We are finally at the end of the table setting episodes, and what an episode to end the streak on.  This is by far my favorite of the four, though full disclosure after being with my father when he was given his last rites I have a hard time watching that scene in this episode.  The power of unchanging language, score one for the tradition minded Catholic Church I guess.  In any case this is a great stand alone story, with a terrific guest actor, so let’s jump in.

The episode opens on a silly chess match between Brother Theo, and Captain Sheridan.  Ivanova and a new character named Brother Edward are spectating and commenting on the game, before Brother Theo manages to outmaneuver the captain and win the game.  I particularly love Brother Theo’s trash talking of Sheridan, which is very Catholic.  

Ivanova gets pulled away from the game by a request from Ambassador Kosh.  He warbles some cryptic stuff about formalities and then introduces his new aide, Lyta Alexander to a shocked commander.

Back from credits Lyta explains that she had been compelled to go to Vorlon space and make contact. Eventually she was able to make into into their territory and even visit their homeworld. Lyta explains she is not allowed to talk about what she saw, and that she plans on staying on the station under Kosh’s protection, working for him.  Sheridan asks that Franklin do a medical examination, and all the characters reflect on how creepy the situation is. 

We pop in on Garibaldi meeting with Delenn, and we get treated to an exposition dump reminding the audience of the death of personality and all that it entails, in case they did not remember Season 1’s episode “The Quality of Mercy”.  Gee, I wonder if that information has something to do with this episode?

Franklin conducts his examination of Lyta, and is astonished that she has seemingly been healed of every malady she has ever had.  Lyta downplays the findings, and points out that all of this means that she is healthy enough to get to work for the ambassador.  Later on Lyta runs into Londo in the hallway.  Londo is gross and handsy, and then tries to blackmail Lyta.  In a sign of how safe she must feel under Kosh’s protection, she threatens him in response and refuses to cooperate. 

Brother Edward meanwhile is negotiating some kind of contracting job for the order with a businesswoman, when she notices that a black rose has fallen out of his bag.  He is confused, insisting that it is not his.  The businesswoman chalks it up to Edward having an admirer. Admirer may be the wrong term to use, as Edward sees a message written in blood when he returns to his quarters, “Death Walks Among You”.

Edward runs off and fetches Garibaldi, asking him to help personally in order to keep the incident from worrying Brother Theo.  Garibaldi comes with him, but when they return there is no message on the wall.  This leads to one of my favorite bits about this episode and its writing.  In most fiction, at this point the police would be dismissive or begin to doubt the story, but instead Garibaldi believes Edward, and moves him to new quarters while a forensic team goes over Brother Edward’s quarters. 

Edward takes a break from the weirdness in his life and meets with Delenn and Lennier, to have a discussion about faith and religion, as that is the mission of the monks after all.  The Minbari discuss their belief in the soul and how it interacts with a sentient universe.  Delenn asks Brother Edward about his faith and he relates the story of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane.  He explains about how this moment defines his sense of faith, the idea that even Jesus had a moment of human doubt and fear.  It is a lovely scene the highlights the centrality of all of the character’s faiths. 

This gentle and nice scene is followed up by a spooky one, as Brother Edward suffers a frightening hallucination in the hallways near his quarters.  Hearing screams, and horrible sounds, he sees the message written in blood again.  A chorus of voices yell at him calling him “Charlie” and he eventually has a full on vision of a water soaked alley, and a dead woman with a black rose stuffed in her mouth.  Later on sitting in his room he goes over the events again, and this time he sees himself, with a goatee to signify evilness, using a bloody knife to trim a black rose.  He is interrupted in his thoughts by Theo, who is concerned about him.  Edward confesses that he is scared, and that he is having memories of things that he never did, and places he has never been.  Theo wants him to ignore it, but Edward instead decides to go to sleep.  As soon as Theo leaves he orders his computer to connect to Earth records and begins a search concerning the images he saw.

Theo goes to Sheridan and explains that something is going on with Edward and asks for the captain’s help.  Theo explains that he does not really know much about Edward’s past, but insists that for the past eight years Edward has been the best out of all the monks.  He asks Sheridan to investigate Edward’s past, hoping that they can find the answers before Edward can, so that they can help him through whatever is going on. 

Edward runs into Garibaldi in the hallway, and explains that he lost his bag, and points to a wall where he saw the message.  Garibaldi sheepishly informs him that the lab found no trace of blood on the wall in Edward’s quarters, but he reassures him that they are checking for other things.  Edward blames everything on his mind, dismissing the possibility that Garibaldi’s people will find anything. Garibaldi promises to help look for his bag, and leaves the troubled monk. Later Edward’s computer interrupts his prayers, and he finds out that he used to be Charles Dexter, the Black Rose Killer and was subjected to the death of personality. 

Garibaldi and Sheridan find out the truth as well, with the additional detail that there was a fire at the transfer facility where he was being held, and he had been presumed dead. His reprogrammed self just kind of wandered into the religious order after that.  Later Garibaldi runs in with Brother Edward’s bag and puts the rest of the puzzle together.  His recorder was still on after his meeting with Delenn and it recorded that the voices in the hall were from a hacked PA system and not in his head.  Garibaldi’s techs have also found a chemical on the wall of Edward’s quarters that would looks like blood and then fade away.  Sheridan and Garibaldi realize that someone is on the station trying to force Edward to remember his past, so that they can get revenge.  They also realize that the Centauri that Edward bumped into has to be a telepath that helped to shake the mind wipe.  They arrest the telepath and then have Lyta scan him (illegally) to find out what the vigilantes may be up to next. 

Theo confronts Edward, who is fully spiraling with the news.  His new self is horrified about his past, and his new faith makes him doubly horrified by the possibility that he could have died, without ever asking for forgiveness for these sins.  Theo counters with the idea that God knows the sins even if Edward does not, but Edward is not convinced and runs off into the darkness. 

Later Edward stops to pray in a small chapel, and is approached by a quiet mob of people.  They reveal that they are the relatives of Charlie’s victims that have been hunting him for nine years.  They begin to work on him, as Sheridan, Theo and security try to find him.  Theo finds him strung up in a vaguely crucified fashion, having been beaten.  Theo comforts him, and Edward tells Theo that he forgives his attackers, and talks about how he now knows that he too has the strength to stay in the garden of Gethsemane. As Theo and Edward talk, it becomes clear that he is dying, and Theo administers last rites. 

We get a mild time jump as Lyta comes back from a trip, and excitedly asks Ivanova what happened with the trial of Edward’s attacker.  Turns out he refused to deny that he killed Edward, and ended up being mind wiped.  Theo decides to pull a hardcore Catholic move and he specifically requests that the killer be admitted to his order, introducing him to a stunned Sheridan as Brother Malcolm, who will be sent back to their headquarters to be trained, while talking about how forgiveness is hard, but they must always strive for it. 

We end the episode with a creepy scene of Lyta sending energy back into Kosh’s encounter suit, setting up the question of just what exactly is her new relationship to the ambassador. 

Next week we get on the road to the fireworks factory, with “Voices of Authority”.  I will give Babylon 5 this much, they nailed the Fox News woman look before Fox News even started. 

As always the show is available to watch for free on Tubi with ads. 

Where do I know them from?

• Brad Dourif is of course Chuckie from the Child’s Play franchise, as well as Grima Wormtounge from The Lord of the Rings.
• Robert Keith has bounced around TV and low budget films, but I only know him from a guest spot on The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. 

The Good

• This is a terrific stand alone episode and Dourif does a great job.
• I mentioned it above, but I am a huge fan of Garibaldi getting to subvert the “uninterested police” trope from these types of stories. 

The Bad

• The only thing I can say against this one is that it keeps us from the huge arc plots of the season.  I would probably be willing to overlook that entirely if it had been one of two or three instead of one of four such episodes all in a row.

Arc Points (Spoilers Ahead)

• Not too much on the arc front, except of course for Lyta’s return. Having her go to the Vorlon homeworld and back, and clearly come back altered (complete with gills) also neatly sets her up to replace much of the Talia Winter’s plots.
• For a stand alone I am impressed by how many little bits of the story do rely on knowledge from earlier episodes, a good sign for how confident Babylon 5 was becoming in its story.
• We have the full compliment of characters introduced for the season, and we can now board the train that will accelerate from Episode five all the way to ten (with a brief stop at episode seven).  
• Famously (among the hardcore B5 nerds) this episode was meant for an earlier season, but JMS had been interacting with fans online and one pitched the concept of the episode as a “wouldnt this be cool?”, and the episode was already mostly written.  “On another service, someone without considering what he was saying (not his fault, it just happened) said, in essence, “What if somebody on B5 found out that he had been mind-wiped, and used to be something awful previously?” Well, I’d had “Passing Through Gethsemane” on the wire at that time, but when I saw this, I had to scuttle the story. It lay there, untouched, for over a year, until I could finally meet the fellow and get a signed release indicating what’d happened. If that fan had not been fair and reasonable, that episode — which many consider one of our best — would never have been made”.