“Hunter, Prey”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Menachem Binetski
Season 2, Episode 13
Production episode 213
Original air date: March 1, 1995
It was the dawn of the third age… Sheridan and Ivanova are in Bay 13, which is where Kosh keeps his ship. Nobody goes to Bay 13, and indeed Ivanova warned Sheridan against doing so, but he’s curious (at least in part because of what happened between him and Kosh in “All Alone in the Night”). According to Ivanova, the maintenance crews steer clear of the place now, as the first ones to try to work there heard the ship talking to them in their sleep. Sheridan thinks that he needs to try to work harder to get to know Kosh and the Vorlons.
Garibaldi shows up wanting to talk to them both. It isn’t something he wants to discuss over a link, and definitely not something he wants to talk about in front of Kosh’s creepy ship.
Apparently, Dr. Everett Jacobs, the personal physician to President Clark, is missing, on the run, and being hunted by EarthForce security with orders to shoot to kill. Latest intel is that he’s on B5, which means the hunt is coming to them.
Sure enough, an EarthForce security agent named Derek Cranston shows up with a contingent of personnel, explaining that Jacobs had a high security clearance because of his closeness to the president, and he stole some classified information that badly threatens the Earth Alliance. Sheridan puts Garibaldi and his entire staff at Cranston’s disposal. They’re going to do a methodical search, level by level. When Allan points out that that’ll conservatively take forever, Cranston reveals that all high-ranking EarthDome personnel like Jacobs have short-range tracking implants. All they have to do is walk through with a scanner and then move on to the next place.
Garibaldi goes to Franklin, who studied under Jacobs at Harvard. Franklin thinks the notion of Jacobs being a traitor is the craziest thing he’s ever heard.
Sheridan sees Kosh in a corridor, and decides to start on his get-to-know-Kosh program right then and there. He directly but politely confronts Kosh about how the Vorlon spoke to him telepathically while he was a prisoner of the Streib. Kosh says he was trying to gain understanding.
After being briefed by Garibaldi on how the search is going, Sheridan sees a red ribbon tied to a post. He excuses himself and goes to meet with an EarthForce officer named Sarah, who works with General Hague. She reveals that Jacobs is not a traitor, and not a threat to Earth. He is, however, a big threat to Clark, because he has proof that Clark was not ill when he left Earth Force One right before it went boom, killing President Santiago. Sarah says that it’s vital that Sheridan get Jacobs safely off B5. Sheridan tartly points out that that would be a helluva lot easier to accomplish if he’d known all this before he gave Cranston free rein of the station and of the security staff. He absolutely cannot be seen to be overtly hindering Cranston, as that would be as bad in its own way as Jacobs being captured.
Sheridan reads Ivanova and Garibaldi in on this. Garibaldi immediately goes off duty and approaches Franklin. Since the doctor knows Jacobs, he’s going to help Garibaldi find him in downbelow. They’re dressed in civvies and Garibaldi is also wearing a fedora, which is a totally foolproof disguise.
Jacobs is, in fact, in downbelow. We see him trying to purchase a fake ID. However, his desperation is obvious, and that makes the merchants wary of him, as desperate people usually bring trouble. He’s mainlining stims as he’s afraid of going to sleep for fear that he’ll be caught while napping. Unfortunately, while Jacobs is able to evade security, he is unable to evade one of downbelow’s criminals, Max, who takes him hostage.
Franklin sees a merchant trying to sell Jacobs’ antique watch. Garibaldi intimidates the merchant into giving up Max. Garibaldi and Franklin are able to rescue Jacobs from Max’s sidekick Chase, but Jacobs reveals that Max has the data crystal with all the evidence on it. For his part, Max has already contacted Cranston and offered to sell Jacobs to him.
To everyone’s shock and awe, Kosh invites Sheridan to meet with him. They have a conversation that proves very frustrating to both parties, but eventually Kosh agrees to help Sheridan learn more about himself, so that the captain will be ready to fight legends.
Max returns to find Chase tied up and no sign of his prisoner. Garibaldi fires his PPG several times, always just barely missing Max, making it clear that he could shoot him cleanly any time. Max timidly gives up the crystal.
Cranston angrily asks why nobody told him that the internal scanners could be recalibrated to find a particular signal, and orders the scanners to be so recalibrated.
Sheridan meets with Garibaldi, Franklin, and Jacobs. They have until the scanners are rewired to get his posterior off the station. Garibaldi says it’s impossible, as Cranston’s people have all possible egresses covered, but Sheridan has an idea…
When the adjusted scanners are online, Cranston orders a sweep, but they don’t find Jacobs’ implant. Sheridan acts pissed that Cranston turned his station upside down and Jacobs isn’t even here. Cranston is vexed, as he was sure Jacobs was on B5. Then Kosh’s ship asks for permission to leave, and it goes, but Cranston wants it scanned. Sheridan is reluctant, as the Vorlons don’t like that, but Corwin does a scan, and they only detect one non-human life form. Cranston briefly toys with the idea of recalling the ship and searching it manually, but Sheridan’s litany of consequences to that—which boil down to “pissing off the Vorlons something fierce”—convinces him to back off that idea. When Cranston asks about Max and his offer to sell Jacobs to him, Sheridan points out that grifters are quite common in downbelow…
Once Cranston and his team have buggered off. Kosh’s ship comes back and disgorges Jacobs, who was in a medically induced coma. Franklin brings him out of it. The one life-form the scanners picked up was the ship itself, which is organic technology. Jacobs also says that while he slept, he would swear that the ship sang to him.
Sheridan gives Sarah the evidence. It’s not enough to bring charges against Clark, but it’s a very good start.
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan does quite a bit of proverbial tap-dancing and juggling trying to keep Cranston on-point and still make sure the right people find Jacobs first. At one point, he convinces Cranston that there’s a section of the station he might be hiding in called “downtown,” a name he made up right there on the spot, which he says is the area between the hull and the water reclamation system (a place where, in reality, nobody ever goes ever). That very handily delays Cranston under the guise of being cooperative.
Ivanova is God. When Cranston asks Ivanova why nobody told him about rejiggering the scanners, Ivanova sweetly replies, “You didn’t ask,” and also reminds him about the cliché involving getting more results with honey than vinegar.
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi thinks he can move easily through downbelow as long as he’s out of uniform and in a fedora because (a) he doesn’t spend much time in downbelow and (b) the people down there usually only see the badge. This is belied by the number of times he’s been in downbelow just in the show to-date, plus he, um, doesn’t actually wear a badge…
The Shadowy Vorlons. Kosh has been attending more council meetings since Sheridan was assigned, and also has obviously taken an interest in Sheridan. But it takes Sheridan pressing the point for him to actually do something about this interest.
Looking ahead. Kosh claims to want to ready Sheridan to “fight legends,” which is pretty obviously a reference to his very big role in the war against the Shadows. Given how imminent the threat is, one wonders why Kosh had to be practically put in a headlock to even talk to Sheridan about this, but whatever.
Welcome aboard. Two people who starred in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure are guests in this one: Bernie Casey (Mr. Ryan) as Cranston and Tony Steedman (Socrates) as Jacobs. Richard Moll, best known as Bull on Night Court and the voice of Two-Face on Batman: The Animated Series, plays Max, while Wanda De Jesus plays Sarah.
Plus we’ve got some recurring regulars: back from “Acts of Sacrifice” are Jeff Conaway as Allan (who’ll return in “There All the Honor Lies”) and Joshua Cox as Corwin (who’ll return in “And Now for a Word”), and back from “All Alone in the Night” is Ardwight Chamberlain as Kosh (who’ll also return in “There All the Honor Lies”).
Trivial matters. The last time the scanners were retuned to find a particular signal was in “A Spider in the Web,” used to find Abel Horn.
Hague’s cabal of EarthForce personnel trying to fight EarthGov’s creeping fascism was established in “All Alone in the Night,” which is when Sheridan, Ivanova, Garibaldi, and Franklin officially became part of it.
The suspicious nature of Santiago’s death and Clark’s just missing it has been a thing since just before it happened in “Chrysalis.” This is the first real evidence we’ve seen of the conspiracy beyond what Garibaldi learned in that episode.
Garibaldi reminds Franklin that the last time he vouched for someone, it resulted in death and destruction on a major scale, a reference to the arrival of Dr. Vance Hendricks in “Infection.”
Speaking of “Infection,” it was in that episode that we got the first mention of the notion of the Vorlons using organic technology.
While most of Kosh’s responses to Sheridan are his usual abstruse nonsense, he reacts with anger when Sheridan asks, “What do you want?” That was the same question that Morden asked the various ambassadors on behalf of the Shadows in “Signs and Portents,” and it was Mollari’s answer to it that pretty much led to the current Narn-Centauri conflict…
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“Well, maybe now you’ll admit that you were wrong about Jacobs?”
“I didn’t say I believed them.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t say you believed me, either.”
“I don’t believe anybody.”
“What a wonderful world you live in.”
“Yeah, well, the rent is cheap, the pay is decent, and I get to make my own hours. Now are you gonna help me or spend the next two days analyzing my lifestyle?”
—Franklin and Garibaldi arguing.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “You do not even understand yourself.” This episode suffers from an unavoidable problem—or at least was unavoidable once casting was finalized. There is simply no way for Cranston to be in any way convincing as an antagonist, or even as a person, when being (and I use this term loosely) “portrayed” by Bernie Casey and his wooden line readings. Cranston as written should come across as a brutally efficient professional. (As an example, look at how Michael O’Neill played Secret Service Agent Ron Butterfield on The West Wing or how Jonathan Banks played Mike Ehrmantraut on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Heck, look at how Walter Koenig plays Bester on this show…) I’d even settle for him being a bureaucratic tool, but Casey can’t even swing that. He’s just an automaton who brings absolutely nothing to bear on the character.
Casey’s somnolent performance drags the episode down a bit, but it’s still a generally effective story. I particularly like the way Sheridan dances between the raindrops, as it were, staying on Cranston’s good side and giving the illusion of cooperation while enabling Garibaldi and Franklin to do their work to find him before an army of trained security personnel manage it. And I enjoyed Tony Steedman’s portrayal of Jacobs as an intelligent, determined person who doesn’t let the fact that he’s completely out of his depth slow him down. Though it does get him in trouble that he only escapes because of the dumb luck of Franklin noticing the watch being sold. Plus, it’s nice to see the good guys getting a proper victory.
One plot point did bug me, though: why did Cranston agree to ransom Jacobs without once actually seeing Jacobs or just generally getting any proof that Max had him. Why did he just take some random shady dude at his word? Every other bit of Cranston’s behavior was that of a trained professional, but that was an amateur screwup. (Of course, if he got that proof, the plot doesn’t work, since Cranston needs to end the episode thinking Jacobs was never on B5.)
The Kosh subplot is mostly okay, but I find myself being frustrated in general on this rewatch with the parsimonious providing of important information. Knowing what’s coming, and how important Sheridan will be in the coming craziness, Kosh’s reluctance to even engage with him despite obviously knowing his importance is maddening. Having said that, I loved the whole mythology that has grown up around Bay 13, with the maintenance crews giving it a wide berth, and Garibaldi not willing to even talk about anything important in front of the Vorlon ship.
This is the last B5 Rewatch entry for 2024. We’ll be taking the next couple weeks off for the holidays, then be back on the 6th of January with “There All the Honor Lies.”
Thank you all for continuing to take this ride with me. I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect from watching B5 again for the first time in three decades, but I’m happy to say that most of the surprises have been pleasant ones, and just in general, it’s been great to re-experience this show again. Looking forward to continuing with season two and the great war coming upon us all in 2025…
