“Confessions and Lamentations”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Kevin G. Cremin
Season 2, Episode 18
Production episode 218
Original air date: May 24, 1995
It was the dawn of the third age… Ivanova informs Sheridan that a Markab ship is ten hours overdue. She requests permission to send a Starfury team out to find them. The subject of Keffer’s off-duty trips to figure out what the weird ship was he saw when he was rescuing the Cortez comes up. Sheridan tells Ivanova to put the kibosh on those trips.
Franklin is in the cabin of a Markab who died, along with a Markab doctor, Lazarenn, who is obviously an old friend and colleague of Franklin’s. Lazarenn is grumpy at Franklin’s presence, but Franklin needs to sign off on all death certificates on the station. Besides, this is the fourth Markab to die of allegedly natural causes in recent times. He wishes to do an autopsy on this Markab, just to be sure. Lazarenn very reluctantly agrees, not that he has a choice, as Franklin is still the chief medical officer here…
Delenn invites Sheridan to a Minbari meal in her quarters. This is a very big deal, as evidenced by the fact that Lennier has been preparing the meal for two straight days. The preparation is very rigid and specific, and if Lennier screws anything up, he has to start over. The food is also eaten at very specific times and in very specific sequence, and there are also pauses for meditation. During the last of those meditations, Sheridan falls asleep, and then is summoned to Bay 14, as Zeta Squadron has found and towed the Markab ship to B5, with all hands having apparently perished.
Lazarenn blocks Sheridan from entering the ship, saying it’s Markab property, but then a very pissed-off Franklin arrives. He autopsied the Markab, and then autopsied the other three who died of “natural causes” recently. They all suffered from a plague. Lazarenn sadly admits that Franklin is correct, and that it’s one hundred percent fatal and one hundred percent contagious.
As the dead bodies are unloaded off the ship, Lazarenn explains that he was explicitly ordered by his government not to discuss the plague, which is called Drafa. When Drafa first appeared on Markab, it wiped out a population that the mainstream of Markab society viewed as sinful. As a result, the disease itself has a stigma attached to it, that only those who were impure got it. So when it came back recently, people wouldn’t admit that they got it. Because of that taboo, and because medical personnel get no support from the government in trying to find a cure, it’s spreading like crazy.
Franklin calls a meeting of the senior staff and the medical staff. They need to screen every Markab on the station. They also need to find someone in the early stages. Drafa proceeds very quickly from infection to death, and they’ve had trouble tracing the pathology of the disease. Sheridan questions whether or not they should isolate the Markabs, but Franklin says no. If the disease is airborne, then isolating them won’t matter in the recycled atmosphere of B5, and it may cause it to spread far more quickly among the Markab if they’re all bunched up together. Garibaldi points out the security issue—the Markabs may need to be isolated for their own safety once word gets out that they’re all potential plague rats.
B5 is quarantined. This does not make anyone happy. Markab Ambassador Fashar accuses Sheridan of trying to show that the Markab on the station are impure. Sheridan’s assurances that they’re just trying to stop the plague fall on deaf ears. Fashar announces that all the Markabs are going to isolate so they can protect themselves from the plague, which is totally not how science works.
Then a pak’ma’ra is found dead. Franklin has now confirmed that the Drafa is airborne, and that it can jump species.
Delenn observes a Markab girl who seeks out and finds her father in the Zocalo, only to discover that her father is dead from the plague. She asks Sheridan for permission for her and Lennier to join the Markab in isolation, to give them comfort at a time when they’re mostly being treated poorly. They also accept that they may not survive. Sheridan reluctantly agrees.
No one on Franklin’s staff is willing to go into the isolab to perform the autopsy on the pak’ma’ra due to fear of infection. Then Lazarenn volunteers. It’s the least he can do after keeping Franklin the dark until it was too late, he knows Drafa better than anyone, and if he gets infected, then Franklin will finally have his full pathology to follow.
Violence against the Markab who didn’t go into the vault increases, with Garibaldi breaking up a near-lynching of one Markab.
Franklin is using stims to stay awake. Lazarenn warns him about the dangers, but Franklin can’t afford to take a break right now. The two of them discuss the similarities between Drafa and the Black Plague on Earth. Lazarenn also gets the disease, which prompts Franklin to start running tests. Also, the pak’ma’ra definitely has Drafa, so Franklin instructs his staff to find out what Markab and pak’ma’ra have in common.
Delenn re-encounters the girl she saw in the Zocalo, who is now looking for her mother, whom she has misplaced. Delenn sends Lennier to find her, though he has no good description, and the girl only knows her as “mother,” not by name. But he tries anyhow, and eventually succeeds—just in time for the girl to collapse.
Franklin is frustrated by the lack of any positive tests in his search for the cure. He finally finds it: both Markab (yellow cells) and pak’ma’ra (green cells) have specialized cells that produce neurochemicals needed for brain function. Drafa targets those cells, so the treatment is to stimulate growth of those cells to give the patient time to develop an immunity to the plague.
Unfortunately, it comes too late. The Markab in isolation are all dead. Delenn and Lennier exit the vault, devastated. And before long, ISN reports that the Markab have been wiped out by Drafa.
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan gamely attends the Minbari dinner, and manages to screw up pretty much everything in it, concluding with him falling asleep while allegedly meditating.
He also tells Keffer to stop looking for the ship he saw, probably because Sheridan now knows that it was likely a Shadow ship, and they’re trying to keep the fact that they know the Shadows are coming on the down-low.
Ivanova is God. Ivanova tells Keffer to stop his off-duty searches for the Shadow ship he saw in the jumpspace. Keffer gives her static about it, at which point Ivanova reminds him that she’s the commander, he’s the lieutenant, and his only response should’ve been “Yes, ma’am.”
The household god of frustration. When Garibaldi stops the people from beating up the Markab and sending them on their way, the victim reaches out for a hand up. Garibaldi hesitates just for a second, then grabs his hand and then supports the Markab all the way to medlab.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. The meal Delenn and Lennier prepare for Sheridan is extremely ritualized, and bears a resemblance to the Passover seder. There’s even an empty seat for Elijah—er, that is to say, Valen.
Delenn and Lennier stay with the isolated Markabs and get to watch them all die. Delenn tells the little girl a story of when she was lost in a big city when she was a child. Her parents found her then.
No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Before Delenn and Lennier go into the Markab isolation vault, Sheridan asks that, if they survive, that Delenn call him “John” moving forward. Afterward, a devastated Delenn collapses crying into Sheridan’s arms saying, “Oh, John.” (That last image is sufficiently powerful that it will be used in the opening credits of season three in a manner that makes it seems like she’s crying about the Shadow War.)
Welcome aboard. Jim Norton, who previously played Ombuds Wellington in “Grail” and “The Quality of Mercy,” pays Lazarenn. He’ll be back in “Dust to Dust” as a Narn. The delightfully named Bluejean Ashley Secrist plays the Markab girl, and Maggie Egan is back as the ISN reporter. Various other Markabs are played by Diane Adair, Michael McKenzie, and Kim Strauss.
Trivial matters. Keffer saw (and was damaged by) a Shadow ship while rescuing the Cortez in “A Distant Star.” Sheridan shared a human meal with Delenn in “A Race Through Dark Places.” Delenn and Kosh told Sheridan about the Shadows and why they need to keep their coming a secret in “In the Shadow of Z’ha’dum.”
The fact that an empty seat is kept for Valen at the meal Delenn and Lennier prepare for Sheridan is especially amusing in light of the forthcoming revelation in “War Without End, Part II” of Valen’s true identity.
Franklin’s reason for not using the Great Hit Point Rearranger from “The Quality of Mercy” and “Revelations” to help at least treat Lazarenn is left as an exercise for the viewer.
The similarity in name between the Markab and the Marcab Confederacy that is part of Scientology is purely coincidental. J. Michael Straczynski has said that he’d never heard of the latter until after this episode aired, and if he’d known about them sooner, he’d have changed the name of his species, as he loathes Scientology.
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“They’re in pain—frightened, dying. Minbari are taught that at such a time, the afflicted should be ministered to, comforted.”
“They’re not your own people, Delenn.”
“I did not realize similarity was required for the exercise of compassion.”
—Delenn making her case to enter the isolation zone and refuting Sheridan’s objection.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Choose whatever strategy makes least sense, then do it.” It’s always impressive, and a bit creepy, when a show that predates something major winds up commenting on it, whether it’s Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s “Homefront” / “Paradise Lost” being a colloquy on 9/11 even though it aired five years prior to it, or B5’s general commentary on the dangers of creeping fascism thirty years before, well, now.
And then we have this, and man is it weird watching this after living through 2020. Of course, it also hit hard in 1995, as there’s quite the allegory for the AIDS epidemic here, as well as for the Black Plague, which is right there in the script.
The basic theme is a good and powerful one: when there’s a disease, focus on the medicine. Because diseases don’t give a shit about your politics or your religion or your moral fibre or any of that nonsense. It acts completely indiscriminately, and you have to treat it thusly. If you don’t, you only make it worse.
Which is exactly what happens with the Markabs. The Sodom-and-Gomorrah-esque story of how Drafa got started has grown roots in their culture, and they focus way too much on the irrelevancies of politics and morality and religion, thus choking off the air supply to the medical research.
Hilariously, the end result is that you could argue that their lack of moral fibre did kill them all: their hubris led to their genocide.
On the one hand, I find it difficult to credit that the entire species was wiped out. They’re a space-faring people, and as Douglas Adams reminded us, space is big—really big. On the other hand, the allegory works much better this way: that the Markabs’ stubbornness and unwillingness to just let science do the work led to their complete elimination as a species.
As for the other stuff, while I like the concept of Delenn returning the favor of her and Lennier preparing a Minbari meal for Sheridan, the execution was a little too ha-ha-look-at-the-funny-aliens-and-their-rituals with Sheridan stumbling over everything. Especially since the dinner was so very much like a Passover seder. I would rather they went for Sheridan appreciating the nuances of another culture than having him go all ugly-American on us for laughs.
And hey, look, it’s Keffer! Showing up just long enough to remind us he’s there and continue to utterly fail to make us give a flying fig about him! Sigh.
Next week: “Divided Loyalties.”
