<em>Babylon 5</em> Rewatch: “And the Sky Full of Stars”

“And the Sky Full of Stars”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Janet Greek
Season 1, Episode 8
Production episode 106
Original air date: March 16, 1994

It was the dawn of the third age… A human boards B5 and goes to a cabin, where he meets up with another human, and they identify their target as Sinclair. So that’s ominous. They never get names in the script, but the credits identify them as “Knight One” and “Knight Two.”

A security guard named Benson is approached by several thuggish gentlemen who remind him rather forcibly of his gambling debts. Benson is then called into Sinclair’s office where the commander and Garibaldi interrogate him about those selfsame gambling debts. However, Benson insists that he hasn’t gone over the limits imposed on security personnel for gambling in the casinos. (Benson is lying, but he’s also covered his tracks decently.) He’s taken off active duty pending a full investigation.

In Medlab, Franklin conducts a physical of Delenn, thus giving him a baseline of a healthy Minbari. Franklin mentions his past as an itinerant doctor, trading passage on ships for serving as ship’s doctor so he could travel the galaxy. That ended when the Earth-Minbari War started, and Franklin scores points when Delenn asks what he did during the war, and he says he destroyed all his notes on Minbari physiology rather than turn them over to EarthGov for use in developing biogenic weapons to use against the Minbari.

When asked what she did during the war, Delenn doesn’t actually answer. This will probably be important later.

Our two Knights are putting a device together clandestinely. They still need a power source, which Benson provides in exchange for enough cash to pay off his gambling debts.

Sinclair has a nightmare about the Battle of the Line. He wakes up only to find that his computer terminal and his link aren’t working, and the station appears to be abandoned save for him—

—and Knight Two, at which point it becomes clear that this isn’t real and that Knight Two has ENTERED SINCLAIR’S BRAIN!

Delenn reports to Garibaldi that Sinclair never showed up for their meeting, nor did he answer calls. It quickly becomes clear that he’s missing, and Garibaldi starts up a search. The first thing he notices is that Sinclair’s link is in his quarters and Sinclair himself isn’t. He never goes anywhere without the link, so something bad has probably happened.

Knight Two tells Sinclair that this VR setup is still one wherein he can feel pain. To demonstrate both that that’s the truth specifically, and that he’s an asshole generally, he sends a shock of electricity through Sinclair, which really really hurts. Then he explains the point of the exercise: The Knights and the people they work for want to know what really happened at the Battle of the Line, as they don’t buy his “blacked out for 24 hours” story. Sinclair, however, doesn’t remember a damn thing after deciding to ram the Minbari dreadnought.

To add to the pathos, Knight Two brings up an image of Mitchell, Sinclair’s wingman, whom Sinclair watched die when he broke formation and got himself blown up.

Knight Two takes a break and discusses the situation with Knight One. The former suggests upping the psychotropics, as they’re on the clock, given that the station personnel are likely to notice that their commander is missing. The latter cautions that it may kill him. Knight Two follows the Evil Dude of Evil Handbook by saying, “So be it” in his posh British accent, which conveniently ignores the fact that this is an interrogation and you can’t get information out of a corpse.

Whatever. Garibaldi tells one of his people that it’s all hands on deck to find Sinclair, and the aide says he’s already doing that, even activated Benson. When Garibaldi questions that, the aide says that Benson’s bank account had plenty of cash in it, so he doesn’t appear to be in debt. But Garibaldi already checked that, and yesterday he was nearly broke. Turns out he got a huge deposit not long before Sinclair went missing. A clue!

Benson, meanwhile, is panicking, because the Knights failed to mention that they needed the power source to kidnap the station CO, which is information he feels he should have had before he made the deal. Knight One shoots him with a PPG, killing him, then dumping the body. However, the body is found outside the station, and Garibaldi orders the search focused on the areas proximate to the part of the station the body was floating near.

Once again, Knight Two ENTERS SINCLAIR’S BRAIN! He pushes, and Sinclair finds himself remembering being inside a circle of people in gray cloaks, hoods covering their faces. And one of them shoots Sinclair with an energy beam.

Sinclair has no idea who all those figures in gray are. Knight Two puts forth his theory: The Minbari were worried about losing the war, so they surrendered, and set up Sinclair as a fifth columnist, who is helping the Minbari lure humanity into a false sense of security as allies before striking.

However, Sinclair pokes multiple holes in that theory, because they were absolutely toast at the Battle of the Line. He has no idea why the Minbari surrendered, but there was no obvious tactical reason for it whatsoever.

But—remembering the last words of the assassin who tried to kill Kosh that Sinclair had a hole in his mind—Sinclair really tries to push through the mental block.

He finally recalls it all: His Starfury was captured and taken into the dreadnought before it could complete the kamikaze run. Sinclair was captured and tortured and then brought before a circle of gray-cloaked Minbari—one of whom, it turns out, was Delenn. The gray-suited folk are obviously the oft-mentioned Grey Council that Delenn has studiously avoided letting anyone know she was part of.

Sinclair also manages to break out of the VR prison and come back to reality. Knight Two is still in the machine, though, so Sinclair smashes it, which renders Knight Two unconscious. Sinclair is also able to knock Knight One out and take his PPG, then go stumbling around the station in a delirious state. Knight One follows, killing a security guard before she can report in her sighting of Sinclair. For his part, Sinclair is hallucinating members of the Grey Council all over the place.

Knight One and Sinclair get into a shootout at the Zocalo, and Garibaldi and his people join in. Knight One is shot and killed. Eventually, Delenn manages to talk Sinclair down long enough for him to pass out from exhaustion.

Sinclair recovers in Medlab. Knight Two is not so lucky, as he’s gone completely cluck-cluck-gibber-gibber-my-old-man’s-a-mushroom from the VR machine’s feedback when Sinclair smashed it while Knight Two had ENTERED SINCLAIR’S BRAIN! He remembers nothing about who he is, who Sinclair is, or what happened, aside from tiny snippets here and there.

Visiting Delenn in her quarters, Sinclair thanks her, and then lies and says he doesn’t remember anything of the experience of Knight Two ENTERING HIS BRAIN! After he leaves, another Minbari—presumably one of the Grey Council—makes it clear to Delenn that if Sinclair ever does remember, he needs to be killed. Meanwhile, Sinclair goes to his quarters and reports a log entry making it clear that he does remember everything and wants to know what the fuck is going on.

Nothing’s the same anymore. We finally fill the hole in Sinclair’s mind, and find out that the Minbari surrendered after the Grey Council examined him. This explains why Delenn has befriended Sinclair in general, though the specific reasons for sparing him, for surrendering, and for Delenn staying close, remain a mystery.

The household god of frustration. Garibaldi does pretty well in this one, catching on to Benson’s illegal behavior, and using the latter’s body as a guide to finding Sinclair.

If you value your lives, be somewhere else. After being told several times that Delenn was on the Grey Council, we see her on it for realsies in Sinclair’s memory. Her no longer being on it seems now to be in order to keep an eye on Sinclair—who was, it should be pointed out, the Minbari’s choice to command B5.

Looking ahead. This is the first flashback to Sinclair’s lost 24 hours. It’s not the last.

Welcome aboard. Judson Scott and Christopher Neame play the two ill-fated interrogators, who are billed as “Knight One” and “Knight Two” for whatever reason. Jim Youngs plays the ill-fated Benson and Justin Williams plays Sinclair’s memory of the ill-fated Mitchell.

Also, Macaulay Bruton is back as Token Security Personnel With A Speaking Part So Garibaldi Has Someone To Talk To, last seen in “Mind War,” and now officially a recurring role. He’ll be back in “By Any Means Necessary.”

Trivial matters. The title of the episode derives from a line of Sinclair’s in “The Gathering” when he describes what he remembers of the Battle of the Line to Sykes: “The sky was full of stars—and every star an exploding ship.”

This episode finally fills in the “hole” in Sinclair’s mind that we first learned about in “The Gathering.”

Originally Walter Koenig was to play Knight Two, but he had to have surgery and couldn’t do it. J. Michael Straczynski wrote the part of Bester for him instead. (“Mind War” was filmed four episodes after this one.) They then offered the role of Knight Two to Patrick McGoohan (of, among many other things, Secret Agent and The Prisoner fame), but McGoohan was unavailable as well. So they cast Christopher Neame.

Footage from this episode will later be used in the prequel movie In the Beginning.

The newspaper Garibaldi reads, Universe Today, has some fun headlines, some of which are (or will be) relevant to a story. One headline reads, “Is There Something Living in Hyperspace?” which will be referenced in “A Distant Star” and answered in Crusade’s “The Well of Forever.” Homeguard, established last time in “The War Prayer,” is referenced, as one of their member is found guilty of attacking the Minbari embassy on Earth (possibly one of the coordinated attacks mentioned by Biggs in that episode, though it seems unlikely that the perp would be arrested, tried, and convicted that fast…). “Narns Settle Raghesh III Controversy,” which refers back to the incident in “Midnight on the Firing Line.” “Psi Corps in Election Tangle: Did Psi Corps Violate Its Charter by Endorsing Vice-President?” is a bit of foreshdadowing of both Vice-President Clark’s eventually-to-be-revealed dodginess and continues the notion, first put out by Ironehart in “Mind War,” that Psi Corps is trying to expand its influence over EarthGov. And then there’s “San Diego Still Considered Too Radioactive for Occupancy,” establishing that San Diego was nuked at some point between the present day and the time of the show; Straczynski lived in San Diego for seven yeas, and, to quote him: “it’s actually a great place, so I’m inclined to tweak it once in a while, just for funsies…”

The echoes of all of our conversations.

Sinclair and Knight Two discussing the end of the war.

The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Maybe we’re both still inside.” I have a lot to say about this episode, some of which is tangential and/or nitpicky, so let me lead with this: “And the Sky Full of Stars” is a fantastic episode, the best one of the season so far. I said in the “Soul Hunter” rewatch that an episode without G’Kar or Mollari doesn’t bear thinking about, and with this episode we have our first exception, as neither ambassador is missed this particular time ’round.

While I would love to live in the parallel universe where Patrick McGoohan played Knight Two, Christopher Neame is still good in the role: Somewhat over-the-top, but the part calls for that, and his deep, intense voice is used to good end. (Judson Scott not so much, but he’s always been pretty much entirely 80s-pretty-boy looks and no talent, and he keeps that sad streak going here.)

But writing this rewatch, I hit back on one of my greatest frustrations from watching this show three decades ago, as I went to the Lurker’s Guide web site (which I strongly recommend) and found this gem from J. Michael Straczynski from one of his online posts prior to the episode airing: “Absolutely unlike anything ever produced before for television.”

And, um, no. Just off the top of my head, I can think of two examples of this being done before on television—and, I might add, done better. One should be obvious given who his choice for Knight Two was prior to casting Neame: the final two episodes of The Prisoner (especially the penultimate episode “Once Upon a Time”). The other is Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Chain of Command, Part II,” which is superior mainly due to the much higher quality of acting on display. (This is not meant to disrespect Neame or Michael O’Hare, but we’re talking about Sir Patrick Stewart and David Warner here. They’re on a different level…)

And honestly there was no need for this level of hyperbole, because the episode is damn good. But being primed with being told it’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before makes all the parts we have seen before stand out. In particular, the tired clichés in how Benson’s debt collectors, the Knights, and Delenn’s cohort at the end are all written.

In all three of those cases, the characters say that someone might have to be killed, which is to show that the characters in question are, at the very least, ruthless, and at the most, incredibly evil. But it also makes them, at best, stupid and at worst incompetent. First off, anyone who is collecting debts is not going to make a threat, the fulfillment of which will not result in the debt being paid. Compulsive gamblers are addicts, so they’re not going to be dissuaded by someone making an example of them (the usual reason for threatening violence given in fiction that portrays such). Debt collectors are in it to collect debts, not commit acts of violence. (Plus, killing a member of the security force of your mini-city in space will just draw attention to you that you do not want.)

Knight Two saying “so be it” when Knight One says Sinclair might die is equally ridiculous, because they’re trying to obtain information. (Much like Number Two was on The Prisoner, ahem ahem.) You can’t get information from a dead body, and, again, killing the commander of a major space station will just draw attention to you, which you don’t want on a covert mission.

The last issue is less of one because we don’t know the truth behind why the Minbari surrendered, but once we do find out, the threat to kill Sinclair makes absolutely no sense, since the Minbari suddenly realized that killing humans would be bad. But we’ll get to that down the line…

One final nitpick: Garibaldi is reading a printed newspaper. This seemed a failure of imagination thirty years ago, and is something of a howler now when far more people in 2024 consume their news on a computer, tablet, or television, and the physical newspaper is dying a slow death. Heck, the original Star Trek understood that in the future people were more likely to be reading on an electronic medium than a paper one.

Okay, now that I’ve spent all this time on nonsense, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty—damn, this episode is good. For starters, it’s easily O’Hare’s best work to date, showing the character’s anger, confusion, and especially frustration. The missing time in his memory is something that’s gnawed at him for a decade, and this interrogation brings all those questions and annoyances to the fore. It’s a beautifully done set of sequences, culminating in some genuine revelations about Sinclair’s missing time. Of course, those revelations just prompt more questions, but it’s progress. I kind of wish Sinclair had confronted Delenn about it right away instead of holding off for a future episode, but we’ll find out soon enough.

And while I wasn’t all that thrilled with the “if he finds the truth, you must kill him” tag, I will say that Mira Furlan has done superb work in showing Delenn’s complexity and depth—and deviousness. There is a lot more to her than meets the eye, and Furlan expertly plays it without overdoing it or losing the character’s charisma and charm.

Next week: “Deathwalker.”