Babylon 5 2-18: Confessions and Lamentations

Episode:

40

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Air Date:

24-May-1995

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm writing about Confessions and Lamentations, the 40th episode of cult 90s space opera Babylon 5.

Incidentally, if you add 40 to 90 you get 130, which is the total number of Babylon 5 stories ever filmed if you include the movies and the spin-offs (and count The Lost Tales as one thing). Why am I mentioning this? Because I feel like I should be writing something here to pad this introduction out a bit. Plus it also means that if I somehow end up owning a Crusade DVD box set in the future I'll have 90 stories left after this to review.

Beyond this point you'll find SPOILERS as I'm going to go through the entire episode in screencaps, and put my opinions and observations underneath, so I wouldn't recommend reading any further unless you've seen the episode already. I won't be spoiling anything that happens after this point in the series though, so it's entirely safe for people watching it for the first time.

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The episode begins in C&C, with Ivanova reporting to Sheridan that a Markab transport is 10 hours overdue and not responding. Which is great news, as it means that Sheridan got to keep his job after the crap he pulled in In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum.

Ivanova suggests sending a flight of Starfuries out to see what the problem is, and then starts making it really obvious how bored she is until Sheridan gets the hint and sends her out to lead the fighters personally. At least that's what I was expecting to happen, but it turns out I had the scene mixed up in my memory with the one at the start of Believers. Probably won't be the last time I'm reminded of Believers during this episode.

This time around Ivanova's quite happy to let Lieutenant Keffer handle the mission. You know, the guy who's been in the opening credits of every episode this season despite only showing up four times and having less screen time than Zack Allan? This is appearance #5!

Keffer's actually out at the moment, as he was nearly killed by a Shadow ship in hyperspace back in A Distant Star and he's been obsessively searching for it in his free time ever since. Ivanova's not in the loop so Sheridan can't explain how bad this is for them, but he gets a look on his face that says "Oh crap, Keffer's going to reveal the Shadows and doom us all," and tells her to tell him to knock it off. I like how the episode trusts viewers to figure that out themselves without Sheridan mumbling it to himself or whatever.

Cut to Dr Franklin and some other guy in the bedroom of some other guy, determining his cause of death. So that's two Markab problems now in this teaser.

We heard about Franklin's Markab doctor friend in Knives and now we actually get to meet him! You can't tell because of all the makeup, but that's the same actor who played Ombuds Wellington in two episodes of season one (and Bishop Brennan in Father Ted).

Dr Lazarenn is a bit annoyed that Franklin's here as he already knew that the man had been ill for a while, he's already made a death certificate and the Markab have jurisdiction over their own kind. But this is the fourth dead Markab who's died of natural causes in the last three days and Franklin finds that a cause for further investigation. He mentions that unlike Garibaldi, he doesn't like mysteries, which implies that Garibaldi's love for mysteries is so well known that even a Markab doctor knows about it. Hey, maybe the guy watches Babylon 5 himself.

ACT ONE

Act one begins with a dramatic pilot briefing by Ivanova, though she's just telling them about the missing ship and how they're going to be the ones sent out to look for it. Claudia Christian does well here I thought, considering that the writer gave her a bunch of coordinates to memorise and recite. Maybe she wrote them down on Keffer's forehead to remind her.

The other pilots go get on with putting their scarves on in the background, but Keffer is a bit frustrated about being told he can't go on space fighter expeditions in his free time and whines about it to Ivanova. He tells her that there's something out there, and she doesn't doubt it. But there's something in here as well, and that's her giving him an order to knock it off. Man, poor Keffer. He was involved in one ongoing subplot and now the captain won't even let him have that anymore!

Meanwhile Sheridan's enjoying dinner with Delenn and Lennier. Well, he's preparing to enjoy it anyway, as they have some rituals to get through first. Lennier spent the last two days preparing the meal, blessing all the spices and so on, and if they make an error now the meal must be abandoned and he has to start over again. Without sleep. Eating only water and bread. So no pressure Sheridan.

Lennier's awkward grins really make this scene, as he looks like a man who's been awake for two days now and is terrified that this stupid human's going to make him stay up for the next two as well.

Here, I stitched a panning shot together so that I could get Delenn and Lennier in the same screencap. Click the image to get a rare glimpse of what Babylon 5 could look like in HD!

Lennier's being very polite, as usual, but he's clearly going through a lot of emotions right now. Sometimes even joy, whenever he sees Sheridan successfully complete a step of the ritual. Of course for TV episode purposes Sheridan has to assume each time that they're finished now and he can take a bite, but Delenn's always quick enough to stop him.

Incidentally the fourth seat at the table is for Valen, in case he makes an appearance. There's no explanation for who that is in this scene, but we learned way back in Babylon Squared that he's the one responsible for all the prophecies about the Shadows that Delenn keeps talking about. Plus he formed the Grey Council, so it seems unlikely that he'll show up for dinner on account of being dead for a thousand years.

Hey I wonder if he was the one who started the tradition of meditating between every bite of food when you've got honoured guests around as well. Because if he was, then he is now Sheridan's enemy

Keffer's evening is going better, as he's found the Markab transport pretty easily. So that's what a Markab ship looks like if you were ever curious. His Starfury's not picking up any life signs though so either 200 Markabs have gone missing, or they're dead (turns out that they're dead).

Over in Medlab, Franklin's been doing an autopsy of the dead Markab from teaser, and has made a troubling discovery of his own. Though he's going to drag out the mystery of what he found for a while to keep us in suspense.

The greatest horror is yet to come though, as at the end of Sheridan's meal Delenn tells him that they must do this again.

Lennier flashes Delenn a glance which says "SERIOUSLY?" before saying "Yes. Of course," with a heroic amount of forced enthusiasm. Then they have a secret conversation in Minbari, apparently about Lennier's cooking.

Of course they had to wake Sheridan first as he'd dozed off during the hours of meditation, but knowing him he probably needed the sleep. They timed it well though as he woke up just in time to answer a call from Ivanova saying that there's a 'problem' in Bay 14 he needs to deal with. She could've just said "Captain, we found the Markab ship and towed it to Bay 14, but everyone on board is dead," but then there'd be no mystery, and unlike Dr Franklin, Sheridan loves mysteries!

Sheridan arrives at Bay 14 to find Dr Lazareen there to stop them trespassing on the Markab vessel, but we're at the end of act one now and need some drama, so Franklin interrupts to reveal what he learned during the autopsy: the four dead Markab on board were killed by a plague. One that's 100% terminal and 100% contagious. So I guess this is the last ever episode of Babylon 5 then, as everyone's going to be infected by this plague. The final shot of the series will be Kosh standing in the Zocalo surrounded by 250,000 bodies, saying ‘I told them that the salmon were scampering tonight, why couldn't they just listen to my warnings?

ACT TWO

Man, that's a lot of dead Markabs. I don't think we're getting any more jokes about Lennier's flarn in this story.

Franklin has a tendency for righteous indignation whenever people do dumb things that threaten people's lives and Dr Lazarenn gets the full force of it during their long walk across the station. It's so long in fact that there's an elevator ride part way through and then they carry on down another set of corridors.

I feel sorry for the set decorators on Babylon 5, as every time characters moved between sectors, they had to replace all the coloured strips and signage in the corridors. Also the lights change colour in the lifts as well, which is something I didn't notice for a long while.

Lazarenn (reluctantly) reveals that he didn't say anything about the plague earlier because he was ordered to cover it up by their government, because it's taboo. The last time there was an outbreak of this plague it happened centuries ago on an island noted for certain excesses. People believed it was a punishment by the gods for their lack of morality, so from that point if you caught the plague you must be immoral. When the disease came back, everyone thought they were too good to catch it, so they didn't take sensible precautions. Well, except for the people who decided to escape the planet on transport ships. It's just a shame they left a little too late and took the plague with them to other colonies.

It's not like the Markab government were completely clueless, but they were worried that taking any action against a plague sent by the gods to kill the unworthy would be political suicide and it was kind of an unpleasant subject to talk about really so they tried to avoid it. Lazarenn, on the other hand, clearly has feelings on the subject that he's been bottling up for a while. The actor does pretty well expressing them really, considering all the prosthetics on his face. But now that he's actually talking, there's something that Franklin urgently needs to know: can the disease cross to other species? Lazarenn doesn't know.

Whoa, they were able to put full alien makeup on a kid? That's unusual. Plus she was played by an actress with the first name 'Bluejean', so that's fairly unusual as well.

This Markab girl was sent by her mother to find her dad. Unfortunately he slumps over dead, because whenever writer J. Michael Straczynski allows a cute kid onto the series he has to offset it with an equal or greater amount of tragedy. Like in Believers, where Franklin saved a sick child's life, only for him to be stabbed to death by his outraged parents. The child's parents I mean, not Franklin's... though his dad has never been all that happy with him treating all these aliens.

The girl takes a step back and finds Delenn standing behind her, looking understandably concerned about the whole thing.

Damn, you can tell a situation is serious when there's extras invited to the staff meeting.

Turns out that the disease is invisible during its incubation period, so they have to assume that every Markab on the station has it. Once symptoms appear the patient has less than 24 hours to live, which by pure coincidence is the same duration as a day on Earth!

The scene continues with them going through questions they need answered, like ‘How is the virus transmitted?' If it's airborne, the recycled air means the whole station might be infected, because apparently filtering out infectious plagues isn't part of the recycling process.

Sheridan tells Franklin that because this is a medical crisis so he'll be calling the shots for this one, so he decides that he needs to examine every Markab on the station, even if it comes off like they're insinuating that they're immoral. If they want to develop a cure they need to find someone that's definitely infected so they can follow the progress of the disease.

Then Sheridan has a crazy idea: he's going to put the station under quarantine! It's crazy because how did he not do this in act one? How many ships have already left while Franklin was having that endless conversation in the hallways?

Of course when people are told they can't leave because Black Death 2259 is spreading across the station, they're going to want to leave. Fortunately they're just waving bits of paper at a fence right now so that's not a major concern... yet.

Garibaldi says getting all the Markab into one place will make them easier to protect from the inevitable angry mob, but Franklin feels that putting them all in one place will only spread the infection between them much faster.

The next scene shows Franklin bringing all the Markab into one place for tests.

Wouldn't it have been a better idea to confine them to their quarters and then test them there, wearing hazmat suits? Or at least a mask and gloves, like the people carrying the bodies from the Markab transport earlier.

Also I assumed that they'd still have beds full of wounded Narn refugees coming in from the war, but I guess the Centauri are either taking a break from blowing up their ships and colonies, or they're getting better at it.

The Markab ambassador is predictably upset that his people are all being tested, like they're immoral or something and accuses Sheridan of spreading hysteria. In fact he has a theory that it's the immorality on Babylon 5 that has contaminated them, and he's already decided that the best thing to do is get all his people together in one room and wait for everyone else to die. Which is what Garibaldi wanted anyway as it'll make it much easier to protect them from attacks.

So step 1: wait for everyone to die, step 2: find a user manual for the docking computer?

Franklin comes on the screen to deliver the typical "Captain, you'd better come down here to see this," line but Sheridan's not having it this time and wants to know what it is first. Good! That should be his answer every time! Though this really is kind of a serious issue as tests have shown that the virus is airborne. Plus they've found a dead pak'ma'ra, a species notable for their tendency to not be Markabs. If tests reveal that they've died from the Markab plague then that means the plague is able to cross between species. And everyone on board is part of a species!

ACT THREE

The Markab (including the girl from earlier) head out of their comfy isolated homes and walk to their miserable isolated sanctuary room, with crowds of assholes jeering at them along the way. So it turns out that stupidity can cross species as well.

I understand that they're angry that the Markab brought their plague to the station, but… the Markab brought their plague, so there's no way a number of them aren't infected right now, and they're ALL coming down this hallway! The only way these idiots could make themselves more exposed to the plague is if they went in with them and got an orgy started. If I was living on B5 while this was going on you'd find me locked in my quarters, with a spacesuit on, cleaning everything I owned with antibacterial wipes and then incinerating it.

We get a first person view from the little girl for a bit which shows how scary the security officers look as well. The Markabs are locking themselves up and security is here to protect them, but they're not exactly doing it with friendly smiles and compassion in their eyes.

Over in Medlab, Franklin is giving instructions to his staff, but there's a whole lot of silence and limited eye contact when he asks for someone to go in and do an autopsy on the infected pak'ma'ra. This confuses Franklin for a moment as his brain tries to process the idea of a doctor not immediately jumping at the chance to catch a plague, but doesn't upset him, he'll just do it himself.

But it turns out that Dr Lazarenn didn't go into isolation with the other Markab and he's here to volunteer! This doesn't seem like the smartest move, seeing as what might infect Franklin will definitely infect him (and definitely kill him), but the guy's looking to redeem himself and Franklin wants to give him that chance.

The isolab is sealed, but unfortunately it turns out that the best thing they've got to keep him protected inside is a pair of gloves. He's not even going to take his fancy robe off or put a mask on. I feel like they could do better against an airborne plague. Also I've changed my mind, I wouldn't be hiding in my quarters with a spacesuit on, I'd be hiding in an isolated isolab with its own air supply (preferably one with no dead pak'ma'ras in it).

Over in Sheridan's quarters, he's about to get some pitiful amount of sleep when Delenn comes by with a request. Sheridan assumes she wants to be allowed off the station, which is a bit insulting. He surely knows her better than that by this point! Though to be fair there's a good chance he's already been visited by Londo and half the ambassadors from the League of Non Aligned Worlds before she came by, each of them demanding to be allowed to leave. I can imagine a lot of furious ambassadors stomping back to the fence with their bits of paper in hand.

But it turns out that she actually wants to be locked away with the 4000 Markabs (and Lennier) in the isolation zone, to give some comfort to the scared and dying.

Sheridan points out that they're not her people, which just makes her angrier, as she replies that she "didn't know that similarity was required for the exercise of compassion." I have to think this is mostly about him not wanting to put his favourite ambassador at risk, as he was the one who made sure that the fatally wounded Narns didn't die alone in a cargo bay just one episode ago.

Delenn's been a secretive character with hidden agenda since the start, so there's always been some doubt about what she was up to. Plus she's been struggling to know herself and her role since her transformation into a half-human and being kicked off the Grey Council. But if there was any mystery left after In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum as to what kind of person she is, it's gone now. Delenn is absolutely a hero at this point.

The two of them have gone through all kinds of emotions by the end of the scene, as he's really not happy about letting her be exposed to massive contamination, but on the other hand he respects her too much to not respect her wishes as well. Though he has one request: when she sees him again, she should call him "John". Aww.

Meanwhile Garibaldi finds himself tested as well as he fights off a group of humans beating a Markab, only to realise the guy's on the floor, reaching up to him for help. I honestly didn't know if Garibaldi was going to help him up, or even if he should. The episode hasn't really explained what people should do to avoid spreading the infection, if they even can, and there's a lot of blood on the guy.

Garibaldi himself doesn't seem sure what he's going to do, but he eventually pulls him to his feet. So he's a hero too! Though he should probably burn his uniform afterwards, as that Markab's really dripping with blood.

Interesting that this Markab didn't go into sanctuary with the others. Does he not believe the theory that it's the immorality of the others causing the plague, or is he well aware of his own immorality and would rather die on the side of the door which has a casino?

Delenn and Lennier arrive at the sanctuary with their sleeping bags and the door closes behind them, sealing them in. Man, the Markab went to all this trouble to escape the immorality of aliens and then two of them came and locked themselves in with them!

The scene does a good job of showing what it's like to be an obvious outsider walking into a room packed full of terrified people who are almost certainly carrying a disease that might kill you, but I think they're really underplaying the true horror of the toilet situation. Also that Markab wearing a yellow shawl on the right seems seems to have a much wider and more alien face than everyone else in the room. The other Markab here look like they're wearing the best rubber masks that a TV budget can buy (that's not faint praise), but that one almost seems like they've got an animatronic head

Meanwhile Franklin is back on the stims to stay awake, and honestly it's hard to blame him at this point. He's got a doctor right there telling him that taking too many isn't good for you (or good for your career, which we learned from The Quality of Mercy), but when there's a 100% infectious plague on board and you've got hours to save the day, that seems like the correct time to get an unhealthy extension on your concentration.

They went with the dolly zoom effect here (you know, like in Jaws), to show the effect of the stims kicking in, but I'm not sure it was worth the effort of setting up the dolly track. It just makes Lazarenn look like he's floating away in his isolab.

Despite being stuck in the same Medlab (alone now it seems) it seems that they haven't had a chat in a while, as Franklin gives his friend an update on the situation. The violence from people looking for someone to blame hasn't been so bad, but they've found the bodies of dozens of Markab that have died of the virus outside of their sanctuary. Then he decides to give make sure we understand the moral of the episode, by listing a few times in human history where we've been exactly as dumb as the Markabs. Though I think is a case of a writer invoking the 'two things that are real and a made up one from the future' sci-fi trope, as I've heard of the Black Death and AIDS, but not Chalmer's Syndrome.

Lazarenn actually gets a proper history lesson on the Black Death, and how people blamed immorality and others trying to poison them back then as well. They even blamed the cats and started killing them off, which made the problem worse as the cats were the ones killing the rats which were the ones actually spreading the plague. This all seems like it's building up to a TV epiphany where Franklin goes "that's it, I know what to do!" but instead Lazarenn gets dizzy and collapses. On the plus side they can now study the early stages of infection… which raises the question of why they weren't testing him the whole time just in case! I mean he's stuck there anyway so what harm would it have done?

ACT FOUR

Back in the Markab sanctuary, Delenn and Lennier were hard at work putting tiny blankets on people and trying to stop them falling off again, when they ran into the little girl from earlier.

This time it's her mama she's looking for and the scene actually leads to a joke, as Delenn asks Lennier to find her while she keeps the kid company, and he immediately jumps into action… then stops and then asks ‘how?' "Faith manages," is Delenn's answer, though they're going to need a lot of it as there's 4000 people here and the kid doesn't know her own mother's name!

It's rare to see Delenn being the one in charge during a crisis, but it suits her.

Medlab is a hive of activity once again as everyone rushes to analyse Lazarenn. He tells the story of how they first met, which was actually on the Markab homeworld, back when Franklin was hitchhiking on starships. Which I guess is a lot like hitchhiking between countries on planes.

Lazarenn basically tells him that this might be a Kobayashi Maru scenario: he's not being tested to see if he can solve the problem, but to see how he reacts when he realises that there is no solution. Also they've just got some test results that confirms that the plague definitely has jumped species to the pak'ma'ra. So best case, there's thousands more at risk from a 100% infectious plague getting pumped through the station's air. Worst case, every single person without their own personal encounter suit is dead within a few weeks.

Franklin's not in an understanding mood now that he's three stims deep and has his desperation stubble on, so he yells at his staff until they go cut the dead pak'ma'ra up for more answers. I can believe this is the son of a general.

Back in the Markab sanctuary, Delenn tells the girl a story of how she was separated from her parents once, and waited for them in a deserted temple. Hours passed and she fell asleep, and when she woke up she saw a smiling figure standing bright against the darkness who told her that she was going to be alright. He said that if she believed then her parents would come for her, and then they did. Just then Lennier shows up and he's found the kid's mother! Possibly because she's the only person with a child here. The moral of the story: things will all work out if you expect them to!

But the scene keeps going past the point where it should cut back to Franklin yelling at someone, and the two Minbari watch the girl stumble from dizziness. Just to rip their moment of joy away. The look on Delenn's face is like… it's like this the opposite of Christmas.

I can't think of many sci-fi series that would have the nerve or the inclination to have a child die, but writer jms once promised that if he ever introduced a kid on the show it would be so he could kill them off, and so far he's on track to be two for two! (The one on the creepy Psi Corps advert in And Now For a Word doesn't count. Plus his appearance was plenty dark as it was.)

Medlab status: back to being nearly empty again.

Franklin is telling the computer to run test after test but it's always negative. Lazarenn tells him that the yellow cells could be… but he can't finish that incredibly important sentence because he's got to say "I'm sorry, old friend. I don't think I can stay any longer. Will you give my love to…" before he finally dies. He totally had enough syllables left in him to finish his suggestion!

Wait, I just realised… Lazarenn isn't just someone Franklin knows from the station, they've been friends from before then. So that mean Lazarenn is an old friend that visited the station! No wonder there's a crisis threatening the lives of everyone here! When Franklin's last old friend visited he brought with him organic bio-booster armour that nearly blew up the station. When Talia's old friend visited he came close to wiping them all out with his psychic powers. When Sheridan's old friend visited… nothing happened! Until he left the station, and then his own ship suffered catastrophic system failure for no reason. Basically what I'm saying is that Lazarenn was clearly the cause of all this, and the angry mobs should've blamed him while they had the chance!

Though Franklin doesn't take his death very well…

Writer jms has been pretty good at foreshadowing, but that trolley slam was couldn't have been more telegraphed if it had a two season of clues to set it up.

After spilling unlabelled vials of coloured liquid and giving the cart a couple of kicks for good measure, he throws it aside and nearly sends the prop consoles toppling over like dominos. He spies another unlabelled coloured liquid on a shelf and swats it aside, but just then the yellow cell analysis finishes… and they're a match with the pak'ma'ra green cells!

Basically this means that the yellow and green cells are the ones the virus is targeting, which are types of cells that humans don't have, so the crew are immune for now. Plus the Markabs and pak'ma'ra can be cured with with a series of injections, and Franklin soon has 500 doses ready to give out at the sanctuary. There's 4000 people in there, so the maths doesn't quite work, but fortunately they'll all refuse to take it, so this'll be more than enough!
 
So they get the door open and...

... they find that everyone's already dead. All except Delenn and Lennier, who are a bit distraught about the whole thing.

Funny, I remember this place looking much bigger, but I guess that means that the scene works. My brain's doing the work of extending the set so I don't see a few dozen actors in a small room, I see one section of a huge sanctuary filled with 4000 corpses.

This is TV, so you'd expect Franklin to just take their word for it that everyone's dead, but nope he rushes in to check on them all. Though this is TV, so he goes off on his own without any other doctors.

All that Delenn can say after what she's been though is... "John". Clearly this did not go as she pictured it, but thanks to her the Markabs did all have someone to comfort them as they died. And now she needs comforting herself.

Mira Furlan is pretty great in this scene I thought, with the way she manages to fall apart so believably while also making sure her face is directly under the strip of light. That's acting that is.

ACT FIVE

Delenn's a lot more composed by the time act five begins, and she has a little speech about how if they can learn from this to help others in the future then the Markabs' deaths will have had meaning.

Cut to a bartender telling really crappy Markab jokes in the Zocalo as ISN reports that the entire population of the Markab Homeworld is dead, as is the population of their colonies and outposts. I would've been ironic if only people living on Hedonism Island had survived this time, but nope, they all dead. It's hardest on the makeup and costume departments really, as now they can't do anything with all those outfits and their prosthetics.

The bartender says that he heard it was the Vorlons who poisoned the place, and Franklin realises that nothing's changed, lessons haven't been learned, and they're still going to carry on making the same dumb mistakes. Though maybe it was the Shadows that spread the disease!

It really was a no-win scenario, Franklin just didn't have the time needed to save the Markab. But only because they rigged the game against themselves. The pak'ma'ra were all saved though! There's a few billion of them back on their homeworld very much still alive and probably building statues of Franklin right now, so... happy ending after all!

Franklin will never see it that way though. In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum established that he sees the faces of every patient he's lost when he goes to sleep...

... so now he's got this guy's face waiting for him every night.


CONCLUSION

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I liked the episode overall, it does a good job of ratcheting up the crisis every act, but I have to admit I have to admit that the ending came as a bit of a shock to me. There's a guy in it called Lazarenn who dies, but doesn't come back to life by the end!

It's pretty typical of Babylon 5 at this point to go from a big arc episode to one that's entirely stand alone, but its a bit jarring to go from the set up of the Shadows as the series' big antagonist in In the Shadow of the Z'ha'dum, to the destruction of a League race due something entirely unrelated in the very next episode. Though I do think the two stories work well back to back, as In the Shadow features the info dump about an ancient threat that went dormant for centuries before striking again, just like the virus in this, and Confessions and Lamentations shows that we keep making the same mistakes and it's going to lead us to a bad situation. This isn't Star Trek, jms didn't necessarily have to keep Babylon 5's setting intact for the next spin-off, and stories like this add serious doubt that they'll get a happy ending at the conclusion of the five year arc.

Man, I can't believe I said the 'this isn't Star Trek' line, I hate it when people do that! Mostly because people seem to forget that Trek has plenty of stories with bleak endings, which I am not going to list now because of spoilers. But this episode really was pretty damn bleak. They killed off an entire League race! Though it would've had a lot more impact if we'd had a couple of stories to establish the Markab first. We know the pak'ma'ra are carrion eaters, we know the Drazi wear green and purple sashes and beat the crap out of each other, but all I knew about the Markab is that one of them smashed his head open on a pipe in Knives. It might have had more impact if we'd lost a character we know as well (the regulars didn't even get sick), though I suppose that could've also backfired and made the story all about their death.

The episode kind of feels like Believers, part 2 at times, as Franklin goes up against a problem caused by the beliefs of an alien race again, but it's not a retread (even though the kid died again). Franklin appearing to save the day before the big reveal wasn't just there to set up the gut punch ending, it also makes it clear that this wasn't an impossible problem to solve. A drug-addled sleep-deprived alien doctor had it figured out in a day or so despite his relative unfamiliarity with Markab physiology. Granted the doctors on the Markab homeworld likely wouldn't have a dead pak'ma'ra handy to help work out what cells the virus was affecting, but Dr Lazarenn seemed to have it figured out himself a minute before the test results came in, despite the fact that he was dying at the time. If the Markabs had wanted to solve this it would've been solved a long time ago, but they chose to let the immoral die.

The episode is pretty sympathetic to the Markabs though really, and most of them are portrayed as just going along with whatever they're told to do. They're asked to go the Medlab for blood tests and they do it, despite the belief that only the immoral can catch it. Their ambassador declares that they're all going into isolation and four out of five of them head right over there. They put their faith in authority and it failed them.

I wouldn't say the episode is anti-faith though, as Delenn is probably the most spiritual character on the series and her faith sends her right into the most horrifying place on the station to give comfort to those that need it. Granted faith doesn't manage in the end, but she and Lennier had more success at actually helping the Markab than anyone else. Though Garibaldi was a runner up, as he worked to save the ones who stayed outside with the angry human racists (don't think we've seen those guys on the series for ages). And it wasn't faith that stopped the Markab government from doing anything to stop the plague, it was a fear of losing votes.

Though it's not like I had to dig into it to find a message as the episode isn't exactly subtle about what it's really about. In fact Franklin straight up tells us the moral of the story: don't let religion or politics get in the way of solving problems or else you're screwed.

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NEXT TIME

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, the Babylon 5 continues with Divided Loyalties.

It might be a bit premature for me to thank you for leaving a comment, but you seem like a decent person and I have a feeling you'll do the right thing. Also thanks for reading!