“No Surrender, No Retreat”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Michael Vejar
Season 4, Episode 15
Production episode 415
Original air date: May 26, 1997
It was the dawn of the third age… B5 is back on a war footing. The Starfuries are running drills under the direction of Corwin, while Sheridan has an early-morning meeting with the representatives of the various non-human nations on B5. Sheridan is calling in a favor in return for the patrols of their borders by the White Star fleet: he’s asking that they sever their ties with Earth Alliance and only respond to calls for humanitarian aid, but not to provide any military aid. He also asks for one capital ship from each of them to protect B5 itself.
G’Kar speaks out in favor of this, pointing out that Earth promised to help Narn in exchange for the weapons that Narn sold them during the Earth-Minbari War. Yet Earth’s aid was nowhere to be found when the Centauri attacked and conquered them, nor did they help out with the Shadow War.
Cole comes to the war room with intelligence from Proxima III, which is the first step of their campaign, to take that world back. There’s a blockade of six Omega-class destroyers in orbit, two of which—the Heracles and the Pollux—are the ones that fired on civilians. Sheridan doesn’t know the commanders of those two ships—Captain Trevor Hall and Captain Elizabeth Morgenstern, respectively—so he figures they’re new and loyal to Clark. Cole also reports that ships are trying to run the blockade despite the very low likelihood of success because that blockade is working—people on Proxima are starving to death.
Sheridan intends to attack from multiple sides, but he also wants to know if there are any vessels that have deliberately avoided firing on civilians. Cole promises to find out. Sheridan also asks Franklin to get the telepaths they rescued from the Shadows and have in stasis ready to be moved. Ivanova and Corwin continue to do drills with the Starfuries, reminding them that all orders must be in the proper code. EarthForce has Sheridan and Ivanova’s voiceprints on file, so they can fake verbal orders.
Vir has fallen asleep doing paperwork. He is awakened from a nightmare by the arrival of Garibaldi, who needs a favor from Mollari. Vir offhandedly mentions the “new offensive,” which surprises Garibaldi. His surprise, in turn, surprises Vir, who assumes that Garibaldi is going to join back up for the fight. When Garibaldi answers in the negative, Vir is confused. Doesn’t Garibaldi want to save his homeworld. Garibaldi says he does, but not Sheridan’s way.
Mollari comes to G’Kar’s quarters with a proposal: he wants them to sign a joint statement in support of Sheridan’s resistance. A joint statement from their two nations that were so recently at war will likely prompt the other nations to follow suit. Mollari wishes to end the acrimony between the two of them, or at least reduce it. To that end, he offers to share a drink as they did before Emperor Turhan’s death. Mollari also offers a belated thanks for G’Kar’s help in getting rid of Emperor Cartagia, even though he knows G’Kar didn’t do it for him.
G’Kar, however, has no interest in Mollari’s thanks, or sharing a drink with him, or the joint statement. Mollari leaves, disappointed.
Sheridan has Ivanova send three White Stars to the sol system to make Clark think they’re scout for an invasion and so he might draw forces away from Proxima, or at least not be able to send reinforcements there. The main fleet heads to Proxima, with the White Star ships painted with B5’s logo.
Three White Stars jump into the far side of the system. Hall, who is in charge of the fleet and who is very much a Clark loyalist, sends the Pollux and the Nemesis after them.
Sheridan then sends in more ships on the near side, and finally the main fleet through the system’s jumpgate behind the Heracles. The Vesta, under the command of Captain Edward MacDougan—an old comrade of Sheridan’s—breaks radio silence. MacDougan tries to convince Sheridan to withdraw; Sheridan tries to convince MacDougan that the orders Clark is giving are clearly illegal. Sheridan reminds MacDougan of ethics classes he taught at the Academy.
Hall orders the Heracles and the battle is joined.
Sheridan’s orders are crystal clear: do not fire unless fired upon. Notably, the Furies does not respond to a flyby and the Juno withdraws from the battle completely, leaving the system. Hall orders MacDougan’s first officer, Commander Robert Philby, to take command and fire on the White Stars. Philby does so eagerly, prompting a wry comment from MacDougan about how he didn’t realize his XO wanted a promotion that badly. However, Philby’s time in command lasts about seven-and-a-half seconds before the rest of the crew mutinies and restores MacDougan to command. The Vesta then immediately stands down.
One White Star and the Pollux are both destroyed with all hands on both ships lost. The Nemesis surrenders, having taken heavy damage. Hall refuses to go down without a fight—especially since he’s dead no matter what happens—but his first officer, Commander Sandra Levitt, refuses to let him take the crew down with him. She orders Hall put under arrest and she broadcasts a surrender to Sheridan.
Sheridan requests that the four remaining ship commanders come to the White Star 2 to discuss what happens next.
On B5, Mollari is joined at the bar by G’Kar, who takes Mollari’s drink, gulps it down, and agrees to the joint statement—but only if they sign on different pages. Mollari agrees.
On the White Star 2, Sheridan meets with MacDougan, Levitt, Captain Yoshi Kawagawa of the Nemesis, and Captain Stephanie Eckland of the Furies. Sheridan just wants to remove Clark from power and then let the people decide if their actions were justified. Levitt is no fan of Clark, but she’s no fan of open rebellion, either. MacDougan says they need to discuss it amongst themselves. They make their decisions: Levitt will make like the Juno and withdraw, taking the Heracles to Beta IX for repairs, keeping Hall under arrest, and staying out of it. Eckland will keep the Furies at Proxima to now defend the colony against retaliation by Clark’s forces. MacDougan and Kawagawa agree to join Sheridan’s fleet.
On B5, Ivanova goes on the Voice of the Resistance to announce both the liberation of Proxima and the joint statement by the Narn Regime and the Centauri Republic supporting the resistance.
Garibaldi leaves the station for Mars to meet up with Edgars. He tells the customs guard that he has no plans to return. (Yes, this paragraph also appeared last week in the rewatch for “Moments of Transition,” because your humble rewatcher is a big honking doofus and conflated the end of this episode with the end of that one. Derp derp.)
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan has to tread a fine line here, as he doesn’t want to be seen as an invader, but a liberator. He is also devastated by the destruction of one of the White Stars and the Pollux, and refuses to refer to what happens at Proxima a victory—merely that they achieved their mission objective, which was to liberate that world.
Ivanova is God. At one point, Corwin comments that the operational phrase is “Trust no one,” but Ivanova says no, it’s “Trust Ivanova, trust yourself—anybody else, shoot ’em.”
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi is not very convincing when he tells Vir that he wants to save his homeworld, just not Sheridan’s way.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Sheridan insists that this be a “clean fight” when queried by Levitt as to why his non-human allies aren’t part of his fleet. But his actual fleet are Minbari-designed ships that use Vorlon tech, and which are mostly staffed by Minbari…
In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Mollari is trying very hard to redeem himself, and he also raises a toast to the humans, who have provided a bridge between the Centauri and the Narn.
Though it take a thousand years, we will be free. It takes G’Kar some time to see past his loathing of the Centauri in general and Mollari in particular to see his way to understanding that the joint statement is a very good idea. G’Kar’s support was already helpful in getting the League of Non-Aligned Worlds on board with supporting the resistance over the Clark regime, and he eventually sees the wisdom of Mollari’s plan. That it takes a while is very understandable, of course…
We live for the one, we die for the one. Cole is the one who gets intelligence on what’s happening on Proxima from the people there.
Looking ahead. Sheridan’s plan for the cryogenically frozen telepaths will finally be revealed in “Endgame.”
Welcome aboard. The three big guests are Marcia Mitzman Gaven as Levitt, the great Richard Gant as MacDougan, and Ken Jenkins, warming up for his role as Dr. Bob Kelso on Scrubs as Hall. Gant will return in “The Face of the Enemy.” Also Joshua Cox is back from “Z’ha’dum” as Corwin; he’ll next be in “No Compromises.”
The extras who play Eckland and Kawagawa are never identified. Philby is played by Neil Bradley, one of the regular background actors on the show—amusingly, this is the only one of Bradley’s ten roles on B5 and Crusade in which he’s not in a ton of makeup, as his other nine roles are as Drazi or Narn.
Trivial matters. Clark ordering civilians to be targeted by EarthForce was revealed at the end of the prior episode, “Moments of Transition.” The White Star fleet started patrolling the borders of the Centauri and the Narn in “Conflicts of Interest” and the nations of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds in “Rumors, Bargains, and Lies.” Mollari’s referring to humans as a bridge between opposing factions echoes comments Delenn has made about humans in both “And Now for a Word” and “Lines of Communication.”
The title of this episode was also the title for the whole season. (It also always tweaks your humble rewatcher, because as a Bruce Springsteen fan, I expect “no retreat” to be before “no surrender.”)
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“Captain, I wasn’t about to let Captain Hall get the rest of my crew killed defending Clark’s policies—I happen to disagree with those policies. But that doesn’t mean I agree with your actions, either. It’s not the role of the military to make policy.”
“Our mandate is to defend Earth against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Now Clark has become that enemy. Your oath is to the alliance and to the people back home, not to any particular government.”
“You’re splitting that hair mighty thin, John.”
—Levitt, Sheridan, and MacDougan discussing military ethics.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Enough is enough.” This has always been one of my favorite episodes of the show, because as great as “Severed Dreams” was as an episode, it missed out on one very important aspect of this entire plotline: the difficult decisions that EarthForce personnel would have to make. In that episode, the ships that tried to take B5 were not given faces and barely given voices. But here, we see Hall and Levitt and MacDougan and Philby, and they represent different approaches to this. Hall’s the true believer, the perfect fascist tool, sneering that MacDougan “doesn’t have what it takes” and more concerned with saving his own skin than the welfare of his crew. (Casting Ken Jenkins was a masterstroke, as few actors sneer as well as he does.) Philby is obviously mostly just in it for his own command, following orders like a good little drone. Levitt is primarily concerned with the welfare of her crew, which is more than her CO can say.
And then we have MacDougan, magnificently played by Richard Gant. He’s walking the line between obeying general orders and not carrying out specific ones, and Sheridan forces him to fall off that high-wire, at which point it’s just a matter of in which direction he goes. It’s to his credit that he falls in the right direction. It’s also to his credit that he’s the only commander who tries talking to Sheridan, though that’s partly motivated by their history. We know it’s a good history, too, as Sheridan lets loose with a smile when Cole mentions that the Vesta is part of the blockade.
Bruce Boxleitner is also superb here, and J. Michael Straczynski writes Sheridan perfectly as well. Throughout, Sheridan is bending over backward to not do what Clark’s been wanting EarthForce to do. He starts out by talking, asking the EarthForce ships to withdraw peacefully (an offer that only the Juno takes him up on, and then only after hostilities have broken out), and he refuses to fire on anyone until they fire first. On top of that, the only ships he will initially identify as hostile are the two they know have fired on civilian targets and are therefore viable targets. He refuses to fire on the Furies once it’s clear they won’t engage.
In the end, he also defaults to understanding and compassion and staying within the bounds of military protocol. He just wants to restore things to what they were before Clark introduced fun stuff like NightWatch and firing on civilians. It’s particularly to his credit that he gives the ships options both before and after the battle: withdraw peacefully, defend Proxima, or join them.
It’s very rare that the portions of an episode that feature Mollari and G’Kar are an afterthought, but this is one of those exceptional instances, as I had to keep reminding myself that there were scenes with those two—and they were really really good scenes, too! As ever, both actors just knock it out of the park. Peter Jurasik gives us an exhausted Mollari who is trying so desperately to crawl out of the murderous hole that he dug for himself (I mean, yeah, Morden gave him the shovel, but still…), while Andreas Katsulas gives not a millimeter in the scene in G’Kar’s quarters. The quiet intensity with which Katsulas has G’Kar rebuff every single overture made by Mollari is superlative, and you don’t see the conflict until the later scene in the Zocalo when G’Kar has finally come to—very reluctantly—accept that Mollari’s notion is a good one. And even there, he refuses to give in completely, insisting on their signatures being on separate pages…
In general, I love that this particular storyline will take several episodes to play out. Nature favors the destructive process—what Sheridan is trying to do is rebuild something that Clark has destroyed, and that’s a much longer, more laborious, more difficult thing to achieve.
This is the last Babylon 5 Rewatch of 2025. Thank you all so much for continuing to follow me on this journey through the dawn of the third age. We’ll be off for the next couple of weeks, coming back on the 5th of January 2026 with “The Exercise of Vital Powers.” Have a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year!
Yep. Awesome episode. The only real miss is the Garibaldi subplot, and that’s because it was set up badly. Not sure how it could have been set up better, since there needed to be time for him to get brainwashed by PsiCorps, but the viewers know that he’s being controlled.
And that is a great song off of a great album. Which I heard live at the Meadowlands on the Born in the USA tour. Drove 4 hours from Northern Virginia to get there. I miss rock albums. And (sometimes) my late teens.
I wholeheartedly agree. One of the best episodes of the fourth season and it’s saying something that the awesomeness of Londo and G’Kar is a relatively minor subplot. Sheridan is doing things about as above board as he possibly can. It’s a very fine line to walk, but Sheridan is at least trying to find a right way to openly oppose Clark and turn the resistance into something more.
And boy, all the talk about illegal orders has a lot of resonance these days.
So much of B5 is just too damn relevant right now.
I’m trying very hard to keep current politics out of these rewatches, which is not to discourage such talk in the comments (I ask only that conversation be kept civil), but to explain why I’m not bringing it up much in the entries. For one thing, I want these rewatches to still be read years from now when (I hope) the current administration is just a bad memory….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
From your keyboard to the Great Masker’s ears.
Even when I very first watched this, I too noticed the disconnect between “clean fight” and using White Stars with majority Minbari crew. I get it, Sheridan doesn’t have the ships or the people otherwise, but it’s a pretty big clanger. One would think that someone with as much tactical and political acumen as Sheridan, as well as everyone around him, would notice and comment that this by definition makes it not a clean fight, that it plays right into Clark’s propaganda about aliens, and that it could easily be interpreted as the Earth/Minbari War Part Two, but no such luck. I suppose it’s his fleet inasmuch as he and Delenn co-command the Rangers, but we could also do with a gentle reminder of that as well.
It’s a testament to the strength of this episode and the show in general that “clean fight” line can be ignored so easily. If I remember correctly, there are minor consequences or at least comments about it later from the Earth side of things. I only wish that there had been a little discussion about it here.
This is an amazing episode all around.
It’s a character perspective thing. B5 and the Rangers are “Sheridan’s” where the allied ships (even the Minbari war cruisers) are distinctly “on loan.” Plus Sheridan’s lived for a while with the Ranger rhetoric of humans and Minbari as halves of the same soul, so from his perspective, these are his team as opposed to alien interventionists.
And yes, he can’t possibly win this first fight (or any of them, arguably) without the White Star fleet. At the same time, he’s been commanding them for a long time now, and the Vorlons certainly aren’t around to take credit. As for the Minbari, Delenn isn’t in charge of the government but one gathers they’re inclined to support whatever she wants.
Part of what makes the “human-Minbari hybrid” propaganda so effective is that it’s just a little related to the truth, enough to support itself. Certainly the “great replacement” theory behind that propaganda has its real-world counterpart. Sheridan may be splitting hairs here, but he’s bending farther than prudence calls for to avoid an “alien imvasion” situation.
I think adding the prominent B5 insignia on the White Stars was supposed to be the gentle reminder. And MacDougan immediately identifies the fleet as “Sheridan’s” (not Delenn’s for example). But, yeah, that point could have been unpacked a bit. The other captains push back on him in sensible ways on other points, but this one just slides by without any reaction.
It was Hall who said it was Sheridan’s fleet, wasn’t it?
Yes, my mistake.
Could have been interesting to have, say, Garibaldi point that out in some fashion, lending a bit more credibility to his objections about how Sheridan is conducting himself. Of course, we know very well that Garibaldi is being controlled, but others don’t know that, so his arguments should be more convincing overall.
But more on that in the next episode, next year!
Except Garibaldi has never expressed any worry or dislike about associating with non-humans. He’s friends with G’Kar, associates easily with Londo, and respectful with the Minbari (even after Lennier finishes his motorcycle). Having him object because some (even a majority) of the Rangers are Minbari is too out of character.
I’m not saying that Garibaldi was xenophobic. I’m saying that Garibaldi keeps saying that he doesn’t like the way Sheridan is handling things, but never comes out and says what that is, specifically. Just a general dissatisfaction. But one thing that Sheridan is not doing, entirely, is keeping this a “clean fight” within the (former) Earth Alliance. The White Star fleet is not purely human by any means, and it would make sense that if Garibaldi is looking for evidence of Sheridan being a bit dishonest about things, that would be one area he could point to.
So not so much that Garibaldi objects to Minbari being part of the war effort, but rather, Sheridan’s apparent contradiction. Assuming that Sheridan is making his sentiments about a “clean fight” public enough for Garibaldi to hear about it.
Garibaldi’s most specific complaints have been a) that Sheridan doesn’t listen to anyone but Lorien (who isn’t around anymore) and Delenn and b) that he is making everything about him instead of about the people who are suffering.
There’s another moment in this episode that gives some weight to point b: specifically, where Sheridan states that he is “declaring” the League’s treaties with Earth “null and void”. That’s an odd choice of framing. Sheridan has no such authority, of course. It would have made sense for him to ask the League to set those treaties aside and what he goes on to actually ask them to do (not get involved, except to provide relief to any who need it) is entirely reasonable. But he starts from a posture of assuming that he has some authority over the League that goes far beyond them owing him a favour.
Of course Garibaldi didn’t witness this, so wouldn’t have been able to react to it directly.
That “null and void” moment struck me too, in the context of Garibaldi’s accusations. But in other respects, I think this episode made it pretty clear that Sheridan isn’t just thinking about himself, because he was also thinking very much about the rest of EarthForce’s personnel and his goal of minimizing casualties and giving them the chance to choose for themselves. And he said outright that once Clark is gone, he intends to throw himself to the mercy of the voters and take whatever consequences the justice system sees fit once law is restored. So it’s not like he’s doing this for his own ambition to rule.
Although that does imply that he’s more imperious with aliens than he is with humans or EarthForce personnel. When he was telling the crew that this was so much harder than other battles because it was their own people, I could see what he meant, but at the same time, it occurred to me that it seemed kind of ethnocentric to suggest that reluctance to kill an enemy or a preference for winning them over with words is something that that should only apply to humans instead of to everyone.
The line about letting the voters decide struck me as a bit hollow, or possibly naive. Of course he has to say it, but nearly every military junta engaging in a coup says they will turn over authority to a civilian substitute once the emergency is over.
Even assuming he means it (which we can reasonably as viewers), do we really think that if the Earth Alliance voters said no, actually we like the xenophopia and authoritarianism just fine, thanks, that Sheridan would just shrug and say “Well, we tried” and surrender to be executed?
That’s not what Sheridan’s saying. He’s talking about once the fascists are defeated and democracy is restored, according to the constitution and laws of the Earth Alliance that he and his EarthForce colleagues are sworn to defend against enemies foreign and domestic. He wouldn’t surrender to the enemy, i.e. to Clark’s fascist system, but he would surrender to his own side once the mission of putting it back in power has succeeded, and once there’s a genuinely free and fair electoral process based on accurate information rather than one corrupted by state-controlled media, thought police, assassination, and whatnot.
Sure, but you can see how that’s a bit self-serving, right? Once there is a regime in place that is satisfactory to us (that we put in place), we’ll surrender to it and allow it to judge us.
I don’t know what else he could have said in the circumstances. But somebody on the other side could easily say there are a lot of outs there that allow him to decide that any particular elections weren’t free enough or fair enough, so he doesn’t have to accept the results.
We want to believe Sheridan is on the side of good. The show tells us that he is. We’re inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. But this is the same rhetoric that people with different motives would use in the same circumstances. So if one was inclined to doubt his bona fides, I don’t see this as likely to change anyone’s mind.
“Sure, but you can see how that’s a bit self-serving, right? Once there is a regime in place that is satisfactory to us (that we put in place), we’ll surrender to it and allow it to judge us.”
I don’t see it that way. Like I said, his job as a member of EarthForce is to defend the Earth Alliance against enemies foreign and domestic. The Earth Alliance is presumably defined by its constitution, the same as the United States is. A fascist government that rules illegally in defiance of the constitution is a domestic enemy that the Earth Alliance must be defended against. Victory is defined as defeating the enemy, i.e. restoring the constitutional order that Earth Alliance officers are sworn to defend. It’s not “satisfactory to us,” because it’s not about their personal whims, it’s about achieving their mission in accordance with their oaths. They serve the system, not themselves. And the mission isn’t accomplished until that system is back in place.
“But somebody on the other side could easily say there are a lot of outs there that allow him to decide that any particular elections weren’t free enough or fair enough, so he doesn’t have to accept the results.”
It’s not his decision, though — it’s the constitution’s. It’s whether the pre-existing laws of the land are being followed in good faith or corrupted and defied. There is an objective standard here. Claiming that it comes down solely to personal belief is playing into the fascists’ hands, since fascism thrives on undermining the concept of objective truth so that lies can thrive.
“But this is the same rhetoric that people with different motives would use in the same circumstances.”
I don’t think it is. I think we can see very clearly in the real world that the rhetoric used by authoritarians is quite different, more about strongman dominance and punishing enemies — more “the public has to do what we say” rather than “we have to defer to what the public chooses.” You can see that in Hall’s line about MacDougal not having “what it takes,” a tough-guy mentality rather than a sense of following law and justice.
I don’t want to take this too far into real-world politics, but authoritarian populism exists and laws, even constitutions, are not self-executing.
I agree with you that Sheridan is carrying out his duty as he sees it. I also agree that challenging the objectivity of his judgment would be (and is in the show) a strategy based on devaluing truth. My point was that it could reasonably be expected to be successful in raising doubt against him.
“…authoritarian populism exists and laws, even constitutions, are not self-executing.”
But the question on the table is not what would really happen — it’s what motivates John Sheridan when he says he wants to let the voters decide. My point is that it is wrong to suggest that he’s saying something hypocritical. He is simply stating his duty as defined by the laws he swore an oath to follow.
“My point was that it could reasonably be expected to be successful in raising doubt against him.”
Only by people who have an agenda and a predisposition to twist the facts against him, and none of the Clark loyalists inclined to think that way were in that room — only the captains who’d either already sided with Sheridan or had remained neutral.
Sheridan’s actual motivations were not the question I was raising. It was how they would be perceived.
You did say “or possibly naive” and “Even assuming he means it,” which certainly sound like raising questions about his actual motivations. You also misinterpreted the line as saying he’d surrender to the fascist regime, which is not what he was suggesting at all.
Naive to believe it would be taken at face value by a skeptical, and possibly hostile audience. And I did not interpret the line that way, I posed a counterfactual to illustrate a scenario in which he might not be quite so willing to accept the verdict of a hypothetical electorate. I was specifically distinguishing what the viewers know and believe from what the other characters in the room would know and believe. I apologize if that was unclear.
I just don’t think that’s a plausible characterization of how Captains MacDougan, Levitt, Kawagawa, and Eckland would have reacted to Sheridan’s comments. Hall or another Clarke loyalist might have done so, but they weren’t in the room. Sheridan wasn’t addressing a hostile audience, he was addressing the captains who hadn’t fought against him, because the ones who had were under arrest or dead.
Also, the counterfactual doesn’t work, because the electorate presumably wouldn’t support Clark if they had a clear and accurate picture of what had been going on, which presumably they would have after the free press had been restored. The Earth Alliance electorate didn’t vote for fascism. They voted for Luis Santiago with Clark as his VP, then Clark had Santiago assassinated, and later on, Clark stirred up paranoia, xenophobia, and conspiracy theories as excuses to declare martial law and dissolve the Senate. Nobody ever voted for Clark’s policies — he made sure not to give them the opportunity — so there’s no reason to think the voters would want to keep the fascist system in place if they were given a real chance to choose.
So yes, someone might be skeptical of Sheridan’s claim that he’d submit himself to justice. But they wouldn’t frame it as “So you’d just agree if they vote to keep fascism?” because that’s not a reasonable hypothetical for any skeptic to postulate if they were being honest with themselves. On the contrary, they’d be more worried that he’d want to install himself as the next fascist leader instead of letting democracy be restored.
I don’t think the fact that they don’t want to fight automatically predisposes them to trust Sheridan, nor should it. Levitt’s reaction is the most plausible for me, for a captain who doesn’t have a pre-existing relationship with him. MacDougan knows him, so it makes sense that he reacts differently, and presumably his willingness to vouch for Sheridan could also carry some weight with the others.
I also think it is not entirely safe to presume that an informed electorate will never vote for fascism. But, yes, the counterfactual was intentionally extreme, not a prediction of a likely outcome. Set it aside. The more important point is that when you’re already in a civil war, words will mean less than actions. If Sheridan earned trust from those captains, he did it through his actions (e.g. limiting his attacks, accepting surrenders, and allowing the Juno to withdraw), not his promise to give up power after the fight was over. Which has some nuance when we get there, anyway.
“I don’t think the fact that they don’t want to fight automatically predisposes them to trust Sheridan”
Of course not, but my point is that they would have no reason to be unfairly prejudiced against him either, and only someone unfairly prejudiced against him would twist the meaning of his words in the way you suggested. A fair, unbiased interpreter would understand what he meant whether they agreed with it or not.
“I also think it is not entirely safe to presume that an informed electorate will never vote for fascism.”
I could argue that point, but I won’t, because it’s off-topic. I wasn’t saying “never,” I was referring to the specific instance as depicted in B5. Specific argument and general argument are two different things. The specifics we have been given throughout the series give us no reason to believe that the majority of the Earth Alliance electorate as of 2260 would choose fascism if given a free and informed choice.
Following up to myself: to be clear, this isn’t a complaint about the script. I think it is quite appropriate that an outside observer wouldn’t be able to tell with any certainty what Sheridan’s intentions really are. So MacDougan, who knows him, is in a different position than the other Captains who don’t and is much more willing to trust him.
Of course it matters that Sheridan’s actions back up what he says. The Heracles really is free to go. Ultimately, that’s how you prove that you mean what you say.
I’m not sure I agree that it isn’t a “clean fight” just because Sheridan’s ships have Minbari technology and personnel. I mean, the White Star fleet doesn’t serve the Minbari government, but serves the Rangers, which are basically an independent, multispecies peacekeeping force. And currently, that fleet, or at least this portion of it, is operating under the command of John Sheridan. So as far as the decision-making is concerned, it’s humans vs. humans.
I mean, yeah, White Star ships use partly Vorlon technology, but human telepaths were created by Vorlons too, and Clark’s government uses PsiCorps. So both sides are using alien advantages to some extent.
As for Garibaldi, the fact that he can’t articulate a specific reason for mistrusting Sheridan is pretty much the point. It’s evidence that what he’s feeling is artificial. Although I agree that plotline might be more interesting if he did have a genuine disagreement with Sheridan. I’m not a fan of mind-control (or mind-influence) stories, precisely because they tend to make characters behave in ways that don’t arise from their real personalities or beliefs. I mean, we’ll learn soon that the intention was that Garibaldi’s natural suspicious nature was just amplified, but I’m not sure that’s really coming through.
“As for Garibaldi, the fact that he can’t articulate a specific reason for mistrusting Sheridan is pretty much the point.”
Garibaldi has articulated that he doesn’t like the way Sheridan has allowed himself to be set up as a messianic figure (seen in their fight about the Brakiri lady who kneels before him because he came back from Z’Ha’Dum) and has become much more authoritarian in his own right (seen in the way he sends Zack to retrieve Garibaldi’s gun and ID because “I don’t like the company he’s been keeping” and Sheridan’s threats to pull his license as an investigator if he doesn’t toe the line).
Now that would have been interesting, and a much more justified reason for Garibaldi to object to Sheridan.
It’s good that we get to see the various faces of Earth Force here, but it’s still really only at the highest levels of each crew. I find myself wondering if they swapped crew around to let the lower decks go where they felt most comfortable. It would be mighty inconvenient for MacDougan if a conspiracy of Clark advocates sabotaged the engines just as battle is joined.
Marcia Mitzman Gaven’s delivery of the word “Now!” has been burned into my brain for years. I still can’t decide whether I like it, exactly, but it certainly was memorable. That one word tells a whole story about her weighing up the likelihood that the bridge crew will obey her or not against the consequences of not acting.
I agree, this is a very strong episode in both the EarthForce plot and the Londo/G’Kar subplot, with the weak point being the Garibaldi subplot that was just moving a playing piece to where he’d need to be later. (Maybe that’s why Keith thought his departure was part of the previous episode, where it actually would have felt more connected.) This was one of Londo’s best (near-)monologues, in writing and performance, and that’s a high bar.
The guest casting was strong and, shall we say, efficient. I could tell just by looking at MacDougal’s first officer that he’d attempt a coup, because they cast someone who looked devious and treacherous. Similarly, Gant looked and talked like a good, avuncular guy, Jenkins oozed nastiness, and Gaven came off as tough but reasonable. Maybe a bit on the nose, but it worked as shorthand for establishing multiple characters quickly, which served the important goal of putting faces and voices to the EarthForce personnel and making it a battle for their hearts and minds instead of just a battle of guns and fighters.
Although the trend continues of keeping Asian characters mainly as bit players and extras. And JMS’s Japanese surname game is at best only slightly improved. I could only find one reference online to Kawagawa as a character name rather than a place name. Kanagawa or Kitagawa would have worked better. Yoshi is a valid given name, though.
I also love this episode. I love the whole Earthforce War arc.
Happy Holidays, everypne!
Bobby
Hence why last week’s notion of Delenn calling Sheridan would have been a major mistake. “No Surrender, No Retreat” represents Sheridan doing what he does best: acting both as a military leader and as a diplomat. As Kira Nerys once put it in the DS9 pilot: they were never going to win this battle with torpedoes alone.
Sheridan may have resented being put in charge of the station by Hague’s orders and being turned into something he was not (it was his big issue in season 2’s “A Distant Star”), but his tenure as Babylon 5’s CO was a crucial step in his path towards his better self. Season 4 Sheridan knows he has to appeal to the better senses of the other side in order to beat back the seeds of fascism and free Earth from Clark. That alone makes this a near-perfect episode.
And the perfect casting brings out both the best and worst from the other side. Hall is as scary as they get in terms of fascist leaders, and both MacDougan and Levitt feel fully formed characters with real voices and opinions worth listening to.
The battle of Proxima III gives us some excellent VFX coreography from the new team that took over for Foundation. And Vejar, as usual, brings out the best in every moment (the way that shot of the pilot trying to eject cuts perfectly to their starfury blowing apart is a chilling reminder that this war isn’t about fancy VFX pyrotechnics alone, but real people and real costs).
The same praise can be thrown at the Londo/G’Kar B plot. It took both of them to finally take a leap of faith and agree on something. G’Kar’s “not on the same page” line is a memorable addition, reminding us to savor even the smallest diplomatic victories that may appear to be compromises at first, but we know are stepping stones for real reform and reparations.
This seems like a good opportunity to say thanks to (other) Keith for all the work he puts into these rewatches, and to all of you for a lively and happily non-toxic discussion to go along with it. It has become something I look forward to each week. Cheers and best wishes to all of you.
I second that! It’s been great reading the recaps and commentary on each episode and then having a fun discussion in the comment section. Here’s to even more fun in the new year!
Thanks very much, namesake!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Yikes. This one feels like it could have been written today.
Anyway, great episode. I’ve always liked Richard Gant, who I saw most recently a few years back guest starring in Doom Patrol. And of course Ken Jenkins was great as Hall. I’m afraid I’m unfamiliar with Marcia Mitzman Gaven, but she was good in her role. But this was Bruce Boxleitner’s episode. I’m glad to see that whatever was going on with Sheridan is apparently over, and he’s back to being Sheridan again.
It occurs to me that The League of Non-Aligned Worlds is an oxymoron. Otherwise, what world/group/coalition are they not aligned with?
It means they’re not aligned with the superpowers like Earth, Minbar, or Centauri. They’re independent worlds that have formed a loose bloc to give themselves some negotiating power against the dominance of the superpowers, but otherwise they’re separate governments.
Which was the original meaning of the term “The Third World” – the nations that were not aligned with the United States and its allies, or with the Soviet Union and their allies.
the fact that the White Stars were involved in this battle made this episode soooooo problematic on so many levels for me. 1) would the Minbari government have 0 issues with using this fleet for attack operations for Earth’s internal matters? 2) how does it look from Earth POV? an alien fleet attacked Earth vessels.
Other than this huge issue that i cannot get over unfortunately, the episode is really great. I would have hoped to see more Klingon in G’Kar and refusing to work with Londo right after the war, but the way he did it, made it almost believable. :) But it’s just a bit too convenient for the plot it seems.
The ships were Minbari-built, but the flagship bore the Babylon 5 insignia and the fleet was commanded by Captain Sheridan, so that made it a Babylon 5 fleet, not an alien fleet. There’s plenty of precedent for one country’s navy using ships purchased or traded from another country, or even enemy vessels taken as prize ships, and incorporating them into its own fleet. What matters is what flag they sail under. That’s why Sheridan repainting White Star 2 to fly the B5 flag was so important.
Granted, the ships were crewed by Minbari Rangers, but are the Rangers really under the Minbari government at this point? I mean, Sinclair was the leader of the Rangers when they were introduced, and though Delenn is nominally his successor, she seems to be autonomous of the Minbari government rather than following its orders. It seems to me that B5, Sheridan, Delenn, and the Rangers represent their own independent political/military bloc.
Yes, certainly Clark’s propagandists could twist the facts to make the claim that Sheridan is working for aliens against Earth, but we should know better.