Babylon 5 Group Re-Watch!

[tomandtish]

*B5 has room for a baseball field/batting cage?

They apparently do. Could the room be used for better things? Sure. But based on what we have heard baseball is the popular human sport and MMA is the popular alien sport. So they've thrown in nods.

*Sector 14 Secret- So Earthforce ''confiscated all the files'' about when B4 reappeared? So did ''disappear'' all the B4 crew too?

Probably swore everyone to secrecy with threats of serious trouble if they talked. Anyone who still had time on their service* may have found a new post WAY out of the way.

*Actually, that brings up a more interesting point. Going by the calendar, even a newbie who had hit B4 the day before it disappeared has served 4 years of his term. Have to wonder how they chose to handle that....

*Duel to the Death- So guess they are allowed on the station?

Probably not. But the issue is who really knows what happens. Ambassadors have a LOT of clout. Londo rents the space (it's in Red Sector), it's sealed off to everyone else, and the duel happens. Security would probably break it up IF they came across it, but they are going to be staying out of the area unless called because presumably Londo has put a big diplomatic "Do Not Disturb" sign on it. And after they'll pack up the body, ship it home with a "he had a heart attack, one of our Dr's attended to him" excuse, and that will be that. Remember, everyone is distracted with Sheridan and most others aren;t going to challenge an ambassador. It's a career ending move if you are wrong.

Save my family- Well the rule of if you kill a guy you save and protect their family sure is convenient.

Very convenient. That's why he went there, to have Londo kill him after all so his family would be safe. The point of the episode (as you even noted) is to start making Londo realize that there's a PERSONAL cost to his actions. But you still need a reason for the friend (assuming he is better) to lose to him. And by having it be a self-sacrifice like this, it's making Londo take one of his first looks at what he is actually doing (he'll need to take many more).

[factotum]

They apparently do. Could the room be used for better things? Sure. But based on what we have heard baseball is the popular human sport and MMA is the popular alien sport. So they've thrown in nods.

We know that B5 has room for an entire garden on its interior surface, so them having room for a baseball court isn't really surprising. What's more of an issue for a science geek like me is that you just wouldn't be able to play a game like that on B5--the way the ball would travel in the rotating reference frame would be extremely odd compared to how it would travel on a planet surface. You might well be able to learn to compensate for that, but then you'd be rubbish playing the game in the normal environment!

[Darth Ultron]

We know that B5 has room for an entire garden on its interior surface, so them having room for a baseball court isn't really surprising. What's more of an issue for a science geek like me is that you just wouldn't be able to play a game like that on B5--the way the ball would travel in the rotating reference frame would be extremely odd compared to how it would travel on a planet surface. You might well be able to learn to compensate for that, but then you'd be rubbish playing the game in the normal environment!

It's also a bit weird that they have a whole baseball sized field with robot catchers.....but it's not exactly a base ball field they can play a game on. It's just a big wide open robot batting cage. You'd think that if they were going to use the space anyway, why not add dugouts, bleachers and all that so people could really play games of baseball.

So if you hit a home run hard enough on B5, could it get stuck in the ''weightless middle'' ?

[tomandtish]

Actually, looking at it you could play a game on it. The only thing that is obviously weird is the backstop behind home, which is way too close. Since we don't get a wide shot of it, it COULD be a metal panel wall that is set up when you are in bat cage mode. And they don't give us a wide enough shot to see if there are dugouts. We don't see outfield bleachers admittedly, but their could be some behind the baselines.

It is a bit odd at times since one of the shots make the field look a little narrow, but that looks like a CGI issue to me. Remember, this is 20 years ago now.

[factotum]

So if you hit a home run hard enough on B5, could it get stuck in the ''weightless middle'' ?

It's theoretically possible, but I'm pretty sure atmospheric drag would slow the ball to a stop long before it got that far, judging by how far Sheridan had to fall in the episode where he jumps out of the train. (There'll be more physics quibbling when we get to that one, just so's everyone is ready ).

[Algeh]

This week, we'll be discussing:

• Confessions and Lamentations
• Divided Loyalties
• The Long, Twilight Struggle

Feel free to discuss anything from the Babylon 5 series without using spoiler tags if you so choose. Please continue to use spoiler tags for things unrelated to Babylon 5 as you would in any other media thread.

[Algeh]

In other news, I'm torn between two options for the Season 3 viewing schedule. They key question is how important does everyone feel it is to keep Messages from Earth, Point of No Return, and Severed Dreams in the same week of our discussion?

Here are the two proposed schedules:

Spoiler: Option 1: 9 weeks, keeps certain episodes together

Show

August 6th:

• Matters of Honor
• Convictions

August 136th:

• A Day in the Strife
• Passing Through Gethsemane
• Voices of Authority

August 20th:

• Dust to Dust
• Exogenesis

August 27th:

• Messages from Earth
• Point of No Return
• Severed Dreams

September 3rd:

• Ceremonies of Light and Dark
• Sic Transit Vir
• A Late Delivery from Avalon

September 10th:

• Ship of Tears
• Interludes and Examinations

September 17th:

• War Without End, Part One
• War Without End, Part Two

September 24th:

• Walkabout
• Grey 17 Is Missing
• And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place

October 1st:

• Shadow Dancing
• Z'ha'dum

Spoiler: Option 2: 8 weeks, same pattern as Season 2

Show

August 6th:

• Matters of Honor
• Convictions

August 136th:

• A Day in the Strife
• Passing Through Gethsemane
• Voices of Authority

August 20th:

• Dust to Dust
• Exogenesis
• Messages from Earth

August 27th:

• Point of No Return
• Severed Dreams
• Ceremonies of Light and Dark

September 3rd:

• Sic Transit Vir
• A Late Delivery from Avalon
• Ship of Tears

September 10th:

• Interludes and Examinations
• War Without End, Part One
• War Without End, Part Two

September 17th:

• Walkabout
• Grey 17 Is Missing
• And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place

September 24th:

• Shadow Dancing
• Z'ha'dum

October 1st:
(presumably, start Season 4)

Other suggestions are also welcome. I couldn't see a good way to keep Messages from Earth, Point of No Return, and Severed Dreams together, keep both parts of War Without End together, and finish in 8 weeks rather than 9. I figured that most people would want to discuss each of those things as a set, but I could be wrong.

[Darth Ultron]

In other news, I'm torn between two options for the Season 3 viewing schedule. They key question is how important does everyone feel it is to keep Messages from Earth, Point of No Return, and Severed Dreams in the same week of our discussion?

By default I'd say the Season Finale could be by itself or with only one other episode, normally the lead-in build up one. A lot happens in a season finale, more so then normal episodes. And some episodes are like Gray 17 is Missing were it's like ''sigh, next''.

Though, B% is a bit unique as a lot of the shows are really connected even if they don't say ''part 2'' or something.

[tomandtish]

I'd vote for option one.

[factotum]

I'm not particularly worried about which episodes are reviewed in any particular week--the arc covers a lot more than three episodes in any case.

Anyway, as for this week's three episodes:

Confessions and Lamentations: Not a big fan of this one. It just seems very unlikely to me that a disease would exist that is 100% fatal across an entire species--if they'd said something about it being an artificially-created infection then maybe, but that was never suggested in the episode. Overall, I can only think of three things that happen here that affect the on-going plot:
a) The Markab being destroyed, Sheridan has no compunction in blowing up their jumpgate to destroy a Shadow vessel in a later episode.
b) The extra pressure on Dr. Franklin makes his stim addiction start to become noticeable to his colleagues.
c) Sheridan and Delenn grow ever closer together.

Divided Loyalties: Exeunt Talia Winters, never to be seen again. It's pretty obvious that JMS always intended the Talia personality to get deleted in this episode, given all the stuff that's already happened, but did he always intend it to be Lyta Alexander to be the telepath who reveals it all, or did he know that negotiations with Andrea Thompson were stalling and wanted to have a back-up plan already in place? The bit about Ivanova admitting she's a latent telepath is interesting, but again, goes nowhere--one wonders if that would have been more meaningful if Talia had returned as intended.

The Long, Twilight Struggle: This is just an amazing episode. We have the battle at Gorash VII, which is one of the best space battles of the series. Interesting factoid: JMS deliberately chose to stage this battle in such a way that the opposing forces were never in naked-eye range of each other, so you never see them onscreen at the same time. This doesn't quite work when the Shadow ships are firing, because the SFX department still has the beams visibly rotating as they cut through Narn ships, thus implying the firing ship is only just offscreen rather than thousands of miles away; you get a similar issue when several Narn ships all fire at the same Shadow vessel, because the ships are close together when they fire but the beams are shown converging from wide angles when they hit their target. Despite all that, though, I think this is my favourite battle of the series.

Meanwhile, Londo, having told Lord Refa that they shouldn't be relying so much on Morden's "associates", watches with horror from a porthole as the main Centauri fleet use mass drivers against the Narn homeworld. This is apparently a horrific act of war, although you'd have thought dropping nukes on the place would be *much* worse--at least the rocks launched by the mass drivers won't leave the place irradiated for years to come. Still, it's effective--with their homeworld in ruins and most of their fleet destroyed at Gorash VII, the Narn have no choice to capitulate.

Which leads to another absolutely awesome scene--G'Kar's speech at the council after he's ordered to leave by Londo. I really can't think of many actors who could have delivered those lines as perfectly as Andreas Katsulas did:

"No dictator, no invader can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power tyrants and dictators cannot stand. The Centauri learned that lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free."

Frankly? I think this episode should have been the season finale. Good as the next couple of episodes are, I think this episode is the one that perfectly rounds off the season.

[Darth Ultron]

Confessions and Lamentations

The Markab species is wiped out by a plague that spreads to B5 and threatens to infect other species.

Foreshadowing Again- Doc Franklin again works like crazy and takes Stims to stay awake and active.

Things that Don't make Sense

*Starfury Joyrides- So Keffer can take a Starfury out for personal reasons on this free time? Like a air force pilot can just hop in an F-22 and joy ride around?

*Big Briefing- So again we see like 20 people at the pre search briefing, but then Zeta Squadron of like six go out and search.

*Red Aliens-So looks like all the Markab live in Red Sector, but not the Alien Sector.

*So Delenn and Lennier watch hundreds Makab die and just sit there? And once they are all dead they just...sit there? Guess they knew it would be more dramatic if they just sat there?

*Fast Plague- So this plague has been around for a year, and then suddenly like a week or less after Doc Franklin starts to look for a cure on B5, it suddenly goes into over drive and kills the whole race. Now sure the B5 Marab do the worst thing of ''lets all huddle together'', but...um, did every Markab in the Galaxy also do that at the same time or something?

Final B, This has to be the single most tragic episode of all of the B5 series. The Markab race essentially doomed itself by hiding the plague from others until it was too late, based entirely on a religious belief and not scientific fact. If Markab scientists had been permitted to study the disease more extensively themselves and were allowed to work with scientists from other species, surely the cure that Franklin discovered would have been found - and before it was too late?

[Knaight]

So if you hit a home run hard enough on B5, could it get stuck in the ''weightless middle'' ?

Technically yes. With that said, it's worth noting that there are two major types of equilibrium - there's a stable equilibrium, where if something gets knocked out of place forces move it back (e.g. a ball at the bottom of a curving whole), and there's an unstable equilibrium, where if something ets knocked out of place forces just keep taking it away (e.g. a ball at the top of a curving hill). This is definitely in the second case, which means that the ball needs to get knocked into the weightless middle, get completely stopped while there, and then not get blown out by a stray air current.

[Thufir]

It's pretty obvious that JMS always intended the Talia personality to get deleted in this episode, given all the stuff that's already happened,

Pretty sure you're wrong about this. I don't remember 100% but as I recall (from a DVD commentary I think), this episode was the result of them needing to remove Talia unexpectedly. The telepathically implanted 'Control' personality was originally intended to be Takashima from the pilot, but the idea was jettisoned when they couldn't get the actress and passed off the betrayal to Garibaldi's second instead, but since the idea already existed it was a convenient way to remove Talia when it turned out they needed to.
Also the fact it was unexpected was why they kind of had to rush to the end of the Talia/Ivanova romance subplot, which was planned to take more time.

I think I read somewhere that Ivanova being a latent telepath would have factored in a bit more if she'd come back for season 5 since there was the whole plotline with the telepaths there.

[tomandtish]

Pretty sure you're wrong about this. I don't remember 100% but as I recall (from a DVD commentary I think), this episode was the result of them needing to remove Talia unexpectedly. The telepathically implanted 'Control' personality was originally intended to be Takashima from the pilot, but the idea was jettisoned when they couldn't get the actress and passed off the betrayal to Garibaldi's second instead, but since the idea already existed it was a convenient way to remove Talia when it turned out they needed to.
Also the fact it was unexpected was why they kind of had to rush to the end of the Talia/Ivanova romance subplot, which was planned to take more time.

I think I read somewhere that Ivanova being a latent telepath would have factored in a bit more if she'd come back for season 5 since there was the whole plotline with the telepaths there.

It factors in even before then, in "Voices of Authority", and is part of the reason why she sees the destruction of Earth Force One.

Draal: "I don't understand. A normal human mind should not have been able to do that!".

One of the really neat things about the show is subtlety. She doesn't say a word to him about being a telepath, and he apparently doesn't realize it. It's only something you'll get if you've been paying attention all along.

[huttj509]

Technically yes. With that said, it's worth noting that there are two major types of equilibrium - there's a stable equilibrium, where if something gets knocked out of place forces move it back (e.g. a ball at the bottom of a curving whole), and there's an unstable equilibrium, where if something ets knocked out of place forces just keep taking it away (e.g. a ball at the top of a curving hill). This is definitely in the second case, which means that the ball needs to get knocked into the weightless middle, get completely stopped while there, and then not get blown out by a stray air current.

I'm not sure.

I mean, in order for the ball to stop in the middle it would need to be hit straight at the middle, with the horizontal velocity opposite the rotation of the station, and the vertical velocity slow enough that air resistance would stop the ball before it hit the other side.

From an outside perspective, you can hit it so it just stops dead 2 feet off the ground, by exactly countering the tangential velocity from the rotation of the station, but at this point from the inside of the station's perspective the ball would be orbiting at a height of 2 feet.

There's nothing pushing the ball to the outer rim from anywhere in the air, if it's stopped relative to the overall translational motion (not rotation) of the station. The exact middle isn't special, except in that from the inside of the station it would look like the ball was just spinning, rather than orbiting in a circle around the middle.

[factotum]

Pretty sure you're wrong about this. I don't remember 100% but as I recall (from a DVD commentary I think), this episode was the result of them needing to remove Talia unexpectedly. The telepathically implanted 'Control' personality was originally intended to be Takashima from the pilot, but the idea was jettisoned when they couldn't get the actress and passed off the betrayal to Garibaldi's second instead, but since the idea already existed it was a convenient way to remove Talia when it turned out they needed to.

You seem to be agreeing that they always intended to have Talia's personality wiped out by Control, though, which is what I said? OK, it maybe had to happen earlier than they intended, but the stuff with them recording her personality in an earlier episode definitely says to me that this was always meant to happen and that the whole "she gets her personality back" part of the plotline was dropped when Andrea Thompson didn't return.

There's nothing pushing the ball to the outer rim from anywhere in the air, if it's stopped relative to the overall translational motion (not rotation) of the station.

There is. The air inside the station is presumably rotating along with it (because otherwise there'd be one heck of a wind at ground level that we don't see), and the air resistance of the ball will force it to be carried along with that rotation--and once it's being rotated with the station like that it will tend to "fall" to the outside, since there's nothing preventing it doing so. For it to continue in a circular path at the same internal altitude would require there to be a force pulling it toward the centre, and no such force exists that I can see.

[Rodin]

There is. The air inside the station is presumably rotating along with it (because otherwise there'd be one heck of a wind at ground level that we don't see), and the air resistance of the ball will force it to be carried along with that rotation--and once it's being rotated with the station like that it will tend to "fall" to the outside, since there's nothing preventing it doing so. For it to continue in a circular path at the same internal altitude would require there to be a force pulling it toward the centre, and no such force exists that I can see.

I now want to see the episode where Sheridan causes a diplomatic incident by hitting the ball too far so that it arcs through the center of the station and brains the Pak'ma'ra ambassador taking a garden stroll on the other side.

[Douglas]

I now want to see the episode where Sheridan causes a diplomatic incident by hitting the ball too far so that it arcs through the center of the station and brains the Pak'ma'ra ambassador taking a garden stroll on the other side.

The orientation of the baseball field relative to the station's spin would be critical for whether, and how easily, this might be possible.

[Thufir]

You seem to be agreeing that they always intended to have Talia's personality wiped out by Control, though, which is what I said? OK, it maybe had to happen earlier than they intended, but the stuff with them recording her personality in an earlier episode definitely says to me that this was always meant to happen and that the whole "she gets her personality back" part of the plotline was dropped when Andrea Thompson didn't return.

Um... no? I explicitly said that plotline was originally intended to happen to someone else, was dropped with that character leaving and then picked up when they had to remove Talia unexpectedly. I wouldn't have said I was pretty sure you're wrong if I didn't in fact mean that I'm pretty sure you're wrong.
As far as Kosh recording her personality, specifically he recorded a traumatic memory as I recall, so while it could have been used as a means of returning the character after she left, if she had never left it could simply have been something the Vorlons would use as leverage over her to get her to fill the purpose for them which ended up being filled by Lyta.

[factotum]

Sorry for misunderstanding you, in that case. I remain unconvinced, though...do you have a source for your recollection about Talia and the mind wipe? I've watched the DVD commentaries as well and don't remember that coming up.

[tomandtish]

Pretty sure you're wrong about this. I don't remember 100% but as I recall (from a DVD commentary I think), this episode was the result of them needing to remove Talia unexpectedly. The telepathically implanted 'Control' personality was originally intended to be Takashima from the pilot, but the idea was jettisoned when they couldn't get the actress and passed off the betrayal to Garibaldi's second instead, but since the idea already existed it was a convenient way to remove Talia when it turned out they needed to.
Also the fact it was unexpected was why they kind of had to rush to the end of the Talia/Ivanova romance subplot, which was planned to take more time.

I think I read somewhere that Ivanova being a latent telepath would have factored in a bit more if she'd come back for season 5 since there was the whole plotline with the telepaths there.

This is correct more or less.

JMS speaks on The Lurker's Guide. (a fair bit down the page)....

If Laurel Takashima had stayed with the crew and shot Garibaldi in "Chrysalis," would she have been Control?
Yes, Laurel would've been Control.

Mike: your assessment is pretty much correct. Laurel was to be the traitor initially; as I noted long, long time ago, and you quoted, she was not, in fact, acting entirely under her own volition. There would indeed have been an implanted personality there, acting without even her knowing about it. And it would've been this implanted personality that would've shot Garibaldi.

When I took Laurel off the board, elements of this were transferred to other characters. This is the kind of thing I mean when I say that even with changes here and there, the story continues to go where I want it to go. We don't necessarily remember *which* general put the briefcase with a bomb next to Hitler's chair in the bunker, only that it got done. Some chairs are moveable, some are not, as anyone who's ever written a novel from an outline can tell you...you start moving the chairs around, but you always keep going where you're going.

Yeah, originally it was the Kosh-scan that would've gotten Lyta in trouble; the TK aspect was originally going to come in from another angle, but I was able to collapse the two in Talia, and then bring Lyta in from a different direction, as you'll see in one of the first batch of new year 3 eps.

If Laurel *had* stayed with the show, by the middle of year two the fact that she was Control would've been revealed via the password incident. At that point, one particular possibility was that her second in command under her -- a rather dour Russian lieutenant named Ivanova -- would've been promoted to take her place, while Laurel was moved off the chessboard. (This was planned because we knew going in that Tamlyn Tomita had a growing film career, and we probably could've only kept her for a couple of years in the best of circumstances. So why not turn that to your advantage?)

The position now being occupied by Corwin, Ivanova's second, is the position that Ivanova would've held (though more prominently) if Laurel had stayed on. (And no, Corwin doesn't now have that arc lurking in the background.)

See, it's easy to stick to an outline and never diverge if you're writing characters in a novel; in a TV show, with live actors, you have to be flexible, plan ahead, come up with contingency plans, and have threads that weave and interlock in ways to leave you maximum flexibility while still proceeding toward your destination.

Takashima would have been the one to be Control. A Psi Corps plant. (Her background on Mars would've been the perfect time for it to have happened.) When Laurel went away, I took that one thread and passed it along to Talia, setting it up as early as the very first episode, when Talia and Ivanova first meet, and later reluctantly have a drink.

At one point, Ivanova says to Talia, referencing Ivanova's mother, "You're as much of a victim as she was." To which Talia replies, "I don't feel like a victim." And, of course, that's exactly what she was, though she didn't know it yet. Ivanova's analysis was 100% correct.

Lurker's is a pretty good place to find clarification about his thoughts on an episode. He did Q&As for the site for a while.

[Rodin]

This is correct more or less.

JMS speaks on The Lurker's Guide. (a fair bit down the page)....




Lurker's is a pretty good place to find clarification about his thoughts on an episode. He did Q&As for the site for a while.

So, this ultimately proves factotum right - they knew even from the first episode that Talia was going to be the plant, after Takashima didn't return after the pilot.

The interesting question is when that plotline would have kicked off if Andrea Thompson hadn't left. It's obvious they didn't want to do it then, because they needed Talia to be the resident Super Telepath to help fight the Shadow War. Would it have been one of the plots during Season 3 where they need to get Talia back to fight the Shadows? Or would they have held off until the Earth Civil War?

[factotum]

Yeah, that JMS quote is pretty much as I understood it--Talia was always going to be Control once they realised they weren't going to get Takashima back. When Talia left in turn, the stuff she was going to do had to be transferred onto Lyta instead. Pretty sure that Talia would have had to return in season 3--there were some quite important episodes requiring a powerful telepath to block Shadow vessels in there, and in fact telepaths were not really very important during the Earth civil war (apart from the weird machine hybrid ones they used to disable the Earth fleet at Mars).

[Rodin]

Yeah, that JMS quote is pretty much as I understood it--Talia was always going to be Control once they realised they weren't going to get Takashima back. When Talia left in turn, the stuff she was going to do had to be transferred onto Lyta instead. Pretty sure that Talia would have had to return in season 3--there were some quite important episodes requiring a powerful telepath to block Shadow vessels in there, and in fact telepaths were not really very important during the Earth civil war (apart from the weird machine hybrid ones they used to disable the Earth fleet at Mars).

How about what happened to Garibaldi? Maybe the original plan was for him to get scooped up while looking for Talia. It would help explain why his disappearance was so weirdly handled - picked up basically at random by a Shadow Vessel and then somehow winding up in the hands of the Psi Corps.

[factotum]

How about what happened to Garibaldi? Maybe the original plan was for him to get scooped up while looking for Talia. It would help explain why his disappearance was so weirdly handled - picked up basically at random by a Shadow Vessel and then somehow winding up in the hands of the Psi Corps.

Maybe, but again, what would be the purpose of bringing Talia back so late in the run? I don't think that would solely be for the telepath rebellion in season 5, because all that stuff about her being even more powerful than a P12 wouldn't have been relevant for that.

[Rodin]

Maybe, but again, what would be the purpose of bringing Talia back so late in the run? I don't think that would solely be for the telepath rebellion in season 5, because all that stuff about her being even more powerful than a P12 wouldn't have been relevant for that.

I'm mostly taking considering how Season 4 would have been handled if JMS hadn't been told they weren't getting a season 5. It's possible the Garibaldi plot would have started sooner and taken longer to play out. I don't remember what the initial plan for handling the end of the Shadow War and Earth's Civil War was, but I'm pretty sure that cramming it all into season 4 was not intended.

Still, I admit it's a stretch.

[tomandtish]

How about what happened to Garibaldi? Maybe the original plan was for him to get scooped up while looking for Talia. It would help explain why his disappearance was so weirdly handled - picked up basically at random by a Shadow Vessel and then somehow winding up in the hands of the Psi Corps.

JMS has said that the intent was for Garibaldi to be picked up there and end up where he did. In short, this was always planned.

"Was he [Garibaldi] captured, or did he volunteer?"

We'll have to see....

There was a very specific reason why Garibaldi was picked up, and there's a suggestion of it in what Justin says at one point to Sheridan.

Nope, I never identified Garibaldi as the support mechanism, only B5.

Now, YMMV on how well anything Justin says backs this up, since JMS also clarifies that the support mechanism is not Garibaldi, but B5.

It's possible that maybe they felt he would be more likely to be reasoned with once given the evidence if Sheridan was gone? I suspect they would be calling that wrong if that was the case.

[Darth Ultron]

Divided Loyalties

A Psi Corps sleeper agent on B5 is revealed.

*Anachronism-Universe Today. We see a print version of Universe Today and it's like everyone is reading it. It's funny that some sort of print newspaper would even exist in 2259. Even by just 2017, most people are reading the news on their table or phone. And it's a bit odd that the folks on B5 don't carry around a small (digital) device with a nice display screen like 95% of Americans over the age of five do. Though, as this show was made in 1995, print newspapers were still a very big normal daily thing for people. Everyone read the paper for news.

*Exit Talia-Talia Winters leaves the show here, and I'm not sad to see her gone. In almost two full seasons, the character is not used much. Many episodes forget she even exists, even worse then poor Doc Franklin. I'm sure JMS had the vague plan for a telepathic character to become important once the Shadow War acr starts to get going, so he wanted that character as a main character. But you have the problem of what to do with the character for the years before that.

They do try and make a bit of a vague friendship..maybe more between Ivanova and Talia, but as most shows are packed for time they don't have much space for that.

And there are a couple of episodes where Telepathy saves the Day, but they do try to avoid that as then the show would just be Telepathy saves the Day, and not Babylon 5. Though this really is a writing problem as they do make telepathy way too powerful and have it do anything. Sure they do try and say there are laws and rules to stop telepaths, but it's kinda silly. And it's worse when that when they do use the character they must always break the rules anyway. And what Bad Guy would follow the rules like ''Oh, I could rule the Universe with what that person knows, but I can't preform an unwilling scan on someone".

*Telepathy Horror- The whole zap someone and mind wipe them into a new person sure is horrible. To think someone could ''flip a switch'' and obliterate a person is harsh. As if the unknown spy living in your head was not bad enough......


Things that don't Make Sense

*Poor Placement- The Universe Today kiosk is just in a random hallway. That is just about the worst placement ever. Universe Today really would has sprung for a whole vestibule at least. Probably with a huge annoying screen flashing breaking news mixed with ''Universe Today, we are so awesome read us'' type adds. And the big words Universe Today.com on the side.

*Send the Password-So...why does Lyta send the password when Taila just randomly walks into the room? Is her telepathic password sending neuron stuck ''on send'' or something?

*Get her out of Here- They, oddly seem to leave Evil Talia alone with no guard. Sure there is no 'proof' she did anything, well except that attempted assassination of Lyta. You'd think they would have kept her under guarded escort to leave the station.

*I want to be a Vorlon Prospect- Ok, so Lyta has been ''trying'' to get to Vorlon space..by hanging out in Earth space and not going to Vorlon space. Anyway, she does make it to B5, and does meet Kosh again, but then she is like ''gotta run''. So, um, why did she not ask Kosh for a ticket to Vorlon space? Like did she ask and Kosh just said ''All paths lead to the Great River. Han shot First. End of Line."

*Lucky-Sure is lucky that Tiala was not part of the Inner Circle of Good, as then she'd know all sorts of stuff when she turns evil.

*No Replacment- Wonder why B5 never gets a replacement commercial telepath?

Final-B, This episode gives a good whack to the overall plot of the series. The episode also does an expert job of building suspense. Misdirection is wonderfully applied by manipulating the audience to suspect Susan through much of the episode. A strong return for Lyta Alexander, a strong underlining of the insidious threat the Psi Corps pose, and just a really fine piece of television in general.

[Rodin]

They do try and make a bit of a vague friendship..maybe more between Ivanova and Talia, but as most shows are packed for time they don't have much space for that.

I think that's more to do with it being 1995. They had to write pretty carefully to have a lesbian relationship that made it past the censors and wouldn't cause a moral outrage. Judging by the rant from JMS on the Lurker's Guide, even the muted ambiguous version we got kicked up quite a storm. It's actually remarkably close to the Giant's rants on the subject.

*Send the Password-So...why does Lyta send the password when Taila just randomly walks into the room? Is her telepathic password sending neuron stuck ''on send'' or something?

Lyta had just gone through all the prime suspects and found nothing. In walks someone who works for Psi Corps - of course she sent the password. With all the command staff clean she becomes the prime suspect. She didn't get permission first, but I don't think Lyta much cared at that point.

*No Replacment- Wonder why B5 never gets a replacement commercial telepath?

It's always bothered me more that a city-sized space station like B5 has exactly one commercial telepath. That has to be hell on the scheduling. I guess the alien races have their own TPs aboard?

Come to think of it, do we ever see telepaths of races other than the Humans, Minbari, and Centauri?

[factotum]

Come to think of it, do we ever see telepaths of races other than the Humans, Minbari, and Centauri?

It's explicitly stated that the Narn have no telepaths (them all having been destroyed by the Shadows a thousand years ago), and I guess the minor races didn't show up enough to make it worth showing one of their telepaths. Vorlons are obviously pretty much all telepathic.

Agreed about the Lyta/Talia thing--of course Lyta was going to check out an important member of station staff, she just hadn't run into Talia before that point.