Back in the day, the rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5 community described certain B5 episodes as “WHAM!” episodes–eps that dramatically kicked the story arc in gear. Here’s our first, which you may discuss here with all of the spoilers and implications you desire: “And the Sky Full of Stars.”
Some beautiful nods to In The Beginning with Stephen and Dellen.
Michael O’Hare gives his best acting performance to date (still not saying much).
Bad guys still look shonky entering the station.
The great Sinclair story arc really begins and starts to address the hole in Sinclar’s mind.
The Psi Corps profile within government begins to rise – Garaboli’s newspaper.
One of the big questions “What do you want?”
Why would the Mimbari be prepared to kill Sinclair now if he remembers?
“Some beautiful nods to In The Beginning with Stephen and Dellen.”
You have that backwards – In The Beginning was made much later than this, and is therefore nodding back to this story.
One thing that always bothered me about B5 was the Com link on the back of the hand. I always think about that with so much of Sinclair’s link shown up close in this episode. Seems to me a Com link on the back of the hand would be both very awkward and uncomfortable in RL and for the actors having to put up with these things in the series.
Plus the com link on the back of the hand lead to many scenes where the actor would have to ‘talk’ to the back of his own hand which must have caused some challenges!
To the story itself, I agree this MOH best acting job so far and the guy he played Knight Two is as creepy as he was in Shada.
Not sure, do the Minbari at this point know that Sinclair was going to become Valen? If they do they would hardly be likely to kill him would they?
IMO, it’s not much worse than late-Trek having the coms embedded into the chest insignia – though both are a bit prescient of Bluetooth-type technologies prevalent today.
I believe this is the first time we hear the music which becomes so iconic for “epic shit is going down”, during Sinclair’s flashback. These bits of epic music are where Chris Franke shines and just hearing it gives me goose bumps and sends shivers down my spine.
I loved the newspaper and took two screen grabs:
– http://abednarz.net/misc/IMG_0630-0tf5C5Kz3x.PNG
– http://abednarz.net/misc/IMG_0631-UOK5eZlwTl.PNG
My favourites are the copyright trial story in the bottom left and the inter-species mating on the far right.
So I think *my* understanding is that the Minbari don’t know Sinclair is Valen at all – all they seem to know is that Minbari and human souls have something in common – and they translate this to meaning Minbaris are being reborn as humans – and this is why they backed down at the Battle Of The Line – because wiping out humanity would mean wiping out Minbari. Its not until Sinclair receives the letter from himself that everything becomes clear to him and presumably he tells the Minbari. Although I always wondered about the historical records of Babylon 4 that the Minbari should have – doesn’t that station look familiar (did they address this and I’ve just forgotten)?
And I find it hard to believe Delenn would have Sinclair killed if he told her what he remembered and asked “yo Delenn I remember you were – and I know you’re in this ‘grey council’ thing – and we’re friends now right? So can you please explain?”.
The depth of detail and related foreshadowing is astonishing – the article on Psi Corps endorsing Clark, the article on inter-species mating (Sheridan and Delenn), the article on Home Guard. I’m particularly intrigued by the article titled “Narns Settle Raghesh 3 Controversy” – the storyline that launched Season 1 and more-or-less got ignored afterwards.
Yes. “Requiem for the Line.” Haunting. Beautiful. One of the best pieces of music in the whole weries, and given that B5 made the unprecidented move of having something like 15 minutes of new music EVERY EPISODE, that is saying something.
As for the Minbari’s understandign of the Sinclair/Valen connection, I believe at this point they jsut believe he is the re-incarnation of Valen’s soul.
And for them recognizing Babylon 4, Delen does states in War Without End that when she arrived on Babylon 5 and began studying Earth history records or somethign that she did recognize B4. My guess is not many Minbari really bother to look up exactly what Valen’s base of operations looked like. Or they never bothered to look at B4 while it was still being built. One of the two.
This episode sees B5 do one of the most familiar ST TV plots: conflict with an enemy in a dreamscape (which for budgetary reasons is represented by the series’ usual standing sets…)
That’s not always a problem. There can be enjoyment to be had in seeing how *this* show does something you’ve seen many times before. AtSFoS is, luckily, a case in point. One of the best S1 episodes, because it takes that ultrafamiliar plot and juxtaposes it with what made this show unfamiliar: the ongoing series-level arc.
Aside from that, two points stand out for me as particularly worthwhile.
One, this is the first definite evidence that we’ve had that there is something seriously wrong inside Earth government. Knight Two’s motivations echo the Home Guard’s in The War Prayer. But the Home Guard are reassuringly defined as terrorist malcontents outside the mainstream of normal society, and TWP is a reassuring story of how legitimate authority doesn’t even feel the temptation to align itself with these bigots and instead works successfully to suppress them. Then AtSFoS yanks the carpet out from under the viewer.
2) The episode makes a virtue of the need to use the existing sets. By emptying them of the usual crowds of extras, it reinvents B5 as an unsettling “haunted house” in place of what usually seems riotous, cheerful, and exciting. This nicely underpins the way in which the episode also gives the lie to the viewer’s default assumption of security in the good intentions of government authority.
Oh, and I’m really hoping that the podcast revisits Sinclair vs. Sheridan when discussing this one.
“default assumption of security in the good intentions of government authority”
Scarily prescient of current issues re: NSA and PRISM.
Just heard the podcast. I’m not sure if guest Steven will be frequenting the spoiler spaces, but we all know that if he liked the interrogation in this one, he has a real treat in store in season 2 with “Comes the Inquisitor!”
*evil grin*
Definitely a good episode for kicking the story arc into gear! As Bed mentioned it jumps out as odd that the Minbari discuss killing Sinclair but they clearly don’t yet know that he’s Valen…
Quite a brave episode in the context of the mostly episodic series of the time, this one opens up a whole lot more questions than it answers.
And not even half way into the season suddenly the casual viewer might be intrigued by the promise of the mysteries yet to be revealed in what might have seemed mostly episodic tv with a wooden lead (hindsight not applying to as yet unknown details of his personal life etc).
I wish I could remember watching this the first time around to get that wow factor!!
I do remember watching sections of this with my jaw quite literally hanging open… of course, I was a callow twenty-three when this aired the first time. 😀 (Man, do I feel old now.)
I was a mere 12 when this episode aired, having literally grown up with nothing but Star Ttrek I bought B5 hook line and sinker right off the bat even with The gathering (aired when i was but 11). Then we got to this, and my poor pre-adolecent mind was compeltely blown.
Agreed, that is weird about the Minbari killing Sinclair if he remembers. There’s two things that come to mind with that (if I’m remembering “In the Beginning” and episodes relating to the Earth/Minbari war correctly).
1) The Grey Council surrended once they learned that some Humans had been born with Minbari souls, because “Minbari do not kill Minbari”.
2) I seem to vaguely recall that the Grey Council learned not only that Sinclair had a Minbari soul, but Valen’s soul in specific when they took him.
So yeah, no matter how you look at it it seems very problematic (to say the least) that they would consider assassinating Sinclair.
Another episode that is better than I remember.
I like how at one point, Knight 2 becomes sort of a confidant to Sinclair. Like he’s the only one in years Sinclair can talk to his experiences with the BotL. And for Knight 2 it became a “be careful what you wish for” situation.