Garibaldi's arc is something that I think should have been spread out over a long span of episodes (sorry, Ajaxbreaker...), because probably the main thing that's leading to the widespread assumption that Garibaldi's somehow been brainwashed by PsiCorps is how quickly his outlook and behaviour have changed since he was brought back to B5.

See...Garibaldi has been depicted as prone to paranoia for his entire run on the series, pretty much. He's repeatedly been betrayed by people he thought he could trust - shot in the back by his second in command and nearly killed, had Talia turn out to be a sleeper agent (I know that wasn't her fault, but it really can't have helped), a decent chunk of his security team sold him out during the Night Watch arc, Londo becoming complicit in genocide - and his return to B5 came after he'd been abducted, imprisoned and interrogated, an experience which could easily have left him with unresolved trauma.

If Garibaldi's suspicion of Sheridan had developed over a longer period of time - especially if he fell off the wagon due to everything that happened during the end of season 3 and the start of season 4 - it honestly wouldn't be out of character for him. It COULD have just been Garibaldi starting to crack after everything he's been subjected to. But the way it's presented, he changes so much, so fast, that most of us assume "brainwashing" and don't buy it at all as a natural progression of his character, and I think that hurts this particular storyline.

If you were only wearing one weapon openly, you were probably hiding at least one other. Because Scotland.

And we've officially hit the point in the series where I can't remember which events happen in which episodes. Season 4 is so dense and so stuffed full of plot that, even though I've seen it before, and remember the overall story of the season, I can't tell you what happens where. I remembered Garibaldi and Sheridan coming to blows, Marcus and Franklin's fake marriage, Sheridan's less than relaxing holiday and the parasite infectee targeting the Martian resistance, but had completely forgotten that they all happened in the same episode.

If that's accurate, it wouldn't be the only seemingly-odd Minbari custom to be based on a real human tradition. The "open gun ports to show that you come in peace" gesture, for instance, has at least one precedent. Weapons were a part of traditional Scottish formal wear from the 17th century onwards (and some still are) because it was considered polite for guests to wear their weapons openly, as it showed that they weren't hiding anything - the same reasoning the Minbari have for the "open gun ports" tradition. If a guest appeared to be unarmed....well, it was 17th-century Scotland. EVERYONE was armed. If they looked like they weren't, it just meant that you couldn't see where they'd hidden their knives.

YOU <edit> could <edit> be in danger! Your household pets <edit> deliver propaganda!

A follow-up report from Alpharius asks a serious question: have the universities even indoctrinated your PETS? The answer may surprise you!

How (uncomfortably) spot-on is this episode?

It's apparently been shown in several journalism-related university courses to demonstrate how media can be manipulated and how careful editing can completely change how something comes across.

If it is Psi Corps brainwashing behind his behaviour, well, Talia kept passing up golden opportunities to endear herself to the command staff or access classified information because they would go against her principles, so there is a precedent for that.

"So…we won by telling Mommy and Daddy to please stop fighting, you're scaring the kids. Really? Oookay then. Not that it wasn’t interesting or compelling but it’s a bit anti-climatic after this big build up, and I'm not entirely convinced that all the Vorlons and Shadows needed was a stern talking-to, but eh. Whatever."

Well...the Shadows' philosophy and attitude has always struck me as "you can't tell me what to do, mum!", and the show has a running theme of "advanced aliens" being incredibly immature, for all their posturing, so...

"It looked to me like Londo did not expect to be named prime minister though. So this is how he’ll wind up positioned to become emperor."

He might've considered it as a possibility, but he certainly isn't happy about it. He mentioned in The Coming Of Shadows that he preferred to influence things from behind the scenes and stay away from the spotlight, to have power without the visibility of a high-profile position in the court. And now he's just become Prime Minister in a time of major political upheaval, and he'll definitely play a key role in any attempt to get the Shadows off Centauri Prime...

"So, science question - with all these worlds being destroyed around the galaxy, how does that effect the gravitational fields of everything else around where those planets used to be? For instance, if Earth got blown up, well, our moon wouldn’t know what to do with itself, at the very least. But would that effect Venus or Mars in any way?"

I wouldn't think it would affect them in any significant way. Earth's gravitational pull is nothing compared to the sun's. But I'm not an astrophysicist, so I could be wrong.