Column Babylon 5 Rewatch Babylon 5 Rewatch: “The Face of the Enemy” Sheridan’s father is arrested, and Garibaldi offers to help his former commander plan a rescue operation… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on January 12, 2026 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 6 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “The Face of the Enemy”Written by J. Michael StraczynskiDirected by Michael VejarSeason 4, Episode 17Production episode 417Original air date: June 9, 1997 It was the dawn of the third age… The Army of Light forces are in a brutal firefight against EarthForce ships. Some of the latter have retreated from the battle, but others, including the Cadmus, are continuing to fight even though they’re outgunned. Sheridan practically begs them to surrender, as he doesn’t want to destroy them, but he will if they keep it up. The Cadmus captain, Leo Frank, finally replies, saying they’re dead anyhow. They were told that every EarthForce ship that Sheridan has defeated have had their crews executed and replaced with Minbari. MacDougan comes on the line and tells Frank that he’s an even bigger idiot than he was at the Academy, and assures Frank that he’s been fed a line of bull. Frank then surrenders. On Mars, Garibaldi informs Edgars that he has set up Sheridan’s father David to be captured. Edgars promises that, once Sheridan is in custody, Garibaldi will be told the whole truth. Elsewhere on Mars, Franklin and Alexander arrive. Number One remembers Alexander from the last time she came through Mars, and is pissed that she didn’t reveal at the time that she was a telepath. And Number One is even more pissed at their cargo of a whole mess of teeps in stasis tubes. Later, over dinner, it’s clear to Franklin that everyone in the resistance really hates telepaths, and Alexander explains about the Bloodhound Units that scan anyone suspected of being in the resistance without their permission—and these are deep scans, which are not only violations of privacy, but also can cause heart attacks, strokes, and other fun things. She also mentions a serial killer of telepaths; the mundane police didn’t really care to investigate thoroughly, so the Psi Cops (with whom Alexander was interning at the time) took it upon themselves. They found the guy and put horrible images in his head—to this day, he’s in a hospital in a straitjacket. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The Agamemnon shows up and Captain James offers to join the Army of Light. Sheridan is delighted to have his former command by his side, and he goes on board. Then Garibaldi contacts him and says that Clark’s people have his father. Garibaldi claims to have some people who can get him free, but they want to meet in person with Sheridan, alone. Sheridan verifies this information independently, and then, despite the advice of both James and Ivanova, he agrees to meet, using one of Agamemnon’s shuttles to sneak onto Mars. He also instructs Ivanova to take a White Star and take command of the fleet in his absence. She does so, asking Delenn to keep an eye on things on the station, because they don’t have the budget for another guest star to play a watch officer. Sheridan meets with Garibaldi, who immediately puts a tranq patch on Sheridan’s hand, at which point folks come to take him into custody. Sheridan resists arrest, and gets the shit kicked out of him for his trouble. Edgars finally reads Garibaldi in on the whole thing. While Clark is a problem, he’s a temporary one—one way or another, he’ll be out of power soon enough. But the Psi Corps won’t give up the power he’s given them, and it’ll be the end of humanity’s dominance over telepaths. Unless, of course, they level the playing field. Edgars has developed a virus that specifically targets the chromosome that controls telepathy. It’s airborne, 100% contagious, and fatal. The antidote is the vial Garibaldi helped Lise and Wade smuggle through B5. Once infected, the telepaths have to get regular injections of the antidote, or they’ll die. Once Edgars and Wade are done explaining their plan, they leave Garibaldi alone. Unbeknownst to them, Lise overheard all of it, and is appalled. When he’s alone, Garibaldi removes a hollow tooth and activates a signal. He then goes to a tram. Lise joins him, but Garibaldi is cold to her, telling her to go back home, even though she’s disgusted by what her husband is doing. After Lise departs, Bester boards the tram, saying he got Garibaldi’s signal. Bester scans Garibaldi and learns all about Edgars’ plan. He’s also appalled, and intends to take care of it in very short order. He debates what to do about Garibaldi, now that his mission is complete. First, he informs Garibaldi what actually happened to him. The Shadows wanted Garibaldi because he was one of the three people most likely to take over the Army of Light if Sheridan was lost, and of those three (the others being Ivanova and Delenn), he was the one most likely to be susceptible to psionic tampering. So he was captured and sent to Psi Corps. Bester was able to divert him and use him for their own ends. It wasn’t a full reprogramming, just a bit of rejiggering—Bester needed his natural inquisitiveness and doggedness and investigative instincts intact, as well as his disdain for authority. Bester hadn’t expected Garibaldi to resign as head of security, but that worked out for the best, as it isolated him, making him easier to manipulate. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Eventually, it led him to be a mole in Edgars’ organization. But now, Bester isn’t sure what to do with Garibaldi—but ultimately, he decides to free him. Not that that’s doing him a favor, as everyone knows he’s the one who turned Sheridan in, so he’s pretty much cut off from his friends. When the mental blocks fall, Garibaldi screams in anguish. But by the time he can make it back to Edgars’ mansion, both Edgars and Wade are dead and the virus and its antidote are gone from his safe. Of Lise there is no sign—before dying, Wade says that she wasn’t in the house when they were ambushed. Ivanova rendezvouses with the fleet just in time to get the news of Sheridan’s capture, which ISN is crowing about (and also lying about, saying that he’s being treated well, unlike his own prisoners, and that he has expressed regret over his actions—in truth, he’s continued to get the shit kicked out of him and he’s bound in an empty cell). When asked what they’ll do next, Ivanova says they keep going. A person is expendable, the mission isn’t (a line Sinclair said in “War Without End,” though Ivanova credits Sheridan with saying it). Cole also says that Garibaldi has tried to contact them and the station, and Ivanova makes it clear that she has nothing to say to him, and also that if he shows up on B5, he’s to be shot on sight. ISN declares a day of celebration and rest, as the capture of Sheridan means that the resistance is broken. They also report Edgars’ murder, saying it was probably members of the resistance, and also that apparently it was Sheridan’s former security chief who turned him in, and ISN thanks him for his patriotism. Get the hell out of our galaxy! Last week, Sheridan was saying that he was getting worried that everything was going too well, and this episode bears out that paranoia, as he’s captured by the bad guys. Ivanova is God. Ivanova takes over command of the fleet from Sheridan. Both Clark and Edgars make it clear that they think losing Sheridan will break the resistance, but the look on Ivanova’s face in the latter portions of this episode make it abundantly clear that that is not the case. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The household god of frustration. We finally find out what’s been up with Garibaldi since the Shadows took him back in “Z’ha’dum.” If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Sheridan is insistent that a human be in command of the Army of Light fleet. It can’t be Delenn, because if a Minbari commands a fleet heading for Earth, it’ll feel like the Earth-Minbari War all over again. The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. As has been hinted at several times—particularly in “Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?” “Epiphanies,” and “Moments of Transition”—the Psi Corps is behind Garibaldi’s weird behavior this season. The Shadowy Vorlons. The Shadows helped put Clark into power, but they also provided the tech that enabled Edgars to develop the telepath virus. Typical Shadows, playing both ends… No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. When Sheridan is captured, Delenn wakes up and cries out his name, which is a common, if tired, practice among writers who want to show a love connection between characters… Looking ahead. For the second episode in a row, a character mentions the likelihood of a coming war between telepaths and mundanes (Edgars last time, Alexander this time). J. Michael Straczynski always intended to show that war on-screen, going so far as to have J. Gregory Keyes skip over it in his Psi-Corps trilogy of novels and having the movie A Call to Arms and TV show Crusade take place after it. But it has yet to be dramatized in any form. Welcome aboard. Recurring regulars Efram Zimbalist Jr., Mark Schneider, Diana Morgan, and Richard Gant make their final appearances as, respectively, Edgars, Wade, the ISN propaganda-spewer, and MacDougan. Other recurring regulars include Walter Koenig, back from “Moments of Transition” as Bester; Marjorie Monaghan, back from “Lines of Communication” as Number One; Denise Gentile, back from “The Exercise of Vital Powers” as Lise; and David Purdham, debuting the recurring role of James. Koenig and Gentile will both return in “Rising Star,” while Monaghan and Purdham will be back in “Between the Darkness and the Light.” Additionally, Ricco Ross plays Frank, and creative consultant Harlan Ellison makes his only physical appearance on the show as the Psi Cop Bester talks to in the flashback. Ellison previously did the voice of Sparky the computer in “Ceremonies of Light and Dark,” and he’ll come back to voice Zooty in “Day of the Dead.” Credit: Warner Bros. Television Trivial matters. Alexander came through Mars to get to B5 in “Divided Loyalties.” The guy who murdered telepaths was previously mentioned by Bester in “Epiphanies”; the full story of that rogue investigation and punishment was told in the novel Deadly Relations—Bester Ascendant, the second book in J. Gregory Keyes’ Psi-Corps trilogy. Garibaldi helped Lise and Wade obtain the cure for the virus in “Conflicts of Interest.” He was captured by the Shadows in “Z’ha’dum,” returned to B5 in “The Summoning” and resigned as head of security in “Epiphanies.” Efram Zimbalist Jr. tripped over the line “the telepath problem,” as that was (deliberately) very similar to rhetoric used by the Nazis against the Jews. It wound up working, as it meant that even Edgars realized the enormity and horror of what he was planning. Wade refers to telepaths as “homo superior,” which is a term first used in Marvel’s X-Men comics in the 1960s to refer to mutants (people born with super-powers). MacDougan says his entire crew is intact, though one assumes that his first officer is in the brig after what happened in “No Surrender, No Retreat.” The echoes of all of our conversations. “The truth—the whole absolute truth—is only a few days away. How many people can say that?” “I don’t know, but I think the last guy got thirty pieces of silver for the same job.” —Edgars giving Garibaldi assurances and Garibaldi feeling very Judas-y about the whole thing.  Credit: Warner Bros. Television The name of the place is Babylon 5. “They believe that you’re a pain in the ass, sir, but they trust you.” It took seventeen episodes, but we finally find out the full story of what happened to Garibaldi after the Shadows took him in “Z’ha’dum,” and it’s a doozy. Walter Koenig does magnificent work here, slowly explaining what’s going on while sitting across from an insensate Jerry Doyle. Koenig’s Bester is his usual awful self and it’s magnificently played. His only concern is for his own ambitions. I particularly like the way he refers to “my” telepaths, even though he doesn’t actually run Psi Corps (at least not yet). Then there’s his bland declaration that he’s not capricious or cruel, which is only half right. He’s definitely not capricious, as every single thing Bester does is calculated. But he’s incredibly cruel. While it’s plausible that he has no personal animus against Garibaldi—I doubt he cares enough about him to dislike him—he’s still perfectly happy to be as nasty as possible to him. Garibaldi is now in the worst possible place, having betrayed his friends, his colleagues, the husband of the woman he loves, and the cause he believes and fights for, and with no obvious way to prove otherwise. (As usual, Bester reckons without the fact that Lyta Alexander is now a badass psi, but we’ll get to that two episodes hence.) And that’s only a piece of this episode in which a lot happens. There’s Garibaldi’s actual betrayal of Sheridan, there’s Edgars’ revelation of his master plan, there’s MacDougan giving Frank a verbal smackdown (I really wish we’d gotten more than two episodes out of Richard Gant’s MacDougan, he was truly fabulous), and there’s Sheridan’s happy reunion with his former crew. What’s most impressive about this episode is that two very lengthy chunks of the episode are basically monologues of exposition, one by Edgars, one by Bester. Both are leavened on a scripting level, the former by Wade and Garibaldi putting their own comments in, the latter by the flashbacks. But truly it’s the performances and the directing of same by Zimbalist, Koenig, and director Michael Vejar. There’s a reason why Vejar is the franchise’s most prolific director, and this episode is a particularly strong example of why. There are many powerful visuals in this, from the closeups of Bester during his monologue at Garibaldi, the shadowy closeups of the stone-faced Garibaldi while Bester monologues at him, and so on. I particularly like the long shot in the flashback of Bester and two other Psi Cops standing over the comatose Garibaldi, one of the Psi Cops slowly moving to close the door, a magnificent visual metaphor. And then there’s Ivanova sitting in the command chair of the White Star, determined to keep the fight going. One of the themes of the past few episodes has been the importance of Sheridan to the Army of Light, and how vital it is to remove him. This, however, flies in the face of reality. As Bester says at one point, there are three people ready to take over from Sheridan if he’s lost, and while Bester himself did a bang-up job of removing Garibaldi from that particular chess board, the erstwhile security chief is also (by far) the least of those three options. Among Sheridan, Ivanova, and Delenn, Sheridan is the one who scares me the least. All capturing Sheridan gets them is an unfettered and pissed-off Ivanova, and that doesn’t improve their position overmuch… Next week: “Intersections in Real Time.”[end-mark] The post Babylon 5 Rewatch: “The Face of the Enemy” appeared first on Reactor.