The telepaths play games with Zach’s people, the Alliance struggles with egos and a disinformation campaign, and G’Kar is filled with righteous fury at the reappearance of an old friend. 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. Fear and Loathing on Babylon 5
Since when did the Drazi suck this much? I’ve asked myself this numerous times this season. They’ve been around since season 1 and while, yeah, the characters were often antagonistic, they were never this bad. It seems like every time there’s an issue, the Drazi Ambassador is at the forefront, pushing for war and conflict and acting out of pure fear and/or political ambition. During the drafting of the Declaration of Principles, the Drazi Ambassador was using outrage to cover up wrongdoing on the Drazi government’s part, which made sense and they got their comeuppance. But here? I just don’t get why they’re being so self-centered.
OK. I know why, and the being hammered home about fear and the consequences of decisions built from them is taken. However, why are the Drazi the primary representative of this force? Is it because of that previous embarrassment? Is it all just bluster to push ahead with the projects and direction they want? Why not the Brakiri or the Game or any of the other ambassadors for the Alliance? It’s not bad but it is weird.
Also, that last line threat from the Drazi Ambassador can get them to fuck all the way off. “Only defending ourselves” my foot.
2. The Beginning of the End
There’s a strong sense of foreboding in “A Tragedy of Telepaths,” starting from the moment we hear Lockley narrating about the situation with Byron’s enclave and a nod to the political situation on Centauri Prime. While Lockley’s narration at the start sets the mood, the events and tenor of the episode reinforce it. It’s like everyone knows things are only starting to get bad and it’s only a matter of time before it all comes to a head. Even the episode ending has a resignation to things seemingly falling apart.
It’s a weird place to be, honestly. You’d think this season would have an upward trajectory, of things getting better or at least more stable. For a story, that would make sense but for an attempt to mirror the realism after the big ending, this fits better. The complicated, difficult and sometimes just plain wrong choices being made are vital to show because that’s how things happen. An ideal is great, and of bedrock importance, but it does not make things suddenly better. As “A Tragedy of Telepaths” elucidates, selfish and destructive desires sometimes win out, are sometimes more powerful, and the path to a better tomorrow is not always a single, unbending line.
3. Creatures of Excitement
I’ve been chewing over what Garibaldi says to Sheridan about midway through the episode.
The two are discussing the attacks the Alliance worlds have been suffering along their borders and shipping lines and how the Drazi are going to introduce “evidence” they found that the Brakiri were behind the attacks; the evidence is fake, though not planted by the Drazi, as the Game have a similar piece of metal, only it’s Drazi in “origin.” Sheridan is lamenting the problems they’re running into, how everyone is acting out in self-interested ways and refusing to work together. He’s worried the Alliance won’t survive much longer if the attacks continue. He is distraught and terrified that what they’re trying to do is, actually, impossible.
I don’t get it, Michael. I truly don’t. I mean, after a while…you’d think this would get a little easier? But lately, it feels like it’s all falling apart. Everything is-is fraying at the edges. I mean, instead of everybody trying to hold things together, I feel like they’re all grabbing at threads and pulling in a hundred different directions.
If you’ve ever worked on a group project with a lot of big egos, you know what this can be like albeit on a vastly smaller scale.
Garibaldi responds by asking about why we break history up by wars, not peace time. It’s a bit of a loaded question but a salient one to the point he’s making: because it’s exciting. And he means exciting without any value placed behind the word. Excitement is neither good nor bad, it simply is a state of being. Things are happening in large, visible ways and that keeps us occupied.
Continued belowPeace isn’t necessarily boring but war, sadly, is anything but. It is eventful, it causes massive upheaval and change, and it reshapes the lives of all involved, even those who think they’re unaffected. Which leads, depressingly, into the second half of Garibaldi’s point: that people enjoy watching something be destroyed, especially from the inside.
You’ve felt this impulse, yes? You see a perfectly balanced rock pile and you think: “What would that look like as it topples over? If a wave hits it? If the wind catches the top just so, sending them clacking onto the others and onto the sand?” Or the satisfaction of hearing how a company like, say, Enron was taken down or Standard Oil broken up? It’s a bit of a strange impulse, isn’t it? Not considering anything but the destruction?
It says something, too, about us as an audience. We crave excitement. A well-functioning Alliance, without conflicts internal and external wouldn’t just be unrealistic, it would be boring. I think it could’ve been made interesting but the point remains that we, and the network, crave interesting developments, which means things being on the verge of, if not fully, falling apart.
While I ultimately think Babylon 5 wants to refute this claim, that people always seek the exciting option and would rather see something implode than work to fix it or build something, this is not the episode where it tries. This is the “things are bad and only going to get worse” episode. And I fear it’s not the last of them to come.
4. It’s All For the Bester
Did anyone else audibly yell at their screen when Lockley radioed to have Bester come to the station? Because I did. It’s a striking example of how different Lockley is from Sinclair and Sheridan, as well as how dire she thinks the situation is. I’m always down to see more Walter Koenig, and it’s very weird to see Walter Koenig actually get the chance to be “good” Bester. I can’t wait to see him get slapped around again, though.
Why was he brought on, though? Well, after locking themselves away, Byron’s telepaths have been successfully holding off Zack’s forces in a pretty ingenious way: planting the suggestion that there are bombs behind the walls in worker’s minds, thereby preventing them from cutting through the wall fast enough AND giving them plenty of time to reinforce it. The effects don’t really sell the reinforcement as being anything but some flimsy metal duct taped to the wall but I’m willing to suspend my disbelief on that point.
Oh and those telepaths that escaped? Some are spray painting messages on walls and the others are starting an armed resistance against Zack, successfully killing two members of his forces before being taken out. It’s hard not to be conflicted here. We’ve spent all this time with Zack and co. and yet his, and the Alliance’s actions, are pretty distasteful, especially when he has to cooperate with Bester.
It’s not hard to see how JMS is repositioning Byron as the “correct” one here, even when the show acknowledges through Lockley that he really fucked up when he threatened the whole Alliance right out of the gate. There is a reason this episode is called “A Tragedy of Telepaths” and not “A Tussle of Telepaths” after all.
He treats her with kindness even now, knowing what she felt she had to do. For all my ragging on his character, I like his outlook here. She was not always kind to them but she was always fair, and sometimes that is enough. Not always, and not often, but sometimes.
5. A Return and a Departure
While I’ve spent most of my thoughts off of Centauri Prime, seeing as how it’s technically the C-plot, that doesn’t mean it’s less important or even less powerful. In fact, Katsulas and Jurasik’s performance this week absolutely steal the show and I found myself wanting the episode to cut back to them, even as the rest kept my attention quite well.
I think what makes it work so well is how the whole plot is structured. It begins with an innocuous statement about Spoo, which leads G’Kar and Londo to discover that Na’Toth, who was last seen in season 2, had been in this solitary cell since the Centauri’s mass driver attack on Narn. Two years. Trapped on Centauri Prime. Nearly abandoned, save for this one guard.
Continued belowWhy was she still here? Well, apparently the emperor ordered her imprisonment and then just…forgot she was there. Whoever else knows is either dead, forgot, or doesn’t care. G’Kar snaps, and for good reason. Not only is it a Narn, it is Na’Toth, his attaché. Played once again by (Julie) Caitlin Brown, last seen playing the character at the end of season 1, she doesn’t get to do a lot but for a coda to her story, it is enough.
It is enough to know she gets out alive.
What’s most interesting about this episode isn’t really the escape, which is clever and funny in equal measure, but the conversation the two have about what happened and how to fix it, as well as the ultimate resolution afterwards. Upon reaching that resolution, Londo is jovial while G’Kar is contemplative. It’s a tiny scene, barely two minutes long, but it’s more than enough to convey the different lives these two have lived.
Londo is of the privileged class, isolated from the harsh truths of living under real oppression and thus sees his actions as personally enriching, while G’Kar has lived a life of strife and sees injustices where Londo does not. For him, this was not an opportunity to do good to feel better about himself but about righting a wrong that should never have occurred in the first place. A rebalancing, and thus a necessity.
“These things happen in a monarchy.” Londo’s words about Na’Toth’s continued imprisonment. They are not said with malice or dispassion but bluntness. These things happen. It is the truth and he relates this story to prove his point:
When I was still new to the royal palace I looked out the window and saw a guard standing in the middle of a courtyard. Nothing to protect, nothing to guard. No doors. I couldn’t figure out what he was guarding and so I asked around. No one knew, not even the emperor. Finally, they searched through the old records and found the truth.
That 200 years before, as winter came to an end, the emperor’s daughter saw the first flower growing up through the snow. To keep anyone from walking on it she assigned the guard to stand watch over it every day. After that, she never gave it much thought and, thys, never countermanded the order.
As a result, every day, for 200 years, a guard would stand in that place…long after the flower was gone.
Long after the reason had been forgotten.
Long after the princess was gone.
As I said, G’Kar…these things happen.
G’Kar challenges not the truth of the matter as exemplified above but the implication behind it: that nothing can be done to prevent it OR rectify it. These things happen, yes, but who lets them happen? And who, when discovering why, makes them no longer happen?
What makes this conflict compelling, above and beyond the performances, is Londo is right – the current Regent likely wouldn’t rescind the order and to defy the order is tantamount to treason – AND G’Kar is right, to leave Na’Toth here for even a day longer is unconscionable. One of them must bend and it must be Londo, for to wait for Londo to maybe become Emperor is no solution. Londo could not imagine another path than the official one so G’Kar forced him to act differently.
It is tragic that the push was necessary, but it is a sad reality that no one is truly immune to.
That about does it for now. Join me again in a week for more tragedy, for fighting, and, perhaps, a point of no return on the station where the telepaths were forced to declare independence.
This is Elias. Signing out.
Best Line of the Night:
Londo: “When we are at peace, we cut production on ships and weapons 25% and invest that money in the domestic economy. Manufacturing. Research and development.”
G’Kar: “Sensible. Wise. Who thought it up for you?”
