"Something my father said. He was…old, very old at the time. I went into his room, and he was sitting, alone in the dark, crying. So I asked him what was wrong, and he said, "My shoes are too tight. But it doesn't matter, because I have forgotten how to dance." I never understood what that meant until now. My shoes are too tight, and I have forgotten how to dance." - Londo Mollari

This is one of my favourite episodes in terms of the writing, because the three plots are linked and work well together (unlike the disaster to come that is TKO).

A close friend of Ambassador Delenn's, Minbari poet Shaal Mayan, is visiting the station. On her way back from Delenn's quarters she's attacked by an Earth-First hate group, who leave her stabbed and branded. This isn't the first attack, and although Commander Sinclair puts security chief Garibaldi on it, it's not enough for Ambassador G'Kar who starts agitating the alien population to fight back. This always strikes me as out of character for G'Kar, making a public spectacle being more Ambassador Mollari's sort of thing. While the show hasn't yet revealed anything about his past as a freedom fighter, he's been shown to be a private person who deals with problems behind the scenes - as he did when there was a price on his head. Inciting to riot doesn't seem like his style.

In the meantime, a pair of Centauri runaways arrive on the station, Kiron and Aria, who've been betrothed to other people but want to marry each other. They end up in Mollari's custody, in part because Kiron is his aide Vir's cousin. Mollari is less than sympathetic - marrying for love is just not done in Centauri society. He himself has three wives, who he refers to as pestilence, famine, and death (fittingly placing himself as war) although none of them are on the station with him. He books Kiron and Aria passage home and washes his hands of the matter.

Ivanova also receives a visitor, an old boyfriend Malcolm Biggs. For a while it looks like he wants to rekindle their relationship, but it soon turns out he has other motives. When Kiron and Aria are hospitalised by the same group that attacked Mayan, there are retaliatory attacks on humans - one a known xenophobe who was questioned about the previous attack. Biggs is caught on camera trying to recruit him into the Home Guard, an Earth-first terrorist faction.

Sinclair engages in skullduggery. He recruits Ivanova to plant some seeds about how he's unhappy with aliens on Earth himself, and introduce them. Sinclair's rude to the ambassadors at a reception, and in short order is telling Biggs how he "really" feels. Biggs takes the bait and is arrested along with his accomplices who attacked Maya, Kiron, and Aria.

Not only do the plots tie together well, but there's some nice characterisation. We hear from Biggs how Ivanova always put her career and duty before her personal life, and then we see it in action - firstly when she cuts her conversations with him short because of problems on the station, and later when she agrees to help Sinclair take him down. There's more of the Minbari as a deeply spiritual people, shown in Delenn's relationship with Mayan and Mayan's reaction to being attacked, and this in turn influences how Mollari decides to deal with his young runaways.

Mayan tells him he should allow Aria to sit in Medlab with Kiron while he's unconscious, because love is a potent healing force. Mollari, with his three unloved and unloving wives, is initially scathing - young people should learn to live without love. "As you did?" she asks him. It's only been a few episodes since Mollari was revealed to be a romantic himself, and a large chunk of future plot hinges on his inability to live without the one he loves. In the end, he arranges for Kiron and Aria to be fostered by his second cousin, which will bring honour to their own families, and when they're old enough will be allowed to choose for themselves who to marry.

There's also a tiny bit of the main story arc, with just enough Ambassador Kosh to be funny without his deliberate vagueness becoming annoying. Garibaldi and Sinclair muse about the nature of Vorlons, and remind the audience of the events of the pilot- of how Kosh was poisoned despite being in his encounter suit, and how the doctor and telepath who were the only people to respectively see and scan a Vorlon were shipped back home shortly after. This is the only part of the episode out of place, since it doesn't tie into the episode other then Sinclair using the attacks as an excuse to talk to Kosh. It's more moving pieces into place than movement, but those pieces will be important later.

Let me pass on to you the one thing I've learned about this place. No one here is exactly what he appears. Not Mollari, not Delenn, not Sinclair…and not me." - G'Kar
 
This is where Psi Corp start playing a role in things, and we get to see if Ivanova's negative feelings towards them are warranted. Spoiler: they are. The episode also puts some guns in drawers for later use, even if it doesn't seem to do much at first glance.
 
Psi Cops Bester and Kelsey turn up to investigate a rogue telepath Jason Ironheart, who they believe is hiding on the station. They're first seen going through customs, with Bester talking telepathically to a security officer who answers out loud and doesn't appear to notice. Then they arrive at Commander Sinclair's office. He does notice and isn't happy about it - such psychic intrusion is against the rules.
 
Bester is unapologetic. Special circumstances warrant special measures, or at least that's his excuse. He has Sinclair call in the station's resident telepath Talia Winters, who is a former student and lover of Ironheart's, so they can scan her. As they carry out what's obviously a painful and deeply unpleasant procedure on her it becomes clear Bester enjoys the power he has over others.
 
There's some nice characterisation here of Sinclair. He clearly dislikes Bester and what he represents, but he's sympathetic to Talia and tries to shield her, and she's surprised by his compassion. Ivanova features briefly, and in hindsight must have a mind of steel - at this point the audience knows she hates Psi Corps, but not that she herself is an unregistered telepath. While Bester's not permitted to scan the command staff, he'd have no problem picking up their surface thoughts which he's almost certainly monitoring.
 
It's only after the scan that Ironheart makes himself known. He tells Talia he's been subject to Psi Corp experiments to ramp up psychic abilities and as a result he's become a telekinetic. They want to use his powers for assassination. Not only does he not want this, but the powers are growing too fast for him to control. As they speak he has a "mindquake" and tells Talia to run.
 
Sinclair and Talia concoct a plan to get Ironheart off the station safely, although why they thought it could remain a secret is beyond me. Bester sees Sinclair's clearing a route to the docking bay for what it is. There's no attempt at misdirection, although to be fair there isn't a lot of time. After a confrontation in which Kelsey dies, Ironheart escapes and turns into a being of pure energy. He gives Talia a gift before he departs, later revealed to be minor telekinetic powers and an ability to block telepathic scans.
 
While this is going on, Catherine Sakai is hired to conduct a survey of Sigma 957. She's warned off by G'Kar - she needs the permission of the Narn government to proceed - but threatens to go over his head. When she leaves to do the survey he's seen calling the Narn Homeworld for a fighter to go to Sigma 957, apparently making good on his promise that she won't return. However, as he tells her, "no one here is exactly what he appears". When her ship has a brush with an unknown entity and goes into a decaying orbit, it's G'Kar's fighter that rescues her.
 
While this encounter is set up as an unsolved mystery, it's actually doing double duty in introducing elements that will be important later. G'Kar's observations about the nature of the beings at Sigma 957 reveal not only a hidden spiritual side but also set up the idea of the First Ones, and this particular race will be contacted again in season 3. That's some pretty heavy lifting for a B plot.

"My orders are quite specific. You are to know pain. You are to know fear. And then you are to die at the required hour." - Tu'Pari

This episode deals with some heavy themes - death and religion - but it does it with a light touch, which is a refreshing change after the lack of subtlety in Infection. It also introduces Commander Sinclair's on-again-off-again girlfriend Catherine Sakai, and new aides Na'Toth and Lennier for G'Kar and Delenn.

This episode is a great example of how the show was set up so no one was irreplaceable. G'Kar's aide Ko'Dath has died between episodes in an unfortunately-timed airlock accident, and he's immediately suspicious that Na'Toth arrives not long after he receives a message saying there's an assassin after him. In reality, Ko'Dath actress Mary Woronov had to drop out because she couldn't tolerate the Narn make-up, and her departure is worked into the story in a way that works with the plot. Likewise Blaire Baron, who played Sinclair's girlfriend Carolyn in the pilot, didn't want to return for the main series. During a conversation between Sinclair and Sakai it's revealed that Carolyn left not long after the events of the pilot, and that the off-again-on-again relationship with Sakai predates her - they don't pick up where they left off if either of them is seeing someone else.

The specifics of the contract are that G'Kar should live in fear of the assassin, then be tortured, before being killed 48 hours after watching the message. He does know both fear and pain before being rescued by Na'Toth. G'Kar is proud, and one thing that's slipped in here is his refusal to give the assassin the satisfaction of hearing him scream, a facet of his character that will be important in season four.

While G'Kar's waiting for an assassin, the station is hosting a week-long festival for all the different species to show off their religions. The Centauri contribution is an over-indulgent feast, in which a drunken Ambassador Mollari crawls on the table and kisses the bottom of the goddess of love. It's a tradition dating back to a conflict with the Xon, who once shared their homeworld, and is a celebration of survival. The Xon were presumably a sapient race, as Mollari describes them as a "dominant species" and tells a poor taste joke ("Do you know what the last Xon said just before he died? Aaarrrgghh!"), which positions the Centauri as aggressors even before their subjugation of the Narn. It may even be the reason they're conquerors by nature.

The Minbari perform a rebirth ceremony, in which Sinclair participates to Delenn's obvious delight. Sakai ribs him afterwards that it also doubles as a marriage ceremony, and this throwaway comment takes on a greater significance in hindsight, perhaps being a declaration of intent on Delenn's part. The introduction of Lennier also gives an insight into wider Minbari culture and the larger plot. He won't look at Delenn at first, because her position as a member of the ruling council forbids it. She gently persuades him to look up, then pulls rank and forbids him to speak of her true identity as the Minbari are hiding it from the others. When asked if he understands he replies "No, but understanding is not required, only obedience."

The religions of the other races, including the Narn, are mostly absent apart from a Drazi pilgrim trying to bring a ceremonial blade aboard the station. Since Narn religion features quite heavily in an upcoming episode this is likely a deliberate choice in the writing. Their lack of participation isn't remarked on, so it can be assumed by the viewer that they participate or not - and its certainly easy to imagine they'd refuse to "put on a show" for any audience that included the Centauri.

At the end of the episode, Sinclair introduces the ambassadors to a long line of people from various Earth faiths. It's meant to show of how all religions are equally important, but it feels like a crammed in way of dealing with how you include Earth in the festival without upsetting any viewers. The festival is meant to showcase the dominant religion, and dominant and important are not the same thing. I'm not sure there was a more graceful way out of it, however, and the long line of people to meet suggests faith is still important in the twenty-third century - important in a show that puts it in the centre of the main story

We have to stay here. And there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers. But there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes, and all of this…all of this…was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars. - Jeffrey Sinclair

This one's a monster of the week episode, and while it doesn't do as much heavy lifting as Soul Hunter it still manages to set up some key themes for the show.

First up, there's a reporter on the station. She's been trying to get an interview with Commander Sinclair for Babylon 5's second anniversary, and he's been avoiding her. "He'll grab any chance to take out a ship," she complains to Garibaldi. I'm honestly not sure what she's doing in this episode, as all she does is chase Sinclair for a statement and generally make a nuisance of herself, but I guess they needed a B plot. Since this episode works perfectly well without her it's possible this contributes to the perception of Infection as the weakest episode of the season (according to Wikipedia).

The A plot involves Doctor Franklin, who's now settled in and gets a visit from his old xeno-archaeology teacher. Doctor Hendricks wants help figuring out some artifacts he picked up during an excavation of Ikarra VII. They appear to be some sort of organic machines, which the Vorlons are known (and the Minbari rumoured) to have. Both Hendricks' employer Interplanetary Expeditions and biotech will feature in later episodes. What the viewer knows and Franklin doesn't is that the artifacts have been smuggled onto the station and not been through quarantine. Hendricks' assistant Nelson killed a customs officer to get them in, rather than pay the bribe the man was rather obviously angling for.

This willingness to kill causes the artifacts to bond with Nelson, turning him into a bioweapon designed to protect Ikarra VII. The catch? The weapons were programmed to protect the planet from anyone who wasn't a "pure Ikarran", and once the invasion was over turned on their creators - because no one is pure anything. Ikarra VII is a dead world.

Nelson goes on a rampage, powering up in incremental levels that will destroy Babylon 5 in a matter of hours, and after several failed attempts to stop the weapon with violence Sinclair decides to try to talk it down. In the end he persuades it to look at Nelson's memories of Ikarra VII. Realising it has ultimately failed in its purpose, it shuts down.

After the fight, Garibaldi comes to see Sinclair. He feels the commander is taking too many risks, in a way he's seen before in veterans of the Earth-Minbari war - particularly those who were in the Battle of the Line. In fact he tells Sinclair he's putting himself "on the line" too often, phrasing that can only echo back to what he feels is the source of the problem. And he's right, although not for the reason he thinks. Sinclair is initially offended at the implication he has a death wish, but admits Garibaldi has a point.

Meanwhile, Franklin and Ivanova have an after work drink and muse on the notion of racial purity. Franklin's heard rumours of a pro-Earth movement back on Earth that's committing hate crimes against aliens, and is worried about the future. I don't think it's a coincidence the characters having this conversation are both members of groups with a history of being persecuted, a black man and a Jew. The only thing that stops this being completely heavy-handed (although the rest of the episode isn't subtle by any means) is that it hasn't been revealed yet that Ivanova's Jewish. In the middle of the conversation soldiers from Earthforce arrive to confiscate the weapon, showing Franklin is right to be worried.

In the end Sinclair finally meets with the reporter. She asks him if going to space is worth it, or should humans pull back and deal with their own problems on Earth. It's worth it, he tells her, because even if for no other reason one day the Earth will be destroyed and all of humankind's achievements with it. While I understand this is probably Sinclair playing politics, and thinking about all that was lost on Ikarra VII, for me it's a Human-centric response that undermines the rest of the episode.

"What do you want, you moon-faced assassin of joy?" - Londo Mollari

In episode one the Narn and Centauri were at each other's throats, and in this one Commander Sinclair is tasked with getting them to agree about something - namely to come to a treaty over the Euphrates sector. Not only is he hampered by Ambassadors Mollari and G'Kar's mutual dislike of each other, but also the fact that Mollari is distracted by a love affair with beautiful dancer Adira Tyree.

The episode reveals a lot about Mollari, and about Centauri culture being one obsessed with status. Adira takes joy in Mollari's title, using it even in bed, but when he suggests taking her somewhere public for breakfast she worries at the damage this would do to his reputation. Mollari, for his part, doesn't care about their difference in status. There's something of the mid-life crisis in the way he moons over a younger woman to the detriment of his duties, but it's also our first hint of Londo as a hopeless romantic.

While Londo's shirking his duties, his aide Vir gets to play ambassador. There are some amusing scenes of Vir playing with a handheld videogame console while the negotiators wait for Ambassador Mollari, and of G'Kar and his newly-arrived aide Ko'Dath playing with it together, while Sinclair despairs over the whole thing. Vir himself is so bumbling and good-natured that he seems ill-suited for a career in politics, but his appointment makes sense in a society where influence is everything - Mollari himself has pulled strings to get relatives favourable positions, an important plot point in Midnight on the Firing Line.

What Londo doesn't realise is that Adira's a slave - contracted out by her own government into the service of an alien called Trakis. He wants to use her to gain access to House Mollari's "purple files", the sensitive information held on the other houses that allows them to maintain position and status. Adira reluctantly copies the files, but when the time comes to give them to Trakis she runs instead. Trakis uses devious tricks to find her, bugging Mollari while he and Sincair look for her, then Sinclair uses devious tricks of his own to find out where she is by persuading telepath Talia Winters to take the information from Trakis's surface thoughts. This isn't the first time he's used dirty tricks to solve a problem and it won't be the last, and it makes him much more interesting than his later replacement commander Sheridan who's much more straightforward.

As well as characterisation for Ambassador Mollari, the episode relays character information in the B plot of Garibaldi chasing around the station trying to find out who's using the restricted gold communications channel without authorisation. It turns out it's Ivanova using it to speak to her dying father, a relationship that will feature in a later episode, and it says a lot about her that she hasn't asked Sinclair for permission. Garibaldi figures it out in time to see their final conversation, and later tells her the problem was a computer glitch in such a way as to make sure she knows he found her out and is letting her off - this time. Londo himself gets a bittersweet ending: Adira is freed, but chooses to return home to Centauri space for a time rather than stay with him. While at first glance it doesn't appear this episode does much to tie in to the wider plot, this relationship lays the groundwork for something monumental in season three.

"It was the dawn of the third age of mankind – ten years after the Earth-Minbari War. The Babylon Project was a dream given form. Its goal: to prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call – home away from home – for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal… all alone in the night. It can be a dangerous place, but it's our last best hope for peace. This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2258. The name of the place is Babylon 5." - Jeffrey Sinclair

We've wandered into a Babylon 5 rewatch at home, which we do every few years. It's the show we most consistently go back to, beating even the delightfully nutty Farscape. We've seen it so many times that this time I found myself watching it differently, paying more attention to the building blocks, foreshadowing, and how it's put together. The show was planned with a five year arc that had to adapt to cast changes, such as the loss of Michael O'Hare (Commander Sinclair) after season 1 and Talia Winters (Andrea Thompson) in season 2, and yet elements ot that arc are seeded in right from the beginning. The sheer amount of craft in writing the thing is astounding, and that got me thinking I should probably write these thoughts down somewhere. Needless to say there will be spoilers, but the show's 25 years old so I make no apologies.

Because this rewatch was a spontaneous thing due to having to resort to *gasp* DVDs for an evening, and needing something that fitted into less than an hour, I haven't actually rewatched the pilot yet. I'll go back to it, but for now here's the start of season one.


S1 E1 - Midnight on the Firing Line

This episode has a lot of heavy lifting to do. Airing for the first time nearly a full year after the pilot it has to re-establish setting, the various alien cultures, reintroduce established characters, and introduce new ones. It does that mostly by treating everything as business as usual. The station isn't new, it's been open a year or so at this point, so everyone's had time to settle in and get used to each other.

Everyone except Lieutenant Commander Ivanova, who became first officer at an unspecified point in the year after the pilot. The change of personnel isn't mentioned, but nodded to in a conversation between Ivanova and Security Chief Garibaldi that reveals she hasn't been around quite long enough to have learned the station commander turns off his link for ten minutes every day and heads off for some peace and quiet. It's a nice note of characterisation that later Garibaldi is able to tell someone looking for Ivanova where she can be found after her shift finishes. This is a man who notices how people behave.

Also new on the station is the resident commercial telepath Talia Winters. She's supposed to present herself to the first officer on arrival, but Ivanova's been avoiding her for weeks. When Talia finally catches up, Ivanova is curt and rude. At first glance this looks like your standard genre everyone-hates-telepaths bigotry, except that no one else reacts to her that way. At the end of the episode Ivanova reveals she doesn't have a problem with Talia but with what she represents - the Psi Corps that destroyed Ivanova's mother on discovering she was an unregistered telepath. It's an understandable reason to be hostile and I get the feeling this was laid out upfront, rather than dragging it out for the sake of tension, to cement early that Ivanova's no bigot.

The episode also puts the politics front and centre (in case you couldn't guess from the opening voiceover). The inciting incident is the Narn invasion of the Centauri colony Ragesh 3, and subsequent forcing of the colonists to publicly declare allegiance to the Narn government. The fact that it's Ambassador Mollari's own nephew who makes the statement is used to discredit his appeal for the other races to intervene. The Narn are clearly being set up as the villains here, but as Commander Sinclair tries to find a peaceful solution it's revealed the two races have a long and bloody history, with the Narn homeworld being subjugated by the Centauri Republic until relatively recently. It also introduces the Babylon 5 Advisory Council and the League of Non-Aligned Worlds, where all the inter-species politics are hashed out in a neutral space.

In the end the situation is diffused with sneaky machinations, some more successful than others. But although the immediate problem is solved it's clear that there's a lot of history between the species, and it's going to make itself known.