War Without End

Part One

Reviewed by Lady Keela Shanri

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Well.
This review is going to come from a rather strange perspective (but then, which of my reviews DON'T?) as the FIRST time I saw this, it "confoozed" (as Zathras would say) the heck out of me. But now that I've actually SEEN Seasons One and Two BEFOREhand, it makes a lot more sense.
On to the review. This is a time-travel episode, which right away makes it potentially quite good in my book. You can never go wrong with time-travel. Well, okay, you CAN, but it's usually pretty fun. However, this being B5, they don't do time-travel in the typical way--a jaunt off to some period of Earth's history, to find out how, say, Delenn would handle the Disco Era or some such, (although that would have been INTERESTING...), this is a serious mission, and time-travel is treated as a dangerous thing ONLY to be used in an emergency. And this IS one.
The episode starts off as a nice, typical day on Babylon 5 (what's that?) when suddenly Corwin gets a very...odd message--it's from Ivanova, who is standing right there in C&C at the time, SCREAMING and crying about invaders storming B5 of some kind, "THEY'RE ALL OVER THE PLACE!!! HERE THEY COME!!! AAAACCCCKKKK!!"
Disbelieving, Ivanova thinks it's not really her voice but it's HER, all right. And it's coming from...
(ominous music here: bum bum bum BUMMMMM...)
...Sector 14!
Yes, THAT Sector 14. The one with all the time distortions, the place where Babylon FOUR appeared and then disappeared again the last time, about two years ago (in the episode "Babylon Squared"). Something screwy is obviously going on here, but WHAT, exactly...?
Meanwhile on Minbar (!), which we get to see for the first time, (one thing I will say for the Minbari, they make GORGEOUS buildings), we see AMBASSADOR Sinclair walking down a hallway in his funky Minbari robes when he is accosted by a running religious Minbari man. "Entil'zha!" he yells, "Entil'zha!" He hands Sinclair a small wooden chest. "The ancient teachings told us to open this box at EXACTLY this time, on exactly this day. It was first sealed over 900 years ago."
Sinclair opens the box and pulls out a piece of paper, reading it in disbelief.
It is addressed to...Jeffrey David Sinclair.
But how did anyone KNOW who he was over 900 years ago...WHO sent him this letter...and what does it SAY?)
At some point after this Garibaldi goes off in a Starfury to study the time emanations in Sector 14 and try to record more of Ivanova's mysterious message. ("You want me to bring you back anything from the future? Some bagels?") and on B5, Delenn calls a select group of people together on the White Star--herself, Sheridan, Ivanova, Marcus, and one more--Sinclair, who has just arrived. This is a great scene, because how often do you get to see the current star of a program and the FORMER star TOGETHER, on the same screen? And the really rare thing is that they actually make a GOOD team. They don't fight with each other or try to constantly upstage each other, like you might expect. (Side-note: After all that talk about how Michael O'Hare's acting was "wooden" back in the first season, the first thing my mom said when Sinclair boarded the Whitestar was, "You know? I MISSED him!" Heh heh.)
Garibaldi radios back the disturbing information that he has now "seen" B5 explode itself due to Shadow attack about 5 times while recording the Sector 14 rift stuff, that the rift has been getting bigger--and the cause of that is a very powerful tachyon beam coming from Epsilon III.
Yep, the planet B5 orbits. The "Great Machine".
Oh, and did I forget to mention the small detail that this disaster is supposedly going to happen in only EIGHT DAYS?!!
Eeek.
Back on Babylon 5, Delenn explains what's going on, to everyone, first saying that what she's about to tell them has until now been known to ONLY the Grey Council. So this is a major secret.
In the last Shadow War, 1,000 years ago, the side of Light was on the verge of winning when the Shadows took out the Minbari's main long-range base. Which caused the side of Light to start loosing. They DESPERATELY needed a long-range base of operations, to turn the balance. But there was no time to build one. Just as things looked desperate, though, salvation appeared out of literally nowhere.
Babylon 4.
("Need this place...biggest of all Babylon stations...as base, to help...in Great War...")
Without Babylon 4, they would have been destroyed. They got it, you see, when it disappeared the FIRST time, about six years ago. But now something is wrong.
The Shadows have evidently found out about all of this too, and THEY have gone back in time six years to blow up the station before the Minbari of 1,000 years ago can get it. So the Shadows were not as badly defeated as they should have been, in this new, wrong timeline, instead they just "went to ground", and now, they have three TIMES as many ships as they would have had otherwise. Before, while their forces were still relatively small, the side of light MAY have had a chance, but now...
And that is, of course, also why B5 was shown blowing up 8 days in the future.
So, there is only one logical course of action. Go back in time six years with the White Star, fight the Shadows off, and make SURE B4 disappears!
Isn't that deliciously ironic? That the Captain of the NEXT Babylon station was responsible for making the PREVIOUS one disappear? It's confusing, but I love it.
How are they going to do this? Leave that to the Great Machine, and Draal's...new?...sidekick: ZATHRAS!
I must take a moment here to congratulate Tim Choate on a good acting job. He was really FUNNY as Zathras, just as he was in "Babylon Squared", an endearingly weird, scruffy little alien mechanic with a grammar problem and a fatalistic attitude. "Zathras used to being beast of burden for other people's needs. Have a very sad life. Probably have a very sad death, too. But at least there is symmetry."
He seems very honoured to meet Sinclair and Sheridan, but for different reasons (remember all that "Not the One" stuff...?) and in the course of trying not to tell them why, he almost DOES tell them.
Before they leave, Sinclair stands alone, looking outside the great wide window, remembering the vision of B5's fiery destruction that he saw earlier, and thinking about how this is what he was always meant to do, and he has to do it no matter if he WANTS to or not. But he's ready. Ready for what? And why was Delenn so upset when she heard that he had come back, earlier? (I should have mentioned that earlier, but I'm too lazy to go back and try to find a place where I can slip it in smoothly.) He also leaves a message for Garibaldi (with the password "Hello old friend"), that Garibaldi, who is MAD at not having the chance to meet his old friend Sinclair before he left again, finds and reads before he was supposed to. What does he find in it? We're not told THAT either...
Is it just me, or is EVERYONE acting like a Vorlon around here lately?
Back to the action--Zathras hands them all some time stablizers, to protect them from the effects of time-travel (remember that poor pilot who went to look at Sector 14 and died of old age?) and prevent them from becoming "unstuck in time". A yucky fate--let's try to avoid that one, shall we?
They go through the time-gate in Sector 14, only to find that they are almost too late to stop the Shadows. A whole bunch of small Shadow fighter-ships are escorting a huge fusion bomb and heading for B4 at an alarming rate. The White Star blows up a few of them and shows off an interesting new reflective-shielding capability ("Well, as my great-great-grandfather would say", quips Sheridan, "Cool!") but they still cannot catch up with them in time to blow up the fusion bomb before B4 would be in the blast radius. So they have to take a chance and blow it up from where they are--but that would mean putting THEMSELVES in the blast radius.
Of course, being who they are, they do just that.
The wave flows over them, and then strangely, a beam of energy seems to target Sheridan SPECIFICALLY, throwing him against the wall. It breaks his time stabiliser, leaving him UNSTUCK in time! The broken piece of technolgy falls to the floor and is picked up by a disgusted Zathras. "Zathras never have anything NICE," he grumbles to himself.
The scene that follows, short as it was, was to me THE most fascinating bit in the entire episode. Sheridan finds himself, on, of all places, CENTAURI PRIME--
--almost twenty years in the FUTURE!
He is kicked around, prodded and generally mistreated by some Royal Guards, dragged directly in front of the throne, where he looks up into the eyes of a very old EMPEROR Londo Mollari!!
Londo seems to be very, very angry at Sheridan for some reason, and is planning to KILL him! "I am doing what I should have done a long time ago," he growls. "Putting YOU out of MY misery!"
"But why?" Sheridan wants to know. "The war...?"
"Oh, yes, your little war", Londo snarls between his yellowed fangs. "Yes, you did quite a good job driving away the Shadows, you and your friends. But you never thought to clean up your MESS! If a few of the Shadows' lower minions happen to end up on Centauri Prime, what's the harm in that? You want to know what's the harm? THIS!" The guards drag Sheridan over to the window, where Londo angrily flings back the curtains. "THIS is the price we had to pay for YOUR little war!!"
And outside the window...Centauri Prime is in flames...
Oh, GEEZ...excuse me while I get a tissue. NOOOOO!!!
Out of all the "signs and portents" on Babylon 5, which have a depressing habit of ALWAYS coming true (one of my MAJOR beefs with the show, and probably THE reason I will never be a "true fan"), this is THE prophecy I NEVER want to see happen. Ever. (But it probably will, knowing Straczynski.)
And it will only get worse...

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