The fighting continues to close on Earth as Sheridan leads an assault on another Earthforce unit. They managed to drive two ships away, but the rest continue fighting even harder, much to Sheridan's bafflement, while on Mars, Franklin and Lyta are heading to meet with the resistance, while Garibaldi comes to Edgars with news that Sheridan's father is in custody and he's ready to give Sheridan the news. Edgars tries to assuage him by saying it's for the best, and will give them the chance to get the Psi Corps and Clark under control. Sheridan may even thank him someday, though Garibaldi doubts it. Regardless, once it's done Edgars will reveal the whole truth.
- Edgars: The truth, the whole, absolute truth, is only a few days away. How many people can say that?
Garibaldi: I dunno. But I think the last guy got thirty pieces of silver for the same job.
Sheridan is still locked in battle, puzzling over why an outnumbered force with jump engines disabled would fight to the death. It can't be for Clark. He sends a signal for them to stand down and gets a response from Leo Frank, captain of the Cadmus. Frank is convinced if they surrender they'll just be executed and replaced by Minbari, until the Vesta chimes in. Mackie assures them he's alive and well and that no harm will come to them. After a few seconds the Earth ships stand down. Sheridan immediately orders his forces to stand down as well, but just then another ship jumps in. It's the Agamemnon signaling for Sheridan. Looking a little apprehensive, he answers.
- Sheridan: Tell me you're not here for a fight.
Captain James: Negative, Captain; we've been chasing you for days, but you're too fast, we couldn't catch you. We're looking to join up, if you don't mind.
Sheridan: Mind? Hell, you've just made my whole day.
He decides to go over and greet them personally.
Franklin and Lyta meet with Number One. She remembers Lyta from when she came through Mars a couple years ago but is none too happy to find out Lyta's a telepath, even less so that they've brought dozens of frozen telepaths. She tersely demands an explanation.
On the Agamemnon Captain James gives Sheridan a rundown on how they've been. A few crew updates, and how they feel about what he's doing. They trust him to make the right decision and voted to join him. Then a signal comes from Marcus. He's relaying a message from Garibaldi, who tells Sheridan about his father. He says he knows where he is, but they need to move fast to get him out. Garibaldi has some people who can help, but they want to meet in person. Sheridan says he'll verify it with his own contacts and if it's true he'll be there.
After he's verified it, he contacts Ivanova, who is not happy about it, loudly pointing out the myriad of ways it could be a trap. Despite their differences, Sheridan doesn't think Garibaldi could go that far. And he won't take Marcus since he'll need to be Ivanova's liaison when she comes to take over the fleet. Delenn's not back yet, and they need to keep this an internal affair as much as possible. Reluctantly, she agrees. He and James then begin planning their approach. The Agamemnon has the most current access, and hasn't been flagged as rogue yet, so they can go where ever they need to. They'll get him to Mars and then he'll take a Thunderbolt down to the surface for the meeting.
In the Resistance hideaway, Franklin, Lyta and Number One are sharing a very tense dinner, until Franklin demands to know what is up. Number One just tells him to ask Lyta, then stalks off to find someplace to put the cryo tubes. After she's gone, Lyta tells him some things she's been hearing since getting off the blip list, specifically about Psi Corps bloodhound units being used to root out possible Resistance members. Suspects are subjected to very unpleasant, and potentially fatal (heart attack and stroke inducing), deep scans that have left several dead. She offhandedly mentions that things like this are usually kept within the Corps.
Franklin asks what she means by that and she begins to tell of an incident from her days as an intern with the Psi Cops. A Serial Killer was going around targeting telepaths, but the mundanes didn't care, so the Psi Cops took matters into their own hands. Through a series of covert, and highly illegal, scans they found the man they were looking for, but then they had a problem. They didn't want to just kill him, and they didn't want to go to the police, or they'd have to explain how they found him, so they came up with their own punishment.
- Lyta: Somewhere on Beta Colony there is an institution. In one room of that institution there is a man who spends his days and night screaming at thing only he can see. Things we planted in his mind. They have to keep him in a strait jacket twenty-four hours a day or he'd claw his own eyes out just to make it stop.
Soon after, Lyta transferred to commercial work. She didn't want to work with Psi Cops anymore. Not with the people who made her for the first time afraid of what telepaths could do, when they did what they had to.
- Lyta: Someday, there's going to be a war between telepaths and mundanes, Stephen. I just hope I don't live to see it.
Stephen thinks that maybe Sheridan can help with this after they take care of Clark, but Number One comes back with a message from Babylon 5 about where Sheridan's going.
Delenn and Lennier return to the station just as Ivanova is heading out. She leaves Delenn in charge until she or Sheridan get back.
Sheridan flies down to Mars and meets Garibaldi in a dark and loud dive. Garibaldi gives a bit more information on Sheridan's father and when he asks what he needs to do, Garibaldi says, "You've already done it," before slapping a tranq patch on Sheridan's hand.
- Garibaldi: Don't fight it. Just give it up, or they're going to hurt you!
Sheridan jerks away, but as the patch begins to take effect, he becomes aware of a group of unsavory looking characters watching him. He tries to make it outside, but they keep cutting him off. As Sheridan roughly tries to force his way through, they start whaling on him, eventually beating him to the ground, as Garibaldi watches impassively from the corner.
Ivanova arrives at the fleet just as ISN begins running a story on Sheridan's capture. The anchor explains that he was captured by Clark's forces earlier and is now being kept in a secure facility, where he will be well treated and cared for, while in said secure facility, a guard ruthlessly beats Sheridan into the wall. Light years away, Delenn suddenly bolts upright in bed, Calling his name right before Lennier comes in with the news.
Garibaldi waits in the suite as Edgars comes in with compliments from the president, who seems to think it's over now. Garibaldi disagrees, but it will slow them down some, and that's all Edgars needs for his plans. Plans? Now Garibaldi's had it, he's done everything Edgars asked and wants him to come through on their deal. He wants the truth.
Edgars finally relents and begins to explain. Clark is a temporary problem at worst, he'll only be around for a few years, but the Psi Corps, they'll still be there. That's the real danger.
- Edgars: The danger before us is nothing less than the death of human liberty and human thought.
And so Edgars came up with a solution. He opens a wall safe revealing several cubes inside, one of which is the package Garibaldi, Wade and Lise smuggled off Babylon 5. Edgars explains that he's been keeping certain things from Lise lately since he knew the Psi Cops were looking for this, which is why Edgars didn't go himself. He confirms that it is in fact a cure, as he initially said.
- Edgars: It took my people three years to develop it. Almost as long as it took us to develop the virus itself.
The virus is encoded to the telepathic gene, so normals are completely immune. Once a telepath is infected, they have to receive the antidote every two weeks without fail. If they miss one, they die. Thus ensuring that the only surviving telepaths will be kept under strict control.
Edgars and Wade explain that sooner or later a race will come along with some kind of advantage that will enable them to beat out anyone who doesn't have that advantage. So, Edgars intends to make their advantage into a liability. Edgars says he never wanted to hurt anyone, but he won't stand by and let telepaths become a ruling class. They take care of the telepaths, and then they deal with Clark.
He asks Garibaldi if he has any qualm about this, and Garibaldi says he doesn't. Edgars is pleased to hear this, and tells him they should be able to start moving the virus out in a few days, and it should spread very rapidly after that. They project within three weeks the telepath prob...he pauses for a moment, then continues in a somber tone.
- Edgars: The telepath problem...will finally be over.
Edgars and Wade head off, and Garibaldi sits down, while just outside the room a horrified Lise has been listening in. She leaves, but Garibaldi removes a tooth from his mouth and crushes it, revealing a small transmitter.
Some time later, he sits on a tube transport, where Lise finds him. She tells him she overheard everything, but she doesn't want to go back right now, and doesn't know what to do. He just stares at the ground, then tells her to leave. She looks pleadingly at him, but when he doesn't move she gets up and leaves. Shortly after someone else gets on as the tram starts to move.
- Bester: Hello, Mr. Garibaldi. I received your signal. Now, tell me what you know, all of it.
Garibaldi explains/shows what he found about Edgars's plan, which has even Bester surprised at its scope. But now they'll take care of it, which leaves him the dilemma of what to do with Michael. Bester decides to take him back through what happened at the end of last year. As he launched to face the Shadows at Babylon 5, they picked him up, thinking he that with his checkered background he would be the easiest out of all Sheridan's possible successors to convert to their cause with some "conditioning". He was apparently turned over to Psi Corps for that, which is when Bester heard of it and decided to step in.
Bester takes a moment to reflect on Edgars's virus, figuring it has to be Shadow technology. Since telepaths were a threat to them, they'd want a means to deal with them.
- Bester: It's ingenious, really. They played Clark's drive for power on one side and Edgars's fear of telepaths on the other, leaving us in the middle, controlled or dead. But let's get back to you.
Bester oversaw Garibaldi's adjusting to better suit his own purposes. He made sure Garibaldi's personality was not overwritten, as he had skills and qualities that they would need. All they had to do was amplify some aspects of his personality, making him more suspicious and stubborn. Once they were sure that he didn't remember anything, they let B5 find him and initiated his programming. His resignation came as a surprise, but proved to be of great benefit to Bester, allowing him to get in contact with Edgars, and isolating him from his friends. They'd nudge him in the right direction from time to time, until finally all there was was an unwitting agent, willing to do anything to find what they needed, even sell out Sheridan.
Now Bester ponders what to do with him. He considers leaving Garibaldi paralyzed or shooting him, but decides to release the programming, and as the tram docks he sends a telepathic signal, and in a minute the old Garibaldi will be back. He can try to go to his friends, but that probably wouldn't be a good idea.
Bester grins and steps out with, "Be seeing you, Mr. Garibaldi."
As the tram gets moving again, Garibaldi blinks, looks back and forth, puts his head in his hands and finally just screams.
Ivanova comes to the bridge with confirmation of Sheridan's capture. Marcus tells her Garibaldi's tried to contact Babylon 5, but Ivanova orders them to ignore all his calls. And if he shows himself, he is to be shot on sight.
In the meantime, with Sheridan gone, where does that leave them?
- Ivanova: The captain once told me, "The person is expendable, the job is not." We keep going.
Garibaldi comes back to Edgars's suite, frantically calling for Lise, to find it trashed. He finds Edgars's body, but no Lise. Wade is still alive, barely, but all he can say is that she wasn't there when they came. Garibaldi goes to check the safe, which is empty. Which means the Corps has the cure... and the virus.
- ISN: This is Alison Higgins, with an update on our earlier stories. President Clark declared today a day celebration and rest, noting that the capture of renegade Earthforce captain John Sheridan signals that the war of aggression against Earth is unraveling. Sheridan continues to be well fed and well treated. Now that he has been freed of alien influences, he has reportedly indicated feeling of remorse and regret for his actions against his own homeworld. We hope to have more on this soon. In other news, William Edgars, founder of Edgars Industries, one of Earth's ten largest medical research corporations, was found dead this morning along with at least one of his staff. Two personal bodyguards outside the estate were also killed. Preliminary reports from investigators on the scene indicate that the Resistance may have been responsible for the attack as they continue their assault against business and political targets. Nothing is known yet concerning the whereabouts of his wife, Lise Edgars. Finally, ISN sources within Earth Dome have indicated that Captain Sheridan may have been turned in by his own former head of security, Chief Warrant Officer Michael Garibaldi. If this is true, we at ISN want to convey our personal thanks and gratitude to a true hero of the people.
This episode contains examples of:
- Affably Evil: Edgars is friendly with his allies and associates, and has shown a surprising amount of kindness toward his test subjects. His motivations, though still evil, are ones he only takes because he believes they're strictly necessary.
- And I Must Scream:
- Garibaldi up until this point. Once he's released and understands the full weight of what's happened hits him, he does just that with a Big "NO!".
- The unnamed TP serial killer on Beta 9, captured by the Psi Corps and trapped in a never ending nightmare as punishment.
- Anti-Villain:
- William Edgars, who’s become the influential head of a pharmaceutical MegaCorp solely to accomplish the creation of a virus (and corresponding antidote) exclusively fatal to telepaths. He does this not For the Evulz or even out of a sense of Fantastic Racism, but because he knows a war with telepaths is inevitable and wants to give "mundanes" a fighting chance. He doesn't even like taking the steps he feels he has to take, and tries to lessen the suffering of those he's testing his drugs on as much as possible.
- Edgars could've been considered this, had he tried to wipe telepaths out completely. Instead, with the development of a cure, he planned to make them his personal slaves. Arguably, a worse fate than what telepath supremacists - like Bester - planned for humanity, though on a smaller scale.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Bester gets everything he wanted and walks away scot-free.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Garibaldi.
- Call-Back: Captain MacDougan is still in Sheridan's attack force. His very presence eventually convinces the Earthforce ships that a Last Stand is unnecessary and wasteful.
- Continuity Nod: Number One remembers Lyta from when she came through Mars on the run from Psi Corps and worked with the resistance, leading to the exposure of the sleeper agent on Babylon 5.
- Deprogram: Bester, in the end, removes the false Garibaldi and restores the original's mind.
- Cruel Mercy: Bester releases Garibaldi from his mental programming just as he's burned every bridge available to him, leaving him no where to turn.
- Did You Actually Believe...?: Leo talks of how he and the other soldiers totally believe that if they surrender, they'll be executed like all the other Earth soldiers defeated by Sheridan. He's shocked to hear Mackie (supposedly "executed" weeks ago) come on the communicator to blast Leo for actually believing that a commander as moral as Sheridan would be okay murdering his own kind.
- Didn't See That Coming: Bester had lots of thoughts on what the exact nature of the anti-telepath plot could be. The full scale and magnitude of it, keeping telepaths enslaved by infecting them with a deadly virus that makes them dependent on regular treatments, is shocking even to a bastard like him.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Edgars tells Garibaldi that, once his plan is put into operation, "The telepath problem... will finally be over." It's apparent that Edgars himself realizes the historical parallel in mid-sentence.
- Everyone Has Standards: Ivanova worries Garibaldi could be setting up a trap for Sheridan, but Sheridan fully believes this trope. He thinks that despite every problem Garibaldi has had with him for the past few months, he wouldn't actually mean him any harm or lie about his father. Normally he'd be right but, well...
- Flashback: During Bester's tale. That said, one odd part of the flashback—one Bester and Garibaldi couldn't have known about—shows Sheridan's discussion with Justin about why he wasn't just killed. It does illustrate the next point Bester makes, however; if Sheridan was killed, three people would possibly take his place: Ivanova, Delenn, or Garibaldi. And indeed at the end of the episode, Ivanova seems to be picking up the mantle.
- Gambit Pileup: Clark had a plan to try to take down Babylon 5 before they could enact any plans to oust him, while in the meantime, William Edgars and Psi Corps were enacting their own plans to take down each other, which just happened to involve stepping on the two main plots from time to time in the process.
- Gambit Roulette / Xanatos Speed Chess: The roulette part is Lampshaded by Bester, who admits that Garibaldi had taken several actions Bester hadn't planned on (such as his resignation from B5's command staff), most of which played right into his hands (the speed chess part).
- Harpo Does Something Funny: While JMS tended to script fairly tightly for most directors, he loosened up whenever Mike Vejar was directing. Case in point: this episode—the scene where Sheridan was taken down was written simply as "They pull down Sheridan like a pack of wolves bringing down a lion." Vejar took that instruction and turned the scene into something special, as JMS had hoped. It actually took half a day to film, far slower than the show's usual pace, but Vejar simply asked JMS to trust him and he did.
- Heel Realization: Most of the way through his Motive Rant, Edgars catches himself referring to The Telepath Problem. After a moment's reflection, he seems to resign himself to it, and completes the thought.
Word of God is that Edgars is Jewish, and his momentary hesitation is when he realizes just what he is sounding like.Edgars: The telepath prob—The telepath problem... will finally be over. - I Have Your Wife: Which for now shall be known as They've Got Your Dad. Poor Sheridan.
- Infodump: Bester spends a good five minutes at the end of the episode explaining all the ways he's been pulling Garibaldi's strings throughout the season. The creepy flashbacks, intense music and Koenig's acting work together beautifully to keep it from getting dry.
- Instant Sedation: Averted. If the tranq patch knocks Sheridan out at all, it doesn't happen onscreen. The most it seems to do is make him groggy and slow his reflexes, making him easy to capture.
- Last Stand: At first, the Earthforce ships are bent on doing this, because they've been told that if they surrender, the crews of the ships will be executed and replaced with aliens. This is, of course, another of Clark's lies, and Captain MacDougan of the Vesta calls in to refute it with the fact he's still alive the moment he hears about it.
- Lured into a Trap: Garibaldi asks to meet Sheridan in some seedy bar and slaps a tranq patch on him.
- Mindlink Mates: Somehow, Delenn knows something bad has happened to Sheridan, and wakes up terrified just as Lennier brings her the news.
- Mind Rape:
- The Corps has been deploying telepaths called bloodhound to find Resistance members, subjecting suspects to highly dangerous telepathic deep scans.
- Someone going around killing your people? Tear his worst nightmares from the depths of his subconscious and put them on display in the forefront of his mind for the rest of his life.
- More than Mind Control: Bester was explicit that Garibaldi's core personality remain intact, but that his suspicion and distrust of authority should be increased. The rest of the things Garibaldi did on his own, with a few nudges in the right direction from time to time. Bester didn't even expect Garibaldi to resign from his job, but it put him in the perfect position to be recruited by Edgards.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Two of them, or maybe one in two parts.
- First, right after Garibaldi drugs him, Sheridan is surrounded by thugs who beat him to the ground as Garibaldi watches impassively.
- The next, is when Sheridan is shown in Earthforce custody, where he is "well fed and properly treated."
- Pay Evil unto Evil:
- What the Psi Cops did to the teep killer after they tracked him down.
- Also what they did to Edgars. From the state of his body, it wasn't quick and it wasn't pretty.
- Paranoia Fuel: In-universe. Part of Garibaldi's brainwashing was to make him be even more paranoid than he was before his capture.
- Playing Both Sides: Bester realizes that this virus likely has Shadow tech behind its development. This means the Shadows were nudging Clark to rely more on telepaths while playing Edgars to kill them.
- P.O.V. Cam: When Bester watches what Edgars's plan was, he sees it through Garibaldi's eyes.
- Ransacked Room: Garibaldi rushes back to Edgars's suite to find it trashed, Edgars dead, Wade dying, and both the virus and cure gone. And Lise is nowhere to be found.
- Red Herring: Throughout this season, we've been lead to believe that Bester brainwashed Garibaldi to make him turn in Sheridan and cripple the resistance. Nope. Even if Bester did plan this (and it's not likely, as Clark's people sent a bunch of telepaths, including Bester's lover, to the Shadows so he's not likely to do them favours for nothing), he never had the time to put it to fruition, as Garibaldi was, completely at random, recruited by Bester's rivals. Who, eventually, told him their master plan to enslave all telepaths. Points to Bester for playing Xanatos Speed Chess to keep control of the developments.
- The Reveal: Two major ones:
- Edgars has been working on a cure for a disease that affects telepaths, all right—a disease he'd developed in the first place.
- Bester has been behind Garibaldi's Face–Heel Turn, and takes him back over what really happened after he left Babylon 5.
- Serial Killer: Lyta tells Franklin about one killing telepaths, and what the Corps did to him when they found him.
- Smug Snake: The grin on Bester's face as he describes in detail how he reprogrammed and used Garibaldi like a puppet is a thing to behold.
- Tranquil Fury: The lack of yelling from Ivanova's direction when Sheridan is captured is very bad news.
- The Unfettered: Bester's conditioning has been turning Garibaldi into this all year, slowly breaking one restraint after another, until he was willing to do whatever was necessary, even betray close friends, to find Edgars's secret.
- Undying Loyalty: Subverted. During the opening battle, Sheridan is baffled by the Earth ships' refusal to surrender as "they can't be willing to die for Clarke." It turns out the commanders have bought the propaganda that any surrendering Earth soldiers are executed. Once they realize that's false, they immediately give up.
- Unwitting Pawn: Garibaldi has been Bester's all season.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: William Edgars, full stop. See Anti-Villain above.
- Wham Episode: Given that season 4 was planned to end at this point, there's naturally a lot.
- Garibaldi betrays Sheridan and gets him captured.
- Bester was behind that betrayal by brainwashing him.
- Just the full extent of William Edgars's plot to stop telepaths.
- Wham Line: When Edgars is explaining how long it took to develop the cure, "Almost as long as it took to develop the virus itself."
- Worthy Opponent: Bester is impressed by the Shadows' plan to use Clark, the Psi Corps, and Edgars's conspiracy against each other.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Bester contemplates killing Garibaldi since he is no longer of any use, but decides against it.
