Babylon 5 3-19: Grey 17 is Missing

Episode:

63

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Air Date:

07-Oct-1996

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's a late contender for the worst ever episode of Babylon 5. Grey 17 is Missing is currently in the bottom three on IMDb, just above Infection and TKO, and the other places I've checked haven't been much kinder to it.

(Though right now the main thing that's bothering me about it is that it's the 19th episode this season; the numbers are just a little bit too close. I have to keep double checking to make sure it's not episode 17 and the title's not 'Grey 19 is Missing'.)

Seems that what went wrong with the story is similar to what went wrong with Exogenesis (the 7th worst B5 episode according to IMDb), as it just took too long to write. Showrunner jms says his best scripts only took one or two days, as once he got on the right track the ideas would start flooding out of his head. Apparently this one took more like two weeks for whatever reason, possibly because he got pulled away to deal with other problems, possibly because of some kind of idea blockage that needed sorting out, I don't know.

Exogenesis took so long to write because it was interrupted by that strike that happened during the filming of A Day in the Strife. They eventually worked things out and got production running again by finding the money to go full union, but that meant cutting costs elsewhere. Turns out that this is one of the places they cut costs on... as director John Flinn chose to give up his payment for this episode and direct it for free! I'm starting to think that people liked working on this show and wanted it to do well.

SPOILER WARNING: This recap and review is for people who've seen the series up to this point. I won't spoil anything that happens after this episode but I'll definitely be spoiling what came before it.

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After a CGI establishing shot of the station we get a CGI establishing shot of this building inside it. The shot was originally put together for The Coming of Shadows, back in season 2, so it's got the old single light strip running down the core. It's even got the same two people walking by.

It's not the most advanced CGI, but I like the rippling water effect. Plus they got the shadows right this time, with the light coming from directly above.

Inside, Zack's conducting interviews with telepaths on the station who are interested in signing up to save the galaxy. You'd think the Minbari could send over more than enough telepaths and spare them from having to recruit more, but apparently not!

It's actually pretty easy to tell if someone's lying about being a mind reader, but this guy's making a real go at passing the job interview through charm and bullshit alone rather than actually being qualified in any way. Unfortunately for him the 'is a telepath' part of the job requirements is really crucial here and he's not actually charming in any way either.

I'm surprised by how many humans like him are lining up here, seeing as human telepaths are either part of the Psi Corps or they're on the run, and they stopped running to B5 in A Race Through Dark Places when Franklin shut down his branch of the underground telepath railroad. Speaking of Franklin's railroad, Ivanova tells Sheridan that she's going to have a look for their wandering doctor and see if he has a lead on any telepaths who want to volunteer.

Meanwhile, there's a dead power relay in Grey 16 and this maintenance worker is really struggling to figure out what the problem is. I'm not surprised really, with this mess of cables he's got going on here.

I guess this must have been a special set they constructed a few feet above the ground just for this scene, so they could have the actor standing in a hole. He's not standing there for long though, as something drags him below. And that's the end of the teaser.

ACT ONE

Act one begins on Minbar, as Delenn has travelled all the way there to pick up Sinclair's belongings to pass along to his family. She's handed a box that looks just like the one that Sinclair took the 900 year old letter from in War Without End... so either this design has been in fashion here for a millennium or he decided to use the ancient artefact to store his stuff in afterwards.

By the way, this is one of the reasons why it makes more sense to watch the episode Walkabout before the War Without End two parter instead of in air date order, as this way Delenn comes to pick up Sinclair's belongings immediately after his disappearance instead of waiting a week.

For some reason his Identicard is in there, even though he brought it with him to Babylon 5 last episode, and the Ranger brooch he was wearing is in there as well. Maybe he just liked to have a spare. There's also his Earthforce insignia, his Battle of the Line medal, and a stylish Grim Reaper patch, which was probably his Starfury squadron's logo.

But the scene's not all about Sinclair's jewellery box, as Delenn's also been offered Sinclair's job as Ranger One, leader of the Rangers!

Back on B5, Garibaldi's playing with a revolver. A Smith & Wesson .38 calibre. It's another antique like the Kawasaki Ninja he was building in Eyes, except this one was handed down from his grandmother, who worked for the Boston P.D, and he's got it out to clean because... he's not sure. Maybe it'll be useful later!

Zack wants to play with it, so he just hands it right over to him. It's fine though, as the gun's unloaded and they both know it. At least I hope Zack knows it, seeing as you don't typically clean a gun when it's loaded and the bullets are sitting there on the console. Well, they are until Garibaldi pockets them anyway.

They discuss guns for a bit, so we get a bit of B5 lore. Turns out that modern pistols are still used for private security and target practice, but Earthforce moved to PPGs because they're less likely to penetrate the hull. Then they discuss the mystery of the missing maintenance guy in Grey Sector, and Garibaldi decides he's going to check it out personally. He hates Grey Sector but everyone knows that he loves mysteries. No seriously, everyone seems to know this.

Ivanova actually manages to find Franklin in the back of a bar in Down Below, and he's looking... not bad actually. The guy's even shaved. He's not feeling great though, as he's finally feeling the effects of stim withdrawal and they're not fun.

Franklin reveals that he deleted the data on the telepath railroad from his computer so it couldn't be used for evil (like he did with his data on the Minbari during the Earth-Minbari War). But he has a backup, and he'll give it to her on the condition that people stop tracking him down every episode! He's trying to find himself and that can't happen if he gets a five minute visit by a friend once a week.

The data's in a hidden folder called "Harriet" (likely a reference to Harriet Tubman, who helped a lot of slaves in a real life Underground Railroad). And the password is... oh, I guess there is no password.

ACT TWO

By act two Garibaldi has made it to the hole of mystery, though I'm not sure it's the same set we saw earlier, otherwise they would've had him look down it. I always think Grey Sector looks weird by the way; it doesn't look right for the coloured stripe along the wall to just be grey.

The woman he's with explains that the missing maintenance guy had finished working here and put everything back, but then he just vanished into thin air, which leads Garibaldi to start rambling about it never being fat air. I think that's something he's going to have to take up with Shakespeare.

Anyway, she tells him that they've already checked all 29 levels of Grey Sector and there's no sign of him. Garibaldi points out that there's 30 levels, but she disagrees, saying that it's a mistake in the blueprints. She's counted every floor, there's only 29 of them.

See, the corridor looks a lot better with some colour on the wall.

Delenn has decided to hold the Ranger initiation ceremony on Babylon 5, because she's apparently never seen an episode of Babylon 5. It hasn't even started yet and already she's got Neroon sneaking up on her in the corridor. You know, that guy who showed up in a flashback last episode to remind us he exists.

Neroon's pretty impressed with the way she's manipulated events to lead to this point. The Rangers have been re-established after a thousand years, the Religious caste are constructing secret warships, she's broken the Grey Council and now she's ready to become Ranger One and fill that vacuum of power. But he points out that the 'Warrior' part of Warrior caste means that his people are the ones that are supposed to do the fighting! Sure they didn't want to act before, but now that things are kicking off they want to be the ones in charge of the Rangers.

It's easy to hate Neroon, but when he accuses her of being "a religious zealot propelled by prophecy into military and political power", you can see where he's coming from. Though she doesn't see where he goes, as he pulls a 'Batman' and vanishes when she turns her head.

Meanwhile Garibaldi's still investigating Grey Sector.

Grey 1's looking pretty grey. So that checks out.

I would've thought that Garibaldi would be called away from his mystery to go handle security for the upcoming Ranger ceremony, but he's still here, counting floors.

Then again it’s a Ranger ceremony, so I suppose they don't have to worry too much about security. Sure someone might try to attack them while the higher ranks are all gathered together, but it'd be like attacking an SAS vs Navy SEAL charity shooting range contest.

Grey 2 is looking pretty grey as well by the way (once you filter out the magenta tint). In fact it's looking more or less identical to Grey 1. The manhole cover is in exactly the same position, the shadows on the floor are the same, the paint on the walls matches perfectly...

You know, I'm starting to think they just used the same set for every floor instead of building a new one from scratch each time.

Garibaldi counts the seconds each time he goes to another floor and it turns out that transport tubes take just 3 seconds to move between floors. That's the only thing we've learned from this scene.

(And it's wrong, it actually takes 5 seconds).

Over in Delenn's quarters, Lennier feels that Neroon's probably going to go a bit beyond harsh language in his attempts to take the Rangers from her, and he's concerned.

She points out that no Minbari has killed another in a thousand years... which means that Sinclair somehow put an end to murder during his time as Valen. No wonder everyone worships him. But Lennier notes that the Grey Council also lasted a thousand years until she broke it, and now that's not around things have changed. Poor Neroon, he only got to be on the council for a few months before it got disbanded. No wonder he's so furious.

Delenn ends the conversation by becoming the second person to ask someone to make a promise this episode, as she ensures that Lennier says nothing about this to Sheridan. She feels they have to handle it by themselves (no one brings up the fact that Sheridan is co-leader of the Rangers in this area, and is already fairly involved in Ranger business).

Damn, what happened to this floor? It looks like the lurkers have gotten to it.

Garibaldi's still counting seconds and floors, and he's finally made it down to the fabled Grey 17, which isn't missing at all! I have a feeling his story isn't happening simultaneously with Delenn's, as he's likely only been doing this for 4 minutes.

Though his trip down to this floor took twice the time it should have, so he takes a ride back up to Grey 16 and requests an emergency stop halfway.

Okay, now I'm spotting some slight differences between the floors.

The real Grey 17 is even wore than fake Grey 17! I wonder if anyone's lost a floor like this in a skyscraper before just because the elevators skip it. Seems incredibly unlikely, and not just because they have stairs. See, this is what the B5 crew deserve for not having stairs.

Unfortunately Garibaldi doesn't realise that once the transport tube doors shut there's no way of getting it back to this floor, and he's stuck down here now. Well he could try to call on his link, but he's distracted by a sound and goes off to investigate instead. Like an idiot.

Here's a season four opening credits shot for you. I half expected him to be still carrying Chekhov's revolver, but it seems like he put it back on the shelf before coming here so he's back to his trusty PPG.

Through the door he finds even more junk piled up, and also steam this time. No sign of the missing maintenance worker yet, though there is a creepy doll that talks like Harlan Ellison doing a voice.

The doll tells him that he shouldn't be here, then one of his eyes opens up and fires a dart a him! This is kind of strange for Babylon 5... but perfectly normal for Roger Moore era James Bond.

Garibaldi finally tries to call in on his link, but he can barely talk at this point and soon he's laying face down on the filthy floor.

Which means we get to look at some headlines! It's been ages since we've gotten a look at a newspaper in this series.

The stack of newspapers on the left mentions Luis Santiago's re-election as the president of the Earth Alliance. That happened in Midnight on the Firing Line, the first episode of the series, which puts it in 2258, almost three years ago. The stack of newspapers on the right mention that Babylon 5's captain has been appointed. Sinclair never held the rank of captain and no one ever says they're the captain of a space station, so I feel like it must be referring to Sheridan, who took command a year later in 2259.

This means that they weren't just left here when the floor went missing, someone's been bringing a stack of newspapers down here every few years and then never opening them.

ACT THREE

Everyone's polishing weapons with a blue cloth in this story.

Act three starts with Lennier visiting Marcus in his quarters, and finding out that the guy really doesn't own anything. It's just an empty room with a triangle on the wall.

It's not a Triluminary, not a real one anyway, it's just a model for his little shrine. The fact he has a shrine is pretty interesting though, as it shows how important Sinclair's Triluminary has become to Minbari religion and that Marcus had bought into that religion during his time with the Rangers. In fact he still believes in it, even though he knows for a fact that the Triluminary was a device brought from Epsilon 3 and Valen was just a regular guy.

Lennier explains to Marcus that Delenn told him not to tell Sheridan about Neroon's threat, and he knows that means 'don't tell anyone', but he's rationalised that telling Marcus kind of doesn't count because he won't report it.

Marcus tells Lennier that he's impressed at how he's managed to take a simple request and turn it around so that it says what he wants it to say instead of what he knows it means... but as usual his response lasts just a couple of sentences too long, for me anyway. I think jms could still do with being snappier with his banter.

Lennier points out that if Neroon tries to harm Delenn it's going to shock a lot of Minbari back home, maybe even cause a civil war. But the same would be true if Lennier tried something against Neroon, so Marcus has to be the one to save the day here.

Not by killing Neroon, just by slowing him down until the ceremony is complete. In fact fighting him is probably not a good idea, seeing as he's one the best warriors of the Warrior caste. You'd have to be literally as good as Valen to defeat him... as Sinclair kicked his ass back in Legacies back when he still had regular human strength.

Meanwhile Garibaldi wakes up to find that his gun and link have been stolen, and there's a bunch of people here who've been watching him sleep.

These guys seem to be the lurkiest of all the lurkers on the station, and they're led by Robert Englund! They had the guy who played Chucky as a monk a few episodes back and now they've got Freddy Krueger at a pulpit.

In fact the very first thing he does is stare at his hand. It's less scary without the glove and the blades, though he's still pretty impressed by it, feeling that all creation is contained within. Veins, capillaries, stars, moons etc.

His name is Jeremiah, which incidentally is also the name of jms's next series after he was done with all the Babylon 5. That's all we learn about him here though. And we never learn anything about the automated creepy talking doll defence system they've got set up. That's done with now, a tiny dot in the rear view mirror.

Over in a docking bay, Sheridan and Delenn are hanging around to greet all the Rangers coming in on shuttles. Delenn's seeing a lot of faces she hasn't seen in a long time and seems kind of miserable about it. Until it cuts to a different angle and she's suddenly smiling.

Sheridan mentions that she never talks about her family, so she gives him an exposition dump. Her mother entered the Sisters of Valeria when she was young and she's only seen her twice since then, but she's happy enough about that because it's a great honour. She's less happy about her dad dying ten years ago though. He apparently couldn't live with what the Minbari were doing to the humans during the war.

She ends the scene with a touching story about the time she got too big for him to carry her to temple and realised that she'd eventually lose him. We're over halfway through the episode now and honestly, it's doing a pretty bad job of being terrible so far.

And now we're back to Jeremiah preaching rubbish about the universe being sentient. I mean the Minbari would find a lot of common ground with their beliefs, but Jeremiah's clearly off the deep end.

He tells Garibaldi that his group isolated themselves to find purity of thought, and that the doors are all welded shut to make sure there's no way out. They live off what they get out of the recycling system, he explains. So they get the water from the toilet system, but what do they eat? Rats and old newspapers? Garibaldi doesn't seem the least bit curious and he's entirely unimpressed by his monologues.

Meanwhile Marcus has found Neroon! Or maybe Lennier found him, and then told Marcus where to go. Either way we've just skipped straight to the part where they have their dramatic confrontation.

Marcus explains that the only way he'll get to Delenn is through him... and then invokes a battle to the death! Funny how that's still a Minbari tradition even though they haven't killed another Minbari in a thousand years. They've killed plenty of humans though, and Neroon reveals here that he's personally responsible for 50,000 deaths. What, in hand to hand combat? That's 46 kills a day! It's also 1/5th of the total casualties during the war.

Here it's going to be pike to pike combat though, as Neroon has his own extending staff just like Marcus's one.

ACT FOUR

While Marcus is fighting and Delenn is having her ceremony, Garibaldi's still struggling to get out of Grey 17. Weird how he hasn't asked them about the missing maintenance guy yet.

Jeremiah keeps going on about how the universe will be perfect after the second big bang, as it will have worked out what's it's doing, and he seems surprisingly unthreatening for a cult leader.

But just to be safe Garibaldi fakes a bad reaction to the tranq dart to get them right where he wants them, then makes his move. Soon it's just him and Jeremiah, and he's got his arm around the guy's neck in what could be considered a threatening manner. He still doesn't ask him about the missing maintenance guy though! Or his gun and link.

While that's been going on, Marcus has been fighting and Lennier has been worrying. I don't blame him really, considering that Delenn has taken absolutely zero precautions against Neroon's open threat. When she said that it was an 'internal' problem I assumed she meant internal to the Rangers, or internal to the Minbari, or maybe even internal to people who've been on the Grey Council.

Now I'm thinking it has to be internal to her alone: a problem she can only face by being really brave and hoping for the best, because she's told no one but Lennier. Then again she didn't want to be Ranger One anyway, so maybe she's hoping Neroon will step up and give a damn.

Weirdly Neroon actually seems to show some compassion to Marcus, trying to convince him that to die like this would be a waste of material. Neroon can't surrender, but it's not too late for Marcus to walk away.

Marcus responds by going all Gandalf, saying that he is a Ranger, and they "Stand on the bridge and no one may pass." They do a few more moves and roll around a bit, but Neroon breaks two of his ribs... three of his ribs, and it's all over.

Neroon asks why he'd sacrifice himself in a fight he knew he couldn't win. He says he did it for her. To him Delenn's already Entil'Zha, even before the ceremony, and he'll die to defend his leader.

Meanwhile in the Grey 17 'plot', Garibaldi has found a maintenance uniform and finally asks Jeremiah if he knows anything about the worker who disappeared!

Jeremiah claims they don't believe in violence (only dolls that shoot tranq darts at visitors), and Garibaldi accepts that answer. Though he's less keen on Jeremiah rambling on about about finding purity of thought to open the door of the mind. I feel sorry for Robert Englund here as he's a good actor, doing better than most with lines that are kind of bad.

I mean every line he has is rubbish in-universe as well. He believes that once they've attained purity of the mind, the next step is for their body to find a really pure way back to the universe, like getting eaten by a perfect killing machine! Which they just happened to have down here with them.

With Marcus finally out of his way, Neroon shows up at Delenn's ceremony just in the nick of time! For a brief moment it seems like we might actually get to see what happens when he tries to take on a room full of Rangers, and Ivanova, and Lennier, and Sheridan, but instead he just drops his staff in the middle of the room and gets Marcus's blood on their nice rug.

Neroon has had a change of heart, for the most pragmatic of reasons: the Rangers are mostly a fighting force of Minbari and humans, and the humans aren't going to fight and die for him like they would for Delenn. I actually feel a bit sorry for Neroon here, because if he genuinely feels that she's a religious zealot scheming to acquire military power, then he just tried to save the day and failed. It'll be even worse for him if he ever finds out that the prophecy everyone's following was written by her human friend who schemed his way into becoming a Minbari religious figure!

Anyway I guess the story's over now then. Marcus is dead, Delenn's the new Entil'Zha.

Oh right, Garibaldi and Jeremiah are being hunted by the Zarg. The guy looks he's gotten drunk and stumbled straight out of season one, so I'm finding it a bit hard to imagine that this is the perfect predator. But then most of what I know about alien predators comes from the Alien and Predator movies, so I'm hardly an expert.

Fortunately Garibaldi's standing next to the bit of wall covered in pipes, so he pries off a steam pipe and blasts some into the Zarg's face. No quip though, sadly.

All this has done is buy them time, but Garibaldi suddenly remembers something: he put Chekhov's gun back before coming down here but he's still carrying Chekhov's bullets!

Jeremiah just doesn't get why anyone wouldn't want to be eaten by this thing, it's like the best predator ever... but he feels he's not quite transcendent enough to volunteer to get eaten first. Fortunately Garibaldi does a bit of MacGyver/Monkey Island work with a pipe, a rag, a steam pipe, and his bullets, and creates a makeshift steampunk machine gun.

I'm not sure how the heat fires off the bullets in sequence, instead of the one at the back going off and messing the whole thing up, but his homemade slug thrower eventually does the job, getting the Zarg with its last few shots.

The perfect predator turned out to be a bit crap really, as it just walked up to its prey and got killed by regular bullets. It's a fitting death though, as it looked crap as well! That rubber suit was bloody terrible.

Oh, actually I have to take that back. The suit actually looks pretty good, if a bit derivative. Somehow it looked worse when it was obscured in smoke and shadow, probably because he just lumbered around and waved his giant fingers. Robert Englund would've done a much better job with those fingers.

(Incidentally jms wrote a note in the script saying "We never get a good look at it," and then underlined it to make sure people paid attention to him, so he's not entirely to blame here.)

So that's the entire Grey 17 plot finished with. Garibaldi met a cult, found that they had a monster and killed the monster. And we never got an answer about whether they rigged the transport tube or how they brought the monster here.

ACT FIVE

Act five begins in Medlab, as Lennier somehow discovered Marcus lying unconscious in the darkest reaches of this five mile station and carried him here. Well, second darkest, after Grey 17.

Everyone's really good at finding other people in this episode: Ivanova found Franklin, Marcus found Neroon and now Lennier's found Marcus. Though I suppose Lennier was the one who told Marcus where to be, so that makes sense. Neroon could've let someone know he was there though! The dick.

Neroon does at least come to see him, and he explains the very Minbari leap of logic he used to get out of fighting him to the death. The way he sees it, it was he that died in the fight... well, the righteousness of his cause did anyway. Marcus is just conscious enough to ask him to find a less painful way to reach a revelation next time, which gets Neroon laughing out loud. 

And the episode ends with Sheridan being a bit annoyed with Garibaldi disappearing when he was needed to arrange security for the Ranger ceremony... which presumably had to take days of preparation now that I think about it, just because of the travel time from Minbar.

So Garibaldi puts his feet up on his desk and proceeds to recap his whole plot. He's a lot better at summarising than me though, it only takes him about 30 seconds, though he leaves out the bit where he tells us what happened to Jeremiah and the cult afterwards.


CONCLUSION

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Despite the episode's reputation, there's a lot to like about Grey 17 is Missing, such as Zack's telepath interview, Franklin finally struggling with withdrawal symptoms, Delenn facing a challenge to the title of Ranger One, Garibaldi counting the floors... in fact I like all of the first half of this episode, and most of the second. It's just that the Grey 17 B plot is so so bad that it dominates your memory. It doesn't help that the episode keeps cutting between the two stories, so that you can never escape it for long.

On the plus side, the heroes have finally solved the mystery of the B5 Triangle! It was introduced in Knives as an excuse to get Sheridan to explore somewhere spooky (and end up with an alien taking a ride in his brain), but now we've actually got a good explanation for all those strange noises and people vanishing in Grey Sector. Also now they've got a whole extra floor of Grey Sector to use for stuff! Or not, seeing as it's mostly taken up by heavy machinery.

I think the ending reveals what kind of story the Garibaldi plot was meant to be: a chain of ridiculous events that gets more insane the deeper he goes into the rabbit hole, ending with him and a cult leader being hunted around a part of the station that doesn't exist by the perfect predator. You could make a solid Rick & Morty episode out of that, no problem. The trouble is it's so pointless and dull and dumb and it doesn't escalate to anything farcical enough. The creepy tranq doll has nothing to do with the purity cult, the cult has nothing to do whatsoever, and all that Jeremiah does is go on and on about his beliefs. The guy was repetitive and annoying and I wanted him to go away as much as Garibaldi did. In fact I almost think the plot would've worked better if they'd cut all the scenes after Garibaldi finds himself trapped on the 17th floor, and just had him reappear to tell Sheridan his shaggy dog tale at the end.

The Ranger plot, on the other hand, is pretty watchable. It's about Delenn resolutely refusing to do anything to avert an attack while Marcus secretly gets his ass kicked on her behalf, so it's a little bit strange, but very in character for both of them.

It's scary to think that Neroon could've just seized control of the Army of Light here, as it's a threat they never even considered. The episode doesn't actually vilify him too much and we do get a glimpse of how bad Delenn looks from his perspective, but he was willing to be the first Minbari in a thousand years to murder another just to seize power, so he's probably not the person we need commanding the Rangers right now. Plus he broke into Valen's quarters once and punched him!

Poor Neroon always seems to end up coming out of Minbari ceremonies disappointed, like when Shai Alyt Bramner's body went missing, and when Delenn broke his government. Though I feel like he would've been even more disappointed if he'd actually tried something in that room. There would've been a sudden rainstorm entirely localised around him; a metaphorical one where every raindrop was a fist (also Sheridan would've been yelling "No more of you!" the whole time). It would've been a thing to see though.

The weird thing about the episode is that there are strong parallels between the A plot and the B plot, but they seem to be there by pure coincidence and there's nothing made out of it at all. Both plots are about a religious 'zealot' who believes that they're the universe trying to understand itself and are leading their people into the jaws of a near unstoppable monster. Both plots feature a man going against a killer in the darkness and finding themselves tested on their conviction to die for their beliefs. In the end Delenn and Marcus prove that they're willing to put their life on the line, while the 'spiritually pure' Jeremiah chickens out when it's his turn to be sacrificed. Really though, you could cut the entire Grey 17 plot out and the Ranger plot wouldn't lose a thing. The episode would also be a quarter of an hour shorter, allowing you to get to And the Rock Cried Out No Hiding Place much faster.

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COMING SOON

Babylon 5 will return with And the Rock Cried Out No Hiding Place. It's... better.

What do you think about Grey 17 is Missing? Are IMDb voters right and it's the third worst episode, or does the Marcus storyline save it?