Babylon 5 4-02: Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?

Episode:

68

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

Kevin James Dobson

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Air Date:

11-Nov-1996

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures it's the second episode of Babylon 5's fourth season: Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?

WHtMG? is the second episode title so far to feature a character's name in it, after season three's Sic Transit Vir, and... hang on, why has the title text switched to lower case? None of the other episodes have had lower case titles so far. I wish I could check to see if it looked like this when it aired to find out if this feature's exclusive to the widescreen release.

It's the first of two episodes by Australian director Kevin James Dobson, who started directing in the 70s and worked on a ton of series I've never even heard of. Probably because they're mostly Australian. There doesn't seem to be a lot of science fiction on his resume though from what I can tell. Writer J. Michael Straczynski had done a bit of sci-fi by this point though; the previous episode was the 50th script he'd written for the series and by this point he'd written 30 stories in a row. He then went and did another 30 after this (including two movies) before Neil Gaiman turned up to give him the week off.

You should be aware that all my recaps and reviews are generally first-time viewer friendly, meaning there'll be SPOILERS for this episode and the ones leading up to it, but nothing for stories that come afterwards. I won't be ruining Babylon 5 for anyone if I can help it.

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This is another episode that begins with someone making a log and this time it's Doctor Franklin, making his first appearance in season four. He's in uniform as well, instead of his Medlab outfit. His journal entries aren't quite as poetic as G'Kar's but he has given me some numbers to work with.

The date is January 8th 2261 and it's been 9 days since Sheridan and Garibaldi both went missing. So that means the episode Z'ha'dum takes place on December 30th 2260, and Franklin got a knife in the gut for Christmas. Though in the original US airing he said it was 14 days since Sheridan died, as someone screwed up and used the date he departed the station instead, which means I don't even know when anything took place anymore!

Plus it turns out that Ivanova and Delenn failed to keep the League of Non-Aligned Worlds together and they've gone back to their homeworlds. 

Franklin continues by saying that there's still a pause in he war but rumour has it that the Shadows are about to strike again and this time they're going to end it... which makes me wonder how anyone can take a rumour like that seriously. I mean how would this information ever leak out? Did Morden tell Vir or something?

Oh, I should mention that Lennier also drops by to let Franklin know that there's something wrong with Delenn. Man I hope she hasn't been messing around with that chrysalis device again.

Then there's a weird dream interlude of Sheridan being held in the air by wall of energy, which keeps asking him "Who are you?" and "What do you want?"

I'm not really keen on these two questions becoming so much of a thing in the series, but hey at least it gives me another chance to point out that 'What do you want?' is the Shadows' question, asked by Morden in Signs and Portents, and 'Who are you?' is the Vorlons' question, asked by Sebastian in Comes the Inquisitor. And at least they haven't put them in the opening titles, so there's that.

Plus to be fair, other sci-fi shows have had their own questions, so it's not exclusively a Babylon 5 thing. For instance Star Trek: Voyager has "What is the nature of the medical emergency?" and Red Dwarf has "Would anyone like any toast?"

Sheridan wakes up and finds he's lying by his campfire in the caves on Z'ha'dum, with that weird guy he met last episode sitting nearby.

The man claims that there's no way off Z'ha'dum and that he should give up, but Sheridan tells him that the first obligation of a prisoner is to escape. His new friend questions if all prisons are bad, he could be a prisoner of love for instance, or joy. Personally I would've argued that this cave doesn't qualify as either love or joy and escaping from it would dramatically increase my chances of finding either, but Sheridan keeps quiet. He must have realised that talking to the guy would only encourage more words.

The man reveals that his name is Lorien and then tries to convince Sheridan that knowing this hasn't helped him at all. It's a big help to me though, as now I don't have to start every paragraph with "The man" and I can write things like "Lorien has creepy long fingers like a face hugger".

Lorien does at least give Sheridan one piece of information he can use: he's dead.

Sheridan doesn't believe it, but Lorien points out that he's been here nine days without food or drink. Also he hasn't got a pulse, that's kind of a giveaway. So Kosh was absolutely right when he told him that if he went to Z'ha'dum he would die. But Kosh didn't mention that death apparently just means you can skip meals, as Sheridan seems pretty active right now.

Well that was a bit of a quiet teaser but now I have to keep watching to find out what happened to Delenn and Sheridan!

ACT ONE

Their conversation continues into act one, with Lorien telling Sheridan that there's only two possibilities: either he hit the bottom after leaping from the balcony a couple of episodes ago or he didn't... yet.

Lorien explains that he's between seconds, between tick and tock, and Sheridan finally has enough of him and slams him against a wall. The guy seems to have a lot of knowledge about the English language and the sound that human clocks make but he's terrible at getting a point across.

Then Sheridan gets another flash of his dream of the energy being holding him up with energy tentacles. I feel like he's probably starting to wonder which is the dream and which is reality.

The episode's lost interest though and has instead brought us to... I have no idea where this is! It's a new planet we've never seen before, with one of B5's trademark nebulas in the background and giant lightning storms all across the night side.

It cuts to a figure walking into a space bar out of the storm, who turns out to be G'Kar!

We've seen characters visit a temples and government buildings on their homeworld, and we've seen Marcus hanging out in a bar on the station, but G'Kar strolling into a bar on some unnamed alien world is a brand new combination. B5 just doesn't stray into the galaxy outside like this, not so far anyway. It doesn't make a habit of visiting two separate alien worlds before cutting back to the station either, so already season four has a bit of a different feel to it.

G'Kar's two days into his search for Garibaldi and he's doing pretty well so far. He's gotten hold of a piece of his Starfury and tracked it back to the guy who sold it as salvage. When the guy tries to slip away, G'Kar gets shouty and makes the point that a Starfury drifting is space is way too small for someone to stumble across by accident.

Unfortunately the bar owner turns out to be one of those campy Down Below thugs that Marcus kept running into in season three and his performance while he's threatening G'Kar threatens to ruin the whole scene.

Speaking of Marcus, he comes in out of nowhere and beats the crap out of him and the other thugs with his metal stick!

The bar owner sets off an alarm so G'Kar and Marcus make a run for it and escape. But there just happens to be a Centauri guard there for the owner to make a deal with. The guard is just an extra though without any lines, so all he can do is grin until the scene ends.

I don't know if it's the writing, the directing, the acting, or some combination of the three, but this whole scene has become so cringy that I feel like I'm right back in season one. This is horrible, I want to go back to season four!

Huh, is this Delenn's quarters? It's rare to see her room from this angle.

It turns out that she hasn't had anything to eat or drink in almost seven days, which isn't actually weird for a Minbari, it's what they do when they grieve. But it's a bad idea for a half-human hybrid like herself.

She explains that she's punishing herself because it's her fault that Sheridan went to Z'ha'dum. She's wracked with guilt and been kicking herself over not telling him the whole truth. In fact it's worse than that, she intends to die so that she can be with him. Wow, this story has gotten kind of dark.

ACT TWO

Back on the mysterious unnamed storm planet, bad people are still searching the streets, and G'Kar and Marcus are in hiding out in a place so scruffy that even the light bulbs have rags on them. This means they actually get to share a scene together! I don't think it's ever happened before and that's a shame because it's a combination that works.

G'Kar reveals that he's out here doing this because Garibaldi is his friend. It seems like a bit of a stretch, but Andreas Katsulas really sells it. It's even more of a stretch for Marcus to then say he's here because he considers G'Kar a friend, because I only remember them having one conversation before now and G'Kar was drunk at the time.

Does this guy have painted on stubble? It looks terrible.

Wait a second, that Centauri guard just said something! He's not an extra after all, they just didn't give him any lines in that other scene.

They're going through their book of rogue Narns so the bar owner can identify the one he saw. And yes he's sure he was a Narn, he didn't suddenly become stupid overnight! Okay right now I'm thinking it's 40% the writing 40% his performance and 20% the direction that's making me hate this guy, but I might refine those numbers later if I ever have to see him again.

Here's a close up of their Narn folder for you, with G'Kar's file held up. You might ask why they're still using paper for this in 2261, but then you'd also have to ask why they're dressed for the Napoleonic War.

Meanwhile Marcus has found the salvage dealer and threatens him with a glass of water to get the information they need. Then it cuts back to the station, as Franklin calls Delenn over to Sheridan's quarters so they can look through his stuff.

It hasn't been long since Delenn was handed a box of Jeffrey Sinclair's possessions and now she's got a box of Sheridan's belongings to deal with. Some of it they'll keep, some of it they'll send back to his family (or try to anyway, seeing as Earth isn't really a friend these days).

Also it turns out that Ivanova gave Franklin the password to Sheridan's log and official files (which I guess he wanted her to know). Franklin looked through them and found a data crystal that might be of interest to Delenn.

It's a personal log from May 14th 2260, recorded just after they declared independence from Earth.

He's got two pieces of wisdom from his father he wants to relay. The first is that to deal with pain you've got to turn it around and make it into something positive. Giving up doesn't work, fighting it doesn't work. Starving yourself for 7 days doesn't work.

The second piece of advice is that if you're falling off a cliff you might as well try to fly, because what have you got to lose by trying? A piece of advice that's strangely applicable to his current predicament... or at least it helps explain how he got into it. There was no reason for him to think he could survive jumping into that chasm but he certainly wouldn't have survived standing where he was. Anyway, he manages to make this point even more relevant by changing the subject to Delenn. He may have fallen off a significantly high cliff by opposing Earth Alliance, but she makes him believe he can fly.

This is almost like a remake of the scene where Sheridan got the video from his missing wife exactly two seasons ago (in Revelations), but I'm considering that to be a point in its favour.

Cut to G'Kar brushing his teeth with his fingers... while wearing gloves. The guy never takes those gloves off. He has taken his coat off though at least, as it's lying in the background.

You know what these scenes are missing? An actual establishing shot. We've gotten a couple of looks at the planet from space but that's a bit high up to get an impression of where exactly this building is.

While G'Kar's distracting me with his antics, Marcus reveals that the salvage dealer was given the Starfury's location by someone from Interplanetary Expeditions (that same folks who sent the Icarus to Z'ha'dum, basically the Weyland-Yutani of B5). G'Kar's happy that Marcus has found a lead, because it means he can send him back to Babylon 5 to use their resources to follow up on it.

Marcus isn't keen on leaving G'Kar by himself while the Centauri are looking for him, but G'Kar is adamant that he should be allowed to carry on his side of the investigation alone. I don't know why, pride maybe?

So Marcus flies off in his shuttle and suddenly a squad of Centauri guards surround G'Kar's shack, like they know exactly where he is. The direction of this episode hasn't always been great, but this scene of him pulling his gun and watching the shadows moving under the door is fantastic.

Either a breaching charge or the galaxy's most useless flashback goes off and G'Kar whips around to shoot one of them in the chest. He takes a second one down as well, but the third shoots him in the shoulder and he passes out. Do they have stun weapons in the Babylon 5 universe? I forget.

I'm a little surprised that Londo hadn't gotten a call and flown over there to gloat, but I guess he's got other problems right now.

ACT THREE

The third act begins with a whole lot of White Stars pouring out of the jump gate and arriving at Babylon 5.

It seems like the jump gate effects have survived the transition to the new VFX studio intact as this looks the same as ever to me.

Man that's a beautiful shot of the station; it always looks best when it's got a bit of shine to it.

Though is it just me, or does it look a bit stretched here? The planet too. I think this is another 4:3 shot that they forgot to crop for widescreen.

Cut to Delenn in her Ranger One robes addressing a room full of Rangers.

The League of Non-Aligned Worlds has collapsed, but there's still a few races on our side who'd probably prefer to go down fighting, they just need a bit of a push. So the Rangers are going to go down fighting first and with their tragic futile deaths they'll show the others the way!

They'll wait one more week and then they'll ride to Z'ha'dum and then probably get mind-controlled and lured down by that Eye that nearly got them last time. But Delenn makes the case that they've got much better odds of success if they actually do something than if they stay here and do nothing. If they're falling off a mountain they may as well try to fly.

I don't think the episode has really earned this level of desperation to be honest, as last season ended with Sheridan's alliance winning a battle against the Shadows and they haven't really made the case for why there's no hope of bringing the League back together. Though to be fair Sheridan's gone and the alliance has fallen apart, that's kind of what these two episodes have been been about. Plus the Shadows went after B5 directly in the season finale and could've easily wiped them out if they weren't distracted; there's nothing stopping those ships from flying back and finishing the job.

Meanwhile, on Centauri Prime, it turns out that Londo's in this episode! Minister Virini too! Though Virini needs to be more careful about who he bothers in the middle of the night as Londo carries a knife behind his back when he opens doors these days.

Virini has been knocking frantically despite Londo yelling at him that he's coming, because the emperor wants to see him immediately. Londo understands the urgency... but he shuts the door on him so he can get dressed first, to Virini's obvious concern. Now I know why the scenes in the alien bar were so bad, it was these two draining all the acting from the rest of the episode so they could power themselves up.

Not just them, Emperor Cartagia as well.

I mean look at him ringing the universe's smallest bell to summon the gift he's gotten for Londo! I love this guy, he's always having the most fun, even though Londo made him wait.

Cartagia can't do anything about that though as Londo had a smart-ass excuse about having to be properly attired in his presence and having his spirit within his heart, and he respects that. Londo has been isolated on Babylon 5 for most of the show so we haven't gotten to see him be so restrained and clever like this before. He's swimming around the mouth of a shark right now but he's agile enough to pull it off.

Anyway the emperor's got Londo a gift...

... it's G'kar in chains! Well chain sound effects anyway. Man they are just stacking Londo's plot with good actors.

Londo is suitably shocked and horrified to see G'Kar here in a lunatic's clutches, but then he's in a lunatic's clutches as well so he can only appear grateful for it.

Cartagia asks G'Kar if he has anything to say, and it turns out that he does. He faces the mad emperor who led the Centauri Republic in the war that ruined his homeworld, he looks him in the eye, and he asks him "Do you, by any chance, happen to know where Mr. Garibaldi might be?"

Cartagia's reaction is perfect. Don't look too confused mate, it's the title of the episode.

Speaking of Mr. Garibaldi...

... look who's finally shown up in season four! He's got a week's worth of stubble on his face but somehow his hair seems even shorter.

A voice tells him to calm down before he hurts himself, but that just gets him even madder and he starts flipping out against his unseen captors, ripping the arm rest off his chair and smashing the lights with it. I love the editing in this scene as it quickly cuts between different angles and takes to show his current state of mind.

The voice wants to know what he remembers after leaving Babylon 5, he says he doesn't remember, and he seems kind of furious about it. People have criticised Jerry Doyle's acting, but man he is entirely convincing as a pissed off man in a tiny cell. The voice has had enough though and pumps in sleeping gas to knock him out. He falls right on all the broken glass, it's not a great time to be Garibaldi.

Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan enters the room and... oh look, a Psi Cops badge.

Bloody typical. Interplanetary Expeditions, the Psi Corps and the Shadows, all working together. Though if he's a telepath it does raise the question of why they were questioning him instead of just reading his mind.

ACT FOUR

Act four begins with a different figure entering a different cell. I guess they made the Psi Corps cell distinctively circular so we could tell at a glance they were different rooms. This doesn't quite look like the same cell that Sheridan and Delenn were held in during War Without End either, but it's close enough. It's probably on the other end of the same hallway.

One thing I love about his run of episodes is how different it looks to regular Babylon 5. All these new sets, all these interesting angles. So little of this episode takes place on the station, just 8 minutes in the last three acts compared to 19 minutes spent elsewhere. Plus we're usually lucky if we get to see one planet, but so far we've been on four of them!

G'Kar's not entirely happy to see Londo, I mean he did once try to sacrifice his own life to kill him, but then he's not entirely happy in general. He's been beaten and chained up in the lair of his enemy; this is really hindering his search for Garibaldi.

However, Londo has brought him a small degree of sympathy and a large dose of the truth. He tells him that he will be tortured and it won't be over quickly, as they're good at prolonging the suffering of their prisoners here for days, weeks and even months. When they're bored of that, that's when the live vivisection begins, and the removal of internal organs.

Okay, the Centauri are absolute monsters. This is really what's been going on in their Royal Palace, even under the last emperor?

After Londo's graphic description of G'Kar's upcoming dissection, he presents him with an alternative: he will save his life if he helps him stop Cartagia when the time is right.

G'Kar not in a great position to bargain here, but then neither is Londo, so he tells him there'll be a price for his cooperation in his plan. He wants Londo to promise to free his homeworld and leave them in peace. Londo gives his word and G'Kar accepts that as being enough. After everything he still has that much respect for him.

See, this is what Sheridan's dad was talking about! Being put in the absolute worst situation and twisting it around to get the absolute best result. Plus we actually got to see them making a deal together on screen, something we missed out on last time they worked together in And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place. Londo's got his second ally! G'Kar and Londo are teaming up again!

Oh no it's this guy again! Always talking about tick and tock.

Sheridan's a bit distraught as his attempt to leave the cave has brought him around in a big circle. Lorien tells him that the only way out is to surrender to tock, but surrender isn't in Sheridan's vocabulary. He can't die, people are counting on him, there's a war going on!

Lorien admits he's concerned about the war as well... seeing as its his children who are fighting. Metaphorically speaking. Sheridan figures out that he must be one of the First Ones, like the Vorlons and the Shadows, but Lorien reveals that he's much older than that. He is the First One. He's the Kosh to the Vorlons. The Ultra Kosh.

So... he's the first person/energy being ever born? Or the last survivor of his race? This is raising many questions!

ACT FIVE

Lorien explains that he's still here because he's been waiting for someone to talk to (so the man in between tick and tock was searching for Sheridan, huh... I guess that could finally explain that cryptic line from Sheridan's Kosh vision back in All Alone in the Night). It seems to me that if Lorien wanted to speak to someone he could just go somewhere other than a cave two miles below the surface of Z'ha'dum, but then I'm not as wise as the oldest man alive.

The wise old alien also reveals that the Shadows keep coming back to Z'ha'dum because he lives here, and that Kosh knows that he's here as well, that's why the voice in Sheridan's head told him to jump. Oh, also there's a piece of Kosh in him, that's why he's hearing voices.

Both Kosh and Sheridan have to agree to let go and die before Lorien can resurrect them. Of course Lorien doesn't bother mentioning the resurrection part of the plan, not for a long while. He does at least tell him that Sheridan's friends need a man who knows who he is, why he is and what he wants. Sheridan needs to find a reason to live and he realises that he wants to live for Delenn.

Lorien finally convinces the two of them to stop trying to fly and give in, and the episode cuts to Sheridan lying motionless on the cave floor, the alien looming over him menacingly.

Weird how he's still missing his stat bar if he dropped it in a dream. I thought the energy being holding him was meant to be reality and this was all in his head, but I guess I don't actually know what's going on here. Bloody all-knowing cryptic aliens, man.


CONCLUSION

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They should've called this episode Whatever Happened to Susan Ivanova? as this is the first episode in four seasons that she's been absent, breaking her perfect attendance record of 67 episodes in a row. Claudia Christian did film a scene for it, but it was removed for time and put in the next episode instead. Either way she's still in the lead, appearing in more episodes than any other actor.

Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi? is pretty much split into three stories, all of them picking up directly from events in the previous episode and most of them are about someone trapped in limbo. Delenn escapes by accepting Sheridan's death and finding a reason to live, Sheridan also accepts his death and finds a reason to live, and G'Kar finds that his search for Garibaldi has dropped him right into Londo's plot instead.

Man, G'Kar's story moves like a rocket in this episode. He starts off following up one of his first leads, then manages to team up with Marcus, send Marcus away, and gets captured in just twenty minutes. That was barely enough time for him to brush his teeth! It's a bit unexpected that his search would only last half an episode, but not a huge surprise that leaving his sanctuary would be a huge mistake. Though being held by Cartagia has given him and Londo an unforeseen opportunity to save both their worlds, so 'mistake' probably isn't the right word. 'Torture' is a pretty applicable word though, both for what he's about to go through and for what I went through sitting through the scenes with the bar owner. G'Kar's plot has Marcus, Londo and Cartagia in it so it's clearly the best storyline here, but something about those scenes really dragged the episode down for me.

I also wasn't keen on the man with the face hugger fingers droning on and on about tick and tock in a cave. It's not that I disliked Lorien, I thought the actor played him well, it's just that he was trying to have a philosophical discussion with a person whose mind was clearly elsewhere but wouldn't give him a clear answer of where his mind actually was. Okay he's between tick and tock, between moments, but what does that mean? I know Anna Sheridan said that time doesn't work the same way on Z'ha'dum, but time is clearly moving outside of their shared dream and it's also moving inside as they're having a conversation.

There's two other problems I had with Sheridan's cave adventure. First, it's all about Sheridan coming to terms with his situation so that he can be reborn, but I don't feel like he really reached any epiphanies or made any breakthroughs or conquered any demons, he just put his faith in a complete stranger who's been annoyingly reluctant to give him straight answers. Lorien didn't even tell him that resurrection was part of the deal until well into making his case that he should give in and die!

My second problem is that a piece of Kosh was there as well, the annoying all-knowing cryptic alien who likes to get into people's dreams, and they didn't have him manifested as another person in the dream cave! This was their one chance to have Kosh and Sheridan both stuck in the same situation as equals, forced to deal with someone far more all-knowing than either of them! I wanted the Vorlon being forced to talk straight, make sense, and accept the fact that he's just a fragment of who he was. That he and Sheridan are both basically dead. It could've been more interesting than one-sided conversations about tick and tock.

Actually I've just thought of a third problem: the reveal of Sheridan being alive and dropping his stat bar in the last episode was actually bullshit as it only happened in his imagination... possibly. Showrunner jms also has a problem with the plot, which is that people believe he ripped it off Lord of the Rings. He claims that the trope is far older than that and he was drawing from those older sources, like Orpheus descending into the underworld, and I absolutely believe him. But he called the planet Sheridan fell at 'Z'ha'dum' and the guy he met there 'Lorien', and G'Kar was saved by a 'Ranger' in a pub, so he can't really deny there's a bit of Lord of the Rings inspiration there as well. Anyway, he's Sheridan the White now; reborn just like Delenn, Franklin and G'Kar, and the best thing about this plot is that it was resolved in just one episode!

There was also a third plot about Delenn looking at Sheridan's diary and finding a reason to live: so that she can carry out a suicide mission and get the other Rangers killed as well. I'm sure it's supposed to come across as heroic, but it feels like a bit of a misstep to have Delenn go from 'we should all go attack Z'ha'dum' in the first episode, learn her lesson at the end, learn another lesson during this episode, and then go 'we should all go attack Z'ha'dum' again! It's nice to see her commanding her Rangers though. We got very, very little... well, basically none of that last season.

It doesn't help that the episode failed to convince me that the situation with the Shadows was that urgent and dire. The only hint we get of the impending doom is Franklin talking about rumours at the start and it's hard to take that seriously. They're ultra-secretive sneaky First Ones that can't even talk, where are the rumours coming from?

I'm only nitpicking though really. I thought the episode was a step down from the last few, but it wasn't bad by any means, and I love the increased serialisation and scope. Babylon 5 station was more or less all we ever saw in seasons 1 and 2, in season 3 they started getting out on the White Star, but here in season 4 B5 is just another location. The episode jumps between B5, Z'ha'dum, a nameless alien world, Garibaldi's cell and Centauri Prime in the same way that episodes used to jump between Londo's quarters and C&C. It makes the series feel much bigger. Plus everyone's got a mission now! Plans are being put in place, alliances are being forged, we're coming out of a pause and everything's about to kick off again.

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COMING SOON

Sci-Fi Adventures will be back next week with Babylon 5 season 4, episode 3: The Summoning. I feel like those numbers I just wrote were counting down to something but then suddenly stopped at the last moment.

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