Born to the Purple

"Born to the Purple" is an episode from the first season of the science-fiction television series Babylon 5. This episode is named after the Greek word porphyrogennetos, referring to special birthright or privileged heritage, royal birth.

Synopsis

Sinclair is trying to negotiate a treaty between the Narn and Centauri over a disputed sector of space with help of telepath Talia Winters. While Narn ambassador G'kar cooperates freely, they have trouble drawing Centauri ambassador Mollari from his love interest, an exotic dancer named Adira Tyree. Unknown to them, Adira is a slave owned by Trakis who wants Adira to acquire Mollari's "purple files" that containing high-level information about the Centauri government. Adira is conflicted between her love for Mollari and Trakis' threats, and eventually tricks Mollari into drinking a sleeping agent that gives her time to learn his passwords and access the files. However, when she is scheduled to trade them to Trakis, she runs and flees instead.

Trakis approaches Mollari instead and convinces him that Adira was working against him, as well as showing him her ownership papers. Feeling scorned, Mollari continues to put off the negotiations to look for Adira. Sinclair, knowing that successfully completing these negotiations means as much for Earth as they do for Narn and Centauri, he convinces Mollari to accept his help to search for Adira in exchange for agreeing to his terms. Meanwhile, Trakis hires criminal help aboard the station to track down Adira, with orders to attack Sinclair and Mollari should they interfere. These men attack Sinclair and Mollari, but soon are called off as Adira has been found by Trakis. Sinclair gets an idea, and with G'kar and Talia's help, tricks Trakis into revealing where he has kept Adira on the station. Mollari acquires Adira's ownership papers from Trakis and gives them to her. Mollari attempts to convince her to stay aboard Babylon 5 since the threat has passed, but she will wants to return to a Centarui world.

Meanwhile, Garabaldi discovers someone is using the high-priority secure gold channel to make external communications from the station, something that should only be authorized by Sinclair. He approaches Ivanova about it, and she suggests it might be the work of "gremlins". After several failed attempts, each which has Ivanova suggesting Garabaldi look elsewhere, he manages to catch the channel being used again, and finds that it is Ivanova herself, speaking with her terminally-ill father, his last call apologizing for being a bad father to her and making up to her before he dies. Garabaldi reports to Ivanova that he found the source of the gold channel use as a computer glitch and dealt with it, but offers to buy her a drink later.

Arc significance

• Introduces Adira Tyree. Adira Tyree's "almost" return to Babylon 5^[1] is a major plot point in the third-season episode "Interludes and Examinations", and she also returns briefly in the episode "Day of the Dead" in the fifth season.
• The scene with Ivanova's father explains some of her personal history^[2] and is significant to her character arc.^[3] His death comes back to haunt her in the later season one episode "TKO".
• Mollari admits to Adira that he has been in love many times and hurt many times. This is foreshadowing of his three current (unhappy) marriages and the previous marriage - coincidentally, to another dancer - that his family had annulled due to it being "beneath his station".
• The affair between Mollari and Adira is treated as a semi-scandalous one, being between a member of a Great House and a common slave. This is pointed out in the instances where Adira takes pleasure in using Londo's title, even in bed, and later being embarrassed at the thought of being seen in public, due to the harm it could cause Londo's reputation. This establishes the striated nature of the Centauri class system and how it will play into future episodes.
• This episode introduces G'Kar's new aide, Ko'Dath, played by Mary Woronov. In "The Parliament of Dreams", it is revealed that she was killed in an "airlock accident".
• The underlying activity in the council chambers concerns the Euphrates Treaty, one of Sinclair's greatest diplomatic triumphs during his tenure as the station's commander. The subject of the treaty and the negotiations involved would appear in later episodes. This treaty would later serve as a building block for the Babylon Treaty.

References

See also

• Porphyrogenitus

External links

• Born to the Purple at The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5