“Lines of Communication”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by John C. Flinn III
Season 4, Episode 11
Production episode 411
Original air date: April 28, 1997
It was the dawn of the third age… Sheridan is watching ISN’s anti-B5 propaganda. Ivanova asks why he’s torturing himself—every time he watches it, he gets riled up. But Sheridan insists that he’s using it for motivation. At the rate they’re going, Clark will be able to justify sending the military in to “liberate” B5.
Franklin sends a quick, coded message to B5 saying that things are proceeding apace on Mars. B5 doesn’t reply, and it’s quick enough, and cryptic enough, that it’s unlikely to be traced or figured out. Which is good, because if Clark found out that one of B5’s senior staff was on Mars, he’d send in the whole fleet to find him…
Cole bursts in on Franklin and Number One to inform them that the Red Planet Hotel has been attacked by terrorists, killing an Earth security force—but also ten civilians.
On B5, Forell reports to Delenn that many worlds near the border of Minbari space are being attacked—including the Norsai, whom the Minbari swore to protect. However, that promise was made by the Religious Caste. The Warrior Caste has shown no interest in honoring that promise, and with the Grey Council dissolved, there’s no one to enforce it.
Delenn goes to Sheridan to tell him about the raids. He says that the Pak’ma’ra have also suffered similar raids on the outskirts of their territory. Delenn wants to take a fleet of White Stars to investigate these raids.
On Mars, Number One tears Phillipe a new asshole for the attack on the Red Planet Hotel. Phillipe says that Donovan approved it, but Number One runs Mars, not Donovan. Franklin and Cole are impressed by the truly epic rage Number One is showing.
On B5, it’s around midnight, and Sheridan is hit with inspiration. He goes to Ivanova’s quarters, waking her out of a sound sleep, and dragging her to the War Room (once she reminds him that maybe he should give her a minute to change into uniform). Sheridan wants to fight fire with fire. He wants Ivanova to do what she did during the Shadow War, when she provided updates to the folks fighting with the Army of Light. Except this time she’ll be the Voice of the Resistance, countering ISN’s bullshit with the truth.
Ivanova is not particularly thrilled at the notion—she hated doing those updates during the Shadow War—but Sheridan makes it an order.
On the White Star flagship, Delenn is having difficulty sleeping, as she’s troubled by what’s happening on Minbar. Forell makes those troubles worse when he mentions the rumors that the Warrior Caste is looking at forming their own ruling council and that they’ve been ejecting Religious Caste members from the cities.
On Mars, Franklin and Cole speak before the gathered leaders of the Mars Resistance. Number One reminds him that Sheridan was the commander on the scene when EarthForce put down the food riots, and nobody has forgotten that. Franklin and Cole acknowledge that, but say that they have to put aside their differences to deal with the greater threat: Clark. Cole points out that he lived on the Arisia colony, which EarthGov bled dry. But they need to avoid open aggression and be smart.
They also emphasize that the fight is with the person, not the office. They’re not trying to overthrow EarthGov completely, just get rid of the fascist. They’ve got a plan to liberate both Mars and Proxima III. But the attacks on civilian targets like the Red Planet Hotel have to stop.
When asked where they’ve been up until now, they say they’ve been busy fighting a war, and before anyone can say that that’s not their problem, Cole reminds them of the Keeper they found on Captain Jack’s shoulder. Aliens are still taking an interest in human events.
Franklin drops the final bombshell: he promises that, if the Resistance cooperates fully with B5’s plan, Mars will be granted their freedom when it’s all over.
The White Star answers a distress call from a Pak’ma’ra ship. They’re too late to save the ship from the fleet of unfamiliar ships attacking it. Lennier sends out a greeting to the ships in Interlac, but they answer in Minbari—meaning they’ve encountered Minbari before.
Forell answers the question that raises by pointing a gun at Delenn. This was all a setup so that Delenn could meet with the Drakh. Delenn reluctantly agrees to speak with the Drakh.
On Mars, after the meeting, Number One congratulates Franklin on his speech, even though it contained some lies. Franklin demurs, but Number One calls him on it. She knows that Franklin hasn’t had any direct communication with Sheridan—just the indirect communication earlier—so Sheridan couldn’t possibly have said anything to Franklin about the attacks on civilian targets, which didn’t happen until their arrival on Mars. Franklin then admits that he ad-libbed that bit, but he knew that Sheridan would’ve said that if he’d known about the attacks. Number One thanks him, as it also helped her out.
Number One then invites Franklin to dinner and asks Cole if he’d help with guard duty, as they’re short-handed. Cole believes that Number One has the hots for Franklin. Again, Franklin demurs, but Cole insists.
On the White Star, an emissary from the Drakh comes over. He seems to be a bit out of phase with reality, and speaks through a translator. Forell explains that the rumors he mentioned earlier are actually facts: the Warrior Caste have indeed cast Religious Caste members out into the polar regions, leaving them to die of exposure, thus getting around the prohibition against Minbari killing Minbari on a technicality. The Warrior Caste has indeed formed a council and in essence declared war on the Religious Caste. They need help, and Forell says the Drakh will provide that, in exchange for a few colonies on the outer reaches of Minbari space. The Drakh recently lost their homeworld due to a natural disaster, you see. The Religious Caste will listen to Delenn and help with convincing them to take the help.
Delenn and Lennier obviously put it all together, but say only that they will return in seven days with the Religious Caste’s answer. Just before the emissary leaves, Forell refers to Delenn by name for the first time, and the emissary reacts.
Once the emissary is gone, Delenn turns angrily on Forell. The homeworld the Drakh lost is Z’ha’dum, and they are allies of the Shadows that were left behind. What’s more, they know Delenn is one of the heads of the Army of Light that drove the Shadows away.
Delenn and Lennier quickly talk strategy. The White Stars are faster than the Drakh ships, but only once they’re in motion—they have to overcome inertia first, and they’ll be vulnerable. Delenn suggests the Warrior Caste technique known as skin-dancing: hugging the hull of a ship to deter fire. Lennier can’t do it himself, he doesn’t have the training, but he can program the maneuver into the ship’s computer and hope for the best.
They pretend like they’re going home, then double back and skin-dance on the Drakh mothership. White Star 16 is destroyed, but the rest are able to jump to hyperspace.
Lennier says he’s setting a course for B5, but Delenn says she didn’t order that. Instead they double back and go on the offensive, returning to destroy the Drakh mothership. Then she orders Lennier to return the fleet to B5.
Delenn meets Sheridan in the War Room, which is being remodeled as the studio for the Voice of the Resistance. She says that not only are the Drakh emerging as a serious threat, but this incident has shined a light on a big problem on Minbar—a problem that Delenn herself is mostly responsible for causing when she shattered the Grey Council. She has to go home and deal with it, and she thinks it’ll be good for her to be away for a while so Sheridan can focus on what he needs to accomplish on Earth. Sheridan isn’t happy about it, but agrees.
On Mars, Cole is on guard duty, opening and closing his staff weapon, while the sounds of Franklin and Number One having hot passionate nookie-nookie echo through the tunnels…
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan weaponizes his anger at ISN’s propaganda by coming up with a counter to it: his very own propaganda!
Ivanova is God. Ivanova does not want to be the Voice of the Resistance. When Sheridan says she has a face people trust, she counters that she would prefer a face people fear. Sheridan allows as how that can be true as well…
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Delenn belatedly realizes that shattering the Grey Council and leaving was perhaps not the wisest move, as the consequences are rather dire.
We live for the one, we die for the one. Cole is as passionate and fervent in his speaking for B5 as Franklin is, but the doctor gets all the credit, and is rewarded with dinner and sex, while Cole just gets stuck on guard duty. Ah, well, they say the Rangers are used to making sacrifices for the greater good…
The Shadowy Vorlons. We get our first real look at the Drakh, who will continue to be antagonists moving forward, both here and in Crusade.
No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Number One obviously has the hots for Franklin. It takes Cole dropping a brick wall on Franklin’s head to make him realize it and do something about it. Cole reminds Franklin that in difficult times like this, you shouldn’t pass up a shot at happiness.
Welcome aboard. Marjorie Monaghan officially makes Number One recurring, as she returns from last week’s “Racing Mars”; she’ll be back in “The Face of the Enemy.” Paolo Seganti plays Phillipe, G.W. Stevens plays Forell, Carolyn Barkin plays the latest ISN propaganda spewer, and stunt performer Jean-Luc Martin plays the Drakh emissary.
Trivial matters. Z’ha’dum was destroyed, leaving the Shadows’ allies homeless, in “Epiphanies.” Captain Jack was discovered to have a Keeper in “Racing Mars.” Delenn broke the Grey Council in “Severed Dreams.”
This is the first appearance of the Drakh, who are responsible for the Keepers seen in “War Without End Part 2,” “Epiphanies,” and “Racing Mars,” though that connection has yet to be established.
Cole’s prior home of the Arisia colony is likely a reference to ancient alien race from the Lensman novels by E.E. “Doc” Smith. Pretty much every space opera ever written and/or performed since the early twentieth century owes a debt to Lensman.
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“Tell me, is this how you treat all your former lovers?”
“As a matter of fact, yes!”
—Phillipe’s question to Number One after she tears him a new asshole, an exchange that bodes ill for Franklin…
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Touch that button and pray very very fast.” The theme of this episode is “unintended consequences,” especially for Delenn. Everything that’s happening on Minbar and everything that happened to her with the Drakh was a direct result of two things Delenn did: break the Grey Council and win the Shadow War.
The latter was pretty much unavoidable, and the alternative would’ve been way worse, but the former, truly, was hilariously irresponsible. You don’t remove the ruling council of an interstellar nation and then just leave and not replace it with anything. The surprise isn’t that Minbar is devolving into civil war, the surprise is that it took this long.
And honestly, the more I think about it, the worse Delenn looks. Indeed, this is the third time in the last four episodes where Delenn has been seen to spectacularly screw up. There was her and Sheridan’s disastrous interview in “The Illusion of Truth,” in which she and the captain gave ISN tremendous ammo for their propaganda war with their irresponsible method of conveying their points (and agreeing to be interviewed together for a network that is stoking fear of aliens). Then we found out in “Atonement” that she played a very large role in starting the Earth-Minbari War. And now this. Nature abhors a vacuum, and something was going to fill the gap left by the Grey Council going poof, and the Warrior Caste—many of whom were already pissed about the surrender to Earth—were pretty easy to predict as the ones who would be most aggressive about it.
The other unintended consequence Delenn deals with is the Drakh, which you can’t blame her for, though it does shine a different light on the Shadows’ capitulation in “Into the Fire.” You have to wonder if they were playing a long game here, figuring that they couldn’t stand against all those First Ones, but if they left the Drakh and the others behind, they’d finish their work…
The actual contact with the Drakh is very well handled. Lennier realizing that the Drakh are communicating in Minbari rather than translated Interlac, meaning that they’ve had contact with a Minbari before. Both Lennier and Delenn instantly realizing what the Drakh homeworld that they lost was, but not saying anything in front of the emissary. Delenn and Lennier working out a strategy to get out before the Drakh take their revenge. It’s all expertly written and beautifully acted by Mira Furlan and Bill Mumy. Credit also to G.W. Stevens, who is just right as the naïve Religious Caste member who falls for the Drakh’s ploy.
The stuff on Mars is fine. We see that Number One is a force to be reckoned with, with Marjorie Monaghan doing superlative work. We see that Sheridan is still high-handed and arrogant even by proxy, as Franklin’s message from him is way more like barking orders than trying to forge an alliance. And the Franklin-Cole double act remains a delight.
Next week: “Conflicts of Interest”
Forell’s description of what’s going on on Minbar is pretty clearly drawn from the dissolution of Yugoslavia, which had to resonate emotionally with Mira Furlan, but also be very difficult for her. At the point this was filmed, I think she was still facing a lot of hostility in Croatia for being married to a Serb and still seeing value in the old union. JMS has or had a habit of using bits of his actors’ personal lives in his writing and sometimes hits a little too close to home.
In Delenn’s defense, the Gray Council was already broken when the Religious Caste took a dominant position by replacing Delenn with one of their own. She just made it official and pulled the Religious out of governance completely. Sure, she should have tried to establish something new, but she was rather distracted at the time. The Warriors would undoubtedly have told her to go pound flarn anyway and strong-armed the Workers into following them in maintaining the Council, but all she really did was accelerate their plans.
Delenn breaks the Council because it was a part of prophecy, though whether that means you should blame Valen or the bootstrap paradox or Delenn herself is an open question.
She’s certainly guilty of neglecting her own people in the aftermath of the Shadow War, but it’s both believable and understandable that she did, and she surely isn’t responsible for no other Minbari stepping forward. While it’s purely suggestive, the Warrior leadership may ironically have been Shadow-influenced themselves (between the assassination attempt on Kosh and sheltering Deathwalker), making the Drahk’s “we can help you with your little problem” offer fit perfectly into a pattern.
If JMS was planning to make us worry that Sheridan and Delenn might have ended up in a somewhat darker or more power-mad spot, this episode shows that Firlan can deliver that more convincingly than Boxleitner, whose “manic Sheridan” energy is charming and downright cute as opposed to the 100% “don’t mess with Delenn” energy Firlan projects. As with Lorien (and Byron later), the show has trouble when it tries to make us uneasy about characters we’re supposed to be more suspicious of than we are. Maybe the problem was casting Jeffrey Combs too early (not that he’d have been available).
“Sheridan is still high-handed and arrogant even by proxy, as Franklin’s message from him is way more like barking orders”
This is (another) example of Franklin’s tin-ear lack of sympathy–as he’s written, anyway. If Franklin is canny enough to do some carrot-stick improv by promising Mars independence, then he should also be aware enough not to start by issuing orders. Read the room, maybe?
When Captain Jack was taking our dynamic duo to the secret rebel base, they were surprised that even Jack replied to their story with, “What war?”
So it couldn’t be more clear that the freedom fighters were going to be absorbed with their own issues, likely unaware of the larger conflict, and Franklin’s/Sheridan’s orders would obviously go over like a lead balloon.
Heck, didn’t Franklin himself spend the first half of his life resenting being bossed around by General Dad?
How many of us grow up resenting a parent only to turn into them in later life?
Unfortunate choice of words – When I wrote “Franklin’s tin-ear lack of sympathy” I didn’t remember that actor Biggs had a pretty serious hearing impairment. I wasn’t trying to be snarky or disrespectful of that.
I often wonder if the intent was to show how Delenn was so dependent on prophecy to make the really big decisions. And in some respects, she was even reliant on Kosh to assure her of the rightness of her actions. She might call it the “calling of her heart”, or something like that, but it reminds me that she has a zealotry streak that has been called out more than once. All of which is to say, it makes a certain sense that she would see herself as the right person to break the Grey Council, because it was “foretold”, but she had no idea what was supposed to happen next. And it never occurred to her, without something to prompt her, that maybe she should do something about it herself.
I like the way that the Drakh are spreading their influence into the spaces once controlled by their masters. Messing with the Centauri leadership, undermining the resistance to Clark, capitalizing on the divisions within Minbari society, it sets them up as a credible threat. Perhaps the appearance of their emissary was a little too sinister for seeming like a helpful ally, but that could be a little human bias on my part.
I hadn’t connected Franklin’s high-handed attitude during the meeting as a reflection of Sheridan’s arrogance, but it’s a good point. Sheridan is a bit more cocky since his return, something I’m noticing more in this rewatch. It’s not a massive shift from his previous personality, but it is enough that I can understand those who think Garibaldi has a point about his messianic attitude.
I think the high-handedness in Franklin’s speech came more from Richard Biggs’s bossy, hostile delivery than from the message itself. The text of what Franklin said is pretty conciliatory:
“Captain Sheridan has asked me to convey several messages. First, to express the outrage we all feel about how Mars has been treated.
It was Clark’s decision to bomb civilian targets that prompted our decision to secede from the Alliance…. [T]he captain is willing
to set aside all differences and focus on what needs to be done now. Right now you need all the allies you can get. He wants you to know that we have not forgotten Mars or Proxima 3. We are putting together a coalition that will move against Clark at the appropriate time, and he wants your support.”
After that, he does start laying down some ground rules about what’s expected of them, but those first few sentences, on paper, are all about showing sympathy and building a connection, winning the listeners over so they’ll be receptive to what comes next. But Biggs delivered the whole speech in this harsh, imperious, scolding tone that ruined the effect and made it totally implausible that he won them over. I suppose that’s as much on the director as on Biggs, but Stephen Franklin as played by Biggs was totally the wrong character for the job of winning a hostile audience’s sympathy and trust.
Speaking of problems with dialogue, I couldn’t make out a word of what the Drakh’s translator was saying aside from a single “Yes.” I had to look up its lines afterward on the online closed-caption transcript site (which is also where I got the speech excerpt). It kind of defeats the purpose of a translator if its voice is so affectedly whispery that you can’t understand it anyway.
Mira Furlan is always great as Delenn, but I keep getting distracted by the weird way her makeup is done at the points where the bone piece attaches to her temples. Her flesh-colored makeup extends about an inch over the bone appliance, and I’m not sure whether those are supposed to be strips of flesh coating the forward edge of the bone or if Delenn just has trouble painting inside the lines when she applies her foundation in the mornings. It just calls attention to the fact that it’s a makeup prosthetic rather than an organic body part.
Franklin’s arrogant approach, here and in other places, strikes me as pretty realistic. He has the arrogance of someone who is used to being the smartest person in the room, and used to having the authority of a doctor in a hierarchical military system. He tells people what to do, and they do it; he doesn’t generally have persuade people. That arrogance fits with his stim addiction. He was convinced that he was the only one who could do everything, and that he was going to be able to handle self-medicating, neither of which were actually true. Also the thing with the alien child whose parents refused treatment; he was blinkered by his belief that he was right and therefore justified, and made things worse as a result.
A career in academia has exposed me to a lot of very bright, very competent people who believe that because they are objectively right, they don’t need things like diplomacy and tact.
Sure, it’s realistic that Franklin is arrogant. That was never the issue. What’s not realistic is that his arrogance convinces the Martians to play along rather than alienating them further. They came into this resenting B5 for wanting to boss them around, and Franklin bosses them around more and it changes their minds? How does that make sense? It’s not Franklin who’s unrealistically written, it’s the Martians.
For me, the big problem with Franklin’s speech is that he acts like he’s negotiating from a position of strength but he doesn’t seem to have anything to offer. He doesn’t mention the fleet or any material support for the resistance at all. There isn’t any reason for the local leaders to to take him at all seriously.
It is perhaps an unfair comparison, but Andor season 2 dealt with this scenario with a lot more sophistication. (Unfair both because it’s 30 years later, and because this is a much larger part of the story in Andor than it was in B5, so of course it will be given more attention.)
I’ve said this before, but I see this as part of JMS’ outcome-driven approach to plotting. He needs the resistance to agree to support B5, so they do. He puts less thought into how or why it makes sense for them to do so.
The other factor was JMS having to wrap up his story lines in season 4 instead of letting them breathe and then finish in season 5. Losing that season made him compress everything, so nuances as to the rebellion, retaking earth the Minbari Civil War all got lost. I really wish we could have had a guaranteed 5th season, so the story could have played out the way JMS wanted.
Well, “the way JMS wanted” is a bit of an overstatement, since he’d already changed his plans extensively due to the numerous cast changes after the pilot and during the first two seasons, and just due to refining his plan as he went. That kind of change had been part of the creative process all along, and that’s pretty normal in writing a long-form work, even one whose general shape is worked out in advance.
I admit to being a bit fascinated with the process of revision that had to take place. Much as I always find the tidbits about the decisions and changes that came with MOH’s departure to be interesting.
So far as I’ve seen, when discussing the changes to the plans for the fourth season, the Mars subplot wasn’t one of the areas he cited as being directly affected. BUT…the impending Minbari storyline in the next few episodes *is* something that apparently was shortened/simplified, and the Mars subplot takes place in roughly the same timeframe, so it may have been indirectly affected. Even having another episode worth of time to let things breathe might have helped in this case.
Regardless, I fully agree that I wish circumstances had allowed the fourth and fifth seasons to unfold as planned.
I read somewhere, and I don’t know if it was JMS or just talk, that if things had gone to plan the season 4 finale would have ended with Earthforce capturing Sheridan. That would have meant that the end of the rebellions against Earth would have played out in season 5 and that would have given the Mars Rebellion more time, if JMS had wanted to. I don’t know how much of what we got in season 5 would have still been in season 5, but I’m guessing the Fall of Centauri Prime arc would have been there. The Telepaths issue is less certain. It always felt tacked on to me, but who knows. Also Claudia would have still been on contract, so whatever happened things would have played out differently.
Yes, JMS has claimed (going back to when the fourth/fifth season was airing, in fact) that the fourth season would have originally ended with “Intersections in Real TIme”. So according to his explanations, he moved 3-4 episodes forward to the end of the fourth season so the Earth civil war and such could resolve. (I’m reading JMS’ commentary for each episode from the script books as we go here, so I imagine there is more detail that will be worth discussing as we approach that material.)
As far as the fifth season goes, JMS maintains that the bulk of what we saw was what he intended for that season, just stretched out a bit (particularly the telepath crisis) and revised to account for the cast changes. And of course, as Christopher points out, there were also some changes made to account for the plans for Crusade.
And damn, is there a lot of controversy, to this day, regarding the whole Claudia situation.
I read somewhere that for season 5, JMS moved forward some of his plans for Crusade storylines, which I think included the telepath conflict.
Yes — “acts like” is the problem. The situation called for gentle persuasion and building trust, but he was bossing them around like they were his interns. When trying to win people over, how you say it often matters more than what you say.
Story-wise, the episode is kinda OK, but everything else makes it fall apart. for one, i totally agree with @@@@@ChristopherLBennett – i didn’t believe for a single second that that speech on Mars would convince ANYONE to help Babylon 5. And i laughed loudly when the Drakh emissary appeared – a guy wearing a stupid mask, out of focus and with motion blur…i don’t have high expectations for B5’s visual effects, but this was just beyond ridiculous. It was also not super clear that if first they had to jump away from the Drakh fleet, how could they just turn back and destroy them with no difficulties.
Sheridan waking up Ivanova with his HIGHLY BRILLIANT MASTERPLAN of doing antipropaganda propaganda – well, that was unprofessional, disrespectful, unnecessary as there was no urgency and last, but not least, it wasn’t even an original/interesting/great idea.
The overall story arc is pretty good, but the execution feels more and more like as if an amateur theatre group was putting it together in their high school…Feels like the exact opposite of mainstream movies these days, where visuals and acting, music etc are all great, just they forget to write a good story for it…
The White Stars are medium-sized but heavily armed and extremely maneuverable ships. They win fights by dodging incoming fire while pouring shots on enemies from their fore-mounted weapons. The Drahk have a huge sluggish main ship and some smaller but less maneuverable smaller ships.
And they are all parked, at zero relative velocity and very close range. The White Stars need to put on speed to maneuver and that requires time to do. So they skindance to get up to speed, dodge attacks, and jump out.
When they jump back on, they are at their desired speed and range and have a tactical advantage.
As JMS explained it: “[T]hey were at that time *surrounded* and if they turned to fire, would get destroyed. Firepower doesn’t solve every problem; one good hand-held Lancet missile can put down a full-sized cruiser if it hits right. They were in the MIDDLE of the Drakh, just as they said, and that’s NOT a defensible position. They had to get away, outside that group, so they could mount an offensive. This they did.”
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/guide/077.html#JS
I had two sorta minor issues with this episode.
The first is that, when discussing how they might be able to get their message back to Earth, neither Sheridan nor Ivanova mentioned using Draal and the Great Machine to boost the broadcasts, which seems like the obvious way around signal jamming.
The second issue was the Drakh ships looked way too similar to Vorlon designs, from the coloration (especially the yellow) to the backwards tentacles.
Regarding your first point, wait a week. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I have to admit, I’m having a hard time mustering up the effort to care about the refugees of Z’ha’dum. They’re just not very interesting, at least compared to Morden and the Shadows. Since we’ll obviously be seeing a lot more of them, I hope we get a better idea of who they actually are beyond the Shadows’ villainous dregs.
“Villainous dregs” thank you! I love it.
This episode has one of my favorite Ivanova moments:
Sheridan: You have a face people trust.
Ivanova: I’d rather have a face people fear.
” if they left the Drakh and the others behind, they’d finish their work…”
To be fair, you could argue that the Vorlons did the same, leaving the Minbari and B5 behind…
I think the Drakh are hewing somewhat closer to the agenda of the Shadows than the Minbari/B5 alliance is to the agenda of the Vorlons.
Tangentially, in the macro scale, one could also argue that the Shadows effectively won the war on the basis that everybody has repudiated the Vorlons and their philosophy once it was actually revealed for what it was, but the Shadows still have lots of people who pretty much buy into their ideals.
That Phillipe line is one of the clumsiest bits of dialogue exposition the show’s ever done. Who would ever talk about their sex life in the middle of a hotel bombing discussion? And former lovers sounds a bit too formal given we’re talking about people with no money who live in caves and make bombs for a living.
“Lines of Communication” – as good as the individual scenes and set pieces are – feels a bit odd and clunky at times. We’ve been given no lead-up to the Minbari storyline. Just a few episodes ago, “Atonement” gave little to no indication there was even a Minbari civil war brewing. This is something that should have been seeded in bits and pieces earlier in the season – possibly even last season. As it is, we get a very blunt introduction to the entire story through the Drakh plot. And if I were to guess, that was another casualty of compressing that amount of plot into season 4. The size of the recap above kinda tells us as much. The episode is both very transitional and packed with more plots than it can bear. Not surprisingly, the Voice of the Resistance C story feels underdeveloped.
At least using the Drakh as the springboard is clever, and we finally get some visual representation to go along with them. And it gives us a thrilling and memorable action set piece bookended by Delenn’s iconic line: “End this“.
I feel the Mars stuff plays better in retrospect (minus that Phillipe line). It’s a natural next step in the Franklin/Marcus mission and using Sheridan’s name and authority as a bluff pays off nicely, even if Biggs doesn’t quite sell it. It’s hard when the least memorable actor/character has to sell the voice and pleas of the best acted character in the show.
“the best acted character in the show.”
Do you mean Sheridan? I’ve always enjoyed Boxleitner’s work, but I wouldn’t say he’s a better actor than Furlan, Katsulas, or Jurasik.
Sorry, I meant best acted human character. And yes, Sheridan.
Even Boxleitner isn’t on the level of Katsulas and Jurasik.