BABYLON 5 Rewatch: Season 4, Episodes 15-16

D15: No Surrender, No Retreat

Airdates: 26 May 1997 (US), 30 October 1997 (UK)

Written by J. Michael Straczynski

Directed by Michael Vejar

Cast: Commander Sandra Levitt (Marcia Mitzman Gaven), Captain Edward MacDougan (Richard Gant), Commander Robert Philby (Neil Bradley), Captain Trevor Hall (Ken Jenkins), Lt. David Corwin (Joshua Cox), Guard (Skip Stellrecht)

Date: 2 September 2261.

Plot:    The White Star fleet arrives at Babylon 5 and Sheridan summons a meeting of the Babylon 5 Advisory Council. In return for the White Stars’ recent defence of their territories against raiders and aliens, he is declaring all the mutual defence treaties between the Earth Alliance and the Narn Regime, Centauri Republic and League of Non-aligned Worlds null and void. He tells them not to get involved in what is to come before asking they each contribute a destroyer-class vessel to the defence of Babylon 5. They agree.

Marcus takes a White Star to an area in hyperspace very close to Proxima III and contacts the rebels. More troops are assaulting the planet and they now think that they will have to surrender in a matter of weeks. Marcus has identified six Omega-class destroyers in orbit: the Heracles, Pollux, Vesta, Juno, Furies and Nemesis. According to the rebels the Heracles and Pollux have fired on civilian vessels, whilst the Vesta and Furies have apparently gone out of their way not to fire on civilians. Sheridan and the rest of the White Star fleet start arriving. They plan to attack in three waves to separate the enemy ships into easily containable groups. The Earthforce fleet begins to disperse to deal with the separate incursions and Captain Hall of the Heracles, commander of the fleet, orders all ships to open fire. However, Captain MacDougan of the Vesta proves reluctant: he used to teach Sheridan at the Earthforce Academy and doesn’t want to fire on him. Commander Philby tries to relieve MacDougan of command but he is overpowered by the bridge crew. MacDougan stands down. The battle is joined and the Furies also refuses to open fire. The Juno jumps out of the system rather than engage the enemy and the Nemesis is crippled by fire from the White Stars and surrenders. The Pollux manages to cripple a White Star, but the vessel crashes into the Pollux and explodes, destroying both ships. The Heracles takes colossal damage, but only surrenders after Commander Levitt relieves Captain Hall of command.

The commanding officers of the four remaining ships meet with Sheridan. Sheridan tells Levitt that the crew of the Heracles are going to have to answer to a war crimes tribunal after this is over, but for now they can decide on their own fate. Levitt decides to take the Heracles to the repair yards at Beta IX and sit out the rest of the war. The Furies will remain and guard Proxima III in case Clark sends another fleet against it. The Nemesis and Vesta both volunteer to join Sheridan’s forces and they are soon joined by other rebel cruisers, including the Alexander. They head for the next target on the way to Earth.

On Babylon 5 G’Kar and Londo decide to issue a joint Narn-Centauri statement approving of Sheridan’s actions. However, Garibaldi grows disgusted at the way Sheridan is handling the situation and leaves Babylon 5 for Mars, planning never to return.

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

Dating the Episode: The date is given in dialogue at the start of the episode.

The Arc: Sheridan finally takes offensive action against Earth, using both the White Star fleet and Earthforce destroyers rebelling against Clark. Proxima III is liberated from Clark’s forces and the liberation movement is now fully underway. This continues in episodes D16-D20.

Garibaldi leaves Babylon 5 for Mars, planning not to return. We discover his fate in episodes D16-D17 and D19.

The Alexander is seen orbiting Proxima III at the end of the episode. It previously appeared in episode C10.

The Centauri apparently agree to cancel the treaty they signed with Earth in episode B22, offering political support to Sheridan’s campaign. The Narn government supports this decision, but insist that their signature appears on a separate page to the Centauri.

G’Kar personally supervised weapons sales to the Earth Alliance during the Earth-Minbari War. This becomes a surprisingly major plot point in TVM1 (which Straczynski was planning when he wrote this episode).

G’Kar’s quarters are back in Green Sector again; after being thrown out of the B5 Advisory Council in B20 and before Narn’s liberation in D5, G’Kar was shown as operating out of identical quarters in Red Sector. Together with G’Kar’s presence on the B5 Advisory Council in this episode, it appears that G’Kar is once again formally operating as the Narn Regime’s Ambassador to Babylon 5.

G’Kar is still working on the book he began writing in prison, about sixteen months earlier (C8).

Londo notes that G’Kar once offered him a drink to toast the possibility of peace and he did not accept in good faith, and now wants to. This is a nod to episode B9 and the drink Londo accepted after sending the Shadows to attack the Narn colony in Quadrant 14.

Background: One White Stars is hit and disabled by an Earthforce cruiser’s weapons fire. This suggests that Sheridan ordered the White Stars to deactivate their Minbari stealth technology (as noted in B1, Earthforce ships can’t lock onto Minbari ships). This is backed up by him ordering the ships not to fire on Earth ships not targeting them, which requires the Earthforce vessels to be able to lock on in the first place. Alternatively, Earthforce is perhaps using new and superior technology (maybe even Shadow-derived technology) to be able to pick up the Minbari vessels.

Commander Levitt knows that the League has thrown its support behind Babylon 5, confirming that Voice of the Resistance broadcasts are reaching Earth Alliance colony worlds.

According to Straczynski, the White Stars were not able to “cut loose” and slaughter the Earthforce ships. Their orders were to minimise casualties and disable enemy vessels where possible, which was quite difficult to do under heavy fire.

Both the Earthforce Rules of Engagement and the Earth Alliance Articles of War specifically prohibit civilian targets being fired on by military forces.

The “Proxima Treaty” is mentioned. This may have been Proxima III’s formal declaration of independence.

The Resistance fleet prior to this episode appears to have consisted of the Alexander, at least two Hyperion-class heavy cruisers and several supporting transport vessels. The addition of the Nemesis and Vesta, along with dozens of Starfuries and of course the fifty-odd ships of the White Star Fleet increase it to a formidable fighting force.

References: Thanks to the florid ship names, this episode has more than most.

The Heracles is named after the Greek divine hero, son of Zeus and Alcmene. He is better-known by his Roman name, Hercules. He was arguably the greatest of the Greek heroes, famed for his epic deeds (most notably his infamous Twelve Labours) and mighty battles against enemies divine and mundane. It’s also possibly a nod to Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, a light-hearted take on the legend by Sam Raimi which aired concurrently with Babylon 5 (and spawned a better-known spin-off, Xena: Warrior Princess).

The Vesta is named for the Roman goddess of hearth and home (her Greek equivalent is Hestia).

The Juno is named for the Roman Queen of the Gods. Her Greek equivalent is Hera. The wife of Jupiter (Zeus) and constantly cheated on by him, Juno was often presented in an antagonistic role in mythological stories, sometimes justified and sometimes not. Her most notable villainous role comes in The Aeneid, where she is the primary antagonist. However, her true nature in both Greek and Roman sources is considerably more complex.

The Nemesis is named after the Greek Goddess of Retribution, the one who struck down those who had succumbed to hubris. She was the goddess of justice and divine retribution, implacable and relentless.

The Furies are named after the three Greek deities of vengeance, particularly against oathbreakers. Straczynski may have also included them as a tip of the hat to his friend Neil Gaiman, who had used the Furies as a major force in his Sandman comic series, which had concluded around a year prior to the writing of this episode.

Corwin say “trust no-one” at one point. This is almost certainly a nod to The X-Files, which used that phrase as its motto.

Proxima is a real star system, although we call it Proxima Centauri today. At the time of the Babylon 5 story, the system has dropped the “Centauri” to avoid confusion with the race of the same name. Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun, located 4.25 light-years away in the constellation of Centaurus. It is part of the Alpha Centauri star system, orbiting the binary stars of Alpha Centauri A and B once every half a million years. The star is incredibly faint, invisible to the naked eye. As a red dwarf flare star, which often emits violent solar flares, it is unlikely to harbour a life-bearing planet: such a planet would have be incredibly close to the surface of the star (within 8 million kilometres, or 0.054 AU), would be tidally locked and would be regularly scoured by flare events.

Commander Philby may be a nod to Kim Philby, a high-ranking member of British intelligence who famously defected to the Soviet Union in 1963.

Unanswered Questions: Why does the Centauri government – now controlled by the Keepers – agree to Londo’s request that they terminate the Centauri’s treaty with Earth? Why would that be in their interest? Are they just trying to keep Londo's eye away from the homeworld at this point?

Mistakes, Retcons and Lamentations: The previous episode ended with Sheridan vowing to get even with Clark’s forces and start moving immediately. This episode takes place a month later, which seems a bit odd although it does help some things (it’d take a while to recall the White Star Fleet etc).

The German dub of the episode contained an error due to the dubbers mistaking the name Furies as a plural of “Starfury”, leading to the assumption that Eckland was in command of the blockade’s fighter squadrons, not one of the ships.

Sheridan says he wants to fight a “clean fight” without any alien involvement…whilst standing on a Minbari warship crewed by Minbari personnel. To be fair, episode D20 acknowledges that whilst Sheridan may have wanted to keep this a clean fighting between humans alone, it wasn’t really possible.

The Earth Alliance logo on the Furies and Pollux is mirrored for some reason. This appears to be a mistake rather than the shot being flipped, as the mirrored logo sits underneath the main name plate which is not flipped.

At one point an Earthforce Thunderbolt is shown flying through space and through the jump gate. The camera cuts to the interior, which is clearly a standard Aurora-class Starfury. The camera then cuts to the exterior, once again showing the vessel to be a Thunderbolt.

Behind the Scenes: Bruce Boxleitner rediscovered his mojo in this episode. He noted that he’d played Sheridan’s lighter and even goofier side in several previous episodes and this was when Sheridan got back on the horse and started doing what he believed in again.

Mike Vejar experimented with moving the camera around Sheridan and having Sheridan walk around on the White Star bridge set. Although this caused complications with making sure the greenscreen tracked in the background, it was important to make the action feel more dynamic. Boxleitner initially felt this was a good idea – noting that the set was boring to shoot on – but later on felt this got overused and started asking to be allowed to sit down again.

Straczynski wanted to make even the hint of a rapprochement between G’Kar and Londo to be hard work. It would be too easy to have them become friends, but G’Kar’s world was destroyed and millions of his people killed by Londo’s actions (however unwitting). That’s not something he can forget easily, and he only even starts to move towards an understanding out of a desire to help Sheridan and the B5 crew who had done so much to help him. Andreas Katsulas appreciated this material in particular, noting it would be hokey if they had become friends straight away.

The Londo/G’Kar scene was supposed to take a whole afternoon but the day ran long so they only had a brief window to shoot the scene at the end of the day (overtime and overruns were not permitted on Babylon 5, due to the show’s insanely tight budget). To everyone’s surprise, they pretty much nailed it on the first go and everyone was very pleased with the scene. Vejar notes that he established the eyeline for the scene and then told Katsulas and Jurasik to go off it, to show these characters couldn’t really look at each other after everything that had happened and this was incredibly awkward for both of them.

Familiar Faces: Neil Bradley (Commander Philby) is one of Babylon 5’s regular “alien rep” performers, frequently appearing in makeup in a plethora of different roles. His highest-profile previous roles are as the Purple Drazi leader in B3 and Kha’Mak, G’Kar’s liaison with the Kha’Ri, in B9 and D20. This is his only appearance sans makeup.

Marcia Mitzman Gaven (Commander Levitt) is an American actress and singer. She came to prominence on Broadway in the late 1970s and early 1980s, appearing in The Rocky Horror Show, Oliver!, Anything Goes and Sweeney Todd. In 1999 she replaced Maggie Roswell on The Simpsons, voicing characters such as Maude Flanders, Helen Lovejoy and Miss Hoover. In 2002 Roswell returned to the show and Gaven was dismissed. Gaven’s other TV credits are relatively few, appearing in Ellen, Frasier and Beverly Hills 90210 among others.

Richard Gant (Captain McDougan) is a familiar face from American TV and film. His other performances include Miami Vice, L.A. Law, Diagnosis Murder, Rocky V, The Big Lebowski (as a cop), Godzilla and the recurring role of Hostetler on Deadwood. His most recent roles include Darius on Family Time and Melville on The Mindy Project.

Ken Jenkins (Captain Hall) is also a very familiar face from American TV and film. He is best-known for playing Dr. Kelso on Scrubs, Chick on Cougar Town and Mike Sloan, Sr. on Homefront. His numerous other credits include The X-Files, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Abyss, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Sum of All Fears and Courage Under Fire.

Skip Stellrecht (Security Guard) reprises his role as a security guard in episodes E7 and E8. He is best-known for his huge resume in voice work, particularly playing Might Guy in the English dubs of the various Naruto series and video games. He also voiced Lu Xun in the English dub of several of the Dynasty Warriors games, Vicious in Coboy Bebop and played several roles in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

Review: A strong episode with a relentless pace leading up to the battle sequence, which is played tactically and with a strong regard for military ethics. This is backed up by the Londo/G’Kar storyline on the station, which is formidably played by the two actors at the very top of their game. ****½

Sheridan: “From now on, Earth stands alone.”

Corwin: “So from now on I guess the operational phrase is, ‘Trust no-one?’”

Ivanova: “No. Trust Ivanova, trust yourself. Anybody else, shoot ‘em.”

D16: The Exercise of Vital Powers

Airdates: 2 June 1997 (US), 6 November 1997 (UK)

Written by J. Michael Straczynski

Directed by John Lafia

Cast: William Edgars (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.), Lise Hampton-Edgars (Denise Gentile), Wade (Mark Schneider), Ms. Constance (Shelley Robertson), Patient #1 (Kenneth Cortland), Patient #2 (Sandey Grinn)

Date: 4-5 September 2261.

Plot:    Sheridan’s forces are continuing on their way to Earth, attacking Clark-loyal forces along the way. Meanwhile, Garibaldi arrives on Mars and is conveyed to the home of William Edgars. Edgars tells Garibaldi that he is impressed with Garibaldi’s handling of various situations on Babylon 5 and wants to employ him full-time, but not until he has tested Garibaldi’s loyalty. He does this by having Garibaldi dragged into an interrogation cell and scanned by a telepath in his employ, Ms. Constance. Garibaldi admits his distrust and dislike of telepaths and his fear that, one day, they will try to take over. Constance confirms that fear. He denies still being in love with Lise, but Constance knows that is a lie, although Edgars seems more amused than annoyed. Later, just before Constance leaves, she is gunned down by Wade.

On Babylon 5 Franklin is attempting to revive the Shadow-controlled telepaths they rescued last year (C14), but isn’t making much headway until Lyta enters and discovers she can temporarily disable the Shadow influence. Using this as a starting point, Franklin is able to override and disable some of the Shadow technology, at least enough for the telepaths not to kill themselves on waking. Sheridan contacts him and tells him why he needs the telepaths mobile and Franklin is shocked. He and Lyta make arrangements to leave for Mars.

Edgars tells Garibaldi that he also fears that one day Psi Corps will make a play for power. His fear is that if Sheridan presses Clark too hard, Clark will remove the restrictions keeping Psi Corps at bay and allow them to take control. Garibaldi agrees to betray Sheridan to Edgars, but again only on the condition he isn’t harmed. He tells Edgars that Sheridan’s father has a medical condition that requires treatment with very rare drugs of Centauri origin. Edgars realises he can trace the drugs and find Sheridan’s father, and through him get to Sheridan.

Later, Wade and Edgars take a look at a group of telepaths they have housed underneath Edgars Industries’ HQ. They are sick and dying. Disgusted at what they have unleashed, Edgars orders that all the specimens be terminated immediately.

Dating the Episode: This episode take place immediately after the previous one, incorporating a journey from B5 to Mars (which C10 established as taking two days).

The Arc: This episode features a massive revelation, namely the full explanation of what happened with Clark and Santiago behind the scenes.

According to Edgars, Vice-President Clark was in favour of using telepaths for security and intelligence, including using them to conduct “loyalty tests” to the regime (presumably to his and Santiago’s party and government, which had been in power since 2248 but had suffered a challenge from Marie Crane’s party in episode A1). Clark had been voted for by Psi Corps members as his sympathy to the Corps was well-known (as seen in Garibaldi’s newspaper way back in episode A8). Santiago was horrified and stamped out the idea. Clark, furious, orchestrated Santiago’s death. He used aliens (the Shadows) to help him achieve his ends. However, he realised that these aliens were wary of telepaths and started giving more power and responsibility to Psi Corps to act as a counterbalance against the aliens (as noted by Bester in episode C14). With the Shadows gone, Edgars feels that Clark will no longer be able to keep the telepaths under control. Edgars also feels that now telepaths have been given greater powers by Clark, they will refuse to renounce it if Clark is overthrown, especially in a violent fashion.

According to Edgars, the mega-corporations really call the shots on Earth and the colonies, as they control the economy and employ most of the human population. They are planning to topple Clark themselves but slowly, from within and a minimum of casualties and violence.

The telepaths B5 has held in storage since C14 are at last able to move around without killing themselves, although Sheridan wants them kept in cold storage and shipped to Mars. We find out why in D20.

Edgars has a crippling fear of telepaths and wants to keep them away from positions of power. However, he is also apparently involved in some sort of experiment or disease being developed for use against telepaths. We find out the truth of the matter in episode D17.

Garibaldi distrusts telepaths. We saw this in action in A6, B7, C6, C14 and D14. He also admitted it in PM.

Garibaldi notes that Mars has almost killed him three times previously. One time was explored in comics DC5-8 and episode C8, when he and Sinclair crashed in the desert, stumbled across the Shadows and barely escaped. The other two are unclear, but one may be a nod to his alcoholism, which left him in a bad way until he met Sinclair and started cleaning up his act.

Garibaldi’s hatred of telepaths and Mars both seem very strong in this episode, but neither were established strongly previously: Garibaldi was always wary of Psi Corps and Bester, but on the other hand he closely trusted Talia and Lyta (and Ivanova, although it is unclear if he knows of her latent telepathic abilities at this point). Although he didn’t seem to particularly like Mars, he was planning to take some leave there in episode A19, contrasted to this episode where he says he vowed never to return after leaving in 2256. Episode D17 hints, however, that Garibaldi’s natural tendencies to suspicion and cynicism have been massively ramped up and enhanced, so these feelings in this episode may be massive exaggerations of his normal mild suspicions.

Background: There are two million people living on Mars.

The fact there are “only” two million people living on Mars, the longest-colonised planet after Earth, is surprising. It confirms that the utterly overwhelming majority of the Earth Alliance’s population still lives on Earth and has never been offworld. Assuming Earth has the same population as now and that all fourteen Earth Alliance colonies have the same population as Mars (although logically most or all of them would have far smaller populations), that means only 1 in 268 of the entire human population was born off Earth. In this light, the fear on Earth of alien cultural contamination and the dislike for spending money on other worlds and in space makes a lot more sense.

Dome One is the largest city on Mars.

Wade has a master’s degree in literature.

Lise is a Christian: she celebrates Christmas as a religious holiday and was upset with Garibaldi for constantly forgetting what it meant to her.

Edgars notes that dictatorships took control of Germany in 1939 (which is erroneous; see below), Russia in 1917 and 2013, Iraq in 2025 and France in 2112.

Edgars Pharmaceutical is the fourth-largest megacorp in the Earth Alliance. Its chemical weapons division supplies Earthforce and it has two dozen lobbyists working for it in Earthdome. It also paid for Senator Claxby’s re-election (which Edgar does not deny).

Five Earthforce capital ships have defected to the Resistance in one day, including two sent to test Babylon 5’s defences. This increases Sheridan’s fleet to at least ten Earthforce warships as well as the White Star Fleet.

References: The title is a reference to Aristotle’s definition of happiness. “The exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope.”

Edgars calls Clark’s coup the “Night of the Long Knives.” This is a reference two events in history: when the Emperor Tiberius had his aide Sejanus and other allies executed in a purge in 31 AD (as dramatized in the novel and television series I, Claudius); and the purge of the rival SA faction of the Nazi Party by Hitler in 1934.

Unanswered Questions: Given that the frozen telepaths are telepaths, why did no-one think of getting Lyta to check them out in the thirteen months they’ve been on the station?

Does no-one from Psi Corps bother to check up on Ms. Constance’s disappearance?

Mistakes, Retcons and Lamentations: Edgars says that the German people voted for the Nazi Party in 1939. The Nazi Party actually became the largest German political party in 1932, Hitler became Chancellor in 1933 and fully seized power in August 1934 after President Hindenberg’s death.

This is rather unfair because Straczynski did not have the power of foresight in 1997, but this episode claims that Russia suffered another revolution in 2013. Obviously, it did not.

The formal title of this episode is The Exercise of Vital Powers, but the “The” was dropped from the title card on the episode itself in error.

Mark Schneider misread his line, saying “everything is illusion, Mr. Garibaldi; concepts of light, language, metaphor.” The correct reading was constructs.

Lise says that Babylon 5 is 18 light-years from Earth. This is incorrect: Epsilon Eridani’s distance from Sol has been pretty conclusively nailed at 10.5 light-years. At the time the episode aired it was a little less clear, but even at that time 14 light-years was the most commonly-given figure.

Wade says that Mars’s rising was linked to omens of war and great events. Whilst Mars’s position in the sky or in certain constellations could indeed be seen as such, it’s rising was not seen as an omen because it rises every single night (apart from those times when it passes behind the Sun).

The EAS Furies was left behind to defend Proxima III in the previous episode. However, in this episode it is part of Sheridan’s fleet. Although the crew could have simply changed their mind, the presence of the Furies once again in the wrong place in episode D17 suggests that Netter Digital had saved the name as their default Omega-class model and, as a result, kept putting the ship in the wrong place by forgetting to change the name.

Ivanova reports that Beta Durani has been liberated. However, Beta Durani was already operating as a Resistance stronghold in episode D14.

Ms. Constance says that Garibaldi is telling the truth when he says he can’t remember anything from his imprisonment. However, we know that Garibaldi remembers flashes of people talking to him and him being imprisoned in a cell, so either she was lying or there’s some protection that prevents Garibaldi thinking about those moments with a telepath in the room.

The medical scanner in MedLab is very blatantly a late-1990s PC CRT monitor.

Behind the Scenes: Straczynski felt it was important to make sure that Garibaldi and Edgars’ opinions and plans made sense to the viewer, and leaned on the viewers’ distrust of Psi Corps (which he’d been building since the pilot) to make them initially sympathetic to Edgars’ likewise dislike of them, only to turn to horror when they realised he was planning a genocide against them.

Richard Biggs felt this was a very interesting episode (along with the events leading up to D20). In Season 1 (in A10) Franklin was prepared to resign over a difficult issue involving a young boy’s illness and the religious beliefs of his parents. In other episodes, Franklin angrily rejected the idea of letting people die to serve a larger purpose. But by this storyline, Franklin has been put in a place, after the walkabout and his mission to Mars, of learning what it means to be a leader and think strategically, and Sheridan convinces him that the telepaths can be used in a manner that perhaps isn’t fully ethical. Biggs played Franklin’s anger in this episode as much as against himself for agreeing with Sheridan than against Sheridan directly for giving the order.

The scenes where Lyta faces off with the telepath through the window were complicated by the fact that the actors couldn’t hear each other, so they had to manually count to know when to open their eyes, fall asleep etc. Patricia Tallman felt it was hard work but the effect was worth it.

Jerry Doyle was happy to be playing some real emotional stuff with Garibaldi, but was unhappy with the amount of time he had to rehearse, particularly with Denise Gentile. A couple of times she played the scene in a way he wasn’t expecting and actually found interesting, but couldn’t do another take (where he was ready for the direction) to exploit that.

Straczynski noted that Garibaldi’s love for Lise had not been touched by Psi Corps’ manipulations, so whenever that became key in the scene Garibaldi would suddenly revert much more back to being his normal self.

Jerry Doyle described Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. as “a wonderful man,” with a good head of hair. Doyle appreciated Zimbalist’s professionalism and commitment to what was, by the standards of his epic career, a fairly minor role: Zimbalist even sat in on the interrogation scene and read his lines off-camera, although this was not necessary. This made the performances in the scene much more naturalistic. This then caused Doyle immense anger because the microphone developed a problem and he had to go and loop the entire (quite long) scene from scratch. He was so angry that he actually got to a very similar place when he filmed the scene, so the ADR is not as noticeable as it was in some episodes.

Familiar Faces: Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. (William Edgars) previously voiced the character in episodes D12 and D14. Born in 1918, Zimbalist fought in the US Army during World War II, most notably during the lengthy Battle of Hurtgen Forest in 1944. He began acting soon after returning home. He had starring roles on the TV series 77 Sunset Strip and The F.B.I., a supporting role on Maverick as well as voicing the character of Alfred Pennyworth on Batman: The Animated Series. He also voiced Doctor Octopus in the 1990s Spider-Man animated TV series. He passed away in 2014 at the age of 95.

Sandey Grinn (Patient #2) previously played the Narn Captain of the G’Quan-class heavy cruiser destroyed at the start of episode B12.

Review: Another strong episode, with the decision to cut to a more relaxed human story about Garibaldi and Lise being a bit unexpected but one that works really well. Jerry Doyle raises his game considerably as he acts off Efrem Zimbalist, Jnr, who is in fine form as a surprisingly compassionate villain. There’s some great dialogue, but the reduction of Lise to basically standing around waiting for the menfolk to talk to her gets a little dull. We’re not really shown why Garibaldi is so into her. ****

Edgars: “Do you know how the ancient Greeks defined happiness?”

Garibaldi: “Not offhand but I’d be willing to bet it involves 3 goats and a jug of wine.”

Edgars: “Nobody takes power. They’re given power by the rest of us, because we’re stupid or afraid or both.”

Edgars: “Megacorporations have been running things for years. We just don’t show ourselves much. People don’t understand. So, we let them still think they have a voice.”

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