The station becomes something else, President Clark’s regime flexes its garbage fascist muscles, and Delenn has to stand up to some assholes in robes. Welcome my friends. This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2260. The name of the place is Babylon 5.
Spoilers ahead.
1. Shame! Shame! Shame!
Delenn hasn’t had a lot to do this season. Outside of episode one and “Messages from Earth”, she’s mostly been in the background, having conversations during other people’s plots, and generally being a reminder that, yes, the Minbari are still important even as the Centauri and Narn get more screen time. That changes with “Severed Dreams.” Pissed as hell that the Grey Council hasn’t done jack-diddly-shit to prepare for the coming of the Shadows, she hops on a spaceship to confront them.
What follows is a B-Plot that has the impact and weight of an A-plot, with Delenn unleashed against the Minbari’s highest ruling body. Mira Furlan brings her A+ game to this episode and her sharpest threatening teeth to all her scenes. I think the Minbari stuff alone could have earned this episode the Hugo it won. That speech in the council chamber? Chills. What an admonishment.
You wanna know my favorite part about the end of that scene? Not everyone goes with her. Yeah. And one of the council even tries to stop another with a small arm hold! Her speech may have shamed some of the council into action but not all. We are not privy to which, nor which cast they are from, but it ultimately doesn’t matter. Her point was made, their stance is clear, and while the day was saved this time, who knows if it will last.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else.
2. A Roll of Duct Tape, Some Chewing Gum, and a Car Battery
There are two major guest stars this week. OK, technically only one but the second is major to me because I recently saw him in a show. . .Fine, both aren’t technically huge but you know what? This is my column and I’m gonna talk about who I want. I have little to say about the characters themselves; I just wanted to note the cool guest stars.
First up, Bruce McGill. I know him from one of my favorite shows Macgyver. No, not the garbage reboot, the original, with all its 80s cheese and mullets. Others might know him as D-Day in Animal House or Detective Korsak from Rizzoli & Isles. He’s here, without his signature mustache, as Major Ed Ryan, who takes the palace of General Hague, whose name has been floating around the last couple episodes and had previously appeared in the season 2 opener “Points of Departure” and the Mid-season episode “All Alone in the Night.” He was supposed to be here in this episode but the actor had a prior commitment, because of a double booking, on the Deep Space Nine set if I remember correctly.
They wrote Hague out of the show because of this. Whoops.
Next is Phil Morris, as Phil Traynor, which is a name you probably don’t recognize but whose face and voice you should. He is a big character actor, having played John Jones in Smallville and more recently, Silas Stone in Doom Patrol. He’s 24 years younger here, which came as a shock to me, but as soon as he started talking, I knew it was him. Granted, I had literally come off of watching the finale ofDoom Patrol but that’s how it be sometimes. He’s got a lengthy Wikipedia article so give it a look.
I wouldn’t with Bruce because. . .well, I’m saddened by the second line. Phil may have only had a bit part in this episode but he acted the hell out of it.
3. Independence Day
Something important happened in this episode but I can’t quite put my finger on what. Hmmmm.
I’m sure it’s nothing that big or I wouldn’t have forgotten about it. But you know what I haven’t forgotten about? The action in the series, and it’s wonderful integration with the always excellent musical score.
Continued belowWay back in the season one episode “Infection”, I commented on the, let’s say, less than stellar action of the series. I can no longer make that statement because the action in “Severed Dreams” is tense, impactful, and done without a hint of irony. That isn’t to say campy fights are worse than earnest ones but for a series that is more often than not earnest in its presentation, the point of the fights are better conveyed here than there.
The entire battle scene in space is great. I couldn’t follow the specifics of the flight formations but who cares. I could follow the flow of battle and what mattered was that JMS and the whole B5 crew sold me on the dire stakes of the battle. It was a desperate fight against a larger enemy and they came out not unscathed, not even only slightly wounded, but barely hanging on. The ground fight is better handled, dramatic and painful, with slow panning shots showing not the grandeur of war, nor the righteousness of the fight, but of the terrible toll this needless fight wrought. At every turn Sheridan tried to prevent bloodshed, to keep things from escalating. But when you’re faced with an enemy that wants to exterminate you, one cannot negotiate, and one must fight. The cost is great. The cost should not have been paid.
The cost was necessary.
4. Captain Sheridan to Agripa: “Drop Dead”
Delenn and Sheridan’s actions are mirrored this week, although it’s more of a fun house mirror than a regular one. While Delenn’s speech to her council is full of fire and admonishment, Sheridan’s to his crew is calmer, though no less emotional. It is, like Delenn’s, an appeal to their better natures, to doing what is right and protecting the people who most need protection from those that seek to harm them for no other reason than they don’t support the President, now Dictator, and his hateful policies. It is, perhaps, more successful in Sheridan’s case but the power dynamics are reversed.
Delenn, former Grey Council, has no power but her words, asking those with great power to wield it in defense of others. Sheridan, current Captain, has power beyond his words, and is asking subordinates to turn against their home and wield their current power in defending others. Yes, the crew has a collective power and they have an out with no repercussions, which some take, but it remains a different form of inspiration.
I was very happy when Lieutenant Corwyn chose to remain with the station. He’s a good egg and when push came to shove, he did the right thing, loyalty to Earth-in-name-only be damned.
5. Independence Day II: Declaration Buggaloo
So. . .yeah. That happened. Babylon 5 has declared itself an independent state, along with many of the other Earth Colonies, as Mars is pummeled by Dictator Clark’s fascist forces of doom. I kinda knew this was coming from the episode description but it remains shocking, seeing how fast things have escalated this season. It is a swift change and things keep getting worse and worse for the crew. Sure, they’re independent now but that comes with its own set of challenges.
I’m excited to see what comes of this. Babylon 5 lets itself grow and change, laying the groundwork for major changes over many episodes, some of which happen slowly and other quickly. We’re in a new status quo and, I fear, soon we will be revisiting the boom that Ivanova was so worried about.
That about does it for now. Join me again in a week for the halfway point of season three, the development of independence and, perhaps, some sabotage on the station that, in the year of the Shadow War, became something greater.
This is Elias. Signing out.
Best Line of the Night:
Sheridan: I know we were all hoping to avoid a head-on confrontation with Earth, that somehow we could. . .*sigh*. . .stop this train before it went off-track. But this train is heading right for us and there’s not a lot of time. So we have only two options. We fight. . .or we surrender. Now if it was just us, hey, you pays your money, you takes your chances but it’s not just us. It’s a quarter million people here, and billions more out there counting on us. Now, I promised Delenn we would draw a line against the darkness, no matter the cost. . .Well, now we know the cost. There’s too much at stake to walk away now.
Continued belowFranklin: If we surrender, they’ll court marshall us. If we fight and lose, they’ll probably kill us.
Sheridan: They probably will at that. So the choice is yours.
Ivanova: I say fight.
Garibaldi: Fight.
Franklin: Fight.
Sheridan: Fight.
