s1e18: Babylon Squared

Either way, is bad for Zathras

We’re watching the pioneering 90s TV show Babylon 5. If you want to join us, hit subscribe then go to your account and turn on the Let’s Watch notifications.

This is a phenomenally dense episode and undoubtedly the most strident commitment to the show’s promise of long-term storytelling that we’ve had so far. ‘Babylon Squared’ picks up a detail from the world building — that there were previous Babylon stations — and runs with it in unexpected ways.

Although the name of the show, Babylon 5, and the season 1 intro, and especially the episode ‘Grail’ have all served to remind us that there were previous stations, and bad things happened to all of them, it wasn’t apparent that this would prove to be directly relevant to the story. So far, it’s been flavour and setup.

The appearance of Babylon 4 at the beginning, therefore, is a startling way to open the episode, especially so hot on the heels of ‘A Voice in the Wilderness’ pulling the Epsilon 3 rug. All the fundamentals we have taken for granted are being upended.

The surprises keep coming, although the characters take it in their stride. The evacuation plan is immediately swung into action, and time travel is immediately committed to. There’s no questioning that there’s some sort of time travel going on, with the command staff all accepting that fact and moving right along. Presumably there hasn’t been any known time travel in the B5 universe that Sinclair and the others know about. They don’t have time to question it, of course, and I rather like that Sinclair immediately formulates a plan, but still…some acknowledgement that time ravel has just been proven to be a thing would have been good.

Once aboard there are all sorts of crazy things: psychic flashbacks (including Garibaldi having a final stand of some sort), a strange goblin/elf thing called Zathras, time stabilisers, the guy from 2001: A Space Odyssey compete with his spacesuit, confusing talk of ‘The One’, threats of a huge war. And, to top it all off, there’s the twist at the very end of the reveal of Sinclair being in the suit and the voice of Delenn off-camera.

All of it — every single bit — is left unexplained. I’m amazed the episode gets away with it, but it does so by focusing on the rescue of the B4 staff. By hanging everything off that, it distracts us from noticing that nothing makes any sense (yet). Of course, the mystery and madness is all part of the enjoyment. None of ‘Babylon Squared’ feels random, or made up on the spot: it all seems to be carefully considered and going somewhere. I get the sense that most of season 1 has been preparing viewers for ‘Babylon Squared’, training them to be able to handle this kind of long-term storytelling.

It’s easy to forget that there’s an entire b-plot with Delenn visiting the Grey Council, being offered leadership and rejecting it in favour of hanging out on Babylon 5. The scenes on board the Minbari cruiser are a good demonstration of how superior these blu-ray (and the HD remasters generally) are compared to the DVDs and previous digital releases. Any scene with virtual set VFX was a disaster before, but now look far better integrated and as intended. Mira Furlan is great throughout.

One thing: the focus on when the stations were built, and the fact of Babylon 4 disappearing four years prior brought my attention to the slightly odd construction timeline. I believe B4 came online in 2254, before promptly vanishing. But Babylon 5 then comes online in 2256, barely two years later (around the time of the pilot episode).

Somehow, funding and approval was found for B5 fast enough for the entire station to be built and fully operational in under two years. Given the scale of the place, I would have expected it to take at least that time to build, without even factoring in the paperwork and logistical issues around the fallout of the previous four stations blowing up/collapsing/disappearing.

I know the UK is especially bad at large infrastructural projects these days, but it’s taken us over 10 years just to build a rail line. Even factoring in advanced tech and the assistance of the Minbari and other races, that construction timeline for Babylon 5 seems unlikely. Plus, by the time of the pilot it is already fully populated and a bustling place.

It struck me as an oddly compressed timeline.

Next episode takes us to ‘The Quality of Mercy’ (after which we’ll be catching up on some of the episodes that shifted order due to the Master List). Only 4 episodes to go until we finish season 1, remarkably.

‼️ SPOILER STUFF ‼️

I absolutely love that this episode comes straight after ‘A Voice in the Wilderness’ (in both the Master List and original order), making it essentially a three-parter, but first time viewers have absolutely no idea that there’s a connection. It’s not until season 3 that we properly connect the dots.

The boldness to commit to this storyline this early, when there was no assurance of a second season, I find remarkable. To put all this in play, knowing it won’t pay off for literal years, with all the complexities of TV production primed to get in the way. It’s the final reveal of ‘old’ Sinclair and Delenn that is the major flex, and one that almost derails the entire thing with O’Hare’s departure from the show.

I really like the lighting of this shot.

That JMS manages to pull off this storyline in season 3’s ‘War Without End’, albeit with a bit of fudging and jiggery-pokery, is something to properly celebrate. This isn’t the same as a modern show like Game of Thrones in which every episode is the main plot and has a more literary structure. Babylon 5 existed in the 90s, where episodes were generally standalone and continuity wasn’t a factor.

Outside of the obvious B4/Valen/Zathras stuff, everything with Delenn is also critical. It is the b-plot here, but it lays the foundations for the breaking of the council, Delenn’s trial at the hands of Sebastian, her transformation in ‘Chrysalis’ and much more. At this point in the series we don’t know much about the Minbari, so it’s difficult to ascertain how important anything is.

‘Babylon Squared’ was always one of my favourite episodes back in the day, not least for its audacious TV storytelling experiment, and I’m glad to see it still holds up.