SUMMARY: Jason Ironheart, a fugitive from the Psi Corps, arrives on Babylon 5.
He is a gifted telepath who was the subject of a
psychological experiment to expand the limits of psychic powers with special drugs and therapy. Two Psi-Cops, Mr. Bester and Ms. Kelsey, searching for Ironheart, arrive
soon after and demand that Commander Sinclair and
Garibaldi help them find him. They believe Ironheart
intends to reveal military secrets to Earth's alien enemies.
Eluding their search, Ironheart hides among the crowded Babylon 5 populace and confronts his trusted former lover and Psi Corps pupil, Talia Winters.
He tells her that after months of painful genetic surgery and injections, he mutated to the point where he can destroy molecular matter with his thought waves. Since the Psi-Cops can't control him, they want to dissect him, learn the chemical composition of his superpowers and use it as a military weapon.
Ironheart asks Talia to help him escape in a shuttle craft before he loses control of his volatile impulses and involuntarily destroys the entire space station.
Meanwhile, Catherine Sakai, is hired by an industrial company from Earth to find a rare mineral on the planet Sigma 957, an uninhabitable world in a far corner of the galaxy controlled by the Narn Regime.
When Catherine asks Ambassador G'Kar for permission to survey the planet, he warns her not to go into that ominous
sector of space. She defies him and departs in an exploratory vehicle while G'Kar orders two Narn fighters to pursue her.
Approaching Sigma 957, Catherine's vehicle is suddenly dwarfed by an enormous alien spacecraft. When it disappears in a blinding light, Catherine's incapacitated vehicle falls into a collision orbit with the planet.
Luckily, the fighters arrive to rescue her. G'Kar explains to Catherine that for millions of years, his people have avoided Sigma 957 because of the unexplainable events that frequently occur there, analogous to an ant trying to explain the intrusion of a human fingertip into its nest.
Back on Babylon 5, Ironheart's uncontrollable psychic waves begin to turn the living space around him into a self-destructive fourth dimension, destroying a corridor of the station. He uses his remaining strength to allow Talia and Sinclair near him to convince them of the danger of his
constantly mutating mind power to negotiate his escape from Babylon 5.
Ironheart easily deflects the Psi-Cops' attempt to capture him as he's led to a shuttle craft and ejected into space by himself.
As the crew watches, Ironheart's craft transforms into a benevolent humanoid apparition, bigger than Babylon 5 itself.
In a final gesture of grateful love, Ironheart gives Talia
the telekinetic mind power that she's always dreamed of possessing, then dissolves into the molecular fabric of the universe to experience the next stage of his psychic mutation.

BRASH REFLECTIONS:
WARNING! Voyager fans should steer clear of this one. Why? Well, many Trekkies have accused B5 of ripping off Trek. Well, if you pay attention, you'd realize that it's the other way around. I refer you to the VOY episode The Gift, aired in mid-1997. This episode came on the air in 1994. So remember this. That Voyager episode was a blatant rip-off of Mind War.

Don't you just love to hate Bester? Hell, the Psi-Corp in general!

I liked Ironheart's gift to Talia but what I wanna know is why she never really used it again throughout the series other than to move that silly penny again!

J. Michael Straczynski has said in the Season by Season episode guide books that Talia's powers would have continued development had Andrea Thompson stayed with the show later on. Ms. Thompson left due to the little character development that was occuring, but J.M.S. had planned to show off more and better powers in future episodes. Too bad, huh?

Kesley and Bester ask Sinclar to get Talia Security and the rest of the command staff to have a meeting to discuss the situation.

Well Talia and Susan were there so

Whatever happened to Mr. Garbaldi

Notice from the time she's in Sinclair's office to when she meets Ironheart, the shade of Talia's lipstick changes.

Have you ever met a person with the surname Ironheart?

It was nice to see Walter Koenig play someone so dark, so utterly unlike the slightly goofy Mr Chekov. He doesn't need big sweeping arm gestures or booming speeches, just subtle mild expressions can do it all for him.

It just goes to show how subtle true evil can be, and how true evil can sometimes be not so true.

Ruminations

- Bester is rather creepy. Not so much immoral, but amoral as the borg queen was/is.

- This episode brings up several future plot lines or teasers.

1. The first ones at Sigma 957
2. The psi corp controlling the shots in the government


- This episode also has similarities to the TNG Transfigurations

In the end, G'kar talks about ants and the great unknown. In that scene, we see, well an ant. However, wouldn't that be registered during the 48 hold on all organic materials?

In the end, G'kar talks about ants and the great unknown. In that scene, we see, well an ant. However, wouldn't that be registered during the 48 hold on all organic materials?

During the talk in question it is noted that they do try and keep ants off B5, but they keep getting onto the station. Its probably safe to assume that even in 2151 there are limitations to what things they can prevent from being moved onto the station while also keeping trade open.

We also know that the inner core of the station contains a lot of green plants - both for oxygen production and for some food production - which requires a lot of soil. It is possible that ants were in the soil when it was placed on the station (there is a huge amount of soil). In which case they may be native to the station rather than immigrants.

well, if ants have made it onboard... I'd hate to think of what kind of roach problem they have in down below...

This was the first episode that I had developed a vested interest in while watching it.

I enjoyed the two bits of humor with Garibaldi and telepaths (first with Talia in the elevator, and then the parting shot with Bester as he left CNC), and Walter Koenig and Felicity Waterman did a great job of presenting the Psi Corps as the jack-booted fascists of the future that you love to hate.

It wasn't the greatest episode of TV I've seen, but it had me invested on an emotional level with what happened next, and that included both the Psi Corps story and the tension of Catherine's plight over that Narn world.

Interestingly, the ending, in which Ironheart transformed into a noncorporeal being, immediately reminded me of Transfigurations(TNG), in which a man with psychic powers was pursued by his own people, as he slowly mutated into a noncorporeal being giving off a bright light.

Brian Webber: Many Trekkies have accused B5 of ripping off Trek. Well, if you pay attention, you'd realize that it's the other way around. I refer you to the VOY episode The Gift, aired in mid-1997. This episode came on the air in 1994. So remember this. That Voyager episode was a blatant rip-off of Mind War.
Luigi Novi: Only if you assume that the writers of The Gift necessarily saw this episode, and could not have come up with the concept without doing so. Given that there's little in this episode, and in modern fiction in general, that is not derived from basic archetypes, this seems like an unsupportable assertion. What's interesting about this is that by the end of the episode, I immediately thought that it was very similar to Transfigurations(TNG), which aired four years before this episode, and was a lot closer to this episode, since it involved a man (not a woman), plagued by a slow, painful mutation (which Kes did not experience), as he was pursued by his own people (something not in The Gift). Using the same reasoning, a far better argument could be made that JMS "ripped off" Transfigurations.

It starts to get better from here on...well apart from TKO which is probably the only episode I can think of you can miss without feeling bad.