Babylon 5 3-17: War Without End, Part Two

Episode:

61

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Air Date:

20-May-1996

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the conclusion of Babylon 5's epic War Without End two-parter.

Sorry about the mosaic up there where the screencap should be, but the image seemed a bit spoilery to have up here in the non-spoiler intro section which everyone can see. Not that you can really tell what you're looking at if you don't already know.

There's going to be even more SPOILERS below this point, for this episode and earlier ones, so I'd suggest you stop here if that's an issue for you. Then watch the episode and come back!

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For the second and final time in the series' entire run, the episode begins with "Previously, on Babylon 5", and it's Michael O'Hare saying the line again! (Edit: I was actually wrong about this, it's not the last time. Sorry.)

Long story short, most of the crew have taken the White Star six years into the past on a mission to steal Babylon 4, but Sheridan's ended up stuck an indeterminate amount of years in the future, where he's about to be executed by a very pissed off Emperor Londo Mollari.

Sheridan's a time traveller now, which means he has an opportunity few others will ever have: to ask the emperor of the Centauri Republic what year it is. Londo doesn't even question how weird that question is, and tells him that it's 17 years after he began the war against the Shadows, which means this is 2277. That places this scene in an imaginary season 20 of Babylon 5 that could've aired in 2013.

Londo also tells him that the next time he's brought to the throne room he's gonna die.

Meanwhile, in 2254 (23 years earlier), we get to see Babylon 4's C&C for the first time.

It looks almost exactly like Babylon 5's C&C, except they've replaced the logo on the back wall, changed the lights to from blue to green, put different tape around the pit, altered the big light panel, covered up a bit of the big window and stuck a chair in front of Ivanova's console. I hope they remembered to put it all back afterwards for the next episode.

This scene reveals three things: the station's first officer likes to yell his lines, the crew are going to increase patrols just in case something breaches the hull while their sensors are offline, and they got the same actor back to play Major Krantz!

Meanwhile Ivanova and Marcus are going around looking for an access panel that hasn't been sealed off yet. I thought the sound quality in B4's C&C was a bit dodgy, but it's terrible in this corridor for some reason. Lots of reverb.

But Marcus disappears mid conversation and Ivanova soon discovers why, as she's surrounded by a security patrol. I'm a bit disappointed to be honest, I thought she'd be sneakier than this. I blame Delenn though; if she'd told them what they were doing at the start of part one they could've brought some Earthforce uniforms to wear and then this teaser would've had a much less dramatic conclusion.

Though this wasn't originally meant to be cliffhanger at all. The original teaser and parts of the first act had gotten moved to War Without End, Part One, meaning this scene happened much earlier than planned and had to somehow lead to an act break. So they just split it at the moment the characters were in jeopardy.

ACT ONE

Fortunately Ivanova's a lot better at fighting than she is at stealth, and when Marcus distracts the two security officers by making a noise in the vents, she drops the guy in front with a kick.

Unfortunately "KENT BROADHURST as Major Krantz" appears on screen right in front of the action, so I decided to go with a screencap of Babylon 4 instead.

Marcus claims that he hid because he realised that this would be the worst moment to get caught, but personally I think he’s bullshitting her, because he turned around like he'd heard something right before he vanished. He also claims he doesn't believe in luck, before accidentally tapping the wall with his pike, knocking an unsealed access panel open.

Hey I recognise this shot from the season 4 opening credits!

Meanwhile on Centauri Prime, buildings are still exploding in the distance. Most of them are just burning but every now and again there's a blast of flames. Not that Sheridan gets to see any of this as he's locked away in a dark cell... except for a moment where he's in a corridor on Babylon 4!

Zathras spots him dropping his broken time stabiliser device, which is weird because he already dropped it on the White Star bridge in part one... I think? Unfortunately he's gone again before Zathras can do anything to help.

Sheridan finds himself back in his cell again just in time for a second prisoner to be thrown inside...

... it's Delenn!

It seems like she's been interrogated, maybe tortured, but she hasn't told them anything. In return for being utterly uncooperative, the Centauri have allowed them one last moment before their execution. This does not seem like the best of all possible futures.

She continues by saying that their son is safe, which definitely gets Sheridan's attention, but he's soon distracted by her kissing him. Aww, they finally kissed! Well, she's presumably kissed him a few times already in the last 17 years, but it's new for him!

Back on Babylon 4, Ivanova's able to set off a hull breach alarm that gets everyone to evacuate the area and drops the pressure doors. This has bought them about an hour to do what they need to do before the crew can burn their way through.

It's still weird to me that Ambassador Delenn's part of the hero team here. Not because she's not capable, but because she's Ambassador Delenn!

Meanwhile, 23 years from now, Sheridan's still in his cell with 17-years-older Delenn, trying to explain the time weirdness he's going through. She doesn't take much convincing though, seeing as she was on the mission he disappeared during and he told her what happened (though we do get an "In Valen's name..." when she realises that she's caught up to that moment.)

She tells him that the war is never completely won, but they achieved everything they set out to achieve and created something that will last for a thousand years! Well she can't mean 'peace' as the war is never won, so what is it? What was created? C'mon, tell us Delenn, you've already spoiled the ending of the main story arc two thirds of the way through season 3, you can give us a little more.

Actually she does say more, as she gives him the name of their son (David). So now their kid's name is a paradox, nice one Delenn.

Everything they won comes at a terrible terrible price, but she tells Sheridan not to change history as the price for that is even higher. The only way to change things, in her opinion, would be to surrender to the Shadows and that's clearly not going to lead to a brighter outcome.

ACT TWO

The two of them are taken from their cell and brought to a very drunk Londo. He's 'drop his golden goblet on the most expensive carpet on the planet' drunk right now.

He explains to them that it's the only way they can be alone, and they don't want to wake it. Londo seems to expect Sheridan to know what he's talking about, but that's expecting a lot from someone who doesn't know what year it is.

Londo explains their conversation earlier was just a performance to satisfy his invisible Keeper. Then he leans forward out of shadow...

Okay, what the shit? This is a twist that we had no way to see coming. There's not even the slightest bit of set up for that thing.

He explains that he's drank just enough to put the Keeper asleep for a little while, so that it can't control him, and so he can tell them that they are his last chance. For his world, and for his own redemption. Oh damn, Lady Morella's prophecy from Point of No Return is already being resolved and it's only been nine episodes. She said that once all his other chances had gone, he had to surrender himself to his greatest fear, knowing that it world destroy him.

There's a ship behind the palace they can use to escape their execution, and all Londo wants in return is for them to save his entire planet. I guess Londo's not so bad after all!

But once they're gone the scene continues (which is weird seeing as this is Sheridan's time jump) and another figure walks in from behind the curtains.

It's old One-Eyed G'Kar, just like in Londo's dream!

They talk to each other almost like they're friends now, and Londo reveals that Sheridan and Delenn don't actually stand a chance of making it to that ship. Once his Keeper wakes up it's all over.

I'm going to guess that Londo's greatest fear has always been G'Kar strangling him to death, but he has to surrender to it now to save his people. In fact he explains the situation to G'Kar and asks him to do it. They said in Voice in the Wilderness that Londo had the capacity for self sacrifice, and now he's gone and proved it.

But as G'Kar strangles him, the Keeper wakes up!

Hah, I suppose that's one way to do that effect. Why spend time and money making an animatronic eye when you can just use a close up of someone's face?

The Keeper decides he doesn't much want his host to be strangled, and makes Londo strangle G'Kar right back.

So the two old enemies have their hands around each other's necks, just like in the dream. It kinds of has a different meaning though, when you know they're both heroically sacrificing themselves. In fact G'Kar is dying to save the Centauri. That's taking 'some must be sacrificed if all are to be saved' about as far as it could ever go for him.

We've seen glimpses of this scene before, in The Coming of Shadows, though it was all reshot for this episode.

2-09: The Coming of Shadows

In the original scene the curtains were much more sinister.

But we first learned about the dream all the way back in the first proper episode, when Londo told Sinclair that he saw himself as an old man, twenty years from now, with his hands wrapped around G'Kar's throat and vice versa. Part one made it seem like this episode was all about giving us closure on Babylon Squared, but then it swerved and gave us closure on Midnight on the Firing Line!

Sheridan and Delenn are still being led to their ship by a loyal guard at this point, but Sheridan starts to be pulled back to the past.

Delenn suddenly feels she has to tell Sheridan not to go to Z'ha'dum... though she won't tell him why, or what choice he made in this timeline. Kosh told him that if he went to Z'ha'dum he would die, and he's not dead here, so that seems to point to this being the timeline where he didn't go. But who even knows at this point?

Meanwhile Vir enters the throne room and discovers Londo and G'Kar lying dead on the floor; the symbol of the emperor lying next to them. Back in Point of No Return, Lady Morella told Vir and Londo that one of them would be emperor after the other was dead, so I guess it won't be long before he's the one wearing it. That's the other part of her prophecy already resolved then.

I suppose the precognitive Centauri have always been getting the endings of their stories early, but this really feels like it's wrapping everything up. Well, aside from the secret invasion of Centauri Prime by the minions of the Shadows, but seeing as that takes place 17 years in the future I can kind of forgive them for saving that story for the novels*.

*(The Legions of Fire Centauri Prime trilogy by Peter David).

Oh right, they're stealing Babylon 4 aren't they! It's been almost 9 minutes since the episode last checked in with the time thieves so I'd almost forgotten.

I like the hole in the floor by the way. It means they must have built this whole set at least a few feet off the ground for someone to get down underneath it. Plus there's another hint in this screencap that this isn't quite the typical corridor set if you look closely (it has an actual ceiling).

Zathras is playing around with one of those spacesuits the production crew borrowed from 2010: The Year We Make Contact as he's got a plan. He's going to use the time stabiliser on the suit to catch Sheridan!

While he's busy with that, Ivanova and Marcus are moving miscellaneous boxes out of the White Star while having a chat about Valen. They're taking the station 1000 years in the past, and Valen lived a 1000 years in the past, so there's a chance they could meet him! The great Minbari leader not born of Minbari, who formed the Grey Council and achieved victory against the Shadows. Shame neither of those things stuck, but at least they got a thousand years out of them.

They're so busy chatting about Valen that it takes them a while to notice that Sheridan's materialised inside the suit. It's a clever way to get exposition across that we don't realise is exposition, because the scene seems to be about what's going on in the background.

Sinclair's also suited up as they need to plant their device on the fusion core, so Sheridan decides that he might as well go help him now. They really need to get this done quickly or else it's going to become a three parter. By the way, I've heard that there was only one 2010 suit available to rent, so they had to make the second one themselves. If that's true, it's a pretty close match!

Wait, this is a variable gravity area? How does that work on a station that generates gravity by spinning a giant cylinder? Surely once you've got that thing turning every section is going to always have a fixed amount of fake gravity.

Though I suppose poor Marcus has been dealing with variable gravity every time he drops down through the floor of the White Star and comes up through the floor of the station. In fact it's starting to seem like a really weird idea to dock the ship upside down, as it means they're having to run their artificial gravity on double strength to counter the effect of the rotation.

Anyway, we finally get to see Sinclair and Sheridan team up... and they're doing it as little CGI people. They have to put a thing on a thing that'll let them drag the station through time. A thing that has nothing to do with all the miscellaneous boxes that Marcus and Ivanova have been carrying out of the White Star.

Meanwhile Ivanova sets off another fake alarm, this time making it look like the fusion core is going critical and they need to evacuate. It wouldn't be very fair on the crew to drag them all back 1000 years to fight in the last Shadow War. Not that being in Earthforce in the present day is likely going to be much fun for them either, with Earth fallen to fascism and Earth Alliance ships blowing each other up.

Unfortunately Major Krantz decides that the best thing to do in this situation is to turn the power up, and Sheridan and Sinclair both get zapped by the energy surge from the reactor!

ACT THREE

Well the bad news is that the surge has affected their time stabiliser, sending the whole station flying through time. The good news is that everything's still going exactly as it's supposed to. They've jumped forward in time four years to late season one, right where they need to be for Babylon Squared to happen!

Though Sheridan ended up disappearing somewhere else, and now tachyon bursts have started giving everyone on the station time flashes.

Delenn finds herself in the future, in Sheridan's quarters, watching him sleep. This seems to be more of a vision than a full quantum leap, as she just casually wanders over to a snow globe and starts playing with it. Until the door opens by itself and a mysterious woman says "Hello".

Though she's clearly not mysterious to Delenn, as she drops the snow globe in slow motion, letting it shatter all over Sheridan's carpet.

Things are even worse for Sinclair, as the tachyon burst has visibly aged him.

Sinclair knew it was going to happen though, that's why he made sure Garibaldi didn't come with them. They both got away with being exposed to the field once, even without protection, but for Sinclair being exposed twice was pushing his luck and it'll likely get worse if he tries to come back to the present with them.

Nothing they can do about it though. They need to focus on getting the station's time stabiliser stabilised and Sheridan's stabiliser fixed.

This leads to the scene where Zathras starts talking to Ivanova about time and tools, picking up a thing and helpfully informing her that she should "Never use this." We also get a clip of season one Sinclair and Garibaldi flying up to the station in a convoy of rescue shuttles.

Unfortunately once Ivanova's gone Zathras gets found by a squad of security officers. This is unfortunate because in Babylon Squared, Krantz tells Sinclair that Zathras appeared in the conference room during a flash, so there's a bit of a continuity issue there. He was apparently supposed to be sneaking around the conference room full of people looking for the tool he needed, then get spotted during a flash, but that would've taken up minutes of screen time they didn't have, so the scene didn't make it into the story.

Maybe the security people were just confused due to all the time flashes, or the person who told Krantz about Zathras was misinformed.

ACT FOUR

Zathras is dragged across one of the big curving Zocalo corridors to the room we first saw him in back in Babylon Squared, in a camera move almost exactly like the one in Babylon Squared. I didn't have to really strain my memory to notice this because the original clip of Sinclair entering through the same door is played right afterwards.

The camera move doesn't match up exactly, in fact the set doesn't match up exactly, but it's close enough. When I was watching the episode I didn't even notice the difference.

They're not just showing off by imitating the shot though, there's a good reason for it. As the camera follows Zathras across the corridor we see that Ivanova is hiding in a doorway, watching him being taken away.

So when Sinclair and Garibaldi walk over to that spot in the original footage we immediately understand that Ivanova is right there behind them, and was always there, just out of sight.

Amazingly there isn't a single shot in the whole episode which features characters composited into old footage (like DS9's Trials and Tribble-ations did six months later), and that's good because it confirms that nothing we saw in the original story has changed at all. Though Garibaldi looks so different with his old outfit and hair here that it's kind of a shame we didn't get to see both Garibaldi's at once somehow. 

By the way, the only time Garibaldi appears in this story is in reused footage, making this the second episode that Jerry Doyle didn't have to come to work for. So Claudia Christian takes the lead here as the actor with the most appearances.

Here's a rare shot of Delenn sitting in the captain's chair that I included because it looks nice.

Delenn doesn't stick around for long though, as she has a idea and goes off to Sheridan's favourite materialisation corner next to the hole.

Meanwhile Krantz has brought season one Commander Sinclair to see their mysterious prisoner, because he's wearing a uniform and can be trusted, unlike non-uniform Ambassador Sinclair who has to sneak around. See, all the time thieves had to do was wear Earthforce uniforms and they would've been fine!

It's the same scene from Babylon Squared, except now it's zoomed in and fuzzy. They could've gotten better footage if they'd just taken it from the season 1 DVDs, but I guess they had their reasons. Maybe they just didn't want people to see the stubble that Krantz has grown in the last two minutes.

Zathras is happy at first because he recognises Sinclair, but then he remembers what Sinclair told him in part one about the other version of himself, and makes it clear that he's not "The One".

Here's a rare glimpse of the corridor outside of C&C, as Ivanova waits until it's evacuated so she can sneak in and use the controls. They even made a special sign just for this episode!

Zathras is still being interrogated at this point, and he's telling Sinclair everything! Because it's another clip from Babylon Squared! He explains that he's here because they need the biggest of all the Babylon stations as a base of operations in a terrible war. They're fighting to save the galaxy on the side of light under the command of The One, and they need to pull the station through time if they want to want to win. Zathras is vague though about whether they're taking it to the past or the future.

This is the best kind of clip show.

It's at this point that mysterious spacesuit person appears, who Zathras calls The One, and who was revealed to be Sinclair himself in at the end of Babylon Squared. But this time we know that there's two people in spacesuits and Ambassador Sinclair isn't the one jumping through time, it's Sheridan.

Commander Sinclair touches mysterious spacesuit person's hand and gets launched back into some boxes again, and Zathras runs over to give them the repaired time stabiliser, just like in Babylon Squared (because it's reused footage). Then mysterious spacesuit person still disappears again after getting it.

The episode returns to Sheridan's favourite re-materialisation corner, next to the hole, and he's back lying there again. But he's in his uniform, not the spacesuit! In fact he's even wearing his coat, so either he had it on under the suit or someone put it back on for him while he was unconscious. Either way he's got a working time stabiliser on him so he's fine now.

Back in the Babylon Squared footage, the time weirdness has shaken one of the pillars loose and it's landed right on Zathras! Fortunately Zathras is a good bloke who respects causality, so he doesn't yell "Sinclair, you asshole, you knew this was going to happen to me and you didn't warn me!"

In fact he tells Commander Sinclair to go and leave him behind, because he has a destiny. Sinclair was still kind of in heroic death-wish mode at this point in the the series, so I can believe he would've stayed there as long as it took to get Zathras out, but fortunately he takes his advice and leaves before the station is dragged 1000 years into the past.

Ambassador Sinclair watches as the last of the evacuation shuttles leave, knowing that he can't warn them about anything either. But then he does it anyway, contacting Shuttle 1 to say "Watch your back, Michael, watch your back!"

Man, he picked a great time to jeopardise their victory in two Shadow wars, and picked the most useless thing to say! Plus Walker Smith already warned Garibaldi to watch his back in TKO, and it somehow didn't give him the spider-sense he needed to predict his second in command was going to sneak up behind him and shoot him.

It's a bit strange to me that he'd risk so much to save his friend, because his friend doesn't really need saving. He made a full recovery and he's been fine for the last two years. It could be that he's trying to change the ending of Chrysalis so that they successfully avert President Santiago's assassination, but that would really mess time up. Though at least now we know what he meant in Babylon Squared when he said that he tried to warn them.

Oh, it turns out that it's Delenn in the spacesuit by the way, which was fairly obvious seeing as she was the last person we saw with Sheridan.

The twist ending of Babylon Squared was the reveal that it was Sinclair wearing the suit, and now they've gone and done a double twist, revealing that it was in fact Sheridan... until it was Delenn. It was a bit pointless, putting Delenn in the suit just for the sake of a surprise, as it doesn't really change anything. But it was nice seeing her risk herself to save him. Even though we didn't get to see where she disappeared off to when she was unstuck in time.

This was my problem with Babylon Squared as well: not enough time flashes! Last time all we got was Garibaldi's flashback to Mars and Sinclair's flashforward to the station being invaded, and now here all we got was Sheridan's trip to Centauri Prime and Delenn's snow globe vandalism.

1-20: Babylon Squared

Sinclair takes his helmet off and tells Delenn that he tried to warn them, but it all happened just the way he remembered. Though there are a few changes here if you play both episodes side by side. For one thing, Delenn is wearing a slightly different outfit.

It's a little hard to compare sleeves though when she doesn't put her hand on his shoulder this time. Apparently this was deliberate as they didn't want to draw attention to it.

Also we're allowed to see her face now as they don't have to hide her transformation anymore.

She does still end the scene by telling him that "We have to go. They're waiting for us," and now we finally get to learn who 'they' are!

Oh, it's just the rest of the time heist crew.

Marcus figures out that Sinclair's going to stay behind to operate the time controls, and volunteers in his place. He's very much like season 1 Sinclair, looking for a cause to sacrifice himself for. But Sinclair points out that he can't leave with them, because he didn't leave with them.

He hands Sheridan the letter he received from 900 years in the past, leading to the worst line in the episode: "Whose handwriting is this?" Sheridan, mate, it was written by someone who was living with the Minbari in the year 1360 and could write in modern English, what answer are you expecting here?

Then Sinclair asks Ivanova and Marcus to give them the room for a minute so they can chat about this 'The One' business. Zathras explains that the Minbari love doing things in threes, so all three of them are The One. There's The One who was (Sinclair), The One who is (Delenn), and The One who will be (Sheridan). The beginning of the story, the middle of the story, and the end of the story that creates the next great story... that got cancelled halfway through its first season. RIP Crusade.

Though Zathras doesn't explain where this comes from and who calls them this. I guess it's just a thing in his head, unless he's talking about Sinclair's role as Ranger One. The Ranger One who is, the Ranger One who will be...?

Anyway this story is all over now. Except not quite.

ACT FIVE

While the time rift closes and the others fly home, Sinclair starts playing around with some perspex triangles he brought with him. Hey this must be what was in all those miscellaneous boxes they were bringing out of the White Star! He's also got one of the Minbari's precious Triluminaries to put on the top, which means this is the same device that Delenn made in Chrysalis to turn herself half-human.

Back on the White Star, Delenn explains to Sheridan that part of the reason she transformed herself was help stop Minbari souls being reborn into human bodies, which has been an issue for the last 1000 years... ever since Sinclair changed himself so that the Minbari who found Babylon 4 would accept him and his shiny new space station. (Actually in Points of Departure, Lennier said that soul migration had been happening for 2000 years, but hey he's allowed to be wrong sometimes.)

As Sinclair's cocoon forms we get clips from season one of times this has been foreshadowed (in colour!), so that we finally know what that was all about. Things like Delenn saying "We were right about you" and Neroon saying "You talk like a Minbari, commander."

Man, we haven't seen Neroon in ages. Hope he's been doing alright for himself after Delenn broke the Grey Council and lost him his job (right after he got it).

Babylon 4 comes out of the time vortex around the year 1260, just in time for... well, everything really. All the things in the series that people said happened "a thousand years ago", they're all happening right now. Sinclair could go get G'Quan's autograph or watch the extinction of the Ikarrans! Maybe go check in on Valen and watch as he defeats the Shadows, creates the Rangers, establishes the Grey Council and leaves all those prophecies for Delenn.

It seems that the Minbari arrived at Babylon 4 a while after the Vorlons, but they made it here eventually.

And they got a pretty impressive welcome. I guess that's one way to get yourself a position of authority over someone else's fleet: show up with a pair of angels and give them a 6 mile long space station.

The Zocalo/central corridor set is pretty tall (it's got a bridge running across it on a second level), but it's not quite this tall, so they've done a good job of extending it with either a matte painting or CGI. The angels... well, they're alright for 1996. It's interesting how the two Vorlons have identical encounter suits though, and they both look like Fake Kosh. We might have seen five different Vorlons in the series so far, we might have only seen the same two, it's impossible to know.

Sinclair hasn't gone half-Minbari like Delenn, he's made a complete switch, and he needed a new Minbari name for himself so he's gone with... Valen.

Showrunner jms hasn't always chosen the best place to stop a scene or end a line of dialogue, as he likes to give a character the final word after the final word. Not this time though. There's no scene in Sheridan's office where the characters all discuss the ramifications of this reveal or say something poetic, the episode just ends right here.

Sinclair is Valen!


CONCLUSION

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It's a bit of a strange episode this one, and not just because the only time we see Babylon 5 station itself is in flashbacks.

For one thing, the season's been building up to Sheridan taking on the Shadows directly using telepaths, Londo was just manipulated into working with Morden again, Franklin's gone on walkabout... and then suddenly everyone decides to put that on hold and go on a time travel adventure instead. It's so unlike typical Babylon 5 for everyone to be sneaking around on a mission together, and it's unlike television in general for two main characters to get their ending halfway through the series (but not leave the show). Also spoiling the outcome of the main plot in episode 61 of 110 is kind of weird too.

Another thing that's strange about this story is the structure, as most times an episode will keep alternating between the A plot and the B plot, while this arranges them consecutively. There's a little bit of running around B4 at the start, but for the most part the first third of the story is about Sheridan in the future. Or a future anyway, though the way it lines up with both prophecy and Londo's death dream gives it a lot of weight. It definitely seems like this is how Londo and G'Kar ultimately go out, as heroes sacrificing themselves to save a Centauri Prime infiltrated by mind-control parasites. See, I told you Franklin needed to set up checks for this kind of thing back in my Exogenesis review! It's interesting to see how Londo ends up, considering his current descent back into darkness, and G'Kar strangling him to death as a favour shows a definite shift in their relationship!

Once the Centauri plot is done the episode throws itself into the Babylon 4 plot, and there's not really much story there. I've always struggled to remember what exactly the crew did in this episode and now I know why: they walked down a corridor, they hit some people, they moved a lot of boxes out of a hole, they put a thing on the fusion reactor, they pressed some buttons in C&C. And that's it. The episode's a bit like a magic trick, as it keeps distracting you with revelations to disguise the fact that very little's happening. Though I guess Babylon Squared was the same way. Those revelations are pretty amazing though. Sinclair is literally Valen! The one who wrote all the prophecies that Delenn has been following! The true seeker finally found the cause he was looking for.

Anyone can come up with a shocking twist: the Joker is the real Bruce Wayne, Return of the Jedi is Han Solo's carbonite dream, the shark in Jaws is the brother of an innocent man who was arrested by Chief Brody 5 years ago and sentenced to death... the hard part is making the twist feel satisfying and earned, and jms absolutely pulled it off here. In fact the revelation retroactively makes Sinclair's short time on the show feel a lot more relevant to the overall story. Though it also means that he's ironically the one prophet on the series who was a fraud! Sure he saw the future, but only because he lived through it. He lived through a fair bit of the past as well it seems, thanks to his metamorphosis. Those Minbari genes really worked out for him, as despite suffering accelerated ageing, he apparently survived another 100 years to write those letters. (His outcome is even happier if you've read To Dream in the City of Sorrows and the In Valen's Name comic, which are both canon and together add an extra aspect to Sinclair's story.)

The future doesn't seem so bad for Sheridan and Delenn either. Not only will they win the Shadow War, but they'll apparently still have powerful allies 17 years from now and will successfully avoid being executed as traitors to their own governments. In fact it seems like Babylon 5's two commanders will have similar accomplishments, as Sinclair will ultimately drive the Shadows away and form a Grey Council that will last a thousand years and Sheridan will drive the Shadows away and create... something that will last a thousand years, they were vague about that.

Plus we finally got the full explanation for why Delenn transformed into a half-human, and I'm writing it down here because I can never remember it: publicly she said it was so she could become a bridge between the humans and the Minbari for a better understanding between their peoples, but it was also to put an end to the problem of Minbari souls being reborn into human bodies (somehow). Really though it's because Valen's prophecy said she'd transform herself, because he'd seen it happen already. It's a good thing she did too, as it means that she can (and possibly will) have a child with Sheridan!

Overall, this is a great two-parter I reckon. It doesn't completely tap the potential of the crew pulling a Back to the Future 2 in a season one episode, but it's impressively consistent and throws in some real twists. I still could've done with some more time flashes though!

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COMING SOON

Babylon 5 will return with Grey 17 is Missing, but next on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's my Doctor Who Series 12 Review! Ten episodes, one article. I apologise in advance.

Anyway, I'm sure you have things you want to say about War Without End, so I won't keep you any longer.