Long live Vir Cotto!
Great line: "I want to live just long enough to see your head cut off and stuck on a pike, as a warning to ten generations that some favors come with too high a price." --Vir to Morden
This episode has one of the GREATEST NITS of ALL TIMES. I'm reffering, of course, to Sheridan's speech to Zack Ellen! thank god Sheridan isn't as good in history as he thinks he is!!!
Do you mean that Sheridan's account wasn't accurate or that it wasn't an appropriate parallel to his own decision?
It's Zack *Allen*.
Well, it's the ending! good thing Sheridan doesn't know the bad ending of the real story!
Wow. What an awesome friggin' episode.
The presence of the ominously-named Morden has been a nice source of foreboding and tension since his introduction, and it was a thrilling surprise for Sheridan to suddenly stumble upon him. The interrogation was nice, Sheridan's use of Talia, her reaction to Sheridan doing this, etc., was all good. One thing that was slightly disappointing was that whereas I thought Sheridan had some type of plan or tactic, like maybe Good Cop/Bad Cop, that he ended up just losing his judgment because of his wife. Years after having lost her, I didn't think it was too rock-solid a characterization. It seemed a bit too one-dimensional to me. I would've preferred it if his arc emphasized plans, like his use of Talia, and any mention of his wife might've come more obliquely or subtlely, like maybe Morden mentioning her, and Sheridan suddenly losing his cool. Nonetheless, overall, it was good. The use of Coventry and the continuity reference to G'Kar choosing vengeance or the good of his people were also dead-on.
It's been nice to see the otherwise obsequious Vir standing up for himself, first in asserting to Londo that what he was doing was wrong, and now in telling Morden that he'd flat-out like to see his head on a pike.
The scene in which Sheridan has Zack use the entire EM spectrum to view Morden and the Shadows wasn't that good. The scene showed Zack fiddling the controls while Sheridan viewed the monitor, which is dumb. Zack should be able to be viewing a monitor with the video feed as he's adjusting the wavelengths, instead of relying on Sheridan to say "stop", thus overshooting his mark. If the creators didn't want Zack to discover the Shadows, then they should've just had Sheridan do this himself, perhaps with a verbal command to the computer. Hell, Sheridan should know that his video feeds have multi-wavelength capability anyway.
I thought Sheridan's actions here were quite in character with someone who has lost a loved one...thought he had managed to get over that loss than then has all the old wounds being opened up again when Morden shows up. In this situation it would have been questionable had Sheridan been cold and calculating.
Rather than showing him as two-dimensional, I think that it shows that he is only human and that his emotions can affect and subvert his thinking.
The scene between Morden and Vir is often mentioned as one of Vir's best moments on the show. Both by the fans and also by the rest of the cast.
Nit; Why can the cameras inside the holding cells scan the entire EM spectrum? What is the point of having this ability? Is there another species that can't be seem with the human eye?
(There is logic in the camera system being able to see the cell with the lights out, and therefore having thermal capability. Likewise there may be some species that don't show up well on Thermal imaging so a couple of other frequencies can be used to see them...but the ENTIRE EM spectrum?)