Signs and Portents

[kangeiko]

I 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.

Comments

[selenak]

Re: Talia, no, as far as I recall, the Telepath novels don't mention her. I think the problem is that Lyta and Talia essentially were the same character in the grand narrative; not literally, of course, but when JMS did the pilot, he certainly intended Lyta to be the ongoing telepath, when the network didn't like Pat Tallman, he brought in Talia, and only when Andrea Thompson decided to leave did Pat and Lyta become an option again. If Andrea Thompson hadn't left, Talia would not have been Control, and instead of getting modified by going to Vorlon space, as Lyta was, Talia would have revealed to be modified by Jason Ironheart's gift, and by the time Kosh had made a copy of her mind. And so on. I do wonder whether Marcus would have existed if Andrea Thompson hadn't left, or if he had existed but been in unrequited love with someone else.

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.)

[kangeiko]

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...

[aris_tgd]

Oh God, I can actually answer some of those questions because I know far too much about the "original plans" before characters had to drop out, but if you want an example of all of the worst of JMS' writing tics with none of his best habits, try to dig up a copy of the original five-year plan. It was released with the script books and it's... it's not good.

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.

[kangeiko]

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.

[aris_tgd]

JMS' comment on the Byron/Ivanova thing was that she was going to basically charge in because of his surface similarities to Marcus, and then I believe they were going to break up because those surface similarities weren't what she wanted. So it's not quite as bad as it sounds? Lyta was going to have a similar arc to the one she had in the actual show, but more as a member of the cult, so more emotionally distant.

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.)

[kangeiko]

... 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.

[aris_tgd]

So very first draft. I do know that his writing of Byron and the teep cult was definitely inspired by his own time in a cult when he was in his teens and twenties, though; he talks about that occasionally in interviews and forwards but I don't know if he's ever written a lot about it.

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!

[kangeiko]

I had NO idea he was in a cult! This explains a great deal about some of the plotlines, tbh.

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.