Babylon 5: "A Day in the Strife"

Babylon 5: "A Day in the Strife." Season 3, episode 3 (20 Nov. 1995).

"The Babylon 5 crew makes contact with a strange alien probe."[1] Covered briefly in Frank Garcia's "Babylon 5 Episode Guide," Cinefantastique 31.12/Vol. 32 No. 1 (June 2000): 71. See Babylon 5 entry for link to locations on line where the relevant Cinefantastique issues are likely to be archived.

As pictured in the Cinefantastique coverage, the probe looks like a gigantic tick or other arachnids.[2] The probe offers "information about advanced technology if a string of questions are [sic] answered." So see for the motif of a strange creature with questions — the sphinx[3] is an example, but asking a riddle and threatening death with the most famous instance — combined with what Richard Erlich and Thomas Dunn have called "The Ovion/Cylon Alliance": associations of insects and arachnids and such with mechanism.

RDE, finishing, 28Aug22