This ep manages to have very clear A- and B-plots, with some occasional medlab scenes to help them cross-over. And the theme for today, in very different ways, is reparations.
A-Plot: As more telepaths show up at B5, tensions continue to grow. Outcasts in Downbelow resent that the teeps get free food and meds from the station. Zack has suddenly become a jerk, and has decided he really doesn’t trust teeps — except Lyta, of course, because she’s different, which attitude doesn’t endear him to her, and pushes her into being … kind of sketchily fanatical.
LYTA: If Byron asked me to follow him into hell, I’d do it gladly with a smile on my face, because I believe in him. What could you possibly say in five minutes that would change that?
There’s one briefly violent encounter where Byron lets himself get punched in the face multiple times, both defuse a bully’s anger and to teach his people about being non-violent.
BYRON: Your anger has nothing to do with me. What will satisfy your anger will never come from me or anyone else here. I’m afraid you must look for it elsewhere.
Unfortunately, the same gang ends up curb-stomping another teep found on his own — and when Byron’s teeps telepathically torture one of the gang members to find out who was responsible, Byron gets arrested for the crime (very clearly unjustly). Which mean, since Zack is being a jerk and leaves Byron to cool his heels in a cell overnight, it means that Byron’s not there to restrain his people from assaulting one gang member telepathically to torture the whereabouts of the perp, and then beating the perp to death, all in utter silence.
There’s probably a sane middle ground between Byron’s “oh, I am so disappointed with them, I am a failure as a leader” moaning, and Lyta’s “I can’t excuse what they did, but, yeah, I can totally excuse what they did,” but the script turns up the melodrama dial. Lyta’s been reluctant to dive headlong into the teep colony, but seeing her beautiful cover model brood and angst over what’s happened (a scene that is either overwrought in its acting, or Byron intentionally manipulating her), she strips down and has hot telepathic sex with him.
Yeah, it seemed a bit odd to me, too.
Not, of course, as odd as what happens next.
One, the telepaths are clearly aware that their main man is going at it with his new girlfriend. I mean, it’s not like the bead screen between the floors they were sleeping on and Byron’s quarters offered that much privacy anyway, let alone the whole telepathy thing, but …
Two, finally having some hot sex (or any sex) for the first time since she was taken by the Vorlons and Made Their Agent, triggers a whole bunch of memories for Lyta, both how things were like when she was working for the Vorlons (first Kosh, then, far less pleasantly, Kosh 2), and then, before that, how things were when she was in a tank, being biologically altered, and could see, in thousands of tanks around her, other individuals, some of them babies or fetuses, for a dozen races, similarly being modified.
And, of course, those memories are all being projected into Byron, and into all the teeps who have been awakened and are watching.
Which is when things get a bit dark, because while Byron has been begging folks for a planetary colony to being his people, now he knows a deeper truth: telepathic abilities were bred into races around the galaxy by the Vorlons, to serve them as weapons against the Shadows. And while he can’t sue the Vorlons, all the younger races are on the hook for their debts.
BYRON: They owe us a place where we can be among our own kind. We’ll ask to speak to the Alliance, put our case before them, see if they can be persuaded to do the right thing.
LYTA: And if they can’t?
BYRON: Then we’ll make sure they have no other choice.
Ssssssooo much for being Gandhi?
B-Plot: Franklin hasn’t gotten much love this season, but now gets at least half an episode to play with. He’s been tasked by Sheridan to study inter-species disease, to help address potential illnesses and plagues that could jump populations. It’s right in line with his past studies of non-human physiology, and with his refusal to develop bioweapons against non-humans.
In this ep, he’s researching the Hyach, a race that wants to be in the Alliance, but is very secretive about their past. Franklin researches the shit out of them, and ultimately uncovers the secret they have hidden from the galaxy: two sentient races, capable of interbreeding, were present on their world until about a thousand years ago, when the Hyach decided it was time to exterminate the Hyach-doh, and, in fact did so.
While it looks like Franklin might be killed for uncovering the secret, it turns out the racial elders had a reason to let him uncover it: the Hyach are going extinct. Something about past hybridizing with the Hyach-doh was apparently necessary for their medical/genetic survival, but now they’ve unwittingly killed the people who might have saved them. Unless Franklin might possibly research and discover a cure …
Franklin will do no such thing, more than happy to indict the present Hyach, who have been maintaining this secret, as accessories after the fact to genocide. Only if the secret is let out will he help organize the massive, interplanetary research project needed.
It comes across as kind of a strident response to the situation — Yes, you are responsible for the sins of your fathers — but it also abruptly reminded me a bit of the debate over contemoprary reparations to Black Americans over slavery (and post-slavery racial injustice), esp. with Franklin, a Black man, serving as proxy for the Hyach-doh.
Other Bits and Bobs: So, yeah, reparations. Byron is convinced that his people deserve a planet, not just because it would be a charitable thing, but because they are owed it because of Vorlon interference with their fates. And Franklin is sort of demanding it of the Hyach– a public acknowledgment of (and shaming about) the identity and existence of the Hyach-doh, and what happened to them.
Not sure if that synchronicity was intended, but it passed right over my head the first time.
As mentioned, Zack is playing his blue-collar Everyman role a bit strong, acting as a racist jerk toward the telepaths moving into his neighborhood and making trouble. (That he is maybe a bit jealous that Lyta is spiraling into their orbit probably doesn’t help.) That Zack has, in the past, been a voice of reason when Garibaldi was going off the deep end doesn’t help it feel a bit jarring.
The teeps, meanwhile, keep getting more and more cult-like. Early on in the ep, Lyta refuses to sleep over with the gang because she feels she doesn’t belong yet. At which point, Byron violates a whole bunch of confidential boundaries, walks out into the main room, and announces that Lyta doesn’t feel like she belongs with them. Which leads, in turn, to all the teeps getting up and gathering around her and giving her hugs.
Knowing (as I didn’t when the episode aired) that Joe spent time in a cult after he left home … yeah. The signs are all there.
Meanwhile: An odd episode with only three of the twelve regular cast members present (Franklin, Zack, and Lyta).
While Patricia Tallman was not actually nude (though with only quite sheer and unreliable pasties) they still made it a closed set during the filming. JMS — who apparently was quite uncomfortable even writing an intimate scene like that (he literally has in the script, “I wonder which is more embarrassing, reading this or writing it?”) — did not visit the set during filming. Though apparently Doug Netter, leading a group of studio executives on a tour, and having missed the CLOSED SET note on the call sheet, did.
It’s maybe worth remembering that while the genocide of the Hyach-doh a thousand years back is treated here as a terrible shame, tragedy, and capital-crime-by-association, back in S.1, the Centauri extermination of the Xon (only two thousand years ago) is treated as, well, literally a joke (at least by the Centauri).
So the B5 Rewatch has been stretching on for some time, but it had been multiple months since the last time we watched. My son had put together (for a different show we’re watching only when he’s home) a Google Slides presentation to brief us on characters and dramatic situations we might have forgotten. Inspired by that, I came up with this presentation to refresh him and my wife before we started watching this ep.
Most Dramatic Moment: The Lyta-Byron-sex-flashback-Vorlons-voyeurism scene probably hits the high mark here, especially when her eyes go all black and spooky.
Lyta started this series as something of a victim, and continued along that path for the past four years, trying to find an institution — Psi Corps, B5, the Vorlons — who would support her and treat her the way she wanted. They all failed. Unfortunately, the moment she’s going to choose to finally take an independent stand … will not be a good one for her.
Most Amusing Moment: This is not a laff-riot episode, and the usual suspects for humor and humorous interaction (Sheridan, Lochley, Londo, Garibaldi, Vir, even Lennier) were not around.
So the best probably comes from the pre-credits sequence, where Franklin introduces what he’s doing about interspecies diseases in a conversation with a Pak’ma’ra, which is amusing in and of itself, but gets better when Franklin tries to feed him a barium milkshake.
(The Pak’ma’ra prosthetics/movement are actually very, very good. Today it would be done with CG, but the practical FX are nicely executed.)
Most Arc-ish Moment: Lyta’s flash-back, hands-down — literally hitting big moments from her character arc, plus peeling a further lid off the history of telepaths and the not-very-nice nature of the Vorlons.
Overall Rating: 3.1 of 5.0 — The A-plot whipsaws back and forth, with a lot of obvious set-up, a lot of melodrama, and a lot of cultish weirdness. I’m probably giving it a higher score than it deserves because of the big Vorlon/flashback scene. The B-plot is a fascinating setup, but ends in a very talky way that turns out both smarmy and preachy and far too neatly wrapped with a moral bow.
Other Resources for this episode:
- Lurker’s Guide
- Babylon Project Wiki
- IMDb
- AV Club (covers eps 6-10 of the season)
- TV Tropes
- Sci-Fi Musings (home of the little videos in so many of these reviews I’ve done)
- Sundry Thoughts
Previous episode: 5×06 “Strange Relations”
Next episode: 5×08 “Day of the Dead” – Neil Gaiman guest writes, as folk on the station are visited by the deceased of their past. What could go wrong?
There is some controversy as to where “Day of the Dead” should be placed. It was written early in the season, after only four scripts had been completed by JMS, and before all the detailed chronology was figured out; it was originally shot 11th, but shuffled to 8th during the original run because of conflicts with the NBA playoffs, and so as to let a more solid sequence of episodes occur. This creates some minor continuity conflicts, and some oddness with G’kar and Londo being (still? again?) on B5, but other recommended options have their own inconsistencies as well. Since it’s all relatively trivial, I’m going with DotD next, as in the original broadcast and HBO Max.