Babylon 5: S04E05: The Long Night

As the warships mass outside Babylon 5, Ivanova is asked by Sheridan to continue her search for the First ones. Ivanova is upset at the thought of being left behind – she wants to die with everyone else(??!!) Tension increases amongst the coalition as the Shadows react to the Vorlon attacks with an equally destructive offensive against Vorlon influenced worlds.

On Narn, Londo goes to G’Kars cell to discover him bloodied and missing an eye. They discuss details of the assassination attempt on Cartagia. Later that night the Vir delivers a syringe like dagger containing the poison that will kill Emperor Catagia.

Londo fumbles the attemptLater, G’Kar distracts the court as he is paraded by Cartagia and Londo takes the Emporer to an antechamber for safety where he attempts to pierce the his heart with the poison dagger.  Londo fumbles the attempt and the dagger falls to the ground only for Vir to pick it up and stab the git Cartagia in the chest. The emperor is dead moments later. Londo announces the death to the court, tells everyone that this is an omen to leave Narn and also free G’Kar and most importantly remove the Shadow presence from Centauri Prime. Londo achieves all his objectives with deadly precision.

Meanwhile, on Babylon 5, Lennier has calculated that the next Vorlon attack will be on Coriana 6, a planet of 6 billion inhabitants.

Worse still, Kosh2 is still on Babylon 5 and Sheridan decides that the walking wardrobe’s days are numbered.  He gathers some close friends with big guns and tech and blasts the Vorlon to smithereens.

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Bolstered by the killing of a minor deity (last weeks episode), Sheridan announces a plan to confront the Vorlons at Coriana 6 with not only the Army of Light, but the Shadows also. Such a plan would mean that the Shadows would have to be lured to the battle zone and that the only way to do this in such a short period of time would be to leak false information to the Shadows. This would have to be done by a Ranger White Star scout ship and it would mean certain death for the ships crew.

It was an awful thing that Sheridan had to do, but Babylon 5 receives the final message from the scout ship that the Shadows have ‘taken the bait’ and the huge rag-tag armada of the Army of Light set off for Coriana 6 and the final showdown.

And there another terrific episode ends.  I’m really enjoying the grittiness of this sci fi series.

I’d rate this episode a down and dirty 37,669 out of 10.
What did you think?

The “Falling Toward Apotheosis” episode review is © 1999 – 2001 Tony Fawl. and not for reproduction without the authors express permission

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The BABYLON 5 names, characters and everything else associated with the series are the property of J. Michael Straczynski, TNT and Warner Brothers, a division of Time Warner Entertainment Company. All rights reserved.

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