Passing Through Gethsemane
Reviewed by Accolyte Jharlenn of Clan Li'Shar
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This was an...interesting episode. Even if I could see the "surprise" from quite a while back, that didn't make it any less frightening or tragic. It had two plotlines--the main one was resolved pretty much completely in this episode, while the secondary plotline was just the beginning of something very large...and they tie into each other by the end. Let's address the main plot first.
The episode starts off with an amusing scene of Sheridan and Brother Theo playing a Human game of strategy called "chess", together while Brother Edward, another monk, and Ivanova try to guess who will win. "Faith manages" as Brother Theo kicks Sheridan's..."butt"? and wins the game. It is humourous, but more important in this beginning is the ISN broadcast that our Ambassador to B5, Delenn of Clan Mir, watches with Security Chief Michael Garibaldi. This broadcast is about a convicted murderer who has just been "mindwiped" and is important--if a bit obvious--in setting up the episode's ending.
We then see Brother Edward making a business deal in the Zocalo where he suddenly discovers a...black rose...near him. He tries to dismiss it as a random odd occurrence but it obviously bothered him for some reason he can't quite place.
He then talks about religion with Delenn, politely asking first if he may record it for future reference (the monks' mission here on Babylon 5 is to discover as much about the religions of all the different alien cultures as possible). She says yes, explains some of our beliefs to him--"We are the universe trying to understand itself" and then asks what, to him, is the emotional core of HIS religion. His answer is that for him, it is that Jesus stayed in Gethsemane (pronounced "Geth-SEH-muh-nee" for those of you who aren't up on your Human dialects) when he COULD have ran away--even though he KNEW he was going to die horribly in the morning, he CHOSE to stay. Brother Edward always wondered, if it came right down to it--would HE have enough courage to stay there?
The Ambassador and her attaché Lennier of the Third Fane of Chu'Domo then proceed to tell him about Valen, that he "was the greatest of us all...he came out of nowhere 1,000 years ago...formed the Grey Council", and that he was "a Minbari not BORN of Minbari". Interesting, no? And thus an incidental conversation sews the seeds for a MAJOR revelation later on in the season...
Brother Edward leaves and goes back into his quarters in Down Below--bumping physically into a Centauri dressed all in black--which is odd, as I've come to learn from my...erm...friend, Lufa Caldoni, that Centauri are creatures of comfort and would NEVER willingly go to such a place as Down Below. (And they usually dress much more colourfully, too.)
Shortly afterwards, the poor Brother starts hallucinating--or...remembering? He's not sure which. He finds a message written on walls in blood, saying "Death Walks Among You", put there just for HIM to find. Then he starts hearing voices accusing him of murdering people from out of the air, suddenly seems to be walking in water and steam, and finds a woman's dead body lying in the hallway.
But there's nothing there...
He goes into his quarters and starts the computer working on the mystery, giving it all the clues he's seen so far, in the hopes of understanding what's going on.
Meanwhile, Brother Theo comes to Sheridan and tells him that Brother Edward used to be a HORRIBLE person but had been...changed, significantly. Yes, "the death of personality", just like in the ISN broadcast. Then Garibaldi comes in and announces that he just found out that Brother Edward was the "Black Rose Killer", and that the files about that murdered have been accessed recently. On Edward's computer.
He knows.
We then have a very eerie scene where Brother Theo confronts Edward in Down Below and tells him that what he did in the past doesn't matter, it's what he does NOW that counts. Brother Edward is ripped up with guilt, however, knowing that he WAS a brutal murderer, and wonders how he can confess his sins if even HE doesn't know what they are! He thinks that his Human God will not be able to forgive him. Brother Theo's efforts to reassure him fail.
The really wonderful thing about this scene is the way it looks. In the dark, with just one, strange, glowing yellow light, and Brother Edward behind some kind of metal grating. Wonderfully symbolic, but of what, exactly? A "confession box"? Bars, to show that he is "imprisoned" in his own mind, the original personality trapped behind the new one? Or both...?
Later, he's sitting in his room, quietly, when the families of some of his victims come stomping in and confess to being the cause of all the weirdness he's been experiencing lately. They broke through his mindwipe--SOMEHOW--they did the black roses, messages, voices--to make SURE he'd remember all of it before they killed him. They drag him off.
Meanwhile, the others discover he's missing, and also figure out that to undo a mindwipe that complete would take more than just objects or words to trip his memory. It would take a telepath! But the Psi Corps has very strict rules against this, so it would have to be an alien. Wait...didn't Brother Edward mention bumping into a Centauri earlier? They track down the Centauri telepath who had been hired by the victims' families and proceed to question him about the location of Brother Edward.
This is where the second plot ties in...so let's address that for a moment, shall we?
Lyta Alexander, our red-haired teep chick, has returned from Vorlon space, on Kosh's ship. (She is evidently going to be his attaché from now on). This is the SECOND time she's been to Vorlon space and back, something that nobody else has done, and she's doing it as casually as a normal person would go around the corner! Even stranger is the fact that she seems to be HEALTHIER than was when she left--strange because according to her story, she was almost DEAD of oxygen deprivation when the Vorlons found her--even chronic conditions she's had from birth and organ deformities have been fixed! But when Dr. Franklin asks her about these things, she denies knowledge of them and leaves.
There follows an enigmatic scene with her and the Centauri Ambassador, Londo Mollari, wherein he seems to know her very well from before--is this from "The Gathering", a Babylon 5 scroll that I do not yet have in my records?--or is it referring to something she did for him in the past that we HAVEN'T seen, which will be revealed later? At any rate, she angrily brushes him off (Londo: "LYTA ALEXANDER, as I live and breathe!" Lyta: "If you don't take your hand off my shoulder, you won't be doing EITHER for much longer!") and absolutely refuses to tell him ANYTHING about her trip into Vorlon space. He then makes a threat about how the Psi Corps is looking for her and it would be such a PITY if they found her... She tells him she is no longer IN the Corps, and therefore could do rather nasty things to anyone who squealed on her. Such as implanting a permanent nightmare in that person's brain. Here Londo has a rather dark and poignant quote: "Nightmares. Bah. The way my life is going lately, who'd even notice?"
Then Lyta's plotline ties into the main one as the CREEPY little Centauri telepath, smug as all "Hell" (not to be confused with the Minbari phrase "a'hel", which means "continuous fire" in Human), refuses to tell them what they want. They won't torture it out of him, he assumes, because "your Psi Corps has rules against that sort of thing".
Whereupon...enter Lyta, who is not IN Psi Corps. She starts scanning his mind for the location of Brother Edward, telling him to "let it go, or I'll fry every synapse you've got!"
Hmmmn...this is a P5...? Yeah, RIGHT.
She gets the information, after knocking him unconscious, and they proceed to Down Below.
Only to find poor Brother Edward already tied up, bleeding, and dying. They are too late. Just before he dies, he looks up into Brother Theo's eyes and says, "I knew it. I knew they would come for me but I stayed right there in my quarters. I always wondered, if it came right down to it, would _I_ have had enough courage to stay in Gethsemane? Now I know. Now I know."
Brother Theo forgives him for all his sins, in the name of the Human God, and Edward dies. Very sad.
Time passes. It is now two weeks later, and Ivanova and Lyta are in the docking bay. Lyta has just gotten back from one of the errands Kosh sends her on, and does not know what the latest news is, so Ivanova's filling her in. They already caught, tried, and convicted the guy who killed Brother Edward. "So...?" asks Lyta curiously. "What happened to him?"
In Sheridan's office, Brother Theo is introducing a brand new monk in his order to the good Captain--a young man named "Brother Malcolm".
And it's the guy who killed Edward...
To wrap up this episode, we have a bizzarre, science-fictiony scene with Lyta in Kosh's quarters and his encounter suit open. She is breathing his air perfectly well without a breather unit, and has GILLS. Yes, you heard me, gills. Strange energy is flowing from his open suit to her eyes and mouth and back.
What EXACTLY did they DO to her in Vorlon space? And what about that "I'll fry every synapse you've got"? I mean, a telepath that can undo a heavy mindwipe in just ONE second, without even looking like he's concentrating, must be rather powerful--and she could fry HIM? If the Vorlons..."altered"...her body, then why couldn't they also have "altered" her mind...?
In conclusion, this was a pretty good episode. Full of terrific acting--especially from Brad Dourif as the conscience-stricken Brother Edward--a b-plot that sets up a MAJOR part of the arc that will have repercussions all the way to the fifth season (and beyond...?) and great foreshadowing, done quietly.
And, most importantly of all, it did what all good science fiction should strive for:
It made you think.
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