This one is pretty great all around. Delenn kicks some serious ass, and I love the Mars storyline .. I have no complaints.
I loved the Mars storyline from the very beginning, long before Babylon 5 broke away from Earth and all that. It's an interesting concept from Earth history reimagined in a sci fi setting. You have this colony with a significant proportion of the population in favor of independence, but not ALL of the population, so there's all this conflict. Also the conflict within the independence movement on how to go about achieving said independence. I thought all this stuff was pretty well done throughout. The story keeps coming up more or less in the background, but here it's solidly in the foreground.
It's interesting that Dr. Franklin, in his speech to the Mars resistance, participates in the Sheridan cult of personality thing. You'd think the Mars resistance would scoff at that, especially considering some of them already dislike Sheridan because of past Earth Force actions.
Ah, Dr. Franklin being a ladies' man again. Marcus' "Touch passion when it comes your way, Stephen. It's rare enough as it is, don't walk away when it calls you by name" seems like pretty solid advice to me, but it's odd that it comes from Marcus. It's also odd that it's directed from Marcus TO Dr. Franklin who has never been seen walking away from passion when it calls him by name
This is indeed the episode that has Marcus on guard duty, repeatedly extending his fighting pike, as we discussed in the thread for "Racing Mars"
![Wink ;) ;)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
It's an amusing end scene.
Delenn is really great in this. Early on in the episode she has this conversation with Sheridan, where she tells him she has to go deal with this stuff and he is reluctant to let her go. She then says the lines quoted by Jan above. It's good stuff. And then of course later in the episode she shows us exactly what she can do. Well, she and a small fleet of White Stars, but still. It counts
There's this interesting bit where Lennier appears to warn Delenn about first contact situations, where she tells him she was there with Dukhat when the Minbari made first contact with the humans. I THINK she then says she won't make the same mistake twice, but it's possible she tells Lennier not to make the mistake of speaking to her in that fashion
![Stick out tongue :p :p](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
Clearly he forgot himself for a second there.
That phase-shifting Drakh is super creepy. Alas, poor Forell. He kinda had to die at the end of this, in order to atone for his terrible mistake
![Stick out tongue :p :p](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
It's also interesting that Lennier appears to whisper "Z'ha Dum" to Delenn when they are talking about the Drakh's world being destroyed. Did he figure it out before she did?
I enjoy the space fight scenes in this. Those White Stars are just so damn cool.
Bad news about the Minbari homeworld. That's going to get very interesting.
There's this idea that keeps coming back in Babylon 5 revolving around the humans' unique capacity for something or other. "You build communities, that is your strength". But, in all honesty, it doesn't seem like the humans are very different in that respect from any of the other races we see in Babylon 5, so I'm not really sure where that comes from.