All Alone in the Night
Reviewed by Lady Keela Shanri
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This was a pretty good episode. Not great, but pretty good. It had two plotlines, both of which seemed to get about equal air-time, so I can't call them an "A"-plot and a "B"-plot. Nevertheless, we have to start somewhere, so let's start with the one that I liked less, the Sheridan one.
To sum up this first plot, I could just say this:
Sheridan gets kidnapped by aliens.
And that really IS all there is to the MAIN part of the episode. It's only at the ending, when General Hague shows up, that things start getting interesting on this front. But first, some observations about the kidnapped part.
1. The whole bit with Lt. Ramirez was cute. "Well, my diagnosis is that the patient is suffering delusions brought on by the fact that he can't face the reality that his team STINKS..." It might also have some arc-importance, although I'm not sure yet. The way Franklin was acting when he was trying to save Ramirez? All tense, frantic, angry, sweating? Sure, he was in a hurry, but the instant he snapped at Garibaldi like that, I thought, "Stim addiction..."
Not to mention, Babylon 5 is the ONLY show I can think of that can actually make you feel SORRY for a generic "you're it" redshirt type. We only knew Ramirez for a short time...but in that time, we learned some of his personality. Enough so that when they got to the part about "Radiation is ALREADY at lethal levels", you're shuddering and feeling sad.
2. The alien ship was VERY ugly and CREEPY looking, also extremely organic, inside and out. And considering how unfriendly this race was...I'm wondering..Shadow allies?
3. Drazi evidently bleed white. Hmmn.
4. The same guy who played the Narn that was trapped with Sheridan ALSO played the dude who turned into the war machine thingie in "Infection", like you needed to know that.
5. I DID rather like that one line of Delenn's: "We know this race well. They once tried this on the Minbari. We followed them back to their homeworld and showed them the true DEPTH of their mistake."
Yikes, don't mess with the boneheads...
Now, on to the more interesting part of the Sheridan plot--the conniving, politicking, skullduggery, all that great stuff. Of course, we Centauri are far better at it...but the Humans turn in a good performance every now and then.
I don't know exactly what is up, but evidently Sheridan is running some sort of a covert operation for General Hague and has been waiting to be debriefed for six months. It has something to do with the General suspecting that President Santiago's death was NOT just an accident, and that the main party behind it was...get this: Psi Corps.
Eeek.
Not good. Not good at ALL.
We are not told very much about this special assignment...just given enough little hints to REALLY pique our curiosity and then the episode has to go and END! Stupid one-hour time limit...
Now on to the Minbari plot. Here we have something BIG happen. An actual EVENT. As we saw the Centauri government be overthrown in "The Coming of Shadows" just recently, here we have shakeups in the MINBARI government. First of all, since they are evidently a bunch of bigoted specist buttheads, the Grey Council kicks Delenn off summarily WITHOUT even letting her defend herself, just because she is now half-Human! Just like that! BOOM she's out! They SAY it was because she had defied their orders when she went into the Chrysalis anyway, but I personally think it's because of the bigoted butthead reason. They don't even let her speak up for herself, because "you are no longer one of us". When she shows up in her Grey Council robes, there is NO-ONE else there, and she is told in a nasty way by, I believe, the same "No-Name Grey Council Dude" that we saw a while ago that she does NOT have a right to be in the circle anymore, that she should NOT be wearing those robes.
You think THIS is bad, wait, it gets worse.
Who replaced her?
NEROON. Remember him? Of the WARRIOR caste!
Why is this bad? Because there are SUPPOSED to be THREE of each caste, Warrior, Worker, and Religious, in the Grey Council. Now that Delenn, a Religious Caste member, has been replaced with someone from the Warrior Caste, that gives them FOUR seats on the Council instead of three, while the Religious Caste only has 2! It unbalances the whole Council and gives the Warrior Caste unprecedented power! The Warriors are the ones that did the fighting during the Earth/Minbari war, so the Council feels that they should have more of a say. But you should NEVER give over control of your government to the military...this is a BAD idea...
I especially liked Lennier in this episode. He was so SWEET and touching. And a very nice ironic touch--just before Delenn goes into the Grey Council chambers--to get KICKED OUT, as it turns out--Lennier calls her "Satai Delenn" out loud for the first time since...ever. He calls her by that title RIGHT before she looses it. TALK about your irony.
All in all, not a wonderful episode, but interesting, intriguing, and I'm sure, very important to the arc. It will be interesting to see what all becomes of this...
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