“Legacies”
Written by D.C. Fontana
Directed by Bruce Seth Green
Season 1, Episode 17
Production episode 115
Original air date: July 20, 1994
It was the dawn of the third age… Shai Alyt Branmer, one of the great warriors of the Minbari people, has died. Branmer’s executive officer, Alyt Neroon, is bringing his corpse back home to Minbar, stopping at every port of call along the way and parading his corpse for all to see. They arrive through the jump gate with gun ports open, which makes Sinclair understandably nervous, despite the captain’s assurances that they come in peace. Delenn shows up in CnC to reassure Sinclair that it’s just a ceremonial thing—the gun ports are open to symbolize that a great warrior is on board. They won’t fire.
A girl named Alison Beldon picks someone’s pocket in the Zocalo, then collapses. Winters and Ivanova are both nearby, and the former senses that she’s had a mindburst. Beldon is brought to medlab, where Winters explains that the kid’s a telepath, and her psi abilities must have just kicked in. She collapsed because she was overwhelmed by all the thoughts she could suddenly hear.
Winters wants to contact the Psi Corps right away and recruit her, but Ivanova refuses, pointing out that she is under arrest for the pocket picking and therefore is under the station’s jurisdiction. Franklin crankily points out that she’s his patient right now and they can both leave medlab, please and thank you.
Delenn, Sinclair, Garibaldi and an honor guard meet Neroon and Branmer’s corpse when they dock. Delenn explains that this type of parading around is unusual, but was insisted upon by his clan, the Star Riders. For his part, Sinclair is a bit apprehensive, since Branmer was the leader of Minbari forces on the Battle of the Line.
Neroon insists that the security detail guarding Branmer’s corpse be entirely Minbari. Sinclair acquiesces, but obviously neither he nor Garibaldi are thrilled with the lack of trust there.
Beldon wakes up and is again overwhelmed by all the intrusive thoughts, though Winters is able to help her mute them. Beldon is an orphan, who’s been on her own in downbelow for over a year. Winters again insists that she should go with the Psi Corps, and Ivanova again insists that she’s still the station’s responsibility.
The ceremony to gaze upon Branmer’s corpse is rather ruined when Neroon opens the coffin to find it empty. Neroon is livid; Sinclair isn’t all that thrilled either, especially when Neroon starts making threats of going to war over this. Delenn gently reminds Neroon that he doesn’t speak for the entire Minbari government and that the Star Riders clan doesn’t set Minbari Federation policy.
Ivanova goes to Sinclair and says she wants to find an alternative to Psi Corps for Beldon. Sinclair agrees to back her play.
Sinclair speaks to Delenn, who confides in Sinclair that Branmer was originally of the Religious Caste, and only switched to the Warrior Caste when the Earth-Minbari War broke out, and he felt his skills as a tactician were needed. Delenn also says that there are many members of the Warrior Caste who were never particularly thrilled with the surrender order.
Garibaldi’s investigation takes him to the alien sector, specifically the Pak’ma’ra, who are carrion eaters, who might be motivated to steal a corpse, ’cause them’s good eatin’. A piece of Branmer’s robe is found near a Pak’ma’ra cabin, so Garibaldi orders all the Pak’ma’ras’ stomachs pumped. Franklin later reports, however, that there’s no Minbari DNA is any of the Pak’ma’ra’s bellies.
Beldon meets with Na’Toth, who is willing to grant Beldon asylum on the Narn homeworld in exchange for regular genetic samples. However, the telepathic impressions Beldon gets from Na’Toth are not pleasant, and she’s not sure she can handle being on a world with so many Narn—reinforced by Ivanova pointing out what a crappy place to live the Narn homeworld is thanks to the Centauri occupying it for so long.
Neroon is not at all thrilled with Garibaldi’s investigation and starts making threats again. Then he breaks into Sinclair’s quarters to search them, having assumed that they wouldn’t be searched. He’s rather embarrassed when (a) Sinclair walks in on him, and (b) Delenn and Garibaldi inform him that Sinclair’s place was the first place Garibaldi searched, supervised by Delenn, so fuck you. Neroon has the good grace to be abashed at that.
Beldon talks to Delenn, since Minbari treat their telepaths well. While they talk, Beldon gets a flash of Delenn’s thoughts, and then asks to be excused. She and Ivanova go to Sinclair, where Beldon says that she saw in Delenn’s thoughts that she knows what happened to Branmer’s corpse.
Sinclair and Garibaldi confront Delenn, who not only stole the corpse, but had it cremated. It turns out that that was Branmer’s true wish, not to be paraded about like a carnival show. But Delenn knew she wouldn’t convince the Star Rider clan of that, so she thought she’d try to couch it as a religious miracle. She says she’ll talk to Neroon alone, which she does—and also uses her status as the head of the Grey Council, which cows Neroon into doing whatever she asks, on penalty of the Star Riders being censured and destroyed. She also orders him to apologize to Sinclair for being a dick.
Neroon dutifully apologizes. Beldon decides to go to Minbar, and she thanks both Ivanova and Winters. The latter two then apologize to each other and agree to a coffee date.
Before Beldon leaves, she tells Sinclair that she saw something else in Delenn’s mind: the word chrysalis.
Nothing’s the same anymore. Sinclair flashes back to the Battle of the Line, reusing the footage from “And the Sky Full of Stars.”
Ivanova is God. Ivanova does everything humanly possible to keep Beldon the hell away from Psi Corps.
The household god of frustration. So apparently Garibaldi can compel every representative of a species on the station to an invasive medical procedure based on a flimsy bit of suspicion. That’s, um, horrible.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. In Neroon we get our first significant look at a member of the Warrior Caste, and their love of bombast, cloaked in a veneer of honor. We also see the conflict between the Warrior and Religious Castes.
Having said that, Neroon apparently is fully aware of Delenn’s “secret identity” as the head of the Grey Council and keeps it secret from the humans.
Though it take a thousand years, we will be free. The Narn still want telepaths, as Na’Toth tries to recruit Beldon in a manner significantly less skeevy than the way G’Kar tried to recruit Alexander in “The Gathering.”
The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. Standard operating procedure when a human telepath blossoms, as it were, is to do the Psi Corps recruitment pitch. Winters is, at least, open to letting Beldon pursue other options, probably at least in part due to the warnings she got from Ironheart in “Mind War” (which Ivanova throws in her face at one point).
No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Ivanova softens her stance on Winters over the course of the episode, mostly because Winters doesn’t fight her tooth and claw over Beldon’s fate, and they agree to have coffee.
Looking ahead. Neroon says that Sinclair talks like a Minbari; the “War Without End” two-parter will make it clear that it’s more like Minbari talk like him…
Beldon’s sensing of the word chrysalis will pay off in the season finale, appropriately titled “Chrysalis.”
Welcome aboard. John Vickery makes his first of five appearances as Neroon; he’ll return in “All Alone in the Night.” Grace Una plays Beldon.
Trivial matters. While this is Beldon’s only on-screen appearance, the character does return in the short story “True Seeker” by Fiona Avery in issue #23 of The Official Babylon 5 Magazine in 2000.
Neroon is one of two recurring roles for John Vickery, who will also play the human Mr. Welles in one episode each of B5 and Crusade.
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“There’s nothing more annoying than Mr. Garibaldi when he’s right.”
—Ivanova, speaking truth.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Perhaps there was some small wisdom in letting your species survive.” Okay, I mentioned this above, but it bears mentioning again, because it really bugged the crap out of me when rewatching this episode:
Based solely on a piece of cloth found in a corridor, Garibaldi is able to compel every single member of a species on the station to have their stomachs pumped—which is an invasive medical procedure, and one that has a profound impact on its victims, as they now have lost all the value from the food they’ve recently eaten. That is, to say the least, appalling, especially since the Pak’ma’ra are all compelled to do this due entirely to what species they happen to belong to.
That is, bluntly, revolting. I’m uncomfortable enough every time they refer to the “alien sector,” which always feels like a ghetto. Now we have this, which I can’t imagine being something that the humans on the station would all agree to. (Also, how many Pak’ma’ra are on the station? Are they all accounted for? Wouldn’t it take a while to do this?)
Anyhow, this is a perfectly cromulent B5 episode. I mostly come away from it disappointed that it didn’t do more with the story. The big thing is Beldon. This is an orphan who’s reduced to thievery to survive. The episode never really focuses on that part of it, the class differences, and the fact that even something as awful as Psi Corps is a huge-ass improvement on living alone in downbelow. On top of that, the costuming and makeup department did a terrible job of showing us a person living on the raggedy edge of life, as Beldon is way too kempt and together for someone in her position. I like that Ivanova fights for her to have a choice, but the brutal truth is that Ivanova wouldn’t give two shits about her if she wasn’t a telepath.
On top of that, after Ivanova makes a fuss over keeping her out of Psi Corps’ hands because she’s a criminal, that’s never followed up on. Is she found guilty? Does she see the ombuds? What happened there?
The main plot is also fine, and is mostly fun for giving us Neroon. John Vickery’s magnificent voice makes every role he plays automatically one of gravitas. (See also his Klingon lawyer Orak in Enterprise’s “Judgment” and his Cardassian soldier Rusot in DS9’s series–ending storyline.) The tension between him and Sinclair and between him and Delenn is sparkling—though the latter is completely muted once Delenn goes all Grey Council on him.
The best thing about the main plot, truly, is to remind us that, for all that Delenn is sweet and pleasant and friendly, she’s also a master manipulator who has an agenda. Though her ability to shut Neroon down takes the wind out of the sails of the plot, too, as it’s a disappointingly pat solution to the problem that makes you wonder why they went to all that trouble in the first place…
Next week: “A Voice in the Wilderness, Part I.”
Regarding the stomach pumping, finding the piece of Bramner’s robe near the Pak’ma’ra’s quarters could be regarded as probable cause, which in turn may allow an issuing of a warrant to “search”, so to speak.
Though why said robe scrap happened to be there is never really addressed in a satisfactory manner.
I think it’s implied that Delenn ensured that suspicion would fall on the Pak’ma’ra, at least long enough to get what she wanted. And in that respect, the ruse worked.
About Ivanova’s dropping of the charges, I saw that as just a delaying tactic until a better option to Psi Corp comes along. She’s quite clear to Franklin that she won’t let Beldon go anywhere to prevent Psi Corp getting hold of her. After she gives her backstory, all 3 of them including Ivanova visibly soften to her plight. Although again, that just highlights that they don’t do anything proactively to prevent that kind of poverty down below.
Neroon eventually becomes one of my favorite secondary/recurring characters on the show. His character arc over the course of the episodes he’s in is just amazing.
I have to agree, though, that the resolution to disappearance of Bramner’s body feels strange and incomplete. If it was really that easy for Delenn to solve the problem by having a conversation with Neroon (and admittedly browbeating him with her status on the Gray Council), why didn’t she have that conversation with him before the viewing was supposed to happen? She knows he’s Warrior Caste, and that he’ll throw a stink about the entire situation. She knows that the Warrior Caste is already largely unhappy with the Mimbari surrender to the Humans. So this feels like she’s potentially putting the entire station and everyone on it at risk for absolutely no reason, because she could fix it with a phone call.
I had forgotten Neroon shows up again. Maybe I will think more favorably of Vickery’s performance once I’ve seen the whole arc again.
Delenn has two options: direct confrontation, where she’d be open and straightforward with Neroon, pull rank, and have Bremmer’s corpse cremated in the open (either causing friction or embarrassment for his whole clan in the process), or lie, employ subterfuge to cremate the body, cast suspicion on the pak’ma’ra, and hope to get away with it. We’ve already “established” Minbari don’t lie… except…
So ahe takes a very Delenn solution, as well as a very Minbari one: lie, deceive, hope she isn’t caught, then offer the face-saving lie of a “miracle” to help Neroon and the Star Riders to save their honor.
This is especially consistent with a specific deception she employs with regard to Sheridan and the IPX team at Z”ha”dum.
John Vickery’s presence and Delenn’s machinations make this episode worthwhile. Pretty much everything else ranges from “meh” to “dafuq?”
Minor nitpick: While Beldon probably was also picking pockets, what brought her to Ivanova’s attention was pilfering a trinket from a vendor stall. Not that it really matters, as Ivanova may have just invented something to assert jurisdiction.
More significant nitpick: While Delenn claimed to speak for the Grey Council, she never claimed in this episode, or any other, that she led the council. (And JMS made some comments regarding the original intended episode ordering that imply her claims of authority over Neroon in the matter were possibly dubious.) The intended strict balance and collegiality among the members of the Grey Council will have significant plot ramifications later.
Delenn “never claimed in this episode, or any other, that she led the council.” Correct!
And an even more minor nitpick for krad – It’s “Branmer” not “Bramner.”
As we learn in “Babylon Squared”, the Grey Council has no leader at this time.
(emphasis mine)
Looking Ahead, we will see this in another scenario with a different outcome and ramifications that followed….
It might say something about the bone-deep terror of another Minbari War that the BABYLON 5 crew are driven to such an extremity – one can only hope they compensated the suspects with a slap up meal afterwards, by way of restitution – but the whole incident still reflects not one whit of credit upon them (Not least because there seems to be the strong suggestion that they could only accomplish this because the aliens in question are few in number and backed by no power of interstellar significance).
And in fact, the Pak’Mara seem to be held in contempt by other races generally.
And outside the narrative they (and this plot point) generally get played for laughs. Though that’s in part deliberate to set up a moment in Sleeping in Light.
Perhaps the show doesn’t do enough with pak’ma’ra and the prejudice they face, but it is deliberate and there is a point to it. I’m guessing the costume/makeup were expensive enough they couldn’t easily do a pak’ma’ra-centered episode, too.
A middling episode. Delenn certainly doesn’t come out of it looking particularly well, which is maybe the point but at odds with how she is played and written later.
Honestly, the prime suspect should have been Neroon, if not from the getgo, then pretty early on. The guard was Minbari, presumably Windriders (unusually diplomatic of Mr. Garibaldi not to point that out to Neroon), and we only had his word that there was a body in that casket when the brought it in. It would be easy to think that Neroon was trying to create a casus belli.
The B-plot filled some time. Mostly it incrementally moved the Talia-Ivanova relationship forward.
That’s exactly what I expected, that Neroon was looking for an excuse to start a war. It’s interesting that he turned out to be more decent.
I came to admire Vickery’s Neroon more and more as the seasons progressed and his character got fleshed out more and more.
Of course Vickery’s acting skills didn’t hurt one bit. Even his Mr Welles (who is about as one-dimensional as a character can be) is well-done, both here and in “Crusade”.
I mostly remember this as the introduction of the fabulous Alit Neroon.
This episode has a lot to say about Delenn. I’ve called her a bit of a zealot before, and I think this episode adds to that impression. Delenn doesn’t lead the Grey Council, and she’s not even seen as the leader of the religious caste members of the Council for that matter (as we’ll see soon enough). But she does believe she is meant to fulfill prophecy, which requires a certain sense of self-importance. All of which comes into play in the near future, as set up nicely here.
As for the B-plot, I almost forget it exists. The biggest thing for me is how the tensions between Ivanova and Winters seem to thaw by the end.
It’s funny. I never even picked up on the issue of Garibaldi ordering the entire Pak’Ma’ra race being subjected to the procedure as being a bad thing. I really should have.
But I would also argue it’s not really out of character for someone like Garibaldi to be doing that. As friendly, and as fair, and as just as he can usually be, we should remember that Garibaldi is your classic paranoid personality. He doesn’t trust anyone. He does deep background checks on any new Earth Alliance officer that joins the station – including Ivanova, and later Sheridan. And if he had it his way, B5 would be a lot closer to a police state (not on a Nightwatch level, but close). And as we’ll see later on, Garibaldi ordering stomach pumping would be the least of his questionable actions. The real issue here is that Sinclair went along and let Garibaldi enforce the procedure. I like to think he was really under the gun, terrified of a potential Minbari escalation with someone like Neroon and let Garibaldi’s outrageous action slide for fear of another Battle of the Line.
I’ve heard elsewhere that this was the only season 1 episode not based on a Straczynski outline. I don’t know the details, but it leads me to assume that Neroon is in fact a D. C. Fontana creation. I could be wrong, of course. But if not, kudos to her for creating one of B5’s most memorable, complex and nuanced antagonists. If he was a one-episode character, then Straczynski made the right call bringing him back later in the Minbari arc. With John Vickery’s unique voice and presence, he made Neroon an instant classic – a character I absolutely despised and respected all at once. He’s brash, arrogant, borderline racist, warmongering, but he’s also somehow fair and just. He can be as absolutely selfless as Delenn, believing he’s truly doing what’s best for the Minbari.
It’s also a real showcase for Delenn’s many faces and ability to manipulate events. The way she gets caught by Sinclair and manages to turn the tables, letting her deal with Neroon and then making him apologize to Sinclair. When Dukhat picked her for heading the Grey Council, he knew what he was doing. Probably the best political episode for season 1 Delenn.
Alisa Beldon is probably the episode’s real stumble. As pointed out, neither the direction nor the makeup/wardrobe department do a good enough job portraying her Downbelow status. It feels bland – as does her performance, sadly. Most of that story is carried by Ivanova, regardless, and I do enjoy the chance to see some brief fiery conflict between her and Talia.
the gun ports are open to symbolize that a great warrior is on board. They won’t fire.
There is a weird bit of dialogue after this bit– Sinclair says to one of the ops crew to keep scanning the Minbari ship and “If their tracking system blinks in our direction…” to which the subordinate cuts him off and says “Understood.” I kinda wish Sinclair had been allowed to finish, because I’m not even sure how that order ends. Are they supposed to fire if the Minbari power up weapons? Fire if fired upon? Try to hail them? Report it? Something else? That crewmember is weirdly confident they know what Sinclair wants because I don’t.
Also: Pretty insane that Neroon insisted on Minbari guards, then gets irate when the body vanishes. I kept expecting Sinclair/Garabaldi to throw them back at him– well, geez, you didn’t want us guarding the body and it looks like your guys didn’t get the job done. Now we have to clean up your mess. Neroon might be unreasonable about this, but they should have at least pointed it out.
Along the same lines, I like Neroon’s claim that the Minbari were in control at the Battle of the Line. If Sinclair was less diplomatic he might have asked: In control of what? Surrendering? Yeah, we know the Minbari could have won, but still…
I assumed that the tracking system in question was something like a modern anti aircraft missile radar. It’s the next step between gun ports open and firing.
That occurred to me too. Sinclair probably just meant “let me know,” but it’s important in a military situation for every order to be stated clearly and unambiguously so there are no fatal misunderstandings, and so everything’s clearly on the record. But then, military discipline calls for anyone receiving an order to repeat the order to confirm they heard it right, and that’s often skipped over in fiction because it slows down the dialogue.
I didn’t really let the stomach pumping bother me that much, as I’m willing to think about that perhaps these alien species have different mores around these items than we do. Perhaps for the Pak’ma’ra, they’re fine with it, and they re-eat the pumped food afterwards. No biggie for them.
But yes, not a great episode, but not horrible either.
I’m astounded that Neroon only appears in 5 episodes. He made such an impression, I could’ve sworn it was way more.
Lots of characters in B5 like that. Look up how many episodes we see characters like Refa, Cartagia, or even Morden! The alien casting, in particular, tends towards the great to stellar.
Not a great episode, though it does have its moments. The gun ports being open as a ceremonial thing is retroactively problematic since they make the misinterpretation of that gesture the cause of the Earth-Minbari War. You would think that EarthForce might have made recognizing the thing that nearly led to the end of the species a priority in their officers’ training rather than something that nearly causes another panicked reaction a decade later.
As noted above, there is no indication that Delenn leads the council (though she will be offered that role), and her claim to speak for the whole council is almost certainly untrue, though they never really follow up on that when Neroon replaces her on the council. Still, it does show that there is conflict between the castes, and has been for some time.
The B plot works for foreshadowing and getting Ivanova to thaw towards Winters (ahem), but is otherwise pretty forgettable. Mostly, the episode is worth watching for the introduction of Neroon, who will make a major impact on the story going forward despite his few actual appearances.
The Minbari plot was mostly decent (apart from the aforementioned stomach pumping). I enjoyed seeing a bit more about Minbari culture and further exploring the divide between the religious and warrior castes. The other plot was sunk for me by Grace Una’s performance and the joke about the Narn tasting like chicken.
Keith, the character is Alisa Beldon, not Alison.
This is a pretty good one, though the flaws pointed out here mostly didn’t occur to me. I did have a couple of other complaints, mainly the script’s casual racism toward the Narn. Not only do the human characters joke about how horrible the Narn homeworld is, but Alisa says Na’toth’s mind is intrinsically cold and malevolent, and it’s treated as a species trait rather than a personal one. The idea that an untrained telepath might find alien minds disturbing at first makes sense, but the episode seemed to be saying she was right to feel that way about Narn minds.
The main thing I always remembered about this episode was Grace Una, who’s as exquisitely beautiful as I remembered — she reminds me of Zhang Ziyi, which is really saying something — but a much weaker actress than I remembered. This was her debut role, though. She wasn’t bad, exactly, but her vocal delivery was unpolished.
Oh yeah, the other thing that bothered me was that the Minbari’s funeral customs were way too human, and too Western. The coffin, the flag-folding and presentation, the urn for the ashes, it’s all too familiar for what’s supposed to be an alien society.
Agreed about the funeral, though it occurs to me that, in-universe, maybe it’s so human/Western because “Valen” invented it.
I love that suggestion. He would have been most comfortable with Western military customs.
Yeah, I really had a problem with how heavily the anti-Narn sentiment was laid on in this episode, and there was no G’kar around to give as good as he got.
I don’t think it lands, but the A plot is interested in differences between Minbari and humans (and the degree to which they can be bridged), so having a B plot that turns towards differences between alien and human cultures is another way to examine the same thing (and notice why the Minbari get treated differently than the Narn. Of course, the Minbari resembling humans closely in certain cultural ways (or vice versa) ends up being a major plot point.
By the way, I am not buying that Narn is having this much trouble finding a telepath to cooperate with them that this is still something they’re searching for a year later. We’ll later find out Earth has ten billion people. If Jason Ironheart is to be believed, one in a thousand humans are telepaths. That’s ten million telepaths right there, not considering humans that live somewhere other than Earth or all the other species that have their own telepaths. Surely *somebody* would be interested especially if they think they can work with tissue samples (which would also seemingly obviate the need for the subject to actually live on Narn). Failing that, they might also turn more to “abduction” and less towards “persuasion/bribery.” Maybe they already have a bunch of telepaths and are always recruiting more, but I don’t think the Narn attempt to recruit telepaths ever gets much follow-up.
Don’t forget, human telepaths are regulated by Psi Corps. So those “ten million telepaths” are:
Don’t forget the subset of Number 2, taking sleepers while residing in the Big House.
Over the course of the series, the Pak’Ma’ra have a wide spread reputation for body snatching. It could be they had to agree to invasive testing to be allowed to live onboard.
Incidentally, the Pak’ma’ra mask/animatronic is pretty good. Kind of Cthulhu-esque, but there was a moment when I was wondering what else was familiar about it and it struck me that it’s reminiscent of Doctor Who‘s Ood.
Yes! In S5, I believe it may be in Paragon of Animals, one can even be seen to be holding a globe-like object, although this is not illuminated. Could it be RTD watched the show? That would not really be surprising.
RTD is a writer, not a designer. The Ood were designed by Neill Gorton of Millennium FX. RTD’s brief to Gorton was that they should resemble the Sensorites from the 1964 Doctor Who serial of that title. Since the Ood’s debut storyline “The Impossible Planet”/”The Satan Pit” was steeped in Lovecraftian references, it seems likely that their design was influenced by Cthulhu as well.
It is always, always unwise to assume that just because you have seen two things that have an element in common, then one must have been based on the other. It’s usually the case that they’re both drawing on similar earlier references. In this case, it’s clear enough that both shows’ designers were independently drawing on Cthulhu, and — like Cthulhu’s own design in turn — upon an octopus.
Also Zoidberg!
And Davy Jones from “Pirates of the Caribbean”
Hmm, I see what you’re thinking, but I don’t see it there because the proportions are too different. Jones has a much bigger and wider “beard” of tentacles, so that his head doesn’t have the same “bulb” shape as the Pak’ma’ra, the Ood, and some representations of Cthulhu. (And Zoidberg, kind of, allowing for artistic style.) Plus Jones’s eyes are more human than the others’.
I like that this one allows the usually noble Delenn to be completely in the wrong, both morally (risking another conflict between Earth and Minbar for her selfish desires; implicitly trying to frame the Pak’Mara) and politically (her actions ultimately just drive a further wedge between the Religious and Warrior Castes to no real purpose). Hell, it’s not even clear to me that she’s actually honouring her friend–Branmer chose to convert to the Warrior Caste; he lived the last twelve years of his life as a Warrior; who the hell is Delenn to say that he should be remembered as a priest? I wish, though, that we’d gotten more of the human reactions to being expected to honour a genocidal warlord who came within a hair’s breadth of eradicating the Earth on board one of their space stations; this would have been a good time to play up the ongoing tension with human nationalists.
As for the B-plot, I think that, unfortunately, Grace Una is another entry in the already crowded field of Worst B5 Guest Actor nominees, and that rather brings the whole thing down. I also don’t like when science fiction shows do that whole business of swearing up and down that an alien race has a completely inhuman mentality when said aliens are never depicted as acting in a way that doesn’t immediately make sense in terms of normal human motivations. G’kar has already been shown singing the equivalent of a Gilbert & Sullivan aria as he prepares his dinner; how inhuman could the Narn possibly be?
“who the hell is Delenn to say that he should be remembered as a priest?”
According to Delenn, it was Branmer’s explicitly stated wish to her that he should be cremated and have his ashes spread in Minbari orbit, instead of being paraded as a military hero. So it’s not Delenn saying it, it’s Delenn honoring Branmer’s wishes after Neroon ignored them.
Delenn also states that he was of the Religious caste on his mother’s side, and that takes precedence over his father’s caste.
There’s an age old debate over whether that line means religious trumps warrior or mother trumps father. I’m more inclined to think “mother trumps,” because otherwise every mixed pairing would create more priests and create an imbalance. Plus it’s basically always possible to be sure about maternity in a way that’s less true of paternity (or at least not when the tradition was made up). So it’s ambiguous but I think it’s his mother’s gender that takes precedence, not the caste itself.
I do seem to recall JMS making a comment that the Minbari were matriarchal in some respects, though I couldn’t cite a specific source.
Yeah, I checked the B5 wiki’s entry on Minbari to see if it said anything about matrilineality or matriarchy, but it didn’t mention it.
It did have rather a lot to say about how Minbari shape their bone crests by influencing the adolescent bone growth with bindings and by filing down the edges, which is why Delenn’s is so smooth-edged while the warrior caste’s are so spiky.
Ah, that’s very interesting! And it makes a certain amount of sense.
Yes, I took it to mean that caste descends primarily from the mother.
The gunports means open arms always cracks me up because it turns out this is what lead to the war in the first place and the Minbari’s arrogance just does not seem to realize it.
This cuts both ways, though– how the heck does the leader of Babylon 5 not know this? Surely, “hey, here’s the weird rituals by the various alien races you’re likely to come across” is an important part of the job and included in the briefing. So neither side comes off looking great here in-universe.
Looking at it out-of-universe, I think JMS hadn’t come up with the origin of the war yet– here it’s presented as just because they’re carrying the body of the great warrior but later its played as a more general practice (that EarthGov and by extension Sinclair really should have known about).
Neroon is being deliberately belligerent and it’s clear the Warrior caste have been bitterly angry about the surrender since it happened. Given that the Minbari do not kill each other and the other races seem terrified of them (at least the Centauri and Narn), it’s perhaps the last Shadow War 1000 years ago that was the last opportunity for the Warrior caste to do anything besides practice.
It’s quite possible they were “advised” but not ordered to go gunports closed and Delenn realizes they might do it anyway, hoping to start something, and goes to CnC after realizing that to prevent trouble, because otherwise there’s little reason she wouldn’t have warned anyone in advance.
It shouldn’t be an issue, but the show does establish Earthforce loves its secrecy and I could see a thorough investigation of the first contact incident leading to a secret or top secret classification of the results. Sinclair and Sheridan should have been briefed, though.
Practice, and chasing down criminals and the like. No large-scale wars does not mean no conflict at all, but things like large-scale fleet operations are going to have been “training only” for a long time…
I’m honestly surprised that Neroon only makes a total of 5 appearances in the series. I thought he played a MUCH bigger role but I guess that’s just a complement to the actor.
I’m realizing from the discussions that there is a critical piece of information that is missing from the story: What was the plan for Branmer’s body once it arrived back on Minbar? If his clan planned on building a mausoleum or some other monument, then Delenn is somewhat justified in interpreting his wishes by having the body cremated. If the plan was to have the procession and then cremate the body once it arrived (thus honoring his wishes), that’s a very different matter.
I’ll have to re-watch the episode, but IIRC his wishes were not just ‘cremate the body’, but ‘do not make a big fancy parade glorifying my career as a warrior’. So even if the warrior caste planned on cremating his body once they finished, the entire procession is a violation of his wishes.
From an online transcript (one of those sites that prints the closed-caption dialogue and nothing else), Delenn’s exact words were, “He told me that when he was called, he wanted only a simple funeral. He did not want to be a monument to war. Neroon and his Star Riders subverted his wishes with this display of his body.”
This is why you always write down a will instead of just telling people what you want. Could have avoided all this if the deceased had simply done so while alive. Did he tell Neroon he wanted something else? Did he maybe change his mind after he talked to Delenn about this topic? Who knows. This is exactly why, “Well, he wrote down what he wants in his last will & testament” always trumps people relaying hearsay from a corpse.
Something I can’t recall seeing addressed is how Delenn refers to Minbari gods in this episode. Yet in the third season episode “Passing Through Gethsemane”, it’s established that the Minbari religion doesn’t recognize any gods per se.
Well, she said Branmer would “take his place with the gods.” She didn’t actually specify whose gods.
Maybe she was speaking metaphorically for Sinclair’s benefit, approximating the Minbari concept in terms she thought would be clearer to a human listener.
That doesn’t make a lot of sense either. My impression is that the Minbari perception of reincarnation is quite different from that of Buddhism, which regards it as a cycle of suffering until Nirvana is achieved. In fact, the Minbari consider the apparent lessening of souls being reincarnated among their own kind (as revealed in “Points of Departure”) as troubling.
Neroon is obnoxious in this one, but like many characters in B5, he ends up having an interesting arc. The way PSI Corps and telepathy worked in B5 never made sense to me, although Walter Koenig’s excellent work made Bester one of my favorite characters.
This episode feels, like many in the first season, to exist so that it can set up or advance plot points and characters that will be important later: Ivanovo/Winters later in the season, Neroon further along, yet another reminder of the Narns lack of telepaths. It certainly has more weight given that larger context. My understanding what that Straczynski gave writers stuff to put in episodes, large and small, for this purpose. How much of that was going on here?
All of the above is not to excuse a weak episode. But is some of the “weakness” due to having to stick stuff in?
funny thing is, Neroon acutually wasn’t planned. THey liked him so much they decided to bring him back
In addition to the whole Pak’ma’ra stuff being offensive for the reasons KRAD mentioned, it also felt to me (your mielage may vary) as though it were being played for laughs, kind of like the hostility between the warring species in TNG S1 “Lonely Among Us,” which also involved aliens who ate dead bodies, if memory serves. I expected better from Fontana than a script that thought the audience would be gullible enough to fall for thinking the Pak’ma’ra were guilty, and also that thought the main upshot of it all was having some yuks at Garibaldi’s and Franklin’s expenses.
I also guess I am in the minority in thinking Vickery, for all that his voice is magnificent, does not do a very convincing job playing Neroon.
Kudos to KRAD for teaching me the word “cromulent” – I would never have guessed it is a positive thing from its sound!
No, the “joke” at the end of “Lonely Among Us” was that one of the two rival delegations was suspected of killing and eating a member of the other delegation. But good catch — that was also a D.C. Fontana script, so it does seem to be a bit of a running gag with her.
“Cromulent” comes from a gag in a 1996 episode of The Simpsons: “I never heard the word ’embiggen’ until I moved to Springfield.” “I don’t see why. It’s a perfectly cromulent word.” The joke at the time was that neither word actually existed, but The Simpsons is so influential that both nonsense words have been adopted as real words, so the joke doesn’t work anymore. From the context of the line, “cromulent” can be interpreted to mean acceptable, valid, legitimate, etc.
This episode is also notable for featuring a child in a significant role who is not killed. I believe JMS at one point said he did not want to have Babylon 5 episodes about children, as this was a television cliche he didn’t like, and as far as I can recall, the other children who are notable characters all die in their respective episodes.