s2e1: Points of Departure

Straight to hell

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It’s impossible for me to recreate the impact of the season 2 changes that must have hit first-time viewers back in 1994 - 1995. I’m pretty sure I started watching Babylon 5 somewhere in season 2, before then going back to watch season 1,¹ so I was always aware of Sheridan being the lead and didn’t experience the shock of the change.

The episode runs out of the gate and keeps going throughout. We open with what I think is our first look at on Omega-class Earth destroyer, and meet Captain John Sheridan. I like that the interior of the ship is a redressed version of Babylon 5’s sets: sure, it’s a cost-saving move, but it makes sense for Earth Force to have a consistent C&C setup so that personnel could move between vessels and stations effortlessly, without requiring retraining. And there are enough tweaks to the sets from season 1 for it to work.

More importantly, we get Bruce Boxleitner’s introduction to the series. He makes an immediate impact: he’s an actor that inhabits the lead role very comfortably. I like that it starts off in such a way that you could think he was going to be the episode’s main guest star, before the rug pull of Sinclair not returning.

That this takes place barely a week after the President’s assassination also gives the episode some serious momentum, especially when we cut back to Ivanova trying desperately to hold things together. Her CO has been recalled, Garibaldi’s in a coma, Earth itself is in crisis, and of course none of the other races care about any of that and all have their own problem and priorities. We can imagine Sinclair navigating all of that complexity quite deftly, but it’s a big and sudden step up for Ivanova.

When she gets the word that Commander Sinclair will not be returning, that’s also us the audience getting the same announcement. In the proto-internet mid-90s, there must have been many viewers who had absolutely no idea about the behind-the-scenes changes taking place on the show, and would have been very surprised. Season 2’s best decision was to not gloss over the seismic change to its lead actor and character — and also not to just recast and keep Sinclair — but to make it a plot point.

It reminds me a bit of the first Avengers film, in which the plot was very literally “this can’t possibly work. You can’t take all of these different superheroes and put them together in a team. It’ll be a big mess.” That the plot of the film embraced the discourse around the film at the time was clever and witty, and acknowledged the questions and scepticism audiences had going in. The point, then, was for the film to go “well, here’s how we do it.” And it worked out pretty well.

That’s what ‘Points of Departure’ is doing. Right from the start it makes the point that Sheridan might not be the right man for the job. Sheridan himself is uncertain and thinks he might be a problem for the station. The Minbari are angry about the appointment. Ivanova is happy to see him, but is also clearly missing Sinclair and the status quo. The entire subtext is “this probably isn’t going to work, and we’ve made a terrible mistake.” Rather than trying to ignore the awkwardness of your lead actor and character changing, the show makes a point of it.

As such, the story here becomes about how Sheridan is the right person for the job. His background gives him the knowledge they need to resolve the immediate situation. He proves himself to be a competent leader in this crisis, although he still has a lot of heavy lifting to do. He gains some of the trust of the station staff, and of the audience.

Boxleitner shifts between excited and self-doubting; gung-ho military veteran and more considerate diplomat. He’s an inversion of Sinclair in a lot of ways: good at warfare, less comfortable with diplomacy and negotiation. We get moments of him blundering his way through encounters with alien cultures in ways that would neve have happened to Sinclair.

It’s an effective entry point for Boxleitner, in other words. Meanwhile, a lot of season 1 strands are still up in the air and unresolved by the end: Delenn’s cocoon, Garibaldi’s fate, the assassination conspirators. We still don’t know where G’Kar is, or what he’s up to. A good decision to not try to resolve all of that in the same episode.

We do get the Minbari talking for the first time about the Battle of the Line and the reborn souls. It’s perhaps a bit of a stretch to think that they’d talk about it to Sheridan, given his history, but the arrival of the Trigati just about justifies it.

It’s a solid first episode of the season. Far more confident and assured in production terms to the season 1 opening episodes.

There are some nifty production changes, too. We get a brand new intro sequence, with a new narration and visuals. It’s pretty great, and sets a very different tone. More shows should do this! Plus the sets in general seem expanded and tweaked in interesting ways: more detail on surfaces, especially the corridor sets; Sheridan’s office has an expansive view out of the window to the core.² Everything feels a bit snazzier, but without creating a hard break with season 1’s established look.

Oh, we also meet Warren Keffer.

Next up is ‘Revelations’.

‼️ SPOILER STUFF ‼️

We get the Minbari conspiracy/mystery/secret laid out plain to see (well, 99% of it — though that final 1% is pretty huge). I suspect this would have taken a little longer if O’Hare had stayed, but stringing out a mystery heavily involving a character no longer actually on the show would have been deeply weird.

Sheridan is introduced on the Agamemnon, a ship that will be important down the line. General Hague, also, will be an important recurring character. Keffer is introduced, who will play a huge — if inadvertent — role in the conclusion to season 2 and what happens in season 3.

Yet more internal conflict with the Minbari is shown here. That’s going to bubble over, although not for a long while.

We hear more about the war, and Sheridan’s past. Having a war hero who is regarded as a war criminal by the other side is an interesting starting point for his character. We will, of course, see a lot more of that in the ‘In the Beginning’ TV movie, which I may or may not try watching at some point in this run.

It’s interesting also what we don’t get in this episode. We don’t get anything to do with Anna Sheridan, the Icarus, Z’ha’dum. There are some really interesting connections to existing plotlines from season 1 involving Sheridan (especially Morden) that will be major surprises down the line.

Another aspect that isn’t obvious at this point is that we actually haven’t seen the last of Michael O’Hare and Sinclair. I love that he has a cameo this season, and then a full-on two-parter in season 3. Especially with the retrospective knowledge of O’Hare’s personal struggles, I love that JMS found a way to give his character a proper resolution and send-off. It would have been far easier to just move on and pretend that the coda in ‘Babylon Squared’ was an alternate timeline, or some such.

1. I have a vague memory of winning four of the VHS releases, comprising the latter third of the first season. So while I was watching season 2 on broadcast TV, I was watching the end of season 1, and then saving up to buy the other season 1 tapes.

2. Thank god they didn’t go with greenscreening the windows. That would have dated horribly.