“A Distant Star”
Written by D.C. Fontana
Directed by Jim Johnston
Season 2, Episode 4
Production episode 204
Original air date: November 23, 1994
It was the dawn of the third age… We open on the EAS Cortez, an Explorer-class vessel under the command of Captain Jack Maynard, who has a very specific message sent to B5. They’ve been out mapping the rim, and are coming to B5 for resupply. The ship comes through the jumpgate and proves to be almost as big as B5 itself.
Maynard and Sheridan are old friends—the message he sent refers to Sheridan as “swamp rat”—and their reunion is a happy one. Maynard, who was Sheridan’s first CO, is surprised to see Sheridan in a desk job, and also discusses some weird stuff he saw out on the rim.
Perhaps conscious of Maynard’s dismissive tone toward his new job, Sheridan bites Garibaldi’s head off when the security chief comes to him with a shoplifting issue, which Sheridan thinks is beneath his notice.
Franklin puts Garibaldi on a diet—which he calls an “eating plan” to make it sound less like he’s on a diet. Garibaldi insists that he has always eaten whatever he wants, and Franklin says that was before he got shot. Garibaldi also says he’s soon going to be making bagna càuda, but as soon as he lists the ingredients of same, Franklin puts his foot down that he absolutely should not have that. On a roll, Franklin also provides eating plans for Sheridan (who’s put on weight since taking over the station) and Ivanova (who, like Garibaldi, needs to change her diet due to her injuries).
Maynard and Sheridan tell war stories over dinner with Ivanova, Keffer, and Zeta Team Flight Leader Ray Galus. Afterward, Maynard tells Sheridan about a big black ship he thinks he saw, but couldn’t confirm. (We now know that it was a Shadow ship.)
A Minbari named Teronn meets with Delenn. There is great concern among the Minbari on the station regarding her transformation. They’re not even sure she is Minbari anymore.
The Cortez heads back out, now fully resupplied. But once in hyperspace they suffer a major malfunction, which knocks main power offline and causes the vessel to drift, losing their link to the hyperspace beacon.
Maynard’s visit has not been good for Sheridan, as now he feels like he’s been beached. He was trained to be a starship captain, not the mayor of a city in space. The eating plan isn’t helping, and he, Ivanova, and Garibaldi at one point try to trade foods, until Franklin walks past them with a stern look.
Garibaldi works with Orwell, a customs and import worker, to get the ingredients for bagna càuda, Franklin’s order be damned. Orwell points out that won’t be cheap or easy, but Garibaldi is willing to pay whatever’s necessary.
Delenn goes in for an exam, to her annoyance, but Franklin insists, especially given the unique nature of her transformation. During the exam, Delenn mentions hearing Garibaldi mentioning the arrival of the bagna càuda, which the ambassador mistakenly believes is a new alien race coming to the station.
Maynard orders a distress call sent. It’s a long shot, as it may not penetrate into normal space, but they have to take the chance. Sure enough, B5 hears the distress call. Sheridan sends out the Starfuries, ordering them to act like a chain, with one Starfury at the jumpgate, and others moving increasingly inward, providing a lifeline for the Cortez. Galus and Keffer are the final two ships in the lifeline, and they locate the Cortez. However something (a Shadow ship) moves through hyperspace; it destroys Galus’ Starfury and damages Keffer’s. However, Keffer is able to fire his weapons, and does so continuously in a straight line, giving the Cortez a path to take to the rest of the Starfuries.
The Cortez and all but two of the Starfuries return to B5. Sheridan is saddened to learn that Galus and Keffer didn’t make it.
Franklin shows up in the cargo bay just as Garibaldi is unpacking his box of bagna càuda ingredients. Garibaldi finally explains why this is so important: when he was a kid, his father would always make bagna càuda on his birthday. Since his Dad died, Garibaldi always makes it on his birthday to honor him. Franklin relents and allows Garibaldi to go ahead—but only if he makes enough for two.
Delenn sees Sheridan in the Zen Garden and offers him words of comfort, assuring him that the universe generally puts us where we’re supposed to go.
As Keffer drifts in hyperspace, he sees another Shadow ship. It pops out of hyperspace, and Keffer is able to use that as a reference point to steer back home. Sheridan is relieved that at least one of them made it back. They hold a wake for Galus, and Ivanova also tells Keffer that he’s now in command of Zeta Wing.
Franklin enjoys the hell out of the bagna càuda, even though he admits that he can feel his arteries hardening just being in the same room as it. Meanwhile, Sheridan digs into his mountain of paperwork, feeling better about being mayor now.
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Weirdly, even though it was established that Maynard and Sheridan hadn’t seen each other in at least five years, Maynard doesn’t once bring up Sheridan’s wife, who’s only been dead for two years.
Ivanova is God. Ivanova eats well and exercises, so she’s more than a little put out by Franklin’s eating plan, especially since it means she’ll gain weight initially. This prompts a complaint from Ivanova about how she’s fought against imperialism all her life and now is becoming the expanding Russian frontier, to which Franklin makes the rather icky riposte, “With very nice borders.”
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi didn’t have the closest relationship with his father, but the birthday bagna càuda is one of the fondest memories the security chief has of him. The ritual obviously means a great deal to him, and it’s to Franklin’s credit that he not only lets him go through with it, but asks to participate.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Delenn is pretty obviously flying blind and without a net, as the Minbari doubt that she’s even still Minbari, and the non-Minbari don’t really know what to make of her, either.
She also quotes Carl Sagan without attribution…
The Shadowy Vorlons. The Shadows apparently like to just hang out in hyperspace…
No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Delenn bucks Sheridan up, which proves beneficial to him, and which also gives us the first signs of their eventual relationship.
Welcome aboard. The big guest is the great Russ Tamblyn, of West Side Story, Peyton Place, and Twin Peaks fame, as Maynard. Other members of Maynard’s crew on the Cortez are played by Daniel Beer and Patty Toy. (Toy previously played a Psi Corps representative in “A Voice in the Wilderness, Part I.”)
Art Kimbro plays Galus and Miguel A. Nuñez Jr. plays Orwell. Joshua Cox is back from “The Geometry of Shadows” as Corwin; he’ll be back in “A Spider in the Web.” And Sandey Grinn plays the first of three different roles as Teronn; he’ll return as a Narn captain in “Acts of Sacrifice” and a human telepath in “The Exercise of Vital Powers.”
Trivial matters. Bagna càuda is a real thing, a fondue-like dish full of garlic and anchovies, which has its origins in Piedmont, Italy, and which is common in northern Italy and southeast France, as well as places like Argentina and parts of the U.S. that have lots of immigrants from that region.
Keffer mentions reading an article about the possibility of something living in hyperspace. He’s probably referring to the Universe Today article, the headline for which was seen in “And the Sky Full of Stars.”
Much of Delenn’s pep talk to Sheridan lifts from Carl Sagan, particularly the famous quote “we are starstuff.” Sheridan acts as if he’s never heard the phrase before, which I find difficult to credit for someone who makes his living in space, but I suppose it’s possible.
Ivanova is still injured from last time, mirroring the real-life injury suffered by Claudia Christian.
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“You think that’s good, wait till dessert.”
“Now wait a minute, I didn’t authorize dessert.”
“No? Then you can’t have any.”
“What is it?”
“Doesn’t matter—you’re not getting any.”
“No no no, let’s not be hasty.”
“No no no no no, too late.”
—Garibaldi torturing Franklin over bagna càuda.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “We are starstuff.” To me, this will always be the bagna càuda episode. While it’s not something that was ever in the repertoire of my various Italian-American relatives, it’s still a yummy Italian food, which always makes my heart happy. And it’s a nice tradition Garibaldi has with his Dad. I especially like that, once it becomes something personal, Franklin modulates from Garibaldi’s doctor to his friend and asks to partake in the tradition.
Having said that, the put-everyone-on-a-diet subplot is weak-tea sitcom nonsense, complete with silly 90s euphemisms (“eating plan”), creepy dialogue (Franklin’s oogy “nice borders” line), and mediocre humor (the plate-switching scene).
The rest of the episode is good. As with last time, the guest casting hits it out of the park, as Russ Tamblyn is superb, making Maynard a very lived-in character, with perfect best-friend chemistry with Bruce Boxleitner. The rescue mission is handled well, especially since the Cortez is made up entirely of guest stars, and killing off the main character’s heretofore-unseen best friend is a long-established cliché, so there’s an expectation that Maynard and his crew might not make it. Adding to this is the constant stream of portentious utterings about the coming darkness we’ve been getting since “Chrysalis,” and you genuinely fear for the Cortez. Which makes their rescue all the sweeter.
Alas, the redshirting of Galus doesn’t land as well, nor does the attempt to give Keffer a minor spotlight. Both characters are complete ciphers, making it hard to get worked up over their danger, especially since Galus is a guest star and Keffer is an opening-credits regular, so the former’s death is expected for the same reason that Maynard’s was feared, and Keffer’s survival is almost a given. (Caveat necessary for reasons that will be clear at season’s end.) This is Keffer’s second appearance and he has yet to be granted a personality, which is problematic.
I’m iffy about the writing decision to have Delenn quote Carl Sagan without attribution, but it’s such a great quote, I think I can forgive it. And it’s nice to see Sheridan come to embrace his job, and also see the beginnings of the Sheridan-Delenn pairing in the conversation where she quotes Sagan.
Next week: “The Long Dark.”
According to Doctor Franklin, the dish in question certainly makes your tummy and tastebuds happy, but gives the heart quite a shock to the system! (-;
On a more serious note, one can only wonder if Captain Sheridan’s friend received advance warning of the Good Captain’s bereavement on returning from the Fringes – one assumes that there would be quite a few messages waiting once the Cortez* got back into home space (If so, it’s perfectly possible that both friends preferred to avoid such a grim topic at their first meeting in five years, preferring to focus on the positive).
*I wonder if that ship was named for a non-Conquistador Cortez or if the name is a subtle hint that EarthForce isn’t entirely on the up-and-up when it comes to Strange New Worlds?
IIRC is has been specifically stated by JMS that the passenger liner Asimov is not named after Isaac Asimov in-universe.
The spelling “Asimov” is unique to Isaac Asimov’s father, so whoever it’s named after must be one of his descendants.
I think that’s possible. But the historical treatment of many figures have their ups and downs and a multinational alliance like Earthforce probably has to take input from its component cultures even where they’re at odds.
I agree that Cortez is mostly famous for unprovoked aggression against strangers, killing them, taking their stuff, and subjecting them to oppression, but ditto Alexander the Great and Earthforce has a ship named after him too. Which may reflect who was head of the defense subcommittee the year each was commissioned, or which region’s votes were critical to the upcoming election.
(Probably. It could also be the famous 22nd century figures Jess Alexander who invented the jump gate and Ximena Cortez who put down the Helvetic Uprising, but betting the odds.)
But it’s also plausible that all the conqueror names are a tell about where the Earth Alliance is headed.
My headcanon has been that Ramya Cortez was the first person to leave the solar system–or something like that.
Also, I know it’s difficult to avoid monsters when mining the Age of Exploration, but there are other options. Like not using the Age of Exploration.
There are plenty of non-rapacious explorers to choose from, like Jacques Cousteau, Neil Armstrong, and the like. There’s Charles Darwin, who was anti-slavery. One of my favorite explorers was Mary Kingsley, who helped promote understanding of West African cultures and opposed the excesses of imperialism, as well as being a darn good writer. (I’m convinced that Marie Brennan must have modeled the narrator/heroine of her Lady Trent series on Kingsley, at least in part.)
People often like to say that the racist or sexist or imperialist attitudes of the past were just “a product of their time,” as if everyone was like that, but in every time, there are people on different sides of the ideological spectrum, and in every culture whose cultural norms or state policies were dominated by prejudice or cruelty, there have been those who spoke out against them and called for things to change for the better. So you don’t have to avoid the whole era, just understand it well enough to pick out the more admirable voices.
I was utterly unfamiliar with Mary Kingsley, but a cursory search makes me want to learn more. Thanks for the heads-up!
I wrote my senior thesis in college on Mary Kingsley, and I just remembered that I posted it on my homepage:
https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/mary_kingsley_clbennett.pdf
I’m fond of Alexander von Humboldt, who inspired Darwin to join the Beagle. Also anti-slavery and pro-liberation of South America.
Given where Crusade in particular would have gone with Earthforce, I think this is a small and deliberate touch to give us a broader sense of uneasiness.
It isn’t as though, say, naming US Military bases after Confederate generals isn’t still a thing today. At the least, we can infer some disagreement over how colonial/imperial Earth should be.
No, JMS’s Usenet comments which I quoted earlier make it clear that he thought Cortes was just an “explorer,” that he didn’t think there was anything bad associated with the name.
Barbetta in the theatre district serves bagna cauda. I just don’t think it’s kind to eat that much garlic before a show.
Especially if you’re doing a presentation of “Interview with the Vampire”…
(I’ll show myuself out)
“Great” is not a word I would ever associate with Russ Tamblyn. I don’t think I’ve liked him in anything I’ve ever seen him in. Maybe I’m tarring him with a lot of the blame for the silliness that is The Long Ships, a film with great actors (Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier) based on what may the greatest viking novel ever, that just vomits all over its source material.
His performance here is fine, I guess, though I think he comes across a little flat. There’s also a bit of a hiccup in the backstory here. At one point, Sheridan say that Maynard was his first commanding officer, which makes some sense with the difference in ages, and it’s not at all impossible for a friendship to develop out of that. The problem is that the Swamp Rat and Stinky business gives off more of an “at the Academy together” vibe. I just can’t buy it arising from a friendship that started out with the sort of social imbalance implied by the CO comment.
But maybe EarthForce has a much flatter hierarchy or something. This is the second time we’ve seen Keffer fraternizing with XO and Chief Medical Officer with the expectation that the Captain will be making an appearance. This is such a violation of basic military protocol, my brain just rebels and refuses to accept it. He isn’t even flight leader until the end of the episode. Actually, my guess is that JMS put this in so that they’d get letters complaining just like I did here that he could then wave at the network and say the character simply doesn’t fit in.
Other than that, a decent episode.
Earthforce ranks are a total mess and while it does appear the officer/enlisted distinction is observed, that looks to be where things end.
Maybe something in the nature of long deployments is being hinted at, but more likely Fontana is writing one of those mentorship stories that works well outside the strict boundaries of military discipline (Starfleet also wavers between “we are military” and “we’re kind of military” at times.)
Russ Tamblyn was a great dancer in his day — check out his work in George Pal movies — but I never found him more than a mediocre actor.
Franklin and Garibaldi come off as much better characters in this batch of episodes, where franklin isn’t as judgy and willing to bend and Garibaldi being more deeper than “Cop”
Yes, the diet thing is dopey, but otherwise it’s pretty solid D.C. Fontana.
(and it’s “food plan”)
This one was uneven. I found the first half rather weak; the stuff about Sheridan chafing at his new job was pretty basic stuff, and the “food plan” business (not “eating plan”) was mired in antiquated notions of how healthy eating works. I mean, good grief, lots of Italian cuisine is vegetarian and loaded with healthy antioxidants and stuff. It was also a gender stereotype to have Ivanova be the only one who objected to gaining weight.
But the second half was more interesting, since we finally got some exploration of how hyperspace works, and I love a creative rescue sequence. Though it’s a lucky accident that Keffer happened to be spinning on an axis perpendicular to the return course so that he could fire straight ahead in the right direction.
This is also the first time I’ve actually liked one of Christopher Franke’s episode scores. The Cortez theme was very nice, and there was a nice variation of it under Delenn’s starstuff speech. I would’ve liked it better had it been orchestral rather than synth, though.
Speaking of which, it’s pretty tone-deaf to name an explorer ship the Cortez. JMS offered an incredibly tone-deaf defense of it on Usenet when it was called out back in the day:
“Blaming explorers for exploring has always seemed to me really kind of silly; do people *really* think that if Columbus hadn’t landed here, it’d be 1994 and we still wouldn’t know the world was round and that this continent was here? It doesn’t matter who discovered it, the same result would’ve come. Somebody had to discover it sooner or later.”
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/guide/026.html
Ignoring that they were conquerors, not “explorers,” that they enslaved and massacred the indigenous peoples rather than simply finding them. Also that it’s ethnocentric as hell to claim that a continent with its own civilization was “undiscovered” until white people found it (or rather, until they found it again, since the Vikings were there 500 years earlier). Not to mention falling for the myth that Columbus discovered the world was round.
One technical error is that of course B5 would have wind, because it’s spinning and the Coriolis effect would cause the air to flow steadily to antispinward. (Which is also the cause of a lot of the Earth’s wind and water currents.) Another error is that in the shot of Keffer’s Starfury returning into the station, I’m pretty sure the fighter was way larger than it should’ve been.
When Sheridan recited that Egyptian blessing, it occurred to me that “All the Empty Places” would’ve been a much better title for this episode.
It’s a great motif: the multimedia Guide to B5 released for home computers had a clip of the Cortez arrival and departure I must have played fifty times just to hear it. Given B5’s budget, an orchestral score was never going to be in the cards.
While the ship name works thematically later on, that defense at the time suggests a kind of retrospective appropriateness flying in the face of obliviousness in the moment. I do wonder whether Fontana or Stracynski came up with the name originally. That defense reads differently to me if it’s a justification for not changing the name versus being its origin.
I didn’t have internet during the original run, so I never realized he said he didn’t intend Cortez to refer to the Conquistador baggage. I thought it fit perfectly with the rather aggressive naming scheme used by Earth Force.
They are warships. They should have aggressive names. It is odd for the Cortez because he is not primarily famous for exploration.
No, the Cortez was explicitly an explorer ship, not a warship, and JMS explicitly said on Usenet that he believed Cortez was merely an explorer, because he got the whitewashed version of history that his generation and mine were taught.
Sorry. I expressed myself poorly. I meant that warships should have aggressive names, but the ship in this story, being an exploratory vessel, should not. Cortez is therefore an odd name for such a ship, precisely because he is famous for an act of conquest.
If they had named a destroyer after him, it would have been perfectly natural.
“If they had named a destroyer after him, it would have been perfectly natural.”
Natural for an aggressive, conquering state without regard for indigenous rights, perhaps, but not for a state that sees itself as benevolent and seeks to use force only defensively.
Everyone has their blindspots. I spent decades believing that the conquistadors were simply daring adventurers, because that’s what I’d been taught. I was probably in my thirties before I found out what utter bastards they were as well.
Me too. Generations of us were raised with a “history” of Columbus that was pretty much a wholesale fabrication by Washington Irving, who felt that America needed a founder hero to mythologize and picked a really awful one. And by the other Enlightenment-era thinkers who wanted to demonize the Church and monarchies by claiming they’d been stupid enough to believe the Earth was flat.
A large part of the reason I went back to college a second time to major in history was because I’d realized how ethnocentric and inaccurate my previous history education had been and I wanted to get a more global view. So I guess it doesn’t surprise me that JMS was mired in the same myths and censored historical education as the rest of us, but it does make it dated and unfortunate in retrospect.
Golden age sci fi writers tended more towards imperialism than postcolonialism, and JMS grew up as much or more on them as on high school and college curricula.
The setting as a whole tends towards suspicion in these contexts (whether Mars/Earth or Narn/Centauri) but I think I’d situate the series as living in a transition space where imperialism looks bad but postcolonial alternatives haven’t really materialized and our protagonists tend to be colonizers and not so much the colonized.
DS9 explicitly tackles these issues; B5’s “Casablanca in Space” leans more towards “here the imperial representatives meet to divide up the galaxy,” but it certainly isn’t presenting that as a happy outcome.
Though by the same token, we don’t know how those figures are taught across Earth and its colonies in B5’s time. The same primary sources were available in JMS’s formative years, the year the show was made, and now. How they get translated into popular history (via formal education, pop culture, lay history books, osmosis, etc.) has varied a lot.
(I don’t disagree with the current consensus re Cortez, but I live now too.)
The issue is not whether it can be explained in-universe. It’s the storyteller’s job to figure that out. A critic’s job is to critique a work of fiction as a created artistic work here in the real world, to assess the merits and the flaws in the creators’ choice to tell the story the way they did. Concocting an in-story excuse for a flawed idea doesn’t change the fact that it was a flawed idea.
I don’t think that it requires Marvel No-Prize level reasoning to say that people naming warships in the 23rd century might have a similar appraisal of Cortez to plenty of people in the last several centuries (including, evidently, the showrunner), even if I don’t share it.
(“Cortez” only dropped out of the top 1000 US baby names a decade ago. There are kids named Cortez right now probably no older than the ship is in this episode, whose parents presumably weren’t thinking “monster” when they chose it.)
In a new age of exploration and colonization, the “small force overcoming a brutal empire” narrative might well outweigh the greed, cynicism, betrayal, and aggression. (Especially in the wake of the Earth-Minbari War.)
That doesn’t have to have been JMS’s thought process to stand on its own. It’s not implausible, it doesn’t clash with the tone of the show or the naming scheme of the fleet, and the Earth Alliance isn’t the sort of aspirational vision that would make it out of place.
By contrast, the Federation is supposed to be better than us, so it would ring false for them– they’re always at least *supposed* to be informed by (our current understanding of) our better angels from a certain perspective. Not always honored, of course, as countless examples from Kirk’s favorite Academy instructor on make clear. But, still, it’s fair to criticize those failures insofar as it’s framed as aspirational.
That said, I don’t remember if that came up in the DS9 rewatch when Starfleet’s USS Cortez appeared. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/USS_Cortez
But the Earth Alliance isn’t presented as better than us. It’s much more “us, but in space” at best, even before the dark undercurrents stop being undercurrents. And we have a US Coast Guard Station Cortez, located in a US city named Cortez in Florida, right now.
So I really don’t think Earthforce having a ship of that name rings a particularly false note.
“I don’t remember if that came up in the DS9 rewatch when Starfleet’s USS Cortez appeared.”
If it didn’t, it should have. It is always worth pointing out when people in the past had cultural blind spots, because we can’t outgrow them as a society if we hide from the fact that they existed and that they were wrong.
And JMS’s online comments make it clear that he wasn’t trying to portray Earthforce as morally ambiguous; he just uncritically accepted the same historical whitewashing that I and most people of my generation and before uncritically accepted until we learned better.
And yes, there are plenty of place names rooted in unfortunate aspects of history. My state’s capital is named Columbus, and nobody’s likely to rename the District of Columbia anytime soon. But people back then didn’t know better. We should know better now, and it’s dated writing to assume that people two and a half centuries from now wouldn’t know better.
The same argument that people at earlier times can know better about something than their contemporaries runs the other way too. People in later times don’t have to retain what we believe we’ve learned. (Every aging generation complains about that.)
Changes in historical appraisal aren’t linear. We don’t “know better” about Cortez because historical records exist that hadn’t been discovered in 1990 or 1950, but because we evaluate which aspects of what he did are important in a different way.
The idea that people in 2258 (and not even people explicitly defined as the Good Guys a la Trek, nor everyone in 2258, just “the people naming warships for Earthforce” and to a lesser extent the community in which they’re embedded) will necessarily share beliefs with (a subset of) people in 2024 more than they do (a different subset of) people in 1994 seems like a different form of ethnocentrism.
I’ve lived through too many such shifts in rather less than the two and a half plus centuries separating us from B5’s time to think that this time, we’ve definitely hit a permanent stable equilibrium, such that it’s an artistic flaw to imply otherwise.
As I’ve already said repeatedly, the issue isn’t the people in 2258, because they don’t exist. They’re a story told by JMS and others. It’s pointless to argue about their beliefs and choices, because they don’t have any; the appearance of their beliefs and choices is shaped by the storytellers’ beliefs and choices. So those are what’s worth critiquing.
“Much of Delenn’s pep talk to Sheridan lifts from Carl Sagan, particularly the famous quote “we are starstuff.” Sheridan acts as if he’s never heard the phrase before, which I find difficult to credit for someone who makes his living in space, but I suppose it’s possible.”
I had the same initial reaction, but the more I thought about it, the less bothered I was by it. I don’t imagine that every captain in the US Navy can quote Jacques Cousteau. I’m more surprised that Delenn has apparently heard it, since she’s from another planet, but maybe Carl Sagan is revered as a philosopher in the 23rd century, in which case he’d be right up her street.
Anyway I basically agree about the episode. The A plot was pretty good with a couple of cringeworthy moments (I wasn’t surprised when it turned out that the black guy didn’t make it back from the dangerous mission) while the B plot was just cringeworthy, though it did make me want to try bagna càuda.
My favorite thing about this show, apart from the world building, continues to be the big ship designs. I adore the Star Trek aesthetic, but the Cortez is what I actually imagine a deep space exploration vessel would look like.
It could be as simple as that phrase has made it into the general vernacular while having lost attribution. Or it could have been a Mimbari religious phrase that just happen to be the same as something Sagan said (the law of parallel development).
For purposes of Babylon 5, it’s also possible Sagan was a Minbari, died, was reborn into a human body, and shared his philosophy with both cultures during his lifetimes. The decline Lennier talks about in the reveal was over the past 2,000 years so to the extent Minbari beliefs about the soul are correct, then any historical figure from from ~250 CE-present is a candidate for being a Minbari rebirth. So the two cultures could have a lot of thinkers who did suspiciously similar thinking because, well, turns out it was the same person.
It wouldn’t have been that hard to insert a line where Sheridan namechecks a “20th century scientist and philosopher who said something similar” between Delenn mentioning starstuff and telling him the universe puts us where we need to be. While that might have lessened her impact on Sheridan, it would have a) been a little more believable by hooking him into a way of thinking he was already familiar with and b) reinforced her belief in the connection between Minbari and humans.
It would’ve been pointless to insert such a line. It isn’t necessary to attribute a paraphrase, only a verbatim quote. Authors paraphrase ideas they picked up from other sources all the time. It would’ve dragged the story to a halt if JMS had to have his characters stop and say “Oh, that’s a Tolkien reference” or “Gee, that Centauri political thing is a lot like the Roman Empire, isn’t it?” every time he made an allusion or homage to one of his inspirations. Annotations belong outside the story.
Also, Sagan never said a damn thing about the universe putting us where we needed to be. That’s pure mysticism. And it directly contradicts what he actually did say, that we are the consciousness of the universe, the part of it that’s capable of trying to understand it and act on that understanding. So Delenn was contradicting herself by trying to have it both ways.
Except, as was discussed in the comments a couple of weeks back, the Minbari belief in souls being reborn is not necessarily true, but is more likely simply their interpretation of humans having the same DNA as Valen.
True. Though the Soul Hunters seem to be capturing (or recording) something, and likewise
Though I suppose the Minbari being right about there being souls, while entirely wrong about their transmigrating between Minbari and humans due to their misunderstanding about Valen, would be kind of funny.
(ISTR there’s at least one SF story where it’s revealed by aliens that yes, immortal souls exist, but humans don’t have them.)
Don’t forget: the savior-founder figure of Minbari culture may well have read Sagan and quoted him to his followers.
Delenn’s lines were a paraphrase of Sagan rather than a verbatim quote, and Sagan himself was probably drawing on earlier statements of the concept:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/06/22/starstuff/
So it doesn’t require Delenn to have been intentionally quoting Sagan. It could just be that Minbari thinkers have independently arrived at the same idea. After all, it’s a simple statement of scientific fact that all matter was formed from elements created mostly in stars. So every scientifically knowledgeable society in the universe would be aware of it.
And her take on star stuff and how the universe is put together feels very similar to the way Minbari religion approaches the very concept of souls, with old souls being reborn in new generations. The way the universe’s molecules keep changing and evolving into new forms.
The acting at some places was terrible. The dialogues on the Cortez after the accident? The acting is terrible from Tamblyn and whoever is standing next to him, but also the way that they are explaining to the camera how they lost the way is super cringe. The next dialogue about the “navigation shot to hell” is also bad – i thought it’s some amateur acting club’s recording…no music, no sound and just very awkward acting. So i really wasn’t impressed by Tamblyn. The war stories scene at the dinner was also terribly overacted, i felt embarrassed just watching it…
Otherwise I agree with the review, the bagna càuda storyline and the rescue was cool and those Shadow guys do seem very evil. :)
This could easily have been a great episode, because the story is good, but the acting and directing didn’t help.
This is one of the episodes in this season that does not impress me. It’s fine. It gives us some good world building. The food plan part is grating and I just never got that into the rescue of Maynard and his crew. It’s a let down from last week, but better than next week’s, IMO.
In the end this one just isn’t that memorable for me.
I’m starting to believe Delenn didn’t think through ramifications her transformation would have, She tells Teronn only obedience is required and he tells her if is she truly Minbari. She just assumed they would blindly accept it.
“Russ Tamblyn is superb”
I dunno about that. Well, maybe it’s the character’s fault, but during the scene on the Cortez after the explosion on the bridge Maynard is portrayed as being borderline of panic, and not sure which side of that border he’s on either. Very overacted, the way some people who mostly do theater can act. He’s trying to reach the back row and, well, there is no back row to reach. And the other bridge crew are panicking too, which could be fatal. I know the real Navy practices every possible bad thing that can happen so that people won’t panic if it happens.
This is a strange one for me. I like a lot of the character moments, and the overall plot should have more of an impact, but I feel like it doesn’t quite come together as a whole. That said, it does kick off Keffer’s subplot regarding his obsession with what might be living in hyperspace, which at least factors into later events in a meaningful way.
I did get a kick out of seeing Dr. Jacoby in space, though.
Fontana’s third and final B5 script introduces us to a new side of Sheridan: cranky, restless and frustrated. I’ve always enjoyed “A Distant Star” because the first half plays more like a ‘slice of life’ piece with barely any plot, driven entirely by character before picking things up with the hyperspace plot in the second half – it almost feels like it comes from a different episode!
While it is credited to Fontana, there are at least three scenes that almost certainly have Straczynski’s footprints all over: one is Delenn’s ‘star stuff’ scene (which I’ve always appreciated), the other is the Egyptian blessing passage from Sheridan (which gets reused in season 3’s “Shadow Dancing”). And lastly, there is that office scene where Sheridan vents his frustration to Ivanova where he makes an analogy to primates, claiming that had they known politics would be an outcome of evolution, they would have stayed up on their trees.
That particular line almost sounds like a libertarian rant. But it also feels like a case of reverse-foreshadowing, knowing what happens to Sheridan down the line. I loved that line as a teen, but these days it definitely feels like a clumsy one. Still, it fits the kind of person President Clark thought he was putting in charge of B5. He expected a jarhead who follows orders and wants nothing to do with politics – but people who really know him, like Gen. Hague, know better than that.
What I do love about that scene is that Ivanova is putting up with none of that crap. She’s the perfect first officer. She talks back and matches his crankiness with a firm commanding tone, straddling the line as his close friend but also as the station’s XO. The way she challenges Sheridan and bluntly asks if he thinks Hague might have made a mistake putting him in charge.
We also get another instance of a well devised strategy from Sheridan. The lifeline telescope maneuver is a sound one, and while Keffer is a one-note character, I appreciate how he doesn’t even blink after the run-in with the Shadows and the loss of Galus, moving straight to fire his guns at the exit vector. I do have my issues with Tamblyn as Maynard (he comes across too soft for an Earthforce captain), but I do credit the episode for capturing that feel of hopelessness when Sheridan is pacing on CnC and bites Ivanova’s head off – and her rolling with it and punching right back (as they wait to find the Cortez). We feel his acute pain over the potential loss of innocent life out there.
I adore Franke’s score for this one. I love it that the Cortez gets such a unique memorable theme – one that stays exclusive to this episode. It really sells the idea that exploration is where the job gets truly special, reinforcing Sheridan’s frustration over being relegated to what’s essentially a desk job.
I have yet to try bagna cauda to this day. It sounds delicious. A nice bit of character work for Garibaldi (and the final step in his recovery over being shot), and while the diet plot may be hopelessly outdated, I still get a laugh out of the trading dishes gag (and indeed, I figured Franklin’s comment over Ivanova’s figure would play rather poorly on this rewatch).
Funny, I thought the episode was poorly paced because the first half felt so devoid of any stakes.
As for the “evolution was a bad idea” line, that sounds like it was a nod to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And yes, I agree it sounds clumsy in context.
As for bagna cauda, I generally love things with garlic and olive oil, but the anchovies are a dealbreaker. I never liked fish.
I’ve been thinking about what, if anything, I wanted to say about this episode. It’s not one of my favorites, but I don’t hate it. It’s a bit half-baked, but it isn’t terrible.
I think the core of this episode is in Delenn’s exchange with Sheridan in the garden, but it isn’t the Sagan paraphrase. It’s the earlier part: that wherever you are is the right place, at the right time. In that moment, Delenn is convincing herself as much as she is Sheridan. Both Delenn and Sheridan are struggling with dissatisfaction and doubt about whether they have made mistakes. Both of them emerge from that exchange reinvigorated and reassured – better prepared to face the challenges to come. And it is not a coincidence that it is their interaction that strengthens both of them, rather than something either realizes alone.
From a character perspective, I think it would have been better if Sheridan’s doubt had a bit more room to breathe. His tantrum at Garibaldi seems somewhat petty and juvenile, partly because it comes on so quickly with such little provocation. And partly because, on a first viewing, it is harder to say whether this is in or out of character for him. Maybe he’s just prone to giving inconsistent instructions and lashing out at subordinates? But if you treat it as a bit of short-hand, it stands as the example of why just wishing things were different is unproductive and self-defeating. The scene with Ivanova calling him on his attitude helps to drive that home.
Teronn’s challenge to Delenn (and, more importantly, her reaction to it) is a bit more effective in this regard, because it allows us to see her confidence falter more clearly. It is enough to see that moment of doubt for what it is.
This was a fun episode.
And isn’t that explorer ship the same type Captain Gideon commanded before he took command of Excalibur in the Crusade show?