"The Parliament of Dreams" is the fifth episode of the first season of the science fiction television series, Babylon 5. It covers an attempt to assassinate the Narn ambassador G'Kar, and the station crew's hosting of a week-long festival of religious traditions of different races, organized by the Earth Alliance.
The Babylon 5 makeup team won an Emmy Award for the special alien prosthetic design for this episode.
Title
The original title of the episode was "Carnival", being later changed to "The Parliament of Dreams". The title refers to the festival of religious and cultural practices held on the station. Showrunner J. Michael Straczynski explained, "A parliament is a gathering of representatives, in this case the representatives of various belief systems; the dreams are the religions themselves."
Plot
The Earth Alliance arranges a week-long festival of religious and cultural exchange on Babylon 5. The Centauri celebrate with a lavish party, commemorating the victory of the Centauri over the other sentient life on their world, the Xon. At the end of each year, they look around and count how many of them survived and they celebrate their good fortune (rather than mourn those who have been killed). The Minbari host a session of prayers, a rebirth ceremony wherein the "old" self is "killed" and a new and better one is reborn.
A courier brings word to the Narn ambassador, G'Kar that an old political rival of his, Du'Rog, is arranging to have him assassinated. A paranoid G'Kar first suspects his new diplomatic attache, Na'Toth, but learns too late that the true assassin is the courier himself, the Thenta Makur member Tu'Pari. Shortly after, Tu'Pari begins subjecting G'Kar to a torture session mandated by terms of the assassination contract. Na'Toth discovers the assassin and intervenes, beating G'Kar in order to appear allied with Tu'Pari, but in actuality, deactivating the torture-inducing binds. G'Kar then easily captures Tu'Pari and then arranges for him to remain unconscious until his commission's deadline has passed, and depositing a large sum of money in his account to make it look like he was bribed into violating his commitment. Since the guild penalty for that is death, G'Kar and Na'Toth encourage him – with relish – to flee.
Jeffrey Sinclair meets an old flame, Catherine Sakai, and rekindles their on-off romantic relationship, before hosting a celebration of Earth religion in which he introduces the major station personnel to a line of people, all of different faiths (starting with an atheist)—the line extends some distance all the way to the final credits.
Production, visual and sound effects
Cast and filming
This episode featured two guest artists: Thomas Kopache played Narn assassin Tu'Pari, while Julia Nickson played the role of Catherine Sakai. Two regular characters, Lennier and Na'Toth, were also introduced.
Minbari diplomatic aide Lennier, was played by Bill Mumy, who as a child actor had played Will Robinson in the Lost in Space television series. Straczynski described his performance:
Narn diplomatic aide Na'Toth was played by actress and musician Julie Caitlin Brown. Following the departure from the series of Mary Woronov – the actress who had played G'Kar's previous aide, Ko'Dath – Susan Kellermann had been cast as Na'Toth. Kellerman withdrew after difficulties with the heavy alien prosthetics, throwing the filming schedule into disarray. Producer Douglas Netter got on the phone in an attempt to get a replacement actress, and by lunchtime of that day, he had secured Brown as a replacement.
Brown sat down with Straczynski, asking who the character was to him, and then came up with a portrayal to suit Na'Toth. The fighting scenes involving Na'Toth had already been filmed using a stunt double. However, Brown persuaded the production team to reshoot the sequences using her, instead of the double, saying that scenes filmed with a double result in a product where it can obviously be seen that it isn't the main actor. Brown got carried away during the sequences involving high kicks, and accidentally kicked the camera whilst filming.
The final scene where Sinclair introduces a long line of Earth people, followers of different religions, was filmed with 160 extras on October 16, 1993. Straczynski indicated that of the characters in the line, some extras were actually who they appeared to be, and some weren't. The actor playing the Jewish rabbi was actually a biker with tattoos all over his arms. Actor Michael O'Hare only had half an hour to memorise the list of names. As he was raised as a Catholic, he made the second one a Catholic priest with the name Father Chrisanti, named after his mother's maiden name. Vulich and Burrell had been contacted by Babylon 5 producer John Copeland, as they had known Ron Thornton, Babylon 5s visual effects designer, from their previous involvement with NewTek and Video Toaster.
Filming for the series began in the summer of 1993. The makeup team's schedule included custom make-ups for each episode, and producing face casts of actors for prosthetics which needed to be on camera in three days. Burrell wrote,
Reviews
Rowan Kaiser writes in The A.V. Club:
Kaiser writes that the final scene where Commander Sinclair introduces the alien ambassadors to hundreds of representatives of different Earth religions, is another demonstration of this transcendence and mystery, labelling it as "one of the most memorable of the series."