s2e4: A Distant Star

Star stuff

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.

Due to a range of factors, including most of my house being ill for the last week, I’ll be keeping today’s newsletter little on the short side. It’s also why it’s coming in a little late. Let’s just say it got lost in hyperspace.

The concept of ‘hyperspace’ has been in the series from the very beginning, but I don’t think we actually saw inside hyperspace until season 2. Do correct me if I’m wrong on that one. In ‘A Distant Star’ we get a plot that revolves around hyperspace as a physical space, which I feel was only confirmed very recently. Until we saw ‘inside’, the jumpgates could have been functioning in a very different way.

Hyperspace is visually dynamic and feels every bit as threatening as it needs to. It’s a long way from Star Trek’s warp speed, which tends to feel exciting and adventurous. Hyperspace is somewhere you don’t want to be for any longer than you absolutely have to. You get in, you get out. Nobody would use it if it wasn’t necessary for interstellar travel.

The episode does a good job of establishing the dangers. No ship has ever been recovered — immediately establishing that multiple ships have been lost — and there’s a ‘drift’ in hyperspace. The idea of a current of sorts pulling disabled ships off track, of vessels falling down gravity wells…it’s all quite terrifying.

Before everything goes wrong, the arrival of the Cortez is used as an excellent excuse to question Sheridan’s skills and appropriateness for the job; again, it’s a slightly meta question: do we, the audience, like him yet? How does he compare to Sinclair? It’s the show not shying away from the awkwardness of changing its lead actor and characters after one season, and instead leaning into it.

Russ Tamblyn as Captain Maynard is a real mixed bag. In some scenes, where he’s reminiscing with Sheridan, he works pretty well. He has an amiable, relaxed quality that works for the character. On the bridge of the Cortez his performance is less successful, though this is in part I think due to some odd staging: the shots are a bit weird, and some actors are shouting while others are speaking normally. It feels like the direction was inconsistent, perhaps, and that there was a lack of clarity over how much crashing and banging would be added to the audio in post.

The visuals of the Cortez have aged, for sure. It lacks the sense of wonder it had back in the 90s, especially in the post-Expanse world. That said, conceptually it’s still really cool. The idea of a ship out on the rim for years, exploring and building actual jumpgates is a good one. The semi-industrial mix of factory chic and Chris Foss stylings is novel, too, even if the model lacks the necessary detail to really pull it off.

Meanwhile, the diet/Garibaldi subplot is unexpectedly witty. Miguel A. Nuñez, Jr. as Orwell, the guy supplying Garibaldi, is hilarious. I wish they’d brought him back as a recurring character, to be honest.

We finally see Delenn again after her big reveal, and again it’s rewarding to see that her transition is also not going entirely according to plan. Season 2 is doing a great job at running with ongoing plot threads and leaning into that continuity.

Finally, I love that Keffer encounters a Shadow ship, the same ones doing Londo’s bidding, but nobody pays much attention. Ivanova literally says “ah, it’s not important right now.” The intriguing thing is that even Londo wouldn’t recognise one of those spider ships. The way information is siloed off in the show at the moment is really fascinating.

Pretty cool that ‘things living in hyperspace’ was there from early in season 1, as newspaper headlines.

Next up is ‘The Long Dark’.

‼️ SPOILER STUFF ‼️

Two big things:

1. Sheridan and Delenn share their first proper scenes together. There’s immediately chemistry there, and it feels like a very different relationship than Sinclair-Delenn.

2. Keffer sees a Shadow vessel, and wants to know what the hell it was. This will set all sorts of things in motion. Critically, this episode marks a point where the major races (or humans, at least) could have become properly aware of the looming threat, and they completely overlooked it. I can’t help but feel that Sheridan’s desk overflowing with paperwork is part of that commentary: the big things being missed due to an overwhelming amount of trivial stuff.