“A Voice in the Wilderness, Part II”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Janet Greek
Season 1, Episode 19
Production episode 121
Original air date: August 3, 1994
It was the dawn of the third age… We get a summary of Part I, and then we see that the ship that was coming through the jump gate is an EarthForce ship, the Hyperion. Captain Ellis Pierce says he’s taking command of the situation.
Sinclair and Ivanova bring Varn to medlab, where Franklin attempts to stabilize him. Pierce explains that the Office of Planetary Security diverted Hyperion to B5 to make sure that Earth—and only Earth, not any of the other nations represented on B5—stake a claim to the technology on Epsilon III. Sinclair is pissed at Pierce trying to horn in on his command, and at his rather brazen entry into the system, as Sinclair was trying to be discreet.
According to an ISN report, President Santiago is facing pressure to quell the rioting on Mars. Garibaldi—still not knowing the fate of his ex, Lise Hampton—sees this report in the Zocalo, and winds up remonstrating with some dudebros who rag on Mars.
Sinclair tries to get Hidoshi to get Pierce to back off, with not much success. He then bluffs Pierce by telling him that he had a jamming device that allowed him and Ivanova to go to the surface by way of getting Pierce to pull back the Starfuries down to the surface. However, the damage has been done. Ivanova reports that after Pierce launched his Starfuries, there were massive disruptions of the planetary core. If this keeps up, the planet will go boom, taking B5 with it. The theory is that Varn was holding all this at bay, but without him inside the machine, it’s going into full defensive mode. Sinclair decides to wait twelve hours, and if the situation hasn’t improved, they’ll start an evacuation.
Sinclair visits with Garibaldi to see if he’s okay, having heard about his incident in the Zocalo. He also talks frankly about how there’s no way they’ll be able to evacuate the entire station, even if they start now. But he makes Garibaldi promise that, no matter what, he makes sure Ivanova gets off the station.
Delenn is continuing to show Draal around the station, but then the latter starts hearing voices. He goes to medlab and insists that the voice he’s hearing is Varn. Franklin points out that Varn is unconscious and can’t be talking to anyone—but then Varn wakes up. He confirms that the planet is “booby-trapped” and will explode rather than let anyone take charge of it. There needs to be a new caretaker who does what Varn does. Pierce wants to send an expedition down; Sinclair tells him not to, and he’ll shoot at Hyperion if he goes through with it. (With the planet about to explode, Sinclair has nothing to lose.) Pierce reluctantly stands down.
A ship comes through the jump gate, belonging to Varn’s people, led by Takarn. They’re outcasts, who’ve been searching for Epsilon III for centuries, and Takarn gives them ten hours to hand over the planet. Varn urges the B5 crew not to give the outcasts what they want. There needs to be a new guardian. But he passes out in medlab before he can explain how that works, exactly.
Draal confirms to Sinclair that he saw a vision of Varn much like the one Sinclair saw in the previous episode. Mollari later approaches Draal and Delenn saying he, too, saw a vision of Varn.
Sinclair and Pierce agree to launch a preemptive strike on Takarn’s ship. Meantime, a Centauri shuttle asks to depart, but instead of going to the jump gate as stated in their flight plan, they head to Epsilon III. Takarn is outraged and fires, and the battle is joined.
The shuttle is piloted by Mollari, with Delenn and Draal as his passengers, and they’re headed down to the planet. Garibaldi takes a shuttle after them. To everyone’s surprise, the planetary defenses leave the shuttles be.
Garibaldi catches up to Draal and the two ambassadors (totally the name of my next band) and learns that Draal intends to take Varn’s place as the guardian of the Great Machine. Garibaldi isn’t thrilled at this idea, but it’s the only way to keep the planet from going boom.
Draal is installed as the guardian. Immediately, an image of him appears on Takarn’s ship, on B5, and on Hyperion. He says that the planet belongs to no one, and must stay isolated and off-limits. He entrusts the safekeeping of the Great Machine to the B5 Advisory Council and says that any attempt to land on the planet will be met with force.
Takarn doesn’t believe it and attempts to land on the planet. He is met with force—Draal destroys his ship.
Delenn wishes Draal well, and Varn promises to take care of him and help him adjust for as long as he lives (which won’t be much longer).
Pierce buggers off with Hyperion, apologizing for overstepping his authority.
They finally get a signal through to Mars, and Garibaldi is able to talk to Hampton, who is alive, albeit injured. However, it turns out that she’s married and is expecting a baby, which dumps a whole lot of cold water on Garibaldi.
The security chief goes to the Observation Deck, where Delenn approaches him. She explains that she and Draal went off with Mollari in secret because Delenn knew that Sinclair would volunteer to be the new guardian. She also knows that Mollari will call in the favor she now owes him…
Nothing’s the same anymore. In a fit of tiresome paternalism, Sinclair makes Garibaldi promise to get Ivanova off the station in their theoretical evacuation. I guarantee that that scene would never have even been considered if Sinclair’s first officer was male.
Ivanova is God. When Mollari attempts to find out what’s going on from Ivanova, her answer is, “Boom. Boom boom boom. Boom boom. Boom! Have a nice day.”
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi gets into a bar fight, helps the new guardian happen, and finally gets in touch with his ex only to find out that she’s married someone else. Busy and not great day for him…
Also: this is the second time one of the command staff has gotten into a bar fight. How do these people still have their commissions???
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. By becoming the new guardian of the Great Machine, Draal is able to find the purpose that he’d lost (and was seemingly leading to his ritual suicide) last time.
In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Back in the day, Mollari led a raid on Frallis 12, and he gets to dust off his piloting skills in this episode.
No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Garibaldi finds his ex and loses hope of a reconciliation. At least for now…
Looking ahead. Delenn is very firm in her desire to keep Sinclair from volunteering to replace Varn in the Great Machine. The reason for that desire will be made clear before too long.
Welcome aboard. Back from Part I are Louis Turrene as Draal and Curt Lowens as Varn. Lowens will return as an Old One in Crusade’s “Patterns of the Soul.”
Denise Gentile debuts the recurring role of Hampton, who will return in the very next episode, “Babylon Squared.” Aki Aleong makes his final appearance as Hidoshi, Michelan Sisti plays Takarn, and veteran character actor Ron Canada plays Pierce.
Trivial matters. This obviously continues from last week’s Part I.
When Draal returns in “The Long Twilight Struggle,” he’ll be played by John Schuck. Turrene will return in the recurring role of Brother Theo in “Convictions,” a human role that doesn’t require the complicated Minbari makeup and prosthetics.
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“So if we go down there, it blows. If we don’t, it blows anyway, just a little later.”
—Ivanova, summing up the hoplessness of the situation.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “He discovered something inside that he thought was buried long ago.” I am absolutely struggling to find anything to say about this episode or this two-parter. Thank goodness this is a rewatch, because that means I intellectually know that there’s some important stuff here. The turmoil on Mars, the Great Machine, and Garibaldi’s tumultuous relationship with Hampton are all threads that will continue to be pulled on in the future.
But this two-parter that sets them all in motion is absolutely nowhere as an actual episode of television. For one thing, there really isn’t enough story here for two parts. We have the addition of the Hyperion to introduce artificial conflict, and hoo-boy is it artificial. Ron Canada can be a good actor when given quality material, but he is not given that here at all. Pierce is a straw man for Sinclair to tiresomely knock down, and his presence in the episode mostly serves to just drag it all out.
Garibaldi’s mooning over Hampton is spectacularly uninteresting, and ends with one of the oldest clichés in the book—he finally gets in touch with her, but she’s married now! Oh noes!
Worse, what should be a huge catharsis for Draal doesn’t have any emotional heft to it in the least. It feels more like he’s getting into the Great Machine because the script says he does. Delenn’s declaration to Garibaldi that Draal finally found meaning in his life has more emotional weight than anything the script or Louis Turrene did in the previous hour.
As usual, it’s left to Peter Jurasik to inject some entertainment into the proceedings, as Mollari’s pleas to Ivanova to know what the hell’s going on and the joy he takes in reviving his old piloting skills are a delight to behold. And also the only delight in the entire episode.
Next week: “Babylon Squared.”
