History Recap / BabylonFiveS01E21TheQualityOfMercy

!The Quality of Mercy

Franklin finds Rosen's daughter, Janice, and tries to talk to her about the device. She tells him how she used to be a physician, until she started abusing stims to work longer and eventually lost her license because of it. Franklin tries to explain that her mother is just keeping people from getting the treatment they need. She gets angry and tells him not to take this away from her mother threatening to fight him if he does.

* DeathOfPersonality: The {{Trope Namer|s}}. Mueller is sentenced to have his personality and memories erased and replaced with FakeMemories and a persona that will want to serve society in a menial role, as the standard punishment for murderers, believed to be more humane than execution. A machine is used to perform the procedure and a telepath is present to scan the condemned before and after to confirm the thought patterns have changed. Mueller escapes before the sentence can actually be carried out. [[spoiler:It's not until [[Recap/BabylonFiveS03E04PassingThroughGethsemane Season 3]] that we see someone who has been through it]].

* AccidentalInnuendo: In-universe: when Ivanova comes to check out Dr. Franklin's unauthorized clinic, he mistakes her for his next patient. "You can start by taking off your clothes." To which she responds, "Not without dinner and flowers."

-> ''It works all right. It restores, renews, envigorates. It is good for ailments of the flesh, the blood and the bone.''
--> -''' Dr. Laura Rosen'''

* AmbiguousDisorder: Laura Rosen is revealed to be dying from Lake's Syndrome. The only distinguishing characteristic is that it induces almost unbearable pain, described by Rosen as akin to having arthritis, blurry vision, the intestines seeming like they are on fire, and veins burning with pain. When Mueller got a dose of it via the alien device, he was instantly incapacitated by the sheer intensity of it.

* BattleButler: Lennier is quite a capable fighter, doing flying kicks and what not. It's implied that Minbari like him who study in temple are all like this, making them ProudScholarRaceGuy. BewareTheNiceOnes indeed.

-->-'''Lennier''': Even a small quantity can cause violent, homicidal rages.
-->-'''Londo''': (''grabs Lennier's glass'') Ah, alcohol! My mistake.

* DeathOfPersonality: The TropeNamer. Mueller is sentenced to have his personality and memories erased and replaced with FakeMemories and a persona that will want to serve society in a menial role, as the standard punishment for murderers, believed to be more humane than execution. A machine is used to perform the procedure and a telepath is present to scan the condemned before and after to confirm the thought patterns have changed. Mueller escapes before the sentence can actually be carried out. [[spoiler:It's not till [[Recap/BabylonFiveS03E04PassingThroughGethsemane Season 3]] that we see someone who has been through it]].

* HarsherInHindsight: Laura Rosen's daughter tells Dr. Franklin about how her mother lost her license to practice medicine because she became addicted to stims while using them to work longer hours and save more lives, which caused her to make a mistake and kill a patient. Franklin obviously didn't take this tragic story onboard, because his major story arc in Seasons 2 and 3 centers around his own growing stim addiction that culminates in him making a mistake that nearly kills a patient.
* HighTurnoverRate: The reason there's a shortage of telepaths who specialize in scanning the minds of murderers -- looking inside such a mind is ''very'' stressful on them.

* AMindIsATerribleThingToRead: As seen in [[Recap/BabylonFiveS01E09Deathwalker "Deathwalker"]], the mind of a SerialKiller is not a fun place to visit. Talia is horrified by what she finds in Mueller's mind, a dark space filled with a "choir" of all his past victims that he believes will sing him up to Heaven when he dies. By episode's end, we can be reasonably certain he's headed in the other direction.

* AMindIsATerribleThingToRead: As seen in [[[[Recap/BabylonFiveS01E09Deathwalker "Deathwalker"]], the mind of a SerialKiller is not a fun place to visit. Talia is horrified by what she finds in Mueller's mind, a dark space filled with a "choir" of all his past victims that he believes will sing him up to Heaven when he dies. By episode's end, we can be reasonably certain he's headed in the other direction.

* AMindIsATerribleThingToRead: Talia is horrified by what she finds in Mueller's mind, a dark space filled with a "choir" of all his past victims that he believes will sing him up to Heaven when he dies. By episode's end, we can be reasonably certain he's headed in the other direction.

* AMindIsATerribleThingToRead: Talia is horrified by what she finds in Mueller's mind.

In a meeting to decide Mueller's fate, Garibaldi is loudly advocating spacing him. The ombudsman disagrees, saying that's only an option for treason. Legally the only recourses they have are life imprisonment, which they don't have the room for and Earth Central isn't willing to cover, or a mind wipe, which will require Talia's services to scan Mueller before and after and confirm a successful wipe. She is reluctant, not wanting to go inside a serial killer's mind, [[Recap/BabylonFiveS01E09Deathwalker having done it once before]], but she eventually agrees.

** Minbari [[CantHoldHisLiquor do not react well to alcohol]], ''at all''.

* TheseHandsHaveKilled: Dr. Rosen definitely takes "first do no harm" seriously, but was forced to use her miraculous alien healing device to kill a man who would have killed her, her daughter, and Dr. Franklin. That this was ruled to be perfectly justified self-defense, or that the manner of killing means she's now free from her awful terminal illness does nothing to alleviate the profound horror she feels at having taken a man's life.