“Objects in Motion”
Written by J. Michael Staczynski and Harlan Ellison
Directed by Jesus Treviño
Season 5, Episode 20
Production episode 521
Original air date: November 11, 1998
It was the dawn of the third age… A familiar-looking woman is having trouble at customs. Her name is Tessa Halloran and she’s from Mars, but the system isn’t registering her identicard. Franklin, however, recognizes her as “Number One” from the Mars resistance and vouches for her to Allan. She’s here to bring a message to Garibaldi, and also possibly to talk to Sheridan.
Franklin takes her to Garibaldi’s quarters, where he’s going through the DTs, and Halloran informs him that there’s a contract out on him and Lise. The new government on Mars is very interested in possible corruption in Earth-based businesses on Mars, including Edgars Industries, and that has made both Lise and Garibaldi a target. Halloran also casually mentions that they’ll both be returning to Mars soon, which catches Franklin off guard.
G’Kar goes to Alexander with his proposal of the two of them going off exploring together, since they are both unable to remain on the station or go home, albeit for wildly different reasons. Alexander accepts, though she assumes a more cynical reason for G’Kar wanting to keep her close.
Allan comes up with a plan to deal with the potential assassin: Lise and Garibaldi will relocate to temporary quarters and stay there until Sheridan holds a going-away party for both G’Kar and Garibaldi, where security will be ready for the assassin.
Garibaldi also finally tells Sheridan that he plans to marry Lise and return to Mars with her to help her run Edgars Industries. He knows he can’t be trusted with a position of authority in the IA. Sheridan gives his blessing.
A man kills a security guard and takes his link, replacing it with a replica. He then works with micro-tools to allow him to access the link, bypassing the DNA filter that would only allow the person he killed to use it.
Halloran visits Sheridan, and explains the difficulties Mars has had. Earth has done everything they can to stall or delay Mars’ ability to be independent—the incident she had at customs is just one example. On top of that, internecine tensions that were set aside for the common goal of freeing Mars are now coming to a boil. Sheridan offers to set up a diplomatic post for Mars on Minbar that will allow them to function independently of Earth with IA support.
A Narn approaches G’Kar asking why he’s leaving, especially since he spent all his money to come here and learn at G’Kar’s feet. He’s also the one who made the G’Kar action figures. G’Kar dismisses him and tells him he wasted his time and money and he should go home.
Allan is going through the dead guard’s effects, and is surprised to see that the link is stuck to the bottom of the box. The links have genetically coded adhesives that only stick to the skin of the user. If this link is fake, then the assassin must have his real link.
Sheridan hosts the going-away party, giving a brief speech about how much they’ll miss both Garibaldi and G’Kar. Allan has a loud signal sent to the dead guard’s link, which reveals the assassin when he doubles over in pain. Allan’s people are able to arrest him—
—but there’s another would-be assassin in the crowd, as the Narn groupie that G’Kar castigated thinks that G’Kar has betrayed them all and tries to shoot him. Allan tackles G’Kar, but the shot goes wild and hits Lise.
Franklin is able to save Lise. While she recovers, Garibaldi asks Allan for five minutes with the assassin, which Allan reluctantly grants. Garibaldi brings the assassin to Alexander. Garibaldi knows that a scan would be inadmissible in a court of law, but he could give a damn about that, he just wants answers. The assassin is trained in techniques to resist telepathic scans, which would probably work against someone less powerful than Alexander, but she plows right through and learns that he was hired by the Edgars Industries board of directors. Garibaldi thanks her; Alexander reminds him of their deal, and promises to make Garibaldi a vegetable if he doesn’t live up to his end.
Sheridan goes to G’Kar’s quarters to say goodbye. G’Kar was going to wait until Delenn returned from Minbar, but the attempt on his life shows that he should leave sooner rather than later. G’Kar waxes rhapsodic about how everyone who departs leaves a piece of themselves behind, and the pair exchange a final handshake. G’Kar then dictates a message to be delivered after he departs.
Lise awakens, and Garibaldi informs her that he’s summoned a priest—not for last rites, to her relief, but so that they can be married right away.
Two guards bring Alexander to the dock where G’Kar’s ship is. G’Kar demands that the shackles be removed, but Alexander telekinetically shatters them before the guards can do anything. They head off together, Alexander disappointed that nobody came to see them off. However, Allan is watching from a distance.
Garibaldi contacts the Edgars Industries board of directors. They pretend to express relief that he and Lise are okay, and they say that they’ve found the guilty party: the company’s security chief, who confessed in his suicide note. Garibaldi, however, doesn’t buy it, and proceeds to mention various dirty little secrets of several of the board members. He then introduces his replacement as head of IA covert intelligence: Halloran. Having the infamous “Number One” in that position could make their lives very difficult. Garibaldi makes it clear that their resignations should be on his desk by the time he arrives on Mars. He’s also set aside 500,000 credits in a secret account. If he or Lise die of anything other than old age, contract hits will be put on each of them for 100,000 credits each, which is well over the going rate.
Franklin and Halloran share a meal at the Zocalo, expressing surprise at how quickly things have moved. Franklin is also disappointed that she’s coming to the station just as he’s about to leave. But they do have time for one night together…
Delenn returns just in time for Garibaldi and Lise to leave. Garibaldi thanks them both for supporting him and being the family he never expected to have. He hugs them both and then goes off.
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan gets heartfelt goodbyes with both Garibaldi and G’Kar. He doesn’t bother with one for Alexander, even though she saved his ass on multiple occasions.
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi is already better at being the head of Edgars Industries than he ever was as a security chief, a PI, or the head of covert intelligence. Mostly because being unethical and extralegal and cutting corners is far more beneficial to a corporate CEO.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Delenn suggests that, before they leave the station, she and Sheridan walk the entire five-mile length of the station. It’s a very Delenn thing to suggest.
Though it take a thousand years, we will be free. G’Kar is disappointed a lot in this episode: by Alexander’s cynicism, by the Narn groupie’s idiocy, and by his having to leave the station.
The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. Allan comes the closest to saying goodbye to Alexander, but he only does it from a distance and out of her line of sight, so she doesn’t know he’s there.
No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Alexander says that she kept the shackles on, even though she could’ve removed them any time with the power of her mind, because she found she enjoyed wearing them. Wah-HEY!
Looking ahead. G’Kar’s recorded message will be played next time in “Objects at Rest.”
Welcome aboard. Back from “The Wheel of Fire” is Denise Gentile, making her final appearance as Lise. Back from “Endgame” is Marjorie Monaghan as Halloran; she’ll be back next time in “Objects at Rest.” James Hornbeck plays the assassin and Neil Bradley plays the Narn groupie.
Trivial matters. This is Alexander’s final appearance. The character was intended to appear in Crusade’s “The Path of Sorrows,” but Patricia Tallman had a scheduling conflict, so it didn’t happen.
G’Kar came up with the notion of going off with Alexander, and Garibaldi made his deal with her, last time in “The Wheel of Fire.”
The assassin runs songs through his head to try to block Alexander’s scan. This is a similar technique to that used by the protagonist to avoid being scanned by telepathic cops in Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man, which was a major inspiration for Psi Corps.
It is unclear what Harlan Ellison’s contribution to the story was to earn him a co-story credit.
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“Go anywhere in the station when it is quiet, and just listen. After a while, you will hear the echoes of all our conversations—every thought and word we’ve exchanged. Long after we are gone, our voices will linger in these walls for as long as this place remains.”
—G’Kar providing the title for this section.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Now is all we have.” The endless denouement continues!
This is pretty much Garibaldi’s swan song, and it’s fitting that he finally found his niche as the head of a corporation defined by dubious ethics. He lies, he manipulates, he performs hilariously unethical acts, he blackmails, he extorts. Yup, that’s a CEO, all right! And best of all, he’s not in an influential position in the IA anymore, which is better for everyone.
I couldn’t really put my finger on what my issue with these last few episodes was until I read a comment by CriticalMyth on “The Wheel of Fire’s” rewatch entry from last week: the Drazi and the Narn attacked Centauri Prime, which was the latest in a series of missteps and screwups involving the nascent IA, and we’ve seen no examination of the consequences. A lot of what went wrong with the fight against the Centauri was due to Garibaldi’s drunken incompetence—not to mention Sheridan putting Garibaldi in a situation where his drunken incompetence could do the most damage—and we’ve seen precisely zero of what that means for the IA. We’ve focused so much on what the characters are doing as the show rides into the sunset that the plot consequences are glossed over.
It is good to see Number One again, and find out what her actual name is, though her getting Garibaldi’s job makes me wish she’d gotten it in the first place. But it’s always good to see Marjorie Monaghan, and I like the fact that Mars’ independence is having expected problems with Earth being buttheads.
It’s very fitting that G’Kar’s final in-person appearance on the show (he only will appear next time in a recorded message, and “Sleeping in Light” will take place after his death) includes the latest in a series of eloquent speeches by the Narn. It’s not his best speech, but it’s a good one, and Andreas Katsulas delivers it with his usual brilliance.
While this episode is less draggy than “The Wheel of Fire” was, and actually is paced decently, it doesn’t feel like an hour’s worth of plot actually happened in it.
Next week: “Objects at Rest.”
This was one that I remembered, but as it went on. But it was more of a “oh yeah, this happened, and then this” and so on.
The Captains and Kings depart, leaving Zach Allen behind. I guess that’s the next episode, too. And then the finale, which I do remember most of, I think.
Endless denouement sums this up pretty well. I suppose you could argue this gets dragged out because of stuff that got moved up to season 4 in case of cancellation, but to me it just shows that there was room for at least one more episode in the Minbari civil war, which really needed it.
I know JMS appreciates the fans, but he’s maybe letting a little personal exasperation slip out when he wrote the scene with G’Kar getting lectured by the idol-crafting fanboy? I paraphrase: You can’t do what you want [leave]. You must do what we want. We gave your our love and adoration. We made you. Therefore you owe your very existence to us. We own you.
4 episodes of goodbye out of 22 is a lot, especially when so much of the season is set up for the Telepath war, and effectively wasted because that story was never told. 4 episodes out of 110 is still a lot, but maybe not so unreasonable.
I’m glad that each of the main characters (well, except for Ivanova) gets a moment to reflect and many of them get a chance to say goodbye to each other. It’s not particularly exciting television, but it was emotionally satisfying for me during the original run and it still is to a degree. So many genre shows get canceled and abruptly stop in mid-stream. It’s nice to have a counter-example of a planned ending. But I do agree that the goodbyes could have been compressed to make room for at least a little consideration of how the IA regroups after the Centauri affair.
As to the details of this episode, I’m not sure that enticing the assassin to make his play in a large crowd of innocent bystanders (with the President of the alliance in the line of fire, no less) should really go down in the books as a masterstroke of security strategy. But, I guess that’s how we do things around here. As is the chief of security just casually allowing a prisoner to be illegally scanned. One can certainly tell that Zach went to the Michael Garibaldi school of due process.
According to JMS’ script book commentary, Ellison’s contribution was remarking on a historical instance where they staged a situation to catch an assassin, only for another assassin to emerge out of nowhere. If I had the book on hand, I’d give more details, but that’s the gist of it. JMS offered to let Ellison write the episode, but Ellison declined; JMS still elected to give him story credit.
I like aspects of the episode…the return of Number One/Halloran, G’Kar’s speech, even Garibaldi’s farewell…but something has always rubbed me the wrong way about Garibaldi’s rise as the co-head of Edgars Industries. I feel like some of it is the scene with the board; Mr. Paretti strikes me as ridiculous for some reason. It’s one of those scenes that feels like it suffered from the loss of a day of production, like many fifth season episodes. But beyond that, maybe it’s his “ethics” that irritate me.
I noticed Sheridan pointedly did not have any words or time for Lyta. I guess he figured he said everything he cared to say in the previous episode. But Sheridan feels odd throughout this episode. Like he doesn’t know what to say. Maybe it’s supposed to be his sense of loss as people leave and he also prepares for impending departure, but he seems off to me. Of course, the cast was dealing with the reality that the show was ending, so that might be it.
Script Book: Ellison pointed to 1933, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was a mob target, they protected him from the assassin, but he was next to FDR at the rally and someone trying to shoot FDR killed him instead.
JMS says he tried to get Ellison to write the script, but he declined, leading to the co-writer credit.
Sheridan’s treatment of Lyta is consistently callous and despicable. But at least it’s consistent. It would be hypocritical for him to try to make nice as she’s leaving. I like that JMS doesn’t pull his punch there. But I *don’t* understand why Zack lurks in the corner instead of saying goodbye. I mean, I can guess why JMS wanted the scene to play out that way, but I don’t think it makes sense from a character perspective.
One thing I have noticed about Sheridan’s progression in this re-watch is that, as his mistakes start piling up over the course of this season, his manner changes. At first he gets brusque and defensive. But now he just seems a bit overwhelmed. At least, that’s how I (now) interpret his unusual passivity in this episode.
I don’t think Zack was lurking, I think he just didn’t arrive until a few moments too late. He’s a busy guy, what with the followup on two simultaneous assassination attempts.
Paretti is large, wears a suit, and smokes a cigar. He’s what happens when you put in an order for an unnuanced fat cat executive with central casting or an editorial cartoonist. It’s also charmingly naïve that not only is the majority of the dirt Garibaldi has on the board members that they’ve had affairs, but that the board members act as if this would be career-ending. (The airlock murder allegation might stick, maybe, but shameless rich people have pieces on the side? Yawn. Well, it was the 90s, things were different back then.)
The thing that rankles about Garibaldi becoming co-head of Edgars Industries is that it’s completely unearned. Sure, people do marry into businesses, but competent (if somewhat scuzzy) cop to competent (if somewhat scuzzy) PI to incompetent head of intelligence to super-competent and rich business CEO is both unlikely and possibly the best outcome any of our main characters gets.
True about how the dirt wouldn’t be seen as very “dirty” these days, with the exception of the murder (perhaps).
I think you’re right about how Garibaldi’s rebound is unearned. I’m not sure if more time to explore that post-binge would have solved that problem. But it does fit into the “second chances, even for people like us” theme that we’ll hear in the not-so-distant future. (Though, is this Garibaldi’s third or fourth chance?)
Over the past 27 years, the biggest unanswered mystery of Babylon 5 (at least to me) was Harlan Ellison’s contribution to this episode. At least with “A View from the Gallery”, you could argue that it was the Hidden Fortress-esque story that broke from the usual format. But this one? I guess now we know a bit little more as to why (thanks to CriticalMyth’s source).
More and more, I find myself agreeing with the consensus. The show not addressing the fallout of the Narn/Drazi assault on Centauri Prime or the IA’s handling of it feels very sloppy the older these episodes get.
Of these goodbye closing episodes, I think this is the odd one out, partly because of the bizarre confluence of events. To have Lise Hampton of all people getting shot by a Narn who’s out to get G’Kar? Seriously, she survived at least one Mars rebellion, two failed marriages, a bombing that killed her second ex, kidnapping for ransom, a hired assassin, and after all this, it’s the fundamentalist Narn who is the one to finally nail her? That takes a LOT of effort from any writer (pun intended). The more I rewatch this one, the more I find myself laughing over the improbability factor alone. Now we know it originated from Ellison’s remarks, but JMS had to stitch all of that together for a very unwieldy scenario.
Hell, I can buy doing a farewell party/gathering for G’Kar. He was a celebrated Narn leader, but Garibaldi?
On second thought, yeah, most people who hated Garibaldi’s guts would celebrate his departure with fireworks.
All that aside, I’m glad Garibaldi finally gets a happy ending of sorts. He’s been through enough hell over the past five seasons that he’s earned it. And blackmailing the company board of directors is right up his alley – Jerry Doyle must have loved doing every minute of it.
I’m glad the show recognizes the fact that Lyta was treated very shabbily by pretty much everyone. And she gets off the show a much stronger, assertive and much more interesting person than she was back in “The Gathering”. I didn’t know she was supposed to appear on Crusade. I was always under the impression that she died during the Telepath War prior to that show.
G’Kar gets a very bittersweet ending, now that I realize this was for all intents and purposes his final chronological appearance until his return in the 2002 Legend of the Rangers movie. And he ends at a point of doubt rather than clarity. Which I guess is a realistic conclusion. At least he got to a point where he could call Londo a friend and be able to forgive. That’s good enough in my book.
Concerning Lyta and her non-appearance on Crusade:
Some parts of this worked well, especially G’Kar’s lyrical dialogue (I liked the “sum of our tears” speech). Having G’Kar stalked by an entitled toxic fanboy was kind of prophetic of the current state of fandom, though I guess there have always been people like that.
Zack’s detective work was excellent, but the prop department undermined it by giving the substitute link an obviously different speaker grille design, which any competent detective should’ve spotted on sight, meaning that Zack should’ve caught on much sooner.
I don’t get why Garibaldi blackmailed the board members into quitting by threatening to reveal their crimes, rather than just, you know, actually revealing their crimes so that they could be prosecuted. I mean, you’d think that’s something an ex-cop would want to see happen. And it would be important to expose Earth’s and Edgars Industries’ actions against Martian independence in order to benefit Mars in the long run. Also, the Sebastian Cabot type they cast as the board spokesman Paretti was way too broadly villainous.
It shouldn’t really be possible to walk the length of Babylon 5, because it’s actually a bunch of separate ring-shaped sections that are only connected by the tram at the weightless axis of the station, as seen in the graphics here:
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/172223/is-there-a-canonical-map-of-babylon-5
Would he do that though? Season 1 Garibaldi might have still done that. But after being shot in the back by his former aide, to then have that aide get lost in transition to Earth may have soured Garibaldi on the prospect of ever trusting institutions to do the right thing. And especially after being violated by Bester, I would argue Garibaldi is way past the point where he feels it’s worth taking the time and energy to do things the right way and is more willing to engage in subterfuge and deception. We’ve already seen it with the AI Garibaldi during the events of “Deconstruction” where he broadcast the regime’s intentions, dooming Daniel and a lot of people to a deadly missile strike.
It’s not just about Garibaldi, though, it’s about Lise’s stated intention to clean up the company, and Tessa’s objective to diminish Earth’s influence over Mars. Even if Garibaldi is more receptive to dirty tricks where he himself is concerned, I don’t believe he’d be so narcissistic as to ignore the others’ priorities, and the right of the Martian people in general to be aware of these crimes, regardless of how effective the institutions are at prosecuting them. I just don’t see what there is to be gained by concealing the crimes in the first place. It seems to work against what everyone is trying to achieve.
I suspect what’s happening here is that having a Dramatic TV Moment is taking precedence over realism. If Garibaldi were to turn his evidence over to the Martian authorities, it would result in press and prosecutions, but those would happen off-screen and might take some time. Garibaldi having a conference call with the board gets us a dramatic confrontation with immediate results, and reminds us that Garibaldi has always been a dirty trickster with a nose for information. Realistic? No. Ethical? No. But it gives Garibaldi his first big success after a season of failure, and is supposed to be his return to glory.
What makes it even worse once you stop to think about it is that Garibaldi somehow has the cooperation of Holloran. If this were anyone other than Our Hero Garibaldi, she wouldn’t agree to sit on this information, she’d make immediate use of it for herself and all of Mars. It’s also never quite clear whether it was her or Garibaldi that dug it all up. If it was her and her team, why would she even supply it to Garibaldi for him to use as a private citizen? It’s not like she’s friends with him.
That last part isn’t an issue: she may not be friends with Garibaldi, but she clearly hates the Edgars board. She also knows doing a favor for the new CEO isn’t going to hurt Mars any, especially as unlike the previous owner, Garibaldi is obviously going to be a full-time Martian citizen.
Given the way the world seems to be going these days, assuming that a bunch of wealthy corporate board-members would somehow get their comeuppance in court instead of either weaseling out of the charges or fleeing somewhere with no extradition treaty with Mars or just using delaying tactics until they die of old age is maybe not reasonable. Whether JMS would have been that cynical at this point is up for debate, I suppose.
There is a bit of an undercurrent of “you aren’t really important enough for me to crush” at play here. Likely, if the story continued Garibaldi ends up having corporate troubles that trace back to the influence of several of these people. But it’s a final episode, so they must be dispensed with in one scene.
I’m not talking about whether the court cases would succeed. I’m talking about the right of the Martian citizenry to know the crimes that have been committed against them, and more fundamentally their right not to be lied to. The fact that the board’s criminal projects were kept secret from the Martians was part of what was bad about it, so how is it remotely right for the good guys to participate in keeping those secrets?
I mean, in the real world, there have been many people in authority who knew what Jeffrey Epstein and his cronies were doing, but who kept quiet about it for many years for reasons of politics or whatever. If there had been more disclosure all along, a lot of bad things might have been prevented. Lying to the public and hiding crimes from them is never a good thing.
Really, I could’ve done without the whole scene, what with the annoyingly caricatured cigar-smoking fat-cat executive. It would’ve been enough just to have a line or two that they’d dug up the board’s crimes and would expose them to clean up Edgars, and devote all that screen time to something more worthwhile. Just one more case of JMS’s work suffering from a lack of other staffers to point out the flaws in his ideas.
While I agree this ending segment is probably overly focused on our characters’ stories at the expense of the larger narrative (though not entirely: these episodes incorporate returning characters who will compose the new B5 team as the others depart), I am unsure precisely what ought to have happened to “wrap up” the Centauri conflict properly in this episode.
Strip away scenes to add an ISA council meeting? To do what? You either bring the Drazi and Narn fleet commanders back or bring in representatives for them (is the departing G’Kar actually Narn representative, or is there someone else we didn’t meet); it’s Sheridan, Lochley, and maybe Delenn there for a conversation. There might be a meaningless rebuke. It doesn’t seem like it advances anything in particular.
The broader problem–that the show doesn’t offer any infrastructure for the ISA, or any equivalent of the B5 Council from earlier seasons, or additional staff to handle things like ambassadorial duties for the Narn if G’Kar isn’t doing that–is a season-long problem. It’s certainly too late to develop all that stuff now for a scene or two that would be, in the rewatch, getting justifiable heat for showing the Narn/Drazi getting a slap on the wrist/Garibaldi being allowed to resign with dignity.