We have arrived at the end of season 3 and it has been a doozy. Major story arcs got activated after operating in the background, a major character was killed off, status quos were upended and everyone even got new clothes. In many ways the Earth Civil War plot felt like the mature scifi story, whereas the Shadow War came across as a high fantasy good vs. evil epic. While the show hinted that there might be more to it than that in the past, this is the first episode that tries to inject some more complexity into the situation, even if it does not exactly succeed.
For a serialized show, Babylon 5 rarely picks up one episode right where the last left off, but this time they do, though with a nice little voice over from Delenn. They even redo some flashbacks to insert Melissa Gilbert into them. Sheridan is appropriately flabbergasted to see his dead wife standing in his quarters. Delenn quickly gets dressed and runs out the door. This leaves Anna to imply that Delenn knew she was alive the whole time. Despite being surprised by everything Sheridan is wary enough to reject Anna when she goes in for a hug. Anna promises answers to all of his questions if he will go with her to Z’Ha’Dum.
Back from the credits we get a quick scene of G’Kar delivering a bunch of powerful nuclear mines. When he questions why Sheridan is missing we get to jump back to that situation. Sheridan has his wife being poked and prodded by Franklin. Franklin lets the captain know that DNA, and dental records are a 100% match. Franklin does offer that there are strange scars on the back of Anna’s neck and promises more tests.
Sheridan leaves the doctor to confront Delenn, and she is not as helpful. She insists that she did not know about Anna being alive. He accused her and Kosh of holding things back to manipulate him, and he is not wrong. Delenn tries to defend herself by insisting that if Sheridan had thought there was a chance that Anna was alive he would have gone to Z’Ha’Dum and died. Sheridan admits that he was falling in love with Delenn and that this betrayal has deeply affected him. As he stalks off, Delenn professes her love for him, and he leaves without responding.
Londo is doing normal Londo things and reacting to news by drinking heavily. He has been promoted to the royal court, but he sees it as an attack on his independence rather than a reward. His rant is interrupted by a mysterious stranger that passes on a message that he must leave Babylon 5 at once for his own safety. Vir pegs him as a friend of Mr. Morden and Londo is clearly uncomfortable with the situation.
Franklin finishes his testing and in a nod to an earlier episode compares the scarring to the scarring found on the telepaths that were being sent as components for the Shadow ships. He passes the report on to Sheridan who reads it and begins to interrogate Anna. Anna promises that the Shadows are eager to meet him and explain their side of events. She also lets him know that they dont call themselves that, which I appreciate. Sheridan demands that she tell him exactly what happened to the crew when they landed, and promises to go to Z’Ha’Dum if she will do so.
Anna fills him in on information that he has mostly already known, Shadow ships on Mars, and things like that. She claims that when they landed they were approached by the Shadows, peacefully but that the Icarus blew up due to an accident and the Shadows agreed to shelter the rest of them. Sheridan claims to be satisfied, but the camera lingers on Franklin’s report indicating that he knows full well that something is up.
Sheridan summons Garibaldi, and requests that he bring the crew of the White Star over to the station and given Identicards so that they have their information if they ever need it. He also gives him one more errand that causes him to hesitate. Sheridan manages to convince him to do the mystery task, and then insists that the next time they see each other they will talk about the weather. He then runs off to his quarters and straps on two guns, while briefly having a hallucination of Kosh reminding him that if he goes to Z’Ha’Dum he will die. Before he leaves he records an unseen message for Delenn and then departs after having his weather chat with the chief.
After Sheridan leaves, Franklin runs to Ivanova in a panic, disbelieving that Sheridan left with Anna because of his report. Ivanova is apparently out of the loop on that and he fills her in. As she heads off to C&C the station gets surrounded by Shadow ships on all sides. The station scrambles their fighters, and Garibaldi heads out to lead them. G’Kar rushes in to let Ivanova know that two of the spiffy new bombs are missing.
Sheridan and Anna arrive on the planet, heading down via shuttle due to the Shadows having a superstition about Vorlon technology. Anna leads him into a residential complex where he gets to meet a kindly old man named Justin who describes himself as a middleman of sorts. Morden is also there in all of his slimy glory. Sheridan immediately makes Justin uncomfortable by asking him the Vorlon question of “Who are you?”. This sets the old man on a bit of rant about being aligned with the powerful people that make all the decisions for the world. They offer him some tea and a lengthy explanation of the conflict between the Shadows and the Vorlons.
Simply put the Shadows and Vorlons were the First Ones that were left behind to shepherd the younger races. The Vorlons believe in order and self-discipline being the path to enlightenment, and the Shadows believe that conflict and struggle are necessary to achieve great things. Justin and Morden causally suggest that a couple of genocides every once in a while are in the best interests of the galaxy. They accuse the Vorlons of essentially cheating, by creating telepaths amongst the races, and appearing as angels. They then implore Sheridan to break his alliance apart, to further the goal of conflict. He then ambushes them with the knowledge that he knows they brainwashed Anna by putting her in a Shadow ship. They are surprised he knows about this, but they admit that they had done that to her, and that once you are put in one you are never normal again, but very pliable. They attempt to ambush him and pulls his hidden gun and starts blasting.
Sheridan manages to escape from Justin and ends up on a balcony overlooking an underground city that surrounds a massive chasm. He sends command to the White Star ordering it to come down, and activating the two fusion bombs on board. Anna corners him and creepily asks him to surrender. Sheridan then hears Kosh’s voice ordering him to jump, and he goes for it. Anna rushes to the balcony in time to see the White Star come crashing through the roof of the city and explode. This causes the Shadow ships back at Babylon 5 to bug out, but not before kidnapping Garibaldi.
Everything going on with the Shadows is intercut with Sheridan’s message to Delenn, where he explains that she in the future told him not to go to Z’Ha’Dum. He then suggests that he is trying to get a better future, by ignoring that advice. He then ends the message by returning the “I love you” she gave him earlier.
We get a lovely little voice over from G’Kar, intercut with scenes of Delenn mourning, Ivanova being informed that Garibaldi is missing, and the Shadows surrounding the smoking crater that used to be their city.
That is the end of season 3, and what an end. We get another massive change, a possible character death or two, as well as a new arc beginning for Londo. I will admit the final shot of Delenn collapsing in grief when Sheridan’s message always gets me, as does G’Kar’s final monologue. Next we will start in on season 4, which is still a great season but it suffers from being overstuffed due to fear of cancellation, a problem that has knock on effects on season 5. We will jump right into it next week with “The Hour of the Wolf”.
Hard to say where you can find Babylon 5 at the moment, but I am continuing on with some pretty good quality downloads from Itunes that I made years ago. It may be back on Roku Channel.
Where do I know them from?
- Jeff Corey as Justin had a huge resume of TV and film appearances, but I remember him most as the coward Tom Chaney in True Grit.
The Good
- A really affecting episode that builds to a crazy climax. Watching this week to week as a kid was tough.
- I like how Sheridan’s plan was contingent on no one other character having access to all the information he did.
The Bad
- This is another of the great ones, I dont have too much to criticize.
Arc Points (Spoilers Ahead)
- The loss of the White Star is nearly as sad as Sheridan’s loss. I do like that in future episodes they dub another one of the ships the White Star II.
- Garibaldi’s kidnapping sets off one of my least favorite season 4 plots, but it is one that maybe would have been better with more breathing room, something I am probably going to say a lot in the next 22 weeks.
- I would have liked to have seen more from Justin, but sadly he is a one and done villain here, not appearing to survive the bombing.
- The show tried to give the Shadows a little more depth, but they ruin it by trying to brainwash everyone.
- The show also kind of just slides right on by the fact that Sheridan just nuked a city that contains plenty of humans as well as Shadows. Do Shadows have civilians?
- I am also torn on whether or not Sheridan always intended it to be a suicide mission. I would like to believe that he had thought he could figure a way out of the situation, but decided to blow up the place out of desperation.
- Story wise this clears the road for Delenn and Sheridan’s relationship pretty well. There is no closure like nuking your first wife.
- I like that Londo pops his head up for this one. His early season 4 arc on Centauri Prime is a favorite of mine.