I hated that Stoner guy, didn't you?

Boy how much we humans enjoy another being's (Londo in this case) misery. *snicker*

I must admit I thought the scenes with Delenn becoming accustomed to human, shall we say, characteristics are quite amusing. Ivanova also plays these scenes well.

Oh Grand and Mighty Moderator, I have a request and this appears to be the most appropriate place to post it. Could you put up the Legions of Fire trilogy over at Novels? The titles are The Long Night of Centauri Prime, Armies of Light and Dark, and Out of the Darkness.

One of the best bloopers is from this episode. It occurs right after Londo is darted.

Sheridan hits his link and says, "Medlab, this is Sinclair!" He immediatly realizes what hes said, and everyone starts laughing.

I love that one of the wives is named Timov. That is Vomit spelled backwards.

I've been a Peter David fan for close to two decades, and have been looking forward to this episode, as I had never seen any of his onscreen work. I tried watching Oblivion and one of his two Trancers movies, but switched them off after a bit, as they didn't grab me, and did the same with an episode of Space Cases that I came across, as it obviously was not made for my age group. Given that I had been wanting to try B5 for years because of how good it was reputed to be, seeing Peter's two episodes was one thing I was looking forward to. Unfortunately, this episode was okay, but no big deal. The Mollari plot seemed largely empty, as its one narrative punchline seemed to be Mollari's reason to Timov for his retaining her as his wife, which was at the very end of the episode. I didn't understand what that artifact did to him, what precisely Mariel and G'Kar's motives were for their plot, or how they fit in with the artifact that Stoner had. The Stoner plot itself was also okay, but its resolution had problems (see nit below). Hopefully There All the Honor Lies will be better.

Mariel's leaving G'Kar's quarters right before the last commercial break had me thinking: What if someone were around to see her? Obviously, she would not want to be seen exiting G'Kar's quarters. On Trek, someone could just ask the computer if anyone were around before exiting the room, but I don't get the sense that B5's computers can do this unless the person has a communications or some other device on their person, and in any event, Mariel does not make any such inquiries.

The scene in the final Act in which Sheridan and Garibaldi confront Stoner with their knowledge of his abilities didn't seem right. For one thing, Sheridan concludes that Psi Corps experimented on Stoner, turning him into an empath. First, there's no reason to conclude this. It's one possibility, but another (one which I guessed up until this scene) was that Stoner's telepathy is (or became) so powerful that he managed to escape the Corps by telepathically coercing every Corps official he could into just letting him go, perhaps even falsifying records of his abilities to make him think that his abilities were gone. He could've indeed have become this powerful through some experiment like the one Sheridan suggests. There's no reason to jump to the idea that the Corps did what Garibaldi suggests, except that Peter David wanted this to be the case. In addition, why would Garibaldi think that letting Stoner go would prevent anyone from knowing that the Corps conducts experiments on telepaths? Wasn't that knowledge uncovered into the open by the end of Mind War? Lastly, why does Sheridan say "empath"? An empath detects emotions, whereas a telepath detects thoughts. But this is not the ability Stoner displayed. The ability he displayed was to coerce people to do or think what he wanted, which is an application of his telepathy that neither he nor anyone else had displayed, and which has nothing to do with empathy.

In watching the Mollari plot, I saw that Timov was the one wife of his who was honest with him. I was pleased that the conclusion of that plot was predicated on that very character trait observation.

I thought Delenn's appearance changed to a more human one, but the final scene, in which she complained of "cramps" to Ivanova seemed to indicate that much of her internal physiology changed as well, which surprised me.

Lastly, why does Sheridan say "empath"? An empath detects emotions, whereas a telepath detects thoughts. But this is not the ability Stoner displayed. The ability he displayed was to coerce people to do or think what he wanted, which is an application of his telepathy that neither he nor anyone else had displayed, and which has nothing to do with empathy.

Empathy can also mean the ability to affect emotions, as well as read them - much as telepathy allows both reading of thoughts and sending of thoughts.

In this case he was altering peoples emotions so that they liked/trusted him/fell in love with him. There is no evidence that telepaths can do this - they can (and do) use various tricks to get people to do what they want, but unless a lot of time is spent in this programming the subject seems to understand what is going on. Figuring out that he wasn't using telepathy would only require asking anyone he used his powers on what they were feeling. 'Well, he's a nice guy so I cut him some slack' coming from an otherwise suspicious guard who's never seen the guy before, or 'I want his babies' from someone who just spent a lot of time telling you how much they hated him and why they divorced is liable to raise a few questions.

I thought Delenn's appearance changed to a more human one, but the final scene, in which she complained of "cramps" to Ivanova seemed to indicate that much of her internal physiology changed as well, which surprised me.

I don't know why - we were told that Delen was becoming more Human. I always thought that this would involve more than just growing hair while sitting in a cocoon for a few weeks.

But how does Garibaldi know that he was affecting emotions, and not, say, thoughts? How does he know that Stoner made people like/trust/fall in love with him, and not simply that he altered their memories?

Yeah, good point about the coccoon.

Luigi: I didn't understand what that artifact did to him, what precisely Mariel and G'Kar's motives were for their plot, or how they fit in with the artifact that Stoner had.

The artifact had a pair of poison darts which were set to fire when a Centauri held it. As for Mariel's motive, keep in mind that she's currently at risk at being divorced with no alimony. If Londo dies before he officially announces which wife he'll keep, this won't be a problem. As for G'Kar, it came across to me that he wasn't involved. Though the fact that he hates Londo's guts would probably be enough motive for him to provide some assistance. As for Stoner, he was a middleman providing the means. I imagine that Mariel had learned of Londo's divorce request through the Royal Court rumormill and made some arrangements beforehand so that she could have some plausible deniability.

I imagine that Mariel had learned of Londo's divorce request through the Royal Court rumormill and made some arrangements beforehand so that she could have some plausible deniability.

I can't recall if Lando mentioned if the Emperor had agreed to a request he'd made or not. It would seem logical to assume that Lando had requested permission to divorce some of all of his wives - the political way to do this would be to ask for far more than you want or expect, then when your request is watered down you're still likely to get what you really wanted.

It is likely that if Lando had asked it wouldn't be long before that request became common knowledge - at least to those people who hung around the imperial court (which I'm guessing is the sort of person Mariel was/is). People will always keep an eye on what the leader is doing, and what matters have been brought to his attention.