Babylon 5 3-21: Shadow Dancing

Episode:

65

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Air Date:

21-Oct-1996

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's Shadow Dancing!

Wikipedia tells me that Shadow Dancing is a song by Andy Gibb from an album of the same name, a Canadian thriller starring Christopher Plummer, and the penultimate episode of Babylon 5's third season, but really it's only that last one I care about.

When you see the word 'shadow' show up in a Babylon 5 episode title you know there's a fair chance that events are soon to transpire. Sure The Geometry of Shadows was fairly tame, but you couldn't say that about The Coming of Shadows or In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum. Hey, 'Z'ha'dum', there's another word that shows up in titles sometimes...

The episode was directed by Kim Friedman, who's more famous these days for being the mother from the crazyjewishmom Instagram account. This was her first and only episode of Babylon 5, but that was possibly because she was busy with all the Star Trek she was doing. She directed four fairly rubbish episodes of Voyager overall (three of them generally ranked in the bottom third of the entire run) and six pretty good episodes of Deep Space Nine (four of them ranked in the top third), so this episode could go either way really.

This recap/review is mainly intended for people who've seen the series up to this point, so I won't be holding back with the SPOILERS. Though if you're watching the series for the first time you'll be fine, I won't ruin what comes next.

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So we're still doing the 'Z Minus X days' thing then. I wonder if the 'Z' stands for 'zombies'... 

Either way, the previous episode ended at Z Minus 10 Days, so Z's coming up pretty fast.

Oh damn, it's the B5 council chamber! We've only been here the once this season, in A Late Delivery From Avalon, but the galaxy's tiniest UN is finally back!

Delenn's the one trying to get the council's attention this time, dressed in her new Ranger One cloak. She needs all of the ambassadors to send their ships on a secret mission, but she can't tell them what it is, because then the Shadows might find out. Like in Revelations back in season two, where someone *cough*Londo Mollari*cough* leaked information about the Narn expedition to Z'ha'dum and got their ship sliced up.

She basically tells them to trust her with this or just get out. No one leaves... though they do point out that this will weaken their defences around their homeworlds, which reminds me of a very similar conversation G'Kar had with a military commander in The Long, Twilight Struggle, which took place just before the Narn weakened their defences and got their homeworld bombed. Really though, if the Shadows want to wipe out their homeworlds it won't matter how many ships they have there in defence. It'll be the Battle of the Line all over again, except without the twist ending.

Meanwhile, Sheridan's telling Ivanova and Marcus what he and Delenn figured out last episode: the Shadows are going to slaughter the refugees from their past attacks to demoralise everyone at once.

Sheridan and Delenn are getting their fleet together, but they can't just park it there as the Shadows will know they're onto them. So Ivanova and Marcus are being sent over there in a single White Star to act like a shepherd boy, ready to cry out when the wolves attack the flock. In fact they're taking the White Star, the original prototype starship, not just picking a ship from their new White Star fleet... unless they're all called 'the White Star'.

One downside of this plan is that they'll be alone against an entire Shadow fleet until help arrives. The White Star has escaped the Shadows every time they've gone up against them so far, but Sheridan guesses they've only got a 50/50 chance of managing it this time. It doesn't help that for TV drama reasons he's not putting a telepath on board to give them early warning or to jam one of the enemy ships. I mean Ivanova's a latent telepath herself, but she rates below even Next Gen's Counsellor Troi on the telepathy scale, and Troi was fairly useless.

Other than that, the plan makes sense, but there's one thing I don't get: why is this mission briefing happening in Sheridan's living room? Is he still annoyed about them outvoting him in the War Room back in Walkabout and trying make sure it can't happen again?

ACT ONE

Act one begins with Delenn getting all her ships, a 'Channel 4' shout out in C&C, an old Egyptian blessing (last heard in A Distant Star), a White Star barrel roll, and one unbroken shot of Zack and Garibaldi walking from the Zocalo/central corridor set to his security office. I didn't even know those two sets were connected, but it turns out that the door is directly opposite the customs area (on the set, not on the station). We also get a cameo of the casino set on one of his surveillance monitors, but that thing's long gone at this point in the series.

Then there's a conversation between Zack and Garibaldi about Franklin's walkabout and his drug addiction, and it's only gotten more uncomfortable since both these actors died due to drug related problems. Garibaldi feels like he screwed up, wondering if Franklin walked away because he wanted to see if anyone cared enough to follow him. I'm thinking probably not, seeing as they did follow him, until he made them promise to leave him alone. It was a good conversation though... well, good exposition anyway, for people who've maybe missed a few episodes.

The episode then cuts to Down Below, where Franklin's been hanging out these last few weeks, trying to lose his withdrawal symptoms and find himself.

Though the scene focuses on a family of three making their way through the market.

The mother seems to be very domineering, but also kind of dumb as she believes President Clark's propaganda and still took her family on a trip to Babylon 5. She brings them down to the slums, complains about how messy it is and the state of what's on sale, starts talking about how Clark solved these problems back home, and then shuts her husband down when he dares to contradict her in front of their child.

While they're busy, Franklin catches the kid's ball and plays with her for a bit, but the parents freak out and drag her away. He's gone from being the Chief of Staff of the Medlab Facility to being the scary homeless guy you don't let your kids go near, and it's all self-inflicted. He has been looking after himself, getting his hair cut, but he's been spending his days walking and walking and getting nowhere.

Really though, Franklin's the absolute last person they need to be concerned about, as the guy once nearly threw his career away to save a kid. It's showrunner jms they should be afraid of! I remember seeing three children in this series so far: one of them was stabbed to death by his loving parents, one died of a plague, and the other was a child actor in a Psi Corps advert. That means jms has killed one cute kid each season so far and we're fast running out of season 3!

The good thing about these 'Z Minus' breaks is that they remove all ambiguity over the passage of time. We know now that we've reached day two of this story and we also know how many days it's been since the last episode. In fact they should've kept doing it even after the Z deadline had been and gone, because... I don't know, I crave pointless information?

Also it's just occurred to me that 'Z' rhymes with 'T' in the US. Not sure if that makes me like these messages less, or more.

Day two starts on the White Star bridge. Uh, I mean the White Star sleeping quarters that just happen to look exactly like the bridge, with Ivanova waking Marcus up for his watch. It seems that people sleep fully clothed on Minbari ships, which makes sense as there's no sheets. Just a tiny triangular pillow.

The two of them have a chat about the Minbari language, with him giving her the greeting "My words are inadequate to the burden of my heart." Except what he actually says is "You're the most beautiful woman I've ever met," so that's going to be a bit awkward if she tries greeting Delenn or Lennier with it later. By the way, this part of the episode was written in about ten minutes when they realised it was running short, and the two actors learned their lines during that morning. So it worked out pretty well considering.

Ivanova lies down to get her four hours of sleep and he stays to chat with her for a while... until it finally clicks with him that she's here to get some sleep and he goes off to do his job. The sloping beds are challenging for untrained humans, but Ivanova's clever and immediately figures out that it can be adjusted to lie flat.

Unfortunately, the bed didn't lock into place and ends up tilting the other way, dropping her into the visible hands of one of the people on the film crew. It's one of those times where they didn't quite make the footage safe for widescreen. In fact you can see the pillow being moved and a shadow over her face even when it's cropped to 4:3.

Back on the station, Delenn arrives in Sheridan's quarters to give him the good news about the ships provided by the league. It's not as much good news as he'd hoped for, but it's the best they'll manage. They'll be joining the fleet themselves on a Minbari Cruiser, so that's going to leave Garibaldi in charge of the station again. Hopefully nothing happens to him or else it'll be Corwin running the place.

She also lets him know that she'll be spending the night with him, though after seeing the look on his face she realises she has to clarify that she'll only be staring at him while he sleeps. For three nights. The music seems to think that this is very sweet.

It's a Minbari tradition, the idea behind it being that she'll be able to see past the face he puts on during the day and judge him by his true face. If she doesn't like what she sees and he convinces her to stay a fourth night, she'll be allowed to cut off his... access to her family.

A couple of seasons ago it would've never occurred to me that Delenn was deliberately screwing with someone just to see the expressions on their face, but now I wouldn't put it past her. She was definitely aware of the roller-coaster ride of hope and fear she was taking him on, even if it wasn't necessarily intentional.

Meanwhile Franklin tries to stop a drug dealer from getting robbed and immediately gets stabbed in the gut. So that's a bit of a shift in tone. He didn't even get a chance to break out any combat moves that I'm sure we've seen him use before.

The dealer Franklin saved is no use, he just leaves him to die, so now he's bleeding to death in a dirty side alley in the bad part of the slums and no one is going to come look for him because he made them promise not to. For the first half of the season he told Garibaldi that he didn't have a stim problem and didn't need help, then he told everyone that he had to go on walkabout and didn't need help, now he's finally willing to admit that he actually really needs help right now, but there's no one around to hear him.

This is a similar situation to the one Garibaldi found himself in when he was shot in the back at the end of season one, except with a lot more blood (I wonder if Franklin did anything to try to stop the bleeding). Fortunately Franklin doesn't need to warn anyone that the president's going to be shot, or whatever. The only thing that's at stake here is his own life.

It's also similar to the situation writer jms got into when he was out walking trying to find something, and was attacked and nearly killed. Apparently the experience really stuck with him and made its way into his writing, weird that.

ACT TWO

Back on the White Star, Ivanova has finally managed to arrange all the tiny triangular pillows into a bed on the floor when Marcus calls her to the bridge. Wait, it took her four hours just to pile up some pillows?

Oh, turns out it's not their four hour shift change, it's just an urgent emergency. They've detected a Shadow scout ship in the area, here to make sure the area's clear before the fleet moves in and blows up all the refugees. I guess the Shadows are being more cautious these days now that we've got telepaths on board to disable their ships. Well, Ivanova and Marcus don't, but other vessels do.

Unfortunately the White Star's been detected and now they have to blow the Shadow scout up before it can warn the others.

The two of them rush to their places on the bridge, with Marcus taking the captain's chair for some reason. I know the chain of command is a bit fuzzy where the Rangers are concerned, but Ivanova's always been his superior, so I don't get what's going on there. Oh hang on, in the next shot they've switched and now she's the one sitting in the captain's chair. I'm glad they sorted that out.

They're going to have to take on a Shadow vessel in a fair fight without a telepath on their side, but it's only a small scout ship so they've got a chance. More of a chance than the other White Stars would, as the prototype has been shot at a lot already and the organic hull has adapted. The ship's levelled up a bit.

Meanwhile Sheridan and Delenn are waiting on their own ship, which has a very Grey Council style tactical centre that projects the battle 360 degrees around them. We saw this already in Points of Departure when we had the flashback to Delenn at the Battle of the Line. It might even be the same ship!

Sheridan's first reaction is to ask "What is this place?" which I feel has to be one of those things that modern screenwriting software catches and underlines in red. I mean surely we're at the point now where they can automatically scan for clichés.

Back on B5, Franklin's stuck in front of a ladder he can't climb and is calling for help, when he's joined by the last person he expected to see down here. Which is ironic, because it's exactly who he came here to meet.

Star Trek has an amazing track record when it comes putting two of the same actor in the same shot and having them interact, but this is Babylon 5's first try and it's not actually doing a bad job. I like the first reveal of Franklin #2, as the camera whips over from Franklin #1 to reveal him sitting on the ledge that Franklin can't reach.

It's a pretty seamless effect, though if you want to spoil it for yourself forever, look at his shoe. The shadow stops before it reaches it, leaving a grey gap. What really spoils it however, is the crappy DVD mastering that turns the screen fuzzy whenever the episode cuts to a scene with compositing or visuals effects. It's a dead giveaway, and it's not a problem the series had during its original airing.

Back on the White Star, Ivanova has maintained her claim on the captain's chair as they successfully blow up the scout ship with only minor damage to their own. She's hoping that it was ordered to keep radio silence and only report in if there's a problem, as it's pretty damn silent now and they don't want to tip the Shadows off. Fortunately it turns out it probably was... because a giant fleet of Shadow vessels arrives to start blowing up refugees.

Sheridan's fleet once took on five Shadow vessels and destroyed two of them. There are significantly more than five ships here.

Back in that other episode Sheridan had to take the White Stars' jump engines offline to get more power for the main guns. This time they were fighting a smaller ship so it wasn't necessary, but they've taken a hit to the engines, so they've still ended up stranded here. Ivanova and Marcus discuss the problem, noting that if they call in their own fleet now their signal will probably be detected, then they'll be detected, and then they'll be blown up. So Ivanova immediately orders them to send the signal, because she's a big damn hero.

ACT THREE

Act three begins with Franklin #2 pointing out Franklin #1's big problem: that he keeps running away from all his other problems. He is not impressed at all that Franklin went out to find himself and sort out his head, even though he did meet himself and this conversation certainly looks like someone sorting out their head.

Well it's not really a conversation, as Franklin #1 is finding it hard to get any words out. He's just getting berated by a belligerent figment of his imagination. Great acting by the two Franklins though.

Meanwhile a Shadow vessel breaks off to destroy the wounded White Star while it's helpless.

Just then Sheridan's cavalry rides in to the rescue! Minbari Cruisers used to be the scariest thing in the series besides the Vorlons and now there's three of them on the way to join the fight, flanked by their brand new White Stars.

Sheridan's really powering up now, you can tell by the way his hair's glowing.

After a 'is this mic on?' moment that's not remotely played for laughs, Sheridan starts commanding his fleet from the green screen tactical centre. He gets the telepaths jamming the capital ships, the fighters clearing a path, and the medium-class ships proving escorts for the big ships. So basically he's putting his own cruiser in the least amount of danger... he's finally thinking like a proper commander!

Back in Down Below, Franklin #2's assessing Franklin #1's condition and it's not looking good. Blood pressure dropping, shock and trauma. Franklin #1 seems to think he's in one of those movies where you can say "I want to do it all again," and a fairy fixes it all, but all that happens is Franklin #2 berates him further. But it's having a very motivational effect, and soon Franklin #1 is dragging himself back to that ladder. It's another season four opening credits moment!

I know who Franklin #2 reminds me of now: Franklin's dad! I mean his dad was far nicer to him, but he's still got that attitude of 'you gotta grab that ladder and pull yourself off the damn floor' and that's exactly what Franklin #1's doing now. Franklin #2 yells at him to keep going, and he does, until it makes it up to the top of the ladder! Now he just has to crawl down miles of corridors and he's safe.

The battle continues with Delenn assessing the situation, Sheridan giving orders, and lots of shots of people just lying in bed. Nothing amps up the adrenaline like seeing people chilling out in the dark.

Lots of energy beams are hitting lots of spaceships, with Sheridan's ships getting one-shotted by them, and the Shadow vessels getting stunned, but it's not clear who's winning. Meanwhile Franklin's started stumbling down a corridor.

Eventually all the voices cut out in the space battle and all we get is action, music and sound effects. Then the sound effects cut out as well.

Then it's over. Sheridan's Army of Light has lost countless ships and countless lives, but they defeated the Shadows in a straight battle and saved their refugees.

Franklin's battle is over as well, as he finally stumbles back into the market and is found by security officers. Incidentally this just happens to be the same set that Garibaldi was found in when he was critically wounded and had to crawl back in Chrysalis.

ACT FOUR

Franklin's rushed to Medlab, hallucinating Ivanova, Garibaldi and Sheridan at his side, and we get something I never thought we'd get to see in the series:

The ceiling of the corridors!

We've seen the ceiling of other sets before, like C&C, but never the corridors as far as I can remember. I just assumed the show used the old Star Trek: TOS trick of leaving the ceiling off and putting beams across the corridor to hide the hole; for all I know that's exactly what they did and this ceiling was added especially for this one shot. But right now there is definitely something more than studio lights above the actors' heads and it does a lot to make the place feel more real.

Meanwhile, in the docking bay, actual non-imaginary Garibaldi meets up with actual Sheridan and Delenn and we learn that they lost two ships for every one they destroyed in that fight. So that's a bit of a downer. Also Garibaldi points out that it's only a matter of time before the Shadows attack Babylon 5 itself and we already saw how that generally works out in War Without End.

Whoa, all that happened in just three days? Sheridan and Delenn really figured out the Shadows' plan in the nick of time. They're lucky it didn't take more than a day to get there as well.

Everyone gets a turn in the new Medlab this year, Lennier, Delenn, Marcus, and now Franklin. Hang on, that reminds me, Marcus really got his ass kicked in Grey 17 is Missing, with ribs broken, so what's he doing walking around and breathing without effort?

Garibaldi hopes that Franklin at least found what he was looking for out there. Franklin replies that he found what he needed, not what he wanted. I guess no one really wants a knife to the guts... or maybe he's talking about the motivational abuse he got from himself. Either way, I'm starting to feel that Next Gen wasn't so crazy to have a counsellor in the main cast after all.

Now though he's feeling a little guilty for lying there in Medlab taking up room, being useless, as all the wounded from the ships are being brought in for emergency treatment.

Meanwhile Sheridan, Delenn and Ivanova have decided that the inevitable Shadow attack on the station is worthy of further discussion, but they're not sure what to do about it. Delenn wonders if the Shadows are hesitating because the Great Machine on Epsilon 3 is there to defend them, Ivanova feels that something has to be stopping them, as they've been left alone all year. Didn't stop them in the other timeline though.

But then the subject switches to the dream Sheridan had when he was captured on the alien ship back in All Alone in the Night last season. It was a cryptic dream sent by Kosh and he still doesn't know what most of it means. Well, except for the hint that Ivanova was secretly a latent telepath, he figured that out back in Divided Loyalties. And he blurts it out here right in front of Delenn, so I hope Ivanova was okay with her most private secret being given away like that.

Perhaps she's too confused to feel betrayed, as he mentions here that she told him about her telepathy a week after he had the dream, when it actually happened 8 episodes later.

The three of them go through the dream to work the rest of it out. At one point Sheridan was wearing a Psi Cop uniform, so maybe that foreshadowed him working with Bester. Dream Garibaldi told him that the 'man in between' was searching for him, so perhaps that's Sinclair? Sheridan's gut is telling him... no. They still need to work on that one.

The last part of the dream was Ivanova dressed for a funeral saying "You are the hand", and real Ivanova is outraged that her dream doppelgänger would say something that dopey. Delenn suggests that if he's the hand, maybe the man in between is the other hand... his equal and opposite. Seems like a real stretch and even if it's right it doesn't help them at all! So thanks Kosh, your weird dream served absolutely no purpose.

Meanwhile a Shadow vessel drops off a shuttle, which enters hyperspace and is almost certainly headed their way.

ACT FIVE

Down in Medlab, Franklin is already out of bed and in a wheelchair so that he can help organise the treatment of their wounded. And he's doing it very calmly and professionally, with zero yelling.

Sheridan's come down to make his unofficial position official again, and Franklin's happy to take it. He's figured out that the stims let him do more, but without them he can do better. He's decided to define himself by what he is instead of what he's not, and what he is, is alive.

So he's found an answer to the Vorlon question, "Who are you?" and the Shadow question, "What do you want?" and both answers have him back helping those that need him. He's also back in a position of respect, and if those parents from the start had picked this moment to make a second appearance they'd have a very different reaction to him. It's probably for the best they didn't reappear though, as little Jessie was lucky to make it out of a Babylon 5 episode alive.

Anyway, Sheridan goes off to bed so Delenn can watch him sleep and the action switches to first person view for a bit as a stranger comes onboard from the Shadow shuttle.

There's a map of the station if you wanted one.

Zack wakes poor Ivanova up to tell her about the visitor, and their conversation gets us some Babylon 5 trivia. Turns out that fifty ships dock with the station every day! Oh wait, we learned that already in And Now For a Word last season. Well, it's nice to know that traffic is back to where it was before they broke away from Earth then!

Meanwhile Sheridan sleeps, Delenn watches and smiles, and then she walks off to pick up a snow globe. It's like she's totally forgotten that this is what she saw in her flashforward back in War Without End!

So they're definitely in that timeline now... except not exactly, as most of the scene was reshot for this episode and doesn't quite look the same.

War Without End, Part 2

I don't know what's weirder, that they'd go to the trouble and expense of reshoots for this, or that the reused footage on the DVD version of the snow globe dropping at the end isn't zoomed in and fuzzy for a change.

Just like before, the door inexplicably opens by itself and Delenn drops Sheridan's snow globe in shock when she sees his visitor. But now we finally get to see who's at the door.

It's... someone we don't know! Though this time around she gets more than to say than just "Hello," as she continues with: "You must be Delenn. I'm Anna Sheridan. John's wife."

I think everyone watching this in 1996 dropped their snow globes at that reveal as well.

Funny thing is, her identity was given away right at the start in the opening credits. It says "Special Guest Star Melissa Gilbert as Anna". But they've recast the role since we saw her way back in Revelations, so her name would've flown right by most people without setting off any alarms.

Incidentally, Melissa Gilbert was Bruce Boxleitner's real wife at the time, getting a chance to be snarky at the woman her husband spent hours with every day. Mira Furlan's husband also worked on the show at one point, though he's a director so he missed out on the chance to scowl at Boxleitner on screen.

We're almost at Z!


CONCLUSION

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Like Walkabout a few stories back, Shadow Dancing is an episode split between Sheridan's fleet ambushing the Shadows, and Franklin going on his walkabout. In fact the Shadow plot even plays out in a similar way, with the White Star getting in trouble with no jump engines and having to be saved by the others at the last moment. But there is a significant difference in quality.

The Shadow plot promises a huge space battle and provides one, but it's played very different to the ones in other episodes. Once the fleet jumps in there's no clever strategies or reversals of fortune, the fight doesn't move through different stages, we're not asked to keep track of anything, and Sheridan the tactical genius mostly just watches his big screen TV. It's chaos, with lots and lots of ships being hit by energy beams, and eventually the sound cuts out so we can just listen to the music as we watch the assorted fragments of mayhem. And even though the heroes win, somehow succeeding against countless unstoppable Lovecraftian spider ships from the dawn of time, it ultimately feels like kind of a pyrrhic victory. They lose two ships for every one they kill, and that's with the advantage of telepaths on their ships. I'd bet that the Army of Light has more ships than the Shadows at this point, especially with all the new White Stars they've built, but the cost in lives to win this war will be horrific. Plus they need those ships to protect their homeworlds!

We get more of the Sheridan and Delenn relationship here as well, and it's still just really nice. You wouldn't think that the two characters would have anything in common, but when you see them together it makes perfect sense and they're growing closer in a slow but believable way. There's none of that typical TV drama there... well, until the guy's dead wife walks in on them during the last scene! The wife that he was ready to throw his career away for during In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum. In fact it was worse than that, as Delenn and Kosh had to give away their big secret to stop him from revealing the Shadows too early in his obsessive quest to find Anna, and even the threat of galactic annihilation almost wasn't enough. That was also the episode where Kosh told him that if he went to Z'ha'dum to fight the Shadows he would die, and he didn't give a damn, that's how much he loves Anna. And now she's back, so... uh, awkward.

Shadow Dancing also continues the Ivanova and Marcus non-romance, which is going nowhere fast. Marcus is clearly in love, but he isn't picking up much from her and is pretty much settling for wishful thinking. It's hard to say if she knows he loves her, but after her last two relationships ended disastrously (one turned out to lead a group of paramilitary xenophobes, the other was a brainwashed traitor) she's probably trying to focus on other things.

Franklin's plot is just him talking to himself for the most part, with his imaginary self pointing out the personality flaw that's brought him out to the most distant part of the most distant Earth outpost and caused him to push away everyone he knows. The revelation that he runs away from all his problems didn't entirely ring true to me, but he does have all that hitch-hiking across the galaxy in his backstory, and I think the plot was overall pretty satisfying. More satisfying than it's been in other episodes anyway. It was a good payoff for an arc that's had its middles and its lows, and I'm relieved the stims/walkabout saga is finally over. Franklin has been properly reborn now, just like Delenn, Sinclair and G'Kar. Though I want imaginary asshole officer Franklin back as a regular as well. The two of them can work together, it'd be very Farscape.

Overall, this was a bloody good episode I thought. I can't decide whether I like it more than And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place, but it's certainly in the top tier of stories for a top tier season. If Grey 17 is Missing was a sign that jms was starting to burn out under the pressure of writing all 22 episodes this season (which is a ridiculous that feat that no one else would try), this episode shows that the guy was able to pick himself up and carry on climbing that ladder.

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NEXT TIME

Babylon 5 will return in the dramatic season finale Z'ha'dum... eventually. I wish I could promise that it's coming next week, but my internet has gone and unfixed itself, and I'll be lucky if this publishes, so who even knows?

What did you think about Shadow Dancing by the way? Drop some opinions in the comment box below.