Babylon 5 5-21: Objects at Rest

Episode:

109

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

John Copeland

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Air Date:

18-Nov-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching the penultimate episode of Babylon 5: Objects at Rest. Episode 109 out of 110.

Babylon 5 was always meant to last five seasons, but for a while it seemed like it would be cancelled at the end of its fourth year. To avoid leaving the story unfinished, showrunner J. Michael Straczynski rushed to get the main storylines concluded at the end of season four and filmed a final episode to wrap everything up called Sleeping in Light. Then they got a fifth season after all, so the final episode was put away for a year until it was time. I'm bringing this up now because it means that Objects at Rest was the last ever Babylon 5 episode to be filmed.

It was also the third and final episode to be directed by producer John Copeland, who'd previously directed Endgame and The Ragged Edge. Those were both very effects-heavy episodes, but I'll be surprised if this episode goes in that direction. In fact I think I'm going to be surprised whatever happens. All the plot I can remember from my first watch already happened in The Wheel of Fire and Objects in Motion.

Alright, I'll be going through the whole episode giving my scene by scene recap and reactions with screencaps so there will be huge SPOILERS here, for this and earlier stories (except for The River of Souls which I'm saving). I'll not say anything to spoil what happens next though, not that there's a whole lot of 'next' left at this point.

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The teaser begins by revealing that Sheridan and Delenn survived their hike across the entire station at the end of the last episode, and now Sheridan's paying one last visit to C&C. Did I ever mention how I like that there's actual plexiglass there reflecting the consoles? Star Trek stopped putting glass in its windows because it was awkward.

It's been almost a year since Lochley came aboard in No Compromises and she's actually grown to like working here now, despite all those times she recorded log entries saying she hated it. She wonders where the time went and Sheridan has an answer for her, saying that it goes "out there". Then he goes on to explain that beyond out there is the Rim, and beyond that is the truth. This earns him a few moments of awkward silence. I think the guy's spent too long hanging around Kosh and Lorien.

It's a nice scene though, with just the two actors and no music for the most part. Not much of a hook for the episode, but it works for me. Speaking of low key scenes, Sheridan doesn't want a big ceremony when he and Delenn leave the station... so I'm looking forward to seeing a record-breaking number of extras show up to see them off.

Then we finally get the very first meeting between Vir and Ta'Lon! The Narn and Centauri have been handed plenty more reasons to hate each other recently, with the war and the orbital bombardment of Centauri Prime, but there's absolutely zero animosity between the two.

Vir was just passing by G'Kar's quarters and he lets Ta'Lon know that there's no point ringing the doorbell as the guy's left forever. Ta'Lon's confused as G'Kar sent for him. He's travelled all the way here from Narn! So he does what he always does when G'Kar's away and breaks into his quarters. We saw a Psi Cop intern do this with hacking gear in The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father, but Ta'Lon just shoves his knife into the card reader! This is what you get when you have your space station built by the lowest bidder.

He says "Lights" and a message starts playing. In fact it's the message that G'Kar started recording last episode. So the character's left but the actor's still back for one last story!

We only get a tiny piece of the message in the teaser, just enough to let us know the reason Ta'Lon has been called here. Turns out that G'Kar wants Ta'Lon to succeed him as the Narn ambassador!

Well this isn't good. Vir and Ta'Lon are so reasonable and decent that they'll never have any good arguments. They'll be no drama anymore! Though the series isn't really bothering with drama at all by this point. I mean the hook in this teaser is 'a recurring character has been offered a job we'll never see them do'.

ACT ONE

The message continues in act one, and there's a weird effect where G'Kar materialises on the left side of the frame so that we don't have to watch a recording on a monitor screen the whole time.

It's a pretty nice monologue, though I pretty much take that for granted from G'Kar at this point. He tells Ta'Lon that an ambassador needs to be equal amounts priest and warrior, and he's been leaning a lot more to the 'priest' side lately so maybe it's time for someone who's a bit more of a warrior to take over. Uh, Narn just bombarded Centauri Prime from orbit mate, I think your people have got more than enough warrior at the moment.

Now I'm wondering what Vir's priest/warrior levels are like.

Now it's Franklin's turn to appoint a successor, and we get a mention of Dr Hernandez from way back in season 1's Believers! But he's decided to give the job to Dr Hobbs, who showed up a couple of times in season 3 when he quit to go on walkabout. He says he's chosen her because she's willing to fight for what she believes in. That's just reminded me of Believers again, where Franklin fought for what he believed in to the point of getting a kid killed. It's not necessarily always a good thing.

Afterwards Franklin walks the the end of the Zocalo and around the corner to the left. Then Hobbs decides to follow him... and the camera follows Hobbs. This means we're going to get an incredibly rare glimpse of what's around the corner!

It's a corridor! Also Franklin's there, having a final chat with Sheridan before he leaves. I'm not even going to question how he immediately ran into Sheridan like this, people just run into each other in corridors all the time in this series.

Incidentally if the camera had continued down that hallway it would've ended up at the stairs going up to the bridge across the Zocalo.

If you take a right from the stairs, the security office is the first door on the left and the customs area is on the right. They were all part of one giant interconnected set. In fact the sets were so big that they were able to build other sets inside them, like a Minbari cruiser hallway, or a warehouse.

Then we actually get to see Tessa do her job as head of intelligence, as she does her first and final briefing in the series. Turns out that things are mostly alright, just a bit of a border skirmish after some Drazi pilots got angry over Brakiri pilots using their brothel. Man, it's always the bloody Drazi! They just had to cause problems one last time.

Tessa's taking her job deadly seriously, but Zack and Lochley have really settled in now and are able to laugh at the situation. It turns out that she'll be staying on Babylon 5 with them instead of coming to Minbar because the station's got more resources for intelligence work. For some reason the episode makes a point of mentioning this, I guess because they're deliberately setting up replacements for each character. Garibaldi's done so much on the series that he's had to be replaced twice, first by Zack and then by Tessa. Meanwhile Lochley's been pulling double duty, replacing Sheridan and Ivanova.

Surprise, now it's a scene with Garibaldi on Mars! I really thought Jerry Doyle that was done on the series last episode, but nope. We get to see him setting up the new board of directors of Edgars Industries, made up of company troublemakers, people with an attitude problem. You can tell those two guys on the right are real troublemakers as one of them won't sit down and the other's got a ponytail.

They're the kind of people who think they can do everything better than their bosses, so he's giving them a chance to prove it. Their job now is to tell Garibaldi if he's screwing anything up and they get a bonus if they're right! (They probably won't like what they get if they're wrong.)

Now we get to see Franklin's lonely walk to his ship. No one comes to see him off, none of the other doctors, none of his friends, no one. And Lyta thought she had it bad when she left last episode! It's fine though as we saw him talking to Sheridan and Hobbs individually before he went.

ACT TWO

Hey it's Jane! This is her first appearance in the series since the end of season 4 and she's really left it until the last minute.

Jane's reporting on the White Star arriving at the station to pick Sheridan and Delenn up, which gives Sheridan one last chance to be annoyed at a reporter. They were supposed to be slipping away quietly! Just then Lennier arrives at the door to Sheridan's quarters, having taken a break from his Ranger training to help him and Delenn move. Delenn slips away quietly to have one last look to see if they missed anything, leaving him and Sheridan standing there alone.

Well this is... awkward.

Sheridan knows that Lennier has strong feelings about Delenn, strong enough to make him go off and join the Rangers after she married him instead, but he's really nice to him all the same. He even says it's cool for him to drop by and stay at their new place on Minbar any time. That's not a bad offer seeing as it's coming from the President of the Galaxy. I imagine his house there is going to be a little more impressive than these quarters. It'll probably have quieter doors at least; this one's sounding a bit worn out right now.

It cuts to Sheridan and Delenn in a transport tube, and the doors open to reveal that a bit of a crowd has formed in the Zocalo. 

The Zocalo set looks really huge when they've got people standing on the bridge up there above the sign.

It's obvious that the two of them aren't going to be able to escape without giving the crowd a speech, so Sheridan acts like he's going to say something... and then drops Delenn into it instead! Points of Departure showed that he has a tradition of making a speech whenever he arrives at a new posting, but it seems like there's no tradition for when he's leaving.

This was apparently the last scene filmed for the series and they were able to get the stage crew and others on screen for it. That guy on the on the left of the frame next to Sheridan is Londo actor Peter Jurasik without his hair and makeup on, finding a way to make a sneaky last appearance in the series that doesn't involve sitting on a throne looking sad. It shows just how much makeup he was actually wearing during the series as he's basically unrecognisable without it.

Delenn's short speech is all about how she had to learn a number of languages when she came to the station, but she struggled with the word 'goodbye'. That's because every word that comes close in the Minbari language leaves open the possibility of meeting again.

There's still one last goodbye for Sheridan and Delenn though, as Zack's waiting for them in the docking bay. He's the only member of the season 4 senior staff sticking around and he thinks he'll probably still be here when it's time to finally shut the place down.

The two of them begin their own lonely walk to their shuttle. Well, less lonely with Lennier following them the whole time.

Lennier informs Sheridan and Delenn that the captain of their White Star has been instructed to stay behind on the station so that the two of them can command it on their trip to Minbar. That's really thoughtful of him, though he must be the only Ranger trainee with the authority to order captains around. I hope he arranged for a way for them to get reunited with their ship afterwards.

Anyway Sheridan brings the ship around and matches the station's rotation, and fortunately the ship just happens to be precisely lined up with the C&C window.

The camera flies over Sheridan's shoulder and we get the zoom in on C&C that's been missing from the opening titles for the last few seasons. Only this time it's got the next generation standing there! The first time we've seen them all together in one place.

• Elizabeth Lochley replacing John Sheridan (who replaced Jeffrey Sinclair).
• David Corwin replacing Susan Ivanova (who replaced Laurel Takashima).
  
• Zack Allan replacing Michael Garibaldi.
• Tessa Halloran also replacing Garibaldi.
• Dr Lillian Hobbs replacing Dr Stephen Franklin (who replaced Dr Benjamin Kyle).
• Vir Cotto replacing Londo Mollari.
  
• Ta'Lon replacing G'Kar.

And no one replacing Delenn and Lyta. Or replacing Sheridan on the council. In fact do they even have a council on the station anymore now that the Alliance HQ has moved to Minbar? If not, then why are the Narn and Centauri ambassadors there?

Here's the season 1 opening titles version of this shot, from back at the very start at the series when they weren't as good at lighting the C&C set. Also everything's been flipped for some reason.

It's so weird seeing Garibaldi in his old uniform (and hair).

Here, have the season 2 version as well, from when Sheridan joined the cast. It's funny how they seem to change the 3D model every time. I suppose it makes sense though, that they'd want to take advantage of the extra memory and processing power they had available. Technology was moving on so fast at the time that the machines they were rendering the series on in 1994 couldn't even run a big-budget video game from 1998.

Man, if someone accidentally pulls the trigger on those giant guns right now the death toll will be horrific. This would be a bad time for Sheridan to say "Ah hell", I remember that means 'continuous fire' in Minbari.

Lochley salutes and the episode borrows some of the soundtrack from Sleeping in Light to make this an amazingly emotional moment... but I can't help noticing that the lighting isn't changing on the White Star as it rotates to match the station. There is a shadow being cast on it though... of a rotating cylinder. I don't know, maybe they tried rendering it with the correct lighting but found that it was too distracting.

The camera repeats the move it did for Sheridan earlier, flying from behind Lochley's shoulder to zoom in on the bridge of the White Star. The series is going all Star Trek: Discovery all of a sudden!

Oh damn, that doesn't look great! See, this is why you need to refine your 3D models to add extra detail over time, or create new close-up models that are appropriate for the shots you're going to need. This is one of the few times where I can say that the 3D looks like it's from an N64 game and not be exaggerating.

The thing is, the shot just keeps getting worse the more you stare at it. I mean for one thing Sheridan is huge compared to the windows, but also look at where the captain's chair is. Yep it's over on the left side of the bridge. Except look at again... it's also on the right side of the bridge behind Sheridan. There are two captain's chairs and two Lenniers in this shot. Fantastic idea, less than fantastic execution.

The series has been saying goodbye to a lot of characters recently, like G'Kar, Londo, Garibaldi and Franklin, but the twist with this scene is that we're not saying goodbye to Sheridan and Delenn, we're actually going with them and saying goodbye to the station!

The episode's called Objects at Rest but ironically Sheridan's feeling very restless right now, playing with the ornaments in his room. I wonder if this is the captain's quarters or the VIP quarters. Delenn suggests going for a walk and it doesn't take him long to agree.

Suddenly a Ranger discovers a coolant leak in the weapon system! I mean really suddenly, like four seconds later. I wonder if that's something that happens a lot on these ships, the coolant system leaking when they're not even in combat. If so that's probably something they need to think about when they're designing those next gen White Star destroyer prototypes.

An alarm goes off and the Minbari on the ship starts running in one direction, so Sheridan heads off in the other. I'm presuming that he knows he's heading towards the danger.

Sheridan finds that the Ranger's almost passed out while attempting to repair it on his own and tries to drag him out. The Ranger won't budge though, telling him he has to leave as they're going to seal the area off. But he only makes it halfway through his line before they seal the area off, so that wasn't helpful!

Fortunately Lennier is the second hero to make it to the scene, and the controls on his side will presumably do a better job of opening the sealed door.

Sheridan tells Lennier to hit the access panel and he does... almost. He stops just short of pressing the button and stares at Sheridan for a moment instead. Then he leaves him to suffocate to death in a sealed room!

I doubt that Lennier sabotaged the cooling system himself, as he does go to hit the button for a moment and he would've had no way of knowing that Sheridan would come here and get trapped. He's certainly taken advantage of the moment to eliminate his romantic rival though! It's the flip side of Lennier lying about detecting a leak in Rumors, Bargains and Lies and saving everyone on the White Star. This time there really is a leak and he's screwing everything up! It's also pretty much the opposite of his choice to throw himself into harm's way to save Londo from a bomb in season 3's Convictions. He was kicking himself after doing that because he thought Londo would go on to do great evil... funny how things actually worked out.

Lennier actor Bill Mumy didn't like this outcome for the character as he felt that he would've considered saving Sheridan to be another opportunity to prove himself to Delenn, and he never would've let another Ranger die as collateral damage. To be fair, I don't think he can see the other Ranger from where he is, so as far as he knows he's only killing Sheridan here. Either way though this would definitely count as fulfilling Morden's prophecy that he will betray the Rangers. And he did it for the most selfish of reasons!

Anyway that's the end of act two. Some sudden life-threatening drama right in the middle of this quiet story of emotional farewells.

ACT THREE

Sheridan thinks fast and grabs the Ranger's extendible fighting pike! This is the first and only time that the series' main hero gets to use the iconic Ranger weapon himself.

Unfortunately the glass they've used in the door is too strong and he can't smash through it no matter how hard he hits it. And it does look like the actor's really hitting it, I can see it wobbling with the impact. Meanwhile it seems like Lennier's on the verge of changing his mind and going back, even though saving Sheridan now will likely mean his arrest (it's not like he can lie and say he went to get help). The funny thing is, he wouldn't have even been in a position to let Sheridan die if he hadn't ran straight towards danger to try to help just like Sheridan had done.

Sheridan thinks fast for a second time, collapses the pike, then wedges it next to the door frame and activates it again. Turns out that the mechanism to extend the pike is strong enough to shatter the glass!

It's nice seeing Sheridan getting to be a clever action hero one last time. It's been so long!

Just to be safe he spends a moment clearing all the glass out of the frame, so that none of it drops on him when he's carrying the other Ranger out. Man I hope that releasing the toxic fumes like this isn't going to kill everyone on the ship. That door was there for a reason! In fact if Lennier wanted to defend himself he could argue that he had to leave the door shut until the coolant repair team came. (Also you really can't see that other Ranger from here, so I'm letting Lennier off the hook for that at least.)

Lennier returns in the nick of time to see that Sheridan's already pulled the guy to safety. Delenn arrives and asks what happened, but he just runs off and steals a fighter. I hope he can reach a jumpgate in 30 hours before the air runs out!

So this is the last we ever see of Lennier. He was once the most noble and innocent of the characters and now he's a fugitive escaping in disgrace after nearly being responsible for the death of the president.

Delenn calls his fighter, asking him to come back so they can talk about this, but he just switches communications off. There's no coming back from this.

Delenn tells Sheridan that she's had Lennier's quarters back on Minbar searched and it turns out that he kept a diary that shows just how much he hated that the two of them got married. To his credit he didn't scribble lots of pictures of him murdering Sheridan all over it, there's no sign that he was going to act on his feelings or harm him, he just gave in to his worse impulses for one terrible moment. She talks about how there are times when we become a different person for a bit and we spend the rest of our lives regretting what we did then.

In Rumors, Bargains and Lies we learned that Delenn had been training Lennier like she'd been trained by Dukhat, and she presumably intended him to succeed her. Then he went and made a horrible snap decision in a moment of emotion that has had terrible consequences... so I guess he really is a lot like her. Fortunately the consequences for failing to kill the president of the galaxy are a lot more personal than the consequences for starting the Earth-Minbari War.

Incidentally it's interesting that Lennier never told Sheridan about that. He could've leaked that little bit of information to him, that she had the deciding vote, and watch the revelation tear their marriage apart. But he didn't.

Turns out that Sheridan and Delenn are going to keep this incident quiet, so no one's going to be trying to bring Lennier in. Probably for the best, as they don't need it to become known that a Minbari tried to kill the human president of the Interstellar Alliance. They'll give him room so they can try to talk to him when things calm down, and Sheridan will do his best to believe what he says.

I think it might have been more interesting though if they'd flipped the roles for this scene. Maybe Delenn could've felt absolutely furious and betrayed that Lennier had left her beloved husband to die, and Sheridan was the one who talked her into calming down for a change.

Then we get fireworks in the Minbari capital of Tuzanor as the White Star flies in and lands on its little fold-out legs. Those blue landing markers make it look like someone's selected all their units in a video game.

Wait, White Stars can land? I guess I should've already known this from The Ragged Edge when one was sent to the Drazi homeworld to pick Garibaldi up (off screen). Incidentally they're supposed to be about as long as the Titanic, so imagine that landing and that's what's happening here. I guess this is why the visual effects artists couldn't build a higher-resolution White Star bridge: they're were busy making a whole damn city.

If this is the new Interstellar Alliance facility it looks very fancy. And thankfully very green as well. I don't remember seeing a lot of vegetation in previous shots of Minbar and I think poor Sheridan would've gone crazy looking at nothing but crystal skyscrapers for the rest of his life.

This is another scene where the character's legs are cut off at the bottom, like that shot of Londo walking to his coronation a few episodes back. Probably because they had to take a 4:3 effects shot and crop it for widescreen.

Sheridan goes to a balcony and takes in the view, with no idea that the episode's setting up a clever reveal. The camera pans across a little bit to show who's standing directly behind him:

It's Emperor Londo Mollari! Turns out that Peter Jurasik's making an in-character appearance this episode as well!

Man, this series keeps giving characters big emotional goodbyes and then bringing them right back an episode later! First G'Kar, then Garibaldi and now Londo too. At this rate Franklin will be coming back any time now.

ACT FOUR

Look at all these new ISA headquarters sets! Well, I suppose they'd actually been in storage for about a year after they used them for the finale, Sleeping in Light.

Londo's a lot more cheerful than he was the last time we saw him. In fact he seems like he's back to his old self, though it becomes clear that he's been made to come here by his Drakh keeper. He does have a plan though: alcohol! The drink that ruined Garibaldi's life might be the key to his salvation.

I've written a few times about how the apparently throw-away season 1 episode The Quality of Mercy is actually the secret lynchpin to the entire series, introducing so many things that became important later on, like the alien healing machine, the concept of death of personality, Lennier's fighting skills, the fact that Minbari don't lie, and so on. Well it turns out there was still one last brick in the air left to drop: that alcohol makes Minbari go into a homicidal rage. For the next four seasons we never once saw a Minbari take a sip of alcohol and go into a rage, so Chekhov's gun remained unfired and the brick joke never landed. Until now.

It turns out that Sheridan didn't bring any alcohol with him for the sake of the Minbari, so Londo's unable to put his keeper to sleep and tell the two of them why the Drakh sent him here. (We never learn if he's banned any other things that are harmful to drink, like bleach or weed killer.)

It turns out that Londo's brought them a gift for their child! It's tradition to give it to the heir to the throne when they come of age, but he's got no heirs so he figured that he might as well give away this important Centauri relic to them. See, this is how the Centauri keep losing their priceless artefacts! I bet an emperor once gave away the Eye from Signs and Portents as a gift as well.

Though we don't actually know if the urn is really part of a tradition or not, all we know is that the bottom of it's sealed up and Londo's insistent that it's given to their child when they turn 16. Of course there's no reason to think that their kid will actually be the heir to the Interstellar Alliance throne... though in this show I wouldn't be surprised.

Anyway, later Delenn gets a holographic message from Lennier!

The guy's still wearing his Ranger gear, which seems a bit optimistic.

Lennier refuses to come back until he can find a way to redeem himself in her eyes. Though he's really trying not to be a dick here, calling Sheridan "your husband" instead of "your partner" for the first time I can remember, and asking her to be happy for his sake. A situation like this could make a person feel like they're finally able to cut loose and say all the things they've been holding back, to really go on a tirade, but Lennier's not falling into that temptation. He accepts that this is his fault and he's just really ashamed with himself.

I know Bill Mumy wasn't keen on this ending but he had to appreciate being done with that makeup at last. It took four hours to put on, so he had to arrive at work by 4:30 am, and at the end of the day he had to go through the process of removing it as well. Plus it went over his ears and you typically need them to hear what the other actors are saying, as well as your own voice. He put up with a lot over five years.

Okay now they're really overdoing 'the Londo looking out the window of a Centauri warship' imagery now. It worked in A Tragedy of Telepaths as it took the original image from The Long, Twilight Struggle of him looking out as Narn was bombarded and flipped it on its head, with him and G'Kar both looking out after working together to save Na'Toth. Coming back to it again so soon is a bit much though, even if Londo's back to looking down in despair because of what he's done. (The CGI looks a hell of a lot better than that shot zooming in to the White Star window however.)

We learn that Londo's reward for betraying his friends is one hour of freedom from its control. Not that he had any choice in the matter. The interesting thing is that he's handed a glass, which makes it seem like they know that it's alcohol that gives him the freedom. If that's true then why is he able to drink so much in War Without End?

Here's a better question: how did a big-ass Centauri warship end up parked above the headquarters of the Interstellar Alliance on Minbar just days after the war ended without the president or Ranger One knowing about it?

We get a shot of keeper-vision as the voice tells him that now they await the passage of years.

Then we get a shot of the urn where it's revealed that there's a keeper lying inside!

It's just going to sit there for 16 years and then spring out when no one else is looking! Maybe they should scan these things sometime instead of letting people bring whatever they like into government buildings.

I have to wonder why this is being set up here when it's the penultimate episode, it's not going to go anywhere in the series, and we already know from War Without End that they manage to save their son. I suppose it is a dramatic ending for act four to keep people watching.

It's also an old Babylon 5 tradition I suppose, that whenever old friends come to visit everything goes to crap. Sheridan invited Lennier to come visit them on Minbar and nearly died, and then Londo comes to visit and gives them a Trojan parasite! It's a bit weird though that the Drakh didn't just take over Sheridan himself.

ACT FIVE

Sheridan's still restless at the start of act five, so he takes Delenn's hologram device (which we saw earlier in the scene with Lennier) and starts to record a message... to his son.

He talks about how on Earth, children come of age at age 21 (in America I think he means), and that Lorien predicts that he only has 19 years left. The maths isn't good... and not just because it was two years ago that Lorien said he'd live 20 years, so he should really only have 18 left at this point.

Anyway it turns out that this message is another gift for his son when he comes of age, full of advice. Seems that Bruce Boxleitner got to make a speech this episode after all. Some of that advice is a bit weird though, like he tells him why Delenn will be their best ally, like he wouldn't already know his mother fairly well by his 21st birthday.

As he talks we get a montage of some of the other characters.

We get to see that Garibaldi actually has traded drinking for smoking, like the last episode hinted. I'm pretty sure Lise's actress doesn't return here, but we do get someone else playing the role of Lise's arm (which pulls him away from work to do something more interesting).

We also get a fourth window zoom, this time giving us a rare glimpse inside one of those giant spherical passenger liners to find that Franklin's inside looking at some papers. Unfortunately it looks kind of ass compared to Londo's window.

My window-zoom rankings for this episode:

1. Londo's Centauri ship.
2. C&C
3. Franklin's liner.
4. The White Star.

Sheridan continues talking to his son, saying about how he'll lose friends and gain new ones, while we get shots of Lochley, Zack, Lennier, Ta'Lon, Vir, G'Kar and Londo. Those friends will change and they will too, as life is change. Sometimes those friends will leave you to suffocate in a room filling up with coolant, or plant a secret mind-control parasite in a gift for your child... okay he doesn't mention that part.

Delenn arrives to finish his monologue for him, saying "Never start a fight, but always finish it". Now he'll have to rerecord it all later! It really shows how close they've become though, that she knows the first piece of advice his dad told him. Then they have a really nice last scene together... which goes right to the dramatic end credits music! It's a bit jarring.


CONCLUSION

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Objects at Rest is yet another epilogue episode that's mostly about saying goodbye to characters. In fact it's a little bit weird to me just how sentimental it is, considering that there's still one more episode to go! It pulls the same trick as Rising Star did last season, as it wraps the series up while there's still one episode left. They could've ended Babylon 5 right here and I'm sure everyone would've been happy with that, it's a lot more closure than most series got at the time, but nope it's still going!

I have to wonder if this ending was as much for the writer and the cast as it was for the audience, because the real ending, Sleeping in Light, had already been filmed the year earlier. It seems like it's giving everyone involved in making it a bit of closure and a chance to say goodbye during their final episode of filming. It also feels like the series is testing how many emotional goodbyes it can have in a row before viewers finally lose patience... but it hasn't quite hit the limit yet, at least not for me.

It's funny how an episode called Objects at Rest takes place on a moving spaceship for the middle acts, but there are lot of people settling into their new roles here. The episode starts off with the meeting of the new Centauri and Narn ambassadors, Vir and Ta'Lon, but there's no drama there. Unlike their predecessors they're not particularly angry or hedonistic or dramatic, they're just fairly quiet, honourable people who'll presumably do the best they can to keep the peace between their worlds going. This won't be an entirely straightforward task while the Drakh are running the Centauri Republic, but I think they'll do alright. Dr Hobbs and Tessa Halloran are also on the 'good but a bit boring' side; people more suited to getting the job done than keeping a TV series running for 5 years. They're all very likeable, but jms isn't building hype for a spin-off here.

And then there's the 'good but a bit boring' Lennier, who suddenly finds himself given the option to let Sheridan die, and takes it. That's a bit of a heel turn! Especially as Lennier started the series as a wide-eyed innocent who'd lived his whole life isolated in a temple and was just now seeing the outside world for the first time.

He was the kindest, most naïve character, who was happy to build a symbol of sexual prowess and rebellion for Garibaldi or go to strip club with Londo. In fact he was very similar to Vir, who was also a bit naïve and childlike, and if he'd stayed on course he probably would've become an ambassador himself, maybe even a member of his government like we know Vir will be. Unfortunately he was also very similar to Marcus Cole, who had also joined the Rangers for the wrong reasons and met a tragic ending due to unrequited love. Lennier and Marcus were both 'nice guys' who both did whatever they could to make the target of their love happy, while never revealing their feelings. I guess the crucial difference between the two was that Marcus actually had a chance of winning over his love interest, and was likely laid back enough to handle rejection if it'd came and just move on. He was saving himself for the right woman and ended up dying to save Ivanova, but he could've loved someone else.

Lennier, on the other hand, just couldn't let Delenn go. Even his attempt to get away from her just happened to turn him into a soldier like her husband, working in the army that she runs! Ghost Morden straight up told him 'You haven't accepted that Delenn will never love you' and that he'd betray the Rangers, but he decided to double down on trying to impress her. Possibly without even being consciously aware of what he was doing.

The episode ends with him determined to redeem himself in her eyes, still utterly devoted to her and unable to live for himself. It'll take more than detox to fix his addiction. He's driven by his emotions more than anyone else in the series and he can't help it. There was nothing rational about letting Sheridan die, he knew that Delenn would never love him, but he's obsessed with her. To me this turn came out of nowhere on my first watch, but after rewatching the series it was almost depressively inevitable that it ended like this. Lines like "If you do the right thing for the wrong reasons, the work becomes corrupted, impure, and ultimately self-destructive," and "A darkness carried in the heart can not be cured by moving the body," feel almost like foreshadowing.

Then there's the other betrayal in the episode, which is hard to talk about really as Londo didn't have any say in the matter and we'll never see any of the consequences play out. It would've taken until the end of season 21 to get resolved anyway! We already know it has a happy ending so it seems like a pretty bizarre choice to write it into the episode really. Unless jms had ideas about making a movie set 16 years later.

I'm not sure Objects at Rest works as a story, but then it's not really trying to tell a story. It's part three of the epilogue; all emotion and sentiment and barely any plot. It also has a lot of recorded messages, speeches, and people giving their advice with stirring music if you're into that. Personally I liked it about as much as I did all the other epilogue episodes, even though it's seeming a bit like overkill at this point. What season 5 lacks in good stories, it makes up for with goodbyes.

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NEXT TIME

Babylon 5 will finally conclude with Sleeping in Light... but first I'll be watching the B5 movie The River of Souls! So you've got that to, uh, look forward to.

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