Captain Gideon, Lt. Matheson, and their (unnamed) Explorer Ship return to earth shortly after the Drakh Attack. They’re then called to Mars, where they meet ‘The Senator’ (Tim Thommerson), who informs Gideon that he has been chosen by President Sheridan of the ISA to command the Excalibur in the attempt to find a cure for the Drakh Plague, which will wipe out all life on earth in Five Years. Gideon chooses Matheson as his first officer, and meets up with Dureena Nafeel and Galen the Technomage. They receive a call from an Omega Destroyer that is pursuing a crippled Drakh Ship. They manage to force it down on a planet before it destroys them. On the planet is an IPX expedition headed by Max Eilerson, and including Trace Miller. They’re immediately attacked by the Drakh who survived the attack, and hide in some alien ruins while they attempt to call for help. The Excalibur arrives, and fends off an attack from Drakh Reinforcements, rescuing the IPX crew and capturing a Drakh Councilman in the process. IPX reassigns Max to the Excalibur as the ship’s xenobiologist. Trace joins up as a pilot, as well.

[NOTE: This episode should be taken with a grain of salt. It was the last one produced, and JMS has washed his hands of it, since it shows the signs of way too much Network Interference from the folks at TNT. A good deal of the information in this episode openly contradicts information we see elsewhere in the series. Best to ignore it, unless you’re an absolute bleeding-from-the-eardrums fanboy, and even then, it’s just going to annoy you.]

Gideon dreams flashbacks of a brief visit to Babylon 5, shortly after he took command of the Excalibur, and was forced to do some hardball negotiating with the Drazi Ambassador.

Unrelated to this, A thousand years ago, the Shadows infected a non-spacefaring world with the Drakh Plague, for some reason. After two years of trying to find a cure, the aliens on this world simply froze the entire population into suspended animation, awaiting a cure. As caretakers, they left one ‘awake’ at any given time. His job is to capture and experiment on any aliens that happen by the world, attempting to find a cure.

The Apocalypse Box again guides Gideon to a planet, claiming something of worth is on it. The planet is abandoned, except for a big, malevolent machine that uses nanotechnology to make the members of the Landing Party kill each other. Galen recognizes this as a Technomage technique, and investigates. He finds the Alien Machine is sentient, and his hardwired with the personality of dead Technomage. It seems a century before, there were two warring parties on this planet, and one invited the Technomage in to help them wipe out the other side. He wiped out both sides, instead, and left this machine behind as his legacy. Galen destroys the machine, but looses his staff in the process. Dureena somehow gets it back for him, for which he is inordinately grateful. Meanwhile, Dr. Chambers has managed to take a finite supply of the Technomage nanites and convert them into a “Nanovirus Shield”. In essence, it will line the walls of the lungs, and keep a person safe from infection by the Drakh Plague for about 36 to 48 hours. It will only work with minor exposure, however, and would not protect a person in a heavily infected area.

A semi-humorous episode intended as a parody of the X-files. The Excalibur encounters a Mulder-and-Scully-like pair of aliens drifting in deep space. They accuse Gideon and Earth of being involved in a secret conspiracy to subjugate his people and their world for some undisclosed reason or another. Gideon disputes this, until the aliens provide rather conclusive proof. Another Alien boards the ship (smoking cigarettes) and also denies everything. Scully and Mulder escape from the Excalibur and go back to their homeworld to disclose ‘The Truth.’ The Cigarette-Smoking Alien later explains what’s going on: His planet was engaged in a generations-long Civil War that threatened to wipe the species out. About that time, they intercepted communications signals from earth — TV shows, etc — and decided to pretend people from Earth had covertly taken over their government. This would give everyone on all sides of the Civil War something to rally behind: Get rid of the invaders. This is where the situation has stood for more than a hundred years: With the paranoid populace suspecting Earth is controlling the planet, and the Government denying it. Paranoia has held their society together. The Cigarette-Smoking alien then leaves for home.

The Excalibur is met by a Warlock Class destroyer, carrying one of the twelve senators who happened to be off-world at the time of the Drakh Attack. He assigns the Excalibur to covertly go back to earth in order to confer with the head of the Plague Research Efforts on earth. En rout, they rescue Captain Elizabeth Lochley (Tracy Scoggins, cf. fifth season of B5), who is drifting in space in a crippled fighter, following a run-in with some Raiders. Back at Earth, someone has been shot into orbit in a small pod. The Excalibur takes him aboard through an airlock in the Medlab, and decontaminates the capsule to an inch of their life. Dr. Chambers is surprised to find that the passenger in the Pod is Dr. Stephen Franklin (Richard Biggs), the head of Xenobiological Research for the Earth Alliance. Lochley is kept unaware of her friend Stephen’s presence on the ship, and Franklin, infected with the plague, is confined to the Isolab. He and Dr. Chambers confer, and now have a pure sample of the Drakh Virus to experiment with. The Drakh Plague, it turns out, is not Really a virus, but a nanite. Franklin congratulates Chambers on the nanovirus shield (Cf. The Memory of War) and is returned to Earth. Meanwhile, the Drakh attack the ship. Lochley leads a squadron into battle, and they ultimately repel the aliens. In the final scene, Gideon returns Lochley to B5, and contemplates going there on leave some time.

Getting dressed in the ‘New Uniform’ one morning, Captain Gideon catches sight of himself in the mirror and is again annoyed that he looks like a bellboy. He contacts Matheson on the bridge, and says “Is there any evidence whatsoever that these uniforms are improving morale back home?” “No,” Matheson answers, “There’s no sign they’ve had any effect whatsoever. I think the people back in Earthgov are just trying to find something to do to keep busy.” Annoyed, captain Gideon replies, “Contact Earthforce and inform them that all the New Uniforms were destroyed in a laundry malfunction, and that pending re-supply from earth, we’re going back to the standard uniforms.” Matheson replies, “But captain, there hasn’t been any Laundry Malfunction…” Gideon interrupts, “There will be.” At this point in the series, the ‘Bellboy’ Uniforms were discarded, and they went back to the black Jumpsuits.

Gideon and the crew of the Excalibur make a deal with the devil in an attempt to find a cure for the Drakh Plague. They meet up with Mr. Alfred Bester (Walter Koenig), who’s on the run for War Crimes he committed during the recent Telepath War. He’s been hiding out in a small human colony, but the locals are getting wise to his identity. He’s willing to trade information that may prove useful to Gideon, in exchange for safe passage away from the colony, and off to a new world where he can make a fresh start. In the end, Gideon double-crosses Bester, stranding him on a livable, but desolate, world. Jerry Doyle guest stars as Mr. Garibaldi.

Exploring a seemingly abandoned World, the crew discovers a mute alien living in a large glass bubble. He’s taken back to the ship, where he causes the crew to have serious flashbacks relating to turning points in their lives. We see Gideon as an ensign on the Cerberus ten years earlier, when the ship is attacked by something — apparently a shadow ship — and stranding him floating in space. He’s rescued by Galen, and eventually returned to earth. Earthforce doesn’t believe his report about a shadowy vessel — curious given the fact that the EA was already dealing with the Shadows via President Clark at the time, but this will be explained later in the series — and that appears to be the end of it. We see the death of Galen’s wife, Isabelle. We see Matheson at the end of the Telepath War, as a loyal psicop. He took pity on a Rogue leader, and this resulted in the destruction of the Psi Corps base, the death of many of the Corps personnel, and, quite possibly, the Corps’ ultimate defeat at the end of the Telepath War. We also see Gideon some years later, when he won the Apocalypse Box under mysterious circumstances in a poker game. Ultimately, the alien is replaced on his desolate world, and the Excalibur leaves, none the wiser, but with far more backstory.

June 15, 2267

A glimpse of Captain Gideon as Ahab, desperately seeking vengeance on the whale that maimed him: The Apocalypse Box guides Gideon to the ship that destroyed the Cerberus ten years before. It looks superficially like a Shadow vessel, but is clearly of a different design than we’ve ever seen before. The senior staff — excepting Max Eilerson — initially oppose Gideon’s desire to pursue and capture the ship he’s been unofficially chasing for a decade, but then they see it attack a defenseless alien civilian vessel, killing thousands. At this point, Dr. Chambers agrees to the chase, and they eventually catch up with it. A pitched battle ensues in an asteroid belt, in which the Shadow Ship is crippled. As Gideon is preparing a boarding party, the damaged vessel self-destructs to avoid capture. The Excalibur scans the debris looking for clues, but can find nothing larger than a matchbook cover. The Excalibur leaves the scene of the battle, and just as we see it vanish into a Jump Point, we see a hunk of wreckage from the Shadow Vessel drift by. Unmistakable in the wreckage is a Kennedy Silver Dollar. The Shadow Vessel was apparently being run by Humans!

Dureena is imprisoned by her mentor, Nafeek, and questioned about why she’s doing on the Excalibur.

Lochley Episode # 4

Lochley Episode # 5

Exploring a lead from the Apocalypse Box, the Excalibur discovers an uninhabited planet that clearly had a base on it in the recent past, however this base was recently obliterated, presumably in order to destroy any evidence about it’s construction and use that might have been apparent if it had been simply abandoned. A second shadow-vessel turns up, physically identical to the one destroyed in To the Ends of the Earth (Episode 13). The Excalibur covertly gives chase, pursuing it to an uncharted star system in the middle of nowhere, well off the normal Jump Routes. When they enter the Solar System, they see fighters coming out to intercept them. Gideon launches his own fighters, but before a battle can begin, Trace Miller informs Gideon that the fighters coming up from the Planet are Earthforce Fighters painted black! An Earth Alliance Major, ostensibly the leader of the Planet with the Shadow Ship on it, contacts the Excalibur, and tells them to stand down. Gideon agrees, but refuses to leave the system, threatening to call in other ships if The Major doesn’t explain what’s going on. The Major agrees to let Gideon (alone) come down, and essentially tells him the Planet is the site of a huge E.A. Covert Operation, and that Gideon is not cleared to know any more than that. If he persists in trying to find out what’s going on, they’ll destroy the Excalibur and make it look like an accident. Gideon reluctantly agrees to leave, but later on sneaks back with Galen in the Technomage’s ship. Galen stays with his vessel, while the Captain infiltrates the EA Base. Once inside, he comes across horrifically deformed half-human/half-shadow people. He’s captured, and taken directly to the Major.

The Major tells Gideon that this Covert Op was started prior to the Shadow War (2258–2260), and was an attempt to integrate Shadow Technology into Human Equipment.

[NOTE: My own supposition here is that these people were the ones who built the “Shadow Omegas” that nearly killed Susan Ivanova in Season 4 of B5] Gideon points out that Shadowtech is illegal, and the Major states that Earthgov — at least parts of it — are fully aware of this Covert Op, and sanction it. Gideon threatens to blow the story wide open, and the Major accuses him of being sanctimonious — Gideon, he accuses, has no problems using Shadow Tech when it suits his need. Gideon asks him what he’s talking about, and the Major states that the Vorlons created the Telepaths as allies among the humans. Likewise, the Shadows created the Technomages as Allies among the Human! This shakes Gideon. The Major goes on: The Technomages decided to ignore their masters. Earthforce, however, wanted what the Technomages had, but they refused to share. This is the real reason the Technomages abandoned human space in 2259: Earthforce was coming after them! Gideon asks why the Major’s shadowship destroyed the Cerberus ten years before. He answers that it was an accident. The ship was dispatched to attack the Technomages, but the Cerberus blundered across its route before the Mages showed up. The Shadow-Hybrid got confused, and attacked the Cerberus instead. At this point, Galen busts in, rescuing Gideon. Some kind of bio-armor has extruded on Galen, making him look like the deformed human/Shadow hybrids Gideon saw earlier. Galen essentially destroys the whole base by himself. Gideon asks him about the Shadow/Technomage link, and Galen doesn’t deny it. Gideon tells Galen to drop him off on Mars, and then just go away. For good. Galen reluctantly agrees. Undercover on Mars, Gideon is planning to blow open the whole conspiracy. He’s contacted by the crew of the Excalibur, who offer him their support. An Earthforce sniper shoots Gideon from a rooftop as he’s on his way to a press conference to break the story. The last scene of the episode is Gideon falling to the ground, dead or dying, as Galen runs towards him, trying to save him.