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

Overview

Franklin discovers one race's centuries-old secret. Byron and Lyta reach an understanding. Robin Atkin Downes as Byron. Fiona Dwyer as Kirrin. Jana Robbins as Ambassador Tal.

P5 Rating: 7.62

Production number: 508
Original air date: March 4, 1998
DVD release date: April 13, 2004

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Tony Dow

Plot Points

• The Hyach are a gerontocracy, with the oldest members of society ruling the younger.
• The Hyach were one of two related races on their world. The other race, the Hyach-doh, was systematically slaughtered by the Hyach hundreds of years ago. Unfortunately, the Hyach are now slowly dying out because they had evolved to require interbreeding with the Hyach-doh.
• Some of the League worlds, such as the Drazi, have had interstellar travel for hundreds of years.
• Byron has discovered the Vorlons' role in the creation of telepaths, and intends to use it to justify demanding reparations from the Alliance in the form of a homeworld for his people.

Unanswered Questions

• What does Byron intend to do to force the Alliance to give his people a world?

Analysis

• The Centauri also shared their world with another intelligent race, the Xon ("The Parliament of Dreams.") Were the Xon a related species as well? How common is that arrangement? Will the Centauri have problems similar to the Hyach's because of the extermination of the Xon?

• Byron said he didn't know who had taken revenge for the attack. That's odd, considering that he has previously said, in "The Paragon of Animals," that his people don't hide their thoughts from one another. Perhaps Lyta was the murderer; she's the one person who has been consistently shielding herself from him, and she certainly didn't seem to share his nonviolent philosophy.

• How widespread among the refugee telepaths was the desire to retaliate violently? Byron said not all of his people were in favor of the idea. Are the majority of the refugees dedicated to nonviolence? If not, would his presence have prevented the attacks? His strong sense of self-importance lead him to believe he could have stopped the murder, but that's not necessarily true -- it might have happened over his objections had he been there.

• Given the Psi Corps' intense interest in telekinetics ("Mind War") they're not likely to take kindly to the news that Byron is harboring at least one teek. And it appeared that Byron had given Peter some kind of telekinetic training (Peter said he'd been practicing just like Byron told him to) which suggests more than a passing familiarity with telekinesis on Byron's part.

• Lyta followed Byron into the arrivals area in much the same way she used to follow Kosh (especially the second Kosh, e.g. in "The Hour of the Wolf,") hanging back slightly but staying close. Has she simply replaced one master with another?

• The Vorlons wore encounter suits even on their own world, if Lyta's memory is to be taken literally. That may not be too surprising, though, if they didn't allow the people in the tubes to see their true forms; Kosh admitted in "Matters of Honor" that being seen by lots of people was a strain on him. Donning encounter suits might have been an effort-saving move by the Vorlons reflected in Lyta's tube.

• The races in the tubes next to Lyta appeared to be Hyach (or possibly Markab,) Centauri, and Llort. Why did the Vorlons have babies of those races, if they had already planted telepath genes among those races long ago? Were they performing other experiments or making other modifications?

  It's also possible her memory was less literal than that; maybe it was more a more representational image conveyed to her by the Vorlons, Lyta's presence representing the Vorlons' tampering with humans and the babies similarly representing that their races had been altered. If so, the Vorlons have altered quite a lot of races.

• If the Vorlons visited the Hyach homeworld, perhaps they took Hyach-doh specimens. If so, the salvation of the Hyach race may hinge on venturing into Vorlon space and finding the lab Lyta remembers.

• Where can Byron's people go? There are at least two deserted homeworlds available. In "Confessions and Lamentations" the Markab race died out; Sheridan might consider it within the rights of the Interstellar Alliance to grant that world to Byron's people. It presumably still has modern infrastructure in place; Sheridan blew up its jumpgate in "Matters of Honor," soon enough after the plague that there wouldn't have been time for looters to clean the planet out very thoroughly, so it'd be a good deal from Byron's point of view. Populating the planet with telepaths might dissuade any additional raids.

  Another possibility is the Vorlon homeworld. In some ways Byron's people are the perfect ones to inhabit it; if Byron is to demand reparation for the Vorlons' manipulation of his people, offering up their homeworld does have a certain symmetry. In addition, it'd be the best possible place for his people to explore exactly what was done to them and how. That's assuming, of course, that anyone knows where it is, and that it hasn't been booby-trapped like Z'ha'dum was ("Epiphanies.")

  One snag might prevent Sheridan from acting to grant Byron's people any world at all: Lochley's promise to Bester to not allow the telepaths to leave Babylon 5 for sixty days ("Strange Relations.") If he tried to allow them to leave the station, he could justifiably be accused of interfering with Earth's internal laws, the very reason he wasn't able to prevent Bester from coming aboard to begin with.

Notes

• Pak'ma'ra can't eat fish.
• When Byron is released from the brig, he talks to Zack for a few minutes, his hands bound. Then he walks out of the room with the restraints still tied around his wrists. The same thing happened after he talked to Lochley in "Strange Relations." Is that symbolic, or simply a sign that restraints are removed in some outer area rather than in the brig?

jms speaks

• Any special procedures for the scene between Lyta and Byron?
  I talked to both actors involved, made sure they were okay with it, and then scripted it out in very detailed form, and shot with a closed set, just necessary crew, nobody else.

  (Funny item: in the script, I'm right in the middle of describing the sex scene, and in the narrative description, I write, without even thinking about it, "I wonder which is more embarrassing, reading this or writing it?" It goes out that way.)

• Wasn't that considered a personal thing by Byron and Lyta? The other telepaths seemed to be sharing the experience.
  I had the group there to further reinforce their tightness, and that it's a different way of living...as for Pat, no, no body double was used.

• Who was broadcasting Lyta's memories to the other teeps? Lyta or Byron?
  It was everything being stimulated, and coming to the surface, mainly from her, but echoing off him.

• Yes, Neil's episode is up next...and as for the Xon, the difference is that the Centauri main-line clashed with the Xon when both were primitive and fighting for food, resources, that sort of thing, similar to our Neanderthal - Cro Magnon struggle, whereas the Hyach did it when they were more advanced, and it wasn't a struggle, more of a program of extermination.

• BTW, the pak'ma'ra used a translator before in "Legacies."

Last update: May 27, 2024