Babylon 5 5-06: Strange Relations

Episode:

94

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

John C. Flinn III

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Air Date:

25-Feb-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 6, Strange Relations. Huh, that's weird, I can usually vaguely remember the names of each episode but Strange Relations doesn't ring any bells with me at all. If I was given one of those quizzes where you have to go through titles and choose whether they're from Babylon 5 or, I dunno, Magnum P.I., I would've totally failed this one. (I would've nailed The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari though.)

You can tell this episode's been around a few years now as a bit of the letter 'g' has gotten scratched off. That's apparently a unique feature of the Region 2 DVDs, so you can tell where all my screencaps are coming from.

This episode was written by J. Michael Straczynski, no big surprise there, and it was directed by the Director of Photography John C. Flinn III. Flinn had previously directed TKO and Grey 17 is Missing, contenders to be the worst episodes of their respective seasons, so he doesn't have a perfect track record, but he's done some good episode too. I'm not considering it to be a warning sign.

Okay I'll be writing about the entire episode one scene at a time so there will be massive SPOILERS here for this story and the series so far. I'll not spoil anything that comes afterwards though.

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The episode begins with a Centauri cruiser arriving at Babylon 5. I feel like the last few times this has happened something's blown up (one time the fork at the front of the station was sliced off) but everyone's friends now so I'm sure everything will be completely fine.

Inside the station we see Delenn intercept Lochley as she's strolling down the hallway. That means Lochley's appeared in three episodes in a row now; she's on a roll!

The previous episode ended with Delenn kind of furious with Sheridan for keeping a secret from her involving Lochley, but she seems to have cheered up a bit since last night. Perhaps she's realised that she of all people has no right to get bitchy when others withhold information. Hang on, if that was last night then this must be carrying straight on from the events of the last episode.

Delenn tells Lochley that she was the correct logical choice to command Babylon 5, which Lochley appreciates... though she'd also appreciate it if Delenn could keep this just between the three of them. That should be no trouble for Delenn as to the Minbari three is sacred.

But then it's revealed to the audience that Garibaldi was lurking around the corner listening in the whole time! I guess he didn't use Zack's computer to get into her files last episode after all, but he's definitely not going to let this go now.

Garibaldi used to have a habit of already being there in the transport tube that telepath Talia Winters was about to use, but hiding next to the transport tube is a new one for him. I wonder if he's been spying on Lochley deliberately. It'd mean knowing her routine, but that'd be nothing new for him. It's nothing new for any of them in fact; characters are always running into the exact person they wanted to talk to in this show. Delenn did it two minutes ago!

A shuttle leaves the Centauri vessel and Londo's down in the Sanctuary watching it come in. We've been getting a lot of the Sanctuary lately, I guess because the series is spending a lot more time on the station this season.

Zack comes by to tell him that a ship has come for him, but he realises he can see it from here. Londo replies that what he sees is the end of the line. The Centauri Regent has fallen ill, so Londo is going to have to spend some of his time on Centauri Prime from now on. And when the Regent finally dies he'll be trapped there forever as the emperor. I'm not sure we've seen Zack and Londo have a friendly conversation before now, there's usually been sarcasm and/or yelling, but Zack tries to cheer him up by saying that he'll be Emperor Mollari the First! Londo corrects him, saying he'll be Emperor Mollari II. Things ended badly for the first Emperor Mollari, and he's just precognitive enough to know that this is where things are going to begin to go badly for him as well.

The episode cuts to things going badly in C&C, as Corwin tries to deal with a ship that's disengaged its autopilot while in the dock. Hey Corwin's in this episode too!

Things go from bad to worst as there's a collision and an explosion. The last time we had a crash in the docking bay like this was way way back in season one's By Any Means Necessary.

Things have changed a bit since then - they've added bevelled edges to the airlock doors so the edges of the teeth catch the light! Fortunately the doors are still just as resilient as they were in season one and it's the fragile ship that takes all the damage. Well, it's fortunate for the people on the station anyway.

And that's the end of the teaser.

Here's some trivia for this episode: producer jms was sick when they did the original sound mix for season 5's new opening titles, but by this point he'd been able to go back to it and rebalance it slightly so that the voices were a little less loud.

ACT ONE

Act one begins with Lochley out in a Starfury inspecting the crash scene personally. So she's a pilot as well! Seems like everyone in a uniform in this series has been trained to fly, with the possible exception of Franklin and Corwin. Every character's got their own personal Starfury art, with Sheridan having a tiger and Garibaldi having Daffy Duck, and it turns out that Lochley has a phoenix logo. That's apparently also been actress Tracy Scoggins' own personal symbol all her life. Writer jms did not know this.

The collision in By Any Means Necessary was a real catastrophe that drove the drama of the whole episode, with people dying due to fuel lines rupturing and fiery wreckage raining down them, but this crash doesn't seem so bad. We see work pods grabbing wreckage and one of the pilots estimates that it's going to take another 12-13 hours to get all the debris out of the elevator shafts, then they'll be done. Lochley negotiates it down to 11 hours by offering to overlook the non-regulation picture from his bachelor party hanging in his locker. Man that must be an extremely non-regulation picture.

This scene establishes that Lochley's been starting to learn a bit about the people under her command. It also implies that the workers would prefer to sit in their cramped cockpits for hours picking up trash just to earn a little overtime pay.

There's a bit of a queue forming outside at this point, including the Centauri shuttle... and shuttles with a black Psi Corps logo on the side.

The good news is that it turns out there are emergency doors somewhere for Lochley to get her Starfury back onto the station. So that explains how Orin Zento's shuttle was able to land back in By Any Means Necessary... man how do I even remember that guy's name? The bad news is that the Psi Corps shuttles can land as well.

Meanwhile, in Medlab (a set we're seeing more than C&C this season), Franklin catches Lyta blatantly swiping medicine from some boxes. He figures it must be for the telepaths in DownBelow, and tells her to tell them to just come up here so he can treat them properly.

She explains that they've got trust issues, after what the Psi Corps doctors did to them. Besides, this medicine was meant for DownBelow anyway, so it doesn't really matter if she decides what percentage of it goes directly to her friends! Franklin's actually cool with it though, as he's a lot less stressed out and wound up these days, and he cares about the telepaths almost as much as she does. I mean he risked his career running an illegal telepath railroad to smuggle them out of the Psi Corps back in season one.

It seems that Lyta has really started to believe in what Byron's trying to do: give all telepaths a home here... in the slums of a space station.

Lyta brings the supplies down to Byron's gloomy little corner of DownBelow and then tries to convince him to take some vitamins for himself instead of giving it all to his followers. This was apparently a bit of an in-joke, as actress Patricia Tallman had started giving jms vitamins due to her concerns about his health. I'm thinking they should probably all be on vitamins here actually, seeing as there's no sunlight on the station.

She also wants Byron to get some sleep, but he explains that he'd already had a relaxing sleep four lifetimes ago and it was enough to sustain him for five eternities. Though the woman he was sleeping with turned into a tree. Lyta doesn't get what the hell he's talking about, so he explains it was meant to be a parable about an awesome tree. What he's trying to say is that Lyta has become his awesome tree as she gives them all shelter.

Lyta calls him on his sneaky and kind of bizarre attempt to change the subject, but the telepaths all suddenly realise that they've got something else to think about. Byron tells Lyta to drop her mental walls so that she can see what they're seeing: black boots marching down hallways. They're Bloodhound units, led by Bester himself.

That means this is a Bester story! The guy has made a habit of showing up each season around episode 6 or 7 and with this episode he's finally completed the set. He hasn't missed a season.

ACT TWO

One of Zack's men drops by the security office to tell him the news that Bester's here, but Garibaldi's there to hear it instead.

Bester spent the last year brainwashing Garibaldi to betray his friends and everything he believed in, so he's probably more furious with the guy than Byron is. Maybe the two characters would get on better if they knew just how much they both hate Bester.

The drums on the soundtrack suggest that Garibaldi's about to do something drastic, and he races down the corridor shoving people out of the way.

Garibaldi catches Bester entertaining Captain Lochley with a joke about the philosopher Descartes over a cup of tea and we get black and white flashbacks to all the hurt he caused him... plus a few in colour. Would've probably worked better with more consistency there.

This wasn't something Lochley wanted to have to deal with today, but Garibaldi is so determined to get over to Bester and tear his head off that Lochley eventually has to punch him and bring security in to drag him to a cell. The two security officers hesitate to arrest their former boss, but Lochley's threat of a court-martial gets them both moving. See, this is what happens when you let someone who fought for Team Fascism take over the station!

Now we're back in Medlab again, just in time to watch Franklin getting a surprise job offer.

Delenn and G'Kar want him to reduce his duties here so that he can take on a new job studying the potential for cross-species transmission of diseases for the Alliance. It's an easy sell for Franklin; this is exactly what he's into. In fact it's all smiles and politeness in this scene, to the point where it gets a bit saccharine. G'Kar even admits afterwards that despite all the stuff he's been doing to make the universe better, he feels like he's not doing enough!

Well I'm sure Andreas Katsulas was glad he got up at 4 or 5am and spent hours in the makeup chair so that he could be in these scenes.

This is a busy episode with places to be and next it catches up with Sheridan as he chews out Lochley for punching Garibaldi and throwing him in the brig.

He gives her a little recap of season four, pointing out that her guest reprogrammed Garibaldi so that he'd betray him and his dad to Clark to be tortured. He also refers to the Psi Corps as Fascists "R" Us, which isn't a very presidential turn of phrase. That reminds me of the time my friend's family used a name ending in '"R" Us' for their butcher's shop. Toys "R" Us took issue with this, as you'd expect, but the shop actually got to keep the name. So there is a chance that the Psi Corps could really get away with rebranding to Fascists "R" Us.

Sorry, I'm getting distracted from the important thing about this scene, which is that Sheridan's office looks way too much like Lochley's office. In fact I'm not sure that I even noticed that they had different offices the first time I watched the series.

Turns out that Lochley's well aware of the crew's history with Bester, but if she judged people by the reports of others then she'd consider Sheridan to be a traitor. That's interesting, as it implies she doesn't consider Sheridan's actions to have been treasonous, despite being on the other side in the war. It also maybe gives a reason for why she didn't take action against Clark herself when reports started coming in about what his government was up to: she likes working off first-hand information.

Lochley runs through the problem they're currently facing: when Sheridan gave the telepaths permission to set up a colony he neglected to give them immunity from prosecution, so they never really had sanctuary from the Psi Corps. Sheridan laments being caught in a web of his good intentions... and then decides to delegate this task to her, ordering her to find a legal reason why Bester can't take the telepaths away.

Back in C&C we learn that the Centauri cruiser can't wait a few more hours for the repairs to finish as they've got a schedule to keep, so their prime minister and future emperor will have to catch the next flight. I feel like Londo would be yelling at them over a monitor screen right now if he really wanted to leave, but he's probably grateful to get to stay on the station a little longer.

Then the Centauri cruiser suddenly explodes, giving Londo another good reason to be grateful! See, this always happens when a Centauri cruiser arrives at the station. Now those work pod pilots have more radioactive trash to pick up. They get to work overtime after all!

So hang on, Londo's life has just been saved by a fluke failure in another ship's navigation system causing an accident which damaged the dock for 12 hours and prevented his own shuttle from docking. And he says that he has bad luck.

ACT THREE

Act two begins with Lochley asking Zack if he's found any clues to what destroyed the cruiser. Turns out they've found traces of an explosive and the detonator, so I guess he was just waiting for her to drop by his office before he shared the news. Seems like the bomb was planted by a Centauri long before the ship got here, and it was set to go off when the ship departed the station, so the target has to have been Londo.

It's weird how the exploding Centauri ship plot seems to have been wrapped up already without much drama. There's no one yelling on video chat screens, no news reports, no emergency council meeting, no diplomatic incident. In season 1 or 2 a Centauri cruiser exploding outside the station would've been a huge deal, just like the crash in the docking bay would've been, but in this episode they're both just minor distractions from the main storylines. They're a nice way to lead into a commercial break though.

The scene ends with Lochley discovering that Garibaldi actually did access her private files last episode, and heading down to the brig to beat the crap out of him.

At this point Bester and his Bloodhounds have reached DownBelow, but the only person they can sense down there is Lyta. Bester realises that she's using her enhanced powers to jam their abilities, but when he sends his men in she psychically bitch-slaps anyone who tries to walk past her. Bester wonders if it's actual telekinesis she's using or if she's just triggering nerves... and how much longer she can keep doing it.

He's interested in testing her limits, but she doesn't recommend it, as she doesn't want to make a mistake and accidentally kill one of them. Like Jason Ironheart said back in Mind War, you just have to put pressure on the right blood vessel and you can kill someone without leaving any trace.

This almost feels like a sequel to the season 2 episode A Race Through Dark Places, though it's a much better scene than anything I remember in that earlier story. Both actors really sell the fact that these are two superpowered opponents facing off, with Lyta in a far stronger place emotionally than she was when Bester made her sign the contract to rejoin Psi Corps last season. The two make moves and counter moves without losing their cool or giving ground, either physically or conversationally. At least until Bester walks off to get backup. He points out that he has friends in the chain of command now, so he'll return soon with a lot more people.

Byron comes out and thanks Lyta... with a kiss.

Lochley's supposed to be coming up with a way to protect the telepaths, but right now she's currently preoccupied with Garibaldi.

Personally I'm distracted by this cell she's got him in, as I don't remember the brig ever looking like this before. It looks pretty good actually, with some nice detail on the walls and a fantastic looking door. It's funny how whenever the characters find a new room on the station it typically looks much slicker than the old rooms they've been reusing for five seasons.

Plus I'm giving them bonus points for not sticking freezer spacers in front of the lights this time.

1-07 - The War Prayer

Don't get me wrong, I think casting interesting shadows is a smart way to make a room a bit more interesting, it just gets a bit old when you keep seeing that same pattern all the time. And not just in this series.

This is the original version of the brig, from early season one. Though it may be more of an interrogation room, as it doesn't have that row of incredibly uncomfortable looking beds along the wall.

2-07 Soul Mates

Here's what the brig looking like in season 2, with those cheap-looking light panels I hate on the left and a curved wall like you find in half the rooms on the station on the right. I don't remember seeing a brig set show up at all in season 3 and 4, though I suppose G'Kar did have his gloomy cell.

Anyway, the brig changes appearance more than perhaps any other set on this station, but the biggest change here is that for once Garibaldi isn't the one asking the questions.

Except he actually is, as he still wants to know Sheridan's secret reason for bringing her in as captain, and Lochley finally just tells him.

Turns out that Sheridan picked her because she ticked three slightly contradictory boxes: she's a capable officer, she fought against him in the Civil War, and he knows he can trust her. The idea was that she'd be a symbol that they were putting past grievances aside and moving on.

The trouble is that I think they skipped the part where they ever informed anyone that Lochley was on the other side during the war. How can she be a symbol of the two sides coming together if her past is so secret that it took the Alliance's Head of Covert Intelligence five episodes to discover what side she was on and he basically had to interrogate her to do it?

Then Lochley finally gives us the answer to what bothered Delenn so much: she and Sheridan were married for three weeks! It didn't work out because they were both too stubborn, and they haven't been in love for a long time, but they both know and trust each other.

This means that Sheridan had a wife from the Warrior Caste, then the Worker Caste, then the Religious Caste! When you put it like that it's no wonder Delenn couldn't be mad at him for long. This is actually another one of those coincidences that jms had to be told about later; he didn't do this intentionally. In fact he didn't plan this twist at all, the idea just came to him as he was writing the season, so that's why there's no hint that Lochley knows Sheridan all that well in her first appearance. It's also why Garibaldi didn't read about this from Sheridan's file in season two when he pulled the same stunt back then. I guess the two of them managed to keep their marriage a secret from Earthforce for some reason?

Garibaldi appreciates honesty and this has definitely helped him turn a corner with Lochley, but he's less enthusiastic when she's honest to him about how long he's going to be staying in the brig. She can't let him out until Bester's off the station, because allowing the two of them to meet would be a terrible idea.

Hang on, I recognise this shot. This is the clip that goes with Garibaldi's credit in the opening titles!

The scene ends with Lochley getting a call from Zack. Bester's given him an official request for security personnel to help him round up the telepaths, and the order comes from Earth Dome so they can't say no.

Cut to a rogue telepath being chased down a hallway and tackled by security, I guess for the crime of being a rogue telepath. See what I mean about how the older sets look scruffy compared to the new ones.

Lyta's there pulling a Garibaldi and spying on them from around a corner, and she ain't happy. Bester told her earlier that she wouldn't be able to protect the telepaths if they split up and it turns out he was right.

Though hang on, the telepath was crying out for help and it's not like Byron's telepaths to ever talk. Plus he's got short hair. It's like the production crew realised that Byron's group are more creepy than sympathetic so they had to make this guy a bit less aloof and pretentious in order to sell this situation as being a bad thing. It's working too, as he's the only one in their group I've actually given a damn about so far!

ACT FOUR

Lyta stops by the security office next and sees her friend Zack surrounded by people doing... security stuff. Okay it's a lot clearer what's going on here in a still screencap, but this is almost a blink-and-you-miss-it moment on screen as you get about two and a half seconds to register what you're looking at. The camera gives Bester a little more time in a later shot, lingering on the huge grin he flashes to let Lyta know how much he enjoys winning.

She looks over to Zack, and he closes his eyes and looks away, clearly not happy about what he's doing here, but unable to do anything about it. It all plays out without words... until Byron calls to her telepathically.

Turns out that he just wanted to see her again so he could say goodbye. Bester has half of his people already and he feels like he should go with them. Lyta wants them to fight back, but Byron's not into that. Violence isn't their way (unless you count his dialogue and the way he delivers it to be a form of violence).

Byron realises he's got himself to blame for how it all worked out... as he never should've trusted Sheridan and brought his people here where Bester could grab them. There's no kiss between the two of them this time, just "goodbye". I suppose that's arguably more appropriate, seeing as the two of them have only known each other for like two episodes!

Oh damn, I'm not sure we've ever seen the season 5 command staff in a meeting like this before. Lochley's the new Sheridan, Corwin's the new Ivanova, Zack's the new Garibaldi and Franklin's the new Franklin.

They're not exactly all smiles right now, but there is some good news. Corwin reports that they've got the dock fixed and Ms. Connelly believes the backlog should be cleared soon. I don't know why the union rep is the one who gave them this info, but it's nice to get a callback to a character from By Any Means Necessary. We also get a callback to Dr Hobbs from Interludes and Examinations and Walkabout as they discuss who'll be taking some of the workload from Franklin in Medlab when he takes his new job.

Lochley's been looking for excuses to stop Bester before he takes all the telepaths away, but his Bloodhounds have done nothing wrong so far. Then she has a TV epiphany from something Franklin said about cross species infection rates and tells him to put it in writing and have it on her desk. She's finally getting the chance to solve a problem herself for once!

Meanwhile two of the Bloodhound catch Byron's psychic scent and charge right at him, which comes across a little more ridiculous than it's supposed to seeing as he's clearly not inclined to move (or even blink), and they're running right into the camera.

Hey it's G'Kar again! They're in Delenn's quarters as she's got an idea she wants to pitch to him. It's in their best interests to keep Londo from being killed by his many enemies, so she wants G'Kar to go along with him to Centauri Prime as his bodyguard!

I know G'Kar's been a little underutilised in the series lately and honestly right now I'm not even sure if he's the Narn ambassador or not, but either way he's apparently right up there with Sheridan and Delenn in the Alliance's hierarchy and it stretches credibility just a little to have him demoted to serve on Londo's secret service. The guy wrote their constitution! Why not send G'Kar as an Alliance representative and bring Ta'Lon along as his bodyguard? Why have one of the leaders of the Narn resistance make himself subservient to a Centauri?

G'Kar's not keen on the idea at first, even if it would be a powerful symbol of their new unity, but when he realises it will mean he's allowed to hang out in the Centauri Royal Court he's sold. He wants to do it just so he can everyone's reactions.

This whole scene was a little bit uncomfortable and cringy to me to be honest, but it did go much better than the last three times I can remember them meeting in her quarters. The first time she used her magic rings on him, the second time he was desperate for help she couldn’t give him, and the third time she admitted that she let his homeworld fall for a greater good. Now the two of them are so happy that Mira Furlan struggles to get the lines out while laughing!

The Bloodhounds and B5 security have finished gathering up all the prisoners by this point and they've even beaten Byron up a bit for good measure it seems. Seems like the new regime at Babylon 5 is really working out for Bester!

Though Lochley does have to bring up one little problem before they leave: these telepaths have spent years roaming around planets that Earth Alliance hasn't even charted yet, and they have no idea what alien diseases they've come into contact with. She can't hand them into his custody until they've been quarantined for two months, at least that's what the paperwork Franklin just gave her says.

I was wondering if Lochley was going to play this scene with barely-concealed smugness or telegraph what she's up to in any way, but she doesn't. For Sinclair, rubbing legal loopholes in people’s faces was his greatest joy, but Lochley really tries to give Bester the impression that she's as frustrated about this as he is. Kind of ballsy, trying to lie to a frustrated immoral mind-reader's face, but it's apparently working.

Bester tries to haggle her down to just letting him take Byron now. He really seems to hate Byron. But she tells him he can't have him... yet. So he leaves Lochley with a warning: sooner or later Byron will turn against her. It seems like he's speaking from personal experience.

Lyta and Byron are reunited with the other telepaths and there are a lot of silent hugs.

It's not an ideal solution though, as the telepaths won't be allowed to leave the station to escape Bester. In fact technically they shouldn't even be leaving their cells, but Lochley arranges for them to find the key. She makes it clear to Byron that she's not making a moral stand here, she's only doing this because Sheridan ordered her to find a way to keep them here. Now they'll just have to hope they can work something out within 60 days or else they'll be right back here again.

Zack waits until Byron's out the door and then gives Lochley a warning. They had a guy like him on Io, a martyr with a movement. And... we never learn if anything bad happened there. Though Zack claims the guy on Io was charismatic, so the two of them couldn't have been that similar.

ACT FIVE

Act five begins with a bartender flipping a bottle around. Sure there's other stuff happening in the foreground, but how am I supposed to care about that when there's bottle-flipping going on?

Delenn gives Londo the news about G'Kar being his bodyguard on Centauri Prime, and he seems as confused as I am about the idea. Though he doesn't bring up the obvious point that G'Kar already has a job... probably. Are they at least going to bring in a new Narn ambassador while he's gone?

Speaking of Narn ambassadors, I rewatched the scene in the council chamber from The Long, Twilight Struggle recently, where Londo demands G'Kar is to be removed from the council and G'Kar gives a speech about how no occupying force can keep a population imprisoned indefinitely, and this scene feels like the exact polar opposite to me. In tone and quality.

Maybe it's because this scene's shot entirely from this distance, with no close ups. It makes it feel more like a stage play.

Though I have to respect how the camera starts on Delenn and Londo, follows Londo and G'Kar as they walk out together, and then gets passed over to Lochley, who's having a candlelit meal nearby. Plus Corwin's here! They've let him out of C&C and into the same set as Londo and G'Kar for a change, though he doesn't get to interact with either of them, aside from stepping out of their way.

Corwin just dropped by to congratulate his captain on how she resolved the telepath problem. She realises it's not a permanent fix, but she's learned that problems are solved in pieces. She uses a metaphor of leaping out of a burning building and then figuring out what to do next on the way down, which is exactly what Sheridan did at the end of season three!

Corwin tells her she did the right thing and that's what matters, but she's not so sure she did. She has a feeling the telepathic situation is going to bite them in the ass. She also has a feeling that she's forgetting something...

He says she'll figure out and swipes a bit of food from her plate before running off! It feels weird that the Corwin we know would dare do that to a captain, he definitely wouldn't have done it to Ivanova, but now that I think about it he's probably the nearest thing she's got to a peer on the station and one of her closest friends. Man, they should really get that guy a jacket and make him a proper character already.

It's at this point that Lochley realises that Garibaldi's still in the brig.

The episode ends with one last scene with Byron's telepaths in DownBelow, and we finally get to hear them using their mouths... because they're singing a song together!

"And will we all come together in a better place, a better place than this..."

The cool thing about this song is that it really does seem to bring people together. Every B5 thread I've read, every YouTube review I've watched, every podcast I've listened to, it seems like everyone hates this scene. It's the one thing we can all agree on. I have to give the director credit however, as the visuals here match the song perfectly. All soft-focus shots of candles.

There's a chance that we're supposed to cringe at this scene, it's hard to know really, and I don't think the ambiguity helps. It's about Lyta being welcomed into the group as one of them and taking off her badge, which seems like it should be a good thing. It mirrors the end of A Race Through Dark Places where Talia took off her badge with Ivanova. Plus I'd expect that any viewer who's stuck with the series this far is likely to be on the side of oppressed people by default, especially if they're being oppressed by Bester.

But maybe the scene is supposed to be ringing warning bells. Maybe we're supposed to be concerned that Lyta's making a big mistake by falling in with this group. It's so creepy that I can't tell what the tone's meant to be! It feels more like a ritual than a celebration, the opposite of And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place.

Well, she seems happy at least.


CONCLUSION

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I've felt like Babylon 5's fifth season has been a bit of a return to the season 1/season 2 style of storytelling, with things generally building up instead of exploding, and that's true of this episode in particular. I mean it's like three or four early B5 episodes all at once! Bester is hunting a group of rogue telepaths, there's a crash in the docking bay and a Centauri cruiser explodes outside. Plus Garibaldi wants to know Lochley's secret and get his hands around Bester's neck, Delenn's offering new jobs to Franklin and G'Kar, Corwin's stealing food right off Lochley's plate, some dude is juggling bottles in the Zocalo... there are a lot of things going on and threads running through this one.

This almost became a story about Garibaldi punching Bester in the face for about 30 minutes straight, but Lochley intercepted him with a punch of her own and he spent most of the episode off-screen in the brig. Weirdly this actually seems to end his antagonism with the new captain. His problem was that he didn't know her; he was missing a crucial piece of the puzzle and his suspicious, paranoid mind just couldn't accept that. She gave him the answer and that defused it, which is good. Anything that makes Garibaldi less miserable is cool with me. Though Lochley and Sheridan being married is a bit of a soap opera twist and it doesn't really ring true that it wouldn't have made it onto either of their records. Then again I have no idea what gets included in Earthforce records.

Lyta played a big role in the episode as well as Byron's lone defender, trying to use her enhanced powers to keep all the telepaths safe. She failed, but hiding an entire colony of people and making Psi Cops think they've been slapped are tricks that Bester was not expecting. The stand-off between the two characters was a highlight of the episode for me. The scenes with her and Byron, less so. We did get a clue to how we're supposed to see him though, as Zack compared him to someone who was charismatic. Nope, the series messed up there, he's not. But Zack also said that the devotion Byron inspired in others was dangerous and that I can see. Then again people said that about Sheridan last season. Speaking of Sheridan, it seems like he forgot to give the telepath colony any kind of protection against the Psi Corps, who were obviously going to come and take them all away the first chance they got. What the hell dude?

Delenn and G'Kar also appeared a few times, in scenes that made me cringe just as much as the Byron ones to be honest. The three main ambassadors are all friendly and altruistic now and it's not working for me. I should be happy for them, this is a good outcome, but they feel like pod people somehow; I think the Body Snatchers got to them. It doesn't help that the idea of making the Narn ambassador into the bodyguard for the Centauri Prime Minister is so crazy that it ruins the illusion that these are high ranking officials and not just actors on a soundstage. It's already kind of awkward that Sheridan's a president with no staff; it feels like they're playing make-believe.

But the star of this episode has to be Captain Lochley, who finally gets to take on the role that Sinclair and Sheridan had before her, and struggle with the crisis of the week. This is where we really get to learn who Lochley is as a person and she comes off pretty well I reckon, despite punching Garibaldi in the face and having tea with a fascist. The previous two commanders always had more going on than just running the station, with Sinclair having a hole in his mind and a destiny, and Sheridan being in multiple conspiracies of light, but Lochley seems very comfortable just being an administrator. She doesn't feel like it's her job to fix the galaxy, she doesn't have to get involved in politics, she just wants to run an efficient station and carry out the orders that she's given. She does get to save the day here, but she does it in a way that doesn't contradict her speech to Garibaldi last episode. Losing Ivanova from the series was definitely not the plan, but jms made the best of it here by giving us a character who brings something new to the crew and doesn't have so much baggage with characters like Bester.

I was surprised by how much I liked this episode in the end, considering it's all about the telepath colony and Garibaldi's distrust of Lochley, two things I'm very much not interested in. It's a bit of a step down from season 4, but then how could it not be? It's a real step up from season 1 at least.

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NEXT EPISODE

Babylon 5 will return in January with Secrets of the Soul. But next on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching a weird 90s space adventure from the Uncharted Territories of Australia.

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