Episode 3.14: Ship of Tears
Yay! A good episode again. Possibly the weakest Bester performance, though—he comes across here as a guest star cameo, not as the compelling, recurring, hero/villain hybrid we’ve seen before—but still a great story, and a start (I hope) to the actual Shadow War. I feel like we’ve been promised a Shadow War for so long now that I don’t necessarily believe that it’s finally here, but we’ll see.
There isn’t really a B-plot, though the G’Kar stuff starts as one. He’s wanted in on the Secret Ranger Club for a long time now, and today Sheridan and Delenn decide to bring him in. The core conflict of this particular plotline is that because the Secret Ranger Club knew about the Shadows for so long they could have potentially stepped in and saved the Narn Homeworld, but I don’t buy that. How does knowing that the Centauri were getting Shadow help change anything? They still couldn’t have done anything about it—I mean, the other thing they knew prior to the Centauri invaded was that the Centauri were going to invade, and they couldn’t do anything about that, either, and G’Kar’s not screaming their heads off over choosing not to act on THAT. Why should it bother him that they also chose not to act on THIS? But it matters to Delenn, and it apparently matters to G’Kar, and I don’t believe any of the logistical underpinnings but their conversation about it was riveting. It’s one of the best scenes we’ve ever gotten from G’Kar, and that is saying a lot; Delenn’s catalog of greatest scenes is much smaller, but this one’s probably second only to her claws-out excoriation of the Grey Council. G’Kar’s fury, tempered almost immediately by wisdom and forgiveness (he says he can’t forgive her, but he already had, so checkmate) was amazing. You know what I was saying about fight scenes, that they either need to be vital to the characters or technically impressive? This is the “technically impressive” version of a frivolous fight scene: it doesn’t matter to the plot how many people Jackie Chan can beat up with a ladder, but I’m delighted to watch it and rewatch it because it’s pure, satisfying, jaw-dropping spectacle. Watching an amazing performer be amazing is always worthwhile, even when the excuse for the performance is thin.
G'Kar's inclusion in the Secret Ranger Club is important because the A-plot is all about the Shadows (sort of). Bester shows up in a black ops Starfury, and tells them that President Clarke is a puppet and the ones really pulling the strings are the Shadows; he claims he doesn't really know what the Shadows are, he's just heard the name, but when he sees one later he doesn't poop his pants the way everybody else does the first time they see them, so he's either lying or waaaay cooler under pressure than we thought he was. I'm guessing the second. He asks B5 for help because he doesn't like the Shadows anymore than they do, and thinks they can unite against a common enemy. And I love how he stays smarmy and unlikeable all through this: he's on their side for now, but he's not one of the team and never will be. A few episodes ago when they made it explicit that the Psi-Corps was in bed with Krang and Shredder I was sad, because I was hoping that at least one of the villain groups could stay independent; this episode is exactly why, because watching these uncomfortable alliances of necessity is so interesting. I always assumed that Bester WAS the Psi-Corps, but the more I learn about him the more it seems like he is high-placed but not calling all the shots, so his actions here represent a rebellion against the bosses. That's awesome.
Important side note: Sheridan tells him not to scan anybody, and then uses Ivanova as a trap to see if he tries to scan anybody and Bester doesn't scan her. He has always been, while gleefully villainous, relentlessly trustworthy with the crew of B5. That juxtaposition is my favorite thing about him.
Bester tells them that the Shadows have a ship full of weapon supplies, and he needs their help to track them down and get them back. He claims that telepaths can sense ships in hyperspace in a way ship sensors can't, and that might be true (his explanation is fully believable) or it might be that he can just sense the presence of the psychics on board the ship their hunting, because that's what the weapon systems turn out to be: human psychics, captured and implanted with some brain cybernetics. They discover this while on the White Star, which begs the question: why are they being so bizarrely cagey with G'Kar and the Secret Ranger Club if they're willing to just take frigging Alfred Bester on board their Secret Ranger Club ship? Why doesn't he ask where they got it? Why doesn't he wonder why Sheridan refers to the Captain's chair as his, instead of Delenn's? The Earth military knows that the White Star exists and that it showed up to help defend B5 from their assault, but they didn't know that Sheridan had command of it, and that seems like an awfully big bomb to drop in Bester's lap. He's not going to immediately jump to the conclusion that Sinclair created a secret army of Human and Minbari commandos, but he's definitely going to know that Sheridan and Delenn--and by extension B5 and Minbar--are in league with each other to fight the shadows. And Bester kind of already knows that, because that's why he's here, but he didn't know how far it went and that's not really my point anyway: my point is that WHY ARE THEY BEING SO CAGEY WITH G'KAR? G'Kar started the series as a villain, yes, but he's been 100% on their side and sympathetic to their causes for well over a full season now, so it just seems bizarre to keep him so firmly at arm's length for so long while rolling out the top secret welcome mat for a bona fide antagonist.
Whatever. They bring the captured people back to the station, they learn that they are psychics, and then one of them wakes up and breaks free and builds a cool Superman 3 cosplay in the medbay. This turns out to be because the cybernetics the Shadows put in her brain are designed to control her mind--the Shadows use captured psychics as pilots and nav computers, which is awesome and explains a LOT of stuff that's happened in previous episodes, but it doesn't really explain how she was able to build a ship interface that complex that quickly. Maybe if they had some kind of Borg nanites that could rebuild the ship, but there's never any mention of that, and I doubt there will ever be one.
(Fun side note: This episode aired in April of '96, and STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT used some remarkably similar imagery for the Borg Queen in November of '96. I don't know if the latter had time to be visually inspired by the former, or if the same production designer worked on both, or if maybe there were just two guys who really loved Superman 3 and this is an instance of parallel evolution. But yeah, there's something going on here.)
In an episode filled with "it turns out that..." moments, we get arguably one too many when it turns out that the Borg Queen psychic in the medbay just happens to be the only woman Bester ever loved. I think that's there to help explain that Bester was so desperate to find these captured psychics he was willing to work with B5, but I already believed that so this feels unnecessary. Oh well. He gives a kind of lame backstory speech about it, and it felt off and kind of contributed to my opening statement about this not being a super strong Bester episode. But then he leaves, and the show suddenly remembers that one time a million episodes ago when G'Kar demanded that Garibaldi read the book of G'Kwan. We see him there reading it, and he puts some pieces together and calls a meeting and proposes his theory that the reason the Narn have no psychics is because they all sacrificed themselves to defeat the previous Shadow uprising a thousand years ago. So we end on two positive notes: 1) the Shadow War is finally starting unless this is another fakeout, and 2) they have the first real weapon they can use to fight the Shadows. This implies a third positive note: 3) their weapon for fighting the Shadows might require an alliance with Bester and the Psi-Corps. I recognize that only one of those is a positive thing for the characters, but the other two will create good stories so they're positive for me.
Final tally: a stellar G'Kar scene is always welcome, a lesser Bester story is still better than average, and there's not a Marcus in sight. I really liked this episode, and I'm looking forward to more.
There isn’t really a B-plot, though the G’Kar stuff starts as one. He’s wanted in on the Secret Ranger Club for a long time now, and today Sheridan and Delenn decide to bring him in. The core conflict of this particular plotline is that because the Secret Ranger Club knew about the Shadows for so long they could have potentially stepped in and saved the Narn Homeworld, but I don’t buy that. How does knowing that the Centauri were getting Shadow help change anything? They still couldn’t have done anything about it—I mean, the other thing they knew prior to the Centauri invaded was that the Centauri were going to invade, and they couldn’t do anything about that, either, and G’Kar’s not screaming their heads off over choosing not to act on THAT. Why should it bother him that they also chose not to act on THIS? But it matters to Delenn, and it apparently matters to G’Kar, and I don’t believe any of the logistical underpinnings but their conversation about it was riveting. It’s one of the best scenes we’ve ever gotten from G’Kar, and that is saying a lot; Delenn’s catalog of greatest scenes is much smaller, but this one’s probably second only to her claws-out excoriation of the Grey Council. G’Kar’s fury, tempered almost immediately by wisdom and forgiveness (he says he can’t forgive her, but he already had, so checkmate) was amazing. You know what I was saying about fight scenes, that they either need to be vital to the characters or technically impressive? This is the “technically impressive” version of a frivolous fight scene: it doesn’t matter to the plot how many people Jackie Chan can beat up with a ladder, but I’m delighted to watch it and rewatch it because it’s pure, satisfying, jaw-dropping spectacle. Watching an amazing performer be amazing is always worthwhile, even when the excuse for the performance is thin.
G'Kar's inclusion in the Secret Ranger Club is important because the A-plot is all about the Shadows (sort of). Bester shows up in a black ops Starfury, and tells them that President Clarke is a puppet and the ones really pulling the strings are the Shadows; he claims he doesn't really know what the Shadows are, he's just heard the name, but when he sees one later he doesn't poop his pants the way everybody else does the first time they see them, so he's either lying or waaaay cooler under pressure than we thought he was. I'm guessing the second. He asks B5 for help because he doesn't like the Shadows anymore than they do, and thinks they can unite against a common enemy. And I love how he stays smarmy and unlikeable all through this: he's on their side for now, but he's not one of the team and never will be. A few episodes ago when they made it explicit that the Psi-Corps was in bed with Krang and Shredder I was sad, because I was hoping that at least one of the villain groups could stay independent; this episode is exactly why, because watching these uncomfortable alliances of necessity is so interesting. I always assumed that Bester WAS the Psi-Corps, but the more I learn about him the more it seems like he is high-placed but not calling all the shots, so his actions here represent a rebellion against the bosses. That's awesome.
Important side note: Sheridan tells him not to scan anybody, and then uses Ivanova as a trap to see if he tries to scan anybody and Bester doesn't scan her. He has always been, while gleefully villainous, relentlessly trustworthy with the crew of B5. That juxtaposition is my favorite thing about him.
Bester tells them that the Shadows have a ship full of weapon supplies, and he needs their help to track them down and get them back. He claims that telepaths can sense ships in hyperspace in a way ship sensors can't, and that might be true (his explanation is fully believable) or it might be that he can just sense the presence of the psychics on board the ship their hunting, because that's what the weapon systems turn out to be: human psychics, captured and implanted with some brain cybernetics. They discover this while on the White Star, which begs the question: why are they being so bizarrely cagey with G'Kar and the Secret Ranger Club if they're willing to just take frigging Alfred Bester on board their Secret Ranger Club ship? Why doesn't he ask where they got it? Why doesn't he wonder why Sheridan refers to the Captain's chair as his, instead of Delenn's? The Earth military knows that the White Star exists and that it showed up to help defend B5 from their assault, but they didn't know that Sheridan had command of it, and that seems like an awfully big bomb to drop in Bester's lap. He's not going to immediately jump to the conclusion that Sinclair created a secret army of Human and Minbari commandos, but he's definitely going to know that Sheridan and Delenn--and by extension B5 and Minbar--are in league with each other to fight the shadows. And Bester kind of already knows that, because that's why he's here, but he didn't know how far it went and that's not really my point anyway: my point is that WHY ARE THEY BEING SO CAGEY WITH G'KAR? G'Kar started the series as a villain, yes, but he's been 100% on their side and sympathetic to their causes for well over a full season now, so it just seems bizarre to keep him so firmly at arm's length for so long while rolling out the top secret welcome mat for a bona fide antagonist.
Whatever. They bring the captured people back to the station, they learn that they are psychics, and then one of them wakes up and breaks free and builds a cool Superman 3 cosplay in the medbay. This turns out to be because the cybernetics the Shadows put in her brain are designed to control her mind--the Shadows use captured psychics as pilots and nav computers, which is awesome and explains a LOT of stuff that's happened in previous episodes, but it doesn't really explain how she was able to build a ship interface that complex that quickly. Maybe if they had some kind of Borg nanites that could rebuild the ship, but there's never any mention of that, and I doubt there will ever be one.
(Fun side note: This episode aired in April of '96, and STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT used some remarkably similar imagery for the Borg Queen in November of '96. I don't know if the latter had time to be visually inspired by the former, or if the same production designer worked on both, or if maybe there were just two guys who really loved Superman 3 and this is an instance of parallel evolution. But yeah, there's something going on here.)
In an episode filled with "it turns out that..." moments, we get arguably one too many when it turns out that the Borg Queen psychic in the medbay just happens to be the only woman Bester ever loved. I think that's there to help explain that Bester was so desperate to find these captured psychics he was willing to work with B5, but I already believed that so this feels unnecessary. Oh well. He gives a kind of lame backstory speech about it, and it felt off and kind of contributed to my opening statement about this not being a super strong Bester episode. But then he leaves, and the show suddenly remembers that one time a million episodes ago when G'Kar demanded that Garibaldi read the book of G'Kwan. We see him there reading it, and he puts some pieces together and calls a meeting and proposes his theory that the reason the Narn have no psychics is because they all sacrificed themselves to defeat the previous Shadow uprising a thousand years ago. So we end on two positive notes: 1) the Shadow War is finally starting unless this is another fakeout, and 2) they have the first real weapon they can use to fight the Shadows. This implies a third positive note: 3) their weapon for fighting the Shadows might require an alliance with Bester and the Psi-Corps. I recognize that only one of those is a positive thing for the characters, but the other two will create good stories so they're positive for me.
Final tally: a stellar G'Kar scene is always welcome, a lesser Bester story is still better than average, and there's not a Marcus in sight. I really liked this episode, and I'm looking forward to more.
I also think you see a disturbing bit of "he who fights demons..." here.
ReplyDeleteThe way Sheridan seems to be viewing telepaths as "a weapon" and not, you know, PEOPLE,