Babylon 5/Recap/S02/E05 The Long Dark

The Long Dark
"The usual. The good times, and the bad times, the revelations, the revolutions. Outbreaks of hysteria, the parade of scandals, promises, constitutions, and the occasional war. The last big ones were against the Dilgar, which we won, and against the Minbari, which...well, that's a long story."

- Franklin's summary of the last hundred years

This episode contains examples of:

 * The Cuckoolander Was Right: Amos' sanity may be questionable, but he knew what he was talking about when it came to the Dark Soldier.
 * Cryonics Failure: Averted. The cryo tube didn't fail, it's occupant died of something far more sinister.
 * Demonic Possession: It lives inside its host and slowly feeds on them.
 * Fish Out of Temporal Water: Mariah Cirrus has spent the last hundred years in cryo-stasis.
 * Harbinger of Impending Doom: Amos, who comes across as a loon. Well, he is a loon, more or less, he just happens to be correct. He's faced the Dark Soldier before.
 * Hell Seeker: The Dark Soldier had reprogrammed the Copernicus to take it to Z'Ha'Dum
 * Hey It's That Guy: Dwight Schultz has been "Howling Mad" before. He's also been a somewhat OCD engineer.
 * Human Popsicle
 * Irony: An example that only becomes apparent when you watch the show through for the second time. Likely not deliberate, but there's something wonderfully ironic in having the Markab ambassador, of all people, speak out about the dangers of ignoring the truth because you don't want to confront it (See the episode "Confessions and Lamentations").
 * Shell-Shocked Veteran: Amos is firmly in the full-blown crazy variety of this trope. Except it wasn't the war itself that messed him up, it was his entire squad (except for him) being wiped out by an invisible alien that could move through walls and killed its enemies by ripping their organs out through their mouths.