Episode 2.1: Points of Departure
I was warned beforehand that the beginning of Season 2 changes a ton of stuff about the show, and that it can be jarring, but either the warnings helped or the nature of modern television has prepared me enough that this didn’t really throw me off. When each season of the Wire completely alters the credits, the music, the focus, and even the list of main characters, Season 2 of Babylon 5 seems almost tame in comparison.
The big change, though, is definitely and unapologetically big: Jeffrey Sinclair is gone, and Captain John Sheridan has replaced him. He’s very much a different character—more aggressive, more militaristic—but at least so far he shares a lot of Sinclair’s defining traits: he’s handsome, he’s good at everything, and he has the same initials as the show’s creator. My Mary Sue alarm is going off, but the show has earned some trust, so I’ll reserve my judgment for now. And to the show’s credit, this episode is great: it’s confident, it’s focused, and it’s squarely in the B5 wheelhouse: the problems are large in scale, and the characters solve them not by shooting (Battlestar Galactica) or by science (Star Trek) but by politics. Babylon 5 has a very distinct flavor in the world of television SF, and POINTS OF DEPARTURE knows exactly what it needs to do and how to do it to help bring that flavor to the front.
One of B5’s other big strengths, though, is sadly lacking from this episode, though I can see why they did it and I think it was a good choice: the wide scope and varied perspectives are missing, because the cast is vastly (and I assume temporarily) reduced. Garibaldi is still in a coma (only 8 days have passed since he was shot), Delenn is still in a coccoon, and G’Kar is still missing; other characters who are presumably still around were also left out, including Talia, Na’Toth, Londo, and Vir. This episode is mostly just the Sheridan and Ivanova show, with a couple of quick appearances from Dr. Franklin and Lennier—and let’s give credit where it’s due, because Lennier has never been this awesome before. He’s usually played as passive and naive, but now we see him as calm and capable—it’s only a few degrees off from his Season 1 performance, but it’s vastly different in effect. When an assassin comes for Delenn, and Lennier goes into his martial arts stance, he actually looks pretty badass. Compare this to his fight scene in THE QUALITY OF MERCY, where he was completely capable but still came across as a bumbler out of his element. the new Lennier is ready to rock. He's more of a warrior monk now than a naive scholar, and I for one am into it.
The other character who gets meaningful screen time is the new pilot guy; in his first scene, watching a holographic letter from his wife, I assumed we were just seeing a side note to make us care about some nameless front line fighter, to help add tension to the almost-a-battle scene, and to be fair that tension was there, but then he shows up in the final scene as well, getting a drink with Franklin and Ivanova and—by invitation—the Captain himself. I don’t think he’d be hanging out with that caliber of upper-rank officer if he wasn’t important, so maybe he’s a CAG or something? I guess we’ll see. And for the record, I genuinely love the idea of adding a named fighter pilot to the show, because it never really sat right in Season 1 when they needed someone to go out flying and sent Sinclair or Ivanova; having a dedicated pilot character who can play those scenes for us makes so much more sense. On the other hand, the wikipedia article on the episode (which I read carefully, trying to avoid spoilers) doesn’t seem to care about the guy at all, without even so much as a “This is the episode that introduces Warren Keffer, Babylon 5’s new CAG,” so maybe he’s not as important as I think. Too bad, because it’s a good idea.
But, to get back to my original point, I think the lack of the wider cast is a good thing, at least in part, because it keeps the story lean and focused. We already know those other people (fighter pilot excepted), so instead we spend our time getting to know Sheridan. We see how he works and how he approaches problems. On the other hand, this tight focus makes the story feel smaller than it really is—we have a rogue Minbari warship, a would-be assassin, and the possible start of an all-new Human/Minbari war, but the stakes never feel super high. This feeling is really slammed home in the end, when it turns out the whole thing was basically an elaborate “suicide by cop,” all centered once again around Sheridan and his backstory. It was a little bit of a let-down, honestly, to get to the end and realize that what looked like a big crazy redefinition of the political environment was really just a Sheridan intro, but—like I said—it’s definitely a good thing to get to know Sheridan as well as we do. And I can see how, back in the day, watching this on first airing, the sudden replacement of Sinclair with Sheridan would have been big and epic enough that it was probably wise not to muddy the waters with a bunch of crazy stuff on top of that. So they made the right call, it just feels smaller than expected, seen 25 years later through the lens of cultural familiarity.
And I haven’t even mentioned the big bomb drop from Lennier: we learn that the reason the war ended, and the reason the Minbari kidnapped Sinclair and then pushed to get him control of B5, was because the Humans are starting to be born with Minbari souls. This...feels like a retcon? I mean, I don’t see how it possibly could be—it’s a huge fracking deal, and there’s no way the entire arc of the series isn’t at least partially based around this one idea—but at the same time, why are we getting all three pieces of the puzzle (Minbari’s reincarnate, but the best souls are disappearing, and now those souls are going to humans) in this one monologue? If the show has been building toward this reveal, why wasn’t the reality of Minbari reincarnation built into a way bigger deal before? I suppose, in hindsight, we can see hints of this groundwork being laid in THE SOUL HUNTER, but it’s not nearly enough. Even LEGACIES, which was specifically about Minbari death rituals, didn't make nearly as big a deal of this as they could (should) have. All we really need for this reveal to work here is the idea that Minbari souls are appearing in humans. The other key ideas--that there's a limited number of Minbari souls, and that the quality of returning souls is being somehow reduced--could have been a major focus of season 1 without any loss of impact or surprise. Blurting it all out right here in a very passive info-dump feels like something went wrong--either they got to the point where they had to reveal it, and realized they hadn't set it up properly, or Sinclair's departure forced them to change their backstory and this was the best they could come up with, or (most likely, in my opinion) Sinclair's departure forced them to change the way this got revealed, making it feel rushed. I can imagine an alternate version of Season 2 where Sinclair was still around and the first two episodes explored this exact topic in much more satisfying detail. But without Sinclair, who is intimately tied to this specific plotline, there was really no way to tell that story from the inside, so they just wrote it off, had Lennier run down the key points, and moved on. So "retcon" was the wrong word for me to use--it's not that they didn't set it up before, it's that they accelerated the story in a way that didn't allow all the setup they needed. And I suppose they did the best they could with what they had; POINTS OF DEPARTURE, as a title, feels more like a reference to their series outline than to anything that happens in this episode.
Also, side note: my wild speculation about Delenn gaining hair because the cocoon is turning her into a Minbari/Human hybrid feels a lot stronger now. I hereby upgrade that from "wild speculation" to "actually pretty likely." If I turn to be right, kudos to all of you who read my guess in the other post and managed to keep your shrieks of recognition out of your public comments :)
Also, other side note: the instant Sheridan refers to a speech he "has to" give within a certain timeframe of taking a new command, it was obvious that he wouldn't be able to give it on his first try. I actually expected it to be a bigger deal than it was, with him trying to give it one extra time, though it would have pulled more focus than it needed so I'm glad we only had one try/fail cycle here. When he finally gives it, though, Ivanova makes the joke about how it's a terrible time to give it, and then we cut to see him on a basically empty command deck. Why is the command deck ever that empty? Especially given that there is no meaningful day/night cycle on a space station, why is it ever less than fully staffed? I've been on ship bridges before--even on an Earthbound ship, they keep a good crew there at all times because they need to able to react to problems on a moment's notice. Do the station's enemies know that they can attack during an arbitrarily determined "nighttime" and face a station that's only partially capable of responding? It's very nice of the universe to only cause problems during Babylon 5's "day," instead of during their own "days" which presumably don't all line up.
The big change, though, is definitely and unapologetically big: Jeffrey Sinclair is gone, and Captain John Sheridan has replaced him. He’s very much a different character—more aggressive, more militaristic—but at least so far he shares a lot of Sinclair’s defining traits: he’s handsome, he’s good at everything, and he has the same initials as the show’s creator. My Mary Sue alarm is going off, but the show has earned some trust, so I’ll reserve my judgment for now. And to the show’s credit, this episode is great: it’s confident, it’s focused, and it’s squarely in the B5 wheelhouse: the problems are large in scale, and the characters solve them not by shooting (Battlestar Galactica) or by science (Star Trek) but by politics. Babylon 5 has a very distinct flavor in the world of television SF, and POINTS OF DEPARTURE knows exactly what it needs to do and how to do it to help bring that flavor to the front.
One of B5’s other big strengths, though, is sadly lacking from this episode, though I can see why they did it and I think it was a good choice: the wide scope and varied perspectives are missing, because the cast is vastly (and I assume temporarily) reduced. Garibaldi is still in a coma (only 8 days have passed since he was shot), Delenn is still in a coccoon, and G’Kar is still missing; other characters who are presumably still around were also left out, including Talia, Na’Toth, Londo, and Vir. This episode is mostly just the Sheridan and Ivanova show, with a couple of quick appearances from Dr. Franklin and Lennier—and let’s give credit where it’s due, because Lennier has never been this awesome before. He’s usually played as passive and naive, but now we see him as calm and capable—it’s only a few degrees off from his Season 1 performance, but it’s vastly different in effect. When an assassin comes for Delenn, and Lennier goes into his martial arts stance, he actually looks pretty badass. Compare this to his fight scene in THE QUALITY OF MERCY, where he was completely capable but still came across as a bumbler out of his element. the new Lennier is ready to rock. He's more of a warrior monk now than a naive scholar, and I for one am into it.
The other character who gets meaningful screen time is the new pilot guy; in his first scene, watching a holographic letter from his wife, I assumed we were just seeing a side note to make us care about some nameless front line fighter, to help add tension to the almost-a-battle scene, and to be fair that tension was there, but then he shows up in the final scene as well, getting a drink with Franklin and Ivanova and—by invitation—the Captain himself. I don’t think he’d be hanging out with that caliber of upper-rank officer if he wasn’t important, so maybe he’s a CAG or something? I guess we’ll see. And for the record, I genuinely love the idea of adding a named fighter pilot to the show, because it never really sat right in Season 1 when they needed someone to go out flying and sent Sinclair or Ivanova; having a dedicated pilot character who can play those scenes for us makes so much more sense. On the other hand, the wikipedia article on the episode (which I read carefully, trying to avoid spoilers) doesn’t seem to care about the guy at all, without even so much as a “This is the episode that introduces Warren Keffer, Babylon 5’s new CAG,” so maybe he’s not as important as I think. Too bad, because it’s a good idea.
But, to get back to my original point, I think the lack of the wider cast is a good thing, at least in part, because it keeps the story lean and focused. We already know those other people (fighter pilot excepted), so instead we spend our time getting to know Sheridan. We see how he works and how he approaches problems. On the other hand, this tight focus makes the story feel smaller than it really is—we have a rogue Minbari warship, a would-be assassin, and the possible start of an all-new Human/Minbari war, but the stakes never feel super high. This feeling is really slammed home in the end, when it turns out the whole thing was basically an elaborate “suicide by cop,” all centered once again around Sheridan and his backstory. It was a little bit of a let-down, honestly, to get to the end and realize that what looked like a big crazy redefinition of the political environment was really just a Sheridan intro, but—like I said—it’s definitely a good thing to get to know Sheridan as well as we do. And I can see how, back in the day, watching this on first airing, the sudden replacement of Sinclair with Sheridan would have been big and epic enough that it was probably wise not to muddy the waters with a bunch of crazy stuff on top of that. So they made the right call, it just feels smaller than expected, seen 25 years later through the lens of cultural familiarity.
And I haven’t even mentioned the big bomb drop from Lennier: we learn that the reason the war ended, and the reason the Minbari kidnapped Sinclair and then pushed to get him control of B5, was because the Humans are starting to be born with Minbari souls. This...feels like a retcon? I mean, I don’t see how it possibly could be—it’s a huge fracking deal, and there’s no way the entire arc of the series isn’t at least partially based around this one idea—but at the same time, why are we getting all three pieces of the puzzle (Minbari’s reincarnate, but the best souls are disappearing, and now those souls are going to humans) in this one monologue? If the show has been building toward this reveal, why wasn’t the reality of Minbari reincarnation built into a way bigger deal before? I suppose, in hindsight, we can see hints of this groundwork being laid in THE SOUL HUNTER, but it’s not nearly enough. Even LEGACIES, which was specifically about Minbari death rituals, didn't make nearly as big a deal of this as they could (should) have. All we really need for this reveal to work here is the idea that Minbari souls are appearing in humans. The other key ideas--that there's a limited number of Minbari souls, and that the quality of returning souls is being somehow reduced--could have been a major focus of season 1 without any loss of impact or surprise. Blurting it all out right here in a very passive info-dump feels like something went wrong--either they got to the point where they had to reveal it, and realized they hadn't set it up properly, or Sinclair's departure forced them to change their backstory and this was the best they could come up with, or (most likely, in my opinion) Sinclair's departure forced them to change the way this got revealed, making it feel rushed. I can imagine an alternate version of Season 2 where Sinclair was still around and the first two episodes explored this exact topic in much more satisfying detail. But without Sinclair, who is intimately tied to this specific plotline, there was really no way to tell that story from the inside, so they just wrote it off, had Lennier run down the key points, and moved on. So "retcon" was the wrong word for me to use--it's not that they didn't set it up before, it's that they accelerated the story in a way that didn't allow all the setup they needed. And I suppose they did the best they could with what they had; POINTS OF DEPARTURE, as a title, feels more like a reference to their series outline than to anything that happens in this episode.
Also, side note: my wild speculation about Delenn gaining hair because the cocoon is turning her into a Minbari/Human hybrid feels a lot stronger now. I hereby upgrade that from "wild speculation" to "actually pretty likely." If I turn to be right, kudos to all of you who read my guess in the other post and managed to keep your shrieks of recognition out of your public comments :)
Also, other side note: the instant Sheridan refers to a speech he "has to" give within a certain timeframe of taking a new command, it was obvious that he wouldn't be able to give it on his first try. I actually expected it to be a bigger deal than it was, with him trying to give it one extra time, though it would have pulled more focus than it needed so I'm glad we only had one try/fail cycle here. When he finally gives it, though, Ivanova makes the joke about how it's a terrible time to give it, and then we cut to see him on a basically empty command deck. Why is the command deck ever that empty? Especially given that there is no meaningful day/night cycle on a space station, why is it ever less than fully staffed? I've been on ship bridges before--even on an Earthbound ship, they keep a good crew there at all times because they need to able to react to problems on a moment's notice. Do the station's enemies know that they can attack during an arbitrarily determined "nighttime" and face a station that's only partially capable of responding? It's very nice of the universe to only cause problems during Babylon 5's "day," instead of during their own "days" which presumably don't all line up.
I always wonder what sort of show we'd have gotten if Bab5 had been an HBO or Starz show for it's first run, giving them a full hour of content instead of the, what, normal 42 minutes.
ReplyDeleteJust from reading the Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5 (major spoilers for each episode if you've not already looked at this resource, but also some interesting 'as we saw it' questions and analysis), I get the idea that the entire production run of this show was very rocky, sometimes with them not knowing if they'd even be on the air from week to week, much less season to season.