Murder is on the menu, Ivanova really, really wants to fight with the rest, and HOLY SHIT IS THAT BRYAN CRANSTON? 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. Erickson in the Middle
That’s right. The special guest star of this week is a pre-Malcolm in the Middle Bryan Cranston. Isn’t that wild? Now, I know there’s a TV/film reason for why his credit is more than just an extra, probably something to do with the number of lines he gets and the fact that his character is named, but I find it funnier to think that they knew Bryan would get big and wanted to make sure he was front and center for the few scenes he’s in.
Cranston plays Erickson, a captain/officer/leader of one of the ships in their fleet and is tasked with gathering reconnaissance information on the Vorlons’ and the Shadows’ latest movements after they are discovered…eating a planet, essentially. It’s a pretty unsettling sight, like billions of elephant-sized (or larger) ants crawling across a world, devouring all in sight, even if that’s not actually what they’re doing. Well…I say he’s tasked with that but his real mission, or at least the final one he’s given, is to get the Shadows’ attention and feed them information about where the Vorlons are going to be attacking next in order to draw them both into a conflict. In order to sell that it is real and secret, however, they have to fight…and inevitably get destroyed.
Yeah. It’s a sobering moment for everyone involved and speaks to the hard choices that are going to have to be made. If season three showed an optimistic vision of the war, one where losses were minimal once they began fighting back, and sacrifices were noble and long-shots and made by the top, this is war as it is: brutal, hard, and while nobility exists, it is calculated. Erickson and his crew’s sacrifice may have been necessary but that doesn’t make it any less brutal or guilt-inducing. War makes killers of everyone involved, even if the only trigger pulled is an order.
Let’s hope Sheridan and crew never become accustomed to that.
2. Ivanova to the Bridge. Ivanova to the Bridge.
Ivanova has had a lot less to do this season than I would’ve expected, but that’s likely because Londo & G’Kar have had such an outsized presence. As we move more and more pieces into place for a big confrontation, it gets harder to focus on the many cast members’ narratives outside the context of the big events. I wanted to at least touch on Ivanova this week, even though her actual screen time isn’t that much. She’s sent off on a mission to find some first ones to help in the big push against the Vorlons and the Shadows; basically what she’s been doing for 15 episodes or so, only with more certainty and urgency. However, what makes this C/D-plot stand out is the one scene between her and Sheridan when Sheridan is asking her to go out searching. She doesn’t want to because she feels like she’s being sidelined and that this is a bid to keep her out of the fight.
I love this! That’s great drama and the two hash it out like real, mature adults. Ivanova is a soldier, just like the rest of the B5 crew, and for her, being sent on these scouting missions while a major battle is going to happen feels like she’s being protected rather than being allowed to make the decision to fight alongside everyone on the front lines. She is not comfortable sitting back and letting others fight for her, for a number of reasons, not least of which is she’s a damn capable fighter AND a leader. She is an asset on the front lines and she knows it.
Sheridan makes the case that this is only a mission she can do because he trusts her for it, and promises that she will be able to fight when she returns. Again, that’s great, character based stuff that is born out through what we’ve seen over the course of three and change seasons (or two in the case of Sheridan.) Ivanova is bringing in the reinforcements they need to halt the war between the Vorlons & the Shadows that’s destroying the galaxy. Let’s just hope they can get there in time.
Continued below3. The Emperor is Dead. Long Live the Prime Minister.
We all knew it was coming and it was very obvious this was going to happen this week. I kind of expected JMS to drag the conspiracy plot out longer but I think a combination of that feeling gratuitous once G’Kar was captured and the strange nature of the WPN season-breaks – episode 4 was right before the usual December breaks shows take – meant that this was the perfect time to deliver on that plot point. Emperor Cartagia is dead thanks to Londo’s conspiracy, though it wasn’t without its hitches.
But before any hitches arrived, we got an actual scene with a bunch of conspirators in a dark room talking around a table in hushed voices. It’s not a real conspiracy without a scene like that! Straczynski uses that scene to inform us of the plan, so we can see how it starts to go awry, and to show how Londo is both an excellent leader and one of the reasons they’re in this mess in the first place, even if they don’t know the half of it. Once Londo informs G’Kar of his part in the plan, and finding out that G’Kar lost his eye to Cartagia, we get some wonderful scenes where Londo has to use his honeyed tongue to stay out of trouble and keep the device to kill Cartagia hidden.
Of all the ways this could’ve gone wrong, I did not expect Cartagia to simply overpower Londo in a fit of ego-induced paranoia without ever realizing Londo was actually about to stab him. I kinda expected him to fuck with the chains – again, he’s just that paranoid – and so when G’Kar broke free using his Martyr-Jesus strength, I was not surprised, though “The Long Night” totally sold me on it not working at first.
That whole scene was an excellent showcase of Babylon 5’s control of tone and action. It was chaotic but that was the point. The fight was all window-dressing for the real action behind the scenes, though the thematic significance of G’Kar overcoming impossible odds to break-free and wreck the court that taunted him and the guards that tortured him is important. It just isn’t as important as what happens to Emperor Cartagia. Or, more accurately, who happens to kill him.
4. Throw Me, Throw Me in the Drink
I have charted Vir’s growth as a character over the last three seasons, from comic relief character to one willing to use what little power he has to save as many people as he can. It’s only the kind of thing you can get in a serialized media like TV, this incremental and meaningful growth and change. It’s excellent and clearly JMS knows it, because he not only invokes Vir’s change through Londo, he also takes the time to inject some of that awkward humor from early on. He draws a through-line from there to now and establishes not only how he has changed, but crucially how he has not…and why that is a good thing.
Vir, to save Londo, ends up killing Cartagia with the device Londo was going to use. It was essentially the thing from Oklahoma where you look into the spyglass, hit a button, and then a needle shoots out and kills you. Only this one is meant for the chest of a two-hearted alien and has a powerful neurotoxin. Same diff. This action, however, absolutely wrecks Vir. Not because Cartagia is such a swell dude; he is, perhaps, the complete opposite of that. No, it is because to Vir, killing someone, anyone, is a horrible act, even if the Centauri deserved it.
As Londo points out, his grief is a good thing. It means he still has the soul that Londo sold long ago. It is something to be protected and nurtured, leaned into, rather than ignored. Vir’s actions should not harden his heart to do it again, Londo and JMS argue, and I like that lesson for this episode. One should aspire to be like Vir, not Londo, and while Londo does end up being promoted to Prime Minister, against his protestations, however minor they are, it is clear that he is not the one being held up by the narrative as being good. He is a lesser of two evils, a flawed man rather than a maniacal egomaniac with a god-complex, but he is not a ruler that is to be admired.
Continued belowHe may be good at leading but that does not make him a good leader. And I suspect we will see that tension in the future.
5. The Wheel of Revenge is Oiled with Blood
G’Kar has had it the hardest of any of the main characters thus far and damn if it doesn’t show. He’s beaten, bloodied, humiliated, and yet he still stands tall. Or, he might, if the other Narn weren’t so determined to throw the world right back onto his shoulders.
It’s interesting how G’Kar has changed over the seasons. He retains the same motivations as his early season one counterpart but he is far less smug, far less bloodthirsty. Whether you read this as the universe beating the revolutionary out of him, or as a re-evaluation of the methods to achieve his core beliefs, it is clear that he wants to live a different life now. He does not feel like the Narn have won, now that the Centauri are leaving the planet, but he no longer feels like they need to fight. He is appalled at the celebration and destruction, not because it is unwarranted, but instead because he wants to rebuild. That is what is most important. Above fighting, above getting revenge, rebuilding what they have is key.
G’Kar’s position is also fascinating because we see why he was such an effective revolutionary on B5. He knows what lessons to take, when to fight and when to build, and, most importantly, what makes a strong and solid government. The tragedy of the people trashing the Emperor’s chambers isn’t that they are angry at the Centauri but because in their anger, not only do they ask what G’Kar has endured, they want to embrace the very thing that is destroying the universe: fascism & authoritarianism. The same thing that devoured the Centauri, the same thing that destroyed the Earth alliance, the same thing that the Shadows stand for, and the same thing that has forced G’Kar & the other to endure.
Revenge is a fruitless tree that poisons the ground around it, G’Kar knows this. He also knows that revenge, and even justice, pursued against an overwhelming force when you have just been decimated, is a fool’s errand that will only result in more death and, most likely, the complete destruction of a culture that is on the brink. It is not a win, that the Centauri are gone without justice truly being served, but it is a chance to rebuild. It is a start, rather than the final gasps of an end soaked in blood.
That about does it for now. Join me again in a week for a battle to rock the stars, a search to rival all searches, and a last, desperate attempt to save a rotting planet on the station where everything changed in the year of destruction and rebirth.
This is Elias. Signing out.
Best Line of the Night:
G’Kar: “Your heart is empty, Molari. Do you know that?”
Londo: “I know your heart will be dead soon, if you do not do as I say.”
