“The Geometry of Shadows”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Michael Vejar
Season 2, Episode 3
Production episode 203
Original air date: November 16, 1994
It was the dawn of the third age… Garibaldi is getting his latest checkup from Franklin and the doctor, despite being cranky about Garibaldi lying about how much pain he’s still in, thinks he’s just about physically ready to return to duty. Garibaldi, however, isn’t sure he’s mentally ready, given that he totally missed that his second-in-command was a murderous traitor and he knows bupkuss about the new boss.
Mollari sees off Lord Refa, a Centauri aristocrat who apparently represents a group of people who are eager to return the Republic to its former glory. They view the emperor as old and weak—more so since his only son died, leaving no clear line of succession. Mollari make it clear he’s willing to support Refa and his buddies.
As Refa embarks on his transport home, Mollari is shocked to see a whole mess of techno-mages showing up. They’re people who manipulate technology to a degree that it appears to be magic—and sightings of them are rare. Seeing one is considered an omen.
Mollari decides that it would be good for his growing approbation within the Centauri Republic to get the blessing of a techno-mage.
In the Zocalo, two Drazi get into a nasty fight. One Drazi is wearing a purple sash, the other a green one. This will be important later…
Sheridan tasks Ivanova with solving the Drazi problem. Every five years, Drazi get into scuffles with each other, and nobody knows why. No one’s died yet, but in a closed environment like B5 even little fistfights can get out of control and hurt bystanders. Sheridan also buries the lede—he casually mentions that this sort of thing is a responsibility one expects when one is a full commander. It takes Ivanova a second to realize that she’s been promoted, and she’s thrilled and honored.
Garibaldi is sitting in his quarters with a PPG in his hand, which isn’t at all ominous, when Sheridan shows up to ask when he’s coming back to work. Garibaldi expresses the same doubts he expressed to Franklin, albeit in less detail. Sheridan says very encouraging and supportive things—most importantly that nobody knows the station as well as Garibaldi—and says he’ll hold the job open as long as he can.
Ivanova meets with the Drazi factions, and is appalled to realize that the source of the conflict is based on the sash they’re wearing. People wearing purple sashes must fight people wearing green sashes. There’s no particular ideology attached to the sashes—in fact, they’re distributed randomly. But whoever wins the contest is dominant for the next five years. Ivanova struggles to understand this, and her attempts to make sense of it result in a fight breaking out, in which her foot is broken.
Vir approaches the techno-mages to request an audience between them and Mollari. The techno-mages whip out a whole lot of sound and fury to scare Vir off, but he stands his ground. One of the techno-mages, Elric, approaches Vir more directly, and is impressed by his lack of fear. Vir shrugs and says, “I work for Ambassador Mollari—after a while, nothing bothers you.” In any case, Elric denies the audience.
While having her busted leg treated, Ivanova is given the chance by Sheridan to pass off the Drazi assignment onto someone less, ah, hobbled, but Ivanova insists she can finish the job.
Welch and Garibaldi bump into each other, with the former wanting to know when the latter is coming back to work. Their conversation is interrupted by another Drazi fight.
Mollari, having been denied the direct approach, decides to take an indirect one. He approaches Sheridan and tells him there are techno-mages on board. Sheridan already knew that, and that there’s a lot of them, and they seem to be going somewhere, and nobody knows where. Mollari offers his assistance in dealing with them, and Sheridan accepts.
CnC links Ivanova to inform her that, on the Drazi homeworld, Green is now killing Purple, not just knocking them silly. Concerned that this murderous escalation will work its way to B5, Ivanova meets with the Green faction in the hopes of de-escalating. This fails rather spectacularly, as the Green leader wants Ivanova to invite the entire Purple delegation to Brown 29 and then open the airlock. Ivanova refuses to murder two thousand Drazi, but it turns out they’ve already summoned the Purple gang there in her name. They hold her at knifepoint and take her link.
Elric meets with Sheridan, with Mollari joining them and discreetly putting a recording device nearby. Elric wants nothing to do with Mollari, and produces a recording of Vir’s audience request. Mollari is shocked—shocked!—that Elric would record someone without their prior consent. Elric then destroys the recording device that Mollari placed, calling him on his hypocrisy. After Mollari beats a hasty retreat, Sheridan and Elric continue to talk in the Zocalo. Elric urges Sheridan to let them go unmolested. There is a great darkness coming, and the techno-mages fear that their abilities might be suborned for foul purposes, so they wish to go far away.
Garibaldi sees Welch and some other security folk dashing about. Welch tells Garibaldi that they got an uplink from Ivanova saying they should clear out Brown 29 for the Drazi, and also that she’d be offline for a bit. Garibaldi confirms that this was an uplink, not a voice message, and also gets the location of where she was when she sent the uplink: Brown 2. Heading there, Garibaldi distracts and confuses the Drazi long enough for him to confirm that Ivanova’s being held prisoner, and the two of them manage to escape.
Mollari is beside himself, as every piece of equipment in his quarters has gone haywire. The speakers are playing Narn opera, he can’t get at any of his personal files, and his finances are now a mess.
The Purple faction have all gathered in Brown 29, but Garibaldi and Ivanova block the Green gang from going there. Ivanova’s plan is to keep the Purple folk in there until the conflict is over. The Green leader snidely points out that the conflict is continuing for another year. In her anger and frustration at the ridiculousness of it all, Ivanova rips the sash off the Green leader. Suddenly, all the Drazi stand at attention awaiting her orders. Whoever takes the green sash off the Green leader becomes Green leader. Thus empowered, Ivanova takes all the Green faction to get their sashes dyed purple…
Mollari gingerly approaches the techno-mages’ quarters and apologizes. When he departs, there are three demons on his back.
Garibaldi returns to duty. Sheridan, Ivanova, and Franklin take him out for a celebratory drink, where he explains that what convinced him was that he knew that Ivanova would never uplink orders, she’d always give them verbally, plus she never takes her link offline. That made him suspicious, and it saved a lot of lives.
Mollari sees Elric and the other techno-mages off. Elric assures Mollari that the pranks are finished now. The techno-mage sees a great darkness surrounding Mollari, and says he sees, “a great hand reaching out of the stars. The hand is your hand, and all around are billions of voices calling your name.” Eyes alight with hope, Mollari asks, “My followers?” Elric sadly replies: “Your victims.”
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan threads the needle very nicely when talking to Garibaldi, making it clear that he can have his job back, but also that the captain will understand if he doesn’t want to come back. I particularly like his response to Garibaldi speculating that it would be easier if he resigned and moved on: “The universe doesn’t give you any points for doing things that are easy.”
Ivanova is God. Ivanova gets a deserved promotion to full commander and has to struggle to resolve a conflict that has no basis in, er, conflict.
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi has justifiable concerns about returning to the job, given that he totally missed that his second-in-command was a traitorous bastard, and also that he’s generally not all that great at his job. His best friend isn’t the boss anymore, so that’s gotta suck for him, too…
In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… The Centauri emperor is elderly and no longer has an heir. We’ve already seen one Centauri aristocrat with visions of coups dancing in his head, and in Refa we meet another, but Refa a) seems to have a coalition and b) is emboldened by Mollari’s apparent wiping out of Quadrant 37.
Never contradict a techno-mage when he’s saving your life—again. We’re introduced to techno-mages, who are able to manipulate technology to an impressive degree, most of which seems to involve holograms, recordings, and the ability to take over the controlling systems of electronic equipment.
Looking ahead. The techno-mages see a coming darkness, both in general on the galactic stage and in particular surrounding Mollari.
Welcome aboard. Recurring regulars David L. Crowley (Welch) and Joshua Cox (Corwin) are back from, respectively, “Revelations” and “Points of Departure,” and we’ve got a new recurring regular debuting: William Forward as Refa. Crowley—who has graduated to being listed with the guests in the opening credits—will be back in “Soul Mates,” Cox will return in next week’s “A Distant Star,” and Forward will return in “The Coming of Shadows.”
The Drazi with speaking parts are played by Kim Strauss, Jonathan Chapman, and Neil Bradley.
But the big guest is the late great Michael Ansara. Best known in genre circles for his roles as Kang on three different Star Trek series, as Kane in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and as the voice of Mr. Freeze on Batman: The Animated Series and its spinoff movie SubZero (not to mention a vocal cameo as the Ancient One in the 1978 Doctor Strange TV movie), Ansara here plays Elric.
Trivial matters. This is the only time techno-mages appear on B5. However, they will be seen in more depth in Crusade (one of that show’s opening-credits regulars, Peter Woodward’s Galen, is a techno-mage; Galen is established as a student of Elric’s), and also in the novel trilogy The Passing of the Techno-Mages by Jeanne Cavelos.
Elric is named after the title character in Michael Moorcock’s long-running Elric of Melniboné series of stories and novels. In addition, Elric paraphrases J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings when he cautions Mollari, “Do not try the patience of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.” (This is especially amusing given that Moorcock doesn’t think all that highly of Tolkien as a writer…)
Claudia Christian really did break her foot, so the injury had to be written into the storyline.
When teasing Welch about his allegedly out-of-character behavior, Garibaldi jokes that there’s “another guy with a changeling net,” a reference to the disguised assassin in “The Gathering.”
Issues #2-4 of the Babylon 5 comic book by Mark Moretti, Michael Netzer, Carlos Garzon, & Rob Leigh, published by DC and based on a plot premise by J. Michael Straczynski, take place between “Revelations” and this episode.
The echoes of all of our conversations. “I believe that there are currents in the universe—eddies and tides that pull us one way or the other. Some we have to fight, some we have to embrace. Unfortunately, the currents that we have to fight look exactly like the currents we have to embrace. The currents that we think are gonna make us stronger, they’re the ones that are going to destroy us. And the ones we think are gonna destroy us, they’re the ones that are going to make us stronger.”
Vir’s unnecessarily long answer to Mollari’s query as to whether or not Vir believes in fate.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Green must fight Purple, Purple must fight Green—is no other way.” There are two things that make this episode worth watching all by itself. One is the very act of casting Michael Ansara, which makes every scene with Elric sparkle and shine. Ansara was one of the absolute greats, with one of the most magnificent voices in the world, and he elevates any role he plays with his deep timbre and stentorian tones. Just an absolute master of the craft, and watching him verbally fence with Stephen Furst and Peter Jurasik and plead with Bruce Boxleitner is an absolute joy.
The other is the scene between Sheridan and Garibaldi in the latter’s quarters, for which a great deal of credit goes, not just to Boxleitner and Jerry Doyle and scripter J. Michael Straczynski, but especially director Michael Vejar. It starts with Garibaldi putting the power cell into and taking it out of the PPG while staring intently at it. Then, when Sheridan enters, his eyes go briefly to the PPG, but he doesn’t really look at it until Garibaldi’s back is turned. And then when he speaks his words of encouragement and understanding, he deliberately walks over to the coffee table and puts the PPG in its holster. It’s a magnificent scene, where Sheridan shows support without pressure, and makes it clear that Garibaldi is wanted, but that the captain will respect his decision. It also shows how low Garibaldi has mentally sunk without beating you over the head with it.
The rest of the episode is hit-and-miss. There’s a certain Gulliver’s Travels-esque amusement value from the Drazi fight between Purple and Green. I kinda wish the episode spent more time examining the origins of the tradition, as I suspect it was created as a method of managing people’s violent impulses in a somewhat controlled manner. Instead, it was mostly played for laughs. A lot of the scenes with the Drazi in general make me cringe, as their method of speaking English is presented to us in the broken style that was also used a lot for Indigenous people in pop-culture portrayals. It comes across as paternalistic at best.
Still, given the incredibly arbitrary and random nature of the entire conflict, coming up with an arbitrary solution is a very clever way of solving it.
Next week: “A Distant Star.”
I had a rather haphazard introduction to Babylon 5, often reading tie-in novels before watching the associated episodes. Relevant in this instance, I had read The Passing of the Techno-Mages trilogy before seeing “The Geometry of Shadows”. IMO it’s the worst of the canonical tie-in fiction and had me reluctant to view the episode. In general, the Elric POV scenes of the events from the episode read like a slapdash fanfic recreation, with him coming across as a smug jerk. But what really repulsed me was the recreation of him and Sheridan conversing while walking through the Zocalo, where he give the impression of being a petty con man shaking down an easy mark. While “The Geometry of Shadows” was far from being Londo’s finest moment, I found myself wondering why I should regard Elric as particularly sympathetic.
Once I finally steeled myself up to give “The Geometry of Shadows” a watch, I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. Most notable is how Elric, though perhaps a bit pompous, comes across a lot better.
“Do not try the patience of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.”
Well one out of two ain’t bad.
Riffable moment: “These are the tools we employ. And we know many things.”
For we walk by night. (Yes, I’ve been on a bit of a Whistler binge)
This episode is where Babylon 5 *really* begins
I don’t agree with that, since the plot wouldn’t carry as much weight without the previous worldbuilding and character development. The story of Londo’s corruption wouldn’t be effective if we hadn’t spent a year getting to know him as a likeable, seemingly harmless figure who nonetheless had resentments and yearnings that made him vulnerable to temptation. Similarly, G’Kar’s character growth wouldn’t be as potent without the first season setting expectations about him that the second upended.
Laying the foundations is important. Audiences today are too fixated on the idea that anything that doesn’t “advance the plot” doesn’t matter, but that’s not true. Plot only matters if we’re invested in the characters and the world.
To not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
For a moment, that’s what I thought he was going to say.
I kinda wish the episode spent more time examining the origins of the tradition, as I suspect it was created as a method of managing people’s violent impulses in a somewhat controlled manner.
Some of the canonical books, I believe the “Passing of the Techo-Mages” trilogy as mentioned, touch on this…
Even without having read the books, I came to that conclusion. It certainly fits with that mindset.
Also, in the most Nineties of Nineties-esque cultural ephemera:
Whoever takes the green sash off the Green leader becomes Green leader.
IVANOVA: But I’m human!
(FORMER) GREEN LEADER: Rules of combat older than contact with other races. Did not mention aliens. Rules change…caught up in committee. Not come through yet.
IVANOVA: Bureaucracy. Ya gotta love it.
It’s also amusing that due to said bureaucracy, Ivanova remains a member of the Drazi hierarchy on Babylon 5 and gets invited to a Drazi party in Season 4, still able to wear her sash.
I agree with you on the scene between Sheridan and Garibaldi. But, for my part, the whole concept of the techno-mages seemed both bland and silly at the time and it hasn’t gotten any better with the passing of years. I get the idea of having keepers of esoteric knowledge fleeing a pending conflict to preserve that knowledge and I like Elric’s conversation with Sheridan about the nature and meaning of “magic”. But otherwise… meh. These people seem more like cosplayers or con artists than mystics or wizards.
I also dislike Sheridan’s closing monologue, which seems forced and old-fashioned to me. The pause on the close-up lasts too long and you can see that Boxtleitner doesn’t quite know what to do with his face.
I’m more partial to the Purple/Green plot. I agree that the presentation could have been a bit less snide in its “look at these backwards primitives” vibe, but I still find it an effective encapsulation of the arbitrariness of many conflicts. It’s actually one of the bits from this show that I find myself remembering or referring to relatively frequently.
I do think the “look at the backward primitives” idea does get questioned when the Drazi note that WE fight for flags, which are just pieces of cloth. Yes, Ivanova says “but they mean something”, but the Drazi look like they think “Really?” and as the series progresses, the flag standing for something does change.
Sure, there’s an attempt at that, but the point is that the rest of the portrayal of the Drazi is mired in old ethnocentric cliches like broken English that undermine that intended message.
I mean, really, why would all Drazi speak broken English the same way? Presumably some would learn it better than others. Not to mention that this is almost literally a “Planet of Hats” portrayal of an alien culture, except with scarves. Every Drazi on the whole planet goes along with this arbitrary custom? There are no alternative subcultures, no dissidents within the main culture? The Minbari get to have rival castes with opposing beliefs, the Narn have multiple religions, and we’ve seen Centauri rebelling against their cultural expectations, but the Drazi are treated here as a homogeneous mass.
I would guess that the ones that aren’t fighting each other (likely the majority, unless they think it’s a good idea to kill half their population every five years) just don’t attract attention when you’re trying to deal with all the fighting idiots everywhere. (This is not in any way a metaphor for the sorts of people who often become politically active down here! Um. I wonder if I’m green or purple…)
The broken English disturbed me, too, particularly given that no other species gets that treatment. You can retcon it as maybe they have a different deep grammar wired into their brains, but, yeah. Not the show’s best decision ever, even in something played for laughs.
“(likely the majority, unless they think it’s a good idea to kill half their population every five years)”
They said that the Drazi scarf wars were usually nonlethal, more a planetwide bar fight than anything else. The current one escalating to deadly force was perhaps the result of the Shadows manipulating things.
Love that Ivanova still parties with the Drazi as their leader years later. We see her stumbling out of a decorated elevator with a passed out Drazi in front of a bemused Sheridan… she just says something like “Don’t” and it’s not explained at all.
I also liked the conversation between the captain and Garibaldi, except for “I would be foolish to throw away a valuable resource”. It might be my oversensitivity, but if i’m seen as a “valuable resource”, i’d rather walk away, so that a piece of gold, oil or coal could replace me as a resource…
Regarding Ivanova’s promotion, it’s very unclear to me what changes with that. Is there any change in responsibilities? Handling the Drazi guys could have been easily her job without any promotion.
I was also happy about Ansara and that he seemed to be a smart guy, a bit less happy about these mages as yet another very mysterious group of people and that half of their fancy magic were just cheap tricks…:)
I don’t see anything negative about calling someone a valuable resource. I mean, “human resources” is a standard term in employment, and calling someone resourceful is a compliment. It basically just means that someone is useful, that they have knowledge or abilities worth drawing on. Maybe it’s just my need to feel needed, but being useful sounds like a good thing to me.
Well, while i find your insights valuable, i don’t think of you as a resource, but as a person. So i’d rather say that I consider you to be a valuable (and maybe resourceful) person, but not to be a valuable resource. I hate “human resources” as well. if i think of resource, i either think of a natural resource like coal, oil etc or a book, a training or other sources of information etc that might be useful for someone. For me calling someone a resource is as insulting as calling them FTE, headcount etc as @JoeChipMoney wrote above.
(also as a background info, treating humans as resources is coming from Frederick Taylor with his crazy management theories that he took from farms using slaves and treating the slaves as replaceable resources – i don’t have the bibliography for this right now, but i can look it up if needed :) )
I have had the joy of being called a company “asset”, which tends to leave me wondering just when Facilities Management will be showing up to staple an asset tag to my derriere.
I just don’t see the word as having those negative connotations. That’s one of its definitions, but not its only one. The whole reason we use modifiers like “natural resource” or “material resource” is that the basic sense of the word is broader than that. It just means a source of support or information or other things you need, something you can turn to for help. I’m happy to be a resource to someone in that sense.
I tend to agree with th1_ here. It was an attitude shift in the 1980s that changed “Personnel” to “Human Resources”, which indicated to me that people became interchangeable pieces rather than individuals.
I can see how people could react to the word that way, but I really don’t think it’s what Sheridan or JMS intended. Sheridan just meant that Garibaldi’s intimate knowledge of the station would be valuable to him as a new commander needing to learn about it. He meant “resource” in the informational sense, a source of knowledge he could learn from, like a resource desk at a library. Maybe I see the word as a positive because I used to work at a library.
I agree, i also think that Sheridan and JMS intended it as something positive in this context.
OK, it might be a language or cultural difference.
I think that it worked because of Garibaldi’s mindset at the time. Sheridan couldn’t say he trusted his work, they had just met and Garibaldi had missed Jack being a traitor. Sinclair could have appealed to their shared history and Garibaldi’s successes, Sheridan doesn’t have that they have absolutely no personal relationship to fall back on. Garibaldi is feeling useless and worthless. Sheridan calls him a resource, meaning he does have use and worth. It might not be the best pitch, but Sheridan doesn’t have a lot to work with to keep Garibaldi.
I don’t recall Ivanova doing anything diplomatic last season, that always seemed be Sinclair’s thing. It’s not like Ivanova is going stay at Babylon 5 for the rest of her career. So Sheridan is giving her some extra responsibilities (on the job training as you might say) besides her job in C&C. Sheridan is letting her handle the small stuff while he takes care of the big stuff.
Garibaldi is a “valuable resource” as in he knows the in and out of Babylon 5 and knows that Ivanova would never be far from her com link, that’s how he knows something is wrong when the security goes to clean out brown sector on Ivanova’s orders.
th1_
Even though “resource” is a cynical, faux-affirming way to refer to a person, I hate it even more when I’m called an “FTE.” Or merely a “headcount.” Don’t get me started on the (literally) subhuman “worker bee.”
[half of their fancy magic were just cheap tricks…]
But apparently they freely admit it? Londo introduces us to the Techno Mages emphasizing their mastery of technology. Elric admits it freely to Sheridan. It doesn’t seem like they make it a secret from anyone who wonders about it. Makes you wonder who (if anyone) they’ve been fooling recently.
Finally, Ansara’s “This is Kang. Cease hostilities” is forever in my head from TOS reruns in the 70’s. It still pops out from time to time, confusing whoever I’m speaking to.
The Technomages aren’t trying to deceive anyone. They just figure that, if your technology is advanced enough to be indistinguishable from magic, why not embrace that ambiguity? It’s not deception, it’s style and symbolism. They choose to use technology to encourage a sense of wonder rather than quashing it. As Elric said to Sheridan, technology can bring the magic of the human spirit to life, so why not call it magic?
Etymologically speaking, “magic” ultimately comes from a term for a member of the learned class, which may in turn come from a root word meaning “to have power or ability.” So there’s really no reason you couldn’t call technology magic, except convention.
One of the things I noticed, this time around, is the play of emotions on Vir’s face during the exchange between Londo and Refa, and the mounting worry he shows as the conversation goes on: down the lineVir will take more and more the role of Londo’s “conscience” and I believe that here is the turning point where he starts to truly become a character with depth, and not just the somewhat bumbling comic relief. His reply to Elric about working for Mollari is one of my favorite quotes in the episode
I agree this is a turning point, where Vir starts considering how to be an independent actor, instead of being acted upon by powers outside his control. He’s not there yet. But there’s a glimmer of “maybe I don’t have to be wholly complicit?” as he watches Londo drift farther toward irredeemable.
For Londo it’s a turning point, too. In a previous ep, he was visibly horrified at the scale of Morden’s first “favor” against the Vorlon outpost. But in this moment we see him forget(?) subsume(?) his horror when Refa offers the power and influence Mollari had all but given up on ever having.
We see both Londo and Vir’s internal compasses shift at the same time, in opposite directions.
I’m guessing you meant Narn outpost, as I suspect the Shadows would have met stiffer resistance against a Vorlon facility. :P
You are correct.
VorlonNarn outpost.One more of those and I’ll have to turn in my Junior Downbelow Irregulars membership card :-)
I saw some glimpses of depth of Vir even in season 1, i don’t think it started here, but i would need to check back to remember the exact scenes/dialogues.
“Issues #2-4 of the Babylon 5 comic book by Mark Moretti, Michael Netzer, Carlos Garzon, & Rob Leigh, published by DC and based on a plot premise by J. Michael Straczynski, take place between “Revelations” and this episode.”
That’s what the B5 wiki claims, so I read the comic just before watching this episode, and it turns out that the wiki is wrong. The comic has to take place after this episode, because it has Garibaldi back on duty and working with Sheridan on a case. Although the comic still calls Ivanova “Lieutenant Commander,” and it’s a direct continuation of the Sinclair/Minbari story arc that begins just before the season 2 premiere, so the timeline isn’t really reconcilable. The events of the comic are presumed to be canonical and are referenced in To Dream in the City of Sorrows, but the inconsistencies suggest that the comic’s version of those events isn’t entirely accurate. (There’s also a page where Garibaldi calls Sheridan “Commander” in one panel and “Captain” in the next. And the art is pretty bad too.)
As for “The Geometry of Shadows,” I largely agree with your assessment. The Drazi plot was clearly meant as a commentary on the arbitrariness of human wars, but it required caricaturing the Drazi as dumb primitives, and between that and the broken English, it really played into hoary stereotypes of non-Western cultures in older fiction. It would at least have been nice to have some explanation for why the Drazi suddenly escalated to lethal force, though it’s easy enough to speculate that it’s one of the signs that the Shadows are starting to stir the pot. Maybe the Green and Purple Leaders back on the homeworld got a visit from Mr. Morden.
Speaking of alien speech patterns, it’s kind of refreshing that we finally get a Centauri actor who tries to imitate Londo’s accent. Although the accent William Forward gives Refa isn’t exactly the same as Londo’s, since he turns his Ws into Vs, which Londo doesn’t do.
Accents do vary from person to person, they won’t always sound the same as someone would pronounce something differently even if they are from the same place. It makes sense that Refa’s accent isn’t exactly the same
William Forward mimicking Londo’s accent brings to mind the Doctor Who serial “The Tomb of the Cybermen”, in which Shirley Cooklin was mimicking George Pastell’s accent (Pastell was originally from Cyprus).
I remember an explanation about the Drazi green-purple fights but I cannot remember where from. Could’ve been a novel or comic book or movie. Apparently, Drazi birth rates are WAY unbalanced with too many males and few females. The fights are the Drazi way of reducing excess male population.
Since I cannot remember the source, I cannot verify its canonicity, but I thought it worth sharing.
But that can’t be right, since the episode established that the Drazi fights were never to the death until this time around.
I don’t care for the Drazi speech patterns, but I don’t mind the universal acceptance of the green/purple conflict. It seems reasonable that some species might have a stronger social conformity than we do. Anyone who doesn’t want to be a part of it would have to hole up somewhere away from anyone else to avoid getting jumped constantly. Easier said than done. It also seems likely that if the conflict lasts for a year or so, that an escalation in the violence would be inevitable, but not to this degree. As presented, you can’t be the dominant faction if you annihilate the other faction.
Sure, and JMS could’ve said that the Drazi have a more collective psychology in order to justify it. But he didn’t. He just wrote them according to the standard lazy Planet of Hats approach to writing alien civilizations and expected us to take it a face value. Which is something he usually avoids in depicting B5’s major aliens, but here, he let himself settle for the usual bad habit.
I don’t own the comics, so I’m going by what the B5 wiki says, which was apparently a mistake. Sigh.’
And yeah, I meant to mention that about Forward.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
When I looked at the episode description to remind myself what this was about before watching it, I saw technomages and the Drazi kerfuffle and sighed. After two really good episodes, I remembered this one as a letdown. It’s not up to those first two, but it isn’t bad either.
Michael Ansara steals every scene he’s in, but then still manages to share it with the other actors, which is quite a feat. I’m still not too sure about the whole technomage concept, but it never plays a role in the show (I haven’t seen Crusade), so I’ll forgive it.
Definite kudos to the director. He brings a lot of subtlety that was very unusual for the time. The whole scene between Garibaldi and Sheridan is a great example, as are the emotions on Vir’s face while Londo and Refa scheme. I also liked the way Londo’s venture into the technomages’ den mirrors Vir’s. It’s not exact, but there are a lot of little tics that remind the viewer of what happened half an hour or so earlier.
Speaking of Refa, I was surprised to see him this early. In my head, he’s more a season 3 character. I’d forgotten he came along so soon.
also that he’s generally not all that great at his job.
Strong for the reasons stated, but on a rewatch I’m noticing things that slid right by me on an initial viewing. Even in this episode that tries to justify his existence, he just happens to overhear the right conversation. Good on him for connecting the dots after that, but I would have preferred if getting to there wasn’t just a lucky coincidence.
What are the technomages even doing on Babylon 5? They don’t even appear to stop for space gas or use any of its amenities. If they just needed a gathering point, they could congregate at some abandoned point in deep space. They could also just wear regular clothes so nobody knows they’re technomages. Instead they draw a lot of unwanted attention to themselves for no apparent reason. It feels a lot like the alien fight club in TKO– Babylon 5 as a setting doesn’t make sense, but we’re doing it anyway because we have standing sets for that.
I’m also just not buying the assurances from Morden and now Refa that the Narn have no idea what happened to their outpost. There would be a Centauri sympathetic to the Narn, or a spy, or somebody willing to sell the secret, a too-loud conversation at a bar, or something– this would leak for sure. The Narn really should have found out by now that Centauri are giving Londo all the credit, even if they have no way to prove it at this juncture.
Why would you think the Narn have no idea? We’ve seen G’Kar out near the Rim confirming his suspicions that another species has involved itself in events, but he didn’t end up with conclusive proof and his belief is based on the Book of G’Quan, which not all Narn believe in or believe in as literal history. Moreover, anyone who knows Mollari would be unsurprised that he might personally take credit for something he had nothing to do with, after it happened. You’d have to confirm that he told Centauri Prime he’d take care of that base before it was destroyed, and not, say, that he’d heard it was destroyed before the news got to Centauri Prime and hastened to take credit for it.
”An ancient race active thousands of years ago just woke up without anyone noticed and destroyed one of our outposts because Londo Mollari asked them to” doesn’t sound especially plausible.
As a non-canonical aside, the boardgame Babylon 5 Wars had the Centauri working on a stealth ship at this time which, if the Narn had an inkling of, could have made this same attack in theory. It suggests why G’Kar’s explanation isn’t more persuasive: there’s other possibilities more plausible. Easy too to assume that the word around the Centauri court that Londo handled things personally is a cover for whatever really happened, and not even a very good cover. Especially for someone who thinks “our cruiser had an accident on the Rim but we won’t send another because it’s wasteful” who might actually be thinking “if it did get destroyed let’s not poke the tiger.”
There’s even a chance that Morden has visited someone on Narn who is discrediting certain theories without knowing they’re true. Certainly this episode, in retrospect, hints at Shadow involvement over an extended period of time. It’s only with a lot of context that the Drazi leadership combat and the Technomages become linked, and even then the linkage is suggestive, not definitive.
“The Narn really should have found out by now that Centauri are giving Londo all the credit, even if they have no way to prove it at this juncture.”
Not necessarily. The Centauri leadership, the royal court and whatnot, are giving Londo the credit, but the rest of the population outside that inner circle probably knows nothing about it. I doubt there are many Centauri in the royal court who have any sympathy for the Narn, and they’re all probably too rich to be bought. And they’re all probably quite good at keeping secrets, since they’re constantly scheming against each other.
Valid points. So I intend to subscribe to the Benjamin Franklin theory that three men can keep a secret if two are dead or the Game of Thrones version– If eight people know something, it’s not a secret any more, just information; if a handful of people know now, hundreds will know soon. But for purposes of the rewatch, I’ll just figure the Centauri are better at this secret keeping business than humans are. And also: While I can think of many examples of secrets leaking before they were meant to we’ll never know how many secrets were successfully kept. Maybe humans are better at it than I think and I only know about the failures.
My operating theory was always that technomages were the B5 equivalent of fanboys. Elric clearly chose his handle from Moorcock, and only a geek would quote Tolkien in that context. There were probably Technomages named Belgarath, Rincewind, and Raistlin.
The most memorable line of the episode for me:
“We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner, holographic demons and invocations of equations. These are the tools we employ and we know many things.”
Anyone who has hung out with folks in the Maker subculture knows that mindset…
That answers the question of why they’re all showing up at B5.
The galaxy’s most powerful Techies, Makers, Cosplayers and Gamers are assembling for one final MageCon before waving goodbye forever to all the mundanes.
I accept this theory as part of my head canon now. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Every time I rewatch this episode, I find myself laughing more and more. The Drazi plot is certainly silly, but every time I watch Ivanova’s reaction to their green/purple dispute, I find it more and more funny.
Not only it’s Vejar’s debut as a B5 director*, I have a lot of respect for not only the way he frames the Drazi in specific closeups, making them a lot more distinct than previous appearances, but I’m also impressed with the way he stages the fighting. It’s Babylon 5’s first big crowd brawl (which becomes a recurring theme this season), and Vejar manages to make it look scary and violent (Ivanova’s broken leg scream gave me chills as a kid) while also reinforcing just how ridiculous the whole thing is through the performances of the Drazi representatives and Claudia Christian’s eyerolling. A marriage of scary and funny that few shows can pull it off this well.
*And his B5 work clearly impressed Berman and the Trek brass, because within 2 to 3 years, he became a regular rotating director on both DS9 and VOY, and later ENT (his only TNG credit was S1’s “Coming of Age”).
And good call on the Sheridan/Garibaldi PPG scene. Very understated and subtle, but very much getting the point across (there’s also a scene much later in the show’s long-term run that reminds me a lot of this one). And it also establishes a key difference between Sheridan and Sinclair. Garibaldi and Sinclair were best buds, but with Sheridan there is always a distance. There’s lots of respect and eventual trust, but there’s always a degree of separation. And it provides some welcome conflict between our leads over the show’s run.
Then there are the techno-mages. One of the most underutilized, fascinating and original creations I’ve seen on any show. It takes the classic sci-fi concept that advanced technology would be perceived as magic to the less advanced and somehow marries it to Gandalf the Grey. Elric is a one-time character I wished the show could have revisited after the Shadow arc. Ansara makes such a tremendous impression that he actually graduates to the show’s opening credits! Not the character. His voice. His remark to Londo about a great hand reaching out of the stars is reused as one of the show’s signature lines during the season 5 intro. Thankfully we get some more exploration of techno-mages on Crusade through Woodward’s superlative Galen.
I adore Vir sounding like a broken record repeating the same line over and over as he tries to get an audience with them. This is when the show finally realizes the comic potential of Furst, and that he can easily carry scenes without Londo. And I love Elric’s sense of humor to the point of torturing Londo with Narn opera. A prankster who’s nonetheless able to foresee just how tainted Londo is and what dire consequences his alliance with Morden could bring. A well written prelude of things to come.
Back in the 90s, I used to have the impression that Refa was a season 1 character, but it wasn’t until the DVD release in 2003 or so that I realized this was in fact his debut episode. It’s a competition to see who’s the more despicable character: him or Morden.
One other detail I overlooked: in theory, the main ambassadors work with diplomatic privilege and backing of their governments, meaning they don’t have to answer to Sheridan/Sinclair/Ivanova or the Earth Alliance in general. Which is why I adore the way Sheridan berates Londo for attempting to bug his quarters. He can’t exactly lock him up, but he can still sting with his words and put him on report.
The best thing in Crusade which retrospectively improves this episode is that the technomages are a mixture of tricks, misdirection, simple approaches made to appear mystical, and a small but substantive amount of actual advanced technology that, if used effectively, would make them about as powerful as they claim to be. In other words, the obviously fake holograms aren’t just a limitation of the effects budget: the technomages do not want to be used, so by making their abilities seem largely illusionary they retain independence and conceal their real capacities.
If we’d seen more of them, there’d be some very interesting comparisons to be made to telepaths.
Very much so. It’s classic strategy. Give the impression that you’re powerful, but actually hide the real power. Misdirection at its core.
Agree with you about Elric’s words to Mollari. The bleakness he manages to squeeze into “Your victims” is stunning.
“And his B5 work clearly impressed Berman and the Trek brass, because within 2 to 3 years, he became a regular rotating director on both DS9 and VOY, and later ENT (his only TNG credit was S1’s “Coming of Age”).”
I see no reason to assume that, since Vejar directed for numerous different series between 1994 and 1997 when he began on DS9. Besides, the makers of one show are usually too busy making it to watch other current shows. They have other ways of finding potential directors, no doubt.
We know at least one Trek staffer or crewmember was watching Babylon 5 because they changed the “Grey Order” to “Obsidian Order” after watching a B5 episode mentioning the Grey Council.
But yes, the director would have added the episode (or parts of it) to their showreel and their agent would have shown that to people, rather than another showrunner happening across an episode and noting who the director is.
The scene where the Drazi explain why they are fighting to Ivanova is just pure gold. It shows how we have these basic assumptions in our life that we don’t question at all. They just say “Green. Purple.” and look at her like it explains everything. And to them, it does, but to Ivanova (and us) it’s just completely baffling. I know it’s played for humor, but it really made me think and it still does.
Honestly, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a funnier satire of the whole concept of nationalism than the “green vs. purple” thing in this episode. I appreciate that it was played for laughs because it deserves to be laughed at.
The technomages are a nifty bit of world building, but in retrospect, it feels very “90s” to just take the concept of a computer wizard and make it literal.
Except the way the situation gets resolves undermines that premise. Let’s say it’s the eve of D-Day and Ike is about to address the troops. Suddenly, Per Albin Hansson (then prime minister of neutral Sweden) walks up to Ike, clocks him, takes his hat and puts it on, and declares to the troops, “I’m your commander now, beotches!” Though perhaps not an exact analogy, that’s more or less what Ivanova’s taking over the Green Drazis amounts to. If you’re trying to illustrate the ills of mindless nationalism, you seriously hamstring your narrative by having someone from outside the nation (who also doesn’t make a secret of their nationality) suddenly take absolute control of said mindless nationalists by brazenly snatching away the Thingamabob of Authority from the commander in front of them.
But that’s the whole point of the allegory — to show that the concepts we give our loyalty to are arbitrary symbols. The Drazi’s “nations” are the sashes. Without them, they’re all one unified culture, so it’s the colors themselves, not the wearers or their places of origin, that they’re loyal to. By analogy, it’s like if you define yourself as loyal to a nation, and then one leader of that nation is succeeded or usurped by a different leader. Most people will follow the new leader because they’re the head of the nation they hold allegiance to. The symbol outweighs the individual.
A better analogy would be something like all the European conquests and succession struggles where a royal family from one nation would take over the rule of another nation and expect its people to transfer their loyalty to them as the rightful monarchs.
Everyone always talks about Tolkien’s influence on the show but nobody talks enough about Twain’s influence.
People do talk about that. JMS has expressly cited Twain’s influence. But yes, it’s often overlooked.
I didn’t even know that Twain was an influence, so evidently it’s not talked about *enough*
which is funny when they later bring in Brother Theo and his order of Cybermonks…which aren’t really different from technomages.
I like how an episode that appears at first to be a comedic break from the tension of the opening episodes is filled with important moments, like the scene between Sheridan and Garibaldi and Elric’s foreboding conversation with Londo. It fits the tone of the second season: the rising sense of dread and escalating tension coming from all directions.
That said, I’m glad that this is the only appearance of the technomages in the series proper. As much as I like Galen in Crusade, I think the technomages work better in small doses. And looking at the series as a whole, this is the perfect time for them to arrive and then leave the stage.
Living in Northern Virginia that sort of broken English is fairly common. The word “The” doesn’t seem to exist in a lot of languages, and English isn’t gendered in the way many other languages are, and some languages have phonemes that English doesn’t while English has phonemes that they don’t. And then we can get into accents… Heck, English itself is a broken Germanic/French/Latin hybrid…
I would hardly call such dialects “broken English.” They’re fluent, just grammatically distinct and influenced by the grammar of the speakers’ birth languages.
“Broken” in this sense does not refer to a dialect or grammatical variant. It mean… talk like movie Tarzan… slow and stiff… few words at time… like not know language well.
And as I said, even if it were a plausible grammatical variant, that doesn’t mean every single Drazi would speak it the same way. There are Russians who speak English as second language and omit definite article, but there are also Russians like Ivanova who speak the language more conventionally with the definite article included. It’s the Planet of Hats uniformity that’s the issue, reducing the Drazi to a caricature.
English is a healthy and happy MONGREL, thank you, nothing broken about her … well, except the noggins of her targets, as English mugs them for interesting bits of vocabulary in the metaphorical mean streets of etymology.
I honestly love this episode. From the comedy of Ivanonva’s frustration dealing with the Drazi to Garibaldi’s frustration with himself and him and Sheridans talk. The scene of him capping and uncapping the PPG is very tense. My personal favorite is Elric’s speech to Londo. The great hand reaching out to those crying Londo’s name…it’s so ominous and shows really what Londo is doing.
“I particularly like his response to Garibaldi speculating that it would be easier if he resigned and moved on: “The universe doesn’t give you any points for doing things that are easy.”
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to give you any points for doing things that are hard, either. However, I agree that scene is excellent, easily the most understated piece of writing I’ve seen thus far in this show. As someone who has his own mood issues, I have absolutely no notes. I even liked Jerry Doyle’s performance!
The Techno-mages are a bit silly, but they fit very well with the kind of universe Straczynski has built thus far. It reminds me of what Lower Decks did with Lt. Commander Billups’ people, only taken more seriously. Plus, I’m a sucker for a good Tolkien quote, and the fact that this one’s so blatant makes me believe this society was founded by a bunch of Middle-earth nerds, which pleases me. Also, it’s always nice to see Michael Ansara, and Vir didn’t come off like a clown, which is promising.
As for the Drazi plot, I really liked how it started, with Ivanova causing a riot through what appeared to be a blatant act of cultural insensitivity. It seemed like a nice way to demonstrate the importance of respecting other societies’ mores, regardless of how trivial they appear at first glance. So you can imagine my disappointment when the episode went on to double down on the triviality, not to mention ramping up the violence and stupidity of the Drazi. I’m not saying I didn’t get what the show was going for, but what it was going for was a lot less interesting than what I’d hoped.
TBH, I always assumed the Drazi Green/Blue thing was just a satire on democratic politics. Every few years everyone in the country paints themselves red or blue (or whatever), then fights everyone of the other colour to decide who is in charge for the next few years.
At the next election year, it all happens again.
I like that idea a lot better, as it makes more sense in the context of the narrative than as an allegory for mindless nationalism.
People don’t typically exterminate each other over electoral politics though
They did in 1861. And at other times and countries.
Michael Moorcock was asked about the shout-out to him in this episode:
There’s a notable mistake here that the Drazi use Ivanova’s link to send a fake message (as Garibaldi used someone else’s link in Survivors in Season 1), but Exogenesis from Season 3 outlines why that’s impossible (although I like the caveat that perhaps B5 changed its security protocol after the events of this episode).
Claudia Christian did break her foot, but not in that scene. It was after chasing a bird around her garden between episodes. The earliest-shot scenes in the episode (before she breaks her foot) had to shoot so as not to show the injury. This also meant changing the plot so Garibaldi helps resolve the plot, rather than Ivanova fight her way out of the situation solo. JMS noted this actually tied the themes of the episodes together better than he’d originally planned.
The infamous PPG scene caused consternation, with JMS being adamant that Garibaldi was at least thinking about suicide, Doyle adamant that he never would, and Boxleitner then improvised the “concerned” look more heavily than was in the script.
The arbitrary nature of the Green/Purple conflict came from JMS’ discussions with Mira Furlan about the conflict in her native Yugoslavia, and how labels (religious and/or ethnic) are used to justify neighbours suddenly killing one another after living alongside one another in peace for decades.
Turhan Bey auditioned for the role of Elric but was turned down for being “too nice.” JMS remembered him and asked him back to play the Centauri Emperor.
The Drazi prosthetics were redesigned for this episode due to the volume of close-ups, with ridges added to the headpieces. The show would continue to use both the earlier “smooth” masks and the new “ridged” ones, with a possible explanation being they are different Drazi ethnic groups (or even genders!).
Babylon 5 had a hardcore TTRPG part of its fanbase, who were convinced the techno-mages were a nod to Shadowrun. JMS confirmed he’d never heard of the game before. Of course, a few episodes later (Spider in the Web) those same TTRPG fans spotted a much more blatant reference to a game that ended up really annoying JMS.
JMS noted that he found director Mike Vejar to be the best director – possibly after or alongside Janet Greek – in interpreting his vision directly to the screen, hence why he becomes so prolific in the show later on.
So is the delay for “A Distant Star” going to be another day or so, or will it be next Monday?