More B5 babbling
Dec. 24th, 2011 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyYou guys expressed a strong desire for me to watch the actual B5 pilot, The Gathering, so I did that last night.
The Gathering is set a year before the series starts. The biggest obvious differences are:
• No Ivanova, Talia, or Dr. Franklin. Instead, there is Takashima, Lyta, and Dr. Kyle, all of whom have really weird line delivery. Given that they don't appear in the first three episodes of the series, I kind of expected them all to die horrible deaths in the movie and was rather surprised that they didn't.
• Londo's intro is better than the intro they ended up going with. Not that this is saying much. It is still terrible.
• It looked as though there was more neon on the set than there is later on. This is neither here nor there. I do like the neon, though. It gives everything a very Blade Runner feel.
Babylon 5 is waiting the arrival of the awesomecakes Vorlon ambassador, Kosh, with equal amounts of anticipation and dread. No human has ever seen a Vorlon before. Like a total dick, he arrives two days early and then almost drops dead from poisoning. Since I already know that he obviously survives, there wasn't a lot of suspense watching this. That's what I get for watching the series out of order.
It turns out that everyone is scared shitless of the Vorlons, probably because they look downright evil. At least their suits look evil. And their ships. Anyway, if Kosh dies, the humans are afraid that the Vorlons will attack the station in retaliation. The Vorlons are determined to let Kosh die rather than let Dr. Kyle see what's under the suit. He looks anyway, but all we see is white light and Kyle's eyes widening.
The prime suspect in the attempted murder turns out to be Sinclair, whose alibi is sketchy. This is confirmed when Lyta does a psychic scan of Kosh, and the last thing he saw before passing out was Sinclair being all, "Do you like this handshake? It is poison-flavoured." D'oh! Lyta accuses Sinclair, and the B5 council convenes to discuss extraditing Sinclair to the Vorlon homeworld. Given that humans and Vorlons can't even breathe the same atmosphere, things are not looking awesome for Sinclair.
Meanwhile, there is an even sketchier arms smuggler running around, Del Varner, and Garibaldi figures that it's more likely that he's behind it. This theory is torpedoed when Del Varner turns up dead. To make things more complicated, he's been dead for 30 hours, but has been spotted alive and offering to pay Londo's gambling debts far more recently than that.
G'Kar acts like a massive asshole throughout, trying to get Delann (who looks different in this movie than she does in the series) into a Minbari-Narn alliance to rule the universe, then sucking up to the Vorlons to get Sinclair extradited. Between this and his scheming in the first episode of the series, I really wonder why they let him stay on the station. I guess it's preferable to starting a war with the Narn, but the Narn seem pretty keen on having a war regardless.
So anyway, Garibaldi's investigation reveals that some of the arms that Del Varner was smuggling included a changeling net. It wasn't Sinclair who poisoned Kosh after all—it was a random Minbari assassin disguised to look like Sinclair. When he's found out, the Minbari tells Sinclair that there's a hole in his mind, then triggers a suicide bomb, almost destroying the station. Takashimi saves the day, the Vorlons drop the charges, and Sinclair dicks with G'Kar's mind. Hee! Oh, and there's a party for Kosh, at which he is downright creepy. Is his suit moist? ZOMG I love Vorlons and there needs to be more of them.
Observations:
• Despite the overuse of the word "last" in the opening monologue, I'd naïvely assumed that there were Babylons 1 through 4. Nope! They were all destroyed. That's dark.
• More detail on the Minbari-Earth war, and it's intriguing. The Minbari were on the verge of winning, and then suddenly surrendered for no apparent reason. Sinclair fought in the last battle but doesn't actually remember how it ended—that would be the aforementioned hole in his mind. The surrender reportedly had something to do with the Minbari Grey Council, of which we find out in the third episode that Delenn is a member.
• I liked Takashimi's character despite her awkward line delivery so I'm glad that they didn't kill her off. What happened to her, though?
• I didn't like Lyta at all, and was expecting her to be evil. The implication with Kyle's departure was that, having seen the Vorlon, his mind was completely blown and he had to leave the station. Presumably the same thing happened to Lyta, except that the actor didn't emote enough to make that obvious.
• I'm still confused as to why Delenn and Sinclair are such good friends. It would seem that there's more tension between humans and any other race than there is between the humans and the Minbari, despite the fact that they fought a war.
• Speaking of alien races, apparently there are four major ones. We see other aliens though, so—who are they? Do they not get ambassadors?
• Does everyone on B5 hang out at the casino? Are there other things to do? It would seem that there should be other things to do.
• The Earth political situation continues to confuse me. Sinclair clearly gets his marching orders from the same Earth senator as in the series. Then there's a reference to the UN being dissolved. So who is Earth's government? I was envisioning a UN-led One World Government out of LeHaye and Jenkins' worst nightmares, bwahahaha, but apparently this is not the case.
• Sinclair has a girlfriend who is some sort of trader. She disappears by the pilot episode, so I guess things didn't go very well.
• I really liked Londo's shark speech. Man, Londo is kind of a grim character. Given the silly hair, I'd expected him to be the show's comic relief. Not so much.
• Once Sinclair is accused of trying to poison Kosh and facing extradition to Vorlon, why do they just let him carry on his business around the station, armed no less?
• I dig Garibaldi's big fucking gun and was disappointed that he didn't get to use it. I hope it makes a reappearance later on in the series.
• Let's talk for a second about how![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sabotabby hates shapeshifter plots.
sabotabby hates shapeshifter plots.
I think it's just that they make me really uncomfortable and unsettled. Fringe does them reasonably well, though its shapeshifter episodes tend to be my least favourite, and DS9 did them well because the end result was everyone being incredibly paranoid. The implications were fully explored: You could never be positive as to who was a shapeshifter and who wasn't, and accordingly, everyone was always a suspect at any given time. Non-shapeshifter characters could never let down their guard or fully trust anyone else. Non-shapeshifter races would inevitably persecute shapeshifters. The utopian, peaceful Federation's gruesome final solution to the Founder problem looks extremely logical given the context.
So fact that the existence of something like a changeling net, despite its illegality and the danger of its use, doesn't quite strike the level of fear into the characters on B5 as I think it should. I'm not sure if it's the lack of paranoia that irritates me about shapeshifting plots or what. I just don't really care for them.
Anyway, back to the series proper when I get a chance.
The Gathering is set a year before the series starts. The biggest obvious differences are:
• No Ivanova, Talia, or Dr. Franklin. Instead, there is Takashima, Lyta, and Dr. Kyle, all of whom have really weird line delivery. Given that they don't appear in the first three episodes of the series, I kind of expected them all to die horrible deaths in the movie and was rather surprised that they didn't.
• Londo's intro is better than the intro they ended up going with. Not that this is saying much. It is still terrible.
• It looked as though there was more neon on the set than there is later on. This is neither here nor there. I do like the neon, though. It gives everything a very Blade Runner feel.
Babylon 5 is waiting the arrival of the awesomecakes Vorlon ambassador, Kosh, with equal amounts of anticipation and dread. No human has ever seen a Vorlon before. Like a total dick, he arrives two days early and then almost drops dead from poisoning. Since I already know that he obviously survives, there wasn't a lot of suspense watching this. That's what I get for watching the series out of order.
It turns out that everyone is scared shitless of the Vorlons, probably because they look downright evil. At least their suits look evil. And their ships. Anyway, if Kosh dies, the humans are afraid that the Vorlons will attack the station in retaliation. The Vorlons are determined to let Kosh die rather than let Dr. Kyle see what's under the suit. He looks anyway, but all we see is white light and Kyle's eyes widening.
The prime suspect in the attempted murder turns out to be Sinclair, whose alibi is sketchy. This is confirmed when Lyta does a psychic scan of Kosh, and the last thing he saw before passing out was Sinclair being all, "Do you like this handshake? It is poison-flavoured." D'oh! Lyta accuses Sinclair, and the B5 council convenes to discuss extraditing Sinclair to the Vorlon homeworld. Given that humans and Vorlons can't even breathe the same atmosphere, things are not looking awesome for Sinclair.
Meanwhile, there is an even sketchier arms smuggler running around, Del Varner, and Garibaldi figures that it's more likely that he's behind it. This theory is torpedoed when Del Varner turns up dead. To make things more complicated, he's been dead for 30 hours, but has been spotted alive and offering to pay Londo's gambling debts far more recently than that.
G'Kar acts like a massive asshole throughout, trying to get Delann (who looks different in this movie than she does in the series) into a Minbari-Narn alliance to rule the universe, then sucking up to the Vorlons to get Sinclair extradited. Between this and his scheming in the first episode of the series, I really wonder why they let him stay on the station. I guess it's preferable to starting a war with the Narn, but the Narn seem pretty keen on having a war regardless.
So anyway, Garibaldi's investigation reveals that some of the arms that Del Varner was smuggling included a changeling net. It wasn't Sinclair who poisoned Kosh after all—it was a random Minbari assassin disguised to look like Sinclair. When he's found out, the Minbari tells Sinclair that there's a hole in his mind, then triggers a suicide bomb, almost destroying the station. Takashimi saves the day, the Vorlons drop the charges, and Sinclair dicks with G'Kar's mind. Hee! Oh, and there's a party for Kosh, at which he is downright creepy. Is his suit moist? ZOMG I love Vorlons and there needs to be more of them.
Observations:
• Despite the overuse of the word "last" in the opening monologue, I'd naïvely assumed that there were Babylons 1 through 4. Nope! They were all destroyed. That's dark.
• More detail on the Minbari-Earth war, and it's intriguing. The Minbari were on the verge of winning, and then suddenly surrendered for no apparent reason. Sinclair fought in the last battle but doesn't actually remember how it ended—that would be the aforementioned hole in his mind. The surrender reportedly had something to do with the Minbari Grey Council, of which we find out in the third episode that Delenn is a member.
• I liked Takashimi's character despite her awkward line delivery so I'm glad that they didn't kill her off. What happened to her, though?
• I didn't like Lyta at all, and was expecting her to be evil. The implication with Kyle's departure was that, having seen the Vorlon, his mind was completely blown and he had to leave the station. Presumably the same thing happened to Lyta, except that the actor didn't emote enough to make that obvious.
• I'm still confused as to why Delenn and Sinclair are such good friends. It would seem that there's more tension between humans and any other race than there is between the humans and the Minbari, despite the fact that they fought a war.
• Speaking of alien races, apparently there are four major ones. We see other aliens though, so—who are they? Do they not get ambassadors?
• Does everyone on B5 hang out at the casino? Are there other things to do? It would seem that there should be other things to do.
• The Earth political situation continues to confuse me. Sinclair clearly gets his marching orders from the same Earth senator as in the series. Then there's a reference to the UN being dissolved. So who is Earth's government? I was envisioning a UN-led One World Government out of LeHaye and Jenkins' worst nightmares, bwahahaha, but apparently this is not the case.
• Sinclair has a girlfriend who is some sort of trader. She disappears by the pilot episode, so I guess things didn't go very well.
• I really liked Londo's shark speech. Man, Londo is kind of a grim character. Given the silly hair, I'd expected him to be the show's comic relief. Not so much.
• Once Sinclair is accused of trying to poison Kosh and facing extradition to Vorlon, why do they just let him carry on his business around the station, armed no less?
• I dig Garibaldi's big fucking gun and was disappointed that he didn't get to use it. I hope it makes a reappearance later on in the series.
• Let's talk for a second about how
sabotabby hates shapeshifter plots.sabotabby hates shapeshifter plots.I think it's just that they make me really uncomfortable and unsettled. Fringe does them reasonably well, though its shapeshifter episodes tend to be my least favourite, and DS9 did them well because the end result was everyone being incredibly paranoid. The implications were fully explored: You could never be positive as to who was a shapeshifter and who wasn't, and accordingly, everyone was always a suspect at any given time. Non-shapeshifter characters could never let down their guard or fully trust anyone else. Non-shapeshifter races would inevitably persecute shapeshifters. The utopian, peaceful Federation's gruesome final solution to the Founder problem looks extremely logical given the context.
So fact that the existence of something like a changeling net, despite its illegality and the danger of its use, doesn't quite strike the level of fear into the characters on B5 as I think it should. I'm not sure if it's the lack of paranoia that irritates me about shapeshifting plots or what. I just don't really care for them.
Anyway, back to the series proper when I get a chance.
