“Messages from Earth”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Michael Vejar
Season 3, Episode 8
Production episode 308
Original air date: February 19, 1996
It was the dawn of the third age… Cole brings Dr. Mary Kirkish on board. Brought from Mars to B5 by the Rangers, Kirkish is wanted by EarthDome, and several bounty hunters try to nab her and Cole in downbelow. Cole manages to take care of them, but Kirkish is badly injured.
She’s sent to medlab, and once she’s stable and conscious, she’s brought to see the war council.
Kirkish works for Interplanetary Expeditions. She tells the council of an IPX mission to Syria Planum on Mars several years ago, during which they found a strange vessel buried, which viewers and council recognize as a Shadow vessel. One of Kirkish’s colleagues touched the vessel and immediately died. The other members of the team were put in isolation, and Kirkish saw another Shadow vessel show up and free the buried one, with both vessels flying off. Garibaldi saw some of what Kirkish saw when he was serving on Mars at the same time, and he also found a scorched Psi Corps badge near the site.
Kirkish went on with her life, but recently, she learned that another Shadow vessel was found on Ganymede. And this time, EarthDome intends to keep it for themselves. The council is scared shitless of what the Clark Administration might do with Shadow technology.
Sheridan has a cunning plan: he will take the White Star to Ganymede and destroy the Shadow vessel. This strikes everyone as a hilariously bad idea, but Sheridan says he’s doing it anyhow.
Allan attends a NightWatch meeting. One of the guards apparently is in direct contact with NightWatch on Earth, and he announces that several allegedly disloyal people in the government are being targeted for arrest. There is supposedly a conspiracy of people planning to sell out Earth to “the aliens.” They have been given carte blanche by NightWatch to increase their surveillance of people who might be disloyal. Allan is uncomfortable with turning into Big Brother. He is, however, the only one in the room who is.
Cole briefs Ivanova on Shadow vessel movements, but Ivanova isn’t really paying attention, which Cole notices and starts inserting nonsense into the reports to get her attention. Ivanova blames Cole for Sheridan buggering off on his own on a crazy-ass mission, but Cole says that he didn’t bring it to Sheridan hoping Sheridan would do it, he brought it to Sheridan hoping he would order Cole to do it.
The White Star arrives at Ganymede. They intercept communications that indicate that they are trying to bond a pilot to the vessel. Delenn goes into a near-panic, as doing this wrong will end very badly for everyone.
Delenn is quickly proven right, as the Shadow vessel goes completely batshit and starts firing on everyone and everything, completely out of control. Sheridan manages to lure the vessel away from Ganymede and into Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere. The planet’s heavy gravity crushes the Shadow vessel, and almost does the same to the White Star, but the vessel—barely—manages to escape the gas giant only somewhat scathed.
At which points, the EAS Agamemnon shows up. This puts Sheridan in a quandary because he doesn’t want to fire on an EarthForce ship, and he especially doesn’t want to fire on his former command.
They open a jump point in the atmosphere, which should create enough of an electrical charge to keep anyone from following them. This works, and they stumble back home.
ISN reports that Ganymede was attacked by an alien vessel that was destroyed by the Agamemnon, which is almost what happened.
The security guard tells Allan that he needs to use his friendship with Garibaldi to help NightWatch keep Earth safe. Allan’s relationship with his boss isn’t the best right now, and he accidentally makes it clear that he thinks something’s going on with the command crew.
Cole brings a fake org chart of B5 to cheer Ivanova up, which lasts right up until Sheridan tells her to turn on ISN, where they hear the story that martial law has been declared on Earth.
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan decides to be a manly man and do the crazy-ass mission himself instead of sending Cole, even though the Rangers’ raison d’être is to do crazy-ass missions. By doing so, he puts himself in the position of possibly having to fire on the ship he used to command.
Ivanova is God. Ivanova got Cole an identicard, which will make his life easier living on the station. In return, he got her fresh bacon and eggs. This serves to embarrass Ivanova when she has it at breakfast with Sheridan and Garibaldi, causing her to threaten to kill him.
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi saw a Shadow ship once. He didn’t like it very much. He’s also very kindly checking up on G’Kar in jail.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Kirkish is convinced that she’ll probably be killed now, but she’s at peace with that because she’s told someone about the Shadow ship who can do something about it—however, Delenn tells her to stop being silly, the Minbari will take her in, and she sends Kirkish off with Lennier to be made safe in Minbari space.
Though it take a thousand years, we will be free. G’Kar has found a measure of peace and enlightenment in prison. He is working on a book, which he hopes to finish by the time he gets out of jail. In addition, he has been singing, and the other prisoners have taken up a petition to get him to stop, as the initial assumption was that G’Kar was being tortured.
Also the Narn language is written and read from right to left.
We live for the one, we die for the one. Cole is surprised that he wasn’t sent on the mission to Ganymede, which he fully expected, not being aware of the fact that he’s on a TV show where the first-billed person in the opening credits has to do most of the cool stuff.
The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. Whatever operation was involved in getting the Shadow vessel off of Mars involved Psi Corps in some way. This is the second time (after “Matters of Honor”) that we’ve seen the Psi Corps involved with the Shadows.
The Shadowy Vorlons. Apparently there are Shadow vessels buried in various spots in Earth’s solar system. That kinda sucks.
No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Delenn and Sheridan share a lovely moment on the White Star, as Sheridan shares a story of how rain on the roof has always been a comforting noise that would enable him to sleep, going back to childhood. It’s something he particularly misses living in space. Delenn then has the computer play the sound of rain on the roof. It’s sweet as heck, and Sheridan is able to sleep, which he does while holding Delenn’s hand.
Also Cole is obviously continuing to try to win Ivanova’s favor. He starts the episode by giving her bacon and ends it by giving her a good laugh, proving that he’s doing a good job of it…
Welcome aboard. Nancy Stafford plays Kirkish, and we’ve also got a Robert Knepper moment, as Vaughn Armstrong—probably best known for playing eighty bajillion roles on the various Star Trek spinoffs, including the recurring role of Admiral Forrest on Enterprise—makes the first of two appearances as the never-named security guard loyal to NightWatch. He’ll be back next time in “Point of No Return.”
Trivial matters. The events Garibaldi describes were shown in detail in issues #5-8 of DC’s Babylon 5 comic book by Tim DeHaas & John Ridgway, the four-issue “Shadows Past and Present” arc that told of Garibaldi’s time serving on Mars.
G’Kar was imprisoned following his attacking Mollari while doped to the gills in “Dust to Dust.” The book G’Kar is working on will eventually be released as The Book of G’Kar, and become quite the publishing sensation.
Allan started suspecting that something is going on with the senior staff, which led to a rift between him and Garibaldi, in “Voices of Authority.”
IPX was first seen in “Infection,” as the company Hendricks was working for.
One of the NightWatch folks says that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, which is, ironically, a Thomas Jefferson quote.
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“Full power! Give me everything you’ve got!”
“If I were holding anything back, I would tell you.”
—Sheridan spouting a space opera cliché and Lennier repudiating it.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Did I mention my nose is on fire and that I have fifteen wild badgers living in my trousers?” This is one of those episodes that’s very important to the overall storyline, which masks the fact that it isn’t all that good.
Visually, it’s a masterpiece. The flashback scenes on Mars with the discovery of the Shadow vessel and the later retrieval of it are superb, as are the present-day sequences on Ganymede and Jupiter with the White Star, the crazed Shadow vessel, and the Agamemnon.
But the actual story is a slog, due in part to clumsy scripting, and in part due to weak casting. One of the many problems with season one was too many guest stars whose stilted line readings brought an episode down, and that still shows up periodically. We get it in spades with the completely uninspired line readings of Nancy Stafford, who brings absolutely no sense of menace or wonder or fear or much of anything to the role of Kirkish. She’s there to deliver exposition, and she does it in a spectacularly bland fashion that drains the life out of what she’s saying. Thank goodness the visual effects are up to the task of conveying what’s happening, because Stafford utterly fails at it. And her dialogue is clunky as hell, too.
Then we have Sheridan putting on his manly-man pants and going off to do the incredibly dangerous mission himself, even though it makes absolutely no sense that he’d be away from the station for so long without explanation. Indeed, it’s a stupid move from a political standpoint, as one of the NightWatch folks notices that the captain’s away with no explanation, and isn’t that weird? And it’s not like Sheridan doesn’t know that NightWatch is a problem, given that he upbraided one of the security guards for trying to punish sedition just two episodes ago.
To make matters worse, the script lampshades this by having Cole say that he expected to be the one sent on the mission, which raises the question, why the heck wasn’t he? If nothing else, Cole was far less likely to freeze when the Agamemnon showed up. Which was also cheaply manipulative, by the way—not only is Sheridan up against an EarthForce vessel, but it’s his former ship! Oh noes!
There are individual scenes that work beautifully. Both Cole-Ivanova scenes are a delight, ditto the Delenn-Sheridan scene in the White Star sleeping quarters and the G’Kar-Garibaldi scene in the former’s cell. And while Stafford’s casting was a misfire, Vaughn Armstrong’s wasn’t: he’s perfect as the NightWatch toady, quoting Thomas Jefferson while doing more or less the opposite of what Jefferson did.
Next week: “Point of No Return.”
And then there are the helmets with the lights on the inside of the visor, which I first noticed in “Outland”. How do you see past the reflected light?
Yes, yes, I know, if the lights were on the outside the viewers couldn’t see the actors. ;-)
On wonders whether Marcus found out whether Susan kept kosher before attempting to woo her with pork products.
The episode also has pacing problems. Pretty much everything from the end of the opening credits to the meeting where Kirkish drops the McGuffin is a real slog. I constantly found my attention wandering.
On top of that, there are some odd directorial choices. There’s that long, close-up pan at the beginning, which conveys nothing at all. Then there’s the extreme close-up on Dr. Kirkish as she tells her story. The camera starts close and zooms in more and more until her face doesn’t even fit on screen. OK, maybe that was Mike Vejar’s attempt to bring out the drama that the actor couldn’t.
While I take Keith’s point on Sheridan captaining the mission to Ganymede, that’s the nature of TV. What it really brought home to me was how much better suited Sheridan is for the Shadow War than Sinclair. All those risky maneuvers would not have been believable coming from Sinclair.
Since DemetriosX hid some thoughts behind the Spoiler box, I’ll reply the same way.
Whether -or when- she detects it herself might be a different interesting discussion.
This is a character piece. Thing is, it’s as much or more a character piece focused on B5/Rangers vs Clark/Nightwatch. Our main cast care for and look after each other, and Sheridan isn’t willing to risk someone else on this mission despite how obviously bad it would be for both he and Delenn to die in the Sol system in a hostile alien ship. Clark would never take that risk. Nightwatch doesn’t give a fig for liberty. People are tools to be used, just like the failed pilot and the Shadow vessel itself.
From a narrow story PoV, Sheridan’s unwillingness to fire on his own ship proves he shouldn’t have captained this mission. But from the broader perspective, his refusal to engage hurts Clark a bit (the alien ship being destroyed isn’t as useful as “alien ship destroys Omega destroyer and escapes,” not that it slows him down amy) and is the right thing to do. Fighting the war in the right way is both what one presumes Kosh has been teaching him and will be important in S4, although Sheridan’s not always uncompromising in that regard.
I also suspect Sheridan knows what is going to happen and wanted to visit the solar system one last time even if it was a damn fool sentimental thing to do. That’s very Sheridan. To the extent the show turns the Earth conflict into “Sheridan vs Earth,” even the coincidence of the Agamemnon being the other ship registers as a comment on the gravity of the decisions Sheridan will have to make. “Don’t fire on our own ships” isn’t going to last for long, but it’s going to stay as a weighty element on the table and on-screen for another season, and this episode sets that up.
“From a narrow story PoV, Sheridan’s unwillingness to fire on his own ship proves he shouldn’t have captained this mission.”
If he’d known he’d be going up against that ship, maybe. But it was a huge coincidence he had no way of expecting. For that matter, it’s an implausible one, since wasn’t it a deep-space explorer ship? What’s it doing at Jupiter?
True. Did Agamemnon plan to lift it off of Ganymede by itself? How? I don’t think Earth Alliance ships have tractor beams.
Or was it there just to guard it uintil it COULD be removed?
Overall, not a very good ep that had its moments. It DID, however, advance both the coming conflict with EarthGov and with the Shadows, as well.
The Agamemnon is not an Explorer-class ship like the Cortez, it’s an Omega-class destroyer. It had been on a diplomatic tour before Sheridan was reassigned to B5, but that was under a different government. Clark’s regime probably has less interest in building relationships with the League of Non-aligned Worlds (and commensurately more interest in local displays of power), so it was presumably re-tasked.
Interesting to think that, had Sheridan not been assigned to Bab5, he would have been captain of a ship patrolling the home solar system and had extremely limited contact with aliens. Without the knowledge and connections he gained on Bab5, he might not have done what he’s about to do. Clark assigning Sheridan to be the commander of Bab5 was quite the owngoal.
I think you have it backward. When Sheridan was assigned to B5, it was at the end of a 3-year patrol of the outer sectors during which the ship engaged in diplomatic interactions with the League of Non-Aligned Worlds and made at least one major first contact, with the Tikar. Sheridan said in “A Spider in the Web” that the Tikar were unlike any other alien species he’d encountered, implying that he’d encountered a good number of species. He also said that his encounter with the Tikar opened his mind to how wondrous the galaxy was.
So if anything, Sheridan’s prior interaction with aliens in the three years before he came to B5 is probably why he proved more open-minded than Clark expected when he assigned him to command B5.
Okay, but it’s still a rather contrived coincidence.
You’re writing the story and want a “worst-case” scenario, because it’s also a coincidence of sorts that another ship was in the area and responded to weapons fire. Having decided on this story beat at all, you want to name the ship. Is picking a ship we’ve never heard of before with no connection to Sheridan better or worse than picking the Agamemnon? You’re balancing the effect of this one ship on Sheridan against the outrageous coincidence.
A different show might offer the possibility the Agamemnon was specifically present in case the experiment went wrong to make it suspect when it joins Sheridan’s forces in S4, but that’s not how B5 handles things.
Depends on whether elements within the Clark Government were banking on having a crew with long and recent experience of weird alien phenomena (Natural and technological) on hand when it fired up an extremely alien vessel, as part of the contingency planning against … well, against exactly the sort of ‘Whoopsy’ that very nearly blows up right in the middle of our Solar System.
I acknowledge some of the flaws in this episode, but I still find many of the individual moments to be stirring. There are some big moments that advance plot and character arcs in meaningful ways. My favorite part, to the surprise of few, is the Garibaldi-G’Kar scene.
Oddly enough, I never saw this episode during the first run of the show. Living in southwest Virginia at the time (I was attending Virginia Tech), the show was regularly pre-empted by sports and other events. Most of the time, the show would air in the middle of the night with little to no advance warning. This time, none of us caught when the show was going to air, so we missed our chance to see it. I did manage to see it months later in reruns, however!
Don’t suppose you were doing watch parties with a VT group at Bogens?
Alas, no, I wasn’t part of that group.
I remembered bits and pieces of this episode, but not the overall plot. I do recall the final shot of G’Kar writing in his book, because I was very struck by the fact that he was writing from right to left, which I thought was a noteworthy choice. (I also seem to recall that he was writing separated characters, rather than a cursive script, producing an effect a bit like Hebrew. Mind you, printing in a constructed alphabet would have been easier for Katsulas than trying to write cursive, especially if he was writing in a direction he was not used to.)
Looking back now, I am also struck by the fact that he was writing essentially with a pen and paper, rather than using an electronic interface; I don’t remember whether or not I made a note of at the time. (On the other hand, one could certainly come up with an explanation that he was observing some kind of Narn tradition in writing by hand, and in our day and age there are certainly still authors who prefer to write their drafts longhand before typing them up.)
[Edit: In searching for more information online, I came across a few samples of the script, and one commentator who compared some of the characters to a Pigpen cipher; I can see a resemblance there as well.]
He’s also in jail and giving him access to electronics probably isn’t allowed.
If nothing else, it would be far easier to spot attempts to meddle with a physical draft AND somewhat more difficult to meddle with the composition of said draft without Direct Action.
Apparently they filmed it with G’Kar writing left to right and flipped the film.
Interesting! I had no idea. Thank you for the clarification.
Just to play devil’s advocate for Sheridan commanding the White Star, he is a seasoned starship commander. While Cole may be great at the spytype stuff, we have no evidence that he has ever commanded a ship in combat. Sheridan has already defeated one Shadow vessel. If Sheridan expects potential combat, he might decide that he is more qualified than Cole to lead the mission.
That said, I agree with the general annoyance of leaders putting themselves in unnecessary danger because they are the star of the show. Overall, B5 at least does a (marginally) better job of justifying those actions (as long as we ignore Sinclair’s shenanigans in season 1).
Sheridan obviously had concerns about someone else commanding the mission ordering the White Star to fire on an Earth ship, especially given the history between Earth and the Minbari. Cole doesn’t rank high enough to command a mission of this delicacy. Delenn is arguably the one who shouldn’t have gone, with her knowledge about Shadow ships insufficient explanation, but given her role in the Earth-Minbari War, it makes perfect sense she’d insist on going.
Let’s be frank here, if Cole and other Rangers led the mission, they would have been dead or failed, ability to operate the ship and speak Minbari does not equal battle captain skills. In fact, several battles before and after prove that one White Star vs one Shadow Ship will lead to loss of White Star, even if Shadow Ship is wounded/uncontrollable. (I believe it takes 3 White Stars to beat 1 Shadow Ship without Sheridan/Ivanova as per Babylon 5 season 3-4) It took experienced combat captain to survive this. The only ones who could have survived this encounter were Sheridan and maybe Ivanova (after season 3 and 4 battle experience). Or Minbari captain…but Ragerss don’t have experienced Minbari captains since those are exclusively Military Caste who are not Team Ranger players.
the thing is, doesn’t cole speak minbari? so yeah..he really should have been on that mission.
To be fair, with Sinclair, there was an attempt to explain that he had a bit of a death wish at the beginning.
“Messages from Earth” – AKA the episode that inadvertently reused a VFX shot from another sci-fi show: Hypernauts. A very obscure sci-fi gem aimed at young audiences that felt like a crossover between Power Rangers and ReBoot. Co-created by B5 veterans Christy Marx and Ron Thornton, with the VFX being made by Thornton’s own Foundation Imaging, also responsible for B5’s early seasons (and later Trek seasons). I still have vivid memories of watching that show as a kid/early teen. Very obscure and campy, but also fun.
The shot itself was of an alien city that was somehow misplaced with the B5 VFX. It happens when the White Star jumps to hyperspace inside the atmosphere. It’s only a couple of frames, but visible on the DVD.
As the opening salvo of this four-parter, I’d say “Messages from Earth” is probably the weakest one, for sure (one particular Kirkish line: “You can kill me now, I don’t care” stands out like a sore thumb). But while Sheridan’s choice to go on the mission is stupid upfront, I’d argue he wouldn’t have stayed home and done nothing either. This isn’t “Voices of Authority” where he could afford to send Ivanova to Draal while entertaining Musante. A Shadow vessel in Ganymede is a direct threat to Earth, and Sheridan is the kind of person ready to take a bullet for the nearest innocent, whether it’s wise or not. It’s the one flaw in a character known for being a good strategist, but it’s part of his DNA regardless.
Regardless, the episode’s strengths are the lead-up scenes to the battle at Jupiter. I adore the Sheridan/Delenn bedroom conversation. Probably my favorite of the father stories he has to tell. As someone who easily falls asleep to the sound of rain on the roof, I can relate. Beautifully written and acted (and even directed, even though all Vejar is doing is pointing the camera and letting them talk). Kudos to the sound designer as well. If I were on a ship in the middle of space, I would welcome ambient natural sounds like that.
Also, this is the first time we see what happens to a major Shadow vessel when it’s destroyed. We didn’t get a good look at the one that was blown up by the jumpgate in the premiere, but we do so here. Love the VFX of the organic spiderwebs contracting and dusting away into nothingness.
I also enjoy the tense scene between Marcus and Susan as she blames him for Sheridan going off in such a suicide mission.
But the real standouts are the scenes building up to next week’s episode, as the Nightwatch are on the move. Both chilling and terrifying. I imagine things wouldn’t have accelerated this quickly had Ivanova not uncovered the Clark video three episodes before and released it to the public. But it would have happened eventually. Some of the best Zack scenes in the show’s run.
The bit about Sheridan’s father having to use the garden hose to make rain on the roof, while nice, was very anachronistic. I kept thinking, why not just call up a recording of rain sounds, like people often do today in real life?
If anyone else had written this, I’d think they might have been relating an anecdote from their own childhood and putting it in the character’s mouth. But I know now that JMS’s father was horribly abusive, so it’s probably more like he was imagining what a good dad would be like.
“Also, this is the first time we see what happens to a major Shadow vessel when it’s destroyed.”
It was crushed by the high pressure of Jupiter’s atmosphere. Presumably the same thing wouldn’t happen in the vacuum of space.
Incidentally, the Sheridan/Lennier exchange about how much pressure the ship could take reminded me of the classic exchange from Futurama when the Planet Express ship went underwater:
“How many atmospheres can this ship withstand?” “Well, it’s a spaceship, so I’d say anywhere between zero and one.”
Real rain is not just hitting the roof. It is running down the gutters, beating against the window, and so forth. A recording is unlikely to be able to capture all of the specifics of rain on that house as it sounded from that bedroom.
Oh, good point. Yeah, the specific sound he’s used to would be more comforting than generic rain sounds.
Still not the worst experiment ever attempted on Ganymede, at least this one didn’t have a protomolecule.
<grin>
“quoting Thomas Jefferson while doing more or less the opposite of what Jefferson did.”
Sally Hemings might disagree.
I thought this was a good episode, since it had a number of great character moments and well-written dialogue exchanges, and those matter more to me than the plot. I didn’t think Stafford was bad at all, though I was mainly noticing how much she reminded me of Amanda Tapping.
Incidentally, if there were people trying to kill Kirkish before she revealed what she knew, and they failed, doesn’t that mean Clark’s people already know that someone on B5 knows too much, and wouldn’t they have good reason to conclude it was Sheridan, given his absence from the station at the time the Shadow ship was destroyed?
I can understand Sheridan feeling he had to command the mission himself. This was the first time the “Conspiracy of Light” directly challenged Earth, and I can see him thinking that he shouldn’t foist that responsibility on anyone but himself.
I doubt that weapons or jump points in Jupiter’s atmosphere would “ignite” the hydrogen as alleged. JMS acknowledged on CompuServe that it wouldn’t have literally ignited without oxygen, and suggested that it was probably fusion instead. But that wouldn’t work, since the atmosphere wouldn’t be remotely dense enough for fusion at that altitude, and if an explosion did somehow compress enough of the hydrogen to fuse, the heat and pressure would instantly blow away the surrounding hydrogen and stop the reaction. (I remember researching this for a novel involving a Jovian atmosphere.)
I’ve mentioned before how annoyed I was by Christopher Franke’s repeated use of a high-pitched “ping-ping” sound in his scores, but I hadn’t remembered how bad it got. In the opening minutes, he uses a particularly loud, repeated “ping” with a sharp attack that somehow has a nails-on-a-chalkboard effect on me. Certain loud, sharp sounds are very unnerving to me, or certain frequencies (such as those in heavily autotuned voices), and this sound really triggered my sensitivity. I hope he doesn’t use it very often, but I’m afraid it may be the very sound I remember getting so sick of in first run.
@ChristopherLBennet, I suspect that Ms Hemmings wouod have had a fair bit of support from other elements in the population covered by Mr Jefferson’s “All men are created equal” rhetoric only in theory, rather than in actual practice during his lifetime.
While I respect President Jefferson’s political and scholarly achievements, my respect for him as a man is not high – it’s deeply, deeply difficult not to see him as an embodiment of the sort of hypocrisies targeted by Doctor Johnson’s “Why do we always hear the loudest yelps for Liberty from the drivers of negroes?” remark.
That’s who she looked like! Almost a twin of Lt Col “You blow up one sun…” Carter.
I wish that “blow up a sun” thing hadn’t become a running gag for Carter, since they got the science so completely wrong there. Yes, it’s true that a star’s core is in a stable balance between the fusion pressure pushing outward and the weight of the atmosphere pushing inward, but removing atmosphere won’t make it blow up; stars shed atmosphere all the time through their stellar wind. Rather, reducing the weight pushing down on the core will reduce the core pressure commensurately and the core will cool down, actually becoming longer-lived as a result. Theorists have proposed star-lifting — using super-advanced technology to scoop away stellar atmosphere — as a way of prolonging a star’s lifespan. So that episode got it exactly backward.
Still, the STARGATE TV shows generally had better science than B5 did, at least on the average (since they had their share of fantasy nonsense along with the good science).
That is, after all, why they call it ‘Science Fiction’ and not just ‘Drama’.😉
It’s so weird to me when people use the line “It’s called science fiction” to defend something having bad science. I mean, would you say “It’s called romance fiction, so it doesn’t matter if the romance is badly written?” Or “It’s called mystery fiction, so it doesn’t matter if the mystery is absurdly obvious?” Isn’t that getting it backward? If you’re going to advertise that your fiction is specifically about a given thing, doesn’t that imply a responsibility to depict that thing effectively, rather than a license to do it badly?
I think I agree with the principle, but disagree with the details. I mean, I don’t think many people want a genuinely realistic romance or mystery, given that both tend to involve a lot of methodical plodding work to be successful (no, I didn’t write my own vows!) I think many people would respond to complaints of “no one falls in love at first sight” or “there’s never five eccentric suspects in a manor” saying that it’s just fiction.
On the other hand, you’re 100% right that there’s a lot of room for more science in the science fiction! Many writers have springboarded from solid science concepts into excellent fiction, there are huge lists of books and authors who prive that real science (or more real, at least) is absolutely compatible with good writing. Your own works are one example, but I’d also cite Timothy Zahn, not to mention many more “classic” authors like Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov.
So I get tetchy when people say it’s only scifi not science too! Sure, there’s a sliding scale of realism, and I’ve read or watched good stuff from all over it, but don’t claim that it’s impossible!
And, much as I enjoyed B5, I think it’s fair to hold JMS to a relatively high standard, as scientific accuracy was one of the selling features he hyped for B5.
If you have FTL, it can’t be sci-fi by your definition.
This generic point has been hashed out plenty of times so it’s not worth belaboring, but for my part, the distinction is that science fiction as a genre feels the need to explain how the scientifically-impossible (probably) FTL works, where science fantasy would be satisfied with Clarke’s Law or similar handwaving. Even that definition breaks down fast: most sci-fi mixes and matches.
You miss the point. I’m not saying all science fiction has to be scientifically plausible. I’m just saying that the rhetorical premise “The fact that it’s called science fiction proves that the science doesn’t matter” makes no sense. I can’t imagine anyone making the parallel argument about any other genre, yet somebody invariably tosses it out every time there’s a discussion about the science in science fiction. There are valid arguments that can be made about the plausibility in science fiction, but that particular bit of rhetoric is not one of them. It’s facile and nonsensical, and I’m sick of hearing it tossed out practically every single time the subject comes up.
Funny you should mention Franke’s soundtrack. I normally don’t notice the background music, but this time it was really distracting. Totally overblown.
To make matters worse, the script lampshades this by having Cole say that he expected to be the one sent on the mission, which raises the question, why the heck wasn’t he?
If Cole was sent on the mission, what was he going to do, kick it? Or slightly less ineffectively, command the White Star? This was a combat mission with a ship, and Sheridan is by far the most experienced space-combat officer they have. You could probably make a case for Ivanova, but not Cole, whose main skill seems to be hitting people with sticks and flirting in a soothing accent.
I agree that Cole leading the mission would have made more sense than Sheridan (or Delenn) going, if for no other reason than to give him something to do in the episode besides his Aragorn/Legolas routine and flirting with Ivanova, but maybe they didn’t think it’d be a good idea to have two Marcus-focused episodes in a row. I said I’d be unhappy if the show tried to make those two a couple, and I still would, but at least he comes off like more of a regular person in their scenes together.
Something I was happy to see was that G’Kar is still locked up. When he was given such a ludicrously light sentence after having assaulted, kidnapped, and tortured a foreign dignitary, I was worried that would be the last we’d hear of it, so I’m glad the legal ramifications of his actions have lasted longer than a single episode. I also like the turn G’Kar has made as a character after his drug-induced enlightenment, though I think it would work better alongside a longer confinement.
I didn’t think Stafford was bad in her role, which really was just to show up and dump some exposition upon the audience, but Vaughn Armstrong made a bigger impression, and they didn’t even give him a name. I’m pleased to read that he’ll be returning. I’m still not crazy about the White Star, at least on the inside. It was jarring to watch the episode cut between impressive visual effects (for the time, anyway) and a set that looks like it was borrowed from a Roger Corman film. Maybe they wouldn’t have to shove all those beds in the same room if they didn’t need the space for big, empty corridors. However, I got a kick out of Lennier’s passive aggressive engineering style.
It did seem an oversight not to give Armstrong’s character a name, but maybe in a way it’s appropriate, since he’s just a tool of the faceless fascist machine or whatever.
Speaking of names, I get why Keith wants to maintain a consistent style by using surnames for all the characters, but it’s weird and sometimes confusing when these reviews use surnames for characters that are usually referred to by their first names, like Marcus, Londo, Zack, or Lyta. In my own reviews on my blog and Patreon, I generally go with whichever name is more commonly used in dialogue. In my current Blake’s 7 review series, for instance, I don’t think it would make any sense to refer to Vila, Jenna, or Dayna by last names that were spoken only 2-4 times in the entire 52-episode run.
When I remember to, though, I try to refer to each character by their full name the first time I mention them in a given article.
Honestly, I didn’t know his surname until after I read this review. It feels as weird to refer to him as Cole as it would to call Ivanova “Susan.”
This is a case where Sheridan going on the mission makes absolute sense. He has the most experience in commanding a combat situation. He was the only person in the Earth/Minbari war to have a victory over the Minbari. They are trying to stop a Shadow Ship, something that the Minbari believe is unstoppable. The Shadow Ship becoming active is a threat, not only to B5 and their Army of Light, but to Earth itself. It has to be stopped. Marcus is not an experienced combat captain. We have not seen him be in charge of ANY ship in combat. Sometimes the situation requires you bring your absolute best, even if it risks losing him, because any other choice is too risky.
“They are trying to stop a Shadow Ship, something that the Minbari believe is unstoppable.”
Well, as far as they knew when they started, they were trying to stop Psi Corps and/or Clark’s people (if there’s a difference) from transporting a dormant Shadow ship off Ganymede. Plan A was to destroy the ship while it was still dormant; they just didn’t get there soon enough for that. And I’m not sure they expected Psi Corps to be crazy enough to install a pilot and reactivate the ship rather than just towing it as a derelict. After all, what Kirkish told them was that they wanted to analyze and reverse-engineer the Shadow tech, and you don’t need a working, flying ship to do that.
So I don’t think they anticipated that they’d be facing an active Shadow ship, so that probably wasn’t a factor in Sheridan’s decision, except maybe as a long-shot possibility.
Indeed, if they had gotten there earlier, Marcus might’ve made more sense as the mission leader, since if the goal was to prevent the ship from being removed and to destroy it in situ, the best way might’ve been to infiltrate the Ganymede base and set explosives on the ship, rather than to blast it from orbit.
G’Kar and Garibaldi can be almost as good a pairing as G’Kar and Mollari.
Isn’t Ivanova Jewish? Would she eat bacon?
It is clear that while Jewish, she is not very observant. Even now, the vast majority of Reform Jews and many (most?) Conservative Jews do not follow strict laws of kosher. However, for those whose kosher is spotty, eating pork is often one of the rules they follow. It often depends on childhood practices.
A friend who became observant after he married has stated that he misses bacon and that the substitute meats, while good, aren’t Real Bacon.
Obviously it’s very hard to go whole hog when one sincerely embraces Judaism … 🥸
For the record, that is meant to be a Groucho Marx smiley, not a ‘cunning disguise’ smiley.