“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.”
