“Racing Mars”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Jesus Treviño
Season 4, Episode 10
Production episode 410
Original air date: April 21, 1997
It was the dawn of the third age… Ivanova meets with Sheridan to discuss their supply issues. With EarthGov’s quarantine in effect, and the punishment for violating it by any human being brutal, even black market sources are steering clear. Ivanova says she’s already working on a solution, which she’s been doing on her own to give Sheridan deniability. She then relieves Sheridan of command on medical grounds, as he hasn’t taken any personal time in nine months, during which he’s died, been resurrected, and fought a war, and maybe he should take a break before the inevitable showdown with Earth.
Franklin and Cole are in the cargo hold of a a liner heading toward Mars, with Cole making Franklin batshit with his game of “I Spy.” Cole then discovers someone sneaking about. He calls himself Captain Jack, and he claims to be the brother of the ship’s captain, who lets him hitch a ride periodically. He also offers superior food to their meal-bar rations: Insta-Heats, which actually taste and smell good. Cole insists they not only not take them, but keep their distance from Captain Jack, as they’re to make no contact with anyone until they meet their Mars Resistance liaison. Eventually, however, Jack reveals that he’s the liaison, uttering the appropriate code phrase. He didn’t identify himself right away out of a sense of caution. He gives them the identicards they’ll need on Mars—they’re for a couple, Jim Fennerman and Daniel Lane.
Sheridan tries to relax by watching TV, but all the Earth channels have been blacked out except for ISN. He puts that on, only to see a rerun of Dan Randall’s hit piece. After watching Garibaldi’s evisceration of Sheridan, the captain decides to confront his erstwhile chief of security. Garibaldi makes no apology for his words—and isn’t freedom of speech what they were supposed to be fighting for? Sheridan counters that they’re having enough trouble with Clark’s propaganda war without Garibaldi giving him ammunition for his side.
Their discussion gets very heated, with both sides yelling, and Sheridan making it clear that he won’t tolerate Garibaldi endangering the station.
Some very skeevy-looking guys observe this, led by a guy named Wade. Later they approach Garibaldi with an offer to help deal with Sheridan, though they frame it as “helping” the captain.
Captain Jack takes Cole and Franklin on a tube across Mars. Jack says they’ve heard all kinds of outlandish stories about B5, including that they’d abandoned Mars. Franklin assures them that they haven’t abandoned them, they’ve just been busy fighting a war—Jack has no idea what he’s talking about. He’d heard rumors about a war, but nothing he really believed. Cole is rather annoyed to learn that he’s finally a war hero and nobody seems to know about it…
Ivanova meets with four smugglers, who haven’t been operating much around B5 lately. They explain that EarthGov’s penalties for doing business anywhere near B5 are too harsh to risk. Plus, Nightwatch has made gun-running damn near impossible. Ivanova offers them a deal: bring legit supplies—food, medicine, and so on—to B5 and they’ll have the protection of B5’s starfuries when they’re in the general vicinity and have full access to B5’s repair facilities for their ships.
Captain Jack leads Cole and Franklin down some underground corridors belonging to abandoned mines. They’re met at gunpoint by members of the Mars Resistance, led by someone identified only as “Number Two.” The communiqué from B5 was fragmentary, and they also have news of a hit squad coming for them, so they’re playing everything safe. They ask for Cole and Franklin’s real identicards, and they’ll verify those against their DNA profile to make sure they’re really Marcus Cole and Stephen Franklin. While they wait, Captain Jack shows Franklin a picture of his daughter, complete with her address on the back of it, which he says is there because he sometimes forgets it. He also insists on keeping his coat on, despite how hot it is in the tunnels.
Delenn approaches Sheridan in the Zen garden, where he’s stewing about the confrontation with Garibaldi. To his horror, she has yet another Minbari ritual that prospective couples must undergo, though he relents when he finds out that it’s to spend a night discovering each others’ pleasures. Wah-hey!
Number Two returns along with Number One: the identicards show that they aren’t Cole and Franklin. However, before anything else can happen, Captain Jack shakily raises a PPG and aims it at Number One. Franklin tackles her to the ground, which saves her life, while Cole manages to shoot Jack in the shoulder, which knocks an alien creature off it.
Jack runs away, dropping the real identicards on the ground. The resistance folks capture the alien, which is now dead, and Franklin examines it. It’s a parasite, with fibres that wrap around the nervous system. Jack probably was being controlled. In retrospect, he dropped hints that something was odd, and also provided a method of notifying his next of kin with the picture of his daughter.
Number One tries contacting him via his comm headset, which he still has. He’s in a tube, and he’s stolen a grenade. Number One tries to convince him that it’s over, the alien parasite is dead, but Jack says that it’ll just grow back. So he blows himself up with a grenade.
Sheridan tries to mend fences with Garibaldi, and the talk is almost reasonable until an alien woman practically genuflects before Sheridan. Garibaldi loses his temper, violently grabbing the woman and saying he’s not a messiah or a religious figure, he’s just a person. Sheridan urges Garibaldi to let go of her, as he’s hurting her. Garibaldi asks if Sheridan likes this adulation, oblivious to the physical harm he’s causing. Sheridan puts a hand on Garibaldi’s shoulder to get him to leave her alone, and Garibaldi decks him.
Sheridan calls off security, which is more than happy to arrest their former boss for assaulting their current CO, but Sheridan says this one’s free. Next time, he’ll knock Garibaldi’s block off. After Sheridan walks off, Garibaldi is visibly pissed at himself.
Sheridan goes to Delenn’s quarters for the pleasure ritual, only to be rather appalled to find a crowded room. There are a mess of Minbari—including Lennier—present as witnesses, apparently. Delenn drags a reluctant Sheridan into the bedroom.
Number One tells Cole and Franklin that the resistance leaders are all going to gather, but it’ll take a couple of days. In the meantime, they’ve made a reservation at the Red Planet Hotel in the names of their assumed identities: it’s the honeymoon suite.
Garibaldi meets with Wade, saying he’s in, that Sheridan has gotten out of control. But he won’t hurt him. Wade assures with a hilarious lack of conviction that they just want to help Sheridan, no really, honest.
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan spends his enforced vacation trying really hard to make nice with Garibaldi, also trying really hard to deal with having his sexual preferences displayed for many Minbari to see. He doesn’t do so great with either…
Ivanova is God. Ivanova pitch to the smugglers is a clever mix of enticing—protection and repairs—and enlightened self-interest—they’d only be smuggling nice things—and also threats—she makes it clear that their ships will need those free repairs if they step out of line. Her pitch is sufficiently successful that one of the smugglers propositions her.
The household god of frustration. It’s obvious that Garibaldi is being manipulated in some way. His body language and facial expressions make it clear that his initial response in the immediate aftermath of his second confrontation with Sheridan is regret and self-directed anger at how badly he’s screwed up. But the next time we see him, he’s telling Wade how dangerous Sheridan is, which is a completely different response, and at odds with reality.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Minbari really do have a ritual for every damn thing…
We live for the one, we die for the one. Cole gets to show off his badassery twice, once when he finds and captures Captain Jack in the cargo hold, and again when he takes out his guard before shooting the Keeper off Jack’s shoulder.
The Shadowy Vorlons. We see another Keeper like the one that attached itself to the Centauri Regent (and Mollari in the future) on Captain Jack, and it’s apparently trying to break the Mars Resistance. This is in keeping with the Shadows’ allies still trying to help Clark out.
No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. The morning after the pleasure ritual, Lennier and Sheridan encounter each other in a transport tube. Lennier looks at Sheridan questioningly and asks, “‘Woo-hoo!’?” Sheridan just looks embarrassed.
Also there’s some very obvious chemistry between Franklin and Number One…
Welcome aboard. Donovan Scott plays Captain Jack, while Clayton Landey plays Number Two and Geoff Meed and Brian Tahash play the two smugglers with speaking parts. Carrie Dobro—who will later star in A Call to Arms and Crusade as Dureena Nafeel—appears as the Brakiri woman. Enough archive footage from “The Illusion of Truth” is used to give Jeff Griggs another guest star credit as Randall.
We also get two new recurring characters. Marjorie Monaghan debuts the role of Number One, while Mark Schneider kicks off the role of Wade. Monaghan will return next time in “Lines of Communications,” while Schneider will be back in “Conflicts of Interest.”
Trivial matters. This is the third time we’ve seen a Keeper, following the one on Mollari in the future of “War Without End, Part 2” and the one on the Regent at the end of “Epiphanies.”
At one point, Ivanova and the smugglers mention that one of them smuggled in a compound that made Garibaldi bald, providing a plot reason—beyond, “he’s going balder by the nanosecond,” anyhow—why Jerry Doyle started just shaving his head.
Garibaldi refers to the pope with a feminine pronoun, a bit that, according to J. Michael Straczynski, resulted in many angry responses from Catholics all over the world. A Pope Bernadette II will be referenced in an episode of Crusade.
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“Just my luck—first time in my life I’m a war hero, and nobody knows about it! And worst of all, I’m married to you!”
“Well, that’s not my idea.”
“Oh, you say that now—tell that to your mother. She never stopped calling us about it. ‘So, when’s the big day? I’ve got to pick out patterns. Your father isn’t going to live forever!’ And on and on and on and on.”
—Cole taking the piss out of Franklin.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “And that’s when I killed him, your honor.” I have not been kind to the late Richard Biggs in this rewatch. I have come through this not liking Biggs’ acting much, and especially not liking the character of Franklin. But I recall having fond memories of the Mars Resistance subplot, and while a lot of that is due to my abject love of Marjorie Monaghan, this episode reminded me that a big part of it was the easy chemistry between Biggs and Jason Carter. This chemistry extended to real life, as the pair were close friends all the way to Biggs’ tragic death. And that really helps sell the Mars part of the episode.
Which is good, as that part of the plot has two major casting issues—which, luckily, won’t affect the future of the storyline, as this is the only appearance by each. Clayton Landey mistakes snarling for acting in his role as Number Two, and Donovan Scott and his hilariously wandering accent is just a little too precious as Captain Jack. He definitely ranks way behind Sparrow, Harkness, and the guy in the Billy Joel song when it comes to fictional Captain Jacks…
I find myself wondering what the plan was for Garibaldi’s betrayal before Michael O’Hare had to leave the show. The Sinclair-Garibaldi friendship was a cornerstone of the first season—indeed, Garibaldi only had his job because the commander was his drinking buddy—and having Garibaldi betray the station would have had much more weight if it was Sinclair he was betraying. But the advantage of it being Sheridan is that the relationship between the two of them was never particularly strong. Yes, they worked together, and generally trusted each other, but the closeness that Garibaldi had with Sinclair has never been there with Sheridan. And so Garibaldi’s turning on him actually has a certain sincerity to it that it wouldn’t have had with Sinclair.
Of course, it’s a bit spoiled by the fact that we know that Garibaldi’s being controlled by something or someone. It might have been more effective if we didn’t know that about him, and thought this might be a legitimate character choice.
Especially since Garibaldi’s words do have the ring of truth. Since returning from Z’ha’dum, Sheridan has been a lot more high-handed and arrogant.
The rest of the episode generally works well. Ivanova’s solution to the supply issue is clever and well handled. Sheridan’s expression of Minbari ritual fatigue hangs a lantern on the rather ridiculous number of rituals that the Minbari seem to have for every damn thing—plus “‘Woo-hoo!’?” still makes me laugh, though that’s primarily due to Bill Mumy’s letter-perfect deadpan.
Next week: “Lines of Communication”
Nice episode-ending scene for Doyle-
Wade: “You give him to us when we tell you to. We’ll see to it he gets the help that he needs.”
Garibaldi’s no dummy-he knows he’s being lied to here.
So we watch Garibaldi (in serious close-up) reviewing, one last time, just how much he’s willing to lie to himself. Then we see him start trying to live with it.
I want to like this a bit more than I actually do. And I think Keith puts a finger on part of the problem; I just think Captain Jack is miscast. Though it is a bit difficult to tell if he’s annoying because of how he is written, how he’s portrayed, or a little from Column A and a little from Column B.
But I love the dynamics between Marcus and Stephen. I could watch this episode just for those parts. But I also appreciate a lot of the other subplots. There’s some tragedy in the fact that Sheridan and Garibaldi probably could find a way to patch things up, if someone didn’t have their finger on Garibaldi’s side of the scale.
JMS considers this one a bit of a miss in some respects, based on his comments in the script books, because it just amounts to moving pieces around on the board. But some episodes are going to be like that, and it sets up some important plot threads to come.
The Franklin and Cole Show is almost as good as the G’kar and Mollari Show. And a lot lighter.
I’m pretty sure the Captain Jack in the Billy Joel song is heroin.
That could explain things. The secret ingredient in Insta-Heats has gotten Captain Jack so high tonight that his accent can’t remember where it’s from.
Keith describes Wade and his crew as “Some very skeevy-looking guys…” My thought the first time we see them and in most of the group shots later is that they look they’re the album cover photo of an aging synth-pop band. He’s also not happy with Clayton Landey’s performance, while I kept wanting to yell at Mark Schneider to open his damn mouth when he talks.
The Franklin and Cole show is a lot of fun. The friendship between the actors was obviously a big plus, just as it was with Jurasik and Katsulas. But I found myself wondering if the whole married couple/honeymoon suite is a little problematic as a source of humor. It’s positive that neither character seems bothered by the cover story, and Marcus is clearly having fun with it, but it also feels to me like there’s a little gay panic underlying the humor.
I love Lennier’s delivery in the elevator, but… but…
i think the married couple part was quite OK, Franklin was just annoyed and Marcus was entertained by it, this felt quite believable to me, i think it was actually quite OK humor even in today’s standards.
The Mars storyline worked out well, the Minbari plot was just cringe for me, and the part about Garibaldi I found more annoying rather than interesting, even though i guess it will be important.
So I didn’t remember the last episode – but I do remember this one. Mostly for the ridiculous Minbari ritual which I did not connect until later to the “bedding” rituals of the middle ages. As a reversal of that – showing how ridiculous they were I think it works well and is something JMS should be given credit for. Also yes – Cole is a delight as always.
Also – and because I don’t know where to ask this – is it possible to see when people respond to your posts? Tried using the my posts area to do this but doesn’t work how I would like it too really. Enjoy the back and forth discussion on these episodes and don’t get to engage in it as much as I would like outside of this site.
I enjoy the Earth/Mars storyline that takes up the remainder of the season. Knowing that Garibaldi had been a prisoner of a Psi Cop, I never really felt the brunt of his betrayal here because it felt like a plot device, not so organic. Later, when he helps capture Sheridan, then I felt it more.
Of course, it’s a bit spoiled by the fact that we know that Garibaldi’s being controlled by something or someone. It might have been more effective if we didn’t know that about him, and thought this might be a legitimate character choice.
Yes, this is the biggest misstep of season 4 IMO. It would have been possible to write Garabaldi up until this point as genuinely being alienated from Sheridan for principled reasons. That’s less true for what’s to come, but I feel like if the only way to justify a season-long character arc is to say they were mind controlled, it’s a bad character arc. Captain Jack is a mini-version of the same phenomena. The guy we barely know is a traitor but, guess what, it wasn’t REALLY him the whole time. It’s hard to get engaged with.
Sheridan tries to relax by watching TV, but all the Earth channels have been blacked out except for ISN.
And what’s up with Martian spycraft? According to Jason Ironheart, one in a thousand humans is telepathic, having one telepath would have cleared up this plot instantly. But also, Franklin’s face was just on ISN and surely Earth is broadcasting its propaganda to Mars too. It should be pretty easy to do confirm he is in fact the same guy who was just on TV and presented as the chief medical officer of Babylon 5. I guess they could be paranoid enough to think that “Franklin” is an actor planted in the ISN broadcast or something, but it’s weird Franklin doesn’t mention this as a quick & dirty form of verification.
And how do you know the telepath offering to work with you isn’t a Psi Corps spy? Get that one wrong once and you won’t get a second chance. Ironically, the success of the Underground Railroad and the recruitment of renegade human telepaths for the Shadow War likely dried up the supply of available “blips” the Mars Resistance would be willing to trust.
I hadn’t thought of the Shadow War draining the blip supply, but to the extent a telepath is available they kind of have to take that chance. If Earth has telepaths on their side and Mars doesn’t, then the resistance is truly doomed and they might as well close shop now. The fear of telepaths in the Bab5 universe is well-founded, because having them when the enemy doesn’t is an overwhelming strategic advantage.
Isn’t it a given that a resistance movement lacks the power and resources of the state it’s resisting? The entire philosophy of guerrilla warfare is about finding ways to hurt an enemy you could never beat in a head-on fight. You use subtler tactics, strike from hiding, nibble away at the edges, win the hearts and minds of the public so they’ll support you over the state, etc. And it’s often proved very effective.
Human telepaths are shunted into Psi Corps as soon as they’re discovered, so I doubt the Mars resistance would have an easy time finding one. Okay, there are rogue telepaths, and this is a rogue movement, but maybe that’s just it — they don’t want to bring down even more opposition by getting the Psi Cops on their case.
As for facial recognition, presumably futuristic cosmetic surgery is perfect enough to render it unreliable.
First point responded to a similar comment above, but to the second point that doesn’t appear to be the case. For instance, even the paranoid Garabaldi treats a message with Sinclair’s face/voice as presumptively authentic when he receives one on a data crystal. As I noted in the thread at the time, that seems a bit strange in a universe with changeling nets and telepathy, but the precedent has been set. Franklin should have at least tried. Come to think of it, Franklin was also on the first journo piece made in season 2 and there’s no way Earth was faking his presence all the way back then.
Garibaldi knows because the password to the message is one known and significant to him and to Sinclair but nobody else. That’s indicated as well by Garibaldi trying “fasten-zip” as the password: insurance only the right person can open the message and also an indicator about the sender being genuine.
”I can’t explain the fake identicard, but I look just like Franklin did on ISN” isn’t likely to convince paranoid and violent people even if Number Two weren’t obviously opposed to the whole “work with B5” idea. Note how he is going to kill them in less than a minute until Number One overrides him by showing up unexpectedly: he thought the whole idea was too risky from the start and is obviously trying to protect her. Jack taking a shot at her and running makes the deal actually work; it seems clear Jack does that deliberately, not as forced by the Keeper, and it doesn’t halt him because he appears on the surface to be doing what its masters want. His plan is to out himself and then die; doing it when he does is clearly intended to ensure the B5-Mars Resistance deal works out.
Yeah, Sheridan does not come off well in this episode. Given that all he knows is that Garibaldi disagrees with his leadership and said so as a private citizen, threatening to use his authority to make Garibaldi’s life difficult if he continues to publicly voice his opinion feels… well, depressingly familiar at the moment. I get that Babylon 5 is in active rebellion against Earth, but you can’t keep up the pretense that you’re preserving free speech on the station while threatening those who exercise it if you disagree with what they say. At least he had the good grace to regret the exchange after the fact. The guy obviously needed that day off.
Yeah, Garibaldi’s relationship to Sheridan is a big reason why this works so well. He’s certainly not himself, as seen by his abhorrent agression on the poor woman, but he’s not exactly wrong about Sheridan either. Even season 3 Garibaldi would have had some private doubts over Sheridan’s miraculous return. The way I see it – as evidenced by his disgust at himself followed by his inexplicable teaming up with Wade by episode’s end – is that whatever he saw on that transmission in “Epiphanies” is clearly designed to recharge his paranoia every now and then, turning him back into this version of himself.
Whatever the case, those scenes are superbly acted. Like last season’s “Interludes and Examinations”, Treviño brings out the best of Boxleitner and Doyle, especially when the script puts them on the emotional edge like this.
The Mars plot is a welcome change of pace. For four seasons, we’d seen bits and pieces of it, but throughout most of the five year arc, Mars was always relegated to the sidelines. Even the last revolt in season 1 played mainly through Garibaldi’s angst over Lise’s fate and some ISN reports, and a few Mars storylines that bled to B5 (“Spider in the Web” being the biggest one). But now we get a semi-permanent face to the Resistance. Number One is a welcome addition to the recurring cast. Tough, but fair, and who instantly clicks with Franklin and Marcus.
The Jack plot was also a clever way to break the ice between B5 and Mars by giving Franklin and Marcus their hero moment while still feeling tragic with Jack’s unfortunate suicide. And tying nicely to the Drakh and the mess they’re about to make.
“Also there’s some very obvious chemistry between Franklin and Number One…”
I would say, rather, that there’s a very obvious attempt to write Franklin and Number One as attracted to each other. I didn’t really feel any chemistry between the actors.
And I don’t feel Garibaldi’s words have the ring of truth. It seems to me like he’s straining to interpret Sheridan’s actions in the most negative way possible. He says Sheridan is making it all about himself, but that seems like a willful misinterpretation of Sheridan simply being the commanding officer and lead decision-maker. Yes, he’s making the plans and policies, but his goal is to bring down Clark and restore democracy, not to aggrandize himself.
So how do you think they did the effect of the “steam” coming out of the self-heating food pouches? It looked too dense to be steam. I’d guess it was actually dry ice vapor.
Yes, he’s making the plans and policies, but his goal is to bring down Clark and restore democracy, not to aggrandize himself.
How do you know his goal is to bring Clark down and restore democracy? Because he says so? Well, so do a lot of people who have no intention of restoring democracy. Sheridan has effectively been a military dictator since the station declared independence and outright threatens in this very episode to punish speech he doesn’t like. It’s easy for us to sympathize with Sheridan because we see everything from his perspective and Clark is an absent/mute character, but from the viewpoint of somebody living in this universe, this looks like a mere confrontation between a military dictator and a political dictator. Some Sheridan skepticism is warranted, but it’s a shame that (for now) we only get it from Zombie Garabaldi.
Okay, maybe some random civilian might think that, but my point is that Garibaldi has known Sheridan long enough that he has no valid reason to suspect that. His objections don’t have the ring of truth because I don’t believe they’re something he’d think if he hadn’t been brainwashed. They feel very forced.
Once the conditioning subplot is in-place, you either offer clues it is there or outright reveal what is going on. “This character is basically behaving normally except for a moment when he crosses the line and we learn he was programmed” is a miserable subplot to have written.
But Doyle (who I think does a good job with this story-line) has to play something. “Play Garibaldi acting this way because he’s brainwashed but also with no sign whatsoever that he’s brainwashed” is simply impossible. If there are signs, how obvious is too obvious? That’s going to vary by viewer (and director, and maybe script) but you want to play it as consistently as you can until the big reveal. I think he plays it as close to “Garibaldi would never do exactly this, but he’d normally be thinking these things and restraining himself” as possible while making it clear Garibaldi isn’t acting normally; Doyle may also feel protective of the character and not want to play the gradual betrayal line in a way unflattering to Garibaldi; compare with Mumy, who while unhappy with the end of Lennier’s story plays the whole thing as true to the character as he can without making any excuses when Lennier looks bad.
Well, yes, that’s the point. I’m responding specifically to Keith’s statement that “Garibaldi’s words do have the ring of truth.” I don’t agree that they do, because I don’t believe he’d think or say these things if he weren’t conditioned. So yes, obviously, it’s evidence that he’s conditioned. And that’s why it doesn’t have the ring of truth.
I agree about Garibaldi. I think, if we didn’t know he was being mind-controlled, his behavior throughout this episode would feel increasingly out of character. I have to give credit to Jerry Doyle, though. He’s done his best throughout this arc to sell the idea that Garibaldi at least believes what he’s saying.
I remember watching this episode when it first aired and absolutely snort-laughing when Lennier said, “Woo-hoo?”
I think it’s impressive that an American TV show from 1997 not only depicts same-sex marriage as being a thing in the future, it also treats it as no big deal. I become, in retrospect, ever more frustrated with Berman-era StarTrek.
As it happens, this episode first aired exactly one week after the release of the Time Magazine interview where Ellen De Generes came out as gay, which was a bold and controversial move at the time. So yeah, it was pushing the envelope a bit, but only a bit, since it only implied that gay marriage existed without actually featuring any gay characters in the story, so it was at a safe distance.
I have a dream. I dream that TV/movie sci-fi creators cure their addictions to body snatcher plots. They’re stupid. They’re annoying. They’re overused. They’re not sci-fi. Telepaths, creepy aliens, amok machines, someone or something is ALWAYS effortlessly taking possession and control of the characters and the ships. The Garibaldi possession is especially noxious because we get only one quick peek of Garibaldi looking at a Q-code on a screen, many episodes ago, and he is instantly under Shadows control. That scene is too brief to make it clear what happened, my first thought was Garibaldi ordered something from Amazon. If you miss that scene then you have to infer from his behavior in later episodes that he is possessed, but that does not work at all. cpmXpXCq says it best:
“It would have been possible to write Garabaldi up until this point as genuinely being alienated from Sheridan for principled reasons. That’s less true for what’s to come, but I feel like if the only way to justify a season-long character arc is to say they were mind controlled, it’s a bad character arc. Captain Jack is a mini-version of the same phenomena. The guy we barely know is a traitor but, guess what, it wasn’t REALLY him the whole time. It’s hard to get engaged with.”
There is a great big huge element to Futuristic Sci-Fi Demonic Possession that B5, and every movie and TV series that uses and abuses it, misses: the resistance of the possessed person. Not only do the alien whatevers effortlessly move in and take control, they do it so expertly nobody else notices. This is completely unrealistic. When people are physically attacked and restrained, we resist. We fight back. How much harder will we fight when it’s our minds under attack? The possessed person should be uncoordinated, arguing with themselves, and generally acting crazy.
It’s an overstatement to say that wasn’t really Captain Jack. We were seeing his real personality, and he was trying to communicate that he was being compelled to do certain things. It wasn’t another entire personality replacing his, it was more like he was being held at gunpoint and had to play along or else. Captain Jack was resisting the whole time, which is how Marcus was able to catch on to what Jack was telling him.
Really, your last paragraph makes no sense to me. I’ve seen many stories about mind control where the victims were shown to resist, often successfully. Just for one, “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II,” where Picard was able to overcome Borg control enough to say “Sleep” and give Data the key to stopping them. Or any of thousands of stories where someone is brainwashed to murder a partner or loved one but ends up overcoming the control through the power of friendship or love. There are several iterations of the RoboCop franchise (which I recently rewatched in full, so it’s fresh in my mind) where RoboCop’s human side struggles to overcome a programmed directive, including the original movie, several episodes of the live-action TV series and both animated series, the first part of the Prime Directives miniseries, and the 2014 remake. He doesn’t always succeed at overcoming the programming, but his resistance is always shown.
Also, Garibaldi wasn’t “possessed” as much as influenced to make him mistrust Sheridan. It’s still his personality, just with one part of it artificially amplified. And he isn’t under Shadow control; the Shadows are gone.
You’re confusing fiction with reality. Picard and Robocop are not real people. The whole body snatcher trope is lazy and unconvincing, and waaaaay overused. Operating a human body is extremely complex, and the concept that any rando possessor can just effortlessly move in, and be convincing, is absurd. The kinds of resistance you’re talking about are tiny and desperate, when it should be the occupier who has to struggle to take and maintain control. Especially for complex fine motor control, like talking and vision, and maintaining control 100% of the time. The person being invaded is going to react violently, not feebly. It’s in the same category of dumb overused deus ex machinae like miracle last-minute time travel, miracle last-minute defuse the bomb, miracle bizarre instant DNA transformations (STNG wins the prize for the absolute worst example of this in “Genesis”, where Troi, Riker, and other crew members “devolve” into primitive life forms. Utterly ridiculous.)
Ship’s computers are routinely hacked by random aliens, and hostile visitors routinely beam themselves aboard with no impediments, and even the bridge is helpless to lock out unauthorized visitors. The whole body snatcher/helplessness against invaders schtick only works when it happens rarely, and when there is a plausible setup.
“You’re confusing fiction with reality.”
I’m doing nothing of the sort, because I’m talking about what tropes appear in fiction. Rather, you’re holding fiction to an overly realistic standard. Yes, realistically, taking control of a body would be far more difficult than it’s portrayed in fiction. But that’s necessary dramatic license for the sake of the story, and the viewer or reader generally understands that the story is not attempting to misrepresent reality, merely to present an entertaining fiction. Whether the audience member chooses to suspend disbelief is up to them.
However, as I pointed out, nothing in this episode depicts the kind of complete takeover you’re describing, so your objection is a non sequitur here. Garibaldi’s body was not taken over by an outside consciousness; he’s still him, just brainwashed to be more paranoid. And Captain Jack’s Keeper was not speaking and acting through him; it was simply influencing him, preventing him from saying and doing certain things and pressuring him to do others. According to the B5 wiki, “the longer that [the Keeper] stayed attached to a host the more microfibers it grew and the greater its ability to control became, so its control over a given host grew.”* That would seem to resolve your objection, because it’s not an instant takeover but a gradual learning process. By the time we met Captain Jack, that process had already been going on for some time.
* https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Keeper#Biology
That is exactly what Bester tells him when the tampering of Psy Corps is revealed. Garibaldi says they MADE HIM think certain things and Bester says that all they did was ramp up his inherent paranoia. Garibald has said since season one that he is paranoid and that is one of the traits that made him a good chief of security. The ONLY actual programming Psi Corps inserted was blocking him from being able to kill Bester, because Bester knew darned well that Garibaldi would eventually figure things out and then he would be out for blood. Other than that it was all Garibaldi’s basic personality on steroids.
I think Bester’s exaggerating a little bit. Garibaldi’s resignation is a bit too prompt to be wholly his own idea. Once Garibaldi gets the natural distance caused by his abrupt resignation, he’s got all the space he needs for his boosted mistrust and paranoia to do the rest.
Weirdly, I remember the mind control being a bit of a reveal when it’s obvious this time around.
I’m glad you highlighted the easy chemistry of Richard Biggs and Jason Carter in the Mars subplot. I find that sometimes as fans we put all the blame of a role not going right all on an actor/actress and not realize that maybe the writing was the issue or the directing. As someone who saw Biggs in other roles that he was great in I knew that for the most part Franklin was not as well written as he could of been.
I agree. Franklin was written as an arrogant pushy creep, which is a shame because Richard Biggs is likable in every other role I’ve seen him in. Franklin pushes his values on the family in “Believers” and makes a giant mess of the situation, then goes full perv in “The Long Dark”. Remember when he caresses the hair of the unconscious rescued Mariah Cirrus? It’s like he has no professional or personal boundaries at all.