“Walkabout”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Kevin G. Cremin
Season 3, Episode 18
Production episode 318
Original air date: September 30, 1996
It was the dawn of the third age… Mollari is upset because one of the ships providing defense for B5 is a Narn heavy cruiser. By the terms of the treaty between the Centauri Republic and the Earth Alliance, any Narn vessel should be turned over to the Centauri. Garibaldi tartly points out that B5 is no longer part of the EA and he can go pound sand.
Alexander arrives on the station and goes to medlab, asking after Franklin, but getting Hobbs, who says that Franklin is on an extended leave of absence. Alexander asks if anyone was with Kosh when he died.
Ulkesh, the new Vorlon ambassador arrives, though he does not identify himself as such, insisting that he be called Kosh in order to maintain continuity and keep Kosh’s death on the down-low.
G’Kar hosts the captain of the Narn cruiser, Na’Kal, who tells him that they are slowly assembling the tattered remains of the Narn fleet. Na’Kal wants to know when they can strike back at the Centauri, but G’Kar says the time for that isn’t right, and at the moment, defending B5 is the priority.
Garibaldi tracks down Franklin, who hasn’t used his quarters in several days. The doctor explains that he’s on walkabout. The concept comes from Australian aborigines, and it’s when you just start walking until you meet yourself. Garibaldi thinks it’s silly, but respects his wishes.
Alexander meets with Ulkesh, wanting to know if Kosh left a piece of him with Alexander, but she wasn’t on the station at the time. Ulkesh says that means she failed. She doesn’t know if anyone else was with him or not, but promises to try to find out.
She then meets with Sheridan, discussing Kosh’s death. Alexander mentions that it’s been a very long time since a Vorlon died. She also starts to suspect that Spock Kosh may have left his katra a piece of himself in McCoy Sheridan. The captain also has a difficult favor he wants to ask her…
In the War Room, Sheridan explains the favor and his plan. With the revelation in the Book of G’Quan that the Shadows are vulnerable to telepaths, they need to test this notion in the field. Sheridan wants to take Alexander in the White Star and ambush a Shadow ship—but they’ll need support, as well as some backup telepaths. Delenn promises the latter with some Minbari telepaths to back Alexander up. As for the former, folks are a bit reluctant.
G’Kar asks Na’Kal to provide support for the White Star on this mission, but Na’Kal considers it to be a fool’s errand, and far too risky. They need to stay safe for the eventual retaking of the Narn homeworld from the Centauri.
In downbelow, Franklin goes into a bar and sees a woman named Cailyn James singing. He finds himself completely captivated by her, more so when she comes to join him for a drink after her set, having noticed how intently he was watching her performance. They eventually wind up back at her quarters for a night of passionate nookie-nookie. At one point, Franklin asks if there’s anything he can do for her, and she asks for metazine, as she’s running low. Franklin can’t bring himself to do that so soon after admitting to his stim addiction.
The White Star goes into hyperspace, with a Minbari support vessel accompanying them. As they wait for news of a Shadow attack, Sheridan and Alexander talk about Kosh, and the captain mentions the dream about his father that was a final message from Kosh.
Garibaldi storms into G’Kar’s quarters in the middle of the night, angrily returning the Book of G’Quan to him. He’s pissed that after everything Sheridan did for the Na’Kal and his crew when they came to B5 for sanctuary, that they’re sitting this out. Garibaldi reminds G’Kar that he can see the big picture where Na’Kal can’t. He then leaves in a huff.
Lennier picks up a distress call from ships being attacked by a Shadow vessel. The White Star leaves hyperspace, leaving the Minbari ship behind in reserve.
Alexander tries and fails to telepathically engage the Shadow vessel. Sheridan grabs her hand to try to get her to focus, and she sees into Sheridan’s mind—including how Kosh died. That pisses her off and she attacks again, this time succeeding in freezing the Shadow vessel, though the effort makes her eyes bleed. Unfortunately, the White Star’s weapons are only powerful enough to take out the Shadow when Lennier takes the jump engines offline to increase power to weapons.
While Franklin is sleeping, James steals his identicard in order to get her hands on some metazine.
Before the jump engines can recharge, four more Shadow vessels show up. The Minbari vessel joins the White Star, but they only have three telepaths on board, so only three of the Shadow vessels are frozen—Alexander is too wiped to handle the fourth.
Then a jump point opens, and the Narn cruiser comes through, its firepower combining with the White Star and the Minbari ship to take out the fourth Shadow vessel. Then G’Kar comes through leading a flotilla of League ships. The other three Shadows retreat.
Franklin wakes up to find James passed out on the deck. He takes her to medlab, assuming she overdosed on metazine and pissed that she used his identicard to feed her addiction. However, Hobbs explains that she’s suffering from terminal neuro-paralysis. She only has a limited time to survive, and the metazine helps manage the symptoms. After her diagnosis, she decided to live in downbelow and bring joy to the folks in that not-so-great part of the station with her singing. Franklin, abashed, sets up to get her as much metazine as she needs for as long as she lives.
Alexander reports to Ulkesh that she thinks Kosh may have left a piece of himself in someone on the station…
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Apparently Kosh left a piece of himself in Sheridan’s mind when he sent the captain the dream of his father.
The household god of frustration. Garibaldi has a fun episode: he gets to snark off Mollari and bitch out G’Kar, and between those be a vehicle for exposition on what Franklin’s up to.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. This is the second time that Delenn has pulled telepathic Minbari out of thin air when the plot has required it.
In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Mollari is not pleased that there’s a Narn cruiser in orbit of B5. Sucks to be him.
Though it take a thousand years, we will be free. Apparently, breen is a Narn delicacy that is exactly the same as Swedish meatballs. G’Kar says that every civilized culture has the equivalent of breen/Swedish meatballs, which calls into question just how civilized they are, but whatever. (No, your humble rewatcher isn’t a huge fan of Swedish meatballs and always found this particular gag more puzzling than funny.)
The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. Alexander is only able to use her telepathy to hold a Shadow vessel in place when she’s really really pissed off…
The Shadowy Vorlons. Ulkesh insists on being referred to as Kosh even in private amongst folks who know that Kosh is dead. When questioned on this by Sheridan and Ivanova, Ulkesh simply says, “We are all Kosh.” (It is possible that the name Ulkesh is derives from “all Kosh,” though that would be too cute for words.)
Looking ahead. The likelihood that Sheridan has a bit of Kosh in his brain meats will pay off at season’s end in “Z’ha’dum.”
No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Franklin spends James’ entire set watching her with goofy eyes and an appreciative ear. She notices this, and the two hook up in rapid succession…
Welcome aboard. The big guest is Erica Gimpel of Fame fame (sorry) as James. We’ve also got four recurring regulars: Robin Sachs, making his second and final appearance as Na’Kal after “The Fall of Night”; he’ll be back in “Movements of Fire and Shadow” as a different Narn and in In the Beginning in his Minbari Grey Council role. Ardwight Chamberlain as the voice of Ulkesh, back from “War Without End, Part 1”; he’ll return in “Z’ha’dum.” Jennifer Balgobin returns from “Interludes and Examinations” as Hobbs; she’ll be back in “Objects at Rest.” And finally, Patricia Tallman returns from “Passing Through Gethsemane” as Alexander, her last appearance as a guest star; she’ll return at the top of season four as an opening-credits regular.
Trivial matters. Franklin went on walkabout and Kosh was killed in “Interludes and Examinations.” Na’Kal and his cruiser asked for sanctuary at B5 in “The Fall of Night.”
J. Michael Straczynski wrote the lyrics to both songs sung by James in the episode, with the music provided by the show’s composer, Chris Franke.
Metazine is the same drug that was used to keep Sinclair unconscious in “And the Sky Full of Stars.”
Meant to put this in the “War Without End, Part 1” rewatch, but the name Ulkesh comes from the novel To Dream in the City of Sorrows by Kathryn M. Drennan.
This episode was written to come immediately after “Interludes and Examinations,” but with the airing schedule set to hold the final five episodes for the fall of 1996 to lead into season four, the production schedule was rearranged so that both parts of “War Without End” would air in May instead of making people wait four months for Part 2.
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“And what guarantee will you give me that the cruiser will not open fire on a Centauri vessel as it approached Babylon 5, hm?”
“The same guarantee I gave you when I said that none of the other Narns would break into your room in the middle of the night and slit your throat.”
“Mr. Garibaldi—you have never given me that promise.”
“You’re right. Sleep tight.”
—Mollari bitching about the Narn cruiser at the station and Garibaldi not giving a damn.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Burn, you bastard!” The least interesting part of this episode is the titular segment with Richard Biggs making goo-goo eyes at Erica Gimpel.
After watching the episode with my wife, I remarked to her that it’s amazing that, even when he’s not being a doctor, Franklin makes bad medical decisions. That’s not entirely fair—James’ behavior pretty much screams “addict looking for a fix,” so it’s not a huge leap for him to think that, even though it’s so totally wrong. I like James’ wanting to spend her remaining days bringing joy to people who don’t have much of that, and no one ever went wrong letting Gimpel just sing and be awesome, but Biggs’ limitations and Franklin’s general incompetence make it hard to get one’s arms around this particular plotline.
Luckily, we have the rest of it. This is the logical next step after Garibaldi found the passage in the Book of G’Quan about telepaths, and the scene where they fight them is genuinely suspenseful and exciting and full of shots of Patricia Tallman staring intently, something she does particularly well.
I also loved Garibaldi taking the piss out of both Mollari and G’Kar. It’s obvious from his telling off the former that whatever vestiges there were of their friendship are totally gone now. Then he does a lovely job of hoisting the latter on his petard, interrupting his sleep to give the Book of G’Quan the way that G’Kar interrupted his to give it to him in the first place.
Next week: “Grey 17 is Missing.”
I really liked the swedish meatballs bit. Pretty sure I’ve seen that in other contexts since. Generally any scene involving G’Kar or Londo is good. Either of them with Garibaldi is better.
“Next week: Grey 17 is Missing”. Yeah, no. I think I’ll skip that one.
I do not recommend skipping all of “Grey 17.” The Minbari stuff is important and fabulous.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Can’t disagree, but it was still a sucky episode.
Both this week’s “Walkabout,” and next week’s “Grey 17,” are titled after the weakest one of that episode’s subplots.
I wonder if there’s a trend here, or if it’s showrunner’s fatigue vs. interest bias: since the season’s backbone plot machinery is already laid out in JMS’s head, mostly, he’s more interested in the new, and therefore shinier, episodic bits he wrote to contrast with the ongoing framework plots?
What’s the alternative? “Shadow War” and “Ranger Danger”? The better plots in both stories are continutions not unique to the episode where they appear.
“What’s the alternative?…”
Fair enough. And I would totally watch “Ranger Danger.”
“Ranger Danger” is totally hilarious!
I’m surprised that “Ranger Danger” has never been the title of a Power Rangers episode, although we had “Blue Ranger, Twin Danger” in Power Rangers Jungle Fury and “Double Ranger, Double Danger” in Power Rangers Dino Charge. Coincidentally, they both involve lookalikes of the main characters, though in the former it’s a twin brother and in the latter it’s evil clones.
Every culture having a variation on meatballs, dumplings, and/or flat breads are all variations I have seen in different contexts.
Much like this episode, I like half of “Grey 17”.
I remember that as a bit of a stinker, and two weeks apart from the fine “War Without End.”
Yeah, the Franklin stuff is just dull. My hand kept straying towards my phone whenever those bits were on. I refrained, but boy was I tempted.
The breen/Swedish meatballs bit is just an inversion of a Douglas Adams joke. In the Hitchhiker’s universe every culture has a drink that sounds like “gin and tonic” (e.g. Jynnan tonyx), but none of them taste the same. Some aren’t even alcoholic.
OK, we needed the whole jump engines are off-line thing so that G’kar could show up with fleet. But couldn’t Delenn’s ship have opened a gate for them? That’s what I took “jump engines” to mean. Or do even starfuries have special engines separate from their normal drives that let them travel in hyperspace through standard gates or gates opened by a carrier?
I came just to say the same that everyone knows that gin-tonic is universal across the galaxy, not swedish meatballs.
Jump-points never get a full explanation. We do see fleets emerge from single jump-points, but it’s unclear if they are one way: we never see two or more ships using a single jump-point to both enter and leave hyperspace, and jump gates do one or the other at a time, with blue or red shift showing whether they’re “in” or “out”. Maybe a ship in hyperspace can only open an “exit from” and not an “entrance to” hyperspace.
I believe the Narn call theirs G’tonkik.
The Minbari cruiser would presumably have come under Shadow attack as soon as it emerged and would’ve been too busy to open a jump point.
And yes, I always took the Swedish meatball thing as a nod to Adams’s gin and tonic joke.
Based on things Lennier said, it took about 10 minutes for the Shadow reinforcements to arrive, and they were worried about the possibility right from the beginning. It seemed like there was plenty of time for the Minbari cruiser to show up and get the White Star out of there.
I almost want to fast-forward through all the Franklin scenes in this episode during my rewatches. I find the songs tedious and Franklin just rubs me the wrong way with nearly every decision he makes.
On the other hand, I like everything else. It’s good to see how bits and pieces from earlier episodes intersect with the main task of testing the efficacy of telepaths against the Shadows, and how relationships have changed over time in significant ways.
I like the songs well enough. They’re reasonably competently written and the vocal performance is good. But it does seem out of place to have the whole number in the first scene and it does drag a bit. Usually we’ve only seen illustrative fragments of performances in the show, like the closing scene. That feels more natural and less like a “we have a singer as a guest star this week, so you have to listen to her sing” insert.
“Then he does a lovely job of hoisting the latter on his petard, interrupting his sleep to give the Book of G’Quan the way that G’Kar interrupted his to give it to him in the first place.”
You know, I don’t know how many times I have seen this episode, but that particular symmetry *never* occurred to me. Huh. Thanks for pointing it out.
I agree that Franklin’s plot was uninteresting, though Erica Gimpel was lovely. I found the ending ambiguous — was Franklin staying with her as she pleaded, or walking out on her like the jerk he basically is?
The rest was okay, but the only real “wow” scene was Garibaldi chewing out G’Kar. Really good writing there.
It bugs me when shows set in the future do musical numbers that sound like the styles of the eras they were made in, but JMS defended it online by pointing out that some styles like classical music have been around for centuries (although I think there’s a recognizable difference between the style of orchestral movie scores from the 1930s-40s and those in the 1980s-90s, say), and that the bluesy style he was going for has its roots in 19th-century music and is still being used in the present. I guess that’s valid, but it still sounded pretty 1990s in style to me. I also didn’t think the lyrics were anything special.
the singing scenes would have been terribly boring in the 90s, i found them terrible now, even though she has a great voice. But it was terribly long and giving nothing and just in general, averagely bad and boring music, similar to the super boring bar scenes in TNG and DS9.
And yeah, i couldn’t care less about the doctor, he’s just an awful character, so i don’t give a damn about his addiction nor love life.
I am always surprised that people discussing this episode either don’t get or don’t like that Franklin, having abandoned his position to “find himself,” keeps walking into situations that could teach him about everything that’s wrong with him but keeps missing the lesson. The “you aren’t looking for yourself, you’re just running away” point gets made explicitly later on.
So of course we see Franklin sleep with someone he just met and then make a snap judgment based not on evidence but arrogant assumptions (yes, I’m sure a recovering addict will only run into addicts and not the ill, Franklin, because everyone else is just an extra/NPC).
Biggs has to play Franklin as both unlikable and likeable in this story line. It’s a really tough job and while I don’t think he fully brings it off, I don’t agree with Keith that it’s because he’s so limited as an actor. It’s easy to forget that Biggs came out of a soap opera role: very different from B5’s mix of theatrical and natural acting. Now he’s playing a subplot that is very soap-like and having to play against type. That kind of stretch can be a challenge and Biggs doesn’t have the long experience of a Katsulas or Jurasik to fall back on.
I think Biggs does an OK job of it. At the time, I would have said he hit the mark of being both likeable and unlikeable. My reaction to the character has changed, because my tolerance of certain kinds of behaviour has changed in a way that makes me both like him less and find him less interesting. But I don’t put that on Biggs.
I remember a classical station doing a side-by-side playing of classical music recordings from early in the century and more modern renditions. There are clear differences in tempo and styling. Early classical music had additional trills, instrument vibrato, and other minor embellishments that have fallen by the wayside.
Even early jazz and ragtime is played differently now. Heck, even retro-styled modern rock sounds different from the ’60’s and ’70’s music it emulates.
Of course, the trap is that any composer who tries to create a conjectural “futuristic” music style will probably end up creating something that sounds corny in retrospect and is still recognizably a product of the era when it was written.
The same is true of costuming. Look at Cleopatra from 1934, 1963, and 1999. All three purport to illustrate Egyptian/Roman costume and all three show unmistakable signs of the common styles of the year they were made.
I think the dynamic is different there. Historical films are, of course, made for present-day audiences and have to be adapted appropriately. The creators know what historical costumes looked like, but they still bring their own sensibilities to the interpretation of them. But nobody can know what music in the future will sound like, or what fashion in the future will look like. Attempts to predict such things tend to come down to projecting current trends forward, so when the trends die down and the fashions change, something that attempted to project forward from, say, 1980s styles will end up seeming very 1980s in retrospect.
A classic example is Jame Finney’s metallic sailor suit outfit in Star Trek: “Court Martial.” At the time the episode was made, it had long been a custom for children and teenagers to dress in sailor suits, so the makers of the episode figured that a teenager in the future would just wear a sailor suit made of futuristic metallic fabrics. They didn’t anticipate that sailor suits would fall out of fashion entirely (except as Japanese school uniforms for girls) and that their “futuristic” projection would end up looking laughably dated. The equivalent for “futuristic” music would be something that sounds like disco with more electronics, say.
But the same affect colors future extrapolations. Costumes in the original Star Trek shout out 60s fashion. So did TNG, though the 90s esthetic wasn’t quite as strong as the 60s.
A lot of it is understandable, because the composers/authors/designers are trying to appeal to the immediate audience. The desired audience in the 60s, the coveted 18 to 45 group, is going to be most impressed by 60s styles; music, clothing, or whatever. The same applies whatever the decade of creation.
Sometimes a creator succeeds in surpassing the current decade, but it is hard.
My point is, we know what historical costumes looked like, so modernizing them is a deliberate choice. That’s a bad analogy for projection into the future, because we don’t know what that will actually be like but can only speculate. What I’m saying is that even the most sincere attempt to extrapolate future trends will inevitably look dated in retrospect, because we can’t predict what trends will actually continue and which ones will be abandoned. So the similarity to contemporary things is unintentional, not purposeful. With updated historical costumes or music or whatever, an informed observer will see the inaccuracy at the time of release. With conjectural future stylistic trends, the datedness will only become apparent in later decades. They’re not the same thing at all.
Very obvious in the original Battlestar Galactica, except that 13 year old me found it so laughably cheesy even then that I remember it to this day.
Then there’s Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, where one of the only forms of 20th-century culture to survive the nuclear apocalypse and remain popular in the far future is roller disco. (Also the Olympics, once they decided to do a cross-promotion with NBC’s 1980 Winter Olympics coverage.)
*The Tucana Supremes have entered the chat.*
Delenn didn’t pull the Minbari telepaths out of thin air. Storming off from the Grey Council with Religious Caste support in tow gave her a certain power and influence over that segment of Minbari society. And season 1 had already established that Minbari telepaths didn’t operate at all like the Psi Corps, but instead treated their gifts as such and were themselves willing to work in service of any cause they deemed worthy, not unlike Lennier’s devotion to Delenn herself. Of course there would be Minbari telepaths stationed inside the already permanent cruisers orbiting the station, just waiting for the order to be of service in the fight against the Shadows.
One thing I like about the Franklin plot in “Walkabout” (discounting the ridiculousness of the act of walking five station miles back and forth, over and over, that is) is that the scene of Cailyn James singing in Downbelow establishes an emotional tone to these last few episodes in that the Shadows are waging war out there, spreading darkness all around, with billions of lives in the balance. And meanwhile, we have this little safe pocket in the middle of nowhere with lonely people just drinking and listening to that brief moment of peace and happiness almost oblivious to everything that’s going on. And reusing the song in the end credits helps to push that feeling. A similar thing happens in the upcoming “And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place” later this season. It’s part of why this ending stretch of season 3 feels so bleak and hopeless.
I adore Garibaldi ripping G’Kar a new one. It’s his big scene this season. A reminder that Michael Garibaldi has always had trust issues, but when he believes, the way he believes Sheridan’s leadership and willingness to stand up for what’s right. Which is why betraying him can be costly, as we’ve seen way back then when he was shot. The last time we’ve seen him this outraged was when Sheridan himself broke the rule of law to get his way with Morden. G’Kar has certainly learned a lesson here.
The test battle against the Shadows is also tense on its own merits, and I always get a kick out of Lyta’s bleeding eyes. You can clearly see the physical toll it takes to immobilize a ship of that size, even for a Vorlon-modified big time telepath like her. Great attention to detail.
The station is five miles long in a straight line, but it’s a cylinder with dozens of concentric levels, so it’s probably got hundreds of miles of traversable corridors. Garibaldi only said Franklin had been traveling in a straight line recently, long enough to predict the pattern. That doesn’t mean he’d be constrained to go straight forever.
Lyta’s bleeding-eye effect didn’t work for me, since it was obvious that the blood was only on her skin with nothing inside the eye sockets themselves to suggest that the blood had come from there rather than just being painted on by a makeup artist. Maybe it wouldn’t have been safe or comfortable to do that, but it was an unconvincing effect without it.
I apparently liked the Franklin parts better than most.
I assumed that Kosh had previously put a piece of himself in Sheridan and was able to communicate with him via that method. That may be influenced by the scene later where Ulkesh is leaving Lyta, so I assumed that physical presence was necessary to do so—also, wasn’t Kosh physically present when G’Kar had his vision? There could also be a difference between leaving a piece and placing your whole self in someone.
I’m not buying that it’s possible to keep Kosh’s death a secret. Several people on the command stuff know, some people in security know, some people in the med lab know. Heck, the guy who had to clean up Kosh’s quarters after the attack probably knows too. Even if you swear them to secrecy, it doesn’t matter; somebody tells their spouse who tells their bestie, etc, about the shocking news that a Vorlon ambassador was murdered. Once this number of people know something, it ceases to be a secret, it’s just information. There’s a quarter million people on the station at a time, but the permanent residents are only a fraction of that. If you’ve ever lived in a small town, then you know how trying to keep a secret in one goes. HIPAA is often honored more in the breach than the observance, in that if you go to a rural hospital with anything interesting, soon everybody will know your business. I actually don’t recall if this lie of omission has any consequences in the show, but it’s a bad idea regardless; if people find out Sheridan is covering things up in the name of morale, then they’ll start to wonder what else he’s fibbing about.
B5 isn’t a small town, it’s a military outpost. I think that the penalties for military personnel disclosing classified information would be a rather more effective deterrent than the penalties for health care personnel disclosing HIPAA-protected information. And remember, we’re talking about a command crew that successfully concealed their resistance movement from EarthGov for months.
Also, a population of a quarter million people is analogous to a moderate-sized city like Arlington, VA or Toledo, OH, rather than to a small town.
The reason I drew a distinction between the permanent population and the carrying capacity is because most of the population is churn. People come to Bab5 for business/diplomacy/tourism/whatever then leave. We know from “And Now For a Word” that there are 6500 EarthForce Personnel and 1500 dockworkers who live on the station. There’s some other permanent residents in there too, like the postmaster, the alien ambassadors, etc. but still the actual population of people who live on the station as a permanent home is much closer to small town than medium sized city, close to “everybody knows everybody else who calls Bab5 home” vibes. Sheridan himself says that quarter million actually represents the civilian population (I’m sorry that your crew was stupid enough to fire on a station filled with a quarter million civilians, including your own people.) Among a permanent population that small, gossip travels fast. And for how effective military regulations are, I’d suggest looking at the real world military. It’s nearly impossible for the military to do a genuinely surprise inspection, because to coordinate the logistics you have to tell the E-4s. And once the E-4s know, everybody knows. If somebody is outright murdered by the enemy on a military outpost, I’m sorry, I don’t care how much you try to call it a classified incident, everybody is going to know pretty quickly.
I spent 3 years in the Army and when I was in we E4s didn’t have advance knowledge of a surprise inspection. Those were from Division and we would get notified when we got back from PT, unless it was a really thorough one in which case we were told when we got up and didn’t do PT.
Small towns, though. I remember when the AA meeting in Milford Utah changed it’s meeting time throughout the year so that it always ended after sunset, so that the neighbors wouldn’t see you leaving the meeting. But that was a very small town. Cedar City, where I lived, was only 15,000 or so and unless someone I knew outside of AA saw me with someone who they knew was in AA those two worlds rarely collided. I wasn’t in the Church though.
Hearing a rumor and knowing something for a fact are two different things. Imagine: people hear a rumor that Kosh was killed, then a couple of weeks later a Vorlon calling himself Kosh is back on the station and being treated by the command crew as the same guy. Most people would probably just assume the rumor was false. After all, Kosh was this mysterious figure hardly anybody ever saw or knew anything about to begin with. There are probably tons of rumors and conspiracy theories circulating about him all the time, so this one would just blend into the mass. Anyone who said “No, I swear, the real Kosh died and this one’s an impostor!” would just get laughed at as a conspiracy nut by most people.
Precisely. We earlier saw an underworld type pretending he was feeding his enemies to Kosh using an encounter suit and a Nakaleen Feeder, and Kosh didn’t seem especially upset. The Vorlon love these kinds of rumors because it keeps people off-balance.
It isn’t even clear until S4 that “we are all Kosh” isn’t something that could be taken literally, however it seems like this Vorlon is very different from Kosh. We could conjecture from this episode that they’re a collective of sorts and that if Lyta was carrying a piece of Kosh to give to Ulkesh, Ulkesh’s behavior might change; we simply don’t meet enough Vorlons to do more than speculate.
Even if they’re individuals, and pretending for the sake of discussion that we don’t know his name is Ulkesh, “We are all Kosh” could have been literally true if Kosh were some kind of title rather than a personal name. Or maybe it’s like how all Sikhs adopt the surname Singh for men and Kaur for women.
The part I’m torn about is Cailyn Jones’ thing with the glass. While I found it strange and unnecessary, it occurred to me that it also might be symbolic of Kosh leaving pieces of himself in others.
It’s Cailyn James. I thought the glass thing was an interesting bit of writing and characterization.
Random thoughts I had while watching this episode:
I’ve never understood why people always want to walk around on the outside of a perfectly good spaceship.
I love the oblique reference to Douglas Adams, with Swedish meatballs being the opposite of gin and tonics.
Is it just me, or does this new Kosh have more of a Darth Vader vibe than the last one? Maybe it’s just the suit.
As if I needed another reason to really dislike ex-Doctor Franklin, he also talks with his mouth full. That’s gross.
Force-choking? Okay, Darth Vader vibes confirmed. I’m guessing this Kosh is going to turn out to be Evil Kosh.
If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn that song was written and composed by generative AI. It’s that bland.
Is the planet called “Narn” or “Homeworld?” I swear I’ve heard both. Neither is very creative (but neither is Earth).
That space battle was full of cliched lines, but it was still a lot of fun to watch. I still really like this show’s visuals.
I’m even warming to the look of the White Star (at least on the outside—the inside still looks like a Corman set).
So, has Lyta always worked for New Kosh, or does she just work for whichever Vorlon shows up on the station?
Lyta works for the Vorlon ambassador, whichever Vorlon that may be. So, it was Kosh, now Ulkesh. If more than one showed up on the station, there might be a pecking order, but that has never happened so who knows.
According to the B5 wiki, the planet Narn is also known as the Narn Homeworld or Narn Prime. I guess those are for convenience to make it clear you’re talking about the place called Narn rather than the people called Narn. The “Narn Prime” usage sounds like it was influenced by the Centauri, since they call their throneworld Centauri Prime.
Using the same name for the planet and the species seems contrived, but then, “human” is from the same root as “humus,” meaning earth or soil, so basically “human” means “Earthling.”
Lyta was OG Kosh’s agent, and Ulkesh-Kosh B’Gosh is taking over Kosh’s role in all respects, so I guess that includes taking over as Lyta’s handler.
It probably sounds better in their own language, which I can only assume is also called Narn :)
Just be glad their planet isn’t called Narnia.
I find Franklin’s drug recovery arc to be mostly dull, but, to be fair, that’s basically how I feel about Franklin himself, so at least there’s symmetry.
A pretty good episode, but the fact that I remember the meatball bit better than anything else means that it wasn’t a great one.