There’s something wrong on Centauri Prime, a long brewing conflict is escalated, and Byron continues to be my least favorite part of this season. Welcome my friends. This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2262. The place: Babylon 5.
Spoilers ahead.
1. Epitaph to a Telepath
It was an inevitability that things would escalate with Byron’s crew after the bombshell reveal at the end of “Secret of the Soul”; I just didn’t expect it to escalate that quickly. Byron goes from 1 to 100 in the course of 15 minutes while a sizable chunk of the telepaths jump from 100 to 1000. Actually, Byron goes from 1 to 50, a reasonable escalation all-things-considered, and then when he’s demanding a homeworld for the telepaths – an idea that requires a LOT of unpacking – he goes from 50 to 10,000 by essentially threatening everyone to reveal all their secrets.
What was Byron thinking?! You just introduced previously unknown information about a group who’s long fucked off, then demanded something HUGE on a short time scale, after pulling a bait and switch. You don’t then lead with a threat, bluff or not. All it will do is antagonize a group you were coming to for help. In his impatience to get the results he wants, convinced his way is the only way, he threw a molotov cocktail onto a small fire he’d already just poured gasoline onto.
Those are the two things that piss me off about Byron: his impatience and his inflexibility. Both are on display at their worst in this episode.
At the same time, I’m questioning why I feel so strongly about this. Byron has every right to be angry. He has every right to be demanding and impatient. There are reparations to be made and difficult questions to be had about how to make it happen and what they will look like as well. Being told they maybe shouldn’t get anything is a slap in the face. And my gut reaction, which is the same as Sheridan’s, that he “did this the wrong way,” curdles like milk in the sun upon the slightest interrogation, even if it is true within the context of the series.
I think my big hang up is structural. Had there been an episode or two between the presentation and the threat/escalation, I would have been more accepting of where the episode ultimately leads and less frustrated with Byron. What Straczynski was trying to do and what he did doesn’t quite line up and that tension is palpable in that one scene. The ideas are good, though with plenty of room to dig deeper. Their execution leaves a lot to be desired, likely due to a desire to push the plot forward so it doesn’t stagnate too much.
2. So, We’ll Go No More a-Hiding
But that’s really only one half of my ambivalence around Byron’s plan and its aftermath. The rest comes from how he reacts to the other telepaths choosing to fight back by scattering and making good on the threats as well as how the episode places us observers in a position we’ve rarely been in: between Sheridan and the B5 leadership and the episode’s “good guys.”
For so long they were the underdog, the ones fighting for justice in an unjust system. It wasn’t always forceful, it wasn’t always done well, but it was being done. Now? The Alliance revokes their asylum protections so B5 can deploy a police force against a minority community, a force headed up by someone with a clear bias against said group.
That’s actually a really meaty decision. It lets the audience chew on cycles of power and how good people can make bad choices and sanction bad outcomes. It asks us to look more critically at the people we like and wrestle with the gray areas, not just the clear battles. Still, the way Byron’s in-group fight pans out, where the framing of the episode lands on that issue, and how the missteps earlier in the episode compound in my head make this feel less cohesive and pointed than it should be.
I suspect I’m not going to have an actual cogent critique of the way Babylon 5 handles Byron and the telepath commune until the end of the season. It’s just too murky to see exactly what point Straczynski is trying to make, how he’s making it and then evaluating both. There are glimpses and graspings but not nearly enough to construct anything.
Continued belowAt least I can still unequivocally say I don’t like Byron and Lyta’s relationship.
3. Citizene G’Kar’s Pilgrimage
G’Kar’s having way too much fun being Londo’s bodyguard, both in terms of his job duties and forcing all the members of the royal court to be around him all the time, clearly making them uncomfortable. While I think it’s a simplistic jab at colonialism and the racism it built, there’s just something so satisfying seeing these stuffy Centauri taken down a few pegs as Londo unequivocally stands by G’Kar and as G’Kar embarasses them at every turn.
I especially like the scene where G’Kar is given the opportunity to strike the guard who whipped him and he doesn’t. While I could read this as G’Kar absolving him of his part under Cartagia’s rule, G’Kar’s argument neither absolves him nor condemns him. The action is condemned; the one who created it and ordered it is condemned; the one who carried it out is not. G’Kar says that the ones who deserve punishment from him have been punished – specifically because they’re dead. He does not harbor hatred or a desire for vengeance because the objects of those are gone.
This all also brings into stark relief the growth Londo has gone through in comparison to the rest of the court and, presumably, all of Centauri Prime. He’s still got a long way to go but what he learned during his long night has stuck. He’s still ornery and one does not change deeply held beliefs overnight. However, he is no longer silent and Jurasik captures Londo’s absolute trust in G’Kar and his rejection of the intolerance he once harbored. It’s an important scene to set the stage and, I fear, to foreshadow where Londo will be forced to go soon.
4. The Prisoner of Centauri Prime
Minister Virini is back everybody! He was consistently my favorite part of last season’s Centauri plots and last we saw him, he’d been made regent and wanted to change all the drapes to lovely pastels. So I guess he’s Regent Virini now? We don’t get to see a lot of him but what we do get is so much fun. Damian London is a treat and finds the right balance between Virini’s formerly flighty nature and his new, cryptic haunted demeanor.
I love how we know why he’s acting the way he is but everyone else doesn’t. It’s a great payoff for the set-up nearly a year prior when he was afflicted by a control alien, the same one we saw controlling Londo in the future. It adds an extra sense of foreboding to the episode and to all the Centauri Prime plots from here on out.
5. Darkness
Well, it mostly adds a sense of foreboding. The death scene of Lord Jano was hilarious in that schlocky Babylon 5 way. He screams at the camera and is then thrown against a wall with all the force of a wet paper bag. I was laughing so much I nearly forgot about the actually spooky scene that preceded it. And much of the episode is filled with omens like these.
The royal court is a scary place, it always has been, but as Londo and Virini note late in the episode, it is now cold, dark, and unwelcome. A pall has fallen over the planet and for a planet with a history of bloodshed and terror, that is saying something.
By episode’s end, we see that the Drakh are making moves on Centauri Prime, using their ships to attack members of the Alliance as a weakening tactic and manipulating the court from the shadows. What do they want from Londo? How will Londo resist? Will he? All these questions and more are at the forefront of my mind and, unlike much of the Byron stuff, I want to know where it is leading.
I fear for Virini, whose fate is sealed in death. I fear for G’Kar and Londo. But most of all, I fear for the Alliance, who have no idea what’s coming next.
That about does it for now. Join me again in a week for tragedy, telepaths, and terror on the station where the president has offered a fateful degree.
Continued belowThis is Elias. Signing out.
Best Line of the Night:
Londo: “I have known the regent since the first time I came to the royal court. He doesn’t drink. He cultivated sobriety as his only vice.”
