Garibaldi’s friend has the eye of the tiger, but it’s Susan’s party and she’ll cry if she wants to. The episode that was BANNED in BRITAIN!
(Originally aired on May 25, 1994)
Written by Lawrence G. DiTillio
Directed by John C. Flinn III
| Sensitivity Training |
| WALKER: Relax, E.T., I'm looking for the Muta-Do. |
IVANOVA: My feelings are my own, and how I display them - or not - is my choice. |
THE MUTA-DO: Fight with courage and respect! |
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GUEST STARS
Theodore Bikel – Rabbi Koslov
Walker Smith – Greg McKinney
Soon-Tek Oh as The Muta-Do
Don Stroud as Caliban
Theodore Bikel, a legendary figure in Yiddish and Hebrew theater, has appeared in the lead role in Fiddler on the Roof more than 1,600 times.
WATCH OUT FOR
* Walker’s last words of advice to Garibaldi. This shameless bit of foreshadowing snuck past almost every B5 fan on the planet when the episode first aired – but everyone remembered it after "Chrysalis".
* Harlan Ellison’s as-yet-unwritten autobiography.
ANALYSIS
The argument can definitely be made that "TKO" is a flawed episode. Overall, I think its strengths just barely exceed its failings.
I’m interested in Susan’s half of the story, and while I don’t see tons of originality in the boxing story, it supplies some diverting action. However, "TKO" also suffers from being the first in a string of lackluster episodes.
The end of "
Signs and Portents" left us hanging: who are Mr. Morden’s associates? What was that ship? Why are we watching alien kickboxing instead of finding out more about that ship? Who cares about sitting shiva – there are translucent spiders loose in the galaxy!
If Babylon 5 is a feast, then this sequence of episodes are a mild sorbet to cleanse the palate between the appetizer and the soup course. That’s great when you’re eating for an evening, but it’s water torture when you’re watching a series over weeks and months.
I enjoyed these episodes on the basic level of an hour’s entertainment when they originally aired. But even then I was shifting restlessly in my seat and waiting for Something More (especially since "TKO" was the last new episode before five weeks of reruns).
Are these episodes artistically necessary? Yes, because they lay a foundation of character and incident that lets us understand and appreciate the Big Exciting Stuff to come. But let’s face it: we all want to fast forward through them.
Steel façade
Susan Ivanova gets my vote as the most repressed of B5’s dysfunctionally restrained human characters. Only the great Theodore Bikel can get her to let her hair down and mourn, and he needs Sinclair’s help to do it.
The idea of Susan needing to open up and allow others to see her true feelings is an intriguing one that screams of future development. "TKO" is the second – third, if you count "
The War Prayer" – important stop in a journey that begins with her father’s death in "Born to the Purple".
Keep an eye on Susan’s issues with trust and feelings over her next three years on Babylon 5. Pay attention to whom she trusts, what happens to them and how she reacts to it.
Thanks to Claudia Christian’s decision not to return for the fifth season, this subplot will end prematurely (in episode "Rising Star"), but it’s still one of the most satisfying character arcs in the series.
SO WHY WAS IT BANNED IN BRITAIN, ANYWAY?
The Independent Television Commission, Britain's TV standards board, decided that "TKO" was too violent for an early evening timeslot (it eventually aired late at night). Fortunately for British B5 fans, war and mass extermination are less violent than kickboxing, so later episodes were untouched.
COMING UP NEXT
Seek the "Grail"
transform a doubting Thomas --
watch for tentacles!
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