Babylon 5 5-11: Phoenix Rising

Episode:

99

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

David J. Eagle

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Air Date:

01-Apr-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 11: Phoenix Rising.

Phoenix Rising was actually the 100th episode to be shot but only the 99th to air (due to Sleeping in Light being shelved for a while), so The Ragged Edge ended up getting the party in its place. They got a big cake from TNT for it and everything. Funny thing is, if the season had been broadcast in the correct order then neither of them would've gotten the cake. I haven't written about Day of the Dead yet because it should come after both stories, making it the true episode 100.

Hang on, that means I've covered 98 episodes and two movies now - this is MY 100TH BABYLON 5 REVIEW! Man, I should've gotten myself a cake.

The episode aired on April 1st, but somehow I doubt it'll be a joke. In fact it's basically the second half of A Tragedy of Telepaths. Or maybe part five of Strange Relations, depending on how you look at it. The series has gotten very serialised again.

There'll be lots of SPOILERS below, as I'm pretty much writing this for people who've already seen all of Babylon 5 up to this point (or followed along with my articles at least). You're fine if you're first time viewer though, as I won't be spoiling anything that comes later. Even the things I can remember.

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The previous episode ended with a long long docking scene showing a shuttle-load of Bester's Bloodhounds arriving at the station. Now another group has turned up and they've brought a proper Psi Corps shuttle this time, with a Black Omega symbol and everything!

Last time it was Lochley who got to narrate the teaser, but now it's Bester's turn to provide the recap 'for those who've just arrived,' as he briefs his team. You know that things are in a bad place when Bester's the one that's telling us what's up.

First he gives us a reminder that Byron's telepaths scanned the Alliance ambassadors in order to blackmail them for homeworld, and man I bet Bester can't wait to get hold of all those secrets.

He mentions that the telepaths have split up into two groups, with the first group sealed away in DownBelow, reportedly on a hunger strike to get sympathy for their cause. Bester's fine with that as it means they're already contained and they're just going to get weaker over time. It's the telepaths roaming the station they have to worry about. Hey that's exactly what Garibaldi said to Sheridan last episode!

Lochley isn't keen on Bester's methods, how his Bloodhounds hunt people down like dogs, but Bester points out that she was the one who called him in to handle this. He also mentions some of the ways that other races control telepaths: through laws, religion, drugs or extermination, and he feels that their system is clearly better than the alternatives. I guess that the Minbari probably use religion, but I wonder what the Centauri do.

While they're talking we get a scene of a Bloodhound in action, chasing a rogue telepath into the only dead-end corridor on the station. Bester mentions that there's little tactical coordination between the group of telepaths loose on the station and this will make them easier to hunt down.

But the scene turns out to be counterpoint to their conversation, dramatic irony, as the telepaths have set up a trap! We see the rogues outwitting the Bloodhound and executing them.

Bester explains to Lochley that the rogue telepaths they're chasing are on the same side as the Psi Corps, they just have to make them see that. Then the transport tube they're both waiting for arrives and they discover to their shock that it's occupied.

They literally crucifed his Bloodhound! Nails through his wrists and everything. Good luck convincing them you're on the same side Bester.

Seems like the 'Free Byron' slogan we saw last episode has caught on. Couldn't they at least wait until Bester's arrested him first?

ACT ONE

Act one begins with Sheridan getting a call on channel 4 (another sneaky shout out to British TV network Channel 4). It turns out that Byron can communicate with them from inside his sealed-off lair after all, so he made Lochley crawl through the vents to speak with them last episode for nothing. I mean that was true anyway as he didn't actually want to negotiate, but it turns out that it was double pointless.

Byron's a little more willing to come to an arrangement now, but first he wants the Psi Cops gone. He tells Sheridan that they're driving the telepaths to become violent, which is true, and that he can talk them down. But Bester stomps into Sheridan's office and he doesn't want talking, he wants action! He tells Byron that despite Sheridan's "liberal attitudes", even he's not going to let killers escape. I suppose everyone's a liberal when you're a fascist.

Sheridan's detected that there might be something personal between Bester and Byron... but he knows that there's something personal between Bester and Garibaldi and that's getting him worried. Garibaldi's being very quiet and that means he's up to something. Wait, Lochley invited Bester onto the station and didn't do anything to keep Garibaldi out of his way? What the hell was she thinking?

Cut to Garibaldi being up to something.

He ambushes Bester in his quarters and tells him to record a full confession about what he did to him. Bester confesses right away, but he doesn't have any intention of hitting record and he knows that Garibaldi won't pull that trigger. Man, Garibaldi must kicking himself for not starting it recording before Bester walked in the room.

Garibaldi feels there's a good chance he can get away with gunning Bester down right now and saying it was self-defence, because who would even care if it was a lie. It doesn't matter though, as he'll accept any outcome that includes Bester being imprisoned or killed. I remember Ivanova nearly killing Bester back in Dust to Dust by pointing the station's defence grid at his ship and telling it to fire. So is going to be the second time we see a main character actually aiming a gun at the guy and pulling the trigger.

But like Ivanova, he's not allowed to go through with it.

Bester points out that he let Garibaldi go after giving him back his free will last year (in The Face of the Enemy), and there's no way he would've done that if there was the even slightest chance he could hurt him. He says that he's put two of Asimov's three laws of robotics in his head, so now he can't harm him directly or allow him to be harmed through inaction. He left his rage intact though, and calls it "counterpoint, dramatic irony." Wow Babylon 5 has actually managed to introduce the three laws even though there are no robots in this universe. Though hang on, those are both rule 1.

By the way the other two laws are: #2 a robot must obey any instruction given by a human and #3 a robot must avoid situations where it could come to harm itself. Unless either of them conflicts with rule 1. So it was actually pretty nice of Bester to skip rule #2 but I have a feeling #3 might have actually done Garibaldi some good.

Anyway Bester tells him to turn the lights out when he leaves.

ACT TWO

Meanwhile Byron's pulling his normal routine of whining to Lyta that he couldn't teach his people that there was another way than violence. I suppose the reason he's failed at that so consistently is because non-violence hasn't actually gotten him anywhere. He's currently trapped in the corner of the slums he calls home, deliberately starving his people to death just to make a point. The only lesson he's teaching his followers is that they have to stand up on their own so they can save him from himself.

Lyta's also figured out that this is personal between him and Bester, so Byron finally reveals his dark past to her. He's rated strong P-12, which means he was automatically assigned to be a Psi Cop. He was Bester's protege in fact, learning to be just like him. He was just like him.

They tracked down a smuggling operation helping rogues telepaths escape into the outer colonies and ordered them to turn over their cargo. And they did! The put all the rogues into a pod and sent them over.

But Bester wanted to send a message and seeing as there were only mundanes aboard now there was no reason they couldn't just blow the transport up. And he ordered Byron to pull the trigger.

Byron was sure Bester would kill him if he didn't obey (doesn't seem likely, but okay), so he destroyed the transport and killed all those people. Afterwards he tried to report what happened, but no one cared, so he escaped the Psi Corps. And since that day he's been determined to resolve problems without blowing up transports.

We get to hear Psi Cop Byron talking in a more normal tone here and somehow he's more likeable like this. He's even got a name like a regular person, though all we can make out here is 'BYRON GEO-' The internet claims that his name's actually Byron Gordon, but that doesn't match the letters. Though I suppose if he's named after the famous poet Lord George Gordon Byron, then his name could be any combination of those words.

You want to know what's weird? I actually want to see more of this story. I want this episode to turn into Lost or Arrow for a bit and give me an extended Psi Cop Byron flashback.

Hey it's Thomas again from the last episode, speaking to Unnamed Telepath from a few episodes earlier on the right. He was the guy who led half of Byron's telepaths away in the first place.

They're currently in the middle of a shoot out, but they're outnumbered so they're going to try another tactic: taking mundane hostages, people whose lives anyone in charge will actually care about.

Cut to Medlab.

In fact cut to Garibaldi walking into Medlab to see if Franklin knows any way to get rid of a telepathic block. You don't have to be precognitive to realise that this camera angle means someone's going to come running in with guns before he gets his answer. We're finally getting the hostage situation we saw in the flash forward back in Deconstruction of Falling Stars! The one where Garibaldi apparently gets killed!

Garibaldi's clearly not in the mood for telepaths right now, as he rushes straight into the invading army, flipping one over his shoulder and tripping another, before trading blows with the next two. I'm sure I saw him pull a gun as well, but I've no idea where that went in the chaos.

Franklin gets in one good punch as well, before he's kicked into a wall.

Garibaldi's completely outnumbered, he can't win, but for a while it doesn't seem like the telepaths can win either. They keep punching him and he keeps strangling anyone he can get his hands around.

Thomas can't believe the quality of hostages they've got here, they've really come up aces. Though he makes it clear that the first hostage to die is going to be Garibaldi, which seems kind of backwards to me. Surely you kill the least important person first, to prove your willingness to execute the valuable ones. (I don't actually know much about hostage-taking to be honest).

ACT THREE

Act three beings with Thomas reading his demands, including safe passage to neutral territory, negotiations for a telepath homeworld, and the release of Byron. Okay, Thomas, seriously. THEY HAVE NOT ARRESTED BYRON, HE IS NOT IN THEIR CUSTODY! Also aren't they already in neutral territory?

Thomas ends his message by echoing what Bester said to Byron in his flashback four minutes ago: they're only mundanes. Byron's pretty frantic now, asking Lyta to find him a way out to Medlab.

Meanwhile the telepaths find Peter, the telekinetic telepath who got his ass kicked a few episodes ago in Secrets of the Soul, and drag him out of his hospital bed. Man, they're just as bad as those Rangers in Learning Curve! They need him to guard a hall with his powers, even though he's clearly not up to it. In fact Franklin even points that out, so Unnamed Telepath points a PPG at his head and pulls the trigger.

Amazingly Franklin manages to dodge it, ducking out of the way so quick that that sails over his head and hits the wall behind him. You can't kill Franklin with a gun mate, he's too fast for that. I'm deducting points from this scene though because his PPG blast doesn't leave a mark on the wall. It only needed to be there a few frames, they could've painted it on!

Unnamed Telepath plays it off like it was a warning shot and tells him to stay out of their business. Franklin doesn't stay out of their business though, he walks straight up to the guy, giving Garibaldi a chance to grab him! I like how this isn't playing out like your typical TV hostage situation. I don't think the telepaths were quite prepared for just how pissed off Garibaldi is today.

The telepaths end up having to take sub-hostages to discourage their main hostage from hitting them anymore.

Man, they could've chosen to go anywhere, picked any hostages, but they chose the medical staff and they are not showing a shred of regret or compassion for them. The episode's really not doing anything to make us sympathise with this group. I wonder if they know that Franklin's their biggest ally on the station, the one who's been treating them for free and letting Lyta take free medicine. The one who set up the telepath railroad to get rogues like them out of the Psi Corps. Oh of course, they're telepaths, they know anything they want to know!

You know, the more I think about this, the more it sinks in: they chose to take doctors and nurses hostage. Whatever Garibaldi wants to do to them right now is too good for them.

I don't know what Zack's team is trying to do here, but Peter's single-handedly holding them all off. Telekinetics are incredibly rare and sought after by the Psi Corps as their abilities make them ideal assassins... but he's just throwing junk at them. The other telepaths could've just done that themselves!

We finally check back in with Sheridan, Lochley and Bester here, and the camerawork goes extremely handheld as it whips between them. Sheridan feels like they could've avoided this crisis by talking, but Bester feels that would've been a waste of time as Byron's people can't be trusted. And if Garibaldi's killed as a result of all this, then Zack gets his room! Okay that was the line of the episode, congratulations Bester.

Bester doesn't really need to listen to what Sheridan thinks anyway, as the Alliance's rules give Earthgov jurisdiction over the humans on the station, which means he gets to decide how this is resolved.

Of course Sheridan could end this right now and save his friends if he negotiates with the terrorists and gives them what they want. So he's got that weighing on him.

Meanwhile Byron and Lyta are still searching for a way out of their self-made prison. Lyta's using a new trick we've never seen before though: CGI vision.

She's able to fly a camera down these pitch-black tunnels telepathically. Either that or we're watching someone play Doom 3.

This one's a dead end, but they find an exit eventually and then Lochley finally has her revenge as the two of them both have to crawl down a filthy tunnel.

They don't even look slightly dirty, what the hell? When Lochley came out of a vent last episode she looked like she'd been up all night single-handedly taking down Hans Gruber's team of terrorists in Nakatomi Plaza, but they're both spotless.

Peter tells Byron that he's not supposed to let anyone through and Byron replies that they didn't mean him. In fact this is exactly what the hostage-takers wanted: Lyta's freed Byron!

Meanwhile the hostage-takers are waiting to wait to learn if Sheridan's going to negotiate to save Garibaldi's life or not. We already know the answer though, we saw it in Deconstruction of Falling Stars.

I've been wondering for a while now if this episode was going to reuse footage from Deconstruction of Falling Stars or reshoot the scene, and it turns out that it's a little of both. We've got new footage of Garibaldi getting thrown down onto the desk and landing on that beautiful giant CRT monitor.

But then a short while later it cuts to footage filmed for Deconstruction of Falling Stars (minus the security monitor overlay). This means they had to match the state of the room exactly for continuity and they got most of the way there. Put the shots next to each other and you can immediately tell that the lighting's off, there's different stuff lying on the desk etc., but with a break in between it's fine.

I think this might be the fourth time we've seen the series pay off its flash-forwards like this. We saw G'Kar strangle Londo in a dream, then we saw it again for real. We saw the events of season 3's War Without End back in season 1's Babylon Squared, we saw a preview of when Delenn dropped the snow globe after Anna Sheridan turned up at the door, and now this. It's one of the advantages of planning out your story!

Sheridan says the lines we've already heard before. He's had a chat with Captain Lochley (hey we know who that is now) and they've decided that they can't negotiate with terrorists. That means the telepaths have two options a: surrender, b: Zack Allen bursts in there guns blazing in ten minutes and kills them all.

This time we know that it's Thomas who raises the gun to kill Garibaldi, and the shot goes off like before...

...but it turns out that Byron is here and he's picked option c: killing his friend with a PPG. Garibaldi survives!

I have to wonder, was there a non-violent solution here? Could Lyta have disabled the guy with her Vorlon-boosted super telepathy? Could Peter have thrown a wrench at his head? Actually never mind, that second one still sounds pretty violent.

ACT FOUR

Then we see a scene that wasn't shown when the academics were deconstructing Sheridan in Deconstruction, with Sheridan wondering why the telepaths haven't given him their answer yet, and feeling really guilty about what he might have just done to his friend. He also mentions that Garibaldi's survived so much, even beaten his alcoholism, which is an interesting fact to remind us about here.

Just then Byron gets on the monitor to say everything's fine, they're going to release the hostages. He's also going to make sure the Psi Corps gets everyone responsible for the violence as long as they make sure that every innocent telepath is free to go. They said that they can't negotiate with terrorists, but technically Byron's the guy who shot the terrorist so I suppose it's okay to negotiate with him. He's not threatening to do anything, that's the important thing, he's just telling them how it is. His power over his people has proven to have its limits and they need to meet him halfway.

Bester's really pissed off when he finds out what Sheridan and Lochley have agreed to, but it turns out that they've gotten Earthgov to give them jurisdiction in this case, due to the fact it's their station personnel who have been shot at, so they're going to get what they want. Not even the prisoners are getting handed over to the Psi Corps!

I think that's a new shot of the station, with all the lights turning off at dawn. Or however that works.

Zack comes in with a folder full of signed confessions and all the Identicards of the people responsible for the attacks. So somewhere in that stack is the name of Unnamed Telepath but we'll never get to see it.

Byron gets a moment to say a silent goodbye to all his followers before he leaves, especially Lyta.

But Bester decides to pay them a visit as well. He's taken his glove off so you can tell shit's getting real. He does the same mental flying around trick Lyta did earlier and calls Byron's name.

The two of them find each other telepathically, which is demonstrated by a nice camera move where it does a 360 spin around Byron to reveal that Bester's now standing in front of him.

Bester tells him he shouldn't go off with strangers and Byron knows that he's not keen on him letting anyone else know about all the evil things the two of them did as Psi Cops. Bester didn't want to record a confession for Garibaldi earlier and he definitely doesn't want Byron recording a confession now. There's a real Magneto and Professor X thing going on between the two of them, with them each beliving that their way is the best way for their people. And Byron's not giving up on that dream one bit.

So Bester goes and meets up with his Psi Cop buddies and tells them that they aren't leaving without Byron.

Seems that security is moving the telepaths out of DownBelow through the hazardous chemical zone for some reason. It's a redress of the Zocalo set, which the series reuses a lot, but I don't think I've seen it look quite like this before.

Suddenly Bester shows up with his people and claims he has a right to the prisoners. Unnamed Telepath absolutely freaks out at the possibility and opens fire!

Oh right, that's the other thing they should've asked for. Confessions, Identicards and guns.

Hey guys, will you just let them capture Byron already? You're so close! You just have to wait until he's in their custody and then you can finally spray Free Byron graffiti over everything and it'll mean something! You'll have an actual cause!

The two sides open fire, and someone breaks a valve in the mayhem, letting fluid leak out onto the floor.

Okay I feel like a few lessons could be learned from this: they shouldn't have let the prisoners keep guns, they shouldn't have brought them through the hazardous chemical zone and they shouldn't have let other people just wander in and freak them out. Also they shouldn't have let the President of the Galaxy stick around during a gun fight, that seems fairly important too.

One of the Psi Cops clips Byron with a PPG and that brings the shooting to an end. Everyone shuts up and it gets so quiet that we can hear the computer saying "Danger, hazardous chemical spill".

Sheridan tells Byron this can still work out as they planned, but he disagrees, saying that there's too much blood. The Psi Corps turned them into killers. Then he reaches down in plain sight of everyone to pick up a PPG and... no one shoots him. He tells Sheridan that he's a symbol and he should remember that. So that's a bit cryptic.

Byron tries to guilt Lyta into leaving him, saying that if she stays out of love then she didn't really love him enough anyway! Because he needs her to carry on his mission. She can't save his life, but she can save his soul. He's literally too stubborn to live and Lyta doesn't need to read his mind to know that.

And then he starts singing again... right before shooting the fuel that's leaked out into a puddle beneath them!

Okay Byron, you had me for a moment. I started to believe you might be a genuinely good person and not a creepy cult leader, and then you go and drag all your followers into a group suicide.

Eh, it's not the best looking effect to be honest. They apparently couldn't get the practical effects to work in the time that they had.

The fireball in the next shot looks pretty legit though.

Man, it's such a pointless tragic waste of life... oh wait, they held the medical staff hostage and fired a gun at Franklin's head so they were basically all scum. Well, except for poor Peter! All he's done since arriving on the station is get viciously beaten, lie in Medlab for a few days, and then throw some trash at Zack.

Fortunately this was a pretty small explosion that didn't blow out half the station and send it careening off its axis. Though it would've been hilarious if Byron's last act killed thousands of innocent people.

ACT FIVE

Bester is genuinely shocked by what just happened. He thought the same thing as Byron: that if he could just talk to the telepaths and explain things to them properly, they'd come see to things his way. Byron wanted to teach them non-violence, Bester wanted to teach them that were supposed to be on the same side, against the real enemy.

Sheridan clarifies that by 'real enemy' he means mundanes like him, and Bester doesn't deny it. They both know what's going on here, both know that there's going to be a war between telepaths and mundanes, but they have a surprisingly civil conversation considering.

As Bester leaves, Franklin shows up. He's looking for Garibaldi and figured that he'd go to where the chaos is. He brings up how Garibaldi asked him about ways to remove a neural block, which surprises me. I figured that Franklin would completely forget about it and never inquire further, but nope they're worried about him. Not worried enough to find ways to remove a neural block though.

The two of them walk off and we see that someone's tagged a wall with the phrase "REMEMBER BYRON". Man they did well spraying that 10 meters from the President of the Universe without anyone in the area spotting them.

The next scene starts with Lyta catching up with the innocent telepaths before they leave. Turns out that Byron telepathically transferred his memories of contacts... safe houses... resources... secrets, and she'll be giving them that information.

Bester's standing right behind her the whole time, but she doesn't care, she tells them openly, rubbing it in his face. In fact she turns around to face him to let him know that what she means by 'secrets'. She holds hands with each of them on the way out, no gloves, and says "Remember Byron". Damn, she really has taken over as leader of the good mutants. She's like a red-haired Professor X... which I guess makes her Jean Grey, aka. Phoenix.

Wait, the episode's called Phoenix Rising! Oh shit, it was right there the whole time! Straczynski wrote for Marvel comics, he had to have known what he was doing here. Or maybe it's just a coincidence.

Aww shit Garibaldi's drinking. So jms is finally pulling the trigger on his alcoholism after all these years. Man, he could've at least waited for an answer from Franklin before hitting rock bottom. Also Franklin didn't think to look for the guy in his own quarters?

In other news, we get a bit of ISN at the end, reporting that Psi Corps headquarters just got bombed. The words "Remember Byron" were found at the scene. It's somehow sadder that Garibaldi's doing this even after hearing about the bombing on the news. Other people getting his revenge for him hasn't done a damn thing to ease his feeling of powerlessness.

And then the heroic season 5 end credits music comes on. It seems less fitting every time I hear it.


CONCLUSION

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Phoenix Rising is the halfway point of season 5 and the point where we transition between the episodes with Byron in them and the episodes without Byron in them. Because he's dead. He blew himself up and we'll never see him again.

There's only one real plot in this story and it's all telepaths, all the time. Turns out that the title has nothing to do with the captain with a phoenix logo on her helmet, it's about Byron's movement rising from the ashes of his smoking corpse. There's a bit of a trope about how villains won't kill certain people or else they'll become a martyr. Can't kill Sheridan, he'll become a martyr, can't kill Fox Mulder he'll become a martyr. Now we're actually seeing that in action, as Byron has become a martyr by blowing himself up, inspiring rogues telepaths to fight back against the Psi Corps... by blowing stuff up.

The weird thing is, I'm not sure what to think about that. I mean that's been true about the entire Byron arc, but in this case the ambiguity is a good thing I feel. The whole episode keeps hammering home the message 'these terrorists are terrible people' and then ends with an act of terrorism against an oppressive organisation that really needs to be taken down. I guess the freedom fighter telepaths will just have to figure this out themselves as they go, as organising to fight back instead of just running to find sanctuary seems like a new thing for them. Though at this point I hope they agree with me that taking medical staff hostage was definitely the wrong move. Especially when one of them was their biggest ally.

I think the thing Byron never quite understood is that you may have limited success teaching people to do something when you've provided no evidence that it'll do them any good. His was not a success story, especially as it ended with him killing a bunch of his own people that were perfectly willing to hand themselves over to B5 security a couple of minutes ago. But he's an excellent symbol for the cause. The slogan doesn't say "REMEMBER BYRON'S WORDS" it's just "REMEMBER BYRON".

I don't particularly want to remember Byron myself, he was a creepy pretentious cult leader who killed more of his own followers than Bester did (seriously, what did Peter do to deserve immolation?), but I have to admit that the episode helped make him a little more sympathetic and understandable. Turns out that what's been driving him all this time is intense guilt over killing a ship full of mundanes. He's definitely one of Bester's victims and we see here how people like Bester work to push their 'us vs them' beliefs on every telepath strong enough to be of use to them. It adds an extra shade of horror to the already pretty horrible Psi Corps.

You could say the Garibaldi story is a B plot I suppose, even though it involves Bester and telepaths at every point (even the last scene has the bombing story on the news). On the one hand it's great that he escaped his prophesied death, on the other hand he couldn't escape the Chekhov's gun of his alcoholism. We've been waiting for the other shoe to drop on that since season one. Garibaldi does not react well to being powerless and defeated.

Still I'm kind of glad he didn't shoot Bester, as it means he can still come back later. Though we actually got two consecutive episodes of Bester here already and that's the first time that's ever happened. Bester's used so sparingly in the series that I never get tired of seeing the guy and Walter Koenig always delivers. I'm sure we already knew that he was a true believer in the Corps who didn't really get why anyone would want to leave it, but the episode does help get his point of view across. Man the character's a dick though.

I think I mostly liked this story, despite the focus on Byron, but I'm looking forward to seeing some episodes where he's not taking precious screen time away from the regulars. And maybe some stories that don't involve telepaths.

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COMING SOON

Babylon 5 will return with The Ragged Edge. But next on Sci-Fi Adventures I'll be checking in with a different sci-fi crew with wildly implausible plans of having fun fun fun in the sun sun sun.

Thanks for reading by the way! If you'd like to leave a comment then the box is just below.