“A Late Delivery from Avalon”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Michael Vejar
Season 3, Episode 13
Production episode 312
Original air date: April 22, 1996
It was the dawn of the third age… The Asimov arrives, a passenger liner, apparently the first non-military ship to formally dock at B5 since they broke off from Earth. Sheridan and Ivanova muse about the need for them to be self-sufficient right now, and their desperate need for more ships like the Asimov to show up and pay docking fees. Sheridan also wants to propose a treaty with the League of Non-Aligned Worlds to help with the defense of B5 so it isn’t all on the Minbari.
Garibaldi is rather shocked to learn that he has to pay a hundred credits to get his package of yummy Italian foodstuffs from Earth, the last such he’s likely to get for some time. The postmaster patiently—and more than a little snidely—explains that it’s much more difficult and expensive for mail to make it from Earth, hence the tripling in price. Garibaldi refuses to pay it, and so the postmaster refuses to release the package.
Franklin is in downbelow, treating an outbreak of Banta flu, which Cole detected. Franklin is impressed with Cole’s observational prowess, as it’s hard to detect Banta flu until it’s started to spread. But Cole knows one can get it from mixing certain alien foods with certain human foods, and he saw one lurker going through a garbage can looking for food. Cole accompanies Franklin to medlab to observe the treatment, and the two discuss various things about the Rangers so the viewer can learn more about them.
One of the passengers on the Asimov is a person having nightmares. He disembarks and is stopped by security because he’s holding a sword. When security tries to confiscate it, its wielder brandishes it, objecting to being called “Mister,” appalled at the lack of respect. He identifies himself as Arthur, King of the Britons. Cole and Franklin happen by, and Cole offers to talk him down, with Franklin—and his position in the station hierarchy—vouching for him to security.
Cole kneels and acts as a supplicant, saying they weren’t informed of his arrival. He offers to bring him to the other Knights of the Round Table, but “Arthur” grows angry at that: he apparently knows that it’s no longer the sixth century, and further that his knights are all long dead. Cole convinces Arthur to (reluctantly) go to medlab to be examined.
A meeting of the war council that’s supposed to be about the new treaty instead devolves into Arthurian neepery, with Franklin pointing out that he can’t possibly be from the sixth century, because he’s speaking modern English, which didn’t exist then. Cole, however, seems very invested in the notion that he could be the real Arthur, though Garibaldi points out that there is no real Arthur.
The fanboy discussion is interrupted by medlab reporting that Arthur has escaped.
Wandering downbelow, Arthur comes across an old woman who is crying. Some thieves took the only picture she had of her husband, a fellow lurker who died shortly after they arrived on B5 in the mistaken belief that they’d be able to start a new life here. The picture was in a gold frame that is very valuable, but she could never bring herself to sell it. Arthur promises to retrieve it.
Upon tracking the thieves down, Arthur—now wearing chainmail—takes on the thieves, who are beating up another lurker. G’Kar, who is nearby obtaining messages from home from the postmaster, joins him in remonstrating with the thieves. They recover the picture and return it to the old woman, then they share a drink or twelve to celebrate their victory. G’Kar is thrilled at having been involved in a scrap where there are no moral quandaries, no shades of gray, just good guys beating up on bad guys. Arthur discusses the ideals of the Round Table, and knights G’Kar.
Garibaldi and one of his subordinates goes to break into the post office to get Garibaldi’s package. He promises to pay the old rate for the package, but he will get his mail, dammit. He shoots off the lock, and then is confronted by the postmaster, who says that it’s an additional twenty credits for the lock.
Cole finds Arthur and G’Kar in their drunken revelry and says that Arthur really needs to come back to medlab, as Garibaldi is very cross indeed. G’Kar dismisses this—Garibaldi is always cranky about something—but Arthur does agree to come with Cole. For his part, G’Kar passes out…
Sheridan and Ivanova present the Babylon Treaty to what’s left of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds. (There are many empty seats.) They offer the station’s various services in exchange for protection.
Franklin has run his patient’s DNA and learned that “Arthur” is really a former EarthForce gunnery sergeant named David McIntyre. He served on the EAS Prometheus, the ship that fired on the Minbari ship Valen’Tha and killed Dukhat, the catalyst for the Earth-Minbari War. Later, McIntyre volunteered for the Battle of the Line, the final battle of the war, of which he was one of the few survivors. It is currently the fifteenth anniversary of the former event, which is probably what led to his psychotic break.
Cole urges Franklin not to share this with his patient. Franklin, however, sees no alternative. He goes to McIntyre and gets him to admit who he truly is, which only works a little bit. Unable to handle the agony of remembering the war, a war he feels guilty for helping cause (he was a gunnery sergeant, so he was one of the ones who fired on the Valen’Tha fifteen years previous) and for surviving when so many others didn’t. He falls into a catatonic state.
Ivanova happily reports to Sheridan that many League members have signed the Babylon Treaty.
Franklin and Cole discuss Arthurian legend, trying to figure out what McIntyre was trying to accomplish, and why he came to B5 specifically. Cole mentions that before Arthur went to Avalon, he urged Sir Bedivere to return Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake.
So they send Delenn to medlab. She takes the sword from McIntyre, who awakens and smiles and comes back to himself.
Garibaldi shows up and pays the hundred credits for his package. (No mention of the twenty for the lock he shot.) The postmaster gives him a package that has been badly damaged, then bursts out laughing at Garibaldi’s crestfallen expression and gets the real one. The security chief then asks who’s paying for the postmaster’s quarters and the use of the mail delivery facility? Not Earth anymore. The postmaster allows as how nobody actually is, and Garibaldi says he’s willing to overlook it, as it’s important to morale to get mail. So he says that the postmaster must pay a one-time fee of 101 credits. (Apparently, a pound of flesh costs one credit…)
G’Kar recruits McIntyre for the Narn Resistance, saying they could use someone who could rally the troops to a noble cause. Franklin sees them off, then Cole joins him after McIntyre leaves, as Cole doesn’t like goodbyes. He and Franklin banter about the notion of their crew being analogues for the Round Table, starting with Kosh as Merlin…
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan solves one of his security problems by getting various races to help defend the station in exchange for the station still doing all the cool things it can do.
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi struggles to get his last shipment of mozzarella, pepperoni, and other Italian yumminess from the post office.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Delenn doesn’t say a word when she takes Excalibur, she simply takes it from McIntyre and smiles.
Though it take a thousand years, we will be free. G’Kar gets to beat up some reprobates and become a knight. Afterward, he declares joyously that the thieves made “a very satisfying thump” when they hit the deck.
We live for the one, we die for the one. Cole explains the Ranger pin for Franklin (and the viewer): the jewel in the center is called “Isil’zha,” On either side of it is a human and a Minbari. The literal translation of the jewel’s name is “the future.”
Looking ahead. Cole assigns Arthurian roles to many of the main castmembers, with Kosh as Merlin, Sheridan as Arthur, Franklin as Percival, Ivanova as Gawain, Morden as Mordred (though he doesn’t identify him by name, though it’s pretty heavily implied), and Cole himself as Galahad (because he, too, has supposedly led a sinless life). As we fade to black, he wonders who Morgana Le Fay would be; the obvious candidate will be revealed in “Z’ha’dum” at season’s end, when Anna Sheridan appears. (Something J. Michael Straczynski himself apparently confirmed on Twitter in 2021.) The episode itself established Delenn as the Lady of the Lake.
Welcome aboard. The big guest, of course, is the great Michael York as Arthur/McIntyre. In addition, Michael Kagan plays the postmaster, Michael Francis Kelly and Jerry O’Donnell play the two security guards with speaking parts, and Dona Hardy plays the old woman.
Trivial matters. B5 broke off from Earth in “Severed Dreams,” and the Minbari fleet has been protecting them ever since. It was established in that same episode that the Shadows have been manipulating several members of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds into going to war with each other. That the Earth-Minbari War started when EarthForce ships fired on Minbari ships that approached with their gun ports open was established in “Legacies.” That event will be dramatized in the fourth season’s “Atonement” and in the movie In the Beginning. The Battle of the Line was established in “The Gathering” and dramatized in “And the Sky Full of Stars.”
Cole references the Vorlons’ kidnapping of Jack the Ripper and keeping him on ice until needed, as established in “Comes the Inquisitor,” by way of theorizing that McIntyre might really be King Arthur, similarly conscripted by the Vorlons.
Michael York has appeared in two other King Arthur productions, both very loose adaptations of Mark Twain’s 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. He played Merlin in A Young Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court prior to this in 1995, and in 1998 he played the actual King Arthur in A Knight in Camelot.
The Asimov is obviously named after the science fiction grandmaster and scientist Dr. Isaac Asimov.
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them?’ So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.”
—Cole waxing philosophical.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Yeah, but this is the post office—this could get us in real trouble.” One of my favorite episodes of M*A*S*H is a fourth-season episode entitled “Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?” In it, a patient is brought into the 4077th identifying himself as Jesus Christ. It eventually comes out that he’s a bombardier who couldn’t handle the stress of war, and so retreated into the identity of Christ.
“A Late Delivery from Avalon” has the exact same plot. The B5 episode also has a much happier ending, which is not what you’d expect comparing an episode of this show to a sitcom, even that sitcom…
Honestly, this episode has less substance than the shorter one from 1975, because the PTSD aspect of it doesn’t really show up until we’re most of the way through the episode. Mostly it’s spending a lot of time with McIntyre’s delusion, with Michael York spouting random bits of Mallory et al, and Cole and G’Kar enabling the delusion.
To the episode’s credit, it never tries to seriously sell us on the idea that McIntyre is the real Arthur. (Cole presenting his “the Vorlons coulda done it like they did Jack the Ripper!” theory is mostly there to cut off fan arguments on the Internet at the pass.) But it’s also to the episode’s detriment that we spend so much time on McIntyre-as-Arthur that the PTSD story gets short shrift.
It’s not too terribly much of a detriment, though, because it’s Michael Fucking York, and he’s an absolute joy to watch playact at being the King of the Britons. He completely throws himself into all three roles he’s called upon to play: King Arthur, a soldier in a denial so heavy it sends him into catatonia, and David McIntyre. Honestly, I could just watch an entire episode of him and Andreas Katsulas as a drunk, adrenaline-soaked G’Kar babbling at each other over mead. On top of that, Jason Carter’s at the top of his game here, giving us a Marcus Cole who really really really wants McIntyre to be King Arthur because after all the shit he’s been through, a real hero would be a nifty thing.
The ending is a bit glib. He hands the sword over to Delenn and now he’s going to (checks notes) go lead a revolution? That doesn’t seem like a healthy thing for somebody whose recent medical history includes identity disorder and catatonia. (The M*A*S*H episode ends with Chandler, still thinking he’s the Messiah, being taken to a psychiatric hospital.)
Also, shouldn’t they have picked a Minbari who actually looks like a Minbari? It would be perfectly plausible for McIntyre to have opened his eyes and wondered why this obviously human woman put a bone on the back of her head…
But, again, Michael Fucking York. Playing King Arthur. It’s fun to watch. So, by the way, is Garibaldi’s banter with Michael Kagan’s postmaster, which is a delight. I especially love Garibaldi’s subordinate who’s incredibly frightened of the possibility of messing with the postal service. And justifiably so, as it turns out…
Next week: “Ship of Tears.”
At least it wasn’t the Phone Cops!
I like this episode. It’s thin, but it is poetic. I think I find it more moving now than I did when I first saw it.
I was just past the peak of my Arthurian nerdery when this first aired, and I disliked it a lot. That wound up coloring subsequent rewatches, but this time I found myself actually moved a couple of times. It’s probably still a poor use of Michael York, though he’s hardly the first guest actor to be underused on the show.
My biggest complaint is with Franklin’s attempt at “healing” Arthur. There is absolutely nothing in his approach that would meet with approval by competent psychiatric authorities now, 30 years ago, or probably 30 years before that. I would be surprised if there aren’t Earthforce psychiatrists or psychologists on his staff, and even if there aren’t there must be qualified people among the humans aboard the station.
I wonder if Marcus’ waffling about Merlin at the end is meant to be foreshadowing for events in about a month. If so, he’s slightly off on his identification.
To be fair, Franklin was not at a good place by this point. Between the stims abuse, the self-denial and the need to pile everything on top of himself – in order for him not to have to deal with himself, ironically – made him a poor choice to be attempting a psych 101 reversal on his patient. But other than Garibaldi, nobody had a clue just how off Franklin was by then.
Honestly, one of my big takeaways from this re-watch is I have much less respect for Franklin in general than I once did. I keep wondering why he’s even trusted to be part of the inner circle, and how he gets away with so much obvious malpractice.
He’s a chief medical officer who thinks he can do better at everyone else’s job than they can… and is wrong. Moreover, that misapprehension leads to massive problems for him and the functioning of Medlab until he works through his issues.
Compare with McCoy, Crusher, Bashir. Who generally speaking seem unironically capable of doing it all with very little cost. Franklin gets to be very flawed and fallable. Of course, the show just ignores some of the medical ethics issues he displays (The Lonk Dark especially).
More to the point, he’a the perfect CMO from a political perspective. Knows something about alien medicine, destroyed records on Minbari instead of allowing Earthforce to use them: in terms of being acceptable and trusted by all the non-humans on the station, Franklin’s a great choice. And given his arrogance and overbearing manner, it makes sense that almost nobody can rein him in. The main issue is that the station commanders don’t, but even that seems well-observed, because Franklin works hard to convince them he’s fine lest they pull him and provoke the disaster of him not being in charge.
He’s flawed in a way a lot of real doctors are, and he improves over the course of the series without turning into a different character by the end. It’s a very nuanced part and performance.
I always get this episode confused with Grail, from the first season.
Me too. When I have several years between rewatching the series I not only confuse this and Grail, but also Infection and The Long Dark. Which one is the Aruthurian take with a a famous English actor (either David Warner or Michael York)? Which one has a servant of the Darkness come on board, again with a well known actor (David McCallum or Dwight Schultz)? I mean when I see them I know, but throw titles at me with no season number and I’m confused.
Another one that I’ve come to really enjoy, despite the flaws. Mainly because of Michael York and Andreas Katsulas, but I also like the central concept. I’m sure I had seen the MASH episode when I was younger, but I didn’t remember it by the time this episode aired. I just thought it was an interesting way to keep the Earth-Minbari War background of the series from being forgotten, since so much had happened since that was at the forefront.
“Also, shouldn’t they have picked a Minbari who actually looks like a Minbari? It would be perfectly plausible for McIntyre to have opened his eyes and wondered why this obviously human woman put a bone on the back of her head…”
If McIntyre came to B5 seeking a Minbari to give Excalibur to in atonement, it stands to reason that he came specifically seeking Delenn (who was actually on the ship he fired on, so it makes sense he’d want to make a gesture of atonement to her). That’s what Marcus and Franklin put together — that “the Lady of the Lake” was how McIntyre interpreted Delenn in his delusion.
This is a bit of a weird one conceptually, but it works nicely thanks to the performances and the effective dialogue. I’m a bit bothered by the post office subplot, though, since Garibaldi’s actions at the end seem downright corrupt, an abuse of his authority to extort the postmaster who’s just doing his job. And yet the script seems to want us to be on Garibaldi’s side.
@Christopher L Bennett It does bring up the question on how McIntyre knew that Delenn was on the ship he opened fire on though. I believe, at this time, they didn’t know that she was the one who called for the genocide of all humanity, and I also don’t think the humans knew that Delenn was close to Dukat
As I mentioned below, he may not have known that Delenn was on the ship, but he did know she was the Minbari ambassador to B5, so it stands to reason that she was the one he was seeking out, which is why she ended up as the Lady of the Lake in his delusions.
We also know she has been seen on ISN and interviewed, even if it was a painful interview, since she changed, and her reaching out to humans might make her a valid person for a human trying to atone to choose.
For me, it’s the Post Office worker who is abusing his authority as he’s requiring triple an agreed upon fee (and why wasn’t this fee paid when sent instead of upon delivery). The only part I see about Garibaldi being corrupt is that he doesn’t actually end up paying for the package (saving himself 20 or 30 credits), but the joke about 101 wouldn’t work otherwise.
Somebody’s gotta pay for the cost of delivery, and it shouldn’t have to be the postmaster. The fact that he’s still accomplishing the feat of getting people’s mail delivered to the station after its secession from Earth Alliance is a minor miracle. It’s no surprise that he has to raise his rates. The only mitigating factor working in Garibaldi’s favor is that the postmaster is living rent-free on the station, a fact which the writer only introduced at the end of the story in an attempt to make the security chief look like less of an outright bully.
I’ve always paid the cost when sending something through the mail. I would have thought the shipping costs were paid either by the person who shipped the stuff to him, or by Garibaldi when he placed the order. It certainly was never stated that the shipment was sent COD.
When the Postmaster demanded 100 credits, Garibaldi said, “That’s three times the delivery charge for a package this size.” So Garibaldi wasn’t questioning the existence of the charge, just its quantity. Later, when he tried to break in and steal the package, he told the guy with him that he would leave the amount of money it was supposed to have cost. So evidently it is normal to have to pay to collect mail; Garibaldi just objected to the sudden unannounced tripling of the cost.
Lately a few packages I’ve ordered have come with a warning that the delivery cost might change without notice if tariffs change between the time it’s shipped and the time it gets to the US.
It’s Garibaldi. We’re mostly supposed to be on his side, but that doesn’t mean approving everything he does.
As I think is evident if you compare the classic Sinclair/Sherdan “loophole in the regs” solutions to how Garibaldi handles things here. We’re laughing at him more than with him. I’d even argue that the “that’s our Garibaldi’ factor here plays into his S4 plotline, though I think aspects of that are mishandled.
“It’s Garibaldi. We’re mostly supposed to be on his side, but that doesn’t mean approving everything he does.”
In general, yes, but my point is that in this specific case, it felt like they wanted us to approve. General and specific argument are two different things.
I think it’s completely reasonable to send Delenn, as she’s (1) a lady (something that Lennier, unfortunately, does not have going for him) and (2) at least used to be an official of the Minbari government (and 3, Sheridan could explain the situation to her without it being awkward)
I see it differently. Having the episode stick to the Arthurian legend for as long as it does makes that psychological breakdown scene all the more powerful. If I had to seek out a flaw in this one is that David’s recovery is a little too rushed and underplayed. I wish we could have had an extended scene where G’Kar invites him to the Narn resistance where we see him grappling with the decision.
But the rest of it? Just masterful and memorable. Babylon 5 occasionally lucked out with these guest castings. Like David Warner or W. Morgan Sheppard, the show is all the better for having Michael York (I have to admit I didn’t know much about him back then, other than him playing Austin Powers’s boss). The way his Arthur goes from pure unfiltered bravery against the robbers to the way he gently and nobly assists the elderly lurker woman makes for some truly poignant scenes. As does his breakdown – his proclamation of the horses being on fire gives me the chills. And that final scream of pain still haunts me to this day. York really threw everything into the role, and Vejar made every scene shine.
One thing this episode does beautifully is to show the consequences for the “little” blue-collar people who are forced to carry out orders from up above. We’re used to Sheridan, Ivanova and command staff stories. We finally see later in the TV prequel movie In the Beginning just how careless, incompetent and unprepared the Prometheus captain was when dealing with the Minbari. His rash decision sparked not only a war and countless casualties but also the life, mind and sanity of a decent hard-working gunnery sergeant who was just following orders.
Also, a slight bit of inconsistency I’ve just noticed, between this episode and the aforementioned movie. To be clear, I don’t consider this spoiler. In the Beginning is a prequel story after all, and it takes place well over a decade before 2260. But just in case, here it is below:
I’m never not happy to see Michael York pop up in anything, so I enjoyed this one, though a few things did annoy me.
First, I always roll my eyes at the suggestion that King Arthur is anything other than fictional, or as British comedian David Mitchell more aggressively puts it in his book on English Monarchs, “Gandalf is fictional. King Arthur is a lie.”
Second, the Garibaldi subplot blows it at the end by letting him get one over on the postmaster, who I was rooting for all the way as a guy who was just doing his job, whereas Garibaldi came off as a corrupt bully (no surprises there).
Finally, this is yet another example of why Franklin should have his medical license revoked. Not only did he inflict extreme psychological distress on someone who was in the possession of a deadly weapon, but he then returned said weapon to the guy while he was catatonic!
I dunno, I’ve seen plausible arguments that the Arthur legend may well have been based on a real Cornish chieftain, though one who bore very little resemblance to the myths that evolved over the centuries. And “Myrddin” (a name the French changed to “Merlin” because that sounds less scatological in French) probably referred to a sea fort he was associated with and got conflated with a similarly-named advisor to a Scottish chieftain.
What I’ve always found weird is that the historical basis for Arthur, if he existed, fought against the Anglo-Saxon invaders of his Cornish homeland, so it’s weird that the English, the descendants of his enemies, assimilated him as their cultural hero.
Yes, I think in part it’s that English cultural appropriation at work, the idea that we’ve always been here (ignore the counter evidence) so therefore he must be our king that Malory et al applied when compiling histories of Britain. I suppose it’s like Christianity absorbing pagan ceremonies in certain places. What I find as fascinating is that the French really embraced Arthurian romances, given the contentious relationships between the two nations.
Come to think of it, isn’t it odd that Shakespeare never did anything Arthurian? He did Lear and Cymbeline, so he wasn’t averse to writing about ancient English kings. And his favorite English history source, Holinshed, wrote about Arthur.
I did a bit of web-searching about it just now, and apparently some theorize he avoided it as a politically sensitive subject because the Tudors claimed descent from Arthur, and because a lot of the narrative is unflattering to the royals. Or maybe he just wanted less well-known subjects, or he did a play and it was lost. I can think of reasons to be skeptical of all of those, though.
I’d be surprised if Queen Elizabeth would’ve frowned on a work about King Arthur, but that’s what happens when you find yourself in a police state. You censor yourself out of an abundance of caution (he says apropos of nothing).
cf. The Faerie Queene which can be seen as both praise and criticism of ER
It was wild how Henry VIII ended with a scene of the Archbishop celebrating the birth of Elizabeth and giving a long, prophetic speech about her future accomplishments as monarch and that of her successor, thereby breaking not only the fourth wall, but the fourth dimension.
The arguments for there being an actual Arthur generally boil down to “there were guys who you might vaguely refer to as kings running around Great Britain before the Anglo-Saxons completely took over.” Again, David Mitchell puts it better than I could. The passage I referenced in my original comment goes on to read:
“Some people will still say he might have existed, but the sort of person they say he might have been is so far removed from King Arthur in any of the forms we understand him that it feels like they’re just saying he didn’t exist in a different way. It’s like they’re saying, ‘Oh yeah, there was a real Superman except he didn’t have any actual superpowers and he dressed as a bat.’”
I think the reason his legend could be assimilated by the Anglo-Saxons was precisely because he doesn’t represent a real person, at least not a real person any Anglo-Saxon had heard of. He’s just a fancy way of saying “Things used to be better than they are,” which is a universal conceit (and was even more universal in the middle ages).
There was a recent BBC Radio 4 podcast of You’re Dead to Me that looked at Arthur. My takeaway from that was that Arthur was a Welsh invention who basically took off like crazy in the late middle ages thanks to some pretty shady characters (looking at you, Thomas Malory!)
Yes, obviously the Arthurian legend we know is a mix of amalgamations and fictional accretions. The point is simply that there’s reason to believe it wasn’t invented entirely from whole cloth, that there’s at least one real historical figure that provided the foundations of the myth. While Robin Hood is probably based more on a general archetype than a real historical figure, there have been credible arguments made that there was a real historical basis for Arthur, however remote.
I once tried writing a fantasy story, a premise I could never fully crack, where a post-apocalyptic world desperately sent back time travelers to retrieve King Arthur to save them in their darkest hour, and they brought back a Cornish chieftain named Arthyr who fit the historical evidence — but then space travelers brought back an Arthur who was impossibly true to the myths and claimed he’d been living on the planet Avalon for centuries. (I started it in December 1996, so it was probably influenced by this episode.) The viewpoint character was an Arthurian scholar who was called in to try to decide which of them to endorse as the real Arthur — the one who made more historical sense, or the inexplicably mythic one who was more capable of saving the world.
The story’s title (and inspiration) was… “Double Pendragon.”
Brilliant title!
Now there’s where you’re wrong. Robin Hood is the real deal.
There was a Doctor Who episode about it :)
Oh, gah, I hated that one, because of the way it presented a “historical” Robin Hood exactly like the modern myths but made no attempt to explain how that could exist, and indeed took sophomoric glee in its emphatic refusal to make sense.
Truly yours is a cold, steely heart barren of all but Science and Drama @ChristopherLBennett – that was one of my personal favourites (and not just because of the golden opportunity to see the lovely Jenna Louise Coleman* togged up as a Maid Marian).
*I know, I know, these days she goes by plain ‘Jenna Coleman’ but it’s just so much more fun to say ‘Jenna Louise Coleman’ (Don’t ask me why, it’s a British thing).
I agree about Franklin. You would have hoped he would have learned a bit of restraint after Believers.
And here we (finally) are—this is the first episode of B5 I ever saw. As you can probably imagine, I was fairly confused, but I guess I somehow recognized that there was a lot going on, so I kept watching the show. (Having another excuse to avoid working on my dissertation almost certainly factored in, too.) It was an interesting experience to eventually go back and see the first 2.5 seasons to understand how we got here, and it certainly colored a lot of my views of the early seasons.
Going Doylist here. But it had to be Delenn who received the sword for the same reason it had to be G’kar. We’re paying Mira and Andreas to be in X episodes, so make sure they’re in X episodes. This is television, bend the story to suit the financial reality but don’t break it.
For similar reasons McIntyre had to be Arthur instead of Bedivere for audience name recognition. Even though the story would have made more sense with him as Bedivere. Both with the return of Excalibur, but also linking starting the Minibari war with killing the adder which upstarted the battle with Modred, in some popular versions.
That out of the way I really love pretty much everything about G’kar in this one. From opening the fight with a threat display, to the look on his face when the pair return the frame to the sleeping woman, to being drunk and joyful at the first morally uncomplicated fight he has been in since he joined the initial Narn Resistance.
I still say it was quite evident that McIntyre came to B5 seeking Delenn in the first place. He wanted to atone for firing on the Minbari ships and starting the war, and his delusion superimposed Arthurian analogs onto his preoccupations. The reason he believed he had to return Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake before he could heal was because he needed to apologize to Delenn before he could heal, and that was what brought him to B5. He wasn’t just looking for any random Minbari, he was looking for the specific one that his mind transposed into the Lady of the Lake — the most prominent female Minbari on the station, their official representative to humanity, the one who was actually there at the battle he started (though I’m not sure if that part was common knowledge).
This episode is “critic-proof” for me. Yeah, deep down I know there are a few flaws, but MICHAEL FREAKIN’ YORK! He was always one of my favorite actors and I will never not watch anything he’s in (in my headcanon, the Omega Code movies don’t exist, though)
I remember being struck while watching this episode by how similar Michael York’s performance style and delivery were to Patrick Stewart’s. It made me wonder if they had the same acting coach. But their bios on Wikipedia show no overlap in their respective schools and theater companies.
So Mr Michael York went from playing a poor heartbroken soul who wants to think he’s King Arthur to playing a King Arthur whose Guinevere is embodied by Amanda Donohoe?
We should all be so lucky!
…
Also, as somebody who has actually worked for the Royal Mail, I say Garibaldi should pay his **** postage and stop acting like a sneak-thief (Italian deliciousness or no).
What comes after the revolution?
That’s what I love about this episode: the whole post office subplot. In fact, I’d love to see more of it. How is the mail still coming through at all? Where are these added costs coming from? The post office is clearly presented as an Earth Alliance government function, so how were the details of that negotiated out? Have they been negotiated out? Probably not, if the conversation between Garabaldi and the postmaster is to be believed.
There’s a certain amount of handwaving going on here. You may well topple the king, but someone still has to deliver the mail. Someone has to fix the potholes. Someone has to do something about petty crime. To some extent, in the immediate aftermath of real world revolutions, you see these things just continuing as they have been, almost by force of habit. But a certain amount of breakdown is inevitable (and is Cole’s off-handed remark about seeing someone foraging for food in the trash perhaps a small sign of that?)
These questions become more difficult in a situation like the one we have here, where one part of the Alliance has effectively seceded. I found myself wondering just what the postmaster thought about all of these events. His highest loyalty appears to be to a sort of platonic ideal of the mail, or perhaps the 100 credit fee is straight up corruption. But how would he respond to any overtures, say, from the Night Watch?
Maybe this is coming up in later episodes, but so far there’s been very little about what the various races and governments think about what’s happened on Babylon 5. We know the Narn have stepped up to support the secession in a big way. We know the Minbari are on board, at least to the extent Delenn is influential. Londo and the Centauri have mentioned it hardly at all. Not to mention all the humans on the station; opposition to the Night Watch is one thing, outright secession quite another. Or perhaps some see it as an opportunity to impose more radical change? Sheridan is clearly meant to be seen as a sort of Washington figure, but history tells us he’s far more likely to be a Kerensky or Mirabeau.
And then there’s the League. This episode handles them in the most offhanded way possible, presenting a “deal” that commits them to an awful lot more than they’ve been contributing in exchange for rather less than the status quo, given that Sheridan no longer represents Earth Alliance and the volume of trade passing through has been drastically curtailed. That’s a plot point that could have used considerably greater expansion.
All of this, as far as I’m concerned, is far more interesting than a main plot that’s an inaccurate (if dramatic) portrayal of PTSD. The VA Hospital system is filled with no King Arthurs, no Jesus Christs, no Richard IIIs. And as wonderful as Michael York, Andreas Katsulas, and Jason Carter all are, I can’t help but put the episode up against Eric Idle’s recovery in the Royal Hospital for Over Acting and find it a bit wanting.
“And then there’s the League. This episode handles them in the most offhanded way possible, presenting a “deal” that commits them to an awful lot more than they’ve been contributing in exchange for rather less than the status quo, given that Sheridan no longer represents Earth Alliance and the volume of trade passing through has been drastically curtailed.”
My understanding was that the League agreeing to take over Earthforce’s patrol functions would help trade return to its regular volume, so it’s an investment that will pay them back in the long term. After all, B5’s commerce isn’t dominated by the Earth Alliance, it’s among dozens of alien worlds and human civilian businesses and traders. This is just giving the League members a bigger, more equal stake in protecting the thing they were already benefitting from, rather than keeping them in the subordinate role of being dependent on Earth for protection.
I take your point, but it’s still quite a gamble. There’s still the very real possibility of Earth Alliance forces returning. If I were in their shoes, I’d probably at a minimum be looking for increased say in the government of the station. Even as a long-term investment, committing to defending the station with military assets is massive, given the powerful enemy they’ve made in EarthDome.
To put things into perspective, there’s a reason why NATO wasn’t prepared to extend its Article V protections to Ukraine prior to the current war with Russia and before we knew just how capable Ukrainians are at defending their country. Even now, knowing what they would bring to the alliance, their accession into NATO would be controversial precisely because it’s such a huge commitment.
Babylon 5 offers something, perhaps a great deal, as both a trading and diplomatic center. But from the perspective, say, of the pak’ma’ra, would the risk of losing it have been worth the risk of being drawn into war with one of the more powerful players in the galaxy? It seems doubtful.
Of course, we know the station’s importance in the Shadow Wars. But, aside from rumors and a video clip, I don’t really know the extent to which the League worlds are aware of this (I honestly can’t remember if Sheridan ever made any presentation to the Council about this, but, if memory serves, they’re largely in the dark still). I mean, presumably all of the various diplomats are spying on each other to varying degrees, but I’d assume that everyone’s still pretty unclear about what’s going on.
There’s a narrative to be made here that Sheridan just staged a coup with Minbari assistance purely for his own megalomaniacal purposes; no doubt President Clark sees it that way and is busy presenting that narrative not only to the part of humanity that still exists under Earth Alliance control, but also through diplomatic channels to other races in order to disrupt exactly this kind of effort.
Beyond that, who even knows how long Sheridan’s going to stay in command of Babylon 5? Again, the history of revolutions should give us some pause here. They’ve resisted a couple of counter-coups, yes. But what’s to stop the station from devolving into infighting?
I suppose that’s what irks me about this: it happens far too quickly and far too easily. It makes sense for the Narns to jump on board—they’re desperate. It makes sense for the Minbari—they have prophesy. But beyond that, this is the sort of thing that should be taking a lot of bartering and haggling and consulting back with homeworlds and bluffing and intimidating and to-ing and fro-ing. Yet Sheridan walks in, presents a pre-written treaty as a fait accompli, asks the League members to accept it, and then Ivanova casually reports that “enough” of them have signed on. That’s not how diplomacy works! Especially when you aren’t in a dominant position!
Put it this way: this is diplomacy as only a citizen of the American hyperpower of the 1990s could have understood it.
That’s a fair point. It might’ve been interesting to see a subplot about the diplomacy and horse trading Ivanova had to do to win the League members’ cooperation, instead of the stuff with the postmaster.
I’ll add a bit more to this: in the first season, we actually saw the entire series developing the question of “How do you live and function with PTSD?” in an interesting way. Then Sinclair unfortunately had to be written out and that entire plot point disappeared. I can’t help but compare this rather cartoonish portrayal of PTSD with that. That’s what makes it frustrating—this series knows how to address that question in a thoughtful and sensitive manner. But this is what we get instead.
Michael York was great as always, and the scenes with him and G’Kar were priceless, but the whole PTSD thing didn’t work for me, and it left the episode feeling contrived.
I always felt quite different about that episode than most of other commenters.
To me, Arthur is an idealization of the fight for the good and against the bad. He only ever punishes the bad and protects the good. That G’Kar, the formerly shady G’Kar, stands by his side and is knighted by him for his valour. That is, what the mythical fight between good and bad is about: It is (almost) an ideal black and white struggle, good is good and bad is bad.
That is what the Gunnery Sergeant fled into, unable to get to grips with reality and the fact that sometimes a dumb misunderstanding can cause great devastation. The open gunports of the Minbari warship are like the knight drawing his sword to slay a snake, by the way, so Arthurian legend was woven into the cause of the Earth/Minbary war to some extent from the beginning.
Then Arthur and G’Kar quaff together, getting utterly plonked and maybe also pished. In that condition, G’Kar is knighted. To me, that speaks of the nonsensicality of the scene, as it is all a drunk fantasy that the world would work like that. A knight in shining armor with a heart of pure gold holds his aegis over the poor, weak and stricken.
The ending, although a bit rushed, sets the end to that delusion. This is not how the Universe works, and especially it is not black and white. A deed done is not necessarily the end of a chain of events, and it is unpredictable even under the best of circumstances what will ensue.
Therefore, I always felt this episode as a memento that Babylon 5 deals with politics. Politics so much harder to grasp than Earth politics, as different planets with their own factions and with quite different ideas of values, honor, utilitarism and many other facets are involved. The Babylon crew has waded so deep into the murky waters of treason, aiding and abetting other traitors, making galactic poilitics against Earth government, while for themselves believing it to be true to their original oath. It does not get any eyewateringly greyer than that for a soldier.
This episode on the brink of all-out war of Earth aginst its own colonies tells you to not expect sunshine, lollypops and rainbows, unless you are quite a fool or live in a made-up universe.
Isn’t President Clark the real traitor, though? He assassinated his predecessor to take power and has suspended the Earth constitution and the legally elected legislature. He’s the one who’s committed acts of treason, and it’s the people in the resistance like the B5 crew who are the actual loyalists, the ones defending against the traitors who’ve seized power. Clark calls them traitors, but only as a cover for his own treasonous and illegal regime.