1x09 - Deathwalker

[janetcarter]

(Here’s the link to the previous rewatch session’s Deathwalker recap if you'd like to check it out! Also, sorry for any formatting issues here - I'll fix it all up later.)

This week on Babylon 5, the infamous war criminal Deathwalker arrives on the station to trade her immortality serum, raising some fun moral questions in the process. Additionally, Kosh enlists Talia to help in some odd negotiations with someone who has a VCR for a brain. 

One of the first things we see is Na’Toth try to murder someone named Deathwalker with her fists alone. I LOVE how badass Na’Toth is and the overall blood oath (Chon’kar) concept! It’s her duty to get vengeance for the murder of an ancestor, and she absolutely holds to that - even though it seemed unlikely for that person to be Deathwalker herself.

We learn that Deathwalker survived so long due to her anti-agapic, because of course during all her time causing death and destruction she’d make a serum to prolong her own life. I’d love to see her other experiments tbh. The details we did get seemed pretty brutal. For example, Deathwalker had implanted a device in Na’Toth’s grandfather’s brain so when he did escape her clutches, it slowly killed his mind and body. No wonder the League was so pissed off about her presence - and yet the major races unsurprisingly voted against them in their own self interest. Narns were trying to make a deal for her anti-agapic, the Centauri supposedly used Dilgar assassins in the past (and were okay with her crimes since they hadn't been against their race), and of course the Minbari had been harboring Jha’dur for years.

Tbh, it only makes me wonder what she specifically contributed to the Wind Swords during her time with them, and what advantages it gave them during the Earth-Minbari War. According to Lennier, the Grey Council only found out about the Wind Swords’ alliance with her when the war began, but they seem to have still utilized her weapons. It’s always nice to get some of that early on sketchiness when it comes to the Minbari. Like G’kar said in Mind War, no one on B5 is exactly as they appear. 

Onto the B-plot, we got some creepy little meetings between Kosh, Talia, and a mysterious man named Abbut. We also learned about those funky little robo dudes, Vicars! It makes me wonder what similar beings exist in the B5 world. This particular one was very entertaining, but like… I feel very bad for Talia in this whole mess. Through that little hell, Kosh managed to record her personality in a data crystal. This was allegedly done so that, should Andrea Thompson ever come back, they could reinstall Talia's consciousness into her body after the Control issue. JMS loves his trapdoors! If only this one had been used. 

Additional Highlights:

1. The G’kar & Na’Toth interactions! He was so supportive of her mauling Deathwalker, and despite being very into the development of his race… he refused to make the deal of trading Na’Toth’s decapitated head for the anti-agapic. In his support he mentioned he also has had many Chon’kars. It would have been very interesting to get more details on these. 

2. We also learned a bit more about Talia’s past with the serial killer she scanned back on Mars. This helps foreshadow her reservations in scanning a different murderer in The Quality of Mercy. 

3. Kosh had a lot of great quotes! But to be honest, I choose to believe when he says things like “Listen to the music, not the song” he’s just trolling the younger races.

4. The League of Non-Aligned Worlds got so much attention <3 I adored getting to see their spaceships and the designs of people like the Abbai ambassador Kalika.

5. We got a pretty classic B5 ending where you have different characters pulling an intense topic in every possible direction, but something happens to render it all useless outside of the impact it had on the characters and audience. Deathwalker is gone, and so is her work. But the characters won’t forget how this all went down, and I certainly won’t either. 

Quotes:

1. “We will meet in Red 3 at the hour of scampering.” -Kosh

2. “Understanding is a three-edged sword.” -also Kosh 

3. “We will no longer be dictated to by the very powers who aided this woman’s atrocity.” -Ambassador Kalika 

4. “Your kind takes blind comfort in the belief that we are monsters, that you could never do what we did. The key ingredient in the anti-agapic cannot be synthesized. It must be taken from living beings. For one to live forever, another one must die. You will fall upon one another like wolves. It will make what we did pale by comparison. The billions who live will be a testimony. And the billions murdered to buy that immortality will be the continuance of my work. Not like us? You will become us. That's my monument, Commander.” -Jha’dur 

5. Sinclair: You think it’ll always be like this, Michael? Little powers at the mercy of bigger powers, politics before morality, expediency before justice? | Garibaldi: Seems to work for everybody… except you. Maybe that’s why I like you.

Fun facts! (These are sourced from the Deathwalker section of Babylon 5: Other Voices Vol. 2.)

1. Since Vicar gets his name from VCR, DiTillio joked that if this had been written during the takeover of DVDs, the character could’ve been called David. 

2. Gilbert Gottfried was supposed to play Abbut initially, but he had a last minute conflict and couldn’t come. DiTillio said the replacement did an okay job, but kind of attributed the inability to live up to the initial vision to why Vicars never came back. 

3. The fight between Na’Toth and Jha’dur was supposed to be a LOT longer and more brutal, but JMS had it cut partly for time and partly because he didn’t like that much action. 

4. Sarah Douglas played Jha’dur! I recognize her from a Tok’ra character in SG-1, but she’s been in loads of stuff. DiTillio mentioned regretting giving her the eye contacts because so much of her acting comes from her eyes and they were so uncomfortable they impacted her performance. But I personally love the look <3

Lastly, I leave you with this beautiful meme I found on reddit:

What did you guys think of the episode? Did you have any favorite or least favorite parts? Do you think Deathwalker should have had a different fate? Were there any elements you wish had been explored more? Let me know your thoughts!