1.08
And The Sky Full Of Stars
Those gray robes do look pretty cool actually. Not that I could pull it off, I could never get the hood right, but they do look cool. If people are randomly switching from Minbari to human and then back again I would like some advanced warning before I step foot in the corridor. Gambling debts are not good today and still aren’t in the future, that’s why I don’t gamble. Well, that and the fear of losing money at an exponential rate because I’m a dope.
Written By: J. Michael Straczynski
Directed By: Janet Greek
Bare Essentials:
A Plot - Two men, Knights One and Two, arrive on B5 and abduct Commander Sinclair. They insert him into a virtual world where Knight Two forces him to remember most of the 24 hours missing from his life during the Battle of the Line. Sinclair escapes and causes Knight Two to lose his memory in the process. Sinclair is delusional but Delenn helps him to remember who he is and he kills Knight One before he is shot himself.
B Plot - A security guard Benson is in severe gambling debt. He helps smuggle a power pack to the two Knights to pay off his debt. He goes back to the Knights when Garibaldi realizes he may be involved with the missing Sinclair. The Knights kill him when he finds out what is going on.
C Plot - Delenn is visited by another member of the Grey Council and she is informed that Sinclair must be killed should he ever remember what happened to him in the missing 24 hours.
More Arc, Less Arch:
Garibaldi is reading The Universe Today and it contains the headlines:
Pros & Cons of Inter-Species Mating (perhaps this is a slight nod to what is to come with Delenn and Sheridan)
Psi-Corps In Election Tangle (the sub headline mentions their endorsement of the Vice-President, and this is an obvious implication of what is to come between Psi Corps and the future President Clark.)
Narns Settle Ragesh 3 Controversy (referring back to events started in Midnight On The Firing Line.)
Home Guard leader Convicted with a sub headline of, Jacob Lester Found Guilty In Attack On Minbari Embassy (This is a tie in to the events of The War Prayer.)
San Diego Still Considered Too Radioactive For Occupancy (this will be shown more in the season two episode, A Spider In The Web.)
Is There Something Living In Hyperspace? (This is actually a very big arc point that most people missed the first time through. It will be touched upon again in the episodes A Distant Star, The Fall Of Night and Matters Of Honor.)
Going into this episode Sinclair was missing 24 hours from his life during the Battle of the Line. After he tried to ram a Sharlin during the battle he blacked out and had no recollection of what happened to him in the following hours. We find out in this episode that he was taken aboard the Sharlin where he was examined and tortured. He caused a strange Minbari device, a triluminary, to illuminate. This is a very big moment as it is the moment the Minbari realize that Sinclair has a Minbari soul and the soul of Valen no less. He was brought before the Grey Council where he yanked back one of their hoods to reveal Delenn underneath. This will be fully explained over the course of time in some key episodes and completely in the movie In The Beginning.
As these revelations are dawning on Sinclair we see a flashback to his run in with a Minbari assassin in The Gathering. That is key because it is the moment Sinclair realized there was more to his missing memory than he thought and the Minbari knew about it.
The Minbari that Delenn talks to at the end of the episode has a symbol on his forehead that will appear again in the episode Signs And Portents. This Minbari is a member of the Grey Council and that symbol is a sign of that.
It is worth noting that based on what we learn about Garibaldi’s aide Jack later on he was most likely involved in this conspiracy. While nothing in this episode points to that, his actions and words in the episode Revelations as well as the fact that Garibaldi, Sinclair, and Knight Two all imply this is an inside government job leave you with the feeling that someone inside B5 was involved and that person would be Jack.
Who Are You? What Do Yo… Hey, I’m Asking The Questions Here!:
As stated above this episode heavily implies that the actions taken against Sinclair are an inside government job. With that being the case, why did they wait over ten years to take action?
Why is Sinclair shooting at the security guard right away when he has already had one incident where people he thought were Minbari ended up being human after he shook the cobwebs out of his head? The fact that he shot at her after she spoke English to him makes this even more questionable.
Why doesn’t Sinclair shoot at Delenn right away and instead tries to warn her to stop? He’s already shown he is willing to shoot at a Minbari with no questions asked, and the fact that he recognizes Delenn as the Minbari he saw on the Sharlin where he was tortured should give him even more incentive to shoot her right away.
Why must Sinclair be killed if he finds out what happened in his missing 24 hours? If the Minbari are okay with killing him in the first place then why are they even taking the chance that he will remember?
Idiosyncratic Musings:
One would think that an episode as pivotal to the story as this one would give you a lot to think about, but that one would be wrong. This episode is an entirely arc driven episode, therefore it doesn’t present any sort of moral, philosophical, or even character issues that are worth discussing at any length.
I See What You Did There:
Station security are not allowed to gamble while on active duty. When off duty they are limited to 50 credits a week.
Before the Earth-Minbari War Franklin hitch hiked across the galaxy trading his services as a doctor for free passage. When the war started he destroyed his notes on Minbari biology so that EarthForce couldn’t use them in bio weapons against the Minbari.
Garibaldi’s security key card allows him access to any quarter on B5.
The machine that Sinclair and Knight Two are hooked into is a cerebral matrix or a virtual reality cybernet. It is anchored in Sinclair’s mind and it creates a complete virtual world within Sinclair’s mind that plays off of his thoughts and memories. While all their surroundings are simulated Sinclair and Knight Two can still be hurt by an outside energy source or they can physically hurt each other inside the cybernet.
Commander Sinclair’s middle name is David, he was born on Mars Colony in the year 2218.
Yes, I Am A Fleet Junkie:
Various flashbacks take us to the Battle of the Line in the Earth-Minbari War. This serves to highlight the technical and military superiority the Minbari enjoyed over the Earth Alliance. No actual EA capital ships are shown, but we do see numerous shots of Aurora Class Starfury Heavy Fighters failing to leave a scratch on any Minbari vessels. In return the Minbari vessels we do see, Nial Class Heavy Fighters and Sharlin Class War-Cruisers, shred through the Starfuries like they are nothing. Truly as one sided of a battle as you will ever see, the Sharlins and Nials destroy Starfury after Starfury with no return damages seen at all.
The Nial Class Windstar Heavy Fighter is the most dangerous fighter craft among all the 2nd class races. The Nial’s armament consists of three heavy neutron guns. It also contains a standard Minbari stealth device that renders it virtually impossible to detect by any scanner or sensor technology possessed by any of the other 2nd class races. The Nial’s are one pilot vessels capable of the fastest speeds and most maneuverability out of any fighter that a 2nd class race may produce.
The Sharlin Class War-Cruiser is the most common capital ship in the Minbari Federation fleet. The Sharlin carries a crew of 190 Minbari and can carry over 8,000 troops. It has an armament of 18 gravitic neutron cannons, 18 gravitic fusion beam cannons, 24 EM neutron guns, 24 EM fusion beam guns, 42 electro-pulse guns, 4 missile launchers, and it is capable of being outfitted for a single mass driver. It also can produce the same stealth field as the Nial and has a defense shield grid. The Sharlin also houses 15 Nial Class Windstar Heavy Fighters. The beast of the galaxy is the best way to describe the Sharlin. It is extremely powerful and no capital ship among the 2nd class races can touch it .
It’s Your Cultural Imperative:
The Grey Council is shown to consist of nine members in this episode.
I Think This Might Be Based On Something:
While not based on it per say, a lot of And The Sky Full Of Stars feels like it is a homage to the classic British TV series, The Prisoner.
The character of Mitchell is a reference to General Billy Mitchell.
You Look Mighty Familiar:
Judson Scott, Knight One, played Joachim Weiss in Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan and the vampire Pallantine in Blade. He was also in a bunch of V episodes as Lt. James. He was in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, Symbiosis as Sobi and the Star Trek: Voyager episode Message On A Bottle as Cmdr. Rekar. He made multiple appearances in The X-Files as the character Absalom and in Charmed as Necron.
Christopher Neame, Knight Two, appeared in the Blake’s 7 episode, Traitor as Colonel Quute and the Star Trek: Voyager episode Heroes and Demons as Unferth. He was in the Earth 2 episode All About Eve as Dr. Franklin Bennett. He also appeared in the Sliders episode Into The Mystic as Dr. Manfred Xang and a couple of Enterprise episodes as the German General. That is just a sampling of his appearances as Neame has appeared in far too many genre specific roles for me to list them all here.
Casting Ahead:
Garibaldi’s aide Jack makes another appearance.
Mark Hendrickson is back, this time he plays the Minbari Grey Council member that talks with Delenn at the end of the episode.
That Wasn’t Supposed To Happen:
The newspaper Garibaldi is reading misspells Ragesh as Raghesh. It also has multiple instance of referring to Psi Corps with a hyphen, and as we will see later in the show there is no hyphen in Psi Corps.
The Ombuds Have Decided:
This is an episode that delivers in spades until the very end when it loses its way somewhat. There isn’t anything that really stands out about the episode, but that’s not a bad thing. Nothing stands out because this is an episode where for the most part everything is on point and at the same quality level.
And The Sky Full Of Stars creates a very intimate and tense atmosphere between Sinclair and Knight Two and it really works. They bring a stage like quality to their scenes and it really shows. Sinclair is best when he is being introspective and thinking, and this episode makes him think like almost no other. The reactions and expressions from Knight Two as he constantly pushes Sinclair to the breaking point are very choice.
The scene with Benson and the thugs clearly establishes his gambling debt and sets the stage for the lengths he would be willing to go to erase said debt. The following scene where Garibaldi and Sinclair confront Benson about his gambling debt feels forced and a rehash of what we were just told in the previous scene. The events with Garibaldi later discovering that Benson’s debts have been paid off make their earlier scene necessary. Because of that you can eliminate the scene involving Benson & the thugs and the issue of Benson’s gambling wouldn’t seem so forced and heavy handed.
I don’t really buy the notion that Sinclair clenching his fist over and over somehow allowed him to remain tethered to the real world. He’s in a virtual reality world that he has no control over and he shouldn’t be able to snap out of it like that.
The entire sequence of Sinclair being delusional at the end is very murky and doesn’t make much sense. It jumps all over the place with him shooting at random one time and then waiting to shoot the next. The way it is shot and the way it comes across he doesn’t seem delusional so much as he seems like a guy picking and choosing who he will shoot at.
A good episode that almost reaches the great level but is held back by a few flaws and the erratic nature of the end delusional sequence. This is an instance where the story was working perfectly fine and was really hitting all the right points. Unfortunately they wanted to go for the weird and crazy sequence with Sinclair that was supposed to make some sort of point, but it ended up falling flat.
Rating:
82/100
B
That’s it for this review, and next time you hear from me we will give the episode Deathwalker a thorough look through.
Cheers,
Bill
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