Sheridan does the 90s version of 2261 equivalent of doom scrolling, Delenn confronts neglected conflicts, and Marcus is #1 wingman confirmed. 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 Good Doctor Fuuuuuuucks
I have to get this out of the way first because it provided me with an endless amount of enjoyment. When I saw we were going to be getting Dr. Franklin & Marcus’ adventures on Mars, I was stoked because I thought it would be a great buddy comedy within a serious, meaty exploration of the rebellion & the geo-political landscape of Babylon 5. What I did not expect was to get a hornier plot than Delenn & Sheridan but somehow lads, we got it! Marcus does what he does best, which is pine from a distance like the disaster bi that he is, and ribs Franklin for not realizing that Number One finds him quite attractive until she literally comes back to ask him to dinner and puts Marcus on guard duty.
The whole thing is only two scenes, though it’s bolstered by him taking Pierre down a peg and lying to help shore up her leadership in the Resistance, and both are glorious, though I love the ending stinger more. It’s of a bored Marcus having to listen to “Oh Stephen” come from a cave, while he fucks about with his staff which is not a euphemism, but may be symbolic, but instead a callback to the final scene of “Atonement”. For such a serious episode, it’s nice to know the low-key comedy can still shine through.
2. Drak Drak
Despite all my worries and complaints back when the Shadow War came to a close, Babylon 5 has been able to continue layering narratives that feel both new and continuous from what was happening before we turned all our attention to the Shadow War. I still lament the external influences that forced this season to speed up many of the stories we’re seeing but JMS is making it work beautifully. We’re at the mid-season and, while it doesn’t have the same bombast as one might expect, it feels just as consequential with regards to both the Earth Gov plot and the Shadows’ allies.
Take, for example, the Drak. Rather than feeling like a new enemy that suddenly appeared, their presence feels like the natural evolution of the defeat/retreat of the Shadows. They’re not a more powerful force but they are sneaky and ambitious, the alien they send as a messenger is suitably eerie with a skull head and blur effect, and they remain shrouded in mystery because they lived for so long in the Shadows’, well, shadow. That’s the perfect excuse for why they weren’t a bigger player before and successfully avoids the pitfall of, “well if this powerful force was always out there, why haven’t we heard from them before?”
Will they live up to the hype? It almost doesn’t matter because I’m more excited to see Delenn come into her own as a real leader of the Minbari in opposition to the Drak and others than I am to know the Drak’s machinations. They are simply an outside force applying pressure on the internal conflicts of various worlds, which is a major aspect of season four in a way that was more in the background of seasons 1-3. They’re one of at least two groups doing this, unless the Drak are the ones putting control aliens on Mars & Centauri Prime, in which case…yeah, maybe I am a little interested in their machinations.
3. TRAITOR
You know, I should have clocked Forell being shifty and shady early on but I didn’t. Instead, I let my guard down and thought, oh hey, new Minbari character. He’s pretty inconsequential honestly and I didn’t really feel anything when he was killed off at the end of the episode but he served his narrative purpose well. He’s there to really drive home just how desperate many of the Minbari outside of the Warrior Caste are getting thanks to an impending conflict between the three castes and to remind us that these problems are neither abstract nor simple nor are they distant problems that will go away if ignored.
Continued below
Forell allied with the Drak and allowed them to do what the Shadows did on Centauri Prime to the allied worlds around Minbari space because he felt powerless and the Drak projected strength and power. It’s not quite a protection racket, as while the Drak are likely feeding tensions on Minbar they aren’t responsible for it, but they are your typical strongman scavenger group, sneaking in to prey on the unfortunate and the downtrodden by promising safety in exchange for allowing them to wield unchecked violence as they please. It’s a good conflict and exactly what I hoped to see as fallout from the end of the war.
It also gave us the opportunity to watch the crew go full Star Trek and do the lean! They got to lean!! It was great. 10/10. Would stabilize again.
4. This is KBBF, the Voice of the Resistance
Sheridan, unable to sleep after watching non-stop ISN and definitely way too stressed for his own good, wakes up Ivanova in the middle of the night to tell her about this amazing idea he had. She having the good sense to be a person who likes sleep and hates having it interrupted, which seems to happen more often than not, is understandably cranky. But, as she’s friends with Sheridan and knows he won’t give up on the idea until he’s worked through it, humors him and joins him in the now useless war room, where he decides they’re gonna make it a TV station for the resistance and that Ivanova is going to be the face.
Needless to say, her face was not happy about this.
It’s wild to me that I didn’t see this coming. Like, it makes total sense that at some point B5 would have to start broadcasting a counter-narrative to ISN’s bald-faced propaganda, possibly filling the niche of real news again, but I still wouldn’t have thought we’d get it soon. I’m certain we’ll get to questions of independence and journalism vs broadcasting reports/updates (bare-bones news, essentially) but for now, the idea is good and it being accompanied by Ivanova dunking on Sheridan for 5 minutes just makes the whole thing even better.
5. The Ambassador from Minbar Fuuuuuuucks
I mentioned at the top how Delenn & Sheridan’s relationship was the horniest in the show but that’s not quite true because, really, it’s one of the only romantic relationships and the only one that’s any semblance of long-term. As such, we’re constantly checking in and getting developments and seeing how their connection actually works. We’re seeing the reality of the day to day and the hardness of that reality. Delenn is going to have to leave the station so that she can help her people and hopefully stop a coming conflict and it’s a tough moment.
It’s important and healthy, and the conversation she and Sheridan share reflects this, but it remains difficult to have and sad to see. That bittersweetness extends to the end of the conversation where Delenn & Sheridan get to have dinner and a night together again outside of the confines of a ritual or work. You know it will be touching and intimate but hanging over the night will be a knowledge that, come the morning, distance will categorize this leg of their relationship. So eat, drink, and be merry, you two, for tomorrow you’ll be fighting your separate fights, for a while at least.
That about does it for now. Join me again in a week for the start of the second half of the season with a bad kind of conspiracy, Ivanova taking charge of pirate radio, and a surprise guest appears on the station where everything changed in the year of destruction and rebirth.
This is Elias. Signing out.
Best Line of the Night:
Lennier: “But I can program the parameters into the ship’s artificial intelligence matrix.”
Delenn: “And what do you do then?”
Lennier: “Touch that button and pray very, very fast.”
