“Born to the Purple” is episode three of season one of Babylon 5.
The episode opens in a bar where Londo is watching a dancer when G’Kar and Commander Sinclair enter. Sinclair wants to talk about a treaty; Londo has been avoiding his calls for a week. G’Kar suggests that Londo cede all claims in the sector to the Narn.
Londo has been waiting for a specific dancer to come on stage, a Centauri women. When she does, Londo tells Sinclair and G’Kar to sit, asking if females are not the finest thing. Which G’Kar agrees with. Then Ko D’Ath, the new head of G’Kar’s diplomatic staff arrives, even though he wasn’t expecting her for some time. When Londo gets back to his quarters, the dancer is there. At the treaty meeting, Londo is still not there and Vir is not able to contact him as the former is still in bed with the dancer.
The dancer, Adira Tyree, is actually a slave and her owner, another alien but not a Centauri called Trakis, wants her to get Londo’s purple files. These files have dirt on all the houses of the Centauri Republic, enough to bring down any of the houses, and are worth a lot of money to the Narn. And Trakis wants to sell the files to the Narn.
Londo is infatuated with Adira and it seems she cares for him as well. Adira has no choice, and does steal the files, but doesn’t meet up with Trakis as she was supposed to. He goes and sees Londo, telling him that Adira has stolen the files, but doesn’t tell him the whole truth. Trakis wants Londo to lead him to Adira. Londo delegates Vir to speak on his behalf at the treaty meeting and, when Londo doesn’t show, G’Kar does the same with Ko D’Ath. Both are warned not to give away their respective homeworlds. Londo ends up asking Sinclair for help to find Adira, and recover the files.
Garibaldi has detected an unauthorised Gold Channel transmission to Earth. Gold Channels aren’t even known about to the majority. He tells Ivanova about the transmission, but she seems rather less bothered. So Garibaldi keeps digging in to the transmissions to find out who is sending them, and gets a bit of a surprise as a result.