Babylon 5 2-19: Divided Loyalties

Episode:

31

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Air Date:

11-Oct-1995

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I am once again writing about a second season Babylon 5 episode. Not many of them left now though. This one's called Divided Loyalties and it's episode 19 of 22.

Here, have some TV scheduling trivia to make everything else I write afterwards seem more interesting by comparison: in the US, seasons of B5 were split into four blocks, so you'd get five episodes, a month off, eight episodes, two months off, and so on. Meanwhile in the UK, we had to wait a while for the season to start, but once it was airing we didn't have so many huge gaps and we were able to catch up. So we actually got to watch up to the season two finale The Fall of Night during the four months that US fans were waiting between Confessions and Lamentations and Divided Loyalties. I can imagine VHS tapes were getting mailed across the Atlantic (they probably wouldn't have worked on an NTSC player but you never know unless you try).

Though American viewers soon got their revenge, as season two continued straight into season three without a break in the US, while British fans had to wait eight months for it. Man, could you imagine having to wait eight months between seasons of Westworld, Doctor Who or Game of Thrones?

I'll be screencapping and recapping the whole episode below, throwing in my own opinions and observations as I go, so there'll be SPOILERS for the whole of Divided Loyalties and episodes leading up to it. But if you're watching the series for the first time and you've only gotten this far, then you've got nothing to worry about as I won't spoil a thing about what happens afterwards.

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The episode begins with an explanation of how people are always reading actual printed newspapers on a space station in the future! Turns out that there are newspaper vending machines that print out personalised content and then recycle the old paper when you're done. Seems like it's Universe Today or nothing though.

Even Delenn has started reading it, to better prepare herself for her next confrontation after her traumatic interview in And Now For a Word. She's been getting kicked down from all directions after her transformation but she's getting her power back.

She explains to Sheridan that on Minbar people respect the privacy of others and you're told what you required to know and no more. Which explains so much about Delenn. But the newspaper dispenser has a verbal interface, so everyone nearby can hear if you're secretly adding the "Eye on Minbari" section to your personalised paper. It turns out that she'd prefer to be told more that she's required to know and no more, especially as she's probably being told a lot less since she was kicked out of the Grey Council a few months ago.

A surprising amount of the scene is just the two actors standing around and waiting for the machine, but they somehow reveal more in those moments than when they're talking. Lots of smiling, not all of it awkward. 

Then we get the establishing shot of a domed city on Mars Colony from A Race Through Dark Places again, followed by a scene of a wounded man racing through a dark place.

Well, more like stumbling around in a sewer.

I'm so used to seeing the same familiar walls over and over again on this series that anything that isn't an obvious redress actually seems like an alien world to me now. I mean I'm sure they've just assembled some of their 'sloping wall with pipes' pieces and stuck some yellow lights between them, but it's not obvious. They've even flooded it with ankle-deep water! It's a lot of work for a minute-long scene of a man passing a data crystal over to a Ranger called Derek. (I know he's called Derek because the guy keeps saying it.)

Derek learns two important piece of information from this meeting: First, there's there's danger within on Babylon 5. Second, you should never wear a cape in a sewer, especially if it's part of the uniform you wear all day every day.

Honestly as teasers go I found this one to be pretty weak. Oh no there's danger on Babylon 5, I'd better keep watching! If he'd said 'one of the main cast is a traitor', now that would've definitely kept me from turning over to watch… uh...

Oh right, 1995, there'd be nothing else on. Okay Babylon 5, you win this game.

ACT ONE

Act one begins with Garibaldi and Sherdian having a covert meeting in the toilets, which has to be J. Michael Straczynski deliberately checking something off his 'Star Trek never does this' list. So for a change I get to say that this actually does not have any similarities to Deep Space Nine. For once thing I bet in Deep Space Nine they'd all wash their hands (for fuck's sake Garibaldi...).

Someone in the production crew must have found some money behind their couch this week because this is another new set, entirely different to the toilets seen in Signs and Portents, with flashy lights on the sci-fi urinals, doors on the cubicles and everything. I like that "Pak'ma'ra use only. Do not enter" sign in the background, especially as one of the languages on it matches the Vorlon symbols seen on Kosh's ship in Hunter, Prey. Even an encounter suit won't save you if you go in there.

Sheridan carries on his inane one-sided conversation about trees long enough for Garibaldi to make sure no one's listening in, and then they start talking about bringing telepath Talia Winters into the group. The 'take down President Clark' group, not the 'take down the Shadows' group. Sheridan can't see why she wouldn't want to help them, which I guess means he's already forgotten how she slapped him the last time he asked her to break the rules. To be fair, Talia is very forgettable.

Speaking of Talia, she's currently hanging out with Ivanova in the Zocalo. She mentions that it's hard to believe it took them so long to get to this point, two years in fact, but I can believe it. This is Talia's seventh appearance this season, but as far as I can remember the two character have been in the same scene together just twice, at the start and end of A Race Through Dark Places, 11 episodes ago. Though that episode did end with them re-evaluating their relationship.

Seems like their relationship's doing pretty well right now, as there's definitely a 'Sheridan and Delenn' thing going on with the two of them in this scene. In fact when Talia reveals she can't stay in her quarters tonight Ivanova invites her to stay with her.

By the way, there's a shot of the Zocalo here with a nice clear view of the end of the set at the correct angle to make it look like it's properly curving up into the distance. It's a clever optical illusion (and cheaper than a CGI set extension) and I wish that seam in the floor wasn't so obvious because my eyes always jump straight to it. I suppose that's actually a good thing though, because it means I didn't notice the dolls.

No, don't look at them, they'll ruin Zocalo scenes for you forever!
 

Anyway the two of them can't chat for long though as Ivanova's needed in C&C. A ship's come in through the jumpgate and now it's just sitting there silently, with a big hole in the side. I guess the vessel was intact enough for the autopilot to bring it to a (relative) stop at its destination, because otherwise it'd be like a bullet fired straight at the station. I remember that when this happened in Soul Hunter they had to grab the incoming ship before it slammed into the Cobra Bays. Oh damn, the episode made me remember Soul Hunter!

There's a lifeform on board so they bring the vessel in, despite the risk of it leading to another terrible episode.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem like they had anywhere to put the ship so they've just dumped it down on top of this pile of boxes. Nice CGI set extension though.

I'm not sure why they're wasting time trying to build suspense about who's on board though, as we already know it's Derek the Ranger.

Except it's not, it's Lyta Alexander! The first commercial telepath assigned to Babylon 5, who vanished from the series after The Gathering. The actress, Patricia Tallman, had been working as a stunt woman on movies and series like Star Trek in the meantime, getting blown up by exploding consoles every week, though you'd never guess by looking at her here.

According to Tallman, the reason she didn't come back to the series was because one of the suits at Warner Bros. got vindictive when she refused to sleep with him. Producer jms was informed that she'd asked for a ridiculous amount of money, but Tallman told him what really happened and when the story called for another telepath to appear he brought her back on.

Garibaldi summarises her role in the pilot movie for Sheridan, and we get a black and white flashback for the sake of all the people who've completely forgotten it or never saw it in the first place. So basically everyone.

He explains that someone tried to assassinate Kosh and she read his mind to find out who he saw. Six weeks later she was recalled to Earth, along with the doctor who operated on him (also Laurel Takashima vanished as well, but no one ever talks about her). Seems that after scanning Kosh, Lyta was never quite the same anymore, so she'll be acting a little different in this episode. The fact that the actress hadn't played the role in two years and took acting classes in the meantime might have something to do with that as well.

Down in Medlab, Lyta wakes up and immediately starts threatening Franklin with an airbrush syringe. I mean she doesn't hold it to his neck, she backs away to a wall and holds it like a gun.

She demands to see the captain right now, because she doesn't want to be left alone with any of them. You see, one of them is a traitor… and she can prove it! Oh I see, jms was saving this reveal for the end of the first act. I still think it should've come in the teaser.

ACT TWO

Lyta's looking a lot better with her new hair style than she did in the flashback. Plus it seems that she also demanded some new clothes as she's changed out of her torn turtleneck.

She reveals that two people died to get the information she's about to give them, which implies that Derek the Ranger is dead! Poor Derek. She nearly got herself killed coming here as well, but she had to get them the message, because this place is "more important than you could possibly know." Uh, really? I wish she'd elaborate on that because they could certainly know if she told them, and I'm curious.

Instead she gives them more backstory they didn't ask about, explaining that she escaped the Psi Corps six months ago and has been trying to get into Vorlon space ever since. Vorlons don't let anyone into their territory but she's been drawn there ever since scanning Kosh so she's hoping to be the exception.
 
I like the direction in this episode by the way. It's the first episode by Jesús Treviño, who stayed with the series until the end, directing four more episodes and the movie Thirdspace (and then an episode of Crusade after that). Though I can't help but notice that he's got Garibaldi standing with his dirty foot up on a chair! For fuck's sake Garibaldi!

No one in the room questions out loud what the Vorlon story has to do with anything, but Lyta's a telepath so she probably got the hint. She explains that she got involved with the revolutionary movement on Mars and one of their agents found out about a secret Psi Corps program to create spies with an implanted personality so well hidden that even they don't know about it. There's one on Babylon 5 right now, but all they know about their identity is their codename: Control. Hey that's the person who ordered Talia to be killed in Spider in the Web!

They're not entirely out of luck though, as Lyta knows a password she can send telepathically to trigger the personality and blow their cover. So it's a good job she was the one who made it here and not Derek the Ranger really, though I suppose they could've always asked Talia to do it...

Ivanova makes it clear that there's no way she's going to let Lyta into her brain, which isn't surprising how she acted the last time something like this happened, back in Eyes. It's funny that no one's questioning the ethics of it though, as if they activate the agent their real personality will be destroyed. They'd basically be murdering someone to flush out a spy and it could be any of them that dies! It will be any of them! Ivanova's lucky she was told enough to opt-out as they're not even planning to tell the rest of the staff, just have them come by one at a time so that Lyta can send the password.

At least Sheridan's going to give it some thought first, and he sends Lyta to a holding cell for her protection in the meantime. Two guards show up to take her there... and they both get lines! They really were throwing cash around on this episode if even Guard #1 and Guard #2 got to take home speaking role money. (Though they should've gotten ventriloquist money as when I watched closely I realised neither of them ever opened their mouths.)

Delenn and Sheridan seem to have no trouble finding each other this episode as she runs into him in the zen garden. Sheridan admits that life's been kicking him in the butt today, but Delenn doesn't recognise the word as it was considered inappropriate for someone of the religious caste to learn. So she decides to try it out for a bit, in a cunning attempt to cheer him up.

"I butt, you butt, he or she butts. Butt-butt, butt-butt… motor butt."

A lot of romances in television annoy me because they're about the drama and the awkwardness, but this is about two people really enjoying each other's company and trying to cheer the other up, and it cheers me up as well. Also I guess this is a romance now! I'm sure it's massively inappropriate for the Minbari representative to date the Earth representative, especially when a bad break up could cause Earth-Minbari War II, but they're adorable together so who cares?

After the scene's over Sheridan checks in on Garibaldi, who's been checking out Lyta's story, and she's definitely been through the Underground Telepath Railroad at least (another link to A Race Through Dark Places). Sheridan's still suspicious but weirdly Garibaldi trusts her. So Sheridan brings up the last time he trusted someone… and got shot in the back for it. But only because he's wondering if that guy could've been Control. They could've already dealt with their spy and Lyta could be working off outdated information.

I like it when characters ask sensible questions like this. We know from Spider in the Web that Control wasn't Zack Allan's evil predecessor, but they don't.

Over in Ivanova's quarters, she's busy demonstrating that all the drawers and cabinets actually open. I wonder if they've always done that or if the set was upgraded just for this scene. I'm also wondering if sexy silk nightwear is the dress code in Ivanova's quarters, because now Talia's at it as well.

Ivanova asks Talia about Lyta, and she reveals that they spent six months together in an intern program, and she seemed like a decent person. Someone she could trust. Though Lyta interned with the Psi Cops, which is a bit of a concern to Ivanova, seeing as they're the worst part of a bad group.

Talia doesn't know who to trust anymore either, after finding out about the Psi Corps in A Race Through Dark Places, so she's decided that the only person she can trust is Ivanova. Then she leans in for a kiss... except not really. It was just some weirdness in the editing apparently.

Meanwhile Garibaldi is having Lyta moved to a different holding cell... which is kind of suspicious.

On the plus side the scene gives some more screen time to my second favourite part of B5's security operation: those doors behind Zack. If I ever get a security office, I want doors like that. They're especially good because unlike the doors on people's quarters, these won't drop from above and kill you if the power goes out.

Zack's pretty good too, though he's still wearing that Nightwatch armband and Garibaldi calls him on it. He explains that he's still wearing it because they're still paying him, and that seems to be about as much thought as he's given it. Though I don't claim to know what goes on in Zack's mind. Maybe he's been thinking about changing the writing on it to say 'Nightwish' and seeing how long it takes people to notice that he's promoting a symphonic metal group from the ancient 21st century instead of an organisation created to locate and eliminate dissent against their increasingly fascist government.

Cut to Talia in Ivanova's bed... reaching over to where Ivanova isn't. I dunno, I feel like they're trying to hint at something here but what could it be???

The episode walks right up to the line of saying outright that the two characters are bisexual, in love and have just slept together, without actually saying it. Because it was 1995, and we've come a long way since then. Even Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was fairly groundbreaking in how it had a lesbian couple in the main cast, didn't let them kiss until 2001.

Star Trek's had a notoriously bad track record in this department, but Deep Space Nine actually did put one of its main characters in a bisexual relationship just three weeks after Divided Loyalties aired, with an actual on screen kiss between two women! Well, unless you were watching it on the channel in the US that edited it out. Trek even had a male-male kiss... 22 years later.

Anyway Ivanova creeping out of bed just when Lyta's getting moved to a different cell is also kind of suspicious. I waited for the 'Franklin does something equally suspicious' scene but it never came.

With all these people being suspicious it was inevitable someone was going to make a move against Lyta, and when the lights go red and PPG blasts start flying it soon becomes obvious that Garibaldi should've put more than two guards on this. I think they actually did the lighting change properly with red lights in the set instead of just sticking a filter on the lens, but it still looks kind of weird to me.

Both guards are gunned down, so Lyta grabs one of their PPGs and then does the sensible thing and runs away. Man, poor Lyta; twice she's visited Babylon 5, and both times she had almost gotten shot before the end of the first day.

ACT THREE

Well Lyta's staying well clear of their security officers now so they've go no way to find her. It's a bit worrying that she's doing a better job of evading station security than Garibaldi did in Survivors, but I guess telepathy helps.

At least now they know they she was right and one of them is a secret traitor, so if they ever manage to find her again Sheridan is going to let her send the telepathic password. Ivanova's furious about the idea, but Sheridan points out that she won't be scanning her or invading her privacy, so it'll be fine. No one brings up the fact that if she is the traitor it'll actually kill her.

Meanwhile Delenn is in her quarters, dictating a message. Apparently she won't be opening up trade relations with the Lumati right now because of... present diplomatic circumstances. So there's a subtle joke for all the people who remember the name of the aliens that Ivanova had to do the sex dance with.

Just then Lyta calls and we get a shot of her reflected in all the little mirrors.

She wants Delenn to meet her in an hour, because she's in just about every kind of trouble there is. It seemed strange at first that Delenn would be the one she called, but then I realised that she's one of the few characters still around from the pilot who has no connection to Earth, and there's no way she'd call up that Machiavellian bastard G'Kar or harmless drunken idiot Londo.

Whoa, another Ivanova and Talia scene? The two of them must have already spent more time together in this episode than in the rest of the season combined.

Ivanova explains that she left her bed last night because she's got a lot on her mind. She's been lying to people for years, possibly putting them in jeopardy, and it seems like what she's hidden is coming back to haunt her. Which means she's probably not the spy, as her real personality wouldn't have any idea about their secret agenda!
 
Plus there's another good reason that she's unlikely to be the traitor: it would be too obvious to all the people that assumed that Ivanova was a straight replacement for Laurel Takashima and would inherit all her story lines.

Babylon 5: The Gathering

It was assumed that actress Tamlyn Tomita would probably leave to focus on her film career after a couple of seasons, so jms decided to set up Takashima's dramatic exit long in advance by making her the secret traitor who helped set up Sinclair in The Gathering and would shoot Garibaldi in Chrysalis. When she eventually got found out, her aide, an officer called Ivanova, would've stepped up to replace her for the rest of the series. Instead the actress left right after the pilot movie, Ivanova got Takashima's job from the start and an officer called Corwin took the Ivanova job.

Meanwhile Delenn catches up with Sheridan (again) and tells her that Lyta's willing to meet with them, so that's sorted out at least. He goes back to his quarters and eventually realises that Ivanova's invited herself in and is sitting right there on his comfy couch.

She's come to admit her secret, the real reason why she's been so reluctant to be scanned by telepaths these past two episodes: she inherited her mother's telepathy!

ACT FOUR

Well she says that she's a latent telepath, which apparently means that despite scanning her mother's mind as a child the best she can do these days is detect and block other telepaths when they scan her, plus some occasional Deanna Troi empathy.

She's been hiding this secret her entire life, and Claudia Christian makes me believe that admitting it now is only slightly less painful for the character than ripping her own teeth out. This is why nearly threw her career away to avoid being scanned back in Eyes: because if she'd been found out she wouldn't have a career anymore. Telepaths can't join Earthforce, but they do have to join the Psi Corps or take telepathy-inhibiting drugs their whole lives, neither of which is an option she'd ever accept. In fact Eyes strongly hinted at her telepathy in a cryptic dream sequence where she was sitting in her mother's place, about to be injected with the sleepers, mumbling "Only one way out."

This revelation gives Sheridan one of those black and white flashbacks to his own cryptic (presumably Kosh-implanted) dream he had a couple of months ago in All Alone in the Night:

The dream looks even more moody in monochrome, especially after being blown up into a grainy mess and cropped during the transfer to DVD. Now the faces really fill up the frame.

In the dream Ivanova was standing in this same room with a raven on her shoulder. Or maybe a crow, I don't think it's important. Actually aren't ravens a type of crow? Anyway, she shushed him and asked him if he knew who she was. Now he realises the dream might have been foreshadowing her secret! I don't know if Kosh intended the dream to give him useful hints about the future, but Sheridan seems happy to leave his speculation until it's time to match the answer up with the clue.

Sheridan gets a message from Delenn telling them that Lyta's ready, and the senior staff are soon gathered in his office, waiting to get scanned. Sherdian goes first and he's clean, followed by Franklin who's good too. Garibaldi goes next, handing Sheridan his gun first just to be safe...

... and oh no he's the traitor! Except not really, he just couldn't resist screwing with them for a laugh. (For fuck's sake Garibaldi.) So that leaves Ivanova… who's going to go later

So they bring officers into Sheridan's office one by one so that Lyta can secretly attempt to annihilate their personality, while Sheridan comes up with some crappy justification for why he dragged them here from halfway across the station. At least Corwin gets told that he's done a good job, Zack doesn't even get that! Sheridan really needs to work on his excuses, as his reason for letting Morden go a few episodes back was similarly terrible and there's no way his crew aren't going to be talking about this between themselves later, comparing the bullshit reasons they were called in for.

Hey the bronze B5 model got a close up!

Everyone they've tested so far has been clean and it's seeming more and more likely that it's got to be Ivanova. After all the implanted personality would make them do or say anything necessary to avoid being discovered. Nerves are getting frayed and no one wants to move on to scanning all 5000 dock workers, so Ivanova finally consents to the scan.

She nearly outs herself as a telepath by involuntarily blocking Lyta, but Sheridan distracts her, the password gets through, and... she's not the traitor! It's a happy ending for Ivanova. Though just then Talia walks in and Lyta decides it'd be cool to send the password to a civilian without her consent.

Talia responds by grabbing Garibalid's gun and trying to murder her! Sheridan instinctively puts himself between Lyta and the gun, but fortunately the shot goes wild and Garibaldi's able to get the gun back off her. Probably would've been more dramatic if it hadn't all gone down in a blink of an eye.

So Talia's Control then. Well this is kind of rough, considering that Garibaldi and Ivanova both loved her. All their hopes of having a proper love triangle going on have been ruined. It wasn't so bad for Jerry Doyle though as his relationship with Andrea Thompson continued after she left the show and they got married... for two years.

If Ivanova had been the traitor I think it would've been genuinely shocking, but Talia got a lot of focus this episode after barely being in the series and a replacement telepath just showed up, so she was kind of the obvious candidate. Plus fans who read the Babylon 5 comic book had also been given another clue:

Babylon 5 Issue 8: Shadows, Past and Present, Part IV

An issue released before the episode aired actually showed her in a secret Psi Corps facility on Mars during her brainwashing (with a name tag to make sure there was no doubt).

By the way, if you're looking for spooky similarities between Babylon 5 and Star Trek, a character having their personality destroyed and replaced by a villain called 'Control' might seem familiar to Trek fans.

ACT FIVE

Act five begins with Franklin, Garibaldi and Sheridan getting together to figure out exactly how screwed they are now. I love it when a series actually takes the time to go through the logical consequences of something like this. Though I keep getting distracted by how the brightness keeps changing between shots.

Fortunately they're probably okay as the only thing Talia knows about is Franklin's Underground Railroad, and the Psi Corps won't dare act on their information as B5 could then retaliate by revealing all the things they know about them. It's a stalemate. Though if they'd invited Talia into their secret club like they'd planned to this would've all been over for them, and jms would've had to cast another new captain. The moral of the story: they should be nicer to their friends on Mars because they really saved their asses this time. Derek the Ranger really is the unsung hero of Babylon 5.

They wonder what else they could use to protect themselves from the Psi Corps, which sends Garibaldi on another Kosh-related black and white flashback, the third so far this episode.

He's thinking back to to what Talia told him in Deathwalker. She'd been hired by Kosh to scan someone during a business negotiation, but all they said was gibberish and she kept getting strange visions. Turns out that Kosh had been recording her mind, collecting reflection, surprise and terror, for the future.

So we're in a flashback to someone thinking back on the events of someone else's flashback. It's a shame the episode didn't go full flashback inception here and go a step further into the the images flashing through Talia's mind, inside her flashback, inside Garibalid's flashback, as then we might have seen this guy again:

Babylon 5 1-09: Deathwalker

Was this mysterious smiley face computer lurking inside Talia's mind supposed to be Control maybe? Or was it just weird imagery for the sake of being weird? I guess we'll never find out now.

Meanwhile Ivanova has gone to visit the Psi Corps agent formerly known as Talia to see if there's any hint of her girlfriend still in here.

The answer, it turns out, is no. And Control cruelly twists the knife, talking about how she was mentally laughing at them this whole time. Talia's invisible sister, only coming out at night. Also she claims that she'd been whispering into Talia's thoughts as she was asleep to push her to get closer to Ivanova, which explains a lot actually. Talia did seem strangely obsessed with Ivanova from all the way back to her first appearance in Midnight on the Firing Line.

I have to admit, I think I prefer Thompson's moustache-twirling performance as Control to how she played Talia. She seems like she was having more fun here. It's a bit sad though that another one of Ivanova's lovers has turned out to be evil (after Malcolm in The War Prayer).

And the episode ends with Lyta going to visit Kosh. She admits that she knows something about Kosh that she never admitted to anyone, and wants to see his true form just one more time before she leaves the station and resumes her quest to get into Vorlon space.

He actually leaves his encounter suit for her and we see a bight ring of light reflected in her eye... but that's it. No Kosh today, unless he looks like a glowing circle.


CONCLUSION

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Well they were never going to match Confessions and Lamentations for the quantity of dead characters, so they went for quality this time. Poor Derek the Ranger. Poor telepath Talia Winters too; despite all the horrible and depressing things happening lately she was the first of the main characters to die and they can't even bury her because her body's still walking around.

Talia was doomed from the start though apparently, as her implanted personality plot was planned so early that it actually pre-dated her character. Which kind of raises the question: why was there basically no set up? I realise that Andrea Thompson deciding to leave the series moved the timeline up, but this is episode 41 and the only hint of there being a Psi Corps agent on the station that I can think of was 13 episodes ago in Spider in the Web, where they ordered Talia's death.

Thompson was apparently unhappy with how her character had been used during the series and wanted the episodes she appeared in to actually be about her, which makes it seem like she wasn't aware that there were 12 characters in the opening titles and she was listed next to Vir. But I do see where she was coming from, because Talia got three episodes in a row near the start of the season and then practically disappeared, except for when Vir needed someone around to spill a drink on, or Sheridan needed someone to slap him. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Lyta got more screen time in Talia's own farewell story.

This episode builds upon the growing relationship between her and Ivanova that has apparently been happening off screen, because the characters didn't actually share many scenes this season, or at all really. Ivanova gave her a glass of water in Mind War, they made peace after disagreeing on what to do with a telepath girl in Legacies, Talia brought a drink over and admitted she was wrong about the Psi Corps in A Race Through Dark Places, and now they're close enough to be sleeping together? Even this episode barely gets beyond hinting at an attraction! I mean there was nothing ambiguous about them caring about each other or sharing a bed, but their scenes in this episode formed a silhouette of a relationship without outright showing it.

It's a shame because Sheridan and Delenn were right there showing them how it's done, or at least showing anything, even if it was just Delenn holding Sheridan's hand. It seems like there should be rules against the station commander getting too close to the ambassadors, but hey when everything else is falling to darkness who'd complain about a tiny bit of light?

The main plot is the characters moving through the stages of 'oh crap one of us is a secret traitor', going through denial, anger etc. until they just get on with Lyta's plan and deal with it. But I'm surprised that they just glossed over the fact that it was a killing password. They weren't just flushing out a traitor, they were killing a friend, and the episode doesn't really express the full scope of how horrific this is until Talia finally loses their game of Russian Roulette and Ivanova has to deal with the Psi Corps taking someone else away from her. She's as vulnerable and tormented as I think we've ever seen her in this story, and it has me worried about what she's going to yell at Corwin later, but I think her confession to Sheridan has at least relieved her of some of her burden. She came out to someone for the first time in her life, and he immediately accepted her, and had her back when she needed it.

Overall I though the episode was decent enough, about mid-tier for what I've seen so far, but it felt a little insubstantial somehow. It feels like a patch installed into the narrative to fix an actor problem, a trap door opening to remove Talia from the arc and bring Lyta in, when it should be an epic twist that pays off a couple of long running plotlines. But to be honest Talia was always my least favourite of the main characters by far and the actress got four seasons on NYPD Blue afterwards, so I feel like we both ultimately got what we wanted from the episode.

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COMING SOON

Babylon 5 will return with The Long, Twilight Struggle. But next on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about Star Trek: Discovery's second season! All of it. Plus the Short Treks.

Do you have any thoughts or opinions about this episode of television from 24 years ago? If so you are in the right place, because there's a box down there you can share them in.