An episode that’s very much weaker than the sum of its parts. Bester is – as always – great*, though weakened by portraying a more conventional villain, rather than the more ambiguous character he’d become later. The Sigma 957 story is wonderful. But as a whole, the Ironheart plot never really seems to work. As people have mentioned above, it’s very hard to believe the Ironheart-Talia relationship, and without that… well, that’s Ironheart’s entire motivation for coming to the station. And Ironheart’s rather painful to watch; I wonder he was meant to come across as just barely holding on to his humanity – that his rather flat delivery was meant to be part of his transformation into something beyond human interaction. If so… it doesn’t quite work, he just looks like a bad actor.
* Look at Walter Koenig – after Star Trek, he became an actor!
Other notes:
- Sinclair’s first response when he realises Bester is communicating telepathically with him is one of almost… revulsion. I’ve always felt one of the better handled aspects of B5 is just how pervasive anti-telepath feelings are. Yes, Bester’s a villain – but Sinclair has no way of knowing that, and as far as we can tell, all he was trying to do was speed up the small talk…
- Going by Ironheart’s figures, there should still be hundreds of thousands of sane telekinetics… Would have been nice to have a line saying that, I don’t know, the more powerful a telekinetic, the less sane they are and that the ones that can function in society have almost negligible abilities…
- Babylon 5 has always struck me as having something of a scale problem with regards to the station. From what we see, it’s all narrow corridors and enclosed rooms; even major areas like the Zocalo are still closed rooms. Fresh food is rare and expensive, and generally has to be imported from Earth. But then we get the view from the monorail, and there’s apparently miles of green parkland around a huge open area… I realise there’s budget issues, but it always kind of bugs me. Even just having the ambassadorial quarters having windows and a view of the open area would have been nice.
- As with Sakai, while I like Talia, I feel her story works better for her replacement; ‘station telepath gains super-powers as a result of contact with the Vorlons, an established major power’ is a much more satisfying storyline than ‘station telepath gains super-powers as a result of contact with some guy we never see again.’
- Some real ‘tell, not show’ in Sinclair’s description of Ironheart as ‘feverish, paranoid’. I think it’d be a much stronger episode if it was a lot more ambiguous about whether Ironheart was in his right mind or not… and if it was ambiguous as to whether Ironheart survived his ship’s destruction – Cosmic Ironheart manages to beat out the Zarg for ‘Cheesiest looking character in a B5 episode…
- So, why didn’t the Psi-Corps continue with the experiments? Sure, maybe you end up with an uncontrollable infant god if you do this stuff to a P-10 – so try again with P-5s and lower! Calculated risk, right?
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* Look at Walter Koenig – after Star Trek, he became an actor!
Other notes:
- Sinclair’s first response when he realises Bester is communicating telepathically with him is one of almost… revulsion. I’ve always felt one of the better handled aspects of B5 is just how pervasive anti-telepath feelings are. Yes, Bester’s a villain – but Sinclair has no way of knowing that, and as far as we can tell, all he was trying to do was speed up the small talk…
- Going by Ironheart’s figures, there should still be hundreds of thousands of sane telekinetics… Would have been nice to have a line saying that, I don’t know, the more powerful a telekinetic, the less sane they are and that the ones that can function in society have almost negligible abilities…
- Babylon 5 has always struck me as having something of a scale problem with regards to the station. From what we see, it’s all narrow corridors and enclosed rooms; even major areas like the Zocalo are still closed rooms. Fresh food is rare and expensive, and generally has to be imported from Earth. But then we get the view from the monorail, and there’s apparently miles of green parkland around a huge open area… I realise there’s budget issues, but it always kind of bugs me. Even just having the ambassadorial quarters having windows and a view of the open area would have been nice.
- As with Sakai, while I like Talia, I feel her story works better for her replacement; ‘station telepath gains super-powers as a result of contact with the Vorlons, an established major power’ is a much more satisfying storyline than ‘station telepath gains super-powers as a result of contact with some guy we never see again.’
- Some real ‘tell, not show’ in Sinclair’s description of Ironheart as ‘feverish, paranoid’. I think it’d be a much stronger episode if it was a lot more ambiguous about whether Ironheart was in his right mind or not… and if it was ambiguous as to whether Ironheart survived his ship’s destruction – Cosmic Ironheart manages to beat out the Zarg for ‘Cheesiest looking character in a B5 episode…
- So, why didn’t the Psi-Corps continue with the experiments? Sure, maybe you end up with an uncontrollable infant god if you do this stuff to a P-10 – so try again with P-5s and lower! Calculated risk, right?