Babylon 5
Babylon 5 (1993–1998), created by J. Michael Straczynski, is a science fiction television epic about Babylon 5, an Earth-governed space station built to promote harmony between interstellar civilizations. It is unusual in its focus on a story arc which dominates the events through its five-year run.
Season 1: Signs and Portents
[edit]- [Opening credits voiceover.]
- Jeffrey Sinclair: It was the dawn of the third age of mankind, ten years after the Earth/Minbari war. The Babylon Project was a dream given form. Its goal: to prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call, home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night. It can be a dangerous place, but it's our last best hope for peace. This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2258. The name of the place is Babylon 5.
- Londo Mollari: [arguing with Garibaldi] We made a mistake, I'm sorry. Here, open my wrists. [offers Garibaldi his wrists]
- Michael Garibaldi: Centauri don't have major arteries in their wrists.
- Londo: Of course not! What, do you think I am stupid?
- Jeffrey Sinclair: The best way to understand someone is to fight him, make him angry. That's when you see the real person.
- Ivanova: I do not like Santiago. I've always thought that a leader should have a strong chin. He has no chin, and his vice president has several. This to me is not a good combination.
- Londo: My people…we have a way, you see. We know how, and sometimes even when, we are going to die. Comes in a dream. In my dream, I am an old man, it's twenty years from now, and I am dying. My hands wrapped around someone's throat, and his around mine. We have squeezed the life out of each other. The first time I saw G'Kar, I recognized him as the one from the dream. It will happen. Twenty years from now, we'll die with our hands around each other's throats.[N]
- Londo: What reasonable explanation is there for the slaughter of unarmed civilians?
- G'Kar: Curious. We wondered the same thing when you invaded our world. The wheel turns, does it not, Ambassador?
- Londo: We should have wiped out your kind when we had the chance.
- G'Kar: What happened? Run out of small children to butcher?
- Kosh: They are alone. They are a dying people. We should let them pass.
- Sinclair: The Narn or the Centauri?
- Kosh: Yes.
- Sinclair: We've had plenty of experience with sneak attacks - Pearl Harbor, the terrorist nuking of San Diego, the destruction of our first Mars colony, it's a long and bloody history... Do you know what we learned from it? That the sneak attack is the first resort of a coward.
- G'Kar: Just a minute-
- Sinclair: You didn't even have the decency to pick a military target! A poorly armed civilian colony... [in sarcasm] What a challenge that must've been for the great Narn military...
- Ivanova: Mr. Garibaldi, you're sitting at my station, using my equipment. Is there a reason for this, or to save time should I just snap your hand off at the wrist?
- Londo: The Council can go to hell! And the emergency session can go to hell! And you, Vir, you can go to hell too—I would not want you to feel left out.
- Londo: Blood calls out for blood.
- Londo: Just now, would you really have killed me?
- Garibaldi: Yes. Yes, I would have. But I'm just as glad I didn't have to. The paperwork's a pain in the butt.
- [An unknown ship on collision course with the station.]
- Susan Ivanova: This is not a clear and present danger? I must read the rule book again.
- Stephen Franklin: It's all so brief, isn't it? Typical human lifespan is almost a hundred years, but it's barely a second compared to what's out there. It wouldn't be so bad if life didn't take so long to figure out. Seems you just start to get it right and then…it's over.
- Ivanova: Doesn't matter. If we lived 200 years we'd still be human, we'd still make the same mistakes.
- Franklin: You're a pessimist.
- Ivanova: I'm Russian, doctor. We understand these things.
- Delenn: They will join with the souls of all our people. Melt one into another until they are born into the next generation of Minbari. Remove those souls and the whole suffers. We are diminished, each generation becomes less than the one before.
- Soul Hunter: A quaint lie, pretty fantasy. The soul ends with death, unless we act to preserve it.
- Michael Garibaldi: I really hate it when you get heroic. Cuts into my business. A man's got to earn a living, you know.
- Soul Hunter #2: If I may ask, what happened to my brother's collection?
- Sinclair: [with a sly smile] Life's full of mysteries. Consider this one of them.
- Londo: What do you want, you moon-faced assassin of joy?
- [Ivanova talks to her father for the last time]
- Andrei Ivanov: Is that you, Susan?
- Susan Ivanova: Yes.
- Andrei Ivanov: Oh dear God! I never thought I'd see your face again. It makes this easier. Susan, I know I haven't been the best of fathers to you. But when your mother passed on and your brother was killed in the war I was too wrapped up in my own grief to pay attention to your needs. And when you joined EarthForce against my wishes…
- Ivanova: You don't have to say this, Father.
- Andrei Ivanov: Yes, Yes I must. There's no more time. I want you to know how proud I am of you, Susan. I always have been. But a father should give his daughter love as well as respect, and in that I failed you. I'm sorry, I'm ashamed. Forgive me.
- [she nods her head, and Andrei smiles]
- Andrei Ivanov: Thank you, dushenka moya.
- Ivanova: "Little soul." You haven't called me that since...
- [her father closes his eyes and stops breathing]
- Ivanova: Papa!
- Jeffrey Sinclair: The last time I gave an interview, they told me to just relax and say what I really felt. Ten minutes after the broadcast I got transferred to an outpost so far off the star maps you couldn't find it with a hunting dog and a Ouija board.
- Michael Garibaldi: [smiling] Don't sweat it. Just be that charming, effervescent Commander we've all come to know and love. What's the worst that could happen? They fire you, ship you off to the Rim, and I get promoted to Commander. I don't see a problem here.
- Sinclair: How sharper than a serpent's tooth.
- [visiting Babylon 5, Vance Hendricks tries to get the attention of his former protege]
- Dr. Vance Hendricks: Stephen, there's a Martian war machine parked outside. They'd like a word about the common cold.
- Dr. Stephen Franklin: Tell them to make an appointment.
- Sinclair: You forgot the first rule of the fanatic: when you become obsessed with the enemy, you become the enemy!
- Mary Ann Cramer: I have to ask you the same question people back home are asking about space these days. Is it worth it? Should we just pull back? Forget the whole thing as a bad idea, and take care of our own problems at home?
- Sinclair: No. We have to stay here. And there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers. But there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes, and all of this…all of this…was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars.
- Narn Courier: Are you Ambassador G'Kar?
- G'Kar: This is Ambassador G'Kar's quarters. This is Ambassador G'Kar's table! This is Ambassador G'Kar's dinner! Which part of this progression escapes you?!
- Londo Mollari: Do you know what the last Xon said just before he died? [clutches chest] AAAAGGGHHHH!
- . . .
- [A drunken Londo climbs across a dinner table as he describes a collection of Centauri statues.]
- Londo: This is Ben-Zed, god of food! And…Li, goddess of passion! And Mo-goth, god of the underworld, and protector of front doors. Gods by the bushel! Gods by the pound! Gods for all occasions!!
- [He leans toward a discomfited Delenn.]
- Londo: Have I ever told you that you are very cute for a Minbari?
- [He crawls over to Garibaldi.]
- Londo: Oh! And you are cute, too, in an annoying sort of way. Everybody's cute. Everybody's cute! Even me. But in purple, I'm stunning!
- [He passes out on the table.]
- Vir Cotto: Ah! He has become one with his inner self!
- Michael Garibaldi: He's passed out.
- Vir: That too.
- G'Kar: And you have no idea how that [a black flower sent to G'Kar as a sign that he is about to be assassinated] got into my bed?
- Na'Toth: Ambassador, it is not my place to speculate on how anything gets into your bed. Your reputed fascination with Earth women, for instance.
- . . .
- G'Kar: The Earthers have a phrase: Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. I believe they stole it from us.
- [Delenn meets her new aide at customs]
- Delenn: You can look up, Lennier of the Third Fane of Chu'Domo.
- Lennier: It is forbidden.
- Delenn: I cannot have an aide who will not look up. You will be forever walking into things.[N]
- [Sinclair is listening to an audio recording of Tennyson's Ulysses in his quarters]
- Catherine: Tennyson? Jeff, you've been caught on that one since the Academy! What's it take to drag you into the 23rd century?
- Sinclair: We find meaning where we can.
- Catherine: Ah, and which are you? "An idle king…doling unequal laws unto a savage race that hoard and sleep and feed and know not you"? Or, "this gray spirit, yearning in desire to follow knowledge like a sinking star"?
- Sinclair: I didn't know you'd memorized it!
- Catherine: I lived with you for a year. I didn't have much choice.
- [Sinclair grabs Catherine's wrist as she moves to leave his quarters.]
- Catherine: Don't touch me unless you mean it.
- G'Kar: That hurt.
- Na'Toth: Ambassador, it was the only way to disable the paingivers. I had to hit them as hard as possible, as often as possible, and still make it appear as though I were beating you into another incarnation.
- G'Kar: And you didn't enjoy it in the least?
- Na'Toth: I didn't say that.
- G'kar: [To Tu'Pari] That's your flight. I suggest you board quickly. With luck, they may never find you, but if they do, you will know pain…
- Na'toth: …and you will know fear…
- G'Kar: …and then you will die. Have a pleasant flight.
- Jeffrey Sinclair: No, it's a fine time…
- [he looks up and spots the two Psi Cops, Bester and Kelsey–instantly realizing that they've been communicating telepathically with him]
- Sinclair: Get out of my head. You want to talk to me, talk to me!
- Alfred Bester: Apologies, Commander. It saves considerable time.
- [G'Kar tries to dissuade a skeptical Catherine Sakai from her flight to Sigma 957.]
- G'Kar: Let me pass on to you the one thing I've learned about this place. No one here is exactly what he appears. Not Mollari, not Delenn, not Sinclair…and not me.
- . . .
- [After returning from Sigma 957, Sakai seeks out G'Kar.]
- G'Kar: Ah, Ms. Sakai. I'm pleased to see that you have returned safely from your expedition.
- Catherine Sakai: Yes, thanks to you. Just one question. Why?
- G'Kar: Why not?
- Catherine Sakai: It's not an answer.
- G'Kar: Oh yes it is. It's simply not an answer you like or the answer you expected. There's a difference. Narns, humans, Centauri, we all do what we do for the same reason: because it seemed like a good idea at the time. There was no profit, no advantage in letting you fall to an untimely and most uncomfortable death. It would distress the Commander to no good effect. So once again we return to, "Why not?" I told you before you left: no one here is entirely what they appear. If I surprised you, all the better. Good day, Ms. Sakai.
- [Garibaldi harbors a very rude thought towards Bester]
- Bester: Anatomically impossible, Mr. Garibaldi. But you're welcome to try.
- Talia: Do you know what it's like when telepaths make love, Commander? You drop every defense, and it's all mirrors: reflecting each other's feelings deeper and deeper…until, somewhere along the line, your souls mix. And it's a feeling so profound it makes you hurt. It's the only moment in a telepath's life when you no longer hear the voices.
- Catherine Sakai: While I was out there, I saw something. What was it?
- G'Kar: [pointing to a nearby flower] What is this? [upon closer inspection, an insect is visible]
- Catherine: An ant.
- G'Kar: "Ant"!
- Catherine: So much gets shipped up from Earth on commercial transports, it's hard to keep them out.
- [As Catherine is talking, G'Kar carefully picks up the ant.]
- G'Kar: I have just picked it up on the tip of my glove. If I put it down again [replacing the ant on the flower] and it asks another ant, "What was that?" …how would it explain? There are things in the universe billions of years older than either of our races. They are vast, timeless. And if they are aware of us at all, it is as little more than ants…and we have as much chance of communicating with them as an ant has with us. We know. We've tried. And we've learned we can either stay out from underfoot, or be stepped on.
- Catherine: That's it? That's all you know?
- G'Kar: Yes. They are a mystery. And I am both terrified and reassured to know that there are still wonders in the universe…that we have not yet explained everything. Whatever they are, Ms. Sakai, they walk near Sigma 957. They must walk there alone.
- Susan Ivanova: You're a vicious man.
- Michael Garibaldi: I'm Head of Security. It's in the job description.
- [Vir pleads with Londo for a young star-crossed Centauri couple.]
- Vir Cotto: But they love each other!
- Londo Mollari: Love. Pah! Overrated.
- [Londo fetches a set of three pictures of Centauri women.]
- Londo: Here. Look. These are my three wives: Pestilence, Famine, and Death. Do you think I married them for their personalities? Their personalities could shatter entire planets![N] Arranged marriages. Every one. But they worked out, they inspired me! Knowing that they were waiting at home for me is what keeps me here — 75 light-years away!
- Londo: …My shoes are too tight.
- Vir: …Excuse me?
- Londo: Something my father said. He was…old, very old at the time. I went into his room, and he was sitting, alone in the dark, crying. So I asked him what was wrong, and he said, "My shoes are too tight. But it doesn't matter, because I have forgotten how to dance." I never understood what that meant until now. My shoes are too tight, and I have forgotten how to dance.
- Vir: …I don't understand.
- Londo: [Smiling wistfully] Nor should you.
- Delenn: Human ways are often unfathomable, but in time, one learns to live with them.
- G'Kar: If one has an exceedingly strong constitution.
- Jeffrey Sinclair: Everyone lies, Michael. The innocent lie because they don't want to be blamed for something they didn't do, and the guilty lie because they don't have any other choice.
- [A mysterious man accuses Sinclair of selling out to the Minbari at the Battle of the Line.]
- Sinclair: We never had a chance. You say we could have won, but you weren't there, you didn't see them! When I looked at those ships, I…I didn't just see my death — I saw the death of the whole damn human race!
- Knight Two: Then why did they surrender?!
- Sinclair: I don't know! Maybe the universe blinked. Maybe God changed His mind. All I know is that we got a second chance!
- [Ambassador Kosh hires commercial telepath Talia for an mysterious job.]
- Kosh: We will meet in Red 3 at the hour of scampering.
- [Later, after the first meeting]
- Kosh: We shall commence again tomorrow at the hour of longing.
- Kosh: Ahh. You seek meaning.
- Talia: Yes.
- Kosh: Then listen to the music, not the song.
- Ivanova: [to a Drazi ship threatening to fire on the station] Vakar Ashok, our gun arrays are now fixed on your ship. They will fire the instant you come into range. You will find their power most impressive…for a few seconds.
- [A distressed Talia presses Kosh for the meaning of his "business deal" with Abbut.]
- Talia: What is he? And what was on that data crystal he gave you?
- Kosh: Reflection. Surprise. Terror. For the future.
- [A gloating "Deathwalker" Jha'dur reveals the secret of her immortality drug.]
- Jha'dur: You and the rest of your kind take blind comfort in the belief that we are monsters, that you could never do what we did. The key ingredient in the anti-agapic cannot be synthesized. It must be taken from living beings. For one to live forever, another one must die. You will fall upon one another like wolves. It will make what we did pale by comparison. The billions who live forever will be a testimony to my work. And the billions who are murdered to buy that immortality will be the continuance of my work. Not like us? You will become us. That's my monument, Commander.
- Michael Garibaldi: Ambassador Kosh has been a busy boy today.
- Sinclair: They say God works in mysterious ways.
- Garibaldi: Maybe so. But He's a con man compared to the Vorlon.
- M'Ola: No one knows what is written in the stream [of Time] until the waters surround him.
- Susan Ivanova: After that [pacing to and fro], maybe I'll try pacing fro and to, just for the kick of it.
- Kosh: The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
- Stephen Franklin: May God save us from false religion.
- Jeffrey Sinclair: Who asked you to play God?
- Franklin: Every damn patient who comes through that door, that's who. People come to doctors because they want us to be gods. They want us to make it better…or make it not so. They want to be healed and they come to me when their prayers aren't enough. Well, if I have to take the responsibility, then I claim the authority too. I did good. And we both know it. And no one is going to take that away.
- Franklin: I'm waiting. For an apology.
- Sinclair: You'd better check the temperature in Hell first.
- Jeffrey Sinclair: Lieutenant Commander Ivanova, escort Major Kemmer off the Observation Dome.
- Susan Ivanova: With pleasure. [to Kemmer] You are going to resist, I hope.
- Major Lianna Kemmer: I demand you open a channel to Earth at once!
- Ivanova: I am a Lieutenant Commander in Earthforce, Major. I do not take demands. If you have a request, I'll consider it.
- Maj. Kemmer: Very well, then. I request that you open a channel to Earthdome!
- Ivanova: Request denied. Have a nice day.
- [G'Kar makes the suddenly fugitive Garibaldi an offer.]
- G'Kar: What if I told you a ship is ready to spirit you away to Narn space?
- Michael Garibaldi: I'd say "Why?"
- G'Kar: You could serve us in various ways. Analyst, security, cryptographer. If you grow homesick we could arrange for your return to human space with proper genetic alterations. That, too, might serve our needs.
- Garibaldi: You want me to betray my own world?
- G'Kar: Stop seeing things in such absolute terms. The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements: energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest. Unless you comprehend that fact and soon, you will be cornered and caged.
- [upon being told that Londo is the only one on the station who can provide him with a flower he needs for a religious ceremony]
- G'Kar: Oh, why does the universe hate me?
- [Sinclair uses his power to end a dockworkers' strike "by any means necessary"…by giving the strikers what they want]
- Orin Zento: You can't do this!
- Jeffrey Sinclair: You're right, I couldn't. Until you convinced the Senate to invoke the Rush Act. You should never hand someone a gun unless you're sure where they'll point it. Your mistake.
- [after Sinclair resolves the dockworkers' strike]
- Senator Hidoshi: If I were you, commander, I would watch things very carefully. You are not the most popular person in government circles right now. [ends their video call]
- Sinclair: So what else is new?
- [one question, asked multiple times to different characters]
- Morden: What do you want?
- Susan Ivanova: I've always had a hard time getting up when it's dark outside.
- Jeffrey Sinclair: But in space, it's always dark.
- Ivanova: [morosely] I know. I know.
- [Lord Kiro dismisses his aunt's vision of Babylon 5's destruction.]
- Lord Kiro: You will forgive my aunt. She sometimes takes her role of prophetess too seriously.
- Londo Mollari: Then you don't believe her vision?
- Lord Kiro: She's been wrong before. On my first birthday, she said that someday I would be killed by…shadows. [N]
- Londo: Shadows?
- Lord Kiro: Doesn't exactly make sense, does it?
- [when Morden repeatedly asks him what he wants]
- Londo Mollari: Do you really want to know what I want? Do you really want to know the truth? I want my people to reclaim their rightful place in the galaxy. I want to see the Centauri stretch forth their hand again and command the stars. I want a rebirth of glory, a renaissance of power! I want to stop running through my life like a man late for an appointment, afraid to look back or look forward. I want us to be what we used to be! I want…I want it all back the way it was. Does that answer your question?
- [he storms off, leaving Morden with a satisfied look]
- Morden: Yes. Yes, it does.
- [trying to find Sinclair, Morden runs into Kosh]
- Kosh: Leave this place. They are not for you. Go. Leave. NOW.
- [Boxer Walker Smith decks a man trying to knife a distracted Garibaldi from behind.]
- Walker Smith: One of these days, Garibaldi…you're gonna learn to watch your back. [N]
- Rabbi Yossel Koslov: Without forgiveness, you cannot mourn. And without mourning, you can never let go of the pain.
- Walker Smith: Any ideas on how I should fight this guy?
- Michael Garibaldi: From inside a Main Battle Tank would be nice.
- [during the memorial service for Ivanova's father]
- Susan Ivanova: When I was thirteen, I developed a passion for Kasharev, one of the radical neocommunist authors.
- Rabbi Koslov: Oy! Your father felt that Kasharev would be personally responsible for the destruction of Russian culture!
- Ivanova: Exactly! But he was invited to a reading by Kasharev, and I begged him to take me. Of course, he had no intention of going, but I whined and pouted as only a thirteen-year-old can, and eventually, he was forced to surrender. So, after the reading there was a question and answer session, and for days I had been formulating the perfect question with which to impress my idol. So the time comes, and I stand up, I'm trembling, and I ask my question.
- Rabbi Koslov: And?
- Ivanova: He promptly said that it was the most foolish thing that he had ever heard, and that he had no intention of bandying words with a bourgeois little twit who was barely out of diapers. [Laughs] I was crushed. But then Papa stood up. And he said that his daughter was neither bourgeois, nor a little twit, and had been out of diapers for many, many years, while Kasharev's writings had yet to rise above the contents of those garments!
- Rabbi Koslov: That sounds exactly like Andrei!
- Ivanova: He then added that were he not a man of peace, he would have horsewhipped Kasharev through the streets of St. Petersburg, as his own father should have done many years ago!
- Rabbi Koslov: Bravo, bravo!
- Ivanova: Well, of course I was mortified. But then Papa took my hand and he turned, and as we walked out, he said to me: "It was a good question, dushenka."
- [Sinclair watches Garibaldi wolf down his food.]
- Jeffrey Sinclair: They say food tastes better if you chew it first.
- Michael Garibaldi: Don't talk, I've seen you eat. Does the term "Doppler effect" ring a bell?
- [Thomas "Jinxo" Jordan tells his story, and the story of the "Babylon Curse," to Aldous Gajic.]
- Jinxo: I was too young to fight in the Minbari War, so when I got the chance to work space construction, I jumped for it. The day I went to work on the Babylon Station–we didn't number them at first, you know–I thought that was the best day of my life! I worked a few months, had some leave, so I took it. And the station's infrastructure collapsed. Sabotaged. They never found out who.
- Aldous Gajic: I remember.
- Jinxo: So I went to work on the second one. The firm still owned my contract until the station was finished. I took leave a second time, and that station was sabotaged. And then when B3 blew up, well, that's when I got the name Jinxo. When I went to work on B4, I didn't take any leave! I was there every minute until we finished it. I thought the Curse was gone. But as I was leaving on the shuttle, I looked back…and the station just sort of…wrinkled, twisted like putty, and then just disappeared. The minute I left. So then when they decided to build B5, I had to work on it. And I have to stay. I have to!
- Aldous: I'd say that you have the wrong nickname. They should have called you Lucky!
- Jinxo: How do you figure?
- Aldous: To have escaped the worst each time, that's a blessing. You're a very lucky man. Perhaps each time, you were exactly where you were meant to be.
- Jinxo: [slowly smiling] I never thought of it like that.
- Aldous: We never do.
- [Delenn has offered to help Aldous in his search for the Holy Grail]
- Jinxo: That's really nice! I mean, with the war and all, I figured you folks would…well, you know.
- Lennier: There are two castes of Minbari, the warrior caste and the religious caste. The warrior caste would not understand. It is not their way.
- Delenn: [slyly] So we will not tell them, and spare them the confusion.
- Aldous: These two sides of your culture, do they ever agree on anything?
- Delenn: [soberly] Yes. And when they do, it is a terrible thing. A terrible power, as recent events have shown us. Let us hope it never again happens in our lifetime.
- Sinclair: We've confiscated the fake encounter suit. It's a pretty close match to your own, at least from the outside.
- Kosh: Why?
- Sinclair: Deuce wanted to make people think he had the Vorlons working for him. He figured it would add to his image and intimidate people.
- Kosh: Why?
- Sinclair: Well, after all, no one knows exactly what you look like. That makes some people a little nervous.
- Kosh: Good.
- Garibaldi: There he goes–Jinx-…Thomas.
- Sinclair: Mm-hmm.
- Susan Ivanova: You never did tell me what you think about that curse.
- Sinclair: What curse?
- Garibaldi: You know. That bit about if he leaves Babylon 5, the same thing that happened to Babylons 1, 2, 3 and 4 would happen to us.
- Sinclair: Oh, that curse. You're not taking it seriously, are you?
- Garibaldi: Me? No, of course not. You?
- Sinclair: No.
- Garibaldi: So, how long until he hits jump?
- Ivanova: [working her console] Oh, right about…now!
- [the ship goes through the jump gate without incident]
- Garibaldi: No boom?
- Sinclair: [slightly disappointed] No boom.
- Ivanova: No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.
- [Sinclair and Garibaldi exchange an exasperated look and wander off.]
- Ivanova: What?! Look, somebody's got to have some damn perspective around here. Boom. Sooner or later. BOOM! [N]
- Michael Garibaldi: Protests are as much use with the Vorlons as fairy wings on a cement truck.
- [Ivanova confronts Psi Corps specialist Harriman Gray.]
- Susan Ivanova: Mr. Gray. I'm grateful the Psi Corps has given you a purpose in life. [She looks him directly in the eye] But when that purpose includes scanning my mind to prove my loyalty, it's not only an invasion of my privacy, but my honor! As for fear, if you enter my mind for any reason, I will twist your head off and use it for a chamberpot!
- [Garibaldi enters the casino to find an angry, inebriated Ivanova mopping the floor with the patrons.]
- Ivanova: Are you gonna arrest me, Garibaldi?
- Garibaldi: No way! I wanna live to see the future.
- Jeffrey Sinclair: We've fought long enough. Maybe it's time we started talking to one another. Branmer's life was more significant than his battles. Let the warrior caste praise his courage in war, and let the rest praise him for what he truly was—a man of peace.
- Neroon: You talk like a Minbari, Commander! Perhaps there was some small wisdom in letting your species survive.
- Sinclair: We like to think so.
- Susan Ivanova: There's nothing more annoying than Mr. Garibaldi when he's right.
A Voice in the Wilderness, Part 1
[edit]- [Sinclair comes upon Talia waiting for a tube car.]
- Jeffrey Sinclair: Problem with the transport tube?
- Talia Winters: No, not really. It seems like every time I get into the tube, Mr. Garibaldi's there! It's like he knows!
- Sinclair: Talia, Mr. Garibaldi is many things, but he's not omniscient.
- [The tube opens, revealing a grinning Garibaldi, then closes again.]
- Talia: I think I'll take the stairs.
- Sinclair: I think I'll join you.[N]
- Draal: Quickly, what is the third principle of sentient life?
- [Delenn turns around and sees Draal.]
- Delenn: Draal!
- Draal: Incorrect answer! The third principle of sentient life is the capacity for self-sacrifice: the conscious ability to override evolution and self-preservation for a cause, a friend, a loved one. It has been too long, Delenn. You have forgotten your training. Soon you will have forgotten all about your old friend Draal.
- Delenn: Not if I live to be a thousand and one.
- [A survey shuttle limps back to Babylon 5 after its second, near-fatal disaster.]
- Dr. Tasaki: Survey 1 to Babylon Control, we're clear. Returning to base.
- Susan Ivanova: Confirmed, Survey 1. Upon arrival, you will report for debriefing. [pauses] And just one more thing. On your trip back, I'd like you to take the time to learn the Babylon 5 mantra: "Ivanova…is always right. I will listen to Ivanova. I will not ignore Ivanova's recommendations. Ivanova…is God. And, if this ever happens again, Ivanova will personally rip your lungs out!" Babylon Control out. [sighs to herself] Civilians. [looks up] Just kidding about that God part. No offense.
- [Londo is cheering up Garibaldi with a tale.]
- Londo Mollari: The next day, I woke up, I saw her in the light of day, sleeping against my arm, and I decided I would rather chew off my arm than wake her up.
- Michael Garibaldi: Aw, that's sweet.
- Londo: No, no! She had a voice that could curdle fresh milk. "Londo!" "Yes, dear?" "Londo!" "Coming, my darling!"
- [Londo to Garibaldi.]
- Londo: Now, I go to spread happiness to the rest of the station. It is a terrible responsibility but I have learned to live with it.
- [Londo vents his frustrations over trying to understand humans to Delenn and Draal.]
- Londo: These Earthers! I try to find out as much as I can about them to try to make some sense of them, but it never seems to come together.
- Delenn: They do seem to be a mass of contradictions.
- Londo: Exactly my point! Here–six thousand years of recorded history, a history that includes remarkable composers, astonishing symphonies! But what is the one song that half of them sing to their children generation after generation?
- You put your right hand in,
- You put your right hand out.
- You put your whole self in,
- And you turn yourself about.
- You do the hokey-pokey,
- You give a little shout.
- That's what it's all about!
- It doesn't mean anything! I have been studying it for seven days! I had the computer analyze it! I swear to you, it does not mean a thing!
- Delenn: We've come at a bad time, haven't we?
- [Sinclair and Ivanova try to retrieve the machine-ensconced alien while the planet quakes around them.]
- Ivanova: Commander, we don't have a lot of time. We're cut off from the way we came in, we don't know if we can find another way back to the ship before we run out of air…
- Sinclair: We can't leave him like this!
- Ivanova: I know, I know. It's a Russian thing. When we're about to do something stupid, we like to catalog the full extent of our stupidity for future reference.
A Voice in the Wilderness, Part 2
[edit]- Delenn: The third principle of sentient life is its capacity for self-sacrifice, for a cause…a loved one…for a friend.
- [A conflict between Earth and Mars has Garibaldi, who grew up on Mars, at odds with an Earther barfly.]
- Barfly: Like my granddad used to say: "Nuke 'em till they glow, and shoot 'em in the dark!" That'll take care of them. Just like magic.
- Michael Garibaldi: Magic? Want to see magic? I got a little magic trick for ya. I got a little magic that'll make you pass through the top of the bar! [grabs the barfly]
- Barfly: Hey! Leggo!
- Garibaldi: I'll need complete silence or I'll have to ask for another volunteer from the audience. Let's see, what was that magic word again? Shazam? [slams the barfly into the bar] No, that's not it. I'll tell you what, I'll go home and look at my books, then I'll come back. If you're still talking trash about killing Marsies, we'll try it again and again [slams him again] until we get it right, huh?
- Susan Ivanova: Ambassador, do you really want to know what's going on down there right now?
- Londo Mollari: Yes, absolutely.
- Ivanova: Boom. Boom, boom, boom. Boom, boom. BOOM! Have a nice day.
- [She walks away with a smile, leaving Londo to stew.]
- Londo: Faugh! You can never get a straight answer from anyone around here!
- [after Captain Pierce of the EAS Hyperion and an alien ship trade ultimatums]
- Ivanova: Worst case of testosterone poisoning I've ever seen.
- Delenn: Summoned, I come. In Valen's name, I take the place that has been prepared for me. I am Grey. I stand between the candle and the star. We are Grey. We stand between the darkness and the light.
- Major Krantz: What if we take you with us? Put you on trial?
- Zathras: Zathras not of this time. You take, Zathras die. You leave, Zathras die. Either way, it is bad for Zathras.
- [Ivanova barges into Dr. Franklin's illicit free clinic. He is bent over a notepad, distracted.]
- Stephen Franklin: [not paying attention] You can start by removing your clothes.
- Susan Ivanova: Not without dinner and flowers.
- Jeffrey Sinclair: I'm still waiting for an explanation, gentlemen.
- Londo Mollari: Yes. And I'm prepared to give you one, Commander, as soon as the room stops spinning.
- Sinclair: This station creates gravity by rotation. It never stops spinning.
- Londo: Well, you begin to see my problem.
- [Talia has been recruited to scan a convicted murderer before he undergoes his sentence of death of personality]
- Talia Winters: I don't want to do this again. I was inside a killer's mind before, on the Mars Colony. There's got to be another way.
- . . .
- Karl Edward Mueller: So you're going to walk around in my head, eh? I'd think twice if I were you. Something might just jump out of the shadows and bite you.
- . . .
- [during the scan, Talia is horrified by Mueller's memories of his victims]
- Talia: How many? …How many?
- Mueller: How many worlds are there? How many banquets? How many flowers waiting to be harvested? How many new voices, waiting to be recruited into my choir? […] The overture is just beginning…
- [Talia tells Garibaldi what she saw in Mueller's mind]
- Talia: You once said you'd bet good money he'd killed before? You would not have lost.
- Londo Mollari: But this…this, this, this is like… being nibbled to death by, uh…Pah! What are those Earth creatures called? Feathers, long bill, webbed feet…go "quack".
- Vir Cotto: Cats.
- Londo: Cats! I'm being nibbled to death by cats.
- [Londo chats with Morden in the garden.]
- Londo: There comes a time when you look into the mirror, and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. Then you accept it, or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking into mirrors.
- [in a bar on the Zocalo, after EarthForce 1's destruction]
- Kosh: And so it begins. You have forgotten something, Commander.
- [speaking to his "associates"]
- Morden: Yes. I think he's ready.…Perfect for our needs.…No.…No. He suspects nothing.…When the time is right, Ambassador Mollari will do exactly as we wish.…Destiny is on our side.
- [last lines of the season]
- Sinclair: Nothing's the same anymore.
Season 2: The Coming of Shadows
[edit]- [Opening credits voiceover.]
- John Sheridan: The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. A self-contained world five miles long, located in neutral territory. A place of commerce and diplomacy for a quarter of a million humans and aliens. A shining beacon in space, all alone in the night. It was the dawn of the Third Age of Mankind… the year the Great War came upon us all. This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2259. The name of the place is Babylon 5.
- Susan Ivanova: [voiceover] Status report, Lieutenant Commander Susan Ivanova recording. It is now eight days since the death of Earth Alliance President Luis Santiago, and five days since Commander Sinclair was recalled to Earth without explanation. And the whole place has gone straight to hell.
- [A transport tube opens to reveal Ivanova addressing a quartet of cowering humans and aliens.]
- Ivanova: And as far as I'm concerned, the transports can wait until the SUN EXPLODES! And if you're not happy with the seating arrangements, I will personally order your seats to be moved outside, down the hall, across the station, and into the fusion reactor! Am I absolutely, perfectly clear on this?
- [As she leaves them to their bickering, she continues her narration about the chaos on the station after Sinclair's abrupt recall.]
- Ivanova: [voiceover] I can only conclude that I'm paying off karma at a vastly accelerated rate.
- [Dr. Franklin tells Ivanova about Garibaldi's coma.]
- Ivanova: Well then, I'll say a prayer for him tonight.
- Stephen Franklin: He's agnostic.
- Ivanova: Then I'll say half a prayer.
- [Ivanova greets Babylon 5's new commanding officer and brings him up to speed.]
- John Sheridan: What's our status?
- Ivanova: The Chief of Security is in critical condition in MedLab. He thinks there's a conspiracy concerning the President's death. Ambassador G'Kar has mysteriously vanished, after two years we still don't know what Ambassador Kosh looks like inside his encounter suit, and Ambassador Delenn is in a cocoon.
- Sheridan: A cocoon? As in, a moth or a butterfly.
- Ivanova: Yes sir. [holds one hand at chin height] 'Bout yea high.
- Sheridan: Interesting place you have here.
- [Sheridan's "good luck speech" upon taking command of Babylon 5]
- Sheridan: When I was 21, I visited Tibet. I went to see the new Dalai Lama. Uh, you do that sort of thing when you're 21 and the son of a diplomatic envoy. We had a simple dinner. Rice, raisins, carrots—steamed, not boiled—and green tea. When it was over, he looked at me and said, "Do you understand?" I said no, I didn't. "Good beginning," he said. "You'll be even better when you begin to understand what you do not understand." After reading some of your reports, I begin to understand what I don't understand about Babylon 5. But I couldn't wish for a more capable and skilled group of people to learn from. It was an early Earth President, Abraham Lincoln, who best described our current situation. He said…
- [he gets interrupted by a security alarm]
- . . .
- Sheridan: [delivering the rest of his speech to an empty C&C] It was an early Earth president, Abraham Lincoln, who best described our situation. "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. We cannot escape history. We will be remembered in spite of ourselves. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the last generation. We shall nobly save or meanly lose our last, best hope of Earth." [He looks around with a satisfied smile.] Five minutes to spare.
- [Londo rants before the Babylon 5 Advisory Council about the missing G'Kar and Delenn.]
- Londo Mollari: There, you see! One deserts his post without any explanation, the other one picks the most breathtakingly inconvenient moment possible to explore new career options, like becoming a butterfly!
- [Londo finds Morden's suggestions of future attacks against the Narn entertaining.]
- Londo: Why don't you eliminate the entire Narn homeworld while you're at it? [chuckles]
- Morden: One thing at a time, Ambassador. One thing at a time.
- Michael Garibaldi: [waking up from his coma] Oh, God. I'm out of it for a few days, the whole place goes to hell!
- John Sheridan: Well, I hope I can prove otherwise. Captain John Sheridan, your new CO.
- Garibaldi: I don't know you.
- Sheridan: No, but I think we'll get along just fine.
- G'Kar: [quoting Yeats' "Second Coming"]
- Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
- Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
- The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
- The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
- And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
- Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
- [A Technomage uses an illusion of a massive robotic creature to scare Vir away.]
- Vir Cotto: [to the illusion] My name is Vir Cotto, diplomatic attache to ambassador Londo Mollari of the Centauri Republic! My name is Vir Cotto, diplomatic attache to ambassador Londo Mollari of the Centauri Republic! My name is…
- Elric: Stop program. [the illusion pauses, then vanishes] You don't frighten easily.
- Vir: I work for Ambassador Mollari. After a while, nothing bothers you.
- Elric: There is an old saying: "Do not try the patience of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger."
- [Dr. Franklin is treating Ivanova's broken foot.]
- Stephen Franklin: I can give you something for the pain…
- Susan Ivanova: Oh, great. Now you can give me something for the pain.
- Franklin: What?
- Ivanova: Where were you when I was going through puberty?
- [He chuckles.]
- Ivanova: No, it's okay; I'll get used to it. If it gets too bad, I'll just…gnaw it off at the ankle.
- Elric: We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner, holographic demons and invocation of equations. These are the tools we employ, and we know many things.
- John Sheridan: Such as?
- Elric: The true secrets, the important things. Fourteen words to make someone fall in love with you forever. Seven words to make them go without pain. How to say good-bye to a friend who is dying. How to be poor. How to be rich. How to rediscover dreams when the world has stolen them. That is why we are going away—to preserve that knowledge.
- Sheridan: From what?
- Elric: There is a storm coming, a black and terrible storm. We would not have our knowledge lost or used to ill purpose. From this place we will launch ourselves into the stars. With luck, you will never see our kind again in your lifetime. I know you have your orders, Captain. Detain us if you wish. But I cannot tell you where we are going. I can only ask you to trust us.
- [Ivanova has been kidnapped by the Green Drazi.]
- Ivanova: What does it take to get through to you? You're making a mistake of galactic proportions! Assaulting an Earth Alliance officer, attempting mass murder…!
- Green Drazi: Green must fight Purple. Purple must fight Green. Is no other way!
- Ivanova: Just my luck. I get stuck with a race that speaks only in macros.
- [Ivanova accidentally becomes the Green Drazi leader by grabbing the former leader's sash.]
- Ivanova: You're saying just because I'm holding this right now, I'm Green leader? But I'm human!
- Former Drazi Leader: Rules of combat older than contact with other races. Did not mention aliens. Rules change…caught up in committee. Not come through yet.
- Ivanova: Yeah, bureaucracy. Tell me about it.
- Londo Mollari: Now if I may ask, does this torment end when you leave? Or am I going to have to spend the rest of my life paying for one little mistake?
- Elric: Oh, I'm afraid you're going to have to spend the rest of your life paying for your mistakes. Not this one of course, it's trivial, I have withdrawn the spell, but there will be others.
- Londo: What are you talking about?
- Elric: You are touched by darkness, Ambassador. I see it as a blemish that will grow with time. I could warn you of course, but you would not listen. I could kill you, but someone would take your place. So I do the only thing I can: I go. [starts to turn away, then turns back to Londo] Oh, I believe it was an endorsement you wanted? A word or two, a picture, to send to the folks back home, confirming that you have a destiny before you?
- Londo: Yes, it was just a thought, nothing more.
- Elric: Well, take this for what little it will profit you. As I look at you, Ambassador Mollari, I see a great hand reaching out of the stars. The hand is your hand. And I hear sounds - the sounds of billions of people calling your name.
- Londo: My followers?
- Elric: Your victims.
- [Captain Jack Maynard of the Cortez has just met Delenn]
- Capt. Maynard: John! She's…Minbari?
- Sheridan: Mm-hmm.
- Capt. Maynard: Uh…but she doesn't look like one! I mean, she does, but…but she doesn't! I mean, what's the deal?
- Sheridan: We're still trying to figure that out. There's the story she told us, but then, the Minbari never tell you the whole truth.
- [Dr. Franklin watches Ivanova as she storms off with his recovery-enhancing "food plan".]
- Susan Ivanova: Figures. All my life, I've fought against imperialism. Now, suddenly, I am the expanding Russian frontier.
- Stephen Franklin: But with very nice borders.
- John Sheridan: I'll tell you one thing. If the primates that we came from had known that someday politicians would come out of the gene pool, they'd have stayed up in the trees and written evolution off as a bad idea! Hell, I always thought the opposable thumb was overrated!
- Sheridan: An old friend of mine once quoted me a [sic]…ancient Egyptian blessing: God be between you and harm in all the empty places where you must walk.
- Sheridan: I wish I had your…faith in the universe. I just don't see it sometimes.
- Delenn: Then I will tell you a great secret, Captain. Perhaps the greatest of all time. The molecules of your body are the same molecules that make up this station, and the nebula outside, that burn inside the stars themselves. We are starstuff. We are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out. And as we have both learned, sometimes the universe requires a change of perspective.
- [Garibaldi is cooking bagna cauda for himself and Dr. Franklin.]
- Michael Garibaldi: Trust me, Doc, you are gonna love this!
- Franklin: I can feel my arteries hardening just being in the same room with it!
- [A wild, unkempt Lurker assails G'Kar with a confused sermon.]
- Amis: I have walked in the valley of th—
- G'Kar: Good! Keep on walking.
- [in the brig, Amis has a nightmare]
- Amis: Incoming! Incoming! Incoming! INCOMING!
- Michael Garibaldi: How long has he been like that?
- Guard: Couple hours now.
- Amis: To the walls. Get to the walls!
- Guard: Damn Lurkers. We oughta space all of them.
- Garibaldi: Hanson?
- Amis: Oh God. Stop them. Incoming.
- Garibaldi: Were you in the war?
- Guard: No, I missed it.
- Garibaldi: He didn't.
- Guard: How do you know?
- Garibaldi: [in a sad, manner-of-fact tone] I've had that same dream.
- Amis: [after waking up in the brig] Oh, God. What did I do this time?
- Garibaldi: You don't remember?
- Amis: Well, I've found that life is, in general, much easier if I forget most of the things that happen to me.
- Garibaldi: You were about to accuse the Centauri ambassador of being in league with the devil…which may not be far from the truth.
- [Garibaldi and Sheridan consider the dessicated body from a failed cryogenic tube.]
- Garibaldi: Lousy way to die, huh?
- John Sheridan: Hmm. Last time I checked, there weren't too many good ways.
- [Newly unfrozen traveller Mariah Cirrus meets G'Kar.]
- G'Kar: Take my advice and go back to the time you came from. The future isn't what it used to be.
- Alien Council member: Evil sometimes wears a pleasant face.
- [Sheridan and Ivanova close in on an invisible, ravenous alien.]
- Susan Ivanova: You got a plan?
- Sheridan: Let's try not to get killed.
- Ivanova: Brilliant.
- [Sheridan sends Ivanova to resolve a problem, then sighs to himself.]
- John Sheridan: Ah, it's good to be the captain.
- Michael Garibaldi: Well, my pop always said that laughter was better than pills for what ails you.
- Susan Ivanova: You know how I feel about telepaths.
- Sheridan: Do I ever. You threw one out a third-story window on Io.
- Ivanova: There was an ample pool below the window!
- Sheridan: I'll assume you knew that.
- Sheridan: Telepaths are gifted and cursed in ways I can never hope to understand.
- Sheridan: There is a spider in the web, Mr. Garibaldi. And I intend to find it and kill it.
- Vir Cotto: [Practicing his greetings to Londo's wives] It is a pleasure to meet you. It is a pleasure to meet you! It is a pleasure to meet you.
- Michael Garibaldi: [Notices Vir talking to himself and approaches] Gonna introduce me, Vir?
- Vir: You must think I look odd right now... [an alien passes by with Garibaldi staring].
- Garibaldi: Well, I guess it's a little relative... [referring to the alien's strange appearance]
- Vir: Actually, it's relatives. I'm here to pick up some women.
- Garibaldi: You'll have more luck at bars.
- Vir: No, I…
- Garibaldi: Just kidding.
- [Vir laughs]
- Garibaldi: So, who are these women? Diplomats?
- Vir: Oh, Ambassador Mollari's three wives.
- Garibaldi: Whoa! A harem! The lucky dog. [a Centauri woman walks in]
- Timov: Are you Vir?!
- Vir: Yes!
- Timov: I am Timov, daughter of Alguhl. You will take me to my husband.
- Vir: I was told there'd be three of you…
- Timov: [Looks at Garibaldi] Who is this?
- Vir: Uhh…
- Timov: No never mind. I said you'd take me. Is your hearing deficient?
- Vir: No, but I do have a…
- Timov: Then let's be off! [Walks away]
- Vir: It is a pleasure to meet you!
- [Talia gets wind of a new arrival on the station.]
- Talia Winters: Stoner? Matt Stoner?
- Garibaldi: Yeah, yeah, that was his name. Matthew.
- Talia: He's not here on Babylon 5?
- John Sheridan: Is that a problem?
- [Talia sighs and nods her head "yes."]
- Garibaldi: You know him?
- Talia: Only in the most unpleasant sense. I was married to him.
- Timov: He drags me out here, gives me no reason why he wants to see me! What's he hiding, Vir? Tell me! I won't bite, Vir.
- Vir Cotto: With all due respect, madam, that's not what I heard.
- Timov: All right, that one time.
- Vir: It was twice.
- Timov: Daggair! My, what a surprise!
- Daggair: A pleasant one?
- Timov: I wouldn't go that far.
- Vir: Madame Daggair, my pardons! This is unconscionable! I was at customs. I don't know how I could have missed you!
- Timov: Believe me Vir, if you knew her as well as I do, you wouldn't miss her a bit.
- Daggair: Oh, Timov, Timov, why do you always try to draw me into your little verbal fencing matches?
- Timov: Because I don't have a real sword handy.
- Vir: Can I get you anything?
- Timov: Yes!! You can get me out of here! Who does Londo think he is, keeping us sitting about?
- Daggair: He probably thinks he's our husband. And we, as dutiful wives, must await his return. Is that not right, Vir?
- Vir: Well, actually—
- Timov: You are joking, Daggair!
- Daggair: Your problem, Timov, is that you've never known your place.
- Timov: My place?! You once threatened to break a vase over his head!
- Daggair: Well, haha, that was the impetuousness of youth.
- Timov: That was last month! Daggair, what are you playing at?
- Londo Mollari: [enters room] Well, well, here you are!
- Timov: And here you are finally, where have you been?!!
- Londo: Affairs of state my dear.
- Timov: State of inebriation, I wager.
- [Delenn struggles with her new hair.]
- Delenn: Commander, I want you to understand. I acquired human characteristics to bring your people and mine closer together! To symbolize our mutuality! It is supposed to be a dignified, inspiring transition for both humans and Minbari, so will you please explain to me why this, this, this…
- Susan Ivanova: Hair.
- Delenn: …refuses to cooperate?! [Ivanova gets a little closer.] I had no problems with it at first, but as time passed it…
- Ivanova: [feels Delenn's hair] It's…pretty brittle. What are you washing it with?
- Delenn: Washing?
- Timov: The secret of our marriage's success, Londo, is our lack of communication. You have jeopardized that success and I would know why!
- Timov: You knew about this you knew!!!
- Daggair: I was caught completely unawares, I assure you! [To Londo] Petulant isn't she? Well, breeding will tell.
- Timov: Ha! A bitch like you would know about breeding. [Daggair barely chokes down her drink, then stares daggers at Timov]
- Londo: [Smiling widely] Ladies, ladies, please…Continue!
- [Londo warns Captain Sheridan about Mariel.]
- Londo: On Earth you have these creatures–insects attracted to flames?
- Sheridan: Uh, yes. Moths. They're drawn to flames and bright lights and get burned.
- Londo: Mariel is drawn to men of power in that same way. But trust me. She burns them!
- Daggair: Let's let Londo decide that.
- Mariel: [Referring to Daggair and herself] The both of us? Together???
- Daggair: If it pleases Londo, it pleases me.
- Londo: No, this isn't right. Timov should be here too!
- Timov: Did you seriously expect me to become involved in your sexual Olympics?
- Londo: They're merely expressing their feelings for me.
- Timov: I can do that. [She slaps Londo on the face…hard]
- Londo: You haven't changed.
- Timov: You have. You've devolved!
- [Londo awakes from a coma.]
- Stephen Franklin: Are you okay? Londo, do you know where you are?
- Londo: [looks around and sees his wives] Either in Medlab, or in Hell. Either way, the decor needs work.
- Daggair: Oh, Doctor Franklin! Thank you for saving our husband! You've done the Centauri a great service!
- Mariel: I agree. It's so good to see you with us again, Londo!
- Londo: Well, that settles it, Doctor! I am in hell! And what, not a word from you, Timov? Not an insincere word of relief? Not a blink of false concern for my well-being?
- Timov: No. If you'll excuse me, I'll be in my quarters. I'm suddenly feeling…quite fatigued. [She leaves.]
- Mariel: Yes, I think I will do the same. [She leaves, followed by Daggair.]
- Londo: Augh. Nightmares, all of them! And Timov, the worst of the lot!
- Franklin: Ambassador Mollari, do you mind if I make one personal observation?
- Londo: No, not at all.
- Franklin: Stick it. [He walks off.]
- Londo: [to himself] How odd. And I didn't even know we were married.
- [G'Kar and Mariel just discussed Mariel's part in the attempted assassination of Mollari.]
- G'Kar: I warn you Mariel, do not be overconfident. If I was married to Londo Mollari I'd be concerned.
- Mariel: G'Kar, if you were married to Londo, we'd all be concerned.
- [Londo chooses to keep Timov as his wife and divorce the two others.]
- Timov: Why did you choose to keep me as your wife and not them? I've made no pretense of affection for you, I find your recent actions contemptible, I'll never love you, at best I'll tolerate you, and I'll never be what you want me to be. Why me?
- Londo: Because with you, I will always know where I stand.
- Delenn: Taking on human characteristics has been something of an education for both of us!
- Ivanova: Well, if you have any other problems, any other questions at all, just ask! [They step into a transport tube.]
- Delenn: Well…now that you mention it…do you have any idea why I suddenly started getting these…odd cramps?
- [Sheridan complains to a bemused Franklin about the "bean counters" trying to charge him rent for his quarters.]
- John Sheridan: They nibble a little bit here, a little bit there—next thing you know, you're not even in charge of your own command anymore!
- Stephen Franklin: No taxation without representation. Give me liberty or give me death!
- Sheridan: Abso-fraggin'-lutely!
- [Sheridan has been invited to dinner by Delenn.]
- Sheridan: One day they're shooting at you, the next day they're taking you out to dinner. Ha! What a universe!
- Bester informs Sheridan, Ivanova, and Garibaldi that rogue telepaths are using Babylon 5 as a transfer point to escape, and requests their help in apprehending them.
- Sheridan to Garibaldi: Well, you've been pretty quiet. Is he right, or isn't he?
- Garibaldi: Technically? Yeah, I suppose. We're obliged to uphold the laws of Earth Alliance. It doesn't mean we have to like it. And if there is some kind of illegitimate travel going through here, it's a threat to station security and we have to know about it.
- Ivanova: Come on, Garibaldi. You can't tell me you agree with this. You want to help them?
- Garibaldi: Want, agree, that has nothing to do with it. The law is the law. It's damn ironic, isn't it? The Corps got started because we were afraid of telepaths, now they're victims of our own fears. We took away every right they had and shoved them into a big black box called Psi Corps. Now look at them. Black uniforms, jackboots, giving orders. Some days they scare the hell out of me.
- Sheridan: Yeah, if you ask me we created our own monster. And maybe we deserve it.
- [Delenn meets Sheridan for dinner, dressed in a stylish little black dress.]
- Delenn: I apologize for being late, Captain. I decided that as part of learning more about humans, I would try to dress like one tonight. I hope it does not offend you.
- Sheridan: No, no, not at all! It's…very attractive! Uh, please! [He helps her to her seat, but as he does, he notices a diner at the next table staring rudely.] Something I can do for you? [The man turns back to his meal.]
- Delenn: It appears my choice was successful. The woman who sold me this told me that I would definitely…"turn heads"?
- Sheridan: [laughing] Yeah, well, if they turned much further, you'd be sued for whiplash!
- [Sheridan and Ivanova are camping in his office due to being locked out of their quarters]
- Sheridan: How many Minbari does it take to screw in a light bulb?
- Susan Ivanova: I don't know, sir. How many Minbari does it take to screw in a light bulb?
- Sheridan: None. They always surrender right before they finish the job and they never tell you why.
- [Ivanova groans, Sheridan smiles.]
- Sheridan: Knock, knock.
- Ivanova: Who's there?
- Sheridan: Kosh.
- Ivanova: Kosh who?
- Sheridan: Gesundheit. [snickers] I thought that was a good one.
- Ivanova: Were you like this when you were married?
- Sheridan: Huh? Yeah.
- Ivanova: The woman was a saint.
- . . .
- [the next night]
- Ivanova: Captain, I'd like to note two things for the record.
- Sheridan: Yes, Commander?
- Ivanova: Item One: I don't think this protest is gonna work. Earth Central never gives in when it comes to money. But if you're determined to keep at it, I'm prepared to do the same. Item Two: You snore.
- Sheridan: No, I don't!
- Ivanova: Yes, you do!
- Sheridan: No, I don't!
- Ivanova: Captain, either you snore, or last night we had a hell of a breach in the hull. I get dibs on the couch.
- [Bester addresses the command staff after an attempt on his life by rogue telepaths.]
- Alfred Bester: They must be getting desperate to try something like this. They know we're onto them. Why else would they try to kill me?
- Ivanova: Is this a multiple-choice question?
- Bester: Would it interest you to know that I'm married, Mr. Garibaldi? That I have a five-year-old daughter? That on Sundays when I'm back home, we pack a picnic lunch and go out under the dome on Syria Planum and watch the stars come out? Hardly the description of a monster.
- Michael Garibaldi: [applauds sarcastically] Smooth! You're getting good at this. Keep working on it, and one of these days I might even be convinced that you're human.
- [after tricking Bester into thinking he's killed the rogue telepaths, Talia speaks with the rogues' leader]
- Leader: You know you can't go back again.
- Talia Winters: I can't leave the Corps. They'll come after me.
- Leader: No, I mean in here! [points to his head] You know too much. If Bester scans you, he'll…Can you keep him out?
- Talia: I think so. Jason's little gift.
- Leader: He gave you more than you know. What we did back there, it shouldn't have worked. Not with that Psi Cop. You tipped the balance. I felt it when we were joined. You're more than you think you are.
- Talia: Then what am I?
- Leader: The future.
- G'Kar: So you are going to allow this? Even over my objections?
- John Sheridan: What, did I somehow turn invisible or something? Yes, Ambassador. The Emperor is allowed to come aboard. Now, if this bothers you, I suggest you stay in your quarters, stick your fingers in your ears, and hum real loud until it's over! Unless you'd like to try something as breathtakingly rational as trying to open up a dialog? G'Kar, you are in a position to directly negotiate with the head of the Centauri Republic, and you are wasting it on a tantrum!
- [Centauri Emperor Turhan talks to Captain Sheridan about their paths in life.]
- Emperor Turhan: Why are you here, in this place, in that uniform? Was it your choice or were you pressed into service?
- Sheridan: It was my choice. The planetary draft didn't start until the war, a few years later. I guess I wanted to serve something that was bigger than I was. Make a difference, somewhere, somehow. You seem interested in why people chose to be here.
- Turhan: It has occurred to me recently that I have never chosen anything. I was born into a role that was prepared for me. I did everything I was asked to do because it never occurred to me to choose otherwise. And now, at the end of my life, I wonder what might have been.
- Sheridan: That's why my father taught me to live each second as though it were the last moment of my life. He said, "If you love, love without reservation. If you fight, fight without fear." He called it "the way of the warrior."
- Turhan: No regrets then?
- Sheridan: A few. But just a few. You?
- Turhan: Oh, enough to fill a lifetime. So much has been lost, so much forgotten. So much pain, so much blood. And for what, I wonder? The past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast terrible in-between. But there is still time to seize that one last, fragile moment. To choose something better, to make a difference, as you say. And I intend to do just that.
- G'Kar: I was ready. I had prepared myself, I had made my peace with the universe, put all my affairs in order. I had the dagger in my hand! And he has the indecency to start dying on his own! Never in my life have I seen a worse case of timing!
- [Franklin brings a message from the ill Emperor to G'Kar, who had planned to kill the Centauri leader.]
- G'Kar: How is the poor fellow? I was so looking forward to meeting him and opening up…a dialog.
- . . .
- [Franklin relays the Emperor's message.]
- Stephen Franklin: He said…"We're wrong. The hatred between our people can never end until someone is willing to say, 'I'm sorry'. And try and find a way to make things right again, to atone for our actions."
- [Garibaldi receives a recorded message from former boss Jeffrey Sinclair.]
- Jeffrey Sinclair: There's a great darkness coming, Michael.
- Emperor Turhan: I would very much like to have seen a Vorlon.
- [he closes his eyes; when he reopens them, Kosh is standing over him]
- Emperor Turhan: How will this end?
- Kosh: In fire.[N]
- Londo Mollari: [relaying the Emperor's "last words"] He said…"Continue. Take my people back…to the stars."
- . . .
- [outside Medlab, after the Emperor's death]
- Lord Antono Refa: Mollari, what did he say? Really?
- Londo: He said…"You are both damned."
- Lord Refa: Well, it's a small enough price to pay for immortality.
- General Richard Franklin: [meeting Garibaldi] I had an Alfredo Garibaldi under my command during the Dilgar invasion. Excellent soldier!
- Michael Garibaldi: [smiles proudly] That was my dad.
- Gen. Franklin: [unimpressed] So much for genetics.
- Dr. Stephen Franklin: I'm a doctor! My duty is to heal!
- Gen. Franklin: Then heal humans! Stephen, I know you're fascinated by these alien creatures, but they're a threat to humanity. And they always will be. Help your own kind!
- Dr. Franklin: Life is life, whether it's wrapped in skin, scales, or feathers! Now if you respected these beings instead of constantly trying to murder them, you'd appreciate that!
- Delenn: We are all slaves to our histories. If there is to be a…bright future, we must learn to break those chains.
- John Sheridan: There's only one truth about war: people die. Killing is part of a soldier's job—we can't deny it. We can only live with it and hope the reasons for doing it are justified.
- Lennier: Being asked to serve on the Council is a matter of soul, not of flesh. The change you've gone through, it shouldn't matter.
- Delenn: But it does, Lennier. I made a decision, and now I must face the consequences.
- [New Grey Council member Neroon confronts Delenn.]
- Neroon: You are an affront to the purity of our race!
- [On the Strieb ship, Sheridan has a strange dream about Babylon 5 and some of its denizens.]
- Dream Ivanova #1: Do you know who I am?
- Dream Garibaldi: The man in-between is searching for you.
- Dream Ivanova #2: You are the hand.
- [Sheridan turns to see Kosh.]
- John Sheridan: Why are you here?
- Dream Kosh: We were never away. For the first time, your mind is quiet enough to hear me.
- Sheridan: Why am I here?
- Dream Kosh: You have always been here.
- [Back on Babylon 5, Sheridan encounters Kosh.]
- Kosh: You have always been here.
- [Sheridan asks Hague why he trusts him with his secret effort to investigate the new Earth government.]
- General Hague: A soldier's record tells a lot about a person. Not just what he's done, but how he's done it and why. And you have an uncommon failing for someone in your position, Captain. You're a patriot. You believe as I do that when we put on this uniform, we took a solemn vow to protect Earth against threats from outside and from within. […] Your cooperation is essential, if we're going to take back our government.
- [Sheridan asks his staff if they want in on the conspiracy.]
- Ivanova: Hey, I never did know when to butt out. We're with you, Captain. Wherever this goes, however it ends, we're with you.
- Delenn: I was there when our war against Earth began, when our ship encountered an Earth vessel for the first time. Afraid of us, of the unknown, they fired. I saw our leader dying. I heard the cries for revenge, for blood, for death. In return we nearly exterminated an entire species. My people are tired of war, G'Kar!
- [Dr. Franklin takes exception to the Lumati's disdain for medical treatment of the infirm.]
- Correlilmerzon [through Taq]: It does not serve evolution.
- Stephen Franklin: Well, my job isn't serving evolution — it's serving humanity, even when the patient isn't human.
- Correlilmerzon [through Taq]: Yes, but what happens when the inferior, saved from the process of natural selection, begin to outnumber the superior?
- Susan Ivanova: You know, I think we should all be moving on by now…
- Franklin: I don't believe that any form of sentient life is inferior to any other.
- Correlilmerzon [through Taq]: Yes. We often hear that argument from inferior species and their sympathizers.
- [Sheridan asks Delenn for help in providing covert assistance to Narn civilians without the approval of EarthGov.]
- John Sheridan: …Ambassador, I've learned the hard way that governments deal in matters of convenience, not conscience. If they fall behind, it is up to the rest of us to make up the difference. If we don't, who will?
- [Ambassador Correlilmerzon insists on sex to cement the Earth-Lumati alliance. Ivanova does a bizarre song and dance which she claims is human-style sex.]
- Susan Ivanova:
- Boom! Shabba-labba-labba.
- Boom! Shabba-labba-labba.
- Hey there, hey there, three bags full!
- You come here often? Yes! I do!
- . . .
- I slept with you the other night.
- You didn't call, you didn't write!
- I think you did it just for SPITE!
- Oh! Yes… oh, yes! Oh, YES! OH! YES!
- Tell me about your portfolio!
- Oh, YES! YES! YES! YES!
- Lie to me about your family…
- . . .
- [She finishes with a shriek and a compliment.]
- Correlilmerzon: What do I do now?
- Ivanova: Old style, you roll over and go to bed. New style, you go out for pizza, I never see you again.
- [Ivanova gets a parting gift and note from Correlilmerzon.]
- Sheridan: What's it say?
- Ivanova: "Next time…my way."
- Sheridan: Commander, is there something you'd like to tell me?
- [During the search for Dr. Jacobs in Down Below, Franklin and Garibaldi muse about disappointed expectations.]
- Michael Garibaldi: Maybe somebody should've labelled the future "some assembly required".
- John Sheridan: Are we just toys to you? Huh? What do you want?
- Kosh: Never ask that question!
- Sheridan: At least I got a response out of you. So what'll it be, Ambassador?
- Kosh: I will teach you.
- Sheridan: About yourself?
- Kosh: About you. Until you are ready.
- Sheridan: For what?
- Kosh: To fight legends.
- [Ivanova rants about EarthGov's decision to sell B5 merchandise.]
- Susan Ivanova: Welcome to Babylon 5, the last, best hope for a quick buck!
- John Sheridan: Commander—
- Ivanova: Oh, this is demeaning! I mean, we're not some…some deep-space franchise! This station is about something. [N]
- [Lawyer Guinevere Corey interrupts the questioning of Minbari witness Ashan.]
- Guinevere Corey: May I ask what you were discussing here?
- Sheridan: The only thing that matters—the truth.
- Guinevere Corey: Ah, yes. The favorite song of the legally ignorant.
- [Londo sputters outrage over a B5 Emporium "Londo Mollari" doll.]
- Londo Mollari: It's a mockery! It doesn't even have any, uh…attributes.
- Sheridan: Attributes?
- Londo: Do I have to spell it out for you?
- [Londo gestures downward. Ivanova and Sheridan stare at Londo, then at each other.]
- Sheridan, Ivanova: Ohh!
- Ivanova: I see. So you feel like you're being symbolically cas…t in a bad light.
- Sheridan: Well put.
- Sheridan: I—I never thought there could be anything worse than being all alone in the night.
- Delenn: But there is. Being all alone in a crowd.
- . . .
- Delenn: In the service of their clan, they're ready to sacrifice everything–their individuality, their blood, their life.
- Sheridan: Their honor? Oh, we've had plenty of that ourselves. Conspiracies of silence, because the larger ideals have to be protected. But you can't have larger ideals if the smaller ones get compromised. It's like building a house without a foundation, Delenn—it can't stand!
- Ashan: We are not responsible. It was the leaders of our clan who decided to act without asking the Council or anyone else in the government–not us. Yes, it was foolish—
- Lennier: No, not foolish. It was tragic.
- [Londo goads a hung-over Vir.]
- Londo: Good, Vir—you're sobering up! I can see the synapses beginning to fire behind your eyes! A frightening sight, I might add.
- [Ivanova hands Sheridan a teddy bear from the new gift shop.]
- Sheridan: Ba-Bear-lon 5? Oh, he's a cute one. [Notices the initials on the shirt.] J.S.?
- Ivanova: John Sheridan.
- Sheridan: Oh, this is supposed to be me? [Suddenly turns grim.] I want it off my station. I want 'em all off my station. I want the whole place yanked out, boxed up, and shipped out by 0800 tomorrow. Is that clear?
- Ivanova: I'll get right on it.
- Sheridan: Oh, and…[Takes the bear.]
- …
- [Warren Keffer responds to a report of a UFO outside the station.]
- C&C: Babylon Control to Zeta-One. Any trace of that unidentified object?
- Warren Keffer: Negative, Babylon Control. I don't see a…
- [Said teddy bear hits his Starfury's viewport for a moment before drifting away again.]
- C&C: Zeta-One, have you encountered unidentified object? Can you describe it?
- Keffer: Negative, Babylon Control. I don't think so. Not on a bet. Heading back to the barn.
- Stephen Franklin: You know, what the folks back home don't understand—the ones who've never left Earth—is just how dangerous space can be. Aside from incidents like this, just the everyday reality of living your days and nights in a big tin can surrounded by a vacuum. I remember my first time on a transport on the Moon-Mars run. I was just a kid, maybe 17. A buddy of mine was messing around and zipping through the halls. And he hid in one of the airlocks. I don't know, I guess he was going to try to scare us or something. I don't know. But just as I got close, he must have hit the wrong button, because the air doors slammed shut, the space doors, opened, and he just flew out into space. And the one thing they never tell you is that you don't die instantly in vacuum. He just hung there, against the black, like a puppet with his strings all tangled up—or like one of those old cartoons where you run off the edge of a cliff and your legs keep going. You could see that he was trying to breathe, but there was nothing! And one thing I remember when they pulled in his body—his eyes were frozen. [long pause] A lot of people make jokes about spacing somebody, about shoving somebody out an airlock. I don't think it's funny. Never will.
- [ISN reporter Cynthia Torqueman interviews G'Kar about the old Narn-Centauri war.]
- G'Kar: My family lived in G'Kamazad, one of the larger cities on Narn. My father…"served" in a Centauri household during the last years of the rebellion. I was barely a pouchling at the time. My mother was ill, unable to escape through the underground, so we all stayed. It was a difficult time. We were striking deep into Centauri resources. Things were tense. One day my father spilled a cup of hot jala on the mistress of the house and…and she had him killed. They took him out, tied his hands together, and hung him from a jalwah tree for three days. I came to him the last night, against my mother's orders, and he looked down at me. He said he was proud, and to go and fight, and be all the things he never was. Then he died. The next morning I ran away and killed my first Centauri.
- Cynthia Torqueman: Why do you think they invaded back then?
- G'Kar: Why does any advanced civilization seek to destroy a less-advanced one? Because the land is strategically valuable, because there are resources that can be cultivated and exploited, but most of all…simply because they can. You have experienced much the same on your own world. There are humans for whom the words "never again" carry special meaning. As they do for us.
- [various answers to Torqueman's final question: "Given the danger, at the end of the day…is it worth it?"]
- Michael Garibaldi: Absolutely. Sure, when things get tense out here, we have to be careful. Our search of the Centauri vessels we captured proved that they were bringing in weapons of mass destruction, offloading them outside the station, and sending them on to the front lines. Now that we know that, we can make sure it doesn't happen any more. We learn. It's what humans do.
- Londo Mollari: Misunderstandings aside, yes! I definitely think it's worth it. We must simply work harder to make sure we communicate with one another to prevent this sort of tragic situation from ever happening again! A violent attack by Narn forces is an unacceptable response to a peaceful protest by my government. And with the intervention of Earth, perhaps we can keep them from making a similar mistake in the future.
- G'Kar: I don't know any more. I used to think so, but now…
- Susan Ivanova: Yes.
- Delenn: Of course it is. For the simple reason that no one else would ever build a place like this. Humans share one unique quality: They build communities. If the Narns or Centauri or any other race built a station like this, it would be used only by their own people. But everywhere humans go, they create communities out of diverse and sometimes hostile populations. It is a great gift, and a terrible responsibility—one that cannot be abandoned.
- Senator Quantrell: Well…I guess we'll just have to see…won't we?
- Franklin: All right, Med 2—go, go! Look, if we weren't here right now, half the people in this room would be dead! Now that should be a good enough answer for anyone.
- Eduardo Delvientos: Sure! What, are you kidding? I have a retirement pension to make, you know?
- John Sheridan: Yes. But not for any of the reasons that you've probably been told. The job of Babylon 5 is not to enforce the peace. It's to create the peace. And this place was built on the assumption that we could work out our problems and build a better future. And that, to me, is the key issue. See, in the last few years, we've stumbled. We stumbled at the death of the President, the war, and on and on. And when you stumble a lot, you…you start looking at your feet. Well, we have to make people…lift their eyes back to the horizon, and see the line of ancestors behind us, saying, "Make my life have meaning." And to our inheritors before us, saying, "Create the world we will live in." I mean, w-we're not just…holding jobs and having dinner. We are in the process of building the future. That's what Babylon 5 is all about.
- Morden: If restoring the Centauri Republic means nothing to you, what does? What do you want?
- Vir Cotto: I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would gaze up into your lifeless eyes and wave, like this.
- [He gives Morden a mockingly cheerful finger waggle.]
- Vir: Can you and your associates arrange this for me, Mr. Morden?
- [Franklin tells Ivanova what he sees when a patient dies.]
- Stephen Franklin: And then, just at the last, it's as if they look past you at something else, and the look on their face, it's like nothing you can describe. And then, just as they look past you—the moment that they look past you—you can't help but meet their gaze and just for an instant, you see God reflected in their eyes. [pauses] I've seen a lot of reflected gods today, Susan. And I'm wondering how we can keep believing in them, when they've stopped believing in us.
- John Sheridan: You ever studied ancient history? 20th century, World War II?
- Zack Allan: Well…not really. [grins] I always used to fall asleep in history class.
- Sheridan: The Germans had a secret code they used for all their important messages. It was called "Enigma". What they didn't know was that the British had cracked the code. One day, Churchill's people intercepted a message authorizing the bombing of a city named Coventry. Now, if they evacuated Coventry, the Germans would know their code had been broken, and switch to another system. If that happened, it could cost the Allies the entire war. If they didn't evacuate the city, hundreds of innocent men, women, and children would die. [N]
- Zack: So, what happened?
- Sheridan: They kept the secret. There was no evacuation. And on November 14, 1940, Coventry was destroyed. The dead were… piled up like cordwood! I—I've seen newsreels of Churchill visiting the ruins a few days later. And you can just see it in his eyes, the knowledge of what he'd done. Dark, haunted. All these years I've never been able to get that image out of my head.
- Zack: Well, I'm glad it's a decision I don't have to make. I don't think I could live with myself. How many lives is a secret worth?
- Kosh: If you go to Z'ha'dum, you will die.
- Sheridan: Then I die. But I will not go down easily, and I will not go down alone. [N]
- [Londo tells Vir about his friendship with Urza Jaddo.]
- Londo Mollari: In dueling societies, it is customary for each member to be given a fighting name by his comrades! They said I fought like a crazed leati, and so they called me Paso Leati! Urza was known as Skal Tura—the silent beast! Those were great times, Vir! We were young, proud, fierce, bursting to prove ourselves to each other and to the world. Our starships ruled the spaceways, and our power was rivaled by that of the gods only! Ah, Great Maker, it was good to be a Centauri then!
- Vir Cotto: Every generation of Centauri mourns for the golden days when their power was like unto the gods! It—it's counterproductive! I mean, why make history if you fail to learn by it?
- Londo: You know, Vir, you have what the Earthers call a negative personality.
- Vir: No, I don't.
- Londo: There, you see?
- Michael Garibaldi: I once saw an entire chorus line of purple wombats doing showtunes in my bathtub. Of course, I was pretty drunk at the time.
- Stephen Franklin: Well, anyone willing to command Babylon 5 has got to be slightly insane, but I don't think that you're ready for the asylum just yet.
- . . .
- John Sheridan: I prefer to be only slightly insane.
- Garibaldi: Don't we all.
- Vir: Londo, this is insane!
- Londo: Insanity is part of the times. You must learn to embrace the madness. Let it fire you.
- Stephen Franklin: Something here doesn't add up, and unlike Mr. Garibaldi, I don't like mysteries.
- Delenn: They are in pain. Frightened. Dying. Minbari are taught that at such a time, the afflicted should be ministered to, comforted.
- John Sheridan: They're not your own people, Delenn!
- Delenn: I didn't know that similarity was required for the exercise of compassion. They are afraid. We wish to do what little we can.
- [Just before Delenn and Lennier enter the quarantine zone…]
- Delenn: Do not look away, Captain. All life is transitory. A dream. We all come together in the same place at the end of time. If I don't see you again here, I will see you in a little while, in the place where no shadows fall.
- Sheridan: W—Delenn! [She stops and looks back.] When I do see you again…call me John?
- Delenn: She has separated from her mother. Please find her.
- Lennier: [looks around, somewhat lost] How?
- Delenn: [to Lennier] Faith manages.
- Delenn: [turning to Markab girl] What is her name?
- Markab Girl: Mama.
- [Delenn turns and looks at Lennier again]
- Lennier: Faith manages.
- Lazarenn: [dying] I'm sorry, old friend. I don't think I can stay any longer. Will you give my love to…
- [after the isolation zone is reopened and all the Markab are found dead]
- Delenn: John…John…
- [she falls on his shoulder, broken and crying]
- Sheridan: What happens next time?
- Delenn: What happens? What happens is that we honor the memory of those who are no longer with us by using what we have learned to save others. To exercise faith and patience and charity. To reach out to those who are afraid. If we can do that, then their passing will have had meaning and we will grow from it.
- [At a Universe Today vendor station, Delenn haughtily dismisses humans' fascination with the press.]
- Delenn: Back home, when there is something you need to know, you are told just what you require and no more.
- . . .
- Delenn: … Minbari respect the privacy of others by not prying into their affairs. To express undue curiosity—
- Newsvendor Computer: Unable to insert "Eye on Minbari" section. Do you wish to accept edition anyway?
- Delenn: Uh… yes, yes I do.
- John Sheridan: "Eye on Minbari"?
- Delenn: It is good to know what your people are thinking and saying about my people. And, uh…[grins] I often learn things about my own world before I'm told "what I need to know and no more".
- [Lyta has tested all high- and medium-ranking station personnel — but one — for the traitor's psychic trigger.]
- Lyta Alexander: The further you go from the center of power, the less likely it is we're going to find the person that we're looking for.
- [She pointedly turns and looks at Ivanova.]
- Susan Ivanova: I suggest you move those eyes somewhere else…while you still have them.
- [Lyta pays Kosh a visit.]
- Lyta: I'm back. I can't stay. The Captain's made sure I can get away before the Psi Cops get here, but—I had to see you again, before my ship leaves. I never told them. I never told anyone. I hid it all away in the smallest, tiniest corner of my mind. They could've killed me and they still wouldn't have found it! Only at night, alone, would I open that small door in my mind where I kept the memory of you and listen to your voice—listen to you sing me to sleep. I hope I can come back again, but I don't know. Until then—Kosh—I want to see you again, just one more time before I go.
- [Kosh's suit opens, and Lyta is bathed in bright white light.]
- [Londo learns of Refa's plan to use mass drivers to assault the Narn homeworld.]
- Londo Mollari: Mass drivers? They have been outlawed by every civilized planet!
- Lord Antono Refa: These are uncivilized times.
- Londo: We have treaties!
- Lord Refa: Ink on a page!
- [Draal tells Delenn and Sheridan about what he's discovered using the Great Machine.]
- Draal: Since taking up residence in the heart of this machine, I have explored its secrets, learned, and discovered that I can look into distant worlds, see and hear things you cannot begin to imagine! Along the way, I've learned some things about you, Captain! The loss of your wife—I know Delenn has told you about the coming darkness. And lately I've learned about your role in, shall we say, a "conspiracy of light" aimed at your own government?
- John Sheridan: I don't know what you're talking about.
- Draal: Yes, you do! Please, Captain, don't worry. Your secret is safe with me. They would have to dig down three miles into the surface of this planet to learn what I know, and no one who tried would survive the attempt! And now I have seen enough! I said a year ago that this place was to be left alone until the time was right. That time has arrived. Now that I know the full capabilities of this place, I am prepared to place them at your disposal!
- Sheridan: Are you proposing an alliance?
- Draal: One of the first! There will be more to come. This has been a hard and trying year for you, Captain Sheridan. It might be helpful for you to know that you are not alone, and that in the long, twilight struggle which lies ahead of us, there is the possibility of hope.
- [After the Narn surrender, Londo demands that "Citizen" G'Kar be removed from further Council meetings. G'Kar rises to go.]
- G'Kar: No dictator…no invader…can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. The Centauri learned this lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.
- [Sebastian, the Vorlons' Inquisitor, surveys the Zocalo]
- Sebastian: Nothing changes. Corruption, immorality, chaos.
- [after a grueling interrogation of Delenn, Sebastian turns his attention on Sheridan]
- Sebastian: You said you didn't have to answer any of my questions. But there's no reason to exclude you from our deliberations. You're linked at the hip, just as bad as she is. But you're not just a dreamer. You're a soldier! How far are you prepared to go? How much are you prepared to risk? How many people are you prepared to sacrifice for victory? Are you willing to die friendless, alone, deserted by everyone? Because that's what may be required of you in the war that is to come!
- John Sheridan: Go to Hell!
- Sebastian: This is Hell, Captain, and you are its chief damned soul. What about the people you work with, the people you call friends? Are you willing to sacrifice them? What about your family? [He zaps Sheridan with his cane.] What about your God? [Another zap.] What about truth? [Zap.] What about blood? [Zap.] What about right? [Zap.] What about wrong? [Zap.] What about your future? [Zap.] What about faith? [Zap.] What about sin? [Zap.] What about Hell? [Zap.] What about death? [Zap.] What about etern…
- Delenn: ENOUGH! Your quarrel is with me! You were sent to investigate me! Let him go! If you want to take someone, then take me!
- Delenn: If I fall, another will take my place, and another, and another.
- Sebastian: But your great cause!
- Delenn: This is my cause--Life! One life or a billion, it's all the same!
- Sebastian: Then you make the sacrifice willingly? No fame. No armies or banners or cities to celebrate your name. You will die alone and unremarked and forgotten.
- Delenn: This body is only a shell. You cannot touch me, you cannot harm me. I'm not afraid.
- [after Delenn offers to sacrifice herself for Sheridan, who's being tortured by Sebastian]
- Sebastian: You can go. You've passed, both of you.
- Delenn: Passed what?
- Sebastian: How do you know the Chosen Ones? "No greater love hath a man than he lay down his life for his brother." Not for millions…not for glory…not for fame. For one person, in the dark, where no one will ever know or see. I have been in the service of the Vorlons for centuries, looking for you. Diogenes with his lamp, looking for an honest man willing to die for all the wrong reasons. At last, my job is finished. Yours is just beginning. When the darkness comes, know this: You are the right people, in the right place, at the right time.
- Sheridan: Mr…Sebastian, I did a little digging, based on what you told me. The records confirm you lived on Earth in the year 1888. The records also indicate that you vanished, suddenly, without a trace on November 11th, 1888. That's a very interesting date, Mr. Sebastian. The morning after the last of a string of murders in the East End.
- Sebastian: The city was drowning in decay. Chaos. Immorality. A message needed to be sent, etched in blood for all the world to see. A warning. In the pursuit of my holy cause, I…did things. Terrible things. Unspeakable things. The world condemned me, but it didn't matter because I believed I was right and the world was wrong. I believed I was the divine messenger. I believed I was…
- Sheridan: Chosen?
- Sebastian: [after a pause] I was…found by the Vorlons. They showed me the terrible depth of my mistake, my crimes, my…presumption. I have done four hundred years of penance and service, a job for which they said I was ideally suited. Now, perhaps, they will finally let me die.
- Sheridan: I think that might be wise.
- Sebastian: [turning to board a Vorlon transport] Good luck to you in your holy cause, Captain Sheridan. May your choices have better results than mine. Remembered not as a messenger, remembered not as a reformer, not as a prophet, not as a hero…not even as Sebastian. Remembered only…as Jack.
- [At a bar on the Zocalo]
- Lennier: Sometimes I get so close, and yet it seems I'm shut out of the important things.
- Vir Cotto: It's a useless feeling! The ambassador is definitely going through some changes. He even looks different!
- Lennier: Indeed! And now with the military starting to stampede over everyone and everything…
- Vir: People coming and going and secret meetings!
- Lennier: You never know what it's all about. Until later, when it's too late.
- Vir: And they never listen to us.
- Vir, Lennier: [in unison] Makes me nervous!
- [They turn and look at each other, then back to the bar again]
- Vir: Same time tomorrow?
- Lennier: Sure.
- [Keffer is describing a Shadow vessel to a fellow pilot, who has seen the same thing.]
- Lt. Warren Keffer: It was jet black. A shade of black so deep your eye just kinda slides off it. And it shimmered when you looked at it. A spider big as death and twice as ugly. And when it flies past, it's like you hear a scream in your mind.
- [Lantze surprises the B5 staff with the true purpose of his visit.]
- Frederick Lantze: I'm here to sign a non-aggression treaty with the Centauri. Before I leave here, there will be an Earth-Centauri alliance that will guarantee peace for Earth. We will, at last, know peace in our time.
- [Sheridan is told that the Joint Chiefs have ordered him to apologize to the Centauri.]
- John Sheridan: I suppose this…apology is already written?
- Mr. Welles: No need. You can phrase the apology any way you see fit. As with everything else, it's the thought that counts.
- [Sheridan practices his apology to the Centauri government before a mirror.]
- Sheridan: I apologize. I'm…sorry. [sighs] I'm sorry we had to defend ourselves against an unwarranted attack. I'm sorry that your crew was stupid enough to fire on a station filled with a quarter million civilians, including your own people. And I'm sorry I waited as long as I did before I blew them all straight to hell! [pauses] As with everything else, it's the thought that counts.
- [last lines of the season]
- Susan Ivanova: It was the end of the Earth year 2259, and the war was upon us. As anticipated, a few days after the Earth-Centauri treaty was announced, the Centauri widened their war to include many of the Non-Aligned Worlds. And there was another war brewing closer to home. A personal one whose cost would be higher than any of us could imagine. We came to this place because Babylon 5 was our last, best hope for peace. By the end of 2259, we knew that it had failed. But in so doing, it became something greater. As the war expanded, it became our last, best hope for victory. Because sometimes peace is another word for surrender…and because secrets have a way of getting out.
- [ISN news shows Lt. Keffer's recordings of a Shadow vessel]
- Newscaster: When our ship encountered a distress beacon attached to an EarthForce recording device, these images, released exclusively to ISN, were found on that recording. Strategic analysts in Earth Dome have indicated they don't know who this new race might be, but promise to find out.
Season 3: Point of No Return
[edit]- [Opening credits voiceover.]
- Susan Ivanova: The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. It failed. But in the year of the Shadow War, it became something greater: our last, best hope…for victory. The year is 2260. The place, Babylon 5.
- [Sheridan approaches Kosh to thank him for saving his life.]
- John Sheridan: You've been back and forth to your homeworld so many times since you got here, how do I know you're the same Vorlon? Inside that Encounter Suit you could be anyone.
- Kosh: I have always been here.
- Sheridan: Oh yeah? You said that about me too.
- Kosh: Yes.
- Sheridan: [slightly unnerved] I really hate it when you do that.
- Kosh: Good.
- [Ivanova chides Sheridan on his impatience over an arriving VIP on a mysterious mission.]
- Susan Ivanova: Leave it to you to try and take all the fun out of life. I mean, come on, where's your sense of mystery, of adventure?
- Sheridan: Are you trying to cheer me up?
- Ivanova: No, sir! Wouldn't dream of it.
- Sheridan: Good! I hate being cheered up. It's…depressing.
- Ivanova: So, in that case…we're all going to die horrible, painful, lingering deaths.
- Sheridan: Thank you. I feel so much better now.
- [Ivanova preempts Sheridan's belated revelation of the Rangers by detailing what he was going to say.]
- Ivanova: Captain, the day something happens around here and I don't know about it, worry.
- [Marcus shows off a brand-new ship to Sheridan and Ivanova.]
- Sheridan: My God! It's beautiful!
- Marcus Cole: Her name is the White Star. And she's yours, Captain.
- David Endawi, EarthForce Intelligence: This is quite irregular, Mr. Garibaldi! I was assured that Captain Sheridan or Commander Ivanova would be available!
- Michael Garibaldi: They got called away on urgent business.
- Endawi: What kind of business?
- Garibaldi: I'm not authorized for that kind of information.
- Endawi: But…you're the head of Security.
- Garibaldi: And what kind of head of Security would I be if I let people like me know things that I'm not supposed to know? [I mean,] I know what I know because I have to know it, and if I don't have to know it, I don't tell me, and I don't let anyone else tell me, either. Now look, we've tried most of the other ambassadors. Why don't you speak to G'Kar? Maybe he knows something about this ship.
- Endawi: Under the terms of our recent treaty, I am not authorized to have any official conversation with the Narn without Centauri approval.
- Garibaldi: So you'll ask unofficially. And I can give you reasonable assurances that the head of Security will not report you for doing so.
- Endawi: [slowly] Because you won't tell yourself about it.
- Garibaldi: I try never to get involved in my own life. Too much trouble.
- Endawi: [confused] This is a very strange place you have here, Mr. Garibaldi.
- Garibaldi: Thank you.
- [The White Star is fleeing a Shadow ship in hyperspace, and Sheridan has an idea for beating it.]
- Sheridan: Tell me, Commander…have you ever wondered what would happen if you opened a jump point while inside a jump gate?
- Ivanova: No! And neither should you! EarthForce experimented with the idea during the Minbari War. They called it the Bonehead Maneuver. [to Lennier] No offense.
- Lennier: [more curious than offended] None taken.
- [A clandestine trio on Earth consider the premature leak of a Shadow ship sighting.]
- Morden: Your government can dismiss this as an isolated incident.
- Psi Cop: I don't know. There's something about this idea of a threat to planetary security I find very appealing. As long as we keep the real truth to ourselves, there's no reason we can't use this situation to speed up the program here at home.
- [Drazi missionaries ask a distracted Garibaldi about the recent sighting of their holy figure Droshalla.]
- Michael Garibaldi: Zack, do me a favor and explain the missionary, uh… position to these folks.
- [Lennier is in the arrivals area, stuck between two humans--one drunk, one sleeping on his shoulder.]
- Drunk: I said "Sheila," "Sheila," I says, "you change that vid channel one more time and I'm outta here, you got it?" Well, she did, I did, and here I am! You shoulda seen the look on her face, let me tell you! But it's great! I get to meet all kinds of people! I mean, look! Me sitting next to you, a Minbari! You know, us in that war and all. But I don't hold a grudge, no sir! You know what? I say live and let live! You know, look, I got hair, you got a bone! So where you goin'?
- Lennier: Home. I have been diagnosed with Netter's Syndrome. Since I have only seven days to live, I thought I would return home to put my affairs in order before the end.
- Drunk: Netter's Syndrome? I've had a few syndromes, but I've never heard of that one.
- Lennier: Neither had I. Apparently it's spread by physical contact.
- [The drunk realizes he's still got Lennier by the shoulder.]
- Drunk: Uh, I gotta make a call. [He gets up and walks away, while the sleeping human rolls off of Lennier's shoulder.]
- Lennier: [to himself] I will do penance later.
- [Londo and G'Kar are about to be pulled out of a bombed-out transport tube]
- Londo Mollari: There, you see? I'm going to live!
- G'Kar: So it would seem. Well, it is an imperfect universe.
- Londo: Bastard.
- G'Kar: Monster.
- Londo: Fanatic!
- G'Kar: Murderer!
- Londo: You are insane!
- G'Kar: And that is why we'll win.
- Londo: "Go be the ambassador to Babylon 5," they say. "It will be an easy assignment!" I hate my life.
- G'Kar: So do I.
- Londo: Shut! Up!
- [Ivanova passes the alien questionnaire results to Corwin.]
- Susan Ivanova: Check these figures again, make sure they came through the translator okay. I don't want to get killed because of a typo. It'd be embarrassing.
- Ivanova: If I live through this job without completely losing my mind, it will be a miracle of biblical proportions!
- David Corwin: Well, there goes my faith in the Almighty.
- [Sheridan reunites with Ta'Lon, the Narn whose life he saved when both were held captive aboard a Streib ship]
- John Sheridan: I don't know what my superiors would say if I started showing up everywhere with a Narn bodyguard.
- Ta'Lon: They will say, "Here is a man who will live to be a hundred and fifty!"
- G'Kar: If I stay here, your families are in jeopardy. Is anything more important than their safety?
- Narn: Yes. Their freedom. It's better to die in the cause of freedom than to live in comfort as a slave.
- Ta'Lon: I carry my sword in my hand. You carry yours in your heart and in your mind. As I see it, that gives you a two-to-one advantage in arms. Be fair, Citizen G'Kar.
- [opening lines: Cmdr. Ivanova and Brother Edward watch their seniors, Capt. Sheridan and Brother Theo respectively, play chess]
- Susan Ivanova: You realize this is an extremely dangerous situation.
- Brother Edward: He's been through much worse.
- Ivanova: I think he's doomed.
- Brother Edward: Not a chance.
- Ivanova: Care to put money on that?
- Brother Edward: Gambling is one of the lesser sins. I've always thought if you're going to sin, you may as well go for one of the really big ones.
- [in conference with Sheridan, Ivanova, and Franklin, Garibaldi offers his take on Lyta's return]
- Michael Garibaldi: Nobody's ever been to the Vorlon Homeworld and back again. Yet she goes, comes back like she just took a trip to the corner store. And now she's working for Kosh. Is anybody else as creeped out about this as I am?
- [the three others all raise their hands]
- Londo Mollari: Lyta Alexander! As I live and breathe…
- Lyta: I suggest you remove your hand, Ambassador, or you won't be doing either for much longer.
- . . .
- Londo: Lyta, I understand the Psi Corps is looking for you. I would hate very much for them to find you.
- Lyta: So would I. Because I'm not with the Corps anymore. That means I'm not bound by their rules! [She gets right in his face.] So if someone were to turn me in, I'd find him. And before they took me, I'd plant a nightmare deep in his mind where no one else could find or remove it. And that person would spend every night for the rest of his life…screaming!
- [she turns around and walks away]
- Londo: Fine! And keep your threats to yourself! [to himself] Nightmares. Hmph! The way my life has been going lately, who'd notice?
- [Theo tends to the mortally wounded Edward after getting him down from a makeshift cross]
- Brother Edward: Is there enough forgiveness for what I've done?
- Brother Theo: Always, Edward, always. Take my hand. [Edward fumbles, and Theo takes his hand.] Through the mysteries of our redemption, may Almighty God release you from all punishments in this life and in the life to come. [Sheridan joins them, a look of dismay on his face as he realizes what's going on.] May He open to you the gates of Paradise and welcome you to everlasting joy. Father, look with compassion on Your servant Edward, who has trusted in Your promises. Welcome him to Your Kingdom in peace. By the authority which the Apostolic See has given me, I grant you a full pardon and remission of all your sins. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
- [Zack complains about his uniform to an exasperated Garibaldi.]
- Zack Allan: I look like I'm wearing a circus tent! Any minute now, a little teeny car with 16 clowns in it is gonna come flying out my butt!
- [Garibaldi's link beeps.]
- Michael Garibaldi: Garibaldi's Fashion Express. Go.
- Draal: [addressing the command staff] Good afternoon, everyone! Captain, Delenn tells me that you're going to try contacting the First Ones. It is a magnificent idea—a daring and splendid idea! In doing so, you will see things no human has ever seen before! It will be…fun! Assuming you're not vaporized, dissected, or otherwise killed in an assortment of supremely horrible and painful ways! Exciting, isn't it?
- [Over dinner, new Babylon 5 "political officer" Julie Musante asks Sheridan about "lurkers".]
- John Sheridan: It's our version of the homeless. In many ways, we have the same problem Earth does.
- Julie Musante: Mmm. Earth doesn't have homeless.
- Sheridan: Excuse me?
- Musante: We don't have the problem. Yes, there are some "displaced" people, here and there, but, uh… they've chosen to be in that position. They're either lazy, or they're criminal, or they're mentally unstable.
- Sheridan: They can't get a job!
- Musante: EarthGov has promised a job to anyone that wants one. So, if someone doesn't have a job, they must not want one.
- . . .
- [Musante runs down a list of all the social problems EarthGov has suddenly solved.]
- Sheridan: And, uh w-when exactly did all this happen?
- Musante: When we rewrote the dictionary.
- . . .
- Sheridan: You can't deal with the problems by pretending they don't exist.
- [using the Great Machine, Ivanova "overhears" a conversation from the past]
- Vice-President Clark: I have wanted Santiago dead for so long…I wasn't sure we could really pull it off. You're sure it's done?
- Morden: EarthForce 1 will never return from Io. The power is now yours, Clark. Mister…President.
- [Ivanova holographically observes Sheridan being seduced by Julie Musante]
- Susan Ivanova: Good luck, Captain. I think you're about to go where…everyone has gone before. [N]
- [The "conspiracy of light" worries about exposure by Bester.]
- Michael Garibaldi: And after that, there are only two options. He turns us in, we're court-martialled, then shot for treason. Or we kill him, before he has a chance to tell anybody.
- Stephen Franklin: I will not support murder. We can not kill him.
- Ivanova: Can we wound him? Just a little?
- [Bester loudly disclaims any prior knowledge of the Talia Winters debacle.]
- Bester: On the other hand, we learned some interesting things about Miss Winters, in the course of her debriefing and dissec—that is, examination.
- . . .
- [Bester, agreeing to take a psi-suppressing drug, sneers at the command staff's distrust.]
- Bester: I'm here to save your butts! Next time, show a little gratitude.
- [He leaves.]
- Franklin: On the other hand, maybe wounding him isn't such a bad idea after all.
- [Bester confronts Garibaldi about his insulting comments.]
- Bester: My blood is the same color as yours, and what I do, I do to protect Earth, same as you. You don't like how I do it, that's your prerogative. But there are things going on out there that you know nothing about. Threats to the human race that no one ever hears about — because we stop them. There's dangers all around us! And whether you like us or not, we may be all that stands between you and the abyss.
- Bester: If I had my talent working, I could've warned you when he was coming.
- Garibaldi: And if I had a baseball bat, we could hang you from the ceiling and play piñata. I still think I should've gone straight to G'Kar.
- Bester: We have no evidence that he made the sale yet. Why annoy the Narn without cause if we are wrong? Shut off the problem at the source and the rest attends to itself. A piñata, huh? So you think of me as something bright and cheerful, full of toys and candy for young children. Thank you. That makes me feel…much better about our relationship.
- [Londo rephrases Vir's report on the Minbari to make them look bad, to Vir's horror.]
- Vir Cotto: They are deeply spiritual people!
- Londo Mollari: Yes, now that you can leave in. It always scares people.
- [Marcus and Garibaldi argue over Lurkers]
- Marcus: Well thank you, Mr. Garibaldi, one of the leading minds of the 14th century. "Have we no workhouses? Have we no prisons?" Mr. Marley here'd like to have a word with you! He's the fellow in the chains! Ignore the moans, it's just gas!
- Michael Garibaldi: Don't you ever shut up?
- Marcus: Not until I get what I want. Why? Do you think silent meditation would work better?
- Garibaldi: Ivanova was right. You are a pain in the ass.
- Michael Garibaldi: You know, I've been stuck in this tin can for three years. I haven't taken a vacation—okay, okay, it's my fault, I had the leave coming, I just didn't take it. And the pay sucks, I knew that when I signed on! And nobody said I'd survive the job! Now, I give you all that. But where in my contract does it say that I have to eat the same food for breakfast every day for three years?
- John Sheridan: [matter-of-fact] Paragraph 47, Subsection 19, Clause 9A. You can find it in the index under S.U.A.E.I.
- Garibaldi: S.U…A.E.I.?
- Sheridan, Susan Ivanova: [in unison] Shut Up And Eat It.
- [last lines: Sheridan turns on ISN]
- ISN Anchor: And to confirm earlier reports, President Clark has signed a decree today declaring martial law throughout Earth Central, citing threats to planetary security. He is expected to provide information to support this action at a closed meeting of the full Earth Senate tomorrow. We repeat, Earth is now under martial law.
- Vir Cotto: I thought the purpose of filing these reports was to provide accurate intelligence!
- Mollari: Vir, intelligence has nothing to do with politics!
- Lady Morella: What we are about to say is for your ears only, Ambassador Mollari. We will not repeat it to others in the Royal Court, and suggest you do the same. If it comes out, we will deny this conversation ever took place.
- Londo: Of course.
- Morella: You have a chance few others will ever have, Mollari. You still have three opportunities to avoid the fire that waits for you at the end of your journey. You have already wasted two others. You must save the eye that does not see. You must not kill the one who is already dead. And at the last, you must surrender yourself to your greatest fear, knowing that it will destroy you. Now if you have failed all the others, that is your final chance for redemption.
- Londo: I…don't understand!
- Morella: The future reveals itself only reluctantly, Ambassador. Take the sign for what it is. Look for it when it appears!
- Londo: I will. Thank you!
- Morella: One more thing. You will be Emperor. That part of your destiny cannot be avoided.
- Londo: I see.
- Morella: [to Vir] You will also be Emperor.
- [Vir starts laughing.]
- Morella: Why are you laughing?
- Vir: I…I thought you were joking!
- Morella: We do not joke in the face of prophecy, Vir.
- Londo: Lady Morella, please! We cannot both be Emperor!
- Morella: Correct. One of you will become Emperor after the other is dead. That is all we see and all we wish to see.
- [after his ship, the EAS Alexander, destroys the Clark-loyal EAS Clarkstown]
- Maj. Ed Ryan: That's what makes this war different from anything we have ever gone through before. This time, we know everyone we kill.
- [Delenn speaks to the Council.]
- Delenn: Three years. For three years, I warned you this day was coming. But you would not listen. "Pride," you said! "Presumption!" And now the Shadows are on the move. The Centauri and the younger worlds are at war, the Narns have fallen…even the humans are fighting one another. The pride was yours! The presumption was yours! For a thousand years, we have been awaiting the fulfillment of prophecy. And when it finally happens, you scorn it—you reject it—because you no longer believe it yourselves!
- [She confronts one of the Grey Council directly.]
- Delenn: "We stand between the candle and the star, between the darkness and the light." You say the words, but your hearts are empty—your ears closed to the truth! You stand for nothing but your own petty interests!
- [She confronts a second Grey Council member.]
- Delenn: "The problems of others are not our concern." I do not blame you for standing silent in your shame. You, who knew what was coming, but refused to take up the burden of this war! If the Warrior Caste will not fight, then the rest of us will!
- [Now she confronts the leader, the one who carries the staff.]
- Delenn: If the Council has lost its way, if it will not lead…if we have abandoned our covenant with Valen…! [Grabs the leader's staff and raises it over her head.] Then the Council should be broken…[She snaps the staff in two and throws both halves to the floor.] …as was prophesied! We must stand with the others—now, before it's too late! Between the Worker Caste and the Religious Caste, we control two-thirds of our forces! And to you I say, listen to the voice of your conscience! Break the Council, and come with me! Our time of isolation is over! We move now, together, or not at all!
- [Sheridan addresses the entire station before the battle.]
- Sheridan: May I have your attention, please? In the last few hours, we have learned that warships are coming this way from Earth. Their orders are to seize command of Babylon 5 by force. As commanding officer and military governor of Babylon 5, I cannot allow this to happen. President Clark has violated the Earth Alliance Constitution by dissolving the Senate, declaring martial law, and personally ordering the bombing of civilian targets on the Mars Colony. He is personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent people. Following these attacks, Orion 7 and Proxima 3 have broken away from the Earth Alliance and declared independence. Babylon 5 now joins with them! As of this moment, Babylon 5 is seceding from the Earth Alliance! We will remain an independent state until President Clark is removed from office! At the end of this current crisis, anyone who wishes to leave for Earth is free to do so. Meanwhile, for your own safety, I urge everyone to stay in your quarters until this is over. That is all.
- [As the immediate danger is cleared.]
- Sheridan: Damage report.
- David Corwin: Damage to all sectors. They're still fighting in Brown Sector.
- Sheridan: Get some more troops down there. Hull integrity?
- Corwin: Not good. EVA teams en route. It's a good thing this stopped when it did. We couldn't take much more. [Jumpgate alarm goes off.] Oh, no!
- [Outside, the jumpgate opens and three more Clark-loyal ships come through]
- Captain Drake, EarthForce: This is Captain Drake to Babylon 5. You are ordered to surrender and prepare to be boarded, by order of President Clark.
- [Another alarm goes off in C&C]
- Corwin: Captain…jump points forming right on top of us!
- Sheridan: [deflated] How many?
- Corwin: Four!
- [The jump points produce three Minbari war cruisers and the White Star, with Delenn in the captain's chair]
- Delenn: This is Ambassador Delenn of the Minbari. Babylon 5 is under our protection. Withdraw…or be destroyed!
- Drake: Negative. We have authority here. Do not force us to engage your ship.
- Delenn: Why not? Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else.
- [the Clark-loyal ships take the hint and retreat to hyperspace]
- Delenn: Prophecy is a poor guide to the future. You only understand it when the event's already upon you.
- [A funeral service for the pilots killed in the battle for Babylon 5]
- John Sheridan: In breaking away from Earth, we have begun a difficult and uncertain journey, and none of us can see its end. But our cause remains a just one. That truth honors and sanctifies our fallen comrades who have made the ultimate sacrifice so that we might carry on the work that is ahead of us. We are gathered here today to honor their memory and their names.
- Susan Ivanova: Hamilton. Rodriguez. Spinelli. Singh. Osterman. Massey. Cooper. Kim. Indari. Nagashima. Lietz. Mankowski. [as she reads the names, a line of torpedoes files out of the docking ring, watched over by a squadron of Starfuries]
- Sheridan: From the stars we came. To the stars we return, from now until the end of time. We therefore commit these bodies to the deep.
- [Londo insists that Refa discontinue his association with Morden's "associates".]
- Lord Antono Refa: You walked away from the greatest power I have ever seen! And now you expect me to do the same? They are the key to my eventual rise to the throne! Why would I abandon them?
- Londo Mollari: Because I have asked you. Because your loyalty to our people should be greater than your ambition. And because I have poisoned your drink.
- [Lord Refa looks in astonishment at Londo]:
- Londo: Yes…and it is very interesting poison. It comes in two parts. Both are harmless on their own. But when combined…quite lethal. The first settles into the bloodstream, and the intestinal walls. It stays there for years. Silent…dormant…waiting. When the other half of the poison enters your system the two meet, have a little party in your cardiovascular system…and suddenly? You. Are. Quite. Dead. Your drink contained the first half of the poison.
- Refa: Why? Why did you do this?
- Londo: To guarantee your cooperation! And because sooner or later, you would do it to me! Yes, we are returning to the old ways, Refa, and poison was always the instrument of choice in the old Republic. Being something of a sentimentalist, I got here first.
- Refa: What do you want me to do?
- Londo: You have encouraged that fool Cartagia to attack worlds that have no value to us. You will now encourage him otherwise. You will bolster our lines of defense around Centauri Prime. And you will have nothing more to do with Mr. Morden. If you do not comply, one of my agents in the royal palace will introduce you to the second half of the poison.
- [he raises his glass and grins]
- Londo: To your health, Lord Refa.
- [Marcus squeezes information out of a reluctant lurker.]
- Marcus: You see? It's like I've always said: "You can get more with a kind word and a two-by-four than you can with just a kind word."
- paraphrased from Al Capone, "You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone."
- [as part of a rebirth ceremony, the command staff leave their Earthforce uniforms by Delenn's hospital bed and tell her a secret they have never revealed before]
- Sheridan: When you were hurt, when you were in my arms, I was ready to kill that guy with my bare hands. I realized I have never told you how much I cared about you, how much you mean to me. I think it's time you knew that. I can no longer imagine my world without you in it. I don't know exactly when or how it happened. But I'm glad it did.
- Garibaldi: No one knows, but…I'm afraid all the time…what I might do if I let go.
- Ivanova: I think I…loved…Talia.
- Dr. Stephen Franklin: I…think I have a problem.
- [Sheridan is inviting Delenn to dinner in his quarters]
- John Sheridan: You know, every time that I have seen you lately, we've been in the middle of a crisis! A revolution! I mean, this is the first time in months that it's been this quiet! It won't last. It never does. But as long as it's here…I'd like to see you tonight.
- Delenn: Are you not seeing me now? I would assume that you see me every time we meet. Unless I have become translucent, or insubstantial, and no one has thought to inform me until now.
- Sheridan: Then let me say I'd like to see you in a different light. Candlelight, for instance. Over dinner?
- Delenn: Tonight?
- Sheridan: Tomorrow we may be involved in another crisis, another battle! This may be the last chance we'll get for a while. You know, back home we have a saying. "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!"
- Delenn: Humans can be a very depressing people.
- Sheridan: Only if we get turned down for dinner.
- Delenn: Well, we cannot have that, now can we?
- [Entertaining Vir and his new wife, Londo is also struggling with a pest infestation.]
- Londo Mollari: I swear, they are evolving right before my eyes.
- [He turns to Vir and Lyndisty.]
- Londo: If you see something this big with eight legs coming your way, let me know. I have to kill it before it develops language skills.
- [After fighting the thieves with Arthur]
- G'Kar: By G'Quan, I can't recall the last time I was in a fight like that! No moral ambiguity, no hopeless battle against ancient and overwhelming forces! They were the bad guys, as you say, and we were the good guys. And they made a very satisfying thump when they hit the floor.
- [Marcus and Dr. Franklin have just seen "Arthur" off.]
- Marcus: Where my people come from, his story has great power. I'll miss him.
- Franklin: Even if he wasn't Arthur?
- Marcus: [as Kosh appears] Now, now! Next thing you'll be saying is he's not Merlin! [Franklin laughs.] Merlin was a great teacher, you know!
- Franklin: I'm not hearing this.
- Marcus: They say he aged backwards. That was how he was able to foretell the future–by remembering it! Which means he came from the future! Maybe he had Arthur form the Round Table by remembering us! We're forming one of our own, after all. Which makes you Percival. I'm Galahad, him being sinless and all. Sheridan is Arthur. Ivanova, perhaps Gawain. I think we both know who Mordred is. So the question is…who is Morgana le Fay?
- Bester: I was expecting the Captain.
- Susan Ivanova: He sent me.
- Bester: Did he? He has a better sense of humor than I thought. Please, sit.
- Ivanova: I'd rather stand.
- Bester: I suspect you'd rather walk out that door and wall me up inside! Do a little re-creation of "The Cask of Amontillado". "For the love of God, Montresor!"
- Ivanova: If you get near a point, make it!
- Sheridan: So, how did you find out about all this?
- Bester: I'm a telepath. Work it out.
- [Morden accosts Vir as he runs errands for Londo.]
- Morden: Anything I can do to help?
- Vir Cotto: Um…Short of dying? No, can't think of a thing.
- John Sheridan: For three years now you've been pulling everyone's strings, getting us to do all the work, and you haven't done a damn thing but stand there and look cryptic! Well, it's about time you start pulling your own weight around here. […] I hear you've got a saying: "Understanding is a three-edged sword"? Well, we've got a saying, too: "Put your money where your mouth is"!
- Kosh: Impudent.
- Sheridan: Yeah? Well, maybe that's the only way to get through to you. You said you wanted to teach me to fight legends. Well, you're a legend too, and I am not going away until you agree!
- Kosh: Incorrect. [slams Sheridan into the wall with an energy blast] Leave. Now.
- Sheridan: No.
- Kosh: Disobedient!
- Sheridan: Up yours!
- [Kosh slams him into the wall again, this time drawing blood]
- Sheridan: So, the real Kosh shows his colors at last, huh? You angry now? Angry enough to kill me? Because that's the only way I'm leaving. Unless your people get off their encounter-suited butts and do something, I've got nothing to lose! Hell, my own government wants to kill me, and if we lose this war, I'm just as dead! Our only chance is to get the other races on board for this fight, and right now you're the key to doing that!
- Kosh: It is not yet time.
- Sheridan: And who decides that time? You? You put me in this position. You asked me to fight this damn war! Well, it's about time you let me fight it my way! How many people have already died fighting this war of yours, huh? How many more will die before you come down off that mountain and get involved? Ships, colonies, whole worlds are being destroyed out there, and you do nothing! How many more? How many more, Kosh? How many more dead before you're satisfied, huh?!
- [Kosh again slams him into the wall, with crushing force]
- Sheridan: Go ahead. Maybe one more death…will help balance out the books. Go on, get it over with. Save us both the trouble later.
- [Kosh releases him]
- Kosh: I will do as you ask. But there is a price to pay. I will not be there to help you when you go to Z'ha'dum.
- Sheridan: You already said if I go to Z'ha'dum, I'll die.
- Kosh: Yes, now.
- Sheridan: All right. If that's the trade-off. If you want to withhold your help when the time comes, that's fine. I'll go it alone.
- Kosh: You do not understand. But you will.
- [blind with grief over the murder of his lover Adira, Londo comes to Morden with one final request]
- Londo Mollari: Everyone dies around me, Mr. Morden. Except the ones that most deserve it. That is about to change. You said that you would go away for as long as I wanted. I no longer want that. All I want now…is revenge. They took from me the one thing that I have…have ever truly loved. And you will help me, Mr. Morden, to strike them down. Give me this, and the safety of my people…and let the rest of the galaxy burn. I don't care any more.
- Morden: Of course, Ambassador. As ever, I'm always in your service.
War Without End, Part 1
[edit]- Rathenn: I have the strangest feeling I will never see him again.
- Vorlon: He is the closed circle. He is returning to the beginning.
- Rathenn: The beginning of what?
- [The Vorlon turns and moves away.]
- Sinclair: I need Lennier to stay on the ship. Can you get the equipment up here by yourself?
- Zathras: Yes, yes! Zathras is used to being beast of burden to other people's needs. Very sad life! Probably have very sad death, but at least there is symmetry!
War Without End, Part 2
[edit]- Londo Mollari: [his last words, in a glimpse of the future] We have unfinished business between us, G'Kar. Let us make an end of it quickly, before it stops me. I am as tired of my life as you are.
- Zathras: All Minbari belief is around three. Three castes–Worker, Warrior, Religious. Three languages–Light, Dark and Grey. The nine of the Grey Council, three times three. All is three. As you are three. As you are one. As you are the One. You [points to Sinclair] are the One who was. You [points at Delenn] are the One who is. And you–[points at Sheridan]–you are the One who will be. You are the beginning [Sinclair] of the story, and the middle [Delenn] of the story, and the end [Sheridan] of the story…that creates the next great story.
- Ivanova: C'mon c'mon, grab what you need. We're running out of time.
- Zathras: Cannot run out of time. There is infinite time. You are finite. Zathras is finite. [picking up tool] THIS is wrong tool.
- [G'Kar hosts a fugitive Narn shipmaster for dinner]
- Na'Kal: I thank you for this, G'Kar. We've been on the run for so long, I haven't tasted fresh food in months.
- G'Kar: Well, it's not the hero's welcome you deserve, but it will do for now.
- Na'Kal: Breen! [takes a bite] You've managed to import breen from Homeworld! How?
- G'Kar: It, uh…isn't actually breen.
- Na'Kal: The smell, the taste—!
- G'Kar: It's an Earth food. They are called Swedish meatballs. It's a strange thing, but every sentient race has its own version of these Swedish meatballs! I suspect it's one of those great universal mysteries which will either never be explained, or which would drive you mad if you ever learned the truth.[N]
- [Sheridan and Ivanova meet the new Vorlon ambassador, Kosh's replacement]
- John Sheridan: Your government neglected to tell me your name. How should I refer to you when we're alone?
- Kosh II: Kosh.
- Sheridan: Ah, yes, I understand that's how we're to refer to you publicly, but privately?
- Kosh II: Kosh.
- Susan Ivanova: Ambassador Kosh is…dead.
- Kosh II: We are all Kosh. [he leaves]
- Sheridan: Well, he's a Vorlon, all right.
- Ivanova: Yep.
- [Franklin explains the principles of "walkabout" to Garibaldi.]
- Stephen Franklin: You know, as a Foundationist, I was always taught that if you're not careful, you can lose yourself in the world. You get too busy with things, not busy enough with yourself! Spend your days and nights living someone else's agendas, fighting someone else's battles, and you're doing the work you're supposed to be doing, but every day there's less and less of you in it all! Till one day, you come to a fork in the road, and because you're distracted, you're not thinking. You lose yourself. You go right, and the rest of you, the really important part of you, goes left! And you don't even know you've done it till you realize, you finally realize, that you don't have any idea who you are when you're not doing all those things!
- Michael Garibaldi: Stephen…you don't really believe there are two of you, do you?
- Franklin: [chuckles] No, it's a metaphor! All right, there isn't literally another me walking around the station. But the principle is real! I realized I didn't have any idea who I was when I wasn't being a doctor, and I think I was using the stims to avoid facing that. Now I gotta fix it.
- Garibaldi: How?
- Franklin: By going walkabout. You just leave everything, and you start walking. I mean, the Foundation adopted the idea from the Aborigines back on Earth. The theory is, if you're separated from yourself, you start walking and you keep walking until you meet yourself. Then you sit down, and you have a long talk. Talk about everything that you've learned, everything that you've felt, and you talk until you've run out of words. Now, that's vital, because the real important things can't be said. And then, if you're lucky, you look up, and there's just you. Then you can go home.
- Garibaldi: It's easy to fight when you've got a lot of ships to work with. The real crunch comes when you're down to almost nothing! Then you either play it safe and you probably lose it all, or you take a chance! After what we've been through with your people, Sheridan was crazy to send our pilots out to fight for your ship! They didn't want to go, they didn't want to get blown out of the sky and leave B5 defenseless, and they sure as hell didn't want to die! But they did it because Sheridan told them to do it and because it was right!
- G'Kar: This time it is possible he could be wrong.
- Garibaldi: Yeah, it's possible. But you don't follow an order because you know for sure it's gonna work out! You do what you're told! Because your CO has the moral authority that says, "You may not come back! But the cause is just and fair and necessary!" That's why Sheridan is out there, and damn it, that's where that cruiser should be, too! It's not Na'Kal's decision, G'Kar. He doesn't see the big picture—you do! So in my book, and your book, that makes it your responsibility! Deal with it!
- [Lennier is alarmed about Neroon's challenge to Delenn assuming the title of Entil'Zha.]
- Delenn: It should come as no surprise. We knew the warrior caste was unhappy with our activities.
- Lennier: Unhappy?! Delenn, he's planning to kill you!
- Delenn: That is…one interpretation.
- Lennier: He said he would use any and all means necessary. I respectfully suggest that he intends to go far beyond harsh language.
- [Beating the tar out of Marcus, Neroon suggests the human need not be bound by Minbari honor.]
- Marcus Cole: I am a Ranger! We walk in the dark places no others will enter! We stand on the bridge and no one may pass! We live for the One, we die for the One!
- Lennier: Delenn, all we know is that we will die. It is only a matter of how, when, and whether or not it is with honor.
- [Neroon comes to Marcus' bed in Medlab to honor him.]
- Neroon: Denn-Shar, you said. To the death…and death there was. The death was mine. To see a Human invoke the name of Valen. To be willing to die for one of my kind when I was intent upon killing one of my own. The rightness of my cause disappeared. Strange, that a human in his last moments would be more of a Minbari than I. Perhaps it is true what Delenn said: That we are not of the same blood, but we are of the same heart.
- [Neroon turns to leave.]
- Marcus: [in a hoarse whisper] The next time…[Neroon returns to Marcus' bedside]…the next time you want a revelation…could you possibly find a way…that isn't quite so…uncomfortable?
- [Neroon laughs out loud]
- [Ivanova and Brother Theo are at customs to greet a group of religious leaders]
- Reverend William Dexter: Are you starting in already, Theo? I tell you, in fifty years of living and forty years of serving the Lord, I have never met a sorrier soul than Brother Theo here!
- Susan Ivanova: Well, I wouldn't say…
- Brother Theo: Thank you! But I'd prefer to leave judgments as to the state of my soul to someone better qualified, and perhaps a bit less loud!
- Rev. Dexter: But it says in the Bible to make a joyful noise unto the Lord!
- Brother Theo: [grinning] I've heard you sing, Will. And take my word for it, that is not what the Good Lord had in mind when He said, "a joyful noise"!
- Rev. Dexter: I'd rather do something and make a mistake than be frightened into doing nothing. That's the problem back home. Folks have been conned into thinking they can't change the world. Have to accept what is. I'll tell you something, my friends, the world is changing every day. The only question is, who's doing it?
- Rev. Dexter: You know, before I got married, Emily used to come by sometimes and help me clean out my apartment. Well, I asked her, "How come you're so eager to help clean up my place when your place is just as bad?" She said, "Because cleaning up your place helps me to forget what a mess I've made of mine, and…when I sweep my floor, all I've done is sweep my floor. But, when I help you clean up your place, I am helping you."
- Rev. Dexter: Every day, here and at home, we are warned about the enemy. But who is the enemy? Is it the alien? Well, we are all alien to one another. Is it the one who believes differently than we do? No, oh no, my friends. 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.
- [last lines: Delenn shows Sheridan a fleet of White Stars]
- Delenn: White Star was never intended to be one of a kind. It was only the first. We've been working around the clock to construct them. I said we needed time to prepare. This is why. The first wave of ships is finished at last. The Rangers will pilot them under our shared command. We are as ready for them as we will ever be. We finally have, as you say, a fighting chance.
- Sheridan: I don't know what to say.
- Delenn: Then say nothing.
- [they kiss]
- Michael Garibaldi: Sometimes people walk away because they want to be alone, and sometimes they walk away because they want to see if you care enough to follow them into hell. I think I went the wrong way.
- [Marcus teaches Ivanova a little of the Minbari language.]
- Marcus: Nu'zen fel'ani in-a lis'e medran. [translation: You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.]
- Ivanova: And what does that mean?
- Marcus: It's…just a greeting. It means…"My words are inadequate to the burden of my heart."
- Ivanova: Well, that's an unusual greeting.
- Marcus: Well…they're an unusual people.
- Stephen Franklin: I realized that I always defined myself in terms of what I wasn't. I wasn't a good soldier like my father. I wasn't the job. I wasn't a good prospect for marriage or kids. Always what I wasn't, never what I was. And when you do that, you miss the moments. And the moments are all we've got. When I thought I was going to die, even after everything that's happened, I realized I didn't want to let go. I was willing to do it all over again, and this time I could appreciate the moments. I can't go back, but I can appreciate what I have right now, and I can define myself by what I am, instead of what I'm not.
- John Sheridan: And what are you?
- Franklin: Alive. Everything else is negotiable.
- [last lines; a surprise visitor makes her way to Sheridan's quarters.]
- Anna Sheridan: Hello. You must be Delenn. I'm Anna Sheridan. John's wife.
- Delenn: Humans have a phrase: "What is past, is prologue." […] Minbari also have a phrase: "What is past, is also sometimes the future."
- John Sheridan: I trusted you, Delenn. I cared for you. I let myself start to love you. Do you know what that means? Do you know how hard that was for me? All along a little part of me was still in love with Anna, even though she was gone. I had to fight that part off every time I…I thought about you, about holding you, about building a life with the two of us.
- [last lines of the season]
- G'Kar: It was the end of the Earth year 2260, and the war had paused, suddenly and unexpectedly. All around us, it was as if the universe were holding its breath…waiting. All of life can be broken down into moments of transition, or moments…of revelation. This had the feeling of both. […] G'Quan wrote, "There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender." The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born…in pain.
Season 4: No Surrender, No Retreat
[edit]- [Opening credits voiceover.]
- Lennier: It was the year of fire…
- Zack Allan: …the year of destruction…
- G'Kar: …the year we took back what was ours.
- Lyta Alexander: It was the year of rebirth…
- Vir Cotto: …the year of great sadness…
- Marcus Cole: …the year of pain…
- Delenn: …and a year of joy.
- Londo Mollari: It was…a new age.
- Stephen Franklin: It was the end of history.
- Susan Ivanova: It was the year everything changed.
- Michael Garibaldi: The year is 2261.
- John Sheridan: The place, Babylon 5.
- G'Kar: It is now seven days since we lost Captain Sheridan and Mr. Garibaldi. In a way I think we have also lost Ivanova. It is as though her heart has been pierced and her spirit has poured out through the wound. She blames herself. It is foolish; it is destructive; it is…human. Ambassador Mollari has returned to Centauri Prime to take up his role as advisor of planetary security. I suppose he is quite happy with his new position. It's what he always wanted: power, title, responsibility. I think he is more alone than anyone else in the universe. Delenn has refused to eat for seven days, fasting, praying, and waiting. Delenn believes; I think she is the only one who does. The Shadows have paused in their pursuit of war and everywhere there is a sense of imminent change. Whether it is a change for good or ill, no one could tell, because no one has answered two very important questions:
- Where is Mr. Garibaldi? And what happened to Captain Sheridan at Z'ha'dum?
- [Zack investigates a break-in in Garibaldi's quarters…and finds G'Kar, wearing the chief's fedora']
- Zack Allan: G'Kar? What are you doing here?
- G'Kar: I saw him wearing this from time to time, and I thought it would help me. In all the concern about Sheridan, it seems Mr. Garibaldi has been forgotten.
- Zack: No. Not forgotten. But I think he'd want Sheridan found first.
- G'Kar: Then you think he's alive?
- Zack: I don't know. When you come right down to it, it doesn't matter what I think either way.
- G'Kar: Our thoughts form the universe. They always matter. [He turns to a picture of Daffy Duck over Garibaldi's bed.] I was studying this image. Is it one of his household gods?
- Zack: [chuckles] That's Daf—Yeah, well, in a way I suppose it is. It's sort of the Egyptian god of frustration.
- G'Kar: Most appropriate! Thank you. I came here to remind myself of his soul, his center. His chad'rasha, we call it. It will help me.
- Zack: Help you what?
- G'Kar: It takes a rare kind of wisdom to accept change and redemption in another. Many would refuse, seeing only what was, not what is. Mr. Garibaldi gave me that chance, and I must repay him. So I'm going after him, Mr. Allan. I don't know where he is, or where to start, but if he is alive, I will find him and bring him back.
- [Lyta pays Ivanova a late-night visit.]
- Suasn Ivanova: Have you ever heard of the hour of the wolf?
- Lyta Alexander: No.
- Ivanova: My father told me about it. It's the time between three and four in the morning. You can't sleep, and all you can see is the troubles and the problems and the ways that your life should've gone but didn't. All you can hear is the sound of your own heart. I've been living in the hour of the wolf for seven days, Lyta. Seven days. The wolf and I are now on a first-name basis. [She sits down and sees that Lyta is still standing.] Ah, please. [She points at a chair, and Lyta gets her drift and sits.] In times like this, my father used to take one large glass of vodka before bed. To keep the wolf away, he said. And then he would take three very small drinks of vodka, just in case she had cubs while she was waiting outside. [takes a drink] It doesn't work.
- Ivanova: Lennier, get us the hell out of here!
- Lennier: Initiating "getting the hell out of here" maneuver.
- G'Kar: Compassion is a rare commodity these days.
- [G'Kar and Marcus Cole take shelter after a bar brawl]
- G'Kar: I was doing fine until you showed up with that… [gesticulates mockingly] thing in hand.
- Marcus Cole: It's a Minbari fighting pike, several hundred years old. [points and smiles] You're just jealous because you don't have one. Bad case of pikal envy, if you ask me.
- [later]
- G'Kar: [admiring Marcus's (closed) Minbari fighting pike] May I?
- [Marcus hands him the pike.]
- Marcus Cole: To open it, you press…
- [G'Kar presses the button and opens the pike; it telescopes out, barely missing Marcus and knocking over a crate. G'Kar looks at him like a child with a new favorite toy.]
- G'Kar: I like it!
- [ Delenn watches an excerpt from John Sheridan's personal log.]
- Sheridan: Personal log, May 14, 2260. We actually had a quiet day today. It's hard to believe with so much going on lately, and now that we've broken away from Earth, everything has hit the fan. It's not what I wanted. Frankly, it scared the hell out of me. But it had to be done. The job now is to turn this around and make it into something positive. My dad always told me that's the only way you deal with pain. You don't surrender, you don't fight it, you turn it into something positive. He used to say, "If you're falling off a cliff, you may as well try to fly. You've got nothing to lose." In a way, I feel the same way about Delenn. I mean, during the war I fought Minbari, I killed Minbari. I saw many of my friends die at Minbari hands. And here I am, in love with one of them. For a long time, I thought about not saying anything, but the moment my heart crossed that line, there wasn't much I could do but see it through. Yeah, I've fallen off one hell of a cliff. When I look in her eyes, I let myself think, maybe I really can fly.
- [Later in the episode, Delenn delivers a speech to a group of Rangers.]
- Delenn: The chances of success are small, but if we stay here and do nothing, they are even smaller. So we go. As a dear friend said to me, "If you're falling off a mountain, you may as well try to fly." Here, at the end, I offer you one final chance to fly.
- [G'Kar has been taken prisoner by the Centauri, tortured, and now languishes in an underground cell. Londo Mollari steps in to visit him, asking for his help in removing the emperor. Just before he leaves, G'Kar rebuts.]
- G'Kar: You didn't ask the price…for my cooperation.
- Londo Mollari: [incredulous] You are not exactly in a position to bargain, G'Kar.
- G'Kar: Neither are you. You want my help…for the sake of your people. I will give it…for the sake of my own. If I remove the monster from your throne, you will remove the monster…from my world. Leave Narn! Set my world free! Promise me this, and I will do as you ask.
- [Mollari thinks about this for a moment, then realizes he has no choice and agrees.]
- Mollari: You have my word.
- [He is let out of the cell by the guard, allowing the bright light to stream in from outside. G'Kar lies back against the wall of his cell, basking in the glow, joyful tears in his eyes.]
- Lorien: It's easy to find something worth dying for. Do you have anything worth living for?
- paraphrased from Wilhelm Stekel, "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
- [Ivanova insists she does not need a translator to command a Minbari-crewed White Star.]
- Susan Ivanova: [in Minbari] Flak'sha. [Engines at full.] Shin'drabi. [High power.] Hat'rashu… [Hatrack ratcatcher…] an dolo… [to port weapons…] ishi'den! [brickbat lingerie!]
- [Both fluent in the language, one of them natively, Delenn and Marcus look on, horrified. Marcus desperately searches for the right response.]
- Marcus Cole: It's…
- Delenn: [quickly] Um, very good! [Minbari only lie to help another save face.]
- Marcus: Bit of an accent. But yes, very good.
- Delenn: But it is not enough to speak Minbari; you must also think in our language.
- Marcus: It can take a few seconds to translate an order. And we all know a lot can happen in a few seconds: Crash, boom, burn.
- Delenn: Exactly. So Marcus will accompany you.
- Ivanova: [protesting] That's not…
- Delenn: [to Marcus] Do you mind?
- Marcus: Not at all. Love to.
- [Ivanova sees she's beaten.]
- Ivanova: All right. Meet me early in the morning, or I'm leaving without you. [She stalks off.]
- Marcus: [calling after her] I'll be there!
- Delenn: [very serious] Tell the crew that if anyone laughs, they will answer to me personally.
- Marcus: At least a dozen ships have reported seeing something rather godlike in the area, and since neither you nor I were there, it must be one of the First Ones.
- Ivanova: [smiling] You're having delusions of grandeur again.
- Marcus: Well, if you're gonna have delusions, may as well go for the really satisfying ones.
- [Londo attempts to recruit Vir into the conspiracy to assassinate Emperor Cartagia.]
- Vir Cotto: I've never been involved in a conspiracy to kill anyone before, not to mention the Emperor! I thought we were past this centuries ago! I mean, there's got to be another way, Londo! I mean, can't we reason with him or something…
- . . .
- [after meeting Cartagia and hearing him bemoan G'Kar's refusal to scream, despite being tortured in supremely painful ways]
- Vir: Londo? Remember what I said before about "there must be another way"? I was wrong. Kill him!
- [In his quarters, Ambassador Ulkesh removes the last vestiges of his consciousness from Lyta Alexander's mind. The energy streams disconnect from her with a pop and her head snaps back like she has been struck.]
- Lyta Alexander: You didn't have to pull out so suddenly. You hurt me.
- [The Vorlon's encounter suit closes without response.]
- Lyta Alexander: While I was carrying you, you felt cold, hard. What are you hiding from me?
- Ulkesh: [ignoring her once more] Your work for now is done here. Go. Sleep.
- Lyta Alexander: I have a right to know. I've done everything you asked. I let your people modify me, enhance my telepathic abilities so I'd be more suited to carry a Vorlon around in my head, because I believed. Kosh—the real Kosh—wasn't like this. I think on some level he cared about us…about me. With you it's as if I'm being used and then thrown away when I'm not needed anymore. [explodes with anger] Dammit! I have earned some respect! [straightens] And I have earned some answers.
- [The eye-sensor on the encounter suit head narrows]
- Ulkesh: Respect? From whom?
- [Lyta's mouth drops open in shock. In her anger, she tries to scan him, but a wave of energy shoots out and knocks her back into the wall. The Vorlon advances on her, the eye-sensor widening and glowing red.]
- Ulkesh: [angrily] Would you know my thoughts? Would you?
- [A sound indicating an intense mind-probe. Lyta screams, and the scene goes black.]
- Marcus: Anyone special waiting for you back home?
- Ivanova: No, not anymore. You?
- Marcus: [bashful] Someone. She doesn't know it yet.
- Ivanova: That's a strange way to pursue a relationship.
- Marcus: I suppose so. Ah…I want this thing to go right. I want it to be special.
- Ivanova: Oh. A romantic! I don't think I've felt that way since the first time!
- Marcus: That's what I'm talking about.
- [Susan's eyes narrow, get wide, then get wider.]
- Ivanova: You mean you don't…you haven't…
- Marcus: Yes.
- Ivanova: You're a…
- Marcus: Exactly.
- Ivanova: With anyone?
- Marcus: Never met the right person before.
- Ivanova: Wow. I thought the First Ones were rare! Well, I hope she appreciates it.
- Marcus: So do I. It's… [An alarm goes off.] I'm picking something up!
- Ivanova: A unicorn? [he gives her a confused look] Sorry.
- [Sheridan, back from Z'ha'dum, interrupts the rabble rousers on the Zocalo.]
- Drazi: Captain…we're sorry…We thought you were dead.
- John Sheridan: [deadpan] I was. I'm better now.
- [After being treated with reverence by a group in the docking bay, John Sheridan walks with Lorien down the corridor. As they leave, they overhear one woman asking about the captain's so-called resurrection.]
- Lorien: You heard?
- John Sheridan: I heard.
- Lorien: They need to believe.
- Sheridan: Not in me.
- Lorien: You can't save them all.
- Sheridan: I'll try.
- Lorien: You'll fail.
- Sheridan: We'll see.
- [Ivanova and Garibaldi survey the fleet]
- Michael Garibaldi: That is a hell of a lot of ships.
- Susan Ivanova: And more on the way. The captain wants the biggest fleet in history if we're gonna end this war. The way things are shaping up out there it looks like he just might get it.
- Garibaldi: And then what?
- Ivanova: And then what what?
- Garibaldi: Well if we lose, there is no "then what", and if we win, what next? We're still renegades. I don't think there's anybody left on this side of the galactic core we haven't already honked off. We can't go home. Sometimes I don't know which scares me more, winning or losing.
- Ivanova: God, I thought I was depressing.
- [Sheridan proposes to Delenn]
- John Sheridan: I, um…I wanted you to have this. I got it down in the Zocalo. It's not exactly what I had in mind, but, um…It's temporary until I can get you a real engagement ring. Um, it's an Earth custom. See, you give someone you love an engagement ring as kind of down payment for another ring. The kind you exchange when you get married. I don't know when we will be able to get around to that part of it. We may not survive the next two weeks, but I wanted you to have this and to know that whatever time I have left, I want to spend it with you.
- Londo Mollari: Great Maker! Your eye! Cartagia?
- G'Kar: My eye offended him. Doesn't matter. I can see things now that were invisible to me before. An empty eye sees through to an empty heart.[N]
- [After G'Kar breaks free from his chains and starts a riot]
- Cartagia: Completely irresponsible! The chains weren't properly secured, I can't have it getting out. They'll have to be killed!
- Londo: Majesty—
- Cartagia: All of them, killed! Incompetent behavior! Absolutely incompetent!
- Londo: Be quiet!
- Cartagia: "Quiet"?! [strikes Londo, making him drop Vir Cotto's poisoned needle] You would tell the stars to darken on a whim?! What, would you tear down the mountains because their height offends you?! Who are you?! [seizes Londo] Where were you?! Where were you when my destiny was written in those stars? Where were you when the gods themselves shined down upon me? Huh? You dare to speak to me?! No, you can burn. You can burn with Centauri Prime. You can burn with the rest. Burn with the cities, burn with the temples, burn with all of them!
- [Cartagia throws Londo away and turns—only to have Vir run him through with the needle.]
- Cartagia: No! [grabs Vir, but starts to weaken as Londo holds him up] I was to be a god, you understand…a god…
- [The War Council has just witnessed the Shadow planet killer in action]
- Michael Garibaldi: Anyone want to tell me how the hell we're supposed to stop that?
- [After the assassination, Londo finds Vir drowning his sorrows.]
- Vir Cotto: [slurring] I was toasting Emperor Cartagia. And since he wasn't here, I drank for him. And then, I couldn't be rude, so I had to drink with him. And so first it was me drinking for him—[drinks] and then him drinking for me—[drinks again] and then I kinda got into this kinda cycle. And then, here comes Cartagia, his glass broke, and—maybe it was my glass. Would you like some? Because you know what, I think this is Cartagia's glass after all, so it would be quite appropriate, don't you think?
- Londo: You're drunk.
- Vir: Absolut—positive—oh, you betcha. I figured it always worked for you, Londo. Let me—lemme ask you something. [puts a hand on Londo's shoulder and leans in] How much more before I can look in the mirror and not see myself? Because I keep looking and I'm always there. And right now I don't want to see me.
- Londo: [pulling away] You're behaving like a fool! You did what was necessary. You saved the lives of millions of our people. He had to be stopped. He—
- Vir: [anguished] Don't you understand? I've never done anything like this before! I close my eyes and I always see his face! [crying, he sits on a couch] Don't you know that all I ever wanted was…was a good job, small title, nothing fancy. A wife I could love, maybe even one who could actually love someone like me. I never wanted to be here. I never wanted to know the things that I know, or to do…to do the things that I've done.
- Londo: I know. I know, Vir. I never wanted you in that hole. I never wanted you to… I remember when you first arrived on Babylon 5. You were so…full of life, innocent. I was not kind to you. I treated you poorly. I think that I did that because I was envious of you. Envious that you had come so far and were still innocent in your way. You still believed. I, on the other hand… I cannot tell you that your pain will ever go away. I cannot tell you that you will ever forget his face. I can only tell you that it was necessary. You may have helped to save our people. You did a hard thing. But you still have your heart, and your heart is a good one. You would not be in such great pain otherwise. It means there is still hope for you. And for that, I find I still envy you.
- [G'Kar is aghast at his people's enthusiasm for more fighting with the departed Centauri.]
- G'Kar: Why are you celebrating?!
- G'Lorn: We drove them away! They knew they could not enslave us forever, and we drove them off! Through strength!
- G'Kar: Is that what you think? Try to understand! The strength that defeated the Centauri is not from weapons or arms!
- G'Lorn: G'Kar, you are tired, you're hurt. You're not seeing this as we do.
- G'Kar: I see, G'Lorn. I see better than you can imagine.
- G'Lorn: When you've rested, we will thank you properly, as is your right. There will be celebrations in the street, G'Kar; your name will be a blessing to any who speak it! And then…then, G'Kar, you will lead us against our oppressors. You will be the instrument of our vengeance! With you directing us, we will finally destroy the Centauri!
- G'Kar: You have just tossed someone off that throne! Would you put another in his place so quickly? The Kha'Ri spoke with many equal voices, not the one voice of a single leader.
- G'Lorn: We need strength to lead us, fire to forge us! We saw that in the Centauri, learned that from them.
- G'Kar: Then you have learned the wrong lessons. I will not take the throne. If the Kha'Ri is restored, I will take my place among them, but that's all. I did not fight to remove one dictator just to become another myself!
- G'Lorn: But the Centauri—
- G'Kar: [interrupting] ARE A LOST PEOPLE! They ought to be pitied! They are already on a course for self-destruction! They do not need help from us. We need to redress our wounds, help our people, rebuild our cities!
- G'Lorn: We must strike back!
- G'Kar: No. [turns to leave]
- G'Lorn: I never thought you a coward, G'Kar! [G'Kar stops in his tracks] We suffered and died during their occupation! Where were you? What have you endured?
- [G'Kar stares at him, dumbfounded, out of his one remaining eye.]
- G'Kar: What have I endured?
- [In way of answer, he starts laughing. His laughter fills the room as he turns to leave the group of angry Narns behind.]
- Lorien: I am the last, and…I was the first.
- Susan Ivanova: I have to admit, I'm a little bit skeptical about that.
- Lorien: Skepticism is the language of the mind. What does your heart tell you?
- Ivanova: My heart and I don't speak anymore.
- Lorien: So I've noticed.
- . . .
- Lorien: To live on as we have is to leave behind joy, and love, and companionship, because we know it to be transitory, of the moment. We know it will turn to ash. Only those whose lives are brief can imagine that love…is eternal. You should embrace that remarkable illusion. It may be the greatest gift your race has ever received.
- [The White Star joins with the rest of the fleet, heading toward the final battleground of the war.]
- John Sheridan: Win or lose, we'll go down fighting. [issuing orders to Lennier] Pour it on, Mr. Lennier. Take us into the fire.
- [Londo finds out Morden was behind Adira's poisoning.]
- Londo Mollari: He played me! He played me like a PUPPET!
- John Sheridan: We still can't win, but it's not bad.
- Marcus Cole: We can't win?
- Sheridan: Against the Vorlons and the Shadows? No.
- Marcus: Then what are we doing here?
- Sheridan: Hoping the truth will set us free… before it kills us.[N]
- [Londo has the Morden's two Shadow protectors shot dead]
- Londo: I'll have to have that painted over, I suppose.
- Morden: You're insane.
- Londo: On any other day, Mr. Morden, you would be wrong. Today? Today is a very different day. One last time: remove your ships!
- Morden: No. You don't frighten me, Mollari. You try to attack our forces, you'll lose.
- Londo: Yes, your ships are very impressive in the air, or in space. But at this moment, they are on the ground.
- Morden: Right. They're on the ground. But they can sense an approaching ship miles away. So what're you gonna do, Mollari, huh? Blow up the island?
- Londo: Actually…now that you mention it… [he produces a small remote detonator]
- Morden: NO!
- [Londo blows up the island]
- Londo: I had most of our people evacuated from Celini during the night. A few stayed, to maintain the illusion of our presence. They knew what was being asked of them. I would have preferred another way, hoped that you would be reasonable, but... [to his guards] Take him to a cell. Keep him there.
- Morden: [as he is dragged away] You just made a mistake, Londo! Even if my associates lose this war, they have allies! They'll make sure Centauri Prime pays the price for what you've done here today!
- Londo: What I have done? Oh, Mr. Morden, I have not even started with you yet...
- Sheridan: Morning, gentlemen. This is your wakeup call.
- [Sheridan detonates three nuclear devices among the Shadow and Vorlon ships.]
- Lyta Alexander: Captain?
- Sheridan: Hmm?
- Lyta: They're pissed.
- [As Sheridan and Delenn evetually figured out the true purpose behind the Vorlon-Shadow War]
- Sheridan: You're trying to force us to decide which of you is right. You're like a couple of parents arguing in front of their kids, manipulating them, trying to get them to take sides! Not for their benefit, but for yours! But what if the right choice... is not to choose at all?
- Sheridan: The Vorlons ask only one question, over and over: "Who are you?". [points to Shadow emissary] And you, for you the question is: "What do you want?". I have never heard you answer that question. [Points, respectively, to the Vorlon and then the Shadow for each following question] Who are you? What do you want?
- [Delenn and Sheridan "negotiate" an end to the Vorlon-Shadow War]
- Delenn: The others have rejected you! How do you have a war when no one will fight for either of you?
- Sheridan: We refuse to take sides in this anymore! And we refuse to let you turn us against one another! We know who we are now. We can find our own way between order and chaos!
- Delenn: You can kill us one by one, and those who follow us, and those who follow them, on and on, every race, every planet. Until there's no one left to kill. You will have failed as guardians. And you will be alone.
- Sheridan: It's over because we've decided it's over. Now get the hell out of our galaxy! Both of you!
- [The Vorlons and Shadows hesitate, but Lorien steps in]
- Lorien: As I taught you and stepped aside, now you must do the same. Our age is past. This…belongs to the younger races now. They have learned to stand on their own. They have learned…to understand. Time to let them go.
- Shadow: Will you…come…with us?
- Lorien: I have been here since the beginning. I will not leave you now. I will go with you beyond the Rim, and we will see again all those who went ahead of us, all those who we have missed for so long.
- Vorlon: Then…we will not be alone?
- Lorien: No. Never alone.
- [The Vorlons and Shadows disappear, and their respective fleets leave the system]
- Marcus: Did we just win?
- Ivanova: Don't jinx it.
- [Lorien turns to address Sheridan and Delenn]
- Lorien: I waited a long time for someone to find me. Now, like the others, I find I hate to leave. But none of us can stay behind this time. That was why it was necessary to find all the remaining First Ones. This…is yours now. And you have an obligation…to do as we have done. To teach the races that will follow you and, when your time comes, as ours has, to step aside and allow them to grow into their own destiny. If your races survive, if you do not kill yourselves, I look forward to the day when your people join us…beyond the Rim.
- [he starts dissolving into a ball of light]
- Lorien: We will wait for you…
- Sheridan: We are all alone now, just the younger races. We can't blame anyone else from now on. It's a new age, Delenn. A third age!
- Delenn: Why third?
- Sheridan: We began in chaos, too primitive to make our own decisions. Then we were manipulated from outside by forces that thought they knew what was best for us. And now? Now we are finally standing on our own. Lorien was right, it's a great responsibility. This is ours now.
- Delenn: Strange. The galaxy seems somehow smaller now that the First Ones are gone forever.
- Sheridan: It feels like the magic's gone now.
- Delenn: No, not gone. Now we make our own magic. Now we create our own legends. Now we build the future. Now we stop…
- Sheridan …being afraid of shadows.
- G'Kar: I have seen what power does, and I have seen what power costs. The one is never equal to the other.
- [Zack is showing some new security guards the ropes at Customs.]
- Zack Allan: When you come on duty always check this display. This is where you get your details on who to hold, and who to let through. Anything unusual gets flagged.
- [Londo walks through the gate.]
- Londo Mollari: And would I fall under the category of unusual, Mr. Allen?
- Zack: Well! I didn't think we'd be seeing you again any time soon, ambassador.
- Londo: Yes, I could tell, from the look of unvarnished joy on your face when I came aboard. Perhaps you would like to take a seat before you are overcome with ecstasy?
- Zack: No thanks, I'm fine. So what happened, they get tired of you back home?
- Londo: Tired? No, don't be absurd. Why, the Emperor himself said I would only be allowed to leave over his dead body. I thought, "Well, how strange. Mr. Allan said I would only be allowed back onto Babylon 5 over his dead body." With my busy schedule I'm afraid I can only accommodate so many requests. I'm sorry, Mr. Allan, but I'm afraid you'll simply have to wait your turn! [he leaves]
- Zack: The only reason that guy is still alive is that half the time I don't know what the hell he's talking about. The other half, I wish I didn't. But that's why it's important to check in on customs on a regular basis. [Bester now appears behind him, surrounded by three security guards.] You never know who's gonna walk in that–
- Alfred Bester: Just a guess, Mr. Allan, but I'd suggest the word you're looking for is "door". Now, please notify the Captain that I'm here. I need to meet with him and the rest of the Command staff ASAP. I assume my usual quarters in the brig are available? I've grown so attached to the place.
- Zack: For you, Mr. Bester? Always.
- [Bester and his security escort move on.]
- Zack: [sighs] You ever have one of those days?
- Lyta Alexander: Psi Cops are trained to make everyone nervous, but Bester can make even other Psi Cops nervous.
- Zack: Hell, the man can make poison ivy nervous.
- Bester: Ms. Alexander has no business being here. She's a blip! By all rights, I should arrest her and take her back with me.
- John Sheridan: Oh, you could do that. And I could nail your head to the table, set fire to it, and feed your charred remains to the Pak'ma'ra. But…it's an imperfect world, and we never get exactly what we want. So get used to it!
- [Bester confronts Lyta about her enhanced telepathic abilities.]
- Bester: You've been keeping me out since I got here. A good question is, why? A better question is, how? I was thinking…I may have spoken rashly before. There may be some value in not turning you over. You're stronger than the last time I saw you.
- Lyta: We all change.
- Bester: Yes, but this is different. I can feel it. Whatever's happened to you, you have a moral obligation to share it with the Corps, Lyta. The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father.
- Lyta: In that case, Mr. Bester? I'm an orphan.
- [the White Star arrives at Z'ha'dum]
- Bester: Is that it? It looks like Hell.
- Sheridan: That's about right.
- [An ISN crew arrives on the station and is stopped by security.]
- Dan Randall: Hey! That's private proprerty! We have rights here!
- Zack Allan: What you're going to have is my foot sixteen inches up your butt if you don't get the hell out of my way!
- [An ISN reporter complains to Sheridan about Ivanova's rough treatment.]
- John Sheridan: Commander! Did you threaten to grab this man by the collar and threaten to throw him out an airlock?
- Susan Ivanova: [chagrined] Yes, I did.
- Sheridan: I'm shocked! Shocked and dismayed.
- [The reporter nods, mollified.]
- Sheridan: May I remind you that we are short on supplies here? We can't afford to take perfectly good clothing and throw it out into space! Always take the jacket off first—I've told you that before!
- [Ivanova nods meekly.]
- Sheridan: Sorry. She meant to say, "stripped naked and thrown out of an airlock". I apologize for any confusion this may have caused.
- Londo Mollari: When I said my quarters were cold, I did not mean, 'Oh, I think it's a little chilly in here, perhaps I'll throw a blanket on the bed.' No, I said it was cold, as in 'Oh, my left arm has snapped off like an icicle and shattered on the floor!' This is highly inappropriate, Captain!
- Sheridan: [smirking] You're right. There are several other parts of your body I'd much rather see snapped off.
- [Zack is being fitted for his new Uniform as Chief of Security.]
- Zack Allan: Oh yeah, I should listen to a Minbari about fashion. I mean, robes? Hoods? No offense, but I've seen Vorlons with more fashion sense.
- [The Minbari tailor stabs Zack with the needle.]
- Zack: She did that on purpose.
- Lennier: Yes, I believe she did. I will deal with this.
- Lennier: [in Minbari] Good work. Give me a moment with the Human, and next time…use a bigger needle.
- Zack: Yeah, and don't you forget it!
- [During the Dreaming, Delenn recalls a conversation with her mentor Dukhat about the Grey Council not wishing to contact the humans.]
- Delenn: Master, may I ask a question? Will you make contact?
- Dukhat: No. The Council will be more determined now. I could override their decision, but nothing would be served. Authority should never be used as a club, Delenn.
- Delenn: But then why?
- Dukhat: When others do a foolish thing, you should tell them it is a foolish thing. They can still continue to do it, but at least the truth is where it needs to be. They will be most upset with you now. You have embarrassed them. I apologize for that. In my anger, I believe I may have caused you more problems in the future.
- Delenn: No. No, Master. It was an honor.
- Dukhat: Don't interrupt when I'm being kind. It does not happen often, Delenn. Raise your eyes and look at me.
- Delenn: [eyes down] It is disrespectful.
- Dukhat: I cannot have an aide who will not look up. You will be forever walking into things.
- [Franklin gets testy with Marcus on their cargo shuttle trip to Mars.]
- Stephen Franklin: Is this really the best ship you could find?
- Marcus Cole: Yes. [he flicks his pike open, then closes it just as quickly]
- Franklin: Smells like the inside of a Martian pleasure dome on Sunday morning.
- Marcus: Wouldn't know about that.
- Franklin: Don't make me come over there and [flick] take that thing from you.
- Marcus: Helps me relax.
- Franklin: Marcus, this is the kind of conversation that can only end with a gunshot!
- Marcus: Would you like me to sing instead?
- Franklin: No.
- Marcus: You haven't heard me!
- Franklin: Marcus, please!
- [the episode ends with Marcus singing the Major-General's Song by Gilbert and Sullivan]
- [After discussing recent events with Captain Sheridan, Commander Ivanova walks around his desk and sits in his chair.]
- Susan Ivanova: Speaking of which, as of now I'm relieving you of command.
- John Sheridan: [slightly amused] Ivanova, your sense of humor has always been on the edge of good taste, but—
- Ivanova: I'm serious, John.
- Sheridan: [defensively] On what grounds?
- Ivanova: You haven't taken any personal time in over nine months. And in that time we have broken away from Earth, fought a war, you have been declared dead at least once, and you know how tiring that can be.
- Sheridan: There isn't much chance of me winning this argument, is there?
- Ivanova: None whatsoever. I never give up when I'm right. Your only option is to surrender.
- Sheridan: Who taught you to negotiate like that?
- Ivanova: You did.
- Sheridan: [impressed and defeated] Oh. Well, then I assume this enforced vacation is to begin immediately.
- [Ivanova has already picked up papers from the desk and gotten to work.]
- Ivanova: Started when I walked in that door.
- [Marcus and Franklin are killing time in a cargo hold filled with crates.]
- Marcus Cole: I spy with my little eye…something beginning with "B."
- Stephen Franklin: [annoyed] Boxes.
- Marcus: Fine! I spy with my little eye something beginning with "M."
- Franklin: More boxes.
- Marcus: Two in a row.
- Franklin: [deadpan] "And that's when I shot him, Your Honor."
- Marcus: I spy with my little eye something beginning with "E."
- Franklin: I-I give up.
- Marcus: Oh come on.
- Franklin: This better not be what I–
- Marcus and Franklin: [in unison] Even MORE boxes!
- [Ivanova tries to sell smugglers on running EarthGov's blockade.]
- Ivanova: We'll upgrade your data systems, and supercharge your engines! And, if you have an accident, we'll repair your ships. And sooner or later, your ships will have accidents.
- Smuggler #1: My pilots don't have accidents.
- Ivanova: They will. I'll see to it.
- Smuggler #1: You wouldn't!
- Ivanova: Really? I've got a 200-megawatt pulse cannon in the forward cargo bay that says otherwise.
- [When Sheridan is faced with the possibility of Delenn heading into what could be a war zone.]
- John Sheridan: Can't you send out Lennier? It might be dangerous.
- Delenn: [smiles in amusement] John! It pleases me that you care for what I have become. [seriously] But never forget who I was, what I am, and what I can do.
- [Sheridan praises Ivanova for her telecasts during the Shadow war.]
- John Sheridan: You have a face people trust.
- Susan Ivanova: I'd rather have a face people fear.
- Sheridan: That too.
- Sheridan: Why not come up with a way to turn the war room into…I don't know…The Voice of the Resistance! Susan, during World War II, the French Resistance used to go on the air for one hour a night, always from a different location, broadcasting the real news about the war. Providing intelligence for the resistance fighters, encouraging Germans to defect. Well, why can't we do the same thing here?
- Ivanova: Why do I get the ugly suspicion that you're volunteering me for this job?
- Sheridan: I accept your offer!
- Marcus Cole: Touch passion when it comes your way, Stephen. It's rare enough as it is. Don't walk away when it calls you by name.
- Delenn: Before the war, Dukhat wanted to know more about your people, so I began studying your history. I came to the conclusion that of all the races we had encountered, humans were the most dangerous. Because humans form communities. And from that diversity comes a strength that no single race can withstand. That is your strength. And it is that which makes you dangerous.
- Sheridan: I'm tired, Delenn. Sometimes I feel as if I've been carrying this station on my back and crawling through broken glass for three years.
- [After Garibaldi reunites a client with his missing daughter, the man is surprised by the invoice Garibaldi hands him.]
- Client: It's one-third your fee!
- Michael Garibaldi: It is? [looking] Yeah, it is. Well, I am going to have to take this up with Bookkeeping. I mean, this hardly even covers my expenses. I—well, now that I think about it, I am the Bookkeeping Department. I'll tell you what. I don't wanna get me into trouble over this, so…why don't we just let it go at 30%?
- John Sheridan: If you're going to wait for the universe to start making sense, you'll have a long wait ahead of you.
- [last lines of the episode]
- Ivanova: This is Commander Susan Ivanova of Babylon 5, and this is the first official broadcast of the new Voice of the Resistance. We're sending this signal out to every ship that wants to hear the truth, to our fallen comrades and freedom fighters on Mars and Proxima 3, and to Earth, which, despite what you may have heard, is still our home and still the one dream that we are as loyal to now as we ever have been. Over the last three years, ever since President Clark took over after arranging the assassination of President Santiago, you have been hearing nothing but misinformation, propaganda, and outright lies. Now we're going to tell you the truth, and we're going to keep telling it until they shut us down or until President Clark steps down and returns Earth to the hands of its people. You can kill us, you can bomb our colonies, destroy our ships, murder innocent civilians, but you cannot kill the truth. And the truth is back in business.
- [Delenn meets with Neroon to discuss their castes' open war.]
- Delenn: Yes, we've disagreed, even fought, but I would rather have someone who opposed me out of an honest belief in the rightness of his cause than someone who is always on my side because it was expected and required. I've questioned your judgment, your wisdom, your temperament, but never your loyalty.
- Neroon: Was that a compliment?
- Delenn: After a fashion.
- Neroon: Then you trust me?
- Delenn: After a fashion.
- . . .
- [later, after two attempts on their lives are foiled]
- Neroon: Dukhat chose you above all to follow him. Slowly, dimly, I begin to understand why. I do not know what lies ahead of us, Delenn. But I do know that it is right that we are here together.
- Delenn: Was that a compliment, Neroon?
- Neroon: [smiling wryly] After a fashion.
- [Sheridan is speaking with the Drazi ambassador about White Star ships on the borders of Centauri and Narn space.]
- Sheridan: I can't confirm that.
- Drazi Ambassador: But you're not denying it either.
- Sheridan: But not denying it doesn't make it true any more than not confirming it makes it false. Are you with me so far?
- Drazi Ambassador: I'm not sure.
- Sheridan: Ambassador, there are so many things in the universe that are and so many things that aren't. If I were to take the time to deny all the things that aren't, we'd be here for centuries, wouldn't we?
- [After Ivanova has been told to "plant" a story on the Voice of the Resistance.]
- Susan Ivanova: First, one brief announcement. I just wanted to mention, for those who have asked, that absolutely nothing whatsoever happened today in sector 83-by-9-by-12. I repeat, nothing happened. Please remain calm.[N]
- Security Guard: Mind your own business.
- Alfred Bester: "Humanity is my business."
- [the guard stares at him in confusion]
- Bester: Marley to Scrooge. Dickens. A Christmas Carol?
- [the guard keeps staring]
- Bester: Well, it's good to see they're continuing the fine tradition of hiring from the shallow end of the gene pool.
- Bester: Well, there is just no delicate way to say this. [beat] I want your body.
- Lyta Alexander: WHAT?! Are you out of your mind?!
- [Bester works on Lyta's feelings of being ignored by the B5 staff.]
- Bester: I mean, being a freedom fighter, a…a force for good, it's…it's a wonderful thing. You get to make your own hours, looks good on a resume, but the pay…sucks.
- [his dying words as the Starfire Wheel consumes him]
- Neroon: I was born Warrior Caste! But I see now, the calling of my heart is RELIGIOUS! The war is over! Listen to her! LISTEN!
- [last lines: Sheridan and Ivanova have viewed video of Earthforce ships destroying civilian transports carrying refugees from rebel planets]
- John Sheridan: This madness has gone on long enough. I don't care if we're not ready. I don't care if we're outnumbered and outgunned. I don't care what ISN says about us. This stops, and it stops now! Now if Earth wants to declare war on us, then it is time we took that war to Clark. You tell the others. Starting right now, we fight back and we fight back hard!
- Susan Ivanova: I thought you were looking for some other way than firing at our own ships. They were following orders.
- Sheridan: Any crew that executes an order like that is guilty of war crimes, and they deserve whatever they get. No, we're riding in, Susan. Anybody who wants to defect and join us? Fine. If they get in our way, we will knock them down. If they kill one of our ships, we'll kill three of theirs. And we keep going. We never slow down, and we won't stop. We're going after the colonies, then Mars, then Earth…and God help anybody who gets in our way.
- John Sheridan: Captain's personal log, September 2nd, 2261. Enough is enough.
- [Vir is surprised at Garibaldi's disapproval of Sheridan's crusade against EarthGov.]
- Vir Cotto: I don't always like the way Londo does things, and…well, me and most civilized worlds, but…you know, sometimes he's right. So I force myself to give him the benefit of the doubt.
- [Ivanova issues careful orders to B5 fighters for avoiding order-spoofing from EarthGov.]
- David Corwin: So from now on, I guess the operational phrase is "trust no one".
- Susan Ivanova: No. Trust Ivanova, trust yourself. Anybody else, shoot 'em!
- [At Proxima 3, Marcus notes the approach of half the blockading destroyers.]
- John Sheridan: The hostiles might be splitting up so they can be with both groups, to keep them in line.
- Marcus Cole: Unless they're all hostile, and some are just more hostile than others.
- Sheridan: Thank you for the ray of sunshine, Marcus. Next time I feel the need to be depressed, I'll remember to give you a call.
- [Monitored by a telepath, Garibaldi tells Edgars of his suspicions about his employment.]
- Michael Garibaldi: Everybody lies.
- William Edgars: That's a very sad view of the universe, Mr. Garibaldi.
- Garibaldi: Yeah, well, it's the only one I got. And it works for me.
- Edgars: Do you know how the ancient Greeks defined happiness?
- Garibaldi: Not off-hand, but I'd be willing to bet it involved three goats and a jug of wine.
- Edgars: "Happiness", they said, was "the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence, in a life affording them scope".
- William Edgars: The truth will be revealed in a couple of days. How many people can say that?
- Michael Garibaldi: I don't know. But I think the last guy got thirty pieces of silver for the same job.
- Lyta Alexander: Somewhere on Beta Colony there is an institution. In one room of the institution there is a man who spends his days and nights screaming at things that only he can see. Things we planted in his mind. They have to keep him in a straitjacket 24 hours a day or he'll claw his own eyes out just to make it stop. When it was over I transferred over to commercial work. I wanted out. The Corps took me in when I was just a few years old. They taught me what a telepath was, what we could do. Until that time I'd never been afraid of who we were. Until that day. When we did what we had to do…because no one else would.
- Susan Ivanova: What's going on? You all look like a Pak'ma'ra just ate your cat.
- [Sheridan tries to encourage an imprisoned Drazi.]
- John Sheridan: You just have to say "no, I won't" one more time than they can say "yes, you will".
- [The interrogator leaves Sheridan in the room, with a recorded voice repeating over and over.]
- Recording: You will cooperate with the state, for the good of the state and your own survival. You will confess to the crimes of which you have been accused. You will be released and returned to society a productive citizen if you cooperate. Resistance will be punished. Cooperation will be rewarded.
- John Sheridan: You know, it's funny, I was thinking about what you said, that the preeminent truth of our age is that you cannot fight the system. But if, as you say, the truth is fluid, that the truth is subjective, then maybe you can fight the system. As long as just one person refuses to be broken, refuses to bow down.
- Interrogator: But can you win?
- John Sheridan: Every time I say "no."
- [Threatened by the Mars Resistance, Garibaldi begs Lyta to force her way past his memory blocks.]
- Lyta Alexander: Michael, if I do a deep scan, it could damage you.
- Michael Garibaldi: And if you don't, they're gonna kill me. Now, a headache I can get over. I'm not sure I'm gonna get over being dead anytime soon.
- . . .
- [after she breaks the blocks and sees Garibaldi's memories]
- Lyta: It's true. What he told us, it's all true.
- Number One: Like that means a damn! How do we know that anything you say is the truth? You could be saying whatever the hell you want–
- Lyta: What do YOU know about Hell? Hmm? [she turns to face Number One, her eyes completely black] Would you like me to show it to you? Mine and his?
- [she telepathically projects Garibaldi's memories into Number One]
- Number One: [recoils] It's true. Damned, it's true!
- [Garibaldi tries to use his ISN fame to get past Sheridan's guard.]
- Guard: [in a monotone] I don't watch TV. It's a cultural wasteland filled with inappropriate metaphors and an unrealistic portrayal of life created by the liberal media elite.
- Susan Ivanova: This is the White Star fleet. Negative on the surrender. We will not stand down.
- Captain Thomson, Earthforce: Who is this? Identify yourself!
- Ivanova: Who am I? I am Susan Ivanova. Commander. Daughter of Andrei and Sophie Ivanov. I am the right hand of vengeance, and the boot that is going to kick your sorry ass all the way back to Earth, sweetheart! I am Death Incarnate, and the last living thing that you are ever going to see. God sent me.
- Marcus Cole: We've all been through six kinds of hell in the last few years.
- [Sheridan's telepath gambit has disabled General Lefcourt's ship, along with the rest of the loyalist fleet.]
- General Lefcourt: Engineering, this is General Lefcourt. In case you didn't notice, the enemy just pulled our shorts up over our head and tied them into a knot. You will get the ship under control ASAP, or I will come down there and skin the hide off every last one of you.
- [Sheridan's liberation fleet finally confronts Earth itself.]
- John Sheridan: This is Captain John Sheridan. We are here on the authority of a multi-planetary force, that can no longer stand by and watch one of their greatest allies falling into darkness and despair. We are here on behalf of the thousands of civilians murdered under orders from the current administration, who have no one else to speak for them, and on behalf of the EarthForce units that have joined us to oppose the tyranny that has darkened Earth, ever since President Santiago was assassinated three years ago. We are here to place President Clark under arrest, to disband Nightwatch, and return our government to the hands of her people. We know that many in the government have wanted to act, but have been intimidated by threats of retaliation against your families, your friends. You are not alone anymore. We call upon you to rise up and do what's right! We have drawn their forces away from Earth and disabled them. The time to act is now! This is not the voice of treason. These are your sons, your daughters, whose loyalties have never wavered, whose beliefs in this alliance has [sic] forced us to take extraordinary means! For justice, for peace, for the future…we have come home!
- John Sheridan: [over radio] We need you, Delenn.
- Delenn: [commanding the League's fleet] We are there.
- Marcus: [as he's giving up his life energy to save Ivanova] I love you…
- [Franklin comforts Ivanova in her grief over Marcus's sacrifice.]
- Susan Ivanova: All love is unrequited, Stephen. All of it.
- Earth President Susanna Luchenko: Well, Captain, you caused quite a stir. Half of EarthForce wants to give you a kiss on the cheek and the Medal of Honor. The other half wants you taken out and shot. As a politician you learn how to compromise. Which by all right means I should give you the Medal of Honor, then have you shot. I confess the idea had a certain appeal when I mentioned it to the Joint Chiefs two hours ago. […] The bitch of it is that you probably did the right thing. But you did it in the wrong way, in the inconvenient way. Now you have to pay the penalty for that. I know it stinks, but that's the way it is.
- John Sheridan: I find it amazing that you think that threats still mean anything to me. "Do this or you're a dead man." Death! Been there, done that.
- [after the reveal that the new Interstellar Alliance has selected him as their first President]
- Sheridan: Funny thing about retiring. You no sooner pick out the places you want to go on vacation then someone comes at you with another job offer.
- [Londo and G'Kar watch the ISN report on the new Alliance]
- Londo Mollari: So, how does it feel to make history, hmm?
- G'Kar: You do not make history. You can only hope to survive it.
- Londo: G'Kar, you are a depressing person.
- G'Kar: Thank you.
- Delenn: It was the end of the Earth year 2261, and it was the dawn of a new age…for all of us. It was end of one chapter, and the beginning of another. The next twenty years would see great changes, great joy, and great sorrow. The Telepath War, and the Drakh War. The new Alliance would waver, and crack…but in the end, it would hold. Because what is built endures, and what is loved endures…and Babylon 5…Babylon 5 endures.
- [Londo and G'Kar's arrive on Babylon 5 during a celebration.]
- Londo Mollari: So Doctor…who died?
- Stephen Franklin: [confused] What are you talking about?
- Londo: Among my people this is how we celebrate state funerals. Our marriage ceremonies are solemn, sober. Moments of reflection…also regret, disagreement, argument and mutual recrimination. Once you know it can't get any worse you can sit back and enjoy the marriage. But to start with something like this? No, it is a very bad sign for the future.
- [Franklin and Garabaldi walk off.]
- Londo: Perhaps it is something I said?
- G'Kar: Perhaps it is everything you say.
- [500 years later, during a holographic simulation]
- Delenn: What we are isn't a matter of flesh, it's a matter of will.
- Garibaldi: This little lab of yours...this isn't by any chance located on a military base, is it?
- [1000 years later, in a future primitive Earth, Brother Alwyn advises the doubting Brother Michael.]
- Brother Alwyn: Faith sustains us in the hour when reason tells us that we cannot continue, that the whole of our lives is without meaning.
- Brother Michael: Then why were we born able to reason, if reason's useless?
- Brother Alwyn: Not useless. But it's also not enough. Faith and reason are the shoes on your feet! You can travel further with both than you can with just one. If you must have reason for an answer, then consider this. If today the Rangers came back to Earth from their place in the heavens, you would not know about it. They would come in secret and move around us and help us and we wouldn’t even know that they were here, because the secret that they bring is feared by people who still blame science for the Great Burn.
- Brother Michael: Then you think the Rangers are here today?
- Brother Alwyn: Yes, I believe they could be. That is all that faith requires: that we surrender ourselves to the possibility of hope. With that, I am content.
- [The man from 1 million years hence prepares to leave the doomed Earth to the imminent Solar nova.]
- Exeter: This is how the world ends, swallowed in fire, but not in darkness. You will live on. The voice of all our ancestors, the voice of our fathers and our mothers to the last generation. We created the world we think you would've wished for us. And now we leave the cradle for the last time.[N]
- [last lines of the season]
- John Sheridan: …and I was wondering if they will remember us in hundred years from now or a thousand. And I figure probably not.
- Delenn: But it does not matter. We did what we did because it was right and not to be remembered. And history will attend to itself. It always does.
- [shown before the credits]
- Dedicated to all the people who predicted that the Babylon Project would fail in its mission. Faith manages.
Season 5: The Wheel of Fire
[edit]- Elizabeth Lochley: As long as you're running an efficient operation and aren't looking for trouble, you are doing just fine.
- David Corwin: That's what I'm trying to tell you. Around here we don't have to go looking for trouble. On B5, trouble comes looking for us.
- Londo Mollari: On my world, we have learned that an inauguration is simply a signal to assassins that a new target has been set up on the firing range.
- [A second attempt on Sheridan's life has been foiled.]
- G'Kar: Do you want to be President?
- John Sheridan: Yes.
- G'Kar: Put your hand on the book and say "I do."
- Sheridan: I do.
- G'Kar: Good. Done. Let's eat.
- [Londo's Brivari has been impounded for health and safety reasons, and he is berating Zack Allan.]
- Londo Mollari: Do you know what this is? No, I can see you do not. You have that vacant look in your eyes that says, "Hold my head to your ear; you will hear the sea." This is bravari, very old bravari, very expensive bravari. You understand bravari, hmm?
- ...
- [Vir takes Zack away to talk privately with him after Londo becomes irate.]
- Londo: Here, Take my shoe! It will be as useful to you as he is!
- [Lennier and Vir meet in the Zocalo for what might be the last time.]
- Vir Cotto: You couldn't sleep either.
- Lennier: No. I heard about your… situation.
- Vir Cotto: I heard about yours. As Mr. Garibaldi would say, it's been one hell of a day.
- Lennier: Yes, a hell of a day.
- Vir Cotto: And a hell of a year.
- Lennier: A hell of a 5 years.
- Vir Cotto: A hell of a life.
- Lennier: [smiles] …you win.
- [He looks at the drink in Vir's hands]
- Lennier: What kind of drink is that?
- Vir Cotto: I'm not sure. The bartender called it a "Shirley Temple."
- Lennier: Interesting. I've studied many Earth religions and I don't think I've ever heard of that particular temple.
- Vir: Me neither. But, it's real good.
- Lennier: Well then. I shall make a point to visit it on my next trip to Earth.
- [Londo is having a vision about his life, for part of which he is sitting at a bar]
- Londo: All of the bottles here are empty? The metaphor's getting a bit thick, don't you think?
- [Londo sees Vir in his vision, discussing his dream of dying sixteen years in the future.]
- Londo: The dream is prophecy.
- Vir: Prophecy is a guess that comes true. When it doesn't, it's a metaphor. You could put a gun to your head tomorrow and pull the trigger, and then the dream is just a dream, and the prophecy is just a metaphor, and so are you. You're out of time, Londo. Turn around.
- [Both read aloud from the opening of the Alliance's Declaration of Principles, written by G'Kar.]
- John Sheridan: The Universe speaks in many languages but only one voice. A language which is not Narn or Human or Centauri or Gaim or Minbari. It speaks in the language of hope.
- G'Kar: It speaks in the language of trust. It speaks in the language of strength and the language of compassion. It is the language of the heart and of the language of the soul; but always it is the same voice; it is the voice of our ancestors speaking through us, and the voice of our inheritors waiting to be born; it is the small still voice that says: "We are one." No matter the blood, no matter the skin, no matter the world, no matter the star. We are one. No matter the pain, no matter the darkness, no matter the loss, no matter the fear. We are one. Here, gathered together in common cause we agree to recognize this singular truth and this singular rule: that we must be kind to one another.
- Sheridan: Because each voice enriches us and ennobles us, and each voice lost diminishes us. We are the voice of the universe, the soul of creation, the fire that will light the way to a better future. We are one.
- G'Kar: We are one.
- Byron: That's why we're here. Because we're tired of being ordered around by those who cannot hear the song. Tired of being used as cannon fodder, as inquisitors, as executioners, and as bloodhounds.
- Lyta Alexander: They forget we're human beings, too.
- Byron: No, not human beings. Better. That's why they're afraid of us. It's all ego, you know. "What a piece of work is man. How noble in reason. How infinite in faculties. In form and moving how express and admirable. In action how like an angel. In apprehension how like a god. The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals." The paragon of animals. 6,000 years of brutality, murder and slavery. An animal does not do this to its own kind, but they do it to each other. And they would do it to us! Unless we stop them. Unless we find a way to help each other. Unless we care for one another.
- [After getting the members of the Alliance to sign the Declaration of Principles, Sheridan and Delenn sit in the conference room, admiring the table full of signed scrolls. G'Kar bursts in.]
- G'Kar: Ah, Mr. President. [sees the documents] Oh, good, good, good. I was looking for these. [begins gathering them up and shoving them in his bag]
- Sheridan: What are you doing?
- G'Kar: Well, we need to get everyone to sign them again!
- Sheridan: What? [stands, flabbergasted] We… Do you understand what we went through to get them signed even once?
- G'Kar: I revised it again. It's better.
- Sheridan: G'Kar!
- G'Kar: But look.
- [He offers another scroll to Sheridan, who snatches it angrily out of his hands. He and Delenn start to read. His anger fades, replaced by awe.]
- Sheridan: [surprised] It's better.
- [Having gathered the old, signed copies, G'Kar retakes the new version from Sheridan, snatching it from his grasp. He dashes out of the council chamber, leaving a stunned Sheridan and Delenn in his wake.]
- Sheridan: Some days, it's like living in a madhouse.
- Mack: Tastes like chicken!
- Delenn: What if the station falls?
- Sheridan: Then, as you said to me once, "I'll see you again in the place where no shadows fall."
- Mack: (sees Bo cross himself) When did you get religious?
- Bo: I'm not, just respect, that's all. Every time we get a red star born out there, somebody's life ends.
- Bo: Sure looks pretty (referring to a White Star)
- Mack: You think?
- Bo: Hell yeah, what do you think?
- Mack: Me? I always thought they looked like plucked chickens. Hey, it's not my fault they were designed that way.
- Byron (looking at an alien helmet) A fellow of infinite jest... I knew him Horatio.
- Mack: It's Mack, actually.
- Byron: At the moment of death there is a passing of energy, an explosion of consciousness. It permeates everything in close proximity... your clothes, jewelry... anything. We can still feel him - what he was, what he did, his hopes, and fears, and expectations. It's still there for a minutes, then it will disappear... joining him in silence.
- Londo Mollari What, are you afraid I won't come back G'Kar?
- G'Kar No, afraid you will.
- Mack: (to Bo) So... how long you figure they been married?
- Mack: Hey, did you see that smile? I mean it was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud.
- Bo: I did indeed. Suddenly, I think I understand Sheridan a lot better.
- Mack: How do you mean?
- Bo: Well, dead or alive, I'd climb my way out of hell and through ten miles of solid rock to see that smile again.
- [after their last encounter with Delenn]
- Mack: Bo?
- Bo: Yeah?
- Mack: She remembered my name.
- Bo: Our names.
- Mack: I think I'm in love.
- Bo: She's married.
- Mack: Eh. We can work something out.
- [Sech Durhan asks fellow Ranger trainer Sech Turval to join him on a trip to Babylon 5.]
- Durhan: [good-natured] You are a source of constant annoyance to me, Turval, but only because you're right more often than you're wrong. And why should I keep this joy to myself? I choose to share you with the universe! [deadpan] Valen help them all.
- [Sech Turval comforts Ranger trainee Rastenn, who abandoned his fellow trainee to fight an enemy alone in a moment off uncharacteristic fear.]
- Turval: We create the meaning in our lives. It does not exist independently. Being Anla-shok [Ranger] does not mean worrying about what others will think about us. It does not mean deciding what to do based upon whether or not it serves our sense of ego or destiny. It means living each moment as if it were your last one. It means doing each right thing because it is the right thing. The scale doesn't matter. The where, the when, the how, or in what cause… none of those things matter. In my life, I've discovered very few truths. Here is the greatest truth I know: Your death, Rastenn, will have a meaning if it comes while you're in fullest pursuit of your heart.
- [after a Ranger trainee has been attacked, his teacher declares Mora'dum—the application of terror]
- Delenn: Captain, this is not about revenge.
- Elizabeth Lochley: [sarcastically] Oh? Then what is this about?
- Delenn: Terror.
- . . .
- Lochley: So, what kind of terror are we talking about here, Delenn?
- Delenn: The kind that cripples…the kind that destroys. Not from without, but from within. As soon as he can stand, whether he is fully healed or not, Tannier will prepare to face his terror. Those who harmed him now have power over him. He must take back that power or he will never be whole again. We will go with him, and bring him to the point of his terror. And then, he will face it.
- Lochley: But if he isn't fully healed, he could die in the effort.
- Delenn: As Anla'shok, we choose to do that which frightens us, knowing that there are no guarantees. He may lose; we cannot help him.
- Lochley: Then he will stand alone.
- Delenn: At the end, Captain, we all stand alone.
- [The Ranger trainees encircle Tannier and the human who attacked him, watching the Mora'dum play out, but not interfering.]
- Sech Turval: Attend, students, this is a classic archetype in action. The strong man—or 'bully', as the humans call it—essentially a coward whose only skill is convincing others to do what he's afraid to do himself.
- Sech Durhan: Notice the lack of technique, no follow through. Another flaw in this particular personality type…all muscle, no brain.
- John Sheridan: I'm caught in a web of my own good intentions.
- Elizabeth Lochley: Well, the road to hell is paved with them, sir.
- Sheridan: I know. But why does it have to go through this office?
- [Lyta demonstrates her telekinesis by "slapping" two of Bester's Psi Cops]
- Alfred Bester: Not bad. Tell me, is that really telekinesis, or are you just pushing the nerve endings, making them feel as if they've been slapped? Either way, it's taken a lot out of you, Lyta. You're sweating, flushed. How many times can you do that, Lyta? Can you do just one at a time? Maybe two? How about three? How about a half dozen of us?
- Lyta Alexander: I don't know. Like you said, I'm new at this. I could even make a mistake. Maybe even pop a blood vessel in someone's head by accident by pushing too hard. Feel like playing the odds, Mr. Bester?
- Lochley: What the hell is your problem?
- Michael Garibaldi: For starters, I don't know you, therefore I don't trust you.
- Lochley: The world's full of people you don't know.
- Garibaldi: I worry about that all the time.
- Lochley: Tough. Get over it.
- [after realizing Garibaldi has accessed her personnel file, Lochley storms out of her office]
- Zack Allan: Where you going?
- Lochley: To pound someone, Mr. Allan. You win. I just decided if you can't join 'em, beat 'em.
- [G'Kar and Delenn are discussing how he can best help the Alliance. They turn to the topic of Londo's return to Centauri Prime.]
- G'Kar: He should have a bodyguard assigned to him at all times while he is there. Someone we can rely on, someone, uh… someone we can trust. Someone strong… strong enough to…
- [He looks down to see Delenn eyeing him, excitedly.]
- G'Kar: Oh, no…
- ...
- Delenn: The Alliance is about learning to overcome our distrust and form a new community. Can you think of a better symbol?
- G'Kar: No, and I'm trying. Believe me.
- ...
- Delenn: You would naturally have to accompany him on all state business and be there to guard him. In the palace. In the Royal Court.
- G'Kar: [brightens] A Narn in the Centauri Royal Court? [laughs] It is a curiously satisfying image, Delenn!
- ...
- [Later, Delenn meets with Londo Mollari just before he and G'Kar leave.]
- Londo Mollari: [worried] G'Kar? You've assigned G'Kar as my bodyguard?
- Delenn: Yes. I think your generosity in working with him will be an excellent symbol of unity for all the other races who could join the Alliance.
- Londo: A symbol…
- Delenn: Yes.
- Londo: And you tried this line on G'Kar?
- Delenn: I did.
- Londo: And did it work?
- Delenn: Completely.
- Londo: [swears] Great Maker!
- Lyta Alexander: Byron, the Vorlons changed me. More than you could possibly know. I don't know what it'll do once you get past my barriers and I get past yours. It could burn you.
- Byron: Then let it burn.
- [After they make love, Lyta's barriers go down, and they both witness the full measure of what the Vorlons did: not only to her, but to all telepaths. They meet with the rest of Byron's people.]
- Byron: It was the Vorlons.
- Lyta: Yes.
- Byron: They created telepaths on a hundred worlds. Interfered with their genetic development. Took people from their homeworlds and adjusted them over the course of the centuries.
- Lyta: Yes.
- Byron: Because they needed telepaths in their war against the Shadows. Needed us as cannon fodder.
- Lyta: Yes.
- Byron: We would be normal. We would have lives. We would be able to walk and live and work among normals without fear of persecution if the Vorlons had not interfered with our normal development. We were made for their benefit, to save them. We were told that our abilities were our gift and our curse, and that we were somehow responsible for it. But we're not. We're not.
- [Rebo enters the customs waiting area and places his duffel bag on the counter.]
- Customs Guard: Anything to declare?
- Rebo: [brightly] I have nothing to declare, my dear man, except my genius!
- [He unzips the bag, and Zooty unfolds from inside.]
- Zooty: [through his machine] And I have nothing to declare but Rebo's genius either! Zooty-zoot, zoot, zoot!
- [Londo talks to a portrait of the first Centauri emperor.]
- Londo Mollari: So. When you were emperor, it meant something. Subduer of the Xon and the Shoggren. Now–pffft–anyone can be emperor. I can be emperor. Vir can be emperor. If Vir can be emperor…a small Earth cat can be emperor!
- [The Brakiri Day of the Dead has begun, and part of the station is…off-limits.]
- Lt. David Corwin: There seems to be a slight problem, sir. It's kind of hard to explain. We seem to be missing a piece of the station. We can't reach it. We can't communicate with it.
- John Sheridan: That piece is almost a square mile across. You can't just lose something that big.
- Lt. Corwin: I agree, but it's still missing.
- [Lennier is visited by Morden.]
- Lennier: I came for wisdom.
- Morden: You don't come to the dead for wisdom, Lennier. My head was cut from my body. Even now, it rots on a pole outside the Imperial Palace. Birds have taken the hair for their nests. Maggots ate my flesh. And you want wisdom?
- Lennier: Yes, I do.
- . . .
- Lennier: Why did you help me? I know what kind of a man you were.
- Morden: Give a dog a bad name, and you can hang him with it. You shouldn't listen to everything Sheridan tells you. Actually, I'm surprised he's not here tonight, since he died at Z'ha'dum. Is there any coffee here or not?
- [Garibaldi is visited by Dodger.]
- Dodger: It's some guy's fantasy. A love-hungry red-head who will disappear in the morning never to be seen again!
- Michael Garibaldi: I'm sorry Dodger, what were you saying?
- Dodger: [frustrated] It's a good thing I'm only here another hour or so, cupcake. Two weeks of this, I'd kill you.
- [Sheridan and Delenn greet Rebo and Zooty in their quarters, where they have all gathered for dinner. As Delenn and Zooty walk off, Sheridan leans in to talk to Rebo.]
- Sheridan: You know, I was really hoping to talk to Zooty. You know, without the machine.
- Rebo: Yeah. He never breaks character, not even around me. In ten years, I've only heard him say one word without the machine.
- Sheridan: Oh. Oh. What's the word?
- Rebo: Why.
- Sheridan: Oh, just curious.
- Rebo: No, no. That was the word. "Why". In ten years, I haven't figured it out myself.
- ...
- [Later, in the Zocalo, Zooty gestures for Sheridan to lean close. He takes off his hat, puts it over the machine hanging from his pocket, and whispers conspiratorially to Sheridan. Sheridan's eyes go wide, and Zooty nods in confirmation. He dons his hat and walks off. G'Kar runs up to him.]
- G'Kar: What did he say?!
- Sheridan: [astonished] "Because it tells me to…"
- Minister Vatelli: (referring to G'Kar) And I see you brought your own entertainment with you! An excellent idea... and quite brave of you to let him so close without keeping him in chains. Perhaps we should change that. Just a few chains to make the others more comfortable before we put him in a cell.
- Londo Mollari: He is my bodyguard.
- Vatelli: Well, it's good to know that his excellency's sense of humor is intact after such a long voyage.
- Regent Virini: You do understand, Jano, that if it were my decision, that I would never let anyone harm you, I would never let anyone hurt you. If it were my decision. But it's not my decision, you see. [Jano is killed by the Drakh] Not my decision at all!
- [on Centauri Prime, Minister Vole brings forth the guard who nearly whipped G'Kar to death a year before and offers the Narn a chance at retaliation]
- G'Kar: Tell me, Minister. If I were to strike you, which would you be angry at? The hand that struck you, or the heart that commanded it?
- Minister Vole: Well, the heart, of course.
- G'Kar: The hand has no choice but to do as it is told. It is the heart that carries the burden. And that heart is dead in both of us, Minister. It died with Cartagia, and it died in me soon after. Besides, everyone knows that the true source of pain is neither the hand nor the heart. It is the mouth., is it not, Minister?
- [after Byron essentially blackmails the Alliance council]
- Michael Garibaldi: Never, ever, ever trust a telepath. I swear to you, I'm gonna have that tattooed inside my eyelids.
- John Sheridan: But they did it in the wrong way, the inconvenient way.
- Delenn: I seem to recall the Earth president saying the same thing to you, after your civil war. [she leaves]
- Sheridan: I hate that she has a memory, don't you?
- Garibaldi: Damned inconvenient!
- G'Kar: It's bad luck to die on an empty stomach.
- [Londo Mollari and G'Kar are discussing the inexplicable rise in Centauri military spending.]
- G'Kar: Well, with everyone now on the same side, perhaps you're planning to invade yourselves for a change. I find the idea curiously appealing. Once you've finished killing each other, we can plow under all the buildings and plant rows of flowers that spell out the words "too annoying to live" in letters big enough to be seen from space.
- [Londo muses about the task of breaking Na'Toth out of her cell.]
- Londo: We have to do it without killing a guard, without raising any alarms, and without anyone noticing that she is gone. For my next trick, I shall fly around the room under my own power.
- Michael Garibaldi: Why is it that we always break up our history by the wars, not the years of peace? The Hundred Years War, the War of 1812, the first three world wars, the Dilgar War, the War of the Shining Star, the Minbari War, the Shadow War—why the war and not the peace? Because it's exciting. And because on some level people like to see something big fall apart and explode from the inside out. And right now, John, we're that something.
- Bester: My people are in there. And several others just tried to kill me, but then, what family doesn't have its difficulties?
- Drazi Ambassador: Every great fall begins with a single mistake.
- Bester: Every race to develop telepaths has had to find some way to control them, through laws, religion, drugs, or extermination. We may not be pretty, but we're a hell of a lot better than the alternatives.
- Lyta Alexander: You can't change human nature, Byron.
- Byron: Then there's not much point in living, is there? If you can't hope for something better, something nobler, at least something kinder?
- [Byron reveals his past to Lyta.]
- Byron: I'm a strong P-12.
- Lyta Alexander: But all P-12s are automatically designated Psi Cops. You were a Psi Cop?
- Byron: Not just a Psi Cop. Bester's protege.
- Byron: We are no longer who we were. We are what we have become. What you made us!
- John Sheridan: Who knew that the presidency was 50% panic and 50% paperwork?
- Sheridan: Can you stall [the Alliance council] a bit?
- Delenn: Not a problem. I'll tell them we're declaring war on Earth. That'll give them something positive to think about.
- Sheridan: [distracted] Good. Good. Give me the paperwork and I'll sign it.
- Londo Mollari: He [a Narn] seems very glad to see you.
- G'Kar: Yes, but we weren't gone that long. Less than a month.
- Londo Mollari: Well, there you have the key to your popularity: your absence. Go away for a month and they bow. Go away for six months and they'll tear the place apart when you come back. Perhaps you should go away and never come back again. Then your popularity will be so overwhelming it would blacken the stars.
- G'Kar: Mollari–
- Londo Mollari: I have always said this about you: nothing so improves your company like the lack of it. ... Perhaps you can make some money from this: ten credits for you not to be there for an hour, a hundred credits for you not to be there for the day. And for you not to be there for the rest of your life, well, they could never afford it.
- G'Kar: Where is my book? It is my only copy!
- Ta'Lon: Yes, that is precisely the point. The Kha'Ri felt that if anything happened to you [on Centauri Prime] the book of G'Kar would never see the light of day, so we "liberated" it [from G'Kar's quarters].
- G'Kar: Liberated it?
- Ta'Lon: We took it home. Those that read it were very moved by it and they made some copies.
- G'Kar: [aghast] Copies?!
- Ta'Lon: Just a few…for their friends. A few more…later a few more copies.
- G'Kar: How many?!
- Ta'Lon: That's hard to say, exactly. There was some confusion when it went to the printers.
- G'Kar: Printers?! I've only been gone for a month, Ta'Lon, there can't be that many copies floating around this quickly. How many?
- Ta'Lon: Five or six…hundred…thousand.
- G'Kar: What?!
- Ta'Lon: I've been told that it will out-sell the book of G'Quan. [G'Kar stares at him in shock] Congratulations, citizen G'Kar. You are now a religious icon.
- [Garibaldi and Tafiq are discussing Drazi cities]
- Michael Garibaldi: What's with the streets? They're so narrow, you can hardly get by.
- Tafiq: Tradition. Goes back centuries. To prevent invaders from taking their city, they built their streets too narrow for armies or engines of war. When you have to go by two or three at a time, you are most vulnerable.
- Michael Garibaldi: See, now you can fly over and drop these things called "bombs".
- G'Kar: All my life, I have been responsible only for myself. When I risk, I risked alone to avoid making others pay the price for my mistakes. They want me to show them another way. What if I show them the wrong way? What if they come to me not because of the lesson, but because of the teacher? I worry, Ta'Lon, that my shadow may become greater than the message.
- Ta'Lon: If that happens, I give you my word that I will personally kill you.
- G'Kar: And this is supposed to put my mind at ease?
- Psi Cop Lauren Ashley: We don't often see a sense of humor in Psi Cops.
- Alfred Bester: Reports of our depression are vastly exaggerated.
- [Zack greets Bester in pretty much the same fashion as his predecessor.]
- Zack Allan: Don't you ever go away? Haven't you caused enough trouble for one lifetime?
- Bester: It's a pleasure to see you too, Mr. Allan. Where can I find Captain Lochley? I should check in with her.
- Zack: She's busy, you can check in with me. Card. [Bester hands over his identicard.] So what is it this time, Mr. Bester? Hunting out freedom fighters? Pulling wings off flies? Annexing the Sudetenland?
- [Zack implies Bester had something to do with a dead body being dead.]
- Bester: He was dead before we got here.
- Zack: [to Bester] Yeah, they told me. But I never let the facts get in the way of a good grudge.
- Bartender in Downbelow: I've seen all kinds, kid. Seen an alien come through here last week with eight compound eyes and a glass stomach. Two fingers of gin, he's down. Completely unconscious for two full hours, and he wants to do it again. I've seen a naked Pak'ma'ra once. You know that hump on their back? It's not a hump at all, it's a…
- Bester: Of all the things in life I could drown in–love, music, the eyes of another–crocodile tears are the least appealing.
- Bester: Oh, come on, doctor, we have a history here. Tell the truth. You don't want me here a second more than I want to be here.
- Stephen Franklin: Personally, no. But as a doctor I have to treat all of my patients equally. Even the annoying, self-righteous ones with self-important delusions of godhood.
- Bester: Thank you. I feel far more at home now.
- Bester [to Franklin]: You're an optimist. Thank you. I had almost forgotten what one of your kind looked like.
- [Lennier is concerned he has offended Captain Montoya with his curiosity.]
- Findell: No, the captain does not believe in indiscreet questions. He believes the only way to get pertinent information is to ask impertinent questions.
- [G'Kar meets with his acolytes.]
- Narn Acolyte: What is truth, and what is God?
- G'Kar: If I take a lamp and shine it toward the wall, a bright spot will appear on the wall. The lamp is our search for truth, for understanding. Too often we assume that the light on the wall is God. But the light is not the goal of the search; it is the result of the search. The more intense the search, the brighter the light on the wall. The brighter the light on the wall, the greater the sense of revelation upon seeing it! Similarly, someone who does not search, who does not bring a lantern with him, sees nothing. What we perceive as God, is the byproduct of our search for God. It may simply be an appreciation of the light, pure and unblemished, not understanding that it comes from us. Sometimes we stand in front of the light and assume that we are the center of the universe. God looks astonishingly like we do! Or we turn to look at our shadow, and assume that all is darkness. If we allow ourselves to get in the way, we defeat the purpose; which is to use the light of our search to illuminate the wall in all its beauty… and in all its flaws. And in so doing better understand the world around us.
- Acolyte: Ah, yes, but what is truth, and what is God?
- G'Kar: [sighs] Truth is… a river.
- [The acolytes remark in awe.]
- Acolyte: And what is God?
- G'Kar: God is… [thinks] the mouth of the river.
- Captain Montoya: To be Anla'Shok means understanding that there is nothing to fear in death except the failure to complete our assigned mission. Death is not the enemy. Death simply is.
- [Vir walks into Londo's quarters]
- Londo Mollari: Something I can do for you, Vir?
- [Vir walks past Londo and grabs a sword off of the wall without slowing down]
- Vir Cotto: No, I just need to borrow this for a minute. I'll be right back.
- [Vir is attacking a Drazi merchant/spy in public]
- Zack Allan: What happened to Vir?
- Londo: I promoted him. Now, now he is ready to be the ambassador for the Centauri.
- [Zack relates the incident with Vir in the Zocalo to Sheridan, Franklin, and Delenn, all laughing]
- Franklin: And Londo?
- Zack: Oh, he was just standing there, watching as Vir tore the place apart! [more laughter; Zack puts on self-important tone] "Today he is a man!"
- [A very drunk Garibaldi stumbles into his quarters.]
- Michael Garibaldi: Sh…Show me the way to go home, I'm tired and I want to go to bed. I had a little…oh, that's a big drink…about an hour ago and it went right to my head. [pauses] What did I do…with that link? You here, Linky, Linky, Linky? Here, Linky? [finds his link] Oh, the missing link!
- [After Lise confronts Garibaldi about his drinking.]
- Lise: I'm sorry.
- Michael Garibaldi: I don't want you to be sorry. I don't need your pity. I don't need anybody's pity. All I know is that I'm tired of being controlled. Controlled by others, by fear, by my past, by what everybody else expects of me and it's enough. Enough. And this? [points at the bottle] This is my own private little act of rebellion, yeah. I may not be able to control what other people do to me, but I can at least be in control what I do to myself.
- John Sheridan: Now, it is absolutely inappropriate of you to pull a stunt like that without telling me. I can not have you making—
- Delenn: [interrupting] You are right.
- Sheridan: I—[pauses] Oh, damn it Delenn, I have been working up a good mad all day and I am not about to let you undercut it by agreeing with me!
- Garibaldi: Barring an act of God—and since I don't believe in God, that kind of narrows the odds a bit—by this time tomorrow, we're gonna be at war with the Centauri.
- Centauri Minister: Is that why you brought it [G'Kar] along?
- Londo Mollari: No, he is still here as my bodyguard, that's all. Where I go, he goes.
- Centauri Minister: My condolences.
- G'Kar: Thank you. It's a burden, but I've come to accept it.
- Centauri Minister: I'm sure you would like to freshen up. Both of you.
- G'Kar: It's a natural musk. I rather enjoy it.
- Londo: Careful minister, we don't want my companion to get the wrong idea. We don't normally treat our guests so badly.
- G'Kar: Yes you do.
- Londo: Shut up.
- [A Centauri official comes to arrest G'Kar]
- Londo: Where he goes, I go.
- Londo [to G'Kar]: Don't worry. Even one as arrogant as this would not take it upon himself to imprison his own prime minister.
- [Cut to the next scene, Londo and G'Kar are in a prison cell]
- Londo: [to G'Kar]: Shut up.
- G'Kar: I didn't say anything.
- [Delenn meditates in front of a candle, praying in light of the soon-to-be war. Sheridan comes out of their bedroom and sits with her.]
- John Sheridan: What does the candle represent?
- Delenn: Life.
- Sheridan: Whose life?
- Delenn: All life. Every life. We are all born as molecules in the hearts of a billion stars. Molecules that do not understand politics or policies or differences. Over a billion years, we foolish molecules forget who we are and where we came from. In desperate acts of ego, we give ourselves names, fight over lines on maps, and pretend that our light is better than everyone else's. The flame reminds us of the piece of those stars that live inside us. A spark that tells us: you should know better. The flame also reminds us that life is precious, as each flame is unique. When it goes out, it's gone forever, and there will never be another quite like it. So many candles will go out tonight. I wonder some days if we can see anything at all.
- [After G'Kar has been imprisoned and Londo went with him as a matter of honor.]
- G'Kar: I still think you should leave, Mollari.
- Londo Mollari: No. I said where you go, I go. It's become a matter of principle.
- G'Kar: You picked a terrible moment in your social evolution to develop principles. Perhaps you can start with something simpler. The moral equivalent of the opposable thumb, for instance.
- Regent Virini: They say: the Shadows were our masters. We served them, believed in them, loved them. Then they went away and left us behind to escape on our own. But without our masters… who are we? In the end… what are we but…
- Shiv'kala: A shadow… of a shadow. An echo… of what was. Our home, Z'ha'dum, destroyed. We… wandered. Then we remembered… this place. We remembered… you.
- Regent Virini: I have been many things in my life, Mollari. I have been silly. I have been quiet when I should have spoken. I have been foolish. And I have wasted far too much time. But I am still Centauri, and I am not afraid.
- [the Drakh keeper leaves his body, and he dies in Londo's arms]
- Londo Mollari: Isn't it strange, G'Kar? When we first met I had no power and all the choices I could ever want. And now I have all the power I could ever want and no choices at all. No choice at all.
- G'Kar: Mollari. Understand that I can never forgive your people for what they did to my world. My people can never forgive your people. But I can forgive you.
- Stephen Franklin: Can God make a rock so big, that even he can't lift it?
- G'Kar: Yes, I've heard it, but ...
- Franklin: What if that is the wrong question? I wonder if the right question is, can God create a puzzle so difficult, a riddle so complex, that even he can't solve it? What if that's us? Maybe a problem like this is God's way of doing to us a little of what we do to him?
- [Lochley and Zack go to the Zocalo to arrest Lyta on suspicion of terrorism. She displays how she has the entire Zocalo under her mental control.]
- Lyta Alexander: I'm tired of being pushed around, Captain. I do not choose to be arrested. I've done a lot for this place…and just once I think a little gratitude would be in order, don't you?
- Elizabeth Lochley: Lyta, don't force us to-
- Lyta: To what?
- Lochley: [gestures to Zack] Zack…
- [He doesn't move. He, the deputies, and the rest of the crowd appear to be catatonic.]
- Lochley: Zack!
- Lyta: You cannot harm me. You cannot stop someone who's been touched by Vorlons.
- [A PPG appears and lines up with the side of Lyta's head. Sheridan steps out of the crowd.]
- John Sheridan: You're not the only one that's been touched by the Vorlons. [gestures to the crowd] Let them go.
- [Lyta stands resolute. Sheridan presses the gun into the side of her head.]
- Sheridan: Let 'em go or I'll blow the back of your skull off!
- [Lyta relaxes her mental control, and the crowd begins moving again.]
- [Franklin and Sheridan meet to discuss the situation with Lyta.]
- Sheridan: What could make her turn like this?
- Franklin: Well, let's see. She was…adjusted by the Vorlons, dumped by the Vorlons, used as a weapon, quit the Corps, lost the only man she ever loved, and dedicated herself to finishing his work. Pick one or all of the above. Let's face it, she's pissed.
- Sheridan: Massively.
- ...
- Sheridan: I tell ya, the next person who acts irrationally, I swear I'm gonna shoot myself in the head.
- [Delenn bursts into the room in a rage, pacing back and forth while ranting.]
- Delenn: BASTARDS!
- Franklin: Did she just…?
- Sheridan: She did.
- Franklin: I'll get the gun.
- [Garibaldi confronts Lyta in her cell.]
- Michael Garibaldi: I need to know, Lyta. Something's happened to your abilities. You're not a P-5 anymore, hell, you're not even a P-12. You're the strongest telepath I've ever seen. What did the Vorlons do to you, Lyta? Who…what are you?
- Lyta: I've only recently begun to understand it myself. You know the Vorlons used telepaths as weapons during the Shadow War, but what no one stopped to consider was that in a war, you have a certain number of small weapons, a certain number of medium-size weapons, and one or two big ones. The kind of weapons you drop when you're out of small weapons and the medium weapons and you've got nothing left to use.
- Garibaldi: Someone like that would be the telepathic equivalent of a thermonuclear device. A doomsday weapon.
- [Lyta turns to face him, smiling, and her eyes start glowing white.]
- Lyta: Pleased to meet you, Mr. Garibaldi.
- Lyta Alexander: You'll forgive the accommodations.
- G'Kar: It's a cell. I've gotten used to them. Frankly, I've done some of my best writing in places like this. In here, you cannot run from yourself.
- . . .
- Lyta: It's ironic. You have to leave because everybody wants you. They're fighting over you. And I have to leave because nobody wants me.
- G'Kar: And yet, we are the same in many ways. We are all the sum of our tears. Too little and the ground is not fertile, and nothing can grow there. Too much, the best of us is washed away. My rains have come and gone, for now. Yours are just beginning.
- [G'Kar comes face to face with one of his more-devout "followers".]
- Narn: We put you in this position, G'Kar. Our reverence is our gift to you, and you are responsible to us. You owe us. Without us… you are nothing.
- G'Kar: Then I am nothing. Goodbye.
- Number One: So it really couldn't–
- Stephen Franklin: No, you're right. It couldn't–
- Number One: So there we are.
- Franklin: There you go, yeah.
- Franklin: You know, I do have about an hour before my next shift starts, in case you wanted to…celebrate your new job.
- Number One: More than an hour or less than an hour?
- Franklin: About an hour and ten minutes.
- Number One: You go on ahead. You know how I like the lights.
- G'Kar: I believe that when we leave a place, part of it goes with us and part of us remains. Go anywhere in the station when it is quiet, and just listen. After a while, you will hear the echoes of all our conversations, every thought and word we’ve exchanged. Long after we are gone, our voices will linger in these walls for as long as this place remains. But I will admit that the part of me that is going will very much miss the part of you that is staying.
- Delenn: It occurs to me I have never walked the length of this place, end to end.
- John Sheridan: Well, Delenn, it's 5 miles long.
- Delenn: I know. Coming?
- Sheridan: Now?
- Delenn: Now is all we have.
- [G'Kar gives a "pep talk" to his successor, Ta'Lon, via a time-delayed message.]
- G'Kar: Greetings, Ta'Lon. I'm leaving this message for you because it appears I must leave Babylon 5 sooner than I had intended. I would have preferred to say this in person, but since I cannot, let me say it here. Now that I am gone, someone else must speak for our people. I would like for that person… to be you. Knowing you as I do, Ta'Lon, I'm sure you're wondering, why you?
- Ta'Lon: To say the least.
- G'Kar: I believe there is a time for enlightenment and a time for things to get done. I have become a distraction for our people. They require patience, direction, determination, and strength. I have provided a little of the first two. Now, you must provide the rest. You have always been sensible and level-headed. A rock that will never shift or break beneath the demands of our people. And you have been my friend. In my absence, we will need someone to focus on helping our world rebuild and strengthening ties with the Alliance. In order to serve our people here and at home, one must be both priest and warrior in equal measure. In recent months, I have become more priest than warrior. Perhaps, now it is time for someone who is more warrior than priest. You may believe you are not ready, but you are as ready as I was when I first came to Babylon 5. Check the records, I think you'll be amused. When this message has finished, a copy will automatically be sent to Sheridan and the others. They will receive you as they would receive me. Good luck, Ta'Lon. Serve our people–reasonably, fairly, and with honor. The rest will attend to itself.
- Delenn: When I had to learn English, one of the most difficult words for me was "goodbye." There is no corresponding word for "goodbye" in Minbari. All our partings contain within them the possibility of meeting again: in other places, in other times, in other lives. So you will excuse me if I do not say "goodbye." Our souls are a part of this place. Our hopes, the foundation of our future. And we will pass this way, again.
- John Sheridan: It's good to know that at least one of the old gang will be sticking around for a while.
- Zack Allan: Who, me? Absolutely. Hell, I'll probably still be here when they turn off the lights.[N]
- Delenn: There are moments when we all become someone else, something other than what we are. It takes only a moment. But we spend the rest of our lives looking back at that moment in shame.
- Vir Cotto: You know, Londo never liked the Pak'ma'ra. They're stubborn, lazy, obnoxious, greedy—
- Michael Garibaldi: They kinda look like an octopus that got run over by a truck.
- Vir: That too! But one day, Londo and I were walking past their quarters, and we heard them…singing.
- John Sheridan: Singing? They can sing?
- Stephen Franklin: There's nothing in the literature about that.
- Vir: Apparently, it's something they only do certain times of the year as part of their religious ceremonies. You may not believe this, but, it was the most beautiful sound I have ever heard. I-I-I couldn't make out the words, but I knew it was full of sadness and hope and wonder and a terrible…sense of loss. I-I looked at Londo, and, this is the amazing part…there was a tear running down his face. I said, "Londo, we-we should leave. I mean, this is upsetting you." And he just stood there and listened. And when it was over, he turned to me and he said, "There are 49 gods in our pantheon, Vir. To tell you the truth, I never believed in any of them. But if only one of them exists, then God sings with that voice." It's funny. After everything we had been through…all he did? I miss him.
- Sheridan: A toast. To…absent friends. In memory still bright.
- Garibaldi: G'Kar.
- Vir: Londo.
- Delenn: Lennier.
- Franklin: Mar—
- Susan Ivanova: Marcus.
- [While Sheridan takes a last walk though the station.]
- Zack Allan: So you hear 'em too, huh?
- Sheridan: Zack. Ha ha! What the hell are you doing here? I thought you went back to Earth.
- Allan: Yeah, I did. Got bored. Re-upped about six months ago. I figured I'd be here 'til they turn the lights out.[N]
- Sheridan: [whispering] Well…look at that…the sun's coming up…
- [last lines of the series]
- Ivanova: Babylon 5 was the last of the Babylon stations. There would never be another. It changed the future…and it changed us. It taught us that we have to create the future, or others would do it for us. It showed us that we have to care for one another, because if we don't, who will? And that true strength sometimes comes from the most…unlikely places. Mostly though, I think it gave us hope—that there can always be new beginnings…even for people like us.
- Ivanova: As for Delenn, every morning for as long as she lived, Delenn got up before dawn and watched the sun come up.
- . . .
- ISN newscaster: And now, for those of you that have been archiving this ISN Special Documentary, the people responsible.
- [single frame stills of department-crews; then a shot of the whole crowd]
- Funding for this program was made possible by grants from the Anla'shok Memorial Fund.
Films
[edit]Babylon 5 films are listed in chronological order within the fictional universe's storyline.
- G'Kar: It is said that the future is always born in pain. The history of war is the history of pain. If we are wise what is born of that pain matures into the promise of a better world. Because we learn that we can no longer afford the mistakes of the past.
- Londo Mollari: The humans, I think, knew they were doomed. But where another race would surrender to despair, the humans fought back with even greater strength. They made the Minbari fight for every inch of space. In my life, I have never seen anything like it. They would weep, they would pray, they would say goodbye to their loved ones…and then throw themselves without fear or hesitation at the very face of death itself. Never surrendering. No one who saw them fighting against the inevitable could help but be moved to tears by their courage…their stubborn nobility. When they ran out of ships, they used guns. When they ran out of guns, they used knives and sticks and bare hands. They were magnificent. I only hope, that when it is my time, I may die with half as much dignity as I saw in their eyes at the end. They did this for two years. They never ran out of courage. But in the end…they ran out of time.
- Delenn: What are you doing here?
- Kosh: Creating the future.
- [Kosh stares into the area before them and a hologram flickers into view]
- Hologram Dukhat: If you are seeing this message, it is because I am dead. I entrust this message to the Vorlons to give it to the right person at the right time. They have come to us in secret and they say that this time, we will need allies. A particular race so far unknown to us, called humans. It is their hope that we find these humans and bring them into the battle on our side. The servants of the Shadows are gathering at Z'ha'dum. Their masters can not be far behind. Finish what I have started. Finish it.
- John Sheridan: Hey I have a message for you. I have a message. I know what is in Dukat's sacred place. omph!
- Minbari Soldier: Silence! [Striking Sheridan]
- John Sheridan: I know what is in Dukat's sacred place. omph!
- Delenn: Stop! What is... in Dukat's sacred place?
- John Sheridan: Entilzah. Entilzah!
- Delenn: Let them go.
- Minbari Soldier: Satai?
- Delenn: I said, let them go. There has been enough blood spilled this day.
- [Soldiers cut the prisoner's bonds]
- Dr. Franklin: Entilzah. What does that mean?
- G'Kar: The future.
- Delenn: I don't know what to do. Tell me what to do.
- [The Vorlons are silent. After seeing she isn't going to receive an answer, Delenn turns to leave.]
- Kosh: The truth, points to itself.
- Delenn: What?
- Kosh: The truth…points to itself.
- Delenn: I…I don't understand.
- Ulkesh: You will. Now go.
- Kosh: Go now. Before it is too late.
- Earth President: This is…This is the president. I have just been informed that our midrange military bases at Beta Colony and Proxima 3 have fallen to the Minbari advance. We have lost contact with Io and must conclude that they too have fallen to an advanced force. Our military intelligence believes that Minbari intend to bypass Mars and hit Earth directly, and the attack may come at any time. We have continued to broadcast our surrender and a plea for mercy, and they have not responded. We therefore can only conclude that we stand at the twilight of the Human race. In order to buy more time for our evacuation transports to leave Earth, we ask for support of every ship capable of fighting, to take part in a defense of our homeworld. We will not lie to you. We do not believe survival is a possibility. We believe that anyone who joins this battle, will never come home again. But for every ten minutes we can delay the military advance, several hundred more civilians may have a chance to escape to neutral territory. Though Earth may fall, the Human race must have a chance to continue elsewhere. No greater sacrifice has ever been asked of a people, but I ask you now, to step forward one last time–one last battle to hold the line against the night!… May God…go with you all.
- Londo Mollari: Why did the Minbari surrender at the Battle of the Line, on the very eve of victory? The answer would change the galaxy forever.
- [The opening monologue to the episode, done in voiceover. This is the special edition version; for continuity purposes, two lines were removed from the original.]
- Londo Mollari: I was there at the dawn of the Third Age of Mankind. It began in the Earth year 2257, with the founding of the last of the Babylon stations, located deep in neutral space. It was a port of call for refugees, smugglers, businessmen, diplomats and travelers from a hundred worlds. It could be a dangerous place, but we accepted the risk because Babylon 5 was our last, best hope for peace. Babylon 5 was a dream given form, a dream of a galaxy without war where species from different worlds could live side by side in mutual respect. Babylon 5 was the last of the Babylon stations. This is its story.
- Jeffrey Sinclair: [to a man with a very attractive looking alien woman] I wouldn't. You know the rules about crossing species. Stick with the list.
- Man: What are you, a bigot or something?
- Sinclair: No. But obviously, you've never met an Arnassian before. After they finish, they eat their mate.
- Delenn: Do you not have files on the Vorlons?
- Sinclair: Absolutely. Very large files. There's nothing in them, of course. How much do you have?
- Delenn: More than you, it would seem. Naturally, it's all classified.
- Sinclair: Naturally.
- Delenn: [producing a data card] Here is a copy of everything I have. It may be of use. If anyone asks…say it fell from the sky. I imagine I will be quite astonished by this breach of security.
- Londo: You're a security chief. Shouldn't you be out…securing something?
- Michael Garibaldi: I am. I'm securing you.
- Londo: It'll be just like the old days, back when we conquered the entire Beta System in nine days! Did I ever tell you that story?
- Garibaldi: Several times.
- Londo: We came out of the sky, a veritable cloud of starships…!
- Londo: I suppose there'll be a war now, hm? All that running around and shooting one another. You'd think that sooner or later, it would go out of fashion.
- Londo: There was a time when this whole quadrant belonged to us! What are we now? Twelve worlds and a thousand monuments to past glories, living off memories and stories…selling trinkets! My god, man, we've become a tourist attraction! "See the great Centauri Republic, open nine to five…Earth time!"
- [Sinclair is recalling his experience at the Battle of the Line.]
- Sinclair: I was squad team leader when the call came in. We all knew it was a suicide mission. The Minbari had broken through and were closing in. Every ship we had left was ordered to circle Earth. We had to stop them, no matter what it cost. They came at us out of nowhere. We never had a chance. The sky was full of stars, and every star an exploding ship—one of ours. My team was blown out of the sky in less than a minute.
- Carolyn Sykes: I'm sorry.
- Sinclair: I managed to take out a fighter before they hit my stabilizers. I was losing power, I'd lost my team. And I figured if I was going to die, I'd take some of them with me. So I targeted one of their heavy cruisers. Hit my afterburners. I was going to ram them head-on. The last thing I remember is hurtling toward that cruiser. Filling my screen, big…my God, so big! Then…something…passed in front of my eyes. I guess I blacked out from the acceleration. When I came to twenty-four hours later, the cruiser was gone. I checked in. They told me the war was over. The Minbari had surrendered.
- Carolyn Sykes: Because of the Line!
- Sinclair: No, that's what I'm trying to tell you. We were beaten. We didn't stop them, they stopped themselves! And I wish to hell I knew why.
- Minbari: [to Sinclair] There is a hole in your mind.
- [after Sinclair narrowly escapes death]
- Delenn: You're all right? Do you need anything?
- Sinclair: Coffee. Two sugars. Cream. And aspirin. Lots and lots of aspirin!
- Laurel Takashima: So, Doctor, just what did you see when you looked inside that (Vorlon's) suit?
- Dr. Benjamin Kyle: There are moments in your life when everything crystallizes…and the whole world reshapes itself, right down to its component molecules. And everything changes. I have looked upon the face of a Vorlon, Laurel, and nothing is the same anymore!
- Garibaldi: Think they'll ever find that transmitter you slipped G'Kar?
- Sinclair: No. because there isn't one.
- Garibaldi: There isn't? Wait—
- Sinclair: I lied. I figured if there were a transmitter, sooner or later they'd find it and remove it. But if I just told them there was, they'd keep looking. Indefinitely.
- Garibaldi: Commander, do you have any idea of the tests they'll put him through, the things they'll do to him trying to find a transmitter that's not there?
- Sinclair: Yes. Come on.
- Garibaldi: [smiling] There are some days I love this job.
- Delenn: There is something I've been wondering. Why Babylon 5? If the prior four stations were lost or destroyed, why build another?
- Sinclair: Plain old human stubbornness, I guess. When something we value is destroyed, we rebuild it. If it's destroyed again, we rebuild it again. And again, and again, and…again, until it stays. That, as our poet Tennyson once said, is the goal: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
- Delenn: A poet?
- Sinclair: Someone who writes poems. [She gives him a confused look.] A poem. A story in meter or rhyme.
- Delenn: [smiling] Ah! "There once was a man from Nantucket."
- Sinclair: [chuckles] You've been talking to Garibaldi again, haven't you?
- Delenn: Yes. How did you know?
- Sinclair: [smiling] Oh, just a wild guess.
- [last lines of the episode]
- Laurel Takashima: This is Lieutenant Commander Laurel Takashima. Our docking bays stand ready to receive you. Babylon 5 is open for business!
- [Delenn and Sheridan are in his office, discussing the massive and mysterious artifact]
- Delenn: May I assume that this has nothing to do with you wanting to be the first to unlock whatever secrets this thing brings with it?
- John Sheridan: Me? When have you ever known me to have a personal agenda?
- Delenn: John, whenever something comes into our proximity that has to do with the unknown, your eyes light up like two tiny suns. And do you know what words these two tiny lights spell out?
- Sheridan: What?
- Delenn: Mine! Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine!
- Sheridan: Oh, now that is a lie!
- Delenn: Minbari do not lie.
- Sheridan: Well then it is slander.
- Delenn: To be slander, it must be false. That's two down.
- Sheridan: Well, then it's…it's damned inconvenient.
- Delenn: The truth always is.
- [she kisses him and leaves; he turns on a monitor and looks at the artifact]
- Sheridan: Besides…it is mine.
- Elizabeth Lochley: Dr. Wolfgang Pauli was a physicist during the late 20th century. Whenever he stepped inside the physics lab, something would go wrong or break down, usually a very expensive piece of equipment. Became kind of a joke with the other doctors, who called it the Pauli effect. According to the story, one day an extremely sensitive and expensive piece of equipment exploded, but he wasn't in the room. So for the first time, they had some proof that the Pauli effect wasn't real. Until they found out that at the exact moment the equipment exploded, he was on a train passing by right in front of the place.
- [Garibaldi can't take his eyes off Captain Lochley's hologram]
- Zack Allen: Hey!
- Michael Garibaldi: What? What am I supposed to do, blind myself here? All right, fine, I'm as offended as you are. But I can see why a lot of guys would rent this particular image.
- Jacob Mayhew: Actually, it was mainly women.
- Soul Hunter: Faith is good. But sometimes faith is blind.
- Galen: If sometimes dreams come true, then what of our nightmares?
- [Dureena extracts a data crystal from a Drazi skin pouch.]
- Leonard Anderson: How do you know they have a pouch?
- John Sheridan: Well. It's not a pouch…exactly. It's their reproductive area.
- Leonard Anderson: Ugh, why did you have to tell me that? Hey, lady! Dureena! Listen! The only thing valuable I carry on me is my watch! I want you to know that in case that ever comes up in the future. Okay?
- Elizabeth Lochley: You're asking the impossible.
- John Sheridan: Then I am asking the right person.
- [last lines of the episode]
- John Sheridan: Those who command the Excalibur will never stop, never give up, and never slow down until a cure is found. And we'll take any help we can get. Wherever and whoever it comes from. Because this is a cause that surpasses borders and difference and distrust. This is a mission about the survival of Earth itself. What we do over the next five years, here, at home, and across the darkness between the stars, will determine whether an entire world will live…or die. It's a fight we can't afford to lose. And we won't. We won't.
- David Martel: We live for The One, we die for The One. But we don't die stupidly.
- Dulann: His concern was for us, not for himself. I know. I saw it in his soul.
- [The Liandra, 20 years old and somewhat in need of maintenance, is about to try to launch.]
- Sarah Cantrell: Today's a good day to die.
- David Martel: Oh, with you every day is a good day to die.
- [after the Liandra rescues a group of very annoyed diplomats from an alien raid, G'Kar attempts to calm them down]
- G'Kar: Minister Kafta, this ship is being held together by little pieces of wire and good intentions. If we land in this condition, assuming we do not have an unpleasant encounter with the ground on the way down, I doubt very much they could take off again. They would be trapped with us, and the ship looking for them would find it, find them, find us, find you, a brilliant cascade of cause and effect. Isn't the universe a wonderful place? I wouldn't live anywhere else.
- [last lines]
- G'Kar: [about to leave the Liandra for Babylon 5] It's quite a place. A place of good times and bad, of pain and growth, but in the end a place of great hope. But if you ever do come aboard, remember one thing: No one there is exactly what he seems. But then, who is?
Books
[edit]- [While walking through the capitol city, the newly invested Emperor Londo Mollari was struck by a rock thrown by a young teenage girl, who proceeded to upbraid him for his failings in defense of the Centauri people.]
- Londo Mollari: You are quite brave, do you know that?
- [For a moment the girl seemed taken aback, and then she gathered herself.]
- Girl: I'm not brave. I'm just too tired and hungry and angry to care anymore.
- Londo Mollari: Perhaps they are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps bravery is simply apathy with delusions of grandeur.
Notes
[edit]See also
[edit]External links
[edit]
- Babylon 5 quotes at the Internet Movie Database
- Babylon 5: In the Beginning quotes at the Internet Movie Database
- Babylon 5: The Gathering quotes at the Internet Movie Database
- Babylon 5: Thirdspace quotes at the Internet Movie Database
- Babylon 5: The River of Souls quotes at the Internet Movie Database
- Babylon 5: A Call to Arms quotes at the Internet Movie Database
- Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers: To Live and Die in Starlight quotes at the Internet Movie Database
- Crusade quotes at the Internet Movie Database
- The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5