Babylon 5 4-20: Endgame

Episode:

86

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

John Copeland

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Air Date:

13-Oct-1997

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Babylon 5's Endgame! Not to be confused with Star Trek: Voyager's Endgame, Avengers: Endgame, or Highlander: Endgame...

Other series with an episode titled 'Endgame' or 'End Game' include:

• Stargate SG-1
• Alias
• La Femme Nikita 
• CSI
  
• NCIS
• NCIS: Los Angeles
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
• Law & Order: Criminal Intent
• The Fugitive
  
• Painkiller Jane
• The Pretender
  
• Xena: Warrior Princess
• Holby City
• The Tomorrow People
  
• Transporter: The Series
• Melrose Place
  
• The Equalizer
• The Unit
  
• Homicide: Life on the Street
• The Legend of Korra
• Dallas
• Young Justice
• All Saints
  
• One Foot in the Grave
• Nash Bridges
• All Saints (again)
• The Last Ship
  
• Person of Interest
  

And so on. But not The X-Files surprisingly. Hang on, I'm wrong, there is an X-Files episode called End Game in season 2.

Babylon 5's Endgame was the first episode to be directed by producer John Copeland. Visual effects supervisor Tony Dow directed the next episode, Rising Star, then showrunner jms directed Sleeping in Light, so I guess the senior staff felt they should steer the ship directly for the last few stories. Then the series got a surprise renewal on a new network and these weren't the last few episodes anymore, so John Copeland went and directed the penultimate episode of season 5 as well.

SPOILER WARNING: If you're a first-time viewer who's seen the whole series up to this point, then you're in luck! There's nothing here that'll ruin later episodes. There's plenty here that'll ruin earlier episodes though, and I'm definitely going to spoil this one.

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The episode begins with a shot of Sheridan's Liberation Fleet in hyperspace heading for Mars.

Hey there's one of those older Earth ships without the spinning bit in the middle to create artificial gravity. It must suck for them to look out of the window at all the Omega-class destroyers, filled with people walking around on decks. And out of the other window there's a giant Minbari cruiser, like the ones that nearly wiped out humanity a decade or so ago.

We never actually get to see what the average Earthforce officer thinks of all this, but it must be bloody strange for them. They don't hang around with aliens all day like the B5 crew do, they're not as familiar with them.

Ivanova hasn't been miraculously cured between episodes, she's still fatally wounded, but a transport has come to take her back to Babylon 5 so she can at least be comfortable. Marcus isn't keen on the idea, he knows that she'd want to be there in the battle, conscious or not, but he doesn't get a say in the matter.

In fact I have wonder if people are surprised that he's the one at her bedside, seeing as his love for her hasn't exactly been a focus of the series. He's appeared in half the season but they only time they've really talked was when he was her first officer on a White Star for a few episodes.

Meanwhile, on Mars, Franklin has realised that they forgot to start the episode with a log entry voiceover so he's doing one now. The Mars Resistance are gearing up for the final fight to free Earth and Mars from President Clark's tyranny.

Unfortunately the dialogue in the scene's a bit harder to make out, like it was ADR'd in a hurry. I had to turn on subtitles in the end, and it turns out that they're busy getting their frozen telepaths smuggled up onto the destroyers in orbit with the help of Kelley, their contact at the staging area.

Kelley is apparently able to shuttle up cargo onto any ship in the fleet orbiting Mars, which is good as they've got 30 telepaths here, almost enough for one per ship. Smuggling weapons or explosives on board would be tricky, but it seems the 'frozen telepath' scan is much easier to get around.

The scene's followed by a nice CGI shot of the Martian landscape, which zooms in to reveal a four-man team hiking up a hill, led by Garibaldi in a nice warm coat. The fur on his hood is blowing around so there's definitely some atmosphere out there, but if it's anything like Mars' atmosphere now it'll be 95% carbon dioxide, so it's a good thing he remembered to pack his own air supply.

He's also got a high tech monocular to spy on the local Earthforce base.

I like how the crosshair zooms around to lock onto targets of interest, like that shuttle taking off.

Garibaldi radios in to the others back at base, and it turns out they're using code names taken from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to keep their identities secret. He's Grumpy, they're Sleepy, Sneezy and Doc. Hmm, I think I have a good idea which of them is Franklin, but the only thing I can be certain of is that none of them are Happy.

Garibaldi's CGI doppelganger leads his team onwards, making this one of the very few times you get to see people walking outdoors on a planet's surface in Babylon 5. The camera loses interest quickly though and flies off to the base instead. Then it spots a shuttle taking off and decides to follow it all the way up into space, where a huge fleet is waiting in orbit.

I feel like they took a bit of artistic licence with the travel time there as I'm sure it takes more than nine seconds to clear the atmosphere, even on Mars. Looked great though.

ACT ONE

This shot doesn't quite work as well. It looks like they've messed up the perspective, putting the horizon of the live action footage below the horizon of the CGI background.

It's the bunker we're supposed to be focusing on here. It's Ground Station Alpha, where the soldiers all dress in green even though they're on the red planet.

They've got intel that Sheridan's going to make his move soon, probably from those fake defectors who infiltrated his fleet, and the commander's a bit envious of the people up there in orbit waiting to ambush him. It's apparently the biggest gathering of Earth ships since the Battle of the Line, and something tells me this guy isn't entirely aware of how badly that conflict went for Earth.

He's definitely not aware that Sheridan and the Mars Resistance are working together, and he's utterly blindsided when one of his own officers puts on a mask, pulls out a PPG, and the door opens to let all the air out.

Fortunately Garibaldi's team was waiting outside to give everyone air masks! Though they're all kicked out afterwards and the door's welded shut behind them, so I get the impression they're not wanted. I also have a feeling they're going to be freezing their asses off out there as the surface of Mars is typically around -60°C

Unfortunately the surface of California is considerably warmer and this was apparently filmed during the middle of summer on the hottest day of the year, in LA, so the actors weren't all that comfortable in those nice cosy coats.

Once the room's repressurised we get to see who came in with Garibaldi, and it's Franklin, Lyta and Number One! Then someone else leaves through the door so I guess it wasn't welded shut? Maybe they were just fixing the seal after they blasted their way in, I dunno.

 Hey it's the 'Traitors Can't Hide' Night Watch poster from season 3 making a final appearance!

The last of their frozen telepath cargo will arrive on the destroyers in 45 minutes so Franklin has to work quickly, putting a thing on Lyta's head, for some reason. We still don't actually know what their plan is, though that's probably for the best. If you're in a movie or TV show and you tell the audience your plan, that plan will invariably go wrong.

The action's been moving so fast that Garibaldi's team has captured a bunker before the credits have finished popping up on screen, but Sheridan still has time for one last speech to his fleet to explain what they're up to.

They need to attack the bases on Mars before heading to Earth or else they'll be leaving their flank exposed to the enemy, and you typically don't want people shooting you in the ass when you're trying to do stuff. He orders his White Stars and Earthforce ships to engage the enemy, while the League ships provide 'tactical support and defence', whatever that means. They'll be there, making Sheridan's forces look considerably more numerous and intimidating, but they're not to engage unless someone picks a fight with them.

Marcus is commanding a White Star this time, with Lennier serving as his XO, and it's the one with the purple railing poles that Ivanova had at Coriana 6! I think we saw Marcus commanding this ship in No Surrender, No Retreat, where it was referred to as White Star Prime, but maybe it's got a number as well I dunno. It's funny how Babylon 5 always tells us what an Earthforce ship is called, but we're lucky if they mention what White Star they're using.

Speaking of Earthforce ships, the fleet at Mars is being led by the EAS Apollo, commanded by General Robert Lefcourt. It used to be commanded by the guy on the left, but Lefcourt has taken over (like how Sheridan took over the Agamemnon) because he's Sheridan's old teacher and he knows how he thinks. In fact he claims he taught him everything he knows, but we know that's not entirely true as Captain MacDougan from No Surrender, No Retreat was the one who taught him to question immoral orders.

Lefcourt doesn't come across like such a bad guy, he's just got strong feelings about whether military officers should turn against their own government and believes it's his duty to kill anyone who tries it.

Man that's a lot of spinning grey space bricks. They can definitely render a lot more of these things than they could back in the olden days.

I like that they're not all perfectly lined up, though it seems like they've generally agreed on which way 'up' is. Some people complain about that, saying it's unrealistic, but any time I've played a space game I've always rotated my ship to match the ones outside without even thinking.

ACT TWO

Franklin's just about finished getting the neural connections wired up to Lyta's brain by the time act two starts, but she'll have to go outside to do her thing. She can't have anything between her and the targets... so I guess it's a bit awkward for her that they're deep inside armoured starships at the moment.

While she's doing that, Grumpy gets on the phone to Snow White to give them the coordinates to the Wicked Queen's castle. I've never actually been all that interested in the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but this retelling is pretty compelling so far.

Meanwhile, back on White Star Prime... oh, White Star, Snow White, I get it now... Marcus is having a chat with Lennier about whether or not he should give up hoping that Ivanova can be saved (he's leaning towards 'no').

Garibaldi explains to their double agent what the coordinates are for: they're so a White Star can open up a jump point inside the atmosphere. Franklin reminds him he gets latitude and longitude confused sometimes, which has to be a joke as when would they have ever had to worry about that on a space station? But their conversation gets interrupted by a 475.6 meter starship tearing a hole in reality right above them and they have race to a wall and curl up.

Incidentally, the most famous White Star (Line) ship in real life was the doomed Titanic, and I'm bringing this up now because it had a length of 269.1 meters. That's roughly 50% as long as White Star Prime!

And now White Star Prime is swooping around like a jet fighter, wrecking everything on the runway and scaring the crap out of Lyta, who instinctively ducks when it flies over.

She's got the best view of the action, but the camerawork makes it feel like there's someone else out there trying to film it. The scene's got that 'news camera' style that was later used in Attack of the Clones, Firefly and Battlestar Galactica, where it the camera's always zooming in and trying to keep the target in the frame.

Hang on, is this the base that Sheridan was held captive in? It looks really similar but I'm not sure.

Back on the Apollo, Lefcourt hears about the attack but he's not going to take the bait; he's keeping his ships away from the planet so they can manoeuvre better. Also now he knows that Sheridan must have some kind of ace in the hole or else he wouldn't have made the first move. He just doesn't know what it is yet.

Cut to Lyta telepathically waking up the telepaths smuggled aboard Lefcourt's destroyers.

Franklin (finally) explains to the others what's going on, giving us some narration as the telepaths start doing their thing. This was the plan Sheridan came up with five episodes back in No Surrender, No Retreat, the one that Franklin freaked out about when he was brought into the secret in The Exercise of Vital Powers.

The cryonically frozen telepaths were rescued by the OG White Star in Ship of Tears, but the crew soon discovered that they'd been altered by the Shadows to be used as the CPU core in their Shadow vessels. Once they're woken up they immediately attempt to merge with the nearest computer and that'll start shutting down their systems.

It's not entirely clear how they can wake up and get out of their pods if they've been cryonically frozen, but hey maybe they just set the defrost option on a timer.

The double agent in the bunker hasn't got the best line reading of "My god, you're using them, using these people as if they were weapons," but she's right, and Franklin admits it. But they can't remove the Shadow implants without the resources on Earth, so using them is their best hope of saving them... along with the 30,000 people on board the destroyers. It's nice they finally found someone who cares about telepaths though.

ACT THREE

It's halfway through the episode and Sheridan is finally bringing his fleet to Mars!

They're all smiles aboard the Apollo as they've been waiting for this to happen, but they're less cheerful when the lights start flickering and systems start failing. Lefcourt figures out it must have been something they brought up with their supplies and sends people running to sort it out.

Delenn is on a Minbari cruiser with one of those StageCraft volume LED walls they use to film The Mandalorian, so she's got a great view of all the ships floating without power.

It's a nice shot, but the ships aren't spinning, which means Lefcourt shouldn't really have gravity. Though only 20 vessels are disabled so it's possible Lefcourt may be on one of the ones still spinning. This isn't necessarily good news for him however, as Sheridan orders his ships to target the engines and weapons on any of the ships which still have use of them.

Meanwhile soldiers on board the Apollo are trying to blast their way into the cargo bay.

The production crew have done a good job here of taking one of the Babylon 5 hallways and cunningly disguising it with pipes. Not that I can ever remember what a B5 corridor looks like anymore. It's been so long.

This isn't the greatest moment for B5's visual effects team though, especially when we see what the PPG blasts look like from the other side of the door.

The first thing I noticed was that the blinding light wasn't lighting up the walls at all, then I looked closer and realised that they'd taken the element used for one side and flipped it for the other side.

Anyway the telepath on the Apollo has formed a cocoon of wires around itself and is shooting electricity from its hand, so the soldiers open fire and... we don't get to see what happens. Maybe the telepath has a forcefield, maybe it got killed. Either way the soldiers were lucky they weren't wearing any Psi Corps badges, as Ship of Tears revealed that tends to get you zapped on sight.

Sheridan's already finished everything he needed to do on Mars, so he tells the League ships to hang around and keep an eye on the disabled destroyers, while the White Stars and EA ships carry on to Earth. They're going to finish this in one episode!

White Star Prime has completed its experiment to see if things can burn in the Martian atmosphere (they can) and is on its way to join Sheridan's fleet. But Marcus decides to take a quick break to review some of Franklin's logs, under the theory that there might be something interesting in them that Lennier's not telling him about.

The logs come in reverse chronological order (with Franklin wearing a different uniform in each) and the first is a report on the death of Cailyn James, the terminally ill singer Franklin fell in love with in Walkabout. That gives us some closure I suppose, but Marcus is trying to find ways to save terminally ill lovers so it's no good to him. The second log is about the massive beating Marcus took in Grey 17 is Missing, when he sacrificed himself to save someone he cared for. Again, not very useful for him right now.

But the third log is about how Franklin used the alien healing machine from The Quality of Mercy to save Garibaldi way way back in season 2's Revelations! It's been a while since I've had reason to claim that The Quality of Mercy is the secret lynchpin of the series, but it's suddenly become relevant again.

Then there's a shot of Lennier entering Delenn's command centre through the projected CGI background, as the episode apparently still has more VFX budget left in the tank. They've got to use it all up before the season ends!

Lennier is here as Delenn requested, but she didn't actually request him. Turns out that it was a clever trick by Marcus, who runs off with White Star Prime in plain sight of both of them! I guess some things in life are more important than turning up to the last battle in a war to liberate the Earth and its colonies from oppression.

ACT FOUR

We get another 'Channel 4' reference in the series as Delenn phones up the Agamemnon to let Sheridan know about Marcus. Unfortunately they're too deep inside Clark controlled space to get a message through the jammers and tell Zack to stop him when he arrives at B5.

Sheridan has to decide right now if they go to Earth or abort, and Sheridan must really like Marcus as he hesitates longer than I expected. But really it's too late for them to do anything but jump to Earth and finally finish this story arc.

At this point it's not clear what Sheridan actually intends to do once he gets to Earth. Start bombing military targets? Deploy the troops? Fly down in a shuttle and punch President Clark? But it turns out that there's no final battle, no more bloodshed; he's brought his ships here to kick away the support propping up Clark's whole regime: fear.

Fortunately it's easy enough to contact Earth's government and give them a well-rehearsed speech, telling the good guys that he's got their back.

Then we get an actual shot of President Clark that isn't on a monitor screen!

Emperor Cartagia and William Edgars were both mentioned a few times in the lead up to their eventual scene-stealing appearances in the flesh, but Clark was set up all the way back in the season one finale and we've barely seen anything of him in all this time. Clark likes to lurk in the shadows and that hasn't changed even now that we're in the same room as him.

It seems like he's got Sheridan on the radio, but he's ignoring him and scribbling on his notepaper instead. I do the same thing when I'm trying to get through an episode I'm not keen on, though I've never been so bored that I've activated the planetary defence grid.

I wonder if Earth had one of these back during the Battle of the Line.

It looks like Clark is going to make a go at fighting the Liberation fleet, but Sheridan continues his speech undeterred. He wants Clark arrested, he wants Night Watch gone, and he wants anyone in the government who's been waiting for a good time to make their move, to make their move already!

Yeah, like this.

It's the Bad President Removal Squad and they're being led by Carolyn Seymour! She's played an antagonist on Star Trek a few times and she comes off as a little bit sinister here, but anything would be a step up from Clark right now.

Unfortunately Clark has the controls to the defence grid built into his desk (probably installed fairly recently), and he's pressing all kinds of buttons. The satellites open up and start firing missiles.

Seems like the CGI budget's not run out yet! Also that 3D model of Earth’s looking a lot better than it did in Epiphanies.

This is the Starfuries' time to shine as they get to work blowing up missiles... or getting blown up by them. Either way it gets the job done.

Meanwhile the Bad President Removal Squad is bashing down Clark's door. He pulls out a PPG... then puts it to his own head and ends his own reign of terror. This might actually be the only death on Clark's side of the conflict during this whole episode, depends on how many people were in those shuttles Marcus blew up I suppose.

They wheel him away on his chair and that's the end of President Clark. Hopefully they'll be wheeling Night Watch out on their chairs next.

But the senator takes a look at the note he was writing and it's not good.

I mean look at it, most of the scribbles are unreadable! Fortunately the impossible happened and we actually got a HD remaster taken from the original film reels which shows the note in much greater clarity... and the scribbles are still unreadable!

But the main text isn't too hard to make out, and it seems like Clark was fixated on that phase 'The ascension of the ordinary man". Had he been trying for godhood like Cartagia or was he proud of his ascent to world domination? Either way their scheming brought them both to the same final objective: S C O R C H E D   E A R T H.

Earth's weapon platforms spin around ready to unload their entire remaining payload on the planet, which is a feature I would definitely not put into my defence satellites. Some alien hacker or Bond villain gets their hands on them and you're screwed. The senator calls the Liberation fleet to let them know those beams can devastate 40% of the world's surface, so they've only have 10 minutes left to save the Earth!

I'm usually not keen on sci-fi shows putting the entire Earth in jeopardy to raise the stakes, but here it seems like the natural progression.

Sheridan calls for Delenn's help and together they get to work. The Minbari fleet has returned 13 years after the Battle of the Line with a mission to destroy the Earth's last line of defence once again... only this time it's to save humanity. Hopefully they don't surrender before they finish the job this time.

The Agamemnon's really soaking up damage from the incoming missiles, but this is a definite 'continue firing' situation so they just keep on going. Unfortunately the Agamemnon's particle beams stop working, and somehow there's no one else close enough to the last satellite, meaning all Sheridan can do is order 'ramming speed' and turn the ship into a giant battering ram. Lieutenant Worf would be proud.

This should seem like a heroic sacrifice, with Sheridan and his crew giving their lives to save the US's eastern seaboard, but honestly the way these Omega-class ships look, I feel like they'd pretty much smash through anything.

Then at the last moment the EAS Apollo flies out of a jump point and blasts the crap out of the defence platform to save both the Agamemnon and the US's eastern seaboard! Lieutenant Worf would be proud.

This is the one ingredient the episode was missing: a surprise face turn! See, I said General Lefcourt didn't seem so bad. Though if I could change one thing about this sequence, I'd have the extras on the bridge of the Agamemnon react to any of it. I realise that they've got important buttons to press and they've been trained to keep their cool while they're pressing them, but these seem like events worth reacting to. Sheridan gives a speech - no reaction. President Clark is dead - no reaction. The weapon platforms are going to destroy 40% of the Earth - no reaction. They set the engines on ramming speed - no reaction. THEY FLY THROUGH AN EXPLOSION AND LIVE - no reaction.

Anyway, Sheridan and Lefcourt finally have a chat, and it turns out that neither holds much animosity towards the other, even after everything. They were just doing their jobs!

ACT FIVE

Turns out that the Agamemnon looks like Babylon 5 except with extra plumbing as well. The ship and the station were both designed by the Earth Alliance, so I don't really see the similarity as a problem, but it's weird to think that all the people on the station have basically been walking down the corridors of a military vessel this whole time.

The only reason Sheridan came down here was so he could have a conversation with the Agamemnon's captain and give us an update about what the characters are up to. Turns out that Delenn's busy sorting out some business and Franklin's racing back to Babylon 5 to stop a friend from making a terrible mistake.

Then the episode is interrupted by an ISN Special Report.

Jane's back! The last time we saw her was in last season's Severed Dreams, when Clark's troops took the building and dropped part of the ceiling on her.

I'm not sure we're supposed to see that the left side of the set's missing, but it's hard to really notice when Jane's so emotional about the end of the Clark regime that she's struggling to read her lines. She explains her absence by revealing that reporters were being imprisoned and interrogated, then she summarises what just happened, using clips from the episode! I suppose this is where the CGI budget finally ran out. Either that or they just didn't want to re-render the big scenes from two different angles just for a news report at the end.

We don't get footage of people cheering in the streets or anything like that, but it's fine. Jane's appearance alone shows us that the fascist regime that locked her up is over and things are returning to some kind of normal.

Oh, plus ISN's got thoughts and prayers for those injured on both sides. They're not discriminating with their thoughts and prayers.

Now Franklin's in command of a White Star! It seems like everyone getting a turn in the seat. Well, aside from Garibaldi, though that's partly his fault for turning evil for a year.

White Star 2 with the red railing posts got blown up last episode, Marcus ran off in White Star Prime with the purple railing posts, and now Franklin's using a ship with blue posts. Ivanova had a blue White Star when she went looking for the First Ones in The Summoning so it might be the same vessel, but it's hard to know. I wish they'd just give them names!

They can't get in touch with the station, so it turns out that jamming field is still up for some reason and they somehow haven't managed to fly clear of it yet. Either that or Marcus has destroyed B5's communications array or something; he has gone renegade. With nothing better to do, Franklin checks the log entry Marcus watched again and has a black and white flashback all the way back to 2-02: Revelations.

They look so different! Well, Sheridan does, Franklin never changes.

There's one part of the conversation in particular he's thinking back to and that's the part where Sheridan points out that Franklin can't hook himself up to the alien healing machine to give his life energy to Garibaldi without someone else supervising, because if he passes out then it's just going to drain him dry.

Cut to Medlab, with Ivanova hooked up to the healing machine and Marcus about to pass out. Though he hangs on long enough to say "I love you."

Marcus has been ready to sacrifice himself for a good cause since the first time we met him, driven by guilt over the death of his brother, so this isn't the most surprising ending for the character. Though it's maybe a little unexpected that he abandoned his duty to save one life. We saw how one ship made a difference in the final battle, with the Apollo saving the Agamemnon at the last moment, so his paradoxically selfish choice might have actually cost lives. And we don't know yet if it's saved Ivanova.

Still, he went out the exact opposite way as President Clark, whose last act was to set into motion the annihilation of his own planet out of spite. Not a sign of good leadership. In fact Hitler gave a similar order when things weren't going his way, intending to deny invading forces the chance to capture anything that might aid them in the war. Fortunately he didn't have controls built into his desk so his orders were just ignored.

I guess what I'm saying here is that Marcus' final choice was a bit morally ambiguous but he's way better than Hitler.


CONCLUSION

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And so it ends. With two episodes still to go. Plus a whole season after that.

The Earth-Minbari War, the hole in Sinclair's mind, Delenn's secret schemes, Morden's mysterious invisible spider friends, Babylon 4, Londo's dream, Anna Sheridan, the assassination of President Santiago, and now Clark and the Night Watch, it's all been wrapped up now. We know everything, all the bad guys have been defeated, and we've entered the third age of mankind. Though I suppose there's still the Psi Corps... oh, plus the Drakh. Great.

Endgame is all over the place, with Garibaldi, Franklin, Lyta and Number One on their covert ops adventure, Sheridan on the Agamemnon, General Lefcourt on the Apollo, Delenn on her ship, Marcus and Lennier, the folks at Earthdome, ISN reporter Jane showing up at the end... it's kind of busy. But it's not really rushed, it's just got a lot of momentum behind it and an uncharacteristic absence of long conversations. The episode also has different feel to it, and I think that's partly because it's a new director and partly because they apparently had a big sack of money to throw at it for a change. This is wall to wall visual effects shots and good looking ones too. Well for 1997 television I mean. This aired around the same time as Deep Space Nine's Sacrifice of Angels and Voyager's Year of Hell, so B5 wasn't the only series with epic CGI space action anymore, but those scenes on Mars were more ambitious than anything either of the Trek series were doing at the time. Even if they did look a bit like a cutscene in a Command & Conquer game. Whatever the case, 1997 was clearly a great year to be a fan of space opera.

The Earth Civil War is the fourth big crisis to get resolved this season, after the Shadow War, Cartagia/the Narn Occupation, and the Minbari Civil War, and once again the storyline ends with characters choosing to sacrifice themselves. Though other than that, each arc has been very different. The Shadow War was concluded with a philosophical face-off, Cartagia was assassinated through trickery and a deal with an enemy, and the Minbari Civil War was ended with surrender... plus trickery and a deal with an enemy. The Earth Civil War, on the other hand, has been all about tactics and spaceships blowing pieces out of each other. It's the big action payoff that we (deliberately) didn't quite get with the Shadow War, and it makes sense that they'd leave the biggest and most satisfying fireworks show until last. Well, they thought it was going to be last anyway, before they got that fifth season.

This is an episode about resolutions, not revelations, but we did learn something new about Sheridan here and that's that he can actually resolve epic confrontations without using nukes! Though he did have a very heavily foreshadowed ace in the hole to avoid having to win his fight in a boring predictable way. Turns out that he's willing to use civilian telepaths as a weapon without their consent, which seems kind of bad. That's the kind of thing a bad person would do! The episode makes sure we don't judge him too harshly for it however, as the two characters who care about telepaths the most, Lyta and Franklin, were both willing to go along with it. In fact Franklin had a whole speech to justify it and it's hard to argue with 'this is the only way they stand a chance, also it saves 30,000 lives as a bonus'.

Anyway, this was a damn good episode in my opinion, let down only very slightly by some of the supporting actors. It's kind of like the Chrysalis of season four, as Clark's assassination of the president means that nothing's the same anymore. They don't need alien ships patrolling the station! The blockade is over! In fact they don't really have a reason to be independent anymore either. Though what happens to the crew and the station next is left as a mystery.


But is this episode the very best of all the Endgames?

Avengers: Endgame

Superhero movies are obsessed with origin stories, but Avengers: Endgame gives us a rare ending story, bringing closure to a series of movies that had been running for 11 years, far longer than Babylon 5 had at this point. It's a great mix of character driven comedy and spectacular action that goes down unpredictable paths and ends up at a fairly inevitable conclusion. But only because it's eager to give everyone what they want.

Rating: 9

Star Trek: Voyager 7-25 - Endgame

After seven seasons, Voyager had been... actually I'm bored of rating Endgames now.

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NEXT WEEK

Oh no, I wrote a whole review about season 4, episode 20, but I'm a week too late to publish it on April 20th and make it the most subtle 420 joke on the internet.

Babylon 5 will return soon with Rising Star, but I've decided I'm going to give the series a break here and review something more suitable for May the 4th. So next week it's The Mandalorian, season 2!