T.K.O.
Reviewed by Emperor Cartagia
Click HERE to see a picture from the episode.
Okay, it looks as if just because B5 has one really good episode, that doesn't necessarily mean that the series as a whole is getting better. No, sir, they can still mess up plenty, and this episode is a perfect example. I WOULD blame it on the fact that they are, after all, still in Season One, and first seasons are ALWAYS rocky, but...
This episode had two seperate plots, as is normal for B5, but neither of them had the SLIGHTEST connection to each other. Neither plotline had ANYTHING to do with the arc, AND both of them were perfectly resolved at the end, leaving NO mysteries to be wondered about for later.
And speaking of "rocky", let's start with the main thread. The one the episode is named after.
The main plotline, if you want to call it that, concerns an old friend of Garibaldi's, who also happens to be a champion prize fighter, showing up on the station. He was cheated out of his one big chance at a title fight back on Earth, so he's ended up on Babylon 5. Why? There's a major martial-arts match between the aliens on B5 called the "Mutai". It's a huge honour if you win it, so to reclaim his lost chance at glory, he wants to enter the Mutai. Problems: first of all, only aliens (but evidently ALL aliens) are allowed to fight in it, not "Earthers", and secondly, it is a very violent fight in which no holds are barred. In fact, "Mutai" means "trial of blood".
So of course Garibaldi tries to talk his buddy out of it, and of course it doesn't work and the guy ends up fighting anyway. He gets into the Mutai by challenging the champion--a huge, tall alien who can mop the floor with almost anyone. He fights him to a draw, then at the end the alien dude bows politely to him.
VERY predictable. And the DIALOGUE!! Could they stuff it any more full of acronyms, abbreviations, slang terms and jargon? I mean, I KNOW it's supposed to be the future but SHEESH, maybe I'd like to be able to UNDERSTAND what the characters are saying? And I just didn't like the idea of revolving an entire episode around a martial-arts match to begin with. I mean, I thought I was watching Babylon 5, not "Mortal Kombat"!
The second plotline, and the only one of any worth in my opinion, concerns Ivanova and the fact that she does NOT want to sit Shiva for her dead father. In fact, he's now been dead for several months (he died back in "Born to the Purple"--remember that?) and she is still not grieving. She does not think he ever truly loved her. Her family's Rabbi, Alexei Rozhenko, (no, just kidding, he's PLAYED by the same guy that plays Worf's adopted Human father on Star Trek: The Next Generation) goes to Sinclair on her behalf to get her some time off whether she wants it or not, so she now has no more excuses. So after much complaining, she finally does.
And when she does, the stories of the way her father acted towards her when she was a small child make her see that he really DID love her after all. For the first time, we see Ivanova the "Ice-Queen" break down in tears. It almost made ME cry.
The main problem with this episode was its disjointedness. The two plotlines not only had nothing to do with each other, they clashed badly and the timing was HORRIBLE. We are yanked straight from a very touching scene of Ivanova crying to a noisy, brutish scene of Walker Smith and the alien champion dude knocking the stuffing out of each other. It is NOT a smooth transition. As it is, you are just starting to feel your own eyes clouding up when UGH! you're back in the ring. It felt rather disrespectful and uncaring. Whoever did the editing on this episode has NO sense of appropriateness whatsoever.
However, we DID learn a few interesting background things. For one, in the fighting ring, I could have sworn I saw a darker-skinned, I would say Arabic? or perhaps Hindu--Centauri in the audience! That is good because I was beginning to wonder if that race HAD any other colour than white...another useful piece of info about the Centauri is that they have a type of fish called "treel" that evidently Humans can eat and even enjoy. (And that makes sense--with a planet that is mostly water, and them being DEFINITELY meat-eaters, you would think the Centauri would eat a LOT of fish). Oh, and Ivanova reading a HARLAN ELLISON book was a wonderful little in-joke.
But the REALLY important things we learn from this episode concern Ivanova's character. First of all, that she is Jewish, and secondly, we learn that Claudia Christian actually CAN act. This episode made my mother say that before this point, she never thought of her as a terribly good actress, but she just changed her mind.
T.K.O. was a poor episode. But if the A-Plot had even vaguely matched the quality of the B-plot, it COULD have been decent.
Oh, well, win some, loose some...
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