Episode 3.5: Voices of Authority
Hey! It's a mytharc episode. I was expecting a much higher percentage of these, frankly, but now is not the time to complain because I'm going to be grateful for the few we get. This episode has a bunch of different plotlines going, and all of them are good, marred only by the fact that almost all of them are trying to be funny, which this show is genuinely bad at. JMS must have been in a very specific mood when he wrote this.
We'll start with the Political Officer. Earth Force, as a part of their increasing self-Soviet-ization program, has seen fit to send Babylon 5 a member of the Politburo to help keep everyone ideologically pure--and while they didn't use the word "politburo," they absolutely did use "ideologically pure." Their officer of choice is Julie Musante, played by THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS star and former Playboy cover model Shari Shattuck, and while you can see the topless seduction scene coming a mile away, what's most surprising about Shattuck is that she's incredibly believable as a competent, dangerous political officer. She knows how to manipulate people, how to spin horror until it sounds completely reasonable, and she talks circles around Zack (which is not hard), Sheridan (which is slightly harder), and even Garibaldi (which is impressive within his field of expertise). I was excited for her to stick around as an ongoing villain, but no, she leaves at the end to deal with a crisis on Earth. Bah.
While all of this is going on, the Secret Ranger Club decides it's time to start contacting the rest of the First Ones, the old races similar to the Vorlons who helped fight the Shadows in the past and might be willing to do so again. I was SO EXCITED for this, getting pumped up about some awesome ancient alien goodness, and then Delenn says "I've taken the liberty of inviting a special guest," and turns to the wall, and I literally shouted "Not Draal!" but yep, it was Draal, and this whole plotline went off the rails. Draal is the Minbari rodeo clown who lives in the Great Machine down on Epsilon Whatever, and JMS specifically instructed him to play the role as if he were Tom Bombadil, and Senator I knew Tom Bombadil, and Draal is no Tom Bombadil. The dramatic story about finding ancient and unknowable aliens is rather abruptly reduced to a jolly jaunt full of pointlessly cheerful lines delivered as if they were jokes, which they are not, and somebody really needs to just nuke that planet from orbit so we never have to see Draal anymore.
Sheridan makes an appointment to zoom on down to the Great Machine and go through Draal's First Ones Rolodex, but then Musante wants to take him out to dinner to discuss politics at exactly the same time, at which Sheridan reveals himself as the worst liar in the galaxy, stumbling over his excuses while all but holding up a sign that says "I'm guilty! Ask me why!" He manages to make it through the conversation without promising to date both girls on the same night, and in fact does the smart thing by going with the political officer and sending Ivanova down to the surface in his place. When Ivanova arrives Draal gets pointlessly angry, and Ivanova gives the world's weirdest speech about surprises and paper cuts and somehow, despite being asinine, it works and Draal likes her now. I realize that Claudia Christian repeatedly asked the writers to give her more opportunities for humor, and to be fair she's one of the only people on the show who can make humor work, but this was not the time or the place or remotely the right dialogue to make that humor land.
Ivanova climbs into the ol' machine and has a bunch of psychic visions, including of the past, and manages to find both a suitable First One candidate (the Sigma 957 aliens previously encountered by Catherine Sakai) and a taped confession of murder by Earth's new president, talking about how much he hated the former president and had him killed. The other voice on the recording is Morden, assuring us that yes, Krang and Shredder have been pulling the strings behind the scenes the whole time. It may seem remarkably convenient that Ivanova could find the exact two things she needed, one of which she wasn't even looking for, but Draal makes sure to tell us that no normal human could have accomplished such a thing, implying that Ivanova's psychic powers make her way better at using the rolodex than expected. Go Ivanova!
Ivanova pops back up to the station in holographic form, directly into Sheridan's quarters--which already seems like a fairly risky proposition--and of course arrives right as Musante drops her drawers and goes into full seduction mode. Sheridan, being an idiot, decides that the best way to make sure Musante doesn't turn around is to pull her into a passionate kiss, thus turning her most of the way around anyway; one wonders why he couldn't just keep talking to her, thus holding her attention while Ivanova quietly slipped away, but of course the answer is "the writers thought this was funnier." It is not. But Ivanova does slip away into the next room, and Sheridan makes the excuse he should have made in the first place and follows her, and Ivanova drops the only legitimately funny line in the episode: he tells her to follow up on the First Ones, and turns to go back to his Playboy model, and Ivanova says "Looks like you're about to go where others have gone before." And sure, slutshaming is bad, but Musante is so clearly trying to seduce him for bald-faced political gain that I say Ivanova can go ahead and shame away.
Ivanova heads out on the Defiant, Marcus in tow, and holy cow is Marcus hopped up on something tonight. It is NON-STOP jokes and jibes with this guy, endlessly ribbing her when he should be helping, wrapping every comment in ablative layers of what he clearly assumes is humor, so that every time Ivanova asks him a question she has to re-ask it at least two more times to get a straight answer. It's like her First Officer is Bruce Vilanch on Hollywood Squares. Even when the Sigma 957 aliens show up (looking remarkably like some kind of Polynesian fire totem, and/or a Skylander), and Ivanova becomes appropriately struck by the gravity of the situation, Marcus is still plugging away in the background, working on that stand-up routine. Ivanova manages to ignore him long enough to come up with a brilliant idea: she knows these Skylanders hate the Vorlons, so she gives a whole speech about how the Vorlons warned her the Skylanders were too chicken to join the fight. And of course they rise to the bait and join the fight, and Ivanova comes out of it looking super awesome, but I can't help but feel a little sad about the Skylanders' fall from awesomeness. When they showed up in MIND WAR they were terrifying and unknowable, and now they're goofy and petulant and easier to manipulate than Marty McFly. I'm glad they joined the war and all, but I kind of wish they'd done it with their dignity intact.
In the end, we've had an episode filled with ancient aliens, psychic technology, and a terrifying new level of Stasi thought-policing, but very little of if felt as big as it could have because they wouldn't stop making jokes. And honestly a few jokes would have been okay, except the writers on this show are SO BAD at them. As soon as anyone starts trying to be funny, their characterization instantly disappears: the problem is partly that they're not funny, but mostly that they're all not funny in exactly the same way. Vir can add humor to anything he says, and to a lesser degree so can Lennier, G'Kar, and Franklin, but as soon as anyone tries to be overtly humorous they stop being themselves and start being--I suppose--JMS. Ivanova handles the transition better than most, but this episode just had way too much of it.
IMDB tells me that Shari Shattuck will not be returning as Julie Musante, which is too bad because like I said, she made a great villain. I hated her passionately, but for all the right reasons; I hate Draal for all the wrong ones, and he needs to never come back unless they replace the actor again. And frigging bargain-basement Baltar needs to get his act together fast, because I know a lot of people love Marcus but he was relentlessly obnoxious in this episode.
The episode ends with G'Kar (who is smart enough that he's aaaaalmost figured out what the Secret Ranger Club really is) waking up Garibaldi in the middle of the night and telling him to read the book of G'kwan. NOW WE'RE TALKING. G'Kar lending his religious expertise to the Shadow War is a plotline I am all in for, and I look forward to seeing where this new development goes three episodes from now when they finally come back to it.
We'll start with the Political Officer. Earth Force, as a part of their increasing self-Soviet-ization program, has seen fit to send Babylon 5 a member of the Politburo to help keep everyone ideologically pure--and while they didn't use the word "politburo," they absolutely did use "ideologically pure." Their officer of choice is Julie Musante, played by THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS star and former Playboy cover model Shari Shattuck, and while you can see the topless seduction scene coming a mile away, what's most surprising about Shattuck is that she's incredibly believable as a competent, dangerous political officer. She knows how to manipulate people, how to spin horror until it sounds completely reasonable, and she talks circles around Zack (which is not hard), Sheridan (which is slightly harder), and even Garibaldi (which is impressive within his field of expertise). I was excited for her to stick around as an ongoing villain, but no, she leaves at the end to deal with a crisis on Earth. Bah.
While all of this is going on, the Secret Ranger Club decides it's time to start contacting the rest of the First Ones, the old races similar to the Vorlons who helped fight the Shadows in the past and might be willing to do so again. I was SO EXCITED for this, getting pumped up about some awesome ancient alien goodness, and then Delenn says "I've taken the liberty of inviting a special guest," and turns to the wall, and I literally shouted "Not Draal!" but yep, it was Draal, and this whole plotline went off the rails. Draal is the Minbari rodeo clown who lives in the Great Machine down on Epsilon Whatever, and JMS specifically instructed him to play the role as if he were Tom Bombadil, and Senator I knew Tom Bombadil, and Draal is no Tom Bombadil. The dramatic story about finding ancient and unknowable aliens is rather abruptly reduced to a jolly jaunt full of pointlessly cheerful lines delivered as if they were jokes, which they are not, and somebody really needs to just nuke that planet from orbit so we never have to see Draal anymore.
Sheridan makes an appointment to zoom on down to the Great Machine and go through Draal's First Ones Rolodex, but then Musante wants to take him out to dinner to discuss politics at exactly the same time, at which Sheridan reveals himself as the worst liar in the galaxy, stumbling over his excuses while all but holding up a sign that says "I'm guilty! Ask me why!" He manages to make it through the conversation without promising to date both girls on the same night, and in fact does the smart thing by going with the political officer and sending Ivanova down to the surface in his place. When Ivanova arrives Draal gets pointlessly angry, and Ivanova gives the world's weirdest speech about surprises and paper cuts and somehow, despite being asinine, it works and Draal likes her now. I realize that Claudia Christian repeatedly asked the writers to give her more opportunities for humor, and to be fair she's one of the only people on the show who can make humor work, but this was not the time or the place or remotely the right dialogue to make that humor land.
Ivanova climbs into the ol' machine and has a bunch of psychic visions, including of the past, and manages to find both a suitable First One candidate (the Sigma 957 aliens previously encountered by Catherine Sakai) and a taped confession of murder by Earth's new president, talking about how much he hated the former president and had him killed. The other voice on the recording is Morden, assuring us that yes, Krang and Shredder have been pulling the strings behind the scenes the whole time. It may seem remarkably convenient that Ivanova could find the exact two things she needed, one of which she wasn't even looking for, but Draal makes sure to tell us that no normal human could have accomplished such a thing, implying that Ivanova's psychic powers make her way better at using the rolodex than expected. Go Ivanova!
Ivanova pops back up to the station in holographic form, directly into Sheridan's quarters--which already seems like a fairly risky proposition--and of course arrives right as Musante drops her drawers and goes into full seduction mode. Sheridan, being an idiot, decides that the best way to make sure Musante doesn't turn around is to pull her into a passionate kiss, thus turning her most of the way around anyway; one wonders why he couldn't just keep talking to her, thus holding her attention while Ivanova quietly slipped away, but of course the answer is "the writers thought this was funnier." It is not. But Ivanova does slip away into the next room, and Sheridan makes the excuse he should have made in the first place and follows her, and Ivanova drops the only legitimately funny line in the episode: he tells her to follow up on the First Ones, and turns to go back to his Playboy model, and Ivanova says "Looks like you're about to go where others have gone before." And sure, slutshaming is bad, but Musante is so clearly trying to seduce him for bald-faced political gain that I say Ivanova can go ahead and shame away.
Ivanova heads out on the Defiant, Marcus in tow, and holy cow is Marcus hopped up on something tonight. It is NON-STOP jokes and jibes with this guy, endlessly ribbing her when he should be helping, wrapping every comment in ablative layers of what he clearly assumes is humor, so that every time Ivanova asks him a question she has to re-ask it at least two more times to get a straight answer. It's like her First Officer is Bruce Vilanch on Hollywood Squares. Even when the Sigma 957 aliens show up (looking remarkably like some kind of Polynesian fire totem, and/or a Skylander), and Ivanova becomes appropriately struck by the gravity of the situation, Marcus is still plugging away in the background, working on that stand-up routine. Ivanova manages to ignore him long enough to come up with a brilliant idea: she knows these Skylanders hate the Vorlons, so she gives a whole speech about how the Vorlons warned her the Skylanders were too chicken to join the fight. And of course they rise to the bait and join the fight, and Ivanova comes out of it looking super awesome, but I can't help but feel a little sad about the Skylanders' fall from awesomeness. When they showed up in MIND WAR they were terrifying and unknowable, and now they're goofy and petulant and easier to manipulate than Marty McFly. I'm glad they joined the war and all, but I kind of wish they'd done it with their dignity intact.
In the end, we've had an episode filled with ancient aliens, psychic technology, and a terrifying new level of Stasi thought-policing, but very little of if felt as big as it could have because they wouldn't stop making jokes. And honestly a few jokes would have been okay, except the writers on this show are SO BAD at them. As soon as anyone starts trying to be funny, their characterization instantly disappears: the problem is partly that they're not funny, but mostly that they're all not funny in exactly the same way. Vir can add humor to anything he says, and to a lesser degree so can Lennier, G'Kar, and Franklin, but as soon as anyone tries to be overtly humorous they stop being themselves and start being--I suppose--JMS. Ivanova handles the transition better than most, but this episode just had way too much of it.
IMDB tells me that Shari Shattuck will not be returning as Julie Musante, which is too bad because like I said, she made a great villain. I hated her passionately, but for all the right reasons; I hate Draal for all the wrong ones, and he needs to never come back unless they replace the actor again. And frigging bargain-basement Baltar needs to get his act together fast, because I know a lot of people love Marcus but he was relentlessly obnoxious in this episode.
The episode ends with G'Kar (who is smart enough that he's aaaaalmost figured out what the Secret Ranger Club really is) waking up Garibaldi in the middle of the night and telling him to read the book of G'kwan. NOW WE'RE TALKING. G'Kar lending his religious expertise to the Shadow War is a plotline I am all in for, and I look forward to seeing where this new development goes three episodes from now when they finally come back to it.
"I dont read Narn!"
ReplyDelete"Learn!"
Andreas Katsulas somehow makes that one of the funniest lines in the show.