Before prestige TV was a thing that pop culture critics talked about, and well before most genre shows were serialized by default, Babylon 5 was changing the nature of TV in the 1990s. Remembered fondly by its fans today, B5 has several crucial turning points, some more famous than others. While most fans will point to various season finales or two-part episodes as major moments for the series (“Z'ha'dum” and “War Without End” come to mind), there are a few episodes that are sneakily pivotal.
Thirty years ago, one example of a game-changing B5 episode that recontextualized the entire show was Season 2’s “Divided Loyalties,” an episode that brutally changed the nature of one character and revealed a hidden truth about another.
Spoilers ahead.
During the week of October 11, 1995, Babylon 5 was deep into its second season, which, in retrospect, is probably a run of episodes that does more heavy lifting than anyone realized at the time. Taken together, Season 2 of Babylon 5 is known as “The Coming of the Shadows,” and that’s because much of what happens in his season sets up the full-on Shadow War of Season 3. And, the brilliance of the way B5 was plotted is that major shifts weren’t telegraphed out with too much obviousness, thus preserving genuine surprises for the viewers.
But, when it comes to the biggest twist in “Divided Loyalties,” the departure of one major character wasn’t always part of the original, grander, Babylon 5 plan.
The Babylon 5 Talia Winters Sleeper Agent Twist Wasn’t Planned
The premise of “Divided Loyalties” focuses on a hidden sleeper agent who has been placed on the space station by the Psi Corps to spy on and undermine various activities on Babylon 5. Relevantly, the majority of Season 2 had been, up until this point, all about various characters forming a secret coalition to combat growing corruption on Earth, but also to prepare for a bigger battle with an ancient enemy.
Since Season 1, the idea of the telepathic Psi Corps infused a kind of Gestapo organization into the mythos of Babylon 5. This government-backed telepath group was to be feared and not trusted. That said, since Season 1, resident commercial telepath, Talia Winters (Andrew Thompson), had been getting cozier and cozier with the crew. And, in “Divided Loyalties,” a low-key romantic relationship between her and Commander Ivanova (Claudia Christian) seems ready to become official. (Yes, Babylon 5 was way ahead of its time with queer romances in genre TV in the ‘90s.)
But, because Thompson wanted to leave Babylon 5 to pursue other TV roles (notably in NYPD Blue), she asked series creator J. Michael Straczynski to write her out. So if it seems that the revelation that Talia is an evil sleeper agent comes fast, that’s the reason why. As stated in many interviews and official Babylon 5 books, Straczynski had created “trap doors” for many of the characters, for the simple fact that sometimes actors leave TV shows. And in turning Talia from ally into villain, Babylon 5 took a very different turn.
Talia’s Turn In Babylon 5 Opened The Door For A Different Fan-Favorite Character
First seen in the Babylon 5 pilot in 1993, the telepath Lyta Alexander (Patricia Tallman) returned in “Divided Loyalties” as the harbinger of the bad news that someone on the station is a sleeper agent. Essentially, the episode presented the idea that B5’s first telepath had returned, and by the end of the episode, she was pointing the finger at the incumbent telepath. This space station wasn’t big enough for two regular actresses playing telepaths!
After Talia leaves the station in “Divided Loyalties,” Season 3 goes forward with Lyta as her quasi-replacement. And, from Season 3 to Season 5, Lyta becomes a major character, much more powerful and pivotal than Talia had ever been. And, unlike Talia, Lyta wasn’t a Psi Corps telepath working within the system, but instead, a rogue telepath who became critical to the direction of Babylon 5 in Season 3. In Season 2, the human characters are still working for EarthForce and the political system that governs Earth. But by the middle of Season 3, they’re all rejecting all of that, including the Earth-mandated telepathic regulation from Psi Corps.
Had Talia stayed as a regular character, this story would have unfolded much differently, and meant that the character of Ivanova wouldn’t have lost this potential love interest. In short, what was bad for the characters was good for the drama of the show. Babylon 5 remains one of the greatest sci-fi TV epics of all time, but it didn’t gain that reputation by giving us happy endings every week. Instead, the shock of losing Talia in “Divided Loyalties” demonstrated what B5 did best: Keep viewers worried.
