Write More with Simon K Jones: Let's Watch: Babylon 5

s4e14: Moments of Transition

Simon K Jones — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 06:54:38 GMT

After a run of wheel-spinning setup episodes that didn’t really go anywhere, ‘Moments of Transition’ kicks things up a notch and matches its ambition with decent production value. By which I mean that the make-up department fired the intern from last episode.

Subscribe now

A lot happens in this episode, which was a pleasant change of pace after several episodes in which nothing much happened at all. The Minbari civil war comes to an abrupt but satisfying conclusion, there’s compelling drama on the station with the Lyta-Zack-Garibaldi-Bester quadrangle and Sheridan makes a pivotal decision.

The previous episode felt somewhat am-dram, hampered by a limp script, poor make-up and a general cheapness. ‘Moments of Transition’ is a real return to form, with director Tony Dow doing excellent work on the station and on Minbar. Babylon 5 feels bustling, cramped, a place of commerce (and diplomacy!). Every scene has a lot going on in the background and is full of detail. It’s Vejar-worthy in its density.

Minbar then functions as a perfect foil, all minimalist angles, broken crystals, simple robes. The establishing shots of the ruined city are effective, even if they’re reworks of the previous city shots. The interior of the temple at the beginning of the episode includes fantastic set extension that is only identifiable by the lack of moving people in the far background. There are several shots in this episode with a freely moving camera even when there are CG extensions going on, which isn’t something we’ve seen much of in B5. Camera tracked VFX shots on a TV budget were not trivial in the 90s.

The climax in the starfire chamber is wildly ambitious for the technology and budget of the time and I was bracing myself for the worst. In fact, it’s largely successful with inventive angles and an interesting multi-tiered coliseum layout. It’s technically accomplished and looks good, even if the compositing is inevitably somewhat dated. Bear in mind this is several years before Gladiator. Even in movies, big virtual sets were still a rarity.

There’s a specific shot as Delenn and the others enter the chamber, where the camera follows them out of a narrow corridor into the larger chamber. It’s a fully roving camera, the music soars, and the space is revealed. Safe to say the show has never attempted such complex live action-CGI integration before, and it works. Especially for that story moment, which required grandeur.

Neroon’s final gambit is not unexpected but it’s still effective. He’ll be missed: Vickery has done such a good job with the character, and somehow managed to retain the sneering superiority even while he made his transition to a different way of thinking. Interesting how he’s the one to break with convention and interrupt the ritual, while Lennier was (reluctantly, obviously) willing to let it proceed according to Delenn’s wishes.

Meanwhile, the Lyta Alexander stuff works back on the station. Bester and Zack are always a good time (I’d entirely forgotten that Koenig was in this episode), and there’s some sparkly fun dialogue between all of them. It’s cleverly written, in that it gives us a lot to chew on for all the characters. We see Garibaldi circling the drain and being drawn down the conspiratorial rabbit hole even further, Lyta is put through the wringer in a way that addresses a logistical plot hole (who does she work for now?) in a creative manner, Zack finds himself again in a place with no decent options, and Bester is working his usual trickery. It’s compelling drama, and offsets the scale of the Minbar story. It helps that there are several lines of dialogue that made me snort with amusement.

Wrapping it all up is Sheridan and Ivanova making a decision to move the plot along. I mean, to take the fight to Earth. It’s a big moment, slightly undercut by awkward staging and delivery of Ivanova’s “bastards!” line (the only scene where Tony Dow seems to run out of ideas/time), but Sheridan’s declaration is fist-pumpingly effective.

A classy return to form.

Next up is ‘No Surrender, No Retreat’.

Leave a comment

‼️ SPOILER STUFF ‼️

The Minbar and Earth stuff is of course heading towards the eventual formation of the Interstellar Alliance, and Sheridan’s decision here will indeed set the season on the path towards the big Earth civil war finale.

What we really have, though, is the Garibaldi-Bester storyline ratcheting up. While some of the scenes are played for wry laughs, in retrospect there’s a darkness there from Bester’s manipulation of Garibaldi. The tragedy is how easy it is — all of Garibaldi’s instincts are off, the intuition that served him so well for three years completely shot.

Also set up here is Lyta’s dissatisfaction with her situation. She had a brief moment with OG Kosh where she had a place in the universe and respect. Of all the characters, she’s the only one who was inconvenienced by the departure of the Vorlons. Not that Kosh 2 was a particularly good employer. But the point is that she’s been left adrift, while everyone else is still busy.

I do wonder how much of Lyta’s plotline was intentional, and how much emerged organically from the direction of the show and people asking questions about the character. In theory her storyline was ‘complete’ with the end of the Shadow War: of course, she has much more to do this season as well as next.

Browse episodes

Know someone who might like Babylon 5? Get them to join us for the weekly episodes!

s4e13: Rumours, Bargains & Lies

Simon K Jones — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 07:49:27 GMT

I can’t avoid the reality that the middle of season 4 is proving to be something of a slog. The fourth season exists in my mind as a real highlight of the show’s run, but during this rewatch I’ve found it uneven and somewhat unconvincing.

Subscribe now

The problem is twofold, I think: on the one hand, the mystery and threat of the first three seasons is gone. The Shadows are done, and the show is taking its sweet time to properly ramp up the Earth civil war stuff, instead becoming distracted by Drakh and the Minbari civil war. On the other hand, there’s been a noticeable drop in production quality over the last few episodes. After the (largely realised) ambition of seasons 2 and 3, season 4 feels at times like a drop back to the production value of season 1, but without any of the ingenuity.

Babylon 5 has never been a high budget show, clearly, but there’s a carelessness to aspects of it in season 4. This week’s episode is almost unwatchable due to sloppy prosthetic make-up on Delenn: the blending of the headbone into her forehead is bizarre, looking less like skin and more like she’s covered her bone in make-up. On the left side of her face, there are clearly globs of prosthetic gunk stuck in Mira Furlan’s hair, and the entire headpiece looks as if it’s going to come unstuck at any moment.

This is exacerbated by Mike Vejar’s visual tics, which favour extreme close-ups throughout. It’s a weird choice, given one of the lead characters in the episode feature make-up that really can’t hold up to scrutiny. Perhaps it’s the new clarity of the blu-ray release, but it seems inexplicable that nobody on set thought to fix the problem during shooting. Perhaps the intern was doing the make-up that day?

If the Minbari storyline is hobbled by dodgy make-up, the B-plot with Sheridan is hamstrung by hammy acting across the board and a daft plot. Rather than Sheridan’s plan coming across as clever realpolitik, instead it makes the non-aligned worlds’ ambassadors into comedy buffoons. Given the highly satisfying machinations of seasons 1 and 2, where political scheming often provided either the inciting incident or the resolution of storylines, here it feels naive and overly simplistic.

Look at the blending on the bone as it goes into her skull. Oof.

Perhaps it’s that hammy acting: the script and the cast treat this like an overt comedy, and it doesn’t work for me. B5 can be very funny in individual lines, but when Stracyznski goes for full-on comedy laughs throughout an episode it doesn’t really land. Part of the problem is that it breaks the characters — Sheridan withholding his plan from the command staff makes no sense, and he does it solely for comedy effect.

There are some good moments with Delenn and Lennier, as they mourn the loss of their home and of peace. The incomprehensible shift from a stable society to one that is deeply polarised and at war with itself should be the focus of the episode, but it struggles to connect the dots.

It’s an episode of shuffling pieces around on the board, and while it attempts to draw a deeper meaning from the farcical treachery of the two Minbari clans, it never quite comes together. Even Vejar’s usual command of the visuals seems missing.

Next up is ‘Moments of Transition’.

Leave a comment

‼️ SPOILER STUFF ‼️

We’re building towards the Minbari civil war climax, clearly, and Neroon’s big switch-up. Is that next episode? I can’t remember. It all feels a bit rushed and vague.

Sheridan, meanwhile, is laying the foundation for the Interstellar Alliance using subterfuge and trickery, which is perhaps not the best start.

The Drakh and Raiders get a mention, both factions that will make a return in season 5 (if not before?).

Otherwise, there’s not much going on here below the surface. It’s all a bit obvious and basic, which is the main problem.

Browse episodes

Know someone who might like Babylon 5? Get them to join us for the weekly episodes!

s4e12: Conflicts of Interest

Simon K Jones — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 07:22:14 GMT

Michael Garibaldi does his best John McClane, crawling through ventilation shafts to help smuggle a package in and out of Babylon 5. Turn out the package is…his ex-girlfriend?

Subscribe now

After the exceedingly wobbly space battle VFX of the previous episode, here the show switches to a smaller, more practical production that mostly involves running around the station trying not to get shot.

While the action is at times fairly flat, the episode itself barrels along at an entertaining pace and is held together by some excellent character work from Doyle, Conaway and Boxleitner. We have an especially complex and confounding depiction of Garibaldi, who starts off sympathetic as he helps reunite the father with his daughter, then appears reasonable with Zack right up until handing over his weapon. At that point Garibaldi pivots into unreasonable asshole mode, and it’s quite shocking to see: that it’s followed up by him quite contentedly helping someone evade security is similarly startling — there’s no way Garibaldi of seasons 1-3 would be helping Wade.

What exactly is going on?

Zack is the audience surrogate here, declaring quite confidently that Garibaldi ‘will be back’. That’s the assumption, and it’s a clever acknowledgement that we only recently had a very similar plotline with the doctor: Franklin also quit his job and went wandering off through the halls of B5 to ‘find himself’. Garibaldi is doing the same thing, albeit in a more mercantile fashion. ‘Conflicts of Interest’ is at great pains to point out that the situations are not the same, and Garibaldi’s highly dubious actions here significantly grow the rift between him and the command staff. I love Conaway’s performance when he’s asking Garibaldi for his ID and gun, when Zack is desperate to avoid conflict with his friend — but it’s inevitable.

Meanwhile, Boxleitner plays Sheridan in a canny way that on occasion tips over into almost confirming Garibaldi’s worst fears. Is Sheridan becoming too confident? Too messianic? The concerns Garibaldi has been raising work because we can see the elements of truth within the paranoia.

Ivanova is here for comic relief, and Claudia Christian clearly relishes doing some serious mugging for the camera with Tim Choate. Zathras is, as ever, a total delight. The entire scene is played in one shot, which is always the best way to let Choate do his thing.

It’s a solid, slightly unremarkable episode, grounded in good character work.

Next up is ‘Rumors, Bargains and Lies’. I absolutely cannot remember what happens in that one.

Leave a comment

‼️ SPOILER STUFF ‼️

I’m enjoying all the Garibaldi stuff on this rewatch. First time round, it’s really quite discombobulating. It feels like the writing is off for his character, or like we’ve missed an episode or something — which is all intentional, and clues towards just how much mental manipulation is going on. It’s a tricky line to tread, and a risky move with one of your main characters. I think it perhaps works better on rewatch than initial viewing.

We get more mention of the Drakh, and Londo’s reaction in particular is notable: the Centauri clearly know of them. As tends to be the case, Londo is caught in an unfortunate information bubble — he’s often at the centre of things but never has the full picture, until it’s too late. Which is no excuse, of course.

We get Lise Hampton returning, which will continue to play out. Garibaldi does, in fact, eventually get the girl, but he’s got a long road before getting there. It’s fun to have the same actor return from season 1, even if she seems a bit lost in the action scenes (they all look like they’re having far too much fun).

Aside from Garibaldi going off the rails and how that’s leading us towards ‘The Face of the Enemy’, the other big thing here is the telepath virus. We don’t yet know the details of what Edgars is up to, but it ain’t good.

Sheridan’s actions here are the clearest sign of the trajectory towards the Interstellar Alliance becoming a formal entity. Again, there’s a long road still to go.

Browse episodes

Know someone who might like Babylon 5? Get them to join us for the weekly episodes!

s4e11: Lines of Communication

Simon K Jones — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 21:51:34 GMT

A solid episode exploring the fallout from galactic war and definitively linking the Shadow War and Earth Civil War is undermined by sub-standard visual effects and some daft visual choices.

Subscribe now

The first three seasons of Babylon 5 are clever in their use of visual effects, working within the boundaries of what was possible with the very early, pioneering CGI. For the most part those first three seasons punch well above their weight class, with Foundation Imaging producing material that was way ahead of the curve and which often still holds up perfectly fine today — from a storytelling perspective, if not from a photoreal perspective. It’s rare in the first three seasons to be taken out of an episode by the VFX.

Season 4 is proving to be a far more mixed bag. It’s a combination of two things, I suspect: the change in VFX studio from Foundation to a semi-internal team at Netter Digital, and the scripts becoming ever-more ambitious. Back in ‘Falling Toward Apotheosis’ we had the deeply underwhelming battle against Bad Kosh, and now in ‘Lines of Communication’ we have the deeply underwhelming battle against the Drakh.

There simply isn’t enough detail on the Drakh ships to be convincing. The mothership in particular looks unfinished and far below the quality of design we’re used to on the show. Both in concept and technical execution, it looks a bit amateur. That’s the lesser of the episode’s VFX problems, though. Worse is the animation and general construction of the sequences, which is rudimentary and lacking the verisimilitude of those first three seasons.

Regardless of the visual fidelity in the first three seasons, the animation was always superb. I’m thinking back to very early season 1 episodes, like Sinclair trying to grapple the Soul Hunter’s ship, or the early space battle around the station in ‘Signs and Portents’. Sure, it all looks very ‘CG’ compared to what we’re used to today, but it doesn’t matter because the general filmmaking prowess is so good: the shots, the editing, the lighting, the animation is more than enough to make up for the technical limitations in the rendering.

In ‘Lines of Communication’ we get lots of dull shots of ships flying from left to right. White Stars and Drakh are often bizarrely close to each other. The tactics mentioned in dialogue (“They’re not shooting at us because we’re close to the mothership”) don’t match up with what we’re seeing. Animation on the ships is frequently awkward and looks like it was keyframed by someone who hasn’t learned about bezier curves.

Combine all of that with the really silly shots of Delenn and the others leaning to the side, inexplicably framed in a wide, and the whole sequence at the centre of the episode falls apart dramatically.

There are still good moments within the mess: Delenn going back for revenge, the final shots of the White Star beam-obliterating the mothership as the jumpgate opens. But it’s not enough to save it.

Oh, and compounding all of this is the woeful Drakh costume and floopy performance. It’s supposed to be unnerving, weird, threatening. Instead, it looks like someone in a silly costume prancing about. The blurry effect on top of the actor is an interesting idea, but doesn’t really work: some sort of optical flow wibbling (probably not yet invented) could have been cool, but directional blurs don’t really cut it.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, we can look at the rest of the episode, which is actually pretty decent. Franklin and Marcus remain eminently watchable, and Number One is performed really nicely — it’s a tricky role to pull off, too, I’d say, without tipping into cheese. Franklin’s speech to the assembled rebels is powerful, with Biggs firing on all cylinders. I like the depiction of a splintered group of rebels with various tactics, and Sheridan’s determination to point them all in the same direction. Interesting backstory tidbit with Sheridan putting down the Mars food riots: it’s a brief line, but it carries weight.

Then we have the trouble on the edge of Minbari space, and how it’s affecting the various non-aligned worlds. On Minbar we have a hardline group upsetting the status quo that has been in place for as long as anyone can remember, fundamentally altering the delicate balance of galactic political affairs. Where once many races relied upon the Minbari as staunch, unwavering allies and protectors, suddenly that is no longer the case. The Minbari are looking inward, tearing each other apart, and leaving a vacuum for others to fill.

As with so much on this B5 rewatch, it all hits home rather harder than it did in the 90s, especially as I read the news about the White House’s security briefing tearing up what remains of a previously strong friendship.

Delenn’s reminder to Sheridan at the beginning of the episode of who she was, and who she is, is brilliant. Both he and we as the audience had perhaps started to forget.

After ‘Into the Fire’, I remember wondering what the show had left to do. Even on this rewatch, there’s a sense of “…now what?” The threads have been bubbling up for the last handful of episodes, and in ‘Lines of Communication’ start to become clear. As an exploration of what happens after a massive war, it’s increasingly fascinating.

Shame about the space battle.

Next up is ‘Conflicts of Interest’.

Leave a comment

‼️ SPOILER STUFF ‼️

The Drakh have a name! And a bad costume. I don’t think the Keepers have yet been directly linked to them, though? It’s unclear whether the Drakh remain a threat by the end of this episode, and I can’t quite remember when they’ll be back.

We have Franklin warning the Martian rebels to expect some strange requests, which will take the form of cryogenically frozen telepaths not too long from now. That will be fun.

And, of course, Delenn’s efforts to avert civil war on Minbar will fail, leading us to Neroon’s final stand. Great stuff, as I recall.

There’s a lot to juggle this season!

Browse episodes

Know someone who might like Babylon 5? Get them to join us for the weekly episodes!

s4e10: Racing Mars

Simon K Jones — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 07:28:03 GMT

It’s been a while. With the Triverse kicking my ass in all sorts of directions, something had to give. The weekly Babylon 5r rewatch blog was it. Anyway, we’re back with a fun episode that follows Marcus and Franklin on holiday.

Subscribe now

This continues season 4’s ambition to get off-station. I’ve always been rather obsessed with Mars, poring over photographs when I was a kid, getting up in the middle of the night to watch live broadcasts of probe landings, devouring Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy (although I read those after Babylon 5). Point is, spending lots of time on Mars is exactly my thing.

We’re confined to tunnels for the most part, inevitably given B5’s budget, but it makes sense for the story. I like that the episode takes the time to show Marcus and Franklin arriving in the cruise ship (the opening shot with the window is cool), and we get the tube transport as well. It’s just enough to establish Mars as a place rather than a cave set. Some of the exterior CG shots work better than others, mostly down to the camerawork — the new VFX team is still getting over-excited about some shots, whereas Foundation Imaging tended to shoot their shots as if filmed with a real camera.

The episode suffers from some ropey support actors. Donovan Scott’s accent is bizarre and I’m still not sure what it’s supposed to be. Clayton Landey’s Number Two is a bit too Growly Bad Guy, and Wade is always accompanied by a crew of the 1980s Bad Guy Rejects that Babylon 5 always seems to cast.

Otherwise, the episode ticks along nicely. Franklin and Marcus are always good value. The creature on Captain Jack’s shoulder, which looks awfully like the one we’ve seen on future vision Londo, is very creepy and nicely executed with a mix of practical and CG. Talking of which, if that IS the same creature that we’ve seen on Londo in the future visions, what is one of them doing on Captain Jack? It’s not focused on here, because Franklin and Marcus don’t understand the connections, but for viewers it feels like a big deal and a potentially huge threat.

Elsewhere, we get Garibaldi and Sheridan’s friendship finally snapping. My favourite part of that story is that the worst moment occurs precisely when Sheridan was trying to apologise. When the woman approaches and starts worshipping Sheridan, the timing couldn’t be worse, and Jerry Doyle plays Garibaldi’s general disgust perfectly.

First time round, I found Garibaldi’s turn rather abrupt, but in this rewatch it’s all felt far better signposted. We’ve seen him gradually come to this conclusion, and we’ve also seen that he’s being manipulated in some way. We don’t know exactly how or by whom, but there’s clearly more going on. This episode introduces Wade, who would seem to be a prime suspect. Garibaldi suspecting that Sheridan has gone off the deep end is believable, but his siding with the random guy who just showed up is more of a stretch — but, again, there’s clearly something going on that we don’t yet understand.

There are elements of radicalisation going on with Garibaldi, which I didn’t really understand on initial viewing. This is long before online radicalisation was a recognised thing, but Garibaldi going down the rabbit hole, and listening to conspiracy theories and Wade’s reasonable-sounding-but-dubious claims is exactly the same as politicians and individuals being radicalised on social media in the 2010s and 2020s.

Structurally, this episode is a curious one in that it feels quite open-ended. The Mars storyline only just gets going, the Garibaldi situation is unresolved. It’s JMS leaning into the show being a tightly plotted ongoing thing, rather than an episodic show. Much happens, but little is resolved. In that regard, it feels closer to modern shows than it does to its 1990s contemporaries.

Next up is ‘Lines of Communication’.

Leave a comment

‼️ SPOILER STUFF ‼️

I’d entirely forgotten that Captain Jack has a keeper. The dubious accent and acting I think distracted me from remembering that detail. It raises huge questions, which the episode doesn’t really get into.

The Franklin/Marcus married couple stuff is actually quite delightful. Part of me was momentarily worried that it’d turn into a bit of gay panic ‘comedy’, as you might expect from the late-1990s. While it’s certainly played for laughs, there’s no anti-gay sentiment underpinning it. Marcus finds the whole thing hilarious, and neither he nor Franklin are offended by the cover story. If Franklin finds it annoying, it’s because he finds Marcus annoying, not because he objects to pretending to be gay.

That feels, weirdly, like quite a progressive bit of writing for a 1990s show.

The Garibaldi stuff is fascinating to rewatch. Especially knowing where it’s headed, it’s fun to see Straczynski writing towards that big moment that’s coming up. You can almost hear JMS squealing with excitement, knowing where he’s taking that story.

Also, Lennier being in Delenn’s quarters during the ritual is super awkward, given what we know will happen in season 5. Oof.

Browse episodes

Know someone who might like Babylon 5? Get them to join us for the weekly episodes!

s4e9: Atonement

Simon K Jones — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 07:00:29 GMT

Babylon 5 goes in search of new storylines, in the post-Shadow War period, and finds a pretty good one by delving back into Minbari history.

Subscribe now

This feels like a return to season 1, and not only because…

s4e8: The Illusion of Truth

Simon K Jones — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 06:46:21 GMT

This is an excellent idea for an episode, which requires absolute perfect precision execution for it to work. It has to be clever, fiendishly clever, or the central conceit falls apart. ‘The Illusio…

s4e7: Epiphanies

Simon K Jones — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 08:27:22 GMT

After ‘Into the Fire’ produced a collective, confused question of “what now?”, ‘Epiphanies’ goes a long way to providing an answer.

Subscribe now

The most striking part of this episode is how much stuff is in it. …

s4e6: Into the Fire

Simon K Jones — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 21:46:21 GMT

Bursting at the seams, this episode very nearly trips over its own expectations. There’s so much at stake, both in the fiction and in the telling of that fiction, that it’s an almost impossible task…

s4e5: The Long Night

Simon K Jones — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 06:45:19 GMT

AKA the one with Bryan Cranston.

Subscribe now

Way back in the mists of time, by which I mean the Nineties, I was on the alt.babylon5.uk usenet group. Newsgroups were proto-internet, community forums covering anyt…

s4e4: Falling Toward Apotheosis

Simon K Jones — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 07:17:27 GMT

Right, this is the one with the eye plucking. I’d forgotten.

Subscribe now

This is an episode that almost nails it, but is severely let down by the Vorlon battle sequence, which is unfortunate given that the entir…

s4e3: The Summoning

Simon K Jones — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 06:19:20 GMT

The show channels the desperation and loss of hope from ‘Hour of the Wolf’ in this episode, before flipping it on its head with Sheridan’s sudden return. It’s an effective combo, even if his arrival…

s4e2: Whatever happened to Mr Garibaldi?

Simon K Jones — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 06:21:35 GMT

This episode is the one that matches my memory of season 4: sophisticated, huge in scope and implication, experimental in style and deft in its storytelling. The season opener was a slight disappoin…

s4e1: Hour of the Wolf

Simon K Jones — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 10:02:56 GMT

As an exercise in picking up the pieces from the season 3 finale, ‘Hour of the Wolf’ nevertheless manages to find a lot of new ground to cover and makes for an intriguingly sombre season opener.

Subscribe now

Dela…

s3e22: Z'ha'dum

Simon K Jones — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 06:50:18 GMT

This is an episode with staggering story implications, the culmination of years of preparation, and yet it feels oddly small. Overly theatrical and stagey. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me…

s3e21: Shadow Dancing

Simon K Jones — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 20:01:31 GMT

This and the next episode are almost a 2-parter, flowing into one another. ‘Shadow Dancing’ is a big one, and yet B5 is putting out episodes like this on a regular basis now, to the point that I’m t…

s3e20: And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place

Simon K Jones — Wed, 21 May 2025 06:11:56 GMT

We’re on the down slope of the rollercoaster now, heading towards the season 3 finale, as announced by the mysterious ‘Z Minus 14 Days’ title card. It’s an effective trick, especially at the end, wh…

s3e19: Grey 17 is Missing

Simon K Jones — Wed, 14 May 2025 06:12:48 GMT

I wondered whether this would be one of those maligned episodes that turns out to be a lot better than its reputation. Like ‘GROPOS’ or ‘Infection’. In its first half, ‘Grey 17 is Missing’ is perfec…

s3e18: Walkabout

Simon K Jones — Wed, 07 May 2025 20:33:05 GMT

Turns out, this was not the episode I was expecting. My brain had mushed ‘Walkabout’ and ‘Shadow Dancing’ together, so I was expecting a different part of Franklin’s story. I’d forgotten almost ever…

s3e17: War Without End, part 2

Simon K Jones — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 07:16:53 GMT

This is Babylon 5’s Back to the Future Part 2, with the story interweaving with season 1’s ‘Babylon Squared’ in ways both clever and slightly awkward.

Subscribe now

There’s a lot of scampering about in this one, c…