B5, the rest of Season 1
Jan. 28th, 2012 01:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyICON VERY RELATED.
If you're like me and have never seen B5 but are planning to some day, do yourself a favour and don't click on the lj-cut. You'll want to be surprised.
So remember how all of the other Babylons were either blown up or disappeared mysteriously? Babylon Squared answers the latter question—Babylon 4 has become unstuck in time, and gotta love the Vonnegut reference there. An unfortunate pilot stumbles upon it and gets caught in a tachyon burst (did anyone else shout out “OMG IT’S DOCTOR MANHATTAN?” No? Just me, then). He has enough time to scratch “B4” into his seatbelt and set his ship on autopilot before he spontaneously dies of old age. Badass.
With this dire warning, Sinclair and Garibaldi set off on a rescue mission to evacuate the skeleton crew trapped on the time-travelling B4. Everyone on the ship is insane, ridiculous, or some combination thereof. Their only clue as to what happened to them is a sasquatch named Zathras who talks in the third-person and is mainly concerned with someone known as “The One.” (Incidentally, this is a name![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sabotabby tends to run away from, quickly. It is a major indicator of incoming cheese.) Apparently there’s some great war that’s happening, or has happened, or will happen, depending on your perspective, and only The One can stop it. Zathras initially thinks Sinclair is The One, then says he isn’t, and that’s a whopping big clue if I ever saw one. The One appears as an astronaut in a blue suit, hovering in the air. Sinclair and Garibaldi also get fun flashbacks and flashforwards as B4 time-jumps all over the place.
Anyway, they manage to evacuate, but Zathras is trapped under a falling plot device—only to be met by The One, who of course is Future!Sinclair. Future!Sinclair tells a woman, who we don’t see, that he tried to warn everyone but it all happened as he remembered. Gah, I hate predestination plots.
The B-plot is about Delenn and the Grey Council and more destiny. They try to elect her Queen of the Space Elves, she refuses, and she may be cast out of the Grey Council forever as a result. I don’t actually care but it’s cool that the Minbari ships look like giant Minbari heads.
Quality of Mercy: I’m sure there’s something I wanted to say about this episode but it’s overshadowed by the revelation that Londo has a prehensile dick. Apparently more than one if that sculpture is anatomically correct. That he uses to cheat at cards.
That is better than cake, you guys. I fully admire the restraint that you have all shown in not spoiling me for that when you must have all been dying to tell me.
ILU SHOW NEVER CHANGE.
In Chrysalis, a goodly quantity of the shit promised in previous episodes finally goes down. It’s New Year’s Eve on B5 (wait, how do they figure), President No-Chin is on a tour of Earth’s solar system, and the Narns and Centauri are in yet another diplomatic kerfuffle over a Narn outpost in neutral space. And Kosh has finally shown up at a council meeting—OMG HI KOSH!
Lest anyone have a happy New Year, one of Garibaldi’s informants gets iced, Delenn, after hearing “yes” from Kosh, decides to do something mysterious and space-elf related, and Captain Boring proposes making his relationship even more boring by asking Catherine (oh yeah, I forgot about her) to marry him. She says yes as well, because if there’s one thing those two do well, it’s bore me to tears.
As if to offset the boring, Morden shows up again with an offer to help Londo’s career. Because there would never be any plot if people did things that were sensible, Londo doesn’t question him nearly enough.
Garibaldi finds a suspect, Devereaux, who has been shipping sketchy things, and hauls him in for questioning, but Devereaux manages to disappear on him. When Garibaldi goes to investigate said sketchy things, he finds a jammer—set to jam Earth Force One’s channel, and figures out that there’s a plot to kill President No-Chin. Alas, his aide is also in on said plot and shoots him in the back. For the longest time I thought the aide was Morden, because they kind of look alike, but maybe not.
Morden’s help turns out to be in the form of siccing the shadowy tentacle ships on the Narn outpost and killing 10,000 people. Yikes. Morden is SRS BUSINESS. To G’Kar’s credit, he is not stupid enough to leap to the assumption that the Centauri did it, which ranks his decision-making in this episode miles above Londo’s.
Delenn has invited Sinclair to her quarters—no, not for that—to tell him everything she knows about his missing memories. But he gets distracted because just as they find Garibaldi on the verge of death, someone blows up President No-Chin. Kosh is finally like, “hey, did you forget something?” and he makes it to Delenn’s quarters in time to find her inside an actual, literal chrysalis (why should I be surprised?) and unable to give him the promised info-dump.
Well, that was a lot to have happen! My predictions for season 2:
- Delenn is going to transform, not into a beautiful butterfly, but into a different actress because she’s been re-cast. It’ll be like a Doctor regeneration where she’s sort of a new character, sort of not. New!Delenn will not be as forthcoming with the information about Sinclair’s missing time. Also these things are always hella awkward.
- Vice-President Too Many Chins is behind the assassination of President No-Chin. Maybe he’s working with the Shadows, but I think it’s more likely that he’s working with the Home Guard.
- G’Kar, having gone the entire episode without doing something incredibly stupid, will do something stupid in the second season premiere.
- Kosh knows all about the Shadows and is just not saying anything to anyone because he’s a massive troll.
- Sinclair and Catherine’s relationship will disintegrate under all the pressure if one of them doesn’t get killed first.
- We will find out what happened on Ivanova and Talia’s date because that is way more interesting than Captain Boring and His Boring Marriage.
- Londo, having been pwned by the Shadows, is now on a tragic redemption arc.
- Lennier will not be able to keep his mouth shut about the prehensile dick thing. I don’t care how much of a monk he is—no one can sit on that kind of comedy gold and not mention it to anyone else.
So that was the whole first season! I feel like I no longer quite fail at geek so much. The verdict so far is better on average than DS9, but not better than the Dominion War arc (yet), less intriguing characters, but more intriguing plots. I'm told it's just getting good, though, and there's four more seasons to go.
Those of you who've seen it before: Is there a movie next, or do I just go right ahead into the second season?
If you're like me and have never seen B5 but are planning to some day, do yourself a favour and don't click on the lj-cut. You'll want to be surprised.
So remember how all of the other Babylons were either blown up or disappeared mysteriously? Babylon Squared answers the latter question—Babylon 4 has become unstuck in time, and gotta love the Vonnegut reference there. An unfortunate pilot stumbles upon it and gets caught in a tachyon burst (did anyone else shout out “OMG IT’S DOCTOR MANHATTAN?” No? Just me, then). He has enough time to scratch “B4” into his seatbelt and set his ship on autopilot before he spontaneously dies of old age. Badass.
With this dire warning, Sinclair and Garibaldi set off on a rescue mission to evacuate the skeleton crew trapped on the time-travelling B4. Everyone on the ship is insane, ridiculous, or some combination thereof. Their only clue as to what happened to them is a sasquatch named Zathras who talks in the third-person and is mainly concerned with someone known as “The One.” (Incidentally, this is a name
sabotabby tends to run away from, quickly. It is a major indicator of incoming cheese.) Apparently there’s some great war that’s happening, or has happened, or will happen, depending on your perspective, and only The One can stop it. Zathras initially thinks Sinclair is The One, then says he isn’t, and that’s a whopping big clue if I ever saw one. The One appears as an astronaut in a blue suit, hovering in the air. Sinclair and Garibaldi also get fun flashbacks and flashforwards as B4 time-jumps all over the place.Anyway, they manage to evacuate, but Zathras is trapped under a falling plot device—only to be met by The One, who of course is Future!Sinclair. Future!Sinclair tells a woman, who we don’t see, that he tried to warn everyone but it all happened as he remembered. Gah, I hate predestination plots.
The B-plot is about Delenn and the Grey Council and more destiny. They try to elect her Queen of the Space Elves, she refuses, and she may be cast out of the Grey Council forever as a result. I don’t actually care but it’s cool that the Minbari ships look like giant Minbari heads.
Quality of Mercy: I’m sure there’s something I wanted to say about this episode but it’s overshadowed by the revelation that Londo has a prehensile dick. Apparently more than one if that sculpture is anatomically correct. That he uses to cheat at cards.
That is better than cake, you guys. I fully admire the restraint that you have all shown in not spoiling me for that when you must have all been dying to tell me.
ILU SHOW NEVER CHANGE.
In Chrysalis, a goodly quantity of the shit promised in previous episodes finally goes down. It’s New Year’s Eve on B5 (wait, how do they figure), President No-Chin is on a tour of Earth’s solar system, and the Narns and Centauri are in yet another diplomatic kerfuffle over a Narn outpost in neutral space. And Kosh has finally shown up at a council meeting—OMG HI KOSH!
Lest anyone have a happy New Year, one of Garibaldi’s informants gets iced, Delenn, after hearing “yes” from Kosh, decides to do something mysterious and space-elf related, and Captain Boring proposes making his relationship even more boring by asking Catherine (oh yeah, I forgot about her) to marry him. She says yes as well, because if there’s one thing those two do well, it’s bore me to tears.
As if to offset the boring, Morden shows up again with an offer to help Londo’s career. Because there would never be any plot if people did things that were sensible, Londo doesn’t question him nearly enough.
Garibaldi finds a suspect, Devereaux, who has been shipping sketchy things, and hauls him in for questioning, but Devereaux manages to disappear on him. When Garibaldi goes to investigate said sketchy things, he finds a jammer—set to jam Earth Force One’s channel, and figures out that there’s a plot to kill President No-Chin. Alas, his aide is also in on said plot and shoots him in the back. For the longest time I thought the aide was Morden, because they kind of look alike, but maybe not.
Morden’s help turns out to be in the form of siccing the shadowy tentacle ships on the Narn outpost and killing 10,000 people. Yikes. Morden is SRS BUSINESS. To G’Kar’s credit, he is not stupid enough to leap to the assumption that the Centauri did it, which ranks his decision-making in this episode miles above Londo’s.
Delenn has invited Sinclair to her quarters—no, not for that—to tell him everything she knows about his missing memories. But he gets distracted because just as they find Garibaldi on the verge of death, someone blows up President No-Chin. Kosh is finally like, “hey, did you forget something?” and he makes it to Delenn’s quarters in time to find her inside an actual, literal chrysalis (why should I be surprised?) and unable to give him the promised info-dump.
Well, that was a lot to have happen! My predictions for season 2:
- Delenn is going to transform, not into a beautiful butterfly, but into a different actress because she’s been re-cast. It’ll be like a Doctor regeneration where she’s sort of a new character, sort of not. New!Delenn will not be as forthcoming with the information about Sinclair’s missing time. Also these things are always hella awkward.
- Vice-President Too Many Chins is behind the assassination of President No-Chin. Maybe he’s working with the Shadows, but I think it’s more likely that he’s working with the Home Guard.
- G’Kar, having gone the entire episode without doing something incredibly stupid, will do something stupid in the second season premiere.
- Kosh knows all about the Shadows and is just not saying anything to anyone because he’s a massive troll.
- Sinclair and Catherine’s relationship will disintegrate under all the pressure if one of them doesn’t get killed first.
- We will find out what happened on Ivanova and Talia’s date because that is way more interesting than Captain Boring and His Boring Marriage.
- Londo, having been pwned by the Shadows, is now on a tragic redemption arc.
- Lennier will not be able to keep his mouth shut about the prehensile dick thing. I don’t care how much of a monk he is—no one can sit on that kind of comedy gold and not mention it to anyone else.
So that was the whole first season! I feel like I no longer quite fail at geek so much. The verdict so far is better on average than DS9, but not better than the Dominion War arc (yet), less intriguing characters, but more intriguing plots. I'm told it's just getting good, though, and there's four more seasons to go.
Those of you who've seen it before: Is there a movie next, or do I just go right ahead into the second season?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 06:52 pm (UTC)My friend has all the box sets, it wont cost me anything.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 07:05 pm (UTC)Why the weird pause?
"......."
no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 07:10 pm (UTC)Right plot point, wrong actor.
Why choose just one?
Someone is definitely trolling.
"Tragic" understates more than one arc you touch on here.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 07:18 pm (UTC)I mean, in my TV.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 07:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 07:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 07:43 pm (UTC)"Nothing's the same anymore."
I just finished season 2. I was surprised about how strong a season it was, with only one or two really weak episodes along the way.
Didja notice how that thingie in her quarters that she's been building practically all season becomes the machine she uses to undergo chrysalis?
no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 07:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 01:12 am (UTC)JMS was setting stuff up a long, long time in advance.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 05:37 pm (UTC)Sadly, I don't know if I can watch the show again because the dialogue really bothered me the last time I tried watching it.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 06:15 pm (UTC)I watched it from the beginning. I remember listening to some people talking about the upcoming show in a gaming store one day, and it piqued my interest. So I watched the pilot. And then it took, like, a year or so, but finally the first season started and I was a bit bored by the show for a while. The formula was pretty clear: either we had threat-of-the-week, or the Narn were being nasty, and other people had to react to that.
"And the Sky Full of Stars" was my first major hint that something bigger was going on. Season 1 had some stinker episodes but some really cool episodes, too. "Signs and Portents" was obviously major. And it was fascinating to me how much the characters changed. I really hadn't seen that in sf TV before.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 07:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 01:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 11:14 pm (UTC)But! B5 ended before The Matrix came out!
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 01:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 12:52 am (UTC)Otherwise no comment ;).
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 01:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 04:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 10:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 05:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 11:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 07:50 pm (UTC)did anyone else shout out “OMG IT’S DOCTOR MANHATTAN?” No? Just me, then
Definitely...definitely not just you. PARTICLES THAT TRAVEL BACKWARD IN TIME, OMG, DO YOU GET IT?
I was a little young when I saw these, so I completely missed the stuff about Londo's dicks. It came as a fresh surprise on this watching. Needless to say, I was delighted. Although strangely, now I never want to look up Babylon 5 fanfiction.
Captain Boring proposes making his relationship even more boring by asking Catherine (oh yeah, I forgot about her) to marry him.
I dunno, in my books marriage plot is a big step up from on-again off-again relationship plots, which make me raeg and also bore me to tears at the same time. The main problem with TV marriage plots seems to be that they treat it like an ending, even though after people get married they're still people and still do shit. But with these two, they're doomed to Boring pretty much no matter what.
Two words that make everything better: BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE BOXLEITNEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER
i am so excite you don't even know
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 11:07 pm (UTC)Marriage plots tend to be universally dull, but then there's Wash and Zoe as a counterpoint. They were married right from the first episode of Firefly and managed to never be boring at all.
I need to wax poetic about how Sheridan looks like he's from the 50s or early 60s and no one looks like that anymore.