show than hang out in MedLab and look distressed.
Meanwhile: So JMS briefly belonged to a religious cult/commune when he was in his early 20s, after escaping an extremely abusive and isolating household. A lot of that experience feeds into the Byron / Lyta / Telepath saga — Byron as charismatic leader, the group behavior, even the song they sing.
No, nothing at all creepy or cult-like here.
And knowing that makes it clear that there will be no happy ending here, for anyone — we know that Psi Corps is awful, and Bester a nasty piece of work, but in his own way Byron is as manipulative as the Psi Cop, and his band of teeps is as much a trap as the Corps.
The only question with someone like Byron is how many of his followers he’ll take down with him.
I can’t let a Bester episode go by without commenting on Bester. He is his usual maddening self — gentile and oh-so-pleasant sharing jokes and tea with Lochley, snarky and smirking whenever he knows he has the upper hand (and wants to rub it in), and, at a few moments, almost desperately eager in wanting to take Byron in and being told he can’t (yet).
Don’t you (like Garibaldi) just want to punch this guy?
Bester is not Walter Koenig’s most famous role, but it should be, and any time he’s in an episode, like this one, it’s a treat.
Most Dramatic Moment: Despite the reeeeeally annoying (and creepy song), there’s a lovely moment from the director, John C Flinn, where Lyta approaches the Teep colony, and sees them with their candles and their singing and their camaraderie and family … through a plastic grid, separate and shut away from them and emphasizing for the final moment how cut-off and alone she is …
Lyta, on the outside, looking in.
Most Amusing Moment: Lochley realizing that, with all the other things that have been going on, she’s forgotten to order Garibaldi released from holding.
LOCHLEY: I also have this nagging feeling that I’m forgetting something.
CORWIN: I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Good night, Captain.
LOCHLEY: Good night, Lieutenant. [beat] Oh no! [into link] Lochley to security.
SECURITY: [over link] Security here.
GARIBALDI: [over link] I said, let me the hell out of here! [Sound of something getting thrown]
LOCHLEY: You can release Mr. Garibaldi now.
GARIBALDI: [over link] About time.
Honorable mention to most of the dialog between Sheridan and Lochley. She still feels stiff with the other characters — trying to be the hard-ass Ivanova type in a way that Tracey Scoggins just cannot pull off with her perfect makeup and hair — but her banter with Sheridan is almost always loaded with gems that are delivered neatly.
SHERIDAN: I’m caught in a web of my own good intentions.
LOCHLEY: Well, the road to hell is paved with them, sir.
SHERIDAN: I know, but why does it have to go through this office?
Or, as Lochley’s explaining why, legally, she has to cooperate with Bester:
LOCHLEY: How am I doing do far?
SHERIDAN: Annoyingly logical.
LOCHLEY: Thank you.
SHERIDAN: It wasn’t a compliment.
Most Arc-ish Moment: Londo has a chat with Zack. The security chief doesn’t understand why Londo is moping about — being emperor sounds like a sweet gig. But Londo has forebodings, both from Centauri premonitions about the future, and from family history — he will be the second Mollari to be emperor, and that one ended badly, too.
“This is where it begins to go bad for all of us.”
Yeah, this is where it all starts to go bad for Londo … and everyone in his orbit.
Overall Rating: 4.3 of 5.0 — After two episodes that were largely filler (entertaining in their own way, but still not really progressing anything), we finally get some plot movement around the Telepaths, the Alliance, and an array of personal stories. It’s the best episode of the season so far.
Wherein we learn more about being a Ranger, none of which is pleasant
A-Plot: A delegation from the Rangers goes from Minbar to B5 to chat with Delenn, the Entil-zha. Two of them are older gents, instructors — Turval, from the religious caste, and Durhan, of the warrior caste — and they bring with them two trainees, Tannier from the religious and Rathenn from the warriors.
Along the way, they get entangled with a new gang boss in DownBelow, Trace. The New Boss has Big Plans, and he’s doing some demonstration killings to show people who’s in charge.
Bullying Gang Boss Leader is a Bully
Unfortunately (for all concerned), recruit Tannier gets involved in one of Trace’s incidents — and ends up being seriously curb-stomped as another demonstration. That leads to Delenn taking the whole matter away from Zack and station security, and handling it via the Rangers. “Those who harmed him,” she tells Lochley, “now have power over him. He must take back that power, or he will never be whole again.”
Tannier, barely back on his feet, is given a chance to duke it out solo with an increasingly panicked New Boss. The recruit ends up taking the guy apart, resolving both the New Boss problem and giving Tannier back the self-respect and self-control he’ll need as a Ranger.
DURHAN: Where is your fear now, Tannier?
TANNIER: Gone, Master.
TURVAL: And what do you feel? Anger? Do you feel triumphant? Happiness? Joy?
TANNIER: Pity.
DURHAN: Why?
TANNIER: Because this is all he will ever have and all he will ever know. Because his name will be swallowed by silence. Forgotten. His name belongs to no one.
TURVAL: And who does your name belong to? History? The world?
TANNIER: No. It belongs to me.
And then we get some neat little bows, and Security moves in to clean up the mess.
“Don’t mind me, I just beat up this dude who beat me up.”
There’s a lot of this that seems to play well, if a bit preachy. On reflection, it does make the Rangers seem a bit more, um, cult-like, and with a fondness for violence as a way of resolving problems. That is, in part, their remit, but it’s also an extension of, as Garibaldi later comments, Minbari inability to back down from a righteous fight.
That these are the guys who are running interstellar security and espionage for the Alliance is both comforting and uncomfortable.
B-Plot: The Mystery of Lochley Continues! Garibaldi is obsessing over the station’s new captain, her past, and which side she fought on in the Civil War.
This leads to a blow-up between the two (with a very uncomfortable Zack sitting by), where Lochley ends up not-confessing that, yeah, she was loyal to Earthforce, because she believed in the chain of command, she wanted to keep her crew safe, and she wasn’t ordered to do something she couldn’t in good conscience do.
LOCHLEY: I am a soldier, Mr. Garibaldi, and as such my vocabulary is rather limited. I only really understand three words: loyalty, duty, honor. If I did it your way, one of those would have to go … and then the other two would become meaningless. Just like this conversation. Good day.
That hardly satisfies Garibaldi, esp. since it reinforces the question of why Sheridan would have picked her for the job.
(Parenthetical note: some poor direction or editing here: In some parts of the scene, the crowd in the cafeteria is definitely hanging on every word Lochley says as she and Garibaldi get into it, complete with applause when she leaves; but in the main shot when she’s saying it, everyone in the background is just chit-chatting amongst themselves.)
While the scene is a little clumsy and rushed, it’s a solid, legitimate argument against what Sheridan & Co. did. JMS plays fair with both sides — which is fine, now, but back actually during the Civil War, a lot of comments were made that “just obeying orders” or “the military can’t set political policy” were treated as weaselly, if not evil. Turning around and treating Lochley’s “as long as I don’t get ask to commit war crimes, it’s not my place to interfere” as something we want to hear our protagonist saying needs a little bit more explanation at this point.
In a later scene, Lochley mentions something in passing that Delenn picks up on as indicating that she’s known Sheridan in the past. And the final scene of the episode has Delenn and Sheridan in bed that night, discussing the matter (or having discussed the matter) — with Delenn on the far side of the mattress, her back turned to him …
DELENN: I’m going to pretend that you were going to tell me this sooner or later.
SHERIDAN: I was just looking for the right time.
DELENN: Ten seconds after you thought of it would have been good.
SHERIDAN: Yeah. Yeah, maybe so.
What “this” is will remain a mystery until next episode.
Other Bits and Bobs: Garibaldi is beginning to work with Byron’s telepaths, though they seem unenthused (or perhaps just disdainful of Garibaldi and the other nats).
He’s also beginning to butt heads with Zack. There’s still a mentor/mentee and even old friends aspect to their relationship, but Garibaldi doesn’t want to listen to Zack, and there are hints here that he’s accessing station security info that Zack doesn’t approve of.
Meanwhile: This episode has one of the rare cases of an actor who played two significant (and not heavily made-up) characters: Turhan Bey, who not only plays the Religious Caste Ranger Instructor Turval here, but back in S.2 played the Centauri Emperor Turhan. This was his last credited role before his death a few years later.
In the script book, JMS recounts how a lot of this episode was driven by the curb-stomping he received when he was young, and at a time when he just got booted out of the cult he’d fallen into. A lot of the “face your fear” stuff here seems to come from this incident, even if Joe never got a chance to beat the shit out of his attacker while his colleagues stood around and applauded.
(His letting the remaining anger about that incident drive this episode is one of the reasons he feels it’s so weak.)
Most Dramatic Moment: Yeah, probably Lochley’s “Loyalty, Duty, Honor” speech to Garibaldi.
Honorable Mention to the cool dismantling of the retreating gang as they seek to escape their level of DownBelow, with thugs being picked off from the front and rear and dragged into the shadows by the Rangers. Not only is it creepy, but when the (mostly Minbari) Rangers in the shadows finally become visible in the dim down-lighting, they look positively satanic.
(The whole incident is scary — while the Mora’Dum, the “Application of Terror,” is meant to be about a Ranger overcoming their own terror, Trace, the New Boss, is clearly terrified by the whole matter, too.)
Most Amusing Moment: Gotta be the final scene there between Sheridan and Delenn.
Sheridan faces the No Win Scenario
Honorary Mention to: One of the new cross-species Ranger recruits is a Pak’ma’ra — who refuses to learn new languages, and whose dietary habits make it difficult to house him with the other Rangers.
Delenn figures out that the ubiquity of the Pakmara (and the fact that nobody wants to pay any attention to them) makes them perfect couriers for the Rangers, turning lemons into lemonade.
Most Arc-ish Moment: This episode is 98% arc-free, but there is one intriguing moment where Delenn and Turval are chatting, and he mentions how Lennier, now at Ranger Camp (though unseen in the episode) is not tackling training in a healthy fashion, driving himself to the breaking point.
Delenn, of course, knows why, but it’s not like she can talk much about it. She just asks Turval to watch over him.
It might have made this episode a lot better — and a lot more on-point — if we’d gotten Lennier rather than Tennier as one of the visiting apprentice Rangers.
Overall Rating: 3.5 of 5.0 — This episode is … kind of a waste of time, in an otherwise crowded season. There’s some minor progress on side fronts, but with Londo, G’kar, and the Telepaths all MIA, there’s just not that much there there, though what’s there is entertaining. It’s hardly a bad episode in and of itself — it just feels like an unnecessary one. Its problem is strategic (where it shows up in the series and what it does there) more than tactical (the show itself).
That’s not just my opinion. JMS has commented, “There are some stories you tell that you look back at later and wonder, what the hell was I thinking?” Between not having a core-character-focused story (after the previous not-a-core-character-focused story), and using yet another interchangeable violent crime guy trying to take over the gangs, Joe opines he would just as soon this episode vanish softly and silently away.
An unusual slice-of-life episode, as epic events and characters are observed by … B5 janitors
A-Plot: The focus in this episode are the two floating maintenance workers, Mack and Bo. The former is salt-of-the-earth building super, always with a wry quip about the little guy. The latter is also grounded, but has a little bit bigger perspective.
Over the course of the episode they have chances to observe — and comment to each other about — each of the major characters, and their relationships. It’s actually feels still part of the TNT reintroduction of the series, since there’s both a lot of show and a lot of tell.
Bo and Mack
Beyond observation, there are two parts of this plot. First, there’s the sense that the little guys (like Mack and Bo) never get paid attention to by the big guys. They’re the set changers in a kabuki play, invisible except when someone has a complaint. On the flip side, there’s also the idea that the little guys look for something more consequential than their work life. Bo, in particular, envies the snazzy Star Fury pilots out there, dogfighting their ways to glory.
So Byron (whilst they’re hunkering down with the teeps in Brown Sector) links Bo up to one of the pilots — initially terrifying, then exciting, then …
Bo suddenly seeing himself as a Starfury pilot
The vision is interrupted — but it’s a taste of a life he never had, never really grasped, making him both more respectful of the pilots and more glad of the role he gets to play on a daily basis.
A third aspect to this part of the plot is that, even as we see the little guys both feeling rare bits of appreciation and even a little adventure, we also get to observe how they see through the facade of heroism, up-close. Delenn and Sheridan’s love. Lochley’s fierceness. Franklin’s pain. G’Kar and Londo’s ties that bind. The telepaths’ humanity. It feel a bit stagey at times, but it still manages to work.
B-Plot: There’s a fleet of evil aliens looking to invade B5’s sector — let’s call them the McGuffins, because in the end who they are and what motivates them isn’t important, and they’ll never be seen again. Anyway, the station knows they’re on the way because of the Gaim. B5 has to give them, at the least, a bloody nose to teach them not to move along to another sector.
Lochley is facing her first big military challenge. B5 is a formidable force, but with the White Star fleet away (see last episode), they’re vulnerable.
Sheridan is facing the reality of not being in charge of the station any longer, but still wanting to see Delenn protected. Delenn, on the other hand, isn’t going to be the damsel locked in the tower for protection.
Garibaldi is fighting for his job, having both gotten the initial Gaim intel, but also missing out on some key strengths of the bad guys. He’s also paranoid about Lochley, trying to pin down on what side she fought during the Civil War.
Franklin is prepping for the big battle, to receive casualties both from B5 and the attacking aliens. When Bo asks why he’s willing to save aliens there to kill them, he exposits some backstory about how his own father (who visited the station in 2×10 “GROPOS”) had his life saved by an enemy doctor, inspiring Franklin to go into medicine himself.
Londo and G’Kar are in shelter, bickering, but also giving us a few glimpses at themselves through their origins. G’Kar grew up in bomb shelters, barely protected from the Centauri bombings, always eventually coming back out into the sun. Londo, on the other hand, was always saddled with layers of noble duty — he never grew up, as G’Kar put it, only grew old.
(That insight will inform the rest of the season, as G’Kar blossoms in the sunlight of freedom, and Londo becomes ever more burdened by his destiny and his duty. More on this below.)
Byron is protecting and honing his people, quoting Shakespeare (again), but still being moved enough by humanity to help Bo make the connection he’s looking for.
Ultimately, the McGuffins are defeated, thanks to a deus ex White Star return of the fleet to trounce them. The command crew are wearied but satisfied with their jobs. Sheridan and Delenn can bill and coo. And Franklin gets stuck signing the death certificates.
The B-plot, in the end, isn’t meaningful, except to advance its entwined A-plot. It would have been nice to have thrown in some plot development in what’s been a slow start to a busy season, but …
Other Bits and Bobs:
Meanwhile: JMS has noted that Mack was modeled somewhat after Harlan Ellison, who had been pestering him the entire series about doing an episode from the perspective of “the little people.” Ellison gets a story credit on this episode.
Most Dramatic Moment: Franklin, having already talked about his desire to go out and find any lives he save after the battle … ends up the episode tagging corpses overflowing out into the hallways.
You think Mack and Bo have it tough?
As Mack starts saying in complaint to Bo, “They get all the glory, we get all the mess. Well, maybe not all the mess.”
Most Amusing Moment: Mack and Bo exchange any number of amusing quips, not even counting their interactions with the series protagonists, but the best has to come as Londo and G’Kar, after lengthy bickering, kvetching, and kvelling, wander off …
Londo: [uncomfortably] I think I will see how things are going out there.
G’Kar: I’ll go too. Good idea.
Londo: What, are you afraid I won’t come back, G’Kar?
G’Kar: No, afraid you will. [They walk off.]
Mack: [to Bo] So, how long you figure they’ve been married?
Amusing, but insightful. The two are bound, if not by oaths of love, by deeper strands of destiny and personality. There are times when it seems that B5 is actually a show about those two aliens, and, even if it’s not true, it’s still close to being so.
Honorable mention to Delenn arguing Mack and Bo out of escorting her to an escape pod at Sheridan’s orders. It may be Sinclair who studied from the Jesuits, but he instilled some of that into the Minbari generations ago, and Delenn has learned her lesson well.
Most Arc-ish Moment: Much of this episode is throw-away regarding arc, but the interaction between Londo and G’Kar and their mutual childhoods is both foundational and predictive of where things are going for the two of them.
G’Kar: Ah, that explains a great deal.
Londo: Really? And what exactly does it explain, G’Kar?
G’Kar: I spent my years in one shelter after another, but sooner or later, I was able to leave the shelter and walk out into the daylight. You do not have that luxury. You carry your shelter with you. Every day. You did not grow up, you grew old.
Mack and Bo in the raid shelter, enjoying some time off.
Overall Rating: 4.1 of 5.0 –My son, who’s always had a love-hate relationship with (his dad forcing him to watch) B5, opined, as the credits rolled, that he’d be happy to watch B5 in the future if every ep was like this.
I think this comes mainly from that human, non-epic, un-pompous note to it. Even though some of the dialog from JMS feels a bit — elaborate and heavy, even from Mac and Bo — it’s still much more of a grounded episode, reflecting not just the legendary heroes (and villains), but the little guys who get whipped up into their wakes.
We’ve seen B5 from other perspectives in the past — but that was the news media, friendly and un-. Mack and Bo, even if a bit too precious and wise at times, still give us an everyman’s perspective on life on B5 that’s too often missing in the sturm und drang of galaxy-shaking drama.
All dramatic roads keep leading back to the telepaths on B5.
A-Plot: Sheridan is herding cats, trying to get a Declaration of Principles for the Interstellar Alliance written by G’Kar while the various IA members squabble over even the need for such a thing — seeing the IA as a way to get high tech sharing (to them) without necessarily making any sort of moral commitment beyond that mere pragmatism. The Drazi, in particular, resent being told what principles they should abide by.
Things get more heated when a planet under siege by raiders manage to get word out by Ranger of their plight.
Evil raiders, who actually are evil enough (or rendered early enough) to be included in the main titles for the season.The Ranger and his shattered White Star barely make it to B5, and the Ranger dies on the Medlab table — but not before Lyta Alexander (see “B-Plot”) reveals what’s going on.
The planet has evidently been being raided for years for crops and resources. When they tried to fight back, their cities and civilization were destroyed. The raiders are coming back one last time, and fear of genocide is in the air.
Sheridan realizes this is a first make-or-break challenge to the IA, if they really do stand for the principles he thinks they must. He makes plans to send the whole White Star fleet (since a single one got pretty trashed) to intercept the raiders. He notifies the Drazi ambassador, since the system is on the edge of Drazi space; the ambassador asks that they rendezvous with a Drazi fleet first, and then they can act together.
But some overheard thoughts by Byron (see “B-Plot”) reveals the truth …
“I spy, with my mind’s eye, something that is green. And purple.”… that the raiders are actually backed by the Drazi, and the rendezvous will be an ambush by the Drazi fleet.
“Just hold still while we rendezvou with you …”That provides Sheridan with a way to put the screws to the Drazi … and to get everyone to sign off on the Declaration of Principles.
G’Kar quickly passing out copies to be signed or (with a nod toward prosthetic gloves) stamped.Everyone wins!
Except the Drazi. What could go wrong?
Nervous Drazi ambassador is nervous.
B-Plot: B5 now has telepaths. Sort of. But nobody’s quite sure what to do with them. Garibaldi wants to use them for espionage for the Interstellar Alliance, since all the other races do. Sheridan’s hinky about that, knowing that a Telepath War is coming, but eventually agrees.
Alas, Garibaldi’s manipulative pragmatism and inherent mistrust of telepaths (recalling what Bester did to him) makes him an awful representative, and Byron (after a bit of exposition about how hard it is for teeps not to read minds, and what an imposition it is to be asked not to when mundanes are so constantly busy “shouting.”
Garibaldi punts over to Lyta Alexander, B5’s here-again/gone-again sometimes-resident TP, currently there as a commercial Psi Corps telepath. She’s had a crap day, including being inside that Ranger’s mind when he died (insert exposition here about how that sort of thing steals a little bit of any TP’s soul when it happens — and the Psi Corps legend that Bester did it waaaaaay too many times, trying to learn what there was beyond).
Don’t mind me, just losing a chunk of soul to net you some important intel, I’m fine, thanks for asking …Garibaldi pretty blatantly leans on Lyta to intervene with the telepaths and she reluctantly (and kind of resentfully) agrees.
“I promise not to ask you to do something terrible ever again … until I need to ask you to do something terrible again. Deal?”
Byron’s happy to meet her — and even happier to try and recruit her to his cause, playing on her (not unwarranted) grievances of being the person that everyone else kind of ignores until they suddenly need a telepath, no matter how dangerous or awful the job. He stokes those flames, alternating between semi-abusive control behavior, and saying some not-very-nice things about mundanes, including a mocking reading from Hamlet:
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!
And then he notes how inhuman the “paragon of animals” has been to its own kind — and to teeps, which Byron considers a different class of being.
Ultimately he turns on the charm, lets Lyta know she’s welcome there, agrees to make a couple of his people available to the IA — and, as a favor, offers to Lyta what he read in the Drazi ambassador’s head.
Byron turns on the charm.Lyta doesn’t fall for Byron’s pitch hook, line, and sinker — and, to be fair, Sheridan thanks Lyta for passing on the info from Byron about the Drazi — but by the end of the episode she’s back to chat with Byron some more about his Telepath Collective and the Workers Revolution he’s fomenting.
“Come into my egalitarian non-mundane parlour …”Yeah, this is going to end poorly.
Other Bits and Bobs: Just a reminder that, even in the far-flung future, computer systems will have crappy UI and everyone will still need spell-check.
Even in the future, UIs are terrible.Meanwhile: The original intent, before Claudia Christian left the show, was for Ivanova to be the one who gets sucked into the telepath cause and, ultimately, into Byron’s arms. That would have had a very different dynamic, just based on Ivanova having very different TP powers, and her (having lost Marcus) deciding to not push away a possible love interest (with suitably tragic results for our Russian officer).
By being forced to shift this over to Lyta Alexander, we lose some great drama — but it actually works kind of better. Lyta really is the telepath that gets pulled on-stage (by the command crew, and by JMS) only when there’s something awful she’s going to be asked to do. She’s perfect for Byron’s manipulation because so much of what he says is true.
Lyta is a weird case. She not only has some righteous resentment, but she’s also a person lost. She’s never fit in with the Psi Corps or with the B5 community. Even Kosh went and died on her. She literally has only been wheeled out in the show, and (by extension) the B5 leadership, only when it’s time to be used in some awful way.
She’s been a tool since the pilot episode.That kind of background is going to have her not terribly rational if offered a cultgroup of friendly figures led by a romantic father figure to join.
Lochley is conspicuously absent from the episode, despite all the action going on at the station. JMS has explained that writing her into the new season, on top of everything else, esp. as he had to be writing the first few episodes before even casting Tracy Scoggins in the role, left it easier to have her just be offstage, working on stuff.
As noted above, Garibaldi is working hard to run IA’s covert intelligence. The problem is, it doesn’t quite feel right. He openly voices skepticism about Sheridan and the Alliance and all the “touch-feely,” but feels he owes a debt. He’s engaging with telepaths, despite having started off the series skeptical about them and only having had increasingly bad experiences with them. He doesn’t seem to have anything to do, despite having a corporate empire to run back on Mars. Garibaldi is a key part of B5, but he’s being stuffed into a plotline that doesn’t bear close examination.
Overall: Good, but too much feels rushed. JMS was still scrambling to get the season going, writing solo and full-time while showrunning everything else, trying to restructure the season, dealing with actors who had departed and others who had returned, recreating his notes from his lost notebook, and generally going quietly nuts.
That said, there’s some appreciable and appreciated mingling between the A- and B-Plots here. The needs of the IA drive contact with the telepaths; telepaths (Lyta and Byron, in particular) in turn push forward the resolution of the raids and the signing of the Declaration of Principles. It’s neatly done, and shows a complexity in stories that JMS will lean into in this final season.
Most Dramatic Moment: The reading of the Declaration of Principles (at least the version that everyone signed).
The Universe speaks in many languages, but only one voice.
The language is not Narn or Human or Centauri or Gaim or Minbari.
It speaks in the language of hope. It speaks in the language of trust.
It speaks in the language of strength, and the language of compassion.
It is the language of the heart and the language of the soul.
But always it is the same voice.
It is the voice of our ancestors speaking through us.
And the voice of our inheritors waiting to be born.
It is the small, still voice that says we are One.
No matter the blood, no matter the skin,
No matter the world, no matter the star,
We are One.
No matter the pain, no matter the darkness,
No matter the loss, no matter the fear.
We are One.
Here, gathered together in common cause
We agree to recognize this singular truth and this singular rule:
That we must be kind to one another.
Because each voice enriches us and ennobles us,
And each voice lost diminishes us.
We are the voice of the universe, the soul of creation,
The fire that will light the way to a better future.
We are One.
This is, not surprisingly, a lengthy piece of text that fandom has spread to any number of places — wedding ceremonies, philosophical debates, and beyond. It’s a neat piece of writing, but maybe having actually been there at the Dawn of the Declaration of Principles, I seem to treat it a bit more skeptically than others do.
It’s also not surprising that various races might be a bit hinky about signing off on it. JMS has commented that the debates here are akin to those over the US Declaration of Independence and Constitution, but this document is even more abstract — the former is a petition of grievances (wrapped in the language of principle), the latter a governmental structure (later amended to include some principles/rights). I doubt you could have gotten the 13 new “states” to have signed such a E Pluribus Unum statement, let alone various races that until recently have been in all-against-all uneasy peace, at best.
Most Amusing Moment: Any time G’Kar is getting all Writerly, such as when he shooshes away the others because his Muse is speaking to him, at which point the show editors choose to put a certain credit on screen:
“Just a moment … my Muse is speaking to me …”And, especially when he recalls all the (signed!) Declaration of Principle documents because he’s improved it in rewrite.
“I revised it again. It’s better.”JMS was having, I suspect, way too much fun poking fun at writers. Most particularly himself.
Honorable Mention to Sheridan demurring Delenn’s request he read the G’Kar’s Declaration of Principles to her, when his face makes it crystal clear he so wants her to ask him once more to do it. Sheridan is always willing to do a dramatic reading or speech.
Most Arc-ish Moment: The Declaration of Principles is quintessential JMS, and the core of his message in this show.
But it would be churlish to ignore Lyta as an arc. She’s been dragged in as needed — TP on the pilot ep, narc on Talia, escapee from the Psi Corps, punching bag for Bester and gill-recipient for Kosh and punching bag again for Ulkesh, desperate refugee back to the Psi Corps, tool for activating unliving telepaths … and always forgotten and out of mind from the core B5 crew when they didn’t need her for some desperate gamble.
People talk about Zack as being the archetypal “normal person” on B5, but I could easily argue Lyta in that role: the functionary who steps on at the whim of the protagonists, only to then be dismissed and ignored when victory arrives.
Poor Lyta. Things are about to get much worse.
Overall Rating: 3.5 of 5.0 — Entertaining with plenty of arc fodder, but vaguely annoying. The Declaration of Principles bit has good humor, but dramatically feels like it falls into place too easily. The telepath conflict has interesting drama, but hits too heavily. (Rating History)
Londo’s dying. But is it actually his heart, or a guilty conscience?
This kind of psychodrama, with a character like Londo, should hit it out of the park. Instead, things get muddied a bit too much between subplots and trying to get a little too cute on a little too small a budget with Londo’s dreamscape.
A-Plot: Londo suffers a major heart attack in the episode intro. While there’s lots of pulse-pounding (so to speak) MedLab intensity, the focus is (or should be) on Londo’s internal mindscape, as he meets with mental representations of the other major players (Delenn, Sheridan, Vir, and, ultimately, G’kar), trying to come to grips with, and then avoid, dying.
If only he can actually face the figure of G’kar, haunting him from the shadows behind.
LONDO: I can’t. I don’t know what he wants from me.
VIR: Yes, you do. The thing that has eaten away at your heart until it could not endure the pain a moment longer. You must let go of this, or you will die here, alone, now.
LONDO: Perhaps that is for the best then.
Each of the characters, Ghost of Christmas-like, adds pieces to the puzzle of Londo, but it’s the last, G’kar, that draws forth the burden of guilt the Centauri has been living under — not just what he did, but what he didn’t do, as he stood by silently as the Narn homeworld was bombarded, as well as when G’kar was nearly flogged to death.
G’KAR: One word, Mollari. One word was all that was required of you.
LONDO: It would not have mattered. It wouldn’t have changed anything! It would not have stopped!
G’KAR: You’re wrong, Mollari! Whether it was me or my world, whether it was a total stranger or your worst enemy! You were a witness! It doesn’t matter if they’d stop! It doesn’t matter if they’d listen! You had an obligation to speak out!
Words we should all live by.
Londo’s mindscape G’kar is as relentless as the real one. Facing his sins of omission is the price Londo has to pay in order to survive.
B-Plot: Meanwhile, Lennier, at the end of S.4, realized that his love for Delenn would always be unrequited, now that she was married to Sheridan. Thus he decides to leave B5 and become a Ranger. This is not a pure act on his part — it meant both to remove the ongoing pain of watching Sheridelenn canoodling, but also to try to prove to her that he’s a great hero, too (even, perhaps, to have her feel guilty about both his sacrifice and, if it happens, his death).
Delenn, for her part, realizes all this, but is unwilling to confront Lennier about it, standing by to let him go. It’s a mistake that will come back to haunt both of them in the future.
Unfortunately, for me, it haunted this episode, too, drawing too much of the emotional focus from Londo’s struggle. There are too many similar beats; if Lennier’s departure could have been shifted forward or back an episode, both plotlines would have benefitted.
Other Bits and Bobs: That’s largely it. No sign of our new station commander, Lochley. No mention of telepaths.
Franklin and Londo
Meanwhile: JMS has noted a tremendous, and sad, irony, in this ep. He usually had chats with Richard Biggs (Franklin) about anything medical, as prep, and did so over lunch on this show’s medical activity. The script was still bouncing back and forth to whether it was heart failure or poison that had struck Londo down, and Biggs favored poison, as no heart problem for Londo had been previously mentioned. Joe, in turn, argued that people could have heart troubles or defects that they never knew up, until one day it hit them, often with tragic consequences.
As, it turned out, was the case with Richard Biggs, only a few years later.
Overall: Good, but the B-plot distracts, with serious emotional notes, from the A-plot, weakening both.
Most Dramatic Moment: There are actually quite a few here (in both plots). But the biggest has to be Londo finally telling G’kar he’s sorry. Too little, too late … maybe. But it’s a good clearing of the table for him (and for G’kar) as we head into the next phase of their relationship.
Honorable Mention has to go to the recap clips from 2×20 “The Long, Twilight Struggle” of Londo watching the bombardment of Narn. That still gives me chills.
Most Amusing Moment: Vir and Lennier, sharing a last few moments as the sidekicks, discussing Vir’s drink, a “Shirley Temple.”
LENNIER: What kind of drink is that?
VIR: I’m not sure. The bartender called it a “Shirley Temple.”
LENNIER: Interesting. I’ve studied many earth religions and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that particular temple.
VIR: Me neither. But, it’s real good.
LENNIER: Well then. I shall make a point to visit it on my next trip to earth.
Honorable Mention to another Vir scene where, thinking Londo had been poisoned, he shouts out his frustration at all the assassins that seem to keep coming to B5.
VIR: What is wrong is you people? Don’t you have anything else better to do? Why don’t you get a hobby? Read a book or something?
Most Arc-ish Moment: Way too many all in line with the flashbacks, flash-forwards, and character beats. I’m going to go with something just in passing: Londo (in his mindscape) mentioning to Sheridan that he always somehow had the weird sense that the latter was there when he, himself, died. Londo, of course, mentioned foreseeing his own death at G’kar’s hands in 1×01 “Midnight on the Firing Line,” long before Sheridan ever entered the show; we actually see it in Londo’s dream sequence in 2×09 “The Coming of Shadows,” and Sheridan’s time-jumped presence (and the outcome of the G’kar/Londo strangling match) is explained in 3×17 “War without End, Part 2”. Now that’s arc.
Honorable mention to the same conversation with mindscape Sheridan, as the latter keeps changing uniform, progressing over the past years, and into the future, finally vanishing in a flash of light. Remember that moment …
Sheridan as EA officerSheridan no longer an EA officerSheridan as rebel commanderSheridan as (future) Entil’ZhaSheridan as … what?Sheridan as a departing ball of light
And Honorable Mention to mindscape Delenn’s tarot reading (the art is dodgy, but who’d have anticipated that sort of screen capture?). In any rate, it’s a lovely summary of Londo’s life to date.
And a third Honorable Mention as well to Lennier’s departure, which sets the character on his final arc extending into the season.
Overall Rating: 3.8 of 5.0 — Good ep, with a lot of excellent constituent parts, but ultimately the Lennier bits distract from the Londo bits, and the attempt to make those Londo bits a truly surreal mindscape never quite gel. (Rating History)
And 30 months later, I’m back to the rewatch, kicking off with Season 5.
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 …
In case you had doubts the assassin is a stone killer, as they said in the 80s… then issuing video threats …
Stone killer!… and then offing a Gaim to infiltrate the inauguration.
Stone … cold … killer!All of which is fine, and set up in nicely creepy fashion (complete with an unexplained affection for a ballerina music box).
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 …
“This is Earth Alliance Destroyer Acheron. We’ve got your package.”… and taking over B5’s operations from the absent Ivanova (see below), with both the dimension of Sheridan stepping away from the station (and planning to move to Minbar), and Lochley becoming a center of B5 action.
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.
Sheridan and Lochley … which is a bit more tense scene than first-time viewers might think.There’s some good stuff here (beyond multiple lines for fan-fave Lt. Corwin). Lochley is clearly competent, she clearly takes no shit (esp. from Garibaldi), she isn’t interested in being a mouthpiece for Sheridan (for reasons to be given further on), and she’s not afraid to speak out.
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.
He’s so DREAMY!
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.
Actors are cheaper if they don’t actually have speaking lines.There are some pretty spiffy TP effects that occur here. Telepaths’ ability to project thoughts both creates an appropriately creepy introduction between Byron and Lochley, some neatly done interaction with young Teep Simon, and ultimately a tragic foiling of the assassination attempt.
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).
Knock-knock!Or maybe the question that everyone has about Lochley, including :
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.
Though I’d never noticed the FIVE stars before. Nice touch.Honorable mention to G’kar being assigned to come up with the Presidential Oath and Declaration of Principles. S5 will be about his growing into the role of Wise Man, and his writings will be a key to all that is to come.
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).
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 …
The war to liberate Earth is over. But now what will happen to the Captain Sheridan and his rebellious colleagues? And after such a climax the previous episode, can this episode rise above just being denouement?
A-Plot: Having spent the last several episodes on rebellion, torture, and war, this episode focuses on the politics of the aftermath. Sheridan is grilled by Earthforce, and, eventually, by acting Earth president Luchenko, a sarcastic and hard-bitten practical politician in a very difficult situation, trying to keep things from spinning apart.
Luchenko has to deal with that to do about the hero of the hour who is also a mutineer and traitor to the Earth government.
“Don’t make the mistake of assuming this is a conversation.”
LUCHENKO: Well, Captain, you caused quite a stir. Half of EarthForce wants to give you a kiss on the cheek and the Medal of Honor. The other half wants you taken out and shot. As a politician you learn how to compromise. Which by all rights means I should give you the Medal of Honor, then have you shot. […] You’ll tender your immediate resignation. I’ll see to it you retain your military pension with full honors, and I’ll guarantee amnesty for the officers and crew who served under you during the crisis. But I want you gone. The Joint Chiefs feel the same way.
SHERIDAN: And if I refuse?
LUCHENKO: You’ll be dishonorably discharged, court-martialed, and brought to trial. Same for Ivanova and the rest of your staff. And I’ll make sure the military tribunal is stacked with generals from the “shoot him” category. Don’t make the mistake of assuming this is a conversation. It isn’t. You have no other options. The bitch of it is, you probably did the right thing. But you did it the wrong way, the inconvenient way, and you have to pay the penalty for that. I know it stinks, but that’s the way it is.
(Beata Poźniak as Luchenko is one of the more odd castings for the show. Her Polish accent gives her a refreshingly non-Anglophone nature, with some odd intonation and rhythm to her speech that given it a verisimilitude. But while being pragmatic and ruthless, she also comes across as about twenty years too young to be even an interim, emergency president.)
Ultimately, Sheridan has the last laugh. He agrees to her terms, and she pulls together a widely broadcast press conference.
His widely broadcast resignation speech gets cleverly hijacked by the presence and machinations of Delenn, G’kar, and Londo, who announce the formation of a new Interstellar Alliance, whose worlds will continue to manage their own internal affairs, but who will act in mutual defense, all of it held together by the Rangers and the White Star fleet. (Which fleet then, rather provocatively, flies over EarthDome, to the consternation of everyone.)
Earth is offered a place in the Alliance, which causes some bristling (even among those who opposed Clark’s “Earth First” xenophobia). But the offer of tech goodies like artificial gravity are awfully tempting, if they care to negotiate with the Alliance president about their entry into the organization.
And who is that president? Ah. Turns out everyone had that surprise teed up: the Alliance has selected John Sheridan for that role …
So, all’s well, more or less, that ends well. Sheridan is the leader of a new galactic polity (which Earth, for the moment, decides to join), and is reunited with his father (who’d been apprehended by Clark’s security forces) as well. All seems like a happy ending, though …
LONDO: So, how does it feel to make history?
G’KAR: You cannot make history, you can only hope to survive it.
LONDO: G’Kar, you are a depressing person.
G’KAR: Thank you.
And what will the future bring? Well over a closing montage, Delenn gets her crack at the opening titles dialog in a montage at the end of the episode, and does a bang-up job:
It was the end of the Earth year 2261. and it was the dawn of a new age, for all of us. It was the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. The next 20 years would see great changes, great joy, and great sorrow. The Telepath War … The Drakh War … The new Alliance would waver and crack, but in the end it would hold because what is built endures, and what is loved endures. And Babylon 5 … Babylon 5 endures.
B-Plot: The episode actually begins with this thread, the wrap-up of the Ivanova/Marcus doomed tragedy. Claudia Christian does (ironically) her best acting of the series, crushed with guilt and anger over Marcus sacrificing himself for her, and her unwillingness to acknowledge the love she felt toward him and knew he had for her.
The discussion with Franklin, conducted on the floor of Medlab, is gut-wrenching and excellent. At the end of the episode, ISN is announcing that Ivanova, promoted to full Captain, has been given command of a new Warlock-class cruiser.
C-Plot: The Mars Resistance has won its war, but Garibaldi is trying to find what happened to Lise. Turns out that she’s been absconded with by some thugs who figure out she’ll be a good ransom victim.
Alas, it doesn’t go at all well against a grimly dedicated Garibaldi, especially backed by a team of Rangers. Bam-boom, and Lise is back in Garibaldi’s arms again … and when she makes a pillow-talk suggestion that she needs his help running Edgars Industries, he doesn’t say no …
D-Plot: While Sheridan is being held in conference rooms, he gets a new visitor — Bester. The two banter aggressively back and forth, Bester glibly denying anything that might make him sound guilty, but the core of the confrontation is his eliciting from Sheridan whether his lover Carolyn was one of the teeps sacrificed to win the space battle last episode. “Because I have to tell you that, if that is the case, you will not leave this room alive.”
Sheridan does rather cruelly string him along a bit, making it clear that he vetted which teeps would be used — those with no family, those whose conditions were the most difficult. In the end, he admits that Bester’s lover was not one of the 30 of 100 used — not, he forcefully adds, as a favor to Bester.
I know what it’s to lose someone only to find then lose her a second time. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even you, as much as I might want to.
Bester and Sheridan
We then get some more angry banter between the two about the killing of Edgars, the theft of the teep plague, and Bester’s intentionally unconvincing denial of anything to do with same. Sheridan suggests that any attempt by the telepaths to suborn Earth’s government, or to start a Telepath War will be unsuccessful, because, well, he’ll be watching … and Michael Garibaldi is out there, waiting for a chance to get his revenge.
I don’t know exactly how he plans to settle the score, but I’m sure it’ll be creative, colorful and extremely unpleasant.
Walter Koenig gives us a great Bester (as usual), layering his mustache-twirling with real emotion over his lover and learning she’s still alive and “safe”. His character is a villain that everyone loves to hate (because he makes no effort to ingratiate himself), but who is clearly a hero in his own story and whose ruthlessness in the cause of his own people is as admirable as it is scary.
Hey, Londo! You’re going to be Emperor! Isn’t that great?
Other Bits and Bobs: Londo gets news that he’s been selected to become the next Emperor. He’s less than thrilled about that, an interesting change from where he was back at the beginning of the series.
There’s a marvelous, if brief, interlude between Delenn and Lennier, where basically he brings up the subject of unrequited love and she basically chooses (she can’t be that dense, can she?) not to see that he is desperately in love with her … even as she heads off to rescue, promote, and marry Sheridan. Poor Lennier …
Meanwhile: The irony of the Ivanova plot is, of course, that after the filming of this ep (and the next one), two things happened.
First, WB and TNT reached a deal for a fifth season of B5, letting Joe finish his five-year arc after he’d already yanked the guts out to fit the key elements he wanted to cover. That left Joe with a pastiche of Alliance, Drakh, and Telepaths to fit together.
Aloha, Ivanova
Second, contract renegotiation shenanigans with Claudia Christian led to Ivanova not coming back for that final season, thus truncating her arc (where her abortive love with Marcus, her command of B5, and her latent telepathy would have all played a huge role in the whole Byron/telepath arc of S5) and further hobbling that season.
That meant one small change to this episode — in the original TV script, Ivanova is offered command of a new experimental cruiser, but has not committed; once she was out of the picture, the newscast voice-over was changed before airing to have her actually taking command and leaving B5.
But beyond the Ivanova drama, these developments also meant that JMS had to take what he’d shot as the final episode of S4 (and the series), reassign it to be the series finale at the end of S5, and rush into production a new S4 conclusion episode …
Overall: As the core of the episode, and a wrap-up of the immediate action, this episode does its work admirably. But the pressures of time and budget show too plainly. The regal sets of EarthDome feel as cramped as the whipsaw plotting. Too much happens driven by people giving long speeches at podiums, or speaking to cameras. The presence of the three star ambassadors at Sheridan’s resignation press event, let alone the savvy Luchenko letting them get up and talk unrehearsed and unvetted, feels contrived to let the Big Announcement be made. Whether it’s writing, direction, or editing, the episode passes by in a chaotic rush, desperately trying to close out plotlines in a satisfying fashion.
It all works, but more with the force of the past four years of plot behind it to drive us through the awkward bits, than because of its artful composition.
Ivanova and Franklin
Most Dramatic Moment: Poor Mira Furlan — this episode should have been her big moment, as Delenn’s plans (with Sheridan) for the Interstellar Alliance come to fruition, and she gets a big monologue at the end.
Instead, it goes to Claudia Christian’s Ivanova, sitting forlorn on the floor of MedLab with Franklin, weeping over and railing against how her life has come to this.
Most Amusing Moment: The twists and turns of this episode make for a lot of light moments amidst the dialog and banter. Garibaldi has a number of wise cracks. Londo chortles with glee when he learns what Delenn has in mind. Luchenko gets some wry, Russian zingers on Sheridan, and Bester’s humor is always dry and tasty. Sheridan get to smirk when the White Stars boom-crash overhead (and, again, when the general who was busting his ass earlier has to now refer to him as “Mister President”).
That all said, it’s hard to point to a single laugh-out-loud moment in the episode. As a whole, the humor is there to leaven the drama, as opposed to standing out. It’s the wrap-up of the story, with enough bittersweet to it to need smiles, not out-and-out jollity. Unless it’s a final skeevy chuckle that the known sex fiend G’Kar has surreptitiously planted his cybernetic eye in Sheridan and Delenn’s wedding suite …
Most Arc-ish Moment: The transition of John Sheridan to President of the Interstellar Alliance represents both a logical and epic transition of the character’s role, and the next step in the evolution of the galactic social order: the creation of a new polity that will, it is dreamed, advance both humanity and the rest of the races around it. It can be seen as a direct successor of events going on at the very beginning of Season 1, and will be a big part of where we end up going in Season 5.
Honorable mention to the Sheridan/Bester scene, which, to a smaller degree, both ties up loose ends from the past, and points toward what lies in the future.
Overall Rating: 4.1 of 5.0 — stunning emotions in places, a wrap-up of loose ends, but way, way too rushed and speech-heavy. (Rating History).
Sheridan’s fleet arrives in the Solar System, trying to overcome Earth’s defenses in order to free it from President Clark’s tyranny. But even victory will come with a terrible cost …
A-Plot: In the first half of the episode, we finally learn Sheridan’s cunning plan, and why Franklin was so appalled over it. Sheridan is going to smuggle the Shadow-tech-infested telepaths aboard the Earthforce warships, and let them do their “All your circuitry is belong to us” thing, crippling the fleet. Not only does this give Sheridan’s forces a fighting chance, it disables the opposition without killing (many of) them.
The shadowtech-infected teeps may be horribly abused by everyone, but they have rockin’ upholstery.
It’s still a horrifying plan, and Franklin, of all people, has to defend it to a Martian Resistance NCO.
FRANKLIN: They’re probably waking up right now. Wondering where they are. Looking for the Machine. They’ll start moving … looking for the first open computer relay. And they’ll merge with it. Become one with the Machine. The interference will shut down the destroyers … let us do what we have to do.
NCO: My god … you’re using them … using these people as if they were weapons!
FRANKLIN: Yeah, we’re using them. Because they are weapons. Because there are three dozen destroyers out there with over a thousand crew apiece … and if the telepaths can disable those ships, we risk thirty lives to save thirty thousand.
NCO: But how can you do this to them? You’re a doctor!
FRANKLIN: We can never remove those implants without the resources back home on Earth. If we can’t win this war, they’re dead either way. They’re fighting for Earth, same as we are. They just don’t know they’re doing it.
It’s a chilling encounter, because Franklin is absolutely right — the greater good calls for these people to be sacrificed, and that’s a horrible, horrible thing. It’s a command decision, something that Franklin is untrained for, and it kills him to be saying it.
The Apollo
Earthforce has its fleet near Mars, where they know Sheridan’s going to strike. It’s newly commanded aboard the Apollo by General Lefcourt, Sheridan’s old instructor, who knows Sheridan all too well. Unlike some in Earthforce, Lefcourt isn’t driven by animus against the traitors — he’s loyal to Earth because that’s what he swore an oath to be, which is why he’s determined to stop Sheridan.
[To his fleet captain] And now I’m going to have to kill him, and his ship, and everyone around him. It’s a terrible day, Charlie. I wish to hell I’d never lived to see it.
[Addressing the fleet, a few moments later] If a ship is on that list, you are authorized to open fire on that ship and any support vessels, alien or human. You are to forget forget that these people were once friends, associates and fellow officers. They are targets to be destroyed, nothing more, nothing less. We are here to do a job, let’s do it. And God help all of us.
His ships wait and bring up supplies. The Martian Resistance (aided by Garibaldi, Franklin, and Lyta) secure the security outposts around the main Earthforce base there, as the teeps are smuggled in with those supplies (apparently such shipments are only examined from the departure point, not on receiving, so nobody on the Earth ships notices those moving-tarp-covered cryotanks with the teeps inside, even where the tarps have slipped significantly).
Grumpy shadowtech-infested teeps are grumpy.
That set, Lyta, down on the planet, awakens the telepaths (again showing her amazing power, coupled with a Franklin-rigged widget), while a White Star bombs the snot out of the base Sheridan shows no signs of pleasure over this, even though it’s where he spent a couple of episodes being tortured, drugged, and psychologically abused. He has the excuse that it will impact Earthforce power on the planet in the face of the Martian Resistance, and might distract Lefcourt’s fleet (it doesn’t).
With most of the Earth ships temporarily disabled until the teeps can be killed (and, even then, their systems are a mess), Sheridan’s fleet sweeps in and uses his alien supporters to keep Earth’s mobile defenses in check. He then micro-jumps his Earth ships and White Stars to Earth, and announces to the planet that he’s there to free them, and encouraging those who have been waiting their chance to rise up against the evil Clark regime to do so.
This is Captain John Sheridan. We are here on the authority of a multiplanetary force that can no longer stand by and watch one of their greatest allies falling into darkness and despair. We are here on behalf of the thousands of civilians murdered under orders from the current administration, who have no one else to speak for them, and on behalf of the Earthforce units that have joined us to oppose the tyranny that has darkened Earth ever since President Santiago was assassinated three years ago. We are here to place President Clark under arrest, to disband Nightwatch, and return our government to the hands of her people.
We know that many in the government have wanted to act but have been intimidated by threats of retaliation against your families, your friends. You are not alone anymore. We call upon you to rise up and do what’s right. We have drawn their forces away from Earth and disabled them. The time to act is now.
This is not the voice of treason. These are your sons, your daughters, whose loyalties have never wavered, whose beliefs in this Alliance has forced us to take extraordinary means. For justice, for peace, for the future, we have come home!
Alas, I can’t find a higher-res version where the other marginalia are clearer.Earth defense grid box launcher, firing on the incoming ships
Clark, seeing the writing on the wall, kills himself, leaving a note for those who find him moments later: “SCORCHED EARTH”. Turns out he’s managed to override Earth’s defense grid, which swings its particle beams around and begins a count-down to devastating the planet. Sheridan’s fleet goes all out to take down the orbiting defenses, but their missiles pack a hell of a punch and Agamemnon, the ship he’s on, gets seriously pummeled. With no choice and no time, he orders the ship to suicide-ram the massive particle beam platform in front of them — but is saved at the last moment by Apollo, which not only finally get back underway, and convinced the ships left behind at Mars to let them go, but whose commander, Lefcourt, has been monitoring the situation and realizes he must back Sheridan’s play.
The last platform is destroyed. Earth is safe. Clark is dead. ISN comes back on the air. Sheridan and his Resistance have won.
So what comes next?
B-Plot: Ivanova, only a few days from death, is shipped back to B5. Everyone agrees that she would rather stay with the fleet, but everyone (but Marcus) wants her to be kept as safe as possible.
Alas, Lennier turns out to have a big mouth, giving Marcus the clue that B5 might hold some powerful medical secret. He downloads the information and discovers the alien healing device introduced in “Quality of Mercy” (way back in S.1), and used by Sheridan to heal Garibaldi (“Revelations,” early in S.2). Despite the fact that Franklin far-too-well-tagged high security medical logs keep saying, “Whoa, this is way too dangerous to ever, ever use again until it can be studied,” Marcus hijacks a White Star and hightails it back to B5. Alas, by that time they are in range of Earth’s interstellar comms jamming (to block Resistance propaganda), and Sheridan can’t let B5 know that Marcus should be arrested on sight kept from the MedLab locked closet.
(Yes, “arrested on sight.” Yeah, I get it, he loves Ivanova with a love that burns like a thousand burning suns. I get it. He also diverted one of the most powerful ships in the fleet, just before they were going to go into the most important battle ever, when the presence of absence of a single ship might mean victory or defeat or, as it turns out, the destruction of planet Earth. That’s desertion, at the very least, and is a hanging offense in most armed forces, no matter how much he loves Ivanova.)
As it turns out, the final scenes of the ep are MedLab, where Marcus has knocked out the security guards watching Ivanova, and hooked him and her to the machine, knowing it will kill him if not monitored. He professes his love, and closes his eyes, collapsing next to her bed.
Overall: And boy-howdy wasn’t that the most depressing episode ending ever, in a episode that should be all about the triumph of the Resistance over Clark, the saving of billions of lives, and the apparent resolution of a story arc that’s been going on since early S.1.
Unlike the defeat of the Shadows in S.3, the liberation of Earth is muted here as something to celebrate. As both Sheridan and Lefcourt make it clear at various times, civil war is a terrible thing, and there have been a lot of casualties despite everyone’s efforts. Plus, of course, there’s the whole Marcus/Ivanova thing to be depressed about. Yikes.
Unhappy, not-making-eye-contact FranklinSpeechifying Sheridan with his natty beard
Boxleitner does a particularly fine job here, keeping the beard he grew in captivity (if trimmed up), and giving a marvelous speeches both to his own folk and to the people of Earth. Everyone else does a workmanlike job with their roles. Franklin’s unhappiness with Sheridan’s plan, and his inability to argue with the calculus of lives it will save, is all conveyed well by Richard Biggs. Marcus quiet stoicism as he sacrifices everything for his love doesn’t allow Jason Cole much to do besides using those dreamy eyes to convey emotion, but he does so well.
President Clark, the man in the (usually metaphorical) shadows
The one person we never hear from is President Clark himself; we simply see his actions, taking his own life before arrest, arranging for Earth to be destroyed as his legacy. It’s all very mad and authoritarian, but Clark’s lack of presence as the person who engineered (or led) this dark chapter in Earth’s history somehow keeps us from personifying the totalitarian and xenophobic evil he represents, and therefore robs us of that conflict in a dramatic sense. It keeps the conflict from being just about evil President Clark, sure, but it makes things feel almost anticlimactic. (More discussion of that here.)
Things aren’t over, not by a long shot, but JMS still thinks he has to wrap up the rest of the saga in a mere two more episodes. He largely takes the time here to do the job right, but further dramatic and narrative shortcuts are yet to come.
“… we’ve been gone a long time …”
Most Dramatic Moment: There are some great moments in this ep — Marcus’ final line, various moments in the battle, Lefcourt’s speech with the captain he’s replacing, Sheridan’s message to Earth, Franklin revealing the plan. I have to give the nod, though, to something smaller: actress Maggie Egan’s turn as the ISN anchor, back on her job, choking up as she talks about what’s happened, but emblematic of the freedom that has returned to the planet.
(The scene was originally written for the next episode, but chunks of it were used here.)
Egan had played that role from the very first episode of the series the entire way to ISN being shut down by Clark, and she’ll continue to do so the last main timeline episode of season 5.
Most Amusing Moment: I can’t think of any humor in this episode, for obvious reasons.
Most Arc-ish Moment: The alien healing machine as Chekhov’s Gun on the Mantelpiece. It took multiple seasons (and, frankly, some other opportunities where it would have been of potential value), but it finally got pulled down and used. The irony of that won’t become clear until we get to S.5.
[For Christmas, my son gave me a “Okay, I’ll watch the rest of B5 with you” as a gift. Woo-hoo! So, I’m picking up after the last review I did (in July of 2016(!)), skipping forward a few eps I never wrote down commentary for.]
The war to retake Earth heats to the boiling point, with a big win and a tragic loss. SPOILERS FOR THIS EPISODE (if you haven’t seen it).
A-Plot: Garibaldi convinces the Martian Resistance, and Franklin, that, yup, Bester had broken his mind back when he was “missing,” turning him against Sheridan and leading to his betrayal of the commander. The convincing is done through Lyta and her mind-probing him — a desperation move on his part, but demonstrating that she can break a P12 mind lock. Yikes!
(On the list of critiques for the ep: Garibaldi is welcomed back into the fold far too effortlessly. Even if Lyta’s mindprobe exonerates him, the suspicions of a year, and the anger of the past few episodes, are not so easily disposed of that the casual banter he then becomes part of is natural or believable.)
Angry Sheridan Is AngryGaribaldi, Franklin, and Lyta break into the Earthforce base where Sheridan is being kept. The commander looks splendidly awful, as the interrogation and drug regime being forced on him (as seen last episode) is finally having an effect, breaking his awareness of reality (lovely mixed set of hallucinations done here). Drawing on Garibaldi’s “fame” as the man who captured Sheridan, they get in, shoot a bunch of guards, and get Sheridan out, Garibaldi taking a knife to the back in the process, and Sheridan getting a single over-the-top expression of anger at one of the guards (shooting him multiple times after he’s down) to show the effect of his captivity.
He’s flown back to the fleet where he cleans up awfully nice and gets a passionate hug with Delenn. He does note to her that he’s had an awful time, but he’ll talk about it with her later. Hope so, because that was a remarkable recovery from where he was earlier in the episode. Indeed, isn’t someone going to recommend a fully psych eval before they put him in charge of his own wardrobe, let alone the a fleet of ships heading off to a climactic battle?
Guess not …
(Note: there is a short, cut-for-time scene in the script, after Sheridan’s freed, where Lyta offers to get rid of the pain still in Sheridan’s head from the torture and drugs. Sheridan refuses: “No, let it burn … gives me one more reason to come back … blow this place to hell and back.” No, no reason to worry there …)
B-Plot: Ivanova’s leading the fleet along, diverting course to take down some EarthGov ships that were responsible for civilian atrocities, both to clean up the mess and get some potential deserters to her side. One of those willing to turn lets her know that not all who have are loyal, and that they’ve gotten word back to Earth about the fleet’s movements and plans, and Earth is planning an ambush with some new, elite units.
Ivanova decides to take the White Star fleet ahead with her to deal with that menace, rather than risking the more conventional forces on her behalf, or letting the other rendezvousing elements get caught in the trap. We get some nice emotional byplay between Marcus and Ivanova, including showing that she’s figured out he’s become besotted with her, and leaving room for that to develop. Uh-oh …
Creepy Shadow-Clad Omega Class Destroyers Are Creepy
On arrival, the White Star fleet is confronted by a large fleet of Earth warships, but they look all shiny and spiky and black. Yup, Earth has backwards-engineered some of the Shadow tech they previously capture, and has installed it on the Earth ships, which makes them …
… well, seriously creepy-looking, able to absorb more fire from the White Stars than usual, but, ultimately, no bigger of a threat. The White Stars win through use of their greater maneuverability and one of Ivanova’s most over-the-top speeches ever (which is saying something).
Who am I? I am Susan Ivanova, Commander, daughter of Andrei and Sofie Ivanov. I am the right hand of vengeance, and the boot that is gonna kick your sorry ass all the way back to Earth, sweetheart. I am death incarnate and the last living thing that you are ever going to see. God sent me.
Oookay …
Then, just as the battle is winding down, her White Star is hit by a big chunk of debris, killing everyone on the bridge except Marcus (who appears unscathed, due no doubt to his Ranger training), and Ivanova (who, if she isn’t horribly crippled and injured by the stuff that fell on her, certainly is when Marcus drags her out and carries her in his arms away to find help) …
Gathering at Ivanova’s bedside
She’s returned to the fleet, and is put under Minbari medical care, which is where Sheridan finds her when he returns, alongside Delenn. Marcus is the faithful hound at the foot of the bed, inseparable from her, sad eyes never leaving her. Poor Marcus …
Just as with Sheridan’s haggard look earlier, Ivanova looks horrible, complete with shoulder and head braces to deal with what are clearly spinal injuries (thanks, Marcus!), and we learn that she has only a few days to a week to live. She and Sheridan get some nice dialog, showing how their relationship has deepened into friendship, and she asks him one final favor: that he lead the battle to Earth in command of his old ship, the Agamemnon. He agrees, and, taking charge, the fleet heads off to its final battle, to liberate Earth.
The council chambers still look dinky
Meanwhile: Londo and G’kar convince the other alien races in council aboard B5 that they should assist Sheridan’s efforts, just as Sheridan in turn had helped all of them at different times. Londo in particular notes that the humans have gone out of their way to help other races in a fashion that none of them (the Centauri included) would have, and that means they should now help the humans in their time of crisis. They inform Delenn that they hadn’t roped her into the discussion because everyone knows she and Sheridan are a thing, and this way it doesn’t look like that’s the reason the aliens are helping.
Overall: The momentum toward the season’s climax is running at full steam now, complete this episode with not one but two space battles. Yet even with that, we have the resolution (somewhat rushed) of the Sheridan in Chains subplot, immediately replaced by the unexpected terminal injuries of Ivanova. That last will, in turn, play out over the next few episodes.
The result is an episode that is sort of a mess, pacing-wise, but still packs an emotional wallop. There are individual elements that come together neatly, but some scenes that needed a little more time or thought to play well (the recruitment of the League of Unaligned Worlds to align behind Sheridan is more consequential than it sounds, but is literally shoehorned into the action). This rush to resolve things was driven by JMS’ awareness that, barring a miracle, this was going to be the final season, and his 5-chapter epic needs to be compressed down into 4. Indeed, in the original framing of the series had Season 4 ending on the cliffhanger of Sheridan in prison in one of the prevoius couple of episodes. Now JMS needed to free Earth and wrap up a bunch of things he wanted to fit into the whole next season, and that compaction definitely shows here.
Most Dramatic Moment: The sickbed encounter with the critically injured Ivanova is, for the most part, delightfully done. Indeed, this episode (including her byplay with Marcus earlier) gives Claudia Christian one of her best outings in the series. Interestingly, it comes when she turns down the volume and Ivanova-ness down from 12.
Most Amusing Moment: Again, it’s an episode that doesn’t have a lot of humor (aside from some Garibaldi & Co. banter). Maybe the best is when Ivanova reveals to Marcus that she’s learned some Minbari of late, and that she actually knows that something he told her in that language a while back wasn’t just a formal greeting, but an observation about her beauty — which she thanks him for, unexpectedly, then leaves, leaving him gobsmacked (and making subsequent events in the ep all the more dramatic).
IVANOVA: Hey. The last time we were in this room together you said something to me in Minbari. I happen to have an eidetic memory. It went [in Minbari] “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever met.” You told me it was just a greeting.
MARCUS: Yes.
IVANOVA: Well in case you hadn’t noticed I’ve, uh … learned a little Minbari since then. Thank you.
MARCUS: [In Minbari] You’re welcome.
Most Arc-ish Moment: Creepy EarthGov Shadow-Tech Cruisers are Creepy. It’s ironic that the government that has been so adamant about rejecting alien influences is so quick and effective in incorporating evil alien technology into its fleet.
Overall Rating: 4.0 / 5 — Action and heartbreak, if a bit rushed and melodramatic in places. (Rating History).
Babylon 5 was not the first TV show to play with serialized stories — the idea that the events of one episode might effect later episodes, and that a TV series was actually a long novel not just a series of incidents — but it set a precedent for SF/Fantasy TV that has grown more and more significant over the decades.
In some ways, I can do nothing but applaud that trend. Dammit, Kirk should have been personally devastated by “City on the Edge of Forever,” and it should have impacted his character in future episodes. Hell, McCoy should have been traumatized by the experience, and Spock should have referenced it in future encounters with Earth’s past, time travel, or Kirk romances.
Beyond that, one can easily point to TV series that have strong serialized stories, but have to be padded out over a season to include stand-alones that don’t advance the overall seasonal plot and tend not to be that memorable. Not every episode can be a “City on the Edge of Forever,” after all, and if you have a serialized story in mind, the “filler” episodes can tend to become like food fillers — cheap, non-nutritious, and not bearing close examination.
That said, serialization has its drawbacks. While it can draw an existing audience forward, it can also alienate people who didn’t jump onboard with Episode 1. I have had a number of series that people have assured me are tremendously cool and worth watching — but which struck me as so serialized that I felt I needed to watch from the beginning to make them understandable … something that’s often non-trivial to do.
Some of this militates toward the UK / BBC approach, in which there are often heavily serialized stories that only have as many episodes as are necessary to tell the core story. If that means a series or season is just six or eight or ten eps … well, there you go, and no worries about filler.
The problem, of course, is that sometimes the “filler” can be great TV. Not everything has to advance the underlying story. (I would argue the same can be true for novels as well, but the weekly episodic nature of TV makes it even more true.) A stand-alone episode can illuminate a character in a way that doesn’t affect the overarching story, but still remains a noteworthy tale.
Thus, if someone decided that the underlying tale of the original Star Trek was the one they revisited on a regular basis — the “Cold War” between the Federation and the Klingon Empire — we might never have gotten “City on the Edge of Forever,” unless it was intentionally targeted toward that story (I can imagine ways to do that, of course, but I can point to great eps in TOS — “I, Mudd,” “The Immunity Syndrome,” “The Apple” — that had nothing to do with that theme, and would therefore presumably have been dropped.
The bottom line seems to be the media res. A series of episodes in which nothing every changes and each episode serves as a story that has no effect on subsequent tales is a shallow and unconvincing show. On the other hand, a series where everything is deeply interlocked and every episode is structured solely around advancing that overall tale can leave out side stories that illuminate and entertain — that are not just filler, but add to the richness of the tapestry of the tale.
Which brings us back to Babylon 5, as that series contained a blend — “arc” tales that focused on the main storyline and themes, the “wham!” episodes, but also one-offs and sides stories that could serve as diversions, illuminations, and stories to add to the overall richness of the saga being told.
It’s a balancing act, that middle path. But it’s one worth pursuing, to avoid the extremes of tunnel-vision focus on the core story versus the things that happen that should (but don’t) have an impact beyond that single episode in which they occur.
Serialized Television Has Become a Disease
At New York Comic Con, during the Star Trek: Discovery panel, Alex Kurtzman said something that I’ve been thinking about a lot. He said that you couldn’t do “City on the Edge of Forever” now, because Kirk would have to spend a whole season mourning Edith Keeler.
Garibaldi starts behaving nearer to normal! Huzzah!
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)
“We want … INformation!”
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?
An oddly compassionate man
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.)
Garibaldi isn’t frothing — but his decision-making hasn’t necessarily improved.
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
“I know. I know it hurts. It’s part of the process. I can only tell you it’ll be over soon.”
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.
Because Garibaldi deserves a detective monologue or two.
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).
The War against the Clark Regime on Earth goes from Cold to Hot, as Earthforce war crimes provoke Sheridan to action. This episode bears the name for the season, so it’s a clear turning point for the B5 saga.
A-Plot: Sheridan has decided to take the war to Earth, after Clark’s forces, under orders, slaughtered tens of thousands of refugees trying to escape Proxima 3. He goes before the League of Unaligned Worlds and drops the long-awaited other shoe: he’s had his White Star fleet patrolling their borders on their behalf, but now he needs to pull those ships back for the assault on Proxima 3. He demands that their governments abrogate any mutual defense pacts they have with Earth — which, after all, has done nothing for them — and that they provide ships to protect B5 in case Clark tries an end run. It’s heavy-handed and blustering, but Sheridan has built up credibility and presence that lets him get away with it in a fashion that neither Jesuitical Sinclair nor eager Boy Scout original Sheridan could have.
G’kar speaks up in favor:
G’KAR: During their war with the Minbari, I supervised arms sales to Earth. They promised to held us when we needed them. But where was Earth when our borders were being attacked? Where was Earth when the Shadows were rampaging across our territories? They did nothing! We owe them nothing in return.
Sheridan marches to war
Sheridan doesn’t want them fighting Earthforce ships directly, though — he wants this to be a human civil war only (handwaving that the alien White Star ships are crewed by Minbari).
SHERIDAN: Beyond that: don’t get involved. Anyone who gets between us and them won’t live long enough to regret it. You will not respond to requests for military assistance from President Clark or the Earth Alliance, except in the form of humanitarian aid. From now on, Earth stands alone. We’re taking back Proxima 3. We’re taking back Mars. And then — we’re going to take back our home. Or die trying.
Sheridan gets info on the besieging EA ships at Proxima, but wants to know which might defect if given the chance — or, from the other perspective, wants to know which ships have been slaughtering civilians. He’ll accept anyone’s surrender, but having an idea of who might stand down will affect the battle plan. As he briefs his Starfury pilots:
Sheridan deploys his forces to break apart the the EA destroyers in orbit around the planet. He learns from Marcus that the Heracles and Pollux are the ships that have actually fired on civilians; the others either haven’t, or have gone out of their way to avoid it.
The EAS Pollux is destroyed
The attack begins, White Stars and Starfuries whizzing about, explosions, blasts, pew-pew-pew, etc. Sheridan calls on the EA fleet to surrender, talking to one of his old friends captaining the Vesta. The Pollux is destroyed when a damaged White Star plows into its hanger deck. Captain Hall the Heracles, who is the fleet commander refuses to surrender — only to have his first officer and crew turn on him.
(Here’s a video of the battle with all of the character bits, sigh, cropped out.)
(This video has much better resolution, but also includes a lot of bits from coming episodes.)
Sheridan chats with the EA commanders
Afterwards, Sheridan talks with the surviving ship captains (and first officer), trying to sway them to the righteousness of his cause.
LEVITT: Captain, I wasn’t about to let Captain Hall get the rest of our crew killed defending Clark’s policies. I happen to disagree with those policies. But that doesn’t mean I agree with your actions, either. It’s not the role of the military to make policy.
SHERIDAN: Our mandate is to defend Earth against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Now Clark has become that enemy. Your oath is to the Alliance and to the people back home, not to any particular government.
MACDOUGAN: Splitting that hair mighty thin, John.
This brings out an ethical debate — one that this entire episode is anchored in — that is more effective than Sheridan’s past agonizing aloud, or his arguments with Garibaldi. And it’s one that’s satisfactory in not having a clean-cut answer: Sheridan and MacDougan (et al.) could argue academically all day long about the moral imperatives that a soldier must follow (as no doubt they used to back at the Academy), but Sheridan has a strong set of supporting arguments both in Clark’s increasingly erratic and bloodthirsty behavior, and in Sheridan’s efforts at Proxima 3 to minimize the conflict.
Ultimately, one ship withdraws from the whole conflict, one stays behind at Proxima 3 to guard it from retaliation, and the two others join up with Sheridan.
EAS Hercules under attack
In all it’s a pretty spiffy space battle, with a bit more strategy than some of the Shadow War stuff. The White Stars seem a lot less effective against more conventional EA ships than they should be — though JMS brushed that off as their being more careful not to engage in wholesale slaughter of Humans. Indeed, the battle is interesting as a challenge of ethics — who is fighting whom; the decisions made by the commanders of the EA ships before, during, and after; Sheridan’s own self-imposed boundaries on what this battle, and war, should be characterized by.
(Only real niggle about the pew-pew-pew is that it was early on stated that the rotating sections of EA ships locked down during battle, which never happens here despite plenty of time for it. Of course, that would have required either expensive “zero gravity” shooting, or else everyone being strapped down into their seats, but …)
B-Plot: After the Council meeting, Londo approaches G’Kar. He plans on throwing the Centauri behind Sheridan’s actions against Earth, and wants G’Kar to convince the Narn to do the same.
LONDO: I don’t believe I have ever been in your quarters before.
G’KAR: Unless you include a cell on Centauri Prime. I apologize for the lack of chains — the cleaning service must have removed them.
LONDO: It has much the same feeling as your world. Dry, red, and depressing. It — isn’t it amazing how quickly we fall in to familiar patterns as soon as we come into one another’s orbit? Like comets that flare when they get too near the sun. I did not come here to spar with you, G’Kar. I came … to talk to you.
It’s an intensely uncomfortable scene. G’Kar is silent, glaring, bitter. Londo is torn between his reflex disdain for the Narn and wanting to apologize for all that happened to them, and to G’Kar. His shame over his own actions, and pain over them as well, are very obvious, very real, and G’Kar refuses to let him off the hook.
Londo offers his thanks to G’Kar for all that he did and endured that freed both their worlds, and his respect for what he did. G’Kar rejects both sentiments. But Londo comes as close to an apology has he ever can.
LONDO: You may not believe this, G’Kar, but all I have ever wanted is to do whats right for my world. I’m a patriot. As are you. I made some … very bad choices in the last two years. Because I did not think. Those choices almost destroyed my world. And yours. That is a humbling realization, G’Kar. If, with a single wrong word, I can become the enemy, then do I any longer really understand who the enemy is?
[Londo describes the joint diplomatic statement he has in mind.]
G’KAR: Why?
LONDO: Because while I do not know who the enemy is any longer, I do know who my friends are, and that I have not done as well by them as I should have. I hope to change that. I have made many mistakes. I hope — I hope to do better.
In the end, Londo pours them both a glass of something, and proposes a toast. “To the humans, and to the bridge that they created between us, in the hope for a better future, for both our worlds.” G’kar pours his back into the bottle and just glares. Londo, unshriven, shuffles out of his room. Hell of a scene.
Later, Londo is drinking in the Zocalo. G’kar enters. Sits down at the bar beside him, not making eye contact. Drinks a drink. “Issue the joint statement. I will sign my name. But not on the same page, do you understand that?” And so each man has bent just a bit in the face of their personal demons.
Londo and G’kar have been largely missing for some episodes, so it’s a delight to see them not only back in action, but together. I always sort of remembered the two of them being a lot more comrade-like after the Shadow War, so the reminder that these two are still deeply divided always comes as a surprise. Excellent work, as usual, from both Katsulas and Jurassik.
Meanwhile: Circling back to a Season 3 plot thread, Franklin is still working on telepaths that were cybernetically taken over by the Shadows to pilot their ships (“Ship of Tears“). He’s getting nowhere in removing the implants (let alone getting telepaths to not try to take over the station whenever awakened), but Sheridan leans hard on him to figure it out because he wants them for some undisclosed purpose.
Vir has a nightmare, waking up with a start shouting, “I didn’t do it!” Could be just a bit of fun. Could be one of those precognitive dreams that the Centauri have …
Garibaldi learns from Vir about B5 going to war. Vir’s a bit surprised that Garibaldi isn’t enthusiastic.
It’s an interesting character moment for them both. Garibaldi’s “madness” has mellowed some; he comes across as a lot more reasonable in his mistrust of Sheridan, as if whatever manipulation has been done on him as soaked in, integrated with the rest of his personality.`
At the end of the ep, as the Voice of the Resistance is announcing the victory at Proxima 3, Garibaldi leaves B5 for Mars, planning to never return.
A White Star gets tagged during the battle. That doesn’t end well for the Pollux.
Overall: Everyone likes the big battles, and this episode delivers on that in spades, with not just some excellent action but all the prep before the mission, and the ethical debate afterward. It shows Sheridan’s ruthlessness, his compassion, and his growing role as a leader.
JMS has written that the overall Earth Civil War plot had to be significantly compressed to fit into a 4-year model (once that truncation of the show was announced). Another element that got significantly compressed — at first — was the Londo/G’kar arc, and Londo’s ascension to the throne. The scenes in this episode were a focused effort by JMS to provide at least some emotional closure, and it works spectacularly; fortunately, he’d be able to revisit these characters in Season 5.
G’Kar and Londo
Most Dramatic Moment: After wrenchingly dramatic attempts at rapprochement, Londo pours a drink to toast with G’kar, with the explicit thesis of how the Humans have helped save both of them, and the implicit thesis that, just maybe, the two of them can overcome the past as well. And G’kar silently pours the liquor back onto the flask, rejecting idea.
Very honorable mention to G’kar actually showing up later in the bar to — barely — accept the deal, and to — sort of — drink that toast.
Most Amusing Moment: As with last episode, the humor is more incidental and subdued. For example, after Ivanova has told the fighter pilots only to trust encoded messages from B5, not voice messages that could be faked.
CORWIN: So from now on, I guess the operational phrase is, “Trust no one.”
(Holy moley — I haven’t watched / reviewed any B5 since August? Well … there’s been a new TV season and … um … stuff.)
The Minbari Civil War comes to a head! Mr. Bester pays a call on Lyta Alexander! And the stand-off between EarthGov and B5 blows up!
A-Plot: The civil war on Minbar is going badly for the Religious caste, as the Warriors surround cities where the Religious are holding out and threaten to destroy them. Neroon is hanging out with Shakiri, the leader of the Warrior Caste, and speculating on the best way to defeat them and what comes after. Shakiri shows himself to be a piece of work — no, don’t worry about destroyed cities because they can be rebuilt, and don’t worry about lost lives because they’ll be reincarnated, and, besides, life and death is meaningless to a Warrior …
NEROON: Is it wrong to value life? I thought that is why we fought.
SHAKIRI: We fight because it is our nature. It is the calling of our heart. Life and death are simply two possible consequences, both equal, neither valued nor feared above the other. For a warrior death is simply the release from our obligation.
Yeah, remember that line, Shakiri …
Minbar in Flames
Ultimately, Delenn and company, besieged in a burning city, agree to surrender (despite all the denial of planning to surrender in the previous episode). They contact Neroon to make arrangements: the surrender will take place in an ancient temple once used for the succession of power back before the days of the Grey Council. Shakiri thinks this is a splendid idea, buying into Neroon’s observations that the place is already wired for planet-wide broadcast, and that it will harken back to the traditions that the Warrior caste claim to believe in. Shakiri adds the filip that, post-surrender, Delenn will want to head back to B5 — which is fine by him, because a convenient accident en route will remove her from any future concerns.
The two sides meet, the TV cameras start rolling, and Delenn surrenders. Shakiri starts boasting to the audience about how the Warriors are now in control and will bring Minbari back to the old ways, etc., etc. …
Delenn in the Starfire Wheel
… when Delenn springs the trap that, apparently, she and Neroon had actually been cooking up. The tradition for that temple was that, yes, one side would surrender and acknowledge being beaten. But rulership in “the old ways” was then based on self-sacrifice. A switch is flipped and the ceiling starts to open up into the Starfire Wheel, a bright beam of energy striking the floor of the temple, gradually widening. Delenn steps in; if she dies, then the Religious caste gets to be in charge.
Neroon ends the Minbari Civil War
Shakiri, trapped by his own boasting from before (as pointedly noted by Neroon), and the planetary audience, has no choice but to step into the beam, too, but he bails back out again very quickly, as expected. But Delenn has decided to take this to the limit, sacrificing herself for peace on Minbar. Neroon is stunned and appalled. He dives into the beam, pushes her back out into Lennier’s arms, then declares that though he was born a Warrior, he dies a Religious — and does so.
NEROON: I was born Warrior caste. Now I see the calling of my heart is Religious! The war is over! Listen to her! Listen –!
Delenn reforms the Grey Council
Later, still recovering from burns, Delenn reconstitutes the Grey Council — but this time with only two members each of the Religious and Warrior castes: the rest will be Worker caste, with the Religious and Warriors there to advise and serve.
DELENN: You had forgotten the Worker caste, hadn’t you? When our two sides fight, they are the ones caught in the middle, forgotten except for when it is their turn to serve, to build, and to die. They build the temples we pray in, the ships you fight in — and look to us to guide their hands. But prayers are fleeting, and wars forgotten; what is built, endures. They do not wish to conquer, or convert, only to build the future.
The center light of leadership will be left vacant in honor of Neroon, until “One Who Is To Come” comes to take it up in the future. Thus are ancient prophecies created …
All told, this neatly wraps up the story line — perhaps a bit too neatly. Shakiri’s ignorance about tradition feels a little forced; he’s too easily tricked. On the other hand, John Vickery does a fantastic job with Neroon, both in playing his betrayal of Delenn completely straight, and then in sacrificing himself for the peace. His recurring character will definitely be missed.
The actual Starfire Wheel itself, and the temple around it, are not well-executed. There’s a bright light, but little context, and little sense that the light itself is slowly destroying those within it. It’s a technical/budget bobble that robs this scene of a bit of its urgency.
B-Plot: Poor Lyta can’t get a break. She’s a really powerful telepath, but B5 doesn’t seem to need her any more, and she can’t get any commercial jobs because she’s not in the Psi-Corps, which means that companies aren’t covered for liability in telepathic services. She’s booted from her quarters (informed by a distraught Zack) into something smaller because she can’t pay — and isn’t willing to be paid to illegally scan Garibaldi to see if there’s something funny going on with him.
And who should show up at that point than Alfie Bester, with his shit-eating grin and quiet sarcasm. He promises Zack he’ll stay away from the command staff; he’s here on private business, which turns out to be approaching Lyta. He wants to clandestinely hire her back into the Corps — that will let her take jobs again, though she’ll have to wear the gloves and badge. She won’t be under Corps control, though.
Lyta and Bester
BESTER: I mean, being a freedom fighter, a — a force for good, it’s — it’s a wonderful thing. You get to make your own hours, looks good on a resume — but the pay — sucks.
The catch is that, after her death, her body gets turned over to Bester. He’s jonesing to determine what the Vorlons did to her to (yeah, he knows) bump up her P-rating.
Lyta laughs in his face, but is beginning to get desperate. She wangles a job, on retainer, from Garibaldi — who mistrusts telepaths, but sees both her need and remembers her past service. Alas, his reclusive employer, William Edgars, phones him and, somehow aware of the the transaction, orders Garibaldi to fire her. He reluctantly does so, leaving Lyta betrayed one last time. She’s been abandoned by the Vorlons. Abandoned by B5. Even her last resort, Garibaldi, has thrown her over.
Lyta! Nooooooo!
She has no choice but to take Bester up on the devil’s bargain.
Pat Tallman does a good job with Lyta this outing, getting progressively more desperate, even as she’s further and further abandoned by everyone but her bete noir, Bester. Her final tears in the mirror as she re-dons the Corps garb are striking.
C-Plot: Garibaldi is still working on B5, but getting impatient with the early-morning phone calls (with no video) from his employer on Mars, and by a lack of invitation to go visit him. But, as Edgars’ agent, he agrees to help slip stuff past B5 Customs — for industrial security reasons, of course — much to Zack’s chagrin.
As noted, he temporarily hires Lyta — who lets him know that a passing-by Bester has just scanned him. Garibaldi gives chase, and has to be pulled off of Bester by security.
Garibaldi will start being important Real Soon Now
Subsequent to that, Edgars forces Garibaldi to fire Lyta, as he won’t have a telepath working for him or for someone so close to him. Garibaldi isn’t thrilled by this, but caves.
Okay, so it’s not a terribly coherent plot, but Garibaldi’s definitely being jerked around. That’s going to affect him pretty soon.
Meanwhile: Bester is pleased with his visit:
Personal log: Bester, Al. August 3rd, 2261. By provoking Mr. Garibaldi, I have put him even further at odds with his former associates, and further on the path I need him to follow. What I came here to get, I got — even her. Guess you could call it a bank shot. Yes — I’ve had a nice day.
The Pollux demonstrates the kinder, gentler side of the Clark regime
Ivanova has been reporting on the Voice of the Resistance how things haven’t been going well for Clark and his EarthForce stooges; ships continue to desert from Earth, or defect. But at the end of the ep, a sea change occurs: EA ships have attacked civilian refugee transports trying to flee the Proxima 3 colony, killing thousands. Ivanova is apoplectic, but it catalyzes Sheridan: they have to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop and go on the offensive against Clarke’s armed forces.
SHERIDAN: This madness has gone on long enough. I don’t care if we’re not ready, I don’t care if we’re outnumbered or outgunned, I don’t care what ISN says about us. This stops, and it stops now! Now, if Earth wants to declare war on us, then it is time that we took the war to Clark. You tell the others: starting right now, we fight back and we fight back hard!
IVANOVA: I thought you were looking for some other way than firing at our own ships. They’re following orders —
SHERIDAN: Any crew that executes an order like that is guilty of war crimes, and they deserve whatever they get. No, we’re riding in, Susan. Anybody who wants to defect and join us, fine. If they get in our way, we will knock them down. If they kill one of our ships, we’ll kill three of theirs. And we keep going. We never slow down, and we won’t stop. We’re going after the colonies, then Mars — and then Earth. And God help anybody who gets in our way.
Unfortunately, this last scene doesn’t quite work. The escalation feels too quick. Ivanova is too shrill with outrage at the beginning, then (as quoted) becomes the voice of reason. Sheridan’s speech-fu feels a bit stretched, too. It’s a big moment and it sets the wheels rolling toward the rest of the season, but it’s not what it should be. That’s because that’s not how it was supposed to happen.
Overall: A solid episode that advances the plot, involves most of the cast, and gives us Bester. Good times.
JMS notes that all of the characters in this episode, even when on opposite sides, are “right” to some degree. Zack is right to brace Garibaldi for smuggling. Garibaldi is right in noting that it’s small beer vs rebellion. Even Bester is right in noting to Lyta how she’s been screwed over by the B5 leadership, and that only the PsiCorps has an abiding interest in her (even if it’s primarily for her body); maybe that’s why he’s the real winner of the episode.
He also has said that this episode started really showing the compression of plot needed to fit the five-year arc into (what was then decided) a four-year series. Originally, the Minbari Civil War would have had a few more episodes; the EA attack on civilian refugees and the reaction to that would have had its own episode, not just a tag at the end. The Earth Civil War was originally to end around the 4th or 5th episode of Season 5; by clipping off bits of plot development, JMS wrapped it up by the end of Season 4, but some of those ragged seams are visible here.
Most Dramatic Moment: Neroon, making the final sacrifice, followed closely by Lyta, crying in the mirror.
Most Amusing Moment: There’s not a lot to laugh about here, though Scott Adams (of “Dilbert” fame) does do an amusing turn as a potential client of Garibaldi’s, and Bester’s wit is in full force in every scene he’s in (“I want your body”).
Most Arc-ish Moment: Huge arcs all around, but the trigger at the end of the war against Earth portends the most for the future.
Poor Lyta. Poor Zack.
Overall Rating: 4.0 / 5 — Solid, solid work, from both the regulars and the guest stars, hampered by some shaky FX and rushed pacing. (Rating History).
I've decided to do my own force ranking (thanks +Stan Pedzick), working within the same list (to do otherwise would be to court madness). And, because I can (and, apparently, have way too much free time on my hands), I'll annotate it. Because the Internet.
First, the shows I never watched sufficiently to judge — they either never grabbed me, or were on at an odd time, or I missed the tide in watching them. (Please don't ply me with DVDs; my backlog of stuff to watch already reaches past the Singularity.) They are ordered as per the original rankings:
Dark Angel (46) Jericho (44) Life on Mars [2006] (40) Lexx (39) Twin Peaks (37) Caprica (34) Red Dwarf (27) Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (26) Star Blazers / Space Battleship Yamato (20) Blake's 7 (15) Lost (12)
The rest are ranked by some idiosyncratic mish-mosh of how I like them plus what quality I think they are. I;ve indicated past the title the original ranking; the lower-ranked ones are helped a lot by dropping out the above 11 choices. Since I broke them up into three groups for initial sorting, I've kept them that way.
(Force ranking of this sort is one of my least favorite activities, since on any given day or for any given episode, I could easy see any of these rankings +/5.)
BOTTOM OF THE CLASS
39. Knight Rider (45) – Silly kids fare, with minimal FX and zero SFishness aside from snarky car AI. Though I still love Marc Daniels.
38. Battle of the Planets (41) — Noteworthy mainly for still inspiring cosplay.
37. The Six Million Dollar Man (47) — I would still watch this at the drop of a hat, but its SF elements were awful.
36. Logan's Run (28) — Deep 70s SF, variable "worlds," pretty bad writing.
35. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (36) — Space fantasy, though I still dearly love the stargate effect.
34. Lost in Space (31) — The first show to really get space opera in everyone's living room, dragged down by camp silliness that only increased each season.
33. _Thunderbirds (50) — Crunchy SF with marionettes and kiddy melodrama. I still marvel at this show.
32. Land of the Lost (49) — Hurt by being a Saturday morning "cartoon" period show, it's still (behind the awful stop-action) full of some very cool SF concepts.
31. V [1983] (13) — Brought big screen TV SF to life as an "event" — but with writing straight out of Dallas or Dynasty.
30. War of the Worlds (38) — A personal favorite of mine, if for no other reason than bringing back those lovely swan-necked Martian War Machines from the Pal movie.
29. Mystery Science Theater 3000 (17) — Upchecked for showing so many wonderfully cheesy SF movies, but downchecked for really just being a comedy riff.
STARTING TO GET SERIOUS
28. Sliders (18) — Imaginative, but the concept wore thin after a while.
27. Quantum Leap (21) — Better than its first cousin Sliders if only because the consequences were of such import and the characterizations were such a challenge. Arguably as much fantasy as thinly veiled SF.
26. The X-Files (02) — It was … okay. Influential. Dearly loved by zillions. But I never really got hooked by it.
25. Stargate SG-1 (14) — I was never a big fan of any of the Stargate iterations. Not sure why. But impressive in overall accomplishment.
24. Space: 1999 (48) — I remember this as the first satisfying SF show after the original Star Trek went off the air. The FX/model work was exquisite. It was hampered S.1 by opaque British plots, and S.2 by dumbing down too far from S.1.
23. Battlestar Galactica [1978] (30) — Incredibly hokey, but spectacular beyond its budget. Some plots were deeper than others.
22. Dollhouse (42) — Possibly ranked higher than it should be here, because while I never quite got hooked, I could tell it had a lot of strings below the surface that I wasn't giving it a chance to show.
21. Space: Above and Beyond (43) — As close as we'll ever get to a Starship Troopers TV show. I liked it.
20. Star Trek: Voyager (32) — Decent Star Trek fare, hampered by an unwillingness to truly embrace the inevitable change and problems of isolation, division, and deferred maintenance.
19. Max Headroom (25) — I am afraid of rewatching this for fear that the zany fun and interesting concepts I remember will turn out to be threadbare.
18. Alien Nation (33) — Like much good TV SF, this tackled (well) contemporary issues (mostly about racism) that would have been too controversial outside of the SF realm.
17. Torchwood (23) — Sometimes too tempted to go over the top, and with an ensemble that the writers never quite knew what to do with, this is still good, gritty, high concept SF (overlapping to fantasy).
16. Fringe (09) — I never became a fan, despite being a serious watcher for at least the first season.
TOP DOGS
15. The Prisoner (07) — While suffering from British too-cleverness (and star/producer indulgence) at times, it's still gripping in making the viewer want to figure out what the hell is going on.
14. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (24) — A great example of successfully (for my taste) grabbing a movie concept and running with it for TV. Well done.
13. Cowboy Bebop (35) — Too cool for school, between the music, the action, the dialog.
12. Futurama (29) — Ranked this high if only because of their willingness to use very single SF trope in the book — multiple times — and do it with humor.
11. Neon Genesis Evangelion (08) — High concept that sometimes gets too high for comprehensibility, it's still a gorgeous (and frightening) Giant Robots vs Aliens anime with eleventy-dozen layers beneath it, from religion to child abuse to alcoholism to identity.
10. The Twilight Zone (05) — Endlessly rewatchable and entertaining, its SF elements get washed away by fantasy too many times, and too many of the Serling and Matheson plots were simply setups for (usually great) plot zingers.
09. Doctor Who (01) — The face of SF for many, and laudable for its longevity and the loyalty of its fans — but, again, too much of it is more properly fantasy, and the uneven writing over the decades does not for great SF make. I watch every episode, but I'm trying to be realistic here.
08. Star Trek: The Next Generation (03) — A remarkable rebirth of a franchise, with a long run, a decent number of great eps, and a large number of not-so-great ones.
07. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (16) — For my money, a better show than its TNG big brother, especially early days when they were diving into the characters and the religion / politics of Bajor, less into the Dominion War in its later episodes. That said, its serial elements put it a tick above TNG.
06. Star Trek: The Original Series (06) — A remarkably seminal show in its influence on TV SF for the decades since. Riddled with weaknesses that its cultural gestalt has overcome.
05. The Outer Limits (10) — With very few exceptions, this classic anthology show was hard SF, written by some great talent (and acted by some remarkable talent), hampered at time by budget limits, but hitting major literary themes and SF tropes in a remarkable fashion. This show (in rerun) solidified my love of SF.
04. _Battlestar Galactica [2004] (04) — A gripping tale of survival and moral compromise, in the face of aliens who look just like us … those were the high points of BSG. The further they drifted away from that (e.g., the further they explored Cylon society), the weaker the show got. And, of course, I truly despise the last couple of episodes concluding the series. Still, with those exceptions, it's a remarkable work.
03. Farscape (22) — One never quite knew where this show was going (that seems to have included the writers), but that didn't hamper the wonders, fun, drama, and imagination of this ensemble explorers-on-the-run show. I just enjoyed it so much, it needed to rank this high.
02. Babylon 5 (19) — Joe Straczynski didn't invent serial TV, but he made it legit, and epic (despite near-disasters by networks and actors alike). Rocky acting early on, and mangled plot points toward the end, it still holds a major place in my heart as a five-year long coherent SF novel, delving into everything from high concept battles between not-really-good vs not-truly-evil, to human weakness and prejudice, including some remarkable character evolutions.
01. Firefly (11) — Yeah, I'm one of those people. Deep-threaded plots and hidden backstories, a delightful mixing of the SF and Western tropes, a splendid set of actors, a roster of episodes where the great far outweigh the weak, and … well, the biggest criticism I can make of the show is that it was cut off way too soon to determine if it would all pay off. I'll assume it did, and just wait for the opportunity to buy the 5-season set when we finally get those portals to parallel worlds working …
And some arguably as-good shows that didn't make the list:
Wild Wild West (of course it's science fiction) Andromeda Fantastic Journey Otherworld Greatest American Hero UFO The Flash [1990] Misfits of Science The Invaders Robotech
I do give, again, kudos to the writers of the original list for leaving off anything within the past five years. Not only would that add a large number of prospects, but it's really hard to judge such things so close to them.
1. I suspect this list would look a lot different in, say, five years. We are currently going through a rich time in SF genre TV, and what will turn out to be great and what will turn out to be a flash in the pan and forgotten is very difficult from up close. That said, kudos for not including anything very recent.
2. With a list of 50 you would think you can probably hit nearly everything that most people would consider "great" at first thought. But a lot here is … um … nostalgic at best (Logan's Run? Really? And not Fantastic Journey?)
3. The list is definitely tilted to the US, with a due nod to some UK greats (though I'd tout UFO over Space: 1999).
4. The inclusion of two anime here breaks the entire list, since if we're to allow that genre there are a nigh-infinite number of "greats".
Still, a fun nostaglic look, regardless of the "accuracy."
A classic two-track episode, with both Sheridan and Delenn pursuing diplomatic strategies on B5 and on Minbar.
“… beautiful city in flames …” Actually, this is from next episode, but it fits too well.
A-Plot: Delenn is on her way back to Minbar, as reports start coming through of civil war breaking out on Minbar. Mira Furlan gets to channel her Inner Yugoslavian to mourn the disunion of her home.
DELENN: When I was a child, my father used to carry me through the city on his shoulders. I had never seen such beauty. The city was eternal … as beauty was eternal. We heard of the Grey Council, but the name was always spoken with awe, and reverence. They held our world together. They were the peace, promised by Valen. A thousand years of peace among the three castes. And now …. I think of my beautiful city in flames, Lennier. The streets where I walked. The temples. The great crystal spires that sighed music whenever the wind touched the … I think of it, and I cry Lennier. And I wonder, did I do this when I broke the Council?
(It’s a strong enough speech that one of the lines (“my beautiful city in flames”) gets highlighted in next season’s main titles.)
Delenn’s guilt and fear drive her to take risks — and to expect the best of her people. Which gets her in trouble …
She reaches out to her old nemesis Neroon, as a leader of the Warrior Caste. They meet on a Religious Caste Minbari ship, and the tension between the two castes is palpable.
(One of the weaknesses of the whole Minbari Civil War sequence is that the Worker Caste, part of the three-legged stool of Minbari society, is nearly invisible. That might be meaningful in and of itself.)
Neither of them is happy about how things are developing, but unlike Neroon, she believes there is a way to bring their people together again. And while she and he have been in opposition too many times (“Legacies,” “All Alone in the Night,” “Grey 17 Is Missing“), she believes in his sincere interest in Minbar.
But the Religious Caste leaders on the ship are less sanguine, and are concerned that Delenn is going to sell them down the river. Proof? She’s chatting with Neroon. Sure, everyone knows that Delenn has been a great leader in the past, but the … changes she’s gone through, as well as uncertainty over the changes that have come to Minbar, lead the Religious to the conclusion that they are about to be betrayed, and their caste forced to surrender to the Warriors.
So they decide on a more extreme measure: martyrdom. They will kill everyone aboard, including Delenne and Neroon, by putting some fuel into the air supply, poisoning everyone. Seems rather ghastly, but as a result the ship will never return home, and nobody will ever know why.
Which sounds like a great idea, except that Lennier overhears and foils the plan, nearly dying in the process. Worse for the conspirators, after a Warrior Caste member tries to kill Neroon, Delenn shames the Religious (inadvertently) for their unity, and Lennier shames them by not betraying their plot.
LENNIER: If I had told her the whole truth it would have destroy her belief in the strength and wisdom of our caste. Delenn does not work in the same world that you and I walk, does not see the same world that we see. In her world, we are better that we are, we care more than you care, and we act toward each other with compassion. I much prefer her world to my own, and I will not allow anything to threaten that.
Meanwhile, Delenn and Neroon have seemingly been coming to a rapprochement, tied together by extremity of situation and grudging honesty.
NEROON: In the time we have known each other, Delenn, I have not always spoken well of you. I assumed your behavior was prompted by a sense of your own superiority, your ego, the usual fanaticism we’ve come to expect from the Religious Caste. In the last year, I’ve come to realize that I was wrong. Dukhat chose you above all to follow him. Slowly, dimly, I begin to understand why. I don’t know what lies ahead of us, Delenn. But I do know it is right that we are here together.
But at the end of the episode, Neroon slips away from the Minbari ship, contacting the Warrior Caste and promising them that the opposition is divided, and victory will soon be theirs.
Neroon and Goons
Overall, it’s an exciting plot, letting us see more of Minbari politics and the breakdown of their society after the pressures of the Shadow War (and what Delenn had to do during it). On the other hand, it’s politics writ small: how much control does Delenn (or Neroon) actually exert. And is the cunning manipulator Delenn from the first two seasons really all that clueless as to what’s going on around her? Is she that much of an inspiring but naive leader? If not, there’s no sign of it here, which causes what should be a great character moment for Furlan to fall a bit flat.
Bill Mumy, on the other hand, is outstanding as a bitterly loyal Lennier, and John Vickery is his usual good job as Neroon.
Sheridan chortles maniacally to himself
B-Plot: Sheridan is locked in his own little world, pondering how to get the Non-Aligned Worlds on board with the idea of the Rangers and the White Stars patrolling their borders. He finally lights on a plan that has both his own staff, Londo, and the League diplomats confused, even though it’s obvious pretty quickly to the audience.
In short, he gets the Non-Aligned Worlds to invite — in fact, demand — the White Star presence, by making sure they know about the patrols between Centauri and Narn spaces, that there are rumors of bad critters out there, that B5 is stocking up blood supplies for all the various races, that information is being covered up (“Absolutely nothing happened in Sector 83 by 9 by 12 today. I repeat, nothing happened in Sector 83 by 9 by 12”), that the White Star have been on some mysterious mission blasting something that nobody could see … which maybe means there are really dangerous bad guys afoot … and they’re invisible!
And, thus, the League insists that the White Stars patrol their borders, not just those sneaky Centauri and Narn superpowers. Sheridan, oh-so-reluctantly and oh-so-clearly backed into a corner, accedes to their demand.
And smiles.
Paranoid Ambassadors Are Paranoid
It’s a fun story, garnering increasing smiles from the viewer as Sheridan’s plan becomes clearer. It’s hampered largely by Boxleitner’s over-the-top manic grinning, which undercuts the seriousness of the manipulation Sheridan is doing. Indeed, the whole matter ends up being played a bit broadly, with the League ambassadors looking more silly than outplayed.
Meanwhile: B5 introduces, as side conversation, the zaniness that is Rebo and Zooty. “Zooty-zoot-zoot!” Sheridan loves them. Londo thinks them inane. It was JMS’ way of introducing a bit of day-to-day humor and conversation to the series, things for people to talk about other than work all the time — but in a way that was cleverly lacking context (people say the catch line and know immediately what it means, but we, the viewers, have no idea). JMS notes he felt the same way as Londo about Steve Martin and his “Excuuuuse me!” catch phrase, and this was his way of working out some of those frustrations, too.
Rebo and Zooty do, eventually, visit the station (in Season 5’s “Day of the Dead”).
Overall: Two strong plots this episode, neither with any fat, both interesting and flawed. Sheridan’s bright-eyed craziness and disingenuity just don’t play very well as the beginnings of a political mastermind. On the other hand, they give us a happy Sheridan, which we won’t be seeing again for a while.
Most Amusing Moment: Londo chatting with the Drazi ambassador, discussing ocular biology and very vociferously (and with deceptive honestly) denying that the Centauri invited the White Star fleet to protect them from some mysterious threat, no, really, truly, cross my heart …
It’s particularly amusing because Londo himself doesn’t know what’s going on (having unsuccessfully grilled Sheridan as to why the captain wanted him to deny inviting the White Stars), but he’s willing to back Sheridan’s play (and have some fun while doing so).
Most Dramatic Moment: Lennier reading the Religious Caste the Riot Act, highlighting Delenn’s naivete (unfortunately), her great aspirations, his disgust with their actions, and, inadvertently, his own deep, abiding love for her.
Second to this is Delenn’s “city in flames” monologue.
“Don’t toss me in that Briar Patch, Br’er Brakiri!”
Most Arc-ish Moment: Sheridan closing the deal with the League ambassadors. This is his first step in something much bigger …
Overall Rating: 3.8 / 5 — Stronger stories than the past few filler episodes, but with a few overt weaknesses. (Rating History).
Other Resources for this episode:
The Voice of the Resistance … will be back on the air shortly.
The action starts to build up a bit after a couple of lack-luster bridging episodes. There’s an actual story here and everything.
A-Plot: Garibaldi is a popular guy, and his Private Investigation seems to be doing well. He even shows some signs of being something other than a paranoid nut-job to one of his clients, which is deeply refreshing. That’s the high point of his status quo, though, as things spiral down from there. Sheridan, who’s kind of a dickconcerned about Garibaldi’s erratic behaviorticked off out to close a potential security breach, has Zack remove Garibaldi’s link and PPG (and hold-out PPG). Garibaldi takes it with ill grace toward Zack — which means that when Zack discovers later that Garibaldi still has some secret security system access, he cuts it off. That causes Garibaldi life-threatening difficulties, which lead at last to a final confrontation with Sheridan …
Wade, leader of Garibaldi’s anti-Sheridan handlers friends, hires him (as an “expendable”) to protect someone passing through the ship — which someone turns out to be his old Martian flame, Lise Hampton, now remarried. It seems her husband, William Edgars, the industrial and medical tycoon on Mars, is trying to get smuggled in a possible cure for a potential plague that would wipe out telepaths. Other parties are interested in seeing the cure either destroyed or in their own hands, and Garibaldi has to protect Lise to from one such group, a set of telepaths with lethal intent. Garibaldi manages to protect Lise and get her and the vial of serum on their way, doing so through some clever back doors in security that only he would know about (and which, being cheesed at Sheridan, he’s happy to exploit). He also pulls a trick on the telepaths, leading to their ambush by station security and their suicide-by-poison-tooth (as they ominously proclaim “To the future!”).
Garibaldi succeeds in his main quest, but by the end is even further on the outs with Sheridan (who’s understandably irked about the number of dead bodies that need tidying), and has broken his relationship with Zack, his protege.
Lucky for him, he’s now reconciled, to some degree with Lise, but, more interestingly, her mysterious husband calls the station and offers him a job on Mars, marking the next step in an interesting plotline for Mr. Garibaldi.
B-Plot: Sheridan calls Londo and G’kar — absent for the past few episodes — to meet with him. Given the skirmishes and piracy and Drakh raids along the borders of the Non-Aligned Worlds, he’s proposing to repurpose the Rangers as peace-keeping forces and patrols, using the White Star fleet to keep the peace. To convince the various regimes involved that this isn’t a power play, he’s further proposing to kick off said patrols in the border zone between the Centauri Republic and the now-free Narn space. Londo bristles at the imposition of sovereignty, and G’kar’s clearly uncomfortable with the arrangement (and the meeting) — but Sheridan presses them for an agreement.
Ivanova and Zathras, zany as ever
C-Plot: Ivanova’s ready to kick off the “Voice of the Resistance,” except for one problem: power. It will take a lot to broadcast through hyperspace and overcome Earth’s jamming. Franklin suggests the Great Machine on Epsilon III below might be able to broadcast power to them for their use. Ivanova shuttles down and encounters Zathras — or, rather, one of Zathras’ nine brothers, all of whom were named Zathras (pronounced unrecognizably differently).
IVANOVA: Let’s try this again.
ZATHRAS: As you wish.
IVANOVA: Zathras came with us to Babylon 4. Zathras stayed in the past with Valen. You’re Zathras. Therefore, you went into the past.
ZATHRAS: No, that was not Zathras. That was Zathras.
IVANOVA: This is Commander Susan Ivanova of Babylon 5, and this is the first official broadcast of the new Voice of the Resistance. We’re sending this signal out to every ship that wants to hear the truth, to our fallen comrades and freedom fighters on Mars and Proxima 3, and to Earth, which, despite what you may have heard, is still our home and still the one dream that we are as loyal to now as we ever have been. Over the last three years, ever since President Clark took over after arranging the assassination of President Santiago, you have been hearing nothing but misinformation, propaganda, and outright lies. Now we’re going to tell you the truth. We’ll keep telling it until they shut us down, or until Clark steps down and returns Earth to the hands of its people. You can kill us, you can bomb our colonies, destroy our ships, murder innocent civilians, but you cannot kill the truth — and the truth is back in business.
Garibaldi has a backup identicard. For the moment.
Overall: There’s a distinct up-tick in the action and intrigue in this one. The motivations of the various forces manipulating Garibaldi aren’t always clear (or even necessarily united), but there are clearly wheels within wheels. There’s enough dickishness on Sheridan’s part about all of this to give at least a certain credence to Garibaldi’s paranoia, and the events of this episode mark a clear push in a new direction for the former security chief.
That said, the core of this episode — the chase through the bowels of B5, under pursuit, amidst the soap opera of Michael and Lise’s former relationship — is the dullest part of the story. The peripheral bits — confrontations with Garibaldi before and after, as well as the B and C plots — manage to mostly overcome that weakeness.
Most Amusing Moment: Ivanova’s encounter with Zathras — no, not Zathras, Zathras. Some quick banter over four minutes, all in a single, un-cut take. Delightful.
IVANOVA: We’re trying to put together a facility to broadcast messages back home and to the other colonies. We’ve got all of the pieces we need, but–
ZATHRAS: But not having enough power to reach far places! Yes, Zathras understand. Everyone always coming to Zathras with problems. Great responsibility but Zathras does not mind. Zathras trained in crisis management!
IVANOVA: That’s great, but–
ZATHRAS: But only Zathras have no one to talk to. No one manages poor Zathras, you see. So Zathras talks to dirt. Sometimes talks to walls. Or talks to ceilings. But dirt is closer. Dirt is used to everyone walking on it. Just like Zathras. But we have come to like it. It is our role. It is our destiny in the universe. So, you see, sometimes dirt has insects in it. And Zathras likes insects. Not so good for conversation, but much protein for diet. Hmmm, ha, ha, ha, very good! — Zathras fix now. Come, this way.
Originally Ivanova was supposed to meet with Draal, but the most recent actor for that was unavailable, so it was (fortuitously) rewritten for Zathras instead.
The scene is marred only by Claudia Christian’s too-broad expressions and vocalizations dealing with the madness that is chatting with Zathras. In contrast, she does great in an earlier scene with Franklin:
IVANOVA: If we gonna broadcast all the way to Earth, we need a hell of a lot more power than what we’ve got now. I don’t know where we’re gonna get it. I’ve been working on this for days. I don’t have a clue.
FRANKLIN: What about Epsilon 3? During the war, we evacuated a lot of the wounded down there for safekeeping. Now, I spent a lot of time looking around. There’s enough power down there to broadcast clear to the Rim.
IVANOVA: [Without a beat of hesitation] Or, just a crazy thought, we could try Epsilon 3.
FRANKLIN: Yeah, you could do that.
IVANOVA: I mean, it’s the logical choice. Anybody could see that in about two seconds. Only a fool would fail to see that.
FRANKLIN: Well, I wouldn’t …
IVANOVA: It’s absolutely obvious.
FRANKLIN: Well, I wouldn’t have thought of it for sure.
IVANOVA: You’re far too modest Stephen.
FRANKLIN: No no, that’s why you get paid the big bucks after all.
IVANOVA: Yep, that’s my job. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I think there’s a shuttle with my name on it waiting for me.
Cranky Sheridan is cranky.
Most Dramatic Moment: Sheridan, in his office with the lights down low, brooding — then sending Zack off to strip Garibaldi of his old security access and equipment.
If Garibaldi weren’t being played for such a tin-foil-hat kind of guy, one could almost see his concerns over Sheridan and “absolute power” as being not outrageous.
Getting the old diplomatic team back together again.
Most Arc-ish Moment: G’kar! Londo! In the same room together! And the first hints of the interstellar alliance that is to come …
Runner Up is Garibaldi in passing watching the conclusion of the Warner Bros. “Duck Amuck“cartoon (1953), wherein Daffy is under the control of strange and power forces which control the very reality around him. Sort of like Garibaldi himself …
Londo: Just as Garibaldi is visited by a former lover, Londo meets with Adira, the Centauri dancing girl he once, truly, loved (ep. 1×03 “Born to the Purple”) … before she was assassinated (ep. ep. 3×15, “Interludes and Examinations”). She was killed (by Refa, probably, possibly with Morden’s connivance) to snap him out of his personal funk and back into leading the Centauri to greatness. 
