Babylon 5: In the Beginning - Part 2

---

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm in the middle of In the Beginning, which is either the first, second or third of the Babylon 5 TV movies depending on who you ask. It was definitely filmed after The Gathering and Thirdspace, but it was the first movie to air on TNT to promote the launch of the fifth season.

This is the second part of a three part review, so you should probably start with PART ONE if you haven't read it already.

You should probably also watch the movie yourself, though make sure you watch four years of the TV show as well. Some would make the argument that the movie is actually a good place for new viewers for start watching the series, but I'm going to be dropping SPOILERS for seasons 1 to 4 and I don't want to ruin anything for anyone.

---

Previously, on Babylon 5: In the Beginning:

It's 2278 and an elderly Emperor Londo Mollari is telling a true story to a pair of children in his throne room, about the time the Minbari nearly wiped out humanity. The Earth Alliance had sent a fleet to investigate the ancient mysterious race, but the Minbari were out investigating an ancient alien race of their own and the two fleets ran into each other unexpectedly. Minbari technology was so far ahead of Earth tech that their scanning beams were interfering with the EA fleet's systems, jamming their jump engines. Plus they had their gun ports open, as is their tradition. The Earth fleet fired first to disable the scanning beam so that they could make a run for it, and inadvertently murdered the beloved leader of the Minbari. Delenn cast the deciding vote for swift and brutal retaliation.

And now, the continuation:

ACT THREE

The season 4 episode Atonement revealed that Delenn was the one who told the Minbari to chase the Earth Alliance fleet to their base and destroy it, but we didn't get to see the attack, only a shot of the aftermath.

I thought we might be getting to see it here, as the space station looks just like the debris floating around in that episode, but the planet's totally wrong so I guess not. This just one of the main other bases the Minbari have been hitting.

Cut to a crowd of people watching the action on the big screen... in 4:3. I guess there's no reason military footage needs to have a cinematic presentation.

This is a weird room, and not just because that wall's obviously virtual. It's weird because it seems to become half as wide when you see it from the reverse angle.

That balcony is a nice effect though. You can't tell at all that it's the same room with the same people just filmed from a different perspective.

General Lefcourt walks out with a friend to address the assembled Earthforce personnel and explain how screwed they are.

The Minbari are visiting their outer colonies and destroying all their defences, leaving them vulnerable for later. It seems like they're taking out the human warrior caste first, so they can go back and slaughter everyone else while they're helpless. Earth has tried calling them up to ask them to stop, but they're not answering.

Earthforce hasn't won a single battle yet due to Minbari technology being a thousand or so years more advanced (they're basically throwing rocks at battleships) and it's kind of hurting morale, so they inform the crowd they currently have two goals:

1. Achieve any kind of victory, no matter how small.
2. Win the rest of the damn war.

Sheridan's in the crowd as well, along with his captain, Roger Sterns (the one that's one tour away from retirement). I've been trying to spot his buddy Mackie as well but there's no sign of him sadly.

Sterns suggests that Sheridan go see his folks while their ship, the Lexington, is being outfitted, because this is seeming very apocalyptic. Sheridan's slightly less pessimistic, as he doesn't believe any enemy's unkillable. They just have to figure out the trick.

Meanwhile, in some other CGI enhanced part of some Earthforce base, pilot Ganya Ivanov just got a call on the PA to go to room 7 because he's got a visitor. Sounds more ominous than it's probably meant to.

It's his sister Susan Ivanova! The Babylon 5 wiki has worked out that she would've been sixteen at this point, while the script says that she's eighteen, but either way teenage Ivanova is still played by Claudia Christian. Which is a bit surprising maybe, seeing as she left the show when it moved to TNT. In fact this movie was filmed after Thirdspace so I think this might be the last scene she ever filmed for Babylon 5... but not her final appearance.

She apparently had to audition for the role of 'Young Ivanova' along with other actresses to prove she could do it, and it seems she got it close enough. The scene's still plenty weird though, because her brother has so much more of a Russian accent than she does, and he's so much worse at acting than she is. Plus the story she tells about how she lost an earring when they were camping is terrible.

"Remember when we were camping and we got lost? And then I lost my earring and then we were found but I never found the earring and you made me feel better by telling me that it was lucky?"

She gives her brother one of her earrings and tells him she'll never wear it again until he gives it back, which seems fairly obvious. This is apparently supposed to be the long-awaited explanation for why Ivanova only ever wears one earring, but I never even realised that was a thing until now!

I checked some earlier episodes and it does actually seem to be the case though, so that's an interesting detail that flew right over my head all this time. Over the course of the series Ivanova had to deal with the loss of her dad, Talia, and Marcus, but now we know that she was also thinking about her dead brother every time she put her earring on in the morning. We also know that this guy's totally going to die, because how could he not after this scene?

The camera has shown a fondness for flying up to windows and peeking inside, and this is the second window in the movie so far to have Londo Mollari standing behind it, with his very shiny dark hair.

Earth would like to buy some Centauri weapons to use against the Minbari, because apparently that's going to help. I'm not sure if they mean ground weapons or ship weapons, but it doesn't matter as the Centauri aren't interested. They don't give advanced weaponry to developing worlds, especially if it's going to paint a target on their own heads for the Minbari to see.

Then it cuts to young G'Kar, in his original costume! This is pre-epiphany G'Kar, so he's arrogant, full of himself, and filled with hatred for the Centauri. He's more than willing to sell Narn weapons to Earth, because they were reverse engineered from Centauri weapons, so the blame's more likely to fall on them.

Turns out that they managed to seize a lot of Centauri guns when they drove them from Narn after 100 years of brutal occupation. This might be the only hint in the movie that the Narn and Centauri really hate each other, which will be kind of important later.

A nice touch here is that G'Kar keeps leaning back to disappear into the shadows as he talks, which is what Emperor Londo was doing in his first appearance. They never meet in this movie and there's still that bit of connection.

Back on the Minbari side of the plot, Morann has come with news of how they're still utterly thrashing the humans, but Lenonn is determined to turn the conversation back to the Shadows. In his opinion the Warrior Caste is having too much fun winning an effortless battle against an opponent that can't fight back and ignoring the real struggle that's to come. In Morann's opinion the humans are an actual real enemy that actually exists, so he intends to keep focusing on them for the time being.

Delenn eventually kicks Morann out for being a dick, and Lenonn reveals he's made arrangements to bring everything of Dukhat's to this ship instead, even his sanctum. Wow at the start of the movie he was utterly confused by the Grey Council rituals, and now he's telling them what to do with their leader's stuff. Wait, why do they need to move anything? Are they on a different ship now? They all look the same!

Anyway, Lenonn tells Delenn to go down to the sanctum, soon, and she finds something fairly interesting there...

...two Vorlons and a holographic recording made by Dukhat! It's Kosh and Ulkesh (Bad Kosh), though Ulkesh never does give his name. Because he's a dick.

Dukhat's recording explains that the Vorlons have come to prepare for the coming war, and Minbari are going to need other allies in order to win the coming Shadow War. One race in particular is going to be absolutely crucial to victory, and without them the Minbari are going to be entirely screwed. This race calls themselves the 'humans'.

So that's a problem.

It probably would've helped if Delenn had been given this information before she voted to chase them down and show no mercy. Though to be fair she didn't vote to go on a holy war afterwards! Unless that happened off screen.

ACT FOUR

 

Now it's time to check on the humans again and the camera flies over to focus on a building next to Earthdome. At least I think that's where this is.

Some of the CGI in this movie still looks fairly good, so it's a shame that the forest back there is absolutely bloody terrible. It looks like they've taken one flat picture of trees and pasted it a few times to hide the fact that the ground ends there and the mountains aren't actually connected. It looks worse to me every time I replay the scene.

Anyway, inside that building over there is Dr Stephen Franklin, who's busy showing people around this awesome new medical facility when the military drops by to have a chat.
 

Man, we're getting everyone here but young Garibaldi, which is a shame because young Garibaldi's story would've probably been pretty interesting and very expensive, seeing as he was a ground pounder space marine. I bet he had tons of hair as well. Young Franklin, on the other hand, looks exactly the same as he always does. Because he always does!

This guy on the left is a bit annoyed that Franklin has been holding out on them. Turns out Franklin had a chance to examine a few Minbari a while back, but he won't share the medical data he collected with them so they can build bioweapons. Hey Franklin mentioned this happening in the episode And the Sky Full of Stars! I can kind of see the officer's position, seeing as humanity is on track to be wiped out by these aliens, but it's also hard not to sympathise with Franklin's 'genocide is bad' position.

They tell Franklin he's under arrest until he hands over the data, and they're also going to be searching his house and office (illegally I guess). So this day didn't exactly go as he planned.

It's over halfway through the movie now and we're finally back on an Earth Alliance ship. This is the Lexington, and first officer Sheridan's personal log voice over reveals that there's an ace cruiser out there wiping out their ships slightly faster than the other cruisers do.

We also get confirmation that there is definitely no gravity on these ships, as the handheld device that Sheridan's playing with stays put in the air when he lets go of it.

It's weird to see Sheridan as an eager subordinate instead of a confident commander, but Boxleitner is pretty convincing. I'm trying to imagine William Shatner ever pulling off playing Lt. Commander James T Kirk and I just can't.

They detect a stray Minbari flyer and decide to send out a Starfury to keep an eye on it... piloted by Ganya Ivanov! Man, what are the chances that he'd be serving on the same ship as Sheridan?

Here he is, in a Starfury cockpit, ready to do something.

Back on the Lexington, Sheridan's noticed that the flyer isn't behaving like a ship trying to get away, more like a ship trying to lure them into a predetermined location. I'm a bit confused by this scene to be honest, because Sheridan's worried that the Minbari are about to open up a jump point in the middle of their fleet, but... they deliberately didn't follow the flyer to the location the Minbari wanted them to be, they just sent a Starfury out.

Anyway Sheridan's right and the Minbari wreck three capital ships with a single jump point, including the Lexington! Actually I just double checked and the ship on the right says Trafalgar on the front, but you can understand how I got them mixed up. They should've given these Hyperion-class ships different colours or something.

Also I have to correct my previous statement: the jump point only takes out two capital ships, as one of them just vanishes from the shot entirely, like they forgot to superimpose an explosion over it.

Man, these Minbari must be pretty dishonourable to pull a sneak attack like this... wait, hang on, in Midnight on the Firing Line, Commander Sinclair said that the Minbari weren't dishonourable and they didn't pull sneak attacks! That's why he was convinced they hadn't attacked Ragesh 3. Though to be fair he said that he hadn't seen the Minbari pull a sneak attack, and it's not like Earthforce was going to broadcast footage of this battle on a big screen to a room full of officers.

Oh no, they hit the ƧAƎ Иoɟϱnixɘl as well! Wait, this is the same shot from the teaser clips in the prologue, except flipped over for some reason so that the writing's backwards. I'm already struggling to keep track of which ship is which so this isn't helping.

Anyway, we know that Ivanova's brother was killed during the war somehow but now we're finally going to see what happened to him! He gets shot by a beam and crashes into an asteroid; a meaningless death achieving absolutely nothing. It's a good thing he was an absolute nothing character really.

Sheridan gives a damage report and requests orders, but it seems that Captain Stern has blinked out of existence as well, which is good as he would've gotten hit by that girder otherwise! That would've really ruined his last tour before retirement.

I guess the girder must have come flying through the wall, as things aren't going to fall from the ceiling in zero-G, though that doesn't solve the mystery of what happened to the chair.

Oh hang on, I think Stern might actually be dead. When I was watching the scene my attention was focused on the CGI blood straight out of Star Trek VI, but in a still screencap it's pretty obvious there's a hand there sticking out from behind the girder. In fact he's so obviously dead that no one's going to bother going over there to check.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

The blood even looks a similar shade of pink to the Klingon blood in Star Trek IV, though I think B5's effects are actually better here. CGI had improved enough in seven years for a 1998 TV movie to take on a 1991 motion picture with ten times its budget... sometimes.

Damn, poor Captain Stern. He seemed like a good man, and he barely got any lines! Now Sheridan's in command of a wrecked ship hunted by the Minbari's most dangerous warcruiser and it's his job to get them out of this.

Well that battle lasted about 30 seconds, so the movie cuts back to the Minbari for a bit. Huh... it's funny how that wall behind them looks exactly the same as the ceiling on the Earth Alliance vessels.

Delenn is really keen on shutting the war down at this point, but she can't contact the humans herself for whatever reason. They can have the Rangers contact the Narn though, and the Narn can arrange for Lenonn to meet with the humans in secret. It'll take about three or four weeks to get the meeting set up, more than enough time for him to learn their language.

Back on the Lexington, director Mike Vejar is showing off one of his favourite tricks: shining an LCD projector on an actor's face to make it look like the light's coming from the screen they're looking at. He even got to use it on Deep Space Nine one time.

The Lexington is only still here because the Minbari cruiser assumed that they were dead, and it's not far wrong. They're in some actual legitimate distress here, but if they send out a distress call the cruiser will come back and kill them.

So Sheridan comes up with a plan. The famous plan that will earn him the nickname 'Starkiller' with the Minbari. He's going to uses nukes! That's not a big surprise, Sheridan always uses nukes, he loves nukes, but the Minbari won't expect them to be attached to the asteroids floating nearby. They just need to send out a distress call and then they can lure them into a predetermined location for the kill this time.

But this is Young Sheridan and he's only been in charge for 5 minutes, so he asks everyone else on the bridge if they have a better idea before putting his plan into action. The guy's got no arrogance, and that's why he's doing smart things instead of dumb things.

ACT FIVE

Wow, those nukes are a lot smaller than I expected.

The crew of the Lexington are all tension and bleeding faces at this point, but there's nothing they can do now except send the call and wait for the enemy cruiser to move into position. So Sheridan gets out a photo and puts it on his console to look at.

It's Anna Sheridan, still played by Boxleitner's wife Melissa Gilbert. They haven't recast her again. Man it's a shame we never get to see any pre-Z'ha'dum Anna in this movie.

The cruiser approaches and Sheridan waits just long enough for them to charge weapons before pulling the trigger on the bombs. So in case there was any doubt earlier, they were definitely not coming to offer assistance, only energy beams.

This is the difference between Jankowski and Sheridan I guess: Sheridan doesn't open fire before getting all the facts. Also Jankowski starts fights against unkillable enemies, and Sheridan finishes them.
 

That's a pretty lens flare! I was going to use a screencap of the shock wave instead, but I decided this was the better picture. I don't think nukes are supposed to have shock waves in a vacuum anyway, but whatever, these are future space nukes and they just killed the Minbari's ace cruiser.

I'm a little disappointed that the famous Black Star looks like any other Minbari ship; they could've at least painted it black. Though I suppose there wasn't much chance of that seeing as the White Star wasn't white.

There's a bit of an inconsistency here though, as in Points of Departure Sheridan says that he took out the Black Star and three heavy cruisers. I suppose he could always go collect more nukes from the wrecks of the other ships and plant more mines for the Black Star's buddies to wander into. We don't actually get to see what happened next, as it cuts straight to...
 

... everyone cheering!

Turns out that Earthforce decided to show footage of the battle on their big screen to a room full of officers, to prove to everyone that Minbari ships can be destroyed.

Then General Lefcourt appears with Sheridan and justifies the use of a distress call to lure the Black Star in, pointing out that the Minbari were going to destroy the ship in distress. Yeah yeah, we get it already, Sheridan's morally flawless.

The last time we were in this location we were told that they needed to do two things, and their first goal is now complete: they've got their victory and boosted morale! All they have to do now is end the war somehow. Fortunately they've got an idea about that: they're going to send a team to meet with Lenonn and do whatever it takes for the Minbari to accept their surrender. And that team is....

Sheridan, Franklin and G'Kar! Even the movie's writer agrees that it's a bit of a stretch that the three of them met here, spent weeks on a mission together, and then never mentioned it again, but I don't think it really contradicts anything. I feel like the series skipped right over their introductions. In fact I'm not sure Sheridan and Franklin even had a scene together in Sheridan's first episode and G'Kar skipped that story entirely.

Plus it does make sense in the context of the movie. They've already mentioned Sheridan's got a good record for first contacts, Franklin can verify that they really are dealing with a real Minbari, and G'Kar's fluent in both their languages. Plus the meeting was arranged through the Narn, so of course G'Kar would be involved. The weirdest thing about it is how eager he seems to be. The guy's seems hyped to go on a secret mission in someone else's war.

The three of them get dropped off at an abandoned listening post on a snowy planet in the Epsilon system... hey that's where Babylon 5 gets built! Unfortunately their shuttle was dropped off by a Narn cruiser, which turns out to be a problem.

Emperor Londo mentioned way back at the start of the movie that a lot of blood is on his own hands, and now he's ready to explain why. He was ordered to stop the Narn from using the war to form closer ties with Earth, so when he heard about this meeting through his spies he issued some orders of his own. He didn't know it was actually a secret meeting to end the war, that part was kept secret!

That's a nice 'light shining in through a doorway' shot. Well, nicer in action.

Sheridan gets the lights on to brighten up their cosy bunker and tells Franklin to go back outside into the cold to check the perimeter to "see if we can secure this place". While he's gone, G'Kar takes the opportunity to talk with Sheridan about what he's going to do if these talk fail, offering him a sanctuary with the Narn to escape his inevitable doom. He made a similar offer to Garibaldi in Survivors; the guy's always trying to recruit people. Someday it'll be Sheridan offering G'Kar sanctuary, but he turns this offer down as he intends to fight to the end. Just then Franklin returns... at gunpoint. Lenonn's here!

Lenonn just wants to chat though really, even though it takes him a few seconds to get comfortable speaking the language. He starts off talking very slow, but once he's gotten some momentum going he's perfectly fluent.

Unfortunately he's rudely interrupted by a Centauri ship, which comes hurtling out of a jump point, guns blazing, and annihilates the Narn cruiser before I could even get a screencap of it. It's just chunks by the time the camera's whipped around to show where the energy beams are going. Wait, Londo had the authority to order a warship around?

The ship's not done yet though, as it fires a few torpedoes down at the planet to destroy the listening post as well.

Yeah, that's not what you want to see in your bunker. It looks really good though.

Emperor Londo explains that neither side ever figured out who attacked them, but all this time Londo's known. We learned in Dust to Dust that a lot of the reason Londo was a drunken mess by the time of The Gathering was because he felt like he'd been given a crappy job as Centauri ambassador on B5 to get rid of him (which was the opposite of true). But maybe some of his despair was due to the 200,000 deaths on his conscience after the war continued to drag on. 80% of the casualties in the Earth-Minbari War might have been his fault, just because he was acting on incomplete information. Then again the Minbari are genocidal dicks, so it's possible these talks may not have actually gone anywhere.

Here's a fun fact: Babylon 5 station has a population of 250,000, so if it got destroyed the death count would match that of the entire Earth-Minbari War.

Miraculously no one was seriously wounded except for Lenonn, but he's in a pretty bad way. Though he looks better than he could have, due to some clever thinking by the makeup team. When actors in Minbari makeup lie down, the bone pushes the makeup on the forehead forward and it makes the seam really obvious. So they just covered the seam in blood and made it look like a deep gash instead.

Lenonn hangs on long enough to whisper a mysterious message to Sheridan, but then he's gone, and all their hopes for peace die with him. This sucks, all the good Minbari characters keep dying!

The Minbari soon arrive in the Epsilon system and bring the humans to Delenn in case she wanted to question them prior to execution. So this is the first meeting between Delenn, Franklin, G'Kar and Sheridan! Shame she's got her hood down so they'll never find out. Though Londo did, somehow.

It's hard to know what Delenn's thinking right now, as we know she's trying to stop the war, but we also know that she doesn't deal with losing her closest friends very well. The others want to question the humans before killing them, and she nods to give that plan the go-ahead. Sheridan gives her reason to stop however, when he yells that he knows what's in Dukhat's sacred place. That's a name that gets her attention.

They make it really clear in the scene that the Minbari are speaking Minbari and the humans are speaking human, and I assumed that G'Kar was probably the only one who understood everything being said, but then Delenn turns around and asks "What is in Dukhat's sacred place?" in English.

Sheridan replies in Minbari, saying "Isil'zha", and Delenn lets them go. I guess she understands that this is Lenonn's way of giving her a last request to not kill them, and an indication that they weren't responsible for his death, but it probably doesn't hurt that it reminds her that the humans are supposed to be their allies.

The scene then gets a bit confusing as Delenn gives the other Minbari an order in English, which they understand. But I didn't even notice the first time around to be honest. Poor Franklin's definitely been missing out on most of the conversation, and he asks G'Kar what 'isil'zha' means. Turns out that it means 'the future'.

Back in the future, Luc asks Emperor Londo if that's the end of the story. It has been going on for 70 minutes now so I'm not surprised the kids are getting a bit restless.

But sadly no, Delenn letting a couple of humans go wasn't the turning point of the war. In fact Londo tells them that it escalated, which is illustrated with another beautiful shot of out-of-context space combat.

Shot IB-191-FIN1, to be specific.

The greatest slaughter of all is still to come, and it changed everything. Everything.

But you're going to have to wait for part three for that, sorry.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART THREE

---

TOMORROW

My epic In the Beginning review will conclude tomorrow, which is good because I can't wait to get back to writing about other things. Oh, hang on, I just realised I'll be starting Babylon 5's fifth season afterwards and that's actually pretty much the same thing.

Anyway you can interrupt my story to make a comment if you want.