War memories are exchanged, Sinclair gets kidnapped and the seeds of mistrust are planted. 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. The Triangle Game
I failed to bring this up before but it’s always struck me as odd that everything Minbari is triangular. It’s pretty prominent and once you know to look for it, it starts to be very obvious. I wonder if there’s a reason for it beyond an extension of the internal lore of the series. Is it ever explained or hinted at through other aspects of Minbari culture? Does the triangle symbolize anything? I don’t know. I hope to find out, although I’m certain it’s not a vital question to be asking.
2. Man From Mars
Sinclair is a Martian! How did I miss this detail the first time I watched this episode? It’s not like he’s Marvin or anything but I never put the two thoughts together. Another relatively unimportant detail beyond character work, I’m intrigued by its inclusion here. We get a lot of information from the nameless villain about Sinclair but this was the detail that stood out. The rest is all war related aka plot important and thus, uninteresting to me at the moment. I kid, I kid. Those details do interest me but they’ll be elucidated in future episodes. His Martian heritage, however, most likely won’t.
3. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Sinclair was in a dream state for most of this episode, which is prime opportunity to do some great mind fuckery, so why was it so boring? The vast majority of the time in Sinclair’s head he’s rooted to one spot, clenching and unclenching his fist, while the villain pretends he’s some operatic character, gesturing and intoning wildly. Honestly, watch this episode just to laugh at the absurdity of him pointing to his head like a windup toy every time he says, “You’re trapped….in here.”
We do get some plot relevant mind buggery, namely with what we assume to be the Grey council, but most of that is revealed in a fairly straightforward manner instead of with surreal imagery and dream logic. It’s a different scenario, true, but when you establish that the Commander is not only in a “dream” but also filled with a hallucinogen, there should be some more strangeness afoot.
4. I Don’t Know Where I Stand
Speaking of Sinclair and the Grey Council, this episode delivers on the start to another larger arc for Delenn and Sinclair. We know, now, that the Grey Council did something to Sinclair and whatever it was, it ended the Earth-Minbari war. This surrender has been teased as being odd and Delenn has been teased as knowing more about Sinclair than is initially apparent for a while.
None of it settled but there is a distrust being bred in Sinclair’s mind and in the mind of the audience. What is Delenn up to? Why is a member of the Grey Council acting as an ambassador? And why can he never know what they did to him? The questions are raised and they’re all good ones. Certainly the strongest part of the episode.
5. Big Yellow Taxi
If you couldn’t tell by now, this wasn’t a very engaging episode and, as such, my thoughts are much shorter than usual. As has been mentioned before, season one has many of the rougher episodes and this one falls into the rough category. Important, plot wise, but it goes on for way too long and is way too slow. The acting also seems to take a couple steps back from others, with even Garabaldi feeling a bit wooden. I mentioned the villain before and he was almost as hammy as the Soul Hunter.
Still, there were a few redeeming moments in the episode and it isn’t the worst of the season, not by a longshot. It’s got some great lines, an intriguing mystery, and an unintentionally hilarious villain. There was a moment early on, when Sinclair was interrogating the debt-ridden security officer, that really made me appreciate this show’s thoughtful writing. The quote will be below (spoilers). It speaks to a trope I hate, hate, hate in shows and comics, in an abstract way.
Continued belowLying is not inherently evil, the fact that someone withheld information is not the end of the world. It is a sign of something, some insecurity, and effective drama wrestles with that through sharp dialogue and physical staging, instead of waving it away with a, “You lied to me. How dare you,” and stomping away. I see this in the CW superhero shows a lot and I hope it disappears into the void.
That about does it for now. Join me again next week for the return of more of the cast, a sought after prize, and Ambassador Koch 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:
“Everyone lies. The innocent lie because they don’t want to be blamed. The guilty because they have no choice. Find out why he’s lying.” – Sinclair
