Babylon 5:"A View from the Gallery "

Written By: J. Michael Straczynski
Directed By: Janet Greek

Capsule Summary: As the station defends itself against an alien attack, two ordinary crewmen, Mack and Bo, try to carry on and keep the station running.

Quotable Highlights:

  • "Sheridan, he's down in the trenches with everybody else."

  • "I heard he was dead once." "Well, nobody's perfect, Mac."

  • "You did not grow up, you grew old."

  • "What if the station falls." "Then I say to you what you once said to me, 'I'll see you again in a place where no Shadows fall.'"

  • "I think I'm in love." "She's married." "We'll work something out."

    • The problem with this episode was the bad setup and the underdeveloped scenes. In my mind this episode suffered because JMS wrote it in one day.

    For starters the setup was an alien-of-the-week attacks B5 and B5 suddenly loses all the AOL ships seen around B5 in previous episodes. The problem here is with a little more development they could have made the aliens Shadow Allies (forshadowed a few episodes before in the first couple episodes), and the fact that no ships where at B5 could have been explained by saying B5 was drawing the alien fleet into a trap (with the AOL fleet waiting in hyperspace to cut off the alien fleet off from the jumpgate once the aliens were centered around B5). Thus the AOL would be weakening the threat these allies posed to weaker worlds (something that makes sense for the leaders of the Alliance to plan) and the episode would fit more with the arc in a case something like this one.

    What really stinks is all JMS had to do was replace the Alien of the Week here with the Streibs from "All Alone in the Night" and this episodes setup would have worked just as well and it could have put closure on the Streibs. Plus, the episode would fit in more with the arc and make the Streibs a bit more than the Alien of the Week they seem to be in "All Alone in the Night".

    Another problem were the scenes in the episode. While a few scenes like the "Welcome to Babylon 5" Franklin scene and the Londo/Gkar scene were well developed and very well done most others were under-developed like the fight scenes (in which people punched helmets and Zack stands up without cover in the middle of a fire fight) and the fact that the two crew Members run into just about everyone. I was especially annoyed by the sappy Byron scene (a quote every once in a while is alright, but Byron does very little but quote). Plus too much of the time the two crewmen seemed like comic relief.

    I liked the second and third episodes even though they were a little slow. However the first and fourth episodes suffer from trying to target new viewers too much and also a rushed feel (back in July JMS said that he would have less time on the first three or four scripts). I think this episode could have been a lot more had it been revised. Instead of the final draft of the script, this episode feels like the first draft without any editing or revisions (probably due to the fact that it was written in less than one day).

    Rating: 3.0

    Next Week:A look at the Rangers



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