January Meme: The Aides to the Ambassadors (Babylon 5)

One of the many virtues of Babylon 5 is that each of the four Ambassadors introduced in the pilot – Delenn, Londo, G’Kar and Kosh – gets an Aide who becomes an important supporting character with their own voice, offering simultanously a chance for the audience to see the Ambasador in question interact with someone from their own culture and see them in their own context, as opposed to them being presented from a human pov.

The big exception here is the combination of Lyta and the two Koshs. We meet Lyta first, before we meet Kosh; she’s the original station telepath, replaced for Doylist reasons but later coming back into the show as a regular with a new official job description (aide to the Vorlon Ambassador). We also see her interact more with other characters than with her ambassador(s), and remain in her pov when she is with either of the Koshs. This is partly due to the nature of the Vorlons, but also because Lyta’s overall function in the story isn’t originally defined by her relationship with Kosh, and doesn’t end once there is no more Vorlon on Babylon 5. Nonetheless, what we do get of Lyta in her capacity as Ambassadorial Aide makes some points about either Vorlon, and thus I won’t leave her out of this post.

( Aides Analzyed )

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