Freeing Proxima

Story: No Surrender, No Retreat

Written By: J. Michael Straczynski

Season: 4

Sheridan calls a meeting of the alliance and all worlds currently on Babylon 5 and tells them of his plan to take on Clark and Earth, starting first with freeing Proxima, then moving onto Mars, and then finally taking back Earth.  He asks for one ship from each race, the rest are to stay with their own forces, because Sheridan wants to take back Earth in a clean fight.  

The whole episode is essentially a battle trying to take back Proxima, and it is really well paced and executed.  In the end Sheridan wins, and two captains plan to join up with his cause, while one decides to stay and protect Proxima from further attacks by Clark, and the other decides to stay on house arrest (she essentially mutinied her own Captain to save her crew) until it is all over, no matter who wins.  

The only scene that really isn’t about the battle (beyond all the stuff leading up to it) is between Londo and G’Kar.  Londo wants to sign a joint statement throwing support towards Sheridan, and try to pave the way for future peace between their two people.  G’Kar initially, and quietly, declines.  But at the end of the episode he decides to sign the statement, as long as his name is on another page than that of Londo’s name.  Maybe someday these two races can find peace, but these two characters will probably never find peace.  

Excellent episode that finally saw the B5 gang take on EarthGov and Clark.  So long they’ve been scheming and hoping to do something about it, planning to eventually someday take back Earth.  And even in the few battles they have engaged with EarthForce they’ve always been the target who fought back.  It was about time they got proactive and started the fight, time to take this war to Clark’s front door.  Because really...fuck that guy. 

NEXT TIME: Edgar’s Plan Against Telepaths