Babylon 5 5-10: A Tragedy of Telepaths

Episode:

98

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Tony Dow

|

Air Date:

25-Mar-1998

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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.

Babylon 5 5-07: Secrets of the Soul

Episode:

95

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Tony Dow

|

Air Date:

04-Mar-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 7, Secrets of the Soul. It's promising secrets, plural, so it'd better deliver or else I'm going to be slightly disappointed. Or more likely I'll forget what the title was five minutes in and not actually care.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be going through the episode scene by scene and writing what happens underneath, so if you don't already know what happens that might be a problem. Especially as I'll be talking about earlier episodes as well. I'll not be talking about what happens next though.

Babylon 5 4-21: Rising Star

Episode:

87

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Tony Dow

|

Air Date:

20-Oct-1997

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the penultimate episode of Babylon 5's fourth season: Rising Star. Hang on, I recognise this picture: that's the same CGI stock shot of a shuttle arriving they used for the start of No Surrender, No Retreat! I guess the VFX team needed a week off to recover after that last story.

Writer jms must have liked this title as he wrote a comic series a couple of years later called Rising Stars, about the lives of people born with superpowers due to a mysterious comet. I remember the comic being pretty good, though I don't remember much more than that I'm afraid. I'll have things to say about Rising Star though, with any luck.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be writing about every scene that takes place in episode 87 of a heavily serialised TV show, so this isn't the best place to jump in if you're just curious about it. But anyone watching through the series for the first time will be safe here as I'll not be spoiling anything that happens after this story.

Babylon 5 4-14: Moments of Transition

Episode:

80

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Tony Dow

|

Air Date:

19-May-1997

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I've written words about another episode of Babylon 5 for you. This is season 4, episode 14, Moments of Transition, which has to be the least evocative title since Interludes and Examinations last season. You can just tell that nothing interesting or game changing is going to happen here.

The title comes from a monologue by G'Kar in the episode Z'ha'dum, in which he explained that life is made from moments of transition and moments of revelation. So I suppose we can at least be sure there won't be any revelations in the episode.

Though I do have a revelation for you of my own: this is episode 80 of Babylon 5, which means that this is the point where the series had officially overtaken the original Star Trek's episode count. Even if you count Trek's unaired pilot episode, The Cage, Babylon 5 has its own pilot movie, The Gathering, to put it one story ahead again.

I should warn you that there's going to be so many SPOILERS after this point. I'm going to ruin the whole damn episode. But if you're watching through the series for the first time you've got nothing to worry about as I won't even hint at what happens next.

Babylon 5 4-09: Atonement

Episode:

75

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Tony Dow

|

Air Date:

24-Feb-1997

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm writing about more Babylon 5! The episode Atonement to be specific, which was the 9th story in season 4.

This means I'm finally going to have to face one of the biggest mysteries in the entire Babylon 5 saga: where the hell does the movie Thirdspace fit in? Some people say watch it before Atonement, some people suggest watching it right after it. Some even suggest starting the episode, getting up to a certain point, then switching over to watch Thirdspace instead for a bit. And some people, perhaps more sensible people, suggest just watching it in the order it aired in.

I'm just going to put the episode on and see if I can spot any point where you could interrupt the action with an entire film without it being weird.

Oh by the way, BABYLON 5 FINALLY GOT REMASTERED! Holy crap, I can't believe it. Okay it's not a full Star Trek-style HD remaster where they rescanned the original film and replaced the effects, I think they've just gone back to the original 4:3 broadcast masters, but it looks a lot better. Unfortunately I don't have any of these remastered episodes so all my screencaps are going to be from the widescreen DVDs.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm going to assume you've seen all of Babylon 5 up to and including this episode, but I won't spoil anything that comes after. I won't even spoil Thirdspace, even though it apparently chronologically takes place here.