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Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Endgame”
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Babylon 5 Rewatch
Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Endgame”
The only obstacle remaining between Sheridan and Earth is a fleet near Mars…
By Keith R.A. DeCandido
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Published on February 2, 2026
Credit: Warner Bros. Television
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Credit: Warner Bros. Television
“Endgame”Written by J. Michael StraczynskiDirected by John CopelandSeason 4, Episode 20Production episode 420Original air date: October 13, 1997
It was the dawn of the third age… The Army of Light fleet—which now includes most of the White Star fleet, a mess of EarthForce ships that have defected, and a bunch of support form the Minbari, the Narn, the Centauri, and various League of Non-Aligned Worlds nations—is in hyperspace, getting ready to jump to Mars. Delenn convinces Cole to leave Ivanova’s bedside and assume his post in command of one of the White Stars and allow Ivanova to be sent back to B5 where she can be better cared for in her final days than she can be aboard a Minbari warship. Cole is reluctant—he insists she’d want to be part of the battle, even passively—but eventually gives in.
With the help of a supply officer who is sympathetic to their cause, the Mars Resistance has worked out getting the various altered telepaths onto the EarthForce ships in orbit of Mars, who are waiting for Sheridan’s fleet to show up. Said supply officer is taken aback by smuggling people—she thought it was weapons being smuggled on. Franklin allows as how they are weapons…
On the surface of Mars, Garibaldi coordinates attacks on various ground bases, aided by sympathetic EarthForce personnel on the inside. They take over the ground bases after the supply ships with the telepaths have already taken off. Franklin then puts a headset on Alexander.
Credit: Warner Bros. Television
On the Agamemnon, Sheridan gives an inspirational speech to the fleet before they start their attack. The plan is to neutralize Mars, then head for Earth. The attacks will be carried out by the White Stars, which all have human captains, and the EarthForce defectors. The non-human ships are to hang back and provide support and rescue—and also to defend themselves if necessary.
On the Apollo, General Lefcourt explains to Captain Mitchell why he’s been given command of the fleet over Mitchell himself: he knows Sheridan, having trained him. Lefcourt is also old-school, believing in the chain of command, regardless of who’s in command.
On Mars, Garibaldi sends exact coordinates of everything on the surface to Cole, who then jumps his White Star inside Mars’ atmosphere and starts attacking targets on Mars. Lefcourt, however, refuses to take the bait, not letting anyone break formation to defend Mars—the general knows that this is a feint.
At Sheridan’s signal, Alexander goes out onto the surface of Mars and awakens the telepaths. They awaken and immediately start taking over the ships’ computers. This disables twenty of the thirty ships—including the Apollo—and five more are badly messed up. Of the five remaining, the fleet is able to make short work, with Sheridan ordering his people to minimize the damage done.
Sheridan has Delenn and the other non-human ships stay behind to render aid to the now-devastated Earth fleet. The White Stars and EarthForce vessels move on to Earth.
Credit: Warner Bros. Television
Cole takes the opportunity of the transit time from Mars to Earth to investigate ways to save Ivanova, because he apparently knows that he’s a character in a TV show, which means that deus ex machinae are just right around the corner…
He comes across Franklin’s log entries about the Great Hit Point Rearranger that was being used in the clinic in downbelow, and which Franklin and Sheridan used to save Garibaldi after the latter was shot in the back.
He then sends Lennier off to Delenn’s ship to distract him while he buggers back to B5. Lennier not being stupid, he figures out what Cole’s up to pretty quickly. Delenn shares this with Sheridan, but there’s no way to go after him without jeopardizing the mission.
The fleet arrives at Earth. Sheridan sends out a communiqué saying that they’re there to arrest Clark, disband Nightwatch, and return EarthGov to the people. Even as he delivers those terms, Senator Crosby, joined by a bunch of EarthForce Marines, goes to Clark’s office. However, by the time they arrive, Clark—having written a suicide note—has shot himself in the head. His last act before taking his own life was to turn Earth’s planetary defenses onto the planet itself, causing incalculable damage and loss of life.
The fleet does its best to stop the orbital platforms from doing what Clark has programmed them to do—aided by the Apollo, which shows up at the last minute, having monitored the situation. Lefcourt is apparently now okay with helping Sheridan, with Clark (a) dead and (b) having pointed some very large guns at Earth itself.
Sheridan’s presence has been requested on Earth. Meanwhile, Franklin is taking a White Star back to B5 in the hopes of stopping Cole.
On B5, Cole has hooked himself and Ivanova up to the Great Hit Point Rearranger and declares his love for her.
Credit: Warner Bros. Television
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan is remarkably fit and confident and commanding even though he was tortured and drugged for several days. Impressive!
Ivanova is God. Ivanova spends the entire episode comatose. Exciting stuff.
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi has gone from persona non grata and people wanting him shot on sight to being trusted with running an important war op in just one episode! Impressive!
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Delenn is pretty much pointless in the episode, as she spends it as a glorified background extra.
The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. Alexander is able to work her magic controlling the Shadow-altered telepaths. The Marine at the ground base castigates our heroes for using the telepaths this way, but Franklin and Garibaldi are able to justify it. And it’s fitting that they’re used against Clark’s forces, since they were given to the Shadows by the Clark Administration in the first place.
We live for the one, we die for the one. Apparently Cole’s Ranger-osity is powerful enough to convince an entire ship full of Minbari to take him back to B5 in the middle of a war. Impressive!
No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Cole’s dying words are declaring his love for Ivanova. It’s almost sweet.
Credit: Warner Bros. Television
Welcome aboard. J. Patrick McCormack makes the first of two appearances as Lefcourt; he’ll be back in an earlier timeframe in In the Beginning. The great Carolyn Seymour plays Crosby, Julian Stone plays Mitchell, and Ungela Brockman plays the never-named Marine who helps secure the ground station.
And we have a mess of recurring regulars: Marjorie Monaghan and David Purdham are back from “Between the Darkness and the Light” as, respectively, Number One and James, Gary McGurk is back from “Voices of Authority” as Clark, and Maggie Egan makes a triumphant return from “Severed Dreams” as Jane the ISN anchor. Monaghan will return in “Objects in Motion” while Egan will return in the very next episode, “Rising Star.”
Trivial matters. The Shadow-altered telepaths were first seen trying to take over B5’s computer systems in “Ship of Tears.” Alexander showed that she could activate and, to a degree, control those telepaths in “The Exercise of Vital Powers.” The Great Hit Point Rearranger was first seen in “The Quality of Mercy,” and Sheridan and Franklin used it to heal Garibaldi in “Revelations.”
Amusingly, this is the only time Clark appears directly in a scene and not over a viewscreen or in footage.
One of the log entries Cole watches is Franklin declaring the death of Cailyn James, the singer he met in “Walkabout,” which is the first on-screen confirmation that she finally succumbed to her illness.
Finally, for something really trivial, this is the third thing I’ve rewatched for this site that has the title “Endgame,” the other two being the Avengers movie and the Star Trek: Voyager series finale. I guess my next thing would be to rewatch the Highlander movies?
The echoes of all of our conversations. “We know that many in the government have wanted to act but have been intimidated by threats of retaliation against your families, your friends. You are not alone anymore. We call upon you to rise up and do what’s right. We have drawn their forces away from Earth and disabled them. The time to act is now! This is not the voice of treason. These are your sons, your daughters, whose loyalties have never wavered, whose beliefs in this alliance has forced us to take extraordinary means. For justice, for peace, for the future.”
Sheridan being all inspirational and stuff.
Credit: Warner Bros. Television
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Welcome home, John.” You know, I was really looking forward to rewatching this episode, and when I actually sat down and watched it, I found myself overwhelmed by how incredibly unimpressed I was with it.
There’s the problem I expected to have with the episode, which is how completely unmoved I was by Clark’s death. The biggest flaw in the entire Earth-goes-fascist storyline is that we saw very little of Clark and what we did see was a nondescript bald white guy. Here’s the thing: while the acts of fascism are carried out by ordinary people, the leaders of fascism usually have someone with significant charisma at the top. While there is very good reason for us to think of Adolf Hitler as a near-caricature of the evil dictator, that makes it easy to forget that he was one of the greatest public speakers of the twentieth century. That’s how he rose to power, his spectacular ability to work a crowd.
Gary McGurk is basically nowhere as an actor and it makes Clark nowhere as a character, which takes a lot of the wind out of the sails of the plotline. Most of the time, it isn’t an issue, but when we first see Clark in his office writing his suicide note, I wasn’t even sure who it was.
But even if we grant that Clark isn’t nearly the point so much as the results of his efforts, the episode itself just doesn’t work for me.
We start with Sheridan, who spent most of the last three episodes being beaten, tortured, and drugged. Yet here he is on the bridge of the Agamemnon, showing absolutely no signs of any of that, proudly leading his fleet into battle. No physical injuries, no psychological injuries, just right back in the forefront. Now, B5 was a forerunner of the current trend toward serialization and stronger inter-episode continuity, something that made it stand out from most of the TV that was aired around it at the time. That means, however, that viewers in 1997 were used to people suffering injuries of all kinds and being all better by the next episode. But B5 was predicated on being better than that—and yet we have this.
On top of that, there’s Garibaldi. Just three episodes ago, Ivanova was refusing communications from Garibaldi and ordering him to be shot on sight. Just one episode ago, he almost got a PPG to his head, and only didn’t due to a telepathic magic trick. And yet, here he is at the forefront of ground operations on Mars, and what the hell? Yes, fine, they know that Bester fucked with his head, and that’s why he betrayed Sheridan, and that can, possibly be forgiven, but also, Bester fucked with his head!!!!! There is no way you ever trust this guy with anything important after this because you don’t know what else Bester might have done. We only have Bester’s word for it that he’s done with Garibaldi and that he has no more use for him, and that’s not exactly a trustworthy source. And even if you believe Bester, he also said that he didn’t change the essence of who Garibaldi is, just made some small adjustments, but kept his distrust of authority and general personality intact. Which means you don’t trust this guy with your lunch order, much less running your super-important rebel ground operations.
Even if you buy that Sheridan and Franklin and Alexander have forgiven and forgotten, why is the Mars Resistance just going along with everything? Sure, Sheridan promised them independence, but why would they trust Garibaldi? Why would they trust Alexander, given what the Psi Corps has done to them?
And then we have the character assassination of Marcus Cole. He’s a dedicated enough Ranger that he’s willing to let Neroon beat the living shit out of him to save Delenn, but not so dedicated that he won’t leave his post in the middle of a critical battle, taking a very powerful ship with him, in search of a deus ex machina to save the woman he loves. Some may find that romantic. I find it ridiculous, and, again, out of character. Cole’s attitude at the top of the episode—when he doesn’t want her sent back to B5 because she should be present for the final battle that she was primarily responsible for getting that far—made much more sense. Ivanova deserved to be there for Earth’s liberation. (More on this particular plotline next week.)
And then we have Lefcourt, played by the aggressively dull J. Patrick McCormack. We’re introduced to him when he awkwardly explains why he’s in command of the fleet to Mitchell, a bit of dialogue that manages to be incredibly clumsy exposition and incredibly clumsy foreshadowing, all at the same time. Because he’s self-described “old school” who believes in the chain of command—as opposed to a Clark toady like Captain Hall—we’re set up for him riding to Earth’s rescue at the end. It’s supposed to be a heroic moment, but it just shows up Lefcourt as a borderline sociopath. “I’ll obey these incredibly illegal and morally repugnant orders as long as the president’s alive, but now that he’s dead, I can ignore his orders,” which isn’t really how that works….
The episode does end on a high note. After getting the vapid propaganda from ISN ever since it went back on the air in “Ship of Tears,” seeing Maggie Egan back in the anchor chair for the first time since troops attacked ISN’s studio in “Severed Dreams” is a joyous and wonderful sight. Egan plays it beautifully too, as you get the impression she went straight from her jail cell to the studio to go on the air. More than anything else in the episode, it’s a moment of hope and optimism.
Next week: “Rising Star.”[end-mark]
The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “Endgame” appeared first on Reactor.