Signs and Portents
31 May 2016 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kangeikoI introduced a couple of friends to Babylon 5 recently, and I have been watching the show alongside them. I didn't realise that this was fairly wide-spread; evidently, the 20th anniversary has brought about a resurgence of interest!
We've covered Season 2, and are in the middle of S3 thus far. Some thoughts, with the benefit of hindsight:
1) I used to draw hearts around Delenn and Sheridan, then went through a phase of having absolutely no interest in them. I've come back around to being very interested in them again, primarily because of the utter respect on both their parts for the other. They are very different, and yet they respect those differences and try to accommodate them. I don't know whether it is a case of television moving towards bombastic, dramatic relationships and away from quiet build-ups, or whether this was always somewhat rare to see, but it strikes me as something I no longer see on screen. Even on shows where there is ostensibly a slow-build, it feels more like a will-they/won't-they dynamic, rather than a gradual growing together. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I do like it.
2) I'm more and more convinced that there was an intention to do something with Talia's arc rather than just leave it hanging. Did we ever see this resolved in a novel? I know that Bester references her later on in Dust to Dust but I feel that his comment is more designed to provoke.
3) I really, really appreciate the creation of the different races. Yes, we have the main players, but we also get to see the other races fleshed out until you can spot them. OK, maybe I never learned the name of the fishpeople, but I remember Ambassador FishPerson being concerned with Homeguard terrorism. I can spot the unfortunate Markab, the garrulous Drazi, the curiously identical-looking Brakiri. (I think it's established that the Drazi don't have any females - or that they reproduce in a non-binary way, anyway - but is it ever explained about the Brakiri? Or have I selectively not noticed any female Brakiri?) And the Hyach (Hyatt? No, that's a hotel chain) and the Pak'Ma'Ra and so forth. Even if they are not one of the main races, from very early on they have a coherent look which helps the station to feel real.
4) I've discovered the Babylon 5 audio guide podcasts and they are excellent! Great discussion for each episode, and suitable for both new viewers and those doing a re-watch. (They have a loud noise to indicate the start of spoilers.)
5) You can now find a whole bunch of convention videos online! The 20th anniversary con panels are mostly on YouTube (here, here, here and here... and here, here) but here are also some 1990s clips. I haven't watched them so I can't swear as to the quality, but it's nice to see them!
6) I feel like more than a couple of governments have watched this show and thought, "yes, the Earth Alliance approach to things is actually pretty great, we should totally implement that at home." Some of it is even worse. I'm fairly certain that Donald Trump's speeches map word for word against Londo's most bombastic, aggressive declarations. He is, after all, going to make the Centauri Republic great again.
7) Julie Musante would have been hired by David Cameron's team in seconds.
8) I really like how we see representatives of the Earth Alliance and they're not all American? There are people from all across the Alliance.
9) ... I miss Andreas.
We've covered Season 2, and are in the middle of S3 thus far. Some thoughts, with the benefit of hindsight:
1) I used to draw hearts around Delenn and Sheridan, then went through a phase of having absolutely no interest in them. I've come back around to being very interested in them again, primarily because of the utter respect on both their parts for the other. They are very different, and yet they respect those differences and try to accommodate them. I don't know whether it is a case of television moving towards bombastic, dramatic relationships and away from quiet build-ups, or whether this was always somewhat rare to see, but it strikes me as something I no longer see on screen. Even on shows where there is ostensibly a slow-build, it feels more like a will-they/won't-they dynamic, rather than a gradual growing together. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I do like it.
2) I'm more and more convinced that there was an intention to do something with Talia's arc rather than just leave it hanging. Did we ever see this resolved in a novel? I know that Bester references her later on in Dust to Dust but I feel that his comment is more designed to provoke.
3) I really, really appreciate the creation of the different races. Yes, we have the main players, but we also get to see the other races fleshed out until you can spot them. OK, maybe I never learned the name of the fishpeople, but I remember Ambassador FishPerson being concerned with Homeguard terrorism. I can spot the unfortunate Markab, the garrulous Drazi, the curiously identical-looking Brakiri. (I think it's established that the Drazi don't have any females - or that they reproduce in a non-binary way, anyway - but is it ever explained about the Brakiri? Or have I selectively not noticed any female Brakiri?) And the Hyach (Hyatt? No, that's a hotel chain) and the Pak'Ma'Ra and so forth. Even if they are not one of the main races, from very early on they have a coherent look which helps the station to feel real.
4) I've discovered the Babylon 5 audio guide podcasts and they are excellent! Great discussion for each episode, and suitable for both new viewers and those doing a re-watch. (They have a loud noise to indicate the start of spoilers.)
5) You can now find a whole bunch of convention videos online! The 20th anniversary con panels are mostly on YouTube (here, here, here and here... and here, here) but here are also some 1990s clips. I haven't watched them so I can't swear as to the quality, but it's nice to see them!
6) I feel like more than a couple of governments have watched this show and thought, "yes, the Earth Alliance approach to things is actually pretty great, we should totally implement that at home." Some of it is even worse. I'm fairly certain that Donald Trump's speeches map word for word against Londo's most bombastic, aggressive declarations. He is, after all, going to make the Centauri Republic great again.
7) Julie Musante would have been hired by David Cameron's team in seconds.
8) I really like how we see representatives of the Earth Alliance and they're not all American? There are people from all across the Alliance.
9) ... I miss Andreas.
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Date: 2016-05-31 05:05 pm (UTC)re: 6, well, Bush Jr. was a fan of the show (one of his sidekicks told Boxleitner who told JMS who was horrified), but clearly he saw himself as Sheridan, and so, you can bet, do most of the current bunch of wannabe dictators. Fighting the good fight against corrupt governments who are secretly in league with evil shadowy FOREIGNERS who have designs to enslave you all. Oh, it can be twisted. And everyone loves themselves as the victim fighting back, even if in reality they're the most privileged of the lot. (I'll never get over reading a review of The Two Towers in which TIME critic Richard Corliss compared the US to the hobbits. Viggo Mortensen didn't get over that one, either. He wore a "no blood for oil" t-shirt on every promo event the cast did, and wrote an incensed letter to TIME. This being the year of the second Iraq War.)
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Date: 2016-06-01 08:59 am (UTC)Re: Talia - yeah, having both Talia and Lyta be modified does rather reinforce the fact that they are sharing a single character function. But I do wonder what the original plan was, because we didn't have Ivanova OR Talia in The Gathering - so presumably after Takeshima was discovered as the spy after shooting Garibaldi (and maybe she was Control?) then the Ivanova character would have been brought in to serve as the 2iC. I'm guessing that Marcus would have existed at that point - both to be the Ranger in situ, and also to give Ivanova a romantic arc, because Lyta would presumably be busy with the telepath arc. Unless Lyta was supposed to be the Byron figure and Ivanova was supposed to pick up the mantle of revolution?
Re: Bush - YIKES, yeah, I can imagine! And Sheridan certainly does a good line of heroic military hero standing for the Light. Shame that they forget all of S4 when cribbing from the show play sheet...
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Date: 2016-06-01 10:08 am (UTC)Originally, Takashima was going to have Garibaldi's second-in-command's role, to shoot him in the back and work on the President's assassination, and then when she left, Ivanova would be promoted from within C&C. I don't know if she was also going to be Control, I think that was going to be later? They were definitely going to bring in Rangers at some point, but I don't know if they'd made the decision around Season 1 when they were still hashing stuff out. I do know that if Ivanova hadn't left in Season 5, she would have gotten the Byron romance plot, as a rebound after losing Marcus. Oh dear.
And yes ugh to the Bush Jr. thing. It was Karl Rove who said "I think Babylon 5 is the greatest show on television, and the President thinks so, too." Welp.
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Date: 2016-06-01 09:33 pm (UTC)He... he was going to do Byron after Marcus on the same person?? That's... well we all knew that Byron was basically a Marcus clone with telepathy and terrible dialogue, but really? Wouldn't that seem a little like she just went out and started dating the first martyr with long hair she could find? And then with what happens to Byron - oh my god I'm so angry about this and I haven't even read the thing. I'm so glad he didn't get the chance to screw this up!!
I still think actually doing something with Talia's character could be interesting. There was so much to Lyta's character that we just didn't get to explore, and with Talia in very different circumstances it would be interesting to see how that evolves. Lyta's story left me feeling a little dissatisfied tbh, and actually upon re-watching I am SO angry on her behalf. Because she is messed around and treated like a tool rather than a person, and Sheridan does this to both her and Talia (Lyta for getting info out of the Centauri telepath and Talia as a mental sounding fork against Morden) and he continues in it! Him and Garibaldi. And Lyta eventually deciding to split being caused by Byron really frustrated me because I felt that she never really challenged how badly she had been treated by the station staff and given how powerful she was, I really really wanted to see that. And not in the way it was in the films.
Tl;dr - Talia breaking free from Control and from Psi Corps or being restored through the crystal back-up, and then being responsible for rescuing telepaths or for coordinating a resistance - doubleplusgood.
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Date: 2016-06-02 05:33 am (UTC)But yes, AUGH, I do wish they'd gotten more about Talia!
(The original 5-year plan... ... siiigh... had Sinclair not being Valen, hooking up with Delenn after Catherine gets her memory wiped out, and them having some kind of super-quick-aging baby who is an "innocent" adult and thus the new perfect spiritual leader... I don't even know. They steal B4 in the future and rename it Babylon Prime and there's more Shadow War stuff I think? Like, he was planning a sequel series? It felt very "I am going to BLOW YOUR MIND, MAN." My mind remained unblown.)
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Date: 2016-06-03 12:12 am (UTC)... It all feels very First Draft (tm). Thank god the worst of that was removed! I still think the telepath arc was screwed up but then I'm not sure whether he intended Byron et al to seem so reminiscent of a suicide cult, or whether that just came about naturally. But I think their whole presentation was of a group that didn't expect to survive and by God, they were going to make as big a bang as they could manage when they drank the KoolAid.
Not that I'm objecting to a Byron who is a cult leader intent on self-immolation, I just think that it's a little limiting to have him be the sole telepath leader. A telepath movement with a convincing leader who had a practical, workable vision, would have been very interesting.
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Date: 2016-06-03 07:45 am (UTC)Aha, I just found the quote about Ivanova and Byron:
"My thought at the time was that, having spurned Marcus and seen the results, Ivanova might hesitate when it seemed to come around again. He would also give her the guidance and ability needed to better understand her latent telepathy, a threat that would have been even further developed by season's end. The premise being that she didn't take affection from the right person, and screwed herself in the process, then on the rebound did accept affection from the wrong person, and got burned as a result.
"What can I say, Ivanova's love life was not a happy road.
"The relationship would have flared hot, complicated her life immensely, and been over in just a few episodes."
I also wish we'd had more telepath stuff. There's a reason The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father is one of my favorite Season 5 episodes, for all its flaws!
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Date: 2016-06-03 03:22 pm (UTC)RE: Ivanova/Marcus - ok, that sounds a LOT better than what I was fearing! I agree with you, having something a bit more fleshed out on the Telepath War would have made me very happy. For one thing, we never see a 'good' Psi Corps member. They're either psychopathic or trying to leave. Whereas telepaths were shoved in that box and there must have been plenty who felt that this was the one chance they had at survival. I'm also interested that nothing was made of how the other races appear to have managed to exist peacefully alongside their telepaths, and it's just humans that seem out for blood. Minbari telepaths seem to be almost exclusively religious caste, and Centauri telepaths fit seamlessly onto the social ladder of Centauri society. (Weirdly, they reminded me of the pre-reform Vulcan in Diane Duane's Spock's World - familial commodities, and sometimes power players.) Yet humans just couldn't figure it out. Where are the humans discussing a pan-galactic telepath organisation? We have the Interstellar Alliance; where are the Minbari teeps wanting to help their human brethren?
... I may write this fic.
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Date: 2016-05-31 07:16 pm (UTC)3) Alien races! The fish-like folks are the Abbai, and their ambassador is named Kalika. And we do meet a female Brakiri in season 4, at the least; the woman who comes up to fawn all over Sheridan when he's trying to make up with Garibaldi (i.e. at the absolute worst time) is Brakiri. There's a bit of an intro to all the Non-Aligned Worlds in one of the things that B5 Books published, but honestly it doesn't hold with a lot of my headcanon and I tend to ignore what wasn't actually on screen.
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Date: 2016-06-01 09:05 am (UTC)That's so cool! We're not up to S4 yet on the re-watch (we watched Severed Dreams last night) so all we've seen of the Brakiri thus far has been background shots and the odd comment in negotiation scenes. I think the Gaim get more lines in screen in the first couple of seasons!
Re: the B5 books - I don't have all of them, do you mean the script books? I'm still trying to collect them, albeit slowly...
I do wonder about the RPG sourcebooks, which seem to be another source of info on the universe, because they seem to have a lot of info about the first Narn/Centauri conflict, which I'm very interested in. But OTOH the quality does seem pretty variable and I'm not sure how annoyed I'd get at extrapolations on canon that don't tally with my own reading and headcanon. (I got irate with JMS's own fanfic over Marcus&Ivanova, so I think my own reading of B5 is pretty solidly embedded in my skull by this point and even JMS's view doesn't seem able to shift it! Conviction or pig-headedness?)
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Date: 2016-06-01 10:00 am (UTC)And after digging through my stuff for half an hour, I found the book: Other Voices Volume 3 has a rundown of the Non-Aligned Worlds and a glossary of Centauri, Narn, and Minbari. I remember just being kind of disappointed that their Brakiri headcanon didn't agree with mine. ;)
But yes totally to the JMS Marcus/Ivanova fanfic. What even was that. Besides incorrect.
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Date: 2016-06-01 09:24 pm (UTC)I bought a few of them when they came out, but sadly I was an impoverished student at the time and couldn't keep up with the rate of release! I'm trying to catch up with them now, but it looks like Volume 15 will be forever out of reach. I keep seeing the whole lot on sale but as I have most of them now re-buying them just for that volume seems excessive...
I'm actually hoping that video will eventually surface of the joke script being acted out, btw. I was at the con where it happened and I've got photos of the kiss (I have a horrible feeling I may be one of the few that did, because I ran to the front and nearly got squashed by Andreas!) BUT I do know that Rick was in the front row with a video camera. So somewhere out there, there exists video footage of the joke script being acted out.
I have decided that fanfic is fanfic and it doesn't matter that it was by JMS, it's just wrong and we can quietly ignore it.
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Date: 2016-06-02 05:36 am (UTC)Bill Mumy told me that he and Peter David wrote a script for Season 5 that (obviously) never got produced, but neither of them has a copy any more and Mumy finds even thinking about Season 5 to be really depressing (he hasn't watched any of the episodes.) I'd love to dig that out of the ashes! So much B5 stuff is just lost and it makes me sad.
... Of course, what I want more than anything is a proper Blu-Ray remastering with all-new effects shots in 16:9 aspect ratio, but that's just dreaming.
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Date: 2016-06-03 12:12 am (UTC)Oh God yeah, I think it was in one of the 20th anniversary panels that he mentioned the betrayal was the one time he didn't internalise the actions and just 'acted', because he disagreed 100% with what happened. He something like, there was another Ranger in there and no matter what Lennier may have felt about Sheridan, he would never abandon another Ranger. I can completely see why he's so upset about it still!
I desperately hope that the interest in Sense8, and the resurgence of interest in B5 following the 20th anniversary, will make it worthwhile for some studio to re-run it again - and off the back of that, to remaster it for Blu-Ray. I can see why it would be incredibly hard because of all the aspect ratio nonsense, but if they were able to do it to 1960s footage of original ST, why can't they do it to 1990s footage? A question for more technical minds than mine, but I shall keep hoping...
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Date: 2016-05-31 07:46 pm (UTC)Oh yes, this. That respect and slow development of their relationship is one of the reasons why J/D is one of the few OTPs I have.
OK, maybe I never learned the name of the fishpeople, but I remember Ambassador FishPerson being concerned with Homeguard terrorism.
Abbai. I remember it because Abba is a brand of pickled herring ;)
"yes, the Earth Alliance approach to things is actually pretty great, we should totally implement that at home."
And the Finnish extreme right wing has clearly taken lessong from the Home Guard and the Clark-approved ISN. It was actually one of the things that really made me think when I was rewatching the show last autumn, how eerily current the show still is.
... I miss Andreas.
Me too. And Michael and Richard, and all the rest. It was really sad often you'd be watching a scene and suddenly realise that most of the people in it are dead :(
In addition to the con videos, I recommend watching this interview that JMS did wtÃth the archive of American television. It 's notable mainly because it was the first interview where JMS told the truth about Michael O'hare's departure, but the whole thing is really interesting.
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Date: 2016-06-01 09:15 am (UTC)Oh, that video is heart-breaking! I've been trying to find footage of Andreas online and it's so rare as to be almost non-existent. Same for Michael and Rick. Whatever isn't on the show is missing. And for Andreas, I can't even find any interviews, which is especially sad.
Re: John/Delenn - honestly, I find it so rare for there to be happily married, respectful couples on screen that I grow more and more appreciative of them. J/D and Jed/Abby from The West Wing are the only ones that spring to mind! (And both have the spectre of early death hanging over them.)
Re: Home Guard, honestly, the rise of the far right is so spot on in the show that when we look around and see it happening it makes you realise how slowly and how gradually everything has been sliding to the right. In Voices of Authority, when Julie Musante says that the homeless don't exist and the newbie who was watching was like "OMG what did they do to them???" And then when Musante said that this was because they re-wrote the dictionary and definition of homelessness, she had a moment when she thought "oh that's ok, that's just what we do - WAIT WHAT OH SHIT."
Some of it is so gradual and hidden that you don't realise what it adds up to.
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Date: 2016-06-04 11:23 am (UTC)What I liked best about it is that Zack also went along with it at first, not because he was brainwashed or evil, but simply because the Ministry of Peace paid him some extra and he didn't realise until later what it really meant.
Also, I used to think that "The Illusion of Truth" was unrealistic, but on my last rewatch I realised that it was scarily accurate portrayal of how the pro-Russia propagandists work today. It just seemed so over the top that surely no-one could really believe it, but if you replaced Minbari and aliens with immigrants, it wouldn't be that far removed from stuff that's being shared on social media...
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Date: 2016-06-04 08:24 pm (UTC)Yes, exactly! Because... well, they don't need him to do anything other than what he's already doing, right? And after that slow, gradual slide, there isn't any way to backpedal from it. While Sheridan et al can hang in the middle, trying to keep Earth off their backs, Zack doesn't have a choice. He is either for Nightwatch, or against it. And he is stuck in the 'for' camp until it gets to a point where he realises he would be irrevocably committed. It's great that he had that choice and he made the right call, but thinking about it logically, there must have been others who reached that point and went, "well, but if I back out, it's going to go badly for me and I have a family. So I guess I'm committed to this." There is a certain freedom that all those characters enjoy of having very few areas in which they can feel pressured.
Also, I used to think that "The Illusion of Truth" was unrealistic, but on my last rewatch I realised that it was scarily accurate portrayal of how the pro-Russia propagandists work today. It just seemed so over the top that surely no-one could really believe it, but if you replaced Minbari and aliens with immigrants, it wouldn't be that far removed from stuff that's being shared on social media...
Yes, OMG. Same for Trump, for UKIP, for all those acceptable faces of xenophobia and racism we see getting more and more airtime.