Garibaldi learns the truth, the resistance is NOT futile, and ISN is somehow only slightly smarmier than Fox News. Welcome my friends. This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2261. The place: Babylon 5.
Spoilers ahead.
1. The Character of Sheridan
Last week, I talked about how I wasn’t quite sure where Straczynski wanted us to sit re: Sheridan’s actions. We know how terrible Clark is, how terrible the things and people he empowers are, and how the price of that empowerment will linger far longer than him; we don’t, however, know what will happen once Sheridan and Co. win the war. There is always the worry that what is taken by military force will only be relinquished through another militant force.
This episode assuages those fears, at least for the part of the audience, through Sheridan, and then reinforces some of them on the part of Ivanovna. It’s fascinating to watch. As we saw from Sheridan this week, he will take extreme actions to make sure the Earth forces he fights are given every opportunity to stop fighting and stay alive. He cares and when compared to the propaganda of him, looks positively saintly.
Ivanova, on the other hand, isn’t what Garibaldi fears Sheridan might be but her declaration at the end of the episode that he be shot on sight is indicative of a somewhat less easy-going leader, even though that moment is personal. She’s always been a bit more inflexible, which is why Sheridan & Sinclair were both excellent foils for her. However, she, like Sheridan, places the value of life above all else and does not see herself as a savior on a crusade. It’s what gives me trust in them.
2. Wibbly Wobbly Druggy Wuggy Stuff
I’m a sucker for a good altered state shot. It’s one of my favorite things to see because it gives a director the chance to play fast and loose with the reality on the screen and you never quite know what you’re going to get. While I can’t say Sheridan being tranqed is all that memorable in the grand scheme of things, and there is a fair bit of flashing, though not quite strobe, lights, Director Michael Vejar makes it properly disorienting and off-kilter. The top moment has to be when Sheridan lightly taps a guy on the chin and then he goes flying through a window in the wrong orientation and direction. Classic stuff right there.
A more memorable scene, though, was at the end when Bester is talking Garibaldi through what happened to him. I love this scene for many reasons but chief among them is how it is shot. It’s claustrophobic, ominous, and perfectly unbalanced, much of which is due to the harsh cuts and slow tracking across Bester’s face until we rest upon an extreme close up of his lips. He was able to do this, keeping the camera close on him for these long shots because he understood how excellent of an actor Walter Koenig is and trusted him to sell every second of it.
Vejar is retired now but across his long career, he was a director for many genre shows, most of which were sci-fi, and previously directed a number of Babylon 5 episodes. His touch is an important reason this episode lands as strongly as it does and I thought it important to credit him here.
3. Number One is Being a Real Number Two
As this season has developed, we’ve been given insight into the Martian resistance in ways we hadn’t in the past. It’s been a bit back-loaded, and I suspect this season might not end with Martian Independence, but nevertheless, it’s been here. “The Face of the Enemy” doesn’t really give us much new info on them but it does show their distrust of telepaths because of their weaponization by the state. I talked last time about telepaths in the abstract within the frame of Babylon 5 so I won’t do so again. I’ll instead talk about Psi-Corps again.
Much of the fear around telepaths in the resistance comes less from the way Garibaldi’s fears them and instead from the way the Psi-Cops are deployed, in addition to the Corps’ reputation for extremely shady shit; a reputation that’s more than earned considering what we’ve seen AND what Lyta lets Franklin in on.
Continued belowOn Mars, Psi-Cops have been deep scanning anyone suspected of being a resistance member with no cause, which is leading to deaths and serious injuries. It’s no surprise that Number One and the rest don’t trust telepaths since most are Psi-Corps members thanks to their reach and the publics’ general fear of them. Psi-Corps, and Psi-Cops, are the danger, not the telepaths writ large, but it’s hard to see that when all you’ve known is terror at their hands.
4. Why Cure Cancer When I Can Make A Life Long Treatment?
Edgars ends this episode dead (spoilers) and while I’ll miss hearing Zimbalist Jr.’s voice, this was the right place to leave him, even if it did feel like the end game a bit earlier than it should’ve. Before he goes out though, we learn the full scope of his plan and it’s not to save the telepaths from some new virus, it’s instead to INFECT them with a new virus and then provide a “cure.” The cure works, but only temporarily, and that’s by design because he wants to essentially turn telepaths into a permanent underclass in order to not be turned into a permanent underclass himself. These are the kinds of things bigots, and especially RICH bigots, think about.
It’s pretty appalling what he wants to do but it’s not too hard to imagine – the “creating a problem and then creating a solution which can only be accessed through him” part, not the “manufactured virus and temporary cure” part; I make that explicit because we’re in the middle of a pandemic where there are people who believe the conspiracy theory that some version of the above is what’s going on now, which is just plain false. Just look at the Sacklers and Oxycontin or the way pharmaceutical companies game patent law to make sure what should be a generic, and cheap, is proprietary and expensive. That’s the kind of framework Edgars is operating in, just with a more extreme sci-fi villain plan and framing. He wants to harm a class of people and then profit off mitigating, but not eliminating the source of, their pain. He is who we should be afraid of.
5. Your Bester Spymaster
Garibaldi has been a major focus of these last couple episodes, and with good reason. While the main thrust of his arc revolves around a sub-plot that has yet to bear fruit – a coming war between telepaths and mundanes – his choices directly lead to the capture of Sheridan AND his father, who was used as bait. It eats him up inside, and I’m sure if he saw any of the ISN coverage later, he’d feel even more guilty since he knows how false the declarations of “humanitarian conditions” are. If you, like me and Zach, were wondering why Garibaldi would even consider doing this to Sheridan, well, we’ve finally got a definitive answer!
It’s an exposition dump, sure, but hot damn if it isn’t an excellent one. I already talked a bit about it in thought two but here it is in full because I’m very happy to say I got 90% of it all right. Bester was indeed behind Garibaldi’s changes, subliminally manipulating him via similar methods to what happened to Talia Winters. He didn’t do a full personality rewrite, though, as he wanted to accentuate Garibaldi’s natural skepticism and distrust of authority.
I was right in that Garibaldi resigning was a result of his tampering but I was wrong that it was intentional. Bester DID want him on the internals but him being on the outs helped him in more ways than he could’ve imagined. The big place I was wrong, though sorta right, was that Psi-Corps picked him up during the final episode of season 3. I had originally assumed he was a Shadow plant, which was wrong, but he was picked up by them. Bester used his connections to re-route Garibaldi and then prep him to do, well, all the stuff he’s done.
It’s weird to have this happen here, rather than in the finale or penultimate episode, but, again, the uncertainty of a fifth season changed the pacing dramatically. I wonder, too, if Garibaldi was originally going to be a Bester plant or a Shadow plant or a combo were things to have progressed as originally envisioned. Obviously things change no matter what but I’m curious what parts of season four would have been saved for season five and what parts would have simply occurred over a longer time frame. Whatever the case, what we got thus far has remained excellent, and now Garibaldi has to face the consequences of his (manipulated) actions. It’s gonna hit him hard, isn’t it?
Continued belowWell, after the Martian resistance hits him hard, of course.
That about does it for now. Join me again in a week for Sheridan in captivity, Sheridan growing a beard, and lunchtime far from the station where everything changed in the year of destruction and rebirth.
This is Elias. Signing out.
Best Line of the Night:
Number One: “Hold it. More telepaths?”
Franklin: “Yup.”
Number One: “How many?”
Franklin: “A lot.”
