I watched the first ten minutes or so of the B5 movie "In the Beginning." At this point I'm doling out the remaining new-to-me canon in small doses, so that I get some fresh input now and then - which means I will get to actual plot in this movie .... eventually. Not yet.



♥ LONDO AND KIDS ♥

Of course he's good with kids. That was so cute; I was grinning all through that scene. It's nice to know that his post-canon life isn't all misery and neck parasites. (I mean, it's mostly misery and neck parasites, but at least he gets a few fun little moments.)

And it's interesting to see Centauri kids - I don't think we ever have before, and I was curious what their hair looks like before they start cutting it in adult styles. It's also interesting how the little girl's headdress approximates an adult Centauri woman's hairstyle - that seems very plausible.

Young Londo! He's somehow adorable and tragic - I like seeing how much more put together he is, collected and ambitious, compared to the washed-up DGAF version of him that we first meet on Babylon 5. And his advice to the humans about the Minbari is genuinely good - after all, the Centauri have been dealing with the Minbari for ages and never had a problem with them. Of course the humans don't listen.

It's also interesting to see Londo at this age - in his 30s or early 40s, I would guess - as a sort of bridge between the reckless young Londo that we've occasionally heard about (the Couro Prido Londo, the hotshot fighter pilot) and who he is when we meet him on the show. Here, he's at the top of his career (at least in his pre-war, pre-Prime Minister days), he's genuinely good at being a diplomat, he still thinks his life and career are going somewhere, as opposed to the hopeless, bitter semi-drunk he is in the early episodes on B5.

Anyway, I like it, will be watching more of it in a while! I don't know how I feel about Londo having been on Earth prior to the B5 era, but now I want fic about that. This was exactly what I wanted, just a tiny bit of additional B5 to give me something new. (And the Delenn and G'Kar cameos at the beginning were very unexpected and delightful!)