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Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Atonement”
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Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Atonement”
Delenn returns to Minbar to undergo “The Dreaming” and justify her choice of Sheridan…
By Keith R.A. DeCandido
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Published on November 3, 2025
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
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Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
“Atonement”Written by J. Michael StraczynskiDirected by Tony DowSeason 4, Episode 9Production episode 409Original air date: February 24, 1997
It was the dawn of the third age… Allan is being fitted for an Army of Light uniform by some Minbari tailors. Allan is reluctant to accept it, partly because the tailors keep poking him with pins, mainly because he is convinced that Garibaldi’s resignation is a temporary situation and he’ll eventually come back to the job.
A Minbari cruiser arrives carrying Callenn, the head of Delenn’s clan. She asks for one more day before they head back to Minbar, which Callenn grants her. Delenn then summons Sheridan to her quarters, greeting him while wearing a slinky black dress. She points out that they haven’t had much time alone lately and so suggests a dinner date—and also to finally have their third night of her watching him sleep to see his true face, as they never did get that done, what with him going to Z’ha’dum and dying and being resurrected and stuff….
Sheridan—mostly focused on how hot Delenn looks in the dress—agrees to all that, though he says he doesn’t really see the value of watching him drooling with his face mashed into a pillow…
She also tells him that the next day she has to go to Minbar to take care of some things, and she’s not sure when she’ll be back.
Sheridan meets with Franklin and Cole. With Clark’s propaganda campaign going full bore, B5 is losing credibility. They need to make a move against Earth, so Sheridan wants to start coordinating with the Mars Resistance. Sheridan would prefer to go himself to make the connection, but he’s too recognizable, and also the most wanted person in the Earth Alliance. He’s sending Franklin, who’s part of the senior staff, which will lend credibility, but not a prominent member of same. Cole is going along as his bodyguard. They need to take a roundabout route so it’ll take a few weeks to get there.
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Delenn watches Sheridan sleep, then goes toward the docking bay—only to be intercepted by Lennier, who insists on going with her. Delenn doesn’t want him to come along, as she fears that he’ll learn horrible things about her. But Lennier has pledged himself to her and won’t leave her side. So they go off to Minbar together.
On Minbar, Delenn’s clan meets, all wearing white robes. Callenn expresses the clan’s concerns: no Minbari has ever married an alien. This on top of her using the triluminary to make herself partly human. She committed both these actions without consulting the clan. She is therefore required to justify these decisions and abide by the clan’s final ruling, to which she agrees. She will also undergo the Dreaming, a process of seeing visions of one’s past that will reveal the truth behind their actions. Someone in the Dreaming can have a second to be a protector and guide, a job for which Lennier of course volunteers.
Delenn and Lennier both drink from a cup that apparently gives you shared hallucinations. They enter the Dreaming, and Delenn sees herself alongside Dukhat. She was a mere acolyte at this stage, and Delenn and Lennier see her being brought before the Grey Council, who have heard about humans from the Centauri. The Council believes that they should not contact the humans—the Worker Caste fears being weakened by more sources of food and artifacts, the Religious Caste fears alien beliefs being introduced to the Minbari, and the Warrior Caste don’t want anything to do with primitives. Dukhat disagrees, and asks Delenn to give a reason why they should make contact. Delenn says that the greatest enemy is the unknown, so doesn’t it behoove them to find out everything they can about humans?
Dukhat both congratulates and apologizes to her for putting her in that position, and for using her to make a point to the Grey Council. He then makes her his aide.
Jump to many years later, and Delenn is made a member of the Grey Council. When they bring the triluminary near her, it glows, which surprises everyone. Later Dukhat confirms that it doesn’t usually glow, and he starts to explain that he expected something like this and he chose Delenn for a reason. But before he can elaborate, there’s an alarm.
We see the first contact between human and Minbari. Dukhat fears that their approaching with gun ports open will be misinterpreted, but before he can give the order to close them, the human ships fire. Dukhat is killed in the ensuing conflagration, dying in Delenn’s arms while trying to tell her something. Morann, one of the Grey Council, approaches Delenn saying that the remaining eight members are deadlocked with regard to how to respond—four want to take vengeance for Dukhat’s death, four want to try a diplomatic solution. Overwhelmed by grief for her dead mentor, Delenn cries out to fight the humans and show no mercy. By the time Delenn comes to her senses and calms down, the war has taken on a life of its own and it can’t be stopped.
In the present, Lennier realizes that this is what Delenn was worried about him finding out. But he doesn’t condemn her or castigate her as she feared. Delenn now realizes she has spent the last ten years atoning for that moment of anguish that resulted in a brutal war that killed so many. She wonders if her engagement to Sheridan is part of that atonement—and even if it isn’t, will the clan see it that way and forbid her to marry him?
The Dreaming having ended, Delenn is instructed to meditate overnight and she will discuss it with the clan in the morning.
As she drifts off to sleep, Delenn realizes why the Dreaming showed her Dukhat’s death—he tried to tell her something before he died, but she has no memory of that, so stricken was she with grief. She and Lennier go back to the Dreaming, and when Callenn tries to stop her, she insists that he join her as well. The three of them see Dukhat’s death again, and hear what he actually said: that he picked her as his aide for a reason, because she is a child of Valen.
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Delenn sends Lennier to retrieve a specific Grey Council record. Lennier returns with the record in question, saying that the guards resisted him at first, but, “I managed to… explain matters to them. They will recover in time.”
It is a genealogy record he has recovered, and it shows that Delenn is one of many Minbari who is descended from Valen. But they know now that Valen was also the human Jeffrey Sinclair—which means that all of his descendants have human DNA. The triluminary glowed in Delenn’s presence because it was designed to glow in the presence of Sinclair’s DNA.
Callenn admits that he already knew all this. But they must keep the secret of the Minbari’s lack of genetic purity. Delenn angrily says that, if she’s already impure, who gives a crap who she marries? Callenn, however, has a more elegant solution that will allow everyone to save face. In the time before Valen, when clan fought clan, there was a tradition that the two sides of a conflict would, after peace was achieved, would have a wedding between the two formerly warring clans. Delenn can couch her engagement to Sheridan in those terms, with her wedding a marriage between the formerly warring “clans” of humans and Minbari.
Delenn and Lennier return to B5 and a very relieved Sheridan. Delenn says only that her affairs are in order and does not specify why she went home.
We cut to Franklin and Cole in the uncomfortable-looking hold of some ship or other, working their way very very slowly to Mars. Cole is opening and closing his staff as a nervous habit, and after Franklin tells him to stop, he offers to sing instead, and then breaks into “Model of a Modern Major-General” from The Pirates of Penzance.
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Franklin offers to try to find out what happened to Sheridan’s Dad, but Sheridan refuses. While they know the farm has burned down, Sheridan is fairly sure that they don’t actually have his father in custody, because if they did, they’d crow about it publicly. It’s safer if nobody inquires after him.
Ivanova is God. We first see Ivanova on her way to a Drazi religious festival. We next see her stumbling out of a transport tube, hair messed up, covered in glitter, and limping with a cane.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. When she’s made Dukhat’s aide, Delenn stands before him looking at the floor. Dukhat tells her to look up, which she says is disrespectful, but he says that if she constantly looks at the floor, she’ll be constantly bumping into things. It’s word-for-word the same as the exchange between Delenn and Lennier when the latter reported as her aide in “The Parliament of Dreams.”
Though it take a thousand years, we will be free. Franklin gives G’Kar a prosthetic eye. G’Kar is tickled by the fact that he will still be able to see through it, even if it’s not actually in his head.
We live for the one, we die for the one. It shouldn’t really surprise anyone that Marcus Cole is a fan of Gilbert & Sullivan…
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Delenn is able to stay engaged to Sheridan. And there was much rejoicing.
Welcome aboard. German actor Reiner Schöne makes his first of two appearances as Dukhat; he’ll return to the role in In the Beginning. Robin Atkin Downes makes his first appearance on the show, as Morann, a role he’ll also return to in In the Beginning; Downes will have the recurring role of Byron in season five. Brian Carpenter plays Callenn.
Trivial matters. The disastrous Earth-Minbari first contact with Dukhat’s death being the catalyst of the war after the misunderstanding about the meaning of gun ports being open was established in “Legacies.” We saw the human side of it in David McIntyre’s flashbacks in “A Late Delivery from Avalon.”
Valen was established as being a transformed and time-displaced Sinclair in “War Without End, Part 2.”
Delenn told Sheridan about the watch-the-dude-sleep-for-three-nights tradition among Minbari women considering a mate back in “Shadow Dancing.” Their second night of it was interrupted by Anna Sheridan at the end of that episode.
Ivanova made herself into “Green Leader” of the Drazi and settled their ancient conflict back in “The Geometry of Shadows,” which is probably why she got invited to their party and why she wore a green sash to it.
Jason Carter sang the first verse of “Model of a Modern Major-General” in one take, which ended with Richard Biggs screaming in agony. That take, and Biggs’ scream (and director Tony Dow saying “Cut!”) was played over the closing credits instead of the usual theme music.
This is the first time Mira Furlan has been in full Minbari makeup since the beginning of season two. She’ll be back in it for In the Beginning.
The movie Thirdspace takes place between the first two scenes of this episode, as it takes place after Allan started wearing the Army of Light uniform and after the Shadow War, but before B5 and Earth started formally fighting each other and before Franklin’s departure for Mars.
The echoes of all of our conversations. “When others do a foolish thing, you should tell them it is a foolish thing. They can still continue to do it, but at least the truth is where it needs to be.”
Dukhat imparting wisdom to Delenn and explaining why he had her speak before the Grey Council.
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Marcus, this is the kind of conversation that can only end in a gunshot.” One of the great dichotomies of the character of Delenn is that she’s this sweet, compassionate, friendly person who fights for the light and rails against the darkness—so it’s very easy to forget how manipulative and capricious and self-centered she can be. The very plot of this episode is prompted by her doing things she shouldn’t have done because she thinks it will be good for her: becoming part-human and agreeing to marry a human, both things she should never have done without at least consulting her clan.
And we find out the rather brutal revelation that the war was entirely her fault. Well, okay it’s partly the fault of the captain of the Prometheus who fired the shot, but it’s entirely on Delenn that the Minbar went for, in her own words, no mercy instead of trying to talk it out.
A big reason why this episode works so well is the excellent casting of Reiner Schöne as Dukhat. After hearing several times about what a great leader Dukhat was, and how devastating his loss was, the casting of the role was crucial to making this episode work—and, for that matter, to make the entire Earth-Minbari War work as a plot point. Schöne absolutely knocks it out of the park, giving us a truly charismatic leader.
Much credit also goes to Mira Furlan, especially for her portrayal of Delenn as a very young acolyte. She convincingly gives us Delenn at three very different points in her life, and as usual inhabits the complexity of the character with verve and style.
Some nice character bits floating around the Minbari stuff, too. Allan finally getting an Army of Light uniform is a welcome change, especially given how ill-fitting the new regular security outfits are. Ivanova going on a Drazi bender is a cute followup to the events of “The Geometry of Shadows,” and Cole tormenting Franklin with Gilbert & Sullivan is epic.
Next week: “Racing Mars”[end-mark]
The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “Atonement” appeared first on Reactor.
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