Season Two: "The coming of Shadows"
2.15 “And now for a word”
“36 Hours on Babylon 5” is a special news programme filmed by ISN, InterStellar News Network, to give people back on Earth an idea of what happens on the station, and perhaps more importantly, where their tax credits are going. The first thing the news crew sees on arriving at the station is a Centauri vessel being attacked, and destroyed, by a Narn ship. Cynthia Torqueman, the investigative journalist heading the programme, interviews Londo, who of course plays up the “peaceful Centauri” angle --- odd, considering they started the war --- and G’Kar, who has no comment he says until he talks to his government.
When he does, he comes back with a shocking statement: the Centauri ship that was destroyed is said to have been transporting weapons of mass destruction to ships bound for the front line, and he will not allow this to happen. The Narn will set up a blockade and refuse entry to any Centauri ship. Torqueman intimates to her viewers that it may be time to consider shutting down the station, that it is a waste of money. A senator interviewed does not exactly give the station a ringing endorsement. She interviews the command staff, but of course they’re aware they’re on the record, and everyone is very careful not to say anything controversial. The aliens don’t fare quite so well, especially Delenn. Unused to human deception and manipulation, she is surprised and horrified when Torqueman tries to needle her about her appearance, her transformation, and openly calls her out on it, telling her she is a travesty and is mocking humanity. G’Kar calls a council meeting to reveal to all that after Ivanova has made a detailed investigation of his claims they have been confirmed: the Centauri vessel
was carrying WMDs, and he believes the other ships berthed here are similarly laden. He demands they be impounded and inspected, but Londo warns that the ships will defend themselves if approached to give up their “cargo”. The situation, to Torqueman’s thinly-disguised and ghoulish delight, already precarious is threatening to spin right out of control.
And so it does. Narn fighters attack Centauri ships and there is a pitched battle going on outside Babylon 5. Sheridan scrambles the station’s Starfuries, hoping to re-establish order, but he knows that should his ships open fire both races will consider this an act of war. However he has no choice: his station is being made into a warzone and he cannot allow it to continue. After two ships have been destroyed both sides stand down, and Sheridan demands a meeting with the two ambassadors. Before that, Torqueman interviews them both, and not surprisingly each gives a different picture of the other, painting themselves in the best light.
A Centauri battlecruiser comes through the gate, blockading Babylon 5 until the Centauri ships held there are allowed to leave. Londo is very clear that lethal force may and will be used if necessary. Another standoff. Sheridan calls their bluff, believing it to be such, and places the defence grid on standyby, telling the Centuri cruiser that if any ship entering or leaving Babylon 5 is targeted they will respond with deadly force. His resolve works and the ship is allowed to leave, but before they can celebrate a Narn cruiser comes through the gate. It attacks and destroys the Centauri ship, despite repeated orders from Sheridan not to engage, and then in trying to escape, badly damaged, it explodes.
QUOTES
G’Kar: “They (the Centauri) have turned Babylon 5 into a weapons supply post, and we cannot allow this to continue. Even if it means shutting down Babylon 5 permanently.”
Sheridan: “It smacks of jingoism and self-deception and armchair quarterbacking. Any time you lose a war you just wait a few years and you’ll hear from everyone who thinks we could have won if they had done the fighting.”
Torqueman: “Except of course, Captain, we didn’t lose the war. The Minbari
did surrender."
Sheridan: “Oh. Of course.”
Torqueman: “Over a quarter of a million humans were killed in the war with your people. How do you think the families of those victims would feel about your change?”
Delenn: “I don’t know. I would hope they would understand.”
Torqueman: “I think they would be hurt, betrayed; that by taking a human face you’re taking a part of us you’re not entitled to. What would you say to them? To all the husbands and wives and children and brothers and sisters of the people who were killed in the war with your people, and now see a Minbari with a human face?”
Torqueman: “Why do you think they (the Centauri) invaded back then?”
G’Kar: “Why does any advanced civilisation seek to destroy a less advanced one? Because the land is strategically valuable, because there are resources they can cultivate and exploit, but mostly, because they can.You have experienced much the same on your own world. There are humans for whom the words “never again” carry special meaning. As they do for us.”
Delenn (in response to Torqueman’s question, is it worth keeping Babylon 5?): “Of course it is. For the simple reasons that nobody else would have built a place like this. Humans share one unique quality: they create communities. If the Narns or the Centauri, or any other race had built Babylon 5 it would be used only for their own people. But wherever humans go they create communities out of diverse and sometimes hostile populations. It is a great gift, a terrible responsibility, and one that cannot be abandoned.”
Sheridan (to the same question): “Yes, but not for any of the reasons you’ve probably been told. The job of Babylon 5 is not to enforce the peace, it’s to create the peace. This place was built on the assumption that we could work out our problems and build a better future. And that, to me, is the key issue. See, in the last few years, we’ve stumbled. We stumbled at the death of the president, at the war, on and on. And when you stumble a lot, you start looking at your feet. We have to make people lift their eyes back to the horizon, and see the line of ancestors behind us saying, make my life have meaning. And to our inheritors before us saying, create the world that we will live in. We’re not just holding down jobs and having dinner, we are in the process of building the future.
That’s what Babylon 5 is all about. Only by making people understand that can we hope to create a better world for ourselves and for posterity.”
Important Arc Plot Points
Back home
Arc Level : Red
Most of this is dealt with in the section below, but the ISN programme is surely Clarke’s way of ensuring that he besmirches the reputation of Babylon 5, already at a very low popularity level with people on Earth. Torqueman (surely no coincidence that her name is very close to the famous Spanish Inquisition leader, Torquemada?) has almost certainly been sent to B5 with an agenda: get all the dirt you can on the station, and on its crew. Ensure that the folks back home see that the aliens are running the place, that they are a threat to humanity. Paint it in the blackest light you can, while not of course being obvious. Twist the facts: you’re a news reporter, you’ll be used to that. Make people wonder why we’re bothering spending millions of tax credits on this floating liability, that is being utilised more or less exclusively for the benefit of the alien races.
Clarke wants to shut Babylon 5 down. He probably was against it in the first place, and now that he’s president he’s determined to get rid of it. Apart from the money spent on it which he would surely use to shore up Earth’s defences against a possible Centauri attack, I believe that at this stage reports have reached him, from Bester, Cranston, others, that Sheridan is not to be trusted and is not one of his men. To have such a man --- a decorated war hero, popular with the people --- in charge of what could be an orbital battle platform does not seem to him to be a good idea. And yet only a few episodes ago he sent armaments to the place. So what is he up to? Maybe he wants to close it down and reopen it as an exclusively Earth-driven and military outpost to keep an eye on the aliens? The chances of the Centauri attacking Earth, once they’ve defeated the Narns --- which quite obviously they will do, sooner or later --- may seem remote at this stage, but the Centauri Republic is now a resurgent power, stretching out its hand and reclaiming territories it lost. An expanding empire can only go one way, and those in its path will be conquered, enslaved or destroyed. Londo might laugh at the idea of attacking his “good friends the Earthers”, but others in the court may have different ideas.
By withdrawing into itself and preparing the best defences it can, Clarke believes Earth can best serve its own interests and keep out of the interstellar wars. Babylon 5 is a major obstacle to that goal, openly inviting aliens in and, proven here, allowing them or giving them an opportunity at least to make of the station their own private battleground. Why allow this to continue? What is the point? Far better to arm the station, kick off all non-Earth (and those seen to be disloyal) occupants and close the place up as a bastion of his government, a floating battleship in space. Sheridan of course would fight this, and he can’t remove him legitimately without good reason, as Clarke still has, for now, as we have seen, his opponents in the Senate and in the military, and the last thing he wants right now is a civil war, a power struggle.
But if he can turn popular opinion against the captain, show people how he is mismanaging and failing at his job, that the aliens are calling the shots and he is either powerless to stop them or worse in league with them, why then the people of Earth would demand his resignation, reassignment or even arrest! And Clarke would be only too happy to oblige, for after all, he serves the will of the people. “36 Hours on Babylon 5” has been nothing but a giant propaganda exercise, using ISN and helped by IPX, who are a sponsor of the show, both of whom will become two of the president’s staunchest allies.
In fairness to Cynthia Torqueman, it may be that she does not realise she is being used, if she is. She may think she’s doing an honest, unbiased story and she may not have any links to Clarke because at this time ISN is still fairly independent, but it will not stay that way long, as we will see in later episodes and seasons.
Darkness ascending
As things begin to show signs of turning ugly back home, as pro-Earth and anti-alien agendas seem to receive tacit, even open support and approval from Earthgov, I’ll be chronicling here the shift in policy back on Earth with the ascension of President Clarke. Unlike Hitler, he won’t be burning down any buildings or making a power grab, but slowly, insidiously and just as effectively, those who raise dissenting voices will be made disappear as easily as in any third-world tinpot dictatorship, as Earth slowly and inexorably moves towards a global police state.
Here we see the creeping effects of Clarke’s propaganda beginning to seep into what will become one of his most powerful tools, the media. Introducing “36 Hours on Babylon 5”, the newscaster describes Mars colony as “Plagued by scattered groups of separatists, who have used acts of terror to intimidate the Earth-loyal majority”, already skewing the facts. Most of Mars wants independence, but that doesn’t suit Clarke, and as in many cases down through history the freedom fighters and those who advocate separation from Earth are classed as “terrorists”, “agitators” and “troublemakers.” Already ISN is becoming --- if it wasn’t already --- the mouthpiece of the Clarke administration, the Fox News of the twenty-third century.
It’s also interesting that the programme is sponsored by IPX, InterPlanetary Expeditions, who we have met briefly in season one, but who will turn out to have more than a somewhat vested interest in keeping the man in power who currently occupies the highest position on Earth.
During a commercial break in “36 Hours on Babylon 5”, ISN screens a recruitment advertisement for Psi Corps, in which the dark organisation makes themselves out to be everyone’s friend, only interested in helping those who have telepathic ability which is undeveloped reach their full potential. It’s about as balanced as a pre-election stab at the opposition two weeks before voting day. Clean-cut kid, sexy but respectable single mother, lantern-jawed Psi Cop somehow teleporting in (teleportation is far in advance of anything Earth technology currently has, but if anyone has it it would be Psi Corps. Mind you, they wouldn’t want to advertise it so I assume this is just a special effect, a way of telling people that the Corps are on hand whenever needed. It’s also a good way of warning people that they’re always there…) with a somewhat chilling: “We’re everywhere.” Then adding, with a tight false smile, “For your convenience.” Yeah… And a flashframe on screen whispers “Trust the Corps. The Corps is your friend.”
There is even a segment thrown in where it’s claimed that recent polls shows Clarke’s popularity and approval ratings at record highs. This may be true, given the general animosity of humans towards aliens, and they may be glad that the new president is pulling back sharply from the policies of social, political, military and societal integration that his predecessor pursued. Or it could all be lies. Clarke will be anxious to have himself seen in a favourable light, and who after all is going to question these possibly mythic polls?
SKETCHES
Ambassador G'Kar
G’Kar’s story, as told to ISN’s Cynthia Torqueman: “My family lived in one of the larger cities on Narn, my father served in a Centauri household during the last years of the rebellion. I was barely a pouchling at the time. My mother was ill, unable to escape through the underground so we all stayed. It was a difficult time. We were striking deep into Centauri resources; things were tense. One day my father spilled a cup of hot jhala on the mistress of the house. And she had him killed. They took him out, tied his hands together and hung him from a jhavwa tree for three days. I came to him the last night, against my mother’s orders and he looked down at me. He said he was proud, to go and fight and be all the things he never was. And he died. The next morning I ran away and killed my first Centauri.”
This tells us a lot about G’Kar, and yet very little. He was brought up from an early age --- “Barely a pouchling” --- under not only Centauri occupation but in their service. As is always the way with the conquered who are put to work for the conquerors, they will despise one another, the latter for their weakness and the former for being enslaved. This hatred, then, for the Centauri has been built into G’Kar’s personality from almost the start: it’s nearly a genetic trait. His father served the oppressors and was killed by them for a trivial thing, though whether he served out of choice or not is not made clear. However his hatred for the invader is, and it would seem he was just a weak man --- or a strong one --- trying to protect his family by not getting into trouble. But from his dying words it is clear he wanted to fight the Centauri, and is proud his son will do so.
G’Kar has of course seen firsthand what the stripmining of his world has meant for Narn. I’m not entirely sure he was there for the invasion --- he does say he was very young and his father was already in servitude, so perhaps the planet had been conquered years before he was born, or before he was able to make any sense of it. In very real terms, he has lived under the Centauri occupation all his younger life and probably knew no other life, until the invader was pushed off their planet, and presumably he took part in that. His hatred for Londo Mollari, however, does not seem to stem from any personal dislike: he is simply a Centauri, and on Babylon 5, the highest ranking and most visible representative of a race who has subjugated G’Kar’s people in the past, and who is now on the way to doing so again. You can even see, in the brief interludes between their fighting and sniping and threats, that each holds the other in a certain kind of fond regard, a case perhaps of “another time, another place”...
But G’Kar’s relationship with Londo will always be teetering on the brink of savage anger and retribution, however close they get. The difference will be seen in the two very divergent paths the two men take, the one into darkness and damnation, the other … well, you’ll just have to wait and see, but let’s just say this much: we’re going to find there is a lot more to Ambassador G’Kar than at first meets the eye.