| Episode: | 83 | | | Writer: | J. Michael Straczynski | | | Director: | Mike Vejar | | | Air Date: | 09-Jun-1997 |
This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm up to Babylon 5 episode 83: The Face of the Enemy.
You can tell the series is picking up momentum again as they've put the title over White Star 2's bridge during a space battle. More often than not an episode title will appear over a nice calm CGI shot of the station just chilling out and rotating, but there's too much going on in the story for that right now.
The episode was directed by Mike Vejar, again. He skipped the first half of the season entirely, but he's been directing every other episode lately, ep 13, 15 and now 17... not that I'm complaining. This was his last for the year though, and he only directed two stories in season five.
I feel like I should give you a SPOILER WARNING just so it's clear I'm going to go through Face of the Enemy scene by scene and maybe spoil a bunch of earlier stories as well. This article will be first-time viewer friendly though, so there'll be no spoilers for later episodes.
Ivanova's not in the fight, she's busy commanding the station, but she still gets to do the voiceover log explaining what's going on. Their war to liberate Earth and its colonies continues and Sheridan's convinced a lot of Earth Alliance ships to switch sides and join his Liberation fleet. Unfortunately there's a lot of them he hasn't convinced, and the battles are getting more desperate the closer they get to Earth itself.
Things are getting a bit dramatic, with cables hanging from the ceiling and smoke filling the bridge, but it's worse on the enemy ships. In fact Sheridan doesn't get why they're not surrendering already. The Earth Alliance fleet can't win this battle, and they can't escape it, so this is only going to end badly for them if they continue like this.
Seems like the story's just skipped right over all the scenes of them stuck on a freighter together driving each other mad with games of 'I Spy' and songs from Gilbert and Sullivan, though the fact they're sitting in there absolute silence says it all. Also look, other people are on the train with them! The protagonists haven't got a train to themselves for a change.
Ivanova reveals that they're in the endgame now, which is wrong as Endgame is still a few episodes away. She then goes and says the most un-Ivanova thing possible: that they're going to be okay as long as nothing goes wrong.
Garibaldi has returned to Edgars' mansion with an update: Sheridan's dad has been captured thanks to his information and now they're ready to use him to capture Sheridan himself. This is great news for Edgars as taking Sheridan off the board will calm things down and let them carry out their own scheme. Speaking of their secret plan, Edgars promise he'll live up to his end of the bargain and speak of their secret plan just as soon as Garibaldi's work is done. He'll receive the whole truth as payment for his part in this. Garibaldi's not all that cheerful about it though, mentioning that the last person to do this job got 30 pieces of silver. Great, now even Garibaldi's started believing that Sheridan's the messiah!
By the way, I got a good look at the headline on Edgars' newspaper and all it says is: "EARTH SENATE VOTES 10-BILLION CREDITS FOR NEW MARS DOME". So that's a bit of a let down. Especially as the project might not even go anywhere if Mars gains its independence.
ACT ONE
I wonder if those cables hanging out of the ceiling are going to get autorepaired too, or if someone's going to have to get up on a stepladder. I remember seeing ships parked outside the station getting fixed in The Illusion of Truth, so autorepair can't fix everything.
Just then he finally gets a reply from one the EAS Cadmus that helps clear things up a bit. They've been briefed about Sheridan's campaign: about how he takes the crews of surrendering vessels, executes them, and has them replaced with a Minbari crew.
The scene shows that it's not just Earth Alliance ships that Sheridan's bringing to his side, it's the officers too, and people are more willing to believe Sheridan's story if there's someone they trust in his corner. It's a good thing that no one's paranoid enough to suspect that they might have Mackie's voice print on file and are using able to imitate his voice to mislead them.
Also, wow they resolved the problem from the teaser quickly. I guess this episode's got other places it needs to be before the end credits roll. In fact Marcus has some troubling news for them right now: there's a jump point opening and another EA ship's coming through.
The Agamemnon calls to tell Sheridan that they're here to join up with him and he accepts that without hesitation. In fact he's going to go over right now to say 'hi' to everyone, despite Marcus pointing out it's maybe not a good idea to hand himself over to a potential enemy without even taking the slightest precautions.
This is the flip side of what just happened with Mackie and the captain of the Cadmus. Sheridan knows the crew of the Agamemnon, they were his Spock, McCoy and Scotty, so he has absolute trust in them. Might be a bit of a weakness of his.
It's a bit misleading though showing us the city, when Marcus and Lyta are currently in the tunnels below meeting up with Number One and the rest of the Mars Resistance. You know, it's just occurred to me that this is the first time that Lyta's set foot on a planet on screen. Out of the characters in the opening titles, I think Zack's the only one who hasn't gotten to visit a planet so far.
Number One has seen Lyta before but this is the first time she's hearing she's a telepath. That's the kind of thing you really want to know about if you're running a Resistance where people have heads full of secrets that could get them all killed.
The Resistance still doesn't know why they're here though and neither do we. But we're not going to find that out here, so Number One ends the scene by putting the cloth back over the pod... and the camera.
Meanwhile Sheridan has arrived on his old ship. The first thing he says is "The place hasn't changed," which is a huge lie!
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| 2-01 - Points of Departure |
Though it is the same set to be fair; both rooms are a redress of C&C, they've just done a better job making it unrecognisable this time. Also look, it's got the Agamemnon logo on the wall this time!
The captain tells Sheridan they have changed something since he left: they've replaced the tracking system. I suppose this explains why the EA vessels have had any kind of fighting chance against Sheridan's Minbari ships. The Earth-Minbari War was a total slaughter because Earth ships couldn't track Minbari vessels, and they still couldn't track them in season 2.
Just then they get a call from Marcus, telling them they've got a call from Garibaldi!
Garibaldi just called to let Sheridan know that his dad's been captured by Clark's forces and unless he surrenders they're going to kill him. Even if he wins this war and liberates Earth he won't get there in time to save him. Garibaldi does have a plan to rescue him fortunately, but Sheridan is going to have to come to a meeting in person, alone (he stops short of asking him to cuff himself and stick a bag over his head).
Sheridan and Garibaldi haven't exactly been seeing eye to eye lately, but it's Garibaldi, so of course he's going to trust him. Despite his former XO telling him it's a bad idea. His dad's in trouble, he has to do something.
ACT TWO
Meanwhile on Mars, people are being very rude to Lyta, slamming her food down on the table at dinner time. Franklin wants to know what's up and that makes Number One storm off!
Lyta explains they're a bit pissed off about the telepath Bloodhound units that are scanning anyone suspected of being in the Resistance. This isn't just bad because of the obvious reasons; the scans they're doing are strong enough to cause heart attacks, strokes, maybe even a trickle of blood to come out of their nose.
In fact she says she hopes she doesn't live to see it happen, which is basically what Garibaldi said in The Exercise of Vital Powers.
Then we get a shot of one of the Agamemnon's Thunderbolt Starfuries entering Mars' atmosphere and Sheridan presumably found a parking spot without much trouble as the episode cuts straight to him entering a bar.
It'd be cool if this was a really subtle clue that he got the idea of where to arrange the meeting with Sheridan from the advert... but the poster says "New flavour" on it, so I think it's just advertising a drink.
Sheridan sits down across a table to Garibaldi and the two of them discuss his father's current predicament for a moment. Then Garibaldi slams a tranq skin tab onto Sheridan's hand! So any hope that he'd had second thoughts and was going to fix the damage he'd caused just went out the window.
I don't think I liked this scene much the first time I saw the episode, but it's working better for me now. Or maybe I just like the song that's playing: YouTube link. It's a track written by the composer Christopher Franke but it sounds nothing like typical B5 music. It doesn't sound much like the songs he wrote for the bar scenes in Walkabout either, which is good news for me because the music in that episode really didn't work for me.
Smashing the electronic window also starts the lights flickering, with gives the director an excuse to slip in some still photographs between the punches.
Sheridan's drugged, outnumbered, and in a fight he can't possibly win, but he refuses to surrender. I guess now he knows what those captains in the space battle earlier felt like. Except all the bad things he's heard about how Clark treats his prisoners are probably true.
And the scene ends with a fantastic shot of Garibaldi looking moody in the flickering light. But I can't really show in action because of all the flickering.
ACT THREE
ISN reporter Alison Higgins I mean, not Ivanova. She's finally arrived on White Star 2, which is a bit of a shame because it means she's using Sheridan's ship with the red posts. I feel like she should have her own ship, maybe the one with the purple posts.
Anyway, she's just hearing the news that Clark's forces have captured Sheridan. But you know what ISN are like, they could be lying their asses off. Maybe Sheridan picked himself off the floor off-screen and got away!
The news anchor's lying about him getting "proper care and treatment" though as what they're mostly giving him is a second beating. They're kicking him so hard that Delenn can feel it. No, seriously, she wakes up like she's suddenly felt his pain through the Force, right before Lennier comes in to tell her the news.
This means it's exposition time again, as Edgars and Wade explain that Clark's not the real concern, it's the Psi Corps. That's why he sent his wife to B5 instead of going there himself, why he had Garibaldi fire Lyta, and why Wade shot that telepath they'd hired to scan Garibaldi: the telepaths are the threat. Though the vial he helped smuggle through station security really is a cure for telepaths... it's just a cure for a virus they've developed themselves. So that's what the sick people in the basement last episode were about.
Wade explains that a species with a genetic or technological advantage will inevitably conquer a species without that advantage... so he presumably doesn't have a whole lot of faith in the Babylon Project. Clark relies on the Psi Corps to maintain his reign of terror, and the power he's handed them could be turned on us to kill human liberty and turn mundanes into second class citizens.
Once the virus has been used to neutralise the Psi Corps it'll be much easier for Team Edgars to deal with Clark. They'll achieve everything Sheridan was planning to do with far fewer space battles and the only cost will be the enslavement of all telepaths. There's a nice moment here where Edgars goes to say 'telepath problem' and stops mid-sentence when he realises he's stealing Hitler's material. He still finishes his line, but he's visibly shaken.
However when Wade and Edgars leave the room the camera pans over to reveal that Lise was listening to the whole conversation and now she knows their morally-suspect plan! But then she leaves before witnessing Garibaldi ripping out one of his teeth. It's a double twist!
Bloody hell Franklin, you had one job: scan Garibaldi to make sure he hadn't been turned into an unwitting agent of an evil faction during his mysterious absence. You gotta scan for the scars that are left behind by Shadow implants, you gotta scan for mind control parasites, and you've got to scan for electronic devices inside the body!
Garibaldi had been told he'd have to stay on the compound until the virus plan is put into play, for obvious reasons, but in the very next shot we see he's crept out and taken a train.
Lise is horrified by what her husband's up to and wants Garibaldi's help to stop him. Garibaldi's more or less in stand-by mode at the moment though and just tells her to go home. So she does!
I've noticed a lot of reviewers complaining that Lise is a terrible female character because she's so passive and always relies on men. Personally I don't think that makes her a bad character, just a different one. She's nothing like Lyta, Number One, Delenn or Ivanova, and she makes them seem stronger by comparison.
Anyway she was the only other passenger on the train, but there is someone else outside waiting to come in.
Bester received Garibaldi's signal and wants to him to tell him everything he knows. He doesn't literally mean 'tell him' though, no he just wants to rip the information right out of his brain. Which is illustrated by the camera flying into Garibaldi's eye.
ACT FOUR
It seems like the exposition is over now... but it's barely even begun.
Bester didn't actually know much about Edgars' scheme, so he got a lot more than he bargained for here. He's not all that bothered though, as the Psi Corps will be able to deal with it. But every time you betray someone in this episode you get to learn about someone's secret plan, even if you did it under mind control, so this has earned Garibaldi a bunch more flashbacks. In black and white this time.
Showrunner jms loved The X-Files and you can really tell in scenes like this. Not just because of the guy being abducted by men in black, but the conspiracies within conspiracies. In fact Bester suspects that the telepath virus was mostly the Shadows' work, as it was in their interest to remove the threat of human telepaths once they'd served their purpose. Just like they'd killed off all the telepaths on Narn during the previous Shadow war.
We learn here that the Psi Corps didn't reprogram Garibaldi, not entirely, because they needed him to pass a telepathic scan and they didn't want to risk making him less effective at detecting conspiracies. They just amplified some of his traits: paranoia, distrust of authority figures etc, and gave him those psychedelic video messages to nudge him in the direction they intended for him to go. Well, mostly. They didn't actually expect him to resign!
But with every nudge he became more their puppet and less Garibaldi, until he was even willing to sell out Sheridan.
Though Bester does point out that killing him now might actually be a mercy, seeing as he's betrayed literally all of his friends, which include the richest man on Mars and the commander of the most dangerous fleet in known space. Especially considering that an alternative option would be to leave him stuck like this permanently, unable to move. Or I suppose he could do that 'screaming forever' thing that Lyta mentioned in her story.
But instead he decides to send the telepathic signal to shut down Garibaldi's programming and return his original personality, all memories intact. In a minute or two he'll be himself again after almost an entire season of being incredibly cranky, and then he'll have the chance to tell the others that he was mind controlled and he's totally trustworthy now, and we'll see how that works out for him.
I figure if Bester thought that Garibaldi could be any further use to him at all he would've kept him as an agent, so Garibaldi's pretty much being dumped like trash at this point.
Using still photos twice in one episode kind of dilutes the effect but it definitely gets the point across. Man, poor Garibaldi.
ACT FIVE
Clark thought that Sheridan was irreplaceable, Edgars assumed his capture would at least force his allies to pull back and regroup, but the Shadows knew that there were people ready to step in and take his place: Garibaldi, Delenn and Ivanova. The person is expendable, the job is not.
The Psi Corps already took Garibaldi out of play, but the other two haven't missed a step this time. Delenn's running the station and Ivanova's leading the fleet, just like she'd always dreamed. Though I kind of wish Garibaldi had gotten the chance to take the Sheridan role for a bit, just so I could see what that looks like.
But I can really tell that regular Garibaldi is back, for the first time since season 3. He's not all irritable and sinister, and the black cloud of misery has lifted. Now he's just desperate.
Then we get a news update from ISN reporter Alison Higgins, mostly telling us things we already know: the war is unravelling, renegade captain John Sheridan is being well fed and well treated, and Edgars has apparently been murdered by the Mars Resistance.
Using the same photo technique three times for three very different circumstances was maybe a bit of a mistake by the director. It would've worked great for any of them, maybe even two of them, but this is pushing it.
ISN's reporting has been a bit shaky lately, ever since they became the propaganda arm of a fascist regime, but for once they're given people information they can actually use. For everyone opposing Clark, this now is the face of the enemy.
CONCLUSION
I've come up with a theory why director Mike Vejar didn't return for the rest of the season: the guy was worn out. Showrunner jms apparently made sure Vejar was the person to direct this episode because he knew it was important to nail the visuals on this one, and the guy did it right. In fact he spent most of a day just filming the scene of Sheridan being taken down in the bar, and man it was worth it.
Last time I mentioned I was hyped to rewatch this episode, but to be honest I was also a little apprehensive. I remembered being put off the first time around by how it'd tried too hard to be stylish. Seems that my tastes have changed a bit in the meantime. That said, using that still photo gimmick three times for three radically different purposes didn't work for me, which is a shame as each scene taken individually is great.
The episode's about three things: the heroes trying to end a space battle without killing everyone on the other side, Lyta facing telepath prejudice on Mars, and Garibaldi luring Sheridan into a trap. Then about 40% of way in it drops the first two plots and goes all in on the Garibaldi story. In fact Sheridan's captured halfway into the episode!
Not that Garibaldi gets a whole lot to do either. The rest of the episode is pretty much one long expository monologue by Edgars followed by one long expository monologue by Bester. But they're both such good characters, played by such good actors, that it actually becomes a positive. Plus it helps that we're finally getting the full answers to all the questions surrounding Garibaldi this season, as promised. We learn why he was taken by the Shadows, what Bester did to him, why he quit being security chief, what Edgars had him doing, and why Edgars had him doing it. Then the episode leaves us to wonder what the hell Garibaldi's going to do about it, seeing as Edgars is dead and Ivanova's not accepting his calls.
Edgars was a somewhat compassionate man who had apparently earned his power through hard work and wanted to use it to protect the human race (those that met his criteria for 'human' anyway). Cartagia was just a dick who got handed power and used it to amuse himself. Cartagia saw himself as a god and didn't have anything to fear, Edgars was well aware of his human weaknesses and was terrified. He was so scared of what the telepaths would do in the future that he tried a pre-emptive strike.... and it turns out he was absolutely right to be afraid. I don't think the episode goes as far as saying that using a lethal virus as leverage is the ideal solution, kind of the opposite actually, but it makes a point of showing that Franklin hasn't got any better ideas and the best plan Lyta can come up with is to die before the war starts. Things are seeming kind of bleak.
Fortunately Bester stepped in to do the heroic thing and stopped the horrific scheme mere days before it was put into action! But the episode specifically points out that he had no idea about Edgar's plan when he brainwashed Garibaldi, so he wasn't making a tough choice there to save his people, he's not the good guy here, he just got very very lucky.
This Bester and Garibaldi team up was considerably darker than the last time they worked together, back in Dust to Dust. It's also got me thinking back to what we've learned about the character over the last few seasons:
- Garabaldi's two main traits, aside for his appreciation for Daffy Duck, his sense of humour and his love of bagna càuda, are his paranoia and his loyalty to his friends.
- In season one we learned how B5 was his last chance after screwing up every other job.
- He was in love with Talia Winters, who had her personality erased by the Psi Corps.
- He's still in love with Lise Hampton-Edgars, who just keeps marrying people who aren't him.
- In Ceremonies of Light and Dark he admitted that he's terrified of losing control.
The day didn't go particularly well for Sheridan either really. The heroes didn't just lose in this episode, they lost hard. The status quo has been shattered again. But it's not another Chrysalis or Z'ha'dum, because at the end Ivanova just picks up the flag and carries on marching. Babylon 5 has sometimes been accused of favouring the theory that certain specific 'great men' are the ones to drive history and we saw in The Summoning how only Sheridan could bring the League back together. But this episode outright states that the job is more important than the person, as Ivanova becomes the next to take the leadership role. We'll have to see how that works out for her though.
Anyway, good ep, would recommend.
NEXT WEEK
I'm sure you've noticed the comment box below, but I just want to take a moment to draw attention to it anyway because it would be awesome if you wrote some opinions or observations of your own down in it.
It's been years since I've watched this show, but my jaw still clenches when I hear Alison Higgins' newscaster voice in my mind.
ReplyDeleteI really should've included her on the picture of recurring season 4 villains.
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