Babylon 5

Teaser: Minbar homeworld. A bright morning sun shines over a great avenue with delicate blue crystal towers and magnificent waterfalls forming a semi-circle with a temple in the middle. Inside, a Minbari and a Human Ranger bow to a hooded figure. A Minbari priest, Rathenn, is carrying a box and calls to the hooded figure using the name of Entil'Zha. He shows him the box, explaining that he and his fellow priests are obeying the instructions written by Valen nine hundred years before, to open it exactly today. The figure reaches and looks inside and we can see an envelope addressed to Jeffrey David Sinclair. Then he takes away the hood and he is revealed as Ambassador Sinclair, and also as the Entil'Zha, or leader of the Rangers. Rathenn wonders out loud how did he Valen know who Sinclair was and where he would be in nine hundred years. In Babylon 5, C&C is picking up a distress call from the quarantined Sector 14, the place where Babylon 4 disappeared. Ivanova asks to put it through and, to their amazement, her own voice is heard, with explosions in the background, calling for help:


Ivanova(though the com): They're coming through! Repeat, they're coming through! This is Earth Alliance Station Babylon 5. They're all over the place!
Lt. Corwin: Commander, that's your voice.
Ivanova: Can't be.
Lt. Corwin: Computer voice-scan confirms it. That's you.
Ivanova(though the com): They're killing us! Can anyone hear me? They're killing us!


Title Sequence


In the temple in Minbar, Sinclair, with the letter still in his hand, is waiting for his ship to Babylon 5. Rathenn announces that it is ready and offers his help if Sinclair would confide in him, but Sinclair tells him that this was meant for him alone. He then thanks Rathenn for being the first to trust him when he came to Minbar, and for his help in preparing the Rangers for the tasks ahead. Rathenn watches Sinclair leave, fearing he will not see him again. The Vorlon Ambassador to Minbar rejoins Rathenn and tells him that Sinclair "is the closed circle" and "is returning to the beginning". But when Rathenn asks the beginning of what, the Vorlon does not answer.


In the War Room Sheridan, Ivanova and Garibaldi are listening to the phantom message. Garibaldi suggests the possibility that, because time does not work properly in Sector 14 since Babylon 4 disappeared, the message could be coming from the future. When Garibaldi boarded Babylon 4 with Sinclair two years earlier to evacuate the crew before it disappeared again, he experienced several time flashes of a battle inside Babylon 5, and they were losing it. He asks Sheridan's permission to go to Sector 14 to investigate, in case the message is really from the future and they need to prepare. As Garibaldi leaves, Sgt. Allan is in Customs, checking the travelling cards of incoming passengers when one of them startles him; Ambassador Sinclair's. Lennier enters Delenn's quarters and finds her troubled and praying. "He is here", she tells Lennier, and also almost crying she says "He is my friend". Lennier replies that it must be done or the dream will die, together with many others. On the table by the candle there is another envelope with the name of Delenn written by the same hand as the other one.


Marcus and Sheridan are in the War Room discussing the latest reports. It seems that the Shadows have stopped their attacks now that the Vorlons are actively involved, but this will not last for long. Delenn interrupts and asks Sheridan and Marcus to go with her to the White Star immediately. Ivanova and one other should also join them. When Sheridan inquires about the identity of the fourth passenger, Sinclair enters through the back door. They all greet one another and, as Sheridan was going to ask Delenn how did she know that Sinclair was on the station, a communication comes in from Garibaldi, who has detected in his long range scanners that the temporal rift in Sector 14 is twice as big as usual, and that this is caused by a powerful tachyon field generated by the Great Machine on Epsilon 3. Inside the Great Machine, Zathras is complaining to one of his caretaker colleagues that something is not working right and that it is up to him to fix it, according to Draal's instructions, because Draal himself is too busy trying to control the Great Machine. Back inside the station, Sheridan argues with Delenn that they should be going to Epsilon 3 to find out what is happening there, but Delenn tells him that there is not time for that, as they are supposed to leave for Sector 14 right now and that she would explain everything once onboard the White Star.


The group leaves Babylon 5 to go to the White Star in two shuttles. Inside one of them, Sheridan is trying to obtain some more information from Sinclair about what is going on, but Sinclair's answers are cryptic. Marcus interrupts him:


Marcus: Captain, if I were you, I'd quit while I was ahead. Back on Minbar, there was a saying among the other Rangers: "The only way to get a straight answer out of Ranger One was to look at every reply in a mirror while hanging upside down from the ceiling."
Sheridan: Did it work?
Marcus: Oddly enough, yes. Or after a while, you passed out and had a vision. Either way, the result was pretty much the same.


Garibaldi arrives at the temporal rift and boosts the signal. He was now able to get an image of Ivanova together with her voice. She adds that the captain is dead, the defence grid is down and Garibaldi has rigged the fusion reactor to explode. She switches to external cameras to show hundreds of Shadow vessels attacking and then she braces herself as the Shadows lock weapons on what's left of C&C and fire. The timestamp on the recording is eight days into the future. On the White Star, Delenn shows to Sheridan and the others an old recording from the time of the last great war against the Shadows, a thousand years ago. The Minbari War Station that had been used as base for long range operations was destroyed by the Shadows but, just as all hope seemed to have been lost, a new station appeared out of nowhere: Babylon 4. With it, the Shadow fleet was destroyed and the Shadows were driven away from Z'ha'dum. Draal sent two additional records to Delenn from the Great Machine. The first one was from two years ago, when Sinclair and Garibaldi went to rescue the crew of Babylon 4. The second was from the time when Babylon 4 first disappeared four years earlier. This one showed Shadow fighters on their way to destroy the station and the White Star itself preventing it. This is why they should go to the temporal rift now and, with the help of Draal and the Great Machine, travel six years back in time to save Babylon 4 and send it back in time one thousand years. Without this, the Shadows would win the war against the Minbari one thousand years ago, or at least force a stalemate, and therefore much of their military forces would still be intact in the present. This would enable them to destroy Babylon 5 in eight days. Just as the recording of Ivanova shows in the alternate-future. Sinclair confirms to the others that what Delenn has told them is the truth, and that he has this from an impeccable source.


Sheridan orders Garibaldi to return and the White Star docks with a small vessel from Epsilon 3 carrying equipment to control the time field and a homing device that must be placed on the central power core of Babylon 4 before they can begin moving it through time. It also carries Zathras. Sinclair recognises him as the strange alien that they found in Babylon 4 last time, and Zathras greets him as The One. Sinclair warns him that, when they meet again inside Babylon 4, he will not recognise him because it would be Sinclair-from-the-past. Zathras does not understand, but since he is good at doing, not understanding, it is alright. He also greets Sheridan as if he knew a lot about him as well. Before they proceed, Sinclair asks Sheridan to order Garibaldi to go directly to Babylon 5 and not to dock with them, and also not to mention that he is here, but refuses to explain why. As they see Garibaldi's Starfury passing by, Sinclair says goodbye to him and recalls the time flashes he had in Babylon 4, where he saw himself being forced to leave Garibaldi to die in the destruction of Babylon 5. He vows not to let it happen.


Zathras hands to all members of the crew a time stabilizer, to prevent them from losing their anchor and becoming unstuck in time, and also from being harmed by the tachyon impulses that can age them rapidly. As the White Star enters the time rift, Sheridan and Delenn hold hands under the understanding gaze of Sinclair. Garibaldi returns to Babylon 5 and Sgt. Allan tells him of Sinclair's visit, to Garibaldi's surprise. He goes to his quarters and checks his messages, discovering one from Sinclair, but it is password-encoded. The White Star has gone through time and is now searching for the Shadow fighters and the bomb that they are escorting. The fighters break off to attack the White Star, but its hull is based on Vorlon organic technology and it is capable of gradually learning how to deflect enemy fire. Garibaldi is trying to find the password unsuccessfully until it hits him: "Hello, old friend". The message from Sinclair is a Goodbye, as he will not be coming back from Babylon 4, and if Garibaldi had gone there as well, he would not return either.


The White Star approaches the bomb as fast as they can. They need to destroy it before it gets too close to Babylon 4, or it would damage the station when it explodes. They are forced to get themselves within range of the bomb's blast to be able to target it properly and, as it explodes, the blast reaches the White Star and an energy surge hits Sheridan's time stabilizer and badly damages it, making him vanish, unstuck in time. Ivanova and Delenn want to try to find him, but Sinclair insists that their best chance is to board Babylon 4 now that their scanners are temporarily blinded by the blast and complete their mission, so that the future is back to what it should be. Only then will they have a better chance of rescuing Sheridan. Meanwhile, an older looking Sheridan is handcuffed and facing an also older Londo Mollari in full imperial regalia in the Centauri Throne Room. Sheridan is confused while Mollari announces that he is about to kill him. In the White Star, Sinclair tries to comfort Delenn and tells her in Minbari that Sheridan will be alright, that he knows what is going to happen and that he accepts his destiny. Mollari faces Sheridan and rants about how Sheridan and his allies drove the Shadows away but did not destroy all the Shadow's minions and now Centauri Prime has been almost destroyed. He shows him the burning of the capital through a window. The White Star boards Babylon 4 and Ivanova and Marcus try to find a way to bring the equipment to the reactor system. Sinclair and Delenn ask Zathras to bring the equipment inside the station:


Zathras: Yes. Yes. Zathras is used to being beast of burden to other people's needs. Very sad life. Probably have very sad death, but at least there is symmetry. Go, go, Zathras take care.
Sinclair(to Delenn): Ready?
Delenn: Why do your people always ask if someone is ready right before you're going to do something massively unwise?
Sinclair: Tradition.