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

Overview

Lochley and Garibaldi discover they have some shared history. A confrontation with Lyta leads to a startling revelation. Denise Gentile as Lise.

P5 Rating: 8.58

Production number: 520
Original air date: November 4, 1998 (US)
DVD release date: April 13, 2004

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Janet Greek

Plot Points

• Sheridan has placed Garibaldi on suspension until he takes care of his drinking problem. Sheridan suspected Garibaldi had started drinking again, but hoped he was wrong.
• The Narn government is desperate to get G'Kar back. According to Franklin, half of Kha'ri want him to return to become leader, while the other half want him to return to give them his blessing to lead on his behalf. They have threatened to boycott Babylon 5 unless he returns home. G'Kar, though, has no desire to return; he's certain he'd become the focus of a cult of personality that would drown out the message he's trying to spread.
• There have been a dozen attacks on Psi-Corps facilities in the past month. In every case, the attackers left behind a message: "Remember Byron." Earth officials have traced the money trail back to Babylon 5, and more precisely to Lyta.
• Lochley's father was an alcoholic, and she became the same thing; she ran away from home and became a drug addict until someone close to her died ("Day of the Dead"). Now she, like Garibaldi before his relapse, never touches alcohol.
• Lyta's powers have been growing dramatically; now she's capable of controlling a large roomful of people. Sheridan, however, is immune to her influence, since he has also been touched by the Vorlons.
• Delenn is pregnant.
• Lochley, concerned about Garibaldi's condition, has called Lise to Babylon 5 on his behalf. She has convinced Garibaldi to give up his post on Babylon 5 and return home to Mars with her to help run Edgars Industries as her husband.
• Lyta has been arrested, but Garibaldi plans to get a senator who owes favors to Edgars Industries to intercede on her behalf. That's part of a larger deal between the two of them. Lyta knows she isn't qualified to hide the funds she's getting from the Narn ("Darkness Ascending") so Garibaldi will do it for her under cover of Edgars Industries. He'll maintain two funds: a token public fund to help telepaths in need, and the real fund, which he'll use to hurt the Corps and help Lyta assemble a force she can use against them. After two years, if Lyta is satisfied with his progress, she will remove his inhibition against harming Bester ("Phoenix Rising").
• Lyta has come to believe that her telepathic enhancements are a form of doomsday weapon built by the Vorlons, something they'd use when they'd run out of other weapons against the Shadows.
• Since neither of them can remain on the station without causing trouble, and neither of them can go home without attracting huge amounts of unwanted attention, G'Kar has offered to take Lyta along as a traveling companion as he visits alien worlds.

Unanswered Questions

• How much of Lochley's history does Sheridan know, given that she was recovered when he married her?
• Is Delenn's baby the son she referred to in the cell on Centauri Prime ("War Without End")?
• How did Garibaldi find out about the deal between Lyta and G'Kar? Has he been tracing the same money flows the Earthgov investigators have?
• Where will G'Kar and Lyta go? Could she return to the Vorlon homeworld with him?
• Who will replace G'Kar on the Alliance advisory board?

Analysis

• If Sheridan really did suspect that Garibaldi had started drinking again, why did he entrust him with delicate intelligence duties such as monitoring the Rangers' messages during the Centauri blockade? Granted, Sheridan didn't want to believe Garibaldi had relapsed, but given that he knew one slipup on the Alliance's part might lead to a shooting war, why did he risk the lives of billions of people?

• Is Sheridan immune to telepathic influence in general? For example, can he be scanned? If not, that might explain why Clark's people tried to brainwash him with drugs and interrogators ("Intersections in Real Time") without employing any telepaths (visibly, at least) to either help the procedure along or sense how well it was working.

  One question is how much of Sheridan's seeming immunity is due to his contact with Kosh as opposed to his contact with Lorien. He's carrying part of Lorien now, the part Lorien gave up to keep him alive after the battle with Kosh ("Falling Toward Apotheosis"). It's likely that Lorien is resistant or immune to Vorlon telepathic influence.

  If Sheridan really is immune to telepathic scans for whatever reason, it'd explain his seemingly odd behavior in "Falling Toward Apotheosis," in which he kept his plan secret from Garibaldi and others for fear Kosh would read it from them, but was apparently unconcerned that he himself would be scanned.

• Sheridan can justifiably be pretty confident that Delenn can carry a child to term; she mentioned a son during his flashforward in "War Without End." But of course, he has no way of knowing whether she was referring to the baby she's carrying now, or whether that future is set in stone.

• Lochley commented to Garibaldi that he couldn't hurt the people who hurt him, people like Bester. How does she know Garibaldi can't hurt Bester? Is she aware of the neural block, or is she simply assuming that Bester is too well-protected or distant for Garibaldi to have any hope of striking at him?

• Parallels between Garibaldi's situation and Franklin's stim abuse: Both were in denial about the effect it was having on their job performance. Both wanted to control or fix everything, but couldn't and turned to drugs as that became apparent. Both took leaves from their jobs to deal with their problems. Franklin had to "meet himself," which he did, while Sheridan said Garibaldi's fight was with himself. Both turned to women to seek help: Cailyn the singer in Franklin's case ("Walkabout") and Lise in Garibaldi's.

• Garibaldi's neural block doesn't prevent him from trying to remove it. Perhaps this is just a sign of Bester's overconfidence; he might have assumed that nobody would be capable of removing it, so it wouldn't matter if Garibaldi tried. Why he wouldn't have realized Lyta might be capable isn't clear, since he was familiar enough with her enhanced abilities to want her body for research after her death ("Moments of Transition").

  He didn't learn about her enhanced abilities until after Garibaldi's kidnapping, though, and it's possible that planting an additional mental block would have required more extensive contact than he had with Garibaldi after Garibaldi's return.

• Garibaldi's initial offer required that Lyta leave Babylon 5. Why? Obviously Lochley and the rest of the crew don't want her around, and it may be that Garibaldi was simply looking out for the station's interests.

• Will Lyta's removal of Garibaldi's inhibition help spark the Telepath War? She implied that she'd wait two years to make use of whatever forces Garibaldi assembled for her. With the two of them going after the Corps full force at that point, a full-fledged war could well be the result.

• Lyta told Garibaldi she couldn't undo an addiction. Does that mean, for example, that a person who undergoes death of personality ("The Quality of Mercy") would retain whatever addictions existed under the original personality? Or did she really mean she couldn't undo an addiction without seriously altering other aspects of someone's personality?

• By sponsoring acts of violence, Lyta has arguably betrayed Byron's philosophy in the name of carrying out his work. How does she reconcile the situation in her mind?

• How powerful can Lyta become? Will she transform into a being similar to Ironheart ("Mind War") if her abilities extend far enough? She's arguably already more powerful than a Vorlon; she's able to control a large group of people and still carry on a conversation, while the second Kosh did nothing of the sort while he was being killed ("Falling Toward Apotheosis"). Of course, Kosh was being attacked, which might have been enough of a distraction to prevent him from taking control of his assailants.

• Garibaldi has been exposed to Lyta's enchanced powers in the past: his dream in "Darkness Ascending," in which she told him she'd decided to stop hiding what the Vorlons did to her.

• Lyta said that in a war, you make one or two big weapons. Did the Vorlons make more than one, or is Lyta the only one? If there's another, what or who is it?

• Lyta's description of herself as one of the Vorlons' big weapons echoes Franklin's comments about weapons remaining after the end of a war ("The Fall of Centauri Prime").

• G'Kar and Lyta are in the same position Londo was in "The Fall of Centauri Prime" -- all the power they could ever want, and no choices.

• G'Kar's idea is similar to the Minbari tradition of "going to the sea" ("A Voice in the Wilderness"): travelling among the stars in the hopes of finding one's calling. The difference, of course, is that both G'Kar and Lyta believe they already know what their callings are, but G'Kar thinks he can only achieve his goal by leaving home behind.

• G'Kar has been touched by Vorlons too, in the form of his brief but highly influential contact with Kosh in "Dust to Dust." Did that contact confer any resistance to Lyta's abilities? Probably not anything close to Sheridan's, but he may well be a better choice to accompany her off the station than he realizes.

Notes

• G'Kar mentioned turning down leadership of the Narn. That was in "The Long Night," after Londo withdrew Centauri forces from the Narn homeworld.

• The title may be a reference to Shakespeare's "King Lear," act 4, scene 7:

  You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave:
  Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound
  Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
  Do scald like molten lead.

  The quote is from King Lear as he lies sick on his bed, his response to attempts to save his life. That might apply to Garibaldi's situation in this episode.

  Another possible reference is to Greek mythology (and in fact, the Shakespeare quote might itself be a reference to the myth.) Ixion, son of the god Ares, tried to seduce Zeus's wife Hera. As punishment, Zeus bound Ixion on a fiery wheel, which rolled unceasingly through the air.

  Finally, in Tolkein's "The Lord of the Rings" (specifically "The Return of the King") the One Ring is likened to a wheel of fire. If that's the source of the title, the reference might be to Lyta's powers.

jms speaks

• The wheel of fire visually has spokes proceeding out from a central flame; the center burns outward. And several of the fires smoldering lately have done that; with Byron it was a literal flame that has now gone out along the spokes and had substantial repercussions, with more to come years down the road.

  It's also a Shakespeare quote, "I am bound upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears do scald like molten lead." Which tends to describe Londo's situation as well. (King Lear)

• Doesn't Sheridan remember what he saw and heard during his flashforward in "War Without End?"
  Y'know, this discussion kinda baffles me to some extent.

  For starters, Sheridan was only in the future briefly; he was being beaten and was confused and not sure how much of it was real; he doesn't know if his going to Z'ha'dum *changed* any of that future...the events he did see were 20 years down the road, and there's no way for him to know (as we know, the audience) what connects to what...he sees only destruction, and that could have happened two weeks before (there's no rule that says a capital city can be bombed only once)...no way to know if the keeper may have been implanted days or months before. To try and impose a quick understanding of events 20 years down the road on things happening right now, without knowing the context, would be madness...you don't need a keeper to start a war, or half our own leaders here would have had keepers on them.

  As for Delenn...yes, he heard her talk about their son, but at the same time, again, that's 20 years down the road. Their son could be any age, so the news that she's pregnant will still be a shock whenever it comes; you may know that you're planning to have kids, that the doctor says its possible, but when you actually hear the news, it's a stunner every time.

  His question is a natural one...he doesn't know if the kid in the future had to be taken out of utero to be sustained until it came full term, doesn't know if extreme measures had to be taken...his question is a sensible and justifiable one.

  People are assuming that what *they* know as the audience, Sheridan knows, which he does not...and assuming that he knows everything that is to come, or what it means, or how it happens, or in what context, which he does not.

  His memory is not faulty.

Last update: May 27, 2024