| Episode: | 73 | | | Writer: | J. Michael Straczynski | | | Director: | John C. Flinn III | | | Air Date: | 10-Feb-1997 |
This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's another episode of Babylon 5! I gotta keep watching them if I want to make it to the end.
Epiphanies was directed by director of photography John C. Flinn III, who generally directed two episodes a season, and not typically the best two. Though he did give us The Long, Twilight Struggle (with the famous shot of Londo reflected in the window) and I remember Soul Mates being pretty good as well. TKO and Grey 17 is Missing, not so much.
I'd talk about the writer, but it's just J. Michael Straczynski again. He wrote all the episodes last season and he wrote all the episodes this season as well.
Here's SPOILER WARNING for you: I'm going to be spoiling every scene in this story and earlier episodes as well. I won't be spoiling later episodes though, so if you're watching the series for the first time you'll be fine here.
I suppose they've got the MaintBots out there filming it all for the people on the station without a window. Which is basically everyone except for Dwight Schultz I suppose.
The Shadow War arc might have ended just six episodes into the season, but they're still opening episodes with someone recording a personal log, and it's Sheridan's turn again.
Speaking of things we haven't seen for a while, I'm searching the crowd trying to spot one of Brother Theo's monks. I guess they don't party.
Sheridan's just standing around watching the dancing from the walkway above. His voice over tells us he can't help thinking about what the war cost them, and what's coming next, but it seems he's been given the same advice that Vir gave to Londo last episode: don't let tomorrow's troubles stop you from enjoying today.
Just then the music starts getting sinister and the episode switches to a really faded shot of Earth.
The shot pans over to focus on the UK, but I think that's just a side effect of the VFX being cropped for the DVDs, as it cuts straight to Earthdome in Geneva, Switzerland. The heart of Earth's government. Then it cuts from the stock establishing shot of the dome to Psi Corps Headquarters tower, in the same way that it sometimes cuts from Babylon 5's exterior to one of the buildings inside the cylinder section. It's just being needlessly confusing though, as Psi Corps HQ is actually a separate building nearby.
I wanted to stitch together this panning shot of Psi Corps HQ, but the camera also tilts and moves around the building as it ascends to the top, so the end result is going to look terrible. Though now I'm curious about how terrible...
Damn, now I've got to do it.
Inside we find Alfred Bester, who's showing up right on time. He's made an appearance every season so far and always during episode 6 or 8, so episode 7 is a perfectly acceptable place for him to turn up this time.
The Psi Corps, Earthforce, Nightwatch and the Ministry of Peace have all been given separate assignments and won't know what each other is up to, because Clark is so paranoid he'd rather have them stepping on each other's toes than knowing the full picture.
Their goal is pretty clear though: shut Babylon 5 down. The heroes need a new antagonist now that the Shadows and Vorlons are gone, so Earth is going to have to step up their game.
ACT ONE
Al and his boss are still continuing their conversation from the teaser, and he's wondering why they don't just send in the troops and take Babylon 5. His boss reminds him that they did that plot already in season 3 and it didn't work out. It was a fantastic episode though, so it really paid off in that regard.
I think their plan is to somehow drive a wedge in between B5 and their alien supporters, but to be honest I'm having a hard time hearing what this guy's saying. You wouldn't want every villain to be a Cartagia, but this guy's way on the other end of the scale.
Here's a fun fact about the actor, Victor Lundin: he was in the original Star Trek before Walter Koenig was. In fact Wikipedia claims he was the very first Klingon ever seen on screen... but he wasn't. The guy was in the episode Errand of Mercy, which first introduced the Klingons, but he's more like the twelfth Klingon to appear (and the second to speak).
Speaking of the emperor, the Centauri are going to take the time to pick a good one this time around, but they need a Regent to sit in the chair for the time being. It's only a ceremonial role, but the pay's good... and they've picked Virini for the job! And on that bombshell, Londo exits to catch his shuttle, leaving Virini to hold the fort.
He thinks about it for a few seconds, then decides to replace the curtains with pastels. I dunno man, there's a lot of curtains here.
G'Kar seems to have got his sense of humour back now that he's among friends again, plus he's got his coat back too! I suppose he could've just bought a new one before leaving Narn though. If you want a Narn coat, that's where to look.
Franklin's heard a rumour that his people wanted to put him in charge and G'Kar explains that he's seen what power does and what it costs, and he could do without it. What Franklin should've asked is why G'Kar came back here. He's not the ambassador anymore, he doesn't need sanctuary, the Shadow War's over. Maybe he just feels responsible for the other Narns on the station, or maybe it's just that all his stuff is here.
For a moment he remembers screaming about not remembering anything in a Psi Corps cell, but then he's distracted by an incoming message.
He tells the computer to erase the message and the log entry and then goes back to his mirror... to erase the face as well. That's even more of a concern!
This is a big deal, as Garibaldi has been working here longer than any of them. He took the job a year before Ivanova and Franklin arrived and two years before Sheridan. And yet in all that time they never let him go out in the White Star! No wonder he's constantly grumpy these days.
After the act break he explains that he wants to get out while he still can, go independent. He figures he can earn a living by helping clients find objects and people that have gone missing during the war. In fact I imagine it'll probably be a better living than running security on a rogue space station cut off from its funding, plus he'll actually be able to have a decent breakfast for once.
ACT TWO
Just then Londo strolls in and Zack calls him 'Ambassador'. See, I knew they'd call him that! He's gotten promoted twice since he was last here, but it's like it doesn't count when he's on the station. Or maybe he's somehow the prime minster and the ambassador?
Londo's in a great mood, joking about the emperor's death and even jokingly threatening to assassinate Zack next, but the guy doesn't know what the hell he's talking about so he just lets him through.
Zack takes it all in his stride, he's actually gotten pretty good at this, but he's glad when he's called away to speak with the captain because he doesn't need to see who the third person to walk in is going to be. Though he does hang around just long enough to joke that it'll be the Second Coming...
It plays some obnoxious Elvis-sounding comedy music to make it obvious that it's a joke, but you have to think about it a bit to get what that joke is.
They're three Kings, like the ones who turned up to see baby Jesus the first time he made an appearance on Earth. (They were apparently played by Elvis fans working on the show, with the first one being the assistant art director).
Then he gets a surprise visit from a serious looking G'Kar. Garibaldi heard that he went off looking for him and got imprisoned, tortured and mutilated for his trouble, so he's a little apprehensive but it turns out that G'Kar only really wants to give the guy a hug!
G'Kar explains that he went out into the universe with good intentions in his heart and was rewarded with Narn's freedom, so he's definitely not holding any grudges against him. Much the opposite. Plus he somehow gets Garibaldi to cheer up a bit, which is actually even more impressive than freeing Narn.
Meanwhile the senior staff, including new security chief Zack Allan, are discussing how Garibaldi hasn't been acting the same since he got back. Unfortunately there's not much they can do about that right now (they've already given him every kind of medical scan they can).
Sheridan seems surprised, and I am too to be honest; I can't believe it took Earth almost a whole year to cut the station off like this.
ACT THREE
Act three begins with Zack going to get Lyta for a meeting with Bester, and it turns out she's been shopping. Now that Bad Kosh is gone she's allowed to have personal possessions again, maybe even a wardrobe, so the prop people have had to produce a whole pile of Zocalo bags. Lyta doesn't want anything to do with Bester as she's a rogue telepath and he's the one that hunts people like her down, but Zack's sure the captain probably won't let him take her away.
She's also a bit annoyed by the fact that no one ever comes to see her unless they want something. I feel like this has to be partly her fault though, as she never goes to see anyone else at all really. Except for that once when she wanted to go visit Z'ha'dum (which she brings up here like it's something they asked her to do!) I realise Bad Kosh probably limited her ability to be social, but she'd been Good Kosh's aide for around six months before that and we barely ever saw her with the rest of the crew. I don't think they realise that she thinks they're friends.
But Zack reveals that people actually are a little nervous about her because there's a rumour that the Vorlons changed her. Though he offers to come by with pizza later and help her unpack! She seems less than enthusiastic.
On the plus side, look! Two more of Brother Theo's monks! I love that all the glitter's still there on the floor from the party earlier as well, even though there's a maintenance guy cleaning it up.
Londo decides that he's not going to slip away, he's going to walk up to G'Kar and hear what he has to say. G'Kar tells him that he no longer exists in his universe and walks off. That's actually probably less painful than a surprise hug, I think Londo got off easy.
It's a shame though that we couldn't get a third scene of upbeat G'Kar. In fact I think that's it now for him for this episode, Londo as well. They're passing the episode along to Lyta and Bester.
Bester's not keen on Lyta being around to block his telepathic scans, but Sheridan doesn't really give a damn. His exact response is "I could nail your head to the table, set fire to it and feed your charred remains to the pak'ma'ra," which seems a little harsh, to both that beautiful table and the pak'ma'ra (they don't eat cooked food).
I think Bester's just cranky because Garibaldi's not around and he can't torment him... weird how he never asks them about his absence. What's really on his mind right now is the love of his life, Carolyn Sanderson, and how she's still frozen in their cryogenic storage waiting for Franklin to find a way to remove her Shadow implants.
Bester's actually come to the station to offer them information on President Clark's latest scheme. He was their ally during the Shadow War in exchange for them helping Carolyn and even though the Shadows have gone that hasn't changed. But what has changed is that now they'll be able to just fly over to the abandoned Shadow homeworld and take the technology they need to save her! Once they do that they can get back to being enemies and everyone's happy again.
Bester accepts Sheridan's word that he'll go back to Z'ha'dum and tells him what he knows in exchange: an elite Psi Corps Black Omega Starfury squadron is going to attack a security patrol blockading B5 and blame it on them. This will help turn public opinion against the station. It's actually kind of reassuring really, that Clark has to send pilots to go out and murder people to frame B5, he still can't just get away with faking it entirely.
ACT FOUR
Zack's doesn't think this is a good idea either, Garibaldi quitting I mean. The two of them have a conversation about epic screw ups and Garibaldi points out that Zack's record made it seem like a massive mistake to hire him. But he had a good feeling about him, and he was right, so maybe he's right about quitting too! (Incidentally actor Jeff Conaway was in a similar situation before B5 took a chance on him, and hiring him seemed to work out pretty well for the show as well).
Garibaldi tells Zack that he's the best second he's ever had and I believe him. His other second was a traitor who shot him in the back. I don't believe that he's being so nice to people all of a sudden though. He's almost back to his old self.
Sheridan's gone back to waiting around for Delenn to appear, but she's here now so they can get the scene started. He's a bit frustrated that they didn't even get a break before the next crisis, but Delenn points out that he's a problem solver so he'd be bored otherwise. He's impressed she knows him so well, and she replies "deal with it". Then a pair of sunglasses slides down onto her face from the top of the screen, which was pretty unexpected seeing as this predates the meme by 13 years, but then B5's always been ahead of the game.
Then they kiss. Somewhere back on B5 Lennier gets a headache and doesn't know why. Probably.
The fight's over with in under a minute, but it's always nice to get a bit of a space battle. And they're even firing from the correct part of their guns this time!
Anyway, Bester's impressed that Lyta's been blocking him as she's only supposed to be a P5 and he's a P12. Clearly the rumours about her getting an upgrade from the Vorlons are true and he genuinely believes that she has a moral obligation to share it with the Psi Corps.
And their White Star arrives at Z'ha'dum once again. Or maybe for the first time, I don't actually know what ship Ivanova and Delenn were flying when they came here in Hour of the Wolf.
You can tell as it flies by that it's the original White Star prototype and not one of its successors because of the tail fin. They lost the texture file somehow and had to make a new one, but for whatever reason decided not to make it an exact match.
Bester's not all that impressed by his first glimpse of the legendary Z'ha'dum. He'll be even less impressed if that eye is still there and it forces them to land. Not that there'll be anyone there to greet them.
The crew can't work out why they're evacuating, but Sheridan suddenly feels like maybe they should be evacuating too, as soon as possible.
Bester's furious that they're leaving but it turns out that Sheridan's instincts are right on the money this time, as the whole planet blows up behind them, taking all its secrets with it. They should visit the equally abandoned Vorlon homeworld next!
ACT FIVE
There's one cut near the start of the scene to show us Carolyn's name on the door, but after that it's a two-minute unbroken take with the guest star going on an epic monologue as the camera slowly pulls in closer.
He laments the loss of the pilots he sacrificed. Black Omega squadron was his baby! They trusted him and he betrayed them for her sake. And he'd do it again, even though it's eating him up. What's worse is Sheridan and the others think that it's hilarious! I mean he doesn't know that, but he's pretty sure they're all laughing at him.
But that's okay, as he has an ace in the hole that'll hurt them more than everything they've done to him. What even have they done to him? He's been punched a couple of times, they've thrown him in the brig and he had to take sleepers once to temporarily block his telepathy, but he brought it on himself. Sure they blew up his pilots, but only because he told them to blow up his pilots!
She thinks it might be a leftover command from the Vorlons, though she also feels that no one should be allowed to have that kind of technology... and that Bester needs to suffer. Sheridan feels he might have agreed with her, if he'd been told, but she didn't tell him. He doesn't like people just blowing up planets they don't like and after all the crap he went through with the Shadow War and Anna he definitely does not appreciate being kept in the dark. They mention the 'Bester could've scanned his mind if she told him' excuse, but her job there was to stop him doing that! We even saw that she was blocking him.
Though to be fair to Sheridan, she blew up a planet that people were living on just to piss off Bester and he didn't even punish her for it. Now they've got a fleet of angry dark servants out there, and the last time our heroes met a Shadow servant he was lurking around the station eating people's internal organs.
It's funny how the chief of security always seems to fall for the station's telepath. Garibaldi was in love with Talia and now Zack seems to have a thing for Lyta.
There's one last scene on B5, with Sheridan and Ivanova talking about how Clark can't pull a false flag attack again as no one would believe it, so they've won this round of the propaganda war. Though they have to wonder where those dark servants are heading to.
Seems like the future Sheridan saw (and tried to avert) is all coming true. The dark servants of the Shadows have come to Centauri Prime, just like Future Londo said.
CONCLUSION
Well shit, Garibaldi just quit his role as security chief on Babylon 5! He lasted 73 episodes and a pilot movie and was the only person on the crew to have been there from the very start, but now he's gone. Unless he goes on walkabout and comes back with a knife wound and a fresh perspective on life, then Sheridan will just hand him his job right back. On the plus side, that means Zack Allen just got a promotion to head of security!
Zack was all over this story, as he seemed to be popping up in everyone's plot. He was being a wise-ass to Londo and Bester, he tried to be a friend to a (disinterested) Lyta, he attempted to talk sense into Garibaldi, and he even got to sit at the Important Character Table. It's amazing to think that the guy who used to show up sometimes to help Garibaldi out when Lou Welch was busy is now part of the station's main command crew along with Sheridan, Ivanova and Franklin, but that just happened. The actor was always good enough to take a bigger role though, I mean he's bloody Kenickie from Grease!
Epiphanies brings the Earth plotline back into focus and properly introduces the Shadow allies as a threat, but it works as a bit of a breather episode that gives viewers, characters and the VFX people a break from the constant tension and action of the Shadow War. Sure it has a bit of a dogfight and another planet explodes, but this feels like a return to an earlier era where other stories could happen and things didn't seem so bleak. It even has a bit of 'comedy' with the 'Three Kings'! The episode also did a good job of keeping me guessing. Not because it was particularly clever, just because the title's so vague that I couldn't remember what happened in it at all. I'm still not sure what epiphanies it's referring to.
The word 'epiphany' can mean a moment of sudden revelation and insight, or the manifestation of something supernatural or divine, so maybe it's referring to Lyta's plot? She's certainly something supernatural, with her Vorlon-enhanced telepathy, and Sheridan did come to a moment of realisation about what she did. I don't know whether she's naturally growing in ability, or she had some kind of block removed when the Vorlons left, but she seems considerably more powerful than she did last season. She does mention having some Vorlon commands left in her head so who knows? All that's really clear here is that taking secret unilateral actions on a planet-destroying scale while living under Sheridan's roof is not the best way to get him to come over with pizza. It may be that she's responsible for driving the Keeper to take over the Centauri regent, it may be that they always intended to invade Centauri Prime and destroying their home base has dramatically weakened them as a threat, we don't know. Either way Sheridan doesn't come away looking too great either. He's become more direct and decisive since his return, but also more secretive and rude. He's not quite the friendly guy with the corny jokes and an orange obsession any more.
Garibaldi also got an epiphany I suppose, but does it really count when it's part of some kind of Psi Corps programming? His changing state of mind was really well illustrated by his drawing on the mirror and it seems he's gone from irritable and paranoid, to completely done with everything. He's really not the same person he was before he left and everyone's noticed, but what can they do? Well, except ask Lyta to scan him, and that's probably not going to make either of them happy. On the plus side, the guy actually cheers up a bit this episode after his mind-altering message and even gets some of his old charm back. He's not snapping at everyone anymore at least. I suppose it helps that Lorien's not around anymore, so he doesn't have to devote so much of his energy to being suspicious of him all the time.
Anyway, this wasn't a bad episode by any means, it just wasn't anything special. But I suppose it was inevitably going to be a bit of a let down after the epic six-part arc that kicked off the season. Oh hang on, I just checked what Deep Space Nine did after their own epic six-part arc and it was the great You are Cordially Invited..., so B5 actually got outplayed this time.
COMING SOON
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I'd probably want to blow up a planet, too, if I had just done that much shopping.
ReplyDeleteI love shopping and unpacking all my loot afterwards so I was looking at those bags in envy.
DeleteIt appears Garibaldi is watching one of the stand in music videos they did on the ITV Chart Show when the track didn't have an official video.
ReplyDelete