This episode is a mixed bag for me personally, and much of that has nothing to do with the episode itself. It has a lot going for it! We get a deeper look into how telepaths work, we get a fantastic antagonist in Bester, and we get another glimpse into G’Kar’s character. On the other hand the main plot is let down by some terrible effects, and some so so acting, and much of the set up here does not receive a payoff later on.
The episode starts strong with a bit of action. A squad of fighters called “Black Omega” is chasing after a mysterious transport before it emits some light and they all just disappear. The scene drops you right in the middle of the action, but most people are probably able to guess the Black Omega Squadron flying black Starfuries are probably not the good guys in this situation.
We jump from that to Sinclair and Catherine settling in nicely together, and chatting about her upcoming projects. Catherine tempts fate, and the mysterious transport arrives to dock.
Talia starts laying out some Telepath exposition to a random curious businessman. Garibaldi listens in and decides to be a creep mentally, which earns him an elbow to the gut. At least he accepts it gracefully I guess.
Just as you are settling in for another normal episode of Babylon 5, then Walter Koening himself strolls through the door, wearing a creepy uniform. He is accompanied by another person in a creepy uniform played by Felicity Waterman. They silently start ordering a security officer around, a first appearance of Macaulay Bruton, credited as Garibaldi’s Aide here. He identifies them as Psi Cops and takes them to Sinclair straight away. The meeting does not go great, and the telepaths come across as very much the thugs their uniforms make them appear to be.
The Psi Cops start briefing the commander and Ivanova, with Talia also present. Ivanova is pretty openly hostile, which does not seem to phase anyone. Talia knows the rogue telepath, Jason Ironheart played by William Allen Young. The Psi Cops do a creepy procedure to verify that Talia has not seen Jason.
Here the show I think overplayed its hand in terms of showing off telepaths. Telepathy is an interesting sci-fi concept, but one that does not photograph well, and it can lead to some silly acting. I think it is more suited to novels and short stories where it can be explored internally. JMS certainly is winking at this by naming the Psi Cop Bester.
After a short look at how real estate and rentals work on Babylon 5, we see that perhaps the Psi Cops were not full of it after all, as the stranger somehow manages to vibrate the room around him before he stops it. He then runs off to find Talia, cleverly waiting until after he knows that she has seen the Psi Cops. He asks for help, and claims that there are millions of lives at stake.
Jason lays out how telepaths are becoming more militarized, and how he was subjected to experiments, experiments that suddenly worked for him. The scene is pretty standard sci-fi stuff, but I like that they drop the nugget of how widespread telepathy is in humans, 1-1000 have it apparently. Jason is a fully telekinetic telepath, and stable. He realized pretty quickly that once they created him that they did not want him for anything good. The image of assassinating someone with minimal force and no evidence is decently chilling, but the scene is interrupted by something the Psi Cops call a mind quake.
Garibaldi does his duty and quickly narrows down where Jason might be staying, while Bester strolls in to show off his telepathy and his dickishness to Garibaldi who does not care for Psi Cops in any way.
The mindquake draws everyone towards Ironheart, but there is a laughably special effect keeping everyone at bay. The Psi Cops calmly explain to Sinclair that Ironheart isn’t technically human anymore. Bester quickly explains a version of the truth about Ironheart, including his murder of a researcher before offering a way to stop him.
Talia approaches the energy barrier, which resembles a 90’s screensaver, and gets to come inside to talk to Ironheart, who is not looking great. He also gives more indication that things back on Earth are not going great, letting slip that the Psi Corps is expanding their influence in the government, via blackmail.
This bit of interesting world building is followed by one of the cringiest scenes in the entire first season, though getting to see the core shuttle is pretty cool. Talia just talking about how crazy telepath boning is to someone that she has only known in a professional capacity for a few months at best. JMS sure had difficulty with that kind of dialogue and Andrea Thompson does not sell it well either.
Back to the plot! Ironheart sounds completely unstable when he talks about how he is continuing to change, and how he can ,like, see molecules man. He convinces Sinclair that he is now too dangerous for anyone to take custody of him, and Sinclair believes it. He tries to sneak Ironheart out, but the Psi Cops figure it out, somehow, and try and stop it. It leads to a very lame showdown complete with over acting and some more terrible effects. On Amazon at least the sound started doing some odd things in this scene as well. Everything ends with Ironheart becoming a cheesy looking CGI man in space, something that would probably not have looked out of place on a poster in a shop that sells healing crystals.
Sinclair manages to blackmail Bester, and send him on his way. Even defeated he manages to leave looking smug. They discuss the gift that Ironheart gave Talia which turns out to be telekinesis as she moves Chekov’s(heh) telekinetic penny.
All while this clunky A plot is going on, one of my favorite little G’Kar subplots of the first season is running along in the background. Catherine Sakai is a surveyor of worlds, and she needs G’Kar’s permission to survey a mundane sounding world, Sigma 957. G’Kar warns her off with reports of some haunted house sounding stuff, and she decides that he is trying to keep control of the world, so she goes around him.
As she leaves in her ship G’Kar requests that she be met by a military fighter at Sigma 957. Given his character so far in the show, it is played as something sinister.
Sure enough Catherine arrives at the planet, starts her survey, tempts fate again by mocking G’Kar’s warning when crazy things start happening. A bonkers looking alien ship swings by and disables her ship before disappearing. The effects are interesting here, mainly because the alien ship does not come in and out of normal space like everyone else, which I always thought was a clever visual shorthand for a species being advanced.
In any case Catherine is about to be cooked by the atmosphere when the Narn fighter arrives to tow her back to Babylon 5 and she gets an interesting scene with G’Kar. G’Kar comes across as a bit more mystical than he has previously. It seems that the thing she saw regularly roams around that planet, but does not care to explain itself to anyone. G’Kar explains that he can no more tell her what it was, than an ant can tell another ant what he is. The whole little plot broadens both G’Kar and the universe of Babylon 5, showing that there are mysterious and unknowable things in the universe, things that dont care at all about diplomacy or wars.
Next week we take on a muddled episode about Earth First assholes. Feel free to skip if “The War Prayer” is too much like real life lately.
As always Babylon 5 is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, or you can stream it for free with about the same amount of commercials on Tubi.
The Good
- Psi Cops get introduced here, with creepy uniforms and creepy powers. They would become a steady part of the B5 universe.
- G’Kar’s plot hints at some depth to a guy that previously came across as a vain schemer. I like his explanation for saving Catherine is summed up as “why not?”
- Walter Koenig seemed to have some fun hamming it up as a villain. Bester is smug, cold and secretive, all things that Mr. Chekov is not. He even gets to be named after a sci-fi author that wrote about telepathic cops.
The Bad
- The effects here are rough. It has been pointed out this is partially the fault of DVD transfers screwing with things, but I dont recall thinking any of this looked good even in the 90’s
- Anytime the show loads up Andrea Thompson with a bunch of plot and dialogue I cringe in anticipation. This episode is one of the worst, but it wont be the last.
- For a plot that involved telepaths so much, Ivanova gets kind of sidelined here which I thought was a strange choice.
Arc Points (Spoilers Ahead)
- There is much here that will not pay off. Talia is being set up for something that will never happen. JMS was able to neatly pivot and dump much of that on Lyta but they lost a bunch of long range plot points when Andrea Thompson left. Seeds of this are sprinkled throughout Season 1 and they are kind of sad ever time.
- Likewise Catherine Sakai’s plot here was probably something that was supposed to foreshadow her going missing investigating a Shadow planet, a plot point that got moved into the character backstory of Sheridan’s missing wife.
- The Walkers of Sigma 957 will return in Season 3 and 4. Aside from Kosh himself this is our first glimpse of the “First Ones”.
- Bester will also be seen again, reliably coming back each season to bedevil the station with his telepathic intrigue. His little gesture at the end of the episode is supposed to work in the context of a larger conspiracy, but that whole plot got muddled from the word jump when Ivanova replaced the character from the pilot who was supposed to be a traitor.
- Amongst stories of telepath love making and crazy ancient aliens, we get more hints that things are not going well back on Earth. The alliance of the Psi Corp with the Earth President becomes a much bigger deal in a season or two.