Episode: | 43 | | | Writer: | J. Michael Straczynski | | | Air Date: | 25-Oct-1995 |
This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about an episode actually genuinely called Comes the Inquisitor. It's the one where an inquisitor comes to the station I guess.
The is the penultimate episode of Babylon 5's second season so I'm very close to being done with it, though it doesn't really feel like I'm at the end of something. Season two has been a lot more serialised than the first year, but it hasn't built up momentum leading up to anything likely to be resolved soon. There's been no sense of all the pieces falling into place before a massive turning point in the story. So to me this is pretty much just feels like season 2, episode 21.
There will be SPOILERS below for both this episode and the earlier stories that led up to it as I'm going to go through the whole thing writing text under screenshots. Though if you're watching the series for the first time you don't have to worry about me spoiling anything that happens after this episode. This is a first time viewer friendly review.
The episode begins with G'Kar once again trying to warn people about a threat he knows is coming, and being ignored. Though this time that's mostly because he's yelling in the Zocalo like he's Amis in The Long Dark (who incidentally was also right).
He's yelling that the Centauri will move onto their worlds next, now that they've learned that they can get away with invading planets without any interference, but even the other Narns feel like he's just embarrassing himself (they're right as well). G'Kar explains that he wants the Narns to be seen and not forgotten, but the way he's chosen to get attention isn't helping their image much, and his friend eventually talks him into going to a meeting instead.
Then the camera pans over to reveal…
...Vir, spying on them from a walkway.
He wasn't in the last episode, so we never saw his reaction to Londo and Refa flattening the Narn Homeworld, but we're getting a hint of how outraged and guilty he feels now. He's also likely pretty glad none of them saw him, because there were a lot of pissed of Narns down there and they could do a lot of damage without actually killing him and giving the Centauri an excuse to execute 500 Narns in retaliation.
Meanwhile Delenn meets Kosh in a shadowy hallway and discovers that the Vorlons have sent for an inquisitor, because despite the fact that they've been working together for a few years and she voluntary changed her body on the genetic level to suit their goals, they're still not sure about her. And she will submit to the inquisitor's authority.
It's always worrying when Kosh gives you a straight answer. Especially when the question is "How will I know who it is?" and his answer is "You will know... if you survive!"
Though what does that even mean? Is the inquisitor going to sneak aboard wearing a ninja mask and try to kill her in the hallway? Seems like it'd be more sensible to introduce them first, then they can move onto the life-threatening loyalty test.
ACT ONE
After the titles are done, we find that Delenn and Lennier are trying to convince Sheridan to let someone they don't know in through customs without being able to tell him who he is. I expected him to put up some resistance to this idea, but he's 100% on her side at this point. He just wants to understand what it's about.
She explains that Kosh has his doubts in her, which is just what she needs considering the hammering that her self-confidence has taken this season. I would've thought it'd be Sheridan the Vorlons would want to investigate, seeing as he's the new guy on the team, but right now Kosh seems more concerned that Delenn might be doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. I guess he missed that episode where she risked her life by locking herself in a room full of 4000 people carrying a plague purely because she saw they were suffering and wanted to help.
Sheridan offers her his help, but she asks him not to interfere, whatever happens. Except to let the inquisitor through customs obviously, he needs to interfere there.
It's all extreme close ups in G'Kar's quarters today as he makes a deal with the raspy Mr Chase for weapons. We learned way back in Midnight on the Firing Line that the Narns sold weapons to Earth during their war with the Minbari and now the Narns are buying those same weapons back again... at a much higher price. G'Kar realises this is ridiculous, but in the position he's in the best he can do is get a 10% discount. Somehow despite being surrounded by Narns, Chase is the one holding all the cards here.
But after spending the whole scene letting this guy walk all over him, G'Kar turns it around at the end when he calmly reveals that this money he's spending came from the life savings of Narns who escaped the occupation, and that if Chase doesn't live up to his side of the deal his body might one day be found, but it'll never be identified.
And suddenly G'Kar doesn't look so much of a fool anymore. If he wants to keep the respect of the other Narns he needs to spend less time ranting in the street and more time delivering quiet threats to arms dealers.
That's a view of C&C you don't get all that often. I never realised this place had so much ceiling on top of it! Though is that a gap in the set above the extra on the left? The room's such a mess of shapes that it's hard to tell.
Ivanova's a bit surprised when a Vorlon transport comes through the jumpgate, and it's not Kosh's! That's all that happens in this scene really. Though it's nice to see that the Vorlon ships still come out of the jumpgate backwards to use their main engines to slow down, even if no other ship ever does it.
Sheridan heads down to Bay 25 to dismiss the security officer there so that the inquisitor can come through. But instead of walking up to the ship to greet his visitor, he waits around at the door instead. Probably just admiring the work the set decorators have done to dress the place up. The fluorescent light on the floor is a nice touch.
I'm not sure if he was expecting a Vorlon to come hovering in, but what he actually gets is the sound of footsteps and a cane tapping the floor. The episode takes an unusual amount of time to introduce this mysterious human, first showing his feet, then the top of his cane, then his silhouette. I see what Kosh meant now, as Delenn's in real danger of dying of old age before the inquisitor reaches her.
40 seconds from the first time we hear the tap of his cane echoing from around the corner the man finally reaches Sheridan and tells him that he believes he's expected. All Sheridan can do is react in surprise, because it's the end of act one and it wouldn't be very dramatic if it cut to commercials on him saying 'Hi!'.
ACT TWO
Now it's the inquisitor's turn to stand in front of the red Zocalo sign, as for some reason Sheridan has brought him here instead of directly to Delenn. Well, he explains his reason actually: he wants to know what the inquisitor's deal is first.
I already know his deal: he's part of some experiment to cross Jeffrey Combs with the G-Man from Half-Life. And he's wearing a top hat because despite the actor being from California, the character is very very British.
The inquisitor has a good view of the Zocalo from up here and he doesn't like what he sees. Things haven't changed since he was last among humans, the streets are full of corruption, immorality and chaos.
Yeah it looks like a real cesspool of sin down there...
Sheridan would still like to know who he is, but the inquisitor feels that despite the captain being Kosh's student and a leader in the war against the darkness, he's not ready for the truth.
Then he tells him that the Vorlons have been to Earth, they've been everywhere, the Vorlons are, and follows that up by giving his name and former address! He's called Sebastian, and he's from 14B Heresford Lane, London. Though he hasn't been there since 1888, about 371 years ago. That utterly demolishes Mariah's record of 100 or so years of suspended animation in The Long Dark!
Basically he gives Sheridan enough facts to satisfy him, without actually telling him who he is.
Elsewhere Garibaldi is confronting G'Kar about his plans to move weapons through Babylon 5, something that didn't go very well when the Centauri tried it back in And Now for a Word, as it ended with two warships blowing up and the station looking bad on television. Babylon 5 is supposed to be neutral territory.
He freely admits what he's up to (in a roundabout way) and pretty much agrees to knock it off, which is all Garibaldi needed to hear. He didn't come here to give G'Kar more problems, as he's brought him information on transfer station he can use to move the weapons through instead. Not very neutral of him, but then Sheridan already promised G'Kar his support last episode.
G'Kar asks why he's helping him, which is a bit strange seeing as they just mentioned Sheridan promising support, but I guess they had to get to the next part of the conversation somehow. Though Garibaldi's answer is a bit worrying as he says he's helping because G'Kar didn't lie to him. So if he had lied the resistance wouldn't have gotten their guns? That's a bit extreme Garibaldi, dooming an entire planet because someone lied to you!
Meanwhile Sheridan's found an industrial storage area in Grey 19 for Delenn's inquisition, as I guess one of the meeting rooms wouldn't be dramatic enough for Sebastian. The guy can't work without darkness and echoes.
Something I really liked about this scene is that while Delenn's steeling herself for what she'll find in there we also get hear a conversation she had with Sheridan that sets up what's going on. It's unusually efficient storytelling for Babylon 5 (probably because they had to cut a scene and fit the exposition in somewhere).
Once she's inside the doors slam shut and Sebastian slides over some ornate manacles for her to wear, demonstrating the skill of someone who's slid a lot of manacles in his life. They stopped right at her feet, it was very impressive. He tells her that she can take them off at any time, but to do so means she fails the test.
The inquisitor's first question is "Who are you?" and he gets the obvious answer... which he finds to be unacceptable. She repeats her name and this time she gets a shock from the manacles to encourage her to try harder. Seems like they're basically a stylish version of the paingivers that G'Kar was wearing in Parliament of Dreams.
So she tries a few others answers, like what she does and who her parents where, but Sebastian's even less impressed by these responses and gives her more shocks. Delenn, just tell him your address and then go on for a bit about how mysterious the Vorlons are and he'll relent and let you go!
He finds it a bit pathetic that she can't define herself without falling back on the labels that others have given her. How is she supposed to be fighting for everyone else when she doesn't even know who she is? Man, this is the most unpleasant interrogation she's suffered since her interview in And Now for a Word!
I wish they didn't have that light show going on in the background during this scene, it's kind of distracting.
Anyway, Sebastian reveals that he's done this many times before, with a lot of self-important people who thought they were chosen by destiny, chosen by God, and they all broke in the end. He stopped them before they could do any more damage by claiming authority over people they were not worthy to lead. I'm 50% wondering what the hell gives the Vorlons the right to make this judgement of others, 50% wondering if we could hire them to sort out present day Earth.
He also mentions it's possible that she'll die here, which is a fact he forgot to mention to Sheridan earlier. Though he wouldn't be the one killing her; it would be her own fault for stubbornly keeping the manacles on despite her obvious inability to demonstrate her suitability for the role. She's so prideful that she'd suffer agony and risk everything on the premise that the universe won't let her die.
Okay I'm starting to just quote what the guy's saying here. That's the trouble of a scene where one person spends a whole scene explaining things, all I can do is paraphrase or transcribe his lines.
ACT THREE
Act three begins with Vir being harassed in a hallway by a guy who either wants a favour from Ambassador Mollari or wants to offer him one, I'm not sure. With the way he's delivering his lines I had to put subtitles on to even tell what he was saying. Vir escapes into a lift, but somehow neither the characters nor the camera spotted G'Kar standing there behind the door on the right. Though he becomes aware of him soon enough.
Vir finds being trapped in a small box with the man whose planet was just occupied by his planet to be a little bit awkward, but after 35 seconds he decides to break the silence by apologising. This episode is starting to make a habit of just lingering in a scene for a while without any dialogue and it's working pretty well so far.
G'Kar responds by drawing his dagger (which is totally illegal to have on B5) and slicing the palm of his hand to let the blood drip. Hey I didn't know the "Dead, dead, dead, dead dead, dead, dead dead, dead, dead, dead," scene was in this episode! Though not all of it was on the first airing in the UK, as they apparently cut the shot of him cutting his hand, which made the blood dripping a bit confusing.
For every drop of blood he says the word "Dead", and it isn't making Vir feel any better about things. Vir realises that he can't apologise to the thousands who have died and so G'Kar replies that he can't forgive. Stephen Furst looks really affected by the whole thing and I'm not surprised, as that happened with actors working with Andreas Katsulas from time to time. The guy was pretty good at this acting thing; much better than the Centauri who chased Vir down for a favour earlier.
That was a pretty unnecessarily painful demonstration to make purely for Vir's benefit though, especially considering the awkwardness of where the cut is. I sliced my fingers a bit messing with a computer case recently, tiny little paper cuts, and that's been annoying enough. Plus slicing his gloves was a pretty drastic move as well, considering the supplier probably went out of business recently. At least Vir can be a little relieved that it wasn't his blood making a puddle on the floor, plus it's just become significantly easier for him to make himself a G'Kar clone!
Back in Grey 19, Sebastian is still trying to annoy Delenn until she reveals who she really is.
He starts talking about how she believes she is important, that she has a destiny. Makes me wonder if he's making assumptions or if this assessment of her was all in Kosh's report. She replies that everyone has a destiny, though that doesn't help her case as much as she thinks it does, seeing that the Markabs' destiny was to die out to a horrible plague and the Narns' destiny was to have their cities obliterated, while she believes that her destiny is to be a leader in a war to save the galaxy.
So he tortures her a bit with the manacles to get her to cry out, so they can see if the universe answers her. He wants to see just how much plot armour she has.
The inquisitor switches questions, asking her why she's here in this place, in this life. She replies that she was meant to be.
He's getting a bit shouty now and asks what if the world says otherwise? Has she ever considered that maybe the world is right and she is wrong? She says 'yes' and this surprises him a little. As a reward for self-doubt he's giving her ten minutes rest. Or maybe he's giving himself a rest; I think he's earned it after doing so much talking in this scene.
She really has had a bit of a 'Delenn is right and the world is wrong' attitude during the series now that I think about it, as the Grey Council has been telling her that she's doing the prophecy wrong and that she shouldn't have transformed herself, and she stubbornly ignored them. Though I got the impression that Kosh was backing her up or calling the shots the whole way. I remember that she needed to see what he looked like inside the encounter suit before she went through with the change because she had "great doubts".
Down the giant fan room from Acts of Sacrifice where secret Narn business is carried out, it's now G'Kar's turn to be questioned, as his people on the station want some kind of proof that he's actually going to be able to get weapons to their homeworld. If he can't prove his worthness to lead then he'll have to step aside and let someone else take over... just like in Acts of Sacrifice. When is it Londo's turn to have leadership issues? Why is it always G'Kar and Delenn who are questioned?
I’m usually a fan of Mike Vejar episodes but he’s gone a bit strange with this one. Lots of distorted close ups and now a Dutch angle.
Fortunately G'Kar doesn't have to fight to win them over this time, just demonstrate that he can get a message through to some guy's family on Homeworld and get their response back to them. It's not important whose family it is, the point is that delivering weapons is a lot like delivering a message, you want it to go to the right place and you want to know it's been received, so it's best he demonstrates on something that doesn't cost all their life savings first. (Though the guy really would appreciate seeing if his family is okay).
Now, back to Delenn being tormented.
This time Sebastian claims that Delenn's problem is that she's a piece of the machine that thinks it's the whole machine.
Something bothers me about this scene and I think it's that's that we haven't seen enough of this 'machine' operating to have any idea of how right Sebastian is. I'm used to the antagonist in scenes like this identifying flaws in the hero that ring true to the viewer, and if it was Sheridan being interrogated they could've done that, but we just haven't seen much of Delenn as a leader. Though if it was Sheridan here then the episode would be even more like And the Sky Full of Stars.
But this scene isn't about analysing Delenn, it's about her finding the strength to pick herself back off the ground and inflicting some verbal hurt on him for a change. She's deduced that he's someone who lashes out at people who believe they can make a difference because he could not, and takes way too much joy in it.
I feel like she might be wasting her time trying to analyse a professional torturer, as he's likely playing a role to get a response from her. Though the way he immediately starts electrocuting her again like she's hit a nerve doesn't exactly prove her wrong.
ACT FOUR
Outside Delenn's little stage play there's a regular episode still going on, and right now it's about G'Kar going to see Sheridan for help. G'Kar needs to prove to his people that he can get the job done and send a message to Narn... which means that Sheridan has to get the job done because it's actually pretty difficult. I'm not sure why he thinks that Babylon 5 has the resources to sneak messages to and from an occupied planet, but thanks to the events of last episode they actually do!
But they're not using the immense information gathering resource of Epsilon III for this, they're using their army of sneaky couriers. The Rangers may not be ready for this yet, but Sheridan feels that they can't keep watching and planning forever. Wait... they've been planning?
No don't cut to Lennier finding Delenn, I want to know more about these plans! I want Sheridan and Garibaldi to drag this episode to a halt and spend 10 minutes discussing how many Rangers they have under their command, what they've been spending their time doing, what they're planning to do in the near future, all of that.
They got two good actors and one of the best B5 directors together here, but between the three of them they'd didn't do a great job of figuring out what the characters should be doing with their hands in this scene. He's awkwardly grabbing her arms, then her wrists, then her arms, and after he finally settles down she starts doing the same to him. It's very distracting.
Delenn is frustrated and confused about not being able to figure out what the inquisitor wants her to say and Lennier's understandably worried. But she refuses to walk out with him and no one's going to be very keen on him picking her up and carrying her out, so he runs off to get Sheridan instead. He explains that the inquisitor is killing her!
Yeah that does actually look pretty bad.
Lennier also explains that Sheridan's the only one who can save her, because he's the only one who can defy Kosh. So are they honestly concerned about what Kosh will do if a security team shows up to save her? I dunno, Kosh has always been a bit of wild card but actually doing something seems pretty out of character for him.
Sheridan decides to get his PPG out and go confront Sebastian alone, who as it turns out is actually glad to see him. In fact it almost seems like he was dragging this out until Sheridan finally decided he'd had enough.
Though Sebastian has no interest in following Sheridan's orders or being shot by him, so he slams him into a wall with magic fire from his magic cane. (It's like the technomages all over again).
So now it's Sheridan's turn to be interrogated! I hope Sebastian reveals a pair of of those virtual reality cybernet chairs from And the Sky Full of Stars and does it properly this time instead of just asking who he is a bunch of times.
Nope, he's just strapped him to a wall. Plus he's stolen his jacket!
But Sebastian doesn't want to know who Sheridan is, instead he asks how many people he's willing to sacrifice for victory. What about his friends? What about his family?
Sheridan refuses to tell him but it doesn't seem like Sebastian's interested in an answer anyway, as he fires off his questions rapid fire and punctuates each of them with a technomagic slap. He's really abusing Photoshop's 'Plastic Wrap' filter here. Then he goes off the rails entirely, adding a whole lot more things to his "would you sacrifice?" list, including:
Gods, truth, blood, right, wrong, his future, faith, sin, hell, death, eternity. (Apparently that last one was an adlib by the actor.)
After 12 slaps Delenn finally yells "enough" and tells Sebastian to take her instead, despite Sheridan trying to get her to leave and save herself. She'll put up with his bullshit when it's her life on the line, but now that someone else is being threatened she's got her fire back.
Sebastian finds this interesting, as if she really is the chosen one then she's not just sacrificing herself but the entire galaxy, just to save one person! She explains that no life is unimportant to her and there are plenty of people who'll take her place if she dies here alone, in the dark, with no one to celebrate her name. Like she could've done in Confessions and Lamentations like three episodes ago.
That's enough to satisfy Sebastian, and with a wave of his cane he's gone. Then he just walks right back in again like he accidentally left his hat in here. There's definitely one thing he's forgotten: Sheridan's jacket.
Sebastian tells them that when the darkness comes, they are the right people, in the right place, at the right time. So that's a bit of a confidence boost for Delenn. Though I think it would've worked better if it was Zack Allan or Vir being tortured, and Delenn had sacrificed herself to save someone she barely knows, instead of someone she's growing to love. Not that I want Zack Allan or Vir to be tortured!
ACT FIVE
Back at the start of the episode Delenn was told that if she survived then she would know who the inquisitor was. Well everyone survived and there's still one act left to go, so Sheridan decides to have Ivanova do a Google search for that name and address Sebastian gave him earlier. It's only been 25 minutes for me and I've already forgotten everything after '14B', but Sheridan's a TV hero so he can remember the whole thing after a day of running a space station and some torture.
Though it might have actually been longer than that, as the Rangers have already gotten a message back from Narn.
So G'Kar is able to show the guy a recording from his family, meaning that this time around he has won the respect of the Narns with a demonstration of his ability to get things done rather than his ability to be the best at doing the violence. They're going to let him carry on as their leader... until the next time they doubt him.
Meanwhile Sheridan goes to Bay 25 to see Sebastian, and to tell him what he's found: Sebastian disappeared from London right after the last of a series of horrific murders in the West… East End. His lips and the subtitles both say 'West', but his voice says 'East'. Apparently the mistake was caught during the UK airing but jms chose to let it air once in the US with the wrong word because he liked the performance, then had it dubbed over for later airings and the video release (but forgot to fix the captions).
Anyway it turns out that he's Jack the Ripper! The clue was at the start when he saw all that immorality in the Zocalo (presumably women who showed any amount of skin). Though I'm not sure we're supposed to entirely put the pieces together until the very last line of the episode when he says he's "Remembered only… as Jack". So once again Delenn has been captured and nearly killed by a serial killer.
That's why the Vorlons thought he'd be ideally suited to question people who believe they're on a holy mission, as he himself was once convinced that he was chosen, and that he was right and the world was wrong. Until the Vorlons showed him that nope, he was definitely the one who was wrong. I wonder what historical figure they got to test him. Joan of Arc maybe?
Sebastian says that now that he's finally found someone who passed the test and finished his 400 years of penance maybe the Vorlons will let him die, and Sheridan replies "I think that might be wise." Damn man! I know he's literally Jack the Ripper, but that's cold.
CONCLUSION
Well, I suppose it could've been worse. They could've called the episode "The Inquisitor Cometh".
The trouble with the classic 'he was Jack the Ripper the whole time' twist, is that it doesn't work so well slotted into a serialised story about intergalactic war and the rise of fascism. At the end of a Twilight Zone episode it's fine, at the end of a Babylon 5 episode it can make you roll your eyes. I mean it kind of makes sense that a race working on a mythological scale would recruit legends, but the twist hijacks the episode, to the point where it's what I'm writing about here right now, before discussing any of the other things that happened.
I think it also relies on you knowing enough about Jack the Ripper to know he's someone who thought he was the chosen one with a destiny, so that it he's a good example of where that kind of belief can take you. Personally I don't really give a damn about Jack the Ripper, so my reaction to the revelation was 30% eye roll, 70% shrug. Which I suppose is better than my reaction to The Long Dark, where a human from a hundred years in the past was woken up and turned out to not be a serial killer. She was just really dull.
Sebastian, on the other hand, was played by a fantastic actor (Wayne Alexander) who dominates the episode, assisted by some great direction by Mike Vejar. It might have been a mistake to lean so much on their VFX team's ability to render CGI electricity effects, and the set looks more like an abstract torture chamber than an industrial storage area, but overall this a really well made episode of Babylon 5. It helps that it plays to jms's strengths, as it sticks a couple of actors on a stage and gives one of them pages of dialogue to read.
The episode's all about people proving their worthiness to lead, mostly Delenn and G'Kar, but in a weird way it's also about ignoring resentful, cynical people who've had to give up on their dreams when they tell you that it'd be much more sensible if you also gave up on yours.
Delenn started the season inside a cocoon changing into something unique in the universe and one of the first things she said after emerging was "What am I?" She then lost the support of her people on the station because they didn't know what she was, her position of Satai was taken from her, and she failed to be the bridge between the humans and Minbari (in the eyes of ISN anyway). So it makes a lot of sense to have an episode about her being interrogated about who she is at the end of the season and having to define herself.
She never really comes up with an interesting answer to the question though. There's no moment of revelation for her. Instead she shows who she is by offering to sacrifice herself for
In a weird way it tells us more about the Vorlons and who they are. They've been very interested in our worlds for a very long time, and if Sebastian's to be believed they've rejected or electrocuted every single potential leader for their cause since 1888. On the plus side, the Vorlons rejected those other candidates for not having the best interests of others at heart, which is a good sign. Also they managed to talk Jack the Ripper out of stabbing people, which is only slightly offset by the way they've kept him around to torture people for 400 years.
It's G'Kar I really feel sorry for though. The last time he had an episode about holding on to his leadership it was overshadowed by the daft B plot and now people remember it as being 'the one where Ivanova does the sex dance'. Now he's been given a second chance to prove himself as a leader and Jack the Actual Ripper turns up!
But he's judged by his peers and by Garibaldi, and he passes by proving his ability to get the job done, and that he's willing to be reasonable. Being proven trustworthy by the command staff opens up the door to a lot of support and unlike last episode it's made absolutely clear what he's getting.
The Long, Twilight Struggle ended with Epsilon III and the Rangers pledging their support to Sheridan's cause and here we start to get an idea of the capabilities and limitations of his new resources. Epsilon III isn't even discussed but it seems they're not going to be sending holograms to the Narn Homeworld. He's not going to be using the Rangers to liberate anything any time soon either. Even getting a message through is tricky enough, though they prove to be up to that task.
So yeah, Comes the Inquisitor, it's pretty good, if you can get past the 'Jack the Ripper' thing.
Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, Babylon 5 season 2 concludes with The Fall of Night.
Imagine how much better this review would be with your comment underneath it.
"You will know... if you survive!"
ReplyDeleteOh, she'll be fine. Delenn is in the opening titles, and that's basically immortality. Talia told me that once.
I felt a strong bond with Delenn after this episode, because I have also gotten some jobs despite doing terrible at the interview.
ReplyDeleteI hope my subconscious doesn't decide to throw an "Ivanova does the sex dance for Jack the Ripper" dream at me tonight thanks to reading this review.
ReplyDeleteNah, it'll probably just be another dream about terrible, dim lighting. The usual.
Yes, but Delenn, how many lights do you see?
ReplyDelete