Well it was certainly fun to see Sinclair again. And the whole time thing played out beautifully. This wasn't like Star Trek time travel. Everything we were told was going to happen, actually happened! Wonderful!

brilliant one. Moving and intelegence. One of the highest point of Sci Fi in B5's best season

One of the nits is that in this episode, Ivanova, during her distress call, calls Babylon 5 an "Earth Alliance" or "Earthforce" station (it's been a while, I forget which one). Funny, considering they broke away from Earth a few episodes ago...

Ah, this ep has one of my all time favorite nits of any series. Its the "second-camera-man-behind-the-grassy-knoll" nit. What I mean by this is, where is the video of the Whitestar attacking the Shadow fighters that ended up 1000 years in the past coming from? Not B4, the angle is wrong. Not the whitestar itself, again, the angle is wrong. So, who REALLY filmed it?

Question regarding Babylon stations: which is bigger, 4 or 5? It seems to be that B5 LOOKS bigger in all its shots, but the opening of the first couple of seasons said that B5 was five miles long. In this ep someone says that B4 is six miles long (and rotating in opposite directions, you'll notice). So was B4 bigger? And if so, why the scale-down with B5 from six to five miles, and only one rotating part?

Kyle: it was probably cheaper to have it scaled down like that. Besides, after losing four stations, wouldn't you want the fifth to be cheaper just in case?

Yes. JMS has spoken on this. B4 was the super deluxe Babylon Station, it even had engines. It was the largest, most expensive of the 5. When it "disappeared" Earth Gov tossed it's arms up in the air and said "Oh forget it. We're not financing another." Then much like the Magelian space probe Babylon 5 was built "off the shelf" with parts leftover from the first 3. This led to things like the station originally not having any weapons. If you'll remember the defense grid was installed in "A voice in the wilderness(?)"

Best moment: At the end, when Sinclair and Delenn are in the B4 corridor.

The film of the WhiteStar attacking the Shadow ships was from the Great Machine in Epsilon 3(?). Obviously the Machine can take pictures of almost anything(see "Shadows of Z'ha'dum," if this is the ep where Ivonava gets Clark's recorded transmission from the Machine).

It couldn't have come from Epsilon 3. The angle was wrong. How then did it end up on B4? Why did it have Minbari writing on it?

The transmission came from the Great Machine (of the whitestar). Deleen said this when she made the presentation. She didn't get it until Draal sent it to her.

B5 normally succeeds the steering clear of Star Trek cliches, but fails when Garibaldi redirects power from life support boost the sensors. In real life, electronics takes as much power as it takes. Try to force more power through, and circuits burn out rather than work better.

While firing on the bomb, the White Star is being chased by two Shadow fighters. We never hear what happened to them. Perhaps they were caught in the blast, but we aren't told.

I found it odd that Ivanova can manually aim at a target with is out of automatic targetting range, and also that they are inside the blast radius on the bomb even though they are outside of targetting range.

One great feature of the Starfury design is the decelerating thrusters, a necessary feature which is often forgotten in sci-fi. So it's a shame that when approaching the rift, Garibaldi has his aft thrusters going until the last moment, then just turns off the aft thrusters and apparently coasts to a stop.

The sequence with the Shadow attack on B5 is great, but I wondered, if the Shadows destroy B5 (as is strongly implied) then why all the references to B5 being boarded?

If memory serves, B5 was being boarded by Shadows, but Garibaldi was going to overload the fusion reactors rather than let the station be taken. Ivanova's "here they come" was probably a reference to the overload which would be on her control panels, but was misleading enough to make the viewer think it was about to be fired upon.

While it was implied I don't remember them ever saying for certin it was the Shadows that were over running the station.
Certainly Ivonova's "here they come" was in reference to Shadow ships attacking the station.
IIRC the two events weren't definitively connected. Its possible one was from a possible future where Sinclair stayed on the station, the other was from a future where he didn't stay on the station but also didn't go back in time. It was all very confusing and in retrospect improbably because it was based on the notion that if Sinclair hadn't taken B4 back in time the Shadows would have won the last war. BUT if the shadows HAD won the last war what are the chances galactic event would be in a state that would permit a Babylon constuction. THEN even if they somehow DID manage to build it under the Shadow's noses because Sinclair hadn't taken B4 back in time why would they need to build B5?

As I recall they said that if b4 had not been sent back in time the Shadown would have still lost the war but they would have had greater numbers and been able to come back much stronger than they do in the b5 timeline.

Ruminations

I think we'll work well together. Like Bonnie and Clyde, Thing 1 and Thing 2, or Santiago and Clark...
- Why are Louis and clark, Bonnie and Clyde, Butch and Sundance always the names people use to describe people who work well together? Surely there're are other people who have worked well together. More recent examples I mean. Too bad they didn't use Rebo & Zootie.

- Delenn: "Slow to 1/3, allow the ship to dock." 1/3 what? Impulse power? Warp speed?


- Garibaldi's password guesses: "fasten" and "zips," are a reference back to the shuttle conversation. The continuity of B5 is refreshing.


Nits

- Sheridan says: "what the hell is that" when looking at the holographic display of the fusion bomb, even though he just saw a video. One would think that he'd pay more attention during the mission briefing.

- If time is so important, why not use the White Wtar to jump into hyperspace and come out of hyperspace right in front of the time barrier opening.

- If time is so important, why not park the White Wtar next to B5. Who controls it should already be obvious since Delenn announced who she was when the Minbari came to protect B5 from the Earth invaders... and she was on the White Star.

Sheridan: "Mr. Garibaldi, please come here."
*Garibaldi stops his patrol of Brown 14 and goes to see the Captain.*
Garibaldi: "Yeah captain? You know we're kind of busy dealing with crime down there."
Sheridan: "Mr. Garibaldi, not more than 20 seconds ago, I received this dispatch from a Lurker claiming his belongings were stolen as he was walking in Brown 14." "Why can't you do your job!?"
- If Sheridan didn't tell Garibaldi to look after things while they're gone (that is doing Sinclair a favor), Garibaldi would have gone back to B5 since Sheridan already told Garibaldi to head back to the barn. Thus Sheridan alerts Garibaldi of their presense in order to hide their presense, well Sinclair's anyway. It would have been better let Garibaldi go back to B5 and get the message there.

- Londo implies that it was the Minions of the Shadows that devastated Centuri Prime. Later we find out that its the non-aligned worlds and the Narns. Londo could still blame Sheridan with the excuse of not controlling his Interseller alliance better.

- Sheridan says: 'what the hell is that" when looking at the holographic display of the fusion bomb, even though he just saw a video of it.

- Delenn: "Slow to 1/3, allow the ship to dock." 1/3 what? Impulse power? Warp speed?


1/3 of full power/full speed, as opposed to "Full speed ahead!"

- Why are Louis and clark, Bonnie and Clyde, Butch and Sundance always the names people use to describe people who work well together? Surely there're are other people who have worked well together. More recent examples I mean. Too bad they didn't use Rebo & Zootie.

Rebo and Zooty had not been mentioned before and it would have simply confused the audience.

- Londo implies that it was the Minions of the Shadows that devastated Centuri Prime. Later we find out that its the non-aligned worlds and the Narns. Londo could still blame Sheridan with the excuse of not controlling his Interseller alliance better.

The devastation Londo showed outside at that point was caused by the Drakh. The Legions of Fire trilogy more fully recounts how those events came to pass.

Rebo and Zooty may not have been mentioned before, and some might find it confusing, but it'd be nice foreshadowing. Additionally, I think the audience would either assume that its two aliens or something of that nature.

By Adam Howarter on Friday, January 01, 1999 - 5:29 am:

Then much like the Magelian space probe Babylon 5 was built "off the shelf" with parts leftover from the first 3. This led to things like the station originally not having any weapons. If you'll remember the defense grid was installed in "A voice in the wilderness(?)"

Babylon 5 has always had a defence grid, but it wasn't designed to do much more than take care of debris meant to hit the station - Sinclar ordered it activated to destroy the Soul Hunters ship in the second episode of season one.

The defence grid was upgraded during GROPOS, giving the station enough heavy weapons to go tow to tow with a capital ship.
If memory serves the upgraded system was first activated in 'And now for a word', but not used until 'The fall of night' when it did, indeed, prove powerful enough to destroy a Centari cruiser.