B5: Born to the Purple

This week on Babylon 5, Londo falls for a slave girl who turns out to be after more than his sideways mohawk. I'm pretty sure that every single sci-fi show has this exact story at some point during their run, and well, I'm personally sick of it. The plot is very poor excuse to try to usher in some character development by having a character be seduced by someone who seems nice at first, but has an unseen evil side. All you need to do is change a few words to fit the context and the story is the same. For example:

Star Trek Voyager, "The Disease": Harry Kim gets seduced into forbidden sex with an alien and contracts an STD.

Lost, "Stranger in a Strange Land": Jack sleeps with a woman in Thailand and gets in trouble over a tattoo she gives him.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Game": Riker is given a "game" by a woman on Risa that brainwashes the entire Enterprise crew.

So, although the intentions of the women in these episodes may differ, the story is almost always predictable. It sometimes works, but this is not the kind of story I want to see in a show that's supposed to be about humans desperately trying to make peace with interplanetary powers.

"I told you, world 8-3 is impossible."

Now, back to the show. There is really not much to say about the A plot. As said before, Londo falls for a girl who turns out to be a slave working for some evil dude who wants him out of the picture. Londo eventually figures this out, denies it for a bit, and the rest of the episode follows the formula we've already seen. Namely, "Let's go find the evil guy hiding somewhere on the station." Most of the humor is worthy of a smile at best, such as the joke where the ambassadors in the council room are playing some future version of a gameboy while waiting for Londo to arrive. It was funny, however, when Talia found out where Adira, the slave, was by telling the evil guy not to think of her location. She should use that tactic every time someone is concealing something.

There isn't too much to say for the B plot, either. Garibaldi is looking for a comm signal that seems to appear and then disappear, which Ivanova refers to as a gremlin. After trying time and time again, he eventually tracks it to none other than...Ivanova herself. Apparently her father that we didn't know about before is dying, and we learn a little about her history.

"Finally, a chance to cut this ridiculous hair off."

But do we care at this point? Not at all, because the episode is almost over, and this was a subplot. This one was a slight improvement over the previous episode, but really only because I could tell it was trying to develop its characters a bit without bringing on boring guest stars like the soul hunter.

Score: 3

Best Quote: "You have kissed far worse things in your time, Mollari."

Best Moment: The computer calls Londo's personal files "purple files".

Best Race: Narn. G'Kar has some cool scenes.