“TKO”
Written by Lawrence G. DiTillio
Directed by John C. Flinn III
Season 1, Episode 14
Production episode 119
Original air date: May 25, 1994
It was the dawn of the third age… A passenger liner arrives from Earth, and two men part ways, having enjoyed talking to each other on the trip. One is Walker Smith, who finds Garibaldi in downbelow trying to arrest a couple of thieves by his lonesome, and almost gets stabbed in the back. Smith, however, takes the would-be stabber out with one punch, teasing Garibaldi that he always forgets to watch his back. Later, Garibaldi and Smith meet at a sports bar for burgers and to catch up. Smith is a boxer, who’s been disgraced. Smith explains that he refused to throw a fight for money. Said bribers then framed him, planting evidence that he’d used performance enhancements. He’s trying to resurrect his career by fighting in the Mu-tai, an alien combat competition. Garibaldi thinks he’s nuts, as few humans have ever participated, and they’ve all gotten their asses kicked.
The other passenger is Rabbi Yossel Koslov, who is there for Ivanova. An old friend of Ivanova’s father Andrei, Ivanova refers to him as “Uncle Yossel.” He presided over Andrei’s funeral, and he has come to B5—his first trip off Earth—to provide comfort to Ivanova, and also to give her her legacy from her father: a samovar that has been in the family for three centuries. Koslov is disappointed to learn that Ivanova never sat shiva for her father. Ivanova dismisses the notion of doing so now, as she is far too busy with her duties.
Garibaldi accompanies Smith to the Mu-tai dojo on the station. The Muta-Do, the person in charge (who, according to Garibaldi, is 90 years old and has fought over a thousand matches), dismisses Smith, saying humans aren’t allowed in the Mu-tai. Smith’s arrogant attitude doesn’t help matters, nor does the fact that the Muta-Do knocks him on his ass without breaking a sweat.
After leaving in disgrace, Smith is approached by an alien named Caliban, offering to help him get into the Mu-tai.
Koslov meets with Sinclair to discuss Ivanova. Sinclair is shocked to learn that Ivanova’s father died, and Koslov is shocked that Sinclair is shocked. Koslov asks Sinclair if he’ll give Ivanova time off to sit shiva, and Sinclair unhesitatingly agrees. Ivanova, however, is royally pissed off that Koslov yenta’d on her behalf to her CO, so much so that she walks out on him in the middle of dinner at Fresh Air. Later, Sinclair offers to give her the time off that he promised Koslov to give her, which she refuses.
Smith apologizes to Garibaldi, and offers two tickets to the latest Mu-tai tournament. They attend—they’re pretty much the only humans in the place—and watch as the Sho-rin, an alien named Gyor, wins the championship handily, again. As is traditional, the Muta-Do asks if anyone will challenge the Sho-rin, and Smith does so. Because he observed the proper forms (coached by Caliban), the Muta-Do accepts the challenge and the fight will happen in three days.
Two people react badly to this. One is a Grome, who doesn’t think humans belong in the Mu-tai. The other is Garibaldi, who thinks Smith will get his stupid ass killed. The next three days, however, prove that Smith’s long-term plan—to get himself back on the boxing map, as it were—is working. The news feeds are full of stories about Smith being the first human to participate in the Mu-tai. This is the first time he’s made the news for something other than being a cheat since he was framed. It’ll be his ticket back into the mainstream boxing world.
Koslov makes one last attempt to get Ivanova to sit shiva for her father, but she refuses. She still hasn’t forgiven him for emotionally abandoning her after her mother committed suicide. Koslov resigns himself to the fact that Ivanova won’t allow herself to grieve and takes his leave.
However, as he’s about to board the liner home, Ivanova remembers her covert conversations with her father on his deathbed, when he expressed regret for how he treated her, and agrees to sit shiva. She asks Sinclair for the time off—he not only grants it, but also asks to attend.
Ivanova and Koslov sit in the former’s cabin, surrounded by several friends, including Sinclair. Ivanova recalls happier times with her father and then Koslov leads them in prayer—which, at Ivanova’s request, is done in English in deference to the not-Hebrew-speaking Sinclair (and also to the not-Hebrew-speaking audience…).
Smith faces off against the Sho-rin, and it’s a brutal fight. At first, Smith is getting his ass kicked, but he rallies and it quickly becomes an even match. At one point, the Grome tries to shoot Smith to stop the human from sullying the Mu-tai, but Garibaldi stops him, confiscates the weapon, and has him arrested.
Eventually, the Muta-Do declares it a draw. The crowd cheers for the Sho-rin, but the Sho-rin gets the crowd to chant Smith’s name instead, out of respect for how well he fought. The Muta-Do declares that humans are now welcome in the Mu-tai. Smith heads back to Earth, reminding Garibaldi to watch his back.
Nothing’s the same anymore. Sinclair is hilariously caught off-guard by Koslov’s declaration that Ivanova’s dad died months ago.
Ivanova is God. During the shiva, Ivanova tells the story of how her father took her to see a writer named Kasherev, whom she greatly admired, at the age of 13. Andrei didn’t think much of him, but barely teenaged Ivanova insisted and whined and eventually convinced him to take her to Kasherev’s talk. Ivanova had a question for him that she’d been refining and rehearsing for ages. However, when she asked it, Kasherev belittled her question and her as a “bourgeois twit barely out of diapers” and refused to answer it. Andrei then stood up and rebuked Kasherev, saying that if he wasn’t a pacifist, he’d horsewhip him through the streets of St. Petersberg for being so rude to his daughter. After they left, Andrei said that he thought her question was excellent.
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi first met Smith when he arrested him for starting a fight in Fortune City. They became friends afterward. Smith expresses surprise that Garibaldi is drinking water with his hamburger. Apparently Garibaldi was still very much in the drinking phase of his alcoholism when he and Smith first met.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Although several aliens are seen watching the Mu-tai, there are no Minbari among them. J. Michael Straczynski said online back in the day that, “It ain’t their thing.”
No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. When Ivanova returns to duty, Sinclair expresses gratitude that she’s back in the proverbial saddle, as it was rough going with her taking time off, and Ivanova tartly reminds him to remember that the next time Sakai comes on board…
Looking ahead. Smith twice mentions that Garibaldi needs to watch his back more often. Garibaldi’s inability to observe his rear will be an issue down the line…
Welcome aboard. Greg McKinney plays Smith, Don Stroud plays Caliban, and Lenore Kasdorf makes her first of three appearances as an ISN reporter. Robert Phelan returns from “Born to the Purple” as Andrei in a flashback. The great Soon-Teck Oh plays the Muta-Do, while James Jude Courtney—probably best known for playing Michael Myers in the Halloween films—plays the Sho-rin.
But the big guest is the late great Theodore Bikel as Koslov. Bikel was an Oscar-nominated movie actor (for The Defiant Ones), a veteran theatre actor (he was the first to play Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music on Broadway), a television actor (he played Worf’s foster father in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Family”), a folk singer (he co-founded the Newport Folk Festival—among other things, it was at that festival in 1965 when Bob Dylan first went electric), and activist.
Stroud, Courtney, and Bikel will all return to the franchise, albeit in different roles: Stroud as Boggs in “Ceremonies of Light and Dark,” Courtney as a Narn in “Sic Transit Vir,” and Bikel as Lenonn in In the Beginning.
Trivial matters. It was established back in “Born to the Purple” that Ivanova’s father was dying, and also that Ivanova was communicating with him covertly, not through official B5 channels, which is why Sinclair was unaware of it. Ivanova’s mother’s suicide was established in “Midnight on the Firing Line.”
Garibaldi being an alcoholic, and his current residency on the proverbial wagon, was established in “Survivors.”
Walker Smith is named after the great boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, who was born with the name Walker Smith Jr.
Ivanova is seen reading Harlan Ellison’s autobiography Working Without a Net. This autobiography doesn’t exist, though Ellison had been saying at the time of B5 that he would write it around the turn of the millennium. In 2008, Ellison said he’d signed a contract with HarperCollins to do the book through their Ecco Publishing imprint, and the book was even listed in various catalogues and online as forthcoming (there’s still an Amazon page for it), but he never finished it before his death in 2018.
The passenger liner that goes between Earth and B5—on which both Walker and Koslov travel in both directions—is called the White Star. This is worth mentioning for two reasons. One, B5 will get a support vessel in the third season also called the White Star. Two, White Star Line is the name of the cruise line that owned and operated the RMS Titanic.
Caliban is presumably named after the character from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“So how are things back home?”
“They change, they stay the same. Russia is Russia. Your father used to say, ‘If regret could be harvested, Russia would be the world’s fruit basket’.”
—Ivanova and Koslov making small talk.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “You cannot run away from your own heart, Susan.” When people are listing the worst episodes of B5, “TKO” is almost always featured on the list, so I am now going to declare something that will possibly get me tarred and feathered: “TKO” was always my favorite first-season episode, going back to when the show first aired thirty years ago. And I still like it a lot.
Not, I hasten to add, for the A-plot, though I have a lot more thoughts on that now that I have twenty years of martial arts under my (black) belt. But I love this for the absolutely magnificent B-plot, and I don’t see how anyone who actually cares about the character of Susan Ivanova can call this one of the worst episodes when half of it is devoted to her, and it is brilliantly written and acted.
First of all, I was over the moon at the fact that B5 actually acknowledges that there are Jews in the future, something that remains vanishingly rare. Indeed, routine portrayal of Jews in any pop culture only really started happening about thirty years ago or so, and it still remains scattershot. In 1994, I was married to a Jewish woman, so I was particularly sensitized to it, and I remain so even though that particular marriage ended two-and-a-half decades ago.
Secondly, nobody ever went wrong casting Theodore Bikel, and he is magnificence itself as Koslov.
Thirdly, the plotline itself is hugely important for Ivanova, not just because it establishes her Judaism, but also continues the work begun in “Midnight on the Firing Line” and “Born to the Purple” of showing her difficult childhood and how that helped turn her into the overly stoic and incredibly cynical adult she is now.
Meantime, we have the absurd A-plot, which is one of the worst examples of The Inevitable Boxing Episode that so many shows have foisted on their audiences, including other genre shows like Batman (“Ring Around the Riddler”), Battlestar Galactica (“Unfinished Business”), Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (“Olympiad”), Future Cop (“Fighting O’Haven”), Quantum Leap (“The Right Hand of God”), and Star Trek: Voyager (“The Fight”).
What makes “TKO’s” version particularly terrible, though, because while the Mu-tai appears to be the usual Space Boxing nonsense, where it’s like regular boxing only alien, it is, um, not. What we see in the Mu-tai is basically Asian martial arts. They even wear gis! (A gi is a martial arts uniform.) And belts! (Okay, they’re sashes, but they’re color-coded just like the belts in Asian martial arts.) Rather than go through the trouble of actually creating an alien form of sport combat, Lawrence G. DiTillio just gave us a mishmash of kung fu, karate, judo, taekwondo, jeet kune do, etc. The casting and costuming just overemphasizes this, the former with the casting of the (excellent) Soon-Teck Oh as the Muta-Do. (And that’s another thing! Muta-Do sounds like a title you’d hear in a karate school.)
Now the thing is, this isn’t a bad metaphor for a conflict that has happened in the martial arts world. As Asian martial arts started to proliferate around the world in the 1960s and 1970s, prompted by military personnel in the region for the Korean and Vietnam wars learning about them, as well as the meteoric popularity of Bruce Lee, there was a conflict between maintaining the perceived purity of the art versus the proliferation and popularization of it in other countries. There was a Kyokushin tournament held in Japan in 1976 whose primary purpose was to reassert the dominance of Japanese karateka in the martial arts world (and the judging was very obviously biased toward the Japanese participants—see the documentary Fighting Black Kings for more on that).
But the metaphor falls down because the Mu-tai is such a lazy kitbash of Asian martial arts that it only works as being alien if you’re a Westerner. Me, I’m looking at the Mu-tai in general and the Sho-rin in particular and thinking that I know about a dozen martial artists in the New York Metropolitan Area alone who would do just fine in the Mu-tai. There is absolutely nothing in it that truly bespeaks something that it would be tough for humans to manage. (It also highlights one of B5’s flaws, which is the poor representation of Asians in its future.)
I will give some credit to the fight choreographers, as the climactic bout between Smith and the Sho-rin is well done. I particularly like the fact that, while the Sho-rin uses punches and kicks—as do all the other participants in the Mu-tai—Smith sticks with what he’s good at: boxing. All his moves are punches, and he moves and fights like a boxer rather than a martial artist. It’s a nice touch. (Though his lack of experience with defending against kicks is something that should do him in, and it doesn’t.)
The Ivanova subplot means that this will continue to be my favorite first-season episode. Even if the A-plot is awful…
Next week: “Grail.”
Well, Keith, you already know that I agree with you on most of this. While I don’t consider this the best of season 1, I agree that this is worth watching for the beautifully done B plot. You just have to ignore the awful A plot. The other Ellison connection for this episode is that Bikel served as a narrator for The Deathbird & Other Stories audiobook (not to be confused with the Deathbird Stories audiobook).
Ah, I remember that audiobook. (Also: hello Amy, it’s Kim Wigmore/Ashford!)
Heavyweight boxing has really dropped out of the zeitgeist in the US since this first aired. There are various other unarmed combat competitions, but none of them have reach that boxing did. Ali, Sugar Ray, Tyson, all were household names and bouts were written up in the newspapers.
When I was in the Army in Korea it seemed to me that getting close enough to a Korean to punch and too close for him to kick was the only way to win. But we had a Katusa sergeant (my first squad leader) who was a boxer in addition to knowing tae kwon do (which he said was just Korean street fighting) and no one could take him.
I didn’t know this episode was that poorly thought of, but I wasn’t highly online then. It does do a good job of fleshing out Ivanova, and adds a bit to Garibaldi. I thought it was pretty good.
Minor Point: I did a careful count and they have ten people, the minimum needed for a minyan, at the shiva ceremony. So, someone was paying attention.
Does that include Sinclair? because I would think that Gentile attendees wouldn’t count (correct me if I’m wrong).
No, that count does not include Sinclair. You are correct. The requirement is for ten Jews.
Cobra Kai IN SPAAACE!
I agree that the hatred for this episode is undeserved. Certainly it is not a great episode, as the A-plot is just a string of cliches from start to finish. But the actors have that mix of earnestness and campiness that makes it amusingly watchable in a way that Soul Hunter and Infection were not.
And I will never not be amused by the Zima ad in the background!
Props to Claudia Christian for the range of emotions she displayed in the shiva scenes. In particular, the whiplash moment from comfort in community to utter, overwhelming grief seemed spot on.
I rewatched this expecting not to like it. That was based on memory and its reputation. Ivanova’s plot worked much better for me 30 years on. Not that I thought it was bad before, but I connected with it emotionally this time. In a lot of ways, this was really the A plot, just that it’s told succinctly thus giving more time to TIBE.
Along with all the other problems with the Mu-tai that Keith mentions, there’s also the fact that there is a Thai martial art called Muay Thai. As to the metaphor with the martial arts world, if I have the timing right this was around the time the first American was breaking into Sumo and meeting a lot of resistance. That might have been on di Tillio’s mind when he wrote this.
Given the poor performances we’ve seen from guest actors this season, this episode really stands out. Theodore Bikel is, naturally, magnificent, but most of the others with speaking roles do pretty well. Don Stroud was everywhere on TV in the 70s and 80s, with his distinctive voice being the only thing that kept him from “that guy” status. There’s not a lot for Caliban to do, but Stroud carries it off.
Greg McKinney plays Smith very naturally. Maybe he was just playing to type, but he sold me on the character. Sadly, he died just 4 years after shooting this episode. I think that makes him the first of far too many actors associated with B5 to die much too early.
Soon-Teck Oh was also his usual magnificent self. Oh was one of the regular guest stars on M*A*S*H, and he was always brilliant every time. Though the crapton of latex he had to wear in the role of the Muta-Do spoiled one of Oh’s specialties, which is facial expressions….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I suspect that the lower popularity is due to people like me who are meh regarding touchy feely stuff. If you happen to like that sort of thing, more power to you. Just don’t expect me to join in.
The A plot (which I’ll grant is hugely cliché) brought to mind the 1989 film Arena, brought to us by our old pal Charlie Band. The two only resemble each other in the broadest sense. However, among the cast is Claudia Christian. On the DS9 side, it also has Marc Alaimo and Armin Shimerman.
I always found the scene where Rabbi Koslov presents the samovar to be awkward, as it employs the As You Know exposition technique (the worst way to employ exposition IMO).
Regarding Jeeeeews in Spaaaaace, IIRC there’s a Jew in the Frank Herbert novel Chapterhouse: Dune.
I take issue with Ivanova being referred to as a cynic. She’s a pessimist, which is a different thing. If there’s any character who could be classified as a cynic, I would say it’s Garibaldi.
You forgot to mention the Zima ad. While it hung around longer than JMS thought it would, it appears to be no longer in production (with the caveat that this comes from the Wikipedia article).
We’re flying along
Protecting the Hebrew Race
The number of people who have “reminded” me that I “forgot” the Zima ad is really impressive. I thought it was dumb 30 years ago and I think it’s dumb now. It wasn’t even a paid product placement — which I would’ve forgiven — but just a dopey in-joke. I didn’t mention it simply because I didn’t think it deserved the dignity of being mentioned…..
And what Christopher said regarding the way rabbis talk. *laugh*
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
And therein lies your dilemma. If you mention it (even just to remark how you think it’s stupid), you give it more attention than you believe it deserves. If you don’t mention, readers presume you’re being sloppy and inattentive and point it out anyway. Something of a no-win scenario for you.
On the “as you know exposition” angle, it’s my experience that when family members or old friends get together after a long time, they often do recount shared past experiences and knowledge to each other, not for the sake of imparting information but as a form of social bonding and reminiscence. Certainly older people like the rabbi often do that, reflecting on past times. And rabbis are nothing if not teachers, so it seems in character for one to lecture about the history and importance of a family samovar, to remind Susan of her roots.
Point taken, though it still sounds awkward to my ears.
They don’t even need to be old! My grandpa was reportedly doing that sort of moral exemplar education thing in his twenties (long before he was a rabbi). It seems that at least some rabbis are born, not made :)
So yeah, I’d say the whole Koslov thing was spot on. That is exactly what it would be like if set in space: exactly what it’s like down here on Earth.
(This is also notable for the evidence that Ivanova has a life outside work that we don’t see — presumably the others there were actual friends of hers and not Jews just roped in at random. Even if they were probably friends made in the last three years, and thus probably not people with a great deal of memory of her late father, but that’s a typical problem with modern levels of migration, military postings, etc, and again not invention.)
At least the show got its boxing episode out of the way early and didn’t make one of the main cast suddenly have an interest in recreational punching. And nice to see Garibaldi on the wagon despite his relapse.
The B-plot was really good and probably an excellent weapon in the Star Trek vs Babylon 5 fan wars. I like how it explains why we didn’t hear anything about Ivanova’s father’s death after that episode. Excellent mix of character building and the usual flow of TV episodes where emotionally significant events rarely get time to breathe.
This is an episode that feels like it has one pretty good B-plot, one excellent B-plot, and no A-plot. Nothing about the Smith plot felt like an A-plot. The only stakes were “will tonight’s guest star die” which isn’t much in the way of drama for a non-medical show.
Fair point. I called it the A-plot because it’s the one the title related to….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
You are definitely not alone in loving TKO. I’m not as high on it as you. I agree that the Ivanova story is really great and the boxing part is meh. There are episodes in season 1 that I rate more highly. Also, the crew on Babylon 5 For The First Time agree that it is the best episode of season one and recently said that it may be the best episode of the show, something I don’t agree with.
I think one of the reasons it has such a poor reputation is because people know which episode this actually is. After a few years away, when I see Survivors, I say “Huh?” until I read a synopsis. The same goes for Eyes. Then there are the “Is that the one with the Grail, or the one with King Arthur” conundrum. Which is mirrored by “is that the one where the evil alien is transported into B5 by the scientist friend of Franklin, or in the suspended animation ship?” question.
With TKO you know immediately that its the boxing episode and when you think of it that way, I remember the boxing part and not the Ivanova part until reminded. Sometimes having a name that totally reflects the plot is good, i.e. Deathwalker, sometimes, it isn’t a great choice.
Another occasion where Garabaldi’s skills as a cop don’t look that great. Sinclair must value personal loyalty a lot, because I’m hard-pressed to believe this is the best guy he could get for the job.
The Ivanova stuff is great. Given that the plot lines don’t intersect at all, there should be a way to make an excellent 20 minute short out of this episode. Come to think of it, Garabaldi doesn’t even show up to pay his respects during shiva. Curious whether he doesn’t know about this at all or doesn’t consider Susan a close enough friend.
At least for purposes of the A Plot, I think this is another one of the occasions where the usage of Babylon 5 as a setting is poorly justified. If this event is such a big alien deal and there are no humans allowed, then why are you holding it in a human space station? Babylon 5 has only been operational for a year and change, if it’s such a no humans club then why didn’t you just keep hosting the event wherever it was before now? It doesn’t seem to be the case that this is one of many Mu-Tai’s given the press attention and that Walker doing well means humans are eligible now, this appears to be “the” Mu-Tai.
To give Garabaldi his due vis-a-vis Ivanovo, shiva goes for seven days. He may have been there on another day.
According to JMS’s Usenet comments, if it’s after several months and the person is already buried, shiva can last as little as one day, which seemed to be the timing here.
I pretty much agree. The Ivanova plot is excellent (and I’m pretty sure it’s the story that introduced me to the custom of sitting shiva), while the fight-club plot is pointless and generic. Why does every sci-fi show have to have an obligatory underground fight club episode? We need to talk about these fight clubs, but nobody wants to for some reason… ;)
No, I take that back. It’s not even a generic fight club episode, because usually in fight club episodes there are serious stakes — it’s illegal, or it’s to the death, or it’s forced on abducted fighters, or it’s something an undercover cop has to win to get close to a crime boss, or something. Here, it’s just a sports episode about a guy who wants to be a contender, meets some token resistance, then proves himself in the ring and goes home. Big deal. I mean, Garibaldi kept talking about how horribly dangerous and potentially deadly this was, but there was no hint of that in the actual fights, whose choreography was not particularly impressive. The only danger to Smith came from that one alien in the audience, and he was dealt with in seconds. Goodness knows, I hate fight club episodes, and I find boxing barbaric, so I have plenty of reason to dislike this subplot, but aside from all of that, it’s just dull.
And yes, the Orientalism was terrible — just mashing up a bunch of faux-Asian stuff and pretending it’s alien, like something out of 1960s TV. Which wasn’t helped by casting the boxer stereotypically as the only black person in the episode (although I thought Greg McKinney was pretty good in the role). On top of which, it reinforces B5’s unpleasantly ethnocentric tendency to treat “aliens” as a generic, undifferentiated mass even from their own perspective. Why are humans the only species excluded from the Mutai? (It’s not hyphenated, according to the show wiki and JMS’s old posts.) There was that bit about the Mutari being offended by humans’ cultural imperialism, but why wouldn’t that exclude the Centauri (who used to have a huge conquering empire) and the Narn (who are currently trying to build a conquering empire)?
And yes, I did have my doubts whether someone only trained in boxing would have a prayer against a practitioner of a different martial art.
Oh, yes, and another annoying thing: Writers, stop naming aliens after very well-known literary characters like Caliban!! It beggars disbelief that aliens’ own name for themselves would just happen to correspond to appropriately similar characters from Earth literature or mythology.
One of the few ways I’m OK with the boxing subplot is that it establishes that humanity aren’t the dominant species (unlike Stars Trek and Wars) and are in fact subject to a fair amount of disdain and prejudice. B5 may not be consistent in showing that, but it’s refreshing. Also, although this doesn’t improve the episode, the actual fight scene doesn’t matter that much, and Iike that Smith doesn’t win: taking a beating but going on despite it is an unspoken central theme of the series. It sure beats something like BSG where apparently “boxing is therapy and actual therapy doesn’t exist on TV”.
No therapists on B5 either, so it doesn’t get a clean bill of mental health. TNG had Troi but just imagine if a Star Trek doctor did medical stuff as rarely as she did therapy! Guinan might have done more in fewer seasons!
Funny, I got the exact opposite impression. The fact that so many different alien species participate in the Mutai yet are united in resenting humans’ intrusion specifically makes it pretty clear that humans are currently the dominant political state in this region of the galaxy, the one that’s expanding and imposing on all their cultures and unifying them in opposition to that domination, much the way America was and is perceived by the second and third worlds. If humans were just one unremarkable species out of many, there’s no reason the multispecies Mutai would single them out for exclusion.
To be fair, this Caliban has no real parallel to Shakespeare’s. I suspect it was used to get people wondering at his potentially ulterior motivations. Which is a problem in it’s own right, since there is nothing for this red herring to distract from, if that makes sense.
I think there are some parallels — a large, powerful inhuman creature with a rough-hewn appearance and manner of speaking, serving as a guide to bring a working-class outsider into his domain in defiance of his superior and for his own ulterior motives. It’s a limited similarity, sure, but there is a resonance. Heck, just naming a large, brutish-looking humanoid Caliban is a common enough cliche. (Or something close to Caliban, like Calibos in Harryhausen’s Clash of the Titans.)
Even without a similarity, though, I still dislike the practice of using human literary or cultural references to name alien characters or worlds, unless it’s established that the names are human-assigned substitutes for their own, more alien names. (I actually once conceived of a story about an alien species called Calibani, but it was explicitly a name coined by humans, who discovered an ancient probe of theirs on Uranus’s moon Miranda.)
Why are they always probing Uranus?
A question asked many times at Dave Barry’s Blog.
And while they’re there, they can wipe out the Klingons.
Most of my dislike for this episode is the whole Inevitable Boxing Episode aspect. The more one thinks about it, the less sense it makes. If there is anything impressive about it, it’s how much they managed to do with the concept given the limited budget of the series, especially in the first season, when they were still figuring out how to stretch those dollars.
The only part of the main plot that means anything, ultimately, is Walker’s constant reminder for Garibaldi to watch his back.
But the Ivanova subplot makes up for it. I really just watch this episode for those parts. Delving into Susan’s family history goes a long way towards explaining her trouble with relationships overall. Every time she seems to let down her guard, it backfires on her. We saw a bit of that in “The War Prayer”, and it will come up again.
I think this episode also suffers because it comes right after “Signs and Portents”. The audience was just hit with some major questions to ponder, and instead of following right up with that, we get an episode that seems to be as loosely connected with the big picture as can be. Not necessarily true, for the reasons I mentioned above, but I can see that reaction being a thing.
“The audience was just hit with some major questions to ponder, and instead of following right up with that, we get an episode that seems to be as loosely connected with the big picture as can be.”
That was still normal at the time. A big, arc-significant story was something exceptional that stood out, and afterward you went back to the regular episodic grind to let it simmer until the next big arc episode came along later. I think it’s better pacing than the modern need to drag out a single continuous story through an entire season. You don’t want your climaxes too close together.
Especially when a show was shot on a budget like this one. Note that Sinclair, Ivanova, and Garibaldi are the only regular cast members who appear this week. It seems they couldn’t afford to feature all their regulars every week, and they featured all three main ambassadors last week (although Franklin, Talia, and the three aides didn’t appear there).
I don’t think budget is the reason the show had regulars missing out the occasional episode. I’m pretty sure they’re paid for every single episode they’re credited in – even ones where they don’t appear.
I have seen interviews were JMS and others noted that they were only contracted for a certain number of episodes (16 is the number I remember for one of them), and that’s what they get paid for, whether they appear in all 16 of those episodes or not. How much of that was due to budget concerns I don’t know, but I am willing to bet that it was more the case in season 1 than in subsequent seasons, at least until season 5.
I can’t source the quote but I’m sure I read JMS somewhere saying the show had been able in a later season to get Jurasik and Katsulas for more episodes than in S1, and I know part of the cutbacks in S5 included many of the cast only being hired for a subset of the total episodes. I believe JMS once or twice posted about having to write around characters because not all the cast was signed for 22 episodes.
I don’t know what the deals were in S1, but I do recall that a big part of the dispute that resulted in Claudia Christian not appearing in S5 was that she wanted to do fewer episodes in S5. JMS and Christian have differing accounts of what actually happened, and what would have been possible from a contracts perspective, but JMS said that Jurasik and Katsulas (and others) had at various times asked for time away for other projects and that he had accommodated them where he could by writing around their absences. (Christian says that she asked for a reduced schedule and that John Copeland said no, that TNT wanted her to commit to all 22 episodes.)
I’m not sure. I’m aware of a number of cases where shows deliberately write things so that their regulars only appear in a limited number of episodes to save money, and this seems to be following the same pattern. Although in those cases, often, the actors are only credited for the episodes they appear in (e.g. Netflix or Disney+ series). And aside from streaming, it’s a pattern I generally only see in shows filmed in Canada, which B5 was not.
But usually in American shows, the norm has been that anyone listed in the regular cast has to appear in every single episode. Look how many ST:TNG or DS9 episodes wrote one token scene for every regular even if the main body of the story focused only on a couple of them. B5 is quite different — it lists 11 main-title regulars, but as of “TKO” has never had more than 9 of them in a single episode, and typically has only 5-7. I’d think that has to have something to do with saving money.
I think it was practice at the time to put clauses in actor’s contracts that they would be paid for appearances in X number of episodes per season. Which is how we got the one scene wonders in some shows. If you’re contracted for 18 episodes of a 22 episode season they will shoehorn you in there for 18. Of course a good rep would make sure their performer got paid extra for the X+1 episode of the season so any producer with a working brain tried to keep it to X.
That may have changed for a lot of productions over the last quarter century along with everything else that changed in production.
Hell, most of the performers in B5 saw money for VHS sales, but since DVD and digital transmission weren’t in the contracts (lack of existence will do that) they had zero residuals from those streams.
Oh, certainly, an actor’s number of appearances is contracted in advance. But that’s what’s strange here. Usually, only full-time cast members, contracted to appear in every episode, were listed in the opening titles, while recurring cast members were billed either in the end titles (in the ’60s, as with Doohan, Takei, etc. in Star Trek) or in the Act 1 guest-cast credits (once that practice became common in the ’70s). So it’s anomalous that B5 listed so many recurring actors as if they were main-title regulars. That happens a lot today, but it was unusual back then.
That’s what confuses me about Babylon 5. Usually people listed in the opening credits are in every episode, but not here. Babylon 5 really should only have Sinclair, Ivanova, and Garibaldi listed in the opening credits at this point.
It could be that the show’s makers were overly generous in their contracts, giving the semi-regulars main-title billing that they normally wouldn’t have gotten, but that would’ve been fairly costly, since credit determines payment. Hard to see how and why a modestly budgeted syndicated show would make such a move.
My guess is that they save on the makeup expenses by not having the ambassadors appear, especially since they had to fill out the Mutai with people in prosthetics.
Yeah, but there are plenty of episodes where Franklin and Talia don’t appear.
That definitely makes sense, particularly the point regarding how few of the regulars show up in this episode. My point was more to try and understand some of the reason why this episode has a worse reputation than the material necessarily merits. Though it could really just come down to the dislike for the tired Mutai business.
It’s not just sci-fi shows. It seems as if every genre show has to have a fighting arena episode. Angel did it in its first season! Smallville did one as well that put Lois against Clark!
One of the few positive things I can say about this one is the cinematography. John Flinn’s directorial debut on B5 looks visually distinctive, especially during the arena set piece. B5 always had a unique use of contrast in dark scenes. Interestingly, he’s the only B5 director to have directed episodes in all five seasons of the show (B5 ace director Janet Greek took a break in seasons 3 and 4).
And the plot itself is not even about Garibaldi at all. He’s just there for the ride. This is Walker Smith’s story, from beginning to end, and it plays like an early Star Trek TNG episode where the story is built around the guest star (and McKinney doesn’t reallly help matters any with his pedestrian performance).
The title may be “TKO”, but it really works because of Ivanova’s story. Not much I can add there. It’s beautifully acted by Christian, O’Hare and Bikel. A major step in Susan Ivanova’s growth, learning to drop her defenses and allow herself to be comforted by her closest friends and family. And a welcome portrayal of Judaism in the 23rd century. And we have Sinclair, a catholic raised by Jesuits, embracing their tradition without prejudice and taking part in Ivanova’s spiritual journey. It’s one of the things I love about the show – its layered portrayal of humanity in the 23rd century. For all its everlasting faults, and the rising risk of fascism in the upcoming Clark arc, we also see more signs that humanity is slowly evolving: more spiritual and religious tolerance, for one (and season 4 establishes that the Pope is female).
The “alien blood” effect in the fights is handled well enough that one can forget it’s a complex effect (especially adding continuity across multiple set-ups for a fight). But the emotional stuff lands well, too.
Smallville was a show about an alien on Earth, so I’d certainly count that as sci-fi. And the term “sci-fi” often tends to encompass fantasy as well, since the genres overlap quite a bit in mass media.
I figure there are probably Obligatory Underground Fight Club episodes in more conventional cop, detective, and action shows as well. But it seems more incongruous that it happens so often in SF/fantasy shows too.
Also medical dramas. I recall an episode of Chicago Hope in the 90s that had the doctors travelling to Vegas for some conference, watching a boxing match, and then saving the one fighter suffering from blunt force trauma.
And I just looked it up: the episode was called “Waging Bull”.
A minor detail is that the episode seems to use the title “TKO” accurately. I always used to think it meant “total knock-out” or something, since people tend to use it in vernacular to denote a complete, decisive victory; but it actually means technical knockout, a situation where a fighter is not knocked out but the referee ends the match because the fighters can’t safely continue. And that’s more or less what happened here, with the Muta-do stepping in and declaring a draw.
On the other hand, it’s hard to reconcile that with all Garibaldi’s buildup about how potentially lethal and no-holds-barred the sport was. I wonder if maybe the Muta-Do, for all his reluctance to let a human compete, was also reluctant to risk the potential political fallout of a human killing or being killed in a Mutai match.
And there’s the bit where I tolerate this “boxing episode” more than the others: it really isn’t about the fight, it’s the dynamics, the politics and optics, that matter more.
TKO could also apply to the process of convincing Ivanova to sit shiva. BTW, in answer to a question not asked: DiTillio’s script (in the B5 script books) apecifies the Minyan as 4 men and 4 women, plus Ivanova and Koslov. That draft has Sinclair enter later.
I loved the plot about Ivanova and was happy to Worf’s father – i liked his parents very much in Star Trek and seeing him returning as a rabbi was very lovely. :)
The other plot was super boring, but what triggered me was the fight scene – not because it was a mix of various fighting styles – i’m no expert -, but because with those punches and kicks the fight would have ended after how long? 10 seconds? This made the whole fight scene totally unrealistic and terrible for me and i didn’t care much for the character that we just pulled in for this episode only…
Since Bikel is both Ivanova’s uncle Yossel and Worf’s foster father, my friends and I joke that Ivanova and Worf are cousins. It makes sense.
totally. Also i’d imagine that Ivanova and Worf would get along well with each other, i see enough similarities between them. :D
I find blood sports inherently boring, and nothing about the A plot changed my mind. Parts of it were downright embarrassing to watch (and to listen to). I liked the B plot more, but I felt like I’d seen some variation of it at least a dozen different times on various shows. So yeah, while I don’t agree with people who say this is the worst episode yet, I can see where they’re coming from.
Well now I desperately want a BABYLON 5/STAR TREK crossover where Susan Ivanova can be amusingly casual about Mr Worf having been raised by Space Jews (Bonus points of this somehow involves Mr Worf speaking Hebrew or Yiddish: I remain deeply saddened that we’ll never get proof that Mr Worf, had he chosen to become a Space skew, would have been as grumpily orthodox about Judaism as he is about being a Klingon).
*If Mr Worf has a favourite Earth film it is FIDDLER ON THE ROOF: never try to convince me otherwise!
On a more serious note, it occurs to me that a key limitation on this episode is the show not being able to include more than the default human number of limbs in it’s alien designs – the ‘A’ plot would have made much more sense with a key issue facing human fighters in this particular combat discipline being their relative paucity of limbs.
I found your last paragraph amusing because it reminded me of this cheesy sci-fi movie from the late 80s or early 90s that I remember watching as a kid. It was about a human taking part in a fighting tournament going up against aliens, including at least one that actually had more than four limbs. Coincidentally, that movie also featured Claudia Christian!
After checking her filmography on Wikipedia, I found the title: Arena. And in addition to Ms. Christian, the movie also featured two alumni from That Other Space Station Show: Marc Alaimo and Armin Shimerman.
Forgot to mention: borrowing the birth name of a historic person for a fictional character is something I absolutely love (Witness Mr John Cleese borrowing the birth name of Mr Cary Grant for A FISH CALLED WANDA).
It’s one thing in a comedy, but that’s the sort of detail that bugs me in a story meant to be taken in earnest, because it feels artificial, the same kind of blatant writerly contrivance as naming an alien Caliban. I mean, presumably the historical figure existed in the show’s history, so is it just coincidence that a 23rd-century boxer is the namesake of a famous 20th-century one, or did he go into boxing because of the name similarity, or what?
This is why, in my own writing, I resist giving characters names that are overtly referential. I do base names on references, but I try to mix and match names or conceal the origin somewhat so that the names can plausibly be taken as non-referential in-universe.
oh, i almost forgot to mention that the alien guy in the ring is a Hungarian city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gy%C5%91r
To give this plot more credit than it deserves: Lots of foreign people in America choose to adopt a name that’s easy in English to blend in– like Lucy Liu in pinyin is Liu Yuling, but it’s easier to just go by Lucy. Figure an alien who has for some reason made the choice to live on an alien space station might do the same thing. We also see this in esports where they’re interested in courting a western audience, Americans aren’t going to remember “Cho Seong-ju” so he just goes by Maru. So figure his real name is something else, he likes fighting, and just looked up a bunch of human names associated with fighting and liked Caliban.
Adopting human-friendly names would make sense if the Mutari were catering to human audiences and trying to assimilate into human cuture. But the story portrays the exact opposite: the Mutari resent human cultural imperialism and cling to the Mutai as something specifically theirs, something where humans aren’t welcome. The entire sport has become a symbol of their resistance to assimilation. (Which makes me dislike the story even more now that I say it, because it’s basically asking us to root for the wrong side.)
Of course, it could be just a coincidence that his alien name, Kaa Lyb’ahn or whatever, happens to be pronounced “Caliban.” But I still think it’s a lazy choice on a writer’s part to use human terms for alien names. How hard would it have been to give him a more imaginative name? “I am Borylos.” There.
Except that as the show begins, there’s five “special status” species on the B5 council:
The Vorlons are ancient and seem isolationist, massively more dangerous, and their mere involvement a shock.
The Minbari were both co-founders and a major impetus on the grounds of “let’s build this place to avoid future genocides like the one we almost committed just now.
The Centauri are fading imperialists.
The Narn are the former conquered who are building up themselves; they may not be imperialists per se, but conquest of the Centauri is in the mix.
Humanity are one of the youngest and technically at best equal to the Narn, but they’re both part of the occasion (as near victims of genocide). Earth post-Dilgar war might have been briefly imperialist, but the Earth-Minbari war put a stop to that. Even Clark’s ambitions are ruling Earth’s territories and isolating from the others.
Even the “most people on B5 speak English” is at best like French as a language of diplomacy immediately after WW2. Humanity, so far, are important because of the Minbari.
Earth imperialism is aimed at Earth colonies, not the Yolu.
It was explicitly stated in this episode that the Mutari resent humans specifically for intruding on the Mutai. Since the Mutari include multiple other species, that pretty much requires Earth to be culturally imperalist toward multiple worlds — which, keep in mind, is not the same thing as being militarily imperialist. Recall the other comments about how this may have been inspired by Japanese pushback against American incursion into sumo, their celebrated national sport, which seemed like a further intrusion by a culture that they’d already been politically subordinate to for decades. Earth is an influential political, economic, and cultural power, as demonstrated by the fact that it runs B5. So it stands to reason that less powerful cultures might feel threatened by humans encroaching on their cultural identities.
Eh I mean the show was made for westerners in a time period when mma wasn’t nearly as big a thing so making a martial art that was alien to westerners was all it needed to do. Not favorable reviews mostly I think as coming off such great mythology episodes and not advancing overall plot. Filler episode, and we had seen Jews in future from earlier episode and Ivanova not my favorite character though I agree the character work here is good.
That’s no excuse. It was made for Americans, and there are millions of Asian-Americans in the country and were back then. It’s not acceptable to treat a portion of your own audience as weird and exotic just because they’re not the majority.
Indeed, that’s the double standard here. There are only 7 to 8 million Jews living in the United States today, while there are some 24 million Asian-Americans, at least three times as many. I would presume the ratio was similar 30 years ago. Both groups would’ve been minorities within the show’s audience. Yet the episode treats Jewish characters with respect and undertakes to educate the majority of the audience about their culture, while at the same time it treats Asian culture in a stereotyped, exoticizing, and literally alienating way.
Really, though, this was par for the course. I’m often startled when I revisit 1990s TV by how blatantly racist it was toward Asians.
Sometimes B>A. And this is a perfect example.
As a former (amateur) boxer, I almost always loved The Inevitable Boxing Episode (Voyager’s being the notable exception), so I was primed to like this one from the title alone. That said, I do see where the haters are coming from on the Garibaldi/Smith arc. The orientalism of the Mutai is not great, and Walker Smith’s casual racism (snakeheads) is less forgivable than his arrogance. Also, it’s a petty complaint, but the “Smith” chant sounds terrible. When you have a great two-syllable chant going for Gyor, why go with “Smith” when “Walker” is right there!?
I was less enthusiastic about Ivanova’s story when I first watched this, and the tonal dissonance between it and the Mutai arc remains jarring, but it is something I’ve definitely grown to appreciate more, and I always loved Rabbi Koslov. It is also another example of the avowed atheist doing a really good job with religion and faith. And agree that regardless your feelings about the Mutai arc, this part of the episode is important for what it shows us about Ivanova’s character, and thus it remains very much worth watching.
Well, given that Yolu phonetics sound close to Japanese, it’s possible they would render “Smith” similarly to how one would in Japanese, as Sumisu, which is three syllables. Similarly, in Chinese it would be Shǐ mì sī, according to an online name converter I found.
After letting all this roll around in my head for a while, it occurs to me that the two plots are connected thematically. They’re both about tradition and its positive aspects. By embracing shiva, Ivanova is able to reconnect with the memory of her father and grieve for his death. By embracing the traditions of the Mutai, Walker Smith gets his shot. Both of them had resisted and rejected tradition and were unable to move forward.
I’m definitely in the camp of “Oh, that’s a terrible episode. Guess I’ll suffer through it. Wait, Ivanova’s shiva is the “B” plot?!?” It may be the best single-episode arc in the entire Season. And the boxing plot is not actually that bad—it’s at least well acted, even if it is cliché. It just suffers in comparison to the other arc.
If anything, “not that bad” is the problem with the boxing plot. Aside from the embarrassing Orientalism, it’s “not that” anything. Not that good, not that bad, not that interesting, not that complex. It’s just a routine sports story with zero stakes beyond a guest star’s reputation. It just lies there. It’s not horrible, it’s inert. It’s the styrofoam packing around the more valuable contents of the Ivanova plot.
I gotta agree. I did NOT care for the “A” plot (though, even though I didn’t “see” it at the time, the foreshadowing of Garibaldi events, ihcluding more notice placed on his alcoholism, and the end of the first season Gaibaldi forgetting Smith’s admonition.
Great “B” plot; (I agree; who can NOT enjoy watching Theodore Bikel exercising his craft so well? And Claudia nailing her part?).
Throw that out, though, and it WAS a terrible episode.
I agree keith. People always list this episode as one of the worst, as well as Grey 17 is missing, but I find that the b plots of both episodes save them from being outright miserable. Ivanova’s subplot is par excellent, a fantastic way to show grief, understanding, bitterness, remebrance…it’s just so good. Walker smith can go fight aliens as much as he wants, give me more of Ivanova grieving over her father.
While we may have a liner named after the company that had the Titanic built, at least there isn’t a vessel called the Mary Celeste. Because that would just be… oh.
Speaking of which, the next episode is suppose to feature the first attempt at a fully CG creature. I have some trepidation over how poorly it may have aged.
krad: “The Ivanova subplot means that this will continue to be my favorite first-season episode. Even if the A-plot is awful…”
Yes and yes.
The part of this episode with Ivanova’s subplot is equal to the best full episode in the first season, because of its deep humanity (lowercase “h”). After this episode, I feel I know who she truly is in a way that takes me several seasons for some other characters.
Also – nobody in my family is Jewish, but I sure wish I’d had an Uncle Yossel. Don’t we all? Bikel is such a gem.
Too bad about the boxing stuff.