s2e5: The Long Dark

Oh dear.

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Wow.

Sigma Franklin

I didn’t expect this to be the worst episode of Babylon 5 so far, but there it is.

There are four absolutely terrible aspects to this episode:

1. The normalisation of doctor-patient abuse

2. Bizarre, out-of-character writing for Franklin

3. A very silly and uneven performance from Dwight Schultz

4. A pretty lame CGI finale

It starts well enough, with a suitably creepy opening and Alien-lite vibes. The idea of a pre-jumpgate expedition resurfacing in the future, having missed so many major developments in interstellar travel and Earth expansion, is superb. The potential to juxtapose Mariah’s background with 23rd century Babylon 5 is immense.

All of that is squandered, entirely inexplicably, in favour of a bizarre ‘romance’ plot between Franklin and Mariah. Presumably as a 14 year old I wasn’t paying attention with this episode, but watching it as an adult makes for fairly horrific viewing. Franklin immediately abuses his position of power, using his position as head of Medlab to manipulate Mariah. He removes her from the hospital, introduces her to a mentally overwhelming situation in the Zocalo, which just happens to be near to his quarters, where he massages the situation to ensure she stays the night.

I mean, WTF.

To point #1, it’s just ‘orrible stuff. Sheridan does berate Franklin and point out the ethical problems: I like how pissed off Boxleitner is in the Medlab scene. There are interesting, important themes to explore here, in terms of abusive, powerful men and so on. It’s only touched upon briefly, though, and on the whole the episode goes out of its way to justify Franklin’s behaviour — for example, by stating that Mariah and her husband were already having relationship difficulties, as if her infidelity was the main ethical problem at stake.

Silly scream and arm flailing in 3…2…1…

That aside, though, none of it has a chance of working because it makes no sense for Franklin’s character. We’ve seen him be arrogant, and over-confident, and dogmatic in his approach to medicine, but his patients have always been his priority. Healing is his entire reason for being. Sure, he flirts with every female guest star, but that’s always been from a position of mutual respect and power (such as in ‘The Quality of Mercy’). What we haven’t seen from him is a creepy tendency towards abuse of power, or an alpha, Andrew Tate-like attitude towards women.

It doesn’t work at all, and we never see this behaviour from Franklin again. It’s bad writing, and I’m entirely perplexed that it wasn’t caught and fixed by JMS or Richard Biggs. While he may not have been in a position to object, I’m still rather stunned that Biggs even agreed to perform the episode. It’s not just that it’s dated badly, it would have sat awkwardly in the show at the time, given the usual humanist themes and its commitment to a diverse (for the 90s) cast, strong female characters and so on.

Slightly better is the stuff with Amis and Garibaldi. The quieter moments are effective, and we get some interesting glimpses into parts of Garibaldi we don’t know much about. I was surprised to hear that he has had counselling, for example, as he strikes me as someone who would think it silly. A lot of their better scenes are rather spoiled each time by Dwight Schultz screaming and running away with his hands in the air. It’s such a daft representation of PTSD, that comes across as ‘generic mad person being mad’. It’s a shame the director hadn’t reined him in a bit.

The best stuff in the episode goes to G’Kar and Londo, who don’t have major parts to play but get all the best scenes. Katsulas works wonders with only a handful of lines, and I’m in awe to this day of how he manages to give such a nuanced performance beneath all that make-up. I still think it’s the most successful prosthetic head performance by any actor ever (though Doug Jones has given him some serious challenges, multiple times across multiple projects). We also get Londo looking more and more apart from everyone else. In fact, there’s a real sense throughout this episode (and the last) of everything spinning out of control, even if the Earth Force characters don’t quite know why yet.

Then there’s the alien. Good idea, and I like that it resembles a typical ‘devil’. One can imagine these things roaming the galaxy and perhaps even showing up on Earth to influence old mythology — just as they show up in G’Kar’s religious text. The final showdown really doesn’t work, though: the tech just isn’t there, and the way it’s shot doesn’t help. If they’d gone with a Jaws approach of not really showing it, they could have got away with it. And I suppose they do, in that we only ever see an outline, but the whole thing is very underwhelming. You can imagine how good it would be given Stranger Things budget and technology, but the mid-90s on a low TV budget wasn’t ready.

There is a brilliant sting in the tail of the episode, though: the revelation that the creature was on its way to Z’ha’dum, out on the rim. The same area that G’kar was investigating at the start of the season, and which he tried to warn the others about. At last, Sheridan and Ivanova are starting to take notice of events beyond the Babylon 5 station itself. Ending the episode with them staring out into space is perfect: it’s notice that the show is about to get a lot bigger.

Next up is ‘A Spider in the Web’, which I can’t remember a single thing about.

‼️ SPOILER STUFF ‼️

There’s some good stuff in here. That final Z’ha’dum revelation, of course, doubling down on season 2’s sense of foreboding. There’s a palpable sense of the story building towards something, in a way that wasn’t quite there in season 1.

Plus we get a mention of GROPOS, or ‘Ground Pounders’, the mobile infantry of Earth Force. We’ll be seeing them again later this season. Interesting that Garibaldi was a GROPOS — did we know that already? He was fighting on the ground while Sinclair was fighting in space during the Earth-Minbari War.

Love how spooky a lot of the space stuff is in this episode.

Some other bits: we get a Markab ambassador berating Sheridan in the council scene. It’s one of the best scenes in the episode and the actor under the alien make-up does a great job. But also, it’s a Markab. Oh dear.

Apparently — and I missed it myself, but heard it elsewhere — we also get a glimpse of a Ranger lurking in the background of a shot in this episode. Did you catch it?