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

Overview

Byron's telepaths present the Interstellar Alliance with an ultimatum. Londo and his bodyguard visit Centauri Prime. Robin Atkin Downes as Byron. Damian London as Regent. Ian Ogilvy as Lord Jano.

P5 Rating: 8.54

Production number: 509
Original air date: March 18, 1998
DVD release date: April 13, 2004

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by David Eagle

Plot Points

• Someone is secretly using Centauri war cruisers to stage random attacks on the cargo vessels of all the Alliance worlds. The Alliance is aware of the attacks, but doesn't yet know of the Centauri connection.
• The Centauri Regent continues to be controlled by his Keeper ("Epiphanies.") He has started drinking heavily, something he never did in the past, and, like Captain Jack ("Racing Mars") occasionally lets slip that something is wrong, even getting as far as asking a palace guard to kill him.
• The Keeper, in turn, appears to be under the control of as-yet-unidentified aliens lurking in the shadows on Centauri Prime. The aliens, according to the Regent, believe they have a lot in common with Londo, and in fact have already thwarted one attempt to assassinate Londo. They appear to be telekinetic (though whether by psi or technological means is unclear.)
• Byron has attempted to blackmail the Alliance into giving his people a homeworld by using his people to scan the minds of all the ambassadors, allegedly gathering a stockpile of sensitive information. His threat to make all the information public has backfired and erupted into violence at least once. Now the Alliance, including Sheridan, is clamoring for Byron's arrest, and most of his people (including Lyta) have sealed themselves into a small section of Brown Sector in an attempt to hold out as long as they can and give cooler heads time to prevail. A militant faction of telepaths has left the group and promises to take a more active approach, sabotaging station operations if necessary until the Alliance capitulates.

Unanswered Questions

• Is the Regent dead?
• Who were the aliens? (See Analysis)

Analysis

• The aliens were almost certainly allies of the Shadows. They're also almost certainly behind the attacks on Alliance ships, which bear some resemblance to the Shadows' tactics: random strikes of no seeming military value, designed apparently to demoralize the Alliance and cause conflicts within its ranks. They also appear to have the ability to turn invisible, a signature Shadow technological trick.

  Are the aliens related to the Drakh, or are they a totally different Shadow ally? If the latter, how many ally races did the Shadows have?

• Are the aliens telepathic as well as telekinetic? Ironheart implied that only telepaths can be telekinetic ("Mind War.") But of course that might only apply to Vorlon-induced telepathy. As Byron told his people, on some worlds telepaths evolved naturally, and those worlds might have evolved telekinesis. It's also possible that the aliens stopped the knife from hitting Londo via some technological means, rather than via psi power.

• Lord Vole might have also been behind the previous attempt on Londo's life ("Strange Relations.")

• The militant faction of telepaths is much more likely than Byron's faction to hold Garibaldi hostage ("The Deconstruction of Falling Stars.") They aren't opposed to the use of violence to get what they want, and they're loose on the station; Byron's people will, by his own admission, eventually be reached and arrested unless the Alliance decides otherwise in the meantime.

• Sheridan still sits behind the "Earth Alliance" placard at Council meetings. Is he the Earth Alliance representative? If not, who is, and why wasn't that person present at the council? Given that Sheridan is still held in contempt by some people back on Earth, it seems like an unacceptable conflict of interest for him to represent both Earth and the Alliance as a whole.

Notes

• The title is probably a reference to a line by Gerard Erasmus: "In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." The one-eyed Keeper on the Regent seems the most likely king in this case -- certainly it appears to be in control. G'Kar is another possibility, of course.
• Continuity glitch: Byron and Lyta spoke as if their first lovemaking ("Secrets of the Soul") had occurred the night before. But that would mean Rebo and Zooty's arrival, and the Day of the Dead, took no time at all. The discrepancy, of course, is simply due to "The Day of the Dead" being moved from its original intended air date.

jms speaks

• Revealing that the Centauri were behind the attacks spoiled the surprise.
  Y'know, maybe you should wait to see how this pans out before you say it's a problem. I *wanted* the audience to know the Centauri are behind this, for reasons that will become clearer in the episodes that follow.

  Again, with this show, it ain't the who or the how, it's the *why*.

Last update: May 27, 2024