Episode 4.10: Racing Mars
A good episode that I genuinely enjoyed, even considering that Marcus was onscreen for well over half of it? B5 is back in good form, and I am delighted.
The A plot picks up where last week's most inexplicable (yet most watchable) scene left off: with Franklin and Marcus in the cargo hold of a deep space freighter, heading off to contact the Martian resistance. Marcus is clearly supposed to be the funny one, but he functions mostly as an annoying straight man for Franklin, who's dry insults and rejoinders are fantastic. Big props to him for lasting as long as he did: if I were in a cargo hold alone for two weeks with Marcus, I'd be dead, because I would try to kill him and he would definitely win.
At some point in their poorly-defined journey another person shows up, who claims he slipped in through a door and who eventually turns out to be their actual contact. (He proves this by offering a code phrase that seems...overly intrusive into Lyta's personal life? Like, why is she being mentioned by name in a secret password, let alone mentioned at all? And why is her very abusive relationship with Ulkesh being mocked?) I'm glad they met their contact, though I'm less glad that he turns out to be a strikingly Marcus-esque character: constantly spouting what JMS clearly thinks is either funny or quirky dialogue, not just in spite of the other characters' frustration but clearly designed to frustrate them on purpose. Now we know why Franklin was assigned to this mission, because literally anyone else in the cast would have shot them both before they ever got to Mars. Marcus hates this doofus but, in typical Marcus style, fails to do any self-reflection and wonder if everyone hates him, too, for acting exactly the same way. But no, the show has no time for self-reflection, because it's too busy not telling us how or why their contact spent two weeks aboard the same empty ship before ever bothering to contact them.
They eventually arrive on Mars, and Marcus 2.0 takes them to meet the resistance, who it turns out are quite appropriately paranoid and want to make sure that these are the right B5 personnel before they share any resistance secrets. The process of confirming their identities is just long and complicated enough to attract the attention of some higher-ups, most notably someone I thought was Daryl Hannah, but turned out to be Marjorie Monaghan (whom Wikipedia claims is most famous for this very role). As soon as she comes out of hiding to see the situation for herself, Marcus 2.0 pulls a gun and tries to kill her--he had purposefully screwed up their ID cards in order to cause this problem and draw her out of hiding. Marcus and Franklin save her life and fire back, and manage to hit him in the shoulder, accidentally revealing and damaging one of the creepy eyeball parasites that invaded Centauri Prime. DUN DUN DUN. The resistance trusts our heroes now, and they call Evil Marcus to try to talk him down--they know he was being mind controlled, and they want him to come back so they can help him. He tells them that it won't last, and the parasite will "always grow back," and that he's going to use this brief moment of mental freedom to escape their influence once and for all. He ignites a thermal grenade inside of a train tunnel, which obliterates the train but doesn't even discolor the tunnel, thus proving that Martian engineering is pretty fricking impressive.
My favorite part of this whole sequence was when Secretly Evil Marcus revealed to Actual Marcus that no one on Mars (and presumably Earth as well) knows anything about the war--they've heard of it, but they didn't know what it was about, or who was fighting, or how big it was. They definitely didn't know that it was over, or that we won. This little detail said more about Earth's propaganda machine, and in a more effective way, than anything else the show has done. It was a great detail with big implications for the setting.
Back on B5, Ivanova relieves Sheridan of duty so he can get some rest after nine (9) solid months of activity, most of it in a war. He chooses to relax the way most of us would: by staying in his uniform, endlessly rewatching the footage of Garibaldi badmouthing him to the press, and then finding Garibaldi in the promenade and cussing him out in front of everybody. Garibaldi's response to this behavior is ridiculously paranoid and out of character, but since the show keeps reminding us that Garibaldi has been very obviously brainwashed, I give it a pass. Can you imagine watching these episodes without knowing about the brainwash? Or without knowing about Sheridan's distinct personality changes post-resurrection? It would be frigging PACKED with drama. It would be two close friends and colleagues tearing each other apart, with us watching helplessly from the sidelines. But we know about the brainwash, and we know about the personality modifications, so it's mostly just two straw men yelling irrationally--at one point Sheridan says "Stop shaking that woman!" and Garibaldi says "Why? Do you want her to WORSHIP you?" and it's so obvious that he's not reacting to real stimuli that I gave up trying to justify anyone's behavior. Garibaldi ends the episode by joining a rebel movement (which I was convinced was led by Peter Riegert, but this is a day for misidentifying guest stars) aboard B5, but only because they promise to be the ones to kill Jesus after Judas kisses him on the cheek. The parallels are, shall we say, a little much.
So: I've mocked this episode ruthlessly but, yes, I did like it. It had a lot of Marcus (two of him, in fact), but it also had a lot of Franklin, and Franklin is the best. It also had a scene of Ivanova talking to a group of black market smugglers, half-negotiating and half-threatening, and it was awesome (and yes it ended with Ivanova being sexually harassed for the sake of humor, but this is Babylon 5 and we're waaaay too accustomed to that by now). This episode advanced three different plots, all in meaningful ways; it gave us good acting and cool story beats; and it revealed that the still-unnamed eyeball parasites are infiltrating way more things than we thought. So there's a new Krang and Shredder in town, but for now I forgive them: this is the first episode since THE LONG NIGHT that I've liked, and for that I am incredibly grateful.
The A plot picks up where last week's most inexplicable (yet most watchable) scene left off: with Franklin and Marcus in the cargo hold of a deep space freighter, heading off to contact the Martian resistance. Marcus is clearly supposed to be the funny one, but he functions mostly as an annoying straight man for Franklin, who's dry insults and rejoinders are fantastic. Big props to him for lasting as long as he did: if I were in a cargo hold alone for two weeks with Marcus, I'd be dead, because I would try to kill him and he would definitely win.
At some point in their poorly-defined journey another person shows up, who claims he slipped in through a door and who eventually turns out to be their actual contact. (He proves this by offering a code phrase that seems...overly intrusive into Lyta's personal life? Like, why is she being mentioned by name in a secret password, let alone mentioned at all? And why is her very abusive relationship with Ulkesh being mocked?) I'm glad they met their contact, though I'm less glad that he turns out to be a strikingly Marcus-esque character: constantly spouting what JMS clearly thinks is either funny or quirky dialogue, not just in spite of the other characters' frustration but clearly designed to frustrate them on purpose. Now we know why Franklin was assigned to this mission, because literally anyone else in the cast would have shot them both before they ever got to Mars. Marcus hates this doofus but, in typical Marcus style, fails to do any self-reflection and wonder if everyone hates him, too, for acting exactly the same way. But no, the show has no time for self-reflection, because it's too busy not telling us how or why their contact spent two weeks aboard the same empty ship before ever bothering to contact them.
They eventually arrive on Mars, and Marcus 2.0 takes them to meet the resistance, who it turns out are quite appropriately paranoid and want to make sure that these are the right B5 personnel before they share any resistance secrets. The process of confirming their identities is just long and complicated enough to attract the attention of some higher-ups, most notably someone I thought was Daryl Hannah, but turned out to be Marjorie Monaghan (whom Wikipedia claims is most famous for this very role). As soon as she comes out of hiding to see the situation for herself, Marcus 2.0 pulls a gun and tries to kill her--he had purposefully screwed up their ID cards in order to cause this problem and draw her out of hiding. Marcus and Franklin save her life and fire back, and manage to hit him in the shoulder, accidentally revealing and damaging one of the creepy eyeball parasites that invaded Centauri Prime. DUN DUN DUN. The resistance trusts our heroes now, and they call Evil Marcus to try to talk him down--they know he was being mind controlled, and they want him to come back so they can help him. He tells them that it won't last, and the parasite will "always grow back," and that he's going to use this brief moment of mental freedom to escape their influence once and for all. He ignites a thermal grenade inside of a train tunnel, which obliterates the train but doesn't even discolor the tunnel, thus proving that Martian engineering is pretty fricking impressive.
My favorite part of this whole sequence was when Secretly Evil Marcus revealed to Actual Marcus that no one on Mars (and presumably Earth as well) knows anything about the war--they've heard of it, but they didn't know what it was about, or who was fighting, or how big it was. They definitely didn't know that it was over, or that we won. This little detail said more about Earth's propaganda machine, and in a more effective way, than anything else the show has done. It was a great detail with big implications for the setting.
Back on B5, Ivanova relieves Sheridan of duty so he can get some rest after nine (9) solid months of activity, most of it in a war. He chooses to relax the way most of us would: by staying in his uniform, endlessly rewatching the footage of Garibaldi badmouthing him to the press, and then finding Garibaldi in the promenade and cussing him out in front of everybody. Garibaldi's response to this behavior is ridiculously paranoid and out of character, but since the show keeps reminding us that Garibaldi has been very obviously brainwashed, I give it a pass. Can you imagine watching these episodes without knowing about the brainwash? Or without knowing about Sheridan's distinct personality changes post-resurrection? It would be frigging PACKED with drama. It would be two close friends and colleagues tearing each other apart, with us watching helplessly from the sidelines. But we know about the brainwash, and we know about the personality modifications, so it's mostly just two straw men yelling irrationally--at one point Sheridan says "Stop shaking that woman!" and Garibaldi says "Why? Do you want her to WORSHIP you?" and it's so obvious that he's not reacting to real stimuli that I gave up trying to justify anyone's behavior. Garibaldi ends the episode by joining a rebel movement (which I was convinced was led by Peter Riegert, but this is a day for misidentifying guest stars) aboard B5, but only because they promise to be the ones to kill Jesus after Judas kisses him on the cheek. The parallels are, shall we say, a little much.
So: I've mocked this episode ruthlessly but, yes, I did like it. It had a lot of Marcus (two of him, in fact), but it also had a lot of Franklin, and Franklin is the best. It also had a scene of Ivanova talking to a group of black market smugglers, half-negotiating and half-threatening, and it was awesome (and yes it ended with Ivanova being sexually harassed for the sake of humor, but this is Babylon 5 and we're waaaay too accustomed to that by now). This episode advanced three different plots, all in meaningful ways; it gave us good acting and cool story beats; and it revealed that the still-unnamed eyeball parasites are infiltrating way more things than we thought. So there's a new Krang and Shredder in town, but for now I forgive them: this is the first episode since THE LONG NIGHT that I've liked, and for that I am incredibly grateful.
It was my understanding (or was it my headcanon making sense of things?) that Marcus and Franklin made lots of stops on the way to Mars (there were no direct flights), and this was simply the last leg of their journey.
ReplyDeleteGaribaldi's brainwashing did get a bit ... weird... particularly in this episode IIRC.