Franklin’s inner monologue is scarily similar to my own, Ivanova just can’t catch a break, and a surprise guest appears. 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. The Ship and the Woman with A Bed Made of Pillows
Straczynski is really getting a lot of mileage out of this bed gag. Of all the recurring jokes, I did not expect humans trying to figure out these strange, granite, mad scientist beds to be the one to come back.
I also did not expect it to be as funny as it is.
I am a simple man. People/creatures being baffled by unfamiliar objects, manners of doing mundane tasks, and new customs will never not be funny to me. The awkward ways in which they try to fit it into their conceptions is hilarious. It’s especially hilarious when it’s a task that I share the confusion in. Ivanova building a bed out of pillows is the kind of thing I would totally do in her situation, although I’d probably be tall enough to reach the pillow (sorry Claudia.)
The pillow? 10 credits. The White Star? 9.59 million credits. The quiet exhaustion in Ivanova’s voice when she falls off the tilted bed? Priceless.
2. Night Adventures
Delenn. Hon. You do realize that in human culture saying “I watch you while you sleep” is incredibly creepy, right? We have an entire trope about it. Hell, we have an entirely different archetype of monster that is the “thing watching you at night,” the assumption being that you are asleep while it watches. Now, the creepy part of the latter is that usually the thing isn’t there when you fall asleep but still.
That aside, I adored this scene. It’s sweet and somehow makes Delenn & Sheridan’s relationship concrete. It transforms it from an abstract, something in the opening stages, to something more real. It’s proof that this is a serious thing and that it will be here to stay. Sheridan being bashful and the one being led into the relationship is also refreshing. This isn’t typical of the Captain/starship hero archetype. Moreover, the healthy back and forth the two share forms the emotional core of the A-plot and I hope that this continues into the finale.
But with that final scene? Who knows.
3. Shadow Hunters
Marcus & Ivanova being sent as advanced scouts with a 50/50 chance of returning was worrying. Them being spotted by an advanced scout of the Shadows was distressing. Them being stuck in the big battle was downright nerve-wracking. I was convinced Marcus was going to bite the big one, especially since he had rather awkwardly confessed his crush on Ivanova TO Ivanova, or that they’d barely escape by the skin of their teeth. They do have a very close call but it’s not as close as it could’ve been.
That tension, in addition to the build up with the Drazi representative & others expressing doubt about the plan of attack, made this the best space fight of the series thus far. The arc of the fight was meaningful and the actions within reflected this meaning. The fighting was clear and while ships weren’t zipping around, the action still moved at a brisk pace. Attacks and skirmishes were clearly shown and when victory was achieved, the framing was quick to remind us of the terrible losses that took place.
Plus, the whole thing looked cool as hell.
The CGI team did an excellent job. And while the integration between Sheridan & Delenn in the command room looked. . .well, like they were standing in front of a green screen, that was the point. What a damn fine way to welcome in the finale.
4. Death of a Self Hunter
Franklin has been on Walkabout for a while. His quest to meet himself has taken him into down below where he’s met all sorts of awful people, like the tourist couple from above. What a garbage person that woman is. But, perhaps, I say this because I am afraid that it is me I see in her smug, aloof attitude. There is a lesson, I can’t remember which Rabbi taught it, that you should be careful when talking about the things you find distasteful in others, as you may be guilty of the same things. This isn’t quite what Franklin goes through but my queasy revulsion of this woman’s attitudes reminded me of it.
Continued belowSo, yes. Franklin finally finds himself and has a nice conversation. Well, not really. Maybe a quarter of that sentence is correct. He does indeed see himself but it’s less of a conversation and more of a one sided verbal flagellation. It is also most certainly not nice. Richard Biggs absolutely kills it this week, as if he didn’t kill it every time he’s on screen, but this week in particular he deserves the praise. He made that split screen look natural and had me hanging on every word, even the awful ones.
Concussion, verge-of-dying hallucination Franklin is a real douche-canoe. Wow, what an awful vision he is. He lays into real, dying Franklin and just berates him for being who he is. He’s almost like the version his father may have wished for.
But he’s also right.
Franklin has been running away from his problems for years. When things start to look tough, he leaves. He doesn’t fight, he looks for the easy way out of the struggle. It’s a tough lesson and while I’m not totally on board with the way it’s presented, the presentation is borne out by Franklin’s psyche. He’s mad at himself. He has all this self-loathing that he couldn’t release and maybe didn’t even know he had. He was afraid of what his friends would think of him, say to him, do to him, when he realized his stims problem and then again when they kept searching him out, that he pushed them away and quit his job.
He didn’t wait to accept help or support from his friends because he did not want to face even the possibility that they would reject him or take away the only job that gave him purpose. He could not face that pain. Better to be the one to cause the pain than to suffer it himself. So when he’s confronted with this, it hurts about as much as the knife wound in his gut. He needed to hear it though, and if he didn’t hate himself so much, maybe the voice in his head wouldn’t have been so fucking mean about it all.
It spurred him to literally crawl out of the pit he was in and get back to a place where help could find him, a feat that literally almost killed him. Here’s to Franklin, a good man and a good doctor. Long may he help in the medlab.
5. The Visions and the Darkness
I’m squishing two things in here because they’re related and because these are my five thoughts. First up, the vision by Sheridan. I have no clue what they could mean but it totally got me to go OH SHIT YEAH. I’d totally forgotten about Sheridan’s dream in “All Alone in the Night”. Now, maybe I’m reading too much into things, but Ivanova’s part of the dream felt like it was referencing Odin and specifically knowledge gained through sacrifice. The Raven on her shoulder and the shadow covering one eye reminded me of this and of Huginn & Muninn, thought and memory, Odin’s ravens.
Why Garibaldi has a dove on his shoulder baffles me but maybe it means his cryptic statement has to do with peace after destruction? I dunno but it’s fun to speculate.
The second is that we get to see who the mysterious figure in the vision Delenn saw in “War Without End” was and it is a DOOZY. The camerawork this week was a bit wonky, really leaning into the intense dolly zoom, but the choice to go first person with this character’s arrival was inspired. Built the tension, built the mystery, and kept me guessing as to who it could be. Could I have guessed it? Probably. Did I? Not even close.
That’s right y’all. Anna Sheridan, John Sheridan’s long presumed dead wife is back and standing at his door, right as Delenn was staring at him for a three day ritual of finding a true face. What a fucking eleventh hour twist, right?! Totally unexpected but perfectly set-up with the reveal of how Morden survived, making this appearance not only perfectly timed for prime drama but also highly suss. Will this be why Sheridan goes to Z’ha’dum? Is this why Delenn warns him not to go? I love it and I cannot wait to see how this plays out in the finale next week.
Continued belowThat about does it for now. Join me again in a week for the finale of season 3, the end of my reviews for the season, and the arrival of a long awaited episode on the station that, in the year of the Shadow War, became something greater.
This is Elias. Signing out.
Best Lines of the Night:
1. Ivanova: Who wants to live forever?
Marcus: I do, actually.
2. Franklin: When I thought I was gonna die, even after everything that’s happened… I realized I didn’t wanna let go. I was willing to do it all over again. This time I could appreciate the moments. I can’t go back, but I can appreciate what I have right now… and I can define myself by what I am, instead of what I’m not.
Sheridan: And what are you?
Franklin: Alive. Everything else is negotiable.
