Babylon 5 4-11: Lines of Communication

Episode:

77

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

John C. Flinn III

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Air Date:

28-Apr-1997

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, another episode of Babylon 5.

Lines of Communication was written by showrunner J. Michael Straczynski and directed by director of photography John C. Flinn III, a pair of people who clearly must have had more hours in their days than the rest of us get. This was the last episode Flinn directed this season but he did a couple more for season 5. He didn't direct any of the spin-off series Crusade afterwards though weirdly, or anything else for that matter.

I feel compelled to warn you that there will be SPOILERS for this episode below this point, because I'm going to go through the whole thing basically scene by scene. I'll not be spoiling anything past this episode though, so if you're watching through the series for the first time you'll be fine.

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The episode begins with Sheridan back at work after that short break Ivanova forced him to take and he's still tormenting himself with ISN reports on Babylon 5. Now they're making up stories of messages being smuggled out of the station, revealing all the oppression going on there. We know for a fact that none of these messages can be legitimate, because people have been suffering from horrible living conditions in Down Below for four years now and no one ever gets word out.

Sheridan tells Ivanova that ISN's building up support for Earthforce to fly over and have a second go at taking the station (or maybe they're baiting Sheridan to make a move on Earth before he's ready).

He's interrupted by a call from Lost Lamb on Mars, who has a message for Big Bad Wolf. It's Franklin calling B5! It didn't take me too long to see through his cunning codename because I could recognise his undisguised voice. Also he's broadcasting video and you can see his face. I know he's new to being a secret agent, but c'mon Doc.

I blame Number One for giving him a suitcase laptop with a camera in it.

Franklin explains that he at least kept the recipient's real name a mystery and told them not to respond so that no one could ever figure out he was contacting Babylon 5. We can only hope that no one back at Earthdome has a photo of the station's command staff. (To be fair he is using a coded frequency, he's not that dumb.)

He was just telling the station that his meeting with the Resistance leaders is going ahead, because it's apparently critically important for Sheridan to know this. He's not going to mention that at least one of their agents has been implanted with invisible mind-control Keepers though.

Number One tells him that the Resistance won't survive the year at this rate and she's worried that the others are going to do something desperate. Just then Marcus runs in to let them know that their hotel just got bombed by the Mars Resistance and 10 civilians are dead.

Meanwhile Delenn gets some bad news from a Minbari guest star as they stroll down a corridor. There's been attacks along their border, and whoever's doing it is only targeting ships from allies that should've been under their protection. Unfortunately without a Grey Council the Minbari have become more insular and the Warrior Caste doesn't see this as their problem.

Guest Minbari has no idea who's attacking the ships but hopes it's not as bad as the reports make it sound.

But he's only saying so that the next scene can prove him wrong, for the sake of a bit of dramatic irony. We've never seen these ships before but the vessel they're attacking belongs to the Drazi.

ACT ONE

Delenn comes by C&C to tell Sheridan about these mysterious attacks and it turns out he's heard about some other mysterious attacks near pak'ma'ra space. She intends to go out with some White Stars and take care of it personally and he's really not keen on that idea. He always hates it when she wants to do something that could get her killed. But she talks him around, telling him that she's glad he loves her for who she's become, but he shouldn't forget who she was and what she can do.

It seems like her ordeal in Atonement has given her a confidence boost and it's nice to see her take charge (like Ivanova took charge last episode).

Speaking of people taking charge, Number One enters the next scene hands first as she shoves this guy to the ground before we can even tell who's doing the shoving. He's understandably a little pissed off about this, but she actually orders the rest of their people out of the room so she can talk to him alone!

Turns out that he's the one that set off the bomb at the hotel and she's not happy that he's blowing up civilians on her territory. Writer jms has given the poor actress a lot of 'tough guy' lines about being able to cripple him for life and scoop out his brains for cat food, but she does a fine job of delivering them without cracking up laughing.

Phillipe seems sufficiently intimidated... but then replies with the line "Is this how you treat all your former lovers?" People don't always talk like people in the Babylon 5 universe.

Back the station, it's past midnight and Sheridan's still sitting there in C&C tormenting himself with the news. In fact he's started talking back at the television in frustration.

But then the last few lines of her broadcast gives him an idea! We don't know what the idea is, because he doesn't have any lines here besides "Up yours, you lying sack of..." but his facial acting makes it plainly obvious he's realised something.

You know what else is plainly obvious? That Ivanova hates being woken up early, or at any time really. The poor woman has no luck with sleep.

But Sheridan's got an idea to share with her and it can't wait until morning, so she's getting up!

Being dragged out of bed is actually only second on the list of things annoying her right now though, as she can't believe he didn't even notice she was standing there in a robe and underwear, having just climbed out of bed. I feel like the scene was probably written to have her wearing less, as she seems offended that he wasn't blown away by how good she looks in her outfit.

I mean you can't even see her in the actual outfit she's wearing in the episode, it's just a low-cut featureless black void. She's got her arms crossed right now, could you tell?

For this screencap the role of Ivanova was played by Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

It turns out that Sheridan woke her up and made her put her uniform on just so he could show her... the war room! Ivanova is almost as out of it as he is right now, but she points out that she has been here before.

Sheridan reminds Ivanova of how she acted like their news reporter during the last weeks of the Shadow War, giving people information over the BabCom units on the station. Ivanova remembers hating it and I think this another example of jms listening to his actors and using things they've said in real life as dialogue in the show, because Claudia Christian wasn't a huge fan of doing it either.

But guess what, she's going to be doing it again! He wants to use the war room to broadcast the real news, the actual verifiable truth, like the French Resistance did during World War II! That way people will have another source of info other than what ISN are feeding them. Assuming Earth doesn't just block them.

Once he's out the room Ivanova makes a quip about how if he wasn't her boss she'd shoot him dead, but I wish she hadn't. Franklin made a similar quip to Marcus last episode and it's too soon for jms to reuse the same joke. It's not even a very good joke.

ACT TWO

Hey Delenn's commanding White Star 2! Or some other White Star that also has red railing poles! That's Sheridan's favourite White Star, the one he commanded at Coriana 6, so I hope she brings it back intact, and doesn't crash it into any planets and nuke it just to give Sheridan some payback for what he did to their beautiful prototype.

Delenn's fleet of seven ships is still on her way to deal with the mysterious attacks, but seeing as she's not doing anything right now, and the camera's dropped by, she figures she'll ask guest star Minbari for some exposition about what's happening back home on Minbar.

He tells her that the Grey Council gave the three castes equal say and without it things are a bit of a mess. The Warrior Caste are apparently trying to form their own council all of their own, and in some cities they've driven the Religious Caste out into the wastelands. At least, that's what he's heard.

Back on Mars, Franklin and Marcus finally have that meeting of all the Resistance leaders they came here for! I hope no one else is wearing a Keeper like Captain Jack last episode or else the Resistance isn't going to survive the night, never mind the year.

The Resistance isn't 100% keen on Sheridan seeing as he helped put down the food riots after the Earth-Minbari War (damn, I hope those people were rioting against being given food), but Marcus points out that they need allies. Their audience seems receptive so far, but then they mention that Sheridan would like them to avoid overthrowing the entire Earth government. Also bombing civilian targets is rubbish and they can't do that anymore, as it just raises more sympathy to President Clark.

Marcus also mentions the Keeper on Captain Jack as evidence that the forces behind the Shadow War are also responsible for some of the problems on Mars. Which is true, we've seen Morden hanging around in Earthdome. Though I thought Franklin was the one who was supposed to be doing the talking here!

Franklin tells them they need to carry out all the instructions they receive from B5 without question for a few months. And in return, when this is over, Mars will finally be an independent state. Then they won't have to follow anyone's instructions!

Number One's terrorist friend Phillipe is the only actor in the group paid enough to have lines, and he's not all that impressed that Franklin expects them to believe Sheridan's capable of delivering what he's promising. Which leads to this exchange: 

"What if I say I'd spout wings and fly to New York?"
"In your case, I'd say you were crazy, but if Sheridan said it, I'd tell him to stop on the West Side and pick me up some bagels!"

Man, it's a good thing Garibaldi wasn't here to hear this speech, he'd go berserk. He thinks Sheridan's cult of personality has gotten too big as it is. Though even if Franklin's right and Sheridan does possess some undisclosed powers of sublight interplanetary flight, those are going to be some stale bagels by the time he finally gets them to Mars... unless they get cold enough for the vacuum to preserve them.

I think we're done with Phillipe now, so here's some trivia for you: the actor, Paolo Seganti, went on to star in 39 episodes of the TV series Largo Winch. He now owns a restaurant in Los Angeles.

Wow, was Lennier's station always that far back? Delenn's going to have to shout if she wants him to hear her orders.

The fleet has just arrived at the location along the Minbari border where the attacks have been taking place and they're already receiving a distress signal from a pak'ma'ra miliary ship. The pak'ma'ra is speaking pak'ma'ra, as you'd expect, but fortunately the ship can translate it into English for them! Well, Minbari for them, English for us.

Hang on, if the ship has a translator, why did Ivanova need to bring Marcus along to translate for her? Why did she need to learn Minbari herself?

Anyway, the pak'ma'ra ship is in a bad way. The engines have been hit, life support is down, and the bridge is on fire.

I mean seriously, look at all this fire they've got going on right now! They could have a barbecue in here if they weren't carrion eaters.

Delenn's too late to save the pak'ma'ra ship, sadly, but they're just in time to catch the ones who attacked it.

Now it's Delenn's seven White Stars versus these mysterious new aliens.

Lennier suggests not rushing into things without knowing all the information and Delenn replies that she was in the episode Atonement as well, she has a fairly strong understanding of what went wrong during the first contact with the humans and doesn't intend to screw up in exactly the same way this time.

The translator can't speak their unknown alien language because it doesn't know it, but that's fine as it turns out that the aliens know their language! Though they choose to whisper it, which just sounds dumb. They say their name is 'Drakh', though they don't say which way around the 'h' and 'k' go, so I had to look it up.

Unfortunately this is set up for the tired old 'someone asks if it's x or if it's y and they say "yes"' cliché. He claims that Drakh is both his name and the name of his species, so I suppose this is a bit like running into someone called Guy Human.

The thing is, the aliens couldn't speak to them in Minbari like this unless they'd already had contact with their species and knew who they were, and it turns out that guest star Minbari is to blame for that! Our heroes didn't work that out for themselves, he just pulled a gun on them and gave himself away.

It seems a bit over dramatic, but then it is the end of an act. Gotta make sure people stick around through the commercial break.

ACT THREE

Oh, it turns out that this guy's called 'Forell' and he's only threatening her because it's necessary. He'd better hope it is, because Lennier's ready to break out his Minbari-fu the first opportunity he gets.

Forell's not threatening to kill her though, Minbari don't do that to each other! No, he'll just wound her a little is all. All he wants her to do is listen to what the aliens have to say. Which was what she was doing anyway, so I'm not sure why he felt he needed to draw a pistol on her. I feel like this may have seriously damaged their friendship!

Then we're back to Mars again.

For the last two episodes every time we've cut to Mars we've either got an establishing shot of the domed city or a shot of spaceships flying around above. Lots of spaceships.

At first it was distracting because I thought the ship was going to be part of the plot, but at the moment I'm mostly distracted by the way they've used the one in the top left twice now.

Down on the planet, Number One has dropped by to tell Franklin how impressive he was at lying to the others. Sheridan couldn't have told him to ask them to stop bombing civilian targets because he had no idea that it was even happening (and even if Franklin had told him off screen, B5 isn't supposed to reply back). Wow, that completely slipped by me without setting off any alarms, nice writing jms.

Number One appreciates Franklin's lie though, as he did it to help solve one of her problems. She didn't want them bombing anything and now they won't, hopefully.

Once she's out of the room Marcus can't help but point out that she thanked Franklin for what he did, not what they did. Because she's into him. But Franklin's had a character upgrade since his walkabout, he's now beyond empty one-episode love affairs and is going to take a bit of convincing that he's even in a love affair arc right now.

He's more convinced when Number One walks back to offer him dinner and Marcus guard duty, though he's not going to let Marcus have the satisfaction of seeing that. Not that it's going to stop the guy from dancing around with a grin on his face and calling him a cheap bastard for not paying the money he bet.

Meanwhile Forell has led Delenn's fleet right up to the aliens' mothership, which is exactly where she wanted to be actually. Though there's not much she can do to them while there's a gun pointed at her.

A pod launches from the mothership and flies over to dock with White Star 2. Wow, these aliens really do know all about them, because even after all these episodes I still couldn't tell you where the docking airlock is on the White Stars.

Aww, it cut away before we got to see where it docked.

Man, I get how you can fit the bridge in that pod up there, but there can't be enough room for those giant corridors. The neck looks just a little taller than those glowing bridge windows up there, and it bends downwards.

3-16 - War Without End, Part 1

Here's how big those bridge windows are for reference. Now here's the size of the corridors leading from the bridge:

Oh right, this shambles shuffled onboard from the pod and is now on its way to the bridge.

The Minbari in the hallway back away in terror and confusion, and so they should as this is the one alien in Babylon 5 so bad that it had to be censored. They actually spent precious time and money, two things B5 had in very short supply, to add that shimmering effect in post-production because it looked too bad for television. And this is the series that had N'Grath the praying mantis alien on screen in multiple episodes!

By the way, it does a weird power drain thing as he walks past lights, which I guess is related to the constant electrical hum sound he makes.

What doesn't help is that the actor is going full alien with his body movements. This is like the Zarg in Grey 17 is Missing all over again, except much worse. The funny thing is, the two episodes share the same director, John Flinn. Seems that dudes in monster suits are his greatest weakness.

He talks in a whispery voice and says he is an emissary for the Drakh. Honestly, when it comes to emissaries I think Deep Space Nine wins this round.

Forell explains that things back on Minbari are regressing to a pre-Valen state, becoming more and more divided. His own family were driven out of their homes by the Warrior Caste and died from exposure on their way to the next city. Minbari aren't killing Minbari directly, but their policies are doing the job for them and people aren't doing anything to help because they just don't believe things are getting so bad.

If that wasn't painfully relevant to current events on its own, it turns out that Forell's desperation has led him to look to the worst possible people to solve the crisis!

Lennier realises that the Drakh also need help from the Minbari because they've just lost their home and Delenn has a good idea what that home was called, but Forell is blissfully unaware that our heroes are two steps ahead of him and continues to make his pitch.

Forell, dude, you can't just make a deal with terrorists and promise to get them their own homeworld in exchange for them helping you out with your current political crisis!

Delenn steps up to the Drakh and tells him that they'll all meet back here in a week, which is a huge lie, but I guess it helps Forell save face so it's fine? However Forell really manages to put his foot in it by mentioning Delenn's name in front of the emissary, and everyone realises the consequences of what he's just done (except for Forell).

Once the emissary's out of the door Delenn gives the order for the other ships to stand by, leaving poor Forell utterly confused. So she explains it to him: the Drakh were the dark allies of the Shadows, their lost home was Z'ha'dum, and they're real pissed at her in particular for her role in making the Shadows go away. Lots of energy beams will be coming their way very soon. A brief laser show immediately followed by their deaths.

There's a good look at a Drakh ship for you, with its tiger stripe paint job. Organic textures like this are good if you've got limited PC memory and awkward shapes, as you can just slap it on and it doesn't matter where it goes. Even better if the texture is procedurally generated and doesn't require an image. (It doesn't look all that great though.)

The Drakh ships turn towards Delenn's fleet and... it's the end of act three.

ACT FOUR

Delenn can't take her ships straight into hyperspace because the Drakh will detect the energy spike and destroy them immediately, and they can't outmanoeuvre the Drakh ships when they're not moving. Though I suppose everything in space is moving relative to something else...

Anyway, Delenn's got a plan which involves skills that Lennier just hasn't trained for. Fortunately he has been trained how to program those skills into the ship's computer, so they'll see how that works out for them.

They start by pulling away slowly, as if they were leaving. Which they are. Delenn waits until the Drakh ships are locking on and then links control of her fleet to White Star 2's computer and has them all flip around and fly alongside the giant Drakh mothership.

Her theory is that the Drakh will be less likely to open fire on their White Stars while there's a risk of hitting their own ship, and it'll give them time to accelerate. This must be a bloody long mothership! I mean each of those White Stars is either 118, 262 or 476 meters (depending on who you ask).

They use the ship as cover so they can reach maximum thrust, allowing them to open up jump points and escape with only minimal damage!

Well, except for poor White Star 16. Now Delenn has only six White Stars. These guys must have pretty good guns to punch through the ship's advanced armour so quickly.

White Star 2 took some damage too, and Forell is conked on the head by a falling ceiling girder and dies.

The poor guy, his only crime was to pull a gun on his friend and leader, and force her to bring their fleet into the clutches of their enemy, but TV series karma is a bitch. He really was an idiot though, trying to make an alliance with a completely unknown race that just happened to be getting into lots of fights along their border and continually blowing up transport ships in 'self defence'. Was he just not paying attention during the Shadow War? The Shadows' whole MO was to start conflicts and get people to ally with them for protection!

So now Delenn's in a damaged ship with a dead friend at her feet after an unprovoked attack during first contact. Suddenly the episode Atonement seems a lot more relevant.

Delenn said that she has learned the lessons of the Earth-Minbari War, and she has, but this is one of those rare situations where history has repeated itself and it turns out that her original decision, the one made in anger that caused so much pain, death and horror, is actually the correct one this time. They're going back to wipe those creepy bastards out!

Delenn's surviving White Stars come tearing out of jump points and catch the Drakh fleet unawares. They clearly weren't expecting her to return and this time they're the ones who aren't moving.

There's lots of miscellaneous VFX shots of spaceships blowing up with no dialogue as the White Stars get to work and show what they can do when they're not at a tactical disadvantage. Turns out that six of them can utterly wreck a Drakh fleet, even when they start off damaged! And Delenn does it all without saying a word, because I guess they felt the scene would be more dramatic without dialogue?

The mothership goes to make a run for it, but it has to use the local jumpgate so Delenn breaks her silence to insist that Lenner get them there faster. She seems adamant that they overtake it so they can flip around and shoot the vessel's bow. I guess she must have her reasons.

Once they're in position and Lennier has the ship pointed the right way, Delenn orders him to "End this". So he pushes the 'fire all weapons button' with absolute determination and a little bit of anger.

Oh damn, did they just turn their guns to 'on'? White Star 2 sliced that thing apart single-handedly! Granted it'd already taken a few hits during the battle, but that last shot looked nasty.

And that's it, all the Drakh are dead. Another successful first contact for Delenn.

She's more concerned about Minbar though. Her decision to break the Grey Council saved Babylon 5 and was necessary to end the war, but now her people are dying because of it.

ACT FIVE

Delenn returns to Babylon 5 to discover that Sheridan's transformed the war room into Ivanova's newsroom. He's even got a giant image of the station printed up to go on the map.

Weirdly there's a panning shot at the start of the scene to show her point of view as she takes it all in, and then there's a second near-identical panning shot right afterwards as she walks across to Sheridan. I couldn't watch two panning shots without stitching one of them together for you.

She points out that the Minbari have buildings that have stayed the same for hundreds of years, but she leaves a human alone for 3 days and he's redecorated!

Sheridan tells her that there were reports of Drakh attacking other ships while she was wiping out their fleet, so there must be a lot more of them out there. He calls them 'wild cards' which means sense as 'Drakh' said backwards is 'card'. Then he talks about something a family member once told him, his grandfather this time, not his dad, which is that the duration is longer than the war.

Unfortunately he's going to be spending some of the duration without her, as she has to go back home to stop her planet sliding into civil war. But she explains to him that time apart might work out for them... by going on a tangent about how humanity's strength is its ability to form diverse communities. Hey that's what she told ISN back in And Now for a Word! Anyway he needs to find a way to put things back together, build a community, and to do that effectively he needs to be dangerous. He needs to be the person who came back changed after Z'ha'dum, not the one who pretends that nothing's different, and he'll be more comfortable doing that without her around. (Plus he'll be less distracted without having to take part in all her rituals.)

But until then they can have dinner.

Oh crap, it's an establishing shot of Mars without any spaceships for once! But hang on, the episode should've ended already. The credits should've came up right after the Sheridan and Delenn scene.

In the 90s, episodes of a TV show were generally all the same length so that they'd fit into a timeslot, but this one's running into overtime now. Seems that they got given some extra time from their network, PTEN, as Babylon 5 was their last TV series standing and they didn't have any need to spend that time advertising their other shows anymore. Every episode beyond this point, even after the switch to TNT, is about 30 seconds longer than in earlier seasons. That's 1.2% extra free!

Though those 30 seconds are spent watching Marcus sitting on guard duty, alone, playing with his staff. Franklin's not around, but judging by what Number One's yelling he's made considerable progress in his romance arc.

This is Franklin's revenge for all the torture Marcus put him through during those two weeks they spent getting to Mars! Poor Marcus though.


CONCLUSION

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Lines of Communication is another chapter of season four that picks up established threads and pushes arcs forwards a little bit, and this time it's focusing on the Mars Resistance, the servants of the Shadows and Sheridan being furious about that ISN report.

It's taken a few episodes, but it seems like Sheridan's finally turned a corner with his obsession with that ISN report, as he's setting up his own Babylon 5 news service to counter it. The episode title could definitely refer to this plot, as the last episode made a point of mentioning how Clark's communication blackout means that information just isn't getting through to Mars right now. His news broadcasts should open up a new line of communication to them and the other colonies being quarantined.

Franklin also manages to communicate Sheridan's message to the Mars Resistance, and his message seems to be: swear absolute obedience to me and I will give you everything you've ever wanted. I'm not saying Garibaldi's right, but Sheridan does seem to be using his larger than life image to get his way, even with people who don't know he came back from the dead and ended the Shadow War forever. Though to be fair that was more Franklin's fault this time, as he built Sheridan up to be a interstellar bagel-retrieving angelic figure. Not that I have any problems with Trenchcoat Franklin in this story, as he's turning out to be the best Franklin yet, able to give inspiring speeches and win over the heart of the tough resistance leader. It was a bit weird that the Mars Resistance was won over so quickly, but they did say they were desperate, and Babylon 5 does have a good track record when it comes to successfully breaking away from Earth.

Delenn's plot is all about her opening up communication with a new alien race, who turn out to be kind of bad, while also finding that she's been left out of the loop on crucial developments happening back home. Delenn's plot actually picks up on a couple of elements from Grey 17 is Missing, as we find out that the tensions between the Religious and Warrior Castes have gotten much worse, and we also discover that John Flinn hasn't gotten any better at directing aliens in monster suits. They really screwed up with the Drakh in this episode, in every way, and slapping a blur effect on in post-production didn't help. It's bad enough to drag the whole episode down a notch.

The plot also gives us a rare glimpse at Delenn in command of a ship. Fortunately it turns out that Sheridan's not the only one who gets more dangerous when the two of them are separated, as Delenn's fleet first survives, and then annihilates the Drakh raiders. This is a good sign, seeing as she and Lennier are off on their own plot now, with a mission to avert the Minbari Civil War. The episode doesn't draw a connection between her conversation about humans being able to form communities between diverse groups, and her own problem of having to rebuild a community from the diverse groups on Minbar, but it all fits. Jeffrey Sinclair, a human, was the one who built the Grey Council and made peace between the clans in the first place. The Minbari then left it unchanged for a thousand years, like they do, until a half-human broke it.

Overall I think this is likely my least favourite episode of the season so far, but it's been a strong season so that's not saying much. That Drakh really jammed a stick between the episode's spokes, but the story had me invested enough that I managed to stay onboard despite it.

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COMING SOON

Sci-Fi Adventures will return with Babylon 5, episode 78: Conflicts of Interest. Maybe this one will have Londo and G'Kar in it.

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