Babylon 5 Rewatch: Confessions and Lamentations/ Divided Loyalties

[selenak]

Confessions and Lamentations

I must say, back in ye olde 1990s a story about a virus that's 100% contagieous felt way more abstract and metaphorical about the human condition than it does today. Though I guess if this episode was written today, the Markab wouldn't be in denial about the virus because they think it only affects the immoral, they would be in denial it exists at all, though there would be the simultanous conviction it was artificially created in a human/Drazi/Centauri/whatever lab, any attempts at safety measures would be greeted by a loud minority as dictatorship, and there would be contageous demostrations throughout the station.

Okay, now about the episode proper: I think that was the first sci fi story on tv I watched where an entire species gets wiped out, and by an illness, not a war (or for that matter a supervillain). Since the Markab weren't just invented for this episode - we've seen them in the background throughout the show so far, and a few times, like with the Markab trader Sheridan got his hitchhiker from, they slightly affected the plot - I had really not anticipated this happening. Franklin creating a vaccine, but too late to save the Markab on the station (or, as it turns out, anywhere else except for the hope of a few remote colonies) reminds me of the later DS9 episode The Quickening where Bashir tries to find a cure for a similarly lethal disease, fails but finds a vaccine that will allow at least some other members of the same people to survive. In both cases, a major emotive plot point is the human doctor and the alien doctor initially clashing but then developing a strong relationship and the alien doctor dying as the emotional climax. The DS9 episode is somewhat more optimistic, though; it ends with Bashir continuing to work on a cure (in addition to the vaccine he's managed), whereas this episode hears with Franklin having to listen to some jerks sounding xenophobic and ignorant. Thinking about it, it's probably one of B5's bleakest episodes.

Which makes its Sheridan/Delenn-shipping thread an odd subplot. The opening scene is downright fluffy, and reminded me of my headcanon that Delenn is sometimes just messing with Sheridan regarding those endless Minbari rituals, testing how far he'll believe her. If it's true about the dinner preparation, though, poor Lennier. Poor, poor Lennier. BTW, I had forgotten that Vir isn't the only aide whom we thus have canon on preparing meals for their ambassador. I suppose that makes G'Kar the only envoy who can and does cook himself (we've seen it on screen, too). :) In contrast to the rom-com opening, the later scenes take the h/c route with Delenn's decision to stay with the dying Markab and her later breakdown in Sheridan's arms. What Delenn does in this episode - staying with the Markab, which has zilch to do with prophecies, destiny or big pictures - is actually a far better reply to a question asked just two eps later in Comes the Inquisitor than what happens there, but then I think that's intentional. Now I don't ship Sheridan and Delenn in the sense that the first time of watching, I was rooting for them to get together, or by seeking out fanfic. Nor do I anti-ship them. But younger me thought scenes like the flarn meal were a bit too cutesy whereas older me thinks it's interesting and for the 1990s an unusual storytelling choice that nearly all the initiative for this relationship comes from Delenn. I mean, Sheridan is obviously attracted and thinks she's great, but she's the one proposing shared meals, flirting, and initiating the first intimate touch (here, cradling his cheek). And she's completely confident throughout. One thing the show never does with Delenn, including in the rom com type scenes, is letting her fret about whether or not Sheridan likes her, or what her own emotions for him are. She (correctly) assumes he does, and while she has plenty of angst in other regards, that's never one of them. Ditto for the lack of "is this love I feel?" fretting. This is still unusual in the way canon romances are handled all too often, which I didn't get as a much younger viewer.

Lastly: Warren Keffer, unwanted pilot, actually gets a scene. Behold. (And the actor still feels as stiff as the lines JMS writes for him.)




Divided Loyalties

Back in the 1990s it could be tough to be both a DS9 and a B5 fan because some of your fellow fen insisted on fighting holy wars and putting down the respective other show, as if you couldn't love both. One of the arguments I recall concerned Jadzia Dax/Lenara Kahn (kiss on screen, but only one episode, and the relationship was never mentioned before nor would be again) vs Susan Ivanova/Talia Winters (the relationship is developed long term and on screen, but there's no kiss, and even here, in the episode where they spend the night together, there were people insisting they were just gal pals). Strangely enough, I don't recall that many arguments about whether the unhappy endings (Lenara Kahn doesn't want to put up with a life time of ostracisim and thus ends the relationship vs Talia gets essentially killed by a secondary personality implanted in her) was following the unhappy lesbians cliché; that kind of discussion belonged to later eras.

Anyway. I thought then, and I still think that the way Talia gets written out works far less well than the Sinclair removal. (Let's speak Watsonian-only now, i.e. the "Andrea Thompson left" argument gets put aside.) Starting with the fact that if you're Psi Corps and want a sleeper program so you have moles in various command positions at hand, then using your own official representative at the station really is a weird choice. Ivanova, Garibaldi, hell, Sheridan himself would have been far more effective choices. Not to mention that Control, who is not bound by Talia's scruples, could have scanned Sheridan & Co. whenever she wanted (and only Susan would have noticed) in order to learn whatever she wanted to know. Then there's the fact that a whole bunch of telepaths, including several who were much more powerful and experienced than Talia, were connected to her mind in "A race through dark places" and did not feel any indication of a secondary personality. (As I mentioned in the spoilery part of my "Race through dark places" review, I briefly toyed with the evil idea that maybe the illusion wasn't the others making Bester see Talia killing the rebels with him, but making Sheridan and Franklin see everyone surviving, but that doesn't work because we the audience see Talia talk to the main rebel telepath later, and also, no dead bodies.) Nor did Überpowerful Jason Ironheart. And because Talia exits with this episode for good, there's never any follow up on her developing telekinesis, either. All of which goes to say: it's really noticable this was a last minute decision.

This said: various previous story elements do work with the idea. Back in the day because of Garibaldi's flashbacks to the s1 episode "Death Walker" and the scan/copy of Talia's mind Kosh orders made there, speculation raged she would be saved/restored by using that crystal, and that sometimes does happen in fanfiction, but Kosh ordering it in the first place also works as foreshadowing of him finding something about her off/distrustful/worth investigating. And of course s1 introduced the fact that in this universe, "death of personality" and the replacement by another personality is something you can do.

What still gets me is that despite Lyta explaining that the moment she sends the password, the original personality will die, none of our regulars seem to really take in that means they're condemning one of theirs to death. I mean, it's an emergency situation, but still, a token "isn't there another way to uncover the mole and/or to ensure the original personality is saved?" protest would not have gone amiss. And of course, the whole Ivanova part of this episode is absolutely heartbreaking. She's not good at trusting people in general, let alone telepaths, but she really let Talia in, and not only does she relive the trauma of her childhood (losing her mother/Talia due to the Psi Corps), but she now has to live iwth the additional cruelty of Control insinuating Talia's affection for Susan was the product of her manipulation, not something that really came from Talia. And she has to come out to Sheridan about being a low level telepath herself. Ivanova gets put through the wringer here, with her heart stomped upon and broken into tiny pieces.

As for poor Talia: the first regular to die, even if her body survives. Characters like her are made for the "she deserved better" phrase. (Mind you: in the post Divided Loyalties story I wrote, Family Business, I didn't resurrect her, I tried to flesh out Control some more. cahn, you can't read it yet, it has some vague s3 spoilers.) RIP.

This is also the episode to reintroduce Lyta Alexander to the show. If Talia Winters, from her dresses to her hair style and demeanour, was coded from the get go as a film noir heroine, Lyta isn't; you see her vulnerable only in the last scene, with Kosh, and otherwise she's another trope, Resistance Fighter/X-(Wo-)Man. Though of course I am reading her with hindsight. But it's also the way the show styles, and Patricia Tallman plays, Lyta scanning someone very differently from when Talia did; Lyta's demeanour (intense, focused gaze) when telepathically active resembles Bester's, if any other telepath's. And of course the show dresses her very differently, too. More about Lyta next season.


The other episodes

Comments

[jesuswasbatman]

From what I've read, Laurel would have been the person who shot Garibaldi at the end of S1, and Ivanova would have been introduced during S1 as a minor character before being promoted to replace her.