Babylon 5 Season 3, Episode 6. Written by
J. Michael Straczynski, directed by
David Eagle. Originally aired on
February 5, 1996.
Primary Plot: Bester visits the station to track down a
Dust dealer.
Secondary Plot: On the influence of
Dust,
G'Kar has a
revelation.
Commentary: Simply a great episode.
Walter Koenig shines every time he portrays
Alfred Bester, and this ep is no exception. He gets to say one of my absolute favorite lines from the series here:
Garibaldi:
And if I had a baseball bat, we could hang you from the ceiling and play pinata.
Bester:
A pinata, huh? So, you think of me a something bright and cheerful, full of toys and candy for young children. Thank you! That makes me feel much better about our relationship.
And then we've got
G'Kar hitting absolute
ROCK BOTTOM, buying some illicit
Dust, stumbling to
Londo Mollari's quarters, assaulting Londo and
Vir, and then having a little excursion inside Mollari's mind to find out the truth about Londo's role in everything that's been happening lately. And, just as
Kosh took advantage of
Sheridan's altered state of mind in
All Alone In the Night to deliver to him in a dream, Kosh does the same thing to
G'Kar here. The basic message, and a
tenet which
G'Kar carries with him for the remainder of the series:
Kosh (as G'Lan): We are fighting to save one another...and some of must be sacrificed if all are to be saved.
Something else I find
very interesting about the dream sequence is that when G'Kar asks "
Who are you?"
Kosh dodges the question! This is the
fundamental Vorlon question, mind you, the one that the Vorlons ask to just about EVERYONE ELSE during the course of the series, including torturing
Delenn with it just months previous to this (in
Comes the Inquisitor), and now Kosh can't answer it himself.
A full recount of
G'Kar's dream is available
here.
Also of note...
Dust, which has been mentioned as far back as
the series pilot, was in reality a failed experiment of the
Psi Corps. It was originally manufactured to try to turn
mundanes into
telepaths, but failed miserably. They do, however, continue to circulate it among humans to try and see if it'll work eventually.
Fun Fact: The
Minbari "Ceremonial Shirt of Welcoming" that
Vir wears in the beginning of the episode...the Minbari letters on the shirt, translated, spell out "
ALOHA".
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Babylon 5 Episode Guide.