Babylon 5 3-11: Ceremonies of Light and Dark

Episode:

55

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Air Date:

08-Apr-1996

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, the Babylon 5 continues with Ceremonies of Light and Dark. Sorry for the close up of the guy's fingernail up there, that's the image the episode chose to display its title over.

It's a pretty fitting title for a post published at Christmas though. I mean Christmas is a social or religious occasion that happens in the dark of winter that involves putting lights up, and participating in ritual acts such as giving gifts and eating too much. Not that the episode has anything to do with Christmas whatsoever, it originally aired in April, but it's still a bit of an occasion.

Babylon 5 has at least five TV movies, two spin-offs and whatever you'd call The Lost Tales, but if you just take the episodes on their own then this story is the halfway point of the Babylon 5 saga. We're halfway through the five year arc!

Which means this recap potentially contains SPOILERS for exactly half the series, including this episode. But if you're watching through the series for the first time you don't have to worry about me spoiling what happens in the other half.

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The episode begins with a shot of Ivanova looking out of the C&C window at the shuttles carrying Nightwatch off the station.

I was going to mention that they've gone back to the old observation dome model from season 1, but then I noticed something stranger: they've gone back to the old sign to the left of the door as well. There's supposed to be a logo with an olive branch there. Also the stripes on her uniform are black instead of red and the station's rotating the wrong way.

What they've actually done here is taken a shot from Babylon Squared in season one. The live action footage in the window was originally mirrored for some reason, so they flipped the shot to fix it and messed up the CGI instead.

Next mystery: what are those two tiny triangles poking through the hull above the corners of the window? My theory is that they're the top corners of the polygon that Ivanova's been projected onto.

Fortunately Ivanova's got the exact same hair style when it cuts to inside, so you can't really tell they used old footage. Unless it's the kind of thing you can't unsee once you know about it, and I've ruined the episode for you.

Sheridan's a little confused about the continuity himself when Garibaldi strolls in with his arm in a sling despite the fact that last episode he had no sling and was limping around with a cane. Garibaldi tells him he broke his arm when he went hand to hand with Clark's troops, which is exactly what happened to the actor as well. Franklin's decided to put him in a cast since then, continuity problem resolved.

Seems that people on B5 are unhappy that the com channels are still shut down, but they've got a good reason for leaving them closed. The station runs on computers and EarthGov has the passwords, so they feel that opening them up to an outside connection is a bad idea. Makes sense to me.

It's fair to say that they're probably not in Earthforce anymore, though they seem reluctant to part with the uniforms. Everyone except for Sheridan that is, who left his jacket behind on a chair last episode. But he mentions that he'll wear it one last time for something that's happening later, so there's a mystery for you.

I guess it's better wearing an enemy uniform than whatever these Minbari officers have got on.

It seems that Delenn brought these guys over from the Minbari ships protecting the station to tell them they're doing well and they're on the right side of history... but really I think she just wanted to show off their new table. It's been days at most since the crew seceded from the Earth Alliance and they've already got a new logo designed and furniture constructed! The olive branch has been replaced with a sword, because B5's all about violence now.

Delenn asks Lennier what he thinks (about the monumental events that are transpiring, not about the table) and he manages to give a response without giving away his own thoughts. "Prophecy said that one day we would unite with the other half of our soul in a war with the ancient enemy, this we have done."

You'd think that Delenn would be all about prophecy, considering how hard she tried to get the Grey Council to take it seriously, but she tells Lennier that it's a bit rubbish really. You can't really understand it until the events are already playing out, and there are no prophecies that predict they're going to survive this war with the Shadows.

Meanwhile Sheridan's decided to go 'on the rounds' without an armed escort, because he wants people to know that the B5 staff are in control. Unfortunately he doesn't control the guy hiding in the Zocalo with a sniper rifle. Presumably. This is why leaders have people there to jump in front of the bullet for them!

The point of a teaser is to grab a viewer's attention and keep it through the opening titles and adverts. Sometimes they'll do this by introducing a compelling premise that promises all kinds of things are going to go down after the break... and sometimes they'll just point a gun at someone's head. Stay tuned to find out if the lead character dies at the start of act one!

This works though, I'd keep watching. It's definitely better than some teasers I've seen that seemed to take their viewers' interest for granted and didn't even bother ending with a hook. I'm looking at you, Enterprise.

ACT ONE

The sniper (called Sniper in the credits) waits for Sheridan to get distracted by an orange and then goes to take his shot, but he's stopped by a guy called Boggs.

Boggs probably wouldn't mind putting a few rounds into Sheridan himself, but he's sure it wouldn't help them any. You can't kill a man like Sheridan as it'd just turn him into a martyr! Same reason you can't kill Fox Mulder.

There are apparently hundreds of people out there just waiting for one of these heroes to die before they all spring into action simultaneously. But until then they're content to just sit back, live boring anonymous lives, and let the protagonists do all of the work.

Hey Marcus is back!

Delenn tells him that the station's safe from his government for now, and Marcus is like "They ain't my government mate, I'm from a colony! We should've given Earth the boot years ago." So the only character in the series with a British accent is basically from the Space United States. Actually I suppose the Space US would be Mars.

The characters have all been getting fresh starts lately so Delenn has decided they need a Nafak'cha, a rebirth ceremony, to give them a chance to heal. We've seen this ceremony once before... and in the opening titles of every episode in season one.

Though if you go back and compare the scene in the credits to the one in the episode where the ceremony took place (Parliament of Dreams) you'll notice that it is a lie. They must have used a different take, as everything's in a slightly different position and Londo's holding his coat with his other hand.

Anyway, Marcus feels that people will be too busy with their own ceremonies for a while, and we see that he's right, as the senior staff are currently at a military funeral for all the people they lost in the last episode.

So this must be what Sheridan meant about wearing his uniform one more time. Man, poor Garibaldi (and poor Jerry Doyle), having to switch outfit with a broken arm.

In happier news, judging by the stars outside they've got the station rotating clockwise again. Though this just makes it more obvious that the stars outside the C&C window don't move at all.

Hey I recognise this shot from the season four titles! I remember wondering what episode this happened in.

Turns out that Babylon 5 does have one thing in common with Star Trek (and not Deep Space Nine specifically for a change), and that's that they send their dead out in space coffins. Though here I think they actually are coffins and not just torpedoes with the warhead removed.

The pilots are flying in a missing man formation as well, with the first fighter on the right pulling away to represent the departure of the dead pilots. Plus if you look carefully you can see that there's one of their new Thunderbolt Starfuries out there.

Hey Lord Refa's back! He's a bit pissed off that Londo dragged him all the way to Babylon 5 instead of visiting him on Centauri Prime and wants to know why he's been summoned here. It always bothers me in sci-fi when someone calls the captain and says "I think you'd better come take a look at this sir," expecting them to just stop what they're doing and get into an elevator to see what the surprise is. Well Londo just pulled that on someone on another planet.

Turns out that Londo brought him here because he's been studying reports from the front lines (all of them probably full of comments about how their enemies' ancient cities are a sign of a decadent culture in decline, knowing what the Centauri are like). The thing that's bothering Londo is how many lines they're getting these reports from. Fighting a war on two fronts generally means you're an idiot, so by fighting a war on 12 of them, the Centauri must be aspiring to become the absolute dumbest sons of bitches in all of known space. (He doesn't put it in those exact words).

Morden pulled the rug from under Londo back in Matters of Honor when he revealed that he didn't need him, because he was working with Lord Refa now.

But it turns out that Londo was recording their conversation, giving him an opportunity to show off to Refa how much he knows about his secret friends. It's a shame the footage doesn't match, as Morden was sitting down at the time and had a slightly different line, but hey who cares, it's a tiny holographic Morden!

Londo tells Refa all about the worries he's had, the ones that caused him to put some distance between himself and Morden, and he instructs him to quit asking for favours from his associates and pull their forces back from their many front lines to protect Centauri Prime.

Refa finds Londo's attempt at growing a backbone hilarious, as Morden is the key to him eventually become Emperor, so Londo reveals that he just poisoned his drink. It's a special two-part poison though so he'll be fine, as long as he doesn't drink the second part any time in the next few years... which is presumably undetectable and harmless on its own. Or else he could've just used the threat of a one-part poison to ensure his cooperation really.

Man, it's a shame Vir isn't in this story, because this conversation would've made his day. It's Londo giving his own special little wave to Mr Morden, except he's using his metaphorical middle finger.

Down in Garibaldi's security office, the command staff are busy making sure they stay the command staff by sorting out the station's computer. This means they each have to give out their command codes, which are 'obsidian', 'griffin' and 'peek-a-boo'. Obviously Garibaldi's is the last one, as he's the only one with the sense to even try to come up with a difficult password. And I thought the Star Trek crew was bad for using the code '1, 1, A'

Delenn drops by to tell Sheridan about her rebirth ceremony idea, mentioning that she showed part of it two years ago and they should do the whole thing now. Also she wants to invite Londo.

It's around this time that the episode finally decides to check in with Boggs and Sniper again, and we learn that they're part of a group of Nightwatch agents who've managed to stay undetected. Not because they're quiet and unassuming, but because they're clearly too crazy to have been allowed to join station security.

At one point Sniper feels he should mention the time he took seven days to kill a Minbari by cutting their limbs off a piece at a time. Then he starts singing "Dem Bones" as the entire room stares at him with their arms crossed in utter silence. The music hints that jms and the director were actually going for menace here, but they missed.

It's like someone took a season one scene and jammed it right into the gears of a season three story.

Boggs comes across as a lot more sensible than Sniper, though he's still a right bastard. He's played by Don Stroud, who previously showed up in makeup as a helpful alien fighter in TKO. This time he's not wearing any makeup, so if you think that scar looks bad, blame the guy who put a knife into his eye.

The actor was stabbed ten times coming to the aid of someone being mugged in the street, and that may not even be the most interesting bit of trivia about the guy. He's the son of a vaudeville comedian and a blues singer, he started off as a stunt double for surfing scenes, which he was well qualified for as he was once the 4th ranked surfer in the World Surfing Championship. He once appeared as a nude centrefold in Playgirl, he has a black belt in Hawaiian martial arts, he plays the drums and can fly a biplane. He also once crashed in a biplane and saved the pilot from drowning. He was the bouncer and later manager of the Whisky A Go-Go club...

Anyway Boggs tells his group that they've somehow figured out that Delenn got the Minbari ships here to protect the station through sheer force of personality, so all they have to do is kill her and they'll go away. It's a brilliant plan, but Sniper has to point out the obvious flaw: the last time they killed a Minbari leader it nearly led to humanity's annihilation.

Boggs assures him that it's not going to be an issue this time, as they're going to make it look like Sheridan's fault! I dunno, it still seems a bit risky to me to pin it on the most infamous representative of humanity.

ACT TWO

Delenn's still on a mission to sign people up for her rebirth ceremony, and now it's taken her to Marcus's favourite bar in Down Below. The one from Matters of Honor and Exogenesis where he meets his contacts.

He's settled in a bit more now, and has made an arrangement with the criminals at the other table so that they don't bother him if he doesn't bother them. So hopefully this means he doesn't have to hit quite so many people in the face with his stick on the way out these days.

But Marcus has decided to opt out of the ceremony, like he opted out of it during his training, and he's being extra jokey in an attempt to not have a serious conversation about why. Delenn decides to let him get away with it... for now.

I suppose it makes sense that the head of security would be in charge of computer security as well, and he does have a lot of computer panels and screens in his office, but it's still a bit weird to me to see Garibaldi being the one to reset the station's mainframe. (Especially as the poor guy has to do it one-handed).

But the computer is successfully rebooted and all is well. Except for the fact that it's now voiced by Harlan Ellison and it's a dick. They've inadvertently resurrected an old artificial intelligence subroutine installed when the station went operational, but never used. Because it sounds like Harlan Ellison and it's a dick. It's worse for us viewers though; the characters don't have to listen to comedy music every time he has a line!

This episode seemed like it was going to be pretty alright at first. Not great, but alright. Then the singing Nightwatch goons and the funny computer turned up and now I'm wondering what the hell jms was thinking. Maybe he'd just seen a rerun of the classic Star Trek episode Tomorrow is Yesterday and wanted to do his own spin on the idea of the computer getting a comedy personality.

The cast was getting a bit worried about jms's thinking as well at this point, seeing as he wrote the computer saying "What, you got a broken arm or something? I got a station to run here," before Jerry Doyle broke his arm.

Marcus may have been the first person she asked about the rebirth ceremony, but Londo's at the top of Delenn's list, so it makes sense she'd get around to him next.

Funnily enough Londo isn't actually interested in a Minbari ceremony with absolutely no drinking or debauchery. In fact he's got a very ‘I’m sick of your self-righteous judgemental bullshit’ attitude towards their attempts to include him and I can kind of see why. Delenn does have a way to make people feel like they've been insulted.

Londo's already gone through a lot of reflection lately, and he's already dealing with his past, present and what remains of his future on his own, so he feels he'll do fine without attending. Plus there's another big reason he's not interested, which is that everyone has to tell a secret they've never told anyone and give up something they value. I'd really struggle with that myself as I value all the stuff that I value.

G'Kar turns it down as well as he's been born once before and quite sufficiently. Plus he was recently reborn due his revelation in Dust to Dust and his meditation in jail afterwards (but he doesn't mention that).

By the way, that blurry Minbari on the right is TV presenter Emma Lee who was on set reporting on the series for Saturday morning kids TV show Telegantic Megavision. Here's a five minute clip if you want to a see a glimpse of the making of this episode: YouTube link. Don't ask me how I stumbled across it, I've already forgotten.

This wasn't the last time that Babylon 5 would end up on morning TV in the UK, sadly. Channel 4 always struggled to find the right time to air the series, but they really outdid themselves when they dumped the last few episodes of the epic five year run onto The Bigger Breakfast block at 11:30am, after Eerie, Indiana.

Weird how abandoned the customs area looks today. I suppose everyone who wanted to leave the station has already gone and there aren't a lot of people eager to get in right now.

Delenn's multitasking today, as she's offered one of the Minbari captains a tour of the station, but she's also dragged Marcus along so she can pester him about the rebirth ceremony some more. He finally has to admit that it's the 'giving something of value' part of the ceremony that he's struggling with, because he has nothing left. Beside a stick and some robes. He's not just a happy quippy action hero character, he's secretly an angsty one as well, who puts a mask over his pain.

We already heard a lot of his backstory in Matters of Honor, that his brother joined the Rangers six months before him and came back to warn Marcus about a Shadow attack. Marcus didn't listen, and when they hit his colony he lost his brother, his home, and a woman he was fond of. Read To Dream in the City of Sorrows for the full story! Delenn wants him to give up the memory of his sacrifices, the pain, the survivor's guilt, but the look on his face says he ain't gonna.

He is going to leave her alone for a minute though, which gives Nightwatch their chance to strike! They shoot one Minbari officer, and kidnap the captain and Delenn. So there's something else for Marcus to be guilty about.

ACT THREE

Garibaldi's gotten some more people on the computer problem by this point, but it's no good: they can't get the terrible comedy music to stop. I mean the episode's comedy music; the only thing coming out of the computer speakers is an obnoxious New Yorker telling him to suck an orange.

I just wish I could find some comedy here for me, but I can't buy into it. It's too absurd for Babylon 5.

Seems that the first few Babylon stations got off lightly when they blew up, if this was the AI they intended to install in them. Garibaldi's clearly wondering if anyone would really blame him if he blew this one up as well. Hey, maybe this is a contingency, so that in the event that someone tries to hijack the station and wipe the passwords they'll be tortured to the point of insanity. It is the same voice as the computer from the game I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream after all.

Speaking of absurd, we're back with Nightwatch again, and they've brought the Minbari over to the giant board game storage room they're using as a lair. I keep expecting Batman and Robin to swing in to rescue them, but I suppose this is a little far from Gotham.

Boggs calls the crew to tell them their demands: either the Minbari ships leave in the next six hours, or they'll start killing their prisoners. Also they're monitoring security channels and they've still got people working in security, so any attempt to find and rescue the hostages and they'll know about it.

Marcus is with the crew watching this on the monitor, but when Sniper kills a hostage to prove they're serious he charges off on a mission, yelling about 'bloody bastards'. This is good though, as the best the B5 staff can do right now is analyse the call for clues, while Marcus is the closest thing they've got to Batman.

Marcus goes back to his bar and sits down to play some cards with Dr Robotnik. Or Eggman, whichever he’s called these days.

He tells them that if they don't tell him what he wants to know, then in five minutes he'll be the only person at the table still standing. He trained for months on Minbari, he can take on six hardened criminals in a fight. Actually he's willing to take on the entire room, and he'll probably have to at this rate because they're finding his attempt at intimidation to be hilarious.

Meanwhile the Minbari captain (called Lennan) whispers to Delenn that he's loosened his ropes, but Sniper knows Minbari so he gets them tightened up again. Funny that they're using rope for this, all these years in the future. It's a bit old school.

Delenn tells Sniper she feels sorry for him. The Minbari went mad together during the war, but they woke up together. Sniper, on the other hand, has no one to waken him from his madness.

Delenn's great at making absolute bullshit sound like profound truth, and Sniper doesn't even call her on the fact that the Minbari castes have been kind of torn on the subject of their surrender. Though he does raise his gun to her head and pull the trigger.

Fortunately for her Lennan had gotten out of his tightened ropes by this point and leapt at him, though it's not very fortunate for Lennan as he's gunned down instead. He's not dead though, and Boggs stops Sniper from shooting any other hostages prematurely. Personally I think he should send him away on guard duty or something, as the guy's clearly desperate to murder someone.

Back in Marcus' side of the plot, he ducks just in time to make sure it's someone else's face that gets a bottle slammed into it and punches Eggman out in retaliation. But then he realises that he's gone and knocked out everyone who can tell him where Delenn is.

Just then Lennier turns up to ask him if he's going to be at the rebirth ceremony and Marcus is utterly incredulous. I was expecting this to be the point where they teamed up to go wreck another bar, but instead Lennier seems focused on the task he's been given. He's coming off more like a computer than the station's actual computer right now.

But Lennier's facade slips when Marcus touches him, as he grabs him right back and lifts him a foot into the air with one hand and zero effort.

Hey, that's another shot from the season four opening titles!

Lennier admits that he wants to tear the station apart looking for Delenn, but doesn't quite get around to the part where he explains why he can't. They should totally team up and hit people in Down Below together!

But the rebirth ceremony requires him to admit a secret, so he reveals to Marcus that he loves her...

ACT FOUR

... but not in a romantic way, honest! It's a higher and nobler love than anything Sheridan has for her. He's accepted that she's meant for another and has vowed to stand by her regardless.

Marcus tells him that he's made a dangerous promise, but just then Dr Robotnik wakes up so he goes over to question him some more (with total disregard for all the blood he's getting on his sleeve). The guy wants him to give him a break, so Marcus asks what he'd like him to break. They're fresh out of broken hearts, but maybe they could start with the fingers and work their way up from there.

Funny, that's pretty much what Sniper said about how he used to torture Minbari prisoners earlier.

Back in Sheridan office, they've got a map up on the screen! I love it when a movie or episode gives me a map so I can visualise where everyone is.

Visualising where Delenn is will take some work, but Garibaldi works out it must be somewhere in Grey sector by the sound in the background, Marcus comes in to tell them which level, and Ivanova uses their information to pinpoint the area. Though Marcus has also gotten a description of Boggs' spy in security, so he wins.

Sheridan's team has gotten him all the information he needs just in the nick of time... so he decides to surrender.

Robotnik must have explained that Boggs' spy is a generic looking white guy with a typical hair style, grey uniform and no distinguishing features, because that's who appears on the screen to tell Nightwatch that the Minbari ships have left the area.

Boggs tells them to send a message back home to send in the marines, because they're going to retake Babylon 5! It's only going to take their ships an hour to get here apparently, which is a bit worrying. It takes two days to get to B5 from Earth with the fastest ship the younger races have, so that Earth Alliance fleet they fought off must still be hanging around nearby.

Just then there's an explosion. But it's not Sheridan's troops coming in, it's a reactor leak! People are running down the corridor and a cloud of radioactive gas is venting in behind them. It's all a bit suspicious, but I don't blame Boggs for not calling the radioactive gas's bluff.

Boggs' crew rush out into this redressed Zocalo set... straight into Sheridan's ambush! Sheridan and Ivanova are actually there in person with a small team, but for once this makes sense as they can't trust their own security force right now.

Also I don't know when it happened, but PPG fights actually look good now. At first I thought they'd gotten so overwhelmed with all the visual effects they needed to get done that they'd stopped putting the ugly distortion effect over the top, but no it's still there. It just... looks good now.

Sniper might be a dick, but the guy can definitely shoot straight. He nails this guy in the middle of the forehead and then the ricochet blows up the wall behind Garibaldi.

But then Sheridan shoots the gun right out of his hand, giving Lennan a chance to free Delenn... with tragic consequences. All these people around Sheridan, and Delenn's the only one to notice Sniper about to throw a knife at him. Delenn leaps into the way of the knife (just as Lennan leapt in front of a gun earlier to save her), and collapses into Sheridan's arms.

Ivanova and Garibaldi plead with Sheridan to calm down and not go rushing off after Sniper alone... actually no they tell him to go for it, not that he needs much encouragement. He finds the guy and beats him into unconsciousness while screaming "NO MORE OF YOU" at him. Hey that's another shot from the season four credits! That's three now.

ACT FIVE

Act five begins with Lennier giving everyone the good news: they don't have to do the rebirth ceremony anymore as they took too long! Also Delenn's going to make a full recovery... and I bet Lennier's real pissed off on the inside that it was Sheridan who got to rescue her and not him. She should've taken that knife for him damnit! Meanwhile Garibaldi gets so pissed off by the comedy computer voice that he shoots out the speaker in the transport tube. Lucky he's left handed really.

I get why he did it; he's had a stressful week, he's in pain, and these speakers are presumably everywhere. But it still seems a couple of degrees too daft for Babylon 5, and it's not even the dumbest part of this plot.

Though here's a fun fact about this scene: it's the last time that Garibaldi wears his Earthforce uniform. Also the last appearance of Sparky the Computer (as the end credits call him).

Everyone's getting a turn to lie down in the new Medlab set this season. Shame they couldn't have tilted the bed at an angle for her though, like the Minbari prefer.

But the crew do have something else planned that'll cheer her up. They've decided that seeing that as the title Ceremonies of Light and Dark is a plural they should really have a second ceremony before the episode's over. So they come to her one by one, each with a secret to admit and something valuable to give up... which is always their old Earthforce uniform.

Garibaldi admits he's scared of what he'll do if he loses control, Franklin admits he may have a problem and Ivanova admits that she thinks she loved Talia. Finally the series comes out and states that Ivanova is bisexual without just strongly hinting at it! And Sheridan admits to Delenn that he loves her. Aww.

So now Delenn is the proud owner of a pile of Earthforce uniforms. They only gave up one uniform each though, so I'm sure they've got spares. In fact they've got more than that, as Lennier catches them on the way out to tell them that there's something waiting for them in their quarters. Did they all give him a key or something?

So now they've all got new uniforms! I'm sure Jerry Doyle really appreciated all the costume changes he needed to go through in this story. And jms appreciated getting a fourth clip to use for the season four opening titles.

Everyone else in C&C stares at them, as if to say 'So, when do we all get our new uniforms then?' Or they might just be wondering how they fit so well when Delenn didn't have their measurements. If you look behind them on the left you'll see that B5 itself has a new uniform as well: the logo with the olive branch has been replaced by the sword and shield logo seen on the table earlier. The olive branch logo had a good run though, lasting just over half a season.

The downside of this change is they can't reuse shots of Ivanova standing in the window from season one anymore. That shot at the start of the episode came in just under the wire.

The DVD resolution doesn't really get across the detail, but the costumes aren't as plain as they look from a distance. Plus I like how they've recycled those metal pins by moving them from the epaulette to the collar. That EA badge is gone now though, replaced with a Ranger patch on their arm.

These new uniforms are yet another Babylon 5/Deep Space Nine similarity, as Captain Sisko's crew also had a costume switch to a stylish (but less colourful) new outfit with two and a half seasons left to go.

It's a little bit of a shame though that Delenn doesn't get a uniform too I reckon. I suppose these are Independent Babylon 5 uniforms, not Army of Light uniforms, and there's nothing wrong with the dresses she usually wears (this isn't a Deanna Troi situation), but she spends more of her time in war council meetings and on the White Star than she does as ambassador lately. Plus she kind of broke the Grey Council, so is she even really an ambassador anymore? I just want her to be part of the group!


CONCLUSION

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Ceremonies of Light and Dark was always going to be a let down after the Severed Dreams trilogy, but I feel like this is a step down for season three in general. And I'm not just saying that because it has comedy music. It's cheesier like a season one story, the computer gets possessed by the ghost of a New York cab driver, a psychopath sings Dem Bones as all the tough as nails extras stand and stare at him in silence, and no one wants to come to Delenn's party.

But there's a lot going on in this episode and most of it was decent I thought. Seems like nearly all of the cast turn up for this one and they're all busy with their own things, but the episode's generally about people dealing with the aftermath of all the drama in the last few episodes.

Londo has been coming off like a real bastard these last couple of years. Partly because he's the mouthpiece for Lord Refa's policies and has to put on a performance, partly because he's the idiot that gave Refa that power to begin with. He decided to distance himself from Morden in Matters of Honor and just made the problem worse, but Point of No Return showed him that he still has a chance to avoid a bad future if he starts making the right choices, and here he chooses to poison Refa! Well, possibly, he might have been lying, like Sinclair lied to G'Kar in The Gathering. The important thing is that he's gotten Centauri Prime to quit harassing everyone! Not because of compassion or regret, he's not trying to 'be a good person', he's just he's grown canny enough to see that unscrupulous people aren't going to be your ally forever, and he doesn't want to see any Shadow vessels in Centauri Prime's sky. Lot of good stuff here considering that Londo's barely in this story.

Delenn's made a huge decision for her own planet as well by breaking the Grey Council and I can understand why she needs to have a nice familiar Religious Caste ceremony now to give her some kind of comfort and closure. It's just a shame that all the people she asked had already been reborn recently and were busy moving forward with their lives. Well, not so recent in Marcus's case, but his rebirth as a Ranger worked out pretty well I reckon. Delenn feels that he needs to let something go, and it probably would be healthier if he did, but all he has left is his guilt, his anger, and a stick, and they're pretty effective when used in combination.

In fact it seems that Marcus is a bit over-levelled for this story. In Matters of Honor he managed to take down a small group of thugs with the help of Delenn and Lennier, in Messages from Earth he was able to hold back a half dozen of them by himself, and here he takes on a whole bar full of them! It's getting a little bit ridiculous. Sure Lennier did something similar in season one, but he's strong enough to pick Marcus up with one hand and season one was a little bit ridiculous.

The main plot is all about the remnants of Nightwatch. Garibaldi was worried about sabotage last episode, but they decided to go with kidnapping instead. This actually worked for the B5 crew though as it got all of Clark's people in one place, so they could flush them out into the open. So that's one ongoing plotline that's finally been brought to a definite end. It had a good run, 18 episodes, but it's done. Funny how the Nightwatch were introduced during In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum, an episode all about Sheridan going off the rails to discover what happened to his wife. Now they've been thoroughly dealt with in an episode where Sheridan is just as determined to save the new love of his life. It makes a lot of sense that the episode ends with him realising that he's fallen for Delenn hard, something anyone could've told him.

So yeah, the episode's a step below the typical season three episode, but not much of one. Maybe a half-step. It's not as good as Matter of Honor or A Day in the Strife, but it's better than Exogenesis. Partly because it's propped up by all the continuity it's built on top of.

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COMING NEXT YEAR

Babylon 5 will return early next year with A Late Delivery from Avalon. It's supposed to be Sic Transit Vir, but that's not the one I'll be watching.

Thanks for reading, leave a comment! And Merry Christmas!