This turned out to be better than I thought - I think I was confusing it with a later Franklin episode for no apparent reason.


Nice to see the future full of liberal morals - no life for a life but then again death of personality could be argued to be the same as "life" could be defined as who we are.

Loved the Londo/Lennier stuff.

Going into it with fairly low expectations probably helped as well Neil ;)

After hearing comments about this being a poor episode sandwiched in between 2 excellent ones, I didn't have particularly high expectations either, but I liked it.

I guess JMS has read LOTR what with Lennier's "Eleventy seventh birthday" comments. And how "silence of the lambs" was Talia's mind scan? I kept expecting the bad guy to mention chianti and make the" ferferfer" noise. :lol: (Max types that sound so much better, I can't remember how she spells it though. :unsure:)

Liked all the Lennier and Londo stuff as a whole. Lennier has some great fighting moves.

I guess we have a love interest story for Franklin further down the line. The whole stuff with the alien curing device was quite interesting, but fairly obvious where it would end up as soon as the woman said it transfers energy from herself to the patient.

I also thought the death of personality thing was a particularly sinister punishment. And not much fairer than an actual death sentence.

Just a thought, how long is it since G'kar appeared in an episode? :unsure:

You know, that struck me as well, but only at the beginning of Chrysalis when he re-appears. He wasn't in QoM, or Babylon Squared, or A Voice in the Wilderness. I think he was in Grail, didn't Gajic see all the Ambassadors ??

The death of personality was creepy, but at least that way, the offender gets to contribute in some way to Society after the wipe.

No he wasn't in Grail. Gajic saw the Minbari, Centauri and Vorlons - No Narns, not even Na'Toth saying something like he'd been called away or whatever.

He wasn't in Legacies either was he ?? Pretty sure he wasn't as Na'Toth was the one trying to convince Alisa that she should go to Narn. Pretty sure he wasn't in Eyes either, and can't remember him in TKO.

Which if we're right means he was absent for eight episodes in between Signs & Portents and Chrysalis. :o

Nope, not in TKO or Eyes either.

I read FotR last weekend and was struck by similarities. Apart from the Nine, JRRT's Galadriel (sp) sounds just likr Delenn to me. Anyway, keep watching ;)

I'd have to agree on this one. I've always remembered this as being an episode that wasn't very good. Whilst it's not brilliant, it's not that bad. As I said before it's done no favours by coming between Babylon Squared and Chrysalis. That aside, it's better than I recalled.

Three stories being told here, the first of which is Franklin on his moral high horse again. You'd have thought he'd learn't by now from his previous actions in Believers :rolleyes:

:lol:

Ivanova gets some decent scenes in this episode. Not only showing herself to be smart by figuring out what Stephen's been doing, but also supportive/protective by offering to chip in rather than shut his operation down.

June Lockhart makes an appearance, famous for her stint on the original Lost in Space TV series, alongside, funnily enough, one Bill Mumy, aka Lennier. It's a shame that the two don't get to share any scenes here.

We also later discover that Dr Rosen became addicted to stims and ended up losing her practice/licence because of a mistake she made whilst under the influence. :unsure:

As some have said already, the conclusion to this story, culminating with the merging of this story and that of Karl Mueller was sign posted about halfway through.

Mentioning Karl Mueller takes us onto the second thread to this episode, that of Karl Mueller and his sentencing. Before I go any further I'll flip in another piece of trivia. For those that have seen the 80s puppet show Star Fleet, Mark Rolsten, who plays Karl Mueller, voiced John 'Fatty' Lee in Star Fleet :thumbsup: He's also turned up on Enterprise and The Shield over recent years.

The sentence of 'death of personality' is creepy. We get to see someone in a later episode who's gone through a mind wipe, which is quite interesting. The con, that death of personality is as good as killing the person anyway. The pro, that they can then repay some of their debt to society through servitude. It's an interesting, not to mention different view of punishment. Star Trek would no doubt have him seeing the error of his ways in no time, and rehabilitated to an upstanding member of society within a few days :rolleyes:

The final thread, and the most interesting one, for me, was the Londo/Lennier dynamic. One of the great things about B5 is that any one character gets the chance to interact with virtually all the other characters at some point, and invariably it works well. Londo takes Lennier under his wing :rolleyes: I'm sure we all saw where this one was going right from the off, but that makes it no less entertaining, as Londo first takes Lennier (or Lannier as Londo kept calling him early on in the episode) to a strip club before moving on to poker.

Bonus points for Londo's cheating with the aid of his incredibly mobile todger :lol:

We get a little more background info on the Minbari, namely that they don't react well to alcohol, and that they can lie, to help another save face.

Plus, we had kickass Lennier in action. Check out those moves !! Not bad for a glorified monk of sorts :lol:

One of his incredibly mobile todgers :)

:lol: This is of course very true :lol:

Joe's the first to admit that he took a fair few references from LotR.

Z'ha'dum/K'ha'za'dum is another one ;)

I thought it seemed a long time! :o

If I'd been watching the season as I would normally watch a season I'd acquired, I probably wouldn't have noticed. But as it's been about 3-4 weeks since I saw him, I did. :)

It's the first time I've really noticed it to any great degree to be honest. An episode stands a far lesser chance of disappointing with G'Kar in it :)

I think this was suggested - whether it was just by Bill Mumy, or whether JMS planned it and then decided it a bit silly, but there would be a scene where Lennier walks past Rosen, and the two of them would look at each other, as if each one recognised the other from somewhere :)

I'm suddenly reminded of the opening credits to The A Team, where the Cylon walks past Face Man :lol:

Fianally got around to watching this one. Interesting without being particulary exciting.

It didnt feel like a 'filler' episode but by the same token I came away from the story thinking 'so what?'

Good but not brillent.

Oh, you'll see soon enough :)

Yes indeed you will :ph43r:

Lets see what happens in season 2 shall we.

You should be over half way through it by now. :rolleyes: ;) :lol:

:ph43r:

with everything else I still havent started watching I am lucky to have got this far:

BOX SETS NOT EVEN STARTED:

Saphire and Steel -Season 1
Timeslip - The Complete show
Quantum Leap - Season 1
Stargate - season 1/2/3/4
X-files - season 1+2
Battlestar Galactica - The Complete show
Dr Who - Lost in time

Just not enough hours in the day, especially when you live with someone who dosent like ANY of it.

Thats easy Ken - B5 S2 p*sses on all of those do I remember Timeslip fondly from my youth.

I'm not saying it dosent but its fitting anything in at the moment

Mark Ralston playing a bad guy, there's a shock, not that he's typecast or anything (is Drake in Aliens the only "good guy" he's ever played?) :lol:

His come-uppance was well done, I thought, but it kind of robbed the episode of the impact of seeing the personality wipe. Talia's pre-wipe scan was very unsettling, so it would have been interesting to see what his mind was like when she did the comparative scan afterwards :ponder:

You have to wonder how incompetent B5's security team is when he was allowed to escape so easily :rolleyes: :lol:

I love Londo's reaction when Lennier tells him about the effects of alcohol on Minbari, and Londo's method of cheating always cracks me up ("Has it suddenly got cold in here?" oslt :lol: ). When Lennier suddenly starts fighting it's quite a surprise :thumbsup:

I like the scene between Franklin and Ivanova at the beginning :thumbsup: