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Babylon 5 through 3x08
I already talked about 3x06 Dust to Dust here.
Other than the absolute glorious idfest that was 3x06, the middle of the season is kind of a mediocre run of episodes until it gets up to 3x08 - the others are interesting, but really just feel like typical sci-fi alien-of-the-week episodes. (Though with this show's emphasis on continuity, I'm sure there are various aspects that matter to the ongoing plot.)
3x04
It's interesting to see the aftermath of a death-of-personality mindwipe from the perspective of people who don't know the guy's personality is fake. I had absolutely no idea what was going on for the first half of the episode until the sudden "ohhhhh" moment when you realize that the monk is getting bleedthrough memories from a past life. It was interesting to see the monks again; I had assumed when they appeared that they'd just be a one-off joke/bit of station life (the station has a religious experience, religious orders start showing up) but no, they're still around. And the episode had some interesting thinky stuff on the nature of revenge/forgiveness that is important to the show's overall themes. I think it's interesting that the human characters seemed to mostly come down on the side of the mindwipe-style punishment being both terribly cruel to the individual who doesn't know they've been wiped, but not actually cruel enough to satisfy the human urge for revenge after being wronged. Interesting, but not really a favorite.
3x05
Finally an Ivanova-centric ep! I loved her getting to use the planetary computer - as Draal invites her to step into the matrix, I was once again reminded of the era this is from, and that the movie The Matrix is still several years out - and captain the White Star, and most of all out-maneuvering a group of millennia-old aliens by using their hatred of the Vorlons against them! Very nice, very nice. Ivanova showing up holographically just in time to interrupt Sheridan's unwanted tete-a-tete with the subtle-as-a-bag-of-anvils Peace lady was also a nice bit. ("It looks like you're about to go where everyone has gone before.")
Husband's observation as soon as the disco-ball alien ship showed up: "Well, done with the rave, back to normal space." (And then at the end: "Back to the rave, call us when the war starts!") I like that it's so truly alien-looking; it must have been a challenge to create a ship that looks nothing like anything we've seen on the show before *and* like it might have been created by an incomprehensible alien intelligence from before the dawn of time.
Back on B5, G'Kar's continues to try to figure out what's going on with the Rangers across these two episodes. It's interesting that he eventually chooses Garibaldi as the person he's going to hit up with the Book of G'Quon(sp?). Because he found Garibaldi particularly approachable, he thought he'd be more receptive than the rest of the command crew, he recognizes their kinship as fellow warriors, or just because he's gotten turned down by almost everyone else and finally decided not to take no for an answer - idk. Anyway, it's an intriguing dynamic!
3x07
Another alien-of-the-week episode; honestly don't really feel like I have much to say about it. (Though it would have been nice if the recorder aliens had anything useful to contribute to the ongoing Shadow war, BUT NO.)
3x08
Finally a good chunk of ongoing plot! This was really terrific. I can't get over that even when you KNOW you're probably going to spot a Shadow ship, they're so creepy and weird-looking that it's simply a "gasp!" moment. (And I noticed that the "package" from Mars, that turned out to be the lady with the intel, was mentioned in the previous episode; nice continuity nod there!) Interesting that Garibaldi was peripherally involved with the events surrounding the discovery of the Shadow ship on Mars, even if he didn't understand its significance then. And I really enjoyed Sheridan and Delenn's expedition - they've now managed to destroy their second Shadow ship this season (and it was Delenn who came up with the insane idea to escape from the Agamemnon; they really deserve each other).
In general, I appreciate that the show is building up Sheridan and Delenn as friends who truly care for each other first and foremost; you can see a romance on the horizon, but it's clear that romance or not, they're two people who genuinely like and admire each other. The handholding while they sleep was adorable. (Also it just figures that the Minbari have invented the most uncomfortable beds in the known galaxy.)
I've also seen 3x09, and that was certainly a Lot, but I'm probably rewatching it with the husband today or tomorrow (since I've watched farther ahead than he has) and I'll talk about it then.
Other than the absolute glorious idfest that was 3x06, the middle of the season is kind of a mediocre run of episodes until it gets up to 3x08 - the others are interesting, but really just feel like typical sci-fi alien-of-the-week episodes. (Though with this show's emphasis on continuity, I'm sure there are various aspects that matter to the ongoing plot.)
3x04
It's interesting to see the aftermath of a death-of-personality mindwipe from the perspective of people who don't know the guy's personality is fake. I had absolutely no idea what was going on for the first half of the episode until the sudden "ohhhhh" moment when you realize that the monk is getting bleedthrough memories from a past life. It was interesting to see the monks again; I had assumed when they appeared that they'd just be a one-off joke/bit of station life (the station has a religious experience, religious orders start showing up) but no, they're still around. And the episode had some interesting thinky stuff on the nature of revenge/forgiveness that is important to the show's overall themes. I think it's interesting that the human characters seemed to mostly come down on the side of the mindwipe-style punishment being both terribly cruel to the individual who doesn't know they've been wiped, but not actually cruel enough to satisfy the human urge for revenge after being wronged. Interesting, but not really a favorite.
3x05
Finally an Ivanova-centric ep! I loved her getting to use the planetary computer - as Draal invites her to step into the matrix, I was once again reminded of the era this is from, and that the movie The Matrix is still several years out - and captain the White Star, and most of all out-maneuvering a group of millennia-old aliens by using their hatred of the Vorlons against them! Very nice, very nice. Ivanova showing up holographically just in time to interrupt Sheridan's unwanted tete-a-tete with the subtle-as-a-bag-of-anvils Peace lady was also a nice bit. ("It looks like you're about to go where everyone has gone before.")
Husband's observation as soon as the disco-ball alien ship showed up: "Well, done with the rave, back to normal space." (And then at the end: "Back to the rave, call us when the war starts!") I like that it's so truly alien-looking; it must have been a challenge to create a ship that looks nothing like anything we've seen on the show before *and* like it might have been created by an incomprehensible alien intelligence from before the dawn of time.
Back on B5, G'Kar's continues to try to figure out what's going on with the Rangers across these two episodes. It's interesting that he eventually chooses Garibaldi as the person he's going to hit up with the Book of G'Quon(sp?). Because he found Garibaldi particularly approachable, he thought he'd be more receptive than the rest of the command crew, he recognizes their kinship as fellow warriors, or just because he's gotten turned down by almost everyone else and finally decided not to take no for an answer - idk. Anyway, it's an intriguing dynamic!
3x07
Another alien-of-the-week episode; honestly don't really feel like I have much to say about it. (Though it would have been nice if the recorder aliens had anything useful to contribute to the ongoing Shadow war, BUT NO.)
3x08
Finally a good chunk of ongoing plot! This was really terrific. I can't get over that even when you KNOW you're probably going to spot a Shadow ship, they're so creepy and weird-looking that it's simply a "gasp!" moment. (And I noticed that the "package" from Mars, that turned out to be the lady with the intel, was mentioned in the previous episode; nice continuity nod there!) Interesting that Garibaldi was peripherally involved with the events surrounding the discovery of the Shadow ship on Mars, even if he didn't understand its significance then. And I really enjoyed Sheridan and Delenn's expedition - they've now managed to destroy their second Shadow ship this season (and it was Delenn who came up with the insane idea to escape from the Agamemnon; they really deserve each other).
In general, I appreciate that the show is building up Sheridan and Delenn as friends who truly care for each other first and foremost; you can see a romance on the horizon, but it's clear that romance or not, they're two people who genuinely like and admire each other. The handholding while they sleep was adorable. (Also it just figures that the Minbari have invented the most uncomfortable beds in the known galaxy.)
I've also seen 3x09, and that was certainly a Lot, but I'm probably rewatching it with the husband today or tomorrow (since I've watched farther ahead than he has) and I'll talk about it then.
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"Passing through Gethsemane" made a huge impression on me when it aired, not even so much because of the revenge-and-forgiveness questions which you are totally right about running straight through the center of this series, but because responsibility for the crimes of your unremembered self is one of the evergreens of both science fiction and film noir and this episode was either my introduction to the concept or the iteration that blew my mind about it. (It was definitely my introduction to Brad Dourif, so I had no idea that it was playing off his established screen persona of serial killers and generally deranged weirdos, in which case I might have been better braced, I just thought Brother Edward was lovely and blew a fuse as the reveal came off the wall. Part of what makes it work for me is that it's clear that even if the death of personality starts the subject off as a well-intentioned blank-ish slate, they both retain the substrate of their original selves and grow from the people they were programmed to be, which is one of the reasons I disagree so completely with his climactic decision, but I'm not a space monk.)
Husband's observation as soon as the disco-ball alien ship showed up: "Well, done with the rave, back to normal space." (And then at the end: "Back to the rave, call us when the war starts!")
I'm just going to hear that whenever I see the episode again, please tell him thanks from me.
I really like that when Babylon 5 goes for deep time, it generally does it well, like the Andre Norton-ish thing where no one knows who built the original jump gates—they seem to be the sole remnant of the civilization that originally discovered the existence and accessibility of hyperspace and all other jump tech has been reverse-engineered from them—or the First Ones being these exponents of Lovecraftian weirdness.
Interesting that Garibaldi was peripherally involved with the events surrounding the discovery of the Shadow ship on Mars, even if he didn't understand its significance then.
There's so much of this show that is just stored in my brain and then details I have completely forgotten, like this one. Even if it originates with this episode, it retrofits with Garibaldi's willingness to believe Amis in "The Long Dark" about his encounter with a Shadow soldier. Speaking of Lovecraftian what the fuck.
[edit] Oh, hey, show-specific icon, nice.
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Yes, same! In general, I'm more interested in the ongoing plot for this show than the standalone episodes (I think this is heavily influenced by the way I'm watching it - I assume watching over the course of years at an episode a week would have been a different experience) but it does have strong standalone plots; it does a nice job of handling complex subjects. I don't agree with his choice, but I can see why he made the choice he made.
I really like that when Babylon 5 goes for deep time, it generally does it well
Yes, I like that too! The ancients that we meet feel suitably incomprehensible, and the universe in general has a sense of great time depth. I like that there are a lot of aliens we don't even get a chance to meet properly, and expeditions digging up artifacts all the time that are eldritch and strange and made by aliens who have long since vanished.
There's so much of this show that is just stored in my brain and then details I have completely forgotten, like this one. Even if it originates with this episode, it retrofits with Garibaldi's willingness to believe Amis in "The Long Dark" about his encounter with a Shadow soldier. Speaking of Lovecraftian what the fuck.
I think it's so interesting that Garibaldi just sort of tosses that off, too! And he never actually says exactly what he saw, just that he saw "part of" the events that the runaway archaeologist is describing in 3x08 (the second shadow-ship coming to rescue/unbury/awaken the first one) which suggests that he may have been the first person in the main cast to see the actual ships themselves. It intrigued him enough to come back to the site and try to find out what he saw.
This also makes it a very interesting choice that G'Kar picked him, out of everyone on the station, to give the Narn holy book that includes pictures of the ships.
Oh, hey, show-specific icon, nice.
:D I figured I needed one, and since I was having zero luck finding something I liked that could be used for generic posts about the show, I just went and got a picture and made one, like our ancestors did.
no subject
And it was more normal at the time when the show aired for episodes to function as discrete if linked units rather than installments of contiguous plot. The quotient of metaplot could shift from episode to episode, sometimes the A-plot, sometimes the B-plot, always something contributing to the overall arc, but not always the same amount and not always given the same prominence, and in the meantime you would still get a three-act structure with a story that you could watch and not be totally cliffhung every week. Without spoilers, there will be patches in the show where it is basically all metaplot all the time, but not where you were just watching.
I like that there are a lot of aliens we don't even get a chance to meet properly, and expeditions digging up artifacts all the time that are eldritch and strange and made by aliens who have long since vanished.
The discovery that Shadows ships are cached all across an unknown number of worlds is definitely one of those delved-too-deep moments, except that we've been in the sort of future where so far it's been safe or at least within archaeologically normal levels of hazardous to excavate random alien artifacts, which is a kind of stakes-raising that if I think about it I really like. The Overton window for weirdness in the known universe is exponentially sliding.
This also makes it a very interesting choice that G'Kar picked him, out of everyone on the station, to give the Narn holy book that includes pictures of the ships.
It does! And again it's such a neat choice to give the Shadow-sighting to Garibaldi, even if he didn't understand what he was seeing at the time, because he's not the character you would expect to have an eldritch encounter in his past, and yet. Of the main human characters, he's the one who looks the most standard-issue down-to-earth and he's got all these little filigrees of quirkiness and damage and openness beyond what is expected of a security chief. I loved your pointing out that one of the ways he interacts with people is cooking for them. That's not expected, either.
I figured I needed one, and since I was having zero luck finding something I liked that could be used for generic posts about the show, I just went and got a picture and made one, like our ancestors did.
All through college and even grad school, my laptop wallpaper was an image of the White Star which I pulled off some almost certainly now long-defunct fan site in 1999.
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Yeah, and honestly I wish modern shows would do more of that, because that way you get the best of both worlds - the ongoing metaplot and also individual episodes that are focused on other things, so you can still have bottle episodes, holiday episodes, spotlight episodes on specific characters outside the dictates of the main plot, etc. I like that we do have so much more flexibility in TV series plotting now than in the old network TV days, but I also really enjoy the relatively leisurely pace of not having to cram all the plot and character development into 6 or 8 episodes.
And again it's such a neat choice to give the Shadow-sighting to Garibaldi, even if he didn't understand what he was seeing at the time, because he's not the character you would expect to have an eldritch encounter in his past, and yet. Of the main human characters, he's the one who looks the most standard-issue down-to-earth and he's got all these little filigrees of quirkiness and damage and openness beyond what is expected of a security chief.
Yes! I love how he's got so many little incongruous character touches that make him far more complex and layered than you would initially guess from his rough-around-the-edges working-man persona. I remember noticing even in the earliest episodes that he's one of the people who most readily makes friends with the nonhumans on the station (he invites Delenn over to watch movies with him, even not really knowing her yet!). And so, perhaps it's not too surprising that he's also got some brushes with the eldritch and strange in his past as well. I like it.
no subject
Agreed! I really did not watch enough television over the last quarter-century to tell when the shift occurred—I assume it had a lot to do with streaming and the ability to drop an entire season at once which made everything much more like a miniseries—but I like the tonal range available to the longer season and the more discursive format and I like how much more it feels like hanging out in a world rather than being told one specific story about it. Babylon 5 has some completely, randomly disposable episodes about which I remember nothing and it also has some completely, randomly transfixing episodes which aren't the hinges of the metaplot. Except in the sense of character development, "Dust to Dust" is not an especially plot-relevant episode! Half of it is a mystery of the week and the other half is pure vibes! But there's room for it in this style of show.
I remember noticing even in the earliest episodes that he's one of the people who most readily makes friends with the nonhumans on the station (he invites Delenn over to watch movies with him, even not really knowing her yet!).
I completely forgot about movie night with Delenn! Yes. And of course he's one of Londo's original friends on the station. I just realized this is one of the reasons that his dislike of Bester doesn't come across as bigotry, either. Garibaldi gets along with so many different sorts of people, alien or not, the telepathy isn't going to make a difference. The Psi Corps ethos and Bester's personality, however, are a bit of an impediment.
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Yeah, rereading my write-ups, I also found this stretch mostly not that interesting / not RTMI (though I did enjoy Marcus shenanigans and Garibaldi & G'Kar visits.
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I don't remember any of these episodes awfully well (a shame, with an Ivanova episode), but boy, do I remember the beds! They will appear again, naturally, but I think seeing them once is plenty.
I occasionally still think to myself, "I'm tired enough that I could probably sleep in/on/in the vicinity of a Minbari bed" when I'm completely wiped.
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LOLOLLLLL. A relatable thought. They definitely went with the worst possible stylings! (Also, considering how meta this show can be at times and how comfortable most of the regular beds look, compared to typical sci-fi beds, I feel like it might be a deliberate commentary on the narrow, uncomfortable beds seen in a lot of future architecture.)