“The Coming of Shadows”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Janet Greek
Season 2, Episode 9
Production episode 209
Original air date: February 1, 1995
It was the dawn of the third age… On Centauri Prime, the prime minister begs the emperor to forego his planned visit to B5. His health is not the best, and what if there’s a crisis? The emperor pooh-poohs his concerns, and thanks the PM for his friendship and service. The emperor also refuses to wear a wig of proper standing-up Centauri hair, choosing instead to revel in his baldness.
On B5, G’Kar very loudly and angrily protests Sheridan allowing the emperor—whom the Narn view as a war criminal—to set foot on the station. Sheridan points out that the whole point of B5 is that everyone is welcome, and that G’Kar should take advantage of the opportunity to open up a dialogue with the emperor. G’Kar storms off in a huff.
Mollari and Refa discuss the emperor’s impending arrival. Refa and his people have prepared a speech for Mollari to give after the emperor’s speech. It criticizes the current regime as weak and “predicts” several possible crises, all of which Refa’s people are working to manufacture. Mollari is concerned that this will put him on the outs with the royal court, but Refa dismisses that as irrelevant, given the emperor’s poor health.
The emperor arrives, greeted by Sheridan and an honor guard. The emperor expresses great admiration for what B5 has accomplished. Privately, the emperor asks Franklin about Kosh, as he’s always wanted to see a Vorlon.
G’Kar consults with a member of the Kha’Ri. The plan is for the ambassador to assassinate the emperor. G’Kar knows that it will be his final act as a living person, but he is willing to make that sacrifice for Narn. G’Kar leaves a note explicitly saying that he’s acting alone without the knowledge of the Kha’Ri or anyone else, thus keeping the government’s hands clean. He bequeaths his copy of the Book of G’Quan to Na’Toth, and requests that his body be sent home to his family on Narn.
The emperor and Sheridan have a private chat in the Observation Dome, where the former laments that he’s never made a single choice of his own in his life. From the moment of his birth, his destiny was established, and he’s never done anything because he just feels like it.
There’s a huge gathering for the emperor’s reception. To Sheridan’s disappointment, Kosh is a no-show; to his pleasant surprise, G’Kar isn’t. Sheridan congratulates G’Kar on his forward-thinking appearance, to which G’Kar makes a rather neutral reply, given that actually saying, “I’m gonna kill the mo-fo” wouldn’t be practical.
But the emperor never makes it to the reception, as he collapses while en route. He’s taken to medlab, where it’s clear that he’s dying, and he can’t really be moved. Franklin is given a message to take to G’Kar: an apology. G’Kar—who is initially royally pissed off that he went to all the trouble of putting his affairs in order only to be denied the opportunity to actually commit the assassination—is gobsmacked by Franklin’s message. The emperor’s message is a sincere and regretful apology, and filled with a hope that relations can at last improve between their peoples.
Alas, Refa and Mollari have other ideas. Factions are already moving into place, and Refa says their people must make a big move to put them at the forefront of those jockeying for power. Mollari’s solution is to have Vir contact Morden and have him sic the Shadows on Quadrant 14.
G’Kar, overwhelmed by the emperor’s apology, buys Mollari a drink, having hope for the first time in a long time.
Then Quadrant 14 is attacked by Shadows. The Centauri military ships Mollari told Refa to send there arrive after the attack is over to clean up, and they find most of the civilians on the colony dead.
A person dressed in black has been following Garibaldi around. When Garibaldi makes him, he tosses him in a cell, unable to deal with him what with the extra security related to the emperor’s visit. Finally, however, Garibaldi agrees to see the person, who has a data crystal with a recorded message from Sinclair for him. While he is serving as Earth’s ambassador to Minbar, as everyone was told, he is also performing a second function: forming a group called the Rangers. The person who delivered the message is one of them, and he was sent to B5 with explicit instructions to only give that message to Garibaldi.
Sinclair asks Garibaldi to keep the Rangers a secret for now, but to also give them free rein on B5. He also says to keep close to Kosh and to watch out for Shadows. Which Garibaldi probably thought had a small S.
G’Kar receives the report of the massacre at Quadrant 14. The Kha’Ri are at a loss to explain how the Centauri managed it, but it did happen. Enraged, G’Kar makes a beeline for Mollari’s quarters, tossing security guards aside like twigs en route. He’s eventually stopped by Sheridan and a half-dozen armed guards, the captain convincing him that strangling Mollari to death won’t accomplish anything. G’Kar returns to his quarters, broken and weeping.
The emperor’s condition is worsening. He weakly says that he wishes he could’ve seen Montana. Er, that is, that he could see a Vorlon. And then, sure enough, Kosh shows up.
Sheridan calls a council meeting, and goes in person to G’Kar’s quarters to request that he attend. The ambassador, subdued, agrees to do so, and thanks Sheridan for stopping him earlier.
Refa and Mollari visit the emperor in medlab, gleefully telling him of the successful attack on Quadrant 14. The emperor whispers his final words to Mollari: that he and Refa are both damned. Mollari, however, lies to everyone by saying that the emperor’s final words were, “Continue, take my people back to the stars!”
Armed with at least some of Sinclair’s information (Garibaldi says very little, mostly that he has intel that the Centauri have help, but doesn’t say where it’s from), Sheridan asks Mollari about the survivors of Quadrant 14, and says that Earth has authorized him to send observers there to interview the survivors and find out how, exactly, the Centauri were so easily able to conquer the colony. Unwilling to allow that, but also unwilling to go to war with Earth as well, Mollari agrees to let the survivors go free to return to Narn.
G’Kar then announces that the Narn—who refuse to ever live in subjugation again—have officially declared war on the Centauri Republic.
Refa tells Mollari that things are proceeding apace. The prime minister committed suicide upon hearing of the emperor’s death (this is a lie—he’s killed by Refa’s operatives), and Refa’s faction is consolidating power and neutralizing their enemies. The emperor’s nephew, who is one of Refa’s people, is now on the throne.
Garibaldi thanks the Ranger for the information, and asks if anyone else on the station knows about what’s going on. The Ranger says there is one other person.
Cut to Delenn, who also has a message from Sinclair…
Nothing’s the same anymore. While Sinclair is indeed serving as Earth’s ambassador to Minbar, he is also now in charge of the Rangers, though Earth doesn’t know that…
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan gets to share a heart-to-heart with the emperor and also twice has to talk G’Kar out of doing something stupid.
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi is put in an awkward position by Sinclair, but he manages to thread the needle of keeping the Rangers secret while making use of their intelligence.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Delenn is also a part of the Rangers, though the extent of her involvement is not yet clear.
In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Had the emperor lived, there might have been peace with the Narn, maybe even the beginnings of an alliance. But instead, he died, leaving Mollari and Refa to wreak havoc in his name instead.
Though it take a thousand years, we will be free. Quite a busy episode for G’Kar—he goes from righteous indignation about the emperor’s visit to planning the emperor’s assassination to being frustrated by the emperor’s collapse before he can be killed to being given hope by the emperor’s words to being devastated by Mollari and Refa’s actions to being the spokesperson for a people now at war.
We live for the one, we die for the one. We’re introduced to the Rangers. All we know about them thus far is that they’re a small but potent army made up of humans and Minbari, they’re mostly just gathering intelligence at the moment, they’re headquartered on Minbar, and Sinclair is their leader.
The Shadowy Vorlons. The Shadows wipe out Quadrant 14 on Mollari’s behalf. Meanwhile, Kosh has all of two lines of dialogue, but they’re quite effective: The emperor asks how this will all end, and the Vorlon says, “In fire.” So that’s encouraging…
Looking ahead. Mollari has one of his prophetic dreams. He sees his hand reaching out from a star. He sees himself being crowned emperor looking the same age as he is now. He sees himself standing on a desert, watching Shadow vessels fly overhead. He sees himself several decades hence, sitting on the throne, and then himself and G’Kar strangling each other, the Narn with one eye missing.
The hand reaching out of a star is a dramatization of something Elric described to him in “The Geometry of Shadows.” His watching the Shadows overhead will come to fruition in “The Hour of the Wolf.” His foreseeing himself dying with his hands around G’Kar’s throat was first mentioned in “Midnight on the Firing Line,” and will be seen in full context in “War Without End, Part II.”
Welcome aboard. Michael O’Hare makes an unexpected appearance as Sinclair, not billed until the closing credits to keep his return a surprise. He’ll be back in the “War Without End” two-parter next season. Fredric Lehne plays the Ranger who delivers the message.
William Forward (Refa) and Jeff Conaway (Allan) officially becoming recurring regulars with their reappearances in this episode, the former returning from “The Geometry of Shadows,” the latter from “A Spider in the Web.” Forward will be back in “Knives,” Conaway in “Acts of Sacrifice.” Ardwight Chamberlain is back from “Chrysalis” as the voice of Kosh, having only one devastating two-word line of dialogue; he’ll be back in “All Alone in the Night.”
But the big guests are the first—and last—appearances of the Centauri emperor and prime minister, played, respectively, by two greats: Turhan Bey and Malachi Throne.
Trivial matters. This episode officially starts a new Narn-Centauri war. In addition, it introduces the Rangers, who will become quite important as the franchise progresses.
The emperor and prime minister are not named in this episode; however, when they are discussed in “Knives” later this season, they are referred to as Emperor Turhan and Prime Minister Malachi, thus giving both characters the same family names as the given names of the actors playing them.
Mollari expresses concern about offending the royal court and losing his standing with them; it was established in “Soul Mates” that he had become a favorite of the court, so much so that the emperor granted him two divorces.
Sinclair was established as being reassigned to be ambassador to Minbar in “Points of Departure.”
The emperor’s nephew who takes the throne his uncle’s death will not be named or seen until the top of season four: Cartagia, who will be played by Wortham Krimmer.
While Ed Wasser does not appear, Mollari does have Vir contact Morden to have him set the Shadows on Quadrant 14.
This episode won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation at the 1996 World Science Fiction convention in Anaheim (your humble rewatcher was in attendance for that). Two years earlier, “The Gathering” had been nominated, but lost to Jurassic Park. At the time, both television episodes and movies were eligible for the award; in 2003, the award was split into “short form” and “long form.” Until this win for B5, the only time a TV show had won, it was either an episode of Star Trek (original or Next Generation) or The Twilight Zone; otherwise, it had been all movies. B5 will receive two more nominations, for “Severed Dreams” and “Sleeping in Light,” with the former also winning.
And now for something really trivial: This is the first of two times Malachi Throne will appear as a high-ranking minister of a foreign government and then die in the same episode; it’ll happen again in “The Red Mass” on The West Wing, where he plays Israeli Foreign Minister Ben Yosef, whose plane is shot down.
The echoes of all of our conversations. “The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us—and our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between. But there is still time to seize that one last fragile moment, to choose something better.”
The emperor, waxing philosophic.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “We are now at war.” In a lot of ways, B5 up to this point has been a big tease. There’ve been hints of things and threats of things and (ahem) signs and portents, but this is the first episode where it feels like shit is getting real.
For starters, this is how you show the devastating impact of the death of the leader of a large nation (as opposed to the bloodless death of Santiago in “Chrysalis”). Over the course of the episode, we get to know the emperor, get a feel for who he is and what he wants, and what he means to the Centaur Republic. The conflict between his desire to normalize relations with the Narn and to take responsibility for the Centauris’ crimes, and Mollari and Refa’s (and the Shadows’) desire for more power and control, is the heart of the episode, and the source of the awful tragedy. His death is meaningful in so many ways.
So many great performances in this, starting with Turhan Bey’s bravura turn as the emperor, who too late finally makes an actual choice of his own, one that fails to have the consequences he wanted it to have. William Forward’s Refa and Peter Jurasik’s Mollari calmly setting the Centauri Republic on an awful path, with Stephen Furst’s Vir trying and failing to be a conscience. Bruce Boxleitner’s Sheridan feels like the only grownup in this situation, trying to convince both the emperor and G’Kar to be reasonable and sensible, and not really succeeding with either. (Malachi Throne is also his usual fine self, though it feels like an actor of Throne’s calibre should have had a more substantial role than this.)
But the episode is absolutely owned by Andreas Katsulas. G’Kar goes on quite the roller coaster in this episode, and Katsulas nails every upward climb and every downward spiral: his anger at the emperor’s very presence, his resigned determination to kill him if it’s literally the last thing he ever does, his frustration at being denied the assassination attempt, his joy at the emperor’s apology, and his righteous fury at the destruction of Quadrant 14. Every single moment is real and pure and devastating, each emotion sharp as a knife, even through the craptons of latex and red contact lenses and such.
No scene, however, lands as nastily as G’Kar’s declaration of war in the council chambers, which is at once preternaturally calm and a seething volcano ready to erupt again at any minute.
On top of that, we get introduced to the Rangers, complete with surprise Michael O’Hare cameo. This is another thing that feels like it’s being kept secret for no compellingly good reason, especially given that a Ranger’s gonna be in the opening credits next season and one of the attempts at a spinoff will focus on the Rangers. Still, it’s a start, and it’s nice to see O’Hare again.
Next week: “GROPOS.”
