Babylon 5 Group Re-Watch!

[factotum]

The ''line of sight'' restriction for telepaths seems a bit odd for space. How far can a human ''see'' in space, like a couple miles sort of? Well...space is really, really, really big....

They can see further in space than they would be able to on a planet. The main thing that blocks your vision on the surface of a planet is the atmosphere, and even if that's preternaturally clear, the curvature of the surface prevents you seeing more than a certain distance. In space, neither restriction applies, so you would easily be able to see things at a good long distance--I believe a typical human eye can distinguish things at an angular resolution of about 0.02 degrees, which would correspond to an object a little over 3 feet across at the 2 mile distance you mentioned. Shadow ships are rather larger than that, needless to say! (Although there are later episodes where Minbari telepaths lying on beds inside their ships are able to take down Shadow vessels, so maybe the line of sight thing is a human limitation? Or JMS just forgot about it later on!).

Anyway, my thoughts on these episodes:

Walkabout: All the stuff with Dr Franklin and the singer is rubbish, frankly. The meat of the episode is about Lyta learning that Sheridan has a piece of the old Kosh in him (although her telling new Kosh about that doesn't seem to go anywhere that I recall), and Sheridan's attempt to take down a Shadow vessel, working on the theory that a telepath can shut them down. He's originally promised help by the Narn, but the Narn warleader aboard the ship refuses to go, which leads to one of the best parts of the episode--Garibaldi throwing G'Kar's book back at him, and saying that they shouldn't have bothered protecting the cruiser when the Centauri came for it. "In my book--and your book--that makes it your responsibility".

Out in space, Sheridan manages to track down a Shadow ship and Lyta is initially unable to stop it, until she sees Kosh's death in Sheridan's mind; then she toughens up right sharpish and disables the ship. Sheridan uses all the White Star's power to destroy the vessel, but that means its jumpdrives are offline when a second Shadow ship arrives, and Lyta is unconscious after her earlier efforts. Things are looking bad, but then the Narn cruiser jumps in and fires on the Shadow ship; Sheridan takes advantage of the distraction to turn and add his own firepower, destroying the ship. Guess Garibaldi's words got through to G'Kar!

Overall: Episode would be improved by having more or less anything other than Franklin making doe eyes at a singer on his "Walkabout" as a main plot section, but them's the breaks.

Grey 17 is Missing: OK, this is popularly known as the worst ever episode of B5, but we'll go into this with an open mind...right? Anyway, it's notable that this episode contains an instance of a non-firing Chekov's Gun--Garibaldi is seen cleaning an antique .38 revolver near the beginning of the episode, but the gun itself is never seen again. JMS admits this was a deliberate subversion of the trope.

Delenn is being asked to take over as Ranger One. She's not very happy about this, but Neroon is even less happy, believing that she's a religious zealot who created a power vacuum (by destroying the Grey Council) in order to occupy it herself. He threatens to kill her, something a Minbari has not done to another Minbari in over a thousand years. Delenn tells Lennier of the meeting but makes him promise to not tell the Captain, so he tells Marcus instead--who intercepts Neroon and challenges him to a traditional Minbari fight to the death. He loses quite badly, and Neroon says that as a human he could back away from this, but he says "We live for the One and would die for the One!". Neroon walks into Delenn's investiture ceremony and drops a bloodied staff on the floor, saying that there is blood between the humans and the Warrior Caste--they would not die for him, but he believes they *would* die for Delenn. Lennier finds Marcus and takes him to Medlab, where Neroon later arrives to speak to him. He says Marcus was willing to die for someone not of his own species, whereas Neroon himself was willing to kill his own kind; that makes Marcus a better Minbari than Neroon. Marcus says, "Next time you want a revelation, could you possibly find a way that's not quite so uncomfortable?" and Neroon laughs.

Ivanova is going to find Franklin to get the information about the telepath railroad he set up. Er, that makes no sense, because she took over that railroad some time ago? She even mocked up Sheridan as a Centauri to put on the official documents! This seems to be a pointless attempt to keep Franklin involved in things while he's continuing his walkabout.

Garibaldi is being asked to investigate the disappearance of a tech, and while looking at the site he was last seen, he has an argument with her about how many Grey levels there are--one says 29, the other says 30, a "mixup on the blueprints" due to the speed of construction of the station. Er, no, that's codswallop, you don't build a skyscraper without knowing how many floors it has. Anyway, he goes into the lift and times how long it takes to go between floors, and finds it takes twice as long to go between 16 and 17, so he stops the lift in between floors and gets out into a junk-filled level, whereupon he gets shot by a tranquilliser dart from a ventriloquist's dummy. (That scene was much scarier when they did it in "Live and Let Die", by the way ). There's a group of...let's call them absolute nutters living in here, who believe the Universe is sentient and will probably get it all right after the next big bang. They're led by Jeremiah (a criminally wasted Robert Englund). Apparently these guys have also imported a Zarg because they're one of the most perfect life-forms in the universe, but also the most dangerous--this is what killed the worker who disappeared in the first place. They defeat the beast by using the bullets from the gun earlier--Garibaldi loads them into some sort of tube and uses heat to fire them. (Would that actually work? Not too sure about the ins and outs of guns). He escapes.

Overall: I may have said earlier that this episode was the one that disproved the theory that bad B5 is always at least watchable. I think I have to revise that assessment, because the stuff with Delenn, Marcus and Neroon is excellent, totally top tier. The rest, though, is unmitigated garbage that isn't fun and makes no sense. The whole idea that they could somehow build a level into the station that nobody knows about is ridiculous to start with, and then to have this cult somehow getting in there and setting up shop? Nonsense from beginning to end.

And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place: Again, we have three sections to this episode. We have religious leaders from Earth turning up to meet Brother Theo on the station--but these are actually part of an organised resistance to Clark's rule back on Earth, bringing intelligence to the station. They also want to hold a religious ceremony on the station, which is intercut nicely with the end of...

...the Mollari plot. Londo tells Vir he intends to capture G'Kar, so he sends him to tell the Narn that they have Na'Toth (G'Kar's assistant from a while back) captive on Narn. This will cause G'Kar to go to Narn to rescue her, allowing Mollari to capture him, which will earn him kudos from the Centauri minister who's on the station to determine who's better, Refa or Mollari. Refa kidnaps Vir and mind-rips this plot from him with a telepath, so Refa decides to go to Narn and capture G'Kar himself. Turns out, however, that Londo's plan was for him to do that all along--he's promised to release 2000 imprisoned Narns in return for Refa getting killed by G'Kar, with the only proviso being that his head and face must be intact (for identification) and a data crystal must be left on the body. This data crystal shows how Refa betrayed the Centauri, thus ensuring house Mollari will come out ahead in this particular race. Vir is obviously furious that Londo lied to him, though.

The other issue is that Sheridan is burning the candle at both ends, and he shocks Delenn at one point when he says the Shadows are crowding refugees into zones where they can be killed to seriously damage the Alliance's morale, saying "It's what I'd do". Even when he says they have to think like the enemy Delenn bundles him out saying he's been working too hard. She forces him to attend the religious ceremony, and then gives him good news--the Minbari have been busy, and they now have an entire fleet of White Star class ships to bring to bear in the coming battles.

Overall: Well, anything has to be an improvement over "Grey 17", but this is a genuinely good episode. It has some emotional heft with both the Sheridan/Delenn storyline and the Refa/Mollari one, and the way Refa's terrified attempts to escape from the Narn are intercut with the hymns being sung at the ceremony on B5 is masterful work--props to the editor there!