“The Geometry of Shadows”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Michael Vejar
Season 2, Episode 3
Production episode 203
Original air date: November 16, 1994
It was the dawn of the third age… Garibaldi is getting his latest checkup from Franklin and the doctor, despite being cranky about Garibaldi lying about how much pain he’s still in, thinks he’s just about physically ready to return to duty. Garibaldi, however, isn’t sure he’s mentally ready, given that he totally missed that his second-in-command was a murderous traitor and he knows bupkuss about the new boss.
Mollari sees off Lord Refa, a Centauri aristocrat who apparently represents a group of people who are eager to return the Republic to its former glory. They view the emperor as old and weak—more so since his only son died, leaving no clear line of succession. Mollari make it clear he’s willing to support Refa and his buddies.
As Refa embarks on his transport home, Mollari is shocked to see a whole mess of techno-mages showing up. They’re people who manipulate technology to a degree that it appears to be magic—and sightings of them are rare. Seeing one is considered an omen.
Mollari decides that it would be good for his growing approbation within the Centauri Republic to get the blessing of a techno-mage.
In the Zocalo, two Drazi get into a nasty fight. One Drazi is wearing a purple sash, the other a green one. This will be important later…
Sheridan tasks Ivanova with solving the Drazi problem. Every five years, Drazi get into scuffles with each other, and nobody knows why. No one’s died yet, but in a closed environment like B5 even little fistfights can get out of control and hurt bystanders. Sheridan also buries the lede—he casually mentions that this sort of thing is a responsibility one expects when one is a full commander. It takes Ivanova a second to realize that she’s been promoted, and she’s thrilled and honored.
Garibaldi is sitting in his quarters with a PPG in his hand, which isn’t at all ominous, when Sheridan shows up to ask when he’s coming back to work. Garibaldi expresses the same doubts he expressed to Franklin, albeit in less detail. Sheridan says very encouraging and supportive things—most importantly that nobody knows the station as well as Garibaldi—and says he’ll hold the job open as long as he can.
Ivanova meets with the Drazi factions, and is appalled to realize that the source of the conflict is based on the sash they’re wearing. People wearing purple sashes must fight people wearing green sashes. There’s no particular ideology attached to the sashes—in fact, they’re distributed randomly. But whoever wins the contest is dominant for the next five years. Ivanova struggles to understand this, and her attempts to make sense of it result in a fight breaking out, in which her foot is broken.
Vir approaches the techno-mages to request an audience between them and Mollari. The techno-mages whip out a whole lot of sound and fury to scare Vir off, but he stands his ground. One of the techno-mages, Elric, approaches Vir more directly, and is impressed by his lack of fear. Vir shrugs and says, “I work for Ambassador Mollari—after a while, nothing bothers you.” In any case, Elric denies the audience.
While having her busted leg treated, Ivanova is given the chance by Sheridan to pass off the Drazi assignment onto someone less, ah, hobbled, but Ivanova insists she can finish the job.
Welch and Garibaldi bump into each other, with the former wanting to know when the latter is coming back to work. Their conversation is interrupted by another Drazi fight.
Mollari, having been denied the direct approach, decides to take an indirect one. He approaches Sheridan and tells him there are techno-mages on board. Sheridan already knew that, and that there’s a lot of them, and they seem to be going somewhere, and nobody knows where. Mollari offers his assistance in dealing with them, and Sheridan accepts.
CnC links Ivanova to inform her that, on the Drazi homeworld, Green is now killing Purple, not just knocking them silly. Concerned that this murderous escalation will work its way to B5, Ivanova meets with the Green faction in the hopes of de-escalating. This fails rather spectacularly, as the Green leader wants Ivanova to invite the entire Purple delegation to Brown 29 and then open the airlock. Ivanova refuses to murder two thousand Drazi, but it turns out they’ve already summoned the Purple gang there in her name. They hold her at knifepoint and take her link.
Elric meets with Sheridan, with Mollari joining them and discreetly putting a recording device nearby. Elric wants nothing to do with Mollari, and produces a recording of Vir’s audience request. Mollari is shocked—shocked!—that Elric would record someone without their prior consent. Elric then destroys the recording device that Mollari placed, calling him on his hypocrisy. After Mollari beats a hasty retreat, Sheridan and Elric continue to talk in the Zocalo. Elric urges Sheridan to let them go unmolested. There is a great darkness coming, and the techno-mages fear that their abilities might be suborned for foul purposes, so they wish to go far away.
Garibaldi sees Welch and some other security folk dashing about. Welch tells Garibaldi that they got an uplink from Ivanova saying they should clear out Brown 29 for the Drazi, and also that she’d be offline for a bit. Garibaldi confirms that this was an uplink, not a voice message, and also gets the location of where she was when she sent the uplink: Brown 2. Heading there, Garibaldi distracts and confuses the Drazi long enough for him to confirm that Ivanova’s being held prisoner, and the two of them manage to escape.
Mollari is beside himself, as every piece of equipment in his quarters has gone haywire. The speakers are playing Narn opera, he can’t get at any of his personal files, and his finances are now a mess.
The Purple faction have all gathered in Brown 29, but Garibaldi and Ivanova block the Green gang from going there. Ivanova’s plan is to keep the Purple folk in there until the conflict is over. The Green leader snidely points out that the conflict is continuing for another year. In her anger and frustration at the ridiculousness of it all, Ivanova rips the sash off the Green leader. Suddenly, all the Drazi stand at attention awaiting her orders. Whoever takes the green sash off the Green leader becomes Green leader. Thus empowered, Ivanova takes all the Green faction to get their sashes dyed purple…
Mollari gingerly approaches the techno-mages’ quarters and apologizes. When he departs, there are three demons on his back.
Garibaldi returns to duty. Sheridan, Ivanova, and Franklin take him out for a celebratory drink, where he explains that what convinced him was that he knew that Ivanova would never uplink orders, she’d always give them verbally, plus she never takes her link offline. That made him suspicious, and it saved a lot of lives.
Mollari sees Elric and the other techno-mages off. Elric assures Mollari that the pranks are finished now. The techno-mage sees a great darkness surrounding Mollari, and says he sees, “a great hand reaching out of the stars. The hand is your hand, and all around are billions of voices calling your name.” Eyes alight with hope, Mollari asks, “My followers?” Elric sadly replies: “Your victims.”
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan threads the needle very nicely when talking to Garibaldi, making it clear that he can have his job back, but also that the captain will understand if he doesn’t want to come back. I particularly like his response to Garibaldi speculating that it would be easier if he resigned and moved on: “The universe doesn’t give you any points for doing things that are easy.”
Ivanova is God. Ivanova gets a deserved promotion to full commander and has to struggle to resolve a conflict that has no basis in, er, conflict.
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi has justifiable concerns about returning to the job, given that he totally missed that his second-in-command was a traitorous bastard, and also that he’s generally not all that great at his job. His best friend isn’t the boss anymore, so that’s gotta suck for him, too…
In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… The Centauri emperor is elderly and no longer has an heir. We’ve already seen one Centauri aristocrat with visions of coups dancing in his head, and in Refa we meet another, but Refa a) seems to have a coalition and b) is emboldened by Mollari’s apparent wiping out of Quadrant 37.
Never contradict a techno-mage when he’s saving your life—again. We’re introduced to techno-mages, who are able to manipulate technology to an impressive degree, most of which seems to involve holograms, recordings, and the ability to take over the controlling systems of electronic equipment.
Looking ahead. The techno-mages see a coming darkness, both in general on the galactic stage and in particular surrounding Mollari.
Welcome aboard. Recurring regulars David L. Crowley (Welch) and Joshua Cox (Corwin) are back from, respectively, “Revelations” and “Points of Departure,” and we’ve got a new recurring regular debuting: William Forward as Refa. Crowley—who has graduated to being listed with the guests in the opening credits—will be back in “Soul Mates,” Cox will return in next week’s “A Distant Star,” and Forward will return in “The Coming of Shadows.”
The Drazi with speaking parts are played by Kim Strauss, Jonathan Chapman, and Neil Bradley.
But the big guest is the late great Michael Ansara. Best known in genre circles for his roles as Kang on three different Star Trek series, as Kane in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and as the voice of Mr. Freeze on Batman: The Animated Series and its spinoff movie SubZero (not to mention a vocal cameo as the Ancient One in the 1978 Doctor Strange TV movie), Ansara here plays Elric.
Trivial matters. This is the only time techno-mages appear on B5. However, they will be seen in more depth in Crusade (one of that show’s opening-credits regulars, Peter Woodward’s Galen, is a techno-mage; Galen is established as a student of Elric’s), and also in the novel trilogy The Passing of the Techno-Mages by Jeanne Cavelos.
Elric is named after the title character in Michael Moorcock’s long-running Elric of Melniboné series of stories and novels. In addition, Elric paraphrases J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings when he cautions Mollari, “Do not try the patience of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.” (This is especially amusing given that Moorcock doesn’t think all that highly of Tolkien as a writer…)
Claudia Christian really did break her foot, so the injury had to be written into the storyline.
When teasing Welch about his allegedly out-of-character behavior, Garibaldi jokes that there’s “another guy with a changeling net,” a reference to the disguised assassin in “The Gathering.”
Issues #2-4 of the Babylon 5 comic book by Mark Moretti, Michael Netzer, Carlos Garzon, & Rob Leigh, published by DC and based on a plot premise by J. Michael Straczynski, take place between “Revelations” and this episode.
The echoes of all of our conversations. “I believe that there are currents in the universe—eddies and tides that pull us one way or the other. Some we have to fight, some we have to embrace. Unfortunately, the currents that we have to fight look exactly like the currents we have to embrace. The currents that we think are gonna make us stronger, they’re the ones that are going to destroy us. And the ones we think are gonna destroy us, they’re the ones that are going to make us stronger.”
Vir’s unnecessarily long answer to Mollari’s query as to whether or not Vir believes in fate.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Green must fight Purple, Purple must fight Green—is no other way.” There are two things that make this episode worth watching all by itself. One is the very act of casting Michael Ansara, which makes every scene with Elric sparkle and shine. Ansara was one of the absolute greats, with one of the most magnificent voices in the world, and he elevates any role he plays with his deep timbre and stentorian tones. Just an absolute master of the craft, and watching him verbally fence with Stephen Furst and Peter Jurasik and plead with Bruce Boxleitner is an absolute joy.
The other is the scene between Sheridan and Garibaldi in the latter’s quarters, for which a great deal of credit goes, not just to Boxleitner and Jerry Doyle and scripter J. Michael Straczynski, but especially director Michael Vejar. It starts with Garibaldi putting the power cell into and taking it out of the PPG while staring intently at it. Then, when Sheridan enters, his eyes go briefly to the PPG, but he doesn’t really look at it until Garibaldi’s back is turned. And then when he speaks his words of encouragement and understanding, he deliberately walks over to the coffee table and puts the PPG in its holster. It’s a magnificent scene, where Sheridan shows support without pressure, and makes it clear that Garibaldi is wanted, but that the captain will respect his decision. It also shows how low Garibaldi has mentally sunk without beating you over the head with it.
The rest of the episode is hit-and-miss. There’s a certain Gulliver’s Travels-esque amusement value from the Drazi fight between Purple and Green. I kinda wish the episode spent more time examining the origins of the tradition, as I suspect it was created as a method of managing people’s violent impulses in a somewhat controlled manner. Instead, it was mostly played for laughs. A lot of the scenes with the Drazi in general make me cringe, as their method of speaking English is presented to us in the broken style that was also used a lot for Indigenous people in pop-culture portrayals. It comes across as paternalistic at best.
Still, given the incredibly arbitrary and random nature of the entire conflict, coming up with an arbitrary solution is a very clever way of solving it.
Next week: “A Distant Star.”
