Babylon 5 5-20: Objects in Motion

Episode:

108

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

Jesús Salvador Treviño

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Air Date:

11-Nov-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 20: Objects in Motion. Hey wasn't that the name of a Firefly episode? Oh sorry, I'm thinking of Objects in Space.

Objects in Space was the final episode of Firefly, this on the other hand is just the final Babylon 5 story to be directed by Jesús Treviño. He was one of the chosen few to have been asked to direct one of the movies (along with Mike Vejar and Janet Greek), but Thirdspace had been and gone by this point. He did return to the B5 universe one last time for an episode of Crusade however.

This is also one of the rare episodes to give Harlan Ellison a story credit (along with writer J. Michael Straczynski), which probably means he suggested something for one of the plots.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be recapping, screencapping and commenting on the whole episode, scene by scene, so if you don't know what happens in it yet, you will do after reading this. I'll not be spoiling anything that happens afterwards however, not that there's much left to spoil.

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The episode begins with a shot of a ship docking at the station. Not exactly a huge break in tradition there, lots of episodes begin like this, but this time it's special. Because this is the last time that an episode starts this way.

Sometimes the docking shot is just there to establish that the action is taking place on the station, but here it cuts to one of the passengers, Theresa Halloran, getting stopped in the customs area because her Identicard isn't being recognised. It's a bit of a problem because all the other passengers are waiting behind her for this to get sorted out.

Oh good they've moved her to one side so the other people can get through. Wait, isn't anyone else getting their Identicards scanned? That security guy on the left grabs a woman's arm for a second like he needs to check her card, but then he nods his head and lets her go.

Turns out that Theresa is an elected member of the Mars provisional government and she's using a brand new Martian Identicard. Unfortunately B5 gets its info from Earth and they're dragging their feet adding the Martian cards into the system. They're really not keen on this whole 'independence' thing that got forced onto them last year and want people to just give up and use Earth cards instead.

Speaking of the battle for Martian independence, Franklin wanders into the customs area by pure chance and identifies her as being Number One, his love interest in season 4! The closest thing Babylon 5 has to Kira Nerys. Well, except for G'Kar I suppose. Turns out that getting through B5 security is easy when you have a friend on the staff, but she's not here to meet Franklin. She's here for Garibaldi!

Garibaldi's currently throwing up as part of his detoxing, but that doesn't stop Lise from opening the door the moment it chimes (turns out that "Yes?" is a valid word to unlock the door). In fact she invites the strangers outside right into his quarters. Franklin and Theresa Tessa come in and give the couple the bad news: someone's going to try to kill them!

I thought this was going to be another episode about the characters packing up their stuff and saying goodbyes, but there's going to be an actual problem to deal with! And I'm not just talking about Garibaldi getting through the physical side of his addiction, though it's cool that the episode taking the time to recognise that it's a thing.

ACT ONE

Act one begins in the same room with the same characters. It turns out that Mars Dome One has had a paper shredder shortage because of all the shady companies covering their tracks after Mars got their independence. Seriously, that's what Tessa tells them. Unfortunately Tessa's sources say that certain people in Edgars Industries are worried that Lise could expose them... so they're going to shoot her first. I suppose they were just waiting 11 months for the right moment.

Tessa's guess is that they'll try to kill them both before they head to Mars... which is a bit of information that grabs Franklin's attention, as he had no idea they were leaving the station. (Not that it should matter much to him, as he'll be leaving right after them.)

Elsewhere on the station, G'Kar has his own problems. Two weeks ago he was working as a bodyguard, now he needs he's the one that needs security. They're busy holding back the army of adoring fans so he can go for a walk. That guy in the middle waving the statue really wants him to come over and just give him a moment of his time, but G'Kar just shakes his head and walks on.

It turns out that G'Kar gone to visit telepathic terrorist mastermind Lyta Alexander in her cell. She apologises for the accommodations but he's spent more time in more cells than any other character in this series so he just says he's gotten used to them. In fact he's found that they're a good place to get some introspective writing done, as there's no place to hide from yourself.

Lyta's already been told about the idea he came up with last episode, about the two of them getting their own explorer ship and going off on adventures. Fortunately it turns out that she does get a say in whether she wants to leave with him. Though she can't go to Earth and she can't stay here, so her options are kind of limited.

They discuss how similar their situations are, for opposite reasons. G'kar has to leave because everyone wants him, Lyta has to leave because no one wants her. That's just because you've turned evil Lyta! Well okay to be fair she didn't actually have all that many friends even before they found out about the bombings.

G'Kar gets poetic, talking about how they're the sum of their tears. He must have cried more though, as he's reached the point of his arc where he's left a lot of his anger behind, while Lyta's barely started lashing out at the ones who've tormented her.

She says she knows that he's only doing this because she's his key to getting telepath DNA, and she's apparently so sure of this that she hasn't even scanned him to find out. Her blatant cynicism makes him realise that she's got a long way to go. He tells her to consider the walls she'll be leaving behind, and the other walls she'll bring with her on their travels. Oh no, he's turning into Byron!

Then the door opens behind him right on cue and he walks out.

Over in the president's office, Sheridan tells Garibaldi about the plan they've come up with.

They're going to have a big ceremony for G'Kar when he leaves and make sure that this is the only place and time that an assassin could possibly take a shot at Garibaldi and Lise. Then security will grab him when he makes his move, easy.

Zack was the one that came up with the plan and Garibaldi's impressed with how good his successor has become at this. I agree, luring a killer into a room full of civilians and important targets (including the President of the Galaxy) is a brilliant plan. 

5-01 - No Compromises

It certainly worked out great the last time it happened, back at the other end of the season! Well, they all survived it at least. Still it's nice that everyone's looking after Garibaldi for a change after so many years of them looking after him.

Sheridan's a bit concerned that Garibaldi and Lise might be rushing into marriage, but Garibaldi points out that they've been seeing each other on and off for 15 years now, and it's the right time for him to leave the station with her. He knows that Sheridan wasn't really going to give him his job back after everything that's happened. Man, the guy's so cynical! I think he needs to go on a trip with G'Kar as well.

Act one ends with this guy rushing to a transport tube and asking the security officer to hold the door.

The man makes a comment about how when the doors open you never know if you're going to get a car or get the shaft, and but he resists quipping "You got the shaft," when he stabs the officer in the back. He even apologises for murdering him, which is more considerate than a lot of killers would be.

Turns out that he was just after the link on his hand, and he replaces it with a fake that looks blatantly different.

We got a shot of the floor like this in Day of the Dead and it had me wondered if the metal pattern was just painted on. It's pretty unambiguous this time though. It doesn't pull me out of the episode however, because I can easily imagine them being fake metal floors in-universe as well. Babylon 5 station was made on the cheap. In fact there was a whole episode about how their shoddy equipment in the docking bay was falling apart.

ACT TWO

Hey it's a proper corridor walk-and-talk! It feels like it's been ages since we've gotten one of these.

Franklin has determined that it was a very slick kill, with the maximum damage done with the minimum time. The security officer hadn't been around long enough to make enemies though, so Zack thinks this is the work of a professional. We saw Bester hunting a killer on the station a few episodes back in The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father, but this time Zack's the one on the case! Man, I hope Garibaldi and Lise don't get assassinated.

Then we get to see the killer adjusting his stolen link to bypass the DNA sensor lockout. The prop department got to have fun with this one, building all the little components.

This is reminding me of a similar scene in No Compromises, but thankfully this assassin doesn't have a music box playing while he works, 

Back in Sheridan's office, we see him chatting to Tessa to find out how things are on Mars at the moment. Now I'm trying to remember if they ever mentioned if Mars was part of the Interstellar Alliance or not. Either way I think he should probably be better informed about these things!

She tell him what we learned at the start of the episode, that Earth is making things awkward for them. Plus now that the planet's not united against a common enemy they can shoot at, all their internal disagreements are coming back. It could be that Earth actually wants them to fall into civil war so they can just take over again.

Sheridan offers to have the Alliance set them up an account on Minbar. So that was all worked out pretty quickly! I'm glad they had this chat. He does want something from her in return though...

At this point the assassin's managed to bypass the DNA system and is using his stolen link to tap into the security channel. Meanwhile B5's staff are busy redressing the Zocalo for G'Kar's ceremony.

It's weird that the words on the bottom share the first and last letter of the English words at the top. If the middle one's Narn I guess the bottom one is Interlac? All I know is that the font they used is called 'Stop' and it shows up all over the place, like in the logo for the Wing Commander games.

Somehow one of G'Kar's obsessive fans manages to catch him unguarded and tells him that he has a duty to his followers. The dude spent everything he had to come here and learn from G'Kar, and he thinks that he owes them. After all, without them G'Kar is nothing. G'Kar's actually fine with being nothing, the dude turned down being leader of Narn last year. But when he learns that this guy's the one that's been making those bloody statues of him, his old anger comes back and he snaps one of them right in his face.

Actors have a natural talent for breaking props. The guy was so proud of that as well! The moral of the story: never meet your heroes. Or maybe 'never pressure your heroes into being something you want them to be instead of letting them live their own lives'. He just wants G'Kar to tell him he did a good job making all this statues and then stay with him and share his wisdom! He doesn't get where all this anger's coming from!

The actor playing the Narn fan does a really good job here I reckon, I'm impressed. He's called Neil Bradley, and he's actually been in a lot of Babylon 5, usually under makeup. Though he did get to show his face when he played Mackie's traitorous first officer in No Surrender, No Retreat. He also played the Drazi Dr Varda a few episodes ago in Movements of Fire and Shadow.

Zack drops by Medlab to pick up the guard's personal effects, and talks about how frustrating it is to be too busy with this assassination plot to give this case his full attention. I wonder if Garibaldi would've seen the connection by now.

Fortunately Zack catches on quick when he tries to pick up the link and finds it stuck to the bottom of the box. Links use genetically-coded molecular bonding to attach to the user's hand, not glue, so this has to be a fake! That means whoever took the real one probably has access to their security channels.

Eight hours later the ceremony begins, and everyone's waving their G'Kar publicity photos around in a way that the camera can see them. There's even a couple of Minbari in the crowd, come to see G'Kar off. I wonder if his book's spread to other planets and cultures too. They're not here for Delenn, she's over on Minbar overseeing the completion of the Alliance facilities there. Everyone else has turned up though, including the President of the Galaxy and a bunch of ambassadors. And about a million extras.

Back in No Compromises they were searching people for weapons as they came in, so the killer had to arrive dressed as a Gaim to hide the gun in the suit.

This time he's just walking around, touching his earpiece while wearing the stolen link on his hand openly.

It's a bit weird that he's still able to listen in on their security channel, but it turns out that Zack's actually come up with a clever plan here. He has security play a high-pitched sound through the stolen link and then goes after the person in the crowd that's grabbing his ear.

A plain clothes officer grabs the assassin as he's raising his gun and they wrestle him to the ground! Fortunately no one in the audience got shot in the process.

Wow, okay they've caught the bad guy and resolved the plot just 20 minutes into the episode. That's unusual. I figured this guy would be a real pro, but with a plan this dumb he was going to get captured here whether he took the shot or not.

And that's the end of act two... right?

Wait, the statue maker Narn just pulled his own gun! It's a double assassination!

Zack leaps over and shoves Stunt G'Kar off the stage like a badass, while the Narns in the crowd try to grab the guy and stop him from shooting their hero. Unfortunately the shocked Narn in the background refuses to drop his G'Kar statue, so he's unable to wrestle the gun out of his hand before he can take a shot.

Seriously, the guy chose to save his icon over saving his icon. Maybe he was worried about injuring his amazing statue-making hands.

Anyway the damage is done now as he got a shot off towards the stage. It misses Zack though and hits Lise in the shoulder!

Man, Londo wasn't wrong in No Compromises when he talked about how they were making themselves new targets on the firing range. So far this season, killers have targeted Sheridan, Londo, G'Kar and Garibaldi and now one of them has hit Lise.

How the hell did this Narn find a gun on the station anyway? He didn't come here to kill anyone and he spent all his money on the trip.

ACT THREE

Act three begins with Lise in surgery and they don't know how life threatening her shoulder wound is yet. I don't want to Google search 'life-threatening shoulder injuries' so I'm just going to take the series at its word when it says that this could be serious.

G'Kar tries to comfort him, saying he knows he feels there's nothing he can do, but this is Garibaldi's episode and he is highly motivated to do Garibaldi things right now. He wants Zack to give him five minutes with the assassin.

In fact Garibaldi's gotten him to let him drag the assassin all the way to Lyta's cell, which is as far away from other people as they could put her.

Lyta's not in the mood to help him out though. Besides, anything they learn from him can't be used as evidence anyway. But she soon comes to understand that this is fairly important to Garibaldi.  'Cancelling the deal between them' important. They don't have the happiest partnership but they are partners and this time he needs her help. Fortunately she doesn't give a damn about the morality of peering into the guy's brain. She was willing to do this for them as early as season 3's Passing Through Gethsemane and her interest in following rules has only deteriorated since then. 

The assassin's been trained to block telepaths by singing songs in his head and doing maths, but Lyta gets through without much effort and discovers that the board of Edgars Industries sent him. All of them. She also wipes his memory so he'll never know they scanned him... a sign of things to come if Garibaldi doesn't live up to his end of the deal in two years' time.

You know, I'm glad that Garibaldi says thanks to her afterwards. I just want people to show Lyta a little bit of appreciation, even if she is going scary.

Sheridan makes his way through the crowd of Narns to come visit G'Kar in his quarters, and G'Kar says "Yes?" to the door without even checking who rang the bell this time. It turns out that Sheridan doesn't actually have any business to discuss with him, he just wanted to catch him before he left and let him know he's always had the greatest respect for him. For a moment I was ready to call bullshit on that, as G'Kar was an outright villain at times in season 1! But then I remembered that Sheridan wasn't in season 1 and the two characters have always gotten on pretty well.

G'Kar's purchased a long-range survey ship with only 240 light years on it, probably funded with the money he's made by being the most successful author ever, so he's ready to leave. But he tells Sheridan that if he goes anywhere in the station where it's quiet he'll hear the echoes of every conversation they've had, and their voice will linger in the walls for as long as the place is here. I'm not sure that's scientifically accurate, but if he's got a good memory I bet he'll remember some of them at least.  

Then G'Kar calls him John for the first time, or at least Sheridan claims it's the first time, and they have a bit of a mock argument about it before saying goodbye. Man this series is really milking these farewells! But this episode isn't quite G'Kar's final appearance, as he activates the BabCom unit to record a message for a later story.

Garibaldi's been waiting at Lise's side for her to wake up and when she does he assures her that she's going to be okay. Though she starts to have doubts when he mentions that there's a minister waiting down the hall.

The minister's not there for last rites however, he's there to marry them! Garibaldi wants to make her Lise Hamptom-Edgars-Garibaldi right this second, while she's still a little delusional due the painkillers. So she tells Garibaldi to get his ass in here.

Then Garibaldi goes and kisses this guy in the hallway on the way!

Man it's nice to finally see Garibaldi happy again, with some of his sense of humour restored. In season one he was the funny one! Well, he and Ivanova were both the funny ones. And Londo. Damn, now the episode's making me sad that they're all either leaving or long gone.

Next the episode cuts to Lyta being escorted to a docking bay in cuffs. I can't believe this is still just act three.

G'Kar asks them to uncuff her but she decides to spare them the trouble by dismantling them with her brain (or maybe she also has super strength now). The security officer on the right clearly doesn't want to be part of any of this anymore and the two guards walk off. I wonder why they didn't have Sheridan around to make sure she didn't try to take over rooms full of people again.

Lyta hangs around for a moment and looks around, like she's hoping someone will turn up to see her off. But no one does, so that's a bit depressing. I figured that Franklin at least would want to say goodbye, after all their secret agent adventures together.

So G'Kar and his companion walk off to their ship to have Doctor Who adventures or whatever.

And it turns out that Zack did secretly come to see her go! Weird how Lyta apparently didn't sense him there.

If things had worked out differently between Zack and Lyta in season 4 this could've been a very different story for her. It's all those Thirdspace aliens' fault. If she hadn't been in a trance at the exact moment he decided to open up about his feelings then he wouldn't have felt like she wasn't interested in him and backed off, and she wouldn't have felt so abandoned. Maybe.

Damn, G'Kar's actually bought himself a nice looking ship. It might be Minbari, in fact it looks like it's related to the White Stars. I doubt there's going to be any Vorlon technology in there though.

Hey they animated that yellow cargo loader thing in the background! It's picking up crates and moving them around. That's a nice subtle touch.

ACT FOUR

Act four begins on Mars, which is a place we haven't seen in ages. In fact I think the last time was actually No Compromises, so these two episodes are really bookending the series.

If you look really really close to writing on that building... you'll probably still fail to make out that it says "Edgars Industries" on it. The writing's kind of tiny. But I'm pretty sure that's what it says.

It might be clearer on the HD version, but I don't know. The CGI was pretty low res to begin with.

Inside the Edgars Industries boardroom the Edgars Industries board are sitting bored waiting for a call from Garibaldi.

That means we get a brand new set! Only one of the board members has a speaking role though, so he gets up to tell Garibaldi how concerned they all are about Lise's wellbeing. He assures them that their assassination was actually just ordered by one man, their head of security, but he hung himself and left a note claiming all responsibility. Wow, the pack really turned on one of their own, set him up as a scapegoat and killed him, that's dark. What a bunch of absolute dicks. And the guy rubs it in Garibaldi's face, saying anything he's speculating would be impossible to prove.

Garibaldi's doesn't really care about that though, not when he's got a whole sack of blackmail material to use on them courtesy of the new Head of Intelligence for the Interstellar Alliance, Theresa Halloran! She's apparently given up her job as an elected minister in the Mars government to run the Alliance's spy operation instead.

Though the blackmail's just to get them all to quit. To solve the main problem of them hiring assassins to kill him and Lise, he's got some money put aside to hire assassins to kill all of them! If Garibaldi or Lise die of anything other than old age, certain individuals will come after each of the former board members, and they won't have Zack Allen around to save them.

It's a classic trope, in fact Sinclair came up with something similar at the end of The Gathering, but it's used in a very satisfying way here. And it's made even better by the way that Daffy Duck's staring at them the whole time. The weird thing though, is that he's only paying 100,000 credits a kill. I dunno, it just seems a little low considering how much security each of the targets will likely have.

Oh, and he also tells them to leave the cigars behind. The guy's trading one addiction for another!

Tessa's happy with her new job as it puts her in a better place to help Mars... somehow. Even if it does mean eating at restaurants where they keep shining a spotlight at your table. That has to be really distracting.

It's a bit ironic that she's coming here just as Franklin's leaving, but they feel they both have too much going to on to have time for a relationship anyway. So that's a bit of a sad ending for them. Though the camera does keep getting closer and more intimate with each cut, and they do decide to get together for an hour to... celebrate her new job. Maybe after 14 years of this they'll be ready to get married themselves!

ACT FIVE

Hey Delenn came back to the station in time to see Garibaldi off!

Garibaldi gets a bit emotional, talking about how they've been the closest thing he's had to a family, and how he never thought he'd make it out of this place alive. I guess tearful goodbyes are a little easier for actors when they really are saying goodbye.

Delenn gives him a very un-Minbari hug while Sheridan stands up straight and gives him a proper manly handshake. Then he gives him a hug as well! And then Garibaldi actually does leave the station alive. Against all the odds the character got a happy ending.

Once he's gone, Delenn says something that really surprised me: that she thinks that Garibaldi's departure is going to be the hardest for her. Did the two of them ever really talk?

It occurs to Delenn that she's never walked the entire  length of the station before, and now is all they have. So the two of them start their five mile hike to the waste extraction machinery or whatever's at the far end of the spinning habitable cylinder. Maybe they can visit McBari's while they're down there. Though hang on, the docking bays aren't really at the very front of the station, so will they have to walk over to C&C or whatever first?

And that's how it ends. Hang on, are they not going to give me a clip of Sad Londo on his throne this time? I guess I just got used to it after two episodes in a row.

CONCLUSION

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Objects in Motion gets its title from how it's all about people leaving the station. Or leaving Mars to come to the station in Tessa's case. Even the Edgars Industries board members find themselves in motion by the end. It's a bit suspicious how everyone just happens to be leaving the station right at the end of the series for many different reasons, but it's nice to get some proper goodbyes. 

Though despite that I was a bit surprised to find that this actually has a bit more of a story to it than The Wheel of Fire did. In some ways it's practically The Wheel of Fire, Part 2, with the Lyta, Garibaldi and G'Kar arcs carrying on to their conclusion, but Tessa's arrival in the teaser starts off an assassination plot that continues through the episode and is concluded at the end, just like things used to be in the pre-epilogue days. 

Lyta Alexander hasn't been around as much as the other characters who leave this episode, but she's been with the series since the first movie and she's had as much of a journey as any of them. She started off as a regular commercial telepath, went on the run from the Psi Corps, became the Vorlon ambassador's aide, fell in with a telepath cult and ended up becoming a terrorist leader with super powers! Somehow even after all that, her departure with G'Kar to explore the universe still kind of feels like it's coming out of left field. It makes a lot of sense for him, maybe not so much for her. But hey, what she really wanted all this time was a bit of support and friendship (and money), and he can give her that.

How G'Kar gets to his ending is also a bit strange. He achieves a level of fame so great that he has to escape the station, all because of one book that he didn't even want to have published. But it's nice how his arc has taken him on an opposite path to Londo, even as they both became better people.

Londo has been pulled down to one place by his sense of responsibility, taking the highest office on his world but losing himself and his freedom in the process, while G'Kar has abandoned all his roles and authority to run off and learn more about the universe. His followers assumed that since he's had an epiphany and put his anger aside he knows all of the answers now, but he's realised that it's an ongoing journey and he can keep going further. Especially because he's rich and has a cool spaceship.

Michael Garibaldi also reaches his ending here, and the episode does a great job tying everything together. From the start he was a guy who was on his last chance to make something of his life after screwing up time and time again with drinking and by the end of season one we'd learned that he'd had a relationship with Lise but blew it. He began as the everyman and joker of the crew, but the events of the series wore him down and made him frustrated and cynical, especially the time he was shot in the back by his friend, and the time the Psi Corps brainwashed him to betray his friends. So seeing him finally descend into alcoholism and despair, blow his last chance on B5, and then come out of it a happy, married, impossibly wealthy man seems right to me. We got Garibaldi back, just in time for him to leave forever. He still has the neural block in his head, he still hasn't finished getting the alcohol out of his system, and his nemesis Bester is still out there, but now he's back in control and he has a plan to deal with it all. Plus once he's on Mars he can have any breakfast he likes and doesn't have to suffer eating the same meal every day anymore.

Though hang on, Sheridan and Delenn got married last season and they didn't show it. Now Garibaldi and Lise have gotten married and they didn't show it either! In fact I don't think we've ever seen a marriage take place in Babylon 5... with the possible exception of Delenn's ceremony in Parliament of Dreams.

I'm not sure how good this episode would be without five years of stories behind it, it kind of relies on you already having an emotional attachment to the characters to really care about their fate. But who's going to watch episode 108 of Babylon 5 without watching the stories that lead up to it anyway? Personally I think it's a decent episode and probably in my top five for the season overall. Though it does kind of raise the question of how this series can possibly have two episodes left when the only things left to be resolved (the Drakh plot, the Telepath War, Bester) involve characters who have already left.

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NEXT EPISODE

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures I'll be writing about more Babylon 5. Season 5, episode 21 - Objects at Rest, to be precise.

If you have an opinions about Objects in Motion, then this is an excellent time to share them with the internet. Don't waste this amazing opportunity!