More Babylon 5: 3x12 - 3x18
Feb. 7th, 2015 02:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkFinally more Bab5! AV had exams so we had to take a break. Hopefully next time we don't have to wait so long!
I'm writing this the day after so I probably forgot some things we were speculating about, but this takes long enough to type up as it is.
Sic Transit Vir: Vir! I was delighted we got a Vir-centric episode. He's just such a good guy. He figured out a way to smuggle Narns off Narn and named his fictional bureaucrat after Abraham Lincoln. And he wants to marry for love, how cute (and naive.) When meeting his new fiancée he's more concerned with that she doesn't know him than that he doesn't know her. Which leads to unfortunate surprises: I figured out quickly that the Narns were after her, not him, but her revelations about what she did on Narn were still shocking. No wonder they want to kill her, I'd want her to die too. I'm a disappointed they cut away from the scene when she pressures Vir to kill the captured Narn. Vir is at his best when he's backed into a corner and has to stand up for something.
Poor Susan, dreaming of walking into C&C naked! And now she's Chief Sneak, works very well.
A Late Delivery from Avalon: First Jack the Ripper, now King Arthur. Maybe his delusion is so strong because he carries King Arthur's soul? Minbari believe in stuff like this (I think. Still not completely sure about Minbari soul things.) Also because that's a really heavy burden to carry, to be the one to have carried out the order that accidentally started the Earth-Minbari war.
Sir G'Kar! That was great.
Franklin always needs to fix things. He should at least have talked with a therapist first...
Marcus loves legends, of course does. He would be Galahad, Ivanova Gawain, nice :)
And they made a treaty to keep Babylon 5 going and protect her, very nice.
Ship of Tears: Bester! I didn't know that the actor also played Chekhov on Star Trek, apparently he really loved getting to sit in the captain's seat ;)
Bester playing his own game fits very well. Of course the Shadows don't fit into his plan of telepaths ruling because they're clearly superior to mundanes, and it's not even surprising that he's willing to ally with Babylon 5 to achieve his goals. More surprising is that Bester has a sweetheart. (And that hers was the first pod they opened...) Poor telepaths! I hope they can cure them eventually. (Who are those creatures who operated on them? I feel like I've seen them before...) At first I thought the cables etc. were growing out of the woman, like the Wraith hiveship out of Jennifer, but now I think the machine probably called those cables etc. out of the walls. Instead of growing their ships, the Shadows sort of graft them onto living beings, if I understood that correctly? Creepy.
I think they should have been more careful around Bester even after he didn't try to scan Susan immediately, like take along at least one Minbari telepath as insurance. They can't trust him.
G'Kar is perfectly justified in saying Sheridan should hold up his end of the bargain. His conversation with Delenn was great.
Interludes and Examinations: Nooo, Morden is back! And he brought Shadows to Babylon 5. At first I thought him killing Adira was pretty stupid - if someone says he's opposing you because he has nothing to lose, why kill the one thing he still loves instead of kidnapping or threatening her? - but making Londo think it was Refa works even better. I'm just surprised Londo fell for it! He knows Morden is not trustworthy. But grief makes people do stupid things, we've seen that multiple times. It would have been great if they could somehow have achieved this change in his attitude, since I assume that's what they were after, without fridging Adira.
The Shadows have started attacking other races openly. Uh-oh, getting worse and worse... so the alliance needs a victory. Sheridan's confrontation with Khosh was very interesting. The Vorlons are so frustrating, they never explain anything. Khosh using Sheridan's father's image to communicate with him while he dies was also well done.
Franklin finally admits to having a problem after Garibaldi confronts him, and resigns his position. I really like their friendship.
War Without End Part 1: Sinclair is back! Makes it obvious how similar her and Sheridan are in many ways. But Sinclair spent more time with the Minbari.
Sinclair and Garibaldi don't even see each other again :( Which Sinclair would have wanted "more than you will ever know" but couldn't let himself have for Garibaldi's own good. There should be a ton of h/c fic about the two of them. Password "Hello, old friend."
I guessed that Sinclair becomes Valen somewhere in here. I didn't expect Babylon 4 being sent into the past! I suspect Sinclair had at least as much to do with winning the war as the station itself.
Marcus calls Sinclair Entil-Zha (it was pretty difficult trying to find the right spelling without stumbling upon spoilers, I think I mostly managed) and is very deferential. Someone has written the fic where Marcus worries if Sinclair approves of him, and his and Susan's potential relationship, right? I swear I spent half of "War Without End" having fic ideas.
Sheridan lands in the future in front of Emperor Londo, who wants to kill him for not saving Centauri Prime... o.o
War Without End Part 2: They did a pretty good job integrating the previous Babylon 4 episode. Poor Zathrus! Nice to see Susan and Marcus work together - with just a little bit of luck ;)
Emperor Londo is being mind-controlled - whut? He saves John and Delenn and gets the mutual death with G'Kar he foresaw, only it's not as enemies. I don't like this future. And if I understood correctly this is still the current future, not an alternate one like Babylon 5 burning was. It's also now part of a stable timeloop, that makes things more tricky... damn.
John/Delenn was clear. They're going to have a son, interesting.
Sinclair becomes part-Minbari using the Triluminary, but we still don't know where the Triluminary even comes from. Vorlons? Hm. I hope we'll find out.
I thought the goodbyes between Sinclair and Ivanova, Garibaldi, and Marcus were very short and unsatisfactory. I'm going to imagine that he left longer messages for all of them back on Babylon 5. More goodbyes, less emphasis on "the three are one"-religion/prophecy, please.
In the Beginning: At this point we watched the first movie, the tale of the Earth/Minbari war as told by Emperor Londo. Who either makes some things up or Delenn told him a lot about the inner workings of the Grey Council, probably a bit of both.
Delenn goes temporarily mad with grief after Dukat's death and hers is the deciding vote in starting the war against Earth, "no mercy" - ouch. That must haunt her. And then shortly afterwards she finds out that the humans are important allies, oops.
Susan saying goodbye to her brother :(
Sheridan not being captain of the ship when he destroys the Black Star makes a lot of sense with his young age.
Franklin was imprisoned because he refused to help develop biological weapons. True to his ideals, but I wonder if he wonders if such a weapon could have been developed and if it would have saved lives.
There was an attempt to make peace and Londo accidentally ruins it. I wonder how he found out? This isn't a mistake in the same category like destroying Narn, it was mostly an unfortunate accident. I know exactly what's going to happen and I still found myself hoping that it would work.
The president's speech before the battle of the Line, wow. I was blinking very quickly.
Delenn not knowing what to do, but then somehow managing anyway, she seems so young... I didn't know that they knew Sinclair has Valen's soul so early! Though I think at this point they don't know that he is Valen. When does she find that out? Only when she gets the letter right before the time travel, I think, but I'd have to rewatch.
Walkabout: Franklin tries to find himself. I realized that after SGA this is the second SF show where the black guy is the one who gets addicted to drugs, which I think has stronger associations in NA than Europe but is still unfortunate. But at least the way Franklin is dealing with it is so much better than what they did with Ford. He's still trying to fix everything, but can't.
They have a weapon against the Shadows!! Well done Lyta, and the Minbari telepaths. And Lyta is "just" a P5, though I strongly suspect that she might have gotten some, hm, "upgrades" from Khosh. Khosh I, now that there's another one. I wonder how the Shadows are going to react to this development, it won't be good... So the alliance has Lyta, and the Minbari telepaths; however many telepaths the other worlds of the League of Unaligned Worlds have; the Centauri and Earth are working with the Shadows, minus the PsiCorps members like Bester, who could be very useful but we don't know how many there are; and a hundred telepaths that were implanted with weird machines. If they could help those that'd be a huge help.
I loved Garibaldi getting G'Kar to bring more ships as support. At least Garibaldi isn't thumping the book of G'Quan any longer ;)
As usual, please try not to spoil me for what is to come :) I'm really looking forward to finding out while watching.
I'm writing this the day after so I probably forgot some things we were speculating about, but this takes long enough to type up as it is.
Sic Transit Vir: Vir! I was delighted we got a Vir-centric episode. He's just such a good guy. He figured out a way to smuggle Narns off Narn and named his fictional bureaucrat after Abraham Lincoln. And he wants to marry for love, how cute (and naive.) When meeting his new fiancée he's more concerned with that she doesn't know him than that he doesn't know her. Which leads to unfortunate surprises: I figured out quickly that the Narns were after her, not him, but her revelations about what she did on Narn were still shocking. No wonder they want to kill her, I'd want her to die too. I'm a disappointed they cut away from the scene when she pressures Vir to kill the captured Narn. Vir is at his best when he's backed into a corner and has to stand up for something.
Poor Susan, dreaming of walking into C&C naked! And now she's Chief Sneak, works very well.
A Late Delivery from Avalon: First Jack the Ripper, now King Arthur. Maybe his delusion is so strong because he carries King Arthur's soul? Minbari believe in stuff like this (I think. Still not completely sure about Minbari soul things.) Also because that's a really heavy burden to carry, to be the one to have carried out the order that accidentally started the Earth-Minbari war.
Sir G'Kar! That was great.
Franklin always needs to fix things. He should at least have talked with a therapist first...
Marcus loves legends, of course does. He would be Galahad, Ivanova Gawain, nice :)
And they made a treaty to keep Babylon 5 going and protect her, very nice.
Ship of Tears: Bester! I didn't know that the actor also played Chekhov on Star Trek, apparently he really loved getting to sit in the captain's seat ;)
Bester playing his own game fits very well. Of course the Shadows don't fit into his plan of telepaths ruling because they're clearly superior to mundanes, and it's not even surprising that he's willing to ally with Babylon 5 to achieve his goals. More surprising is that Bester has a sweetheart. (And that hers was the first pod they opened...) Poor telepaths! I hope they can cure them eventually. (Who are those creatures who operated on them? I feel like I've seen them before...) At first I thought the cables etc. were growing out of the woman, like the Wraith hiveship out of Jennifer, but now I think the machine probably called those cables etc. out of the walls. Instead of growing their ships, the Shadows sort of graft them onto living beings, if I understood that correctly? Creepy.
I think they should have been more careful around Bester even after he didn't try to scan Susan immediately, like take along at least one Minbari telepath as insurance. They can't trust him.
G'Kar is perfectly justified in saying Sheridan should hold up his end of the bargain. His conversation with Delenn was great.
Interludes and Examinations: Nooo, Morden is back! And he brought Shadows to Babylon 5. At first I thought him killing Adira was pretty stupid - if someone says he's opposing you because he has nothing to lose, why kill the one thing he still loves instead of kidnapping or threatening her? - but making Londo think it was Refa works even better. I'm just surprised Londo fell for it! He knows Morden is not trustworthy. But grief makes people do stupid things, we've seen that multiple times. It would have been great if they could somehow have achieved this change in his attitude, since I assume that's what they were after, without fridging Adira.
The Shadows have started attacking other races openly. Uh-oh, getting worse and worse... so the alliance needs a victory. Sheridan's confrontation with Khosh was very interesting. The Vorlons are so frustrating, they never explain anything. Khosh using Sheridan's father's image to communicate with him while he dies was also well done.
Franklin finally admits to having a problem after Garibaldi confronts him, and resigns his position. I really like their friendship.
War Without End Part 1: Sinclair is back! Makes it obvious how similar her and Sheridan are in many ways. But Sinclair spent more time with the Minbari.
Sinclair and Garibaldi don't even see each other again :( Which Sinclair would have wanted "more than you will ever know" but couldn't let himself have for Garibaldi's own good. There should be a ton of h/c fic about the two of them. Password "Hello, old friend."
I guessed that Sinclair becomes Valen somewhere in here. I didn't expect Babylon 4 being sent into the past! I suspect Sinclair had at least as much to do with winning the war as the station itself.
Marcus calls Sinclair Entil-Zha (it was pretty difficult trying to find the right spelling without stumbling upon spoilers, I think I mostly managed) and is very deferential. Someone has written the fic where Marcus worries if Sinclair approves of him, and his and Susan's potential relationship, right? I swear I spent half of "War Without End" having fic ideas.
Sheridan lands in the future in front of Emperor Londo, who wants to kill him for not saving Centauri Prime... o.o
War Without End Part 2: They did a pretty good job integrating the previous Babylon 4 episode. Poor Zathrus! Nice to see Susan and Marcus work together - with just a little bit of luck ;)
Emperor Londo is being mind-controlled - whut? He saves John and Delenn and gets the mutual death with G'Kar he foresaw, only it's not as enemies. I don't like this future. And if I understood correctly this is still the current future, not an alternate one like Babylon 5 burning was. It's also now part of a stable timeloop, that makes things more tricky... damn.
John/Delenn was clear. They're going to have a son, interesting.
Sinclair becomes part-Minbari using the Triluminary, but we still don't know where the Triluminary even comes from. Vorlons? Hm. I hope we'll find out.
I thought the goodbyes between Sinclair and Ivanova, Garibaldi, and Marcus were very short and unsatisfactory. I'm going to imagine that he left longer messages for all of them back on Babylon 5. More goodbyes, less emphasis on "the three are one"-religion/prophecy, please.
In the Beginning: At this point we watched the first movie, the tale of the Earth/Minbari war as told by Emperor Londo. Who either makes some things up or Delenn told him a lot about the inner workings of the Grey Council, probably a bit of both.
Delenn goes temporarily mad with grief after Dukat's death and hers is the deciding vote in starting the war against Earth, "no mercy" - ouch. That must haunt her. And then shortly afterwards she finds out that the humans are important allies, oops.
Susan saying goodbye to her brother :(
Sheridan not being captain of the ship when he destroys the Black Star makes a lot of sense with his young age.
Franklin was imprisoned because he refused to help develop biological weapons. True to his ideals, but I wonder if he wonders if such a weapon could have been developed and if it would have saved lives.
There was an attempt to make peace and Londo accidentally ruins it. I wonder how he found out? This isn't a mistake in the same category like destroying Narn, it was mostly an unfortunate accident. I know exactly what's going to happen and I still found myself hoping that it would work.
The president's speech before the battle of the Line, wow. I was blinking very quickly.
Delenn not knowing what to do, but then somehow managing anyway, she seems so young... I didn't know that they knew Sinclair has Valen's soul so early! Though I think at this point they don't know that he is Valen. When does she find that out? Only when she gets the letter right before the time travel, I think, but I'd have to rewatch.
Walkabout: Franklin tries to find himself. I realized that after SGA this is the second SF show where the black guy is the one who gets addicted to drugs, which I think has stronger associations in NA than Europe but is still unfortunate. But at least the way Franklin is dealing with it is so much better than what they did with Ford. He's still trying to fix everything, but can't.
They have a weapon against the Shadows!! Well done Lyta, and the Minbari telepaths. And Lyta is "just" a P5, though I strongly suspect that she might have gotten some, hm, "upgrades" from Khosh. Khosh I, now that there's another one. I wonder how the Shadows are going to react to this development, it won't be good... So the alliance has Lyta, and the Minbari telepaths; however many telepaths the other worlds of the League of Unaligned Worlds have; the Centauri and Earth are working with the Shadows, minus the PsiCorps members like Bester, who could be very useful but we don't know how many there are; and a hundred telepaths that were implanted with weird machines. If they could help those that'd be a huge help.
I loved Garibaldi getting G'Kar to bring more ships as support. At least Garibaldi isn't thumping the book of G'Quan any longer ;)
As usual, please try not to spoil me for what is to come :) I'm really looking forward to finding out while watching.
no subject
Date: 2015-02-07 05:10 pm (UTC)Ship of Tears: They grow their ships, and then they use living beings to form a sort of central processing core.
War Without End: Now that you have seen this, you need to find a copy of the tie-in novel To Dream in the City of Sorrows, about what Sinclair was up to on Minbar. (also Catherine Sakai and Marcus) Stracynzki didn't write it himself, but he plotted it out and told the author what was going on through that whole thing.
In the Beginning: The fun thing is, after you've watched this and know what's going on from the Minbari POV, to go back and watch the first season or two from the human POV. Like, how much of this has been arranged from the beginning by Delenn so that she could get close to Sinclair? The humans wanted generals or admirals--long-serving decorated officers--to command the station, and the Minbari went nope, we want Sinclair. Delenn wasn't very young, but she was sheltered. I mean, we don't know exactly how long Minbari live but they generally have long lives. But the thing is, if you are a religious caste Minbari, you grow up in the temple, pretty much. I mean, you may not live there as a child (they're pretty unclear about that) but you go to school there, all your family and friends spend all theirlives in the Temple, where they prize cooperation and harmony and order. It's quite possible she's never so much as heard a raised voice in her life, much less watched someone she loves die violently in front of her. She'd probably never met an alien or anything, either. So really, really, not prepared. And going from an aide to a member of the Grey Council in one fell swoop? After not much time as an aide?
Walkabout--yeah, the drug thing, really unfortunate. Yes, Lyta has gotten upgrades.
no subject
Date: 2015-02-08 10:30 am (UTC)With things being revealed one by one, rewatching everything from the beginning when I'm finished watching it once is definitely part of the plan :) The first time we watched the pilot episode the Vorlon said something to Sinclair that LK told us was a spoiler, but we forgot/didn't get it until he reminded us after War Without End. (The second version of that ep didn't have that line, maybe they took it out later.)
no subject
Date: 2015-02-09 10:27 pm (UTC)OH MY HEART. ♥
I love B5 so, so, so much - I have come to be able to admit that it has flaws, and might not hold up as well in some regards today as it did when I first watched it in the late 90s but still. When it gets it right, it gets it so very right. There are certain things, like - the speech before the Battle of the Line. Blinking rapidly? I was sobbing openly!
Other random comments:
And the time thing! With B4 and Sinclair and the flash-forward and then Sheridan sees what will-has-happened and... that was an interesting storytelling thing, I think. Because until that point you don't know how much of the 'death omen' thing is superstition and how much is prediction, and IF it's a prediction it's a fairly obvious one because have you met London and G'Kar? And then War Without End happens and all of a sudden you know the death omen appears to be 100% accurate, but there are so many more questions!
So many questions. I love how B5 throws questions at you! (And I love that a lot of questions - if not all - eventually get answered, unlike in some shows...)
Yeah, the realization of what role Delenn played in the War is - that's a pretty huge thing. I think it adds a lot to who she is as a character? And Mira Furlan carries it all beautifully. (I don't know how many real world info bits you might want, so I'll just mention this and then nothing else unless you indicate you're curious: Mira Furlan was in the US because she'd fled the war in her native Yugoslavia.)
Oh, Vir. ♥ He is so delightful! And Bester - I wouldn't call him delightful, but I love watching Walter Koenig go through all the the nuances of arrogant smugness covering something much darker (and sometimes far more human) than he seems at first glance.
no subject
Date: 2015-02-10 07:08 pm (UTC)It's just spoilers I don't like, I don't mind behind the scenes info. Sometimes it's even very useful: I think I'd be much more annoyed at Sinclair and Talia leaving the show - especially Talia - if I didn't know it was because the actors were leaving. The actress' background makes it obvious how much some of Delenn's speeches can relate to things that happened on Earth.
One of the reasons why I hope that the future we see in "War Without End" isn't set in stone is because it's not really a happy ending. I want happy endings! I know that wars have a cost, but I want there to be hope, and that future isn't very optimistic, especially because even though the Shadows are beaten apparently there's this new danger of mind-controlling parasites. But I'll see. There's still time left - two seasons and a few movies ;)
no subject
Date: 2015-02-10 07:32 pm (UTC)You're going through such a great bunch of episodes right now, I'm all excited for you! I've done a couple of rewatches since seeing the series for the first time before season 5 even came out (and when it did the only way to see it was on VHS tapes of the TV broadcast kindly posted at no cost by an American fan - sometimes I feel like I come from the past!), and while I always love the series, it's somewhere around War Without End that I get kind of blown away by the twists and turns of the plot and the depth of the characters and all of it coming together like WHOA. It's brilliant the first time around when you're all WHAT'S HAPPENING?! and it's definitely amazing the second (and third and fourth) time around when you can see that, OH, that's where this thing ties into that one plot and AH THIS MOMENT and... yeah.
For me, B5 will always be rewatchable, I think. (Possibly in a curated version, because five seasons is a lot and there's always a the odd ep that just falls flat...) Sadly for me, my dearest wife watched B5 after the new Battlestar Galactica, was expecting something along those lines, and was too disappointed to (I believe) watch the whole thing through. But ONE DAY I may bring her around, 1990's CGI and all... The story is worth it. ♥
Oh, and on the subject of actors' RL stuff affecting the plot - you mentioned you wanted more of Sinclair? There reason he left, and the reason he only came back for such a short time is absolutely heartwrenching. JMS didn't talk about it for twenty years, but at the 20th reunion, a year after Michael O'Hare's tragic passing, he revealed that Michael had been struggling with incredibly difficult mental health issues. It is so impressive to see now what he accomplished despite this, and it speaks so highly of JMS' respecting his integrity integrity that there were no rumors or leaks about this AT ALL during all those years. The full story is told in the audio about halfway down the page here. There shouldn't be any spoilers on the page, I don't believe there are any in the audio piece, but it's been a couple of years since I listened to it.
This might be common knowledge now, but when the news first hit (in 2013), it was exactly like Dan Roth writes here:
Very few things can both break and mend a heart at the same time, but O'Hare's story does exactly that. And the respect JMS pays to O'Hare's memory shows an unwavering empathy not just for that one man, but indeed for anyone who has ever struggled the way he did.
no subject
Date: 2015-02-10 08:00 pm (UTC)LK warned us that some of the movies are not that good, and apparently there's also a spin-off season that's not very good, and he's not sure yet if he even wants to show them to us. But I think unless they're so bad that they make the rest of the show worse I'd like to, just so that I know more about that world (and it'll be easier to write fic.) I'm used to watching things with a lot of wasted potential, though it never stops being sad, and maybe especially in a show like this.
Being able to watch the whole thing in one go, no hiatus, and over the internet instead of waiting for tapes, definitely makes it easier! I'd have hated to wait for some of these cliffhangers to be resolved. Season 3 so far has been amazing <3 With many episodes I already know I'll want to rewatch, first among them "Severed Dreams", where Babylon 5 becomes independent.
no subject
Date: 2015-02-11 09:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-02-11 02:37 pm (UTC)There's definitely a lot of Arthurian myths in the show: we had the Grail seeker, King Arthur (kind of)... I don't know enough about Valen to see where he fits best. When I rewatch the series I'll definitely pay more attention! :)