“In the Shadow of Z’ha’dum”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by David J. Eagle
Season 2, Episode 16
Production episode 217
Original air date: May 10, 1995
It was the dawn of the third age… Garibaldi and Allan discuss the growing Narn refugee problem, as the station is running out of space to put them up. The healthy ones, at least, are being moved off-station as fast as possible, but the wounded are piling up in medlab.
Morden has a scheduled meeting with Mollari, but Vir comes in his stead, as Mollari is off-station. Vir makes his tremendous disdain for Morden very very very clear.
Garibaldi meets with Sheridan, interrupting his long-procrastinated going through of his wife Anna’s things. Sheridan agrees to intensify the criteria by which Narn refugees get to stay in medlab in order to deal with the overcrowding.
One of the things Sheridan has is the manifest of the Icarus crew. Garibaldi flips through it, and is rather shocked to see a familiar face: Morden. According to the records, he died with the Icarus, but Garibaldi has seen him on the station on several occasions. Sure enough, he’s on the station now. Sheridan wants to know how a dead person got through customs, and Garibaldi rightly points out that they can’t check every single person against every single database. If he’d done something requiring an investigation, that’d be one thing, but he hasn’t. Now, though, Sheridan wants him found.
Winters gets a visitor: Pierce Macabee, a representative of EarthGov who is holding a series of lectures, and wishes her to attend. This turns out to be an unveiling of a new initiative by the Clark Administration’s Ministry of Peace: Nightwatch. Both Winters and Allan are in the audience as Macabee describes Nightwatch. It’s a volunteer organization made up of civilians who will spend some time keeping an eye on things and promoting peace. For this service, members of Nightwatch will be paid fifty credits a week. Not enough to live on, but some useful extra money for some…
Ivanova has to order Franklin—who has been pushing himself and going without sleep and taking lots of stims—to get six hours’ sleep and then eat a proper meal.
Morden, having made his delivery to Mollari through Vir, tries to depart the station, but is detained by Allan. He’s put in an interrogation room where Sheridan starts to question him. Morden doesn’t wish to stay, but Sheridan refuses to allow him to leave or get legal counsel for one simple reason: he has no rights by virtue of being dead. According to EarthGov, he died on the Icarus, and Morden never informed anyone that he was still alive. Morden provides Sheridan with a bullshit story about how he woke up amnesiac with no idea what happened on the Icarus.
Garibaldi tells Sheridan that he’s going too far. Morden hasn’t committed a crime, and Sheridan has no justification for holding him against his will, and threatens to resign if Sheridan doesn’t let him go. Sheridan doesn’t let him go; Garibaldi resigns.
Sheridan orders Allan to find Winters. Vir then comes to Sheridan and says that Mollari wishes Morden to be released, as he has diplomatic immunity from the Centauri Republic. Sheridan lies to Vir and says that Morden is currently in protective custody, so diplomatic immunity doesn’t apply.
Ivanova tries to point out that Sheridan’s acting like an obsessed idiot. Sheridan’s response is to double down and say that nothing else matters but finding out what happened to his wife.
Winters refuses to scan Morden without his consent, as that’s hilariously illegal, even if Morden is legally dead. Sheridan has Allan escort Winters back to her quarters on a path that will allow her to pass by Morden, and she senses an incredible darkness around him that causes her to collapse. She’s taken to medlab, and when Sheridan tries to apologize, she slaps him, which is the very least he deserves.
Delenn and Kosh confront Sheridan, who is really wondering what the hell it is about this guy that everyone wants him freed. They tell him about the First Ones, who were among the first sentient life forms in the galaxy, and about the Shadows, who are returning. They have had to play it very close to the vest, though, because the Shadows are moving slowly, which gives them time to prepare. If the Shadows know that the Vorlons and Minbari know they’re coming, they’ll accelerate, which would be disastrous.
The Icarus went to Z’ha’dum and disturbed the Shadows. The crew was given a choice: serve the Shadows or be killed. Morden chose the former. Sheridan has to let him go, or the Shadows will strike. Morden is never alone, Delenn points out.
Sheridan talks with Allan, telling him about the bombing of Coventry during World War II. The British knew the attack was coming, because they’d cracked the Nazis’ code. But if they warned or evacuated Coventry, the Axis would know the code had been broken and they’d change it. So Prime Minister Churchill let Coventry be bombed. Allan says he’s glad he doesn’t have to make that kind of decision.
Sheridan adjusts the scanners in the interrogation room to see different frequencies, and briefly sees the Shadows on either side of Morden.
He lets Morden go. He gives Garibaldi his link and PPG back, saying that the security chief was right. Garibaldi happily returns to duty, saying that next time he should listen to Garibaldi. Sheridan says there won’t be a next time. Garibaldi also notes the Nightwatch armband that Allan is now wearing. Allan says it’s an extra fifty a week for doing what he already does anyhow.
Sheridan goes to Kosh and says that he wants to learn how to fight the Shadows, whatever it takes.
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan does not cover himself in glory here, as he refuses to back off his obsessive need to find out what happened to his wife, and none of the entreaties made—by Ivanova, Garibaldi, Winters, Vir, and Morden himself—move him even a little bit, when truly any one of them should have gotten him to back off, which gives you an idea of how obsessed he really is. Even when Delenn and Kosh give him a very very good reason why he should let Morden go, he agonizes over it.
Ivanova is God. Ivanova goes full Jewish mother in this one, from her whupping Sheridan upside the head for being stupid to her making Franklin get some sleep and eat a good meal.
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi pulls the “stop doing this stupid thing or I’ll resign” thing that TV characters always pull, which usually gets the boss to back off. However, the boss doesn’t back off and Garibaldi hands in his link and PPG.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. We finally find out what Delenn had Lennier ask Kosh back in “Chrysalis,” to which the answer was affirmative: “Have the Shadows returned to Z’ha’dum?”
In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Vir has a crowning moment of awesome, as he has the absolute best answer to Morden’s perpetual “What do you want?” question. (See “The echoes of all of our conversations” below.)
Though it take a thousand years, we will be free. B5 is practically overrun by Narn refugees. Sheridan is forced to take crueler measures to see who qualifies for medical treatment simply because they don’t have enough space in medlab to treat everyone who’s injured.
The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. Winters is asked to attend Macabee’s seminar on Nightwatch for no obvious reason. Just being near Morden causes her to sense the Shadows, who nearly overwhelm her.
The Shadowy Vorlons. We find out that the Vorlons are one of the First Ones, and the only ones that are still around. The Shadows are a malevolent force that the First Ones have beaten back in the past. And we finally get a good reason why Delenn and Kosh have been parsimonious with revelations about the coming of the Shadows—they can’t afford to let the Shadows know that they’re on to them.
Looking ahead. Vir’s answer to Morden’s question (again, see “The echoes of all of our conversations” below) will be called back to in “Into the Fire.”
Franklin’s proclivity for taking stims will continue to be a thing.
Kosh tells Sheridan that if he goes to Z’ha’dum, he will die; Sheridan will go to Z’ha’dum in the aptly titled “Z’ha’dum,” and while he will die there, he’ll only be mostly dead, not all dead…
Welcome aboard. We’ve got recurring regulars Jeff Conaway as Allan and Ardwight Chamberlain as Kosh, both back from “There All the Honor Lies,” both to return in “Divided Loyalties,” and Ed Wasser as Morden, back from “Revelations,” to return in “Matters of Honor.” We’ve also got Alex Hyde-White being spectacularly bureaucratically bland and reasonable-sounding as Macabee.
We also see a picture of Anna Sheridan, which is a picture of Beth Toussaint, who played her in “Revelations.” When the character next appears in season three, she’ll be played by Bruce Boxleitner’s then-wife Melissa Gilbert.
Trivial matters. We get a name—First Ones—for the ancient species discussed by G’Kar and Sakai in “Mind War.”
Franklin and Ivanova discuss religion, with Franklin revealing that he was raised a Foundationist, a comparatively new religion that sprung up around the time Earth made first contact with alien life. We’ll see this religion again on both B5 and Crusade.
The Ministry of Peace—which quite deliberately sounds like something out of George Orwell’s 1984—is abbreviated “Minipax,” which is a reasonable abbreviation, but which also sounds a bit more like “pacification” than “peace,” which is also probably deliberate.
We are told why Kosh stays in an encounter suit: if he didn’t, he’d be recognized by everyone. It’s not entirely clear what that means as yet…
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“I want to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this. Can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?”
—Vir’s answer to Morden’s query as to what he wants.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “The Shadows were old when even the Ancients were young.” Even if the rest of the episode was dreadful—and it isn’t, this is a good, strong, powerful episode—it would be worth it for Vir’s answer to Morden’s perpetual query of what he wants. It was worth it the first time through, and it’s even more worth it on a rewatch. Just a fantastic moment for Stephen Furst and for Vir, whom you underestimate at your peril. (I particularly like the tone of pure glee Furst puts into Vir’s voice when he says “lifeless.”)
We also get to see a very ugly side of John Sheridan. His behavior in this episode is appalling, and it’s a good thing it ends well, because if he kept going the way he was going, Ivanova was going to be forced to find a way to get him brought up on charges. True, Sheridan’s loophole that Morden was listed as dead meant that he could legally keep Morden there for as long as he wanted. But ethically, it’s a spectacularly shitty thing to do, and bravo to Garibaldi for sticking to his guns and handing in his link and weapon. Threats are useless if you don’t follow through, and it would’ve been even cooler if Garibaldi had stayed resigned. (Honestly, the Garibaldi-Sheridan relationship was always a little off. Garibaldi was created to be Sinclair’s confidant and best friend, and the dynamic between Garibaldi and Sinclair’s replacement never quite gelled.)
And even with him finally doing the right thing, Sheridan does a lot of wrong things along the way, particularly his treatment of Winters. A pity there won’t be any followup to that…
Finally getting Morden’s backstory is also useful, especially since it ties into Sheridan’s wife’s death. Morden was already a powerful presence on the show, and this adds a fascinating new layer to it, one that has very direct meaning to our lead.
We also have the very low-key introduction to Nightwatch, which made my skin crawl the first time I heard it thirty years ago. “Spy on your neighbors! We’ll pay you!” There is no way to interpret that as anything other than icky. Points for casting the perpetually bland Alex Hyde-White, who brings just the right tone of reasonable bureaucratic dullness to the presentation, making it seem perfectly harmless.
Next week: “Knives.”
