Episode 1.19: A Voice in the Wilderness Part 2

This is such a better episode than Part 1–not because Part 1 was bad, but because Part 1 was very clearly a Part 1. It spent its time setting up dominos, and then Part 2 got to knock them all down, and it was great.

Just to reassure me that my snarky observations are, in fact, grounded in truth, Part 2 begins with an Earth battleship showing up and seizing control of the station: the thing that happens in practically half of the episodes happens literally within the first 30 seconds of this one. At least this time Sinclair demands to see the receipts, and when the battleship commander can’t prove his claim with an order from the president Sinclair refuses to relinquish control, setting up a tense standoff as both sides of Earth forces threaten to blow each other up. Then a third force shows up—a group of aliens from the same species as the one they pulled out of the Great Machine crucifix—and joins the Threaten To Blow Each Other Up party, making it very briefly a three-way war until Sinclair wisely agrees that it’s better to join forces with the battleship, and the two Earth forces are back in an uneasy alliance. I say it every time, but: Babylon 5 excels at these kinds of political machinations, and the show always feels stronger and more assured when they are arguing about treaties and rebellions and diplomatic compromise than when they’re arguing about some random monster stalking the lower levels. Maybe that’s why they take away Sinclair’s jurisdiction all the time? Just let him run the station and argue with the ambassadors: that’s what they’re there for.

Speaking of which, G’Kar is not here, and hasn’t been since SIGNS AND PORTENTS. That’s six episodes without our favorite duplicitous bastard, and nearly as long without his arguably-even-more-awesome assistant Na’Toth. Where are all the Narn? I assume Andreas Katsulas was doing something else during the filming, and they had to write around him, but I miss the Narn. BRING BACK THE NARN.

Anyway. Turns out the guy in the alien crucifix was controlling the machine, possibly for centuries, and in his absence the machine is protecting itself with lethal force. If the battleship or the alien invaders go down to try to subdue it, it will destroy the station. The alien invaders, by the way, have been searching for the Great Machine for 500 years, and since their the same species as the caretaker we assume they have a right to it, but he adamantly disagrees with that idea: he says the machine is not for this time, and definitely not for them; they’re from a splinter group of violent outcasts, and can’t be allowed to have the Machine because they could use it to rule the galaxy. Speaking of which: pretty much anyone who gets the machine could use it to rule the galaxy, so he needs to get back down there and start protecting it again, or the already-precarious balance of power between the Humans, Narn, Centauri, and Minbari will be thrown into chaos. This is where Captain Boring Guy, Delenn’s Minbari mentor figure, swoops in to save the day: he wants to die anyway, and this way he can sacrifice himself to save people. Woot! Delenn and Londo help fly him down to the surface, and he plugs himself in, and he uses the Great Machine’s giant space laser to blow the invading aliens out of the sky without harming the station. He sends out a fierce holographic No Trespassing sign, and Delenn says a fond farewell, and we’re done.

Except...how in the world is this not the major political issue of the galaxy? Why did Londo give away control of the galaxy’s most powerful, war-winning technology without so much as an accented snarl? Why did he let a Minbari, for crying out loud, take control of it? This thing has the ability to tip the scales of war in the favor of whoever controls it, and now a Minbari dude has it, and everyone’s just like “welp, that’s back to normal.” No it’s not. The weird alien with no nostrils had no vested interest in any side of your war, so you could trust him to be impartial; the boring Minbari guy is a little more partisan. Why does everyone just go on with their lives? Why does Earth recall the battleship instead of sending five more? Are we supposed to believe that the Minbari guy is suddenly a benevolent friend of all peoples with no bias toward his homeland? Because neither episode led me to that conclusion, and I guarantee the Narn aren’t going to believe it, and I can’t for the life of me imagine why Londo believes it. That man has looked for the self-interested silver lining in every situation he’s ever encountered, up to and including trying to wheedle a bribe from the grieving parents of a dying child. There is no way he gives up control of the Great Machine without, at minimum, a long and painful reckoning with his own desires and nature. I can beleive that he would look at the crucifix and decide that even if he wants to control it, he doesn’t want to be the one strapped into it; that’s perfectly in line with his character. I can’t believe that he would cede that control without a fight, or an argument or even just a wistful glance. We get nothing.

That said, I do like the character development we get from Londo in this episode, if we choose to ignore the big glaring hole that, to be fair, the show is also apparently ignoring. Londo has experienced adventure and felt the remembered thrill of his glory days, and I’m excited to see if that’s shaken him out of his complacency. We know that he wants to return the Centauri to power, so is he actually going to act on that now instead of playing with strippers and gambling in the station casinos? I hope so. And since Delenn had to offer him a big favor he can cash in at some point, whatever he does is likely to be big.

Also, before we finish: that Mars plot kind of went nowhere, didn’t it? I mean, an armed rebellion still happened, and that will be important in the future, but for the purposes of this episode it didn’t really have any impact or accomplish anything. Garibaldi found his old girlfriend (who is apparently real and not just a trick to figure out where the Psi-Corps secret base was), and it turns out she’s married, and it sucks to be Garibaldi but it kind of already sucked to be Garibaldi, so I don’t know what we gained by introducing a girlfriend only to lose her an hour later. Is Garibaldi the new Geordi La Forge? Do we get to watch him fall in love—or suddenly remember conveniently-imperiled past loves—only to lose them by the end of the episode? Great. I’m so looking forward to that.

Garibaldi aside, what I’m really looking forward to is more chewy political shenanigans. The season is almost over, and finally getting into high gear, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Comments

  1. Once in a while Londo tries to do something good to appease his conscience. He knows Morden is shady, for instance, so he does something altruistic to balance out that greed that usually overpowers him.

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