{"id":51442,"date":"2015-06-19T11:49:56","date_gmt":"2015-06-19T17:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=51442"},"modified":"2015-06-19T12:00:32","modified_gmt":"2015-06-19T18:00:32","slug":"b5-rewatch-4x11-lines-of-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/19\/b5-rewatch-4x11-lines-of-communication.html","title":{"rendered":"B5 Rewatch: 4\u00d711 “Lines of Communication”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Why<\/a>
Why ever would you mistrust our new best friends, the pleasingly-named Drakh?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Time for another bridge episode, in which Things Happen, but more as a chain of events than as a unified chapter in the saga.<\/p>\n

A-Plot<\/strong>:\u00a0After the War to End All Wars, there are … wars. Or at least battles, as various of the weaker races are getting someone or someones nibbling at their frontiers, bushwhacking ships, and otherwise causing problems. Delenn catches wind of this and is cheesed to find out that the Minbari — who have traditionally protected these folk — simply aren’t. It turns out the Grey Council’s breaking (courtesy of Delenn herself) is causing the three castes to edge toward civil war, with the Warrior Caste leading the charge. (Of course, we hear all of this from some Religious Caste members, so take it with a grain of spoo<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

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

Turns out the Drakh are refugees — but powerful ones — who are simply looking to carve out a place to live. Forell\u00a0fills in Delenn on all the horrors of the cold civil war going on back home (his own family was ejected from one Arctic city and most of them died on the way to another). He’s proposing an alliance between the Religious Caste Minbari and the Drakh, as leverage against the martial strength of the Warrior Caste. (The Worker Caste can, as always, go pound sand.)<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Drakh ships have a sort of yellowjacket look to them, thus adding to their aura of friendliness.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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

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

Delenn wraps things up (after Forell\u00a0dies from battle wounds) as noting that (a) there are still bad guys in the galaxy, and (b) she really needs to visit Minbar to figure out WTF is going on.<\/p>\n

B-Plot<\/strong>: Franklin and Marcus try to get a handle on what’s going on with the Martian rebels — who, in turn, don’t trust the B5ers one bit. Most of the folk there are actually allies up from Earth, and there are lots of conflicts going on about the tactics to use — most notably, terror bombings that kill civilians as well as EarthGov security forces. Fortunately, Number One, the 90s Rock Star leader of the Rebels, is against that, so the gosh-that’s-quick romance between her and Franklin doesn’t have a moral ambiguity\u00a0to it.<\/p>\n

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

<\/object><\/div>\n

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

ISN REPORTER: … as reports continue to come in about the harsh conditions aboard what was once the shining beacon of EarthForce, Babylon 5.\u00a0Messages smuggled out indicate that humans continue to be subjected to cruel oppression by alien groups aboard the renegade outpost. And every day more people are asking, “When will Earth intervene? How much longer can we allow our citizens to endure this mistreatment?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

Ivanova is not amused.<\/p>\n