The Shadows have spider & tick shaped ships, the propaganda will be televised, and our best friend Gooder is back and deliciously villainous. 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. SPOOON
Out of everything that happened in this episode, and it was a lot, I somehow latched onto the blink and you’ll miss it designs of these new, micro-USB Shadow vessels. All of the Shadow vessels look like they’re of a different time, of a world built out of darkness and terror, but thus far all of the ones we’ve seen have looked like big spiders.
Maybe it’s just the motif of those larger ships attempting to be replicated on a ship that serves a different function that makes it look less like a spider and more like a tick. Maybe it’s deliberate, as ticks are parasitic organisms that extract resources from an unsuspecting host and, depending on their source, re-deposit something nasty and harmful. Whatever the case, the image of these small ships stuck with me so much that I had to talk about them with y’all.
This isn’t the first time I’ve gushed about the ships in the show and it won’t be the last time. The production design on Babylon 5 gets better and better with each season and the usage of CGI to create ships with shapes that truly defy gravity and sense in our minds keeps them looking fresh and impactful even 25 some-odd years later. Plus, did you see those new rad cockpits? So much better than the old beige ones, I tell you.
2. If Shoe Fits, Wear It
“Dust to Dust” was our favorite (#APCAB) Psi-Cop’s last appearance and it looks like good old Bester hasn’t missed a single, conniving beat. I’m sure you’re all sick and tired of hearing me sing Walter Koenig’s praises but he deserves it. Bester is a character you love to hate and Koenig is the reason he’s so realistic. Bester has the bravado of a powerful leader of a paramilitary organization that either is, or at the very least believes itself to be, unanswerable to anyone but themselves.
He genuinely sees himself as superior to others and, taking it a step further, sees telepaths as superior to “mundanes.” This sentiment shouldn’t feel shocking knowing Bester’s previous attitudes but the words JMS gives Bester to say and the implications of it are still striking. For one, despite being “against Clark,” his general attitude is identical to Clark and his ilks, a point not lost on the audience and the crew. Remember Julia Musante? Same brain, different “other,” different level of polish to hide the hate.
I had a whole section here discussing the idea of “post-racial” sci-fi and the pitfalls of creating stand in prejudices for the real life ones we experience and perpetuate but I’m not nearly knowledgeable in the subject to do it justice. That hasn’t stopped me before but I’m far less certain about my ability to communicate any point I had here. What I will say is that the way JMS characterizes Bester’s thoughts and feelings and the system that codifies them is reminiscent of reality in its broad strokes rather than specifics. He is emblematic of power’s ability to craft a narrative that justifies that power and breeds a superiority that festers into a distrust and hatred of those who are “inferior.”
It’s a false construction but Bester believes it. At the end of the day, belief is all that matters and isn’t that a scary reality to be confronted with?
3. G’Quan Thumping
G’Kar finally gets his day in the sun and is brought into the fold of the Conspiracy of Light. Sweet!
Garibaldi thumps his very old looking and sacred religious book like it was a smartphone button game. Not sweet.
The information in his book gives them vital information into how to fight the Shadows and why they so desperately wanted the telepaths from Earth. Sweet!
He is also told by Delenn that they knew that the Shadows were in league with the Centauri and could have potentially warned him before his home world was sacked in a particularly brutal scene that emphasizes how fucking great this cast is and how they can shift from action to heartrendingly conversations delivered with the care and and realism of a seasoned cast so that you’re a sobbing mess as you feel for Delenn, G’Kar, and the millions of dead Narn who might have been saved for a little longer but would have been joined by billions more had silence not been kept. Not sweet. Not sweet at all.
Continued below4. Tech Butterfly or Gross Wire Blob? You Decide!
There are two moments involving Bester that I had to mention before bringing up the gross wire cocoon. The first was when he’s floating in his cruiser and Sheridan is debating whether or not to just blow him out of the sky. Bester may be a master manipulator but even he couldn’t see that Sheridan would actually consider it, so deep is his distrust and dislike of Bester. Koenig’s face in that scene is priceless.
The other scene is when Ivanova gets to slap him hard. I could watch that over and over again. Eat slap Bester you ass.
OK. So the A-plot of the episode involves a secret weapon’s shipment being done by the Clark administration for the Shadows that Bester doesn’t like and turns out, by the end, that they’ve been shipping “Blips,” telepaths who refuse to conform to the Psi-Corps, to be used INSIDE THE SHADOW SHIPS.
Why’s Bester there? Enemy of my enemy and all that and considering the Shadows are scorched Universe, murder everyone type villains, Bester’s brand of vile hatred and power-hungry fascism looks like sunshine and rainbows in comparison. Still gross though. However, we learn that Bester does have some caring left inside his shriveled up husk of a soul and was willing to go against the arranged marriage to take a lover. Now, his conscience isn’t nearly developed enough to reflect on his job and renounce it for love but it’s a tiny something.
It makes Bester more human and, most importantly, gives us a look into a piece of his life where he is not a complete and total garbage human. It does not transform him into a sympathetic character but instead establishes that real people, people who come home and love the people close to them, are capable of great atrocities and evils elsewhere. The good does not excuse the bad, it merely establishes the many sides of him.
I got a little side-tracked there. I never talked about the gross cocoon the telepath Franklin unfreezes creates out of the wires of the Med-lab. It’s fucked up y’all! I don’t actually have much to say but that image will haunt my nightmares. Not quite as much as the baby from Akira but close.
5. Murdoch’s Legacy, The Before Years
Propaganda is a dangerous tool and when a media outlet is the voice of an administration without independence, thought of its own, or a conscience, there are no checks on power. We saw the death-throes of journalism in the final moments of ISN. Now we have something new masquerading as it, wearing its skin as it shambles across the airwaves, distributing hate and misinformation on behalf of the people who killed the original.
This episode aired on April 29, 1996, 3 months before MSNBC launched and 6 months before Fox News, based entirely on CNN’s existence as the sole 24-hour news channel. I wonder if this plot would have played out any differently had it been written today.
That about does it for now. Join me again in a week for tragedy, punishment, and addiction on the station that, in the year of the Shadow War, became something greater.
This is Elias. Signing out.
Best Line of the Night:
Ivanova: I thought your patience was infinite?
G’Kar: Since space and time are curved, the infinite sooner or later bends back upon itself and ends up where it began and so have I.
