Ambassador Sinclair returns to pull Babylon 4 through time ([[Babylon Squared]]) Part 1 of 2.
####Overview

####Guest Stars

Michael O’Hare as Ambassador Sinclair. Tim Choate as Zathras.
####Lurk

http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/synops/060.html
####Backplot

The last Shadow war nearly ended in defeat when the command center, a Minbari space station, was destroyed by Shadow forces. But shortly thereafter, a replacement arrived out of nowhere: Babylon 4. With Babylon 4 in place, the Minbari, the Vorlons, and their allies were able to drive the Shadows off Z’ha’dum and destroy a good two-thirds of the Shadows’ warships. Until Delenn arrived at Babylon 5, the origin of the replacement station was a mystery to the Minbari.

Six years ago, just before Babylon 4 vanished, some of the Shadows’ allies recognized the station from the last war. A group of Shadow fighters tried to deliver a fusion bomb onto the station, whose destruction would look like an accident and would lead to a Shadow victory, or a stalemate, in the previous war. They were fought off by the White Star, which travelled back in time through the rift in Sector 14 to stop them. These events were recorded by Varn in the Great Machine.

The Great Machine is responsible for opening the time rift and allowing Babylon 4 to be pulled backward through time. However, opening the rift strains the Machine, and Draal, to its limits.

The White Star’s Vorlon technology includes the ability to learn from past experiences. Its previous encounters with Shadow vessels have strengthened its resistance to some Shadow weapons.

There is at least one Vorlon on Minbar, a fact that’s known to at least some of the former Grey Council.

In one possible future, Sheridan is destined to win the war against the Shadows, but not entirely destroy them; some Shadow minions will come to Centauri Prime, where an older Londo reigns as Emperor, and lay waste to the capital city.

While on Minbar, Sinclair gained a reputation among the Rangers for answering questions cryptically.

The Rangers were put together with the help of the Grey Council, or at least some of its number, including Rathenn, the Minbari who restored Sinclair’s memory in the comic issue “In Darkness Find Me.” He’s an old friend of Delenn’s; she asked Draal about him in [[A Voice in the Wilderness part 1]] And he seems to revere her, accepting Sinclair’s status without question at her behest.

At the close of the last Shadow war, someone who knew Sinclair would be on Minbar left him a note in a sealed box. The box was stored in a temple for over nine hundred years with instructions to not open it until a specific date, a date which has now arrived.

During their first visit to Babylon 4, Garibaldi and Sinclair both saw the same flashforward of Garibaldi defending the station against unknown attackers.
####Unanswered Questions

Who left the note for Sinclair? (See Analysis)

Sinclair has a scar on his cheek (as also shown in [[Babylon Squared]].) Where did he get it?

Where did Delenn’s note come from? How long has she had it?

What was the Vorlon doing on Minbar? Has he/she/it been there all along?

How far into the future has Sheridan been thrown?

Why did Sheridan end up on Centauri Prime, presumably some distance from Sector 14?

What did Londo mean by greeting Sheridan, “Welcome back from the abyss?”

Where did Zathras come from? Has there been a community of his people on Epsilon 3 for generations, or are they more recent arrivals?

Why was Zathras honored to meet Sheridan? What were the things Draal instructed him not to mention?

When Zathras was looking at the Great Machine, he said, “Not good.” What was he talking about? Was the strain of opening the time rift causing the Machine to malfunction?

Were the Shadows, or their allies, also responsible for the sabotage of Babylons 1, 2, and 3? If so, why didn’t they destroy Babylon 4 before it was finished?

Did Babylon 4 survive the war? If so, where is it now?
####Analysis

It seems likely that Sinclair left himself the note. In [[Babylon Squared]], Sinclair was shown to be present on Babylon 4 when it shifted through time; and from his message to Garibaldi, it seems the note told him he was destined to stay in the past and help defeat the Shadows then.

If that’s correct, and the Minbari holy books contain instructions about the box, it suggests Sinclair was involved in writing the books. Very possibly he was Valen, “a Minbari not born of Minbar,” as Lennier described Valen in [[Passing Through Gethsemane]]., Sinclair, as the Grey Council discovered ([[Points of Departure]]) somehow has a Minbari soul.

Which leads to the question, what does Sinclair’s time travel have to do with the Minbari soul migration, if anything? Does he have a Minbari soul because he’s a giant figure from Minbari legend, or vice versa?

Presumably, if Sinclair is Valen and Draal knows about it, that’s why Zathras was honored to meet Sinclair. What Zathras knows about Sheridan, though, is an open question — perhaps he has been watching recent events unfold on Babylon 5 and simply respects Sheridan’s stand against Earth and the Shadows.

Rathenn appears to defer to Sinclair. If a former member of the Grey Council looks to Sinclair for direction, Sinclair must be one of the most influential people on Minbar.

Londo’s description of Sheridan’s victory over the Shadows makes it sound like a fairly distant event, but the Centauri capital city was burning while Sheridan stood there. Perhaps the Shadow minions Londo mentioned have been slowly destroying the city, building by building, since the close of the war, and the Centauri have been powerless to stop them. Or, perhaps, the end of the war isn’t as far back as Londo implies. (It’s interesting to note that Londo doesn’t appear surprised by Sheridan’s appearance or by the fact that Sheridan hasn’t aged.)

Sheridan looks older (his hair is lighter) and may be dressed in something other than his uniform as he visits Londo in the throne room — it looks like he’s wearing a leather jacket, but his outfit isn’t shown clearly enough to tell for sure. If it’s different, though, could his trip forward be along the lines of the flashforward experienced by Sinclair and Garibaldi, rather than a physical transfer? If so, where is his body?

If Babylon 4 is being sent back to help defeat the Shadows in the previous war, will other equipment be sent too? For instance, loading the docking bays full of Minbari fighters (or better still, Vorlon fighters) could do as much to turn the tide of battle as the mere presence of the station, especially assuming that Minbari and Vorlon weapons have improved in the intervening thousand years.

On the other hand, perhaps the non-destruction of the Shadows in the last war wasn’t a matter of military strength after all; perhaps the Shadows hid somewhere such that they were impossible to wipe out. If so, will the same thing happen again? Londo’s accusation suggests it will, to some extent.

How long after Delenn arrived on Babylon 5 did she figure out where Babylon 4 came from? Were the Minbari really so uninterested in Babylon 4 that the Grey Council never saw a picture of the station? Did Delenn recognize the similarity in design as soon as she arrived, or did she find a picture of Babylon 4 in B5’s archives?

Along similar lines, was the station not identified as “Babylon 4” when it appeared in the past? If it was, the Minbari should have at least heard of the Babylon Project in its earlier stages, and would have known B4’s identity before Delenn arrived on B5. It’s possible the Minbari lost whatever records contained the name of their second base of operations, or that Sinclair convinced the Minbari to leave such information out in the interest of not altering the future.

If the Great Machine opened a rift for Babylon 4 six years ago (while, it should be noted, the machine was under Varn’s control, not Draal’s) and can still open a rift today for the White Star, will it be able to open other rifts to send more people back? Or is Draal simply not as capable of handling the strain as Varn was?

On the other hand, maybe the original time rift was generated from the present day by Draal, and Varn wasn’t involved at all. In that case, the Machine may only be able to manipulate time once.

If B4 was being pulled back in time, why did it reappear four years later than it vanished? Sinclair, according to [[Babylon Squared]], interrupted the station’s time travel to allow the crew to get off. But if it was travelling backward through time, that should have caused it to reappear some time before it vanished.

Maybe B4 will have to be pulled forward to the present day, from which point Draal can send it back — that is, maybe Draal can only open rifts between the present day and some other time, not between two arbitrary times.

The Great Machine’s time-manipulation abilities suggest that perhaps it was built specifically to pull Babylon 4 back through time. If so, who built it, and how did they know about Babylon 4? Their technology in that area exceeds the Minbari’s, which says that the Machine’s builders were First Ones. In that case, what was the role of Varn’s people?

Delenn told Sheridan that the Minbari did not have the technology to control a time field “as unstable as this one.” How much time-manipulation technology do they have?

If there’s a Vorlon on Minbar, could it have been responsible for Delenn’s childhood vision ([[Confessions and Lamentations]]?)

In [[Babylon Squared]], Zathras hands his time stabilizer to the space-suited figure (possibly Sinclair,) who promptly vanishes. Was that a replacement for Sheridan’s stabilizer, or for another broken one?

Ivanova’s wish has come true — she’s on Babylon 4 and Garibaldi is left behind. ([[Babylon Squared]])

In Ivanova’s distress call, she says, “This is Earth Alliance station Babylon 5.” Presumably in the heat of the moment her Earth Force training kicked in and she didn’t consider that B5 isn’t an Earth Alliance station any more. (See jms speaks.)
####Notes

As in [[Babylon Squared]], the term “unstuck in time” is a reference to Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s “Slaughterhouse Five.”

Garibaldi’s attempted passwords: “Jeff,” “Jeffrey,” “peekaboo” (Garibaldi’s computer password, most recently used in [[Ceremonies of Light and Dark]],) “Susan,” “Michael,” “socks,” “fasten,” “zip” (the last three from the conversation between Sinclair and Garibaldi on their way to Babylon 4 in [[Babylon Squared]],) and finally, “hello, old friend,” Sinclair’s opening line in the message delivered to Garibaldi by the Ranger in [[The Coming of Shadows]].

Viewers outside North America may have some difficulty recognizing all the partnerships to which Sinclair compares himself and Sheridan.

“Butch and Sundance” were Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, two outlaws from the days of the Old West (of more recent fame for the movie in which they were portrayed by Paul Newman and Robert Redford). “Lewis and Clark” were not Lois Lane and Clark Kent, but Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who explored much of the territory of the Louisiana Purchase (a vast expanse between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains that the United States acquired from France in 1803) from 1804 to 1806, eventually reaching the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest. “Lucy and Ethel” were Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz, the characters portrayed by Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance in the 1950s sitcom “I Love Lucy.”

The building in which Sinclair and Rathenn talk bears some resemblance in outline to the encounter suit of the Vorlon inside — and even more resemblance to a Shadow.