Babylon 5 3-18: Walkabout

Episode:

62

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Air Date:

30-Sep-1996

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Hey, a shot looking straight down at Babylon 5 station, you don't see that often.

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about Walkabout, an episode of Babylon 5. In fact this is the last episode I'll be writing about for a while, as I'll be switching over to Super Adventures to play video games for a couple of months instead.

Because of scheduling weirdness this and the remaining four episodes in the season all aired earlier here in the UK than they did in the US, which is a rare and beautiful thing. In fact it was the last time it ever happened for Babylon 5. Though we still got them in the wrong order.

According to the airing and DVD order I should be watching War Without End right now, which is a huge two-parter I'm eager to get to. But Walkabout was originally supposed to be aired first and the season apparently works better if it's moved before it. At least according to the Lurker's Guide Master List, which has this block of episodes looking like this:

14 - Ship of Tears
15 - Interludes and Examinations
18 - Walkabout
16 - War Without End, Part 1
17 - War Without End, Part 2

So this review won't have any SPOILERS for War Without End, but I will be going through all of Walkabout scene by scene and I'll probably end up spoiling some of the episodes leading up to it as well.

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Seems like it's the Drazi and Vree's turn to guard the station again, though a Narn heavy cruiser has turned up as well, much to Londo's annoyance. But seeing as B5 never signed the treaty which has all Narn warships turned over to the Centauri, there's not much he can do about it.

Garibaldi's pretty miserable too as he has to listen to him whining, but then Garibaldi's always miserable this season.

Londo wants a guarantee that the ship won't open fire on Centauri vessels approaching the station. Garibaldi offers him the same guarantees he gave when he said that the Narns wouldn't break into his quarters and slit his throat in the middle of the night.

I could already hear him say "But you have never given me that promise," before the words left his mouth. Writer jms does like to use more lines than are strictly necessary in his quips.

Then the episode cuts to Medlab, and they must really be struggling for resources as they still haven't replaced those emergency flashlights either side of the door. It's almost like they were only put there for one scene in Ship of Tears and will never been seen again.

But Dr Hobbs and Lyta are both back. I guess Hobbs is running the place now that Franklin has quit.

This is Lyta's second appearance this season, which is double what she's managed in the other seasons so far. The last time we saw her she'd just become Kosh's very own Vir, and Kosh's recent death has hit her kind of hard.

Unfortunately Hobbs can't tell her anything about what happened to him, even though Lyta promises not to tell everyone that he's dead. She even keeps her voice down so that only a handful of people in the room could've overheard her.

Outside the jumpgate fires up, and out comes a Vorlon ship just like Kosh's, except red. And it's flying backwards, just like Kosh's did! No other spacefaring race seems to give a damn about Newtonian physics, but the Vorlons always try to get their engines facing forwards when they want to decelerate. Well, except for when they came charging in to wreck some Shadows last episode.

Garibaldi turns up in C&C to tell Ivanova about a meeting and it doesn't take her long to figure out there's something that he's not telling her. About the captain. Going walkabout. On the forward cargo stabilisers.

Then we get a flashy Star Trek: Discovery camera move going from Ivanova looking out of her window in C&C, all the way up to one of the two prongs sticking out of front of the station. I guess now we finally know what they're for then. Stabilising cargo.

We've seen a few kinds of spacesuits on the series, like the Starfury suits and the ones borrowed from 2010: The Year We Make Contact that showed up in Babylon Squared, but this one's something new and it's not all good.

There are few things that bother me about this suit. Actually everything bothers me, but mostly the giant baggy boots, the 80s Cyberman helmet and the lack of anything that looks like it's storing or generating air.

Suddenly New Kosh's ship comes up to have a look. Even puts a message on the side of the ship for him. I guess they'll be disappointed to find that Sheridan hasn't bothered to learn Vorlon yet.

The ship may be an ominous colour compared to Old Kosh's ship, but this guy seems like a pretty friendly Vorlon.

ACT ONE

Act one begins with the captain of the Narn ship eating with G'Kar in his quarters, and it's Robin Sachs again! He's Na'Kal, the guy who turned up in a damaged heavy cruiser in The Fall of Night and asked for Babylon 5's help. So that must be his ship, the G'Tok, parked outside. I have to give his crew credit, they did a really good job fixing it up. They even got it repainted.

Na'Kal is amazed that G'Kar managed to import Swedish meatballs from the Narn homeworld, but G'Kar informs him he just got the Earth equivalent and it works just as well. Apparently every sentient race has its own version (except for the pak'ma'ra presumably as they're carrion eaters).

We also learn that the Centauri were very thorough in the war, and the Narn only have about ten ships left... but the Centauri were also in a rush and so the Narn have got lots of ships left. I feel like Na'Kal completely changed his story mid-sentence there. The important thing is, the Narn have got ships, they're being repaired, and G'Kar isn't keen on using them to strike back at the Centauri for the time being. 

Meanwhile Sheridan and Ivanova have gone to greet New Kosh, the second Vorlon they've ever met, who's clearly not going out of his way to disguise himself as Old Kosh. He's also as cryptic as Old Kosh, saying that they are all Kosh when they ask what to call him in private.

They're not all Kosh by the way. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that this guy is called Ulkesh, as it's not important and it's never mentioned in the series. Though it does mean that he's the same Vorlon that shows up in the novel To Dream in the City of Sorrows.

Garibaldi had to skip meeting New Kosh with the others because he went to check on Franklin. They were worried about him after learning that he hadn't visited his quarters in a while, but he's fine. He's just gone walking to find himself.

Franklin's a Foundationist, which is a fairly new religion that's adopted (amongst other things) the Aborigine tradition of walkabout, where you drop everything (except your backpack and credit card apparently) and just keep walking until you meet yourself. Then you have a talk with them until you run out of words. Garibaldi's amazed he's taking it so seriously, seeing as he's a doctor and a scientist, but Franklin explains that he needs there to be more to himself than those two things. He's slipping way behind Dr Bashir from DS9 when it comes to character development!

The guy seems to be doing pretty well after quitting stims, though he's probably suffering some side effects of withdrawal, like a lack of energy perhaps. He's managed to walk in a straight line for four days straight inside a five mile long space station.

Meanwhile Kosh is doing a bit of CSI in the crime scene.

I'm not sure if Kosh is moving into Kosh's quarters, but it won't be much fun for him if he does, because the silhouette of Kosh's killers has been burned into the wall by the energy released by his death. Presumably. I mean how could anyone get a good night's sleep with Morden's silhouette printed onto their wall? Still, at least it makes it clear who killed Kosh, like there was any doubt.

Lyta's also on her way to Kosh's quarters at this point and Kosh catches her in the corridor.

I think that's the closest we'll ever get to seeing a ceiling on one of these hallways. I'm sure there's something up there though as we can see the shadow on the floor.

Darth Vorlon greets his new aide by telekinetically choking her, but she insists that she isn't carrying part of Old Kosh inside her. So to put it in Star Trek terms, Kosh wasn't able to transfer his katra to anyone before he died, meaning he's truly gone.

So that energy transfer through the eyes and mouth we saw in Passing Through Gethsemane must have been her transferring part of Kosh back out of herself. Why she had any Kosh in her to begin with is still a mystery.

ACT TWO

I mentioned the other day in my Late Delivery from Avalon review that there's part of the lower resolution B5 model that bothers me. Part of it's missing, the bit I've circled in pink on the second image, and my eye gets drawn towards it because it looks so unfinished with the pipes just floating there not connected to anything.

Well look, I finally got my pipe connecting bits back! For this brief moment the station is complete and all is well.

Anyway, Lyta drops by Sheridan's office and he asks her how she's doing with the new ambassador. She says "Fine," leaving out the part where he choked her. In fact she kind of defends him, saying that it's been a long time since any of them have died and they're not taking it well. That explains why they sent a whole fleet to Babylon 5 in the pilot movie when it looked like Sinclair had murdered Kosh.

Sheridan shows his weird cup to her, but she's not as keen on it as Bester was in Ship of Tears, so he puts it back down again.

It doesn't seem like she's taking the death of Kosh very well either as she's kind of zoned out right now... until she hears Kosh's voice in place of Sheridan's for a moment (or the voice of his translator device anyway). Seems like Kosh might have left him with more than a cryptic dream when he died. Either that or Sheridan did his best Kosh impression to freak her out. Kosh is a hard person to imitate because you have to do the weird chime effect as well, but he's had a couple of years to practice.

Before she leaves he tells her there's something he needs her to do. But we don't get to learn what it is yet, as the episode cuts to someone singing and it's clearly not Lyta.

Well at least it's not a 60s Las Vegas lounge singer. That's a similarity with Deep Space Nine I can live without. Not because I hate that character, I just hate that kind of music.

This music on the other hand... well I kind of hate it. Though at least the scene doesn't feature everyone on the station saying how objectively awesome it is, as I'd hate that even more. I'm looking at you, Deep Space Nine and The Orville.

Science fiction series have a choice when it comes to music. They can either take existing songs that were composed before the episode was filmed (like Next Gen using classical music, DS9 using swing, and Disco using disco), or they can make up something new that's supposed to be from the future. This tune sounds very 90s but Babylon 5 actually chose option #2 here, with showrunner jms providing the lyrics and the actress credited as the composer (with series composer Christopher Franke coming up with the music for a second song later on).

Here's a DS9/B5 similarity for you though: they let the song go on for bloody ages. Franklin comes into a bar, sits down, and watches this woman sing for over two minutes. She's a good singer, but when a series starts putting songs into an episode they're going to risk losing people who don't like that genre of music. There's an easy way to minimise this risk though: don't focus on the song for two minutes straight. Unless it's 'Sabotage' by the Beastie Boys of course.

Once the song's finally over, Sheridan convenes another meeting of the War Council, with some guards at the door to keep them safe... at least I think that's why they're there. Hey, why does the Brakiri ambassador get to sit at the round table? That's for Sheridan's knights only!

I'm starting to see why the Lurker's Guide suggested watching this before the War Without End two-parter, because the crew believe they stumbled across the Shadows' weakness back in Ship of Tears and after getting the League on board in Interludes and Examinations they're now able to test it. The original broadcast order put three episodes between discovering the weakness and testing it, which seems excessive.

Sheridan's going to go out on the White Star with Lyta, seeing as she's the only telepath they know on the station, and they're going to go wait in hyperspace for news of an attack. It takes days to travel between worlds, even in hyperspace, but Sheridan thinks he can get to the Shadow fleet in time to try jamming one of the ships with telepathy. Then their ships can jump in and help blow it up. Well, G'Kar's and Delenn's ships anyway, as it seems that no one else is going to help. Kosh died to forge this alliance but now that Sheridan needs their extra firepower they're being useless!

Weirdly Sheridan's against having Minbari telepaths waiting on another ship as backup in case more are needed, but he's outvoted. He wants to minimise risk while also putting their leader (him) directly in harm's way in their only White Star, so he's being a bit stupid here.

Huh, they drink chocolate milkshake here as well? Seems like it's a popular drink even outside of Marcus's favourite hang out.

Franklin's still in the bar, sitting on his own, so the singer comes over to say hi. He's trying to be smooth, she seems to be into it, everything's working out! She's Cailyn, and he's going to be Steve, because she's already had one boyfriend called Stephen and it didn't work out.

There's something weird about this scene, and that's that I don't hear jms in it. He's got a style of writing dialogue that can be kind of unnatural, but Cailyn feels like she escaped from someone else's story.

She holds he glass up and we get this interesting shot of Franklin refracted four ways. Would've been more interesting if the four Franklins broke into Bohemian Rhapsody, but I've had enough singing this episode already.

Franklin's a man in search of himself, so I'm sure seeing four of him here is supposed to relate to that somehow.

Meanwhile G'Kar asks his buddy Warleader Na'Kal to come over so he can discuss sending the G'Tok on Sheridan's mission.

Sheridan stuck his neck out to protect the G'Tok when they needed repairs, standing up to the Ministry of Peace and a Centauri warship, at the cost of one of the station's forward cargo stabilisers and a core tram. It would've cost him his own life as well if Kosh hadn't rescued him. So basically Na'Kal kind of owes him.

But Na'Kal says 'nah'. He believes they need all of their last remaining ships intact to have a hope of liberating their home, and doesn't seem to feel that the Shadows annihilating everyone is his problem. He actually mentions that the Shadows wiped out their fleet, which to me makes them sound like a direct threat to the Narn that needs to be dealt with urgently, but he considers this a reason to not fight them. What an ungrateful git!

G'Kar's the last of the Kha'Ri and the leader of the resistance, but if Na'Kal doesn't want to go help Sheridan then what can he do?

ACT THREE

By act three Sheridan has left the station with his fleet of two ships to see if they can blow up a Shadow vessel. The White Star's not any further away here, by the way, it's just tiny compared to the Minbari cruiser.

Sheridan can't predict the Shadows' next move like Garibaldi did to Franklin because there's no pattern to their attacks. But the Shadow vessels do still have to travel to their next destination like everyone else and there's a limit to how far they can get in a day, so if Sheridan takes the White Star out to a region that's been hit multiple times recently, chances are that the next attack will be close enough for them to catch them in time.

Meanwhile, in the Franklin plot...

The woman just likes looking through her glass I guess.

Cailyn says that she's looking at Franklin's soul, which is not creepy at all (though the music kind of thinks it is). On the plus side, I don't think Franklin's going to be looking for a place to sleep tonight.

Well it was nice checking in with the Franklin plot again, back to the Sheridan story.

It's the middle of the night, but G'Kar is woken up by an angry Garibaldi, who's got a book to give back to him. It's his revenge for when G'Kar did it to him in Voices of Authority.

Garibaldi's a little bit furious that Sheridan's flying off to take on a Shadow vessel with no Narn backup and is holding G'Kar responsible. He lays a guilt trip on him, telling him about all the people that risked their lives to save the G'Tok because Sheridan told them to. In a war officers do what they're told to by their commander, and G'Kar's position means he has the perspective and the responsibility to be Na'Kal's commander. And if he doesn't do something to get that ship moving... I dunno, maybe he'll come back and smack his beloved book a few more times.

I think Garibaldi's just cranky because he never gets to ride in the White Star. They've taken it out six times now and he's never been invited. When they take the prototype super-ship out in Deep Space Nine everyone gets a turn to come on board, even Quark and he's a bartender. Could be worse though; I don't think Dr Franklin's ever left the station at all.

She's going to do that thing with the glass again!

Franklin thinks that Cailyn can do so much better than living here, singing in bars and staring through her glass like this. Even though he's quit his responsibility as a doctor he's still driven to help people, that's one side of his personality he can't just walk away from. But she's says she's fine.

Though there is one thing he can do for her: get hold of a prescription drug called metazine. Not really the kind of help he's keen on giving, especially considering he's dealing with his own drug problem right now. She claims it helps her sleep, but he's switched into 'concerned health professional' mode and points out she'd sleep better if she quit drinking so much. Kind of ruining the mood there Franklin.

I've never liked that tiny bridge pod on top of the White Star, mostly because it seems too small to even fit the bridge inside it. But there is a bridge in there, and inside that are Sheridan and Lyta, having a chat about how Sheridan sensed that Kosh had died.

Just then they receive a distress call, and fly in to test their theory that Lyta can jam a Shadow vessel

Nope!

Guess they'd better go find gas giant to hide in or a jumpgate to blow up, as the Shadow vessel knows they're there and it's coming for them.

ACT FOUR

Lennier presents Sheridan with two very sensible choices: they can escape to hyperspace or call in their other ship with all the other telepaths on it. Sheridan's not given up on their first plan though, and persuades Lyta to stop screaming on the floor and give it another shot.

She sees a black and white vision of Kosh's melted encounter suit, presumably from Sheridan's mind, and her fury gets her back on her feet. Usually telepaths in sci-fi bleed from the nose when they strain too hard, but she's so pissed off that she's bleeding from the eye. She faces the scary Shadow ship and commands them to "Burn, you bastard." Except for during the original UK airing, where she apparently didn't.

The Shadow vessel doesn't burn, but it's not moving either, so they open fire on it with everything they've got. It's not quite enough though, so Sheridan has another two choices: they can take the jump engines offline to get more power, even though it'll leave them stranded for 20 minutes while they charge up again, or they can call in their other ship with the big guns all over it.

Sheridan decides that leaving their best ship helpless for 20 minutes is the way to go here and shuts off their engines. And... it works! That's three Shadow ships they've killed now, though this is the first they've just blown up with guns. Turns out the tiny White Star actually does have the firepower to kill a Shadow vessel after all, no Narn backup required.

Meanwhile Cailyn nicks Frankin's Identicard from his trousers.

Anyway back to Sheridan's plot. They've been charging the jump engines up for ten minutes but there's a while left before they can escape and four more Shadow vessels are coming in for revenge. They stole our idea of waiting in hyperspace for a distress call! Fortunately Sheridan is able to think on his feet and come up with a strategy: run for it.

Hey it's a tiny hologram man!

Babylon 5 doesn't do holograms much, but they've been around here and there. The holographic knight in Survivors, Draal's holographic system, Londo's holographic recording of Morden etc. This one's a bit awkward though as the Minbari captain has to look upwards to speak to Sheridan, who must appear like a giant to him.

The Minbari ship has come to help out, though they only have three telepaths on board and there's four Shadow vessels left. Also the telepaths are lying down in a dark room without line of sight to their targets, so I don't know how this is going to work. On the plus side, they're not screaming with blood dripping out of their eyes when they freeze three of the ships in place, so I guess they're more powerful than Lyta.

They're definitely more powerful than Lyta is at this moment, as she's too exhausted to jam the remaining ship, so there's one Shadow vessel coming right at the White Star and there's nothing that can stop them.

Except for the G'Tok flying out of hyperspace guns blazing! With the Narn cruiser and the White Star firing on the same Shadow vessel they're able to destroy it. Though it's kind of weird how they fire at three separate parts of the ship and still get through its armour.

It's a good thing that Sheridan went out of his way to save the G'Tok back in Fall of Night, because it's just gone out of its way to save him. Though actually it was G'Kar who went out of his way here as he didn't just put his boot up Na'Kal's ass, he got the whole bloody League to send ships!

The other three Shadows vessels aren't liking where this is going so they manage to get through the jamming long enough to make a run for it. And that's it; final score 2-0 to the good guys.

Lennier's so amazed and happy that they won that he even lets Sheridan touch him without picking him up with one hand and threatening him.

So Sheridan managed to pull off an epic victory thanks to the telepaths he didn't want to bring and the fleet he didn't know was coming. Now I know why that Monk was able to beat him at chess earlier in the season: because he didn't have Ivanova and Garibaldi backing him up.

But the White Star now has three Shadow vessel kills and an assist this season, and that's not bad considering that everyone was convinced the Shadows couldn't be destroyed.

Getting a lot of shots of the bridge windows in this episode.

We also get a classic quote from Kosh, as Lyta hears him say "And so it begins." Hey that's what he said to Sheridan in Chrysalis after President Santiago was assassinated! I suppose that was the beginning of everything going to crap, and this is the beginning of them successfully pushing back.

Meanwhile on Babylon 5, Franklin's woken up by Cailyn collapsing in the next room. He finds her lying on the floor next to a bottle of metazine. Doesn't think to check how much she's taken though.

ACT FIVE

Act five begins with Cailyn being treated in Medlab. Dr Hobbs isn't surprised at all to see him, so I guess they're just treating his resignation as a leave of absence.

Franklin freaks out when he learns that Hobbs has been treating Cailyn with metazine, as he just assumed that she'd overdosed. It never occurred to him she might be getting prescription drugs to treat a medical condition. She has incurable terminal neural paralysis and passed out from the pain before she could even get the bottle open.

Personally I assumed that this story was going to be about Franklin driving someone away with his obsessive need to help, but I was wrong too. In fact I'm not sure there's even a lesson for him to learn here. Except that if you're not honest about your problems people can't help you with them.

Cailyn lives in Downbelow by choice because people live terrible lives down there and she wanted to cheer them up with her singing. So he lets her carry on doing that.

Which means we get another song! It fades out as the credits start... and then comes right back again to play over them. I like this song better though so I'm fine with it.

Though before then there's another shot of Franklin refracted in glass.

Also Lyta goes to speak with Mean Kosh again, and tells him that that she doesn't have a piece of Kosh but she thinks it's possible someone else does. (I think she's talking about Sheridan).


CONCLUSION

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Walkabout isn't the title I would've gone with for this episode. Sure Franklin does technically go walkabout in this story, but it's not even the focus of his B plot, never mind the episode. Maybe Sheridan is an Idiot would've been more apt, as the A plot is all about Sheridan's mission to test a theory in the most risky way possible... to avoid putting people at risk. It's not the best example of his tactical genius to be honest.

I get that he's the kind of heroic commander who'll put himself in harm's way, but once a mission has reached the 'we're bringing a skeleton crew of volunteers' stage of suicide, it's probably best not to put the leader of the Army of Light on that ship. It was a dumb move to only bring the one P5 telepath into battle when he didn't know how many it would take or how many Shadow vessels he'd be facing, and it was just as dumb to deactivate the jump engines instead of calling in backup. Weirdly this is more of a problem with Sheridan than it is with the episode, as literally everyone but him voted to bring the extra telepaths and they were right. Well okay, New Kosh didn't raise his hand, but he's a bastard so that's not a huge surprise.

New Kosh makes his debut in this story and the way his ship says 'hi' to Sheridan at the start made me think he was going to be an okay guy. He is not. Sure he's probably a little upset about Kosh's death, but choking Lyta is not on, especially as she practically worships the Vorlons and she's suffering from Kosh's death more than anyone. It was also a little sad to see that Kosh's sacrifice last episode managed to inspire exactly no one to come to Sheridan's aid on this mission... at first, but the eventual deus ex G'Kar was earned I thought.

We've seen how G'Kar can motivate people with his speeches, and Garibaldi gave him such a kick in the ass that I'm sure the other League ambassadors felt it. Plus G'Kar must have woken them all up in the middle of the night as well, and I can imagine them all saying 'yes we'll send some ships, whatever' just to get rid of him. The only problem I have with G'Kar's arc in this story, is that I thought he'd been through it already. He's already proven himself as a leader, he's already asked his people to come to Sheridan's aid, and no one knows that some must be sacrificed if all are to be saved more than him. It felt like the story was making him look bad so that he could learn a lesson he'd already learned.

Overall the Shadow War plot this episode wasn't as strong as it could've been, but to make it worse they kept interrupting it with Franklin's walkabout adventure. Not that he did much walking, as most of his story was spent either sitting down with Cailyn or in bed with her. What is it with Franklin and one-episode romances anyway? At least she wasn't his patient this time, which immediately makes the B plot better than the one he had in The Long Dark... though not by much. In fact I paused the episode at the first song and it took me half an hour to get around to watching the rest of it.

Part of the problem with the B plot is that it seems kind of pointless. I was bracing myself for Franklin to inevitably put his foot in it so he could learn some kind of lesson, but I don't think he does really. There's a misunderstanding over the drugs, but he's not exactly in a position to get judgemental about it and he doesn't. And the episode ends with him just as lost and still in search of himself. I mean he's discovered that he likes to help people and sleep with women but that much was never in doubt. A few episodes back, Lennier said that a sickness in the heart couldn't be cured by moving the body, and it's starting to seem like that it may apply to Franklin's issues as well.

Anyway this is probably my least favourite episode of season three so far, but it's not that bad. About on the same level as a mid-tier season one story.

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COMING IN TWO MONTHS

Babylon 5 will return with War Without End, Part 1... eventually. The site's going on a two month break while I write about video games.

But there's still enough time left this month for one more article: the Sci-Fi Adventures Awards - Season Four! So check back in a couple of days for that.