Episode 3.13: A Late Delivery From Avalon
Last week I lamented the show being boring, and asked that if it couldn't be great could it please be terrible, so I'd at least have something to talk about? And boy howdy did this episode deliver.
There’s a moment in the story, early on, when the command staff (plus Marcus, for some reason) is sitting around a conference table, and Sheridan wants to talk about the peace treaty he’s trying to negotiate, and the rest of them won’t shut up about this crazy guy they found who thinks he’s King Arthur. And Sheridan not caring about some rando is the first great thing about the scene—the command staff has a tendency, on this show and on Star Trek—to treat that week’s A-plot as the most important thing that’s happening right now, which doesn’t make any sense in most cases, and this is definitely one of them. So score one for Sheridan. The other great thing about this scene, and my favorite part of the episode, is when Marcus lays out a case for this actually being the real King Arthur, trained by the Vorlons and preserved in time just like they did with Jack the Ripper, and then Franklin IMMEDIATELY and completely shuts him down, skewering in maybe two whole sentences the entire genre of “famous historical figures in SF shows.” It’s simple, it’s grounded in science, and it’s glorious. It also scuttles any sense of wonder or interest the rest of the episode could possibly have held, so there’s that, but there’s no way an episode about King Arthur was going to be good anyway, so sacrificing it all for that one moment of awesome Franklin-ness is probably the best we could have hoped for anyway.
Given how lame the whole Arthur thing is, I’m going to go ahead and rename the plots: it’s the B-plot now, and the peace treaty thing is the D-plot, and the A-plot is about Garibaldi trying to get his tackle box full of pepperoni out of the post office. There is no C-plot: the peace treaty is so boring and frictionless that it places fourth in a three-way race. The A-plot, about the pepperoni, is the only reason to watch this episode: the head of the post office (who would go on to appear not only on “Days of Our Lives,” but as a casting director for “Days of Our Lives” on “Friends”) patiently but entertainingly explains to Garibaldi that the revolution and civil war have raised his costs significantly, and the price of delivery has gone up accordingly. This becomes a showcase for two things: 1) the post office guy's endless string of hugely entertaining insults, and 2) Garibaldi's utter disregard for the rule of law. Garibaldi has always had a fairly inconsistent relationship with justice, but I think that he does have internal consistency: the law is important, but when it serves his own purposes no line is un-crossable. And this tackle box has pepperonis, doggonit! The big ones! So he tries to talk the guy out of an extra charge, and when that doesn't work he literally gets two of his security flunkies to help him break into the storage room, and when that doesn't work he raises a very important point (the Earth government is no longer subsidizing the B5 post office's rent) but only for the sake of extorting a bribe. Garibaldi is a weasel, but he's a harmless weasel, and Michael Kagan as the post office guy manages to be funnier than probably anyone in the history of the series. I would seriously watch an entire spinoff series about the mouthy Brooklyn post office guy trying to get pepperoni through an interplanetary shipping blockade.
Okay: let me see if I can explain the B-plot as simply as possible. The third (third!) pre-credits scene has a guy who looks like modern-day Val Kilmer (but this was 25 years ago so it's actually Basil Exposition from Austin Powers) running through what is either an experimental black and white dream sequence or a very low-rent cologne commercial. Why did the writer and director think that we cared enough about this nameless weirdo we've never seen before to be interested in his abstract run through a featureless setting we've also never seen before? I do not know, but here we are, but when he sees a sword and grabs it (by the sharp part, for some reason, instead of the handle because it's off-screen) we put two and two together and realize that the title IS indeed, as we feared, a reference to King Arthur, and it's all downhill from there. The ship docks at the station, Arthur tries to board, and because they haven't used Marcus in a while they decide that he will happen to be passing by and take this obviously crazy person under his personal protection. Franklin, who is usually smarter than this, personally vouches for the dude as well, promising that even though he's currently threatening people with a sword he will not be dangerous or cause any trouble. Why? Because otherwise they couldn't do their cool King Arthur story! So they get him into medbay, tell the command staff that he's obviously crazy, and then we just run some laps to use up time until the episode ends. At one point he escapes and beats up some lurkers, and G'Kar helps him and they get drunk, and that seems like a huge waste of G'Kar but okay, and then it turns out this guy is crazy because he accidentally started the Earth-Minbari war, which seems like a huge waste of the Earth-Minbari war as well but at this point why not? His own delusions strike him down, and Franklin decides that the only way to bring him back is the Lady of the Lake, and we've already seen Ivanova this episode so let's use Delenn. She shows up, and somehow it works and heals his mind, which is beyond ridiculous but remember that this is an episode in which a man is so delusional he literally summons a full Arthurian cosplay outfit ex nihilo, so the bar for too ridiculous is almost unapproachably high. And then G'Kar takes the guy to Homeworld, I guess? Or somewhere Narn-y? Because he's got some good ideas and is now perfectly mentally sound so you can 100% trust him with your violent revolutionaries.
And then at the foundation of it all we have the D-plot: Sheridan works out a peace treaty with the Council of Unimportant Aliens. I have no proof, but I would be willing to bet you that in the series outline the notes for this episode just said "Sheridan works out a peace treaty," and then it was time to write it and JMS realized there wasn't enough story to hang a whole episode on, so he just started padding it out and padding it out and probably watched EXCALIBUR somewhere in there and then we got this episode. And frankly, as the pilot episode of BABYLON 5: THE POST OFFICE GUY, it feels a little unfocused, but I'd be willing to watch a couple more episodes. And I'm very much looking forward to season 4, in which Marcus has died and Post Office Guy gets to be in the opening credits.
There’s a moment in the story, early on, when the command staff (plus Marcus, for some reason) is sitting around a conference table, and Sheridan wants to talk about the peace treaty he’s trying to negotiate, and the rest of them won’t shut up about this crazy guy they found who thinks he’s King Arthur. And Sheridan not caring about some rando is the first great thing about the scene—the command staff has a tendency, on this show and on Star Trek—to treat that week’s A-plot as the most important thing that’s happening right now, which doesn’t make any sense in most cases, and this is definitely one of them. So score one for Sheridan. The other great thing about this scene, and my favorite part of the episode, is when Marcus lays out a case for this actually being the real King Arthur, trained by the Vorlons and preserved in time just like they did with Jack the Ripper, and then Franklin IMMEDIATELY and completely shuts him down, skewering in maybe two whole sentences the entire genre of “famous historical figures in SF shows.” It’s simple, it’s grounded in science, and it’s glorious. It also scuttles any sense of wonder or interest the rest of the episode could possibly have held, so there’s that, but there’s no way an episode about King Arthur was going to be good anyway, so sacrificing it all for that one moment of awesome Franklin-ness is probably the best we could have hoped for anyway.
Given how lame the whole Arthur thing is, I’m going to go ahead and rename the plots: it’s the B-plot now, and the peace treaty thing is the D-plot, and the A-plot is about Garibaldi trying to get his tackle box full of pepperoni out of the post office. There is no C-plot: the peace treaty is so boring and frictionless that it places fourth in a three-way race. The A-plot, about the pepperoni, is the only reason to watch this episode: the head of the post office (who would go on to appear not only on “Days of Our Lives,” but as a casting director for “Days of Our Lives” on “Friends”) patiently but entertainingly explains to Garibaldi that the revolution and civil war have raised his costs significantly, and the price of delivery has gone up accordingly. This becomes a showcase for two things: 1) the post office guy's endless string of hugely entertaining insults, and 2) Garibaldi's utter disregard for the rule of law. Garibaldi has always had a fairly inconsistent relationship with justice, but I think that he does have internal consistency: the law is important, but when it serves his own purposes no line is un-crossable. And this tackle box has pepperonis, doggonit! The big ones! So he tries to talk the guy out of an extra charge, and when that doesn't work he literally gets two of his security flunkies to help him break into the storage room, and when that doesn't work he raises a very important point (the Earth government is no longer subsidizing the B5 post office's rent) but only for the sake of extorting a bribe. Garibaldi is a weasel, but he's a harmless weasel, and Michael Kagan as the post office guy manages to be funnier than probably anyone in the history of the series. I would seriously watch an entire spinoff series about the mouthy Brooklyn post office guy trying to get pepperoni through an interplanetary shipping blockade.
Okay: let me see if I can explain the B-plot as simply as possible. The third (third!) pre-credits scene has a guy who looks like modern-day Val Kilmer (but this was 25 years ago so it's actually Basil Exposition from Austin Powers) running through what is either an experimental black and white dream sequence or a very low-rent cologne commercial. Why did the writer and director think that we cared enough about this nameless weirdo we've never seen before to be interested in his abstract run through a featureless setting we've also never seen before? I do not know, but here we are, but when he sees a sword and grabs it (by the sharp part, for some reason, instead of the handle because it's off-screen) we put two and two together and realize that the title IS indeed, as we feared, a reference to King Arthur, and it's all downhill from there. The ship docks at the station, Arthur tries to board, and because they haven't used Marcus in a while they decide that he will happen to be passing by and take this obviously crazy person under his personal protection. Franklin, who is usually smarter than this, personally vouches for the dude as well, promising that even though he's currently threatening people with a sword he will not be dangerous or cause any trouble. Why? Because otherwise they couldn't do their cool King Arthur story! So they get him into medbay, tell the command staff that he's obviously crazy, and then we just run some laps to use up time until the episode ends. At one point he escapes and beats up some lurkers, and G'Kar helps him and they get drunk, and that seems like a huge waste of G'Kar but okay, and then it turns out this guy is crazy because he accidentally started the Earth-Minbari war, which seems like a huge waste of the Earth-Minbari war as well but at this point why not? His own delusions strike him down, and Franklin decides that the only way to bring him back is the Lady of the Lake, and we've already seen Ivanova this episode so let's use Delenn. She shows up, and somehow it works and heals his mind, which is beyond ridiculous but remember that this is an episode in which a man is so delusional he literally summons a full Arthurian cosplay outfit ex nihilo, so the bar for too ridiculous is almost unapproachably high. And then G'Kar takes the guy to Homeworld, I guess? Or somewhere Narn-y? Because he's got some good ideas and is now perfectly mentally sound so you can 100% trust him with your violent revolutionaries.
And then at the foundation of it all we have the D-plot: Sheridan works out a peace treaty with the Council of Unimportant Aliens. I have no proof, but I would be willing to bet you that in the series outline the notes for this episode just said "Sheridan works out a peace treaty," and then it was time to write it and JMS realized there wasn't enough story to hang a whole episode on, so he just started padding it out and padding it out and probably watched EXCALIBUR somewhere in there and then we got this episode. And frankly, as the pilot episode of BABYLON 5: THE POST OFFICE GUY, it feels a little unfocused, but I'd be willing to watch a couple more episodes. And I'm very much looking forward to season 4, in which Marcus has died and Post Office Guy gets to be in the opening credits.
I'm glad that you enjoyed part of this episode, and that you're continuing the watch blog. There are some clunkers, but the final 7 episodes of the season include a lot of great television. War Without End 1 and 2 really stands out as the only time I've seen a specific thing happen where it was done right.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I really appreciate about this blog is how it illustrates how B5 is often seen as great (by those of us who love it), in retrospect. For example: the scene with Sheridan and the singing monks only comes out as great foreshadowing when you know the meaning of him giving up his stat bar/rank insignia and saying "it's not worth much": he's going to rebel against Earth Force, and do awesome things.
Likewise, the Arthur plot only really becomes meaningful when you see the terrible stuff that happened in the Earth-Mimbari War, and Delenn's role in the war. It's a weird mix of foreshadowing and nostalgia that, naturally, someone watching for the first time is not going to feel, because they haven't yet seen the parts that retroactively make some scenes interesting.
This is not intended as criticism, the opposite, rather: I am grateful to you for helping us see that many of the pieces are only awesome once you have the whole, and can look back. It's hard to see a show for the first time again once you've become familiar with it, and that perspective is greatly appreciated. Looking forward to hearing your take on the awesome season finale :).
-HS
I used to hate this episode. Now I merely dislike it. Since Grail is perhaps my LEAST favorite Babylon 5 episode, I just think of this one as, "JMS tries to make another Arthurian episode that doesn't suck as bad as Grail and barely succeeds."
ReplyDeleteI will say this about this episode: if you watch it right after the prequel movie (In the Beginning), which deals with the Earth-Mimbari War, it turns this episode kind of decent. That prequel makes Delenn and the Arthurian dude's mutual forgiveness actually kind of moving.
DeleteWithout the prequel this episode is trash :)