Contents: Overview - Backplot - Questions - Analysis - Notes - JMS

Overview

Sinclair fights two turf battles at once as alien invaders claim the planet the station orbits, and an Earthforce captain disagrees with him about how to deal with the situation. Ron Canada as Capt. Ellis Pierce. Louis Turenne as Draal. Curt Lowens as Varn. Denise Gentile as Lise Hampton. Aki Aleong as Senator Hidoshi.

Sub-genre: Action
P5 Rating: 8.49

Production number:  121
Original air date:  August 3, 1994

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Janet Greek

Backplot

• In his youth, Londo led the Centauri raid on a planet called Frallis 12.
• Five hundred years earlier, the last of Varn's race died, entrusting him with a legacy, the guarding and caretaking of Epsilon 3. Some time prior to that, a violent, cruel faction of the race was cast aside by the rest, and since Varn took over Epsilon 3, they have been searching for it.
• Some Earth citizens feel they're heavily subsidizing the Mars colony, and that may in fact be true.
• The Centauri contributed a substantial amount of money to the construction of Babylon 5.

Unanswered Questions

• What is the intended use of Epsilon 3?
• What needs to happen before it will be deemed ready for consumption by the rest of the galaxy?
• Was Takarn's ship the only one of its kind, or are more outcasts from Varn's race still out there, searching (or heading) for Epsilon 3?
• Are there any other planets like Epsilon 3 waiting to be discovered?

Analysis

• The station potentially has a powerful new ally in Draal. It remains to be seen if he will prove willing to come to the station's defense in the future, but the threat of retaliation by Epsilon 3 might be enough to keep any would-be attackers at bay.
• Garibaldi's tentative hopes of one day getting back together with Lisa have now been dashed. This might make him that much more likely to hit the bottle again. (cf. "Survivors")
• Assuming Earth is successful in putting down the revolt on Mars, a continued presence will likely be necessary to keep things from flaring up again. This is bound to have political consequences back on Earth, and possibly on Babylon 5, as Earth has a harder time claiming the moral high ground if it's occupying one of its own members with soldiers.
• Londo's sense of adventure, now reawakened, might lead him to go even further in his quest for the "good old days." Between this and his possession of the Eye (cf. "Signs and Portents") he may be a much more influential figure than he appears.
• Delenn's assessment of Sinclair jibes with the hints in "Grail" that she considers him a "true seeker," someone whose life is devoted to a cause.

Notes

• The heavy cruiser EAS Hyperion was named after the Babylon 5 Internet archive (and home of the Lurker's Guide) originally located at Hyperion.COM.
• Ivanova seems to enjoy saying "Boom!" (cf. "Grail")
• When Capt. Pierce is going to launch fighters to land on the planet and Sinclair threathens to destroy them, Pierce argues for a moment and then backs down. When he turns briefly to the screen and a computer graphic is displayed showing him calling down the ships, one of the ships in the top left corner of the screen has the flight number THX-1138, the name of one of George Lucas' first films.
• More SF references can be found in the list of words being downloaded from the station's language files by the aliens. For instance, "ORAC" is a computer from the British series Blake's 7, and "Skynet" is from The Terminator. The phrase "I am not a number, I am a free man" (from the title sequence of The Prisoner) can also be seen on several consecutive frames.

jms speaks

• BTW, have named an Earth Alliance Cruiser Hyperion, in notation of the library....
• Does the Earth Alliance have capital ships?
  Of course there are capital ships. We never said otherwise. There's one later this season, for instance, the EAS Hyperion, a heavy Earth cruiser. There aren't as many as they'd like -- the majority having been wiped out in the war -- but they're building 'em as fast as possible. (The Hyperion, though it's never mentioned, is one of the leftover capital ships, not one of the newer ones.)
• Will we see other ships like the Hyperion?
  That design will never be seen again.
• Correct; the Hyperion didn't have a gravity-positive section.
• Of course, insofar as I recall, it wasn't stated in the episode that Varn's people actually *built* the Great Machine; after all, if they could build it, why would the others have been searching for it so frantically for the last several hundred years?
• Actually the Hyperion is one of the few surviving heavy cruisers from the Earth/Minbari War period; after we lost a LOT of our ships, there were some new ones commissioned, which we haven't seen yet, which are far cooler than even the Hyperion (though we'll see them next season).
• The captain of the Hyperion specifically states that he was already IN hyperspace, en route to another system, when he was ordered to stop here. His ship was already in the area. Also, there is a fair amount of time between the actions on the planet initially, and the arrival of the Hyperion...enough to know there's some kind of tech there, based on the initial attacks. The Hyperion continued to monitor reports as they came in.
• And there we get into the contradiction; Ivanova and Sinclair down on the planet would be mainly more run-and-jump...Draal talking about his feelings, Delenn showing she is upset that her friend is going away and will never be seen by her again, their obvious friendship, that to me is characterization. And not just throwaway stuff, either, but important down the road.

  But hey, what do I know....

Last update: July 1, 1997