three_star_dave@pluspora.com
***Dave Hill

B5 Rewatch: 5x05 "Learning Curve"

A-Plot: A delegation from the Rangers goes from Minbar to B5 to chat with Delenn, the Entil-zha. Two of them are older gents, instructors — Turval, from the religious caste, and Durhan, of the warrior caste — and they bring with them two trainees, Tannier from the religious and Rathenn from the warriors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-VngaL7iCo

Along the way, they get entangled with a new gang boss in DownBelow, Trace. The New Boss has Big Plans, and he’s doing some demonstration killings to show people who’s in charge.

Babylon 5 5x05 Learning Curve - Trace

Bullying Gang Boss Leader is a Bully

Unfortunately (for all concerned), recruit Tannier gets involved in one of Trace’s incidents — and ends up being seriously curb-stomped as another demonstration. That leads to Delenn taking the whole matter away from Zack and station security, and handling it via the Rangers. “Those who harmed him,” she tells Lochley, “now have power over him. He must take back that power, or he will never be whole again.”

Tannier, barely back on his feet, is given a chance to duke it out solo with an increasingly panicked New Boss. The recruit ends up taking the guy apart, resolving both the New Boss problem and giving Tannier back the self-respect and self-control he’ll need as a Ranger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWn2SCmu7UY

DURHAN: Where is your fear now, Tannier?

TANNIER: Gone, Master.

TURVAL: And what do you feel? Anger? Do you feel triumphant? Happiness? Joy?

TANNIER: Pity.

DURHAN: Why?

TANNIER: Because this is all he will ever have and all he will ever know. Because his name will be swallowed by silence. Forgotten. His name belongs to no one.

TURVAL: And who does your name belong to? History? The world?

TANNIER: No. It belongs to me.

And then we get some neat little bows, and Security moves in to clean up the mess.

Babylon 5 5x05 Learning Curve - post fight bow

“Don’t mind me, I just beat up this dude who beat me up.”

There’s a lot of this that seems to play well, if a bit preachy. On reflection, it does make the Rangers seem a bit more, um, cult-like, and with a fondness for violence as a way of resolving problems. That is, in part, their remit, but it’s also an extension of, as Garibaldi later comments, Minbari inability to back down from a righteous fight.

That these are the guys who are running interstellar security and espionage for the Alliance is both comforting and uncomfortable.

B-Plot: The Mystery of Lochley Continues! Garibaldi is obsessing over the station’s new captain, her past, and which side she fought on in the Civil War.



This leads to a blow-up between the two (with a very uncomfortable Zack sitting by), where Lochley ends up not-confessing that, yeah, she was loyal to Earthforce, because she believed in the chain of command, she wanted to keep her crew safe, and she wasn’t ordered to do something she couldn’t in good conscience do.

LOCHLEY: I am a soldier, Mr. Garibaldi, and as such my vocabulary is rather limited. I only really understand three words: loyalty, duty, honor. If I did it your way, one of those would have to go … and then the other two would become meaningless. Just like this conversation. Good day.

That hardly satisfies Garibaldi, esp. since it reinforces the question of why Sheridan would have picked her for the job.

(Parenthetical note: some poor direction or editing here: In some parts of the scene, the crowd in the cafeteria is definitely hanging on every word Lochley says as she and Garibaldi get into it, complete with applause when she leaves; but in the main shot when she’s saying it, everyone in the background is just chit-chatting amongst themselves.)

While the scene is a little clumsy and rushed, it’s a solid, legitimate argument against what Sheridan & Co. did. JMS plays fair with both sides — which is fine, now, but back actually during the Civil War, a lot of comments were made that “just obeying orders” or “the military can’t set political policy” were treated as weaselly, if not evil. Turning around and treating Lochley’s “as long as I don’t get ask to commit war crimes, it’s not my place to interfere” as something we want to hear our protagonist saying needs a little bit more explanation at this point.

In a later scene, Lochley mentions something in passing that Delenn picks up on as indicating that she’s known Sheridan in the past. And the final scene of the episode has Delenn and Sheridan in bed that night, discussing the matter (or having discussed the matter) — with Delenn on the far side of the mattress, her back turned to him …

Babylon 5 5x05 Learning Curve - Sheridan and Delenn

Sheridan faces the No Win Scenario

DELENN: I’m going to pretend that you were going to tell me this sooner or later.

SHERIDAN: I was just looking for the right time.

DELENN: Ten seconds after you thought of it would have been good.

SHERIDAN: Yeah. Yeah, maybe so.

What “this” is will remain a mystery until next episode.

Other Bits and Bobs: Garibaldi is beginning to work with Byron’s telepaths, though they seem unenthused (or perhaps just disdainful of Garibaldi and the other nats).

He’s also beginning to butt heads with Zack. There’s still a mentor/mentee and even old friends aspect to their relationship, but Garibaldi doesn’t want to listen to Zack, and there are hints here that he’s accessing station security info that Zack doesn’t approve of.

Meanwhile: This episode has one of the rare cases of an actor who played two significant (and not heavily made-up) characters: Turhan Bey, who not only plays the Religious Caste Ranger Instructor Turval here, but back in S.2 played the Centauri Emperor Turhan. This was his last credited role before his death a few years later.

In the script book, JMS recounts how a lot of this episode was driven by the curb-stomping he received when he was young, and at a time when he just got booted out of the cult he’d fallen into. A lot of the “face your fear” stuff here seems to come from this incident, even if Joe never got a chance to beat the shit out of his attacker while his colleagues stood around and applauded.

(His letting the remaining anger about that incident drive this episode is one of the reasons he feels it’s so weak.)

Most Dramatic Moment: Yeah, probably Lochley’s “Loyalty, Duty, Honor” speech to Garibaldi.

Honorable Mention to the cool dismantling of the retreating gang as they seek to escape their level of DownBelow, with thugs being picked off from the front and rear and dragged into the shadows by the Rangers. Not only is it creepy, but when the (mostly Minbari) Rangers in the shadows finally become visible in the dim down-lighting, they look positively satanic.

(The whole incident is scary — while the Mora’Dum, the “Application of Terror,” is meant to be about a Ranger overcoming their own terror, Trace, the New Boss, is clearly terrified by the whole matter, too.)

Most Amusing Moment: Gotta be the final scene there between Sheridan and Delenn.

Honorary Mention to: One of the new cross-species Ranger recruits is a Pak’ma’ra — who refuses to learn new languages, and whose dietary habits make it difficult to house him with the other Rangers.

Delenn figures out that the ubiquity of the Pakmara (and the fact that nobody wants to pay any attention to them) makes them perfect couriers for the Rangers, turning lemons into lemonade.

Most Arc-ish Moment: This episode is 98% arc-free, but there is one intriguing moment where Delenn and Turval are chatting, and he mentions how Lennier, now at Ranger Camp (though unseen in the episode) is not tackling training in a healthy fashion, driving himself to the breaking point.

Delenn, of course, knows why, but it’s not like she can talk much about it. She just asks Turval to watch over him.

It might have made this episode a lot better — and a lot more on-point — if we’d gotten Lennier rather than Tennier as one of the visiting apprentice Rangers.

Overall Rating: 3.5 of 5.0 — This episode is … kind of a waste of time, in an otherwise crowded season. There’s some minor progress on side fronts, but with Londo, G’kar, and the Telepaths all MIA, there’s just not that much there there, though what’s there is entertaining. It’s hardly a bad episode in and of itself — it just feels like an unnecessary one. Its problem is strategic (where it shows up in the series and what it does there) more than tactical (the show itself).

That’s not just my opinion. JMS has commented, “There are some stories you tell that you look back at later and wonder, what the hell was I thinking?” Between not having a core-character-focused story (after the previous not-a-core-character-focused story), and using yet another interchangeable violent crime guy trying to take over the gangs, Joe opines he would just as soon this episode vanish softly and silently away.

(Rating History)

Other Resources for this episode:

Previous episode: 5×04 “A View from the Gallery”

Next episode: 5×06 “Strange Relations” – Telepaths! Psi-Corps! Assassinations! Divorces! Finally, some chewy arc bits!

Reposted on Pluspora.

#3sd-nerditude #b5 #babylon5

Originally posted at: https://hill-kleerup.org/blog/2022/01/10/b5-rewatch-5x05-learning-curve.html

There are no comments yet.