Column Babylon 5 Rewatch Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Meditations on the Abyss” Lennier is sent on a secret mission, and Vir learns that he is the new Centauri ambassador to Babylon 5… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on June 1, 2026 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “Meditations on the Abyss”Written by J. Michael StaczynskiDirected by Michael VejarSeason 5, Episode 14Production episode 515Original air date: May 27, 1998 It was the dawn of the third age… Delenn’s insomnia is interrupted by a signal from Lennier. She waits for him in a nightclub in downbelow, pausing to break the finger of a guy hitting on her while she waits. Delenn has summoned Lennier back to B5 in secret for a mission so clandestine only the two of them know about it—she hasn’t even told Sheridan of it. They need evidence of the Centauri’s responsibility for the attacks on cargo ships, and she wants Lennier to find it. The secrecy is to avoid leaks. His cover will be an assignment to White Star 27 for a training mission, as they’re detached to the Centauri border. Vir arrives in Mollari’s quarters with a huge bag of groceries. Mollari’s bug detector finds a listening device attached to the bag he got from the Drazi fruit merchant. After saying some pointed words about the Drazi ambassador’s wife’s sexual prowess before destroying the bug, Mollari informs Vir that, when Mollari is made emperor, Vir will be the new Centauri ambassador to B5. Lennier reports to Captain Enrique Montoya on White Star 27, which Montoya has rechristened Maria after his late sister. Lennier meets his fellow trainee, Findell, who has nothing but praise for Montoya. On B5, the Drazi ambassador crankily reports another attack on their ships, and they have a hypothesis as to who’s responsible, and that it’s someone important in the IA. Sheridan says that they’re waiting for proof, not conjecture, but they are leaving no stone unturned. Mollari shows up and makes some snotty remarks to the Drazi ambassador, then leaves in a huff. On Maria, Montoya assigns Lennier and Findell a mission: to take two fighters and scout the area. They do so, and both trainees are rather shocked to see that they only have an hour of air left—they both checked the tanks before disembarking, and they read full, but now they don’t. And right after that, Maria jumps into hyperspace. They are, in a word, fucked unless Maria returns in the next hour. Lennier recommends that they both go into meditative trances to slow their breathing and heartbeats to make the air last longer. Findell proves not very good at that… Credit: Warner Bros. Television On B5, G’Kar’s Narn prosthetic eye has finally shown up, and Franklin installs it. G’Kar is thrilled to see two red eyes looking back at him in the mirror. Franklin also asks if he can sit in on one of G’Kar’s discussions—as a Foundationist, he’s always interested in new viewpoints on religion. G’Kar agrees, though he doesn’t think Franklin will get much out of it—mostly because G’Kar himself is only doing these sessions reluctantly. At that session, G’Kar answers a rather stupid question—“What is truth? What is God?”—with a complex answer involving lights shining on walls and such. It’s a nice little metaphor for life’s struggles—and then the guy asks again, “What is truth? What is God?” G’Kar gives a simplistic nonsense answer that’s right out of the Vorlon playback for cryptic and annoying answers to questions, and then people are all satisfied. G’Kar and Franklin exchange a glance of mutual amusement and frustration. Maria returns before the hour is up. Lennier did the right thing; Findell panicked. Montoya debriefs them, making it clear that Lennier was the one who succeeded in the mission. On B5, Vir confronts the fruit vendor, who brushes Vir off, saying he’s known far and wide as being weak and spineless. Vir seemingly slinks off, but then returns to Mollari’s quarters, grabs a sword, and returns to the Zocalo and starts angrily trashing the fruit stand. Mollari follows and watches, declaring to a gobsmacked Allan that now Vir is ready to be ambassador. On Maria, Montoya has a new training mission for Lennier, Findell, and two other trainees: an Easter egg hunt. They have to go into an asteroid field and each find ten beacons that have been hidden throughout it. However, there are only 39 beacons, so someone is going to fail. Findell then confides in Lennier that he never wanted to be a Ranger, but he joined up because two of his family members were Rangers, and they died in the Shadow War. Lennier points out that that’s a really bad reason to join the Rangers—you should do it because you want to, not because you feel obligated to. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The Easter egg hunt starts, but Findell starts to lose it. Lennier realizes that he’s set a course to crash into one of the asteroids. He tries talking Findell out of it on a private channel, but Findell is determined. Lennier overrides the targeting system and manually fires on Findell’s fighter to knock him off course. Back on Maria, Lennier concocts a bullshit story about equipment failure to protect Findell. Montoya declares Lennier a failure in the mission and gives Findell a neutral grade, as he didn’t get to finish the assignment. He also has decided that Findell’s best place to be is in recruitment—it will be his job to make sure that all new recruits really really want to be Rangers. After Findell goes off, Montoya privately thanks Lennier for what he did and also reminds him that White Stars can listen in on any communication between fighters, even “private” channels. Sheridan, Delenn, Allan, and Franklin share a meal. Allan tells the story of Vir’s going medieval on the fruit vendor, and how Mollari was like a proud father watching it. Sheridan says he’s almost sorry Mollari found the bug, but Delenn doesn’t think that Mollari has anything to do with this. Most likely it’s the Regent and/or other members of the court. There’s also an empty seat at the table, which was supposed to be for Garibaldi. We cut to his quarters to see him very very drunk, singing “Show Me the Way to Go Home” and ordering a pizza. The household god of frustration. Garibaldi got a coffee cup stain on G’Kar’s manuscript. Because Narn tradition is that all copies of a book are facsimiles of the original manuscript, there’s a brown circle on one page of every copy of The Book of G’Kar. Also, Garibaldi’s now getting seriously drunk. If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Delenn’s plan to get information about the Centauri without any leaks is to make use of Lenner’s dedication. In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Vir is now in line to take over as ambassador. Considering he’s already been Centauri ambassador to Minbar, this isn’t really a big stretch, but whatever. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Though it take a thousand years, we will be free. Narns are apparently like humans in that they prefer short pithy platitudes to philosophical musings. We live for the one, we die for the one. Ranger training can be really really mean… Looking ahead. Lennier mentions the prophecy he got from Morden’s ghost that he’d betray the Rangers. Delenn finds that impossible to credit. She’ll be proven wrong, and Morden right, before too long. No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. It is very obvious that, when Delenn meets Lennier secretly without Sheridan even knowing about it, that he thinks it might possibly be a booty call, and he’s obviously very disappointed to realize that it’s “just” a Ranger mission. Welcome aboard. Richard Yniguez makes the first of two appearances as Montoya; he’ll be back next time in “Darkness Ascending.” Ron Campbell is back from “Rumors, Bargains, and Lies” as the Drazi ambassador; he’ll next be seen in the movie A Call to Arms. Martin East plays Findell, Mark Hendrickson plays the clueless Narn, and the late Carl Ciarfalio—who played the Thing in the never-released Roger Corman-produced 1994 Fantastic Four film—plays the Drazi fruit vendor. Trivial matters. Franklin was established as being a Foundationist in “In the Shadow of Z’ha’dum.” The Book of G’Kar was established as a publishing sensation, and G’Kar revered as a prophet of sorts, in “The Ragged Edge.” G’Kar’s eye was removed by Cartagia at the end of “Falling Toward Apotheosis.” Lennier left B5 to join the Rangers in “The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari.” He met Morden’s ghost in “Day of the Dead.” Garibaldi got back on the proverbial wagon in “Phoenix Rising.” The echoes of all of our conversations. “I was beginning to wonder if you were going to make it, Lennier.” “I said that I would never leave you, that I would be here when you needed me most. Tell me what you want done. I will make it happen, no matter the cost.” —Delenn welcoming Lennier and Lennier overdoing it a bit. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Wanna finish our little conversation, spoo-for-brains?” In all honesty, this is the first episode in this rather dreary final season that really feels like an episode of Babylon 5. Now to be fair, for some of the prior episodes that didn’t so feel, that was a feature, not a bug—“A View from the Gallery,” “Day of the Dead,” “The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father”—but for the rest, things have just been off. Part of it is the lack of Ivanova; a big part of it is Byron sucking the air out of the room in every episode he was in. And the first episode after Byron’s welcome departure was the victim of poor directing. This one, though, just feels right. It helps that the guest casting, which has been a hit-or-miss proposition on this show since the beginning, absolutely nails it here. Richard Yniguez is brilliant as Montoya, whom J. Michael Straczynski writes superlatively as a teacher and mentor. He handles Lennier and Findell perfectly, and that entire storyline works very nicely. I especially like the compassionate solutions that both Lennier and Montoya employ, attempts to save a life and also save face for everyone. G’Kar’s exasperation with being a major religious figure continues to be a strong storyline, as he’s frustrated, not just by the fact that everyone wants to hear what he has to say, but that most of what he’s saying is going right over their heads. Both Andreas Katsulas and Richard Biggs—watching from the doorway—play it very well. (The shrugging smile Franklin gives G’Kar at the end speaks volumes.) Vir has had basically nothing to do since the end of the Shadow War, so it’s nice to see him have his crowning moment of awesome here. Having said all that, man these storylines are dragging. Part of it is the hangover from the balls-to-the-wall action of season four, but it feels like it’s taking forever to get through some of these plots. This is the third episode (after “Phoenix Rising” and “The Ragged Edge”) that has had Garibaldi’s drunkenness played like it’s a big revelation, without that thread moving at all. The cargo ship attacks feel like they’ve been going on for several ice ages without much forward movement, and I’m pretty much at the “get on with it!” phase with a lot of it. Next week: “Darkness Ascending.”[end-mark] The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “Meditations on the Abyss” appeared first on Reactor.