Eyes
Reviewed by Keela Shanri
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Wow! This was a great episode!
Like "And the Sky Full of Stars" before it, this is one of the very rare first season episodes that just...FEELS...like Babylon 5. It has the mood, the look, the timing, and the characterisation that I associate with Babylon 5. And all this while NOT having been written by J. Michael Straczynski. Although it is so close to his writing style--at its best--that I have a feeling he contributed quite a bit to Lawrence G. DiTillio's script.
This episode is good all the way through. The A-plot is intriguing, dark, and suspenseful, and the B-plot, while it does, admittedly, add nothing at all to the episode itself OR the "arc" as a whole, is a delightfully FUNNY piece of fluff. And, as you have probably discovered if you read my reviews of "Born to the Purple" and "Parliament of Dreams", I LIKE fluff if it's done well.
First, the main plot. It concerns a creepy military secret investigator named Colonel Ari Ben Zayne and his telepath sidekick Harriman Grey who come aboard the station under false pretenses. Once they reveal themselves, they DEMAND that the command staff MUST be questioned and ALL submitted to a telepathic scan. All--including Ivanova, who is absolutely determined NOT to let them get inside her mind.
This could have been just a standard "evil-beauracrats-at-the-top" episode, but it is so much more than that. It let us know a bit more about exactly how creepy and horrible EarthGov is getting, and it was a tense thriller, with the plot getting thicker and thicker, more and more layers of intrigue, deeper, and deeper, until you don't know HOW far up this deception goes, WHO's involved, and exactly how bad IS it going to get before it stops. Great stuff. Plus, it tells us more about one of our main characters, and contains a worthy guest-star character.
Ivanova's extreme reaction to the idea of being scanned--including nightmares, an attempt to resign her commission, and a drunken bar brawl also tells us a few more tantalizing bits about her character. For example, why was she thinking so "loudly" as Grey put it, about Talia Winters? (Also bear in mind that after Talia was subjected to a painful deep scan by Bester and his partner in "Mind War", it was IVANOVA who handed her a glass of water.) And WHY did we see HER face at the end of the dream? Interesting...
As a side note, the drunken bar brawl was not only a HOOT, it was great to see that simmering temper of Ivanova's finally cut loose. She's always making menacing comments about how you DON'T want to get her mad (to the ISN reporter in "Infection": "Don't. You're too young to experience that much pain." for just one example), it was nice to see that she was NOT kidding or bluffing all that time!
And Harriman Grey was a very intriguing character. Not even counting that I already knew the actor Jeffrey Combs from his roles on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" (he plays both Weyoun, the Vorta representative and Brunt, F.C.A., the MOST obnoxious Ferengi EVER) and was just enjoying the chance to see what he looks like as a HUMAN for a change, he did a great acting job and I found the character very interesting. He seems like just an ordinary flunky, and a Psi Corps stooge, but by the end of the episode he has revealed himself to be a strong-willed individual with a mysterious but decent and kind personality. He was actually quite cool. I think he is probably the most likeable Psi Corps character I've yet seen. And if you think his eyes are freaky here--wait until you see him on Star Trek with his LAVENDAR contacts in! Hee hee...
And now, for the B-plot...
I've been reading in-jokes among B5 fans about Garibaldi, Lennier, and a...motorcycle?!--for months now, and it was a relief to finally see WHERE they were coming from. Lennier's total fascination for the whole motorcycle "mystique" so to speak, and his ability to not only learn a foreign language but also ASSEMBLE a very complex machine within maybe a couple of days, were both amusing beyond belief. And I LOVED it when he said "Domo arigato" while bowing before he left Garibaldi's quarters. That was GREAT! He has to learn Japanese to read the manual, so he starts SPEAKING Japanese. And the Minbari culture has always reminded me of them quite a bit from day one. So it's rather appropriate. "I'm turning Minbari, I really think so" (oriental guitar riff)...um...oops, where was I? Ah, yes. Delightfully funny.
Garibaldi: Get out of here! (meaning, "I don't believe this!
Lennier: Of course, I will leave at once.
I think Ivanova summed it up best when, after seeing Lennier and Garibaldi go zooming down the corridor on a Minbari-technology-powered 1992 Kawasaki:
"Well, looks like things are back to normal!"
If this is "normal" for Babylon 5, I think I'll have me another plate!
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