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jonroxton · 2 years

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b5 s5 feels like on long great swan song and the telepath arc is almost the shows’ anti-thesis writ. so we’ve had four seasons of nonstop chaos, growth and complexity, with compromise as one of the most important factors for any kind of continuation. everyone is given choices to make during the shadow war that tests their resolve, their beliefs and yields results. even londo eventually relents, realizing the only way things end is if there’s honest change and community, especially with your archnemesis.

then there’s byron and the telepaths. byron wants a better world for his people and a place to live with them, but he also won’t work with anyone in authority, anyone with the power to give them what they want, and he isolates them. byron’s more than stubborn. he just won’t work with them. he has valid concerns. he’s right that telepaths were just being utilized for other purposes beyond their own, as weapons. but he also won’t move from there. unlike everyone else we’ve watched for four seasons, there’s no compromise or negotiation. he advocates nonviolence and peaceful living, but he has nothing but contempt for the people he has to coexist with, who he doesn’t actually coexist with bc he keeps them all apart. until finally you have the standoff, where even if you don’t root for bester (who does lol), you see that byron put them all in that situation. sheridan even says it, we didn’t have to get to this point. i mean, to the very, very end, byron refuses to budge.

view from the gallery and the rebo and zooty episode really bring it home about the end of things, saying goodbye (literally !), and how you get there. through give and take, negotiation and compromise and change, really listening to people. byron just... doesn’t do that. and he ends the same way as president clarke did, taking everyone down with him.

#mystuff #babylon 5 #i really love this season #one long extended final episode #this arc contrasted with the greater theme of this season especially #bc it reiterates what i think s3+s4 swallows up being so bombastic #the smaller wars don't end #not so long as things remain the same #tho bye byron u pompous jerk #he talked a big game and was surprised every time it didn't go his way #poor lyta

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steal-this-idea · 5 years

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Babylon 5 rewatch continues...

Now with a LINK to the original post that I had let grow to unreasonable length instead of forcing the two people who will see this scroll through ever last piece of dumb shit I’ve had to say first!

JUMP TO ORIGINAL LONG POST HERE

(Learning Curve)

I’ve taken the talk on meditation to heart (the “anyone can meditate in silence” bit) to the point where I think I can become impatient or even annoyed by those who insist upon quiet to do so (think especially for certain sports like golf and tennis...like, if you’re to the point where you’re a professional, some asshole in the stands should be able to neither faze you nor distract you)

If garlic stinks then what’s saffron? (the meal where Garibaldi starts laying into Lochley’s past and Zack is obliquely commenting on it, asking if anyone thinks the food tastes funny, suggesting saffron when it starts getting awkward and concluding garlic after Lochley puts Garibaldi in his place)

Continuing my Takashima just disappeared rant: N’grath, our season 1 praying mantis gangster, gets a mention in this episode but Lt.Cmdr. Takashima? Who’s she?

I do love that the Minbari are an advanced race but not an impassionate one...which honestly makes them scarier, as the Earth-Minbari War shown to us throughout “In the Beginning” demonstrated...

Meaning does not exist independently... I wonder if this episode is where I got that idea from?

(Strange Relations)

I don’t hate the ex-wife of Sheridan revelation of Capt. Lochley. If anything, it kinda complements how Cmdr. Sinclair got appointed to run Babylon 5. I assume, like with the Minbari when the station first came online, Sheridan insisted on veto power over anyone EarthGov might select to run Babylon 5. I wonder if Capt. Lochley was far down the list too?

Zip ties: Still good enough for the 23½ century :-)

The bottle tossing Hyach is at it again...

(Secrets of the Soul)

I do like Season 5 being like a mirror of Season 1 and giving us more standalone type episodes which allows us to be given closer looks at members of the (former) League of Non-Aligned Worlds. This episode, the Hyach; the next episode, the Brakir; and the one after that, the Drazi.

And I have to say this again. Even when he’s cheesy, I don’t hate Byron.

I think Lyta made me love bangs :-)

I liked the detail of the Drazi record not being in English

Also, why didn’t we learn Byron’s secrets too? While, yes, dramatic effect for the later episode, sure...why not? I suppose also Lyta’s walls coming down during her intimacy may have simply flooded everything else out too. Hard to say. I also wonder why Lyta’s eyes went black during their lovemaking when, since this is a Vorlon-influenced memory, they should’ve glowed white? Again, I’m sure it had something to do with dramatic effect...

(Day of the Dead)

I love that Capt. Lochley hates Rebo & Zooty. It’s like, ugh...these hacks :-)

And I also love Delenn’s reaction to one of their jokes. I wonder what Mira Furlan was thinking about to get herself to laugh so heartily and convincingly?

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Nice that the guest spots got end credits billing and not upfront so as not to spoil the surprise (unlike what happened with Anna Sheridan). I wonder if that cost TNT a fine with the Screen Actors Guild? I know Lucas always had to pay a fine to get out of putting traditional title screen credits over the start of each Star Wars film.

I presume there is plenty of A.U. fiction out there about who the other characters would have met had they been on the other side of the line?

Do you think Kosh would have appeared in its encounter suit to Sheridan had he been there or would it have been more open like in the death dream sequence (or even in its true squid-like form)?

(In the Kingdom of the Blind)

The Centauri are ultra racist. That dude’s not even attempting discretion: he’s gonna talk shit about Narns right in front of a Narn with not even a hint of concern that G’Kar might understand what he’s saying or be capable of feeling hurt by it.

As much as I hate what Byron did after learning how telepaths came to be and what they were intended for, I also can’t imagine an equivalent shock that could so forcefully shake the very foundations of my world and thus how I would react to such knowledge...

Would the Drakh have worked better if they didn’t have visible sclera? I just can’t help but feel if their eyes were entirely black or red instead of looking human, if it would have increased their visual menace or just made them look goofy?

But that lighting on the Drakh’s reveal though...magnificent

Isn’t that a Brakiri warship? How could it have been unarmed? I’m not in any way justifying the attack on them but, like, of *all* the ships you could’ve used to illustrate an attack on a commercial transport...

(A Tragedy of Telepaths)

I’ll admit I’ve tried using the “There’s No Bomb” technique in my desperate attempts to quell my allergies. Trying to tell my itchy, runny nose that, despite its objections, there’s no need to sneeze. There’s. No need. To sneeze...

Can’t say it ever worked though...

Byron just dropping that some worlds developed telepaths naturally which seems strange because I thought I recalled JMS mentioning that if a species were to develop telepathy they’d never advance to civilization. Being a telepath would just be another technique a predator could use to snare prey and/or a technique a prey animal could use to avoid being eaten.

Still, if I’m going to grant him this, I wonder if the Soul Hunters were an example of natural telepaths? The behavior of the two we meet in the show’s second episode is reminiscent of telepath behavior we witness in later episodes (like Byron sensing that man’s impending death and the Soul Hunter being able to pick up on Delenn’s secrets as the machine she was hooked up to slowly killed her). Were Soul Hunters like vultures originally? Always feeling for the impending death of an animal so they could eat that night? But that particular ability wouldn’t necessarily have prevented the kind of generalization necessary for the development of language, tools, and technology so the ability served them rather than limited them and as they developed and went to the stars, the idea of preserving special souls became of paramount importance to their raison d’être. Comments? Concerns? Good idea? Poorly thought out idea?

G’KAR: Would you like some jala? It’s cold.

LONDO: Get that away from me. Jala needs to be hot. It takes heat to cultivate its flavor. To consume cold jala is to insult a Centauri. I don’t even know where you got it.

G’KAR: I saw it on a tray heading into the south end of the palace. I assumed no one would mind if I took it.

LONDO: That’s right. Only Narns can stomach it cold.

It would be interesting to have a culture which marks the peaces rather than the wars. I don’t even know if that would be so far-fetched to imagine such a people given the Incas made “constellations” out of the dark parts of the sky as well as its luminous parts.

Byron’s demand for compensation is SOOO much more reasonable than his threat of blackmail. It’s a shame he didn’t think of it first...

Is the Interstellar Alliance basically the Minbari Empire? Minbar’s going to be the home office of the ISA. After the White Star fleet (which really cannot be rebuilt), the Minbari military is the strongest in the known galaxy and I have to assume it is their fleet the ISA would lean on in the event of a major war between powers. I don’t know. I just think of it like if we were to form an EarthGov right now and it actually had real power, its power would almost certainly be heavily reliant on U.S. military might, making an EarthGov like a de facto U.S. empire, no? It’s outside the scope of Babylon 5, but I wonder if such a thing will come up in the ISA’s future?

Babylon 5 did for me with telepaths what Buffy the Vampire Slayer did for vampires. I can no longer accept any alternative :-)

(Phoenix Rising)

I wonder how this telepath colony plot would have unfolded differently had Byron had the foresight to have some non-human telepaths among them so they wouldn’t be wholly under Earth’s jurisdiction?

Do you think Bester spoke to his underlings at the briefing because he *had* to or was it solely for our, the viewer’s, benefit? I just think back to when Bester first met with Sinclair...

Regarding Bester’s “How stupid do you think I am?” speech: I’m so glad JMS didn’t pad the scene by going to commercial as the music climaxed with Garibaldi holding a PPG to him. That immediate release of dramatic tension because there never was any there to begin with; that subversion of expectations, was an effective choice.

I don’t drink but after that scene, I’d probably start drinking too...

Peter’s telekinesis seems underwhelming. I suppose I could blame it on the show’s ability to do that special effect (the ring Eilerson fires in that episode of Crusade was an effect done well). But how hard was he casting those objects? I feel like I could throw harder and more accurately; like his telekinesis was really an inefficient way to go about things, y’know?

I know from reading around that had Claudia Christian remained on the show, she would’ve been the one to fall for Byron and I have to admit it’s still hard imagining Ivanova in that role. I think I’m glad she didn’t not because it would be unbelievable but just that it would be yet another tragic love and broken trust story for her and it’s like, damn, give this woman a break already...hasn’t she suffered enough?

Did Byron program his followers with that hymn? The way they gather around him before he immolates them is practically instinctual. I suppose it’s not so far-fetched. Byron *is* a strong P12 and more than once he desperately tried to get back to his people in order to calm them down suggesting his hold over them may not have been charisma alone. I don’t know...

(The Ragged Edge)

The Drazi with the vomit bag on the shuttle, haha. I love those touches they put into the show :-)

Is it my imagination or is G’Kar’s room less red?

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