sabotabby | B5, S02E04-6

Wait, J. Michael Straczynski is writing some of the Watchmen prequels? What? Okay, nerd pride be damned, I am going to read the shit out of those.

A Distant Star: Hey, Earth Alliance, your ship naming practices suck. First there was the Icarus (why not call it the Big Fucking Explosion) two episodes ago; this episode has an explorer ship named the Cortez. What do they call their warships, the EAS Hitler?

Rant over. Anyway, the EAS Pol Pot shows up at B5, captained by Sheridan’s former commanding officer, to refuel. Captain Maynard calls Sheridan’s posting into question, suggesting that he was meant to command starships and explore space, not run a floating United Nations. Sheridan reacts by acting like an asshole to everyone.

Meanwhile, Doctor Boring has put everyone on a diet. I guess that kind of plot was funny in the 90s. What I actually find funny is that he prints out lists of forbidden and recommended foods. Like, prints them out on paper. Heh.

The Minbari are not best pleased with Butterfly!Delenn. I’m not either; her hair is looking less stupid, but now she’s decided to dress like a Victorian schoolmarm, and not in a cool steampunk kind of way. Later she’s dressed like a Disney princess. Why, Delenn, why?

New Guy Keffer finally gets a storyline! The EAS Ida Amin gets lost in hyperspace, and the Starfury fighters have to rescue it, even though a ship has never been rescued from hyperspace. They succeed, but at the cost of the Zeta Squadron commander, who gets blown up by a Shadow ship. Keffer looks to be doomed as well, but obviously not as he appears in the opening credits, and he uses the Shadow ship to navigate his way out of hyperspace, reappearing triumphantly to be the new Zeta Squadron commander. Cool, now I know who he is!

I also now know what bagna càuda is, thanks a lot show now I’m going to have to make that, minus the anchovies.

The Long Dark: Creepy! A cryogenic ship from about a hundred years ago shows up on B5. One occupant, Mariah, is still alive (and pretty); her husband is looking pretty much like a taxidermied version of the Cryptkeeper. Meanwhile, a Lurker named Amis is ranting about Judgment Day and annoying everyone (and how amused am I at the idea of a missionary license).

It turns out that Amis is a decorated war veteran whose entire outpost was massacred—not by the Minbari, but by some evil thing that may have also been aboard the ship and responsible for Mariah’s husband’s death as well as a subsequent killing on B5. Mariah looks suspicious; she’s the only other person in a locked-room mystery, and she gets friendly with Doctor Boring really quickly. The non-aligned aliens want her off the station ASAP; Londo thinks it’s stupid, G’Kar is like, “I TOLD YOU THERE WAS AN ANCIENT CREEPY THING.”

The thing’s M.O. is particularly neat, BTW. It somehow removes its victims’ internal organs. Amis claims that, after killing everyone at his outpost, the thing took “something” away from him, and by the time he was rescued, he weighed only 85 pounds (what, they still use imperial measurements in the future?). By the way, this particular actor really sells it; he should have been a regular. Garibaldi, who is the one person who believes his story, is also pretty engaging in this one.

Disappointingly, Mariah is not the ancient creepy thing, and also the ancient creepy thing is vulnerable to really big guns. It’s kind of anticlimactic. Then Mariah, who was into this sudden romance with Doctor Boring, suddenly changes her mind and just leaves. It seems to me that their entire interaction was weird and tacked-on—from her perspective, she said goodnight to her husband a few days ago, and now she’s macking on Doctor Boring (who has the worst bedside manner, by the way; why does he stroke everyone’s hair?). What is it that she plans to do? Is she just going to get a job somewhere? Where is she going to live? Is there a resettlement agency for people from the past like in Transmetropolitan?

Anyway, this episode makes up for its flaws by being chilling. The predictable twist at the end is that G’Kar actually is right, and this particular thing was being called to Z'ha'dum (the planet where the Shadows are reportedly gathering their forces) and would have gone there if B5 hadn’t intercepted it.

Why is G’Kar reading a book out of paper? People barely do that now. Oh, 90s.

A Spider In the Web is chock-full of so much shit that I find cool it’s not even funny. First, it involves the Mars rebellion. Second, San Diego is a post-apocalyptic wasteland (I have been to San Diego and found it a really lovely city, but I love love love that our first glimpse of Earth is the bit that’s demolished). Third, there is a cyborg zombie. Fourth, Sheridan is revealed to be a conspiracy nut.

So basically I enjoyed this one a great deal. Talia’s friend and client, Taro Isogi, arrives on B5 to conduct business negotiations with Amanda Carter (great-granddaughter of John Carter of Mars), a representative of the Mars provisional government. Who is also a former member of Free Mars. More of her, please? Isogi has a plan to achieve Martian independence through a partnership with his company, which everyone—except Earth Alliance, that is—thinks is kind of crazy awesome. Earth Alliance thinks that Isogi is just trying to fund another rebellion, and asks Sheridan to spy on the negotiations. Sheridan, bless his soul, tells Earth Alliance where to shove it.

Alas, before negotiations can get very far, a Sting/Bowie cyberpunk with a facial tic murders Isogi with Force lightning, inexplicably leaving Talia as the only witness. Said dude is getting his orders from an unseen woman in the San Diego wastelands. He turns out to be Abel Horn, a Free Mars terrorist responsible for blowing up some of Sheridan’s friends. Except that Horn is dead. When Talia—who manages to escape him a second time—scans him, all she sees is a ship blowing up.

Sheridan figures out, way too quickly, that Horn was a victim of Earth Alliance’s Project Lazarus, which took dying people and hardwired their brains with computers. And then—because this show is clearly written by a gleeful sadist—got telepaths to focus their brains on an endless loop replaying the moments of their deaths. So cool! I mean, it’s gruesome, but very creative. Talia manages to fuck up this programming with her psychic ability, leading Horn to remember who he was before Earth Alliance killed him and started dicking with his brain.

Also, Garibaldi actually uses the phrase “cyberzombies” because LOL 90s.

Anyway, Horn commits suicide-by-cop and then blows up. Sheridan is in the position of being able to expose Carter’s past with Free Mars, but doesn’t because he wants to see Isogi’s plan happen, and also because he’s not an asshole. Talia gets one last scan of Horn’s memories and finds a woman (the same woman who is talking to someone named “Control” from San Diego) who looks very PsyCorpsish, kind of like an evil Agent Scully, but elects not to share this information. Anyway, she’s dead, according to records, which we know by now are totally accurate.

At the end, Sheridan confesses to Garibaldi that the reason he was able to find out about Project Lazarus so quickly is that he’s really, really into conspiracies. Particularly black ops inside Earth Alliance. YES LET’S HAVE EARTH ALLIANCE CONSPIRACIES OH YES CAN WE?

Another thing I liked about this and other episodes is the sheer glee when people are talking about first contact. Unless they come up later, Sheridan’s long discussion with Ivanova about an alien delegation that we never see on screen is completely irrelevant to the plot, but is absolutely wonderful. I love that the most exciting thing that can and does happen is friendly first contact.

Speaking of Watchmen, Talia's yellow and black outfit is a bit Silk Spectre, y/y? Obviously way more practical.

I started to watch the next episode but fell asleep. Which is unfortunate, as it involved a creepy telepath and Londo’s wives.