Episode 3.6: Dust to Dust
HOLY CRAP.
This is one of my very favorite episodes of the entire series. It tells its own story while also being an integral part of the larger arc. It has great performances from most of the cast and phenomenal performances from G'Kar, Bester, and even Londo. It has Vir, which is a couple of big bonus points by itself. It uses the main cast in ways that make sense and feel intimately tied to the plot, instead of shoehorning them in while focusing on somebody else. It bends morality and expediency back and forth until all the villains are heroes and all the heroes are villainous. And it has at least three moments of such incredible power you want to stand up and cheer. This is what an episode should be.
DUST TO DUST begins with a quick nod to the Nightwatch, just to remind us it's still around, and shows that Sheridan is throwing the full weight of his authority against them: if people want to display openly seditious propaganda, they can. This will surely come back to bite him, probably hard and probably soon, but it won't be in this episode. The Nightwatch reminder finished, we move straight into the real plot, and it's a doozy: Bester is on his way here, searching for a dangerous psychic threat. Garibaldi rolls his eyes and says "they're always looking for a threat, do they think we're gonna fall for that line again?" But then we cut immediately to a dangerous psychic lunatic and realize that Bester is 100% right. There is a psychic threat on the station, and it is a matter of state security, and literally everything we see Bester say and do is, in the end, accurate and well-meaning. This hearkens back to his very first appearance, in Season 1's MIND WAR, where he was slimy and underhanded but absolutely right about everything. This episode doubles down on that, making us hate him all the more while still showing that he is fighting tooth and nail for a good cause. His methods are shady as hell, but his goals are completely pure. This adds such incredible layering to his character, I want to clap my hands.
The psychic threat on the station, it turns out, is not an individual psychic but a psychic drug called Dust, capable of giving a person temporary telepathy. You experience another person's entire life, reliving all their memories, complete with a heightened version of the standard risks of psychic interaction: you can break a person's mind, knock them unconscious, and more. This means that Dust is not just a recreational drug with some nasty side effects, but an actual weapon, and better yet a weapon that is invisible, intangible, and leaves no trace. And who, asks Bester, might be in the market for such a weapon? The show is not interested in telling the story of this investigation--it has better things in mind--and thus cuts directly to a scene of G'Kar negotiating with a drug dealer to buy vast quantities of Dust. Narn have no psychics, but they do have the latent gene for it, and G'Kar thinks that with Dust he can give the resistance a chance to fight the Centauri occupation.
(This is not the story of an investigation, but it does include a very brief interrogation scene--not because we need to see Garibaldi being a cop, but because we need to see Bester being an underhanded scoundrel. They crew, fearing that he would read their minds without permission and thus discover their Secret Ranger Club, force him to take the same suppression meds that Ivanova's mom had to take back in the day. He thus goes through the episode without telepathic powers--which is important later--but he still pretends to have them during this interrogation. It's a cute spin on the classic "we already know you're guilty, so you may as well confess" tactic, and it works beautifully, and Garibaldi is grateful but accuses Bester of intimidation, which is HILARIOUS because Garibaldi's entire modus operandi is based on intimidation. Bester calls him on this immediately, and Garibaldi shuts up, and Bester is THE BEST.)
So they catch the dealers and get the Dust and think that all is well, but: G'Kar has already taken the drug. He's been trying to give the Narn psychic powers since the pilot movie, so of course he jumps on this train the instant it arrives. He wanders through the halls in a purple haze, hearing thoughts drift in and out of his mind, and eventually--not thinking clearly--ends up at Londo's place, where Londo and Vir are catching up on old times. G'Kar comes in, beats both of them senseless, and starts tearing through Londo's brain like a mobster tossing a house to look for money. He finds guilt, he finds Morden, he finds all kinds of damning evidence that Londo is deeply and personally responsible for the fall of Narn, and he's about to dig deeper and find the Shadows themselves when suddenly G'Kar snaps into his own mind, in his own past. We see him on a desolate plain, talking to his father strung up in a tree--presumably a victim of the previous Centauri occupation--and his father tries to convince him to turn the other cheek. It's a powerful scene, but it's nothing compared to the next one: G'Kar won't listen, and abruptly the scene changes: instead of a plain we're in an empty black nothingness, and instead of his father there's another Narn, nameless but wise, telling G'Kar that the only way out is peace. If they keep fighting, he says, no one will remember or care who started it, or who was right or wrong, because there will be no Narn or Centauri left and it won't matter. As this scene goes on we realize that this is no nameless Narn but G'Kwan himself, and indeed the scene ends with G'Kwon turning into a Vorlon-style angel and flying away. G'Kar's series-long conversion from duplicitous villain to religious leader is complete, and he instantly backs down from everything he was doing to Londo. He stops reading his mind, he goes to trial, he freely confesses everything and accepts his (remarkably light) punishment. The end of the episode sees him sitting in prison, thinking about what's happened and where he's going next, and we get a final little teaser from Bester: Dust was developed by the Psi-Corps itself, in an effort to activate latent psychic genes and thus create more psychics. This never worked on humans, alas, but it is STRONGLY hinted that G'Kar is now permanently psychic. And Bester has no idea, because the suppression drug is blocking his ability to sense it.
This episode was fantastic. The story was great, the dialogue was great, the performances were great. G'Kar hits it out of the park every time, of course, but Bester really shone as well. The dude playing G'Kwan was understated but perfect. Franklin and Ivanova, in their limited screen time, were fantastic. (Side note: Ivanova gets a funny line, which is pertinent to my review of the previous episode, but it works here because she delivers it straight, without wiggling her eyebrows and saying "yuk yuk yuk" the way Draal and Marcus did. She really is the strongest actor in the main human cast.) I love this episode and I can't say enough good about it.
This is one of my very favorite episodes of the entire series. It tells its own story while also being an integral part of the larger arc. It has great performances from most of the cast and phenomenal performances from G'Kar, Bester, and even Londo. It has Vir, which is a couple of big bonus points by itself. It uses the main cast in ways that make sense and feel intimately tied to the plot, instead of shoehorning them in while focusing on somebody else. It bends morality and expediency back and forth until all the villains are heroes and all the heroes are villainous. And it has at least three moments of such incredible power you want to stand up and cheer. This is what an episode should be.
DUST TO DUST begins with a quick nod to the Nightwatch, just to remind us it's still around, and shows that Sheridan is throwing the full weight of his authority against them: if people want to display openly seditious propaganda, they can. This will surely come back to bite him, probably hard and probably soon, but it won't be in this episode. The Nightwatch reminder finished, we move straight into the real plot, and it's a doozy: Bester is on his way here, searching for a dangerous psychic threat. Garibaldi rolls his eyes and says "they're always looking for a threat, do they think we're gonna fall for that line again?" But then we cut immediately to a dangerous psychic lunatic and realize that Bester is 100% right. There is a psychic threat on the station, and it is a matter of state security, and literally everything we see Bester say and do is, in the end, accurate and well-meaning. This hearkens back to his very first appearance, in Season 1's MIND WAR, where he was slimy and underhanded but absolutely right about everything. This episode doubles down on that, making us hate him all the more while still showing that he is fighting tooth and nail for a good cause. His methods are shady as hell, but his goals are completely pure. This adds such incredible layering to his character, I want to clap my hands.
The psychic threat on the station, it turns out, is not an individual psychic but a psychic drug called Dust, capable of giving a person temporary telepathy. You experience another person's entire life, reliving all their memories, complete with a heightened version of the standard risks of psychic interaction: you can break a person's mind, knock them unconscious, and more. This means that Dust is not just a recreational drug with some nasty side effects, but an actual weapon, and better yet a weapon that is invisible, intangible, and leaves no trace. And who, asks Bester, might be in the market for such a weapon? The show is not interested in telling the story of this investigation--it has better things in mind--and thus cuts directly to a scene of G'Kar negotiating with a drug dealer to buy vast quantities of Dust. Narn have no psychics, but they do have the latent gene for it, and G'Kar thinks that with Dust he can give the resistance a chance to fight the Centauri occupation.
(This is not the story of an investigation, but it does include a very brief interrogation scene--not because we need to see Garibaldi being a cop, but because we need to see Bester being an underhanded scoundrel. They crew, fearing that he would read their minds without permission and thus discover their Secret Ranger Club, force him to take the same suppression meds that Ivanova's mom had to take back in the day. He thus goes through the episode without telepathic powers--which is important later--but he still pretends to have them during this interrogation. It's a cute spin on the classic "we already know you're guilty, so you may as well confess" tactic, and it works beautifully, and Garibaldi is grateful but accuses Bester of intimidation, which is HILARIOUS because Garibaldi's entire modus operandi is based on intimidation. Bester calls him on this immediately, and Garibaldi shuts up, and Bester is THE BEST.)
So they catch the dealers and get the Dust and think that all is well, but: G'Kar has already taken the drug. He's been trying to give the Narn psychic powers since the pilot movie, so of course he jumps on this train the instant it arrives. He wanders through the halls in a purple haze, hearing thoughts drift in and out of his mind, and eventually--not thinking clearly--ends up at Londo's place, where Londo and Vir are catching up on old times. G'Kar comes in, beats both of them senseless, and starts tearing through Londo's brain like a mobster tossing a house to look for money. He finds guilt, he finds Morden, he finds all kinds of damning evidence that Londo is deeply and personally responsible for the fall of Narn, and he's about to dig deeper and find the Shadows themselves when suddenly G'Kar snaps into his own mind, in his own past. We see him on a desolate plain, talking to his father strung up in a tree--presumably a victim of the previous Centauri occupation--and his father tries to convince him to turn the other cheek. It's a powerful scene, but it's nothing compared to the next one: G'Kar won't listen, and abruptly the scene changes: instead of a plain we're in an empty black nothingness, and instead of his father there's another Narn, nameless but wise, telling G'Kar that the only way out is peace. If they keep fighting, he says, no one will remember or care who started it, or who was right or wrong, because there will be no Narn or Centauri left and it won't matter. As this scene goes on we realize that this is no nameless Narn but G'Kwan himself, and indeed the scene ends with G'Kwon turning into a Vorlon-style angel and flying away. G'Kar's series-long conversion from duplicitous villain to religious leader is complete, and he instantly backs down from everything he was doing to Londo. He stops reading his mind, he goes to trial, he freely confesses everything and accepts his (remarkably light) punishment. The end of the episode sees him sitting in prison, thinking about what's happened and where he's going next, and we get a final little teaser from Bester: Dust was developed by the Psi-Corps itself, in an effort to activate latent psychic genes and thus create more psychics. This never worked on humans, alas, but it is STRONGLY hinted that G'Kar is now permanently psychic. And Bester has no idea, because the suppression drug is blocking his ability to sense it.
This episode was fantastic. The story was great, the dialogue was great, the performances were great. G'Kar hits it out of the park every time, of course, but Bester really shone as well. The dude playing G'Kwan was understated but perfect. Franklin and Ivanova, in their limited screen time, were fantastic. (Side note: Ivanova gets a funny line, which is pertinent to my review of the previous episode, but it works here because she delivers it straight, without wiggling her eyebrows and saying "yuk yuk yuk" the way Draal and Marcus did. She really is the strongest actor in the main human cast.) I love this episode and I can't say enough good about it.
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