Babylon 5: Season 4 (1997)

No Surrender, No Retreat (1997)

22 episodes, approx 44 mins each.

"It was the year of fire - the year of destruction - the year we took back what was ours. It was the year of rebirth - the year of great sadness - the year of pain - and the year of joy. It was a new age. It was the end of history. It was the year everything changed. The year is 2261."

The events of the Season 3 finale are carried over into the beginning of Season 4. It closes doors that were opened in Season 2 and opens some that won't be shut until the very last episode of Season 5.

I think of it as Babylon 5's Dune season; expect political intrigue, religious motifs, betrayals, power hungry Emperors, plans within plans, assassinations, and wars on a planetary scale.

Elsewhere it deals with love, loss, identity, the desire to change and the things we must sacrifice to gain the ability to carry out such change. The Man In-between is revealed. And there are some exciting space battles for those that like that sort of thing.

Londo and G'Kar continue to grow and to further complicate their already complex relationship. Both men are two of the finest small screen actors that I've ever seen in sci-fi.

The penultimate episode gives Ivanova a chance to show that she really can act after all; she manages to convey in five short minutes what she never managed in four years previous: to make us care about her beyond her role as station crew. I almost wept.

Reportedly, JMS was told that he had to wrap-up everything because he wasn't getting a fifth season, so he did, he packed in two years of story and gave the series an ending that made sense and was bittersweet. Things move almost too fast because of it.

Then the ass-hats told him that he had a fifth season after all, so he moved the bittersweet final episode to the very end of Season 5 instead, and in its place put something pointless to close Season 4 (The Deconstruction of Falling Stars). I don't know how other B5 fans feel about it, but I prefer to end a viewing of Season 4 after episode 21. (I said in my Season 2 post that we should suffer shit episodes for the greater good, but Falling Stars is my one exception to that.)

Notable episodes this time are Atonement (Ep.09 - the 1998 TV film Thirdspace may take place during this time); Moments of Transition (Ep.14) is essential viewing; The Face of the Enemy (Ep.17) in which old friends have a moment; and finally Intersections in Real Time (Ep.18) is a lengthy interrogation that for me was the best episode of the year.

Unfortunately, The Illusion of Truth (Ep.08) is another awful ISN episode that adds almost nothing to the arc; and The Deconstruction of Falling Stars (Ep.22) is just plain awful - it's the ending episode I mentioned above that was never supposed to serve as such.