B5 Watchthrough: Infection

[ariela]

Infection is an episode I remembered as unwatchably bad, and a lot of it is. Heck, JMS himself even cites it as a low point in S1. It was the first episode written for the season, a year apart from The Gathering, and it shows.

That said, the parts of it that aren't terrible actually accomplish a considerable amount of worldbuilding, which is why I've included 13 minutes of it. A big part of it is establishing Babylon 5's somewhat fraught relationship with Interstellar Network News (ISN), and through it, with the public.

I love Star Trek, but one of my main gripes with it is that we rarely get much of a sense of humanity outside of Starfleet. Star Trek's various captains and commanders may have to worry about what Starfleet thinks of them, but they don't often have to deal with opinion polls, conflicts between the military and civilian government, or social media. (Similarly, one of my main gripes with DS9 in particular was that I never really got a feel for station life outside the experience of the main characters and their families.)

Infection's A-plot is cheesy and so inconsequential that I'm not going to even bother rehashing it. The only important part is that there's a company called Interplanetary Expeditions, which will come back in the future. It seems to be mainly about archaeologists digging up ancient alien ruins, but Infection notes that it's basically a front for bioweapons research. It will, in the course of the series, unleash something even worse.

The B-plot, however, which focuses on an ISN reporter who's come to B5 to do a feature on the place, does a fairly good--and subtle, since it's a B-plot and mostly treated as humor--job of easing you into the larger universe of human politics.

Deep dive:

• Rowan Kaiser's analysis and review at the AV Club.
• The Lurker's Guide episode page.

Main takeaways:

• There doesn't seem to be much faith in B5 from the general public. 75% of them predicted it would fail immediately, and Lloyd's of London put the odds of success at 500 to 1.
• Babylon 5's leadership is somewhat of a collection of people who didn't work out elsewhere (much like the West Wing crew). Sinclair may not have the confidence of the military, and hasn't covered himself with glory in interviews past. Garibaldi's been fired like a million times. No word, as yet, about Ivanova.
• Garibaldi is one of Sinclair's few close friends, and he's worried that Sinclair's war experiences have given him a death wish. He's keeping an eye on him for self-destructive behavior.