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This week’s episode encapsulates all the things that don’t quite work in season 1 of Babylon 5. Wooden, hammy acting.1 On-the-nose dialogue. Silly humour. Flat action.
And yet.
‘Infection’ is a guilty pleasure episode for me. It reminds me of a lot of 90s TV and cheap, low budget movies. It’s daft and simplistic and bombastic, and thinks it’s being more clever than it is. But the suit is kinda great, and some of the ideas floating around in the background are really engaging.
So, that Ikarran biomech suit? Love it. The idea of it is cool, and the execution is also pretty great. I love me a bit of David Cronenberg-style body horror and rather wish they’d leaned more heavily into that. In fact, you can imagine an alternate version of this exact story that had Nelson as the lead character - even above the usual main characters - following his descent into rage and madness. Then his growing horror as his body rebels and mutates, like Goldblum in The Fly, but then discovering just how much power he was accumulating. His struggle between being himself and inheriting the memories of the Ikarran scientist.
There’s a really cool horror episode in there. Unfortunately, it’s not the one they made. Instead we focus on Dr Franklin and his rather dull old mentor buddy. Given how Franklin otherwise comes across as very professional, it’s odd the way he just takes their word for it that the tech went through quarantine. In reality there would have been a fairly significant inquest into his conduct following an infectious outbreak that nearly destroyed the station. I couldn’t help but marvel at them leaving all this unknown biotech just lying around in MedLab, without any consideration for patients or the artifacts themselves.
The staging of all that feels a bit ‘off’ throughout. It doesn’t really make sense that they just uncrate all of the Ikarran stuff in the middle of the GP’s surgery. Sure, B5 was low budget and couldn’t afford fancy sets all the time, but it feels like a constraint here for the first time in season 1. A lot of the line delivery is weird, too - stagey in the spoken lines as well as the blocking of scenes. This episode has the same director as the pilot episode, and it’s probably not a coincidence that it shares many of the same problems.
Glancing at the Lurker’s Guide, it turns out that ‘Infection’ was actually shot first after the pilot. So it’s perhaps not a surprise that it feels tonally very similar, and that Richard Biggs as Franklin perhaps hasn’t quite got his portrayal nailed down yet.
But yeah, the suit. Love it! Man in suit good. It also looks fantastic on the blu-ray discs. It’s the first time I’ve seen the Ikarran make-up in HD quality and it holds up remarkably well, especially all that gooey biomech ribcage stuff. I also like that they added some grindy sort-of-robot sounds to his movement. Very Robocop. It’s also a surprisingly good performance from Marshall Teague underneath all the prosthetics. It takes a certain strength of acting to make that kind of make-up and suit work at all.
Despite my moaning, there’s some good stuff from Sinclair and Garibaldi in here. I like when Sinclair enters the fight and orders a security team member to give him a weapon. That no-nonsense, let’s-get-this-done portrayal of Sinclair doesn’t tend to come through very well, but in that scene it does.
O’Hare’s performance in the showdown with the war machine tips over into cheeseball, which I’m going to at least half blame on the director. O’Hare is weirdly gleeful when he’s telling the Ikarran about the destruction of its homeworld. That said, I think O’Hare is really good in the aftermath scene in his quarters when Garibaldi confronts him.
The line “I think you’re looking for something worth dying for, because it’s easier than finding something worth living for” is proper good. And a lot of the themes in the episode of fanaticism are compelling, especially if you compare the Ikarran to Sinclair’s own obsession with service and self-sacrifice. I don’t think the episode itself does that particularly successfully, which is a shame - there’s good material here, but it’s all a bit superficial in the actual treatment.
We do get some intriguing world building, though. A definite sense that corporations are very powerful in B5’s future. That the Earth government is researching bioweapons and living ships. That a corp called Interplanetary Expeditions is a front and up to no good. In most other 90s shows this would all be throwaway stuff, but in B5 nothing is throwaway.
I’ve mentioned previous weeks how the word ‘alien’ is used as an easy catch-all for non-humans, which seemed a bit weird on a space station that is so intentionally multi-species, and part-funded by the Minbari. Then again, it is entirely run by Earth, so it probably does make sense. I like that this episode sort of interrogates the word directly, though, albeit in less-than-subtle ways. Is it Franklin who points out the idiocy of purist thinking, and how we’re all alien to one another? It’s the sort of theme that would have fascinated 13-year old me, though 43-me wishes it was done with more subtlety.
Right! Next week we have ‘The Parliament of Dreams’. See you there, or reader on for MEGA SPOILERS.
‼️ SPOILER STUFF ‼️
It occurred to me while watching this one that I’ve been quite inspired by the slow burn corruption in the background of season 1 and 2 in my writing of Tales from the Triverse. The background played of Barrindon Industries in Triverse fills a similar plot point to Interplanetary Expeditions in B5.
I’d completely forgotten that Interplanetary Expeditions got a mention here, so early in the show. It’s also interesting that we learn straight away that they’re a bit dodgy. The nice thing about the foreshadowing in much of season 1 is that it’s easily ignorable and optional - rather than overplaying it and building up hype, like many more recent shows - a lot of it in B5 only becomes apparent in retrospect. This episode works fine as a standalone, and the IE stuff isn’t presented as some major plot point tease.
It’s cool to get a hint of Garibaldi and Sinclair coming out of the Martian wastes together - a story that comes back in more detail in season 3 and was told in full in a comic at some point.
Also - the Ikarrans developed this super-weapon tech a thousand years ago. Just a coincidence, or were they trying to fight against the Shadows and/or Vorlons? Intriguing. I suspect a lot of races went extinct on planetary scales back then.
I think that’s about it for this week. Did I miss anything?
Being wooden and hammy is actually quite a skillset.
SPOILERIFIC WONDERS!
Garibaldi telling the reporter than he and Sheridan walked 50 miles through Martian desert comes back twice - an entire issue of the DC Comic series (which was script approved by JMS himself, and, unlike the first run of novels, remains "canon" for those who care about such things), and B5 Season 3, Episode 8, "Messages from Earth." Sinclair and Garibaldi stumbled across - without realizing the significance of either - both the Interplanetary Expeditions (IPX) dig uncovering a Shadow Battlecrab, AND the Psi-Corp facility where Talia Winters is conditioned with her backup personality.
In the Non-Spoiler section I said in some ways this episode is a macrocosm of the series.
Well yeah... For most of the show we're building up to, fighting, then seeing the aftermath of a Shadow War. The last one was 1000 years ago.
The Ikarran bio weapon - confirmed by JMS to be developed from Shadow Tech - has now been taken by EarthGov. EarthGov/IPX has, of course, been looking for Shadow Tech since finding the Battlecrab on Mars. We will see other examples of species a thousand years ago playing with Shadow Tech and getting burned. The Markab Virus from S2 is a variation on the same virus the Drakh will drop on Earth during "A Call to Arms." The Ikarran suit merges Shadow tech with Ikarran tech to form a bio weapon, and Earth will fuse Shadow Tech with Earth tech to create modified Omega destroyers. I think Warlocks might have Shadow Tech as well?
Either way we're already getting hints of the 1000 year old war. We're already getting hints of the war to come.
The Ikarrans were all about their racial purity, but we're seeing that happening with Earth - President Santiago RAN on a platform of "protecting Earth cultures from alien influence, and Homeguard/Earth First and Knightwatch are all coming.
The Minbari are all about their racial purity. The information that some humans have Minbari souls is held to the Gray Council. The truth of Valen children by Catherine Sakai being part human... That information is also held by the Gray Council.
If a Minbari makes the Triluminari glow, means they have human DNA. Delenn does... She's Sinclair/Valen's great-to-the-nth grandchild.
But that's a tangent.
Narns, oddly, don't seem to be overly into the "racial purity" thing. Especially not G'Kar who would LOVE to add some human telepath genetics to his species. Also, G'Kar just has a thing for human women in general.
Centauri? They wiped out the Xon - the other sentient species on their planet. Yeah, they've got the "racial purity" stick up their asses.
Many of the League worlds do as well - Abbai, Drazi, Markab, and Brakiri for sure.
Point is Infection shows us the last remnant of a species which took technology from an outside species, adapted it for their own military, used it in a war, and got bitten by it. We see Earth (and, it's hinted at, others) doing the same thing. We see the Ikarran's downfall was basically via their own racism, and we see too many doing the same in the 23rd century.
How do the "good guys" win the 23rd cent Shadow War? Because the "human superpower" in the show isn't having the best tech, the mightiest military, or the superior civilization... Instead, as Delenn puts it, "Humans build communities." It's the humans - and humans still struggle with racism in the 23rd century, as will come up soon enough - who have enough people willing to NOT be racist and treat every species with respect which allows them to build Babylon 5 as a location for all ti work out differences, peacefully (something none of the other species ever tried). It will be Sheridan's team building bridges and alliances between everyone which turns the tide, and sets up what may be a flawed peace, but one which will last a thousand years, and will be rebuilt after that next war.
JMS is an avowed atheist who writes religion quite respectfully - look at next week's "Parliament of Dreams," but arguably, B5's two greatest themes are:
1) Rejection of religion/God. The Shadows and Vorlons very obviously serve as inspirations for many religions in the B5 universe, INCLUDING EARTH, and the "Third Age of (Human)kind" is us realizing we don't need follow the Shadows or the Vorlons anymore and we can make our own way. That's a literal rejection of God.
2) "Can't We All Just Get Along?" Consistently in the B5 universe species who pull away from others, who refuse to mingle, merge, grow from, and learn from each other do poorly. By working together we become stronger. We won't see too many of the fruits of this during the show (other than convincing the Gods and Demons to go the fuck away) as that type of change takes generations to solidify, but the ISA Destroyer Excalibur, merging Human, Minbari and Vorlon tech being created by a group of Human, Minbari, and League engineers is a concrete example.
Ikarra fell to its own insular nature. The same crap the fascist ("nationalist") movements want to drag us back to.
Growing up in the US, I cannot believe the "self-evident-truth" we were taught in Social Studies - that the rise of the US to being such a strong, democratic, forward thinking, LEADING country was due to being a "melting pot" which accepted all who moved there, then learned from and took/adapted the strengths of all the cultures who joined. To see so many reject that for "America First/Only," and "Close the Borders" is shocking and upsetting. Pisses me off to see parts of Ireland pushing that way, too.
But that's a different topic.
NON SPOILER
Right, first episode shot... JMS has noted he hadn't really re/found character voices yet, and this episode is one of two or three JMS himself wished disappeared.
Ikarran suit is pretty cool, Sinclair's last speech of the episode is good, and that "survivor's guilt/death wish" chat between Sinclair and Garibaldi was the type of thing basically unseen in SF (or, just most) TV till that point.
Episode utterly wastes David McCallum with a boring character.
Episode is utterly ham-fisted in setting up it's central theme which is odd, because, in some ways this episode is a total macrocosm of the entire show. We'll come back that in the Spoiler section.
Richard Compton somehow manages to choose the most boring way of shooting every scene that isn't in C&C. But IN C&C... He's got that beautifully staged shot with the three techs talking about energy surges, nice an low to the floor of the upper walkway. Then he cuts to a high angle, looking down at the tech pit. Shots to Ivanova or Sinclair come FROM the tech pit to bring in the ceiling... I was a cam op for quite awhile, so I really look at cinematography, and I just don't get how Compton could find interesting angles to shoot C&C then put no effort into anything else. Some low angles looking up at the Ikarran mech suit letting the moving light fixture flare into camera would have been sweet. Well, Compton is only around for the first 9 filmed episodes... Come "Grail," he'll be gone, and better directors like Jim Johnston, Janet Greek, and Mike Vejar will pick more interesting angles. Especially Vejar.
Still, this is one of three episodes (the others are "TKO" and "Gray 17 is Missing.") I'll usually skip.
On this watch something caught my eye on the readout of the Ikarran artifact's composition. So I freeze framed it.
The artifact contains Thiamine, Riboflavin, Niacin, Xanthan, Maltodextrin, and "Okudazin."
Basically, it's edible. Would be sweet. And it's good for you, with all those vitamin B compounds. ALSO, it helps you make panel displays for Federation starships.
(Michael Okuda is the production artist for the Trek franchise, who, among other things, codified the look of the backlit LCARS displays used in Enterprise-D, so, the shout-out is worthy. Backlit panels in Trek shows are still referred to as "Okudagrams")
Again, freeze-framing video displays and newspapers is a good way to catch in-jokes and Easter Eggs on B5, but are also a good way to get world-building and/or plot teasers. The headlines from Garibaldi's paper in "Born to the Purple" will all be relevant.
"Infection" seeds important concepts which recur throughout the series - organic tech, Interplanetary Expeditions (IPX), EarthGov actively seeking artifacts, and pay attention to how many things happened "a thousand years ago." There's a throwaway line which comes back later...