Babylon 5 Season 2, Episode 19. Written by
J. Michael Straczynski, directed by
Jesus Trevino. Originally aired on
October 11, 1995.
Primary Plot: B5's first
telepath,
Lyta Alexander, returns to warn them that one of the officers on station is a
spy.
Secondary Plot: Ivanova reveals that she is a latent telepath.
Commentary: Pretty neat not because of the episode itself, but all the stuff
behind the scenes that lead to it being made:
Andrea Thompson, who plays
Talia Winters, was not really getting along with JMS and the other cast members. She felt that every episode she had a part in should've been entirely about
her, which is entirely opposite from the whole point of having an
ensemble cast. And so, JMS got fed up with it and simply wrote her off the show (exposing Talia as the
spy) even though she was an integral part of the story arc.
Never piss off the writer.
It's also neat to see what Lyta's been up to since the
pilot episode. In most normal shows, cast changes after the pilot are usually just swept under the rug and never mentioned. On B5, everything is explained pretty thoroughly, and reasonably as well--it was a pretty amazing coincidence that the only two people to see
Kosh outside his
encounter suit,
Dr. Kyle and
Lyta Alexander, were the two cast members to leave after the pilot. JMS uses that coincidence to his advantage, putting it forth that both were recalled to Earth under "mysterious circumstances" less than a week after that incident, presumably so that
EarthForce intelligence could try to figure out exactly what they saw.
Return to the
Babylon 5 Episode Guide.