B5, episodes 14-16
Jan. 22nd, 2012 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyTwo fillers and a plot arc episode, all of which I greatly enjoyed because I have a girlcrush on Ivanova and her angst.
TKO is filler of the good kind. Which is to say that it’s mostly about Ivanova and her capital-I Issues. There’s some kind of other plot involving Garibaldi’s boxer friend, and I can’t say I’m interested in that story very much, other than that there’s people being punched out, which is always nice to see.
Ivanova’s plot, though, I really like. A really anachronistic-looking rabbi (seriously, I know we of the Tribe are big in our fashion traditions, but the guy is wearing a suit and tie, so he’s not frum, and most rabbis wouldn’t dress like that now) shows up on B5 looking for Ivanova. He wants to help her sit shiva for her father, who died a month ago. But Ivanova is full of conflict about her father, and her religion, and there are some really lovely, subtle tensions at play, and probably the best acting I’ve seen on the show so far.
Grail has a ridiculous premise, but it starts out with Kosh eating someone’s brain, so I’m willing to forgive a lot. (Spoiler: It’s not really Kosh; it’s some Centauri parasite creature that eats people’s brains that the villain of the week has dressed up to look like Kosh—not a difficult feat as no one actually knows what Vorlons look like.)
So there’s a guy named Deuce with a silly hick accent who runs an extortion ring in the sketchy part of the station known as Down Below. His latest target is a construction worker named Jinxo, so named because he worked on every Babylon station—all of which ASPLODED the second he left. Accordingly, he has committed to staying on B5 no matter what, convinced that everyone will die if he leaves. He owes Deuce what I can only assume is a huge sum of money, and after using Fake!Kosh to brain-wipe the only person on the station willing to testify to his crimes, gives him an ultimatum: pay up in credits or in tasty, tasty BRAAAAAINZ.
Meanwhile, another guy named Gajic has come aboard the station. Delenn and Lennier make like he’s a huge big deal, but Sinclair and Garibaldi give the best eyerolls ever when he tells them the reason for his visit—he’s after the Grail. The holy one. It’s even better because he has robes and a giant staff.
Jinxo tries to rob Gajic and gets caught, but Gajic convinces the ombuds—that would be a Space Judge—to forgo exiling him from the station and allow him to be his new Grail-seeking sidekick. Lulz ensue as they travel around the station, asking aliens if they’ve seen the Holy Grail lately and beating down the guys who are after Jinxo. Eventually Gajic reveals the reason for his crazy quest—and I actually really like the writing here. He used to be a space accountant until his family was killed in a space accident, and when he returned to work, “the numbers didn’t add up.” That was, until he met the last and dying seeker of the Grail, who passed on his mission to Gajic.
Obviously Gajic dies saving Jinxo from Deuce, and Jinxo becomes the new Grail-seeker. Fake!Kosh is revealed to be a pretty cool bit of CGI with tentacles. Garibaldi gets a nice troll on Londo and Vir. The scenes with the ombuds’ court are also pretty fun—there’s a cute bit involving a human whose ancestor was abducted by aliens trying to sue an alien. Ivanova only gets a few lines at the end, but they’re extremely good lines. Also, obviously the station doesn’t explode when Jinxo leaves because we’re only 2/3 through the first season, and the next season isn’t named Babylon 6.
Eyes is full of win. Ari Ben Zayn, a colonel from Earth Force with an epic facial scar, comes to B5, accompanied by a Psy-Corps guy who is Weyoun/Brunt from DS9 (!!!!yay!!!!) in order to investigate some of Sinclair’s more questionable decisions. He claims to have the authority to have Good!Weyoun psychically scan all members of the senior staff, including Ivanova, who is like, “no fucking way.” Meanwhile, when Garibaldi is not forced to do Colonel Jewy Ben Israeli’s bidding, he has to deal with Lennier taking far more of an interest in his motorcycle-building project than is healthy for a proper young space elf.
This episode features some of my favourite dialogue in the show so far, including Garibaldi consulting the “interweb” and referring to the irritating colonel as “Ben Hitler,” but the best line goes to Ivanova, who threatens to “twist off [Good!Weyoun]’s head and use it as a chamber pot.”
Other good things that happen:
• Good!Weyoun scans Ivanova—somewhat accidentally, to be fair—and discovers that she has STRONG FEELINGS for Talia. Did I call that or what? Sadly, Ivanova and Talia have not interacted at all since their one episode together, so maybe I’m reading too much into it.
• Ivanova gets drunk and punches out everyone at the casino.
• Ivanova has a nightmare involving her mother, terrifying people in theatre masks, and dry ice. It is wonderful. I mean, not for Ivanova, but it’s a great scene.
• Ivanova in general.
• I guess Garibaldi and Lennier zipping around the station on a motorcycle is also pretty sweet. “Behold! The Ninja!” is one of those lines I might need to use out of context.
• There are Mars terrorists now. I happen to love a book series that has Mars colony independence as a central theme, so this excites me greatly.
Anyway it turns out that Col. Jewy Ben Israeli got his awesome impressive scar murdering Palestinians or something, and is very bitter about this (wait, is there still an Israeli-Palestinian conflict this far in the future? That makes me sad) and even more bitter about being passed over for command of B5 for the less-qualified Sinclair, and that’s what the whole thing is really about. Also he is friends with Evil!Chekov. (Can Evil!Chekov please come back to the show ASAP?) Good!Weyoun figures out that he’s actually batshit insane and mindfucks him while Sinclair punches him out. I can’t imagine that given the emphasis of the show on story arcs and realistic depictions of bureaucracy…IN SPACE! that this won’t have some sort of later impact on Sinclair’s career trajectory, but it sure is fun to watch.
TKO is filler of the good kind. Which is to say that it’s mostly about Ivanova and her capital-I Issues. There’s some kind of other plot involving Garibaldi’s boxer friend, and I can’t say I’m interested in that story very much, other than that there’s people being punched out, which is always nice to see.
Ivanova’s plot, though, I really like. A really anachronistic-looking rabbi (seriously, I know we of the Tribe are big in our fashion traditions, but the guy is wearing a suit and tie, so he’s not frum, and most rabbis wouldn’t dress like that now) shows up on B5 looking for Ivanova. He wants to help her sit shiva for her father, who died a month ago. But Ivanova is full of conflict about her father, and her religion, and there are some really lovely, subtle tensions at play, and probably the best acting I’ve seen on the show so far.
Grail has a ridiculous premise, but it starts out with Kosh eating someone’s brain, so I’m willing to forgive a lot. (Spoiler: It’s not really Kosh; it’s some Centauri parasite creature that eats people’s brains that the villain of the week has dressed up to look like Kosh—not a difficult feat as no one actually knows what Vorlons look like.)
So there’s a guy named Deuce with a silly hick accent who runs an extortion ring in the sketchy part of the station known as Down Below. His latest target is a construction worker named Jinxo, so named because he worked on every Babylon station—all of which ASPLODED the second he left. Accordingly, he has committed to staying on B5 no matter what, convinced that everyone will die if he leaves. He owes Deuce what I can only assume is a huge sum of money, and after using Fake!Kosh to brain-wipe the only person on the station willing to testify to his crimes, gives him an ultimatum: pay up in credits or in tasty, tasty BRAAAAAINZ.
Meanwhile, another guy named Gajic has come aboard the station. Delenn and Lennier make like he’s a huge big deal, but Sinclair and Garibaldi give the best eyerolls ever when he tells them the reason for his visit—he’s after the Grail. The holy one. It’s even better because he has robes and a giant staff.
Jinxo tries to rob Gajic and gets caught, but Gajic convinces the ombuds—that would be a Space Judge—to forgo exiling him from the station and allow him to be his new Grail-seeking sidekick. Lulz ensue as they travel around the station, asking aliens if they’ve seen the Holy Grail lately and beating down the guys who are after Jinxo. Eventually Gajic reveals the reason for his crazy quest—and I actually really like the writing here. He used to be a space accountant until his family was killed in a space accident, and when he returned to work, “the numbers didn’t add up.” That was, until he met the last and dying seeker of the Grail, who passed on his mission to Gajic.
Obviously Gajic dies saving Jinxo from Deuce, and Jinxo becomes the new Grail-seeker. Fake!Kosh is revealed to be a pretty cool bit of CGI with tentacles. Garibaldi gets a nice troll on Londo and Vir. The scenes with the ombuds’ court are also pretty fun—there’s a cute bit involving a human whose ancestor was abducted by aliens trying to sue an alien. Ivanova only gets a few lines at the end, but they’re extremely good lines. Also, obviously the station doesn’t explode when Jinxo leaves because we’re only 2/3 through the first season, and the next season isn’t named Babylon 6.
Eyes is full of win. Ari Ben Zayn, a colonel from Earth Force with an epic facial scar, comes to B5, accompanied by a Psy-Corps guy who is Weyoun/Brunt from DS9 (!!!!yay!!!!) in order to investigate some of Sinclair’s more questionable decisions. He claims to have the authority to have Good!Weyoun psychically scan all members of the senior staff, including Ivanova, who is like, “no fucking way.” Meanwhile, when Garibaldi is not forced to do Colonel Jewy Ben Israeli’s bidding, he has to deal with Lennier taking far more of an interest in his motorcycle-building project than is healthy for a proper young space elf.
This episode features some of my favourite dialogue in the show so far, including Garibaldi consulting the “interweb” and referring to the irritating colonel as “Ben Hitler,” but the best line goes to Ivanova, who threatens to “twist off [Good!Weyoun]’s head and use it as a chamber pot.”
Other good things that happen:
• Good!Weyoun scans Ivanova—somewhat accidentally, to be fair—and discovers that she has STRONG FEELINGS for Talia. Did I call that or what? Sadly, Ivanova and Talia have not interacted at all since their one episode together, so maybe I’m reading too much into it.
• Ivanova gets drunk and punches out everyone at the casino.
• Ivanova has a nightmare involving her mother, terrifying people in theatre masks, and dry ice. It is wonderful. I mean, not for Ivanova, but it’s a great scene.
• Ivanova in general.
• I guess Garibaldi and Lennier zipping around the station on a motorcycle is also pretty sweet. “Behold! The Ninja!” is one of those lines I might need to use out of context.
• There are Mars terrorists now. I happen to love a book series that has Mars colony independence as a central theme, so this excites me greatly.
Anyway it turns out that Col. Jewy Ben Israeli got his awesome impressive scar murdering Palestinians or something, and is very bitter about this (wait, is there still an Israeli-Palestinian conflict this far in the future? That makes me sad) and even more bitter about being passed over for command of B5 for the less-qualified Sinclair, and that’s what the whole thing is really about. Also he is friends with Evil!Chekov. (Can Evil!Chekov please come back to the show ASAP?) Good!Weyoun figures out that he’s actually batshit insane and mindfucks him while Sinclair punches him out. I can’t imagine that given the emphasis of the show on story arcs and realistic depictions of bureaucracy…IN SPACE! that this won’t have some sort of later impact on Sinclair’s career trajectory, but it sure is fun to watch.
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no subject
Date: 2012-01-23 08:01 am (UTC)no snark is not crying because of a show about bureaucracy in space, snark is just next to some onions
all the time
Also: did you know Ivanova is Russian? just letting you know
It's a good thing she's Russian--it gives her cynicism superpowers
she's Russian, btw
Also, not a spoiler: upcoming is an ALIEN MACHINE that I finally got to see the origins of, and unsurprisingly, it also shows up later. I was so excited to see the episode about the ALIEN MACHINE that I shouted at the screen: "IT'S THE ALIEN MACHINE. I AM SO EXCITED. I REMEMBERED THE ALIEN MACHINE BUT NEVER SAW ITS ORIGIN AND NOW IT IS HERE"
My dad could not resist, and is now joining me for Babylon 5 viewings, so he got the brunt of my ALIEN MACHINE excitement.
How can they have Palestinian/Israeli conflict metaphors and also the actual thing still going on? Doesn't that ruin the metaphor?
Garibaldi's password: now you know.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-23 11:46 am (UTC)Is Ivanova Russian? I felt like maybe the show was being a bit unclear on that, what with only mentioning it every episode.
How can they have Palestinian/Israeli conflict metaphors and also the actual thing still going on? Doesn't that ruin the metaphor?
Every so often I'm reminded that this isn't Star Trek and we're not in the utopian Federation of Planets. SIGH.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 07:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-24 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-24 02:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-24 03:37 am (UTC)One of the annoying things in this episode is that the Rabbi asks if triel (a Centauri food) is kosher and then when the person he asks says they don't know he replies something like "Oh well, it doesn't matter." Yes, he isn't frum, and yes there are some sects of Judaism where not even the Rabbi has to keep kosher (we don't know if he's in one of those, however). But, if he was going to ask as if it mattered, why does he then shrug it off? Why bother? Irritating.
On a better note, the guy who played Weyoun was in Reanimator (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089885/) and some other HP Lovecraft films :-D.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-24 11:41 am (UTC)It's unfortunate, because there were some interesting places it might have gone. Just what happens to Judaism in the future? Frum like to think they're traditional, but their tradition is, historically speaking, not that old. Do new "traditional" sects pop up? How do you deal with kosher when it comes to alien food? I actually liked how they dealt with the Narn religion in one of the other episodes and the question of how you worship the sun when you're in deep space.
The guy who played Weyoun is all over skiffy. I like him.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-25 02:56 am (UTC)As for the rabbi in TKO... What threw me was the language. He's quite the polyglot, using terms from Russian, Yiddish, *and* Hebrew. Yet he calls Susan "Suzochka," a dimunitive that makes no sense to me. It's like the whole "Vor" prefix that Bujold uses in her Miles Vorkosigan series. It works great until she pulls out a classical Russian last name -- where that isn't a prefix at all, but part of the root word.
The bit about kashrut, yeah. That was a distinctly weird handling. Irrespective of anything else, there was no way that fish could've been kosher, since it wasn't prepared in a kosher kitchen. But let's suppose that this issue has been relaxed, some two centuries from now. Has the question of scales on seafood also been dismissed as no longer relevant for modern Judaism? Those are the two primary requirements for seafood, if memory serves.
A further question would be, how does Judaism view bodies of water on other planets in the first place: Are they, and the completely independent evolutionary paths their inhabitants have taken, bound by the same rules as earth-born creatures? What about the position that since these creatures were not created as companions/food for humans, the laws of kashrut should not apply at all? I can see huge conflict between an orthodox view that non-earth food falls under a blanker prohibition and a reform/spacefaring practical position that... And here we would have to get into a lot of specifics based on how weird the food in question was :)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-25 06:40 am (UTC)Even given everything you say here about kashrut, the fact that the Rabbi asks as if it's important then says oh well it doesn't matter would still be 10 kinds of wrong given any other facts.
But if we are theorizing, I think Orthodox folks would say alien produce would be ok, but not meat or fish.
(not pointing gun at you, only Ivanova pic I have)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-25 06:51 am (UTC)We're in agreement on the whole kashrut thing. I was just trying to come up with some possible justification :)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-25 06:52 am (UTC)(Ivanova's aim is off. That shot would be ventilating my office closet)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-26 02:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 07:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 07:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 07:20 am (UTC)