GUEST STARS
Robert Englund -- Jeremiah
John Vickery -- Neroon
Time Winters -- Rathenn
WATCH OUT FOR
* Measurements. There are 30 levels in Grey Sector. It takes three seconds to travel between each level. From top to bottom, the lift should take 90 seconds to make the complete tour.
* Nightmare monster without a mask. Robert Englund is best known for a role he plays wearing a mask: he is none other than Freddie Krueger from the Nightmare on Elm Street film series.
ANALYSIS
The lost world -- a world like our own, but exotic, filled with marvels -- is a staple of science fiction. Look to Arthur Conan Doyle. Look to Edward Rice Burroughs.
Entering a lost world is like stepping back in time. Dinosaurs and other monsters can live alongside primitive people. Anything can happen, because nothing has been fixed yet -- everything is still possible.
Garibaldi finds such a world -- sans dinosaurs -- in Grey 17. He steps into a place where station law no longer holds. By seceding from the everyday cosmos, the inhabitants of Grey 17 hope to regain purity with the galaxy.
But this world is marred by logical inconsistencies. It doesn’t add up. Why smuggle in a deadly alien like a zarg? How has this level remained undisturbed for so long? Does this so-called return to innocence have anything to contribute to the larger universe?
True to Anton Chekhov's maxim about a gun shown in the first act firing by the final one, this episode allows Garibaldi to use bullets from his great-grandmother's revolver to get out of Grey 17 after killing the zarg.
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However, the plot comes off feeling contrived. Garibaldi’s final scene with Sheridan suggests that this has been a Great Adventure, far-fetched, even. Yes, it was far-fetched, but not so much from the characters’ point-of-view, but from ours.
It’s good that dynamite episodes are coming up soon.
COMING UP NEXT
"And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place"
Ministers visit.
Centauri plot, counterplot.
Narn sing gospel.
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