B5: The Long Dark
Airdates: 30
November 1994 (US), 7 March 1995 (UK)
Written by Scott Frost
Directed by Mario DiLeo
Cast: Mariah Cirrus (Anne-Marie Johnson), Amis
(Dwight Schultz), Alien 1 (Jennifer Anglin), Alien 2 (Neil
Bradley), Medtech (James Kiriyama-Tech), Ambassador Vershaar (Kim
Strauss), Guard (Warren Tabata)
Plot: The USS
Copernicus, lost in space for a hundred years, drifts past Babylon 5 and
is salvaged. The vessel was launched shortly before Earth made contact with the
Centauri and gained jump gate technology, allowing them to take to the stars.
The slower-than-light cryogenic freezer ships launched to colonise other star
systems were virtually forgotten. One of the ship’s crew has survived, but the
other is dead.
Dr. Franklin revives the survivor, Mariah Cirrus, but
discovers that her husband did not die of natural causes. Meanwhile, Garibaldi
encounters a lurker named Amis who appears to be deranged, continuously
claiming that an alien force is coming for him. Calming him down, Garibaldi
learns that Amis, like Garibaldi himself, was in the marines (“ground-pounders”,
or GROPOS) during the Earth-Minbari War. An alien unlike anything seen before
destroyed the listening post he was serving at and only Amis survived. Since
then he has felt that the alien is drawn to him. Lurkers start turning up dead
in Downbelow and both the Narns and Markabs (one of the non-aligned races)
begin claiming that an alien force has come onto the station from the Copernicus.
Garibaldi uses Amis to flush out the creature and he and a security team manage
to kill it. Mariah returns to Earth to investigate this new future, whilst
G’Kar finds a picture of the alien in The Book of G’Quan. Ivanova
examines the course of the Copernicus and discovers it was headed for
the same planet G’Kar visited a few weeks ago: Z’ha’dum.
MORE AFTER THE JUMP
The Arc: The alien creature is referred to as a ‘dark
servant’ of the Shadows rather than an actual member of the same race (though
it has the ability to turn invisible, like the Shadows). We meet other servitor
races of the Shadows in episodes D10 and D11.
The Markab appear in greater detail in episode B18.
We learn in that episode that the Markab Ambassador seen here (who refers to
the ‘Great Darkness’) is called Vershaar.
The Earth Alliance Marine Corps, known as the ‘Ground-Pounders’
or GROPOS, appear in force in episode B10.
Background: Earth made contact with the Centauri
approximately 100 years ago and the Centauri sold jump gate technology to
Earth, allowing humanity to expand into space. Before then Earth had only sent
a few slower-than-light cryo-ships into space. These weren’t meant to be
coloniser vessels (they only had a few crewmen on board each one) but instead
to scout out potential worlds for colonisation.
Garibaldi and Amis both served in the Earthforce Marines
during the Earth-Minbari War.
The Markab Confederacy are one of the member-races of the
League of Non-aligned Worlds. We learn in later episodes that they are a deeply
spiritual people.
Amos’s moon is located in Sector 18 by 70 by 59.
The “Soldier of Darkness” appears to be about fifteen feet
tall, has horns and a vaguely devil-like appearance. It can turn invisible at
will and feats on the internal organs of living entities. It can also leech off
living beings to preserve its lifeforce indefinitely in a parasitic manner.
According to the illustration in The Book
of G’Quan, it also has a snouted face.
Garibaldi still sees psychologists to discuss his traumatic
experiences during the Earth-Minbari War.
The Drazi enjoy live food.
Devalera is a drug used to treat cardiac arrest in humans.
Long-term cryogenic suspension is a proven technology in the
B5 universe.
References: The Copernicus is named for Nicolaus
Copernicus, the Prussian astronomer who advanced the theory in the early 16th Century
that the Earth orbited the Sun rather than vice versa. His work was built on by
Galileo.
Unanswered Questions:
Did the alien know that Amis was on Babylon 5? Or was it just a massive
coincidence that he was there at the same time?
How do the Markab know so much about the “Great Darkness”?
Why do Sheridan, Ivanova, Franklin and Garibaldi – the station
commander, executive officer, chief medical officer and chief security officer –
all board the Copernicus first?
Shouldn’t security and science teams have swept it first?
Mistakes, Retcons and
Lamentations: The alien attacked the outpost on the Minbari moon probably
in 2246 or 47. The Copernicus must
have passed by some months or years later. The ship then reached Babylon 5 –
travelling at sublight – a decade or so later.
However, unless the alien somehow radically increased the
ship’s velocity, it is unlikely the ship had enough time to reach Epsilon
Eridani from another system at sublight speeds, based on the modest speed it
was travelling at the start of the episode. It probably should have taken
several decades, not just one. Similarly, it would have taken the Copernicus hundreds of thousands, if not
millions, of years to reach Z’ha’dum. The Soldier of Darkness may be patient,
but is it that patient?
Behind the Scenes: The
opening title sequence is, yet again, tweaked to show Keffer’s promotion to
full Lieutenant.
Jerry Doyle, a fan of The
A-Team, enjoyed acting with Dwight Schultz, finding him to be professional
but also a lot of fun.
Andreas Katsulas found wearing the Narn prosthetic chest
piece to be uncomfortable, so worked out a deal with Straczynski where it would
only be necessary to show it two or three times a season.
The final “creature reveal” effect was nowhere near as elaborate
as Straczynski had hoped. The director realised they couldn’t do the scene
justice and adjusted accordingly, trying to evoke the battle against the
invisible alien in Forbidden Planet,
but this resulted is the episode building to a confrontation with a creature
no-one could see. Straczynski felt this hampered the episode’s quality.
Richard Biggs was unhappy with how Franklin was shown to be
attracted to a traumatised woman who’d just lost her husband, feeling it was
out of character for him. Some rewrites were incorporated into the script where
the morality of the situation is addressed.
Familiar Faces: Dwight
Schultz is best-known for playing Murdock in The
A-Team and Lt. Reginald Barclay in multiple episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Voyager, as well as the movie First Contact.
Writer Scott Frost is a writer on The X-Files and the brother of Mark Frost, who co-created Twin Peaks.
Review:
Probably the weakest episode of Season 2, down to it over-egging the pudding in
the Shadow storyline (the Darkness is coming, yeah, we get it) and its
unsatisfying creature reveal. It’s also a poorly-paced episode and treats
Franklin (who’d never initiate a relationship with a vulnerable patient in this
way) badly. Dwight Schultz helps pull things back, but his character doesn’t
have a whole lot to do apart from act a bit crazy. **
Franklin: “It’s going to take a lot more than a
hundred years to evolve a better human.”
G’Kar: “Take my advice and go back to the time you
came from. The future is not what it used to be.”
Ambassador Vershaar: “Evil sometimes wears a pleasant face.”
B6: Spider in the Web
Working Title: A
Trick of the Mind
Airdates: 7
December 1994 (US), 14 March 1995 (UK)
Written by Lawrence G. DiTillio
Directed by Kevin G. Cremin
Cast: Abel Horn (Michael Beck), Amanda
Carter (Adrienne Barbeau), Taro Isogi (James Shigeta), Security
Aide Zack Allan (Jeff Conaway), Senator Elise Voudreau (Jessica
Walters), Thirteen/Psi Cop (Annie Grindlay), Station One (Joshua
Cox)
Plot: Taro
Isogi, the head of Futurecorp., arrives on Babylon 5 to conduct business
negotiations with Amanda Carter, a representative of the Mars Provisional
Government. Following the Mars Rebellion last year (A18-A19) Mars’ new
legal government is attempting to get support from Earth’s megacorporations to
allow it to become independent by legal means, rather than violence. The
negotiations, overseen by Talia Winters, proceed satisfactorily, but then Isogi
is brutally murdered by a man saying “Free Mars!” Garibaldi identifies the man
(via his DNA traces) as Abel Horn, a member of Free Mars, the terrorist group
who spearheaded the rebellion. Amanda Carter is confused, since the
negotiations between Mars and Futurecorp. would have benefited Mars. The cause is
diminished by Isogi’s death.
Garibaldi and Sheridan continue their investigations and
discover that Abel Horn is supposed to be dead. His fighter was shot down by
the EAS Pournelle during the rebellion and destroyed after he escaped
from a prison camp on Mars’ smaller moon, Phobos. Sheridan tells Garibaldi that
he used to collect information on covert groups and organisations, including
one called “Bureau 13”, and wonders if they are involved here. He also recalls
a now-banned experiment to suspend people at the point of death and subsume
their conscious mind with cybernetic implants, turning them into mindless
agents. The experiments were banned but perhaps they have continued in secret.
Sheridan resets the station scanners to scan the interior of
the station for a cybernetic power source and quickly locates Horn. Horn,
meanwhile, is suffering intense flashbacks to his prior life. He contacts
Amanda, who used to be in Free Mars, and blackmails her into getting Talia Winters
to her quarters. Horn knows she is a telepath and plans to have her free him
from his implants. Sheridan and Garibaldi burst in and are forced to shoot him.
Horn’s body self destructs, leaving behind no evidence.
On Earth, under the ruins of the destroyed city of San
Diego, California, the Psi Cop who runs Bureau 13 receives a report from her
agent on Babylon 5, “Control”, informing her of the failure of the project. She
orders Control to maintain a careful eye on events on the station and continue
to report in.
The Arc: Bureau 13 is a dirty tricks organisation on
Earth with links to the Psi Corps. According to JMS, Bureau 13 eventually
becomes redundant and is absorbed into the main body of Psi Corps itself by the
end of the season. We learn the identity of their agent “Control” on Babylon 5
in episode B19.
The Mars Rebellion may have been defeated by Earthforce, but
the uprising had a positive outcome in that a semi-autonomous Mars authority –
the Mars Provisional Government – was established. Mars’s resolve is pushed to
breaking point in episode C10 but is rewarded in D21.
In episode A8 we saw Garibaldi reading a paper which,
among many other intriguing articles (some referenced in episodes B2 and
B4), announced that San Diego was still too radioactive for resettlement
(we learned in episode A1 that San Diego had been destroyed by a
terrorist nuclear bomb). The end of this episode - where we see that Bureau 13
has a secret base under the blasted city - indicates that this may actually be
incorrect.
Senator Voudreau overrides Sheridan’s legal and ethical
concerns with bland rhetoric, a harbinger of the sort of stuff the Ministry of
Peace and the Nightwatch start doing in episode B17.
Ivanova says that Talia Winters is trustworthy and “interesting”,
which bemuses Sheridan. Ivanova notes that Talia is loyal to the Corps but is a
good person in her own right. This reflects their growing friendship after they
buried the hatched in episode A17.
Sheridan’s fascination with black ops, secret groups and conspiracies
explains a lot of what happens later on, particularly revelations at the end of
episode A11.
Background: The
Mars Provisional Government is a semi-autonomous body which controls Mars under
the aegis of EarthGov. The name and organisation appear to be a sop to the idea
that Mars might one day, in the conveniently vague future, be free but not yet.
The Mars Conglomerate appears to be a group of Earth megacorporations with
business interests in Mars. The Conglomerate appears to be opposed to Martian
independence, at least whilst they are still able to financially exploit the
colony.
There is a penal colony on Phobos, Mars’ smaller moon.
The EAS Pournelle (an Omega-class destroyer, the same
class as the Agamemnon) was one of several Earthforce destroyers
that blockaded Mars during the uprising to prevent rebels escaping.
This is the first-ever episode of Babylon 5 to have a sequence actually set on Earth
itself (as opposed to news reports and video communications shown on-screen).
Ivanova threw a Psi Corps telepath out of a 3rd floor window
on Io. He landed in an “ample” pool. Also, Io’s quite low gravity means that
this fall would have not been fatal or even likely to result in injuries.
Abel Horn was born 17 July 2221. In 2252, he was sentenced
to Phobos Maximum Security Outpost for helping steal 50 million Mars
Conglomerate credits. He served one year before being transferred to Lunis
Planum Prison Base. He served three months before escaping on 16 April 2253.
During the Mars Rebellion in 2258 his ship was shot down by the EAS Pournelle.
Horn was responsible for the destruction of Richie Station
in a Free Mars attack. Friends of Sheridan and his wife were killed in the
atrocity.
Talia Winters was raised by the Psi Corps from the age of
five, and has barely had any contact with her non-telepathic parents ever
since. She was looked after by a woman named Abbie, who helped her acclimatise
to life in the Corps.
Alfredo Garibaldi, Michael’s father, was a cop. He was still
hauling in perps at the age of 75 but had to retire after being diagnosed with
a wasting disease.
References: The EAS
Pournelle is named after Jerry Pournelle,
a prolific science fiction author. He is arguably best-known for his blockbuster
collaborations with Larry Niven which hit the New York Times bestseller lists, namely Lucifer’s Hammer (1977) and Footfall
(1985). His most recent book was also
with Niven, Escape from Hell (2009).
Niven and Pournelle are currently collaborating on a new novel, Lucifer’s Anvil (not related to Lucifer’s Hammer).
Transport vessel Matheson
is mentioned, a nod to Richard Matheon,
the author of the famous novel I Am
Legend.
Amanda Carter’s grandfather is John, so therefore named John
Carter. John Carter was the hero of Edgard Wright Burroughs’s Barsoom series of novels, starting with
A Princess of Mars.
Unanswered Questions:
What really happened to Bureau 13?
In Straczynski’s original plan, who was “Control” supposed
to be?
Mistakes, Retcons and
Lamentations: “Control” is identified here as male, which is not the case
when they are unmasked in episode B19.
This is down to the significant arc-rewriting that Straczynski had to do to
write that episode, which we will discuss at that time.
Bureau 13 is never seen or mentioned again, although it is
assumed to be part of the same Psi Corps/EarthGov dirty tricks group implicated
in everything from Cypher (in the comics) to the conspiracy against Santiago to
Home Guard. The reasons for it not being mentioned again are down to perceived
legal issues (see below).
In one of the show’s biggest mistakes, in the shot of B5
after Sheridan says “No evidence” near the end of the episode, you can see
through the docking bay, through the station’s hull and into space.
Behind the Scenes: Straczynski
introduced Bureau 13 as a black ops group within the Earth Alliance working
without legal oversight. After the episode aired, Straczynski learned that
there was a popular pen-and-paper roleplaying game called Bureau 13. He contacted the game company and apologised for
inadvertently using the same name. There was some discussion of using the name
with permission, but Straczynski elected to drop it instead.
The episode’s first draft took Talia and Garibaldi more in
the direction of having a relationship. However, Straczynski had already decided
to have Talia and Ivanova get involved and cut back a lot of that material as
he didn’t want to complicate things too much. Larry DiTillio disagreed,
thinking that a love triangle between the three characters would have been more
interesting and informed by Jerry Doyle and Andrea Thompson's real-life relationship, which had started by this time.
Familiar Faces: Adrienne
Barbeau (Amanda Carter) appeared in several of John Carpenter’s movies
(arguably most memorably in Escape from
New York), and was married to him for a time.
Jessica Walters (Senator Voudreau) had already established a
respectable career by this point, but became even more famous after Babylon 5 for her roles in Arrested Development and Archer, playing the formidable Mallory
Archer (the mother and occasional nemesis of hero Sterling Archer).
This episode marks the debut of Jeff Conaway as Security
Officer Zack Allen. Conaway is best-known for playing Kenickie in the 1978
movie Grease and Bobby Wheeler on the
first three seasons of Taxi. Conaway
watched the first season of Babylon 5
at home and ordered his agent to get him on the show by any means necessary,
even if it was a tiny role. Straczynski created the role of Zack Allen for him,
which started off as a glorified extra but later evolved into a series regular.
Jeff Conaway sadly died in 2011 from pneumonia and encephalopathy, complicated
by a history of substance abuse.
Michael Beck (Abel Horn) is best-known for playing Swan in
the 1979 movie, The Warriors (and its
2005 video game adaptation) and Malone in Xanadu
(1980). He was close friends with Kevin G. Cremin, Babylon 5’s production manager and the director of this episode,
and agreed to do this episode at a lower pay rate as a favour to him.
James Shigeta (1929-2014), who played Taro Isogi, was an
American-Japanese actor, born in Hawaii. He served in the US Marine Corps
during the Korean War. He’d begun his acting career in Los Angeles in the late
1940s, where he became known as a singer. After failing to break into the
movies in the USA, he moved back to Japan and starred in many films for Toho
Studios throughout the 1950s. He finally broke Hollywood in the 1960s, and was
critically acclaimed for his role in Walk
Like a Dragon (1960), where he played a Asian character who spoke like a
regular American rather than in a racially-stereotyped accent. In 1988 he appeared
in the iconic action movie Die Hard.
His last roles were as the Old Wanderer in the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005) and
as Charles Yang in The People I’ve Slept
With (2009).
Review: This
is a reasonable episode, despite an iffy performance by Michael Beck and the
fact that the entire Bureau 13 storyline is a bit of a dead end. Hinting that
Sheridan may be less clean-cut and up-front than he first appears is nice
foreshadowing for later episodes. ***½
Sheridan (after
Ivanova takes over a tough job): “Aah, it’s
good to be the Captain.”
Abel Horn: “Mars will never be free until the sands run
red with Earther blood.”
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Dwight Schulz played Murdock, not Face
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