Classics: B5 2:5 - The Long Dark

Plot Synopsis:

The Lurker's Guide has a plot summary here.

Overall: 5.0

This is filler, filler, filler, and - oh, yes! - more filler. And it's not well performed filler at that.

Writing: 4.5

At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if some in the audience started to question my dedication to this canon. But I swear to you guys that there is brilliance in this show. When the myth arc really gets going a few episodes from now, the quality of the individual episodes will increase markedly. Third season in particular is a wall-to-wall feature fest, and fourth season is pretty good as well. Still, it's hard not to notice that early stand-alone episodes like this one - the ones that Straczynski farmed out to other writers - tend to be among the series' weakest showings.

So what can I say about The Long Dark? It's basically a skip-worthy monster-of-the-week feature that is pulled way down by unnatural dialogue that outdoes even Straczynksi's famously purple prose. For example, when Amis is asked about the creature that murdered his colleagues at the listening post at which he was assigned during the war, he says thusly, "It looked like it had come straight from hell!" Talk about cheesy melodrama.

Acting: 5.0

It also doesn't help that both of the primary guest actors apparently took lessons at the Hollywood School of B-Movie Overacting before the shoot. Dwight Schultz in particular comes across as the stereotype of a crazy, raving homeless guy; his opening scenes were so ridiculously over the top that I basically found it impossible to take his character seriously as the episode proceeded.

Message: 5.5

I do find it interesting that when the other aliens mention their belief that a "soldier of darkness" has found its way onto Babylon 5 (this being the one nod to the myth arc we get in this episode), Londo openly scoffs at their "superstition." The ones who are closest to darkness are also the ones most likely to deny that the darkness exists.

On the other hand, Frost deserves to be spanked - and spanked hard - for writing that execrable exchange in which Franklin tells Mariah about the wars that have taken place while Mariah was in deep freeze and Mariah laments that the human race has not "outgrown violence." Excuse me, but in neither the Dilgar War nor the Minbari War were humans the aggressors. The Dilgar were genocidal maniacs who might've decimated the populations of the Non-Aligned Worlds if not for our assistance, and the Minbari War began because of a tragic misunderstanding that the Minbari chose to escalate beyond all reason. Mariah's line here is tantamount to declaring that the U.S. is at fault for the atrocities of Adolph Hitler. Gee, if we Americans had outgrown our lust for violence by then, maybe we wouldn't now be faced with this whole Israel "problem" (owing to the fact that the Jewish population would have been reduced to so much ash scattered across the European countryside).

Peacenik bromides make my brain hurt.