“All Alone in the Night”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Mario DiLeo
Season 2, Episode 11
Production episode 211
Original air date: February 15, 1995
It was the dawn of the third age… Delenn has been asked to appear before the Grey Council. They have picked a new leader, and Delenn is concerned with how the council will deal with her transformation. She’s left instructions for Lennier on what to do while she’s gone and also if she never comes back. However, Lennier surprises her by accompanying her to the council for moral support. Delenn is grateful for Lennier’s constant, unwavering support.
Ivanova reports that several ships have gone missing near the station. It doesn’t appear to be raiders—and it needs to be investigated. Sheridan volunteers himself to take a Starfury to check it out. Ivanova objects, but Sheridan hasn’t logged flight time in a while and he needs to in order to keep his certifications up. Ivanova relents, but insists on an escort.
A Narn ship is attacked by an unknown vessel. The ship is destroyed, and the Narn pilot, Ta’Lon, is able to eject his pod—which is then taken by the vessel.
As he’s preparing to fly off in his Starfury, Sheridan is informed by Ivanova that General Hague will be arriving early—which is the first Ivanova has heard that Hague was arriving at all. Sheridan insists (a) that it’s just an informal visit, nothing official, and (b) he’ll be back in plenty of time. Neither of those points will prove to be entirely true…
One of Sheridan’s escort pilots is Lieutenant Carlos Ramirez, who has a friendly argument with Garibaldi and Franklin about the upcoming baseball playoffs, with a wager laid down before Ramirez is called to the launch bay.
However, their search turns up bupkis—at least until they give up and head back to the jump gate. Suddenly, a ship appears and attacks. Two of the escort Starfuries are destroyed, while Sheridan’s and Ramirez’s are badly damaged. Sheridan himself ejects, the same way Ta’Lon did, and is also captured the same way. Ramirez is left alone in space in a damaged Starfury. Radiation leakage has already reached fatal levels, and his communication systems are down. His only option is to return to B5.
Delenn and Lennier arrive at the Grey Council’s mobile headquarters. Delenn is shocked to see that only Hedronn is present. He is there to pass on the council’s judgment: she has been stripped of her position in the council. (Yes, they had her fly all the way to the ship just to say she’s been fired. This meeting could’ve been an e-mail.) Delenn asks about her position as ambassador to B5, and Hedronn says they’re still debating. Delenn does have the right to speak before the council on that matter, which she invokes. Hedronn says he will summon the other eight, including the new leader.
Sheridan is captured and tortured by a bunch of devices that look like they belong in a dentist’s office, one of which may be the nozzle. After he is injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected, and selected, he is given a staff and an opponent: a Drazi. The Drazi is wearing some kind of control device on his head. Sheridan tries to reason with the Drazi, but that doesn’t work. The Drazi is then killed by Ta’Lon, who also has a control device on his head. At one point, Ta’Lon begs Sheridan to kill him, but Sheridan instead renders him unconscious.
Hague arrives on B5, greeted by Ivanova alone, as he specifically requested a lack of honor guard, which tracks with Sheridan’s line about it being an informal visit. Hague is concerned that Sheridan isn’t back yet, as is Ivanova. That concern blows up into worry when Ramirez returns to the station dying of radiation poisoning. He reports what happened before succumbing to the radiation. Hague calls in the EAS Agamemnon, Sheridan’s former command, to aid in the search.
Delenn is appalled to see that Neroon has replaced her on the council. This is an issue only insofar as the council has always been balanced: three members of each caste (Warrior, Religious, Worker). Delenn’s replacement should have also been of the Religious Caste, but now the Warrior Caste has four seats, with the Religious Caste only two. Neroon angrily points out that, if Delenn’s right about a great war coming upon us all, then the Warrior Caste will be relied upon to a significant degree. Neroon is also disgusted by her transformation. She is permitted to return to B5 as ambassador, mostly because it keeps her and her icky part-human self the hell out of Minbar. Delenn returns to B5 with Lennier, offering him a chance to leave her service and go back to his studies on Minbar where it’s safe. Lennier refuses and insists he will always stand by her side.
On the way back, Delenn receives a report on Sheridan’s kidnapping and recognizes his abductors: the Streib. They abduct members of a species to test them for possible invasion. They made the mistake of trying it on the Minbari once, and the Minbar remonstrated with them quite thoroughly. Delenn provides the coordinates for the Streb homeworld, and the Agamemnon, supported by some B5 Starfuries lead by Ivanova, heads there.
Ta’Lon wakes up long enough to tell Sheridan that he asked the captain to kill him because there is no escape. Then he passes out again. Sheridan does likewise a bit later, and has an odd dream that includes Ivanova with a raven, Garibaldi with a dove, Sheridan himself wearing a Psi Cop uniform, and Kosh talking directly to him, saying this is the first time his mind has been clear enough. When Sheridan asks why he’s here, Kosh replies that he’s always been here.
He wakes up to see that a door, which rises upward, is partly open. Grabbing his staff, he tries to lever it all the way up, or at least enough for him and Ta’Lon to escape the room. The ship shudders several times; at first, Sheridan thinks they’re transitioning to normal space, but then he realizes that they’re under attack—which they are, by the Agamemnon and the Starfuries. They make it to an escape pod and leave the ship, Sheridan sending out an SOS in Morse code, which Ivanova picks up, enabling them to be rescued.
They return to B5. Sheridan is disheartened that he lived while Ramirez died. (No mention is made of the other two pilots who also died.) He then meets with Hague—
—at which point, the other shoe drops. Sheridan angrily asks what took Hague so long to debrief him. Turns out both Hague and Sheridan are part of a group that is concerned about the creeping fascism on Earth. Sheridan says that his senior staff is loyal to Earth and can be read in. Hague agrees, and thinks that President Clark views Sheridan as a loyal soldier and won’t look too closely at him, which frees him to act. Sheridan then meets privately with Ivanova, Garibaldi, and Franklin and recruits them. They all agree.
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan has been covertly working for Hague all these months, part of a group of military personnel who are concerned with the growing power of Psi Corps and the possible assassination of Santiago.
Ivanova is God. Ivanova spends most of the episode being frustrated—by Sheridan’s gung-ho attitude, by nobody telling her about Hague’s arrival, and by Sheridan’s disappearance—but she gets to save the day in the end, since she’s the one who detects Sheridan’s SOS.
The household god of frustration. Though it’s not mentioned specifically, Garibaldi’s discovery of the plot to assassinate President Santiago—and the inability of anyone to corroborate his findings, or even any interest in doing so—in “Chrysalis” and “Revelations” is likely why he so unhesitatingly joins Sheridan and Hague’s cabal.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Delenn’s ouster from the Grey Council, a process started in “Babylon Squared,” is solidified here, thanks mainly to her making herself part-human, a metamorphosis nobody on the council seems particularly comfortable with.
The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. Psi Corps’ growing influence is a major concern for Hague and his cabal. Also at one point in his weird-ass dream, Sheridan is wearing a Psi Cop’s uniform.
The Shadowy Vorlons. Kosh goes full cryptic in this one, appearing in Sheridan’s dream, and possibly being responsible for it, with the comment in the dream that this is the first time Sheridan’s mind has been quiet enough for him to hear Kosh, plus Kosh repeats in person what he said in Sheridan’s dream.
Looking ahead. Sheridan’s dream is full of weird images and cryptic nonsense. The reference to the man in the middle is likely to be Justin, who we’ll meet in “Z’ha’dum,” though it could also be Lorien, who will recur starting in “The Hour of the Wolf.” Ivanova wearing black and half hidden in shadow is possibly referencing that she has a secret; that secret will be revealed in “Divided Loyalties.” There’s all kinds of potential symbolic meanings to Kosh’s “You have always been here line,” which is repeated by the real Kosh at the end of the episode, most of those meanings relating to Sheridan’s importance. (One could uncharitably call it an attempt at a retcon: “no no, Sheridan has always been the commander of the station; Jeff who?”)
Welcome aboard. Nick Corri plays Ramirez. Marshall Teague, last seen as Drake in “Infection,” debuts the recurring role of Ta’Lon; he’ll be back in “A Day in the Strife.”
Robin Sachs is back from “Points of Departure” as Hedronn; he’ll be back in that role (though named Coplann) in In the Beginning. John Vickery is back from “Legacies” as Neroon; he’ll be back in that role in “Grey 17 is Missing.” Both Sachs and Vickery will next appear in “The Fall of Night,” albeit in different roles.
Robert Foxworth makes his second and what turns out to be his final appearance as Hague, following “Points of Departure.” The role was intended to be recurring, but he was unavailable to appear in “Severed Dreams,” so the character was killed off-screen.
And finally, we have recurring regulars Joshua Cox as Corwin (last in “GROPOS,” next in “Acts of Sacrifice”) and Ardwight Chamberlain as Kosh (last in “The Coming of Shadows,” next in “Hunter, Prey”).
Trivial matters. Ta’Lon is not named in this episode, and is credited only as “Narn.” He’ll get the name when he returns in “A Day in the Strife” in season three.
The Streib are named after Whitley Streiber, author of Communion, his account of being abducted by aliens. The Streib look like the alien pictured on the cover of Communion, which is the now-iconic “gray” bald alien look with black eyes.
This is the second time we saw a “gray” alien on B5, the first being a gag bit in the station courtroom in “Grail.”
Ivanova and Sheridan mention that raiders haven’t been a problem lately, which dates back to “Signs and Portents.”
The episode title comes from the opening-credits monologue, as both Sinclair last season and Sheridan this season refer to the station as being all alone in the night.
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“The Dodgers will never make it to the World Series. Hell, they’ll be lucky if they make it through the playoffs without embarrassing themselves.”
“Your diagnosis, Doctor?”
“Oh, the patient is confused, delusional, unable to separate his natural sense of loyalty for his home team from the reality that they stink, and they only got into the playoffs on a technicality.”
—Ramirez, Garibaldi, and Franklin talkin’ baseball.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “The first obligation of a prisoner is to escape, right?” One of my personal frustrations with season two of B5 when it aired was the complete inability of J. Michael Straczynski and his writing staff to make Keffer in any way interesting. It would later come out that Keffer was put in at the insistence of the studio, as Warner Bros. wanted a “hotshot pilot” character, and Straczynski’s rather immature reaction to that was to not do anything interesting with him and then kill him off in a manner nobody could possibly care about. (We’ll get into that more when we hit “The Fall of Night.”)
Tempting as it is to view this as an inability on Straczynski’s part, we turn ourselves to Ramirez in this episode. It’s not much, but we learn more about Ramirez in one charming sixty-second scene in the Zocalo discussing baseball among him, Garibaldi, and Franklin than we do about Keffer across the six episodes he appears in.
This is how you do a redshirt death: establish who he is, make us actually like the guy, have him act selflessly and heroic, and then when he dies, it actually matters.
I have to add that this is also how you don’t do a redshirt death, as there were two other pilots who got blown to smithereens by the Streib, who don’t get the courtesy of names or billing or being mourned.
The Sheridan-is-kidnapped part of the plot is a serviceable riff on the bog-standard character-is-kidnapped plot that we’ve seen a gajillion times before. After creating no impression whatsoever as the big scary enhanced dude in “Infection,” Marshall Teague does a very nice job with Ta’Lon, establishing a nice rapport with Bruce Boxleitner’s Sheridan as they struggle to escape together.
The meat of this episode, though, is Delenn’s side of the plot, as it becomes clear that the gamble she took in transforming herself is not paying off the way she thought it would. The Grey Council has snipped off her metaphorical cufflinks and turned their back, not just on her, but on her entire caste, as the Religious Caste is weakened in the council in favor of the Warrior Caste. It’s also great to see both Robin Sachs and John Vickery return as their respective Minbari, as both actors are excellent as usual, their sharp voices magnificently filling the dimly lit council chamber. In particular, both do a wonderful job conveying the utter contempt they both feel for Delenn. In the end, she’s sent back to B5, but where her initial assignment to the station was a cover for her work with the council, now it’s an exile for a person who has fallen out of favor and whom the government wishes to be both out of sight and out of mind.
(This is an interesting reversal of the journey Mollari has gone on, as he was initially exiled to B5 to get him out of the way, but he has parlayed that into a position of power and authority in the Centauri Republic.)
And then we have the revelation at the end that Garibaldi isn’t the only one who saw Santiago’s death as something more than an accident. Hague and Sheridan are part of a group that is concerned about the direction Earth is heading. This isn’t much in this episode—just a tag at the very end to get the ball rolling—but it sets the tone for much of what will be happening on the station moving forward…
Next week: “Acts of Sacrifice.”
