“Grail”
Written by Christy Marx
Directed by Richard Compton
Season 1, Episode 15
Production episode 109
Original air date: July 6, 1994
It was the dawn of the third age… Delenn and Lennier interrupt a meal Sinclair and Garibaldi are having, expressing surprise that they’re not preparing to meet the honored guest. Sinclair has no idea what they’re talking about, but he plays along, telling Garibaldi to throw together an honor guard. It turns out the honored guest is Aldous Gajic, who is on a quest to find the Holy Grail. He is part of a long line of people who have sought the grail, though that particular society currently numbers one.
Gajic apologizes for not informing Sinclair of his arrival, but he didn’t think his arrival was of interest to anyone but himself and the ambassadors—his purpose in coming to B5 is to meet with the four non-human ambassadors to see if they have any knowledge of the grail.
He doesn’t say the quiet part out loud, which is that he figures that the humans on B5 would think of him as a crackpot, but the expressions on Sinclair and Garibaldi’s faces handle that pretty well.
Delenn expresses surprise at Sinclair’s skepticism regarding Gajic’s search. To the Minbari, such a true seeker is someone to be admired and respected.
In downbelow, an engineer nicknamed Jinxo is approached by a criminal named Deuce. He wants Jinxo’s help, or he wants the money Jinxo owes Deuce. To show that he means business, Deuce brings Jinxo to a woman named Mirriam Runningdear, who is scheduled to testify against Deuce. A tentacle appears from behind a crate, attaches itself to Runningdear’s forehead, and then her face goes blank. The tentacle retreats into a Vorlon encounter suit, and Deuce thanks Ambassador Kosh for the help.
Sinclair is summoned to medlab, where Runningdear has been taken. According to Franklin, she’s been completely mind-wiped. This is the third such instance of this happening in downbelow. Garibaldi is ripshit to discover that Runningdeer is the latest victim, as she was the only witness against Deuce.
We get a look at the court system on B5, specifically Ombuds Wellington’s court as he presides over a suit brought by a human against a Vree (a short gray alien with an outsized head and big black pupil-less eyes, ahem ahem) for kidnapping his ancestors.
Jinxo tries to pick Gajic’s pocket, and Garibaldi catches him, bringing him to Wellington’s court, dragging Gajic along as a witness. Wellington sentences Jinxo to be exiled from the station, pointing out that his skills as a zero-g engineer means he can get work anywhere. Jinxo, however, is adamant that he not leave the station. Gajic offers to take him into his custody. Wellington accepts that offer.
Garibaldi then has to explain to Wellington that the only witness against Deuce is no longer usable as a witness, forcing Wellington to dismiss the charges.
Jinxo joins Gajic in his cabin and explains why he can’t leave B5. He was an engineer on the first Babylon station—it wasn’t numbered at the time. It was sabotaged and destroyed right after Jinxo took leave. The company still had his contract, so he worked on the second station, and it too was sabotaged right when he took leave, as was Babylon 3. For Babylon 4, he was determined to take no leave whatsoever and see it all through—which he did, but then right when he left the completed station for his next job, B4 disappeared mysteriously. Jinxo is absolutely determined to never leave B5, firmly believing in his curse (which is also why he has the nickname Jinxo).
For his part, Gajic tells Jinxo how he came to be a grail-seeker. He’d been an accountant, but his wife and children were killed in an accident on Mars. He was grieving and despondent, then he met a dying man who was seeking the grail. Gajic took up his quest when he died.
Ivanova and Franklin have a theory as to what’s causing the mind-wipes: a Na’ka’leen Feeder, a creature from Centauri-controlled space that’s supposed to be under quarantine. Mollari confirms this, and is petrified at the thought of one loose on the station. He locks himself in his quarters.
Accompanied by Jinxo, Gajic visits Delenn, who regretfully says there has been nothing reported that they can find about the holy grail in Minbari space, but they promise to let him know if that changes.
Next they meet with Mollari, who has just finished yelling at a Centauri official for letting the Na’ka’leen quarantine lapse. Mollari tries to work an angle to extort money from Gajic for a search of Centauri records to find this grail, but Vir has been a little too efficient and already checked the records and not found anything.
Deuce’s people try to jump Jinxo, but Gajic fights them off. Then they meet with Kosh, but at the sight of him, Jinxo panics, having seen him mind-wipe Runningdear. Deuce’s people again jump them, and this time they capture Gajic, though Jinxo escapes.
Wellington has also been kidnapped. Jinxo, in a panic, explains to Sinclair that Deuce is in cahoots with Kosh to mind-wipe people. Jinxo brings Sinclair to downbelow, where Wellington is about to have his mind eaten by the Na’ka’leen. However, Gajic is able to keep the Feeder at bay, er, somehow. A firefight ensues when Sinclair and Garibaldi arrive, with the Feeder exposed as not being Kosh and Wellington saved, but with Gajic being shot and killed saving Jinxo’s life.
Gajic’s body is sent back to Earth, seen off by Sinclair and Delenn, and also Jinxo, who plans to continue the grail search—and also insists on being called by his real name of Thomas Jordan now.
At CnC, Sinclair, Ivanova, and Garibaldi watch Jordan’s ship leave, reassuring them that the curse is nonsense, as the station—for the first time—does not explode or disappear when Jordan leaves.
Nothing’s the same anymore. Delenn says that Sinclair is also a true seeker like Gajic. She doesn’t specify in what way, though his ongoing search to fill the hole in his mind (“The Gathering,” “And the Sky Full of Stars,” “Signs and Portents”) might qualify. Which, given that Delenn is in charge of making sure he doesn’t succeed in that quest, makes it kind of hilarious that she’s the one who brought it up.
Ivanova is God. When Sinclair and Garibaldi express relief that there’s no boom when Jinxo departs the station, it’s up to Ivanova to, as she puts it, have perspective, and point out that even if there’s no boom today, there’s always a boom tomorrow…
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi desperately wants to do a complete purge of downbelow. Sinclair refuses to allow it, as most of the people there are just down-on-their-luck people with nowhere to go. Garibaldi is not impressed by this argument…
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. We get the first mention of different Minbari castes, with Delenn and Lennier explaining that the Minbari Federation consists of the Religious Caste and the Warrior Caste. (The Worker Caste will be established later, and the fact that the workers aren’t mentioned by a pair of politicians is, well, not surprising…)
In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Not a great day for Mollari, as he finds out that the latest symptom of the fading Centauri Republic is letting the quarantine on a dangerous creature lapse, and then Vir screws up his attempt to extort a ton of money out of Gajic.
The Shadowy Vorlons. Kosh’s response when told that Deuce disguised the Feeder as him is, “Why?” When Sinclair reminds him that nobody knows hardly anything about Kosh, making this kind of deception easy to pull off, Kosh’s response is, “Good.”
Looking ahead. Jinxo’s description of the disappearance of Babylon 4 will be seen in “Babylon Squared.”
Welcome aboard. Tom Booker plays Jinxo. The great character actor William Sanderson makes the first of two appearances as Deuce; he’ll be back in the movie Thirdspace. Jim Norton makes the first of two appearances as Wellington; he’ll be back in “The Quality of Mercy,” and he’ll also appear as other characters in “Confessions and Lamentations” and “Dust to Dust.” Linda Lodge plays Runningdear, while recurring regular Ardwight Chamberlain is back from “Signs and Portents” as Kosh; he’ll return at season’s end in “Chrysalis.”
But the big guest is the late great David Warner, one of the finest character actors, as Gajic. Known in genre circles for his roles in Star Trek (The Final Frontier, The Undiscovered Country, The Next Generation’s “Chain of Command”), Tron (which also featured fellow B5 folk Bruce Boxleitner and Peter Jurasik), Doctor Who (“Cold War”), Batman: The Animated Series (where he voiced Ra’s al-Ghul), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (in which he danced incredibly badly…), and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (where he played Superman’s father Jor-El), among many others. He passed away in 2022.
Trivial matters. Writer Christy Marx named Gajic after Mira Furlan’s husband, Goran Gajic. Gajic will later direct the fifth-season episode “And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder.”
This is the only time the term “cycle” as a unit of time is used. It was the original plan for a time unit on the station, but by the time they decided against it, this episode was already in the can.
The Feeder is the show’s first completely CGI alien.
The transport Jinxo takes off the station is the Marie Celeste, which is the name of a ship found adrift with the crew (and a lifeboat) missing in 1872. This is rather like a ship deciding to name itself the Titanic, but whatever…
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“I’d say you have the wrong nickname. They should have called you ‘Lucky’.”
“How do you figure?”
“To have escaped the worst each time—that’s a blessing. You’re a very lucky man. Perhaps, each time, you were exactly where you were meant to be.”
“I never thought of it like that.”
“We never do.”
—Gajic giving Jinxo some perspective.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “No boom today, boom tomorrow—there’s always a boom tomorrow.” So many times in this rewatch, I have seen some truly horrific guest casting ruin, or at least damage, an episode. It is, therefore, a genuine pleasure to watch “Grail” and see greats David Warner and William Sanderson ply their trade magnificently. Plus there are strong turns here by Tom Booker and Jim Norton.
What they’re acting in is a nifty little science fiction story by Christy Marx (who, full disclosure, is a friend of your humble rewatcher) that plays the what-if game in a fun way, to wit, if you’re trying to find something, and you’ve looked all over the Earth, and you have space travel and contact with other species, why not look elsewhere? After all, if God is supposed to infinite, why shouldn’t the chalice used by his kid at a millennia-old seder wind up somewhere other than Earth?
I also found the concept of Jinxo to be charming, both that the notion of his curse had grown roots to the point that everyone seemed to believe it to an extent, but also that it proved to be nonsense when he finally did leave in the end.
It’s a little disappointing that we didn’t see G’Kar’s reaction to the grail quest, but that’s mostly because an episode with Andreas Katsulas is better than one without him. Mollari’s attempt to get some extra gamblin’ money out of Gajic is amusing and in character, ditto Vir’s circumventing that with his ultra-efficiency.
The Deuce part of the plot is mostly fine, especially his using Kosh’s mysteriousness for his own purposes. It’s good to see the court system on the station (and the guy suing a Gray Alien for kidnapping his ancestors was cute), but the storyline lost me when Deuce kidnapped Wellington for no compellingly good reason. Seriously, what purpose did that serve? The ombuds had already let him go! And mind-wiping a station official is going to get you way more attention from Garibaldi and the gang than random nobodies in downbelow…
Finally, I love that Delenn commands sufficient respect that Sinclair drops everything and throws together an honor guard just on her say-so—even if it is for a crackpot…
Next week: “Eyes.”
