Between the Darkness and the Light

Reviewed by Lady Keela Shanri

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Wow.
This was QUITE an episode. Arc-heavy, action-packed, exciting, sad, scary, and even managed to work some humour in. But as hard a wallop as THIS one packs, it's nothing compared to what's coming up next...
The episode basically had two main plotlines, and a subplot--the effort to rescue Sheridan, Ivanova leading the fleet towards Earth, and the League of Non-Aligned Worlds going further towards a real alliance. Let's start with the Mars/Sheridan one first.
We start off with a DELICIOUSLY surreal and bizzarre scene in which Sheridan, seemingly just hunky-dory, is back on the station talking to Franklin, in his (Sheridan's) quarters. While the audience is left yelling "WHAT? How the hell did THAT happen? He was being tortured in a holding cell on Mars last we saw him! What a cheat!" Franklin goes on and smarms his way through the "friendly" conversation, and when he asks who Sheridan worked with, the setting switches back to what's REALLY happening--he's still in his cell, being interrogated. He looks VERY scruffy and VERY beat up and is drugged, delirious, and hooked up to all kinds of nasty wire-goodies, but he's still not cooperating! The scene switches back from real reality and him being happy back on B5 and back, with weird mixes of the two in-between (such as Franklin being in the interrogation cell, or the interrogator talking to Sheridan on B5.) Very weird and creepy, and as a side note--Franklin (Richard Biggs) does a good sinister.
From there, we go to the Mars resistance tunnels, where Garibaldi is failing to make the rebels listen to his side of the story. He tells Franklin and Lyta (who are with them) that his mind was messed with by Bester, but he doesn't have any way to prove it. The resistance people want to shoot him on sight but Franklin manages to get them calmed down for just a second. "If it were one of YOUR men," he says to Number One, "wouldn't YOU give him a chance to explain what's wrong, to set things right?"
She thinks about it for a second. "NO." she says, calmly draws a gun, and proceeds to try to blow Garibaldi away!
(YIKES--don't MESS with this woman...)
Whereupon Lyta pulls out a BIGGER gun and she and Franklin totally shoot the place up until all the rebels are really LISTENING to them. (Battle of the Alpha Females here...I think I'll just quietly back into a corner now...) Then she scans Garibaldi to find out if he's telling the truth, as he requested. She can't get in at first, because there are level 12 blocks all over the place--only a Psi Cop can put them in, which right away starts to corroborate part of his story. She pushes, on his request, and her eyes do that funky alien all-black thing as she relives the entire thing, all in extreme fast-forward.
"It's true", she tells Number One.
"Like that means a damn! How do we know that anything you say is the truth, you could be saying whatever the hell you want--"
"What do YOU know about Hell, hmmn?" Lyta asks her, turning around, her eyes still black (Number One visibly recoils at this point, and I don't blame her!) "Would you like to see it? His and mine?" and she throws all the images into Number One's brain. Now SHE says it's true, and being the leader, they believe Garibaldi now. So now all they have to do is get to Sheridan. Garibaldi is pretty sure of where he is and how to get out--it's just the getting-in part that will be tricky. For that, they'll need help from the resistance. But the resistance is stretched very thin and the area they'll be going into is extremely dangerous--they shoot you on SIGHT if you're found in here, don't even bother to question you--so Number One can only spare one person. So, into the tunnels Franklin, Lyta, Garibaldi, and this very exotic-looking Indonesian (or something like that) pixie elf-woman all go.
Well, Elf-Woman takes them as far as she can, then she has to go back. So then they improvise. They knock out some guards and steal their uniforms, and poor Garibaldi at one point gets a knife in his back! But by far my favourite part of this whole plotline was when Lyta got a rare chance to be funny. They had a canteen of water to drink from, Garibaldi takes a drink, hands it behind his back to Franklin, who takes a big gulp, then Lyta who takes a normal drink. "Okay, I heard a gulp," Garibaldi says, "We have to conserve our water here, people. Who gulped?"
"I didn't gulp." says Franklin.
"I didn't." says Lyta.
"You I believe." says Garibaldi to her.
"Why do you believe her and not me?" says Franklin, chagrined.
"Because she's a much better liar than you are. When YOU lie, it's all over your face."
"Thank you," says Lyta, then goes, "WAIT a minute--what do you MEAN I'm a good liar?" (They keep talking, just ignoring her). "I don't like what I'm hearing here--where did you hear I was a good liar? Who told you that? I'm--I'm a TERRIBLE liar!" (They keep talking, and start to leave.)
"When I get back to the station, I am gonna SUE somebody!" she yells indignantly. "I don't know who, and I don't know how, but I am GONNA sue SOMEBODY!"
"Are you gonna come with us, or not?" says Garibaldi sarcastically from off-camera.
"HMMPH!" she tosses her head in the air and stalks off after them. Great stuff.
Well, they get to the place where they're holding Sheridan and make it past the main guard, because he recognises Garibaldi from ISN and is honoured to meet the "hero." Then they have a little less luck with the cell guards. ("You may have seen me on ISN", "Television is a cultural wasteland filled with inappropriate metaphors created by the liberal elite." I was on the FLOOR...) until Lyta whispers, "PAIIINNNNN..." into the guard's mind and rips the codes out of his head. They get in and untie poor Sheridan ("Garibaldi! I was gonna kick your butt for...something...I don't remember....") and almost get him out safely when one of the front-door guards sees blood on the back of Garibaldi's uniform (from his knife-wound, which Franklin sutured--WITHOUT anasthetic, OUCH!) and realises something is wrong, so they all pull out their guns, kick butt, and run. Rather disturbingly, Sheridan pumps six rounds of ammo into a guy who's already dead with a COMPLETELY emotionless look on his face, and when Garibaldi asks if he's all right, he says, "Fine. Juuuuuust fine." Shudder...
Then eventually, Sheridan gets onto the fleet and reunites with Delenn, but for that to make sense, we have to visit the sub-plot.
Delenn is walking down the corridor, looking half-asleep, when Lennier runs up and tells her that he's just heard-- Ambassador Mollari has called the League of Non-Aligned Worlds into a meeting--and it's already started! He does not know why, but "knowing Ambassador Mollari, I am already depressed by the possibilities." They rush off there to find out that what they are doing is actually something NICE--they want to get the League to back Sheridan and help him out for the way he helped them during the Shadow War. "Politically, it is wise." says Londo. "Morally, it is even wiser." says G'Kar. "Politics and morality on the same side? That doesn't happen very often, Delenn." says Vir.
"If someone does not start making sense here very soon, I will become most annoyed."
says Delenn, glaring about at everyone.
The reason they did the vote so quickly, and without telling her, is that they knew that if SHE did it, it would look like she was just getting revenge for what Earth did to her sweetie-pie, Sheridan. This way, it looks a lot more honest and rational. And so, Delenn agrees to the idea, which is a great, hearts-warming one, and we get to see CENTAURI ships on the side of LIGHT for a change! That doesn't happen very often! I mean, sure, it's more fun to play the villian in THEORY, but when all the good guys band together and kick your butt and burn your planet to the ground, it's not so much fun anymore...but that's for Season Five...
And now, onto the fleet-marching-towards-Earth plot. Ivanova, now in command of the fleet, finds out from a captured officer that not all of the people who "defect" to their side are REALLY defecting. (well, DUH, I could have told you THAT a long time ago!) Some of them are playing both sides against the middle, and they have leaked word to Earth about where Ivanova's fleet is going to meet up before they get to Mars, and they have a big fleet of special, advanced-model warships there. "How many? Ivanova asks. "A lot." he answers.
So, she decides to go in after them and spring the trap early with ONLY the White Stars--they can't afford to lose the defected Earth ships; they're the symbol that this really is Earth's OWN people getting pissed off at Clark, not just those B5 renegades and some random aliens. So she deliberately tells the Agammemmnon and the other Earth ships NOT to help her; the White Stars will do this on their own.
So then we get a great bit with Marcus and Ivanova. She does not want to rest before the battle, but Marcus convinces her to, saying, "Well, let me put it this way--you can either get 4 hours and 59 minutes of REST, or you can get 4 hours and 59 minutes of me BOTHERING you about it." "You wouldn't." "Rangers never bluff." So she goes and lays down--on a slanted Minbari bed, which she seems to have gotten the hang of by now, and Marcus comes to wake her up after almost the entire 5 hours, rather than the 2 and a half hours they agreed on. Whereupon we get a rather touching scene. "The last time we were in this room, you said something to me in Minbari," she tells him. "I have a photographic memory, it went like this: 'You are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.'"
"Yes", says Marcus, mystified.
"Well, in case you can't tell, I've learned some Minbari since then." (wry, embarrassed smile.) "Thank you."
Oh, geez...
Then, the big battle. This was a GREAT battle for CGI--fancy rotating gun-turrets, big explosions, hairpin, three-dimensional turns (as my mom said when a squadron of White Stars made a VERY quick turn-about, "Oh, PLEASE let the inertial dampeners be working..."), but that all pales compared to the plot aspects of it.
First of all, the new, advanced-model Earth warships are using SHADOW TECHNOLOGY!!! They are that creepy metallic/organic, black mottled texture, and they have SPINES growing out of them! Let me tell you, I shuddered every single time one of them came on the screen, they were so CREEPY-looking! And so, just when we thought the battle between the First Ones was over--it isn't--we've got ships that are part VORLON technology fighting ships that are part SHADOW technology! Great, huh?
And then, there is Ivanova's speech, possibly one of the most over-quoted lines in the entire show:
"Who is this?" snaps one of the evil Earth captains.
"Who am I?" asks Ivanova, her eyes wide with anger. "I am Susan Ivanova, Commander, daughter of Andrei and Sophie Ivanov. I am the right hand of vengeance, and the boot that is gonna kick your sorry ass all the way back to Earth, sweetheart. I am death incarnate, and the last living thing you are EVER going to see.
"GOD sent me."
And they cut loose firing.
What ensues is a huge, long, dramatic battle that I have already described the special effects for, but it was impressive. The White Stars are outnumbered by the enemy fighters but they still manage to defeat them--and just as they are about to clear the battlefield safely, a huge chunk of debris crashes RIGHT into Ivanova's White Star and trashes it!
Isn't it ironic--don't ya think?
Marcus is the only one left standing in the rubble and he pulls a heavy metal beam off of poor Ivanova, who is laying there wounded and unconscious. He picks her up and, struggling to carry her (and she is NOT a small girl, and he's really skinny and delicate, so that could not have been easy!) across the tilting floor, while all around him, fires burn. It's a very dramatic and heroic scene.
Sheridan, meanwhile, reunites with Delenn and asks to see "her." Cut to Ivanova, laying down on a Minbari bed, which Marcus, who has been watching over her all this time, managed to get "nice and flat, just the way she'd like it." She is hooked up to all kinds of complex medical stuff, and it looks as if her neck has been broken. Ouch. At this point, I started getting all teary-eyed. As does everyone else in the room--all the other characters, including Ivanova herself, who is conscious but in lots of pain. "John", she whispers weakly, "they won't tell me the truth. But you...you're my friend. Tell me--am I going to make it?"
He sighs, and says, "No. They say the damage is too..." he trails off. "I'm sorry."
"John," she whispers. "There's something I want you to do for me..."
And so, he appears on the bridge of the Agammemmnon, saying that "a friend asked me to command the last battle from here."
We are left with a mixed message of hope and tragedy, as the heroes gear up for the last fight but on the other hand, Ivanova seems to be dying! I knew ahead of time that she was no longer going to be there in Season Five, but I didn't know WHY. So I started thinking, "Oh, no, is THIS how she leaves the show, that they KILLED her? No, Ivanova, don't die!!" sniff etc.
But this is Babylon 5, where nothing is as it appears, remember? They can still surprise you...but not necessarily in a NICE way...

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