Talia must enter the mind of a convicted murderer while Dr. Franklin goes to Downbelow to investigate a doctor who apparently is 'magically' healing people.Talia must enter the mind of a convicted murderer while Dr. Franklin goes to Downbelow to investigate a doctor who apparently is 'magically' healing people.Talia must enter the mind of a convicted murderer while Dr. Franklin goes to Downbelow to investigate a doctor who apparently is 'magically' healing people.
- Delenn
- (credit only)
- Vir Cotto
- (credit only)
- Na'Toth
- (as Caitlin Brown)
- (credit only)
- G'Kar
- (credit only)
- Lou Welch
- (as David Crowley)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaMany fans were surprised that Bill Mumy and June Lockhart didn't share a scene together, in an obvious homage to their joint work on Lost in Space (1965). The reason is that the two storylines were shot on different days, and the actors never even crossed paths on the set.
- GoofsAll entries contain spoilers
- Quotes
Sinclair: I'm still waiting for an explanation, gentlemen.
Ambassador Londo Mollari: Yes, and I'm prepared to give you one, Commander, as soon as the room stops spinning.
Sinclair: This station creates gravity by rotation. It never stops spinning.
Ambassador Londo Mollari: Well, you begin to see my problem.
- ConnectionsReferenced in Babylon 5: Objects at Rest (1998)
We also have Mark Rolston, who has been a fixture on Star Trek and in Aliens (as Vasquez' sidekick with the motorized machine gun who gets dissolved into microscopic chunks with dead alien acidblood). He is cast sometimes as a good guy, and sometimes as a bad guy and he is very good at portraying both. In the Trek Universe he has played a character somewhat similar to that which he plays here, ie, a murderer who is scheduled to be brainwiped. In the seventh season ST Next Generation episode "Eye of the beholder", he torments counselor Troi through "telepathic genetic residue"- several years after his death. Here, he torments Talía Winters almost the very same way, but in real time. In fact there is a very good connection between Mark Rolston's character and Talia, and this could only be shown, not spoken about. It had to be seen in Talia's mind's eye, and it is not remotely close to a routine Teep scan: she was right to have ambivalence about performing this function...
The Rolston-story and June Lockhart's story head to an inevitable and unavoidable collision, and the tables get turned neatly and irrevocably. Meanwhile...
In one of the last appearances of pre-shadowized and Mister Mordenized and "still laughing" Londo, he brings Lennier on a field trip to the sleaziest bars, strip clubs, and poker palaces that the station has to offer. Mollari unfortunately succeeds in getting Lennier to open up about his life as one of the religious caste, which had the same amount of excitement as looking at a plate of tripe for Londo- until Lennier happens to mention that he is an expert at statistics and probabilities. This is when the fun starts. But then of course, Lennier being Lennier, he doesn't have a concept of how his advantage can actually be used as an advantage, therefore causing Londo to reveal something extremely unique about Centauri Anatomy: and this is where we have to refer back to the episode "the parliament of dreams", where the Centauri are celebrating all of the gods that they worship and Mollari makes a comment about one particular God that has a superfluity of certain appendages.
We also get to see Lennier's kickboxing skills, Jean Luc Picar... er, I mean Van Damme would have been proud of him.
Ironically Billy Mumy's character never interacts directly with "Maureen Robinson"... but that is because of the separation of the A and B storylines of this episode. Actually there is an A, A 1/2, and a B storyline in this episode, as the June Lockhart thread directly connects to the Mark Rolston thread. Which gives Dr. Franklin an opportunity to make an incredible discovery which is left in his capable hands, a discovery which will become important in the first episode of season two, and also in one of the last episodes of season four.
This is the last lighthearted episode of B5 we get for a while, and it was properly placed in season one, right before the "Chrysalis" episode. One of the attractions of Babylon 5 was how characters came and went with the storytelling, never affecting the entire story but slightly changing the tone of the show. Season one had a lot of humor and Londo was always at the center of it.
- XweAponX
- May 23, 2021