It can’t be a mid-90’s TV show without some good old fashioned government conspiracy storylines.  This one dolls it up with Mars, and semi-undead cyborgs. But at it’s heart is big businesses colluding with the government to crush a peaceful independence movement.  To me it feels like the show trying to remind the audience that things are not ok on Earth, now that Sheridan is fully integrated into the show. 

The episode opens up with a scene showing Sheridan is fully in charge now, as he rattles off a list of orders to Ivanova.  It is nice to get that reminder that he is now fully integrated with the crew before we kick off the A plot, with Talia meeting up with an old friend named Taro Isogi, played by James Shigeta of Die Hard fame.  He is a businessman from the very lame sounding Futurecorp who is proposing a business idea to help Mars achieve independence and allow his company to begin dealing more directly with alien governments.  He is on Babylon 5 to meet with Amanda Carter, played by veteran scifi actor Adrienne Barbeau with Talia mediating. 

There is a jarring cut, to a mysterious government center underneath a ruined San Diego where something clearly nefarious is set in motion, as an official looking cargo container opens on Babylon 5 and a hand reaches out before the opening credits roll.

Back from the credits, and we are just in time for Jessica Walters to show up as an asshole senator that wants Sheridan to spy on the business negotiations.  He demures despite her fear mongering, and then gets pulled away by more pressing duties.  Later he and Ivanova discuss the meeting with the alien race the Takar, and Sheridan tells the story of how his ship made first contact with them.  

Meanwhile Isogi is giving Carter the hard sell and she is buying it, to a point.  They break for the night and Isogi invites Talia to dinner to discuss her thoughts on the whole deal.  They are having an idyllic chat as they walk when a man, played by Michael Beck, runs up, says “Free Mars” and shocks Isogi to death with his bare hand.  The man advances on Talia, but she scans him and gets a glimpse of ships fighting.  The scan seems to disorient the man and he wanders off instead of killing her too.

Later Sheridan questions Talia in his office.  She is insistent that the murderer did not seem like a typical Free Mars terrorist, and that something else is going on.  She even points out to Sheridan that any Martian Independence group would have been stupid to kill Isogi.  Sheridan parrots some of what the senator said about Isogi helping plan another bloody uprising, but Talia shuts him down hard, and asks to leave.  Later Sheridan asks Ivanova about Talia.  Ivanova says that Talia is trustworthy but also loyal to Psi Corps.  Later Sheridan expands his investigation to Amanda Carter, informing her of the murder, but getting much the same response from her as he did Talia.  

Garibaldi escorts Talia back to her quarters and they share a sweet moment discussing humor and how it helps when dealing with awful things.  Later he and Sheridan meet up to try and figure out the situation.  So far both of them have been acting kind of dumb in the investigation, so it is an improvement to see them actually try to puzzle things out.  

The assassin checks in with his controllers, including uploading everything he has seen so far.  He gets new orders to kill Talia and heads off on the hunt.  Once he catches up to them he quickly murders a security officer, but again Talia is able to ward him off by scanning him.  This time it produces a stronger reaction in him, but he recovers and begins robotically stalking once more.  Later she tells Sheridan that it felt like the killer was reliving the moment of his death over and over again, an Earth cruiser shooting at him.  Garibaldi interrupts to announce they ID’d the killer as Abel Horn of Free Mars, except of course he is dead, killed in a space battle over Phobos during the rebellion.  

Horn sneaks into Carter’s quarters, gives some lame story about surviving the explosion and hiding with aliens and asks for her help getting back to Mars.  He quickly progresses to blackmail when she is hesitant, and then even more quickly decides to kill her, before being stopped by some sort of attack.  This convinces Carter to summon Talia to her quarters to help.

Garibaldi and Talia get another quiet scene, which must have been a challenge given the state of Jerry Doyle and Andrea Thompson’s marriage, where he shares some funny stories about his father, and she shares a horrifying story of being indoctrinated by the Psi Corps as a five year old.  This wonderful exchange is interrupted by Sheridan, who has basically figured out what is going on.  He lets Garibaldi know about a series of cybernetic experiments that were conducted on the dying, his assumption being that Horn is one of them.   Sheridan figures out a way to scan for radiation linked to the cybernetic implants. 

Things come to a head when Talia gets to Carter’s quarters and finds Horn there, and security manage to trace the radiation to the same place.  The confrontation also gives us our first glimpse of a new recurring character, Zack Allan played by Jeff Conaway.  Talia manages to get some more images out of Horn, including a Psi Cop looking down at his surgery, and Sheridan ends up having to shoot him to free Talia.  The conspiracy gets cleaned up though, as Horn’s body has a self destruct, and everyone has to flee the impending explosion. 

In the aftermath Sheridan agrees to keep some of what happened secret to protect Carter, Talia decides to lie about what she saw in Horn’s mind and Sheridan shares with Garibaldi his hobby of collecting secret information.   He indicates that there is a shadowy organization in Earth that is behind many horrible things done on behalf of the Earth Alliance, an organization known by the cheesy name of Bureau 13.  Talia starts investigating on her end as well, finding that the Psi Cop from Horn’s memory is also listed as dead.  

Overall this is not one of my favorite episodes, lots of groundwork is laid down that ultimately is not made use of later, which is disappointing in some ways, but a relief in others.  The conspiracy angle is just too cheesy for me and it does not seem to gel with the rest of the show’s stories. 

Next week we have the very broadly comedic episode written by the late great Peter David, “Soulmates”.  If you want cheesy jokes about marriage, divorce, doing your hair, and other stuff like that than this is the episode for you. A note Amazon uses the correct episode order, whereas Tubi uses the originally intended order that got switched for production reasons.  The showrunner has stated that either order is fine.  

As always, a reminder that you can watch the episodes on Tubi with ads.  It is apparently back on Amazon Prime, but Tubi is free and their ad breaks are smaller. 

The Good

• We get some insight into the Psi Corps and as always it is deeply unsettling.
• It was also nice to check in with Mars again after the Rebellion last season.  Martian Independence is a recurring plot element that hangs around season after season, and makes the universe feel a bit more real. 
• As much as a lot of the main structure of the plot felt silly to me, I appreciated that somewhat mature underpinnings, the tension between Martian government, corporate interests, revolutionaires, and Earth felt pretty grounded. 
• We get a bit of foreshadowing about the mysterious “Control” who is on the station.

The Bad

• Bureau 13 is just a dumb name, I don’t care how you slice it. 
• Another Delenn light episode, which is disappointing for me personally as Mira Furlan is a favorite of mine in the cast.  On the other hand I am sure she did not miss her time in the makeup chair, and the same goes for all the other alien actors..  

Arc Points (Spoilers Ahead)

• Bureau 13 does not really come up again which makes much of this plotting irrelevant.  I imagine they were going to be part of the original Talia plot which got dumped when Andrea Thompson could no longer stand to be around Jerry Doyle.  
• Zack Allan shows up! He will become more and more important as the seasons go, eventually replacing Garibaldi as chief of security.  This was Jeff Conoway’s chance at redemption after cocain abuse had already torpedoed his once promising career on TV.  Sadly he would relapse during filming of later seasons, and once news of that spread his second chance was effectively dead. 
• Sheridan’s love of secrets doesn’t really come up again, but his love of spooky stuff replaces it.  It is a very episodic TV kind of element, which is strange as the show is really starting to stretch its long form storytelling structure.