Moments of Transition

Reviewed by Accolyte Jharlenn of the Religious Caste

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This was a very good if very serious and rather sad episode. It had several plotines--Lyta's problems with Psi Corps, Garibaldi's involvement with Mr. Edgars, the whole EarthGov thing, and of course the Minbari Civil War. Let's start with that one first.
Delenn and Lennier's ship has finally arrived back at Minbar, where they see exactly how bad the damage is for the first time. The beautiful crystal spires are broken, blackened with smoke, fires rage across the city. In the halls of the once-peaceful temples, the wounded lay dying as the healers--too few--run frantically among them, trying in vain to beat death. Victims are hurried past on stretchers, buildings are naught but ruins. It is a very sad sight. If this was not depressing enough, Delenn then tells Lennier to tell the Warrior Caste leader, Shai Alyt Shakiri, that the Religious Caste will surrender.
But don't despair yet, this is indeed Delenn, remember. She's got something up her flowy, medieval-style sleeve...
Meanwhile, Neroon meets with Shai Alyt Shakiri (a very LARGE Minbari, and another descendant of Valen--he's got a beard. Which ironically means that Delenn's main enemy is RELATED to her! Distantly.) and reports on what he has found out from the Religious Caste. Not being a TOTAL fanatic, Neroon makes some comment about how it's a good thing the Religious Caste has agreed to surrender, because this will allow them to take over with a minimum of bloodshed and dying. Shakiri then goes into this big long speech about how death is not to be feared, it is just another state of being after all, why should we fear death more than life? Everyone dies eventually, only the time and place changes, etc. And you just KNOW through this entire speech that if good writing is to prevail, this guy will HAVE to put his money where his mouth is later...but, as I said, that's LATER. For now, we see Neroon starting to perhaps doubt his "august leader"'s words--just a bit (you can see it in his eyes) as he leaves the Shakiri's chambers. Oh, and one last little detail--Shakiri thinks that Delenn will be too large of a danger to his authority once the new "Warriors' Council" is put into place, so after she surrenders, he is going to have her killed.
Nice guy, huh?
I'm sure some other stuff happened here but I can't remember what, so let's skip on ahead to when the two leaders, Delenn and Shakiri, meet in the Temple of (some word I can't remember that sounded almost as much Centauri as Minbari), choosing this place for her surrender because it is where they chose their leaders in the old days, before Valen. Everyone gathers in the room, which is circular with a strangely marked-off smaller circle in the middle of the floor, and has a HUGE amphitheater of seats going all around the walls, way up high, in fact practically reaching to the ceiling it seems. Shakiri confronts Delenn and asks what does she have to say. Everyone holds their breaths as she does indeed say the words: "The Religious Caste...surrenders."
Shakiri then starts going on about how glorious a day this is, and now the Warrior Caste will take over as they are meant to, etc, when a rather miffed Delenn interrupts him. "ExCUSE me," she says. "I said that we surrender. I did NOT say that we gave up our right to help form the new government! We cannot fight you. After all, we have spent so many centuries arming you, teaching you how to fight. How can we stand against that?" (side-note: Is that a bit of a hint? Like, "A-HEM, just WHO taught you to be so tough? Ungrateful punks...") Then she goes on about how leaders usually send off the young and helpless to fight for them while they stay far away from the front lines. The Ancients knew this, so they made up a different rule--to be a leader of your clan you must be willing to DIE for them. To be worthy of sending others into battle to die you must be willing to sacrifice yourself.
And at this point, an irising mechanism on the ceiling, far, far overhead, opens up and a small but very bright beam of light shoots down into the very center of the hall. Delenn is still talking, and as she does so, she steps INTO the beam of light. Now, I'm not exactly sure what this thing does, but I assume it's some kind of conduit that magnifies the sun's heat or something, and gets more powerful the longer it's on and the bigger the circle opens. But hey, I'm just a lowly accolyte, what do I know? Anyway, Delenn finishes, if you REALLY want to go back to the old ways, well, then THIS was part of the old ways, too! The warring caste leaders would gather in this temple and test their courage by standing within the Starfire Wheel. Whoevever left the wheel first LOST, as they were not worthy to lead their cast because they won't die for them. Whoever stayed in there and died (or showed they were willing to die), their caste would win even if they had lost their leader. "Valen said, 'Will you follow me into fire?'" Delenn recites. "Well, Shakiri? WILL you?" The wheel keeps getting bigger and bigger, in stages, every time it does so with a loud CRUNCH nose of stone on stone (this was a VERY well-timed, dramatic, tense scene, with the lighting, the sounds, the huge space dwarfing the characters, etc. Too cool.) Shakiri is afraid to go in (WUSS!) and in fact cannot even LOOK at the Starfire Wheel, shading his eyes from its glare. Delenn just stands there, passively, cool as anything. Finally, determined not to be seen as weaker than a RELIGIOUS Caste member (oh, phooey!) he steps in. But while Delenn is standing straight and tall, looking up into the source of the light, he cringes and cowers and covers his face, and only lasts a few seconds before the pain drives him out.
But Delenn stays.
"She has won, why does she not leave?" wonders Neroon, getting obviously worried.
"She is making a point." says Lennier quietly.
The Starfire wheel opens more. It is now almost ALL the way open. The heat by this time is extremely intense. Delenn crumples weakly to the ground, unable to withstand the onslaught anymore.
And she STILL stays.
"NOOOO!!!" roars Neroon, and charges in to SAVE her--his worst ENEMY! He hands her limp form to Lennier, safely outside the Wheel, then he stands there, in extreme pain, raises his fists, and screams, "Though...I was born...Warrior...I see now...that the calling...of my heart...is RELIGIOUS!!"
And the Starfire Wheel opens ALLLLLL the way up and POOF Neroon is naught but a blackened burn-stain on the stone floor.
WHOAH.
It figures. Just as I start to really LIKE a character, the "anvil of fate" has to hit him/her/it on the head! Or in this case, the...sunbeam of fate?
At any rate, that of course freaks the HELL out of everybody there, and leaves them wondering if perhaps peace might not be possible--after all, Neroon had been a staunch warrior all his life but converted to Religious! Delenn, after a short while to partially recover from her ordeal, decides to take advantage of this and REforms the Grey Council. Yes, you heard me, the same lady who destroyed it puts it back together about a year later. Only this will be a different Grey Council. Instead of 3 from each Caste, there will be two Warrior and two Religious--and FIVE Worker. Yes, Worker. They were the quiet, never-wavering, never-complaining ones who kept steadily at their jobs all this time that the Warriors and Religious types were at each other's throats. They never asked for more than what they got, they never tried to kill anybody. And so Delenn feels that not only are they more suited to govern, but after the way they were just totally ignored and stepped on all this time, they DESERVE to rule. So from now on, war and religion will serve the state, NOT the other way around, and the Workers will be the new governing body of Minbar. The place in the middle of the circle, for the One (the Nine and the One, right?) will be reserved in memory of Neroon, until "the One who is to come" shows up to take it. Two points here--first, who IS "the One who is to come"? and secondly--notice that she does NOT give herself a seat on the New Council--although she COULD have, easily. Hmmn...
On to other stuff now. Mr. Garibaldi keeps getting called at odd hours of the night by his new employer, Mr. Edgars, who feels he is paying him MORE than enough money to be allowed a few eccentricities. (There is a seven-hour gap between B5 and Mars, and Edgars calls at the time of day HE feels comfortable, which means it's bad for B5. A note--in "The Hour of the Wolf", we find out that Centauri Prime is SIX hours away from B5. So Mars is farther away than Centauri Prime? Interesting...) Edgars wants Garibaldi to smuggle things through customs for him, presumably so that the competitors can't get their hands on it. This causes problems, more of them, between Garibaldi and Zack (poor Zack!) When Zack accuses Garibaldi of dishonesty, Garibaldi comes right back with, "Oh, so breaking away from Earth, using stolen government property, starting to build your own little empire out here, THAT'S honest? You want to see dishonesty, go look in a mirror sometime."
OOH...ouch...
Garibaldi also at one point hires Lyta, who is desperate for money, but is almost immediately called by Egars (in the middle of the night, AGAIN) who tells him to fire her. Right now. He doesn't trust telepaths and he doesn't want them working closely with anyone who's working for HIM. This raises an interesting question--if the serum he's working on is supposed to HELP telepaths, then why does he hate them so bad? Hmmn...
Oh, and the scene with Garibaldi and "Mr. Adams", the nutball who thinks his dog and his cat are going to take over the galaxy, was hilarious. For those few of you who didn't know the in-joke, Mr. Adams was played by Scott Adams, of "Dilbert" fame, and the dog and cat he's talking about are of course the evil mastermind Dogbert and the sadistic Human Resources Director, Catbert. (Those of you who were on the Warner Bros. Babylon 5 message boards in November of '98 may remember that I was "running" for "Lord of the Galaxy" with the ticket of Anna Sheridan and Catbert--it was THIS episode that caused me to associate that character with B5. And I ALMOST won, too!)
Meanwhile, Lyta is having a REALLY bad time. She alMOST gets a job at the beginning of the episode, but at the last second is turned down because she does not belong to Psi Corps, and for insurance reasons practically every company that would hire a commercial telepath has to have Psi Corps references. If this wasn't bad enough, Zack--the one person on the station who's NICE to her--shows up to tell her she has to move to smaller quarters. The Vorlon government is no longer paying for the ones she's using, and they need as much space as they can get...so...And she just barely finished fixing the place up all nice, too!
(Is it just me, or has Zack sorta become the Angel of Despair--he's always the one to bring the BAD news to people, lately...)
Things get yet worse for our redheaded telepath when Bester shows up and offers to make her an underground Psi Corps member--she'd be Corps in name only, have to wear the gloves and insignia and give 10% of her fees to the Corps, but otherwise, she wouldn't have to follow any of their rules, and companies would hire her. It's a win-win situation--with just one little catch--
He wants her body.
"WHAT?!!" she shrieks. "Not NOW, just when you're not...using it anymore." Bester of course said it that way first to get the reaction, but what he really meant was that he wants Lyta to sign her body over to the Corps so they can study how exactly she was altered and how to duplicate the effects, AFTER she is dead. And the contract specifically states that if it happens for ANY reason other than natural causes, it's null and void. So he can't just kill her himself.
Lyta crumples up the paper and tells him off, then stalks away.
But by the end of the episode, after she's tried everything else, we see that same paper, on her table, flattened as much as she could from where she crumpled it, and the camera slowly pans up to show her putting on the Psi Corps insignia--with black leather gloves on--looking at herself in the mirror, and crying.
Oh, dear...
To wrap all this up, at the VERY end of the episode, Ivanova comes into Sheridan's office screaming about "Those BASTARDS!!!" Earthforce ships have started shooting down ships full of refugees, CIVILIANS, women, children, the injured, the infirm, who were only trying to escape the killing zones! This makes Sheridan very very mad too, as well it might, and he vows that he will hunt down Clark and get him if it's the last thing he ever does. And God help whoever gets in his way...

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