Episode 2.22: The Fall of Night

Well holy crap. That’s how you tell a story.

THE FALL OF NIGHT is hands-down the best episode yet, of either season, not just because it paid off massive plotlines and shook up the status quo, but because it did them both so well. It did exactly right everything that THE LONG,TWILIGHT STRUGGLE did wrong: its space battles were compelling and deeply connected to the characters, and there wasn’t a second of wasted time. Great acting abounded, and even Keffer had a powerful moment—freaking Keffer, who couldn’t act his way out of a wet paper bag. He delivered a monologue describing the Shadow ship that was chilling and perfect. How? How was this episode so good? And I haven’t even gotten to the angel yet.

Where do I even start? How about a short conversation between Vir and Lennier, getting together to sympathize over their mutual sense of powerlessness. Both aides have really come into their own this season, not just in story but in acting. I don’t remember seeing hints of this from either of them in Season 1, but they’re among my very favorites now. Can you imagine if Caitlin Brown had been able to stick around as Na’Toth? The three ambassadorial aides, as three of the best characters on the show, all working together and against each other at the same time, bantering and insulting and supporting each other? I mean, come on. I’m almost glad that didn’t happen, because it would have outshined the rest of the show.

The Nightwatch plotline mostly just makes me angry, but it was at least well done. I hate the idea that people can be so susceptible to thought-policing, but I can’t deny that it’s happened in real life and the way they portray it here seems maddeningly plausible. The meeting where Mr. Welles (thanks a lot, B5) gives his slimy speech and then bullies Zack into informing on people was great, by which I mean it was awful. It was also the first time we’ve gotten a solid reason for replacing Lou with Zack in the first place: Lou would never have stood for this garbage, and would have told Welles exactly what he thought about him and his fascist brownshirts. I’ve never liked Zack precisely because he seems so wishy-washy, but now we see that even that was a part of the plan all along, and Zack’s wishy-washiness is exactly the quality that’s going to cause a ton of problems down the line. I don’t believe for a second that the title THE FALL OF NIGHT is only talking about the Shadows; the Nightwatch are a major power now, and I hate them.

Side note: always live your life in such a way that a fascist group of thought police would immediately make you disappear. Always. That’s some of the best life advice I can possibly give to anyone.

Moving on. The main thrust of the episode is an Earth Force diplomat come to “investigate” the reports of Centauri aggression, which happens to occur right as a lost Narn warship, running a deadly guerilla resistance from jump gate to jump gate, shows up at B5 pleading for sanctuary. Sheridan naturally assumes that he has his government’s approval to offer them his full support, but a) the diplomat is actually here to make a treaty with the Centauri, and b) one of the underlings on the Command Deck is a dirty dirty Nightwatch informant. Word gets out, Londo brings in a Centauri cruiser, and Sheridan goes right over his superiors’ heads to defend the Narn ship. Awesome threats are made from every side, chests are thumped, weapons are drawn, and then the Centauri fire first and all hell breaks loose. Sheridan and Londo and Ivanova and even Keffer are right in the middle of it, and the pacing and editing are fantastic, and it’s even more effective because we genuinely don’t know who’s going to win, or what’s going to happen. The drawn-out space battle in THE LONG, TWILIGHT STRUGGLE was boring in part because we all knew exactly how it was going to end, and then we had to wait through the whole long thing to see it happen. With the space battle in THE FALL OF NIGHT, it could have gone literally anywhere and I would have believed it. The Centauri could have destroyed the Narn ship. They could have severely damaged the station. Keffer could have died. The Earth diplomat could have forced Sheridan to stop, or Welles could have pulled a gun, or maybe the entire Command Deck could have turned into a deadly standoff between the Nightwatch and the Sheridan loyalists. The Great Machine and its annoying Minbari spokesman could have shot the Centauri right out of the sky. Literally any of this and more could have happened, and I would not have batted an eye. You want to make good fight scenes? Do this: present us with a wide range of completely plausible outcomes, and we'll be on the edge of our seats.

I forgot to talk about Keffer's Shadow speech. Early in the episode he hears from another pilot that he's not the only one who's seen the monsters in the Warp. He goes to talk to one of them, and after a short but excellent conversation to establish character Keffer mentions the rumors, and the guy gets up to go because who needs this crap, and then Keffer describes the Shadow ship perfectly and ominously. The other guy sits down, they talk, and eventually Keffer gets a set of sensor readings that could help him find the Shadow ship again. So here we are later, after the space battle, and he's escorting the Narn ship through hyperspace, when suddenly his sensors pick up a Shadow and he heads off to chase it. He dies (to no one's surprise), but not before getting some awesome footage and ejecting his recording for someone else to find. But who will find it?

I also forget to talk about Welles trying turn Ivanova to the dark side. Obviously she says no, because Ivanova is awesome, but I was honestly a little disappointed she didn't jump down his throat a little harder at the insinuation that she would commit treason. Also: Welles is played by John Vickery, who also shows up as Neroon in the big crowd scene in the garden at the end. He only gets one line, but yay Neroon! I love Neroon. And yay for Vickery playing two parts in one episode. I honestly was halfway convinced for most of this episode that he was Kyle Maclachlan from Twin Peaks, but if it couldn't be Mclachlan I'm glad he was Neroon.

And yeah. Let's talk about that garden scene. The Earth government finds that Sheridan acted legally but foolishly in defending the Narn ship, since he was following Starfleet protocol and the non-aggression treaty hadn't been formalized yet. But he did blow up a Centauri cruiser, so he has to apologize in a formal meeting, but he never gets the chance because terrorism. A group of Centauri activists see him walking through the halls and follow him onto a subway car, which quickly turns into an underslung train car hanging from a track in the vast center section of the ship. We never see this part very often, but we know it's there: a huge open cylinder in the center of the station, complete with fields and water and so on. Everyone but Sheridan gets off, and the train gets going, and then he sees the bomb the terrorists left behind and quickly does the only thing he could possibly do: override the doors and jump out right as the train explodes. He happens to be directly over the garden party as he does this, and Ivanova helpfully explains that while he is mostly technically weightless, the ground is moving at 60mph relative to him, and if he hits it that will be messy. This makes sense, because the spin of the ship is what produces the gravity, and most of that vast empty cylinder is too close to the center to experience that gravity, and so on. She does not explain why the train car itself, which was also in the center of the gravity-less cylinder, somehow does have gravity, but we don't have time for that: Sheridan is plummeting to his death. The only solution is to fly up and catch him, but the jet pack teams (because B5 has jet pack teams! That's who I want to see next season as a replacement for Keffer) can't make it in time. Who else can fly? WHO?!?

Remember a few episodes ago, when Kosh said he only wears an encounter suit because if he didn't "everyone" would recognize him? And remember how I totally predicted that this was because he was not only an angel, but an angel who appeared to each viewer as their own culture's religious entity? Well: pat me on the back, because I have never been happier to nail a prediction than this one. Delenn says "Kosh, you know how important he is: it's now or never," and Kosh doesn't even hesitate to open the suit and unfurl his wings and HE IS A FREAKING ANGEL. And every species there sees him as something completely different: not just a generic angel, but a specific, named angel. Neroon calls him Valeria, and a Drazi dude calls him something else, and the entire thing is legimately shocking and stunning and awesome, in the original "awe-inspiring" meaning of the word. I mean, I can think of so many ways to botch the sudden appearance of a massive glowing angel on a sci-fi show, and they didn't do any of them. It was absolutely perfect. My one and only complaint is that, after all the other species saw their own angel and called him by name, Sheridan comes face to face with the human version and doesn't say a thing. "Michael" would seem like the obvious choice, as key to both Christian and Jewish theology, but other options could have worked. Maybe Gabriel? Damiel or Cassiel from "Wings of Desire?" Azrael for the Batman fans? Moroni would have been hilarious. And I suppose I can understand that they probably shied away from an actual name drop of an actual religious figure because they were worried about offending people: you can call the Minbari version Valeria because there are no actual Minbari to get offended (spoiler warning), but as soon as Sheridan looks at this thing and says "Gabriel?" the whole Christian Right comes crashing down on your head because you just implied that Jesus was an alien. And yes, that's exactly what they're implying here anyway, but without a name it's easier to swallow. And who knows, maybe we'll get names in the future, when Sheridan and Ivanova are sitting around over drinks trying to parse what they saw and felt. I was just sad, after all the beautiful build-up, that it didn't happen here.

One of the keys of the scene, speaking of build-up, comes when everyone else is staring in awe and naming the angel and Londo only frowns in confusion, and says nothing. OMINOUS. Later he confesses to some other alien ambassadors, in what I suppose is Hot Rod Billy's Totally Safe Bar For Very Important Ambassadors Who Don't Have Bodyguards, that while they all saw their own religious figure he did not in fact see anything at all. This is even more ominous, and he's obviously shaken by it, but I honestly couldn't pay too much attention because why did he not have bodyguards? Someone just tried to kill Sheridan, for crying out loud, and Londo is 100% guaranteed to be the single most hated person on the entire station, bar none. He should be surrounded by security at all times. He shouldn't even be out in public drinking without a crowd of furious Narn and Drazi and everyone else screaming in his face. But when Hot Rod Billy promises security, he provides security, and so Londo and all of the others were just sitting around drinking without a care in the world. Okay, B5. Sure.

As a final stinger, Delenn assures Sheridan that yes, Kosh revealed himself, but no, that shouldn't light the fuse that starts the war because the Shadows don't yet know that they've been discovered. And then the ISN finds Keffer's recording and puts the footage on the news, and now everyone knows that the Shadows have been discovered. So now we know what Season Three is going to be about, and all I can say is: finally.

Because here's the thing: that season-long mantra of "The year the Great War came upon us all" turns out to be a hollow tease that isn't fulfilled until the final voiceover when Ivanova talks about how the Great War doesn't start until after the end of the episode. The Centauri continue their war of expansion, conquering more and more worlds and people, and sure that's cool but why oh why did you build it up for twenty two episodes if it was only going to be an epilogue? I've spent all season waiting for the Great War to come upon us all, and this is all I get? I loved this episode dearly, and it's still my favorite of the series so far, but holy crap do I feel lied to. A Great War is an awfully big gun to leave on a mantel, especially when you start every episode by pointing at it and saying "Eh? Eh?" And then to toss it off as an afterthought at the end, with just a voiceover telling us "and then by the way somebody shot that gun that was on the mantel, the end, you've been a great audience, tip your waitresses." Blerg, Babylon 5. Blerg.

That one point aside, this was an awesome episode. I'll post another season retrospective, just like I did with Season 1, but then it might be a couple of weeks before I get to Season 3. I have a deadline and a family vacation that are going to eat up my time, and I won't be able to dedicate two hours a day to this goofy side project until after I get those out of the way. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you soon.