BPP Crusade 109 – Racing The Night

The Babylon Project Podcast

We liked this episode for a number of reasons. Understanding that JMS originally intended this episode to be the premiere helped. With that in mind, it becomes clear why we’re seeing an assortment of character introductions that don’t seem to belong in the nine episode (as aired). It also explains why Max seems to be back to his fully-abrasive personality after we’ve seen several episodes he may have a heart and a moral compass that isn’t fully driven by corporate profit and politics as a company man.

The Excalibur’s crew is on a planet seeking the cure to the plague on Earth, Max is making a number of discoveries, but with little medical advancement, and Dr. Chambers has discovered there are at least 30 kinds of DNA present.

Galen is missing (for the moment), with his absence attributed to being a Technomage, and Dureena is climbing through tunnels where she discovers what appears to be a giant machine. She’s called back to the surface without the immediate chance to tell the others what she’s looking at. Time passes, and it eventually surfaces that the people of the planet are cryogenically dormant—sleeping—with a single being awake and taking care of the machine. The storyline takes a sinister turn when the caretaker tells Gideon and crew why the population is asleep: they were also infected with the plague that now haunts the Earth. They had been trying for four years to lure others to the planet, then experimenting on them even to the point of death, in hopes that they’d find a cure. The episode places ethics of science and experimentation in front of us to ponder: is it okay to kill some in order to save many more?

When Excalibur tries to depart, the ship is grabbed by a tractor beam and starts being pulled to the surface. In order to escape, Gideon rotates the front of the ship toward the surface where the beam originates, and fires the main gun. The tractor beam fails and the ship recovers control in time to prevent its destruction in the planet’s atmosphere.

As the ship and crew depart, Galen asks Gideon how he picked this particular planet to search. Gideon’s response: “I have my sources.” As the show ends, we’re shown his source…a mysterious, glowing box that we already know is the Apocalypse Box, previously won in a game of cards. We’re left wondering what this box really is, how it works, and why Captain Gideon trusts it.

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