The Face of the Enemy
Cephiedvariable, I see your Star Wars humor and I raise it with a Serenity blooper. ;)
“The Face of the Enemy” is an interesting title for an episode that doesn't reveal any new villains. What it does do, IMHO, is remind us of another episode that defined the enemy:
The enemy is fear. The enemy is ignorance. The enemy is the one who tells you that you must hate that which is different. Because, in the end, that hate will turn on you, and that same hate will destroy you.
This is Reverend Dexter's speech from “And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place,” in response to the rumors beginning to circulate on Earth about Babylon 5. Those rumors are given voice here through Captain Frank, who tells us that ISN has now exaggerated B5's relationship with aliens to a horrifying degree. But there's another, stronger parallel to this episode - namely, to the role of the telepaths in the B5-verse.
Since we're doing spoiler-friendly discussions, I'd like to take a look at what we know about telepaths from the whole series. We know that the Vorlons created telepaths to combat the Shadows' organic tech. We know that different races treat telepaths differently. Of the four primary races, the Centauri and Minbari appear to treat their telepaths the best; both seem to integrate telepaths into their respective cultures, though always in a position of servitude. The Narns do not yet have telepaths, but it seems that they also see telepaths as tools or weapons.
And Earth? They created the Psi Corps to segregate telepaths from the rest of the population, presumably out of fear. That fear is what drives William Edgars to sponsor the creation of a virus that destroys the telepath gene and an antidote that only non-telepaths can control.
Is this fear justified? Lyta's story about the crazed man on Beta Colony would suggest that it is. The development of bloodhound units - the same bloodhound units that will attempt to kill the other telepaths in S5 - would suggest that it is. Bester's manipulation of Garibaldi would suggest that it is. And yet there seems to be an underlying message, which Franklin gives voice to: if we could all just get along and find a way to coexist with the same legal rights, there wouldn't have to be a war. Then again, this is from the doctor who is about to use cryogenically frozen telepaths to disable Earth ships. And who does nothing during the conflict that arises in S5.
Here are my questions:
From a narrative perspective, why bring the telepaths up now? How the telepath conflict affect the civil war, or vice versa?
Why did JMS use Garibaldi rather than Ivanova to give voice to the telepath conflict?
Let me elaborate on this one. Bester tells Garibaldi that he basically kidnapped him from the Shadows, who were going to alter his brain anyway, in order to get him looking for the anti-telepath virus. This seems to me like a huge retcon rather than a cleverly revealed mystery, mainly because I hate that Garibaldi loses his agency for so much of S4. According to Bester, the only choice he made was to resign his position, and that happened after the war was already won. I get that JMS conflated the Shadows, Earth, and Psi Corps from the beginning of S3, but I don't understand why he felt it necessary to say that the Shadows were going to do something to Garibaldi and then not tel us what it was. I also can't help thinking that making Ivanova the spy would have been all kinds of dramatically satisfying.
As for the civil-war-centric part of this episode, it doesn't do too much for me. I get that Sheridan doesn't think Garibaldi wants to hurt him personally, but obviously his people were not doing a good enough job if they couldn't confirm that Garibaldi was no longer operating on his own. The strobe lights in the bar scene give me a headache, and I have a hard time believing that Sheridan fought a tranquilizer tab that well. And the intercutting of the ISN reporting with scenes of Sheridan's torture seems too heavy-handed since we already know that ISN doesn't tell the truth.
Having said all that, if you did like these things, please jump in and tell me why.