Holy cow. (*WARNING* An excess of exclamation marks follows in this episode report…)
As soon as I saw the credit above, I recognized both names. Laura Ingalls was going to be on B5?? And HEY, I thought Anna was DEAD! That sort of gave away a big plot surprise, unfortunately.
Marcus and Ivanova take off in the White Star to keep an eye out for the enemy after an encouraging send-off from Sheridan in which he tells them that there’s only a 50-50 chance that they’ll survive if the enemy spots them.
Ivanova: May gods stand between you and harm in all the empty places where you must walk.
Glad to see that Garibaldi has forgiven Zack for his Nightwatch involvement, or at least they’re on friendly terms again. What’s with the B5 recruitment posters on the walls, though? Wouldn’t anyone who sees the posters already be on B5? Or maybe they’re intended for visitors. What IS that thing on the poster?
Looks sort of like some kind of alien monster with a long forked tongue. Or a fork stuck through its head. Either way, it doesn’t seem to me like much of an inducement to join the team.
But I digress.
Touching to see how worried Garibaldi is about Franklin, and his angst about whether he could have done more to help his friend.
Garibaldi: Sometimes people walk away because they want to be alone. Sometimes they walk away because they want to see if you care enough to follow them into hell.
More and more, I’ve noticed that not only does B5 have some great writing, but also some great truths. I’m sure there must be sites out there full of these B5 quotes. I’d look for them except I’d be worried about coming across spoilers.
Amusing to see tourists on B5. I’ve certainly seen that obnoxious woman tourist type before. 
*swoon*
He’s funny, smart, gallant, heroic, sensitive, speaks fluent Minbari, can take orders from a woman and not resent it, has a British accent, and he’s nice on the eyes.
Ivanova, forget about Talia! MARCUS WANTS YOU!!!
I love the look that Ivanova gives Marcus when he tells her that he likes gardens and four-poster beds.
And the scene where Ivanova tries to find a comfortable position on those Minbari ship beds is pretty funny.
I love Delenn’s explanation of the Minbari tradition of how the woman watches the man as he sleeps to see his “true face.” SO ROMANTIC. As you might have guessed, I’m a huge sucker for romance.
But of course throughout this episode, because of the opening credits, I was bracing myself for the appearance of Sheridan’s wife.
I didn’t like the scene where Franklin is attacked. 
Glad he finally “found himself.”
Creepy-looking scoutship.
But not as creepy-looking as the sight of all those shadow ships emerging in front of The White Star…
I was freaking out during this scene.
Ivanova: That’s a lot of ships.
Marcus: That’s a bloody awful lot of ships.
And then OMIGOD one of the Shadow ships notices them and approaches but as they brace for attack YAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY Sheridan’s forces arrive!
The control center where Delenn and Sheridan stood during the attack was amazing, wasn’t it? And such a great backdrop as Sheridan barked out his orders:
Whenever the camera panned over those Minbari telepaths, I thought for sure this last one was going to lose it:
He always seemed much more unsure and nervous than the others, didn’t he?
Amazing battle sequences!
After the battle, Sheridan talked about the odd dream he got from Kosh.
We still haven’t found out the true meaning of the scene with Sheridan as a Psi-Cop; Ivanova theorizes it’s because of Bester, but I still think there’s something more. Don’t tell me.
And then the Dream Garibaldi says “The man in between is searching for you.” What man? Was Delenn right? Don’t tell me.
Also can’t help but notice that the bird on the Dream Ivanova’s shoulder is black, and the bird on Garibaldi’s shoulder is white.
Ivanova also looked way different in Sheridan’s dream, all dolled up and evil-looking. Does Ivanova turn bad????????? Maybe she finds out she’s a super-telepath and is corrupted like Londo. And then Sheridan has to stop her? (hence the Psi-Cop image)
But no, Ivanova would never go against her principles. I refuse to entertain any possibility that something bad is going to happen to her. Ivanova and Marcus (nothing bad can ever happen to Marcus, either) will get married and have little Rangers and live in a house by the ocean with a garden and a four-poster bed.
You’ll see.
I love Ivanova’s reaction to Sheridan’s last dream observation.
Ivanova: ‘You are the hand’? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Why would I say anything as dopey-sounding as that?
I love Ivanova.
When the scene near the end of the episode came up with Ivanova playing with the snowglobe, I started freaking out. This happened before, when she was caught in that tachyon burst in a recent episode! Doesn’t she remember!?! And then, as if on cue, a woman’s shadow appears on the wall as the door opens.
But this time, we get to see what she looks like…
IT’S LAURA INGALLS WILDER!!!!!
Dear lord.
Poor Sheridan.
Poor DELENN.
And what a cruel way to end an episode. Viewers really had to wait a WHOLE WEEK to see the next episode?? I would have gone mad.
Next episode: Z’ha’dum.
[For those who comment below: As the title of my blog indicates, I'm watching B5 for the very first time so PLEASE refrain from posting plot/character spoilers/hints about upcoming episodes, or including links to pages with spoilers (unless you warn readers that they contain spoilers). More info about spoilers here. Thanks so much! - Debbie]
13 comments ↓
Yeah, it was pretty dreadful. But it was worth it.
BTW, once you have watched all of B5, wait a few months and go back and watch it again. You will find yourself suddenly going “whoa! so that’s what that meant.” And, at least in my case, feeling that JMS really did do a “novel for television,” complete with foreshadowing.
I think the B5 Needs You poster has a picture of the station on it. The fork is the docking platform.
What’s ironic is that, in real life, Melissa Gilbert was/is Bruce Boxleitner’s wife. So you had Sheridan’s wife played by the actor’s own wife. I’m sure that added some twists.
Did you notice the snow globe on the table in Sheridan’s quarters in Act 1? JMS rule of writing — If you use a snow globe in Act 4, you better see it in Act 1.
You did notice the posters. They seemed to have replaced the Home Guard/Nightwatch posters. Maybe taking down the old posters left a bad mark on the wall and they needed something to cover it.
I felt bad for Franklin. He did not get to make the Bad Guys fall with a very satisfying Thump, as they turned out to be all Bad Guys. Why couldn’t he get to the farmslands of the station and have a more open aire walk? Franklin also seen that he missed when he was most needed when he woke up in MedLab.
JMS would have preferred Melissa Gilbert get an end credit, but SAG rules require actors of a certain calibre to be put in the opening credits. I think they should have got the agreement with Melissa and paid whatever fine to the guild, as, yes, the credit does spoil the surprise. Can you guess that she is a big part of the next episode?
The Minbari telepaths don’t seem to need visual line-of-site as Lyta and Bester did.
I don’t see mention of it in The Lurker’s Guide, but I think these space battles here and recent episodes beat the complexity of the space battles in Star Wars (6): Return of The Jedi.
You might want to go back to “A Late Arrival at Avalon” to hear Marcus’s asking “Who is Morgana La Fey”?
“And what a cruel way to end an episode. Viewers really had to wait a WHOLE WEEK to see the next episode?? I would have gone mad.”
I’m surprised you could wait long enough for Z’ha’dum to write up this one!
I love reading these - thanks to you, I’m enjoying the moments of joy and shock again as if for the first time. Thank you for that.
If you’re anything like me, the thing with B5 was that it plugs into you by this stage - you have three years of shared history with the characters, so you feel their joy, their pain, their fear and confusion. It creeps up on you - as you’re dismissing Infection and Grey 17 as slipbacks to “classic” Sci-Fi, you unconciously lose sight of the fact you’re doing it because this is sooo good. Then the emote-ing episodes hit you, and it’s too late.
There are many episodes that I was glad they showed at 1am on a Monday morning, so the family weren’t there to see my reaction.
One of the more interesting things about JMS is the way that he structures his scripts. In this episode, Shadow Dancing, notice the big battle starts at the half way point of the show. In normal television the big battle is always at the end of the show. In B5 we spend time after the big battles to see the results and aftermath. I think that this sort of story structure was very daring and not often duplicated.
That so-called “Egyptian blessing” that Ivanova utters is from a Harlan Ellison story: “Paladin of the Lost Hour” where he attributes it to the 18th Egyptian dynasty. I’ve never been able to find out where Harlan got this from, so I’m inclined to think he just made it up.
Debbie,
if you go to the site below, the B5 quotes are organized by the seasons/episodes. So you can choose which episode to read and avoid spoilers.
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~albert/Quotes/B5-quotes.html
If you click on the “home button” in the upper left corner, it takes you to the B5 Lurker’s Guide.
The other sites (if you do a google search for B5 quotes) are a mix of whatever quotes that person liked, so the chances of encountering spoilers is increased.
“What’s ironic is that, in real life, Melissa Gilbert was/is Bruce Boxleitner’s wife. So you had Sheridan’s wife played by the actor’s own wife. I’m sure that added some twists.” - SMAP
IIRC there is/was/will be (I can’t remember which!) a wedding photograph of John and Anna visible in Sheridan’s quarters. This was apparently Bruce and Melissa’s actual wedding photo with just a little doctoring of the outfits! The art of casting for economy in set dressing!
Oh, and the wait before Z’ha’dum was easy - well, at least compared to the wait we had *after* it…
Though the wait between Z’ha’dum and the following episode was only a week (at least in the US) as PTEN held over the last 5 episodes of the season until the fall and then aired them along with the beginning of the fourth season.
At the time a lot of people had already guessed that the person saying “Hello” in Delenn’s time flash was Anna. Some people recognized Melissa Gilbert’s voice and it was pretty easy to conclude who BB’s actual wife might be playing on the show. Then there was a 4 month wait for new episodes. Let’s just say there was a lot of fanfic written in the meantime.
As you may remember the Egyptian blessing was first mentioned back in “A Distant Star”.
Shortly after this aired, I caught an appearance of Bruce on a late night talkshow where they brought Melissa on stage as well as a surprise.
Somehow, the host got Melissa to reveal her little nickname for Bruce: Captain Freakdaddy.
The host asked if that came about because of his role on the show, but apparently no, it preceded the show by many years.
Bruce is getting redder and redder during this interview and the host asks if the rest of the B5 cast know about the nickname. Bruce gets this slightly horrified look and responds, “They do now.”
Yes, we had to wait a WHOLE WEEK to see what happened next!
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