Babylon 5 Episode 8 Season 2
A Race Through Dark Places is, as the title suggests, a fairly dark episode in many ways. It’s a definite change of pace from the lightness and humour of Soul Mates. It is however not without it’s lighter moments.
Happily for me, it was a telepath heavy episode and that always means plenty of Talia. She didn’t appear much early in the season, but they’re making up for that now with the blonde telepath being a large part of the show’s focus. Things that hadn’t been referenced since Ironheart came back to the fore as well.
I’ve always been interested in the idea of the telepaths. Up until recently I think the concept has been criminally underutilised. We haven’t seen Boris Bade…sorry Bester, since his initial appearance in Ironheart, but he has been mentioned. When he initially appeared in Ironheart I thought he was relatively low level, sort of on a par with Sheridan within the Psi-Corps, but not especially powerful. It’s become obvious that he wields a lot more influence than that, and has been hinted at that he has a direct line to the President.
He’s first seen in A Race Through Dark Places torturing another telepath on Mars for information regarding a system they call the underground railroad that is spiriting telepaths away from Psi-Corps. The telepath resists Bester right up until he dies, only allowing Bester to get the information he wants at the moment of death. What Bester sees is that the underground railroad operates from Babylon 5. I did wonder then if this was accurate as torture is not a particularly effective way of getting information as the subject will give you whatever they think you want to stop the abuse.
The mention of the underground railroad and later stories from the telepaths in hiding on Babylon 5 made me think of Psi-Corps as a sort of futuristic slave organisation. Because they take the telepaths in fairly young and train them they believe they own them. The common phrase is that Psi-Corps is both mother and father to them. Garibaldi later speaks about Psi-Corps making mention of their black uniforms and tactics likening them to the Nazis, although he doesn’t mention them by name it’s pretty obvious what comparison he’s making. It made think of the telepathic soldiers in the movie version of Starship Troopers, they were very SS like. I also picked up on the difference between the uniform Talia generally wears and what Bester wears. Bester dresses all in black, which is why I keep thinking of him as Boris Badenoff from the Rocky and Bullwinkle show. Talia wears a predominantly yellow uniform with a black stripe. There’s a conscious decision there by the show to portray one character as all bad and the other as slightly more ambiguous, but mostly good.
Talia is kidnapped by the underground telepaths (don’t you hurt my Talia!) and taken their leader, who I presumed was the brains behind the operation. I got a shock when I found out the real organiser was Franklin! He’s not a telepath, but he heard about what was being done by Psi-Corps and threw his weight behind the organisation. He started smuggling people out of sight when he was running the free clinic below decks. He knew about Psi-Corps’ underhandedness on Earth, so I wonder if he arranged to be sent to Babylon 5 to run this scam. There are things we’re yet to find out about Babylon 5’s social conscience.
It’s obvious that they’re also playing up the relationship between Garibaldi and Talia, because he’s the one who is all for going in guns blazing to find her after she’s disappeared. Oh you foolish foolish people, can you not see that she and Ivanova were made for each other?
After hearing the stories of the telepaths Talia uses her own enhanced abilities to help them put one over on Bester, while making him think that she’s on his side. This was a very effective scene and it really did wrong foot me. I actually thought Talia had betrayed the telepaths. I didn’t know why, and it didn’t make sense for her to do so, but Psi-Corps has proved very effective at brain washing it’s people in the past. I was relieved to see that it was a fake out. There’s also indication that what Ironheart gave Talia makes her an enhanced commodity, but the nature of the gift shields it presence from even someone like Bester. I also just worked out that Bester is named for the science fiction writer Alfred Bester.
There are a couple of sub plots. One is a semi humourous one about EarthGov trying to charge the likes of Sheridan and Ivanova extra for their more spacious living quarters. Sheridan uses some creative accounting to get around it, thus giving EarthGov what they want, while at the same time not backing down on his principal of not giving in to a bean counting bureaucracy. The duo do spend a couple of uncomfortable nights sleeping in Sheridan’s office though. I’ve also come to the conclusion that I definitely like drunk Susan Ivanova even more than I do sober Susan Ivanova.
The other sub plot concerns Delenn. Seeing as she now looks human, she decides to try and be more human. To that end she asks Sheridan out on a dinner date, so that she can talk about things that are not work, as she believes humans do this. With her hairstyle, a section is tucked under the bone that runs around the back of her head, so I kept asking myself how she washes and combs it. I hope they change it. it’s most distracting when I keep thinking of things like this. I found it a little odd that she asked Sheridan on this. Sheridan’s a pretty work focussed guy and doesn’t relax much ever. A better person would have been Garibaldi, now this is partly because I ship Garibaldi and Delenn a bit, but it’s also because as Garibaldi showed in his interaction with Lennier in Eyes, he’s a more human and relaxed kind of person who Delenn could learn more about humanity form, plus they also established way back in the pilot that Garibaldi has hung out with Delenn on a social level.
The episode ended with a moment that I like to believe was made just for me. Because of Ivanova’s background; her mother was a telepath, and it had tragic consequences, there’s always been a connection between her and Talia. After the events of the episode, especially hearing the stories of the telepaths, Talia turns up at Ivanova’s apartment with two glasses and a bottle of wine! C’mon who are they kidding? If she wanted to have a heart to heart with Ivanova about their connection via her mother’s talent they would have done it over a cup of coffee, and possibly in public. A bottle of wine in her apartment. Woohoo! You can actually see the chemistry between Claudia Christian and Andrea Thompson whenever they appear together. I know that Ivania is probably never going to sail, Talia will hook up with Garibaldi at some stage, but I can’t believe the writers didn’t know what they were implying with Talia and Ivanova. It’s a nice moment anyway and will make Ivania head canon for me.