| Episode: | 98 | | | Writer: | J. Michael Straczynski | | | Director: | Tony Dow | | | Air Date: | 25-Mar-1998 |
This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 10: A Tragedy of Telepaths.
The word 'tragedy' in this case is a collective noun, as it's the name for a group of telepaths. You know, like a murder of crows or a litter of puppies. Or a shrewdness of apes. An implausibility of gnus. A congregation of crocodiles. A handful of stegosauruses. An exaltation of larks. A business of ferrets. A tower of giraffes.
I'd mention some trivia here or talk about the director, but I'd rather just keep listing collective nouns. A wisdom of wombats. A dazzle of zebras. A murmuration of starlings. Where do these nouns even come from? Who even uses them? Okay everyone says things like 'a pack of cards' or 'a round of drinks', they're not all bizarre, but no one has ever had to refer to an 'obstinacy of buffalo' before.
Anyway, I hope you're into SPOILERS because there'll be a lot of them coming your way very soon if you keep reading. For this episode and for earlier ones too. But if you've watched the series up to this point you have nothing to worry about as I'll not be spoiling anything that happens after the episode.
It's 16th June 2262 and Lochley's miserable. She's got a colony of telepaths on the station who are blackmailing the ambassadors for a new homeworld and they've sealed themselves inside the darkest depths of DownBelow. This means she's got to get them out before they starve. Plus she also has to catch the ones who have already gotten out and are loose on the station.
Huh, that's strange. It looks like her uniform's too green here, but the blue on the walls is fine.
Lochley mentions in her voice over that she's tempted to give up her Earthforce career and go work for Londo, captaining a starship in the Centauri fleet. Turns out that she can speak a bit of Centauri. Though really she just wants to be doing anything else at this moment. She's kind of regretting her decision to do Sheridan a favour by taking the job running Babylon 5.
Unfortunately Sheridan can't help her resolve the telepath problem as he's busy with the other crisis: the random attacks on Alliance shipping lanes. The ambassadors are kind of preoccupied with that at the moment as well and Byron knew that before he tried to blackmail them, so his timing here was terrible. Never blackmail someone with more urgent and important business to take care of.
Then we learn the other reason why Lochley's so miserable: she's decided the only thing she can do now is to call Bester for help. And that's the hook at the end of the teaser. It's going to be another Bester episode!
ACT ONE
Act one begins with Zack explaining to Lochley that he's got a team cutting through a wall in DownBelow to get the telepaths out, with another one cutting elsewhere as a distraction. Man, who knew that it would take so much effort to get through Babylon 5's walls? Whenever there's a fight scene I'm worried that someone's going to accidentally put their foot through one.
Unfortunately the telepaths are telepathic, and there are so many of them linked up that they're able to detect what Zack's people are doing even without line of sight. As they're cutting through on this side they keep welding thick steel plating to the other side. Which kind of raises the question of what the telepaths are taking apart to come up with all these steel plates.
Every time this happens it takes half an hour for them to get the next guy down to replace them. He can't just have a second welder sitting there doing nothing, waiting for his turn, because that would be the wrong kind of convenient. The kind that hurts the drama.
Anyway Byron sends Lochley a telepathic message and she decides that she should go crawling in through the vents to talk to them. Last time Byron sent her a telepathic message to meet somewhere she was pragmatic enough to bring guards with her, but this time she's going full Sinclair and heading in there alone. Even though she might just be handing them an actual hostage.
Londo's alarmed by reports that their military spending has gone up 15% when it was supposed to drop by 25% in peace time, but G'Kar distracts him by offering him fresh spoo. I'm thinking back to what Lochley said earlier, about knowing a bit of Centauri, and it just occurred to me that G'Kar must be speaking the language himself the whole time he's here. They're definitely not all speaking English.
The thing about spoo is that G'Kar knows full well that it's an insult to Centauri to serve it fresh, which is part of the reason Londo smacked it out of his hand when he offered it to him back in Midnight on the Firing Line. It also raises the question of how he was able to get hold of some in the Centauri Royal Palace on the Centauri homeworld. They work together to piece together the mystery, with G'Kar revealing that he found it on a tray heading to the south end of the place and Londo telling him that's where the underground cells are. Seems like someone there is eating Narn food.
By this point G'Kar lost his cheerful demeanour and he makes it clear that the two of them going to those cells, NOW.
Na'Toth was G'Kar's aide in season one, and in season two as well I suppose (she was in the opening titles and everything). The series switched actresses when Julie Caitlin Brown was unable to continue after a year of suffering in that makeup, however Na'Toth #2 didn't bring the same strength to the role and was written out after a couple of episodes. But now Na'Toth's back and with her original actress too!
To be honest this isn't much of a surprise as both the actress and the character appeared in the guest star credits at the start. Though then again you can't trust everything you see in the credits this episode; they credited Kim Strauss as playing the 'Drazzi Ambassador', at least on my Region 2 DVDs.
ACT TWO
She says "Almost," and we get a flashback to the mass driver bombardment in The Long, Twilight Struggle, complete with the iconic shot of Londo looking in horror from the window of one of the ships doing the bombarding. You know, the one that was shown again a few episodes back in The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari.
 |
| 2-20 - The Long, Twilight Struggle |
But this is Na'Toth's story we're hearing, so we also get a view from where she was down on the planet.
Na'Toth's tale is pretty short and straightforward. Her planet was hit without warning and she awoke in ruins with a boot on her throat. She was taken to Centauri Prime as slave labour and entertainment, but they found she was "not sufficiently entertaining" and locked her away. Hang on, was that a quote from the Star Trek episode Plato's Stepchildren?
The thing is, the war's been over for more than a year, the Centauri and Narn are allies, and there's no reason she should still be down here. There's no purpose for it, it benefits absolutely no one.
It's so typical that Londo's reaction to this is basically 'Eh, this kind of thing happens in a political system like this, what can you do?' and he feels like he's powerless to improve the situation. The dude has a messed up planet! Thing is, this is based on an alleged true story from our own world, with Russian empress Catherine the Great being the one that gave the order.
Man, I know I said in my Strange Relations review that I didn't like ultra-noble G'Kar, but it's actually kind of horrible to see him so angry at Londo again. The two of them had gone from bitter enemies, to reluctant allies, to something halfway resembling friends. Now this has happened, dragging everything back up, and it threatens to ruin everything.
It's bad enough that she has to crawl down this narrow duct without also having to dodge these high voltage boxes along the way. How the hell do they do maintenance in here anyway? She can only hope that the other side isn't sealed up, otherwise she'll be coming back out backwards. It's a bit of an Aliens situation, except slightly less claustrophobic, thankfully.
One interesting thing about this scene, is that it exists. The production crew went to the trouble of building this duct set just for this one moment, when they could've cut to the chase and had her dropping down from a wall. It must have been considered important to the story to show how much Lochley is enduring to solve this problem. She has a lot of goodwill to earn back with viewers after calling in Bester.
They've also got bigger concerns outside the station, as the Drazi have found a bit of metal left behind after the latest attack on their shipping lines that points the finger right at the Brakiri. Sheridan doesn't buy it, the Brakiri don't attack without provocation. He's a long way from learning what we already know however: that it's probably the Drakh who are attacking these ships, using Centauri vessels. So that doesn't come up in the conversation.
Sheridan confides in Garibaldi that he thought things would get easier the more people they got onto the same page, but it seems like everyone's trying to pull what they've built apart. Garibaldi points out that we break up history by the wars, because they're more interesting than the peace. Then he goes and lists a whole bunch of wars right off the top of his head, going way past the rule of three references. It's like he's been giving the subject some thought. The point he's making is that people like to see big things explode, whether they're spaceships, organisations, or dreams.
I've seen people saying the same things online for years. Talking about how Star Trek would be more interesting if the Federation fell. Talking about how sci-fi would be more interesting if Star Trek fell.
Lochley lays it out straight, that with the Alliance divided and paranoid the telepaths picked the worst moment to blackmail them with their secrets, and there's exactly zero hope of them getting a homeworld by continuing this strategy. Therefore, staying here is pointless. (She leaves out that part that the 'B' in her Plan B stands for 'Bester'.) Byron replies that his telepaths are staying for as long as it takes for all the ambassadors who currently want them dead to realise that they totally deserve a homeworld. And if that never happens then his telepaths will all die here. Man, if there's a moral to this story, it's 'don't join a cult'.
At this point Lochley's wondering why they even asked her to waste her precious time crawling through hundreds of meters of dangerous cables if they had no intention of negotiating, and Byron says he just wanted to say goodbye. Dude, next time you're going to seal yourself in somewhere and wait for news from outside, give the people outside some way to communicate with you.
The scene provides us with an interesting contrast between two leaders with very different ways of looking at the world. Lochley's very pragmatic and sensible. She sets attainable goals and she comes up with very ordinary, rational solutions. She's not the type for idealistic crusades or ingenious schemes. Byron, on the other hand, is an idiot.
ACT THREE
She was expecting some cross-dressing fun like she had with Emperor Cartagia (even if she doesn't think her clothes will fit him), but unfortunately she's probably going to be sitting here half-naked and alone until they've carried out the next phase of their operation. He could've just asked her to fetch him one of her other outfits!
The Drazi believe that the Brakiri debris they found shows that Byron's telepaths leaked info to the Brakiri so they could attack their shipping lanes. But the Gaim have found their own mysterious debris at the scene of another attack, and it was from a Drazi ship! Sheridan reveals that it's actually a trick, the debris is too neatly cut to be actual space wreckage, so they need to hold off fighting each other so that they can figure out who the real threat is.
Of course the ambassadors still don't trust each other after this reveal, because the ambassadors can't even tie their shoelaces in the morning without Sheridan first preventing them from sawing off their own feet off out of paranoia and spite. Five seasons they've been like this now.
Na'Toth's not all that happy to see Londo in her cell, telling him that she'll kill him the first chance she gets. But he just tells her to wait in line and carries on removing her chains.
Back at the station Bester's finally arrived! Took him long enough, the episode's almost half an hour in. The very first thing he does is go "I told you so" to Lochley. Which is fair, I suppose, as he did.
ACT FOUR
That means Londo gets to play the role of a drunken idiot again, which we haven't really seen since way back in season 1. Meanwhile Julie Caitlin Brown is playing the role of a mute with a bag over her head, assuming that's even her. It's a bit of a shame that they went to all the trouble of bringing the character back but she doesn't really get to do anything.
Still, it's nice that we're finally getting another Londo and G'Kar team up, like that time they executed Lord Refa, and the time they assassinated Emperor Cartagia. When they're both pulling in the same direction, things get done.
I feel like the 'Free Byron' graffiti might be inspired by the 'Free Kevin' slogan used by hackers protesting the arrest of hacker Kevin Mitnick. The thing is, Byron locked himself away. Babylon 5's security is trying to get him out!
The rogue telepaths roaming B5 know that Bester's there now and this has only escalated the situation. Last time he was here they all got captured and Lochley had to come up with a loophole to get them out. So this time they're going to have to go get themselves some guns, quick. Sure Byron preaches non-violence, but they're able to overlook that for his own good. In fact they're even talking to each other out loud and acting like real people, which has to be against the rules as well. Next they'll be cutting their hair and wearing colours other than black or dark brown.
I don't know why Zack didn't just try to explain to their welder that the telepaths in there believe in absolute non-violence and would never use a bomb. They wouldn't do anything to harm people at all in fact.
This telepath's called Thomas by the way, and he seems to be the leader of this particular group of rogue telepaths that broke away from Byron. Hang on, in episode one we got Bryon's friend Special Simon, then later we got the telekinetic Peter, and now we've got Thomas. Seems that jms is naming Byron's followers after Jesus' Twelve Disciples.
That security officer on the left gets shot as well, but Zack throws over his PPG to Lochley so she can join in, then pulls out his backup. I'm sorry Zack, I shouldn't have questioned your ability to do your job. And Bester's helping too!
Oh damn, the stuntman hits his head on the pillar on the way down the stairs. That has to have been deliberate. I hope.
The fight ends with Thomas' telepaths retreating, leaving two B5 staff dead and one telepath wounded. I don't know what the telepaths' objective was here, but I guess they've delayed the cutting process by another half hour.
Hang on, didn't the Shadows mention that they controlled the hemlines when they were giving their speech to Sheridan at Z'ha'dum?
There's actually a theory (called the hemline index) that suggests there's a correlation between skirt lengths and stock prices, so hemlines are indicative of the health of the economy. But I've got no idea if this is what Bester was meant to be talking about. Maybe he was just rambling.
ACT FIVE
The ambassadors aren't all that keen on the two Alliance leaders threatening to use force when they're just trying to defend themselves. In fact the Drazi ambassador tells Sheridan that this was the single mistake that will lead to his fall. We already know his prediction's way off though, thanks to The Deconstruction of Falling Stars. The telepath colony was the single mistake! I suppose we'll have to wait to find out how far he falls due to it.
The episode has reminded us that one of the darkest times in G'Kar's life was when he was held prisoner in a cell under the Royal Palace, and one of the darkest times in Londo's life was when he was standing at the window of a Centauri cruiser as his fleet bombed Narn. Now the two of them are at the window together, watching the escape of someone they've rescued from one of those cells. That's proper writing that is.
Also Londo's happy! He actually enjoyed breaking Na'Toth out, taking a risk and being a hero. He even offers G'Kar some food, which mirrors G'Kar offering food to Londo at the start.
It's 18th June, 2262, two days after the first log, and Lochley's going back to bed. I don’t blame her. She hasn't had a good night's sleep since she first arrived to take over B5, but she's got to try tonight as this the moment of calm before everything goes to crap. Tomorrow the killing starts and she doesn't know what she can do to prevent it. So there's a bit of a hook for the next episode.
CONCLUSION
With a title like A Tragedy of Telepaths I was expecting more tragedy to be honest. Maybe even the death of a major telepath character. But no, it actually only pushes the telepath story forwards very slightly. Security is still cutting through the wall to get Byron's telepaths out, a group of telepaths led by a guy called Thomas has gotten guns and are fighting back, and Lochley has invited Bester and his Bloodhounds back. That's basically all that happens. Things are left very unresolved here.
Byron was a frustrating character for me before this episode and his determination to get his people killed hasn't made him any more endearing. He finally leaps into action when he learns that telepaths are hurting other people in his name, but when it comes to his own group he'd rather let them all starve than work towards a solution. Either he really doesn't understand that the people he's trying to win over with his hunger strike want them dead, or he's martyring his followers to make a point.
It's also frustrating that Lochley isn't able to find a typical TV show left-field solution to work things out. It's not due to a lack of effort, she's willing to risk her life by crawling through ducts into the telepaths' lair unarmed, she just can't think of anything. Well, other than to call Bester in to drag them back to the immoral fascist organisation they once escaped from. She has to get them out to save their lives but by doing so she's dooming them to a fate worse than death! It's the by-the-book Earthforce solution, but it's not the one Sinclair, Sheridan or Ivanova would've chosen, and so far it's mostly just escalated things, leaving two people dead. It feels like I'm watching a version of B5 where all the heroes are gone or busy, and all I'm left with are flawed fallible ordinary people. Also Bester, but he's only in it for a few minutes at the end.
Sheridan, Delenn and Garibaldi are in the story, but they're dealing with the ambassadors, so there's not much joy or success in that plot either. Plus it feels like a bit of a retread of the Shadow War in season 3 and the Drakh raids in season 4, with the ambassadors being just as annoying as ever. The League/Alliance worlds don't trust each other, there are mysterious attacks going on, been there, done that. There's no feeling that they're part of a unified alliance now, as it's still about Sheridan and friends doing all the work to keep things together and solve the mystery.
Then there's the Londo and G'Kar plot, which is the opposite of the other two plots. It features two ambassadors from different worlds working together to solve a mystery and fix a problem, and they get it done within 40 minutes by thinking outside of the box and being imaginative. They're proper 90s TV heroes here... which is funny, seeing how at times they've both been the villain. The other ambassadors are stuck as shallow cardboard obstructions (Delenn aside), but Londo and G'Kar have both grown to the point where I wish they were the ones on B5 solving the telepath problem! It's just a shame that Na'Toth is only in five minutes of the episode and spends the last minute walking silently with a veil over her face. We get nothing of what made the character so great in season one. But we do get closure and we learn that she's okay, so that's good. I want my fictional characters to be safe and happy.
For some reason though it's the story of the guard and the flower that stuck with me the most in this story. I came into the episode with a very hazy recollection of what happens in it, but that tale will always have a permanent place in my memory.
Overall I'd rate this as being an average episode of Babylon 5, near the middle of the pack... which puts it quite high for a season 5 story. At least compared to the episodes I've gotten so far.
COMING SOON
Thanks for reading! If you've got any opinions about this episode please type your text into the box below.
I thought of the flower story a few weeks ago when I was reading some Army tales. In one of them, the freshly minted officer was being trained for taking over management of a facility. He didn't understand the purpose of one of the duties, and the senior officer who training him said it's because that's how he was trained. So they tracked down the person who trained him, and he said it was because that's how he was trained. They never did find out what the original point of it was.
ReplyDelete