s1e6: Mind War

"I am becoming...."

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.

Did I mention that I once interviewed Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski? True story. You can listen to the conversation here:

Needless to say, that was a career highlight.

Today we have ‘Mind War’ and the proper introduction of the Psi Cops and Alfred Bester, played of course by Walter Koenig. Although we’ve met telepaths already, with Lyta in the pilot and Talia, and we found out a bit about the Psi Corps during Talia’s attempts to make friends with Ivanova, they’ve been mostly in the background so far. ‘Mind War’ is when we get a proper sense of how telepathy works in B5’s universe.

We know that there are different rankings of telepaths. There’s a seemingly paramilitary part of the Psi Corps that was set up to monitor telepaths and ensure they were following the rules. A bit like more violent versions of data officers checking up on your GDPR compliance. I like that privacy and freedom of thought is central to the telepath stuff in the show, right from the off.

Straight away we know that the Psi Cops are bad news. In fact, they’re such bad news that the actress playing Kelsey appears to be trying to literally chew on the scene. Every time I’ve watched this episode I’ve been entirely distracted by her mouth and it’s weirdly deliberate pronunciations. It’s a bit like watching an animatronic or early CG character. Somehow, the real, human actress exists within the uncanny valley.

Koenig is much better, fortunately. Creepy, intense, threatening despite being physically quite slight. Always looking like he’s analysing the situation to work his advantage. The immediate assumption is that the Psi Cops break the telepath rules far more than any of their targets.

The USP of this episode, I’d say, is William Allen Young as Jason Ironheart. He plays it with a really strong physical presence, but with very delicate line delivery. At all moments he seems to be two people, one holding the other back. He’s immensely powerful but is utterly terrified of that power. The role could have been played all sorts of ways, and I reckon Young picked the best option.

I’m so pleased to have the new HD remasters of the show. This episode suffered particularly badly with the earlier DVD 16:9 editions, in which every visual effects shot was cropped from the original 4:3 video. Every key scene in this episode has visual effects, whether it’s the mindquake electricity, Ironheart’s shield wall or simple PPG gunfire, which made it almost unwatchable. The blu-ray is a vast improvement.

There’s a VFX-heavy scene in this episode that I think has held up especially well, not least because it’s put together in a really quiet, contemplative sort of way. It’s the one with Sinclair and Talia, as they board the core shuttle together and ride it through the inside of the station. The establishing shot of the tram on the rail actually looks pretty great - sure, it’s very early CG, but the design of the visuals and the shot itself is strong. What I really love is the stuff inside the tram. As Talia talks about her early life in the Corps, and meeting Ironheart, the tram continues on its ride, and there’s some brilliant visual timing. Just as Talia gets to the most difficult part of her story, the tram enters a tunnel and everything goes black except for the occasional light flashing past. The scene is technically accomplished, especially for the time, and is a great example of visual effects being used to heighten the emotions in the scene.

(on the flipside, there’s a shot of Sakai’s ship descending towards Sigma 957 in which you can clearly see the texture on the planetary sphere experiencing some kind of texture filtering issue in the render…oops)

MEANWHILE we get Catherine Sakai getting into trouble at Sigma 957. I’d forgotten that she was in this episode and I think the continuity of that relationship works well. Back in the 90s, simply having a character not be around, then arrive in one episode, and stick around in subsequent episodes was quite a novelty. Usually that kind of cast shift would be kept for a new season. Again, it makes the place feel more real.

This is also where we see another side to G’Kar. We had the scheming villain in the pilot and opening episode, then we got to know him better during the assassination attempt, and this time we see him shift into another mode. This is the strategist G’Kar, showing an aptitude for long-term planning that we wouldn’t have expected based on what we’ve seen so far. We also gets hints of philosopher G’Kar, as he explains to Sakai what she’d seen at Sigma 957. It’s a brilliant coda.

The main thing I love about this episode is that it is overflowing with a sense of wonder. That was what attracted me to the classics of science fiction as a kid: I’d read Asimov and Clarke literally open-mouthed. It was hard to do that on a TV budget in the 90s, even on a very good TV budget (which B5 did not have). They manage it twice here, first with the Sigma 957 mysterious ship/thing, and then again when Ironheart becomes some sort of energy being. The VFX team must have been quite stressed on this one, I reckon.

OK, next week we have ‘The War Prayer’, of which I only have a very vague memory.

Abandon ship now if you’re a first-time viewer.

This was probably astoundingly difficult to pull off in 1994.

‼️ SPOILER STUFF ‼️

Phewf. That was a lot of important stuff.

We get Psi Cops, I think for the first time. Bester is introduced, although at this point we might assume it was a cool one-off guest star stunt. We get the notion of ascendance to semi-godhood, which foreshadows literally the very final episode of the show, as well as the season 4 finale. The line “see you in a million years” does seem to suggest that JMS had this in mind from the start. Also makes me think that maybe Valen does indeed end up going beyond the rim.

Really hope first-time viewers aren’t reading this. A spoiler blackout tag would be useful right about now.

Curiously, at the same time as the notion of human ascendance we also glimpse a First One, with the Sigma 957 ship. We don’t make any kind of connection between the two on first viewing, of course, but it’s not inconceivable that Ironheart will be having conversations with that same ship no long from now.

What else? We get very clear indications that the Psi Corps is up to something, or at least pulling the strings back on Earth.

Watching all of this with sort-of fresh eyes, and having now written several of my own serials, I’m really admiring the way JMS is layering in important and not-so-important episodes, but all the while building the framework for what is to come. So far, nothing is wasted.

See you down in the comments.