Mysterious agents force Sinclair to relive the Battle of the Line.
(Originally aired on March 16, 1994)
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Janet Greek
GUEST STARS
Judson Scott - Knight One
Christopher Neame - Knight Two
Jim Youngs - Frank Benson
Justin Williams - Mitchell
WATCH OUT FOR
* Sinclair's question when he faces the Grey Council for the first time. He asks, "What do you want?" and the inquiry echoes through the chamber for several seconds. It is a loaded question, and it reverberates through the series causing no end of trouble for those who choose to answer it.
ANALYSIS
It's ironic that that in forcing Sinclair to recover his memories, Knight Two develops a whole Swiss cheese worth of holes in his own mind. This is what's known as poetic justice.
Irony aside, what is the real reason for the Knights' interest in Sinclair? The stated belief that he sold out Earth to the Minbari can't justify the effort they expend in trying to break him.
The assumption that Sinclair was the linchpin of a fifth column movement dedicated to undermining Earth from within is absurd. At best, this is the sort of paranoid rhetoric that groups like the Home Guard use to exploit the masses' fears.
Whatever their intentions may be, the Knights clearly believe Sinclair knows something . Given their apparent connections to the highest levels of EarthGov, they may be privy to information that we viewers won't learn until the episode "Eyes": Sinclair was not Earth's first choice to command Babylon 5. The Minbari engineered his appointment. If the Knights have this information, their concerns become slightly easier to understand.
The Knights' belief that Sinclair is a traitor still fails to explain why the Minbari surrendered. The question is not "did Sinclair sell out his own people?" but rather, "what is so special about this one mid-level officer that it caused them to surrender on the brink of victory?" Even assuming if they were interested in destabilizing Earth from within, why would the Minbari choose a random fighter pilot as their go-to guy?
These questions do not to occur to the Knights. Of course, people who dedicate themselves to flushing out traitors become so focused on their goal that there's no room for the larger questions to invade their consciousness.
That's unfortunate, because when you get right down to it, there is a conspiracy in action. Specifically, the Minbari have plans for Sinclair that are far greater than the conquest of a single planet. In their eyes, he is the key to a thousand-year-old prophecy in which he is instrumental in preparing for not one, but two wars on a galactic scale.
But that information will have to wait for future episodes. Because when all is said and done, there's plenty more to be remembered.
An actor prepares
Michael O'Hare pulls off a neat bit of characterization in this episode. It's subtle, but his performance imbues Sinclair with the curse of survivor's guilt.
As he explains to the Knight, he watched his friends die one by one. By all rights, he should have died as well. He only avoided their fate by an inexplicable -- and unremembered -- twist of fate.
The question of how he survived has dogged Sinclair for ten years. This pales in comparison to another, painfully insoluble question: "Why me?" The question of what happened notwithstanding, why did this soldier live when all his comrades perished?
In a lesser show, Sinclair's anguish would be conveyed complete with wailing, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. In the context of "And the Sky Full of Stars", Sinclair's suffering is conveyed almost wholly on a subtextual level. It's there in O'Hare's characterization, but it's just one element in a powerful, multi-layered performance.
COMING UP NEXT
Join Scott O'Callaghan when gets behind the wheel for the next five laps of the Babylon 5 Hundred. An alien war criminal offers Earth the secret of immortality. Find out what happens when the League of Non-Aligned Worlds stops being polite and starts getting real in "Deathwalker".
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