Babylon 5 4-16: The Exercise of Vital Powers

Episode:

82

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

John Lafia

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Air Date:

02-Jun-1997

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's The Exercise of Vital Powers, or maybe just Exercise of Vital Powers? IMDb agrees with the title on screen but it seems like everything else, including the DVD box, put the 'The' at the start. I like it better with the 'The' so that's what I'm going with.

It's a nice title I reckon, and it gets explained during the episode so I don't have to write anything about the meaning here. That means I've got more room to mention that this is director John Lafia's second episode, after the excellent The Long Night. He only directed one more episode of the series and it's coming up very soon.

We're in the last third of the season now, by the way. Seven episodes left to go. If all goes to plan I should be writing a season four review by the end of next month.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm going to go and type out everything that happens during this whole episode and that's inevitably going to spoil the series so far as well. But if you're watching through Babylon 5 for the first time you'll be fine, as I won't mention anything that happens next.

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The episode begins with a blast of white noise followed by Lieutenant Commander Susan Ivanova doing her newsreader thing. A newsreader with a gun in her belt.

She's got good news this time! Sheridan's fleet has been kicking ass since reclaiming Proxima 3 last episode, taking more territory and turning more ships. She's calling it the 'Liberation Fleet', so they've clearly given some thought to their branding.

Then the episode switches to another personal log entry as we see Sheridan sitting on the bridge of White Star 2.

Dude what the fuck? Walk behind the captain's chair, not in front of it! He's not even the only one who does this.

Anyway, we get some log entry narration here, but it's not Sheridan's personal log, it's Garibaldi's! He talks about how the old Sheridan never would've gone up against their own government like this, but the guy's changed since Z'ha'dum and now he's worried he thinks he's Alexander the Great and has ambitions to take over the Earth Alliance. Unfortunately Garibaldi remains blissfully unaware of the fact that he's changed a lot more than Sheridan has, due to Bester's influence.

Garibaldi soon gets around to the subject of Mars, a planet he's very much not keen on. In fact he can't believe he's back there, but he's come to fight for Earth in his own way, by doing something about Sheridan. We just don't know what that is yet.

Garibaldi's new friend Wade is finally bringing him into the heart of their operation, but first the guy tells him that he has to wear a blindfold. Garibaldi's very much not keen on that either, but Wade tells him about his master's in literature, and then goes into how everything is just an illusionary construct of language, light and metaphor... except the blindfold and the consequences of not wearing it. Actually he says 'concept' instead of 'construct' but when the actor keeps making the same mistake during every take at some point you've just got to move on.

Writer jms was actually pretty impressed by the actor, that's why he kept bringing him back, and why the character's got a master's degree in literature now. He doesn't come across like the typical Down Below thug; he seems like he may have read a book or two.

Garibaldi's got one last bit of noir narration to take us out of the teaser, repeating his line "Mars... I can't believe I'm back on Mars", and then it's over. Probably the best teaser about a guy on a train bitching because he has to wear a blindfold I've ever seen, though there wasn't a whole lot else going on here.

I suppose it's also revealed that Mars has 2 million people on it, which means it has eight times the population of Babylon 5 and a quarter the population of New York City. That's a lot fewer people than I expected, considering they're fighting for independence, but then I suppose it's not much different to the population of the American colonies during the American Revolutionary War.

ACT ONE

Act one begins with Zack dropping by on Dr Franklin and learning that he's once again failed to get the Shadow implants out of one of the telepaths they've been keeping in cryo. In fact Franklin's kind of frustrated about not being able to figure it out, though maybe more frustrated by Sheridan bugging him about it all the time. He doesn't even know why he's in such a hurry!

We learned during the last episode that the frozen telepaths are part of Sheridan's big plan to take down President Clark, but we don't know how yet and he hasn't told Franklin either.

Lyta turns up looking for Zack and ends up inadvertently forming a connection with the unconscious telepath, making him considerably more conscious. One of Franklin's medical staff is so surprised that she drops something, but Franklin clearly feels that this is a breakthrough.

Then the episode jumps back to Mars again and we get a good look at the inside of one of the domes for a second. It doesn't look as red as I expected. In fact it's pretty nice in there, like something out of a Final Fantasy game on the PlayStation.

Turns out that the secret location Garibaldi was being taken to was William Edgars' surprisingly nice looking house. I mean it's no surprise that a billionaire would have a nice place, I'm surprised that B5 could pull off a set like this with its budget. It's not an obvious redress of the War Room, there's no backlit translucent panels, it's not made of curtains... I'm genuinely impressed. Lise has seen it all before though, so she doesn't even notice her grumpy ex standing there until she's a few steps into the room.

Lise warns him that it's not a good time for him to be here, but Edgars walks in and interrupts. Which means we finally get to see what the guy looks like!

He looks like Efram Zimbalist Jr. That means he's Alfred from Batman the Animated Series! He's not the first B:TAS actor to appear on the series though, as Two-Face showed up a while back in Hunter, Prey and Batgirl appeared in Z'ha'dum.

Edgars apologises to Garibaldi for the smallness of his giant house and reveals he has to live on Mars for six months of the year or lose his tax benefits. It's hard to be rich.

Edgars wants to know why Garibaldi was so insistent on coming to see him so soon, and it turns out the reason is 50% curiosity and 50% a pressing need to stop Sheridan's war.

It turns out that Edgars isn't really a fan of Clark either, but he believes that they have to remove him from power properly, from inside the system, and Garibaldi agrees with him. So if they're going to take down Clark they need to first put a halt to Sheridan's own attempt to take down Clark.

Garibaldi explains that he can't just turn Sheridan over to Earth without having someone powerful on his side to intervene and make sure he gets treatment instead of getting killed. Wow, Garibaldi really believes there's any chance of Sheridan getting some kind of legitimate treatment from these people?

It's hard to know what Garibaldi believes right now. He tells Edgars that being the hero here by handing over Sheridan would earn him points with the next administration... maybe even give him a chance of becoming the next president himself! I don't know if he really thinks that's a possibility, but he certainly wants Edgars to think it is.

Personally I think having a businessman with no political experience take over the presidency sounds like a terrible idea. Also, it's interesting that Garibaldi is 100% against his old friend Sheridan taking over the Earth Alliance but he's apparently got no problem with this guy he's only just met doing that same thing. Seems that Bester's got him all wired up back to front right now.

Edgars changes subject to the 'curiosity' half of Garibaldi's motivation for being here, saying that he hasn't decided yet if he's going to tell him the full truth of what he's planning. Shouldn't take more than a weekend to decide though.

ACT TWO

Act two starts with Garibaldi again, as Wade shows him to his room.

Garibaldi's really eager to meet with Edgars again, but Wade doesn't know any more than he does about when that's going to happen. He does have a suggestion for him though, saying that he shouldn't touch anything in there. So after he leaves Garibaldi decides to go touch everything, because he's a child now. Well, everything on camera anyway.

I'm not sure why but I'm getting the feeling he's not in a good mood right now.

Back on the station, Franklin has finally caught up with Lyta to ask her how she got his patient to wake up. She tells him that she heard a Shadow vessel and instinctively made it go away.

Lyta's not eager to work with him on helping the telepaths, but he eventually talks her around by telling her that they're telepaths that need her help!

After that short interruption by the B plot, Garibaldi finds himself woken up in the middle of the night by three people in balaclavas bursting into his room to drag him out of bed. He doesn't put up much of a fight, but then who would? I definitely can't fight off three people in the morning until I've had my first cup of tea.

The moral of the story: don't touch all the stuff.

They throw him into a room with a desk and a silent telepath and plenty of questions. So it's lucky he was sleeping fully dressed really.

We already know how much Garibaldi loves being locked in a room and forced to answer questions, and he's now he's extra grumpy because of the abduction and lack of sleep. Edgars' test has proved that it is actually possible for Garibaldi to get more tetchy this season, and that's good because it makes him easier to scan.

Edgars is off-screen in another room so all we get is his voice as he asks Garibaldi his opinion on telepaths. It's a bit of an awkward question seeing as there's a telepath right in front of him, but he admits that he's never trusted them and never will. He doesn't mention that he was falling in love with one for a while, but seeing as it turned out that other telepaths had brainwashed her into being a spy I'm thinking that didn't reduce his trust issues any.

Not sure we were supposed to see the light shining through the gap in the wall there. Or that light in the top right.

Garibaldi carries on being honest, saying that the telepaths will never trust us and we'll always be jealous and afraid of them. He's sure it's going to get ugly and hopes he's not alive to see it happen. In fact he feels like they're the biggest menace to society they've got. Hey that means something's more of a menace to him than Sheridan is!

If you ever wanted to watch a guy walk laps of a dark room for four minutes this is the episode for you.

Edgar isn't going to talk openly about their plans in front of the telepath, but he asks if Garibaldi was lying when he said he had a way to get to... someone (Sheridan) and it turns out that he was not. Then he asks Garibaldi why he's so sure that he has a secret agenda. He already gave him an explanation for all those secret packages he had him smuggling through B5.

Garibaldi replies that people like Edgars only hire people like him if their secret packages are liable to get them in trouble. That means there's something else going on here and Edgars is afraid of getting caught. He's got no issue with calling Edgars a liar to his face... uh, voice, because in his view everyone's a liar.

Though Garibaldi's stuck in a room with a lie-detecting telepath right now, so Edgars can be reasonably sure he genuinely doesn't know what happened to him when he disappeared in his Starfury back in January. Interesting that Edgars knows about that but doesn't seem to consider it to be an issue. Also interesting that the episode's making sure to remind us about it.

Edgars has one last question for him: "Are you still in love with my wife?"

Garibaldi says 'no' and then leaves.

All throughout the interrogation the telepath has been giving subtle head movements to indicate if Garibaldi's lying or not (because it's cheaper to hire an actor when they don't have lines). Turns out that last reply was definitely a lie.

Edgars returns to his living room and finds his wife waiting there. He tells her that Garibaldi didn't say anything about her and he's probably put their relationship behind him.

So there's at least two liars in this episode.

Meanwhile Wade arrives to give the telepath her payment: a couple of PPG blasts. I'm starting to think that Edgars isn't the good guy here!

ACT THREE

Back on the station, Franklin's working with Lyta in Medlab. He's trying to get an idea of what's going on in the patient's brain when Lyta wakes him up, so that he can achieve the same effect with his equipment. It won't get the implants out of him but it'll be a start.

It's strange to suddenly get so much Medlab in a season four episode as we've barely seen the room this year.

We also get that first person shot of the X-Files aliens with the drill from Ship of Tears again, right before the patient gets up and starts strangling Franklin.

Ship of Tears was the episode that first introduced these telepaths, and it explained that the Shadows had intended to use them as the central processing unit in their ships. That's what all the extra wiring is for.

Franklin tells him the Shadow vessels are all gone but the guy isn't all that relieved to hear it, asking "Why am I?"

In fact he goes to stab himself in the neck with a scalpel!

Fortunately Lyta intervenes, telepathically freezing him in place and then sending him to sleep. So that's a new trick.

Over on Mars, Edgars is offering Garibaldi orange juice. He says it costs a fortune to ship it there, so Sheridan's orange habit must be really expensive.

Once the beverages have been dispensed it's time for more dialogue, most of it coming from Edgars. The poor actor really had to earn his paycheck this episode. Plus the episode wasn't filmed in order, so this would've been shot right after the previous scene of him and Garibaldi chatting in this room. Just pages and pages of text.

Edgars talks a bit about the Greek definition of happiness, saying that it's "The exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope." Basically 'getting to do what you love and doing it well'. Garibaldi figured it would have something to do with three goats and a jug of wine but this is incorrect.

So that's what the episode title means! They should've hired Efram Zimbalist Jr. for a special feature on the DVDs where he explains all the other episode titles as well.

Edgars believes that a world ruled by telepaths wouldn't leave the rest of them with much happiness and definitely no privacy.

Garibaldi's paranoia is at an all time high, but even he thinks the idea of the Psi Corps getting that much power is far-fetched. Edgars is convinced it's coming though; their numbers might be small but the Nazi party didn't have that many members either. They found people to do the work for them.

He then mentions a few examples of people handing over power to people they thought could settle scores and restore their prestige, like the Germans in 1939, so we get a rare Double Godwin here.

Edgars then basically runs through the history of Clark's rise to power. He used telepaths for loyalty checks (Eyes), had Santiago assassinated (Chrysalis), created the Nightwatch (In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum), and used the Psi Corps as insurance against the Shadows as well as a means of getting more power (Matters of Honor). We don't get clips, but I figured you'd want a break from Edgars' living room for a moment.

Clark has been relying on the Psi Corps all along and the Psi Corps has been put in a position of authority as a result. Now that Sheridan's become a genuine threat to him, Edgars believes that Clark's going to freak out and turn the Psi Corps into a thought police, and then they'll all be screwed.

You might think it's a bit risky for Edgars to share these opinions with a guy he barely knows, but it's fine, he used a telepath to give him a loyalty check earlier.

The conversation continues with Edgars revealing that the megacorporations are actually pulling the strings and they just let people carry on thinking their vote matters. Wow, Garibaldi really backed the right horse here if he wants to make a stand against tyranny.

Edgars explains that the megacorps slipped up and let this Psi Corps problem go too far and now they're going to fix it, quietly. But they need Sheridan off the board before he wrecks their timetable.

Just then Lise interrupts to tell her husband that breakfast's ready. So that's some good news at least. She hasn't got the greatest part in this episode but she has to be grateful she's not delivering pages of text like he is. He's bloody good at it though.

Anyway it's too early for him to give away his whole plan. We've only just reached act four!

ACT FOUR

Hey we're back at Sheridan's Liberation Fleet! We haven't checked in with these guys since the teaser half an hour ago.

That's the EAS Furies in the background, one of the ships that decided to stay behind last episode to defend Proxima 3. I guess they got bored.

It's that guy again, the one who walked in front of Sheridan's chair during the teaser. He's even doing it when Sheridan's trying to talk to someone!

Sheridan finally gets some lines in this scene and he's getting an update from Ivanova. Turns out that Clark sent a couple of destroyers to B5 and we never got to see it! There wasn't a fight though, as they changed sides immediately and then flew off to catch up with Sheridan. The B5 crew aren't into telepathic loyalty tests so I suppose they're just going to have to hope that the captains weren't lying in order to get hold of Sheridan's coordinates and plant a trojan ship in his midst.

We also learned that Delenn's going to be back in a couple of days. She's been off in her own story since Lines of Communication, so this is the fifth episode that she and Sheridan have been separated.

Then he calls up Franklin again to bug him about those telepaths. Franklin hasn't been this irritable since he was trapped in a freighter with Marcus, but he explains that he's setting up a way to relay Lyta's telepathic commands to the frozen telepaths.

Then he finally snaps at Sheridan, asking why this is so damn important... and Sheridan actually agrees to tell him. Just as soon they've got the extra encryption set up and everyone in Medlab has been sent to take a break. Man, I hope no one was in the middle of surgery.

Cut to Franklin walking out of (a crowded) Medlab and collapsing against a wall in shock, just as Lyta's coming around the corner. But she's not the only thing entering the frame, as a distracting black shape just slid on screen from the right. It sticks around for a while then slides back off again. This is the kind of content that people watching the 4:3 HD remastered version are missing out on.

It doesn't seem like we're going to learn anyone's secret plans in this episode, but we do get to see Franklin's reaction and he's shook. He tells Lyta that he didn't believe what people were saying about Sheridan, that he'd changed after Z'ha'dum. Well, aside from the... from some physiological changes. But the Sheridan he knew wouldn't have told him what this one just did, and the thing is he actually agrees with him! It has to be done.

He tells Lyta he's got a long term job for her and they leave in a few days. Man, she just signed her body away to the Psi Corps because of her lack of income and now they have a job for her. Turns out that they're going to Mars!

Cut to Mars, where Lise has decided to drop by Garibaldi's room to bring him some food. Because all she gets to do in this story is show up, say a line about food, and then disappear again.

But Garibaldi stops her from leaving, because it's time for the episode to enter the Garibaldi and Lise Soap Opera Zone. He can't work her and Edgars out; apart from the incredible incredible wealth and fresh orange juice, what does Edgars have that he doesn't?

She tells him that she really does love Edgars and goes on a bit of a monologue about how Garibaldi was always married to his job. It's hard to argue against that, especially when he admits he doesn't actually know if he would've left Babylon 5 to be with her instead.

Meanwhile Edgars and Wade are in a creepy dark room completely unrelated to the creepy dark room that Garibaldi was being interrogated in earlier. Though it does have a telepath in the middle. Three of them in fact.

They're covered in plastic sheets, which seems like a bad sign, but Edgars is pretty sure that whatever they've got isn't going to infect him. In fact he just reaches under the plastic to put his hand on one of them, despite the fact that parts of his skin seems to be disintegrating.

Edgars can't be that bad, as he feels compelled to show some compassion to them. In fact he's decided to have them all killed to put them out of their misery! He's seen enough, he knows that what they've got works. Five days without 'the drug' and they're clearly not going to survive much longer.

ACT FIVE

Act five begins with Garibaldi continuing to be really insistent that he wants to know the rest of the plan. First though Edgars would like something from him: he wants him to give up Sheridan.

Garibaldi's still kind of reluctant to sell him out though. Bester may have meddled with his grey matter, but it seems like there's still enough Garibaldi Classic in there to cause him to hesitate before setting his former friend up to be executed by Clark. Edgars assures Garibaldi they'll be able to make a move on Clark themselves before Sheridan's hearing's over, so he's not actually going to die.

Then he admits that this is the reason he hired him in the first place. Garibaldi is a man of many talents, but what makes him an irresistible asset to Edgars is that he's pretty much the one person who was close enough to Sheridan to know his weaknesses, and disillusioned enough with his cause to turn against him.

So Garibaldi finally gives in and tells him how to track Sheridan's father down through the medicine he needs. Damn man, that's even worse than Dan Randall just casually mentioning that his farm burned down on ISN.

And the episode ends with basically the same shot that we got at the start, with Garibaldi on a train (though they went to the trouble of changing the picture behind him just in case anyone compared the two scenes).

He continues his noir detective narration, talking about how Mars has nearly killed him a few times now and now he's finally finished the job. He doesn't feel anything anymore, he doesn't know what he cares about anymore... except for Lise.

His last lines remind me of Franklin's conversation with Lyta earlier, as he talks how this has to be done. It's horrible, it's not what he wants to do, but he has to betray Sheridan.


CONCLUSION

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Exercise of Vital Powers gets its title from the ancient Greek definition of happiness, so it's maybe ironic that Garibaldi is the definition of misery here. Or maybe it just proves Edgars right when he says that a world ruled by telepaths would be no fun.

The previous episode finally kicked off Sheridan's military campaign against Earth, but that's been pushed to the background for a while so we can check in with Garibaldi and Franklin again. Both sides of the story are about people running experiments on telepaths and subordinates demanding more information about what's really going on, and it doesn't exactly paint anyone as being an angel or an outright monster. Edgars and Wade are doing something obviously horrific out of fear while Franklin and Lyta are motivated by altruism, but both of their medical experiments have an ominous purpose and both are for the greater good... probably. We still haven't gotten enough pieces to judge what they're really up to yet.

It's interesting to see Franklin visibly shaken after hearing what Sheridan wants him (and Lyta) to do with the telepaths, but still 100% willing to go along with the plan. Franklin is among the most moral characters on the series but he supports Sheridan's mission and his methods while Garibaldi strongly opposes them. It's also interesting how episodes keep putting us in Garibaldi's head and asking us to sympathise with him, even though we know for a fact that Bester has messed with his mind and is using him as his agent. He's not the person we used to know, but he's still the protagonist of this story and we get to understand his feelings about the situation through his hard-boiled film noir narration. To be honest, I think he's a much more compelling character here than he was last season, even though he still spends most of his time being miserable and grumpy, as he's more driven and unpredictable this year. And he may have just done something unforgivable.

One thing we know about Garibaldi is how important loyalty is to him. He's always been absolutely loyal to his friends and he freaked out when his own security people were disloyal to him. Now he's betrayed Sheridan by handing his father over to Clark and it's destroying him. The episode's the flipside of Z'ha'dum in some ways now that I think about it, as it's about a character making a journey to the enemy's cosy living room to hear their side of things, except Garibaldi ultimately joins them. They're also both about lots and lots of talking, as a guest star explains what's really going on. Fortunately the guest star this time is Efram Zimbalist Jr. and the guy is absolutely up to the task of delivering like half the words in the script all by himself. Edgars is a loveable sinister billionaire and he's very good at making his case. In fact it's a good thing that we got a likeable telepath in the story as well, as we see them so rarely we might have come away thinking that the guy has a point.

Actually I forgot that Ivanova's a telepath too, so there's two likeable telepaths in this episode. Though one of them's a bit miserable because she's been given yet more teleprompter work. It was really cruel of Sheridan to make Marcus his first officer and leave her behind, and by 'Sheridan' I mean 'the writer'.

Overall this was a decent episode I thought, but it's the next episode I'm hyped for now.

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NEXT WEEK

Next time on Sci-Fi Adventures: Babylon 5 season 4, episode 17 - The Face of the Enemy. I did wonder if I should write about some Star Trek for First Contact Day on the 5th, but that'd mean putting the next episode off for a second week and I don't have the willpower for that.

Thanks for reading, by the way! You should leave a comment while you're here, give us all some bonus content to read.