My Opera"Mind War" (season 1, ep. 6)
Sunday, June 2, 2013 2:33:36 PM
LOTS of setup for later events here. Also, a lot of physics in this post. In a blog post describing an episode where a human becomes a living god, no less. Perhaps the timing could have been better, in retrospect. 
• Garibaldi’s aide appears (I think for the first time). And by sheer coincidence he is the first person Bester encounters on board the station. Hmm… Perhaps Bester did more on this visit than was shown on-screen?
• And here for the first time we see what a great good guy G’Kar makes. He has a huge soft spot for damsels in distress, apparently. Or just for damsels in general, I guess. Still, a great development at this stage, and a nice taste of what is to come.
• Ivanova giving Talia a glass of water after the scan was a nice detail. Common enemy and all that.
• How does the P-scale work, anyway? Is it logarithmic (i.e. is a P6 two or ten times stronger than a P5)? Or maybe it is just qualitative, as this page suggests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psi_Corps#The_P_scale
• How did Ironheart miss the extra personality? I can only assume he wanted to respect Talia’s privacy.
• The safety restraints on the core shuttle seen in the pilot are now gone. We know from the finale of season 2 that it is a low-G-area, but perhaps they sped up the rotation of the station a little more? Of course, that would make for some heavy gravity in Downbelow. There’s probably some analysis of B5’s rotation floating around (no pun intended) somewhere, so could look into how that works if I find a good source.
• Tachyon channels are apparently used for interstellar communications (like StellarCom), and tachyons are also mentioned in “Babylon Squared”. They are not an invention of the B5 universe, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon (One major problem: If Einstein was correct, you could use it to send information back in time. Actually, any information sent via faster-than-light particles would have to arrive before it is sent. But when you can do that to an entire space station, perhaps that isn’t really that much of an issue. )
• Who leads the Psi Corps, anyway? A normal or a telepath? A council?
• G’Kar belongs to the third circle of the Kha’Ri. I wonder if the circles denote rank or if it’s a term for some kind of subcommittee?
• It’s actually hard to tell what knocks Talia down in the final confrontation. Ironheart’s loss of focus or something Kelsey does? Either way, Ironheart seems surprised.
• Where would the energy that was “off the scale” as Ironheart transformed have come from? Accumulated vacuum energy over time? He certainly seems able to influence things on subatomic scales.
• “I will see you again in a million years.” Probably “you” as in humanity, and not Sinclair. Unless, you know, he was just being sarcastic. I think it takes about a million years for humanity to reach that stage (we’ll see when we get to the finale of season 4).
• Clearly there was another plan for Talia than her being the Psi Corps agent, but what was it? How much of that ended up being done by Lyta, keeping in mind that Talia only a tenuous connection to the Vorlons at the time she left? But perhaps that would have changed later on.
• The First Ones around Sigma 957 did use some pretty non-standard warp tech. The Shadows have their own variety, too. I wonder what the advantages/disadvantages are.
• Garibaldi’s aide appears (I think for the first time). And by sheer coincidence he is the first person Bester encounters on board the station. Hmm… Perhaps Bester did more on this visit than was shown on-screen?
• And here for the first time we see what a great good guy G’Kar makes. He has a huge soft spot for damsels in distress, apparently. Or just for damsels in general, I guess. Still, a great development at this stage, and a nice taste of what is to come.
• Ivanova giving Talia a glass of water after the scan was a nice detail. Common enemy and all that.
• How does the P-scale work, anyway? Is it logarithmic (i.e. is a P6 two or ten times stronger than a P5)? Or maybe it is just qualitative, as this page suggests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psi_Corps#The_P_scale
• How did Ironheart miss the extra personality? I can only assume he wanted to respect Talia’s privacy.
• The safety restraints on the core shuttle seen in the pilot are now gone. We know from the finale of season 2 that it is a low-G-area, but perhaps they sped up the rotation of the station a little more? Of course, that would make for some heavy gravity in Downbelow. There’s probably some analysis of B5’s rotation floating around (no pun intended) somewhere, so could look into how that works if I find a good source.
• Tachyon channels are apparently used for interstellar communications (like StellarCom), and tachyons are also mentioned in “Babylon Squared”. They are not an invention of the B5 universe, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon (One major problem: If Einstein was correct, you could use it to send information back in time. Actually, any information sent via faster-than-light particles would have to arrive before it is sent. But when you can do that to an entire space station, perhaps that isn’t really that much of an issue.
)• Who leads the Psi Corps, anyway? A normal or a telepath? A council?
• G’Kar belongs to the third circle of the Kha’Ri. I wonder if the circles denote rank or if it’s a term for some kind of subcommittee?
• It’s actually hard to tell what knocks Talia down in the final confrontation. Ironheart’s loss of focus or something Kelsey does? Either way, Ironheart seems surprised.
• Where would the energy that was “off the scale” as Ironheart transformed have come from? Accumulated vacuum energy over time? He certainly seems able to influence things on subatomic scales.
• “I will see you again in a million years.” Probably “you” as in humanity, and not Sinclair. Unless, you know, he was just being sarcastic. I think it takes about a million years for humanity to reach that stage (we’ll see when we get to the finale of season 4).
• Clearly there was another plan for Talia than her being the Psi Corps agent, but what was it? How much of that ended up being done by Lyta, keeping in mind that Talia only a tenuous connection to the Vorlons at the time she left? But perhaps that would have changed later on.
• The First Ones around Sigma 957 did use some pretty non-standard warp tech. The Shadows have their own variety, too. I wonder what the advantages/disadvantages are.
