All Alone in the Night is a good arc heavy episode, concerned with moving some pieces around to support further story lines, but also giving us a good old fashioned alien abduction story at it’s center.  It is part of a stretch of episodes that are moving us along in the various stories without having anything as momentous as the events of “The Coming of Shadows”.

The episode opens with more attention being paid to Delenn and her transition.  We have had indications that her government and her people do not approve of her change, and we saw how horrifically some humans reacted last week, but now it seems that there may be official consequences for her decision.  Lennier comes across as heartbreakingly naive about the situation, whereas Delenn has been in politics long enough to be pretty clear eyed about the likely outcome of her meeting with the Grey Council.  

Meanwhile Ivanova is reporting to Sheridan about strange sightings in a sector of space near Babylon 5.  I like how Sheridan mentions that the raiders are out of business these days when he rejects them as a possibility, a nice nod to the first season’s story.  Sheridan decides to send Delta Squadron to investigate, and he decides that he will lead them, both to have a little fun, and to make sure he keeps his flight pay.  Sheridan is pretty cavalier about the possible danger, and then of course we get a quick cut to a mysterious ship hunting down a Narn fighter.

Back from the credits Delenn and Lennier prepare for the journey to the council.  Lennier has arranged to borrow a ship to accompany Delenn.  Delenn tries to dissuade him, letting him know that he could jeopardize his own future by being associated with her, but he is young enough to still have a damn the consequences attitude, even if he does it in a very Minbari way.  They both arrive on the creepy floating government ship the Minbari use, things go off the rails quickly for Delenn.  She gets confronted by our old buddy Hedronn who lets her know she is officially out, and then says a bunch of racist stuff.  She grasps for an opportunity to address the council, in the hopes of maintaining her post as ambassador.  Delenn begins to make her case to the council before she gets side tracked by a disturbing revelation.  The council has replaced her with returning Minbari Neroon. This will upset the balance of 3 from each cast, giving the Warrior cast more of a vote. Neroon angrily defends himself, pointing out the coming war, and pointing out that the warrior caste would have never surrendered at the end of the Earth-Minbari War.  

As Sheridan prepares for his mission, Ivanova contacts him about a visit from General Hague, last seen in the season premiere.  She is slightly irritated about finding out last minute, but Sheridan shuts her down, insisting that it is a personal visit and does not really concern the station.  

We also check in with Garialdi, Franklin and a Starfury pilot named Ramirez(played by Jsu Garcia) having coffees and arguing about baseball.  I guess in some futures baseball is still going strong, and I cant help but wonder if this was the smallest little dig at Deep Space Nine.  Also a fun detail that the World Series now includes teams from Mars.  Ramirez gets summoned away to the Captain’s doomed mission, and has to leave after making a bet with Franklin.  The ships scan the area and then are pretty quickly ambushed by the mystery ship.  It destroys Sheridan’s ship as he ejects, and then makes quick work of the remaining fighters before capturing Sheridan and zipping off, leaving the wounded Ramirez behind.  His ship helpfully tells him that he is already dead from radiation, and the poor guy resolves to make it back to Babylon 5 to warn them about what happened to Sheridan. 

Ramirez is successful and makes it back to the station.  He manages to pass on the warning before dying, and Ivanova and Hague begin planning a rescue.  Hague calls in the Agamemnon and Ivanova gets her fighters ready.  Eventually Delenn gets in contact with Babylon 5 on her way back, and lets them know that the Minbari are aware of the race, the Streibs, and she gives them all the information they need to find the captain.  

Captain Sheridan gets to wake up in a pretty standard scifi abduction story.  He is getting pitted against random other captives in fights to the death, though the other participants have strange brain implants that are making them fight.  A neat little detail is that Sheridan apparently knows a bit of the Drazi language as he unsuccessfully attempts to talk his way out of his first fight.  After winning that fight he manages to only wound the Narn pilot we saw earlier, played by Marshall Teague of Road House fame.  He also manages to disable the implant and they work together to escape the ship, while speculating as to why the aliens are doing this. 

In the midst of all these boilerplate alien shenanigans, Sheridan gets to have a trippy dream featuring strange images of himself dressed as a Psi-Cop and various characters uttering cryptic phrases. Eventually Kosh shows up and takes credit for the dream which causes Sheridan to snap awake. 

Eventually all the plots collide as the Earth forces and Delenn arrive to beat the crap out of the Streibs.  Delenn even makes some threats.  We are treated to a pretty good little scifi battle as the Streibs get overwhelmed before they decide to execute all of their captives via spacing.  Sheridan and the Narn manage to make it to an escape pod for pick up. Sheridan gets back to the station a little worse for the wear, and gets confronted by Kosh who repeats “You have always been here” from the dream confirming that Kosh was behind it. 

Hague comes and visits the captain in his quarters, and pulls out a device to jam any listening devices.  Sheridan has been evaluating the Babylon 5 command staff to see if any of them may have had something to do with President Santiago’s death.  Hague begins to outline the shape of the conspiracy, mentioning elements in the military and intelligence agencies, as well as the Psi Corps.  Hague also points out that Babylon 5 is remote enough that Sheridan can begin gathering evidence on the conspiracy without attracting too much attention. Hague trusts Sheridan enough with this information and leaves it up to him to bring in others to help take back the Earth government.  Later Sheridan calls Ivanova, Franklin and Garibaldi to an off duty meeting, and explains to them the mission to work against Clark’s government. Everyone agrees to work toward the goal, which yeah we figured they would. 

Next week we jump back to the Narn-Centauri war with episode 12 “Acts of Sacrifice” a downer of an episode that starts hinting that the Narn are in trouble in the war that they declared.  It also has the most infamously cringy scene in the entirety of 110 episodes, so if that is your thing make sure to watch it and come here to comment. 

As always, a reminder that you can watch the episodes on Tubi with ads.  It looks like it is back off of Amazon Prime, but hey Tubi is free. 

The Good

• Another peek into the decline of Minbari society.  It really feels like every society in Babylon 5 is careening towards conservative rule and disaster in the series. 
• The show continues to flex its creative muscles in terms of staging space battles, something that will only get stronger.
• We get a sense that Kosh is interested in Sheridan which is a development for the character.

The Bad

• Ramirez and Franklin’s last scene together was a bit overacted especially on the part of Richard Biggs.
• Neroon’s tirade against Delenn got really ugly.  Then again this is culmination of everything she has been going through, and it would seem to fit with the xenophobic Neroon’s character. 

Arc Points (Spoilers Ahead)

• Sheridan begins getting prepared by Kosh for the coming war against the Shadows, even if he does not quite understand this.  He also gets some prophecies and courtesy of the enigmatic Vorlon.
• Sheridan also gets formall inducted into the conspiracy against the new president and then inducts the others.  This plot will play out for the next full year of the show and beyond. 
• Marshall Teague will return in Season 3 and 4, so finally the Narn get a recurring character.  Probably took them that long to find someone that could handle the extensive Narn makeup process.