The Exercise of Vital Powers
Reviewed by Lady Keela Shanri
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This was, as is typical for late Season Four, another very HEAVY episode. There were basically two plotlines--one involving the frozen telepaths, and one involving Garibaldi. Let's attack the "teepsicles" plot first.
Franklin is getting thoroughly annoyed because Sheridan keeps calling him (remember, Sheridan's heading towards Earth now) and asking how he's doing with the telepaths, so often that it's messing up his work. Lyta stops by for some reason (I forget why) and he tells her how annoying Sheridan is being and how no matter WHAT he tries, he can't get the implants out or even work around them. Lyta, curious, decides to try for herself--and she gets a reaction! The telepath wakes up and for a moment is conscious, fairly lucid, and not being a danger to himself or others. Just as looks like he's about to say something, he collapses.
Then Zack comes along and says he's got a job for her to do a scan for a murder investigation (or some kind of crime anyway). At first she says no, which tells us both what the rules are about telepaths in the future and a bit more about her own morals, but then she says yes once she realises that it's the VICTIM who wants to be scanned, so he can remember what happened to him.
Later, Franklin catches up to her in the hall and after much pleading, manages to make her try to wake up one of the "teepsicles" again. He wants to know what it was like, how she did it. She answers that she "heard" a sound in the man's mind--the same scream a Shadow vessel makes when it goes overhead (WHOAH boy!) and that she just...made it go away...and that was when the guy woke up. Now he wants her to do it again only slower this time so he can monitor what she's doing. So she does so, and this time, when the guy wakes up, he does speak. He tries to strangle Franklin, who tells him that the machines are gone, they can't hurt him anymore. Upon which, the telepath delivers the chilling line, "Then...what am I doing here? Why AM I?" (eewwww...sad.) Evidently, once they've been hooked into a Shadow vessel they have NO other identity! (Let me tell you, that gave me the CREEPS!) He then starts trying to kill himself because he can't STAND the idea of not being connected. Lyta tells him to go to sleep, mentally--and he does. Well, that's a convenient little trick...
The epilogue to this plot comes when Sheridan calls Franklin to bother him about the telepaths AGAIN, and this time, Franklin puts his foot down and refuses to do any more until he knows WHY Sheridan wants this so badly. (You go, boy!) Sheridan gets rather uneasy and tells him to clear everyone out of the room and that he's encrypting the message every three seconds (whoah) so no-one can understand it.
We do not then HEAR what Sheridan's plan is, that's a revelation for later. But whatever it was, it hit Franklin HARD. He is shown standing outside in the corridor afterwards, slumped against the wall, with this look of absolute shock, horror, and betrayal, like his heart has just been ripped out or something. When Lyta asks him what's wrong, all he says is that for some reason they have to go to Mars. NOW.
And speaking of Mars, that brings us to our main plotline of the episode, Mr. Garibaldi's Amazing Adventures.
Garibaldi, much as he can't believe it, is indeed back on Mars, where he is finally going to get to meet the enigmatic Mr. Edgars in person. Before he can do so, however, he has to put on a blindfold so he can't tell where his personal estate is! This was a nice scene because it showed us more of the strangely interesting intellectual thug Wade (and is it just me, or is his sharp-featured face WAY too young-looking for his solid silver hair?), who is a character I like for some odd reason. We get some great sarcastic quips from Garibaldi, and then we meet Mr. Edgars, who looks like--a nice, calm, grandfatherly, distinguished old gentleman.
BWAHAHA.
Edgars tells him that he can only tell him part of the truth now and the rest of it later, when he's all the way in. But first he has to see if he can trust him at all. to that end, he gives him a TINY little closet of a guest-room (he must just keep it to keep people like Garibaldi nervous from claustrophobia--I mean, come ON, he's a BILLIONAIRE, he could give Garibaldi an absolutely PALATIAL guest-room if he wanted!) and our poor anti-hero is woken up in the middle of the night and dragged to a tiny room where there is a table, a chair, a beam of light---and a telepath--and nothing else.
Demanding to know what this is all about, Mr. Edgars explains in his kindly, reasonable voice that he wanted to ask him some simple questions to find out if he was trustworthy, and that Ms. Constance here (the teep) will only be doing surface scans to see if he's telling the truth or not. He asks a short series of questions beginning with "How do you feel about telepaths?" (answer: He does NOT like them) and ending with..."Are you still in love with my wife?"
Garibaldi answers them all truthfully...except the last one. He says no.
Hmmnn...
Then, he instructs Wade to "make sure Ms. Constance gets her payment" and escorts Garibaldi out to finish his sleep.
The next morning, over a breakfast including fresh-squeezed orange juice (VERY expensive to import--and what is this with powerful men and oranges? Sheridan has a thing for them too.) Edgars decides to tell Garibaldi half of the truth. He tells him, basically, that although President Clark THINKS he has real power, it's actually the megacorporations--like, for example, Edgars Industries--that have been running things behind the scenes all along. He does want Clark taken out of office as much as anyone but the way Sheridan is going about it is all wrong; it's causing Clark to act too fast, messing up their timetable. What does Clark have in mind? Clark wants to take the power that the Psi Corps already have in the government and make it even worse--make them into a sort of "thought-police" force. To make a world where a stray thought could get you killed and privacy is a thing you don't even dare dream about. "Would you want to live in that world, Mr. Garibaldi?" he asks.
"No," he says, of course. "I wouldn't."
Then Edgars goes on to casually throw in something about how some aliens showed up and promised Clark anything he wanted (WHOAH boy!) if he would do this, so he's been at it ever since. They have to get him out of office, yes, but Sheridan's way is not the right way.
At this point is when I THINK the conversation was over, and Garibaldi asks if this is the entire truth, and Edgars says no, but he doesn't know whether he can tell him the whole thing yet or not. He is escorted away.
Somewhere in here, we have some scenes whose order I'm not too sure of--a soppy, whiny scene with Lise in which she explains why she married Edgars (and an actual useful nugget of information--evidently Babylon 5 is "18 light years away" from Mars. THANK YOU--I was wondering if they'd ever give us any clues at ALL to where it was! Of course, that's not saying 18 light-years in which DIRECTION...but it's a start...), a chilling scene in which Ms. Constance "gets her payment" (Wade shoots her because she now knows too much) and, last but not least, we see Edgars evidently doing some kind of very painful experiments on telepaths, after all his talk that he would never HURT anyone, that he was only doing the RIGHT thing, for everyone's GOOD, etc. He maintains his same soft-spoken, grandfatherly demeanor through the entire thing, even when he orders Wade to execute all of them because "they've suffered enough". Yeah, at YOUR hands! And so, Edgars enters the ranks of B5's best villians, in my opinion...
At the very end, Garibaldi walks up to Edgars and tells him, okay, he's decided, he's "all the way in." So what's the rest of the truth? But just SAYING you're in doesn't make you in, you have to do something to prove your loyalty first. Okay, so what does Edgars want Garibaldi to do?
Oh, nothing much. Just set up and betray SHERIDAN, his former best friend, so that he can be captured by CLARK!
And Garibaldi says...YES...
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