“Dust to Dust”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by David J. Eagle
Season 3, Episode 6
Production episode 306
Original air date: February 5, 1996
It was the dawn of the third age… A security guard, who also is with NightWatch, is attempting to shut down a store that’s selling merchandise that is anti-President Clark in the wake of the revelation that he helped orchestrate the death of President Santiago. Sheridan shows up and makes it clear that freedom of expression is still a thing, despite the guard’s insistence that this is sedition. Sheridan warns the guard that if these attempts to strangle free expression will not be tolerated.
A man in downbelow is ranting, raving, and breaking things and people as he screams about a mountain falling on him. He’s eventually taken to medlab, as is a woman who was injured. A medtech notes that the woman was nearly killed in a rockslide on Mars—a mountain fell on her. Franklin immediately tests the man for Dust, an addictive drug that temporarily gives a person telepathic powers.
Bester contacts Garibaldi to let them know that he’s on his way and will be there in a few hours. The war council immediately meets and panics about Bester’s arrival, as there’s no guarantee that he won’t read folks’ minds without their permission, and if he finds out about the Rangers or the Army of Light, they’re all fucked.
When Bester is on approach to the station, Ivanova clears CnC and activates the defense grid. Sheridan, however, talks her down, insisting that Delenn’s plan will work. When Bester finally arrives—rather pissed at the radio silence that greeted him on approach, as Ivanova deliberately ignored his hails while activating the defense grid—he enters Sheridan’s office only to discover that every member of the senior staff is being shadowed by a Minbari telepath. Sheridan’s stated reason for not trusting Bester is the fate of Winters, which prompts Bester to imply that Winters was dissected by Psi Corps, which pisses Garibaldi off until Ivanova calms him down.
Sheridan gives Bester an ultimatum: either take sleeper drugs to suppress his telepathy for the duration of his visit, or the Minbari stick around. Bester chooses door #1. Franklin administers the sleepers, and Bester agrees to meet in a couple hours once they’ve taken full effect.
Vir arrives from Minbar to report to Mollari on how he’s doing in his new post, and also to prepare a report for the Centaurum, which Mollari wants to read over first. Vir’s report is even-handed and pleasant and philosophical, and all of Mollari’s notes are to instead make it more cynical and paranoid and tactical. In addition, Delenn and Lennier attempt to negotiate an accord between Mollari and the Drazi ambassador, which fails utterly due to Mollari’s intransigence.
Bester is on B5 to stop the trafficking of Dust. He has it on good authority that a dealer is trying to expand to non-human markets. Proving his point, we cut to G’Kar’s quarters, where a dealer named Lindstrom is selling Dust to G’Kar. He gives G’Kar a sample packet, which the Narn will test before finalizing the deal. Lindstrom warns G’Kar that they don’t know how it’ll work on non-humans.
Garibaldi and Bester interrogate Ashi Van Troc, a merchant who has his fingers in pretty much every black-market deal on the station. Bester lies about being able to read his mind and says he knows Van Troc is prevaricating. This gets the criminal to admit that he was approached about dealing Dust, but turned the dealer down, as he doesn’t get involved in that stuff. Van Troc’s intel leads them to Red Sector, where Garibaldi and Bester arrest Lindstrom and his suppliers and confiscate an entire shipment of Dust.
G’Kar takes the Dust sample, which has a very nasty effect on him, as he’s suddenly telepathic. He makes a beeline for Mollari’s cabin, taking out Vir and kidnapping Mollari. His telepathic interrogation of Mollari reveals that the latter got the assignment to B5 because nobody else wanted it; given the fate of the previous four attempts at a Babylon station, it’s a post nobody on Centauri Prime wants, so it’s dumped on Mollari by Emperor Turhan. G’Kar finds this hilarious. He also sees Mollari’s memory of several of the ambassador’s conversations with Morden, making it clear to G’Kar who, exactly, was responsible for the destruction of Quadrant 37. Mollari insists that he no longer works with Morden’s associates, but G’Kar doesn’t believe him and wants to know who they are.
However, before he can tear Mollari’s mind apart, he starts to see other visions: his father being tortured by the Centauri, and another Narn who is definitely Kosh the way Narn see him. Kosh urges him to break the cycle of hatred and try to build something better for the future. If he stays on the violent course he’s on now, it will result in the destruction of the Narn as a species.
G’Kar wakes up crying next to an unconscious Mollari, while behind him, Kosh wanders off, unseen by either.
In court, G’Kar pleads guilty and is sentenced to sixty days in prison. Sheridan tries to speak on his behalf, but the ombuds doesn’t buy that he was out of his mind from the drugs, as he went directly to Mollari’s quarters—that’s premeditation. Garibaldi tries to give G’Kar back the Book of G’Quan that G’Kar gave him last time, but G’Kar tells him to keep it.
Garibaldi escorts Bester off the station. G’Kar sits in his cell and thinks.
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Having previously been at least been willing to give Bester the benefit of the doubt, not having dealt with him in the first season, Sheridan is now fully part of the ever-growing We Hate Bester A Lot Club.
Ivanova is God. Ivanova comes this close to blowing Bester up to prevent any chance of him finding out their secrets. It’s obvious from the way she talks to herself that she’s trying very hard to self-justify this horrid act of murder, and shows just how deep her hatred and mistrust of the Corps is. Sheridan is barely able to talk her down.
The household god of frustration. After Bester pretends to still be telepathic in the interrogation of Van Troc, Garibaldi angrily confronts Bester about still being able to use his psi powers, because Garibaldi apparently skipped the class about how to conduct an interrogation in security school and didn’t realize that Bester was bullshitting Van Troc. Seriously, lying to the perp to get a response is Interrogation 101, and Garibaldi should know that, and the only reason he didn’t is because the script needs to let the viewer know that Bester is lying. It would’ve been much better—and not made Garibaldi out to be spectacularly incompetent at his job—if Garibaldi very reluctantly complimented Bester on his technique, especially since Van Troc couldn’t possibly have known that Bester was on sleepers.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Delenn is able to scare up a room full of Minbari telepaths in a remarkably short time. She also fails to negotiate a peaceful solution to the growing Centauri-Drazi crisis.
In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Vir’s report is that the Minbari are a lovely people interested in culture and art, they have cities that are thousands of years old, and that they’re a deeply spiritual people.
Mollari’s counter to this is that they are decadent and soft, out to impose their views on everyone else, and their lack of new construction is a sign of their faltering economy, and it may make them aggressive. However, he says Vir should leave in the part about how they’re deeply spiritual—it always scares people.
Though it take a thousand years, we will be free. G’Kar takes Dust, even though he doesn’t know how it will affect him, since the drug was designed for humans. It does give him telepathy, but also makes him susceptible to Kosh’s manipulations.
We live for the one, we die for the one. One of the things the senior staff fears is Bester finding out about the Rangers.
The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. At the end of the episode, Bester meets up with another Psi Cop so he can talk in incredibly clumsy exposition about how Dust was actually created by the Psi Corps as a method of finding new telepaths (at which it has been somewhat less than a howling success) and he was really just here to keep it from being sold to aliens.
The Shadowy Vorlons. Kosh sets G’Kar on the more spiritual path that he will continue to follow for the rest of the show by inserting himself into G’Kar’s mind.
Looking ahead. G’Kar gets flashes of some of the future events Mollari has had dreams and/or visions of, including being crowned emperor and seeing the Shadows flying overhead on Centauri Prime.
Welcome aboard. Recurring regular Walter Koenig is back from “A Race Through Dark Places” as Bester, as is Judy Levitt (Koenig’s wife) as an unnamed Psi Cop. Koenig will return later this season in “Ship of Tears.”
Jim Norton plays the image of G’Kar’s father, having previously played Ombuds Wellington in “Grail” and “The Quality of Mercy,” as well as Dr. Lazarenn in “Confessions and Lamentations.” Perhaps because he was busy playing this role, a different ombuds is seen in this episode, played by Dani Thompson.
Trivial matters. G’Kar will next be seen still serving his prison sentence in “Messages from Earth,” though he will be released early by Garibaldi in “Point of No Return.”
Vir was made Centauri Ambassador to Minbar in “A Day in the Strife.” The evidence of Clark’s role in the assassination of Santiago was found and made public in “Voices of Authority,” which is also when G’Kar gave Garibaldi his copy of the Book of G’Quan. Winters was revealed to be a sleeper agent for Psi Corps in “Divided Loyalties.” G’Kar described his father’s awful fate at the hands of the Centauri in “And Now for a Word.”
G’Kar telepathically sees the conversations that Mollari had with Morden in “Chrysalis” and “Revelations.”
Kosh similarly inserted himself into Sheridan’s thoughts in “All Alone in the Night.”
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“And if I had a baseball bat, we could hang you from the ceiling and play piñata.”
…
“A piñata, huh? So you think of me as something bright and cheerful full of toys and candy for young children? Thank you, that makes me feel much better about our relationship.”
—Garibaldi making it clear how much he hates Bester and Bester taking the piss in order to annoy Garibaldi even more…
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “The great and powerful Londo Mollari got his job because no one else was stupid enough to take it!” It’s hard for an episode that heavily features Mollari and G’Kar to be bad, ditto for an episode that guest stars Walter Koenig as Bester, and this episode lives up to that promise, as it’s very well done, despite some clunky scripting.
G’Kar getting to see inside Mollari’s head is very provocative, mainly because Mollari is much more complicated than G’Kar is likely to have ever given him credit for. G’Kar has always seen the Centauri ambassador as a tiresome buffoon at best and a vicious representative of a vicious people at worst. G’Kar’s telepathic invasion of Mollari raises the question of how much of Mollari’s emotions does he also feel? When he sees Morden’s response of “One thing at a time” to Mollari’s joking comment about destroying the Narn homeworld, does G’Kar also feel the obvious discomfort Mollari had with Morden’s serious response to his jocular query?
As ever, both Andreas Katsulas and Peter Jurasik are superb. I especially love the way Jurasik plays Mollari’s verbal evisceration of Vir’s report, which is told with his usual bombastic semi-folksy humor. (He claims Vir shows the most political naïveté since Lord Jarno, whose speech was so pathetic it was considered that he be sterilized so there was no danger of him reproducing. Then they remembered who his wife was and realized it wouldn’t be an issue.)
Which makes it hit that much harder when G’Kar drops Vir like a sack of potatoes and tortures Mollari.
Meanwhile, we have Koenig continuing to kill it as the telepath you love to hate. It’s especially fun to watch as he pokes everyone with a stick, being deliberately provocative and/or deliberately obtuse in order to get a reaction out of the mundanes. In addition, Bester actually accomplishes his goal, reminding us that he’s a force to be reckoned with. While our heroes were able to keep their secrets from him, the end result of Bester’s mission was a complete success for Psi Corps.
The only thing that holds back the episode are, as I said, some bits of really clunky scripting. There’s Garibaldi’s misunderstanding of Bester’s interrogation technique, done to provide exposition at the expense of character, making Garibaldi look incompetent in order to spoon-feed the viewer. There’s Kosh’s fortune-cookie nonsense to G’Kar in his telepathic vision. There’s the awkward negotiation between Mollari and the Drazi and its aftermath, which very clumsily tells us that Vir still believes in Mollari even though he’s a dick. And there’s Bester’s infodump to his fellow Psi Cop, the latter of whom is solely there so Bester can tell her things she already knows but will spoon-feed the viewer some more.
On the other hand, you also have Ivanova talking herself into blowing up Bester while alone in CnC, which is well-written and phenomenally performed by Claudia Christian. You’ve got Bester’s banter with Garibaldi (the piñata bit quoted above is epic). And you’ve got the interactions between Mollari and G’Kar, which always sing.
Next week: “Exogenesis.”
I like how this episode plays with how the viewer is supposed to view Kosh’s intrusion into G’Kar’s mind. Because we like G’Kar, and this seems to set him on a better path, it is often viewed positively. And yet, Kosh is the same one who calmly dismissed the Narn as a dying people…and we just saw how manipulative the Vorlons could be a few episodes ago. So is Kosh just pushing G’Kar, as a leader of the Narn, pushing him into a place where he will do what the Vorlons want? And we eventually see that, to some extent.
As clunky as some parts can be, I always enjoy this one for the way it changes G’Kar in such a profound way…even if the seeds of the more spiritual G’Kar were there.
It’s fascinating: Kosh is unquestionably a fake religious figure, and I think the “fortune-cookie” dialogue is meant to underline that at least to some degree. But this episode shows that doesn’t matter: it was a profound spiritual experience that changes G’Kar forever, and pretty clearly for the better, even if that wasn’t Kosh’s intent and even though he isn’t an angel or a god.
Why do you say Kosh is a fake? He, or another Vorlon, was undoubtedly the actual religious figure, not copying an actual Narn.
Do we know that? I thought the idea was that the Vorlons brainwashed other species to perceive them as whatever gods they already believed in, not that they invented the gods themselves.
Even if they did originate a planet’s belief system, I think they can still be called fake gods, because they’re misrepresenting who they are and what they intend.
The Vorlons don’t appear as the primary gods of any known religion, but rather as “supporting characters” as it were. So Kosh didn’t look like Jesus or Yahweh to Christian humans, but rather as an angelic being. To G’Kar, he didn’t look like G’Quon, but G’Lan (who served G’Quon in the Narn stories).
JMS specifically said in response to Kosh’s reveal that it’s an open question whether the Vorlons actually WERE the revered figures from the younger races’ mythologies, or whether the Vorlons merely exploited those existing belief systems. And he said that the exploitation option was the more logical possibility.
According to the subtitles, the old man G’kar sees after his father is G’Quon.
Subtitles are not always correct about such things.
I have been waiting for this episode because it represents such a shift in G’Kar’s behavior and viewpoint. Not that he isn’t still focused on helping his people (violently in several cases, notably “The Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place”) but he is much calmer. Favorite character in the show bar none.
I’m glad you mentioned how quickly Delenn is able to have a group of telepaths available. Was there a Minbari telepath convention this week or does she just have a group of telepaths doing Valen knows what for her on the station at all times? Those Minbari sure are sneaky.
I’m not sure the logic of putting Bester on sleepers for his stay really works. If PsiCorps is willing to violate the rules and cares enough to scan the Bab5 senior staff, they can always just send some other P12 in plainclothes that they won’t recognize, then that person can scan them when they’re out in public. If I was Bester, then that’s the first thing I’d do; they’re obviously hiding *something* if they’re being this squirrely about not being scanned.
Presumably Minbari society is more comfortable with its telepaths and doesn’t segregate them from the general population as humans do, so there could be a number of them in any sizeable Minbari population. These Minbari could’ve just had normal jobs and lives on the station that weren’t defined exclusively by their telepathy.
The argument that anyone who cares about defending their right to privacy must be guilty of something is deeply disturbing, but I suppose it’s consistent with how an authoritarian like Bester thinks.
In re the Minbari: Yeah, that’s a third possibility as well. In re privacy: We’re not just talking about defending their right to privacy, we’re talking about the rather extreme measures of blocking him with counter-telepaths and coercing him to take sleepers, measures they haven’t taken the last time he came aboard. As a formal legal matter, that by itself probably isn’t admissible evidence. As a matter of basic inference, the obvious (and correct) conclusion is that they’re hiding something big that they don’t want him to know about. Ironically, this plan only works in the long run if Bester really does play by the rules, because as noted he can just send some other telepath to scan them if he feels like it. As portrayed in-universe, it wouldn’t be hard to find the non-Ivanova command staff off duty in an area with civilians and spend a couple of hours poking around. I think this wouldn’t work on Ivanova because she’s telepathic enough to know when she’s being scanned, but that isn’t true for the rest of the team.
I stand by the position that people don’t need to be hiding something to have a reason to be firm in defending their right to mental privacy. The principle alone is reason enough. Bester wouldn’t see it that way, but the rest of us should.
If I were Bester, I would find it hard not to conclude that Sheridan was trying to keep more secrets from me than from the Minbari, who are a foreign power that EarthGov does not trust, and who very nearly exterminated humanity a few years before. That sounds like reasonable grounds for suspicion to me.
From Besters point of view, Sheridan might or might not be plotting something against the New Order.
And there is only so reassured you can expect President Clark to be at the news that one of his military commanders might or might not be planning treason against him.
Pretty much the reply I was going to write. Plus, and I should have mentioned this before, they’re outright breaking the regulations that require them to cooperate with PsiCorps, it’s just that Bester doesn’t have the time to file a complaint and hear back. Later developments will make the stakes moot, but if he cared to make an issue of it after the fact, surely EarthGov would be interested in, “Bab5 staff refused to cooperate with an investigation, looped in alien telepaths, then made me take sleepers to get them to go away.” Even without regard to why they’re doing it, that alone would be enough to get them in hot water, though of course their motives for doing so would inevitably come up in the course of an investigation.
“Plus, and I should have mentioned this before, they’re outright breaking the regulations that require them to cooperate with PsiCorps”
No, they’re not. They cooperate fully with Bester’s official investigation into the dust smuggling. They just protected themselves from being illegally mind-scanned, because they didn’t trust Bester not to break the rules. All they did was require Bester to stay within the limits of the same laws they were bound by.
“If I were Bester, I would find it hard not to conclude that Sheridan was trying to keep more secrets from me than from the Minbari, who are a foreign power that EarthGov does not trust, and who very nearly exterminated humanity a few years before. That sounds like reasonable grounds for suspicion to me.”
To an authoritarian like Bester, anything seems like grounds for suspicion — including the simple assertion of a person’s right to have their own private thoughts and opinions. We saw that in the opening scene with the storekeeper and the Nightwatch guy. The storekeeper was expressing his thoughts more openly, but the principle is the same, the right to control one’s own thoughts without fearing punishment for them.
Keep in mind that it was only a few months ago that the B5 crew saw Talia Winters, a close associate, mentally violated and destroyed by Psi Corps espionage shenanigans. That would be more than enough reason for them to be especially mistrustful of a Psi Corps agent, even without having anything in particular to hide — particularly in the current climate when Earthgov agents are ready to arrest people simply for disliking the president. By contrast, I don’t believe the crew has been given any particular reason to fear Minbari telepaths invading their privacy or hauling them off to prison.
I don’t think psicorps wants to risk any more sleeper agents on B5. They already had Talia and, and in psicorps eyes, the b5 crew figured her out and she was someone that they trusted. it would take alot of effort to install a new one…though of course, this can pan out later.
I don’t mean a sleeper agent, just send somebody in plain clothes that looks like any other visitor to the station. The command staff is routinely in areas that has civilians as well as military personnel. Just find them out and about in public, scan them for what they know, go home. Other than Ivanova, none of them would even know they were being scanned. There’s a reason telepaths are a really hard enemy.
Two issues: firstly, this presumes that nobody is actually enforcing any Psi Corps rules (ie not only regulations laid upon telepaths but those Psi Corps lays upon itself). Nothing previously or in the future (including Crusade, which is post-Psi Corps) indicates lack of enforcement, even if in practice there’s a lot of covert operations you would expect to be unlawful. (For example, I’d bet members of the Corps sign away rights to the Corps allowing things like the sleeper program Talia suffered.) There may be limitations on what the Psi Cops are willing to do in terms of undercover work.
And second, an operation like that on B5 is a good way to lose telepaths. These Minbari telepaths aren’t the only aliens moving about the station, and we know that alien telepaths don’t necessarily have precisely the same abilities as human ones. Because Minbari and Centauri telepaths (and presumably others) don’t wear badges or gloves or other identifiers, your undercover telepath could easily be detected by an alien. Even if they don’t get exposed to station security, unregistered human telepaths are more vulnerable and you wouldn’t have a support team in place to help.
Idle fishing expeditions are different from specific tasks, of course. Bester always has something specific to do on the station. In later episodes, we’ll see undercover operatives and they have an extremely specific mission to perform: risking exposure by unauthorized scans would have endangered that mission. Of course B5 staff have something to hide. That’s been true every time Bester visited. Everybody has something to hide. In this case, what they’re up to involves Earthgov, but isn’t specifically aimed at Psi Corps, so why would they care?
Yeah, valid points. And there’s also something Bester will mention in a later episode: He does have a life outside of these people. What’s going on Bab5 might be far enough down his personal priority list that even if he could dispatch a P12 to go fishing, it’s not important enough to bother with.
ok fair but they wouldn’t use plainclothes because of their own rules. They have to annouce when they arrive. they need to wear badges at all times. certain people, like baxter, get off on showing their authority. their whole mindset is “the psicorps is mother, the psicorps is father” they’re arrogant enough to believe their own hype. Also, i think Baxter and probably the others who aren’t indocrinated by the propaganda love the mind games. being in plains clothes would be too easy for them
This is, what, the third or fourth time G’Kar’s quarters have been trashed? Usually, by him. And this time he doesn’t have the resources of the Narn government to fix them up again. I suppose Ta’Lon can pass the hat and do a lot of the work himself while G’Kar is in jail, but it’s kind of ridiculous how often it happens.
Londo may be the one with the passphrase “wine, women and song”, but G’kar truly lives the rock & roll lifestyle.
Another terrific performance by Koenig. JMS said in his online comments that he knew that in Bester’s next appearance, he either had to win or to be right, so that he wouldn’t seem ineffectual by losing all the time. So this is a nice chance to see a story where Bester is basically acting as a good guy despite the others’ mistrust of him — at least until the final twist when it turns out his manipulations created the problem in the first place.
And the pinata comeback was brilliant. I thought it would’ve been a fun touch if Garibaldi had actually laughed at it despite himself, just appreciating the cleverness of it even from an adversary.
I’m willing to cut Garibaldi some slack for the interrogation scene, since his accusation didn’t come from ignorance of security procedure but from mistrust of Bester. If he were working with someone he trusted, he’d take it for granted that they were lying to trick the suspect (ironically enough). But given how much he has to hide from Bester, and how much is at stake if Bester were somehow able to read him despite the sleepers, it’s natural that he’d be hyper-alert to the risk of Bester reading him (and the others), and that would outweigh his more general understanding of security procedure. It’s not that he didn’t know it was possible that Bester was bluffing, it was that he couldn’t afford to trust that to be the case. So he confronted Bester about it to see how he’d react.
I noted that when Franklin injected Bester with the sleepers, his fingers touched Bester’s bare arm briefly, which could’ve let Bester read something, potentially. But I guess the Minbari telepaths’ blocking would’ve prevented that.
Some more brilliant lines from Londo re Vir’s report on Minbar:
“Vir! Politics has nothing to do with intelligence!”
“…in pursuit of dubious pleasures. The “dubious” part is very important – it doesn’t mean anything, but it scares them every time.”
This episode makes me wonder why they don’t make a practice of having someone dress up like a psi-cop for interrogations. It’s probably a felony to impersonate one.
Also, as much as I like G’Kar the Prophet, I’m uncomfortable with the extent to which his conversion is a scheme cooked-up by Kosh to manipulate him for his own political ends. I suppose that that sort of dubiousness is inseparable from the Vorlons as a concept.
Anyone can put on a Psi-Cop uniform, sure, but probably only a Psi-Cop can convincingly wear one. It’s not just the clothes, it’s the attitude.
Indeed. G’Kar has now been expressly persuaded to be willing to sacrifice himself *and his people*, to benefit others, under arguably false or at least misleading pretenses. Hmm.
Oh, the Vorlons aren’t nearly the “good guys” they’ve previously been thought of as. They’re more lawful neutral than lawful good. And perfectly willing to glass a planet inhabited by billions of non-combatants if it will deny the Shadows a victory.
It is pretty clear from events in later episodes that the Vorlons do not all share the same view of the younger races, and there are factions within their leadership. Kosh at least it does appear to genuinely care about the younger races, and sees them as something more than just tools to be manipulated. Ulkesh, on the other hand…..
Yes, but we don’t know that yet. I was speaking from the perspective of where we are in the series.
I will say that, on first viewing, I bought into the idea of Vorlons as being a bit paternalistic but generally having the best interests of the younger races in mind. So I was entirely willing to believe at the time that Kosh’s intervention here was intended to “save” G’Kar from making a mistake that he would regret, rather than a manipulation to get him to fall in line and serve the cause.
Later revelations changed that, of course.
It’s been clear since Deathwalker (or since The Gathering, really) that the Vorlons are anxient, powerful, mysterious, and perfectly willing to ignore everyone else and do whatever they want. As members of the B5 council they were nevertheless prepared to destroy the station over Kosh’s poisoning; they casually murdered Deathwalker. And there’s plenty of occasions where they would be obviously helpful and choose not to intervene.
The show very much wants us to accept Kosh as the Gandalf/Dumbledore mentor figure, but it’s been consistent to show him action in ways that conflict with that. JMS is even on record comparing Kosh and Morden, where Morden can behave in a way that’s friendly and supportive and we read him as “evil” while Kosh is creepy, gaslighting, and manipulative and we read that as “good.”
“As members of the B5 council they were nevertheless prepared to destroy the station over Kosh’s poisoning; they casually murdered Deathwalker. And there’s plenty of occasions where they would be obviously helpful and choose not to intervene.”
None of which necessarily marked them as evil or amoral, though. A nation whose ambassador was almost murdered sending its fleet to demand the killer’s surrender for trial is hardly evil or even unusual; it’s pretty much what you’d expect any nation to do. And Deathwalker posed a clear danger to future civilization, so the Vorlons killing her could be seen as a paternalistically benevolent act of protecting us from ourselves. By the same token, a powerful civilization choosing not to meddle in the affairs of less powerful ones could be seen as respecting their right to self-determination, as with Starfleet’s Prime Directive. So there were reasonable, even benevolent interpretations of all those things, which is exactly how we were meant to read them at the time. It’s only in retrospect that we have the context to read them more negatively.
Well, they didn’t JUST murder Deathwalker, they killed the crew on the ship she was on and any escort vessels that were with her. Kosh could have killed her on the station without collateral damage. Not saying they were wrong to do it, just saying they aren’t being just practical, they just don’t care about anything other than their goals.
I’m not saying whether I think they were objectively right or wrong; I’m just saying that at the time, without future knowledge of how the Vorlons would turn out, it was possible to interpret or rationalize the Vorlons’ actions as being intended for the greater good, however harsh they might seem — by analogy with the myth repeated in “In the Shadow of Z’ha’dum” about Churchill letting Coventry get bombed as a necessary evil. It was only with later revelations that we realized they were hints to the Vorlons’ darker nature. As with so many things in this series, what we were led to believe about them at the start was a misdirect from what they’d really turn out to be.
Yeah, that’s one of the more effective pieces of hiding things in plain sight in the show. I think the fact that the Minbari (and specifically Delenn) vouch for the Vorlons as being ancient allies on the “good guy” side colours how their actions come across. We think we know something about what their motives are, but we really only know what Delenn thinks (or says) they are.
The thing about Garibaldi’s outraged reaction to Bester’s sudden moment of “telepathy” is that it comes from character. From day one, it’s been established that Garibaldi has a deep mistrust for all telepaths, going all the way back to his days on Mars. It doesn’t matter to him at that point whether Bester is bluffing or not. It’s the very remote and at that point implausible idea that Bester could be in fact fooling everyone and potentially scanning them (and him) as they work together. We see much later in the show just how Garibaldi reacts for real to having his mind actually violated.
One of the most unsettling parts of the episode to me is the way the script deliberately edits out most of the sequence where G’Kar breaks into Londo’s quarters, assaults them both, knocking Vir out, and then tears the place apart. If I recall correctly, they go to a commercial, and then we come back to the scene as late as possible, when most of the damage has already been done. Kudos to whoever made that decision, whether it was planned from the start on the script or was a post editorial decision to cut the carnage from either JMS or director David Eagle. Not seeing it can be just as effectve, if not more so.
If any of the actors ever had a shot at an emmy, this would have been the episode for Andreas Katsulas. Under the influence of Dust, we get that brutal telepathic confrontation with G’Kar at his purest state of rage. Some of his best work with Jurasik and some of Stracynski’s nastiest lines in the show’s run:
G’KAR: Tell me, tell me or I’ll rip it from your mind!
LONDO: NO!
G’KAR: Then I will take it from you! Neuron by neuron!! ALL OF IT MOLLARI! ALL OF IIIIT!
By the end, they’re both writhing in pain, tears and sorrow. And G’Kar looks and feels as if he’s achieved an epiphany and begun to reevaluate his entire outlook on life and existence as he cries through it all. A major step in the right direction for someone whose life has been so entrenched in pain and anger.
And I don’t see Kosh’s interference as fortune-cookie nonsense at all. It’s exactly how him and the Vorlons operate when it comes to the younger races at specific points in history, and there is plenty of merit in his words. G’Kar tries to hold on to the excuse that the Centauri started it (true enough), and the notion that he’s honoring his father by doing so. But then comes the damning argument: if they continue to fight, both sides obssessed with each other will eventually perish and no one will care as to who deserved the initial blame. It only matters who is suffering now. And then Kosh makes the case as to why G’Kar and the Narn deserve a chance to turn things around and become a force for good instead of hate. It’s a pretty well written argument. And that’s also a sharp turn from his “they’re a dying race” comment from season 1, back when Kosh couldn’t be bothered to even attend council meetings.
Sixty days? And that was the Judge NOT being lenient?
My suspension of disbelief can only stretch so far.
She said “no less than sixty days,” so it could’ve been longer.
Looking into penalties for assault and battery, it looks like it tends to be treated as a misdemeanor if there’s no weapon involved and no serious injury inflicted — though I guess Londo being hospitalized suggests that he was seriously injured, so that would make it a felony. Also, he was facing two charges of assault and one of drug possession/use, so 60 days does seem pretty light.
Maybe they define the terms differently in the future, but really, it seems that G’Kar should’ve been charged with battery as well as assault. Assault is legally defined as threatening someone in a way that causes them reasonable fear of imminent harm, e.g. holding a gun or knife on them or reaching for their throat in anger. Battery is “intentional and offensive physical contact.” So once G’Kar actually hit them, it became battery.
I”m guessing the fact that G’Kar waived away a defense laywer and immediately plead guilty, fully willing to do penance for what he did, were enough redeeming factors in the final sentence.
Of course, he’s lucky Garibaldi and Bester didn’t find him sooner. When Londo almost shot G’Kar with that manufactured weapon, it came that close for Garibladi to shoot him, courtesy of Talia’s timely unexpected scan.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand your last sentence at all. Are you referring to some past episode when Talia was still around, and if so, what’s the relevance to this episode?
“Midnight on the Firing Line”. Talia bumped into Londo and accidentally read his intent to kill G’Kar (over the Ragesh III situation), thus warning Garibaldi who promptly intercepted him. His hand goes for his holster, meaning he was ready to pull his gun and shoot Londo in order to prevent that premeditated act of murder. What I mean is G’Kar could have ended up in a similar situation where Bester would have shot him, possibly fatally, had they found him faster.
Oh, I remember now. Although Londo’s gun there wasn’t a “manufactured” weapon in the sense of a makeshift one; it was a weapon designed to be disassembled and concealed in multiple parts, presumably so it could be smuggled onto the station.
Yes. “Manufactured” wasn’t really the word I was going for.
Actually now that i think about it, did the show come up with a reason why the Centauri didn’t do the 600 narn executed for hurting a Centauri punishment for what G’kar does?
That was for killing. Maybe Londo had five hundred Narn beat up?
It’d be poetic justice if Londo had asked Vir to draw up a list of Narn to be beaten or killed in retaliation for what G’Kar did and it was the final trigger for something Vir opts to do which we find out about later.
I thought that penalty was only for killing a Centauri, not assault.
How do we know they didn’t? Although if they did, that makes G’Kar’s actions harder to sympathize with, if he knew that doing it would get 600 innocent Narns killed. Perhaps he didn’t expect that the dust would make him violent, but just intended to read Londo’s mind clandestinely or something.
I find the Kosh question here quite compelling. We know that his views will diverge from Vorlon-standard if they haven’t already, which complicates the unanswered and perhaps unanswerable question of his motivations with regards to what he does with G’Kar here. It’s entirely possible Kosh is just manipulating him to serve the Vorlon goals, but it’s also possible that Kosh really is coming to care about the younger races at this point and perhaps sees an opportunity to use a light touch to bring about a greater good…and, of course, it’s also possible that it’s a mix of the two. But, I have a bit of a hard time seeing the Kosh who previously dismissed the Narn and Centauri bothering to nudge G’Kar onto a better path here.
B5 plays a lot with balancing totemic pairs of characters, sometimes subtly and sometimes not so subtly, to expose layers that we didn’t expect. (See the Morden v. Kosh v. creepy Dumbledore observation by Narsham somewhere in these comments)
Consider Vir v. Londo in this episode. We’re already primed to see Vir’s openheartedness and bias toward seeing the positive as an unadulterated good. So we side with Vir in the face of Londo (predictably) slamming the report as “the most political naïveté since Lord Jarno”
But Londo’s actually right, here–Vir’s a bit deluded. He rhapsodizes about how friendly everyone on Minbar is, but he doesn’t seem to have spent any time with the Warrior Caste (who would have no use for him) or the Worker Caste (who everyone seems to ignore). The Religious Caste is fascinating, all right, but they’re canny enough to present exactly what they want Vir to see.
Maybe a bit of sour cynicism is the prudent course after all, eh Vir?
You’re right (imho, of course) that Katsulas and Jurasik are ALWAYS spot on – and interact so well, and Koenig as Bester never disappoints us as a little (well – he IS short), evil, snide man, with an inflated ego and a disdain for ANY mundane.
Ivanova is always fun (even if she’s not funny, by ny means!) to watch, but the rest of the episode was, to me, very uneven.
OK, but not my favorite episode.
The reason why Vir stood by Mollari, IMO, is that no one else in his life stood up for Vir before his posting to B5. They clicked despite what they each view as short-comings in the other because of their shared situation of being out with the court and dumped to a dead-end (literally given the history of the previous stations) post that had little to no value to anyone else on Centari Prime home world.
The only other Centari that valued Vir for himself was