War Without End

Part Two

Reviewed by Lady Keela Shanri

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Well.
This episode was good, but VERY complicated, so don't smack me if I mess up the sequence or something.
Well, we start off with good ol' Sheridan still on the ruined, burning Centauri Prime (sniff) where he is told that it is now 17 years since the end of the Shadow War, and then thrown into a cell. Delenn is thrown in with him--the older Delenn. This is one of the most intense, touching, and sad scenes of the entire show. "They cannot hurt me," Delenn tells him. "It doesn't matter what they do to me, our son is safe." And then she kisses him. HARD. However, that STILL doesn't count as their official first kiss! Straczynski is still teasing us...
Not to mention...SON?!!
Now THAT'S a plot point and a half. And it's only one of many in this episode alone...
Back to our friends on the White Star, who have split up to put the time-travel equipment on the engines of Babylon 4 (Ivanova says that "with luck" they'll find an open access panel still, Marcus says he doesn't believe in luck and WHAM a random swing of his pike promptly opens one.) Ivanova also casually just HAPPENS to bring up the subject of Valen. "They say he was a Minbari not born of Minbari, and that he lived a thousand years ago," she mentions to Marcus conversationally. "I always wondered about that. Ya think we'll get to meet him?"
Well, you sort of already HAVE...
Back to John and Delenn in the dungeon. (At least that's what it looked like to me...) "You don't know", she says, searching his eyes. "You still have much pain and grief ahead of you....I can see, in your eyes, the innocence that was lost so very long ago..." (His CURRENT mind has jumped into his FUTURE body, for those of you who are confused by this, as I was the first time around.)
"But we won the war?" he asks her.
"The war is never completely won," she answers. "There are always new battles to be fought against the darkness. But we...we accomplished everything we set out to do, we made something that will endure for a thousand years. But the PRICE, John, the terrible, terrible price!" She also says that the only way to keep this from happening to Centauri Prime is to let the Shadows win. Which is obviously out of the question.
Then she manages to tell him that their son's name is David before the guards come for them and drag them in front of the throne.
What follows is, for ME, one of the VERY saddest scenes of all B5. Being a true Centauri-phile, I could not keep my eyes dry, nor would I have wanted to. And I'm not ashamed to say that in public.
Londo tells the guards to leave and then tells John and Delenn the truth. "I put on a very good performance back there," he says, "It was satisfied." In other words, the totally angry, callous "You are going to DIE now!" stuff was all an act. See, he's got this thing on him called a "Keeper", which is a NASTY little thing with tentacles and one huge eye, that's linked into his brain and forces him to do what it wants. Only by drinking himself almost totally into a stupor can he be in control of himself, and that only for a few minutes. And those minutes have been growing shorter and shorter...
(sniff)
He tells them that he has hidden a ship for them to escape in behind the Palace, but they must go NOW, or else his Keeper will wake up and then he really WILL have to execute them, whether he wants to or not. He also mentions something about them being his last chance for redemption, and BEGS them, if he helps them to escape, will they please help save his people?
Oh, geez....sob...that's good old Londo, all right. Drunk as a skunk and still caring deeply about the CENTAURI, as a race, rather than himself as an individual, right to the end. What a sad, but appropriate ending. I HATE the idea that he spends so much of his life under mind-control, though, I absolutely HATE it!! What a horrible thing to do to such a wonderful character! It almost would have been better to have him die...well, not young, but middle-aged I guess--rather than live a long life of being forced to act against his will at all times. But as we've seen, practically all of the prophecies come true in this thing, which means this WILL happen to him, and there is NO way around it. Which I HATE. I believe that there are ALWAYS alternatives. A chance to break away, to take a DIFFERENT path. The future's not set. There's no fate but what we make for ourselves.
Erm...sorry about that rant there, MAJOR sore point with me. It's my website, and I'll rant if I want to! Anyway...on with the episode...
After they leave, finally, Londo calls his "old friend" into the room--which turns out to be G'Kar--with only ONE eye! He then ASKS G'Kar to KILL him (geez, life under a Keeper is THAT BAD, and it won't even let you KILL yourself unless you're extremely tricky, ARGH Straczynski why'd you have to do this to someone as wonderful as Londo, you @#$#$#!) and G'Kar starts to strangle him. But at the last moment, the Keeper's huge creepy eye bonks open and Londo starts to strangle G'Kar back! Afterwards, as they are both laying there dead, VIR comes in and picks up the Seal of Empire (that medallion the Emperor always wears)...
WHOAH....it's the VISION! What a wonderful (but sad) twist! G'Kar is strangling Londo not because of their enmity, as we always assumed, but because Londo ASKED him to as a FRIEND! Terrific (but mean) writing and incredible acting from Peter Jurasik in this scene. As for the depressing future for Centauri Prime itself...well, we can only hope Emperor Cotto I will be the one to fix it...
And the episode is FAR from over...
Then back on Babylon 4, Zathras finally gets Sheridan's time stabiliser fixed and he starts to fade out. Just before he leaves, Delenn tells him desperately, "Take these words back to the past with you--do NOT go to Za'ha'dum!!!"
Okay, this is where it gets REALLY confusing and I'm not even gonna TRY to sort out the sequence of events. Basically, the action is made up of old scenes from "Babylon Squared" that were mysterious at the time but NOW make sense interspersed with new scenes to make a coherent (but COMPLICATED) whole. Sheridan and Sinclair BOTH put on those blue spacesuits that we saw in "Babylon Squared" to put the time-travel equipment stuff on the main deflector dish, but Major Krantz, temporary commander of the station, gets jittery about something and decides to power up the station right then, which causes a beam to come out and zap both of them AND make the station move through time before it was ready. Four years into the future, in fact--or in other words, where Garibaldi and the younger Sinclair (oh, did I mention, being exposed to the time-field is dangerous and ages you? He's now 20 years older with totally grey hair.) THAT'S why Sinclair didn't want to tell Garibaldi about this whole thing--he knew that Garibaldi would want to come along with his old friend, and since he's also been exposed to the time-field before, it would age him, too. And the time-travel stuff on the station has been damaged and has to be repaired, by of course poor old Zathras, whom NOBODY listens to...
Anyway, we re-watch some old scenes that now make sense, such as Zathras being interrogated by the B4 people, and his meeting Sinclair and saying, "Not the one", and NOW all his rantings about "They told me not to talk. Zathras listens and does as he is told", etc. make sense. Then we have Sheridan sitting on the White Star where he notices that his time stabiliser shows NO signs of damage--it's been switched for a new one. Well, then who took his old one?
We then cut back to B4, where Sinclair meets the figure in the suit--who we now know is Sheridan, which is why he wasn't shown before, as we weren't supposed to KNOW that they would have a whole new commanding officer later!--he touches the hand, just as before, and WHAM he is thrown across the room, just like before (Deja vu all over again!) and poor Zathras winds up with a pole on him. Everyone has to leave him because they THINK the station is going to blow up--it ISN'T, Ivanova just sent false sensor readings to make them THINK that so that the crew could evacuate before they sent it back in time--so they leave him there, pinned, and again, the space-suited figure comes in to rescue him, which he greets as The One. The figure takes off the spacesuit helmet and...
it's DELENN?
Yep, evidently she's the one who switched time-stabilisers with Sheridan. Although exaclty why, other than she was worried about him 'cos she loves him in general, is not said.
Oh, and at some point earlier, she had a vision herself, where she was, apparently in present day or close to it, standing watch over Sheridan while he sleeps. She is playing with a snow-globe (why do they strike me as something Minbari WOULD like?) when the door opens and a female voice, from off-camera, says, "Hi!" and for some reason, the person freaks Delenn so badly she drops the globe and it shatters on the floor...hmmmn...what's THAT all about...?
Back to the main story, we see the part with Sinclair, older, taking off his helmet and saying, "It's happening. I tried to warn them. But it's all happening just the way I knew it would, all over again." And then Delenn saying "We have to go now", but THIS time she says it ON-camera, so you can see her. Orignally, it was just a hand and sleeve, because we would have seen her changed into her new half-Human form too early, otherwise, and ruined THAT surprise.
Then Zathras finally explains all that "The One" stuff. The reason he said that Sinclair was NOT the one in "Babylon Squared" is because he was only ONE of the THREE! Minbari beliefs are based on threes, after all. Sinclair, Delenn, and Sheridan TOGETHER are The One. Sinclair is the One who Was, Delenn is the One who Is, and Sheridan is the One who Will Be. They are the beginning of the story, and the middle of the story, and the end of the story, which together will create the next great story.
They eventually get all the time-travel stuff in place, but it turns out that the system is not automatic, that Sinclair has to stay behind and control it himself. Which means he will be trapped 1,000 years in the past. They try to convince him not to do it, but he says that this is the moment his entire life has been leading up to. Reluctantly, the others get into the White Star to leave and Sinclair starts the time-travel systems.
The White Star detaches, B4 goes back in time, and the others are left on the ship discussing what had happened. "Draal closed that door." says Marcus. "I guess he didn't want anyone else going back in time."
"That is not the only door that has been closed", says Delenn. "1,000 years ago is when Minbari and Human souls started intertwining. Minbari souls were being born in Human bodies. My change in part was to correct that, even out the balance. If my people had found a Minbari on board Babylon 4 1,000 years ago, they would not have accepted it."
Understanding dawns in a great flash. "Oh, my GOD," gasps Marcus. "A Minbari not born of Minbari!"
Cut to Sinclair, who is on B4, preparing. Flashbacks--from Soul Hunter--Delenn saying "We were right about you", Legacies--Neroon: "You talk like a Minbari." (I NOTICED that line the first time around! I did! Look at my review--it MIGHT be in there, I don't know, I wrote shorter and less-detailed reviews back then...), and then finally Sinclair has that huge weird crystal structure thingie that Delenn used, only now he's going to cocoon himself the OTHER way. He puts the Triluminary on top...and the cocooning begins...
And then we cut to Zathras, and it is 1,000 years ago. The time-travel was successful. A couple of Minbari warrior-caste types, patrolling the station suspiciously (and well they might considering it just popped out of NOWHERE--does the name "Trojan Horse" ring any bells...?), they run into Zathras, who gets them to follow him eventually (kvetching all the while), to a large open hallway where we see two Vorlons OUT of their encounter suits, hovering like angels far above the floor, and between them, a tall, stately, middle-aged Minbari man in long brown robes, with a Ranger pin.
It's Sinclair (and he makes a GREAT Minbari, he's got exactly the right face-bones for it!). But on the other hand, it's NOT Sinclair anymore.
"My name is Valen", he tells the astonished Minbari. "And we have much work ahead of us."
Now if THAT isn't a plot twist, I don't know what is. The commander of the station turns out to be the great, legendary, Minbari saviour! And it was all set up ahead of time so that it made perfect sense!
This is an example of B5 at its best.

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