Babylon 5 ep 17 - Featured Television 

Five Thoughts on Babylon 5‘s “Legacies”

By | September 12th, 2018
Posted in Television | % Comments

The Minbari mourn a great warrior, Ivanova and Talia fight over a young telepath, and Neroon is a butt. 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. Hot Cold Opening

Open gunports, an unwanted military parade and a MIND CRUSH, I mean, burst. . .that’s quite the cold opening. It’s action packed, mysterious and promises to make the lives of our crew very difficult for the next little bit. But all good things must come to an end. Turns out, all the drama from that fiery opening get a bucket of ice water dumped on it. Thankfully there are still a few coals left to reignite the fire but it takes the better part of an episode to get there. Sinclair’s friction with Neroon, Ivanova’s friction with Talia, and Delenn’s friction with Neroon provide enough interest to keep the promise of that opening alive.

2. Detectives Neroon & Garibaldi

I may be tipping my hand a bit but I wish, wish, wish that B5 would’ve taken the risk and done a Film Noir style episode for this instead of framing it in the standard of the show. It would have felt horribly out of place and possibly tonally dissonant to the rest of the show but it would’ve been SO MUCH fun. There’s a missing body, a ship-wide search for it, and a whole host of suspects with motives! They go to the weirdest places on the ship but none of the ambassadorial wings? It’s a missed opportunity but that’s just the mystery lover in my talking.

As is, the episode operates differently, using the missing body as a vehicle to dredge up old tensions and to reveal more information to us about the Earth-Minbari war. The mystery of the missing body doesn’t matter. What matters is what that action meant to the taker as well as the bystanders.

3. Wooden acting? On MY Spacestation?

It’s been a while since we’ve had a performance that didn’t mesh with the rest of the cast. Early on, it was our leads, who were still finding themselves in the roles. Then it was the occasional villain, who ate the scenery just a little too much. Now, it’s Alisa, a young telepath whose abilities are just now appearing. It’s hard to avoid commenting on her performance since she plays a major role in the episode, both within her own plot and that of the missing body.

However, she is a child actress and in this era of TV, child actors & actresses that weren’t. . .difficult to watch were rare. Her performance is OK but each line delivery is Mark Wahlberg talking to a plant in The Happening levels of unbelievable. It’s almost unbearable but then there’s that one moment that you forget, that one moment the delivery becomes natural, and you can make it through the scene. It’s not enjoyable but I can certainly think of performances that are a hell of a lot worse.

4. War, War Never Changes

While it doesn’t delve too deeply into the issue, it’s pretty obvious that Sinclair has PTSD that stems from the war and, more specifically, the Battle of the Line. Just seeing the ship and hearing the name of the commander who led the forces against him was enough to trigger flashbacks. Then, to add insult to injury, he has to comply and honor the general as well as deal with Neroon’s constant jabs at him. He should be angrier, more bitter but there’s a reason he’s a main cast member.

He keeps his cool (for the most part) and is respectful. He understands the duties of his position and knows that peace is more important than the animosities of the past. He and Neroon are opposite in that regards and their relationship also provides an interesting foil to that of Londo and G’Kar. Sinclair is the kind of leader one hopes to have upon a diplomatic vessel and this episode is a perfect example of it. Additionally, as more details about Branmer are told to him by Delenn, he learns more about him and his own struggles with his split duties as a religious caste member and also a member of the warrior caste. It paints a picture more akin to reality, filled with complicated people asked to do complicated and difficult things.

Continued below

5. Boom Today?

The lingering spectre of the prophecy continues to hang over the show. Although it’s not expressly mentioned, or apparent in the character’s actions, it’s in our minds still. Any small sign of destruction or attack on the station can be instantly associated with the prophecy, creating an added sense of dread in viewers. It’s not a given, I had even forgotten for much of the episode, but once I remembered, I wondered if this would be when the prophecy came true. It didn’t and the episode never referenced it, which I’m finding to be nicer and nicer. There’s a tendency for modern TV shows (looking at you The Flash) to constantly, CONSTANTLY bring up these types of events as a way of creating tension. It’s nice to have a series that, whether it’s intentional or not, craft scenarios that conjure up the possibility of a previously mentioned event without an explicit, or even implicit, reference to it.

5.5. Continuity, Schmantinuity

For the keen-eyed observer/the person who quickly googled trivia for the episode, (hint: I’m the latter) you’ll notice that we’ve never seen the weird flashy device that Delenn uses to stun the guards before. It’s something that could be written off as a piece of Minbari tech we never knew existed but that exists in universe, which is what I did, but it turns out, that flashy triangle isn’t introduced until episode 20. Yup.

The reason being is that this was supposed to be the second to last episode of the season but it got shuffled around for. . .reasons. Honestly, the modular nature of much of season one makes it so that this only matters for a few plot-threads. This is a simple goof but one that can easily be handwaved away. Still, it’s always nice to know that even a show like this has flubs.

That about does it for now. Join me again next week for part one of our first two-parter, a cold, dead rock that turns out to be not so dead, and a revolt that’s been brewing in the background for a while on the station that wraps humans and aliens in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal . . . all alone in the night. This is Elias. Signing out.

Best Line of the Night:

Neroon: “Perhaps there was some small wisdom in letting your species survive.”

Sinclair: “We like to think so.”


//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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