The Quality Of Mercy

All it takes to get into Ivanova’s pants is dinner and some flowers! I am so there! Franklin is B5’s answer to Captain James Tiberius Kirk, don’t you deny it. The man is a pimp in a world full of nutters, he is awesome. Speaking of Tiberius, I have every intention of attempting to name my first born son Tiberius. No doubt whatever woman agrees to marry me will shut this idea down, but a man can dream, can’t he? Also, never, ever make a Minbari mad or drunk.

Written By: J. Michael Straczynski
Directed By: Lorraine Senna Ferrara

Bare Essentials:

A Plot - Dr. Franklin is running an illegal free clinic in Down Below. His patient count is dwindling and he finds out that they are all turning to a disgraced doctor in the form of Laura Rosen who is offering them healing through an alien device. After initially dismissing her as a quack Franklin does come around to realize that she is legitimate and doing good. Convicted killer Karl Mueller holds Dr. Rosen and her daughter hostage in order to use the alien healing device. But Dr. Rosen turns the alien device around on Mueller and infects him with the Lake’s Syndrome that had been ravaging her body and kills him in the process. Following the incident she is forced to turn the alien device over to Dr. Franklin and she decides to leave the station.

B Plot - Karl Mueller is convicted of murder and sentenced to the death of personality. During his pre-mind wipe scan Talia Winters discovers that he has killed many more people than originally thought. Mueller escapes from security, but is wounded in the process. He takes Dr. Laura Rosen and her daughter Janice hostage in an attempt to use her alien healing device on himself but she turns the device around on him and kills him instead.

C Plot - Londo takes Lennier out to discover the seedier side of Babylon 5. Londo is Londo and keeps getting Lennier in trouble, resulting in a massive bar fight. Lennier takes the blame for the incident in order to help Londo save face.

More Arc, Less Arch:

The clinic in Down Below has a purpose beyond what is stated in this episode, that will be revealed in A Race Through Dark Places.

The alien device itself is a bit mysterious in its origin. Maybe it is from some unknown race but its writing does look a little bit like the Vorlon writing we will see in the episode Walkabout. Maybe it is of Vorlon origin.

The story of how Laura Rosen became addicted to stims and lost everything as a result is foreshadowing for what is to lay ahead in the life of Dr. Franklin for the next couple of seasons.

The alien healing device will have further implications in Revelations and Rising Star as well as a minor role in the novel Clark’s Law. However, based on what we know about EA and their thirst for new and alien technology I don’t find it plausible that knowing about it like they do they would allow it to stay in the hands of Franklin. This flies directly in the face of Infection for instance.

Who Are You? What Do Yo… Hey, I’m Asking The Questions Here!:

Why does Franklin tell Welch to have Garibaldi meet him in Rosen’s quarters in twenty minutes? If he suspects Mueller is there then he should have security arrive at the same time he does.

Idiosyncratic Musings:

The Quality Of Mercy doesn’t really take any stance on corporal punishment, although if pressed I would say it leans more towards corporal punishment in all forms being a bad thing. I don’t agree with that, but since the story really never address that, that is an issue for another time. However it does bring up the issue of death of personality as somehow more human than the death of the body. Some characters think this way while other characters view it as just as bad as the death of the body. Personally I would say it’s much worse. In the death of the body everything is erased, all that you are mentally and your physical shell as well. With death of personality all of your memories, thoughts, fears, feelings, your entire personality is erased and replaced with a new one. They kill off everything that you are and they also change who you are and force you to be a completely different person. That is a much worse punishment than merely killing a persons body in my mind.

I See What You Did There:

The death of personality is the future equivalent to the death of the body, or death penalty. A persons mind is wiped so that they are left with none of their original thoughts or personality. At that point a new personality and set of memories are programmed into the person and they live out the rest of their lives serving the public. The death of personality is handled by a machine, not by a telepath as some people have wrongly taken from this episode. The telepath is merely there to go in and get an image of the persons mind before they are mind wiped so that they can then scan them after the machine has wiped their mind and make sure the wipe was successful.

The alien healing device is an apparatus of unknown origins. It was first designed as a means of corporal punishment. Two people are hooked into the machine and it takes all the life energy of one person, killing them in the process. It transfers that life energy into the other individual hooked into the machine, healing whatever illnesses or ailments they may have. It can also be used in incremental doses wherein a small amount of life energy is taken from one individual and used to help treat the illness of the other individual, but no one is harmed under this usage.

Lake’s Syndrome is a terminal illness that consists of severe arthritis, blurred vision, intestinal pain, blood issues and probably a lot more.

Say It Again Mac:

Londo, “Touch this!”

Lennier, “From birth I was raised in the temple and studied the ways of the Religious Caste. Six months ago I came here. There is nothing else.”

This exchange between Londo and Sinclair is worth noting,

Londo, “Yes, and I am prepared to give you one Commander. As soon as the room stops spinning.”
Sinclair, “This station creates gravity by rotation, it never stops spinning.”
Londo, “You begin to see my problem.”

Lost In Translation:

Karl Mueller, “Stroke off!” If your characters can’t swear then try and make up a workable substitute at least.

It’s Your Cultural Imperative:

Under Earth Alliance law, spacing, the act of throwing someone out of an airlock without a space suit on, is reserved as a punishment only for the acts of mutiny or treason.

Telepathic scans appear to be completely inadmissible in an EA court. Since Mueller willingly submits to the scan all telepathic scans are inadmissible in court regardless of whether or not the person agrees to have one done. For some reason this violates the persons rights of due process, although it’s not clear in what way.

The Minbari suffer from psychotic impulses and violent, homicidal rages when exposed to alcohol.

Minbar has 97 different dialects and sub-tongues.

Centauri males have six tentacle like appendages as sexual organs that have tactile heads. They also closely resemble the appendages of the Na’ka’leen Feeder.

The alien at the poker table that accuses Londo of cheating is from an unknown alien race that is never seen before or after. Nothing is known about them except that they are biped, breathe an oxygen atmosphere, and have a pig like snout.

In Minbari culture it is an honor to help another save face.

We have seen Li the Centauri Goddess of passion before, but now we know that she has both female and male sexual organs.

I Think This Might Be Based On Something:

The title, The Quality Of Mercy, comes from the William Shakespeare play, The Merchant Of Venice.

You Look Mighty Familiar:

Constance Zimmer plays the young woman patient seeing Dr. Rosen for a hurt wrist. She has actually gone on to a relatively successful career in TV. She appeared as the recurring character Dana Gordon on Entourage. She was also Claire Simms for a bunch of episodes on Boston Legal and Sister Lilly Watters for a string of episodes on Joan Of Arcadia. She was the lead character of Penelope Barnes Barrington for the two seasons that Good Morning, Miami was around.

Mark Rolston, Karl Mueller, played Kuroda Lor-ehn on the episode Canamar and Captain Magh on the episode The Augments of Star Trek: Enterprise. He voiced Firefly in a couple of The New Adventures Of Batman episodes and he reprised the role for the episode, Only A Dream, Part 1 of Justice League. He was Donald Lucas for a series of episodes on Profiler. However he is most known as Pvt. Drake, the manly boyfriend of Pvt. Vasquez, in Aliens.

Kate McNeil, Janice Rosen, played Commander Collins in the Affliction episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. She also played Olivia Barrett Covington in an episode of Quantum Leap, The Leap Between The States – September 20, 1862.

June Lockhart was Alice Davidson for a couple of episodes of The Greatest American Hero. However her defining role was as Maureen Robinson in Lost In Space. Interestingly enough she played the mother of Will Robinson, or Bill Mumy, Lennier from this very episode. She was also in the horrendous 1998 movie version of Lost in Space as Principal Cartwright.

Casting Ahead:

David L. Crowley is back as Security Office Lou Welch.

Jim Norton makes his last appearance as Ombuds Wellington, but he will be back to play a couple more characters in the series.

Damian London makes his first appearance as the yet to be named Minister Virini of the Centauri. He will be back a bunch more times and he will always do a terrific job.

The Ombuds Have Decided:

The Quality Of Mercy is a good episode, but the problem is that it’s not an episode that grabs your attention at all. The plots work fine, the story is perfectly acceptable, there aren’t any cringe worthy moments, and it comes together rather nicely. However it does all this in a matter of fact fashion and the end product winds up being very plain and perfunctory as a result. It needed that little bit extra to pull me in and make me care more about what was happening. For instance the entire Mueller threatening the Rosen’s scenario never seems dire at all. There’s never a moment in that scene where I think, “Oh man, I wonder what will happen next?” It’s part acting and part writing as well as a little bit of tone and atmosphere, but the finished scene does little to entrap me into what is happening on the screen.

The scene with Franklin and Ivanova at the free clinic is an important one for Franklin. Up till this point in the series Franklin has come across as either abrasive or on the outside looking in at the group of Sinclair, Ivanova and Garibaldi. His exchange with Ivanova is a nice bit of friendly interaction that will begin the process of bringing him closer to that group and making him a more integral part of the show and it was deftly done.

I love the interactions between Londo and Lennier throughout the entire episode. Whether it is them interacting with each other or their interactions with the environment around them when they are near each other it is fantastic in its entirety. It all blends together very nicely to create a very funny buddy story.

I like that the Psi Corps has a sort of dress uniform for the scan of someone prior to a death of personality. It makes the process feel very formal, a lot like a funeral. Going off of that I really liked the way they shot Talia inside of Mueller’s mind. It came across very eerie and quietly psychotic. That type of setting always works better for me than the raving lunatic effect that you might also see in such a situation.

Londo’s tactile appendage actually works out very nicely. It isn’t overdone or overemphasized so that it ends up being cheesy. Instead it’s treated as a normal run of the mill thing for Londo and ends up being understated, but funny.

I’m ecstatic that this is the episode where Dr. Franklin is set up as the pimp of Babylon 5. Don’t get too attached Janice Rosen, you are going to be but one of many that will see Dr. Franklin’s inner sanctum only to be shown the door for a newer and better model shortly thereafter.

Like I said earlier, The Quality Of Mercy isn’t an episode that features a lot to complain about. There aren’t any major gaffes or any moments that take me out of the episode. It really is a well made episode that just happens to fail to resonate on any sort of emotional level with the viewer and that is what stops it from being better than it is.

Rating:

77/100

B-

Only one more episode of the first season of Babylon 5 to go. Trust me, Chrysalis is well worth the wait.

Cheers,
Bill

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