Babylon 4 returns, leaving temporal mayhem in its wake. And meet the lovely and talented Zathras! Everyone loves Zathras, right?
(Originally aired on August 10, 1994)
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Jim Johnston
| What's That Name? |
| ZATHRAS: Need this place. Need this. Use to fight. They told Zathras biggest of all Babylon stations we need. Needing, we take. There is no more to telling. |
ZATHRAS: Zathras not of this time. You take, Zathras die. You leave, Zathras die. Either way, it is bad for Zathras. |
GUEST STARS
Kent Broadhurst - Major Krantz
Tim Choate - Zathras
Denise Gentile - Lise Hampton
WATCH OUT FOR
* The markings on Alpha 7. On the trip to sector 14, the Star Fury has a vertical yellow racing stripe on top. When the ship returns to Babylon 5, it sports an elaborate green pattern over the entire central section.
ANALYSIS
Oh, so that's what happened to Babylon 4. That explains everything.
A character in J. Michael Straczynski's most recent comic book creation Midnight Nation points out that questions can lead to either explanations or answers. Explanations address the simple nuts and bolts of what happened, providing information but not much meaning. Answers attend to the more complicated matters of who and how and why.
Thus, getting the explanation of what happened to Babylon 4 is something like being a midwife attending the birth of a whole litter of new questions.
Who else was involved in the theft? Where was the station taken? Who is/are The One? How did the seemingly older Sinclair wind up on Babylon 4?
To put it another way, the first season of Babylon 5 can be compared to a set of four-dimensional Russian nesting dolls. Each answer peels away a layer of mystery, but what remains tends to be more puzzling, more mysterious and larger than the riddle that encompassed it.
It takes the better part of two seasons until we learn the answers to the new questions surrounding Babylon 4. By that time, the lion's share of the mysterious questions raised in the show's first season and a half will have been explained to most viewers' satisfaction.
The once and future Garibaldi
"Babylon Squared" shows viewers three faces -- past, present and possible future -- of their
.
Taken in sequence, they represent a continuum. The unhappy ending of his relationship with Lise shown in the flashback points the way toward the present version of Garibaldi -- the character we see week in and week out.
After Lise, Garibaldi focuses on his career because that's all he has. Defined by his job, the Garibaldi of the future is someone in search of his defining moment. Convinced he has nothing of substance to live for, a heroic death will give his life the meaning he always believed it lacked.
Ultimately, the future is mutable. Sinclair's vision depicts a possible future, one that the successful hijacking of Babylon 4 neatly invalidates.
While the future Garibaldi may well believe that he was born to go out in a blaze of glory, Straczynski reserves a happier ending for the balding misfit.
COMING UP NEXT
Criminal justice,
alien healing machine
and June Lockhart, too.
"The Quality of Mercy".
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