Racing Mars
Reviewed by Lady Keela Shanri
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This was a complex and arc-heavy episode (but then again, come on, this is Season FOUR already!), very interesting and mysterious, with action and even quite a bit of humour. How DO they do it, I wonder...Anyway, there were several plotlines going on at once. The two main ones were about Franklin and Marcus's trip to Mars to meet the rebel underground, and Mr. Garibaldi's downward spiral into darkness (don't ya just LOVE that kind of talk?). The two subplots involved Sheridan and Delenn's relationship, and the continuing plight of the station running out of supplies due to the embargo.
Let's start with that one first. Ivanova first FORCES Sheridan to take a break ("Who taught you how to negotiate like that?" "You did.") and then goes to, of all things, the black-market people in order to forge new supply lines for Babylon 5. She is TOTALLY evil and unscrupulous and absolutely the most FUN in this scene, as she threatens the scrungy smugglers with blackmail and worse. "And if your pilots have an accident, we can repair your ships", she says. "My pilots don't HAVE accidents" says one of the smugglers. "Yes they will, I'll SEE to it myself!" "You wouldn't." "There's a 200-megawatt pulse cannon in the forward cargo bay that says otherwise!" Great stuff. The deal is, if they help smuggle GOOD things into the station, such as needed food supplies and weapons, she will reward them by helping them upkeep their ships, and by NOT telling EarthGov about their crimes and NOT "blowing them out of the sky". Ivanova is getting MEAN, isn't she? I absolutely ADORED it. Oh, and evidently this is how Garibaldi lost his hair--by a practical joke that she and one of the smugglers played on him. "We didn't KNOW what was in that bottle, that's my story and I'm sticking to it." Hee hee...
On to the next plotline now--Mr. Garibaldi vs. Sheridan. Sheridan's attempt to apologise to Mr. Garibaldi only makes things worse--both times they make a scene, and Sheridan ends up YELLING at him and even threatening him, and the second time, Garibaldi PUNCHES him! Huge crowds gathered and I'm sure that this information got all over the station within 15 minutes of when it happened. The problem is, you see, that Garibaldi thinks that Sheridan is developing a God complex, as he said in the ISN interview in "The Illusion of Truth", a "cult of personality", and that worst of all, Sheridan is starting to believe his own publicity! Sheridan's desperate questioning about what's wrong, WHY does his old friend now hate him so much only makes things worse, and leaves him wondering if perhaps, just a little bit, Garibaldi could be RIGHT... The Crazed Brakiri Woman did not help matters, either, when she flips out over meeting Sheridan and wants to recieve a "blessing" from him ("Get away from him, he's not the Pope, he doesn't look anything like her!" snaps Garibaldi. "HER"?! YES!! Ha ha ha ha ha!) and Sheridan protests but Garibaldi doesn't believe it for a moment, and it makes the already tense moment turn into an explosion. A couple of notes here--first of all, why did this remind me of a darker version of Zack and the relgious-nut Drazi ("Look, I don't wanna share my blessing, okay?"), secondly, the actress playing the Crazed Brakiri Woman is named Carrie Dobro and she is evidently going to be a regular on the new series, "Crusade", as a character named "Dureena", and thirdly--that was AWFULLY convenient timing that she came over there and acted that way at EXACTLY that instant, now, wasn't it...?
All of this combines to make Garibaldi even MORE disillusioned with Sheridan and "the cause" in general and more susceptible to outside influences. So when he is approached by a group of goons led by a silver-haired, sweet-talking yet CREEPY thugs named Wade who offer to "make sure" Sheridan "gets the proper care he needs" for his "mental illness", and ask Garibaldi if he is "in", he says, "Yes." Without knowing WHAT "in" is! There is definitely something wrong with our dear Mr. Garibaldi.
The questions are: HOW wrong is he? And better yet, who did this to him? And why?
On to our next plotline (notice how I cleverly changed the subject there), Marcus and Franklin on Mars. This was great, important to the plot AND still full of humour. "I spy with my little eye", says Marcus, as they play silly "driving-games" to stave off the intense boredom of their long journey, "something beginning with 'b'".
"Boxes", says Franklin, bored to tears.
"Right!" says Marcus. "I spy with my little eye, something beginning with...'m'."
"More boxes." groans Franklin. Then he turns to the camera and says, TOTALLy deadpan, "And that's when I shot him, your honour."
Who SAYS Franklin can't be funny?
It gets even better when they meet their contact, Captain Jack. He first TORTURES them with the smell of his hot meals while they're forced to eat dried rations, then eventually reveals himself to them by reciting a very strange pass-phrase, ("Lyta had a little Vorlon"...I wonder what Lyta would think of this code?!) but he himself turns out to be even stranger--in a likeable sort of way, for the most part. Donovan Scott did a good acting job as the irrascible, folksy, eccentric, seemingly happy-go-lucky rebel smuggler with a very tragic secret. He tells Franklin and Marcus that since the rebels he usually smuggles through only travel one at a time, not in pairs, he had to kinda fudge things to let the two of them go through together--their fake I.D.s say that they are a young MARRIED couple, and they're going to Mars for their honeymoon! ACK!! LOVE it! B5 is certainly not afraid to be open-minded and liberal, and I LOVE it. "Shall we go, darling?" Marcus quips, linking his arm through Franklin's and dragging him along. Later on, on the shuttle, Marcus is toting up the full list of things that have gone wrong on this trip, ending with "and worst of all, I'm married to YOU!" "That was not MY idea!" says Franklin. "Oh, you say that NOW, but it was all I could hear about from my mother for weeks. 'When are you going to set the date, I have to pick out patterns!'" Aw, how sweet..the young couple's first fight... (and like I said earlier, I think they make a PRETTY couple!)
On Mars itself, they first travel through the tube-shuttles, impressive-looking glass-enclosed monorail systems, zipping across the Martian plains in a really cool-looking shot, then they get to the place where they will meet the other rebels, a series of underground tunnels. Worried that they might be lost, they ask Captain Jack if he really knows where he's going. "Don't worry" he answers, acting steadily a little bit stranger and stranger all the time, "Captain Jack knows what he's doing. You can TRUST Captain Jack."
"I don't trust anyone who refers to himself in the third person," mutters Marcus to Franklin.
As it turns out, he's right. They get to the rebel base and find themselves with a VERY unfriendly welcoming party, led by a guy with a Southern accent named "Number Two" who refuses to let them see Number One, their leader. He is suspicious of Marcus's pike ("I'm a Ranger", he explains. "You're a long way from Texas, boy", grunts Number Two, "and you don't have the right accent.") and everything else about them. He "suggests" that they give him their identicards, their REAL ones, so he can check and see if they are who they say they are, so reluctantly they hand them over. They are then forced to wait for hours in a very hot, stuffy room while under heavy guard, removing the outermost layers of their clothing. While Captain Jack still wearing his heavy coat like always, saying he's fine even though he's sweating. He also shows Franklin a picture of his daughter, which happens to have her address on the back of it...
Then Number Two comes back in and almost blows them away saying that their identicards turned out to be FAKE, when a very, very very TALL woman with long blonde hair shows up and tells him to hold off a bit. (I'm not exaggerating her height; she was taller than ALL the other people on the screen, who were all MALE, and she had to DUCK going through the door!) This is "Number One" and she decides to give them one last chance to explain what's really going on.
But before anyone gets a chance to say much of anything, from behind them all, Captain Jack rubs at his shoulder funny and then whips out a PPG and fires at Number One!
Marcus tackles her down to the ground to save her while a royal firefight breaks out for a moment. The Marcus shoots at Captain Jack's shoulder. As he does so, a strange, yucky tentacled thing flashes into view on his shoulder...and scuttles away to die behind a crate. Captain Jack himself staggers weakly out of the room.
Once all the excitement has died down, Franklin examines the body of the tentacled yick as the others watch--it is, as you have probably guessed already, a KEEPER. No-one uses that name because none of these characters have seen one before, but I was going, "OH MY GODS!! A KEEPER!! THEY'RE ALREADY TO EARTH!!!! OH MY GODS!!" etc. (I also thought for a long time that maybe President Clark had one, but they never say so I'm guessing that's NOT a spoiler. But hey, it's a valid guess...) Franklin explains how the entire skin of the creature is covered with fibers that go into the skin and hook into your neural network, in effect controlling your actions (and even thoughts?) That's what made Captain Jack betray them and try to kill Number One (he must have switched their real identicards for the fakes when he handed them over), but it didn't notice the LITTLE things he was doing to warn them that something was wrong--wearing his coat even though he was sweating, saying that Deneb has nothing worth buying when it's actually a huge market, and why he gave Franklin his daughter's address--because he was not expecting to live...not expecting to live? Just then a flunky comes in to say that the weapons locker has been broken into, and someone took a thermal hand grenade.
Number One urgently calls Captain Jack, who has made it into the transport tube on a shuttle that is totally empty other than himself, by now. She begs him to reconsider, tells him that now that the thing's dead, he'll be all right now. He chokes that it doesn't matter, it'll grow back, they ALWAYS grow back, you can never get rid of the whole thing. They broke in and put it on him when he was asleep (can we say, "It was all a dream! That's all! Just a bad dream!" SHUDDER.) and he will never be free of it now. As a new tentacle is ALREADY starting to grow, climbing over his shoulder, he uses his last remaining bit of free will to blow himself to kingdom come.
WOW.
(And THIS is the fate awaiting Londo, and the poor little Regent? Torment so bad that you want to DIE but can't and there is absolutely NO way to get rid of the thing? WAAAHHH!! I refuse to believe that, there's GOT to be a way. Selective mindblasts by a very powerful and very skilled telepath, a poison that only hurts the Keeper's biology and not yours, or it does hurt you but the amount needed to kill a Keeper, with its smaller body, only makes you sick for a while, etc. There's GOT to be a way, there just HAS to. I refuse to believe there is no hope whatsoever for my favourite characters. REFUSE.)
Well, after all that, Franklin and Marcus have made contact with the rebels successfully and we leave this plotline for now with Number One taking Franklin out to dinner ("I'll just mention this when we're fighting for custody of the children", mutters Marcus as they leave.)
Onto the last plotline--Sheridan and Delenn. Speaking of getting married, Delenn wants Sheridan to do yet ANOTHER Minbari pre-wedding ritual. There can be as many as FIFTY before the couple actually ties the knot. "Doesn't anybody ever ELOPE on your planet?" wonders the disgruntled Sheridan. But this ritual is DIFFERENT. This one involves "exploring each others' pleasure centers". ! THAT perks him right up. One catch, however--
A whole group of other Minbari, including Mr. Lennier, has to be RIGHT in the next room, listening!
Hey, this is what you get when you take up with an ALIEN woman, buddy boy! Delenn eventually manages to drag Sheridan--LITERALLY--into the next room, and then bows politely before closing the doors.
And so I'll let Mr. Lennier end this review with one of the best lines of all B5 (to Sheridan in the elevator, the next day):
"Whoo-hoo?"
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