Babylon 5: Infection

I am re-watching the entire Babylon 5 television series along with my teenage daughter. I have not seen a single episode since B5 completed its tumultuous run, and Calista was just a few days old when the final episode aired back in 1998. Does J. Michael Straczynski still have the touch? Come along with us and find out.

In Valen's Name: Dr. Vance Hendricks, a former professor of Dr. Stephen Franklin's, shows up on Babylon 5 for what is presumably a pleasant reunion with his formal pupil. Down in the station's docking bays, however, Hendricks' henchman Nelson Drake kills a station worker in order to smuggle an alien artifact through customs, which sets an ominous tone. Hendricks explains to Franklin he's returned from an archaeological expedition to the dead world of Ikarra VII, where he's discovered pristine artifacts buried deep underground. The artifacts, left by the advanced Ikarran civilization, are based on organic technology, and he needs Franklin's xenobiology expertise--not to mention advance Babylon 5 medlab--to analyze the find. Despite his misgivings--likening the corporate-sponsored rush to explore dead worlds to grave-robbing--Franklin agrees to help. Shortly thereafter, as Drake is unpacking the artifacts, one discharges, affecting Drake. Franklin returns to medlab and is shot by the transforming Drake with an energy blast, knocking him out. The next day, having regained consciousness, Franklin explains to Commander Sinclair and Garibaldi how it appears the alien artifacts are grafting themselves onto Drake and transforming him into some sort of alien warrior. Garibaldi casts doubt on the idea that the artifacts actually cleared customs like Hendricks claimed, to which Hendricks says, "Yo, that was my evil henchman's job. If he killed your dockworker to smuggle them in, I had nothing to do with it." Meanwhile, Drake/Warrior is getting more powerful, and his battle mode recharge time is decreasing. Franklin, studying the remaining artifacts, discovers what is going on: Ikarra had been invaded so many times that the civilization developed technology to create unstoppable warriors to defend their world. Unfortunately, zealots programmed them to destroy anything that wasn't "pure Ikarran," an ideological definition. Naturally, once the alien invasion was beaten back the warriors turned on the Ikarran population, finding none of them "pure." The only warrior not deployed was, in fact, the one Hendricks had discovered and smuggled onto Babylon 5. Realizing the warrior's mission is now to destroy everyone on Babylon 5, Sinclair arms himself and attacks the Ikarran, luring it into a docking bay where it can be vented into space. Once there, Sinclair begins arguing with the warrior, insisting it failed in its mission to defend Ikarra VII, and instead destroyed the world it was created to protect. The artifact accesses the memories of Drake, who'd seen the dead world, and in grief the artifact deactivates itself and separates from Drake. Hendricks explains to Franklin that the corporation funding his research is actually a front for a bioweapons developer, and that if he could confirm the artifacts' use as weapons technology, he could claim a much higher finder's fee. He offers to split the money with Franklin, but Franklin declines the bribe and two security guards take him away. Later, two agents from Earthforce Intelligence show up and confiscate the artifacts for "research."

What Calista Says: Nothing. Calista has declined to provide further written opinions regarding Babylon 5 episodes. "It's too much like homework." Such are the fickle natures of teenagers.

What Jayme Says: A run-of-the-mill episode. It's not bad and not great, but relies of many science fiction tropes that we've seen time and again. With a cosmetic rewrite, there's nothing to prevent this script from being used for Star Trek, Farscape, Stargate or Battlestar Galactica. It's that generic, and that's the problem. Thus far in the series, there hasn't been an episode that could only exist within the Babylon 5 universe. Everything is so self-contained within this episode--even the evil henchman Drake survives his transformation and gets to recover off-camera. While the stakes are high, there's no indication the show has any teeth. No partial victories or even serious losses or sacrifice from the protagonists to save the rest of the station. It is standard, episodic television. Also, while this is a Franklin-centric episode, the doctor plays no role in the resolution. Sinclair steps in to save the day. It's not quite deus ex machina, but for Franklin's in-episode character arc, it is awkward. Two small touches that are lost amongst the flash and bang of the episode are nice, however. First is the establishing of the theme that Earth is aggressively scouring the galaxy to acquire the technology of lost civilizations so they won't be at such a military disadvantage against the Minbari or any other alien race ever again. In this episode it seems merely incidental to the plot, but the series will return to it time and again in the future. The second is much more self-aware: Garibaldi takes Sinclair to task for risking his life to lure the Ikarran warrior into the docking bay, pointing out that as commander, Sinclair was needlessly putting his life in jeopardy when Garibaldi or any of the security officers could've accomplished the same thing. Garibaldi points out that many survivors of the Earth-Minbari War have a hero complex and put themselves in danger in an attempt to go out in a blaze of glory. Sinclair acknowledges this and promises to work on it. This neatly addresses the Captain Kirk issue, in which the captain of a starship constantly leads exploration teams into potentially hazardous situations away from the ship, whilst in any rational situation the captain would stay aboard the ship and other officers would lead said mission. The answer to this is, of course, that if the captain is the central focus of the television show, then that actor has to be actively engaged in the plot. Babylon 5 acknowledges the irrationality of the captain's actions here, and posits a reasonable explanation for Sinclair's behavior (and Sheridan's to come).