This episode has epic ’90s computer matte compositing of a balcony, set to a particularly stirring Christopher Franke score!
Oh, and Garibaldi does the secret agent thing, hamstrung by his return to the bottle; G’Kar becomes the Narn Pope; Franklin gets a job offer (name-checking a character not mentioned in 99 episodes), and Londo inadvertently fingers his own government. Just another ordinary day in the life of Babylon 5–in our 100th episode!
Here’s the big thing we commented on as we recorded the podcast: this is the first time in ages, it feels like, that we’ve had the whole core cast involved in the story. What’d you think? No spoilers!
So we can’t spoil anything about Byron’s future, because, well. But what does this coda to the telepath crisis imply for the rest of the season, and is it paid off?
It’s the end of the Byron arc, in dramatically tragic fashion–which means it is of course time for our own harbinger of doom, Jason Snell, to return to delight in misfortune.
The two threads–the telepath colony crisis and the secret Centauri attacks on ISA ships–get pulled tighter together, with an unexpected rescue of Na’Toth (the real one!) and an entirely expected return of Bester. We’d call it the calm before the storm, but it’s not very calm….
What did you think of the predicament Byron’s telepaths have gotten themselves into? And the sticky galacto-political situation? Let’s talk about this episode, but not the next one, here.
Damian London portrays a very different Regent from the sweet old man we used to know as Londo begins to suspect very dark things are afoot in his supposedly liberated world. It’s an episode full of delightful double acts (Londo/G’Kar), palace intrigue, clumsy politics (hello, Byron) and dark omens. But is there a STORY here? And if not, is that all right?
