“Interludes and Examinations”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Jesus Treviño
Season 3, Episode 15
Production episode 315
Original air date: May 6, 1996
It was the dawn of the third age… We get voiceover narration from Ivanova bringing us up to speed: the Shadows are now fighting overtly, attacking worlds on the rim; they’ve hired more security, but without Earth’s resources, it’s harder to vet them (to prove that point, we see one security guard sneaking Morden onto the station in exchange for gemstones; said guard winds up dead shortly thereafter); the senior staff is handling things well, at least (to prove her wrong, we see Franklin taking stims); there’s been no sign of Kosh (which worries Ivanova greatly); and Mollari is still Mollari.
We see Mollari being fitted for a new suit and informing Vir that he wants to rent the largest suite on the station: Adira is returning! Mollari is happy for the first time in forever because the woman he loves is coming back to him as promised.
Sheridan meets with representatives of the Brakiri—who have been badly damaged by the Shadows—and the Gaim—who haven’t. Sheridan can’t promise protection from Earth, as B5 has broken away. The Gaim refuse to provide assistance to the Brakiri because the Shadows have ignored them until now and they have no wish to draw attention to themselves. However, the Gaim might change their mind if they know that the Army of Light has a chance against the Shadows.
Later, Sheridan is brooding in the war room, telling Delenn that they need some kind of serious victory against the Shadows to prove that there’s at least a chance of victory. Without that, everyone’s going to be like the Brakiri (victims) or the Gaim (staying the hell out of it until the Shadows inevitably target them). Delenn says that in that case, they need a victory, and she’s sure he’ll think of something. After she leaves him to it, Sheridan grumbles that everyone’s starting to sound like Kosh, which then prompts an idea…
There’s chaos in medlab, as Franklin and Dr. Lillian Hobbs disagree on a diagnosis. Franklin gives the wrong instructions to the medtechs working on an alien, nearly killing the patient, then snaps at Garibaldi, who brings in one of his people to be worked on. Franklin explodes in near-hysterical anger.
Morden confronts Mollari regarding the fact that Refa isn’t returning his calls. Mollari accepts credit for convincing Refa to do so. Morden reminds the ambassador that they carved up the galaxy together, but Mollari doesn’t see that it’s any of Morden’s concern how the Centauri handle their portion, and Mollari would prefer not to overtax their military on multi-front wars. Morden’s counter that they need those multi-front wars fall on uninterested ears, as do Morden’s threats, as Mollari doesn’t see that there’s anything Morden can threaten him with at this point. After the ambassador leaves in a huff, Morden tells the Shadows that they shouldn’t kill him yet, they can still use him.
Garibaldi confronts Franklin in his quarters, expressing concern that he’s overextended himself and that maybe he’s back on stims. Franklin tells him to fuck off, and Garibaldi reminds him that he went to him as a friend first.
Garibaldi’s next stop is the Zocalo to talk to Hobbs. He wants access to the regular blood tests that all medical personnel undergo regularly due to constant exposure to alien biologies. Hobbs refuses on privacy grounds. Garibaldi points out that he can do it through channels as security chief, but that brings a lot more people in on it, and he wants to spare Franklin that. Hobbs does at least tell him where in the system the blood tests can be found. Unbeknownst to either, Franklin sees the two of them talking.
Vir is going over all the stuff that’s to go in Adira’s suite. After taking his leave, he bumps into Morden. After Vir tells him to screw off and die, Morden goes back to the merchant and pretends to be a friend of Vir’s in order to find out what Vir and the merchant were talking about.
Garibaldi goes to medlab and starts the process of retrieving Franklin’s blood samples, but then decides against it at the last minute. Franklin walks in, surprised that Garibaldi chickened out. However, Franklin did his own blood test, to prove Garibaldi wrong. Except he didn’t—the levels of stims in his blood is way too high, past the addictive stage. Garibaldi leaves it to Franklin to decide what to do next.
Sheridan asks Kosh for help. If the Vorlons can just make one big strike against the Shadows, show that there’s a chance, it’ll help. Kosh refuses, as the Vorlons are too few in number, at which point Sheridan loses it. Kosh has been great at manipulating things and staying behind the scenes, but now the Shadows are destroying entire worlds, plus Sheridan’s own government is out to kill him. He’s got nothing to lose, and no way to fight this war without Kosh’s more overt help. Kosh gets sufficiently angry, calling Sheridan “impudent,” and telekinetically knocking him around. But eventually he accedes, with the caution that he will not be with Sheridan when he goes to Z’ha’dum. Sheridan already has been told that if he goes to Z’ha’dum, he’ll die, and if that’s the price he has to pay, so be it.
Another Shadow attack in Brakiri space is thwarted by a Vorlon fleet that wipes them out.
Mollari and Vir wait for Adira to disembark, but the final passenger comes out saying there’s no one behind him. (That same passenger meets with Morden and is given a bag of gems.) Then Hobbs wheels out a corpse, which turns out to be Adira. There’s no sign of trauma on the body, and Mollari—remembering his poisoning of Refa—tells her to search for poison in the autopsy.
Ivanova informs Sheridan that the various worlds in the League of Non-Aligned Worlds are backing him now. Sheridan wants to thank Kosh in person, but it’s two a.m., and he gets some sleep, planning to thank Kosh in the morning.
Morden breaks into Kosh’s quarters and watches as the Shadows tear Kosh apart. Meantime, Sheridan has a very vivid dream of his father, but it soon becomes obvious that this is Kosh communicating with him. He apologizes for getting angry, but he knew what the inevitable result of this attack would be, and he didn’t want to face it. He agrees that it’s time for Sheridan to fight the war his way. Kosh/David’s final words to him: “As long as you’re here, I’ll always be here.” Thus Kosh ends his life the way he lived it: cryptically.
Garibaldi reports that Kosh’s quarters look like it’s been through a war. But there’s no sign of a body, just a very badly damaged encounter suit. Delenn says there won’t be a body. The Vorlons do not wish to reveal Kosh’s death publicly; they will send another ambassador, who will pretend to be Kosh. Delenn requests that Kosh’s encounter suit and belongings be placed on his ship, which is alive and bonded to Kosh, so it too must die. It flies into the sun.
Franklin resigns his position as chief of staff of medlab. He needs to get his shit together. Sheridan is stunned, but accepts the resignation.
Mollari meets with Morden. He wishes to renew his association with Morden. The rest of the galaxy can burn for all he cares. But he wants his revenge on Refa for killing the only thing he loved. Morden says he is the ambassador’s humble servant.
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan confronts Kosh once and for all, speaking one of his iconic lines (quoted at the top of the review segment).
Ivanova is God. Ivanova provides exposition, and probably saves Sheridan’s life by telling him to wait until morning to talk to Kosh, since if he’d gone before going to bed, he probably would’ve been there when Morden and the Shadows showed up and been collateral damage.
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi does everything he can to get Franklin to confront his stim addiction without actually doing any paperwork on it. Luckily, Franklin realizes that he’s an addict before Garibaldi gets to the point where he has to make it an official report.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Delenn plays the role of helpmeet to Sheridan, encouraging him and supporting him while he tries to figure out how the hell to fight this war…
In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Mollari’s threat to Refa apparently worked. Luckily for Morden, he had a way to get Mollari back into the Shadows’ thrall….
The Shadowy Vorlons. We get our first Vorlon-Shadow confrontation, as the Vorlons make short work of the Shadows invading Brakiri space.
Looking ahead. Kosh says that he won’t be with Sheridan when he goes to Z’ha’dum. This will turn out to not entirely be the case…
No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. It’s obvious that Mollari plans a great deal of debauchery with Adira, as most of what he requests for her suite consists of booze and lingerie.
Welcome aboard. Jennifer Balgobin debuts the recurring role of Hobbs; she’ll be back in “Walkabout.” Rance Howard officially becomes recurring, returning as the image of David Sheridan from “Severed Dreams” (though, truly, he’s playing Kosh cosplaying as Sheridan’s Dad); he’ll return as the real David in “Rising Star.” Meanwhile, we have other recurring regulars Ed Wasser as Morden, back from “Ceremonies of Light and Dark,” to return in “Z’ha’dum”; and Ardwight Chamberlain as the voice of Kosh, back from “Dust to Dust.” He’ll return as the voice of another Vorlon, Ulkesh, in the very next episode, “War Without End, Part I,” and return as Kosh in “Walkabout.”
Trivial matters. Kosh is killed in this episode, though “Walkabout” will establish that he’s only mostly dead, not all dead. Franklin resigns his position, and will remain a civilian doctor until he’s reinstated in “Shadow Dancing.”
Mollari blackmailed Refa via poison to cut off communication with Morden and the Shadows in “Ceremonies of Light and Dark,” as we see in flashbacks to that episode.
The Gaim, whose encounter suit design is similar to the helmet worn by Dream of the Endless in The Sandman comic book, are named after that comic’s writer, Neil Gaiman. Gaiman will later write an episode of the show in season five, “Day of the Dead.” (One suspects that J. Michael Straczynski regrets that particular bit of nomenclature these days…)
While Adria plays a large role in the episode, Fabiana Udenio only appears in flashbacks to “Born to the Purple.” The actor will return in the aforementioned “Day of the Dead.”
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“I’m sorry, I can’t talk—I have things to do.”
“Well, apparently so. Anything I can do to help?”
“Short of dying? No, I can’t think of a thing.”
—Vir and Morden bantering.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Unless your people get off their encounter-suited butts and do something, I’ve got nothing to lose!” Something that bothered me about this episode when I first watched it in 1996 and which bothered me even more in 2025: why does Mollari go to Morden in the end? Yes, Refa is definitely a suspect in Adira’s murder, but he’s hardly the only one. What about Morden himself? Mollari knows as well as anyone how devious Morden is and how powerful the Shadows are and how much Morden wants Mollari back in his thrall. Yes, Refa has a powerful motive and the means, but so does Morden. The fact that Mollari never even suspects Morden of committing this crime doesn’t make any kind of sense, and it makes even less sense because the viewer is shown quite clearly that Morden is the one who had Adira killed. It’d be different if Morden did something—anything—to more aggressively frame Refa. The use of poison by itself isn’t enough.
And it’s too bad, because in the grand scheme of things, this is an important moment for Mollari. He’s lost the only thing that brings him joy, which makes him far more dangerous. And I love the way Morden is written in his interactions with Mollari, in particular how he addresses him. When he confronts him in the corridor about Refa’s sudden silence, he calls him “Mollari” with the same dismissive tone that G’Kar uses. When Morden “learns” of Adira’s death, he refers to him as “Londo,” acting the sympathetic friend. And once Mollari reengages in his deal with the devil, Morden respectfully refers to him as “Ambassador,” pretending to be his humble servant when he is, in fact, neither.
It’s also an important moment for Franklin and for Sheridan. The former finally confronts his addiction, which he’ll continue to deal with going forward. And Sheridan finally gets to put his coalition together, using the Vorlons to carry a big stick.
For all that the yell-at-the-person-until-they-beat-you-up-and-then-do-what-you-wanted-in-the-first-place scene is a tired cliché, it’s sold by Bruce Boxleitner’s desperation and Ardwight Chamberlain’s ability to put a great deal of feeling into just a few words. (Just saying, “Impudent,” at Sheridan is pretty devastating.)
Franklin’s storyline is less compelling, partly because Franklin himself is just not a very good or nice character, and partly, with all due respect to the memory of Richard Biggs (who was an absolute sweetheart in real life), because the character isn’t very well acted. His breakdown in medlab is incredibly mannered and not very convincing, ditto his screaming at Garibaldi in his quarters. To his credit, he does sell the character’s quiet self-revelation to Garibaldi and his resignation speech to Sheridan.
Next week: “War Without End, Part I.”
Sheridan’s confrontation with Kosh has an interesting parallel with a similar confrontation in Season 2. In that earlier scene, he pisses off Kosh by asking, “What do you want?” That is, of course, the Shadows’ question. Here, he asks Kosh, “Who the hell do you think you are?” That’s pretty close to the Vorlons’ question of “Who are you?” I’m sure that is absolutely intentional on JMS’ part.
Ivanova’s voice over felt oddly out of place to me. If this had been the first episode after the mid-season break, it would seem more necessary, but this aired just one week after the previous episode.
I also thought Morden calling the Shadows off of Londo came across too much like he was in command. It did not feel like an underling suggesting a course of action to his superiors.
As JMS put it in response to a fan question, “The shadows looked for Morden’s opinion; he’s an advisor, in a sense, on lower-species politics.”
I’m reminded of a bit from Diane Duane’s Young Wizards novels addressing why the Powers of the universe — basically gods — depend on the wizards they empower to do so much for them rather than doing it themselves. It’s because corporeal, temporal beings have a better understanding of corporeal, temporal matters than the beings outside of space and time, so the Powers trust that the wizards have better judgment about such matters than they do. I don’t think that’s a perfect analogy for the Shadows, of course, but maybe it’s more like the Imperial Chinese policy of “use barbarians to deal with barbarians” — you listen to the advice of the lesser beings who serve you because they understand other such lesser beings better than you do from your more rarefied level.
I don’t disagree. I just thought that Morden’s tone was too “Down, boy,” when it should have been “He can still be useful to us, sir. I can bring him back into the fold.” It needed a little more obsequiousness from Morden.
Except as I recall — and I’m getting ahead of the show here, so spoiler alert — the Shadows don’t want the younger races to be obedient and obsequious, they want them to be aggressive and forceful and chaotic, since they think conflict promotes evolution. It’s the Vorlons who want us to be tame and submissive — note Kosh’s “Disobedient,” and the way they present themselves to us as either gods or father figures, or both. As with all characters in B5, the Vorlons are not as purely benevolent and the Shadows not as purely malicious as we were initially led to believe. The Shadows think they’re doing us a favor.
After all, Morden’s whole MO is to come to people and offer to give them what they want. It stands to reason that the Shadows would manipulate Morden in the same way — not by making him feel submissive and controlled, but by giving him what he wants, a feeling of power and importance and freedom. So they’re going to let him feel like he’s the one making the decisions and giving the orders, the same way Morden let Londo feel that.
What bugs me about Mollari falling back into Morden’s orbit–other than the fact that he seems like a complete idiot for assuming Refa killed Adira right after Morden threatened him–is that it doesn’t really seem to affect his arc all that much going forward. I mean, I suppose they needed there to be some continuing link between the Centauri and the Shadows after
Also, maybe this is just me being a cynical 21st-century type, but lines like “encounter-suited butts” make me thankful you can swear on television now.
Let’s call it for what it was, Adira got straight-up Fridged (several years before Gail Simone coined the term, but she was fridged none the less…)
Well, yes — the whole reason Simone coined the term was to point out that it was a trope that was used way too often. Dying to motivate male protagonists has historically been one of the main roles of women in fiction. Just ask Anna Sheridan. Or Edith Keeler. Or Richard Kimble’s wife.
“Miramanee!”
I agree that it was strange for Londo to miss the obvious fact that Morden was the one who had Adira killed. I did wonder if maybe Londo knew perfectly well but was just playing Morden, pretending to be fooled so he could maneuver Morden into a position where he could take revenge.
Did anyone else find the music sting at the very start of this episode familiar? It sounded like a stock library-music cue I’ve heard used on several low-budget productions in decades past.
In addition to the points Keith raised about Franklin’s subplot (which I agree with), one more thing that bugged me was Franklin’s monologue about how medicine comes down to numbers and X amount of stims proves you’re not addicted and Y amount proves you are. For one thing, that sounds like a ridiculous oversimplification of how addiction works; even aside from different people having different body masses and metabolisms, the susceptibility to addiction is influenced by multiple different genetic, neurological, psychological, and environmental factors, so that one person using “Y amount” of the drug could be free from addiction while another person could get addicted just from “X amount.” So it’s right in line with the typical oversimplified nonsense of JMS’s medical technobabble. But it also serves the character poorly, because it means his realization that he was addicted didn’t come from a process of personal soul-searching, but simply from reading a number on a page, which makes it as psychologically oversimplistic as it is medically.
Interesting about the origin of “Gaim.” When I saw it written here, I thought of the Japanese series Kamen Rider Gaim, where the name “Gaim” (rhymes with “rhyme”) is derived from (IIRC) an archaic term for “armored warrior.” So it’s fitting that it was used for an armored character, particularly one that Sheridan was trying to bring into a war effort.
We later see him having a breakdown over being “played like a puppet” when he finds out, so evidently not.
I was always frustrated by Sheridan’s assumption that Kosh “not being there” at Z’ha’dum would be as a consequence of willful abandonment. By now he should be familiar enough with Kosh’s very indirect means of speaking to consider other interpretations, but maybe he was just too deep in his own feelings to do it right then.
I’d forgotten about Vir’s brief exchange with Morden in this one. You know you’ve chosen the wrong team when the sweetest man across several worlds wants your existence revoked from the moment he meets you.
There is at least one moment in the second season of Jeremiah where I remember thinking “hey, that’s Vir’s line”. I think it might have been this exchange with Morden, although I can’t remember with confidence and can’t find any confirmation.
One of the interesting things is that everyone who answered Morden’s “What do you want?” question ended up getting some version of it, though usually in and “evil genie” sort of way. This could explain why Morden looks not just offended but downright uncomfortable when Vir gave him his answer.
The other reason I enjoy the scene is that it’s an example of getting something by the network censors. If you look very closely at the way Morden hands Vir the data crystal at the end of the scene it verifies that the middle finger is still used as an offensive gesture by humans in the twenty-third century.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been in AA for 30+ years, but Franklin seemed pretty believable to me. Trying desperately to keep his shit together and going into a screaming rage when he can’t. And the whole “X Y” thing struck me as him trying to convince himself, unsuccessfully.
Mollari, yeah, I don’t buy that he really thinks Refa did it.
Loved Vir’s interactions with Morden.
Mollari absolutely thinks that Refa did it, proved pretty conclusively in future episodes “And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place” and “Into the Fire.”
“And the whole “X Y” thing struck me as him trying to convince himself, unsuccessfully.”
But that’s just it. The dialogue said that looking at the concrete numbers did successfully convince him, because medical results were numerical absolutes that even an addict in denial couldn’t argue with — which is an utterly ridiculous statement from a medical standpoint.
Is that what the dialogue says? Literally, yes, sure. But does he really believe it yet? I don’t think he does. He’s still stuck in the liminal space where his rational mind has begun to acknowledge the problem, but the rest of his being hasn’t caught up yet.
Whether he believes it or not makes no difference, because the point is that it’s not a rational statement in the first place, but scientific nonsense that no actual medical professional would be likely to say under any circumstances. Addiction cannot be reduced to the single variable of how much of a drug is in a patient’s bloodstream.
I agree that it is not an accurate description of the the physiology or biochemistry of addiction. I also agree that it’s a clunky line. But I disagree with the assumption that he would be looking at that situation rationally, as a medical professional.
If I was tweaking the dialogue, I might have had him make it more clear that the threshold he had set in his own mind was part of his denial, rather than something clinically meaningful – i.e. as long as I’m under this threshold, I could convince myself that I didn’t have a problem, whether that’s medically meaningful or not. But the reality is that I’ve crossed every line that I have set for myself and I can’t change that until I face it.
My point is not about the attitudes of the fictitious character of Stephen Franklin. My point is that the line is an example of JMS’s farcically simplistic view of medical science, the same mentality that gave us the recurring concept that personal health and lifespan are determined entirely by a person’s inborn reservoir of “life energy” that can be depleted or replenished like a video game character’s hit points. It continues to be frustrating that JMS touted how scientifically accurate B5 was but filled it with such utter nonsense most of the time.
Testing….
I’ve had similar issues in the past. I find what works is to write your comment in notepad (or whatever), post a garbage comment, then edit it. For some reason, just hitting “post” has a tendency to eat posts, but the edit function is much more forgiving.
I haven’t found that to be the case. When it blocks me from posting comments with italics or other features, I’ve tried posting them as plain text and editing in italics etc., but it won’t let the edits through.
For whatever reason, I can’t post the rest of my take on this episode and the rewatch. I keep getting error in my upload.
We’re aware that some users are experiencing issues with posting comments at the moment, and we’re working on a solution. Meanwhile, some of those users were able to post shorter comments, so if your comment is long, maybe try to break it up over two or more posts. Sorry for the inconvenience.
While you’re at it, could you look at why I’m sometimes not allowed to post comments with italics or links in them? This has been going on intermittently for months.
I don’t think I’ve been able to that, or indent quotes, since it switched from tor.com.
Since and switched were bold and then italic to test. tor is both.
Apparently it is working for me at this moment.
And with the Shadow War in full swing, the show enters its darkest stretch. “Interludes and Examinations” is an uncompromising portrayal of hopelessness and desperation from start to finish. Whether it’s Franklin giving up his only purpose, Londo losing his last chance at happiness or Sheridan going to blows with Kosh and indirectly causing a major loss for the alliance, this episode is unrelenting. Seasons 3 and 4 may have lacked Janet Greek, but Treviño more than makes up for her absence directing this one. Just nasty and brutal, and a stark contrast to how things looked like back when the show began.
Franklin’s realization just how off his game he’s become is a nicely written JMS monologue, even though Biggs doesn’t quite nail the scene. A lot of that story works thanks to Jerry Doyle and Garibaldi’s palpable concern coming from someone who’s been on the deep end of substance abuse. Thematically, it ties into this overall dark point of the 5 year arc.
Londo’s story is just heartbreaking. I disagree however that him not suspecting Morden is a flaw. I don’t see it as a scenario of Londo fully jumping into bed with Morden again, no special conditions required type of situation. Londo is fully aware that Morden can’t be trusted. But his pain over losing Adira also creates a blind spot where he can’t see anyone but Refa in that situation. We know Londo can be easily misled by opportunists as seen how easily he bought Morden’s pitch back in season 1 due to how frustrated he was over G’Kar always getting the better outcome in every conflict. This season he fell into that same pattern with Refa.
That scene of Londo losing it seeing Adira’s covered corpse gets me every time. It’s just sad seeing him lose that last chance at a hopefully peaceful loving life. Now he’s about to get all the power and be left with no choice at all (yes, I’m borrowing from JMS). Just tragic….
…But the real star is the Sheridan/Kosh confrontation. The show has been building to this moment for almost 40 episodes now. The student/mentor relationship breaks apart as Sheridan has had it of being kept at arm’s length, never being allowed to take charge or do anything to upset the balance. To me, this is Boxleitner’s finest hour (up to this point). Years of setbacks and frustration coming down to a boiling point. And between a lot of loaded lines, we get this gem:
KOSH: Disobedient!
SHERIDAN: Up Yours!
To me, this nails the emotional state of the show as a whole. They’ve been passive while the Shadows have been working and preparing. And as with the recent break from Earth, Sheridan knows they can’t sit still and wait for things to happen. His desperate plea for Kosh’s help followed by his outrage over the fact that Kosh asked him to fight that war and did nothing himself feels palpable, raw and in-your-face honest to its biggest degree. The stakes are that high.
Your comment about Sheridan and Kosh made me realize a parallel to what we had been seeing with G’Kar and his attempts to get involved with the Alliance of Light. Delenn and Sheridan both conspire to keep G’Kar in the dark until finally he proves that the Narn have valuable information for the fight against the Shadows.
And then we get that heartbreaking farewell from Kosh posing as David. As we’ll find out soon, it turns out that Vorlons have always been the dutiful stern parents. And Kosh has been a father figure for Sheridan and we’ve reached the point where Kosh himself can no longer ignore his personal feelings in spite of the Vorlons’ mandate of non-interference. It’s also planting the seeds for the show’s most pivotal plot twist….
And this is the first time I’ve noticed the Cold War parallels. For all those decades, the US and the USSR kept at arms’s length, never directly confronting one-another, but always interfering on neighboring nations and supporting war by proxy. The Vorlons and Shadows are surprisingly similar in this aspect. The Vorlons stick to themselves, while the Shadows do all the dirty work oppressing and/or blackmailing the other races. Change that balance and you get Kosh’s encounter suit left in ruins.
I don’t agree. The Vorlons have meddled just as much as the Shadows. Kosh has been manipulating others — Talia, Lyta, Sinclair, Sheridan, Delenn, etc. — from the beginning, and we’ve seen that Vorlon meddling in various species’ history goes back millennia, since they’ve programmed us to see them as our gods, plus they’ve alien-abducted the occasional serial murderer here and there to use as their agents. Then there was the time the Vorlons straight-up murdered Deathwalker to keep the junior races from getting immortality. And I daresay that Lyta is basically the Vorlons’ counterpart of Morden at this point. The only real difference is the goals the two sides are working toward, with the Vorlons seemingly more benevolent (but are they really?).
I’d also quibble with the statement that the show has been building toward a Sheridan-Kosh confrontation for nearly two seasons. I mean, yeah, theoretically Kosh has been mentoring Sheridan all this time, but how many of those almost 40 episodes have actually featured them interacting? I can only think of a handful. It doesn’t really feel like a buildup when it’s revisited that infrequently.
Let’s not forget arguably the biggest Vorlon meddling of all: messing with the evolution of the younger races* to create telepaths because telepaths are very effective weapons against the Shadows.
*Including the Narns, it’s just that all the Narn telepaths were wiped out in the last Great War.
I meant the Vorlons sticking to themselves in regards to them not taking direct action against the Shadows. But yeah, they’ve certanly meddled with younger races in more ways than one, just not as overtly as the Shadows.
As for us viewers not seeing Kosh and Sheridan interacting on every episode, I just like to imagine there is a lot of offscreen back and forth between them we’re not privy to. We know that by design B5 was still very episodic and didn’t always feature every character on every single one of them, despite the sizable ensemble. While there aren’t that many Kosh/Sheridan interactions overall, it still feels like we’ve seen them together for long enough for it to feel like a meaningful buildup. Just like we’ve only gotten a handful of Sisko/Kasidy episodes in the four+ years they’ve spent together on DS9.
But that’s my point — if we have to use our imaginations to fill in the Sheridan/Kosh relationship, it’s because the show only intermittently reminded us of it. So I don’t feel there was really that much buildup.
Sheridan does mention his offscreen “lessons” with Kosh once or twice. I guess they could have snuck a similar line into more episodes to reinforce the idea, but you’re right. Showing, good; telling, not so good..
Just the odd dialogue reminder that the lessons were happening wouldn’t have helped, because what’s at issue isn’t whether the audience is factually aware of the existence of the lessons, but whether the audience is sufficiently emotionally invested in the Sheridan/Kosh relationship to feel the impact of the loss. I think the idea of Kosh being a father figure for Sheridan hasn’t been adequately seeded, so the attempt to sell the emotional impact of Kosh’s loss on Sheridan is not entirely convincing.
I can’t believe we threw kosh into the wind.
Sorry, that’s been rattling around in my head since the episode first aired…
Took me a moment…
I remember rewatching this episode with the commentary track on, and when we get to the scene with Sheridan and his father, Bruce Boxleitner says something like, “Ohh…Sheridan’s father — that’s Kosh!”. I found myself wondering just how Boxleitner could pull off the scene without actually understanding what the full story was.
As the commentary tracks were made some years later, I took that just to be BB reminding himself, I think he was seeing the episodes for the first time since production
For an episode with no big battles, there sure are a lot of turning points in this episode. And most of them are not happy ones.
While I question the implied correlation between turning points and big battles, I would point out that there are two space battle scenes in this episode — the opening montage of Shadow attacks, and the scene of the Vorlon fleet destroying the Shadow fleet. The latter would definitely constitute one of the main turning points.
Also, the murder of Kosh would technically constitute a battle scene, though it was mostly offscreen. According to JMS, Kosh fought back fiercely and did significant damage to his assailants, but it was on a plane too ethereal to depict on camera.
I was exceptionally disappointed by Adira’s death. As unoriginal as I found the episode she was in, I was really looking forward to her reappearance, if only so she could be horrified by what Londo has become, and maybe that would force him to engage in some long overdue introspection. Instead, he’s far too easily manipulated by the guy by the same psychopath he’d just kissed off earlier in the episode into becoming his worst possible self. Then again, he was far too easily manipulated into working with Morden in the first place, so really this is just more of the same, I guess.
As for the rest of it, I thought it was fine. The scene between Kosh and Sheridan felt like it went on a bit too long, but maybe that’s just because I’ve seen that scene a hundred times before, and KRAD’s right that the actors played it well. Boxleitner continues to bring more intensity to his role, which is all to the good, but I’d be surprised if anyone actually believed Kosh was dead when this went out. Unfortunately, the C plot didn’t do much for me, probably because it featured my two least favorite characters, but at least Franklin isn’t in charge of the Medlab anymore. That should have happened a long time ago.
I seem to recall that during first run, very few people questioned Kosh’s death. I’m sure there were some, but the majority were shocked and upset.
Really? I always operate under the assumption that nobody’s dead until they show me the body. Then again, I don’t know whether or not Vorlons even have bodies as such, so maybe it doesn’t apply in this case.
They’re beings of pure energy, so no.
If he’s a being of “pure energy,” how did he get poisoned in the pilot?
Looks like I misremembered the details of the Vorlons’ nature. From JMS’s comments on a future episode, courtesy of the Lurker’s Guide:
“‘If Vorlons are amorphous energy beings, how was Kosh poisoned in “The Gathering?”‘
Remember, they do have a certain physicality about them, even in that form, and the nature of the poison was such that it would affect that kind of life form using a crystalline base (note in the pilot the screen reads analyzing crystalline structure, and you filter light or refract or distort it using a crystalline structure).
Silicon or crystalline based lifeforms are still lifeforms, just not the same as carbon-based lifeforms (like us).
Yes, that’s a Vorlon…and there was a physicality to them,
“Beings of pure energy” is one of the sci-fi tropes I find most annoying. It doesn’t actually mean anything. Energy isn’t a thing in itself, it’s a property that particles have. We tend to use “pure energy” as a shorthand for massless particles like photons, but massless particles are constrained to travel at exactly the speed of light and thus are incapable of holding still to organize into a life form or functioning mind. Anything living or thinking would have to be made of matter. Even a gas or liquid would have no realistic way of maintaining any kind of coherent internal structure that could have cognition or life processes.
It’s a minor point, but I love the revelation in this episode that anger that Kosh shows when Sheridan first confront him as ultimately a cover for his fear. Learning that he fears death humanizes him (if I may be so bold as to make that comparison when it comes to one of the First Ones).
This is one point that bugs me with this show (and several others). Resignation should actually have consequence. If Sheridan wanted to keep open the possibly of Franklin taking up his old job, there should have been a quick line of dialogue to say so, ala “this is a leave of absence while you figure yourself out. The job is yours to pick up when you’re ready.” Otherwise it is totally unfair to the new head whose only fault is not being in the opening credits.
Speaking as someone who’s had his own difficulties with stimulants, I’ve never really bought Franklin as a stimulant addict. That’s partly to do with how he’s been written. Injections of amphetamines especially high doses, as portrayed here, are often pretty damn intense (and euphoric) experiences. The most obvious signs of stimulant addictions that have reached this level of severity are things like narcolepsy or psychosis due to lack of sleep, neither of which has been presented here. There’s often weight loss, brought on by a lack of appetite, and an aged appearance, brought on by dehydration.
Basically, to me, Franklin acts like someone with an advanced caffeine addiction, which I suppose is a stimulant, who’s been up for 20 hours and is under a lot of stress. In other words, a difficult situation, but one that pretty much everyone has experienced at one time or another. I suppose it’s only natural for someone without that experience to assume that that’s what stimulant addiction looks like.
It basically just wasn’t believable at all to me.
With respect to Londo leaping to the conclusion that Refa was responsible, I didn’t buy it either. Morden is right effing there on the station, threatening Mollari right before Adria arrives. Mollari basically dared Morden to act, saying that there was nothing Morden or his associates could do to hurt him. And then, having found the one way to hurt him, Mollari leaps to the conclusion that Refa was responsible? Morden couldn’t have made his responsibility clearer if he’d signed a confession.
I wonder if this particular plotline was initially envisaged as something along the lines of the horse head scene in The Godfather, with Mollari knowing full well that Morden is responsible and either capitulating to or revolting against the Shadows. But perhaps that presented real difficulties down the line, so this misdirection was substituted instead. But if that’s the case, the early confrontation between the two really undercuts it. The whole thing just doesn’t make sense to me as it is.
Speaking of which, has Londo figured out that Morden’s “associates” are the Shadows? And if not, WTF? Seriously? Really, this episode portrays Mollari as a moron, which is a huge disservice to the character.
The Sheridan-Kosh stuff, on the other hand, is really superb. Kosh in particular—”Impudent!” “Disobedient!” is somehow more riveting that the telekinesis assaults—is terrifying and Sheridan standing up to him speaks to just how much of a badass he is. Sheridan has this friendly, easy demeanor most of the time, but here’s where the steel comes out and Boxleitner completely sells him as the great leader that he is. And, of course, that sets us up for the fantastic dream scene at the end.
If I have a complaint about it, it’s that it serves to make Kosh too human, too relatable, too understandable. Of course, a human mentor might well lash out in anger to conceal his fear. But an inscrutable Vorlon? On one level, where science fiction is a metaphor for exploring human nature, it makes sense. But on a speculative fiction level, where we are trying to explore just how extremely weird and bizarre extraterrestrial intelligence is likely to be, this is unsatisfying. But that’s a nit I’m picking; this plotline is excellent.
I wondered a bit about all of the other races falling into line so easily. Would it really have been that way? No one on the fence at all? But I’ve decided that I’m OK with it because it’s the effing Vorlons. Nobody likes the Shadows. They fear them but that’s it. Give them an opportunity to fight back? Yeah, I can see that.
“…If I have a complaint about it, it’s that it serves to make Kosh too human, too relatable, too understandable. Of course, a human mentor might well lash out in anger to conceal his fear. But an inscrutable Vorlon?…”
I can see that maybe this particular Vorlon has spent a little too much time with humans, and has “gone native” a bit like Delenn has. He identifies too much with the less advanced after exposure to their kind of emotional thinking.
Certainly the next Vorlon we meet (even though they say they “we are all Kosh”) sure seems like a different individual with a much less tolerant attitude–and presumably less prior exposure to humans, et. al. (If “prior” even has any meaning to Vorlons, but that’s another can of worms)
Keep in mind that “stims” is a slang term for a drug that is never described in any kind of detail. There’s no evidence to support that it uses amphetamines at all. Which was probably deliberate — there are always new drugs popping up in the world, so that most of what’s used recreationally 300 years from now is likely something we know nothing about now. Hell, it could include alien stuff. So we have no idea what the symptoms of addiction would actually be….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Franklin’s basically using these “stims” in much the same way people start abusing ritalin or whatever in college. He’s swamped with work and doesn’t have enough hours in the day to deal with it so he’s robbing himself of sleep to keep going.
Stimulants work by affecting the norepinephrine pathways in the brain. That’s the bit that causes the sympathetic nervous system to kick in. That’s the “fight or flight” response and it means a wide variety of things, from increased heart rate and blood pressure (to keep those muscles well oxygenated and fed) to heightened alertness and being awake to a shutdown of the digestive system. Hence any drug that’s exploiting norepinephrine is going to have the same results. You’re awake and alert, yes, but going without sleep always results in a price to pay, and that’s what leads to things like psychosis.
Granted, in a couple of centuries, we’ll likely have better understanding of how to more accurately target certain responses (like being awake and alert) or to ward off some of the worst elements of sleep debt, but the problem here is this: the very thing that Franklin is trying to do is the very thing that causes all of these side effects of stimulant abuse. There’s some basic biology at work here that isn’t going away no matter how good our pharmaceuticals become.
In addition, we know that whatever Franklin is taking is operating on his dopamine pathways as well. Dopamine is often described as a pleasure chemical, but what it really is is a salience chemical. Whenever you do something important to evolution—eating, drinking, sex, whatever—your brain uses dopamine to tell you to keep doing it as often as you can. It also plays a huge role in addiction, because addictive drugs hijack this reward pathway. That’s why addiction is so hard to break: your conscious mind is fighting some of the most primitive and powerful urges that we face as animals. It can be hard enough to win that fight at the best of times.
Hijacking dopamine and norepinephrine pathways are basically what stimulants—”stims”—do by definition. The side effects are pretty inextricable from the desired effects. That’s the problem with them.
I had that thought myself, but I think Corydon’s point may be that if Franklin’s symptoms seem no more severe than the behavior of someone suffering from sleep deprivation and caffeine overload, then it’s a rather watered-down attempt to depict a degree of addiction that’s impairing enough to require going into rehab.
Re: Sheridan/Kosh
I just made the connection that there’s a real interpretation of Babylon 5 to be made in Jungian terms. I know, I know, Shadows should have made it obvious.
Anyways, I’m thinking of parallel scenes in mythology and the one that springs to mind is in Wagner’s opera Siegfried, where the third act has this remarkable scene where the sky god Wotan (or Odin) first welcomes the advent of Siegfried as his heir, but then tries to assert control over him and has his spear broken in the confrontation and fades away. (I’m really not doing this justice, but I owe a lot here to Fr. Owen Lee’s introduction to the Ring Cycle).
Anyways, there’s a lot of the Hero’s Journey going on here, even if direct confrontation between mentor and mentee is less common in other myths, like Obi-Wan Kenobi/Luke Skywalker or Gandalf/Frodo or Merlin/Arthur. But this confrontation must happen for the hero to develop. At a certain point, we rebel against our fathers and teachers and take matters into our own hands and do things in our own way, just as Sheridan does here.
And what does it mean for us as we age into becoming wise old wo/men ourselves? That we can pass along whatever gifts we may to the next heroes, and then our role is to yield power, yield control and allow ourselves to “diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.” That’s Kosh.
This is really profoundly powerful stuff.
Since you mention Siegried, have you heard this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM33rgC2Fek
I’m a huge fan of Anna Russell. “She’s his aunt,” gets me every time!
“I’m not making this up, you know!”
I do love the Ring Cycle and Anna Russell both!
Great observations, and Siegfried and Wotan is an excellent parallel. Siegfried is not only Wotan’s heir – he’s the culmination of a project that has spanned ages (and 10+ hours of opera prior to this point) in order for Wotan to create a way to sidestep the consequences of his own bad decisions. Wotan created the conditions for the raising of a hero who was not beholden to the gods, but could save the gods from their downfall. Of course the independent hero has grown up and has his own ideas that are different from the old man’s, which sounds pretty familiar.
Whenever I see Siegfried mentioned, my first thought is “the one where Wotan comes down and plays 20 questions.”
It’s a cheap way of shoehorning in all of the exposition from Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. This is, to be fair to Wagner, often a very difficult thing to do without boring the pants off the audience. The analogous scene would be Peter Jackson trying to bring The Council of Elrond to life. There’s a lot of information to get across, but, with apologies to TNG, a bunch of people sitting around a conference table is rarely compelling TV.
Your reCAPTCHA no longer seems to load under Firefox, so posting a comment here is a lot harder for me.
Londo’s behavior is frustrating if you’re thinking purely in terms of character, but thematically he’s being established as a mirror image of Sheridan. In effect, each is the embodiment of the lessons and growth they’ve received from their respective Elder Race patrons. Sheridan’s able to confront and persuade Kosh because he’s learned Kosh’s lessons, with that “who the hell do you think you are” turning the Vorlon question back on the Vorlons themselves; this also works as foreshadowing. Londo, OTOH, begins the episode already expressing himself in the ultimate Shadow way: his anticipation of Adira is purely “What do you want?” In that regard, he’s exhibiting a continuing misunderstanding of Morden and the Shadows that’s always been in place:
Sheridan has been taught by Kosh “to fight legends” and to understand himself in order to understand beings like the Vorlons and the Shadows, and he’s going to understand himself out of his problems. Londo has been taught to go after and get what he wants. He was hyperfocused on getting what he wanted more than anything else (Adira), and her death shifts him into wanting revenge. Why doesn’t Londo suspect Morden and his “associates” of killing Adira? Well, simple: he intuitively believes that since the Shadows see the expression of desire as what ought to be the defining attributes of all sentient life, they couldn’t possibly get in the way of what he wants like this, because that would violate their own philosophy.
In that regard, the flaw in his story-line, from a strictly character-driven perspective, reveals the same thing that the Sheridan-Kosh storyline reveals about how both Vorlons and Shadows express a single overriding viewpoint question but no longer conduct themselves according to its underlying principles.
If doing something for thematic reasons can only be accomplished by violating character, then you’ve failed as a writer.
And honestly, the theme would still work if Morden had done anything to frame Refa or didn’t actively threaten Mollari earlier in the episode, with Mollari practically daring him to try something.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
It occurs to me that if Londo realized he’d goaded Morden into killing Adira, he’d blame himself for getting her killed. So maybe he’s just in denial, blaming Refa because he couldn’t bear to admit the truth to himself. Okay, it’s a reach, but at least it’s consistent with his character. If there’s one thing Londo’s good at, it’s self-delusion.
This is an excellent point.
It suddenly occurred to me that this episode can be described as the one where the Shadows koshed Kosh.
I’m not familiar with that slang term. The online slang references list several meanings for “kosh” — one of which means to speak cryptically and is derived from Ambassador Kosh’s name — and I had to scroll down before I found a mention of it as British slang for mugging someone. Which I suppose is probably derived from “cosh,” meaning to hit someone in the head, or a club or bludgeon used to do so.
The latter was what I was referring to.