Shadow Dancing
Reviewed by Lady Keela Shanri
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Okay, this was a relatively simple episode (compared to the last one, almost ANYTHING could be considered "simple"!). It had two basic plotlines. One was about the escalation of the Shadow War, and the other was about Dr. Franklin. Let's take the Franklin one first, it's faster.
Franklin is wandering around Down Below, still on walkabout, when he hears someone in trouble around a corner and goes to help, being a decent person after all. He does rescue the guy, but his efforts get him STABBED in the stomach by one of the guy's attackers! They then all leave him to die, including the guy he just rescued. Now THAT'S gratitude for ya...
He lies there bleeding all over the place, in great pain, dying, when--he MEETS himself. Or rather, he sees an image of himself, all nice and neat and healthy in his snazzy black uniform, lounging around on top of a crate with his elbows resting on his knees. This is essentially his conscience I guess; one part of his personality arguing with the other part, put into visuals so we can SEE it happening for ourselves.
Now, in my opinion this was one artsy experiment that DIDN'T work. It was too cutesy. And I didn't like how the scenes with him kept intercutting the ones with the big battle. Sure, it was important to have this character get rehabilitated, but the way it was done, it was cut in at the most IRRITATING moments, and it seemed like it was being used as pure filler to make the episode the proper length. Sometimes you should break the tension, yes--and sometimes you should LET it keep building and freak the audience out!
And the "other" Franklin himself--GODS was he obnoxious. For some reason, the way he talked, the way he moved, the way he...SAT...he reminded me of--I am NOT making this up--Q!! I'm serious. I kept expecting him to say something like "Oh, G'Kar, eaten any good books lately?" or "You WOUND me, mon Capitan" to Sheridan. Never mind that neither of those characters was THERE, you know what I mean. After having seen this, I think Richard Biggs would make an EXCELLENT Q. Next time they need A Q as opposed to THE Q (John DeLancie, in other words) I think they should call him. Also, we've never seen a Q who wasn't caucasian--so it would be cool for that reason, too.
Anyway, he eventually realises that all his life he's been running away from everything, and he wants a chance to start all over again and get it RIGHT this time. So he somehow forces himself to crawl and even CLIMB all the way back to civilisation, bleeding all the way. He wakes up later in Medlab to see Garibaldi standing over him and complaining about the money he lost betting on him to cover his OBVIOUS concern for him. Sigh. Males. You know how they are...
"Well, what happened?" asks Garibaldi. "Did you meet yourself?"
"Yeah", wheezes Franklin. "And I found out--I don't LIKE myself very much." (You're telling us...)
Delenn is seen begging the League of Non-Aligned Worlds to send out their ships and help the Army of Light, appealing to their sense of honour, pointing out all the things B5 and the Rangers have done for them. Problem is, she won't tell them WHAT her plan is! They're obviously reluctant at first, but eventually, the Drazi Ambassador (played by Mark Hendrickson, who did a pretty good job) comes out to tell her that yes, the League worlds will send all the ships they can spare. But if this plan doesn't work, their homeworlds will all be vulnerable...
Nervous about that sector the Shadows are leaving alone, the one all the refugees have been flocking to, Sheridan decides to send out a scout ship--the White Star, commanded by Marcus and Ivanova. They are to ostensibly scout out the area and send word to their fleet (which will be hiding in hyperspace) the instant the Shadows show up, but what they REALLY are--and everyone knows it--is bait. Just before they leave, Sheridan sends them off with the cheerful thought that even if they do everything RIGHT, they only have about a 50/50 chance. Oh, yeah, THAT cheered me right up, thanks a HEAP Captain!
The parts with Marcus and Ivanova were definitely the best parts of this plotline. Well, that and John/Delenn, but I'll get to that later. I LOVED Ivanova's comical attempts to sleep on a Minbari bed (first she keeps sliding off it onto the floor feet-first, then she lifts the low end of the bed and puts it into a notch so it'll stay straight--she THINKS--and it tilts the OTHER way and dumps her HEADfirst. She finally gets ALL the little triangular pillows off all the beds in the entire room and makes them into a rectangular mattress on the floor, and JUST as she's falling asleep, finally--Marcus calls her. UGH!), and the romantic interplay between them--so sweet on his part, so clueless on hers--was wonderful. That line about "four-poster beds"...the look she gave him was PRICELESS. And it's so sad that he wimped out and didn't tell her what he REALLY said in Minbari--"You are the most beautiful woman I've ever met." Oh, geez...
Well, they get to the sector, they see a Shadow scout ship, it sees them--and soon a HUGE space-battle opens up. Now, I must say, I'm usually NOT into space-battles and special effects vs. characters and plotlines, but this one was GREAT. This was easily the best space-battle I've ever seen on B5, maybe one of the best I've ever seen, PERIOD. It was wonderful--ALL these different types of ships together, all colourful and diverse (from all the League worlds--I noticed Drazi, Brakiri, and Vree, especially, with the Narn heavy cruiser, the White Stars, and Minbari warcruisers mixed in there as well), everything going at ALL different directions--truly three-dimensional--in TOTAL chaos. It didn't seem slow, careful, choreographed, like most space battles do, it seemed like a REAL fight being done by ships that could go REALLY fast. It was so fast-paced it made me a bit uneasy to watch, as if I should duck or something...and the graphics were to die for! I especially liked how some of the Shadow ships would BLEED when they were shot--eewww...
Meanwhile, we have some stuff with John and Delenn. Before they leave for the battle, she tells him that if they survive this, they will spend the night together.
WIDE eyes.
"Not like THAT", she says, and goes on to explain. By Minbari tradition, when a man and a woman start getting serious about each other, it is customary for them to spend three nights together. The man sleeps, and the woman watches, waiting for when he drops the mask he wears all day and his face relaxes into his TRUE self. If she likes what she sees, she will stay the other two nights, if she doesn't, they will have nothing else to do with each other. If the man tries to force her to stay another night, she can leave when he falls asleep, make a complaint with the authorities, even cut off his..." (big pause; Sheridan's eyes get even WIDER) "...access to her family." (Gee, I wonder what we THOUGHT she was gonna say...heh heh heh...)
So, you have to sleep while someone STARES at you and tries to see your soul. I wouldn't be able to fall asleep, I'd be too freaked out! Some fun custom, you bet. Yet another reason NOT to be a Minbari...
Later, on one of the Minbari warcruisers, Delenn takes John to a strange room that looks JUST like the former Grey Council's meeting room, but it turns out that structures like this have other purposes, too. They can see the entire battle and talk to the entire fleet from here, with this really cool holographic display that comes down and envelops them on all sides. This was also really cool-looking, although a bit disturbing, to look so HUGE against a background of stars...
They direct the battle from here, until the Shadow forces start being hurt enough to take it seriously, then they wibble back into hyperspace and leave. Once they're in hyperspace, a small, ordinary-looking vessel breaks off of one of the Shadow ships and speeds away. What the heck is THAT all about...?
Our guys seem to have won the day--but at a sobering cost: For every Shadow vessel they took out, they lost TWO of their ships. EEK. The survivors are rushed to Medlab where they have to start triage.
A mysterious person arrives on the station. We are never shown this person--not at first--but only how people react to him/her, checking in with Security, getting into an elevator, looking at a map, etc. People seem vaguely freaked out for some mysterious reason, and whoever it is seems to have a definite purpose in mind and to be heading STRAIGHT for it...
And at the end of the episode, we do indeed see Sheridan and Delenn "spending the night together"--her smiling beatifically, him snoring away. She picks up a snowglobe on his desk and stares at the sparkles floating through it.
OH MY GOD! you might be saying at this point, if you've been paying attention to the earlier episodes. It's that flashforward! And just as you realise that, the door opens, and a sharp-featured blonde woman in her 30s (?) comes in. "Hello", she says, smiling politely. "You must be Delenn. I'm Anna Sheridan.
"John's wife."
Who was supposedly DEAD all this time. Let's think about this. Where was the Icarus when everyone died? Za'ha'dum. Who was the only other survivor of that ship? Mr. Morden. What did she apparently come in on? A pod that was attached to a Shadow vessel.
Are we starting to see a pattern here?
CRASH goes the snowglobe on the floor...
(This could tick off Delenn JUST a bit, don't you think? Why, she might even cut off John's...."access to her family"...)
Z-Minus 2 Days...
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