1.11
Survivors
Drazi ninjas own your soul! I wish being an alcoholic was so easy to handle, I’d drink all the damn time if that were the case. Liana Kemmer makes me want to do things, naughty things, to her. Ya know, I really have run out of witty things to say. I don’t know what to say anymore, this episode left me that flat, man I’m almost as pathetic as this episode was, but not quite.
Written By: Marc Scott Zicree
Directed By: Jim Johnston
Bare Essentials:
A Plot – New Starfuries are being delivered to B5. Things go boom as terrorists are afoot. The blame is placed on Garibaldi, but eventually Garibaldi is cleared and the real culprit is discovered to be the man that originally blamed Garibaldi, Nolan, as well as Cutter, an EA security officer.
B Plot - Major Lianna Kemmer has come to B5 to make sure it is safe for the Presidents visit. Her father was once good friends with Garibaldi. But, when he was killed as a way to get at Garibaldi she blamed her Uncle Mike and still hates him to this day for her fathers death. Garibaldi apologizes, a lot, and later when he helps to stop the bombing of the Cobra Bays from going off and shows Kemmer the error of her ways she forgives him and they part ways on good terms again.
C Plot - President Santiago is on his way to B5 under the guise of delivering the new Starfuries. He’s actually on hand to further push across his new alien immigration laws he wants passed.
More Arc, Less Arch:
It won’t be seen again until season 5, but Survivors does give us the first glimpse, albeit very badly done, of Garibaldi as an alcoholic.
The friction over aliens on Earth has been shown already in The War Prayer and it will come to a head for Santiago in Chrysalis and really be pushed by President Clark in all of seasons three and four.
Who Are You? What Do Yo… Hey, I’m Asking The Questions Here!:
Why the heck is Major Kemmer in her full dress uniform, all the time?
What Corps is Garibaldi referring to when he infers that they blackballed him throughout the system?
Security has been searching for Garibaldi like crazy, they have even been shooting first at people they can’t see and asking questions later. But, when they actually find out definitively where he is they don’t go in and get him. Instead they wait outside the bar for him to stumble out the back door?
Idiosyncratic Musings:
Survivors tries to tackle the issue of alcoholism, but it fails miserably. Garibaldi being an alcoholic and his actions come across as extremely cheap attention getters. He turns to the bottle so quickly, almost right away, and that does not go along with Garibaldi’s current character at all. They try to explain it away with Garibaldi’s line about thinking that he had changed but that is a paltry excuse for a weak plot point. His return to the bottle wouldn’t have been so cheap if the repercussions faced for it weren’t cheap as well. The man is an alcoholic, a hardcore alcoholic. Yet, even after returning to the bottle he’s fine five minutes later and doesn’t suffer any setbacks at all from his transgressions. That is completely unrealistic. Alcoholism is a serious disease, and alcoholics can’t touch the stuff because once they start down the path it takes them forever to get back off of it. Survivors does a pitiful job of portraying the reality and the harshness of alcoholism. Luckily the issue will be handled much better come the fifth season.
It’s not a big thing but I love the juxtaposition they try and put forth with Kemmer’s hair. In the final scene her hair is down and now all of a sudden she’s a quiet, likable character that has changed. It’s not really a nitpick on my part, I just love when the hair change signifies major character change.
I See What You Did There:
Certain areas of Babylon 5 are low gravity zones.
Garibaldi once worked on Europa and Orion 4. He was transferred off of Europa after being blamed for negligence in an explosion.
Garibaldi is a recovering alcoholic.
There is 3-D holographic gaming on B5.
There is a bar in B5’s down below area called Happy Daze.
Officer Lou Welch makes his first appearance. He will serve as almost a secondary second man to Garibaldi for a few seasons.
Jane, known only as ISN news anchor at this point, makes her first appearance and she will make many more as the anchor that everyone knows from ISN.
Say It Again Mac:
Susan Ivanova, “That’s a very Russian attitude. I commend you.”
Ivanova, again, “You are going to resist, I hope?”
Lost In Translation:
Commander Sinclair attempting to be the baddest man alive, “Get out of my way or by God I’ll shove you out the nearest airlock.”
Michael Garibaldi joining in the ugly tough talk, “Call it a lifestyle.”
Garibaldi again joins in the testosterone fest, “Right, let’s do it.”
Yes, I Am A Fleet Junkie:
EarthForce One makes an appearance. It doesn’t have a class designation that I know of, and literally nothing is known about it’s defensive or offensive capabilities, its armament or the crew that it carries. The only information that is known is that it is the official space liner of the Earth Alliance President and that it is escorted at all times by four Aurora Class Starfury Heavy Fighters.
With the introduction of Zeta Wing Babylon 5 now has a full compliment of Aurora Class Starfury Heavy fighters on hand. Zeta Wing joins the already present Alpha, Delta, and Omega Wings and gives B5 48 Starfuries at their disposal.
It’s Your Cultural Imperative:
The Earth Alliance Chief of Presidential Security has the right to override local security forces on any matters that involve the President.
It’s standard procedure for EarthForce personnel to be suspended when they are suspected of sabotage.
Centauri hard currency are known as ducats.
Ilaros is the Centauri Goddess of luck and the patron saint of gamblers.
Tha’Ri is a Narn alcoholic beverage.
I Think This Might Be Based On Something:
General Netter is named after B5’s execute producer, Douglas Netter.
The last name Kemmer is taken from the character of Ed Kemmer in the old school sci-fi show Space Patrol.
You Look Mighty Familiar:
Rod Perry, Gen. Netter, appeared as Sgt. David “Deacon” Kay in S.W.A.T..
Maggie Egan, The ISN news anchor, played Mrs. Comet, the wife of a character killed in an alien version of Russian Roulette in the episode, The Game of Alien Nation. She also portrayed the character of Margaret Cole in the Quantum Leap episode Maybe Baby – March 11, 1963.
Casting Ahead:
The animatronic N’grath is back again.
Doug Netter is back as Luis Santiago, he last appeared in Midnight On The Firing Line.
Mark Hendrickson is back again, this time as the passed out Drazi sitting next to Garibaldi at the bar.
That Wasn’t Supposed To Happen:
In the scene where Garibaldi is coming to see G’Kar the door to his quarters open without any prompting from G’Kar or without G’Kar from the inside of the room being anywhere near the door. This does not jive at all with the way that the doors have been shown to work on the series.
Garibaldi uses Cutter’s link to contact Ivanova. That is impossible since as we know all links are biogenetically sensitive and can only be operated by their actual owner.
In the alien sector a security officer pulls his PPG and shoots at Garibaldi without even knowing who he is. In that dense of an atmosphere while looking through a breather mask there is now way that he should have known that the other person whose identity is obscured behind a breather mask is Garibaldi.
The Ombuds Have Decided:
The one positive in Survivors was the relationships on station that were portrayed. The story allowed us to once again see how strong the relationship between Sinclair and Garibaldi is. It also showed us how strong the relationship between Garibaldi and Ivanova has grown to be. But as a bit of a surprise we were able to witness Londo opening up to Garibaldi and proving that he does view him as a friend by putting his neck on the line for him. I really dug that aspect of the episode, unfortunately that was the only aspect of the episode that was worth digging.
Nolan blaming Garibaldi for planting the bomb is out of left field as well as being far too clean and convenient. Nolan has no idea what is going on or that Garibaldi is in the room, but somehow in his last dying moments he remembers that he dislikes Garibaldi from an incident months previous and thus must implicate him in the bomb going off. I don’t buy it, that’s bad storytelling that relies too much on chance, coincidence, and a giant leap in logic that I am not willing to take.
Garibaldi going to Londo and asking for Centauri ducats is something else I don’t buy. Up till this point in the series Garibaldi has been portrayed as a very smart and cagey individual. While I believe that Londo would offer him the ducats, there is no way that Garibaldi would be stupid enough to use the Centauri ducats and further incriminate himself.
I have a problem with Kemmer killing Nolan for a couple of reasons. First, no one, especially not someone in a position like hers, would be that overt about the act. They would take more precautions and would make sure do to it quietly, not loud and out in the open for everyone to see like Kemmer did. Secondly, she deliberately killed a man. She did so in calculated and cold blooded fashion and yet this is glossed over as if it is a fact of life. At the end of Survivors they want us to view Kemmer as a sympathetic figure, but that doesn’t work at all when you have portrayed her as a killer and not given one reason for why we should be sympathetic towards her.
The CGI effect in the background as Ivanova and Garibaldi pass through a tunnel in the transport tube at the beginning of the episode is a bit too noticeable. It’s not bad CGI, but it does stick out and CGI shouldn’t stick out from the natural surroundings.
The music throughout the episode was bad. Franke was going for an action/intense drama feel but he ended up going overboard. The resulting sound is far too melodramatic and a bit too much.
There are various instances of tough guy talk throughout Survivors, and they all fall flat. None more so than Sinclair’s threat to shove Cutter out of an airlock. It’s obtrusive and too over the top.
The fact that no one in a position of power never thought to search Nolan’s quarters until the very end is pathetic. Kemmer, Garibaldi, Ivanova, Welch, Sinclair, not a one of them thought to search the quarters of a man that Garibaldi had said would possibly have a grudge against them. That is just more stupidity in an episode full of stupidity.
I realize that B5 is a big station, but I find it hard to believe that an on-station bank would have 100,000 Centauri ducats on hand at the drop of a hat. The main currency on the station are credits, and hard money like ducats would not be in abundance on the station. The entire idea of Cutter going to a bank and withdrawing 100,000 ducats the moment Nolan implicated Garibaldi in the bombing doesn’t make any sense. This compounds with the fact that the whole, “Garibaldi has Centauri ducats therefore he must be the bomber” is rendered moot when we find out that anyone can go and get ducats at any time.
Survivors is a reset episode of television. None of the conflicts matter because at the end of the episode everything is wrapped up in a nice little bow and everything returns to status quo. The characters and the story return to where they were before the episode even started, save the Kemmer/Garibaldi relationship, and the whole story resets itself. That is not good TV, sci-fi, or storytelling.
The main problem with Survivors is that it is far too coincidental of an episode. It relies far too much on people being in certain places at certain times. Sinclair just happens to be in the same areas as Garibaldi when he is in the middle of getting beat down by Drazi ninjas. No one in the casino happens to be able to recognize Garibaldi when he is walking around freely without a disguise in an area that he has been shown to frequent while his picture is plastered all over the station as a wanted suspect. It all requires way too many instances of “hey, good thing you were here,” or idiotic nonsensical actions to be any good.
Rating:
45/100
D-
Thankfully that’s over, next time we get all Union on your behind with By Any Means Necessary.
Cheers,
Bill