s1e19: The Quality of Mercy

Alcohol? No, of course not.

We’re watching the pioneering 90s TV show Babylon 5. If you want to join us, hit subscribe then go to your account and turn on the Let’s Watch notifications.

This is a really dark episode. I mean that literally: it’s as if someone forgot to turn on some of the set lights. It’s extremely visually moody throughout, almost abstract at times: there’s a scene of Ivanova and Garibaldi walking through corridors that are barely lit at all, walking in and out of darkness.

While it’s occasionally distracting in what are normally well-lit thoroughfares, Downbelow looks fantastic. As does the casino — the station has a real texture to it and feels very lived-in. Perhaps the director of the episode was trying some new things?

I remembered this episode being a bit lightweight, and was anticipating something on a similar level to ‘Believers’ or ‘Survivors’, but it’s actually more accomplished than that. Perhaps it benefits from being later in the production schedule: they’d worked out a lot of the tonal aspects that the earlier episodes danced around. The sets feel richer, the performances settled, the visual style distinct.

There’s a standout moment that hit me in a way it never has before, which is right at the end when Dr Rosen makes the decision to turn the machine on Mueller and kill him. On repeat viewings, you can see the moment she decides, when she knows that’s what she’s going to do. Mueller doesn’t know it yet, neither do her daughter or Franklin. Knowing that her heroic moment is the ultimate failure of her life’s work properly brought me to tears this time round, which caught me rather unawares. Perhaps when I was younger I focused more on it being a ‘righteous’ decision, as Garibaldi emphasises: Rosen did the right thing. This time, perhaps because I’m older and have thought more about what I want to accomplish in my time, I focused more on the impact it would have on Rosen.

Good stuff.

This episode is helped greatly by having accomplished guest stars. Everyone does a decent job, and it’s fun to see the ombudsman from ‘Grail’ make a return. Mueller is a one-note psycho baddie, but Mark Rolston has all sorts of fun with him.

Meanwhile, we get Londo and Lennier off on a very silly adventure that reveals a) Centauri genitalia and b) even quiet Minbari scholars are very good at martial arts.

All of the above is without even mentioning the exploration of capital punishment at the heart of the episode. We get mentions of ‘spacing’, apparently reserved for mutiny and treason. And of course we have the mind-wipe death of personality, a punishment clearly intended to be more humane but which seems to miss the whole point of what ‘alive’ actually means. There are logic holes all through it as a concept, which is of course completely in line with all forms of capital punishment in the real world. It’s a fascinating idea, and I rather like that the episode doesn’t obsess over it: it’s there for the viewer to ruminate on, but the story itself is concerned with other things.

What it does allow, much like the best of the standalone episodes this season, is for each character to have their own unique reaction. Garibaldi and Franklin in particular, but also Mueller himself, and Talia. By this point it’s quite clear that Talia’s life as a telepath is pretty grim, despite it appearing early on to perhaps be quite a privileged position.

Lots to chew on, then, but wrapped up in a couple of really entertaining plots. Oh, and I enjoy the consistency of Delenn still being off-station after her meeting with the Grey Council.

Next week we move on to ‘TKO’, which rumour has it is really quite bad. I seem to recall enjoying it in a cheapo-Rocky-rip-off sort of way, but we’ll see.

‼️ SPOILER STUFF ‼️

Aside from all the excellent character work, the main thing here is, of course, the alien device itself. A bit like the gutsy storytelling in ‘Babylon Squared’, that JMS introduces the device here, in season 1, in a fairly low-key fashion, paving the way for tragedy in season 4, slightly boggles my mind.

It’s not just a convenient plot device that he plucked out, either, it seems, going by this quote from him which I think was from the time of the episode’s original airing:

!You will see the healing machine from "Quality" once more. Part of the reason for that story was to set up something within the B5 universe that will come in handy a long time later (but I'm *not* going to have it lying around indefinitely; it would cause lots of long-term complications).” J Michael Straczynski

Madness. I do wonder whether it was specifically intended for the Marcus/Ivanova plotline, or whether Straczynski knew the general use case and would apply it to specific characters down the line. In writing Triverse I sometimes throw stuff into the mix, knowing it’ll be useful but not always knowing 100% when and how it’ll reappear.

Also, and something I had entirely forgotten, we learn that Rosen’s backstory is essentially Franklin’s upcoming story. The history of drug taking in order to stay alert and on the job, the dedication to medicine being her undoing, making a critical mistake after pushing too hard…what a shame that Franklin didn’t pay more attention to what had happened to Rosen.

Thanks for reading!