Chip here. I’m genuinely not sure what kind of banter to provide in this space. After all, people new to the show see these descriptions too. So if I talk about how this is the [REDACTED] episode in which we see [REDACTED] [REDACTED] I run the risk of spoiling it for everyone. And we can’t even talk about the revelation that [REDACTED] is a [REDACTED] [REDACTED].
Well, I guess that’s what the comment thread is for!
I’m very excited to hear how Steven took this one, after all the talk about “where’s the telepath”.
Also, our intrepid hosts weren’t all watching as this one aired, so for those who want the experience of watching it when it aired – the Season 2 episodes of B5 from here on aired in the UK first (great for those of us who live here). But as well as that a little Easter egg in the B5 comic that told the story of Garibaldi and Sinclair on Mars was a huge spoiler. You saw a Shadow powered PsiCorp centre, with one T. Winters having something done to her brain… It was meant to come just after the episode. Instead jms ended up having warn folk to be careful.
OK, we know that this happened at this point because Andrea Thompson wanted to leave the show, feeling that her character wasn’t being given much to do.
She seems to come in for a lot of criticism for that – but, given that she moved quickly to NYPD Blue, a show that was at the time one of the most prestigious things on American tv, I don’t know that her belief that she could be doing more than her sporadic appearances on B5 allowed her to do was particularly strange.
But it means that we never saw the “restoration of Talia’s personality” storyline that JMS had planted in S1. One thing that’s unfortunate about that, at least for me, is that we don’t see more of the Control Talia. Thompson is actually really, really compelling in her one scene as that character, and I’d love to have had a few episodes with that Talia as the antagonist. (I hate to say it, but Thompson is for me a good bit more effective in that one scene than in all her appearances as the “real” Talia.)
Restoration of Talia’s personality? Goodness, I never heard about that, and it would make perfect sense. Kosh is a dark horse!
Inclined to agree with you on Thompson’s superior portrayal of ‘Invisible Sister’. I found Talia (as played), much too sterile, dignified in a royal bred way; I couldn’t use any of my senses to imagine Talia capable of taking a dump, and isn’t that the B5 character test?
I’m wracking my brains to recall if that episode where Kosh records Talia’s brain (yes, I could look the name up, but I prefer my title, The Hour Of Scampering) occurred to me after seeing this ep. If it did I can’t remember. But let’s say, probably. But the thing is, at no point when the show went on did I ever really register that that payoff never came. By the time of Bester’s throwaway (or was it?) line about dissection, I think that ship had sailed. We just never really missed the character, presumably because she’d just not really been there at all during s2.
I wonder whether, should Jon Snow NOT come back from the dead in the upcoming season, whether future GoT podcasting discussions will be as blase about all those unresolved plot questions?
Also, where do Andrea Thompson’s personal life events relevant to the show – her marriage to, child with and divorce from Jerry Doyle – fit within the show’s production timeline?
I think that part of why one doesn’t miss a follow-up to the recording of Talia’s personality in S1 is that it’s not at all obvious that such recording is what’s going on. If it weren’t for extratextual knowledge, I at least would never have known what the plan was. It just seems like typical Kosh weirdness. And, I suppose, in the actual version of B5 that we got, that’s all it is.
The other reason is that Patricia Tallman makes Lyta a strong presence. Following S3 with the Downbelow podcast recently has made me aware of how little Lyta is actually in the show in S3 – in my memory, she always seems like she was a more important character, more early on, than she actually was. It helps, perhaps, that she represents the return of a character from The Gathering.
The recording seemed clear, at least by the end of THoS. Perhaps, I grant you, have retconned this in my own mind, after what we get for resolution ie. that Kosh has the Corps by the short and curlies.
“Andrea Thompson and Jerry Doyle (Garibaldi) met filming Season 1 and got married, but they were in divorce proceedings by the end of Season 2. It was apparently an amicable break-up but even still it had to make things difficult.” – Source: Reddit
Sorry to any Talia fans out there but I am glad she’s now gone and we can move on to Lyta who in my book is worth ten Talias
Gotta agree with you there. Bring on Pat Tallman!
L = T(10)
I agree with our hosts, Pat Tallman owns this role from the open.
The latent telepath reveal for Ivanova really shows how deeply the show lays plans when you go back and look. In many shows, a sudden revelation like this could be coming out of nowhere as the creators suddenly tack something on to shake things up.
It’s interesting how the show makes a course correction with the Talia/Lyta situation. Lyta comes back to replace her own replacement. And while I wasn’t sad to see Talia go, I do wish we could have gotten some kind of resolution to her story.
Talia’s story does have a resolution in a way. She is exposed, leaves the station and ultimately Bester’s remark about dissection explains her ultimate fate. That restoration plot that went nowhere (I think it was in the episode Deathwalker, a title which is not only Jha’Dur’s nickname but could also reference Talia’s alternate personality, even we don’t know that at the time) is one of a number of seeds that were planted in the series that were never played out.
I wonder what would have happened if Tailia had stayed or been restored at some point. She would have played the part that Lyta come back to perform. Lyta going off to the Vorlon homeworld and returning to B5 explains how she would become Kosh’s aide. I wonder how this might have happened if Talia had the part. Again, would we go back to Kosh’s interest in her in Deathwalker? Ultimately too, it would have been Talia who had the romantic storyline with Byron. Does that sound right? She had a love interest already named Jason Ironheart, even though he passed beyond the rim.
Would Talia have been a better choice to play the telepath role than Lyta?
I think that Talia the *character’s* story could definitely have been something special. Assuming that it followed the general lines of Lyta’s, it’s the story of a convinced Psi Corps believer who over time (and with the intervening stint of being a completely different person) becomes the rebel who tears down the whole edifice. With Lyta, we get only the briefest glimpse of her as other than a renegade, and it’s in The Gathering, in which it’s not relevant whether she’s loyal to the Corps or not.
But Patricia Tallman the actor is another matter entirely- she’s a fabulous (re)addition to the cast.
“after the scan (of kosh), she was never quite right anymore” – did Lyta, maybe unknown to her, come face to face with her maker?
I always took Bester’s comment to be a lie. Ivanova says right after that Bester is trying to push Garabaldi to ride the strong emotions into his head.
Had they simply killed and studied Talia it would have been a huge waste. You have a custom built personality 100% loyal to the Corp with powers beyond the P5 talent she was born with. Of course they would study her, but they’d be stupid to kill her. Heck, they’d probably try to develop her telekinesis into the perfect assassin idea JMS is in love with.
I don’t think it is a lie at all. There is no doubt in my mind that psi corp is not only aware of Talia’s upgraded ability, but would consider that a priority over the Control personality given thier arranged marriage/breeding program.
And the best way to study that would be to get into her actual brain and find out what kind of neurological changes were made.
The other thing that The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father (with the usual problematic tv depiction of people with “multiple personalities”) turns on the conceit that psi ability is tied to the personality, and if a person has different personalities, they can have different P ratings. So Control may not even have access to Talia’s enhanced abilities.
Well, Talia and Byron would have made a much better match. Lyta would have been better off with someone like me. Ah, but I get it, she’d just got out of bad relationships with Kosh II and the Interstellar Alliance, poor girl.
If we’re talking about a show with both telepaths, I guesstimate JMS would have reprised the Kosh Vs Control story, and Jason Ironheart, with the revelation that he knew more than he was telling about the power-up.
I have a soft spot for Zack/Lyta.
I so agree. I loved the beginning chemistry they had and the scene in Thirdspace, then it’s just kinda dropped until he watches her leave at the end. They’re relationship is probably in my top 5 for regretful dropped plots.
Interesting how Deathwalker/The Hour of Scampering comes a few after Mind War, Kosh, perhaps, re-aligning the Super-Ironheart beyond Psi-Corps control? We don’t get much use of Super-Ironheart after that, one appearance is it?
I haven’t gotten into Sense8, so I would be quite interested in a Very Special Episode in which y’all tell me why I should / should not watch it.
I’ll be listening to the podcast in flight between Gatwick and Belfast. Meantime, I remixed another of those terribly daft trailers, if you like.
Btw, as t’was asked in the cast, Lyta does feature in the teaser, in PrOphEtic dOOm immInEnt voice-over, then in a visual, hunted in the corridoors.
Also, I made this.
Just listened to the podcast, and there was some discussion over whether Kosh had implanted the desire to visit Vorlon space into Lyta. I’m pretty sure that in the Psi Corp trilogy of novels Lyta’s great-something grandmother is one of the original telepaths created by the Vorlons, and they’re keeping an eye on the female Alexanders.
(IMHO the Psi Corp Trilogy, Dark Genesis, Deadly Relations, and Final Reckoning by J Keyes are the best of all the B5 novels.)
I was thinking that Ivanova being on the “list” of potential traitors as a nod to the original plot where Lt. Cmdr. Laurel Takashima was supposed to be the traitor instead of Garibaldi’s aide.
Count me as another of those who watched from the start and always felt that Lyta should’ve been The Show’s Telepath all along and never entirely warmed to Talia. (This really was Talia’s strongest episode, which is ironic as heck.)
Still, I felt terrible for Ivanova. She can’t really catch a break, can she?
The heavy hand of the author is, yes, a bit much here. But I think he didn’t have much choice since the stuff he originally planned to pay off over time all had to get used up in one episode, so… meh. He couldn’t really win either way, I suppose.
I watched the original airing of the whole series and am now rewatching the series on dvd. The story of Talia’s betrayal I always found interesting (especially for the Ivanova angle) but always thought maybe one more episode dealing with it would have put the story to rest better. What occurred to me while watching it this time was the ‘Ironheart effect’…why wasn’t the enhanced Talia able to block Lyta’s scan?…or conversely thinking back to the Ironheart episode…JI didn’t detect the hidden personality in Talia…that was because JMS didn’t know at that point Thompson would later want out from this gig?
What’s sad with the eventual outcome is that the enhanced capabilities of Talia never got to be explored by JMS as a tool to the greater good of the show and story arc.