“The Long Dark” is episode five of season two of Babylon 5.
A ship is tumbling through space and Sheridan arrives in C&C and speak to Ivanova. She says that they got a weak signal from deep space – not from the jump gate – and it’s on a frequency that she has never heard before. Sheridan asks if it’s alien in nature and Ivanova tells him not exactly. The ship is broadcasting a message, in English, saying ‘This is the Copernicus. We come in peace.’
In downbelow, two lurkers start fighting and awaken a third, Amis (Dwight Schultz, perhaps best known for The A-Team, but he also played Reginald Barclay in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Voyager). who starts shouting. He says he needs some ozones, but can’t find any, then says where are you before uncovering a porthole in the floor and looking through. Then Amis starts praying, in a rather jumbled manner.
A bot is sent out to Copernicus and Amis is in the plaza, shouting that the day of judgement is coming and that everyone is in great danger. Amis confronts G’Kar, which Londo finds amusing – until Amis confronts him as well, before Amis is taken away by Garibaldi.
Garibaldi arrives in C&C as the bot starts sweeping the ship. Ivanova is still trying to identify the design, then the bot comes across the name Copernicus on the side – also in English. Some letters in front of that have been scuffed off, and Sheridan says that they should read ‘USS.’ He says it’s an early deep range design, used by Earth before they got jump gate technology from the Centauri. Which puts the ship at over 100 years old.
Sheridan contacts Dr. Franklin to tell him that they may have a patient for him, as life signs have been detected from the Copernicus. Inside the ship, there are two cryogenic stasis tubes. The occupant of one of them is very dead; the person in the other, a woman, is still alive but her life signs are fading. Franklin says that they need to get the woman to Medlab or they will lose her. When the tube is opened, a blast of something leaves it. As the woman is being taken to Medlab, she technically dies briefly in the transit tube.
Garibaldi checks on Amis, who is having bad dreams, in security. There is a guard watching him, one who says that they should space all the lurkers. Garibaldi asks if the guard fought during the war, and he states that he missed it. The chief then says that Amis didn’t – and he knows, because he’s had the same dream.
On the Copernicus, Ivanova is trying to get the systems working. So she used fixing method one – she hits it. The systems come back to life, but Ivanova hears something, although she can’t see anything.
When Amis wakes up in security, Garibaldi is there and Amis sounds a lot more stable. Amis wants to know what he did this time, so the chief tells him. Garibaldi wants to know what Amis did during the war, and he says that he was a gropo – a ground pounder. Which was what Garibaldi was too.
Elsewhere, Ivanova speaks to Sheridan and says that, according to the Copernicus‘ systems, the other stasis tube didn’t malfunction. So the occupant should still be alive. Only they aren’t. Which suggests murder.
When Franklin examines the corpse, he says that the dead man has lost about half of his body weight. That’s not what killed him; he died from organ failure. Although that doesn’t seem to be quite the right term; the man’s organs didn’t fail, they were removed from his body. Without leaving a mark. Currently, there is only one suspect for the murder, the woman from the other tube. However, the logs show her to be in stasis the whole time.
The woman, Mariah Cirrus, wakes up and tells Franklin that she and her husband, Will, were part of a commercial research group. She expected to wake up in the future. just not over 100 years in the future. Amis, who has been released, goes and finds the Copernicus.
Mariah is also not exactly happy to find out that people still haven’t outgrown violence. She also seems to be having nightmares and visions. Dr. Franklin is also attracted to her, and the feeling seems to be mutual.
Amis, who has started preaching death and destruction again, is once again picked up by Garibaldi. Who passes on a story from Amis to Ivanova and Sheridan. During the war, Amis was stationed at a deep space listening post on a dead moon. Of the 47 stationed there, Amis was the only survivor after an attack by a monster. The Copernicus, during its journey, passed near to the same moon (the Copernicus seems to have supposedly travelled a lot further a lot faster than a sublight ship should be capable of).
At a council meeting, a member of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds says that when the darkness was defeated in the great war, the soldiers of darkness scattered. Now that the darkness is rising again, the soldiers are being summoned back. This means this isn’t simply a Monster of the Week episode; it’s connected to other things that are going on.