Interludes and Examinations

Reviewed by Lady Keela Shanri

Click HERE or HERE to see more pictures from the episode. And I'm TICKED that they didn't have ONE SINGLE PICTURE for the entire Londo plotline!

WOW!
Don't let that quiet-sounding title fool you, this is one HECK of an episode. Full of great acting--from Bruce Boxleitner, Peter Jurasik, Ed Wasser, and others--action, character development and arc advancement from beginning to end, if you miss even a MINUTE you'll be confused from now on.
There were several plotlines going on at once. Sheridan's attempts to get the League races together on their side, the whole thing with Kosh, Dr. Franklin's worsening stim addiction, and Londo and Mr. Morden...
Let's start with Sheridan, the League, and Kosh, for all these things are related. It is now ten days since the Shadows started attacking openly. They attack practically everyone, without seeming provocation or cause, taking no territory, just plain killing. No-one can figure out their pattern, if they even have one. Sheridan is trying to get the League worlds to come together and back the "Army of Light", but they refuse to do so unless Sheridan can prove that HIS side has equal power. They wrongly think that as long as they stay quiet, the Shadows will leave them alone. To back Sheridan would be to make themselves seen.
Sheridan is fuming about this. They need a victory, just ONE, to raise everyone's morale. "Then give them one," says Delenn. "Just like that?" Sheridan laughs, incredulously.
"Just like that", she says, adding "I'm sure you'll think of something..." and leaves the room.
Well, that was certainly helpful (not). So Sheridan goes to the only person on the station who just might BE able to handle Shadows--
Kosh.
Thus follows a VERY intense scene in which you can just FEEL the foreboding in the air, as Sheridan tries to convince Kosh to "get up off his encounter-suited butt and DO something!" I must also say, this was some of Bruce Boxleitner's best acting to date and yet another reason why I'm pissed that science fiction NEVER wins acting awards. Sheridan wants Kosh to get the Vorlons to attack just one or two Shadow vessels; just enough to give everyone some hope. Kosh violently refuses, insults Sheridan, and slams him agains the wall with some kind of telekinesis, almost strangling him. But at the end...
...he AGREES...?
"But there is a price", Kosh tells the shaken Captain. "If I help you now, I will not be able to help you later, when you go to Za'ha'dum."
"You already told me that if I go to Za'ha'dum I will die," Sheridan reminds him.
"Yes", says Kosh, walking away, and adds, "You do not understand..."
"...but you WILL..."
And that is the last we ever see of him alive. Well, SORTA...
A short while later, we see a Vorlon fleet doing battle with a Shadow fleet--and WINNING! The good guys cheer, thinking that things are finally starting to go right. While in the station's Alien Sector, something is going horribly wrong...
Let's jump to Londo's plotline now, as it ties into this one. Londo is DELIRIOUSLY happy, because his one, true love, Adira, is finally coming back to him. He has Vir make all KINDS of super-lavish preperations for her arrival. He has the largest suite on Babylon 5 rented and filled with REAL Starlaces (a Centauri flower), he orders for her fine wines, hot jala, lovely gowns, and other...things...as an embarrassed Vir tries to explain to the vendor he is ordering the stuff from. "Do you want this one with or without garters?" asks the vendor, obviously enjoying poor Vir's embarrassment. As Vir flutters and blushes, the vendor chooses, "With. You can never go wrong with garters." (looks down at Vir) "Well, YOU could."
It's an amusing scene, but you KNOW that anything that makes a main character THIS happy HAS to end in tragedy...especially on Babylon 5. And this episode is no exception. Enter Mr. Morden.
As Ivanova's voice-over explains at the beginning of the episode, with B5's resources being as strained as they are now, they can't keep as tight a lid on security as they would like to, so every now and then someone undesirable WILL slip through the cracks. Someone like Mr. Morden, who we see buying some unidentified contraband from a two-timing B5 Security guard in exchange for some diamonds--who he then KILLS afterwards and takes the diamonds back, grinning all the while. Later on, he meet Londo in a corridor that suddenly turns red-lit like something out of Hell, all spooky and gloomy (I'd worry about someone who can make the lighting change just by walking into a room, wouldn't you?) and says he has something to settle with him. Londo wants nothing of it.
Morden says that Londo has gone back on their bargain. He is very angry--while still sounding smooth and calm at all times, of course--that Londo has evidently somehow not only gotten the Centauri to pull back from their border wars, but also made Lord Refa stop returning his calls (I could make a snide joke here about how "you won't return my calls!" sounds like the complaint of a jilted "significant other", but I'll restrain myself...). "We carved up the galaxy, you and I." he says.
"Yes, we did." returns Londo. "And as long as you have your half, it is of no concern to you what we do in ours. You were never interested in returning the glory of the Centauri Republic," he continues over Morden's arguments, "I believe you were always just using us, as...agents of chaos. Weakening the other races, distracting them so that you and your associates could pursue your own goals unnoticed."
"Careful, Mollari", Morden warns, still in that same, even, amiable tone, "If you put yourself between my associates and their goals, they may turn their eye to your own homeworld." "Then we shall pluck it out," sneers Londo with a confidence he obviously doesn't really have, and stalks away.
Pride goeth before a fall...
(Disturbingly, Londo can HEAR the Shadows that accompany Mr. Morden as they chitter at each other. We've never seen an ORDINARY person react to their talking before, but then again, it never happened in this quiet of an area before. The question is--can ANYBODY hear a Shadow, or just those who have gone that far down the path of darkness...?)
Morden, undaunted, tries to figure out how to get his claws back into Londo. He meets a very hurried Vir JUST after that scene with the vendor and cheerfully asks if there's anything he can do to help. "Short of dying?" grins Vir. "No, I can't think of a thing. If you'll excuse me," and pushes past him.
Since he was obviously in such a hurry, Morden walks up to the vendor and pretends he had JUST missed Vir, and would the vendor please mind telling him what he had missed? The idiot then proceeds to tell him everything...
And so, when Londo is finally standing at the docking bay, a bouquet of Starlaces in hands, so happy he's crying, waiting for Adira to disembark--
--you already KNOW she's dead.
Poison. It's what Morden was buying earlier. He cut the one last tie Londo had, took away the one thing he ever, truly loved.
But Londo thinks that Lord REFA did it instead, for revenge!
Oh, dear....
So he jumps RIGHT into Morden's clutches again, WILLINGLY. Back to the very person who hurt him to plan revenge on one who USED to be his friend and gladly sells whatever remains of his soul, all in one fell swoop. "All I want now is revenge", he tells Morden, who can hardly contain his happiness at how well his nasty little plan worked. "and safety for my people. The rest of the galaxy can BURN for all I care."
Oooh....
I must take a moment here to congratulate both Peter Jurasik and Ed Wasser on great acting jobs. Jurasik really makes you FEEL his grief at Adira's death and his desperate, tearstained anger; Wasser literally makes your skin crawl with his always calm, "friendly" portrayal of Morden. When the character can make you jump by simply FROWNING, you know you've established a good villain. Morden is so laid-back and almost unemotional all the time that the instant he shows the SLIGHTEST bit of actual anger, you freak...
And that's not all. Mr. Morden and his associates were busy little boys this day. (Well, or girls, or its, as the Shadows may be.) Shortly after Kosh's forces wipe out that Shadow fleet, Morden breaks into Kosh's quarters where three or four Shadows (it was hard to tell) proceed to beat Kosh to a...glowing...pulp. During the intense battle, the sleeping Sheridan sees his father come to him in a dream, but his father is saying things like what KOSH was saying. How he was right, this IS their war, and it WAS time they got involved. But now he is going to have to leave, but "don't worry, my son. As long as you're here, I will be here."
Sheridan LEAPS up in bed, yelling, "KOSH!!"
Hmmn...
And Security guards arrive to find nothing but a burned-out husk of an encounter suit. There is no body, but then, there wouldn't be. Kosh is, nevertheless, truly dead.
This has been a depressing day, hasn't it?
Now I must take aside a bit of time to talk about Mr. Morden himself, the man at the center of all this chaos. Up until now, Morden merely contained the HINT of pure evil, lurking beneath the surface, and we knew he was totally callous about taking lives, but we never saw him actually DO anything horrible. Here, he kills people in cold blood, using assassins and poisons to manipulate all the pieces on the board into the positions he wants. In this episode, he went from merely creepy and foreboding to downright despicable.
And it ain't over yet...
Now, onto the subplot, Franklin's stim addiction. His scenes with Garibaldi were touching and sad, and his behaviour in Medlab shows a man on the edge of collapse. I have to give acting credit to Richard Biggs here, too, because he really DOES seem like he's going completely out of control. I also rather liked his assistant, Lillian Hobbs. Well-played by Jennifer Balgolbin (who looks enough like him to be his SISTER), she is intelligent, sarcastic, and assertive, but also caring. She refuses to help Garibaldi spy on Franklin to find out just how bad his stim addiction is, but on the other hand, in Medlab, she snaps at Franklin, "I didn't question your judgement, I said you were flat WRONG!" Great character. I like it when even the background people are sympathetic and interesting.
So what comes of all this? Franklin finally fesses up to the fact that he is, indeed, addicted, and decides to...RESIGN...before he hurts anybody else.
Whoah.
Like I said, miss THIS one and you're a goner. A great episode full of great performances and big, sweeping themes, all around.

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