B5 s1 ep22 - Featured Television 

Five Thoughts on Babylon 5‘s “Chrysalis”

By | October 17th, 2018
Posted in Television | % Comments

22 weeks of diplomatic fights and negotiations. 22 weeks of space battles and mysterious sectors. 22 weeks watching, growing, and connecting to the crew aboard humanity’s last, best hope for peace. Welcome my friends. This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2258. The name of the place is Babylon 5.

Spoilers ahead.

1. What Lurks Deep in the Heart of Londo?

Out of all the ambassadors across the season, Londo gets by far the most screen time. Partially this is because he is the most interesting to follow. He’s a trickster, a bit of a hustler and certainly the most jovial of all the characters, save for maybe Vir. I believe, however, that there was at least one other reason for his outsized presence, and that has to do with his relationship with Morton, our resident creepazoid. By giving us plenty of time to see and understand Londo, we know how he thinks and how Morton is able to appeal to him.

Londo’s struggles and decision to accept help may not be sympathetic, as we have seen many sides of him and know that he is motivated by pride and upholding an imperial system that has committed great injustices and refuses to acknowledge them, but we also know he is a good person who is capable of compassion, world weary though he may be. He is filled with fire and anger and when he gives into that anger, the worst happens. He accepts, for the second time, a deal with a devil. Although the first time ended perfectly for him, with the recovery of the eye, this time he is deeply conflicted with his choice.

Peter Jurasik always gives a fantastic performance and for the finale, he really pulls out his season 1 A-game to sell us on the complexity and fullness of Londo. Each scene with him and Morton, from incredulity, to a mildly surprised acceptance, to a conflicted, pained confrontation, paints a picture of a man who believed he was making the right decision only to realize just how much of his morality he has compromised. The final scene of him and Morton in the hedge maze was powerful because of this. Going forward, this will weigh on him and I wonder how much more he will compromise.

One last note on this. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Babylon 5 takes great pains to make sure its recurring characters (and some one-offs) feel like full people, with internal lives and thoughts, and decision processes that don’t require long, obvious chains of dialogue that spell everything out for us (watching the DC CW shows really makes me appreciate this).

2. The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

There is A LOT I could talk about in this episode, which, seeing as it’s the season finale, isn’t much of a shock but I’m going to use this point to continue to talk about Londo but not in the same way. We opened this season with the Narn military seizing a Centauri colony and the ensuing arguments over who has ultimate custody, who has the right to act, and what actions are acceptable. As such, it makes sense that we would conclude this season on the same topic, on a fight over jurisdiction and a lack of agreement over what is right, over what is just. It is also a topic that I’ve wanted to cover since the start, the nature of this argument, but I’ve been wary to. However, I feel that this episode’s opening discussion encapsulates my point perfectly so here I go.

It will come as not surprise to anyone who’s been following along that the Narn and Centauri are stand-ins for the myriad ethnic & nationalist power struggles in the world. I know of one that comes to mind but I won’t specify it for fear of starting a major argument. However, it is not a 1 to 1 comparison. Both G’Kar and Londo — and yes, I will be using them as stand ins for their governments and the “nations” they represent — have aspects from all sides of these real-life conflicts and the show does not posit one as right and one as wrong, one as good and one as evil.

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They are both complex, multi-layered and so are their conflicts and grievances. While at the start of the season, it was easy to say that G’Kar was the “bad guy,” such is no longer the case as we now know, 1) his narrative in private, 2) have seen his actions and reasonings, and 3) seen Londo’s own duplicity. Neither Londo nor G’Kar are blameless in this conflict nor are they willing to concede to the other, for that would be admitting that they were in the wrong, and they cannot compromise, for they are both too prideful for that.

Which brings me to the final thing I wanted to talk about and it’s the question at the heart of the Narn-Centauri conflict: What do we do now? This is not meant to be a flippant question or a rhetorical one but a genuine, important query. The conflict does not exist in the abstract but in “reality,” which is messy and temporal. To act now is not the same as having acted years prior. Solutions that could have worked then cannot and will not work today. What’s done is done, which does not mean that it should be forgotten, but that it must be reckoned with and acknowledged along with the fact that there will never be a simple solution that will be feasible and satisfying. Injustice exists atemporally, unconcerned with the history or future of the conflict that caused it, merely with the fact that it happened. How does one balance the scales without causing more injustices? That is not a question B5 tries to answer, nor should it, but it is one that it poses and it is an important one to keep in mind.

3. Delenn and the Crystal Pyramid

I still get a kick out of all the different ways in which the creators infuse the pyramidal structure into the Minbari world. Delenn is literally building a pyramid out of pyramids for an unknown purpose, at least until the end, Lennier carries an oil lamp that’s pyramidal and then there’s the triluminary, which is about as close to a mcguffin we’ve gotten this week. I love it, deeply and truly. It shows care and also acts as a visually striking identifier. That’s not what grabbed me about Delenn’s plot though. What grabbed me was how out of place it felt, relative to the other plots, but how it still was effective and interesting.

It’s fairly subdued, preferring to let the mystery and the worry in Lennier/Delenn’s actions speak for itself. Warning that there is a ticking clock, at first marked by the construction of this structure, and then by the tension and worry as to whether or not Sinclair would make it to her quarters in time. It creates this nameless worry in our guts, as we watch as Delenn makes her final preparations and as Sinclair forgets about the meeting because of everything with Garibaldi. Then she is gone, cocooned onto the ships wall. Awaiting whatever comes next.

4. My Long Con’s Longer Than Your Long Con

To be totally honest with you, I don’t know the name of the officer that shot Garibaldi. He’s a semi-regular member of the security force but I can’t remember the last time they said his name. On that note, this is another moment where the attention to detail in this show is put into relief. Here’s this character that’s an incidental but recognizable character, making his presence in the episode seem routine and not out of place, but then they pull the rug out from under us and reveal that he’s a member of Earth First (I presume, he’s at least involved in this plot to kill the president). If we were wondering how things or people were smuggled on board/covered up, look no further than this guy and maybe some of his accomplices on the force.

It’s also not played up for huge shock value but is instead just another twist in Garibaldi’s case to find out who killed his friend from the start and why. It also has ramifications, as shown above. Plus! No one knows what he did except for us, Garibaldi never saw him, and he may not even survive to next season! That’s a lot and I haven’t even touched on the actual plot to kill the president and what that means.

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Remember how Malcom from ep. 5 “The War Prayer” said they had friends and sympathizers everywhere and at the time it felt like a threat? Well, now it is proving to be more than just a threat and is a scary reality knowing that the rot goes high, from the station police, to the special police, to the newly-sworn in President (it can be inferred he knew not to be on that transport,) who’s very first line after saying the oath is to say that he will be prioritizing “his people” on Earth or, the phrasing he’s dancing around, he’s putting Earth First. What this means for the Mars colony revolt as well as human-alien relations is a question for next season but it does not bode well for them or for the station whose entire purpose is peaceful relations between species in the galaxy.

5. This is How the Season Ends, This is How the Season Ends, Not With a Bang, But with A Whisper

If this were a show that operated on the seasonal model as the fundamental unit of story, then season 1 of Babylon 5 would have, sort of, failed in this mission. It resolved Sinclair’s plot line to the extent of which we were originally made aware — holes in the memory, why’d the Minbari surrender, and what happened at the Battle of the Line? — yet more important questions remain unanswered, such as WHY is Sinclair important? What’s up with Zathras and the great war? Will Garibaldi survive? Well, that last question does work since it acts as one of the cliffhangers into a season 2. But otherwise, the season didn’t resolve anything, leaving most of our characters out to dry and leaving us with a lack of resolution to many of these longer arcs. We’ve reached a point in the journey but it is not the destination.

But that’s OK. Babylon 5 is not written on the seasonal model. OK, I brought this up a couple weeks ago but let me break it down a little because I find this really interesting and it’s not something that many shows do. (If you want to skip, I’ll bold the first word of when I get out of this part.) As far as I know, this isn’t a codified thing but it is something that can be talked about. There are many ways of looking at a TV show but the easiest way to see what each show treats as its discrete, or fundamental, unit. Some do it with episodes, some with half-seasons, some with full-seasons. Rarely do we see it show wide.

Shows that treat each episode as its fundamental unit are, well, episodic. Sit-coms are this way, wherein the problem of each episode is resolved within the episode and each episode, while connected by character and situation to the rest of the show, tend not to have stories play out over multiple episodes. The episode is the unit and the scenes within it serve as beats for the episode. On a seasonal model, each episode is treated as a beat for the season long arc(s) and so there may be scenes that don’t service an episode at the moment but do serve it later on down the line but it always pertains to that season’s finale.

Two different examples of this are The Flash and Daredevil. Both treat the season as the unit of story but act upon it in different ways, with The Flash taking a more episodic route while Daredevil is constructed more like an extended movie. They build to the season finale but that’s the end point of the major conflict of the season. Maybe they’ll set up for more at the end but that’s only as a teaser for the next season, for the next unit of story.

In a show model, which is rarer than you might think, seasons build to a larger conclusion and story arcs are untethered from them. One narrative might appear midway through a season, pop up a couple times and then return for its conclusion in a different season. For another couple examples, check out Orphan Black and Gravity Falls, which operate differently. I hesitate to invoke Lost because I have not seen it and, despite it technically fitting this model (I believe), it could be argued that it was seasonal with the IDEA of what happened to the plane known to the writers. But I digress and I’m sure you’re asking, isn’t Babylon 5 still episodic? Yes and no. Just as a chapter in a book must have a trajectory, so too must an episode. It was also the nature of television at the time that, well, even seasonal storytelling was rare and so it had to operate under those constraints.

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Yet as evidenced by this finale, many of the arcs of the season that were set up prior to the finale are not resolved but they are developed. The Mars revolt, the Earth First movement, the great war, the Vorlons, the prophecy & flash forwards, Sinclair and the Minbari, whatever those spider creatures and their creepy ships are (yes, I know their names but the show hasn’t named them yet so I won’t either), all these and more are not resolved. Because of this, and because of the results of the plots that do occur, the tone of the finale is somber and leaves us on a cliffhanger but one that says: you won’t get answers yet but when we return, we’ll move a little closer to them.

That about does it for this season. Thank you all so much for bearing with me, both in this post and in the season at large. I didn’t get to talk about everything in this finale but I’ve already gone on way too long. It’s been a blast and I hope I’ll be able to see you again next year for season 2, if that happens, where I’ll get to talk about a new opening, new designs, and. . .well, a number of other new things. Until then, it’s been a blast talking to you all about the station that wraps humans and aliens in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal . . . (h)all alone in the night. This is Elias. Signing out.

Best Lines of the Night:

1) Londo: “But this, this is like being nibbled to death by. . .What are those earth creatures called? Feathers? Long bill? Webbed Feet? Go quack?”

Vir: “Cats.”

Londo: “Cats. Like being nibbled to death by cats.”

2) Lennier: “But what if you’re wrong?”

Delenn: “Then speak well of me when I’m gone.”

3) Morton: “Your name is being spoken at the highest levels of the Centauri government. They don’t know or care how you did it. You saved them from another embarrassment without creating a war in the process. They’ve noticed you, ambassador. That was the point of the exercise. I hear they have great plans for you.”

Londo: “Yes, but 10,000 in cold blood?”

Morton: “Ambassador, you’re a hero. Enjoy it.”

4) Sinclair: “You told me that before the Centauri came, Narn was an agrarian world a peaceful world. To be free, you had to fight. That’s true, but you’ve overcompensated. Like abused children who abuse others as if that’ll balance the scales. It won’t. If you let your anger cloud your judgment, it’ll destroy you.”

G’Kar: “We know what we’re doing. Anything else, commander?”

Sinclair: “Just that I’ve had this feeling lately that we’re standing at a crossroads. And I don’t like where we’re going. There’s still time to choose another path. You can be part of that process, G’Kar. Choose wisely not just for the Centauri, but for the good of your own people as well.

G’Kar: “We all do what we have to. It’s late. Please go now.”


//TAGS | 2018 Summer TV Binge | Babylon 5

Elias Rosner

Elias is a lover of stories who, when he isn't writing reviews for Mulitversity, is hiding in the stacks of his library. Co-host of Make Mine Multiversity, a Marvel podcast, after winning the no-prize from the former hosts, co-editor of The Webcomics Weekly, and writer of the Worthy column, he can be found on Twitter (for mostly comics stuff) here and has finally updated his profile photo again.

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