s1e21: Legacies

Dark. Cold...alien!

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.

Here we have it, the penultimate episode. At least, according to the ‘Master List’ that we’re following. ‘Legacies’ originally popped up about 3/4 of the way into the show, just before ‘A Voice in the Wilderness’, but it does work rather well in this position.

That’s partly because it calls back to the start of the season, with Talia and Ivanova’s awkward relationship, everything we know about Ivanova’s family background, the Narn preoccupation with telepaths from the pilot, Minbari culture and so on.

On top of that, the episode has a wonderful sense of place: the station feels very real, very lived in and physical. There’s a great shot near the start where a maintenance guy is fiddling around fixing something in a hole under the floor of the central corridor, which is a detail that makes the space feel less like a set and more like a central corridor on a space station. There are a couple of perfectly selected CG set extensions that position the sets within the central garden area: the windows glowing with the core gardens beyond, while the Minbari ceremony takes place inside a chapel of sorts; then a beauty shot of the garden as Delenn sits towards the end of the episode. It looks more expensive than a lot of season 1, which is presumably a consequence of the production team working out how to make the damn show.

Can we also take a moment to acknowledge the pak’ma’ra design and prosthetics? It’s a perfectly executed alien creature and a great mix of techniques.

Neroon is a superb new character. Scheming and impulsive and angry, but never quite descending into being Just A Bad Guy. John Vickery has enormous fun, but avoids caricature. Watching him crash up against Garibaldi and Sinclair is always entertaining.

Meanwhile, the Alisa Beldon nascent telepath plot is an intriguing quirk of the telepath storylines we’ve had so far. The counterpoints offered by Talia and Ivanova are interesting, and the b-plot intersects in a sneaky way with the a-plot. All good.

There is a major flaw in the episode, which is the performance of Grace Una as Alisa. It’s a peculiarly terrible performance, in which almost every single line is delivered in a bizarre way. It threatens to undermine the entire episode, but it just about gets away with it on the strength of everything else.

OK, next up we have the season 1 finale ‘Chrysalis’. Waitaminute isn’t that what Alisa said—

‼️ SPOILER STUFF ‼️

Chrysalis, eh? That’s another reason this episode sits quite nicely at this point in the season. Showing up earlier, I think that ‘Chrysalis’ line would be largely meaningless and then forgotten by the time we get to the end. Having it here in the penultimate slot immediately raises the stakes once a new viewer clocks the name of the following episode.

It also makes a lot of sense, in that the chrysalis move is going to be absolutely at the forefront of Delenn’s mind at this point.

We get nice reminders of Ironheart, of Narns and telepaths. We meet Neroon, who will become a key player. This is the episode in which I finally get a proper handle on Minbari culture, which has been weirdly vague so far.

Right. Looking forward to next week!