Babylon 5 3-22: Z'ha'dum

Episode:

66

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Air Date:

28-Oct-1996

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I've finally reached the Babylon 5 season 3 finale Z'ha'dum!

Saying anything about the name would be spoiling earlier episodes, but if you're not familiar with it, it's a made up sci-fi place that has a lot of significance and a lot of apostrophes, and using it as the title gives the impression that this story will be somewhat important. If the fact that it's a season finale didn't already give that away. This unfortunately means that it's given me more to write about than usual, so you're getting a double-length article this time.

You want to know an absolutely pointless fact that I guarantee you've never read anywhere else? Season 3 contains both Babylon 5's alphabetically highest and lowest episode titles, with A Day in the Strife up at the top and Z'ha'dum right at the end. Here's more obvious piece of trivia: this is the second episode of the series to be directed by Leonard Nimoy's son, Adam Nimoy (the first being the universally beloved Passing Through Gethsemane). It's also the last episode he directed, for whatever reason.

This recap/review is first time viewer safe, but there are going to be SPOILERS for this episode and the series so far, so I'd suggest watching it first. I mean you can do what you like, but the series has gotten pretty good by this point and the episode will tell you the story much better than I can.

Babylon 5 3-04: Passing Through Gethsemane

Episode:

48

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Air Date:

27-Nov-1995

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Welcome to Sci-Fi Adventures, it's like a podcast with pictures! Except when I say that this week I'm talking about Babylon 5's Passing Through Gethesmane, I'm not literally saying it out loud. So if you're wondering, it's pronounced like 'Geth-seh-man-ee', not 'Geth-semain' or 'Get-hess-man-ee' or whatever.

This one's directed by Adam Nimoy who has a pretty big connection to Star Trek... as he's married to Terry Farrell, who played Jadzia Dax! Plus his dad apparently had a role in the Original Series. Nimoy would return to direct the last episode of season three, and he also directed two episodes of The Next Generation: Rascals and Timescape. I've blocked Rascals out of my memory, but Timescape was pretty good I reckon. Lots of screwing around with time.

Speaking of temporal anomalies, Passing Through Gethsemane was intended to air fifth in the season, but the VFX on Voices of Authority required more time so they aired this in its place. Though the Lurker's Guide Master List I've been following says that the season actually works better with the stories this way around so I'll not be watching them out of order this time.

So there'll be no SPOILERS for Voices of Authority here, but I will be spoiling this episode and I'm considering anything that came before it in the series to be fair game as well.