Babylon 5 2-17: Knives

Episode:

39

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Writer:

Larry DiTillio

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Air Date:

17-May-1995

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Welcome to Ray Hardgrit's Sci-Fi Adventures, which is now entering its fourth year! And yet I'm still not done with Babylon 5 season two. It's like I'm a showrunner on a modern TV series or something.

Obviously my plans have been terrible and something needs to be done, so I've got a new plan for 2019: I'm going to be writing just one review per week and I'll be switching my attention between Sci-Fi Adventures and Super Adventures in Gaming every two months. So that's 8 or 9 episode reviews here, then I switch over and write about 8 or 9 games, and so on. Unfortunately that only gives me 26 weeks a year to write about science fiction; just enough to cover a single season of one 90s TV series (or one episode each from 26 different series I suppose).

So I've decided to drop my weekly Doctor Who, Deep Space Nine, Discovery and The Orville reviews and focus on getting through Babylon 5... with something different thrown in every now and then so I don't have to rename the site to Ray Hardgrit's Babylon 5 Adventures. It's not that I don't like those other series, it's just that B5 is a serialised story that I'm already a third of the way through and I'd like to get it finished.

The last episode I reviewed (back in February 2018) was And Now for a Word, so if you go by the airdate, DVD and Amazon Prime episode order I should be watching In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum right now. But I'm following the Lurker's Guide Master List which puts Knives before it for continuity reasons, which makes this block of episodes look like this:

14 - There All the Honor Lies
15 - And Now for a Word
17 - Knives
16 - In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum
18 - Confessions and Lamentations

All this really means is that I'll not be including any SPOILERS for In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum, because that's what I'm watching next time, though I will be spoiling everything in this story and probably earlier episodes as well. Assuming I can still remember anything (it's been ages since I watched them).

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The episode begins with Captain Sheridan smacking a baseball right at the camera. Then we get this beautiful shot from his point of view showing the station interior at night. Well, I can imagine it being beautiful if it wasn't a fuzzy mess.

I'm a bit surprised they had room on Babylon 5 for a whole baseball field though, seeing as they never seem to have room for anything nice. Ivanova had to break regulations just to have a coffee plant. They could've used this space for vital oxygen-producing trees! Maybe they were going to and the shipment of trees didn't turn up due to budget cuts, so they put down the fake grass instead. No room for stands though.

Oh, there's another strange Babylon 5/Deep Space Nine similarity for you here: the captain enjoys baseball. Sure there's nothing unusual about an American liking baseball, but how many other sci-fi captains have played baseball on screen aside from Sisko and Sheridan?

They even have their own caps (though Sheridan's still on Team Agamemnon and I don't blame him after the ship came by to rescue him from the Streib a few episodes back).
 

That's a lot of balls he's missed. Hey isn't there supposed to be room back there for someone to catch those?

Garibaldi soon shows up in an official Babylon 5 baseball shirt, possibly bought from the Babylon 5 Emporium before Sheridan had it shut down a few episodes back (though now I've got a mental image of boxes of confiscated shirts and toys all over Garibaldi's quarters). He intuits that Sheridan's had a bad day, and the captain explains that he's trying to recover from an eight-hour session with the League of Non-Aligned Worlds. I wonder if there's a Baseball League of Non-Aligned Worlds...

Garibaldi's had a rough day as well, as he's been down in the 'B5 Triangle' in Grey Sector, where all kinds of strange lights, weird noises and bad episodes have been reported. Sheridan loves exploring creepy places like haunted houses and Indian burial grounds so he immediately decides to go down and take a look for himself. Alone. Which is so stupid that it makes Garibaldi miss his third ball in a row. I'm no baseball expert but the music makes me think that's bad.

Speaking of music, Londo's in a good mood and chatting about Centauri opera with his attaché Vir like they're actual friends instead of downtrodden assistant and shouty boss. They're soon singing in the hallway, but it's a classy kind of singing as they each try to demonstrate the superiority of their favourite opera with a brief performance. In fact they're soon both singing the same tune and the soundtrack even joins in.

Fortunately a mysterious figure in a hood grabs Londo by the neck and tells him he's about to die, so there's no danger of an encore.

ACT ONE

But once the opening credits are over it turns out it was actually a fakeout, as it's just his old friend Urza Jaddo, who decided to terrify him for a laugh. It's a bit of a crap way to resolve a cliffhanger, but seeing one of Londo's friends turn up is actually more interesting than yet another person with reason to want him dead. Plus bad things tend to happen when old friends visit the station, so I've got that to look forward to.
 
Urza is apparently the hero of the Battle of Gorash and the finest swordsman in the Couro Prido next to Londo. I don't think this is the first time we've heard about Londo's combat skills, but we sure haven't seen them yet. He's mostly been displaying his drinking skills and Urza's arrival has just given him an excuse to open up a bottle of Brivari.

Oh by the way, Urza's played by Carmen Argenziano, who sadly died earlier this year. He's better known for playing Samantha Carter's dad on Stargate SG-1 (with considerably reduced hair, eyebrows and accent).

Also the episode was written by Larry DiTillio, who died just a couple of weeks ago. I don't plan to start listing all the people who've died since these episodes aired because I'm sure we've both got enough to be depressed about already, but they died so recently that I felt I had to mention it.

This was the last time that DiTillio's name appeared at the start of an episode as it was his final ever script for the series, but his name stuck around in the end credits. You can find him there credited as the "Executive Story Editor"... for the last few episodes of the season anyway.

By this point Sheridan's gotten back into uniform and is exploring the spooky hallways of Grey Sector with spooky music playing. I don't know what he was hoping to see here, but what he finds is a Markab with his head bashed open.

He tries to contact Garibaldi on his link to report it in but there's spooky interference.

Suddenly the Markab lurches forward to grab his head and transfer over a CGI energy effect, which is annoying because I'm sure I've seen this happen before in a million other things and I can't remember a single one right now. Maybe the Deep Space Nine episode The Passenger? On the plus side the transference has cleaned the interference up!

Cut to Medlab, where Sheridan is getting a scan from Dr Franklin. His epinephrine level is elevated but there's nothing to suggest he's contracted a 'beat your head against a pipe' virus, so he's fit for duty. That means the Markab's cause of death is still a mystery.

But it might be related to how Sheridan's vision has suddenly gone wibbly. No one's drawing a connection yet though, they just think Sheridan could use some rest.

Then we get a shot from inside Londo's Brivari vault! Shots like this take extra time and effort to set up, so I'm a little surprised to see one show up in season 2 Babylon 5. I had a look at what other episodes the director Stephen Posey had done and it turns out that this was his only one, so I guess it makes sense for it to be a little atypical.

Urza's not here yet, but that gives Londo a chance to unload a bunch of backstory onto Vir, explaining that he's been Urza's friend since they were children and their houses have been allied forever. He also talks about the nicknames the two of them have, which are in Centauri obviously, so he translates them into English for him… wait, what? Maybe they're in Centauri Latin or something.

He then goes on for a bit about the good old days, where their starships ruled the spaceways. Vir feels like they should be learning from history instead of trying to repeat it, so now we're up to date on their points of view as well.

When Urza finally arrives the two of them drink deep from their jewelled goblets of Brivari, while Vir's face falls in the background. What, was he hoping they'd save him some? Or is he just concerned for them?

Elsewhere Sheridan is sleeping on his couch, which makes a lot of sense when the episode reveals that there's a snarling CGI pterodactyl creature in his bedroom waiting to eat him.

I bet after the ad break we'll learn that the creature is just his old friend in disguise and they'll have some Brivari together.

By the way, this guy is the reason that the episode ended up airing the week after In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum, as they needed extra time to animate and composite him in. This was a cutting edge effect in 1995!

ACT TWO

But I don't get to see much of him on the DVD version thanks to the way the shot has been cropped for widescreen, and Sheridan's PPG is barely visible on the bottom of the frame as well. We've got a good view of his couch though and man I'd sleep on that thing too; it looks so comfy.

The creature swoops down at him a couple of times, but Sheridan's able to grab his PPG, fire a few shots off, and make it disappear without any trace it was ever there. But that's not the weirdest part, as Garibaldi immediately comes bursting in with a security officer to back him up. He explains that he was already on his way with the forensic report and I guess his sidekick is the guard in the hallway, but it still seems very convenient.

Sheridan tells them that he saw a grylor, an animal native to Janos 7. Garibaldi is sympathetic as he once saw a whole chorus line of purple wombats doing show tunes in his bathtub (probably before coming to B5, as he stopped drinking when he took the job, plus there's no way his quarters have a bath in them if only the top brass even get proper showers).

Garibaldi's also got some good news: the dead Markab went nuts and bashed his own skull in, so there's no need to waste time looking for a murderer. Funny thing though, his scans were all clean of abnormal brain activity... just like Sheridan's. But I'm sure that's no cause for concern.

I must be seeing things myself, as the piece of art on the wall he blasted seemed to be fine in an earlier shot but now it's got a big hole in it:

I hope he didn't pay actual money for that. Though the way Sheridan's luck's been lately I suppose he should be grateful it was just a bit of plastic and he didn't get tricked into shooting a Minbari again.

Sheridan rushes out to Medlab C&C and I like the security officer's reaction once he's out of the room. She doesn't get any lines but she turns to Garibaldi with a 'I am deeply concerned about our captain going crazy' expression on her face. I like Garibaldi too this episode; he's really... likeable. I have a feeling Larry DiTillio liked him as well, as he showed up a lot in his stories.

Londo and Urza are still partying hard, but they take a break to talk about Londo's love Adira, from Born to the Purple way back in the good old days of early season 1. Incidentally that was Larry DiTillio's first script for B5, and this was his last, so he started and finished with Londo stories. Reminiscing about season 1 episodes makes Londo sad though, so they get right back to the drinking.

Apparently there's word back home that Londo's star is in ascendance, as is the Centauri Republic's, so that's good. Though the conversation turns to the war and happy drunk Urza is replaced by angry ranting Urza, who reveals to Londo that a faction within their midst is to blame for starting it. The same faction that killed Prime Minister Malachi and put their puppet Cartagia on the throne after Emperor Turhan's death! So the dead Prime Minister, Emperor and the Emperor's nephew finally have names now, which always helps. (Plus I like that Turhan and Malachi are actually the first names of the actors who played them.)

I was expecting Londo to have a 'uh-oh I hope I don't get found out' reaction, seeing as he's secretly the one who kicked off the war, but he's more surprised to hear what happened to Malachi. Lord Refa apparently never told him about the murdery side of the plan. Londo's also completely unaware that a resolution is about to be brought before the Centaurum declaring Urza and his house to be traitors (with absolute zero evidence). That's why Urza's here, to ask Londo to stand with his house and save his family.

I like how this shot makes it look like Londo's standing in front of a mirror. Or maybe it looks like his past self in the purple jacket is judging him.

Anyway Londo says 'sure, I'll help your family out', so Urza decides to throw a banquet for him! That's good news for Vir as it means he doesn't have to arrange anything himself for a change.

Over in C&C we get the first appearance in the episode of Ivanova, who's actually in a good mood due to all the terrible things that aren't happening for once. Sheridan sees things differently though... as he's got that wibbly vision effect from earlier. Then he sees a ship out of the window that looks a whole lot like his wife's ship, the Icarus. Which is good, because his wife has been presumed dead for two years, and bad, because it explodes.

I'm not all that surprised though to be honest. I mean it couldn't have been a very well made ship or else we would've seen another ship of the same design flying around ever.

Sheridan is a bit emotional about losing his wife again and orders that they scan the area where the ship exploded, which confuses the techs as there's no ship to scan. It's probably the sign of a good commander that he doesn't admit to everyone right there that he's having vivid hallucinations; that kind of thing can hurt your credibility. He just tells them he's got to see to something and then secretly heads down to Medlab (where he really should've gone right after shooting the imaginary pterodactyl).

He does tell Franklin everything, but it doesn't help him any as the doctor still can't find anything wrong with him. Franklin knows a good Markab doctor so he'll speak to him about the possibility of this being a 'beat your own head in with a pipe' virus that's crossed species, but it could just be stress. After all he never gets a full night's sleep, he's in a conspiracy against his own evil government and he has to solve a crisis every Wednesday. Either way he's taking him off duty for a while.

ACT THREE

Back in the Londo plot, he's phoned up his buddy Lord Refa to get the resolution against Urza dropped, but it's apparently already happened. Londo says he going to publicly support his friend and get it undone, but Refa turns it back around on him, explaining that if House Mollari is linked to House Jaddo it could drag him down too. There's no point arguing with Londo when he's in full shouty mode though, so he relents and says he'll do what he can.

Vir's proud of his boss for doing the right thing, but Londo ain't happy. He wants Vir to get in touch with all his agents back home as he's clearly not being informed about critical information.

Then it's like we're back in the teaser again, as they're getting their money's worth out of the baseball field set. Except this time Sheridan's hitting fouls instead of home runs… and he's been at it for three hours (with a sweat stain to prove it).

Garibaldi drops by again to tell him something interesting about the dead Markab in Grey Sector: he came here through Sector 14, which you're not supposed to do. Space sector 14 not Grey Sector 14 that is. It's not a good idea to go down there because it's where Babylon 4 disappeared, and then reappeared for a bit back due to a space-time anomaly in Babylon Squared. Sheridan doesn't know anything about an anomaly, as Earthforce confiscated the records for their investigation, so Garibaldi has a chance to recap the episode for him. Man, I don't think there's been this many references to old stories in a single episode since... the season 1 story Eyes, also by Larry DiTillio.

Hang on, how had Sheridan not heard about the Babylon 4 incident? What about all those people that were rescued from it, was that all covered up? Anyway, Garibaldi hands him a data crystal containing all the files they're not supposed to have anymore so he can check what he missed.

Now we're at Urza's banquet, which looks a lot like Londo's parties back in Parliament of Dreams and Soul Mates. They've even got another medieval band playing, though there's no giant painting of Londo's head glaring down at them from the back wall. I don't know if there's any rule about wearing shoes this time but there's a lot of people here going barefoot I've noticed, including that dancer who's stolen Vir's attention.

Vir's got a lot to do in this scene, despite being basically silent for the whole thing, and I can't help watching what he's doing when I should be paying attention to Londo. Like he actually gets to sit down and drink with them this time... but when they clink their goblets he's left out, so he's sad again.

Turns out that Urza's brought a lot of nobles here for the announcement of their alliance and it's not a bad turn out for a disgraced house. It's kind of worrying though really, considering Refa's warning that if Londo publicly supports Urza he'll be setting his own house up for ruin.

Londo's got no problem with enjoying the party, but he tells Urza that there's no need to announce anything as he's already spoken to Refa and sorted the whole thing out! Urza's a little taken aback by this, because a: Refa is the one who declared him a traitor in the first place and b: he hasn't done a damn thing that Londo asked him to and Urza's still in trouble. So now Londo looks evil and stupid!

The two get into a bit of an argument and it turns out that the two old friends have dramatically different images of what the good old days were like, with Londo certain that they need to get back to conquering and building empires, and Urza haunted by the horrible things that happened last time they did that. It doesn't seem likely either of them are going to change their mind about this, especially considering all the horrible things happening to Urza's house right now.

So Urza gives Londo a gift! His old Coutari sword, the one he used at the battle of Gorash. It was meant to celebrate their alliance but now it's going to be Londo's weapon in the Morago... a duel to the death. Because if Londo is a part of Refa's schemes then Urza will have to fight his old friend to save his honour and his family. This escalated quickly!

On the plus side, Londo's got two hours to practice. Plus it was probably hard enough for Urza to smuggle that one sword past B5 customs, so what are the chances he brought a second one? He'll have to fight with a lamp stand or something.

ACT FOUR

Meanwhile Sheridan's watching the clip of Babylon 4 disappearing in Babylon Squared, when he's suddenly hit by eyeball static. That's never a good sign.

Plus his visions are getting worse as now he's not just hallucinating things in his living room, he's hallucinating an entire living room in his living room.

Babylon 5 was a notoriously cheap series, at least compared to the Star Trek series, but they must have built all this (and installed a fire) just for a blink-and-you'll-miss it shot. Plus these poor actors had to drive to work, go into makeup, get their costumes on, all so they could go onto a set and lift their arms up for four seconds in exchange for a stack of cash. Wait, how is this a bad thing again?

Apparently Larry DiTillio's original idea for Sheridan's B-plot was that his dad was going to come to the station, but he'd just done that with Franklin's dad in GROPOS so producer J. Michael Straczynski decided they should go in a different direction. But Sheridan says "Mom, Dad," here, so DiTillio found a way to put his dad in after all!

Sheridan thinks he knows what to do now and runs out of the room, leaving his link behind. Which isn't a great sign on its own and even less reassuring considering that Franklin was trying to call him on it at the time. I get the feeling we're not supposed to be working this puzzle out alongside Sheridan, as the episode's intentionally making him look a bit nuts right now.

Meanwhile Londo been spending the last two hours polishing the galaxy's shiniest blade to make it that little bit shinier, while explaining Centauri duelling to Vir. He and his friend are Couro Prido, proud knives (title drop!), which means that he had to accept Urza's challenge or else it would've brought disgrace on his own house. Turns out that it's more important to him than his life, or his friend's life... plus insanity is part of the times and he intends to embrace it. I don't think we've seen bravery from Londo like this since he flew that shuttle down to Epsilon III in A Voice in the Wilderness (a glimpse at an adventurous side to the character that Garibaldi thought was better left buried).

Speaking of characters going on a rogue mission in a spaceship because of an alien message, Sheridan uses his authorisation code to leave the station in a Starfury without Ivanova's clearance. Hope he doesn't see a gremlin on the wing and accidentally shoot a Minbari Cruiser or something while trying to get rid of it.

Whoa, that guy's hair is amazing. And considering who he's standing next to that's saying something. To play a Centauri you have to retain dignity in that outfit with that hair, and he's nailing it.

The banquet room has been repurposed as a duelling arena and one of the guests, Lord Valo, has stuck around to tell the fighters to "Draw your swords with purpose and sheathe them with honour". I guess he's not aware that only one of them will be sheathing a sword at the end of it. Unless the winner gets both swords!

I actually like how the episode keeps returning to the baseball field and the banquet room, as it makes it stand out visually from the rest of the season. This may be the least we've ever seen of that wall from Sheridan's office with the slats running across it that shows up everywhere!

Wow, what the hell just happened to the image quality? It usually only gets this bad when there's compositing going on, but it's just gotten incredibly fuzzy and a purple glow's appeared from the left of the frame.

G'Kar had his fight a few episodes back in Acts of Sacrifice and now Londo's getting his. It's a shame that G'Kar isn't around this episode actually as I bet he'd love watching Londo getting cut up by one of his closest friends. Though despite all the talk about them both being awesome with a blade this isn't the best choreographed fight I've seen on TV, and after getting his arm sliced Londo starts swinging his sword all over the place.

Back in Sheridan's plot, he's been making his way to Sector 14, where the space-time anomaly is. There wasn't any visible time weirdness there but Sheridan knew he had the right place when he did a scan for unusual phenomenon and the sensors failed due to an unusual phenomenon. Plus it takes hours to fly to Sector 14, so either there's some time weirdness going on or the Londo and Sheridan plots aren't actually happening simultaneously. To be fair, beside the way it keeps cutting between them there's no hint in the episode that they even take place during the same month.

The reason Sheridan came here is because he figured out that he had an alien entity in his head who needed a lift home (the last clue was seeing a hallucination of his home when he was looking at Babylon 4). Seems like it would've been a smarter idea for Sheridan to actually discuss his plan with the others before going off alone into danger, it's not like they wouldn't have believed him, but the laws of television drama demanded impulsive stupidity and secrecy.

And once he reaches the anomaly the entity flies off to do whatever non-corporeal entities do in an space-time anomaly. It reminded me a bit of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Lonely Among Us actually, though I wish it hadn't. This is a much better episode.

The anomaly is getting pretty visible now, though the CGI looks a bit ropey. It doesn't look great how the oval of weirdness contracts around Sheridan's fighter and then suddenly springs back open for a fraction of a second at the end of the shot. But Sheridan's unconscious at this point so he doesn't have to see it.

Fortunately Garibaldi is always there wherever Sheridan goes in this episode, so he shows up in a second Starfury to manually grapple the captain's fighter and pull it away from the time rift in the nick of time. And neither of them rapidly age to death like the poor pilot who got too close in Babylon Squared!

Back at the duel (that none of the characters in the Sheridan plot seem to know about), things have gotten so serious that the music's stopped and Londo eventually gets head-butted to the floor.

At first I thought his sword had fallen somewhere off the bottom of the screen, but viewing it frame by frame revealed that I was actually looking at a white mark on the floor. They've taped a couple of orange marks there as well and I can't believe I've never noticed them before either. That top one would've been plainly visible even in the original 4:3 broadcast.

Anyway, anyone who's seen a sword fight in a TV show or movie knows that the floor is actually the ideal place to be, as the other fighter always leaves themselves entirely open as they prepare to make the killing blow, so Londo just picks his sword back up and stabs Urza somewhere he didn't want to get stabbed.

Urza is mortally wounded, but he hangs on just long enough to explain why he went straight to 'duel to the death' when he realised whose side Londo was on. He wasn't angry enough to kill his old friend, he was wise enough to know that he had to find another way to get what he wanted from him. The rules of the duel mean that the winner has to protect the loser's family, so now they can't be dishonoured by Refa.

And yet another good Centauri dies, after Turhan and Malachi back in The Coming of Shadows. No wonder Vir looks so worried back there.

Now I want to see a prequel with young Londo and Urza having their adventures in 'the good old days'; flying shuttles, having sword fights and wearing elaborate waistcoasts. It wouldn't have to be a whole series, just a movie, or a miniseries. 14 episodes would be fine! As long as Urza doesn't call him "Paso Leati" the whole time, as I got enough of that from this episode. It gets said ten times this episode, at least, and that's seven too many in my opinion.

ACT FIVE

The tiny final act starts with with Gigantic Sheridan bringing the main cast over to sit on the comfy couch so he can explain how he knew where to take the alien hitchhiker in his brain. Not the most interesting way to structure an episode but hey it's 90s television.

Sheridan figured out that the alien was trying to send him a message with a series of images, which is an idea I'll never be able to take seriously again after that episode of Red Dwarf where Rimmer interprets a character's mysterious broken leg as meaning 'Hello to you' because it hurts like hell and happened below the knee. Though it does introduce the idea of an energy being that can exist in a person's head and communicate with them, which Dr Franklin is hyped about.

The scene looks so much like the shot at the end of All Alone in the Night that I figured they might discuss their conspiracy to stop President Clark as well while they were there, but nope. They don't even mention Londo stabbing a man to death and getting away with it!

Speaking of Londo, he's realised that Urza let him win and he explains to Vir that the winner must accept the loser's family as part of his own. They're not just protected, they're House Mollari now. Someone joining another house to escape dishonour, that's another similarity to Deep Space Nine.

Londo's also got something else from Urza: the feeling that perhaps his choices haven't been right... but he's going to carry right on doing what he's doing as there's already blood on his hands.


CONCLUSION

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In retrospect it's obvious now that I made a big mistake in rewatching Babylon 5.

You see, the story kind of takes off around this point, and even though I was supposed to be reviewing each episode right after watching it while my memories were fresh, what I actually did was carry on to the next episode. Then the next episode, and the next episode. That's part of the reason I haven't posted a Babylon 5 review since February 2018. Because I kept going until I'd rewatched the whole series, and once I was done I finally realised that it's actually really difficult to write anything worth reading when you're relying on scruffy notes scribbled down months ago. Now I have to pay for my mistake by re-rewatching 60 hours of television... well 59 now, seeing as I already did this one. I'm a still a bit fuzzy on the story's context as it's been ages since I reviewed the earlier episodes, but rewatching stories like Infection and Grail would've been an even bigger mistake.

Plus Knives wasn't actually a terrible place for me to jump back into the series after a long break. The last episode, And Now For a Word, would've been better, but this seemed to be deliberately designed to refresh people's memories. It reminds us of the Icarus, Anna's death, Babylon 4, and the time rift at Sector 14. We learn absolutely nothing new about any of them, but bringing them up again shows the series isn't done with them just yet. Plus they probably say 'Markab' more in this episode than in the rest of the episodes so far combined, so now I can add them to my list of Non-Aligned races I can recognise, along with the Drazi, the pak-ma-ra, and the fish-woman played by Saavik in Deathwalker.

The episode also gives Londo another chance to spell out his goals and motivations to make sure everyone watching understands exactly where he's coming from. And where he's still going, despite everything. Though the episode was a definite wake up call for him, showing him that his actions are hurting friends back home, and that he needs to step up his game if he wants to play at this level. Londo's always been cynical and jaded but he has a romantic idea of the 'good old days' that hasn't prepared him for the reality of what he's brought back by empowering Lord Refa. The moral of the story, stated by Urza, is that knowledge is a basic tool of politics, and without it Londo is just a basic tool. Refa doesn't respect him, he's just using him to get what he wants, and ultimately Urza does the same. Londo doesn't change course at the end, he's still convinced he's doing what he has to, but it seems he's learned a lesson from this at least.

The Sheridan plot on the other hand isn't much of anything, but I think he got what he wanted in the end. He found his weirdness, he solved a puzzle, he flew a Starfury and he helped an alien out. That's worth the cost of a new cupboard door and few funny looks from his co-workers. It's just a shame that the two sides of the story feel so utterly disconnected. There's no thematic link, there's no crossover, and Ivanova doesn't even say "Hey, you heard that Londo stabbed a guy?" at the end. It's two separate groups of people in their own isolated stories that never meet.

Though the episode's more monumental than it seems, as it's the last time for a long time that anyone other than showrunner J. Michael Straczynski would get to write for the series (he made an exception for Harlan Ellison and Neil Gaiman, though he only got one of them to write a script in the end). After this point the story gets so serialised that jms figured it'd be easier for him to just write all 22 stories a year by himself, so he did, and he somehow survived it.

That makes this the last of script editor Larry DiTillio's seven episodes, and he left the show entirely after this season. I guess there wasn't much need for a script editor anymore when the showrunner was the one writing all the scripts. Though DiTillio was also the one who wrote the walla (the indistinct sound of background characters murmuring to each other), so someone else would've had to provide the babble for Babylon 5's third season.

Personally I thought that Knives was one of DiTillio's better episodes and about average for the series so far. If I ranked the episodes this would be right in the middle, between his other stories Deathwalker and GROPOS (and miles ahead of TKO). It wasn't until B5 was written by a single author that it really became the novel for television it was promised to be, but DiTillio's era of the series wasn't so bad! He did his own weird world building, gave Londo something to sing about in the hallways, let Lennier embark on the mysteries of fuel injection, and provided the series with an annual bar fight in the casino. He totally should've gone off to make his own space station show with a number in the title; I would've watched it!

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COMING SOON

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