Endgame

Goodbye, dear Marcus...sniff...

Reviewed by Lady Keela Shanri

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WOW!!
This is it! This is really, really it!
(Okay, so it's only the FOURTH-season ending, and it's not even the ending, there are still two more episodes to go, but you know what I mean...)
Endgame indeed! This is one of THE most scary, exciting, edge-of-your-seat hours of television I have EVER seen. It would be extremely hard to top this one. And I'm surprised it didn't also win a Hugo!
There are two main storylines in this--the battle to free Earth being the big one, and a smaller, more personal battle to save Ivanova's life. Let's start with the big one first.
We start off on Mars, where our heroes are taking over bases right and left. "What's wrong with that base?" demands an angry Earthforce officer.
"The same thing that's wrong with this one!" returns one of his staff, and WHOOSH they've been taken over by the rebels. (As a side note, I don't know this character's name or the actress's name, who played the little black woman that was helping the rebels from the inside, but I LIKED her, she was kinda cool.) Garibaldi, under the name of "Grumpy" (AHEM, noooooo comment...) is sending messages to "Sleepy, Sneezy and Doc", telling them that he has found the coordinates for "the White Queen's castle" and that they can "break the mirror any time they want", providing a much needed spot of humour in all the tension. And boy, is it EVER tense!
They are loading the telepaths, or 30 of them anyway (out of about a hundred) onto the Earthforce destroyers, with the help of a tiny Earthforce lady officer who is on the rebels' side as quickly as they can. Why?
And here, we find out the plan of Sheridan's that got Franklin so very, very shocked when he first heard it a couple episodes ago--Sheridan plans to USE those people. The idea being that they will go onto the ships, Lyta will wake them up from Mars, and they will hook into "the machine..." and thereby disable the ships, allowing Sheridan and his rebel fleet to come in safely. Or, more precisely, the teepsicles will take out MOST of the ships, leaving only a few for Sheridan and co. to fight.
"My god!" says the No-Name Resistance Chick. (the short black woman that I liked.) "You're USING them!"
"Yeah, we're using them." says Franklin in an angry but somehow dead voice. And you can tell, from the sad look in his eyes, that the arguments he's giving her are STILL arguments he's giving himself, even now, at the deadline. But he has to go through with it anyway. Garibaldi trying to cheer him up by telling him he's doing the right thing was a very nice touch.
I have to say I agree with Franklin. It IS wrong for Sheridan to just USE these people like that! Sure, it's been said several times before that there's nothing they can do for them, sure, it's necessary because in times like these you should use any weapon you have, sure, it'll help save thousands of lives, BUT...
Using these people as weapons is exactly what the SHADOWS had in mind when they altered them.
And now Sheridan is using them for exactly the same purpose.
What exactly is the difference? Where is the line between good and evil? What's the difference between Sheridan, the way he is now, and, say, Londo? They are both patriots who care deeply about their homeworld, both willing to commit rather cold-blooded acts to save it.
They have been described as opposites, Sheridan the hero and Londo the villian, but at this moment, I would be hard-pressed to find ANY difference between them at ALL. Sheridan uses the teepsicles, Londo blows up the Island of Celini with a few people still on it.
You tell me--where is the difference?
There isn't any.
At all.
Okay, okay, enough philosophizing, back to the plot. Meanwhile, back in hyperspace, Sheridan is on the Agammemmnon, commanding the fleet. Marcus is on one of the White Stars, thinking about Ivanova. He tells Lennier to cover for him for a bit, he has "a few details to take care of." (It always worries me when someone speaks very vaguely like that on this show...) And at some point in this section of time, we find out that the commanding officer of the Apollo, one of the main destroyers sent to stop Sheridan at the last moment, is General Lefcourt, who happened to have been Sheridan's TEACHER at the academy!
Hmmn...this is NOT good... (Side-note, I liked the younger British/Australian (hard to tell which) guy who was the Apollo's normal Captain, he was cool. Yet ANOTHER guest-star character with real potential that is never used again...this episode is FULL of 'em!)
Back on Mars, a White Star pops in IN the atmosphere, EXTREMELY close to the ground, (Lyta, who is outside in her encounter-gear, has to DUCK as it goes over her head, YIKES!) and starts taking out the defense grid bases on Mars from INSIDE the warning system! That's what all that "we have found the coordinates for the White Queen's castle" thing was all about--Garibaldi giving the EXACT coordinates to the White Star. It's an amazing scene and shows you that these people, the good guys, do NOT fool around...
A note about the special effects on this episode. They were SUPERB. They added to the story, rather than distracting from it or making a weak story seem better because it LOOKS snazzy, as special effects are so very often wrongly used in other science-fiction shows and movies. The story of THIS episode was so strong, it didn't NEED any embellishment, but the CGI made it even tenser, if anything. I especially loved the shots on the surface, outdoors, on Mars--some of them were truly breathtaking, harsh, red, alien vistas, with the winds sweeping across the desert...very cool.
Back to the story--this next bit goes SO fast that I'm not sure I can keep up with it and put everything into its proper place, so bear with me:
1. Sheridan's ships are almost to Earth, when Marcus finds out what he wanted to know--he searches the medical database on B5 (over the 'net) and found out about the alien healing device. Which takes the life-force out of one person and puts it into another...remember...? and he turns HIS White Star around, after diverting both Delenn and Lennier's attention away from him, and goes back to Babylon 5 alone...
2. Delenn calls Sheridan about it, and makes it a private call. We do not hear what she tells him, but it makes him obviously upset. But they continue on towards Earth anyway.
3. They reach Earth and pop out of hyperspace.
4. The Clark-loyalist Earthforce destroyers also pop out of hyperspace, all over the place.
5. Lyta, standing on the surface of Mars, stares up at the enemy Earthforce destroyers and does her all-black-eyes thing, waking up the teepsicles, which then start to disable the ships, and do a really good job of it, too. At least some of them are killed, as we see one of them being blown away by what looks like some kind of PPG machine-gun. Sad.
6. Sheridan makes his WONDERFUL speech, in my opinion, one of the best if not THE best speeches on the entire show. Now, I can't remember the entire thing, it's too long, but some of the memorable pieces are, "We have come to place President Clark under arrest, to disband the Nightwatch..." "this is NOT the voice of treason. These are your OWN sons, your OWN daughters, whose loyalty to this alliance has NEVER wavered!" and, who could forget the ending, "We have come home!"
Oh, geez....sniff...that speech just GETS me every time...!
7. A huge battle ensues between what's left of the enemy Earthforce ships and Sheridan's fleet. Great special effects, bang, zoom, turn, zap, etc. Neat stuff.
8. President Clark is shown sitting all alone in the dark, in his office, writing something (we don't know what) all during Sheridan's speech.
9. The Earth defense grid, huge missile platforms with absolutely TONS of deadly ammo, turn themselves on, (no, not THAT way, get your minds out of the gutter!) and start firing at our guys. The poor Starfury pilots are basically being used as sacrifices to go blow up the minefield to make the way safe for the bigger ships, as they keep intercepting all the defense-grid missiles! I felt sorry for them!
10. Meanwhile, Senator Crosby, flanked by all kinds of Security guards, is marching towards his office to take him under arrest. (Note: Senator Crosby, a cool guest-star character that I wouldn't mind seeing again, was played by Carolyn Seymour, a classy actress who has played several parts on different Star Treks and I've liked every character I've seen her play so far.)
11. Clark finishes what he is writing and hits some buttons on his desk, buttons which do...something...to the defense grid.
12. Senator Crosby breaks down the door of Clark's office with her Security guards JUST as (a) the battle with the enemy Earthforce ships seems to be winding down, and (b) President Clark puts a PPG to his head.
Ouch.
Then she finds the paper Clark was writing. He has circled a few of the letters. Together, those circled letters say:
S C O R C H E D E A R T H.
YIKES!!!!
She gasps as well you might in that situation and calls back up to Sheridan, "Captain, I think Clark has turned the defense grid in towards EARTH! If you don't stop them they'll wipe out 40% of our landmass and kill everything on the planet!"
And here we see a parallell to ANOTHER mad leader...."Let it burn. Let it all end...in FIRE!!!"
SHUDDER!
So now Sheridan's fleet, all beat up, has to defeat these HUGE defense-grid platforms, which have missile after missile after missile, in only a few seconds before they can finish turning around! The Agammemmnon's weapons are disabled. "What should we do?" asks Captain James, Sheridan's former second-in-command.
Sheridan thinks for one second.
"Sheridan to engineering," he says, "give me enough power for RAMMING speed!"
YIKESSS!! Oh, of course I know they won't REALLY kill the MAIN good guy, but still, was there EVER a more nail-bitingly tense moment?!!
They get closer and closer to the defense grid platform. Closer, closer...
...and the Apollo--that's right, one of the ENEMY ships, the one captained by Sheridan's old teacher from the academy, shows up at the VERY last second and blows up the platform with their weapons!! The Agamemmnon crashes through the remains in a great ball of fire, only INCHES away from ramming it.
WOW!!
Epilogue--everything seems to be hunky-dory now, although not quite. For one thing, Sheridan seems to have a permanent beard now (just kidding, that's not a disaster, it just...doesn't look right on him...), and he will have to face trial for what he's done here today, and before--it AIN'T over yet, as we will see in the next episode. Everyone is calming down, cleaning things up. But for some odd reason, the scene that REALLY got me during this part was the ISN report.
And why? Because, it's the REAL ISN back again!! Yaayyyy!!! And, the anchorwoman is that same one we kept seeing before, back in Seasons One and Two, the one played by Maggie Egan. (Who I guess I'll have to call "The No-Name ISN Chick" even though I don't want to.) The same old face we recognise from the good old days, the one--well, one of the two--who was there when ISN was attacked! The instant I saw her face on the screen, my first reaction was, "It's HER! She's OKAY!! They DIDN'T kill her!"
And then my second reaction was, "WHY did I just react like that? She's a minor, background character who doesn't even have a name!"
That's B5 for you. The writing is SO good, for the most part, that it makes you feel for even the minor characters.
You know she's on OUR side from the report she gives. She is sitting there, obviously crying (oh, geez...) while she tells about how she and her fellow reporters were captured, interrogated, tortured, and sometimes even killed, under Clark's regime, and then goes on to tell about how "forces loyal to a FREE Earth" came in and took out Clark's forces, rather than saying that they were "evil renegades" as ISN would have done shortly before. And with tears in her voice, she wraps it up by saying, "We have a long struggle to repair the wounds that this civil war has left behind, but we must remember one thing--we are all, equally, sons and daughters of Earth."
(sniff...)
And speaking of "sniff..." the episode ain't over yet. Babylon 5 can NEVER let you have an unadulterated, pure, happy ending. No, like the happy/crying news report just before it, the very ending scene of this episode is extremely bittersweet.
Franklin is heading back towards Babylon 5 in an effort to stop Marcus. He watches the last thing Marcus was watching, the computer records about the alien healing device: "What would happen if you passed out while you were hooked up to this thing, would it just keep taking your life energy?" "I don't know." (remember when I said, way back in Season Two, that that line would come back to haunt us? This is such GREAT continuity!) "...we have determined that even for short amounts of time, the alien healing device is EXTREMELY dangerous and should never be used again, until we can figure out how to control it more exactly. But one thing is certain--for near-death cases, for the patient to live--the person giving their life energy has to die."
Cut to Medlab, on the station--nurses are knocked unconscious all over the place and it's obvious the place has been broken into. The camera slowly sweeps over Marcus, plugged into the alien healing device on one end and the poor, dying Ivanova on the other, giving her his life energy. Now, I knew, unfortunately, that this scene was coming up BEFORE I ever saw it, and since I only LIKE Marcus, I don't LOVE him, I thought that I WASN'T going to get misty-eyed over it.
I thought wrong.
I was fine, up until the moment when Marcus looks into Ivanova's face, who is still unconscious and therefore will never know, and says, "I love you..."
...just before he passes out...
(excuse me while I get a hanky...)
And so it ends...

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