Episode 3.19: Grey 17 Is Missing
Aha. We have arrived at GREY 17 IS MISSING, almost universally derided as the worst episode of the series. JMS actually said, in the wake of the massive backlash reaction to the episode, that he would travel to each fan’s house and personally apologize. And the thing is, the first half of the episode is actually great. We get some Minbari infighting, and Delenn might be taking over the Rangers, and then Neroon shows up for a withering rant about how—seen from a certain light—every single action Delenn has taken looks an awful lot like a coup of the government. And he’s not wrong, plus the actor snivels and sneers and it’s awesome. And the titular Grey 17 turns out to be a haunted house mystery starring Garibaldi and some kind of monster, and I was totally down for it. I actually loved this episode until it all went south, starting in the scene with an annoying clown puppet. Actually, no: it started getting bad right BEFORE that scene, in a different scene with a talking ventriloquist dummy. The annoying clown puppet is Marcus, who I am so done with I can’t even stand it. JUST SHUT UP, MARCUS.
We also get some weird stuff about B5 trying to hire telepaths for the war effort, which seems poorly thought-out and honestly kind of racist. Or at least humano-centric. They have the entire Ranger Corp at their beck and call, and most of them are Minbari and a bunch of them are telepaths, and now that Delenn’s the boss they’re all coming right to B5 anyway, plus we’ve even seen them successfully attack a Shadow ship, so why not just use them? Why go to all the trouble of exposing your secret army and drawing the wrath of Psi-Corps and vetting and paying an all-new group of people when you already have an army of psychics trained and ready to go? The answer, of course, is that it never occurred to JMS or anyone else on the show that the psychics they used in their war could be anything other than human. Not all humans are human supremacists, but all humans benefit from human supremacy. NOTE: it has been pointed out that there are clearly aliens standing in the line, and I just didn’t see them because I was watching the joke guy. Sorry! I still think it’s weird that they have an open call for psychics, but they’re definitely using plenty of non-humans.
The guy pretending to be a psychic is a cute joke—not a funny one, but this show rarely is—but it underlines the core issue of this whole plan: every human psychic is either part of Psi-Corps or on the run from Psi-Corps. So why did they just put an ad in the paper or whatever, instead of either going directly to Psi-Corps or going directly to Franklin for his “psychic underground railroad” he’s been running? Who did they think was going to answer their ad? Did they literally not put any thought into it at all? Presumably not, since the person in charge is apparently Zack, who I am honestly surprised is still on the show now that his Nightwatch storyline is over. He has no character traits or dramatic interest without that plot to back him up, and yet he’s still here. Yay for Jeff Conaway getting work, I guess?
And really, I think the "why not use the psychics from among the Rangers" question taps into a much larger question, which is: "why do we never see the Rangers doing anything?" Not counting Marcus, or the White Star, we've seen the Rangers maybe three times? And at least two of those were cameos, and the other was just a messenger. We've got an entire secret army, and it never does anything. We've got a crew for our ship, and a sassy British Mary Sue, and...ten thousand faceless MacGuffins. Now Delenn and Neroon are fighting over who gets to be in charge of them, and all I can think is that Neroon can have them if he wants, because they've added jack squat to the war effort so far despite that being their one and only purpose for existing. We'll keep the White Star, he can have the Purely Hypothetical army, and Marcus can die in a fire.
My Marcus ire is a little more ire-y than usual today, because Lennier comes to him to ask for help and Marcus mocks him ruthlessly for it. Neroon has threatened Delenn's life, and Delenn refuses to take it seriously, Lennier has found a loophole in his moral code that will allow him to ask someone for help, but unfortunately the only person he can ask is Marcus, who has to a) make a huge joke about it first, and b) chooses a surprisingly harsh joke about not only Lennier's moral code but all of Minbari philosophy. I understand that Marcus thinks he's funny, and I understand that he cracks bad jokes at every conceivable opportunity, but this one is especially biting and personal, and he throws it in the face of a man who is clearly desperate for help, and Marcus I hate you so much. I'm usually pretty open-minded about differing artistic opinions, but if you like Marcus you are wrong. He's a bad character with obnoxious personality traits who contributes nothing to the ongoing story except a thin excuse to say "See? The Rangers are real even though this is the only one you ever see and everything he does could be done better by someone else." If he doesn't die in a Keffer-esque self-sacrifice at the end of this season I will throw a chair.
Down in Grey 17, everything that happens post-ventriloquist dummy is as stupid as the use of a ventriloquist dummy in the first place. I can see why people hate this episode, though I'm assuming most people only hate it because of the Pointless Idiot Club and the blatantly impossible conversion of a steam vent into a machine gun. Why are those morons hiding out in this level? What do they want? Why do they "have" a killer alien? Why do they tranq Garibaldi if he's not a prisoner? I get the sense that they're some kind of religious cult based around the central premise of not having any goals, but I also get the sense that JMS needed to kill some time and thought a half-baked monologue about the universe being a living thing could help him kill it. Compare this to WALKABOUT's pointless side trip away from the main plot: neither story "matters" to the long-term thread, or advances it in a meaningful way, but one is a pleasant way to get to know a main character and the other is a very poorly written monster story.
And why not just use the actual gun? Relying on antiquated technology is just as interesting as MacGyvering a steam vent, but doesn't shatter the laws of physics. Just tweak the initial "this was my grandma's gun" conversation to talk about how old an unreliable slug-throwers are, and how glad they are to have PPGs instead of having to use these antiques, and you're good to go. You're already telegraphing that the gun and/or bullets will be used in the end--with a literal gun on a mantel--so it's not like you'd be giving away something we don't already see coming. Make it a thematic reference to "sometimes the old ways are best," and tie it in to something in the rest of the show--or contrast it to the "time to change everything about Minbari society" theme you've got going on in the other plot. We know you're good at this, just be more consistent about it.
Back in Ranger Land, there's a big ceremony to make Delenn the new Ranger One, but Marcus doesn't show up because he's busy getting his butt handed to him by Neroon. I was 100% convinced that Marcus Sue was going to win the fight, because that's how this show tends to go, but imagine my delight when Neroon beats him senseless! It was awesome. Neroon was already a favorite character, and now he's risen a notch or two in the ranks. I even dared to hope that he'd straight up killed Marcus by beating him to death with a steel bar, but alas. I admit I was surprised, though, that he backed down from his claim and decided to let Delenn have the Rangers. I was initially furious at this, because I saw it as a moral victory for Marcus, but once my red haze cleared from my eyes I saw that it is even more of a moral turning point for Neroon. We've always seen him as a villain, and in this season with the Warrior Caste getting way too big for their britches he seems even more like a bad guy, but wow: he just gave a politial opponent a massive resource because he knows they will be more effective in her hands than his. He recognizes that their purpose, should they ever decide to start filling it, is to protect and save the entire galaxy, and unlike all the dopes on Earth Neroon knows that this purpose is more important than his own petty ambitions. He may be an antagonist, but he's a good guy, and by listening to the one good idea Marcus ever had he's proven to be far less prideful than I am, too. Plus he got to beat Marcus unconscious with a pipe! Guys, I want to be Neroon.
The part I don't understand about the ending is that Delenn and Sheridan both treat this as "there was an assault on Marcus," despite the fact that they are also apparently fully aware of the fact that Marcus went after Neroon and challenged him to a fight to the death. When Neroon shows up in medbay to intone some solemn words at Marcus's coma, Delenn snaps at him: "come to finish what you started?" And for some reason neither Neroon nor Lennier nor the semi-conscious Marcus says "Neroon was defending himself from an armed assailant." Self defense is still self defense, even when you don't like the guy defending himself.
And honestly, you know what I think bothers me the most about this episode? That fight with Neroon should have belonged to Lennier. He's the one devoted heart and soul to Delenn; he's the one with both the warrior and philosopher background to meet Neroon on his own level and change his mind on a higher one. He's the one who's spent three seasons building toward a moment when he could go toe to toe with someone threatening Delenn, and give his life to keep her safe. This would have SO MUCH MORE drama and power if Lennier had been able to do it. Even if you like Marcus, you can't deny this would have been better with Lennier. I'm genuinely kind of furious.
The episode ends with Garibaldi coming into Sheridan's office and giving an even more mocking version of his plotline than I've given in this review, and I didn't think that was possible. So apparently everyone on the show knew that this was every bit as dumb as it turned out to be, and they made us watch it anyway. Pro tip: if the conclusion of your story is "ha! That was so dumb" maybe just write a different story.
At the end of the day, though, this is not nearly as bad an episode as I'd been led to believe. Marcus is an ass, and pipes full of steam and bullets are not machine guns, but other than that this is a fairly solid mid-range episode. Are people mostly just complaining about the science of the bullet thing? Why harp on this episode, out of all the vast and checkered history of the show, when there are so many worse ones we could denigrate instead? How about SIC TRANSIT VIR, in which JMS used the Oskar Schindler story in the pursuit of what he described as "broad, fall-down comedy"? What about PASSING THROUGH GETHSEMANE, which gave a story so obvious they had to get legal permission to tell it? How about the Nazi pig sex from ACTS OF SACRIFICE? The physical painful boringness of SOUL MATES? The unadulterated racism of TKO? And don't even get me started on BORN TO THE PURPLE. GREY 17 IS MISSING might not even make my bottom five for the season.
No, it totally will, but it'll be like third or fourth instead of the absolute bottom.
We also get some weird stuff about B5 trying to hire telepaths for the war effort, which seems poorly thought-out and honestly kind of racist. Or at least humano-centric. They have the entire Ranger Corp at their beck and call, and most of them are Minbari and a bunch of them are telepaths, and now that Delenn’s the boss they’re all coming right to B5 anyway, plus we’ve even seen them successfully attack a Shadow ship, so why not just use them? Why go to all the trouble of exposing your secret army and drawing the wrath of Psi-Corps and vetting and paying an all-new group of people when you already have an army of psychics trained and ready to go? The answer, of course, is that it never occurred to JMS or anyone else on the show that the psychics they used in their war could be anything other than human. Not all humans are human supremacists, but all humans benefit from human supremacy. NOTE: it has been pointed out that there are clearly aliens standing in the line, and I just didn’t see them because I was watching the joke guy. Sorry! I still think it’s weird that they have an open call for psychics, but they’re definitely using plenty of non-humans.
The guy pretending to be a psychic is a cute joke—not a funny one, but this show rarely is—but it underlines the core issue of this whole plan: every human psychic is either part of Psi-Corps or on the run from Psi-Corps. So why did they just put an ad in the paper or whatever, instead of either going directly to Psi-Corps or going directly to Franklin for his “psychic underground railroad” he’s been running? Who did they think was going to answer their ad? Did they literally not put any thought into it at all? Presumably not, since the person in charge is apparently Zack, who I am honestly surprised is still on the show now that his Nightwatch storyline is over. He has no character traits or dramatic interest without that plot to back him up, and yet he’s still here. Yay for Jeff Conaway getting work, I guess?
And really, I think the "why not use the psychics from among the Rangers" question taps into a much larger question, which is: "why do we never see the Rangers doing anything?" Not counting Marcus, or the White Star, we've seen the Rangers maybe three times? And at least two of those were cameos, and the other was just a messenger. We've got an entire secret army, and it never does anything. We've got a crew for our ship, and a sassy British Mary Sue, and...ten thousand faceless MacGuffins. Now Delenn and Neroon are fighting over who gets to be in charge of them, and all I can think is that Neroon can have them if he wants, because they've added jack squat to the war effort so far despite that being their one and only purpose for existing. We'll keep the White Star, he can have the Purely Hypothetical army, and Marcus can die in a fire.
My Marcus ire is a little more ire-y than usual today, because Lennier comes to him to ask for help and Marcus mocks him ruthlessly for it. Neroon has threatened Delenn's life, and Delenn refuses to take it seriously, Lennier has found a loophole in his moral code that will allow him to ask someone for help, but unfortunately the only person he can ask is Marcus, who has to a) make a huge joke about it first, and b) chooses a surprisingly harsh joke about not only Lennier's moral code but all of Minbari philosophy. I understand that Marcus thinks he's funny, and I understand that he cracks bad jokes at every conceivable opportunity, but this one is especially biting and personal, and he throws it in the face of a man who is clearly desperate for help, and Marcus I hate you so much. I'm usually pretty open-minded about differing artistic opinions, but if you like Marcus you are wrong. He's a bad character with obnoxious personality traits who contributes nothing to the ongoing story except a thin excuse to say "See? The Rangers are real even though this is the only one you ever see and everything he does could be done better by someone else." If he doesn't die in a Keffer-esque self-sacrifice at the end of this season I will throw a chair.
Down in Grey 17, everything that happens post-ventriloquist dummy is as stupid as the use of a ventriloquist dummy in the first place. I can see why people hate this episode, though I'm assuming most people only hate it because of the Pointless Idiot Club and the blatantly impossible conversion of a steam vent into a machine gun. Why are those morons hiding out in this level? What do they want? Why do they "have" a killer alien? Why do they tranq Garibaldi if he's not a prisoner? I get the sense that they're some kind of religious cult based around the central premise of not having any goals, but I also get the sense that JMS needed to kill some time and thought a half-baked monologue about the universe being a living thing could help him kill it. Compare this to WALKABOUT's pointless side trip away from the main plot: neither story "matters" to the long-term thread, or advances it in a meaningful way, but one is a pleasant way to get to know a main character and the other is a very poorly written monster story.
And why not just use the actual gun? Relying on antiquated technology is just as interesting as MacGyvering a steam vent, but doesn't shatter the laws of physics. Just tweak the initial "this was my grandma's gun" conversation to talk about how old an unreliable slug-throwers are, and how glad they are to have PPGs instead of having to use these antiques, and you're good to go. You're already telegraphing that the gun and/or bullets will be used in the end--with a literal gun on a mantel--so it's not like you'd be giving away something we don't already see coming. Make it a thematic reference to "sometimes the old ways are best," and tie it in to something in the rest of the show--or contrast it to the "time to change everything about Minbari society" theme you've got going on in the other plot. We know you're good at this, just be more consistent about it.
Back in Ranger Land, there's a big ceremony to make Delenn the new Ranger One, but Marcus doesn't show up because he's busy getting his butt handed to him by Neroon. I was 100% convinced that Marcus Sue was going to win the fight, because that's how this show tends to go, but imagine my delight when Neroon beats him senseless! It was awesome. Neroon was already a favorite character, and now he's risen a notch or two in the ranks. I even dared to hope that he'd straight up killed Marcus by beating him to death with a steel bar, but alas. I admit I was surprised, though, that he backed down from his claim and decided to let Delenn have the Rangers. I was initially furious at this, because I saw it as a moral victory for Marcus, but once my red haze cleared from my eyes I saw that it is even more of a moral turning point for Neroon. We've always seen him as a villain, and in this season with the Warrior Caste getting way too big for their britches he seems even more like a bad guy, but wow: he just gave a politial opponent a massive resource because he knows they will be more effective in her hands than his. He recognizes that their purpose, should they ever decide to start filling it, is to protect and save the entire galaxy, and unlike all the dopes on Earth Neroon knows that this purpose is more important than his own petty ambitions. He may be an antagonist, but he's a good guy, and by listening to the one good idea Marcus ever had he's proven to be far less prideful than I am, too. Plus he got to beat Marcus unconscious with a pipe! Guys, I want to be Neroon.
The part I don't understand about the ending is that Delenn and Sheridan both treat this as "there was an assault on Marcus," despite the fact that they are also apparently fully aware of the fact that Marcus went after Neroon and challenged him to a fight to the death. When Neroon shows up in medbay to intone some solemn words at Marcus's coma, Delenn snaps at him: "come to finish what you started?" And for some reason neither Neroon nor Lennier nor the semi-conscious Marcus says "Neroon was defending himself from an armed assailant." Self defense is still self defense, even when you don't like the guy defending himself.
And honestly, you know what I think bothers me the most about this episode? That fight with Neroon should have belonged to Lennier. He's the one devoted heart and soul to Delenn; he's the one with both the warrior and philosopher background to meet Neroon on his own level and change his mind on a higher one. He's the one who's spent three seasons building toward a moment when he could go toe to toe with someone threatening Delenn, and give his life to keep her safe. This would have SO MUCH MORE drama and power if Lennier had been able to do it. Even if you like Marcus, you can't deny this would have been better with Lennier. I'm genuinely kind of furious.
The episode ends with Garibaldi coming into Sheridan's office and giving an even more mocking version of his plotline than I've given in this review, and I didn't think that was possible. So apparently everyone on the show knew that this was every bit as dumb as it turned out to be, and they made us watch it anyway. Pro tip: if the conclusion of your story is "ha! That was so dumb" maybe just write a different story.
At the end of the day, though, this is not nearly as bad an episode as I'd been led to believe. Marcus is an ass, and pipes full of steam and bullets are not machine guns, but other than that this is a fairly solid mid-range episode. Are people mostly just complaining about the science of the bullet thing? Why harp on this episode, out of all the vast and checkered history of the show, when there are so many worse ones we could denigrate instead? How about SIC TRANSIT VIR, in which JMS used the Oskar Schindler story in the pursuit of what he described as "broad, fall-down comedy"? What about PASSING THROUGH GETHSEMANE, which gave a story so obvious they had to get legal permission to tell it? How about the Nazi pig sex from ACTS OF SACRIFICE? The physical painful boringness of SOUL MATES? The unadulterated racism of TKO? And don't even get me started on BORN TO THE PURPLE. GREY 17 IS MISSING might not even make my bottom five for the season.
No, it totally will, but it'll be like third or fourth instead of the absolute bottom.
One of the biggest missed opportunity's in this episode is not having Bester. That would have allowed a scene where Walter Koenig holds the gun and makes a reference to the drop "Chekov's Gun" while staring DIRECTLY into the camera.
ReplyDeleteLennier stopping Neroon is a cool idea but I think it really had to be a ranger to convince Neroon that the rangers could be so dedicated to a non-warrior. Lennier is religious caste and Delenn's devoted personal assistant. Neroon could easily have brushed it off as not showing anything about actual rangers.
ReplyDelete"it never occurred to JMS or anyone else on the show that the psychics they used in their war could be anything other than human." honestly I am not sure how you come to this conclusion when it is PLAINLY visible that there are multiple aliens in the waiting line... did the joke with the applicant distract you that much? Also on the "why even": kind of in their best interest to have as many as possible at their disposal, no?
ReplyDeleteYou’re absolutely right—how did I miss that? I’ve updated the article to reflect it.
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