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Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Between the Darkness and the Light”
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Babylon 5 Rewatch
Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Between the Darkness and the Light”
Garibaldi has a tense reunion with his former friends, and Ivanova learns of an ambush waiting for the fleet…
By Keith R.A. DeCandido
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Published on January 26, 2026
Credit: Warner Bros. Television
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Credit: Warner Bros. Television
“Between the Darkness and the Light”Written by J. Michael StraczynskiDirected by David J. EagleSeason 4, Episode 19Production episode 419Original air date: October 6, 1997
It was the dawn of the third age… Sheridan is still being interrogated by the guy from the end of last episode, but he’s using pharmaceuticals to make Sheridan think he’s having a pleasant conversation with Franklin. It’s not working as well as he’d like, though.
Garibaldi meets with a contact in the Mars Resistance. He’s hoping for a meeting to explain himself—he is, instead, assaulted and brought to Number One with a bag over his head. Number One offers to let Franklin be the one to kill him, but the doctor wants to give Garibaldi a chance to explain himself. Garibaldi explains what happened, but of course he has no proof, as Bester isn’t going to leave evidence. When he sees that Alexander is also present, Garibaldi asks her to scan him, but that isn’t going to mean much to the Mars Resistance, as they don’t have much use for telepaths.
Franklin wants to know for sure, and asks Number One if she’d want the same if it was one of her people. She says, “No,” and aims her PPG at Garibaldi. Franklin is able to spoil her shot, and a brief melee breaks out which ends with an MD and a commercial telepath somehow getting their hands on a rifle and a PPG and getting one over on a room full of resistance fighters. Sure.
Credit: Warner Bros. Television
Franklin holds the rifle on Number One while Alexander probes Garibaldi. She warns him that the blocks in place are strong, and her breaking them could damage him. Garibaldi points out that the alternative is that the resistance kills him, so he’ll take his chances.
Alexander breaks the P12 barrier on his mind, and learns that it’s all true. Number One is skeptical of her claims, and Alexander—whose eyes have gone completely black—core-dumps everything she just learned into Number One’s mind. Number One realizes that Garibaldi is telling the truth, and everyone’s friends again.
Garibaldi has learned where they’re holding Sheridan. He still has contacts from his time serving here, plus he’s considered a folk hero for turning Sheridan in, so people volunteer info to him. However, Number One can only spare one person to help them through the tunnels that will lead to where he’s being held, and she can only go so far. Her people are stretched thin as it is.
On B5, Delenn and Lennier are appalled to learn that Mollari has called a meeting of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds—and not invited the Minbari. They crash the meeting just as they’re taking a vote, which passes unanimously. Mollari, G’Kar, and Vir explain to a very confused Delenn and Lennier that they have agreed to provide support to Sheridan’s fleet, in exchange for all the support Sheridan provided during the Shadow War. They kept Delenn out of it because of her relationship with Sheridan.
Ivanova leads the resistance fleet to Beta IX, fighting the Damocles and the Orion, who refuse to surrender and therefore get their asses kicked. They take on prisoners, and one junior officer named Eisensen provides some rather nasty intel: Clark knows about the rendezvous at Sector 300 and they’re preparing an ambush with some powerful new warships that have just come off the line. According to Eisensen, not everyone who has defected to the resistance has really meant it—some have been feeding info back to Clark.
Credit: Warner Bros. Television
After discussing it with Cole, Ivanova decides to have the White Stars break off and go ahead to Sector 300, as there’s no way to warn Delenn and the rest of the fleet that’s meeting them there. James is not happy about that, but Ivanova insists—they stand the best chance against whatever Clark has waiting for them, and this way the Agamemnon and the others are in reserve in case they fall.
On Mars, a woman named Felicia gets Garibaldi, Franklin, and Alexander part of the way to where they need to go, then leaves them on their own. They encounter a search patrol and take them out, though Garibaldi is stabbed in the back. Franklin is able to stitch him up, but it’s a makeshift job. However, they now have uniforms to wear….
The White Star fleet arrives at Sector 300, and a mess of jumpgates open to reveal EarthForce destroyers that have been significantly altered with Shadow technology. The battle is joined, and is brutal, but in the end, the resistance is victorious—but at a price, as Ivanova is mortally wounded.
Garibaldi is able to talk his way past the first guard thanks to his notoriety, but the guards on Sheridan’s cell are more of a challenge. Garibaldi mentions the code to open the door, which causes the guard to think the code, which Alexander can read. They then take out the two guards and enter the code, freeing the incredibly drugged Sheridan. They barely escape, with Sheridan at one point shooting one of the guards repeatedly long after he’s down.
The remains of the White Star fleet rendezvous with Delenn and the League ships as well as the remaining EarthForce ships that have defected. Ivanova is being cared for on Delenn’s ship, but she’s only got a few days to live. Sheridan is reunited with Delenn, then immediately goes to see Ivanova. She asks that Sheridan take command of the fleet from the Agamemnon, to which he agrees.
Credit: Warner Bros. Television
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan continues to not break despite the best efforts of the EarthForce interrogators. Then he takes his old command back for the final battle, which will happen next time.
Ivanova is God. Ivanova spends the entire episode making it abundantly clear that capturing Sheridan was not the flex that Clark and Edgars thought it was going to be, as she picks up right where Sheridan left off and is, if anything, a much more implacable foe than her CO…
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi is desperate to a) prove that he was manipulated by Bester and b) redeem his actions while being manipulated by Bester. He’s only able to succeed thanks to Alexander’s Vorlon-enhanced telepathic awesomeness. Fittingly, he gets stabbed in the back at one point.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Delenn is overwhelmed by the support from the League of Non-Aligned Worlds, then is reunited with Sheridan, finally. He promises to talk to her about what he went through when he’s ready.
In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Mollari waxes eloquent on the subject of how the humans have brought so many worlds together. Helping them is the right thing to do both politically and morally. Vir adds that politics and morality are, for once, on the same side, and how often does that happen?
Though it take a thousand years, we shall be free. G’Kar is also eloquent on the subject of helping Sheridan, and he has a more direct debt to Sheridan to repay, as the captain granted him asylum when the Centauri conquered Narn. Pointedly, G’Kar always makes sure there’s either a large table or at least one person between him and Mollari the whole time.
The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. Alexander can punch through a P12’s psychic shields, and then can dump an entire set of clear memories into someone else’s hyead. Because she’s just that awesome.
We live for the one, we die for the one. Cole insists that Ivanova get some rest during the five-hour transit time to Mars. He gives her two choices: she can get five hours’ rest or listen to him nag her about it for five hours. When Ivanova tries to call his bluff, he insists that Rangers never bluff, which seems unlikely. But it works, and she gets some sleep…
The Shadowy Vorlons. The big space battle is, in essence, the next generation of the Vorlon-Shadow conflict, as the White Star fleet are a mix of Minbari and Vorlon tech and the EarthForce fleet are a mix of human and Shadow tech.
No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Cole stands over the sleeping Ivanova and says, “You’ll never know,” referring to his crush on her. But when she wakes up she tells him that she remembers what he said to her in Minbari one time, and she knows enough Minbari now to know that he said that she was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen, and she rather sweetly thanks him. So apparently she will ever know…
Welcome aboard. Marjorie Monaghan and David Purdham are back from “The Face of the Enemy” as, respectively, Number One and James; both will return next time in “Endgame.” Bruce Gray is back from “Intersections in Real Time” as the interrogator, Marc Gomes plays Eisensen, Greg Poland plays the guard, and the magnificent Musetta Vander plays Felicia.
Trivial matters. Coletold Ivanova she was beautiful in “Shadow Dancing.” This episode reveals that she’s also eidetic, which might be a byproduct of her low-level telepathy.
Lots of Greek mythology references in this one, from Ivanova taking on the Damocles to Sheridan taking command of the Agamemnon, named after the king who sacrificed his daughter in order to get strong winds for his fleet in the Trojan War.
According to J. Michael Straczynski, the first few scenes with Garibaldi, Franklin, Number One, and Alexander on Mars were written for “Intersections in Real Time,” but that episode ran long and this one ran short, so the scenes were moved. (This made both episodes stronger, truly.)
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“Who am I? I am Susan Ivanova, commander, daughter of Andrei and Sofie Ivanov. I am the right hand of vengeance and the boot that is gonna kick your sorry ass all the way back to Earth, sweetheart. I am death incarnate and the last living thing that you are ever going to see. God sent me.”
—Ivanova’s rather dramatic answer to the EarthForce destroyer fleet’s request for her to identify herself.
Credit: Warner Bros. Television
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “The truth speaks for itself—I’m just the messenger.” Anything would be a letdown after the intense brilliance of “Intersections in Real Time,” and while there are parts of this episode that are fabulous, other parts of it stumble pretty badly.
It starts with the Garibaldi-Franklin-Alexander scenes, which are just a mess. Garibaldi’s self-centeredness is bad enough—he seems more concerned with what Bester did to him, not what Bester made him do to others, which is not a great way to get people to sympathize with you—but then we have total non-combat-trained Franklin and Alexander unconvincingly holding off the entire Mars Resistance with two weapons followed by the entire Mars Resistance even less convincingly trusting our heroes after Alexander telepathically dumps Garibaldi’s memories into her. Given the Resistance’s mistrust of teeps established pretty brutally two episodes ago, this willingness to go along with things is just not something I can buy at all.
Then we have the gulping conversation, as we suddenly get a vaudeville routine about lying and drinking too much from the canteen in the middle of a rescue scene. Like far too many deliberate attempts at humor on this show, it falls completely and embarrassingly flat.
And then we aren’t shown how they get off of Mars after springing Sheridan, which is the hardest part of the whole thing.
Luckily, the awfulness of that spoke of the plot is leavened by the fabulousness of the other two spokes. First we’ve got the part of a B5 episode that almost always works: a scene with the alien ambassadors. Mira Furlan, Peter Jurasik, Andreas Katsulas, Bill Mumy, and Stephen Furst bring the brilliance like they always do, and the scripting work is as strong for them as it is lousy for Garibaldi, Alexander, and Franklin.
Second is Ivanova Being Awesome. The 1990s were a great time for kickass women in genre television, from Xena to Buffy Summers to Farscape’sAeryn Sun to DS9’s Kira Nerys, and Susan Ivanova was cut from the same fabulous cloth. This episode highlights that you underestimate her at your peril, and while her speech to the Earth fleet (quoted in “The echoes of all our conversations” above) is a bit over-the-top (okay, a lot over-the-top), it’s still a crowning moment of awesome for the character. More to the point, she backs up those words with actions.
This episode is the culmination of a theme that has come up a few times, writ large in Ivanova’s kicking of multiple asses, and spoken specifically by Sinclair in “War Without End Part 2” and Ivanova two episodes ago: a person is expendable, but the mission isn’t. We’ve seen it in both the planned storylines (Sebastian’s interrogation of Delenn and Sheridan in “Comes the Inquisitor”) and in externally dictated story twists (Sheridan replacing Sinclair, the death of Hague). One person doesn’t matter.
Clark and Edgars didn’t see that because they each believe themselves to be indispensable, so they assume that Sheridan must be as well. It’s great fun watching Ivanova prove them wrong—at least until she’s badly injured, which is annoying. But it sets up Sheridan’s final push next time…
Next week: “Endgame.”[end-mark]
The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “Between the Darkness and the Light” appeared first on Reactor.
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