I mentioned back in the Londo heavy episode that an advantage to having 22 episodes and not enough plot to fill them means that the show can luxuriate in one off episodes that do some good character building work without having to be slaves to the story arc. Season 4 did not have that luxury and it suffered for. “A View from the Gallery” proves that even when you have the time to do solid character episodes, sometimes you can just waste that time with meaningless filler. An episode that would not be out of place in any other scifi show, this one just does not feel like Babylon 5. Star Trek: The Next Generation could get away with an episode like “Lower Decks” because for the most part it was not important to have seen those characters before, or after. A show like B5 doing something like that is just giving up one of its advantages.
The episode opens with mysterious aliens destroying a hyperspace probe. Lockley is informed and she seems to have been expecting them. Apparently a fleet of ships from an unknown alien race is on its way to Babylon 5 to fight. Their mission is to evaluate Babylon 5 and Earth to see if they are vulnerable to invasion. Lockley rallies the C&C crew to the challenge and launches all the stations fighters. As a team of security officers in battle gear go running to their stations, they pass two maintenance workers who complain to each other about the alert and the clean up required afterwards.
Lockley implores Sheridan to standby to evacuate, and they argue about it. The two maintenance men, Mack and Bo, discuss Sheridan and their admiration for the man who used to be their commander. They end up breaking for lunch and discussing what kinds of food they can get into the station. They are interrupted by a PA announcement that sends them off to Medlab and the observation dome.
Bo takes the Medlab job, where Franklin is briefing all of the medical staff on the upcoming battle, before breaking and having Bo look at a malfunctioning monitor. Bo overhears Franklin trying to make preparations to treat alien wounded and questions it, leading to the doctor telling him a story about his father being captured by the enemy, and the enemy doctor providing treatment that saved his father’s life.
Mack ends up in C&C trying to fix a console for Corwin as the enemy scouts come through the gate. The battle rages on as Mack dutifully works on the console, fixing it in the nick of time and allowing the defense grid to destroy the last of the scouts. He proudly presents the giant cockroach to Corwin explaining that it ate through some wiring.
Back together Bo and Mack compare notes, and discuss Lockley and her service during the Earth Civil War. They also address some of the rumors around Claudia Christian’s departure in a tongue in cheek manner. As they ride the elevator Garibaldi and Lockley get on and argue over the lack of intel that the Alliance has on the new alien threat.
Down in Brown Sector the two fix some pipes and address fan complaints about Jump gates before getting sent off to another job. As they do that the battle starts in earnest. The two watch out of the window and discuss how the battle is going, and how to tell which explosions are from B5 ships and which ones are alien. They also discuss fan complaints about how the White Stars look, with Bo liking them, and Mack claiming that they look like plucked chickens. They are interrupted once again as they watch a breaching pod come through and the PA directs everyone to disaster shelters.
As they ride the elevator again it gets stuck, and when the doors open again they are dumped into the middle of a fight between the boarders and security. They help out at little before Zack sees them and directs them run. They then have the grave misfortune of running into Byron. He is at least not openly hostile to them, but he does go on about how people dying tend to release telepathic energy, even aliens. An alien runs into the group, but the telepaths send him on his way without him having seen any of them. Bo expresses a wish to be out in space fighting, and Byron seizes on it, being a creep, before he casts Bo’s mind out into one of the pilots.
At the disaster shelter, Londo is pacing about and complaining that the universe itself has it in for him. G’Kar points out that he spent a lot of his childhood in a bomb shelters, hiding from Centauri bombardments designed to punish rebellion. He claims that shelters are the closest thing he has to a home. Londo is suitably uncomfortable with this and begins to leave G’Kar but G’Kar calmly asks Londo how he spent his childhood. Londo is pushed off balance for a moment by the sincere question, but then replies he was never a child, all he can remember was always having a duty to his family and his house.
Outside the station, the battle rages on with another wave of unnamed aliens coming in. A massive explosion damages the station, which causes Mack and Bo to be called into service for firefighting duty. As they walk they pass by Sheridan begging Delenn to go to a life pod so that he will at least know she is safe. He tasks Mack and Bo with escorting her to one, using the logic that all of the security personnel are needed elsewhere. Delenn halts them, asking their names and implying that she will sabotage any attempt to launch her in a life pod. She then simply leaves them behind. Before they can really process that, they get to witness the arrival of the bulk of the White Star fleet which handily destroys the antagonists that are not important enough to rate a name.
Bo and Mack wander through the aftermath complaining about the cleanup, before stumbling across Franklin processing an emergency morgue. As Mack and Bo repair the smashed C&C Lockley and Corwin debrief and seem satisfied that not only have they defeated the generic alien menace, they did so thoroughly enough that they will never be seen or heard from again. Mack interrupts to sweatily inform Lockely that he thinks she is ok. Since he has been a conduit for fan complaints the whole episode, I guess JMS thought he could try and use that to address the most recent complaint. As the two workers move on to their next assignment, they pass Sheridan and Delenn in the hall, and Delenn greets them both by name, enchanting both men.
As much as I like the concept of an episode that follows the regular people of Babylon 5, I feel like we already had that in Zack Allan as a character. Babylon 5’s one main strength was continuity and introducing two new characters that will never been seen again, and an alien threat that will never be seen again in the same episode was just too much for me. Then having the two act as surrogates to voice audience complaints and have them try and bolster two other new characters that people were not fans of was even worse. Next week we get a bit of an inside look at the Rangers, using more one off characters, in “Learning Curve”.
Where do I know them from?
- Raymond O’Connor as Mack, I remember best as Park Ranger Bob in The Rock.
- Lawrence LeJohn as Bo, I have never really seen in anything but he appears in the background of two different episodes of Seinfeld.
The Good
- An on the ground view of the station form the maintenance team is a decent premise, and I cant really fault the guest actors for the performance.
- Londo and G’Kar’s conversation snuck in a little character building.
The Bad
- All the continuity breaking, and nods to the fans, were irritating without much reason for any of it.
Arc Points (Spoilers Ahead)
- No real arc points on this one, though they do at least nod to continuity by mentioning that the White Stars were so far away because of the events of “A Paragon of Animals”.