“GROPOS”
Written by Larry DiTillio
Directed by Jim Johnston
Season 2, Episode 10
Production episode 210
Original air date: February 8, 1995
It was the dawn of the third age… A quiet night in CnC is interrupted, to Ivanova’s chagrin, by the unexpected arrival of the EAS Schwarzkopf, along with several support vessels, under the command of General Richard Franklin, the father of Dr. Franklin.
Sheridan rushes to apologetically and belatedly greet him, not having had any word of his arrival. However, that’s on purpose: His mission is classified, for the moment. Even the ground-pounders (or GROPOS) under his command don’t know the real mission. Right now, General Franklin needs accommodations for all 25,000 of his troops. Ivanova and Garibaldi struggle to fulfill that request: For starters, they put some folks in existing quarters, which we see when Keffer finds two strangers making themselves at home in his cabin.
General Franklin reads Sheridan, Ivanova, and Garibaldi—and only the three of them—in on his real mission. They’re off to Akdor to assist the local government in putting down a rebellion. EarthGov hasn’t officially announced that they’re assisting the government yet. They will do so right before the Schwarzkopf arrives. Part of why they’re stopping at B5 is because Sheridan has been to Akdor before; the general wants to go over the battle plan with the captain. The other reason why is that they’re providing upgrades to B5’s defenses.
Franklin père et fils are reunited, and it’s a bit on the tense side. There’s obviously a lot of resentment and spectacular lack of communication there. To prove it, when Ivanova brings some Marines to bunk down in medlab, Franklin throws a nutty. He and Ivanova talk about it both there and later off-duty in the Eclipse Café, where Franklin laments that his father always makes him incredibly angry. Ivanova—who has some experience with paternal difficulties—urges him to try to find a common ground with his old man, as you never know when the chances to do so will run out.
After Delenn expresses concern about the flipping great wodges of Marines stumbling about the station, a trio of them start to harass her. Led by PFC Kleist, they’re not thrilled with a Minbari trying to look human. Another PFC, Dodger, interpolates herself between Kleist and Delenn, and while the ambassador is able to depart thanks to Dodger’s interference, a brawl soon breaks out. Garibaldi is able to stop it, and convinces Sergeant Plug to drop the matter without charges.
Dodger thanks Garibaldi, and is stunned to realize that Kleist was picking on an ambassador. Garibaldi is called away, and Dodger admires his ass as he leaves.
General Franklin shares the battle plan—Operation: Sudden Death—with Sheridan, who advises the general that this is a terrible idea. The government is lying about the fortifications the rebels have, and the casualties will be way worse than they have been led to believe. However, EarthGov is insistent on establishing a presence in Akdor’s system. It’s proximate to both Narn and Centauri territory, and with a war heating up between those two, Earth needs to be ready for when their conflict spills out into the rest of the galaxy. Unfortunately, the price for having that presence is to put down the rebellion.
Dodger tracks down Garibaldi when he goes off duty and hits all over him. Encouraged by Welch, Garibaldi shows her around the station, eventually winding up at his quarters. However, Garibaldi puts the brakes on, as he tends to rush things, and that messes the relationships up. Dodger angrily points out that she’s a ground-pounder—she doesn’t have time for a relationship, she just wanted a roll in the proverbial hay. She leaves in a huff, with Garibaldi belatedly realizing that he’s seriously fucked things up.
The general goes to his son to apologize, and the pair of them kiss and make up, with General Franklin, not for the first time, urging him to actually contact his mother and sister every once in a while.
Garibaldi tracks down Dodger in the Zocalo to apologize, and she does likewise. Elsewhere in the bar, Keffer exchanges war stories with the two PFCs he’s now rooming with: Large and Yang. The former is a veteran, the latter a rookie. Keffer accidentally bumps Kleist, and soon a brawl breaks out. Garibaldi and his people try to break it up (and at one point, he and Dodger almost punch each other before they realize who the other is), but it doesn’t really end until General Franklin, Sheridan, and Plug show up and say they’re moving out.
As the GROPOS board the Schwarzkopf, Garibaldi and Dodger share a kiss before she embarks, while the Franklins get a goodbye.
Later, folks are watching ISN’s report on the mission. Franklin is relieved to see his father interviewed by the reporter on Akdor, meaning he survived. Welch gives Garibaldi the casualty report, and Kleist, Large, Yang, and Dodger are all on it—we then cut to their broken corpses on the ground at Akdor.
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan proves a little too good at providing accurate intelligence to General Franklin, certainly more accurate than Akdor’s government manages, as Sheridan predicts that it’ll be impossible to put down the rebels without massive casualties, words that prove sadly prophetic.
Ivanova is God. Ivanova starts the episode talking about how much she enjoys the quiet, which is always a recipe for things to stop being quiet any second. You’d think she’d know better.
She also urges Franklin to be good to his father, so he doesn’t get the same regrets we saw her express in “TKO” at her father’s shiva.
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi manages to fail at keeping order on the station with 25,000 Marines on board (not that anybody really could do that), and also fails at having a one-night stand.
His father served with General Franklin during the Dilgar War. The general was apparently impressed with Alfredo Garibaldi—not so much with his kid.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Delenn’s transformation proves not to sit well with veterans of the Earth-Minbari War.
No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Dodger has designs on Garibaldi from the moment she sees him and his ass. Garibaldi’s baggage—his disastrous relationship with Lise Yates, his obvious lack of any kind of chance to Winters—sadly gets in the way of his and Dodger’s nookie.
Welcome aboard. Marie Marshall makes the first of two appearances as Dodger; she’ll be back in season five’s “Day of the Dead.” The various other PFCs are played by Morgan Hunter, Ken Foree, and Art Chudabala, while Ryan Cutrona plays Plug.
We’ve also got a bunch of recurring regulars: Joshua Cox back from “A Spider in the Web” as Corwin, who’ll be back next time in “All Alone in the Night”; Maggie Egan back from “Chrysalis” as the ISN anchor, who’ll return in “Confessions and Lamentations”; and David L. Crowley back from “Soul Mates” in his final appearance as Welch.
However, the big guest is the late great Paul Winfield as General Franklin, adding B5 to a genre resumé that also included Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, The Terminator, Mars Attacks!, Batman Beyond, Gargoyles, and the classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Darmok,” not to mention one of your humble rewatcher’s personal favorites, Presumed Innocent.
Trivial matters. The Schwarzkopf was named after General Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., who led U.S. forces during the Gulf War of the early 1990s. It’s possible that the ship was also named after Major General Norman Schwarzkopf Sr., who, among other things, was in charge of the investigation into the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s son in 1932.
Keffer tells Large and Yang about the time he faced down a Minbari squadron in “Points of Departure.” Ivanova mentions Connoly, the head of the dockworkers, seen in “By Any Means Necessary.” Garibaldi references his relationship with Lise Yates, seen in the “A Voice in the Wilderness” two-parter and “Babylon Squared,” as well as his periodic attempts to flirt with Winters, seen most recently in “A Spider in the Web.”
While neither G’Kar nor Mollari appear in the episode, Delenn does mention that the two won’t even speak to each other, both anxious for the war the Narn declared in “The Coming of Shadows” to start in earnest.
The echoes of all of our conversations. “I’m a doctor, my duty is to heal.”
“Then heal humans! Stephen, I know you’re fascinated by these alien creatures, but they’re a threat to humanity—and they always will be. Help your own kind.”
“Life is life, whether it’s wrapped in skin, scales, or feathers. Now, if you respected these beings instead of constantly trying to murder them, you’d appreciate that.”
The Franklin family argument, also the classic soldier-vs.-scientist argument.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Leave it to the infantry to ruin a guy’s morning.” Last week, we got one of B5’s best episodes. This week we get, um, not that. “GROPOS” is a dreary collection of tiresome clichés masquerading as a script. It’s hard to say what’s more excruciating to watch, the stereotypical Marines doing stereotypical Marine things or the stereotypical father-son arguing-and-reconciliation scenes.
The only saving graces of this utter nonsense are the performances of Marie Marshall and Paul Winfield. Marshall gives Dodger a gleeful charm that is very compelling, and Winfield was never even really capable of giving a bad performance. Even so, neither is a particularly well-written character, and both suffer for that. Still, you can see why Garibaldi was interested in Dodger—and vice versa, truly—and you really just want to smack Garibaldi for screwing it up.
As for General Franklin, it was an interesting touch to have a Black character give the “why don’t you help your own kind” speech to his son, since that’s the sort of thing a White character might have said to his son the doctor who treated Black people. (Something we would see in real life a decade after this episode aired, when General Colin Powell, who was Black, used the exact same language to justify keeping LGBT people out of the military that was used prior to 1948 to justify keeping Black military personnel segregated.) Unfortunately, the script doesn’t really do anything with that after the first conversation between dad and kid, which is a blown opportunity to give the episode some life. Or at least something beyond the war-movie clichés.
The episode’s plot also strains credulity, as there’s just no way B5 would be able to accommodate 25,000 new arrivals without warning. It might have worked if General Franklin requested shore leave for his people, but to give them all bunks? That’s madness, and logistically completely unfeasible for the station to be able to provide.
Next week: “All Alone in the Night.”
