SUMMARY: Dr. Franklin examines Shon, the young child of a visiting alien family. He tell the parents, M'ola and Tharg, that a simple operation is needed to remove a blockage from Shon's throat. However, the family's ancient religion dictates that any puncture of the body allows the spirit to escape, leaving a carcass that can't be redeemed by their God. Dr. Franklin insists that Shon will die without the procedure, but they refuse to give the doctor permission to operate.
Furious that the child will die because of an alien superstition, Dr. Franklin files an official complaint with Commander Sinclair. By the laws of the Earth Alliance, he asks Sinclair to overrule the aliens' parental authority and approve the operation.
Fearing that Sinclair will decide in favor of Dr. Franklin, M'ola and Tharg asks the four alien ambassadors to plead their case before Babylon 5's
security council and prevent Dr. Franklin from disobeying their religious belief. G'Kar, Londo, Delenn, and Kosh, all refuse to get involved with the politically sensitive moral dilemma.
After learning how devoutly the alien family believes in the body's purity, Sinclair realizes that defying their faith would contradict Babylon 5's humanitarian mission to be a peaceful galactic oasis that respects the unique rights of every alien race. He forbids Dr. Franklin to operate on Shon.
After M'ola and Tharg say a final good-bye to their dying child, Dr. Franklin and his assistant, Dr. Maya Hernandez, risk their careers by performing the operation. Obeying their medical ethics, they're convinced that once the aliens see their child alive and healthy, they'll realize the error of their superstitious judgment.
Even though Shon recovers completely, when M'ola and Tharg see his neck incision, they curse him as an undead thing without a soul. Shon allows them to destroy his body in a sacrificial ritual. M'ola and Tharg concede that Dr. Franklin was obeying his own morality but can't forgive his desecration of their child.
Dr. Franklin realizes that the multi-cultural galaxy
is filled with many different definitions of morality. He'll forever be haunted by the ordeal of Shon's struggle between life and death.
BRASH REFLECTIONS: This episode is really deep and religous. Being agnostic, you can see why it's not one of my favorites.
My thoughts:
This episode's plot is extremely reminiscent of the recent conjoined twins case in England.
Doesn't it seem that by this point in the future there would be a less invasive procedure that could clear the blockage without surgery?
I can't help but feel that Commander Sinclair should have given Dr Hernandez a whupping too. After all, she participated in this business - and she disobeyed orders too. The overreaching 'don't' from Sinclair, and Dr Franklin when he told her to leave the medlab. But when she links in later during Sinclair chewing out Franklin, he barely even glares at her.
If the Asimov is in raider territory, why send only two Starfuries to escort it? Why not send a whole wing?
Ruminations
- Kosh's answer to the parents' plea hints at the fall of minor worlds during the shadow war.
- An interesting episode, not only regarding the religious belief itself, but also the power of the state to override those beliefs should they disagree with the accepted norm. This topic also happens quite a bit; parents believing that healing comes from God alone and so they do not treat the child. However, in the real life cases where the child dies because the parents do not seek treatment, the parents generally face charges of neglect among other things.
The other side of this is the killing of the shell. Could the parents be brought up on charges for doing that? While not exactly similar, it sort of reminds me of the whole idea of mercy killings. The parents did say that they ended the shell's life so that it wouldn't suffer.
Possible Nits
- what is in the industrial goo to make it glow? Having the word industrial in it makes it sound unsafe.
- Well, Stephen cut the child open, so will the father now kill the doctor?
- Did Susan destroy a fleet of raiders or did I miss a scene somewhere?
Wow. Good episode. Wasn't new territory, as Peter David's Deep Space Nine novel, The Siege, was published in May 1993, almost a year before this episode, and featured a B-plot that mirrored the events of this episode almost exactly. However, the successful operation was not followed by the parents' murder of the child, making this episode all the more shocking and powerful, and was better are driving home the point that even where one person is clearly right, forcing their point of view upon another can have tragic consequences.
- Did Susan destroy a fleet of raiders or did I miss a scene somewhere?
Per JMS Susan beat the raiders because her ship had longer range weapons than they did. Since Star furies are more maneuverable and can accelerate equally well forwards or backwards all she had to do was stay out of their weapons range and she could pick them off one by one.