Contents: Overview - Backplot - Questions - Analysis - Notes - JMS

Overview

Sheridan's search for his father leads him into danger on Mars. Lyta warns Franklin of an impending clash between telepaths and mundanes. Garibaldi chooses between loyalty to Sheridan and to Edgars. Richard Gant as Captain MacDougan. Denise Gentile as Lise. Walter Koenig as Bester. Marjorie Monaghan as Number One. Mark Schneider as Wade. Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as William Edgars.

P5 Rating: 9.26

Production number: 417
Original air week: June 9, 1997
DVD release date: January 6, 2004

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Mike Vejar

An episodic soundtrack is available.

Warning: This episode reveals a lot of information, and there are spoilers below. Think twice before reading on if you haven't seen the episode.

Plot Points

• Clark's ship commanders have been convinced that if they surrender to Sheridan, they'll be killed and their crews replaced by Minbari. Perceiving they have nothing to lose, they are therefore willing to fight the rebel forces to the death.

• Sheridan has been captured by Clark's forces. Garibaldi personally sprung the trap, which earned him a commendation from ISN and condemnation from Ivanova: she has ordered B5's personnel to shoot him on sight.

• Ivanova is now in command of the rebel fleet, and has vowed to keep up the fight with or without Sheridan.

• Sheridan's old ship, the Agamemnon ("Points of Departure") has joined the rebel fleet. (See Notes)

• The telepath virus described by Wade and Lise in "Conflicts of Interest" is indeed real, as is the drug to suppress it -- but the virus was developed by Edgars' company. It is airborne, 100% contagious, and completely harmless to normals. Telepaths have to take the cure every two weeks, or they'll die. Edgars' plan was to release it on Earth and use control of the cure to effectively enslave all the telepaths, preventing them from ever gaining the upper hand over normals. Bester believes the virus was developed with the help of the Shadows, who had a vested interest in wiping out telepaths.

• When Justin told Sheridan that the Shadows wouldn't kill him because someone else would come along and take his place ("Z'ha'dum") he had specific people in mind: Delenn, Ivanova and Garibaldi. The Shadows decided that given his innate paranoia, Garibaldi would be easiest to cause to turn away from Sheridan's cause, thus sabotaging the Army of Light in Sheridan's absence. The Psi Corps was given the assignment of programming Garibaldi. They took him to a secret facility on Mars, where Bester intervened and added some programming of his own.

  Bester was aware that some kind of action was being planned against the Corps, but he didn't know what or by whom. Given Garibaldi's proven track record at ferreting out conspiracies, Bester instructed his colleagues to leave Garibaldi's personality largely intact, and to accentuate his natural sense of paranoia and distrust. Garibaldi's resignation was an unexpected bonus that put him in a perfect position to infiltrate Edgars' organization.

  Garibaldi's mission was to gather information about the threat to the Psi Corps if the opportunity arose, then signal Bester.

• Bester has removed Garibaldi's programming, leaving him with full memory of what was done to him and what he's done to Sheridan.

• Bester's people have murdered Edgars and Wade and may have taken the virus. Lise's whereabouts are unknown.

• The Corps has engaged in clandestine operations in the past. While Lyta was interning with the Psi Cops ("Divided Loyalties") someone started murdering telepaths. The Corps engaged in illegal scans of civilians, and eventually found the killer. Rather than simply kill him, they twisted his mind. According to Lyta, he's now in a cell in a secret facility on Beta 2, straitjacketed 24 hours a day to keep him from clawing out his own eyes to stop the nightmare visions only he can see.

• The Corps has gone even further with the establishment of "bloodhound units," special undercover detachments of the Earth military who are accompanied by telepaths. Their mission is to perform random scans of the public and arrest any members of the resistance they come across.

• Lyta believes there's likely to be a war between telepaths and mundanes some day, when word of such operations gets out and the trust the Corps has managed to build up evaporates as a result.

Unanswered Questions

• Where is Lise?
• What does Bester plan to do with the virus, assuming he has it?
• Does Franklin know the full extent of Sheridan's plans for the frozen telepaths, and can he carry them out with Sheridan out of the picture?
• Why didn't Franklin detect Garibaldi's false tooth during his medical exams?
• Now that Ivanova is leading the fleet, will she continue her Voice of the Resistance broadcasts?
• Is the Agamemnon's defection to the resistance what it seems?

Analysis

• The resolution of the battle between Sheridan and Clark's forces points out what may be Sheridan's most potent weapon against Clark: not White Stars or superior strategy, but the presence of previously loyal human commanders who lend credibility to the rebel cause.

• The White Stars appear to have adapted to Earth's weapons; a hit from an Earth heavy cruiser only disables a White Star until the auto-repair systems come online. Even without the defection of so many Earth ships, Ivanova is in command of an unstoppable military force.

• Sheridan told the Agamemnon's captain that the rebel forces had lost some battles, but had kept the news to themselves. ("We've lost a few. We just made damned sure nobody heard about it.") How is that possible? Wouldn't Clark jump at the chance to spread news of victory over Sheridan's forces? And for that matter, would Ivanova participate in covering up any losses, given her insistence on telling the truth in her Voice of the Resistance broadcasts? ("Rumors, Bargains and Lies")

  Perhaps Sheridan simply has a more specific definition of "victory" than most other people. He didn't seem to consider the outcome of the Proxima 3 battle a victory ("No Surrender, No Retreat") so perhaps he'd consider it a loss if he wound up having to fight Clark's forces to the death.

  Or maybe Sheridan wasn't referring to his current campaign, but was speaking in general of his military career.

• Sheridan demonstrated a lack of caution in this episode, first going over to the Agamemnon on a moment's notice (it could easily have been sent by Clark as a trap) then agreeing to go to Mars by himself. He even walked straight into a public place without attempting to obscure his face, which has no doubt been featured daily on ISN. That can be seen as evidence of what Garibaldi referred to as a "God complex" -- Sheridan appears to have disregarded his own fallibility.

  It's possible that this stems in part from the glimpse of his own future in "War Without End, Part Two," which might lead Sheridan to believe that no matter what he does now, he'll be alive and free in 17 years.

• Sheridan's capture was similar to G'Kar's in "Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?" Both of them left a place of relative safety to try to rescue someone they cared about, and both were captured by a regime that was oppressing their people. Both were tortured after capture.

• The Agamemnon, according to its captain, had been modified to track Sheridan's forces down. What, specifically, were the modifications? And more importantly, how likely is it that Clark would equip a ship specifically to seek Sheridan out without being very sure of its loyalty?

  The Agamemnon would make a perfect plant. Clark's people might have figured that Sheridan's emotional attachment to it would likely prompt him to put it in a position of trust, all the better to sabotage Sheridan's efforts at a critical juncture. Of course, Ivanova isn't biased toward trusting the Agamemnon, but at the time the Agamemnon was sent out to find the rebel fleet, Clark had no idea Sheridan's capture was imminent.

  Its arrival just after the battle was also very convenient; its captain could claim to be joining up with the rebels without actually having to fire on Clark's forces. If it had indeed been chasing after Sheridan for weeks, emerging from hyperspace at just that moment was quite a coincidence.

• Was the Agamemnon's captain the one in command when it fired on the White Star? ("Messages From Earth")

• The Agamemnon has been involved in skirmishes with raiders near Io. Who are the raiders? Are the Drakh ("Lines of Communication") encroaching on Earth's territory? Or are the raiders simply opportunists out to take advantage of Sheridan's campaign and its likely effect of drawing Earth forces away from their home system?

• The Shadows were apparently right about Ivanova; she is indeed taking Sheridan's place, just as Bester says they feared.

• Bester's manipulation of Garibaldi was foreshadowed in "Dust to Dust." Bester told Garibaldi, "I enjoyed working with you. We made a good team. Perhaps we'll do it again sometime."

  It was also foreshadowed, if obliquely, in "Divided Loyalties," in which Garibaldi pretended to have a personality implant, if only as a joke.

  And before then, ironically, in "The Quality of Mercy," Talia and Garibaldi shared a moment of mutual foreshadowing when she said to him, "Things that live inside us, Mr. Garibaldi. Terrible things. Terrible."

• Bester referred to the Corps as "my telepaths." This echoes his comment to Ivanova in "Ship of Tears" that he had plans for Earth's telepaths and didn't want the Shadows interfering. Apparently he considers himself responsible for Earth's telepaths, even if he's not officially in charge of the Corps.

• Did Bester's people get the virus? It's possible Lise took it when she fled Edgars' compound. She wanted Garibaldi to help her stop him, and taking the virus would be a big step in that direction. Of course, that's assuming she could get to it; the Psi Cops could presumably take control of Edgars and force him to use the handprint reader, but Lise would have had a harder time getting to the vials.

  Garibaldi did see blast marks around the secret compartment, though, suggesting that it was opened by force.

• The ISN broadcast showed investigators picking up a necklace from the floor of Edgars' residence. That necklace, or one like it, was being worn by Lise when she listened in on Edgars' conversation with Garibaldi, suggesting she was in the room after Edgars and Garibaldi left.

• Bester's supposition that the virus was developed with the help of Shadow technology is consistent with the courier's claim in "Conflicts of Interest" that coming up with the cure was a job beyond the capabilities of Earth's biologists, and that alien help had been enlisted.

• If Bester is right about the Shadows helping create the virus, it means Edgars was in contact with the Shadows, even if indirectly. And indeed, Edgars and Wade seemed to espouse something like the Shadow philosophy: the enslavement of normals by telepaths or vice versa was a natural consequence of evolution.

• References to the Nazis abound: Edgars described his plan as a solution to "the telepath problem," an echo of Hitler's "Jewish problem." Bester told Garibaldi that he had just prevented a Holocaust. Edgars even referred to the Nazis directly, though he misspoke a date; he claimed they came to power in 1939, but in fact Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933.

• Garibaldi's line about the last person with his job being paid 30 pieces of silver is a Biblical reference. Judas was paid 30 pieces of silver to betray Jesus to the Romans. Even under the influence of his altered personality, Garibaldi apparently has moral qualms about betraying Sheridan.

• After Edgars told Garibaldi the full extent of his plans, Wade told Garibaldi he wouldn't be allowed to leave Edgars' compound. The implication was that any passing telepath (e.g. one of the "bloodhound units") would be able to scan Garibaldi and learn about the virus.

  Why, then, was Wade allowed to travel to Babylon 5, and stay there to recruit Garibaldi? Was Wade unaware of the big picture until his return to Mars? The laboratory scene near the end of "The Exercise of Vital Powers" doesn't give the impression that Wade just found out what Edgars was up to; he seemed to have witnessed similar experiments in the past.

  Perhaps Wade was drugged or brainwashed in some way that made him more difficult to scan or that caused him to believe the story he told Garibaldi in "Conflicts of Interest."

• Bester's release of Garibaldi was, in some ways, an act of arrogance; in essence, Bester was saying that he didn't consider Garibaldi a threat. Given Garibaldi's determination in the past, he'll likely seek revenge or justice, and he won't rest until he has it.

• Despite Bester's apparently accurate warning that Garibaldi's old comrades wouldn't want to have anything to do with him any more, Garibaldi did try to get in touch with Babylon 5. How will he be able to prove his story to them, and prove that he's no longer under Bester's influence? One obvious answer is to submit to a scan by Lyta, whose Vorlon-enhanced powers appear to far exceed Bester's. She would easily be able to verify Garibaldi's story, and her word might be enough to convince the others.

  Edgars' order to Garibaldi to fire Lyta ("Moments of Transition") may, ironically, have been his downfall. If Edgars hadn't forced Garibaldi to get rid of her, she might have eventually detected Bester's handiwork and removed it, and Edgars would still be alive.

• Why didn't Edgars release the virus? What was he waiting for? In "The Exercise of Vital Powers," he seemed satisfied that the virus worked, and even asked that a test of its effectiveness be terminated.

  Since his aim was to control the telepaths, not simply wipe them out, perhaps he needed to wait until he had enough of the cure manufactured to supply to millions of victims.

  Edgars said he was waiting for Clark to drop his guard, but it's not clear what difference that would have made; Clark's level of paranoia would presumably have little effect on the spread of the virus and the demise of the telepaths.

• Edgars' plans didn't amount to anything in the end. He was the only known credible threat to the Psi Corps. Now that he's dead and the Corps has control of his weapon against them, and Ivanova is continuing the rebel advance even in the face of Sheridan's capture, Edgars' fear of Clark panicking and giving increasing amounts of control to the Psi Corps may well become a reality.

  Of course, Sheridan may have anticipated that problem, and the frozen telepaths may be his answer.

• In "The Exercise of Vital Powers," Edgars implied that there were other powerful megacorps dissatisfied with Clark, and that his company was one of several planning to move against the government. Will any of the others act now that Edgars is out of the picture?

• The problem may have gotten even worse thanks to Edgars: if the Corps has the virus, they'll presumably spend a good deal of effort studying it. The virus selects its victims via the presence of the telepathy genes. Developing that selectivity from scratch may have required the aid of the Shadows, but it might not be beyond Earth's biotechnology to use it as a blueprint and produce a modified version that selects for the lack of the telepathy gene -- thus giving the Corps the same power over normals that Edgars wanted to gain over telepaths.

  Or the Corps could use the virus to cement its own control over all human telepaths. By releasing the virus and only giving the cure to members of the Corps, they'd eliminate the problem of rogue telepaths overnight. Latent telepaths like Ivanova would no longer be able to hide themselves from the Corps.

• Bester could possibly also use the virus on Lyta; death by the virus might be considered natural causes under the terms of her contract ("Moments of Transition.") Of course, such an operation would be very risky, since Lyta would be contagious.

• Assuming Edgars kept detailed personnel records, the police will most likely look to Garibaldi as a prime suspect in the murders. Lise might also be a suspect. Both of them disappeared suddenly at the time of the murder, and given their past history, the police might conclude that Edgars' murder was a crime of passion committed by two old lovers who wanted to be together again.

• The bloodhound units may have been in evidence before this episode. In "Conflicts of Interest," the two telepaths chasing Garibaldi, Wade and Lise seemed to fit the description pretty well. And, more speculatively, they could have been the ones to plant the Keeper on Captain Jack in "Racing Mars," since they presumably would have had little trouble learning of his personal association with Number One.

• Lyta's description of the Corps' treatment of the murderer is strikingly similar to her threat to Londo in "Passing Through Gethsemane." Perhaps she was present when the murderer was implanted and knows firsthand how to do such things. Maybe she was even involved in the process; that could be the secret about her Bester threatened to reveal in "Epiphanies."

• Number One said that when Lyta passed through Mars a year and a half earlier ("Divided Loyalties") she made no mention of being a telepath on the run from the Corps. That's inconsistent with Lyta's story in that episode. She told Sheridan and the others at that time that she'd been helping out the resistance, and implied that they'd hired her for her telepathic skills.

• Number One apparently really does treat all her former lovers like she treated Phillipe ("Lines of Communication.")

Notes

• Harlan Ellison has a cameo appearance in this episode. He's the Psi Cop Bester instructs to alter Garibaldi's personality.
• Bester's parting salute to Garibaldi, "Be seeing you," is a reference to the 60s TV show "The Prisoner." Bester first used the salute in "Mind War."
• Garibaldi is now missing a molar.
• The appearance of the Agamemnon contradicts the attack scene at the end of "Moments of Transition," in which the Agamemnon can be seen attacking civilian targets. However, as JMS noted in response to comments on that episode, the use of the Agamemnon was a slipup on the part of the production team.
• The Cadmus, the ship that surrendered to Sheridan and MacDougan, is named after a mythological hero. Cadmus slew a dragon, and when he sowed the dragon's teeth, a race of warriors sprang from the ground.
• This is the series' second attack on someone using a skin tab. The first was the poisoning of Kosh in "The Gathering."
• The Sheridan fight scene, shot in slow motion, was interspersed by editor David Foster with shots taken by still photographer Byron Cohen, who does most of the B5 publicity stills sent out to TV stations.
• The shot of Garibaldi shown on the ISN broadcast is from the season-three opening credits.

jms speaks

• I agree that it's probably one of the best we've done. I've now watched it at least a dozen times in finished form, and it still works for me.

• One thing I've been doing with the latter part of season 4 is to experiment a little more, try different things. I feel that we need to push visually to try new things, the sort of visual techniques you don't see much in SF-TV, which for the most part is fairly prosaic as these things go. And to push the writing, to try some things that may succeed, or may fail, but you learn something either way. In its way, next week's ep is just as experimental, but in a very different direction.

  Mike Vejar definitely did a great job with this episode.

• Zimbalist did a great job for us...he took huge gobs of exposition and not only delivered them, he made them interesting.

• Was he a fan of the show?
  Nope, just figured he'd be great for the job, and cast him without audition. He didn't know anything about the show before that.

• What was the shimmering wall Sheridan stood near on the White Star bridge?
  Those were the autorepair systems at work.

• ""The Face of the Enemy" might represent the flipside of young Delenn's claim in "Atonement" that the most dangerous enemy is the one you know nothing about. Now the face of the enemy is the one you know all too well, one which you take for granted until it's revealed that the face is actually a mask."

  Yep. It's one thing facing implacable, vast enemies...it's quite another when you friend betrays you. That's personal.

• There isn't that much direct, personal violence in the show. My feeling is that if you do that a lot, it loses any potential for impact. You only pull out that card when you really need it, to best effect...don't waste it. It's like harsh language, after you've heard someone going on using all the more remarkable Anglo-Saxon words for a while, it loses all impact.

• "I thought the fight was a bit too long for much the same reason as you. All I can suggest is that John's metabolism isn't "normal" any more, and perhaps this had an effect. (And maybe the bullyboys were doing less damage than we think, simply to prolong the "fun".)"

  1) It was for dramatic/stylistic effect. Not everything done with some style has to have a scientific explanation.

  2) Having been mugged myself, time expands and slows down.

  3) It's the TV cliche that fights are over in a second. Ask anyone who's ever been in a real knock-down fight. It goes on a heck of a lot longer than we showed here. When I got mugged it went on for 10 minutes.

  One of the ironies in other messages on this (not this one here specifically) is that some have noted the fast-paced editing, which is supposedly associated with music video/short attention span material...and then turn around and say it wasn't over fast enough.

• Was Lyta's story the secret from her past alluded to by Bester in "Epiphanies?"
  No, Franklin's comment to Lyta didn't involve her past, though we will find out more about that in a bit.

• Was Bester's salute a "Prisoner" reference?
  Nope, not a Prisoner homage at all, in any way.

• Why mess Edgars' place up so thoroughly?
  They wanted it to look like it was done by the Resistance; too much "attention" to his death would've drawn attention to the Corps.

• Wade specificially says Lise wasn't there when they got back, so that eliminates her from the scenario.

• Why haven't the other races had conflict between their telepaths and their normals?
  Obviously some, like the Minbari, dealt with it more easily than others; and in some places it came through Vorlon interference, while in others it came about naturally.

• "Wade had a great line about the clash of homo sapiens and Neanderthals in Carthage. Was this line inspired by some of the recent Neanderthal finds? Or was this part of your orignial conception for the story?"

  Not recent stuff, just a general knowledge of this area.

  "Did Edgars really believe the Earthgov propaganda that Sheridan was operating under the malignant influence of aliens?

  Nope.

  "Is Bester really done with Garibaldi?"

  For the moment.

  "One of the captains of the Earth vessels is named Leo Frank. Was this a deliberate historical reference?"

  Not intentionally.

  "Franklin and Number One seem to have cooled their relationship. Any further developments in the works here?"

  Any more personal stuff got set aside when Franklin showed up a) with another female, and b) she was a teep. When #1 calms down, they might take another shot at it.

  "Lastly, there is a bit of irony in the fact that the stage for Sheridan's capture is set when he steps aboard his old ship, the Agamemnon. Agamemnon was the supreme commander of the Greek forces at Troy, who survived that long war, but who was betrayed and murdered by his wife when he returned home. He blindly and arrogantly stepped into a trap, as Sheridan also seemed to do."

  Yeah...that's one of many reasons why I picked that image/reference. It plays on a LOT of levels in the story.

• Wasn't Edgars' complex guarded to keep people from leaving without permission?
  If anybody could slip away, Garibaldi could.

• Ivanova quoted Sheridan as saying, "The person is expendable. The job is not." But in fact, it was Sinclair who said that, in "War Without End."
  But then, if I did everything perfectly, wouldn't it be boring?

Last update: May 27, 2024