Books book review Heartache and Horror in CG Drews’ Don’t Let the Forest In A review of CG Drews’s new YA horror novel By Maya Gittelman | Published on December 16, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share It’s senior year at Wickwood, a boarding school tangled in classical bourgeois traditions of the American northeast, all manicured lawns and handsome bullies, a world away from the world, tucked up against a forest that brims with terrible secrets. Andrew Perrault knows something awful happened at the end of last year. He’s got scars he can hardly remember getting, but he doesn’t want to think about it. He is, as usual, a mess. He’s a scattered, anxious, quiet thing, not like the hearth fire that is his more popular twin sister Dove. He just wants to finish out senior year alongside their best friend Thomas, an unapologetic, deeply charismatic artist boy who makes Andrew feel alive like nothing else can. Andrew pours his heart into writing dark and twisty fairytales, and Thomas draws them to life on the page. But upon their final arrival to Wickwood, something’s wrong. Dove’s avoiding Andrew for the first time ever, and Thomas seems to be keeping a secret—something bloody, and tender, and terrible. Andrew wants to help him. Andrew wants to save him, to protect him with his life and lay down his own for this boy, because the alternatives—losing him, or loving him aloud—are too terrible to imagine. Because Andrew does want Thomas, but he’s afraid Thomas wants Dove, and even if he did want Andrew back Andrew wouldn’t be enough—a boy like Thomas, he tells himself, is never going to be satisfied with only kissing, and Andrew knows he doesn’t want sex. Secrets, lies, and monsters come to life, and Thomas and Andrew must try to survive them—and each other.  Don’t Let the Forest In is an atmospheric mindfuck of good horror, a descent into madness or simply an awakening to it, the call coming from inside the house. CG Drews crafts a profoundly successful unreliable narrator. Lushly drawn with a gorgeous voice, this book revels in the sensory physicality of horror. Visceral, tangible, lingering on the smell and pressure of real and rotting things. The world-building is vivid and inviting, threaded with ominous, inviting foreshadowing. Drews renders Andrew and Thomas beautifully in relation to each other, a push-pull of adolescent codependence, its power and its pitfalls. A taut tangle of love and art and terror. The specific agony of closeted queer pining, and the way we can obsessively pour ourselves into our craft. The stories we tell ourselves in order to live, the stories we tell ourselves instead of doing the work of living, the stories we tell ourselves because the truth is anathema. Drews knows how to turn a phrase, and the book moves at a satisfying pace with propulsive, inventive prose. As the forest creeps closer and Andrew’s grasp of reality falters, the text on the page slips sometimes—a bit of kerning play, the story taking on the shape of his fraying consciousness. And the art! This is a book I’m extra grateful to have read in physical form. Drews intersperses Andrew’s dark fairytales into the pages of the story, as well as Thomas’s macabre art, conjured by illustrator Jane Heidersdorf. It’s a brilliant choice, immersive and fitting—not only allowing the reader another dimension in which to experience the horrors, but literalizing the monstrosity creeping its way through Andrew’s consciousness.  The atmospheric horror also works so well with Andrew’s awfully accurate anxiety. This is rep that speaks to my own chronically anxious heart, all second-guessing and avoidance, driving himself wild with worst-case scenarios conjured from his deepest wants and worries. You can feel his fraying subconscious, the way chaos sometimes seems calmer than peace because at least chaos means you’re allowed to freak out; at least you can ascribe an external reason to your frightened heart. You don’t have to simply sit with it and figure out what is actually real, what is dangerous, and what is just… you.  Buy the Book Don’t Let the Forest In CG Drews Buy Book Don't Let the Forest In CG Drews Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget And gosh, I’m not an ownvoices reviewer for asexuality but from my outsider’s perspective this is a lovely, lovingly rendered exploration. Asexuality on the page is still a rare find, especially within queer romance and especially between queer boys, and this reads real and messy. Andrew uses the word asexual—I might also call him demiromantic—and Drews evokes this specific yearning with such clarity and compassion it makes me ache. Even though the horrors of the forest are truly terrifying, there’s so much comfort for queer readers built between these pages.  That said, speaking of comfort: Usually I’d like to avoid “spoilers” in my reviews for twists this significant, but in this case, I’m choosing to share what I wish I’d known going in. If you don’t want to know, you’re welcome to stop reading here or skip to the very last little paragraph. SPOILER WARNING: This is a grief book. Grief is listed among other content warnings for this title, but I didn’t realize just how much of a central role it would play. It’s elegantly done, braided effectively into classic horror’s workings with grief, but so much so I genuinely didn’t see it coming. It hit brutally when it did. If you can handle the painful twists in, say, The Haunting of Hill House or The Haunting of Bly Manor, then you probably don’t need my extra warning. This is an intentional choice for craft and effect, and I do think it’s effective—but as I wasn’t braced for a grief book, I don’t think it had the desired effect on me. Feels silly to say grief is one of my core triggers, but it is, in the sense that being confronted with profound grief as a shocking, devastating twist doesn’t delight me the way other plot twists do. It pulls me out of the story and into myself, as opposed to drawing me deeper in. This is a personal truth as a reader and a person that I know impacts my professionalism as a reviewer, so I choose to approach stories carefully based on how much grief is a factor, and the shape of its presence. Had I known this was a grief book, I would have approached with more caution and understanding—or, given my increased sensitivity to grief this month for various personal and political reasons, I might have opted out for the time being. So I offer you this information in case a book ultimately about the transformative monstrosity of grief isn’t what you need right now, and you were really looking for a beautiful gay book in which the horrors are not, in fact, traumatic manifestations of heartbreak and the devastating agony of loss.  AN EVEN BIGGER SPOILER AHEAD Given the magnitude of the tragedy at the story’s core, the ending feels a bit rushed, unfinished. There are such enormous, spectacular twists so close to the end. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so jarred by them if there was more of a denouement, breathing room for the truth as much as the delusion, but it’s not that kind of book. Once I realized what, exactly, the story is about, Dove feels missing from what turns out to be her own story, reduced to a point of tension between the boys.  I understand what their relationship is, who she’s meant to represent for each of them. But if ultimately Dove is Andrew’s most significant relationship, I want to feel why, not just be told that it was true. This was a cinematic choice and I was emotionally attached on a literary level, which is to say by obscuring the specific genre I was reading I didn’t understand the stakes until it was too late. It’s sad, not just scary. Deep psychological trauma, not just creepy conjurings in the woods. The marketing had me prepared for two boys fighting eldritch horrors as well as their own feelings, not a raw, psychologically devastating exploration of loss.   Look, I love a grief book and I’m all for books leaving me heartbroken. But I don’t love grief as a plot twist, as a surprise. I like to know the shape of the wound I’m in for, and the content warning, promo material, and summary alone didn’t prepare me for that, so I’m preparing you. The only reason being that it impacted my experience of the book in an unwanted way, and I hope this means you get to experience it knowing what you’re in for, and in the right headspace, because twists like these can be profoundly cathartic, and I’m sure this is for some readers. And if you’re one of them and I just spoiled you—sorry! I said to skip, that’s all I can do. Because it feels worth it, for me, to keep this information in. None of this takes away from how much I enjoyed reading the first three quarters of the book, or even from how fitting the brutal twists feel. It’s extremely effective for what it is, and even wishing for a bit more padding after the harsh landing of the climax, this was a triumphantly beautiful read and I love so very much of it. I’m extra sensitive to grief and loss right now, and I’m sharing this in case you are too. I like to know when I’m going into art that’s about confronting that, versus going into art for escapism.  END SPOILER WARNING Don’t Let the Forest In becomes don’t look at just how much of a forest you’ve become: a haunted, violent thing, tendrils of secrets and crackling monstrosity. This is a beautiful book that succeeds in so much of what it sets out to do. Suspenseful and textured, a horrific meditation on grief, avoidance, and the profoundly transformative nature of loss. It presses thorns into the softest parts of your wounds and it almost feels like a kiss.[end-mark] Don’t Let the Forest In is published by Feiwel & Friends. The post Heartache and Horror in CG Drews’ Don’t Let the Forest In appeared first on Reactor.

News Blood and Ash Jennifer L. Armentrout’s Blood and Ash Series to Get TV Adaptation By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on December 16, 2024 Credit for Jennifer L. Armentrout photo: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Comment 0 Share New Share Credit for Jennifer L. Armentrout photo: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Sony, the studio behind Starz’s adaptation of Outlander, is setting its eyes on Jennifer L. Armentrout’s Blood and Ash series. According to Deadline, the production will center on five of Armentrout’s books: From Blood and Ash, A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire, The Crown of Gilded Bones, The War of Two Queens, and A Soul of Ash and Blood. Here’s the sexy synopsis of the first book in the series, From Blood and Ash, per Goodreads: Chosen from birth to usher in a new era, Poppy’s life has never been her own. The life of the Maiden is solitary. Never to be touched. Never to be looked upon. Never to be spoken to. Never to experience pleasure. Waiting for the day of her Ascension, she would rather be with the guards, fighting back the evil that took her family, than preparing to be found worthy by the gods. But the choice has never been hers.The entire kingdom’s future rests on Poppy’s shoulders, something she’s not even quite sure she wants for herself. Because a Maiden has a heart. And a soul. And longing. And when Hawke, a golden-eyed guard honor bound to ensure her Ascension, enters her life, destiny and duty become tangled with desire and need. He incites her anger, makes her question everything she believes in, and tempts her with the forbidden.Forsaken by the gods and feared by mortals, a fallen kingdom is rising once more, determined to take back what they believe is theirs through violence and vengeance. And as the shadow of those cursed draws closer, the line between what is forbidden and what is right becomes blurred. Poppy is not only on the verge of losing her heart and being found unworthy by the gods, but also her life when every blood-soaked thread that holds her world together begins to unravel. The TV universe of the series, again according to Deadline, might even expand beyond the first five books in the Blood and Ash series; Armentrout has a sixth book in the works, and has already published a four-book prequel set in the same world. This news comes soon after the announcement that Armentrout was also working on a romantasy reality show called The Keys. The Blood and Ash adaptation is still in its early days, so no news yet on casting or when it will go into production.[end-mark] The post Jennifer L. Armentrout’s Blood and Ash Series to Get TV Adaptation appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Dune: Prophecy Dune: Prophecy (Almost) Reveals All in “In Blood, Truth” Someone give Chloe Lea all the awards, though. By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on December 16, 2024 Credit: Attila Szvacsek/HBO Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Attila Szvacsek/HBO “In Blood, DNA Samples” would be more accurate. But sure, let’s go with truth. Recap Desmond Hart presents in front of the royal family at the head of a new fighting force that will protect the Imperium, which he will lead as Bashar; the Emperor has decried it. Hart suggests that the Emperor leave the fleet over the planet a while longer as a show of strength. Sister Francesca (Tabu) arrives on Salusa Secundus due to a message she received from Constantine, her son. Ynez is under guard, but Constantine insists on coming into her room to attempt an apology for abandoning her at the Landsraad—he couldn’t stomach disappointing his father after making hi, proud in showing up. On Wallach IX, Sister Jen interrupts their lesson in upset over the lack of transparency from their leaders following the joint dreaming. Tula removes her from class, but not to punish her; she believes Jen is resistant to the dream as she’s never had it, and wants her help with Lila since they were friends. Lila is in a state, screaming and drowning in the voices of her ancestors. Tula asks Jen to keep watch over her. When Constantine meets with his mother, he tells her that he never sent her a message; he assumed she came because of Kasha, but Francesca didn’t know she’d died. Harrow approaches Hart in attempt to make amends for his accusations at the Landsraad; he blames his aunt’s poor guidance, but Hart insists that not enough—Harrow needs to give something to makes amends. He gets information; Harrow tells him of the underground market, which he claims has been stealing some of his shipments as part of a smuggling operation. Hart says this is only a start, and that Harrow will need to give proof that his aunt is involved in the operation to clear his name. Francesca talks to Valya, wanting to know why she secretly sent for her under the guise of her son. Valya tells her of the reckoning and how the Sisterhood is being sidelined by the Imperium. She asks Francesca to help them in this, promising to occupy Hart while she gets Javicco’s ear, and tells her she may maneuver Constantine into a position as fleet commander. Keiran Atreides tells Constantine off for being late to his sparring lesson and leaves, telling the prince to take responsibility for his life. Keiran goes to see Mikaela, to warn her of Hart’s impending arrival when he follows up on Harrow’s intel, but she’s unbothered and tells him not to try and become the part he’s playing. She insists that she’s ready for Hart. Jen talks to Lila and realizes that she’s speaking to Mother Raquella. She brings Lila to Tula so that Raquella can help them. Raquella begins analyzing tissue from Kasha’s body and realizes that she’s seen this sort of damage before during the war. Harrow tells Valya that the intel she provided helped with Hart, but that he was asking about the Sisterhood. Valya tells him that the information she gave him will improve House Harkonnen’s standing, and he leaves for Evgeny’s funeral, telling Valya she can stay while he’s gone. Theodosia asks where Francesca fits into this plot, and Valya tells her that she hasn’t yet learned the skill of imprinting on a person so that you can affect the course of their life. Francesca asks Javicco to give Constantine a chance to prove himself. He kisses her, but she stops him, insisting that she didn’t come to drive a wedge between the Emperor and his wife. Avila tries to take Tula to task for not being present while the school founders in panic. She has a message from Valya and demands to know what is going on in the lab. Though Tula refuses to tell her, Raquella (Lila) emerges and explains that the deaths they’re seeing were caused by an engineered RNA retrovirus. Avila is mortified at what Tula has done, but she tells Avila to stay silent. Hart visits the underground bar and asks Mikaela questions; she feigns ignorance. His men trash the bar, searching everywhere, while Hart tells Mikaela that all he wants is evidence of the Sisterhood’s connection to the rebellion. Keiran is planting chain explosives for Mikaela while this happens, then the two fight their way out of the bar. As they do so, Hart discovers Mikaela’s Sisterhood robes in one of the spice canisters and Keiran sees her use a Sisterhood knife. The explosives go off, taking down the whole complex and Keiran tells Mikaela that he doesn’t want to see her again, feeling betrayed. Jen demands to know if Lila is just being used for the Sisterhood’s gain, which Tula insists inevitable in this period of crisis. Hart survives the explosion, and Francesca goes to speak to Constantine. He asks her why she had him and then left him with a father who will never be pleased with him. Francesca tells him that his father is driven by fear and the Constantine must seize opportunities when they come. She also tells him that he was born to protect his sister, the future leader to the Imperium. Mikaela is furious with Valya for destroying her years of hard work when she learns that Hart didn’t die in the explosion. Valya gives her passage to a safe house on Arrakis and dismisses her. Constantine goes to the sparring room and finds evidence of Keiran’s rebel activities. He waits for Keiran to come back and pretends to be contrite for his earlier behavior before turning him over to the guards. At dinner that night, the Emperor praises Constantine’s actions and promotes him to fleet commander. Ynez watches her mother leave the dinner in hurt, and heads to the cells to talk to Keiran. She demands the truth and he admits the he betrayed his principles for her because he cares for her, but he does believe he can bring about a better Imperium. Lila talks to Jen, glad that she hasn’t let the Sisterhood down, while Jen insists she’s the best of them. Tula gets Hart’s DNA sample from Valya and begins analysis with the computer. The Empress visits Hart, saying he has been chosen, and that she was once too. She believes that the Sisterhood has stolen all of this from her; Javicco’s trust, her daughter’s love, her power. She asks what they took from Hart and he tells her that he’s the son of a Sister, who gave him up and allowed him to be raised by scavengers. Hart and the Empress kiss and she bids them to rid the Imperium of these “witches” as, on Wallach IX, Tula learns that Hart is a descendant of Harkonnen and Atriedes bloodlines… Commentary Okay. So Hart is Tula and Orry’s kid. Little perplexed by how he got any background on his family if she gave him up to a bunch of dubious characters, but I’m assuming we’ll find out how by the final episode. I’m a little worried that they’re going to use him as an example of how powerful the Atreides and Harkonnen bloodlines can be together, and make it a precursor to the eventual crossing of the bloodlines again in Dune, since that was orchestrated by the Bene Gesserit. But what can you do—it’s gonna go where it goes. At least we’ve now got confirmation that Hart’s powers aren’t magic, but delivered via a coded virus. How he wields this power is another manner entirely, but I’m much more interested in getting an answer to that. I’m also way more interested in him having an affair with the Empress because she deserves this. Someone get this woman the known universe’s biggest martini. She gets no respect. This episode finally makes good on a lot of what the show has put forth, and results in the most successful chapter so far. The actors are finally getting a chance to stretch their legs and we get all those good tense moments you’d expect from a drama like this. The prolonged end to dinner where Ynez sees her mother’s heart break in realtime, and she watches the Empress leave the table is such a powerful moment of connection that doesn’t even require two characters interacting. There’s so much clarity and pain between mother and daughter here, even if Ynez is the only one to feel it fully. And it spurs her to go have a conversation with Keiran Atreides that I must assume will lead to his freedom. Keiran thinks he’s been clear and concise about when and how he’s betrayed his principles and what they mean to him, but Mikaela reads him for filth in this episode and she’s right. As another person who’s operating on two sides of a line that cannot be made compatible, she’s far more aware of the cost, and more honest with herself about what she’s been trying to achieve. Her only mistake is in failing to realize that she’s a much smaller player to Valya than she’d assumed. In the meantime, Chloe Lea runs way with the entire flipping episode in her embodiment of Raquella, which is so flawless and detailed that I fully believed the woman was possessed by dead ancestors. It’s a little silly that only Raquella’s memory is capable of unearthing this virus, but if it leads to performances like that, I’m down. Whatever, give me an entire episode of that. While the question of who qualifies as the ‘hero’ of any given Dune story is always a wooly one, the script goes a long way in making it clear who we should be railing against once Javicco makes that speech at the start of the episode. He hits “defend our values with ferocity and pride” with all the fervor you expect from dictators, and it scrapes just a little too close to reality at the moment, thanks. Little annoyed that Hart survived that explosion. Obviously he had to, and I know that the shield belts are supposed to be able to help with a lot, but it was so much explosive. I felt a lot like Mikaela did over that one. And while I appreciate that Constantine needed a win in order to get in good with the Emperor, the idea that Keiran would just leave his rebellion crap lying around in the sparring room is a tough sell. I know he’s not the most put-together insurgent, but come on now. Francesca is identified by Valya as an imprinter; a particular skillset that the Sisterhood uses for the coercion and seduction of powerful men. This is a thing that Frank Herbert eventually identified in Heretics of Dune (retroactively suggesting that Lady Fenring was an imprinter), and I kind of wish he hadn’t? Again, it’s just another place where it feels as though Herbert wants to give reasons for the power women can have in their relationships with men. Why? I believe that Francesca is that powerful without extra special man trap sparkles. Are we supposed to believe that powerful men are harder to manipulate, resulting in the need for special skills? Because, uh… please don’t make me laugh. Look at Javicco. That is not a difficult man to wheedle. You just need the right words and big emphatic eyes. (This applies to Francesca and Hart, by the way.) But the final question I’ve got is whether or not this show is hoping for more seasons. It seems as though there’s a lot to wrap up, and very little time now to do it. Truthsaying and Visions It seems very likely that the new fighting force we see at the beginning of the episode is meant to be the predecessors of the Sardukar, which, again, we really don’t have to make this little micro-era the point where every little thing gets created. Raquella claims that the dream is prescience and all the Sisters are seeing this potential downfall for their order, but I keep wondering if the vision is either doing double duty (i.e. it applies to more than one era, which often happens in these kinds of stories), or this is truly a vision about Paul Atreides—or Leto II the God Emperor. Shai-hulud leading to darkness and two all-seeing eyes would seem to fit the bill.  Last week, I was saying the Emperor should kiss heart, but this week it’s all about Jen tearfully calling Lila “Doe Eyes.” Love Jen, more to the point, but I do worry that she’s got far too much compassion to be a part of the order. Next week we come to the end of things…[end-mark] The post <i>Dune: Prophecy</i> (Almost) Reveals All in “In Blood, Truth” appeared first on Reactor.

News Avengers: Doomsday Hayley Atwell’s Peggy Carter Will Also Return in Avengers: Doomsday Agent, not Captain, alas By Molly Templeton | Published on December 16, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Once upon a time, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) and Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) had a romance troubled by time and superhero business. In Avengers: Endgame, they got a happy ending, at least if you didn’t ask any questions about time travel and… let’s not get into it. Their story—apart from some multiversal mayhem and the series What If…?—seemed to be mostly over. Just kidding. Last week, the news broke first that Evans will be returning to the MCU in Avengers: Doomsday, though it has not been made clear that he will (or won’t) be playing Captain America. Later in the week, more news: Atwell, too, will be returning, though Deadline’s sources are clearer on this front: “Sources tell Deadline that Hayley Atwell is expected to reprise her Agent Carter role in the film.” Of course, none of this means anything until it does. It could be that they both appear in a multiversal moment of happiness that zips by while someone is barreling through worlds and times. It could be virtually nothing. It could be a lot! Though, as noted, Deadline’s story specifies Agent Carter—not Captain Carter (who Atwell played in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, pictured above). Hayley Atwell is a fantastic actress (seriously, go watch her with Matthew Goode and Ben Whishaw in the 2008 Brideshead Revisited!) and should get to be in everything. Peggy Carter is a delightful character. But isn’t Marvel creating a whole new baby Avengers team with its TV series? Is there not a lot more ground to cover in decades’ worth of comics? Do we need to go back to the same wells? That said, I will eat my words if they let currently 42-year-old Atwell be a full-fledged action star. Everything old may or may not be new again when Avengers: Doomsday arrives on May 1, 2026.[end-mark] The post Hayley Atwell’s Peggy Carter Will <i>Also</i> Return in <i>Avengers: Doomsday</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Column Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Hunter, Prey” The president’s physician comes to Babylon 5, on the run from Earthforce special intelligence… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on December 16, 2024 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “Hunter, Prey”Written by J. Michael StraczynskiDirected by Menachem BinetskiSeason 2, Episode 13Production episode 213Original air date: March 1, 1995 It was the dawn of the third age… Sheridan and Ivanova are in Bay 13, which is where Kosh keeps his ship. Nobody goes to Bay 13, and indeed Ivanova warned Sheridan against doing so, but he’s curious (at least in part because of what happened between him and Kosh in “All Alone in the Night”). According to Ivanova, the maintenance crews steer clear of the place now, as the first ones to try to work there heard the ship talking to them in their sleep. Sheridan thinks that he needs to try to work harder to get to know Kosh and the Vorlons. Garibaldi shows up wanting to talk to them both. It isn’t something he wants to discuss over a link, and definitely not something he wants to talk about in front of Kosh’s creepy ship. Apparently, Dr. Everett Jacobs, the personal physician to President Clark, is missing, on the run, and being hunted by EarthForce security with orders to shoot to kill. Latest intel is that he’s on B5, which means the hunt is coming to them. Sure enough, an EarthForce security agent named Derek Cranston shows up with a contingent of personnel, explaining that Jacobs had a high security clearance because of his closeness to the president, and he stole some classified information that badly threatens the Earth Alliance. Sheridan puts Garibaldi and his entire staff at Cranston’s disposal. They’re going to do a methodical search, level by level. When Allan points out that that’ll conservatively take forever, Cranston reveals that all high-ranking EarthDome personnel like Jacobs have short-range tracking implants. All they have to do is walk through with a scanner and then move on to the next place. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Garibaldi goes to Franklin, who studied under Jacobs at Harvard. Franklin thinks the notion of Jacobs being a traitor is the craziest thing he’s ever heard. Sheridan sees Kosh in a corridor, and decides to start on his get-to-know-Kosh program right then and there. He directly but politely confronts Kosh about how the Vorlon spoke to him telepathically while he was a prisoner of the Streib. Kosh says he was trying to gain understanding. After being briefed by Garibaldi on how the search is going, Sheridan sees a red ribbon tied to a post. He excuses himself and goes to meet with an EarthForce officer named Sarah, who works with General Hague. She reveals that Jacobs is not a traitor, and not a threat to Earth. He is, however, a big threat to Clark, because he has proof that Clark was not ill when he left Earth Force One right before it went boom, killing President Santiago. Sarah says that it’s vital that Sheridan get Jacobs safely off B5. Sheridan tartly points out that that would be a helluva lot easier to accomplish if he’d known all this before he gave Cranston free rein of the station and of the security staff. He absolutely cannot be seen to be overtly hindering Cranston, as that would be as bad in its own way as Jacobs being captured. Sheridan reads Ivanova and Garibaldi in on this. Garibaldi immediately goes off duty and approaches Franklin. Since the doctor knows Jacobs, he’s going to help Garibaldi find him in downbelow. They’re dressed in civvies and Garibaldi is also wearing a fedora, which is a totally foolproof disguise. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Jacobs is, in fact, in downbelow. We see him trying to purchase a fake ID. However, his desperation is obvious, and that makes the merchants wary of him, as desperate people usually bring trouble. He’s mainlining stims as he’s afraid of going to sleep for fear that he’ll be caught while napping. Unfortunately, while Jacobs is able to evade security, he is unable to evade one of downbelow’s criminals, Max, who takes him hostage. Franklin sees a merchant trying to sell Jacobs’ antique watch. Garibaldi intimidates the merchant into giving up Max. Garibaldi and Franklin are able to rescue Jacobs from Max’s sidekick Chase, but Jacobs reveals that Max has the data crystal with all the evidence on it. For his part, Max has already contacted Cranston and offered to sell Jacobs to him. To everyone’s shock and awe, Kosh invites Sheridan to meet with him. They have a conversation that proves very frustrating to both parties, but eventually Kosh agrees to help Sheridan learn more about himself, so that the captain will be ready to fight legends. Max returns to find Chase tied up and no sign of his prisoner. Garibaldi fires his PPG several times, always just barely missing Max, making it clear that he could shoot him cleanly any time. Max timidly gives up the crystal. Cranston angrily asks why nobody told him that the internal scanners could be recalibrated to find a particular signal, and orders the scanners to be so recalibrated. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Sheridan meets with Garibaldi, Franklin, and Jacobs. They have until the scanners are rewired to get his posterior off the station. Garibaldi says it’s impossible, as Cranston’s people have all possible egresses covered, but Sheridan has an idea… When the adjusted scanners are online, Cranston orders a sweep, but they don’t find Jacobs’ implant. Sheridan acts pissed that Cranston turned his station upside down and Jacobs isn’t even here. Cranston is vexed, as he was sure Jacobs was on B5. Then Kosh’s ship asks for permission to leave, and it goes, but Cranston wants it scanned. Sheridan is reluctant, as the Vorlons don’t like that, but Corwin does a scan, and they only detect one non-human life form. Cranston briefly toys with the idea of recalling the ship and searching it manually, but Sheridan’s litany of consequences to that—which boil down to “pissing off the Vorlons something fierce”—convinces him to back off that idea. When Cranston asks about Max and his offer to sell Jacobs to him, Sheridan points out that grifters are quite common in downbelow… Once Cranston and his team have buggered off. Kosh’s ship comes back and disgorges Jacobs, who was in a medically induced coma. Franklin brings him out of it. The one life-form the scanners picked up was the ship itself, which is organic technology. Jacobs also says that while he slept, he would swear that the ship sang to him. Sheridan gives Sarah the evidence. It’s not enough to bring charges against Clark, but it’s a very good start. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan does quite a bit of proverbial tap-dancing and juggling trying to keep Cranston on-point and still make sure the right people find Jacobs first. At one point, he convinces Cranston that there’s a section of the station he might be hiding in called “downtown,” a name he made up right there on the spot, which he says is the area between the hull and the water reclamation system (a place where, in reality, nobody ever goes ever). That very handily delays Cranston under the guise of being cooperative. Ivanova is God. When Cranston asks Ivanova why nobody told him about rejiggering the scanners, Ivanova sweetly replies, “You didn’t ask,” and also reminds him about the cliché involving getting more results with honey than vinegar. The household god of frustration. Garibaldi thinks he can move easily through downbelow as long as he’s out of uniform and in a fedora because (a) he doesn’t spend much time in downbelow and (b) the people down there usually only see the badge. This is belied by the number of times he’s been in downbelow just in the show to-date, plus he, um, doesn’t actually wear a badge… The Shadowy Vorlons. Kosh has been attending more council meetings since Sheridan was assigned, and also has obviously taken an interest in Sheridan. But it takes Sheridan pressing the point for him to actually do something about this interest. Looking ahead. Kosh claims to want to ready Sheridan to “fight legends,” which is pretty obviously a reference to his very big role in the war against the Shadows. Given how imminent the threat is, one wonders why Kosh had to be practically put in a headlock to even talk to Sheridan about this, but whatever. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Welcome aboard. Two people who starred in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure are guests in this one: Bernie Casey (Mr. Ryan) as Cranston and Tony Steedman (Socrates) as Jacobs. Richard Moll, best known as Bull on Night Court and the voice of Two-Face on Batman: The Animated Series, plays Max, while Wanda De Jesus plays Sarah. Plus we’ve got some recurring regulars: back from “Acts of Sacrifice” are Jeff Conaway as Allan (who’ll return in “There All the Honor Lies”) and Joshua Cox as Corwin (who’ll return in “And Now for a Word”), and back from “All Alone in the Night” is Ardwight Chamberlain as Kosh (who’ll also return in “There All the Honor Lies”). Trivial matters. The last time the scanners were retuned to find a particular signal was in “A Spider in the Web,” used to find Abel Horn. Hague’s cabal of EarthForce personnel trying to fight EarthGov’s creeping fascism was established in “All Alone in the Night,” which is when Sheridan, Ivanova, Garibaldi, and Franklin officially became part of it. The suspicious nature of Santiago’s death and Clark’s just missing it has been a thing since just before it happened in “Chrysalis.” This is the first real evidence we’ve seen of the conspiracy beyond what Garibaldi learned in that episode. Garibaldi reminds Franklin that the last time he vouched for someone, it resulted in death and destruction on a major scale, a reference to the arrival of Dr. Vance Hendricks in “Infection.” Speaking of “Infection,” it was in that episode that we got the first mention of the notion of the Vorlons using organic technology. While most of Kosh’s responses to Sheridan are his usual abstruse nonsense, he reacts with anger when Sheridan asks, “What do you want?” That was the same question that Morden asked the various ambassadors on behalf of the Shadows in “Signs and Portents,” and it was Mollari’s answer to it that pretty much led to the current Narn-Centauri conflict… The echoes of all of our conversations. “Well, maybe now you’ll admit that you were wrong about Jacobs?” “I didn’t say I believed them.” “Yeah, but you didn’t say you believed me, either.” “I don’t believe anybody.” “What a wonderful world you live in.” “Yeah, well, the rent is cheap, the pay is decent, and I get to make my own hours. Now are you gonna help me or spend the next two days analyzing my lifestyle?” —Franklin and Garibaldi arguing. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The name of the place is Babylon 5. “You do not even understand yourself.” This episode suffers from an unavoidable problem—or at least was unavoidable once casting was finalized. There is simply no way for Cranston to be in any way convincing as an antagonist, or even as a person, when being (and I use this term loosely) “portrayed” by Bernie Casey and his wooden line readings. Cranston as written should come across as a brutally efficient professional. (As an example, look at how Michael O’Neill played Secret Service Agent Ron Butterfield on The West Wing or how Jonathan Banks played Mike Ehrmantraut on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Heck, look at how Walter Koenig plays Bester on this show…) I’d even settle for him being a bureaucratic tool, but Casey can’t even swing that. He’s just an automaton who brings absolutely nothing to bear on the character. Casey’s somnolent performance drags the episode down a bit, but it’s still a generally effective story. I particularly like the way Sheridan dances between the raindrops, as it were, staying on Cranston’s good side and giving the illusion of cooperation while enabling Garibaldi and Franklin to do their work to find him before an army of trained security personnel manage it. And I enjoyed Tony Steedman’s portrayal of Jacobs as an intelligent, determined person who doesn’t let the fact that he’s completely out of his depth slow him down. Though it does get him in trouble that he only escapes because of the dumb luck of Franklin noticing the watch being sold. Plus, it’s nice to see the good guys getting a proper victory. One plot point did bug me, though: why did Cranston agree to ransom Jacobs without once actually seeing Jacobs or just generally getting any proof that Max had him. Why did he just take some random shady dude at his word? Every other bit of Cranston’s behavior was that of a trained professional, but that was an amateur screwup. (Of course, if he got that proof, the plot doesn’t work, since Cranston needs to end the episode thinking Jacobs was never on B5.) The Kosh subplot is mostly okay, but I find myself being frustrated in general on this rewatch with the parsimonious providing of important information. Knowing what’s coming, and how important Sheridan will be in the coming craziness, Kosh’s reluctance to even engage with him despite obviously knowing his importance is maddening. Having said that, I loved the whole mythology that has grown up around Bay 13, with the maintenance crews giving it a wide berth, and Garibaldi not willing to even talk about anything important in front of the Vorlon ship. This is the last B5 Rewatch entry for 2024. We’ll be taking the next couple weeks off for the holidays, then be back on the 6th of January with “There All the Honor Lies.” Thank you all for continuing to take this ride with me. I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect from watching B5 again for the first time in three decades, but I’m happy to say that most of the surprises have been pleasant ones, and just in general, it’s been great to re-experience this show again. Looking forward to continuing with season two and the great war coming upon us all in 2025…[end-mark] The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “Hunter, Prey” appeared first on Reactor.