Episode 1.18: A Voice in the Wilderness Part 1

Whaaaaaaaat? A two-parter? Well played, Babylon 5, I didn’t see that one coming at all.

Even from the beginning, though, it’s clear that this episode is more interested in telling a long story than being an episode of television. There’s at least four plots going on, though two of them converge at the end, and in this Part 1 we don’t get resolution on any of them. The main plot revolves around the planet Babylon 5 is orbiting, and the biggest shocker comes at the beginning when we learn that Babylon 5 is orbiting a planet. I suppose it’s always been there in the background, but I literally had to go back and watch the opening credits to see if it was really there. And it totally is! Did YOU know it was there? Why didn’t I ever notice it before? I suppose my brain is so used to watching SF credit sequences where Enterprise or Moya or Andromeda or whatever just flies past a bunch of random planets and we don’t care about them. I genuinely believed that B5 was between systems, out in space somewhere in neutral territory. Weird.

Upon learning that there’s a planet—called Epsilon 3–we are asked to immediately alter our perception of it: it is empty and dead, and extensive studies have proven this to be true. We are then asked to immediately alter our perception of it AGAIN when it starts attacking a science vessel, firing Magrathea-brand automated defense missiles. Then we’re asked to alter our perception yet a third time when Sinclair and Ivanova head down into the cave system and find a great machine, which the wikipedia article refers to as The Great Machine. I didn’t read ahead, so I don’t know what it does beyond shoot missiles at people, but it’s there and it’s weird, so if you disobey orders and get too close just repeat Babylon 5’s first rule: “Ivanova is always right.”

One of the weirdest parts of this storyline is the conversation Sinclair and Ivanova have upon learning that there’s something under the surface: they figure they’d better go check it out, but they manage to add more winks-winks and nudge-nudges to the discussion than you probably thought was possible, let alone necessary. And yes, I know that Sinclair and Ivanova are both known for their eagerness to leave the command deck and charge into danger, but this was still super strange. They’re so inexplicably cagey about it I’d almost say they’re having an affair, but there’s no way Ivanova would act this cheerfully in an affair.

Meanwhile, back on the station, one of Delenn’s old teachers/tutors/mentors shows up and suddenly THOSE two are acting like they’re having an affair. The Vulcans on Star Trek are often compared to elves, and the Minbari are desperately trying to one-up them for the Space Elf title, but in this episode they take it even farther by dropping a direct Tolkien reference: when it’s time for an old Minbari to die, they “go to the sea,” which I assume means the Grey Havens, from which the white gulls call and the grey ships can sail into the west. More importantly: I have become convinced that the thing on the Minbari’s heads is an actual projection of horn or bone; I have come to this conclusion because every Minbari actor we see has a better prosthetic than Delenn's does. They look like they’re part of the characters’ heads, while Delenn’s looks like its peeling off—like it’s not fully connected, especially around the edges. I hope she gets a better one in future seasons, when they have a chance to reallocate some budget.

Anyway, Mentor Dude goes around with Delenn a little, saying hi to Londo and some others, and that’s all very well and good except that it's painfully, agonizingly boring. I spent my time in the last paragraph talking about the Grey Havens and the head prosthetics because they are both a hundred times more interesting than whatever the people in these scenes are saying. I sure hope none of it is important to the series arc, because any information delivered by or in the presence of this guy is rendered too boring to pay attention to. It slides away from your mind like eggs in an infomercial frying pan.

Londo manages to be pretty memorable, though, so that’s always good. He gives a terrible speech in the bar to Garibaldi, trying to cheer him up with the worst excesses of “please don’t take the Centauri seriously,” and I hated it until it turned out to all be a con designed to trick Garibaldi into paying for his drink. Well played, Londo. Way better than that, though, is Londo’s rant about the Narn and their hatred, which is exquisitely written and perfectly delivered.

The third plot is about the Free Mars movement finally boiling over into armed rebellion, which we don’t see in person but instead hear through news reports and some angsty conversation between Garibaldi and Talia: he’s taking the news hard (hard enough that I’m suspicious), and wants Talia to check with her secret Psi-Corps contacts to see if his surprise ex-girlfriend is okay. I swear, the officers on this station have more exes than the cast of ER. Talia’s secret Psi-Corps contact doesn’t want to help, because doing so would confirm their existence, and I admit that I really hope the whole story about the ex is a fake, and that getting said confirmation is actually Garibaldi’s plan all along. We’ll see.

But let’s talk about Garibaldi and Talia: in the beginning of the episode she’s waiting nervously at the elevator because she’s pretty sure Garibaldi’s going to be there, because he’s always there when she tries to ride the elevator, with the obvious implication that he is interested in her and she is trying to avoid him. And I was willing to give that a pass because Garibaldi is a busy man and he’s probably on the elevator all the time, so it's not his fault he's there when she is, but then it comes and the door opens and he’s standing there with the slimiest smirk on his face, and for crying out loud he is a stalker. It’s not an accident, and he totally did it on purpose, and he knows it bothers her and he does it anyway. That is straight up, no bones about it, sexual harassment. I will call this Garibaldi’s Law: no matter how much you liked a show when it was new, watch it 25 years later and it will shock you with how problematic it was and you never noticed it. And seriously: if you think I’m reading too much into this, watch their exchange when Garibaldi approaches her to ask about Mars; watch the way she tries to brush him off, and the look she gives him when he grabs her arm. It’s all there, and the creators of the show knew it was there, and they honestly probably didn’t consider it to be all that bad. “Garibaldi’s stalking her, see, because he likes her and he’s the security chief so he always knows where people are. He’s abusing his authority and she’s afraid to ride the elevator! It’s adorable!” Acceptability changes fast.

(Even if the show eventually makes the point that Garibaldi's behavior was wrong and he shouldn't have done it: Sinclair was standing right there. Talia told him directly that the creepy behavior of an executive officer made her uncomfortable and scared, and then Sinclair saw it in action, and he did nothing. So it's not just Garibaldi.)

Meanwhile, Sinclair and Londo both have brief visions of a ghostly alien asking for help, which turns out to be a guy strapped into some kind of alien crucifix inside the Great Machine. We knew he was connected to it somehow, but that crucifix thingy was pretty effectively spooky, and now I'm way more intrigued than I thought I was going to be. We don’t know what’s actually going on, though, because they pull him out and jump in their ship and then DUN DUN DUN it’s a freeze frame and a “to be continued.” And I’ve got to hand it to them: this isn’t my favorite episode by far, but it’s a good one and that cliffhanger totally has me. I can’t wait to watch the next one.