A very special B5 post
Mar. 10th, 2012 07:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyEpisodes 16 and 17, for those of you who requested that I watch War Without End before going on hiatus. (For a week, people! I don't even post these every week!)
War Without End Part I:
One of the many sci-fi tropes I adore is the time-skip into a future that everyone would rather avoid. Cities are in flames, major characters are dead, other major characters have mysterious scars—love it. The episode has two of those, and other things that I love.
Minbar looks exactly like I imagined it would. Ahahaha. Planet of the Space Elves! Oh look, there’s Sinclair in a ridiculous cape! You know the episode is going to be good when Sinclair is in it and is wearing a ridiculous cape. I like Sinclair so much better as a special guest star than as a main character. A Minbari is scurrying around carrying what I think at first is a take-out container but is actually a box that has a (paper, natch!) letter in it addressed to Sinclair from 900 years in the past. Yes, we already knew that Sinclair is a closed loop, let’s move on. Also there is a Vorlon on Minbar. Not Kosh. You can actually tell because the voice is different and the lens of his face camera is also different.
Delenn has received a similar letter, and B5 has received a distress call from 15 minutes into the future, so Garibaldi is off to investigate the rift in time, now double its usual size, and everyone else is off to the White Star for a massive infodump. “Everyone else” includes Sinclair, who just misses Garibaldi but gets to say hi to Zack. Man, predestination blows. The reason for this seems to be that when he was last on B4, one of the flashes of the future that Sinclair saw was Garibaldi sacrificing himself. So he’s taking great pains to prevent this from happening.
As much as predestination sucks for Sinclair, though, it really, really sucks for ZOMG IT’S ZATHRAS! HI ZATHRAS! The infodump reveals that when B4 became unstuck in time, its final destination was the earlier Shadow War, which it helped the Minbari and Vorlons to end. But before it originally vanished, the Shadows tried to destroy it so that it wouldn’t go back in time and defeat them, so now the White Star has to go back in time to stop the Shadows from destroying B4 and then unstick (?! Stop messing with my grammar, time travel!) it from time and send it back 1000 years ago.
WHAT
Either way it is bad for Zathras.
Everything goes according to predestination until Sheridan gets zapped with an energy thing and gets unstuck in time himself, where he winds up in the aforementioned horrible future where Londo is Emperor. Emperor Londo has great fashion sense. Centauri Prime is on fire, though. Like the entire planet. Apparently Sheridan wins the Shadow War, but a few stragglers blow up Centauri Prime for shits and giggles. This is really terrible but I’m distracted by Londo’s fantastic gloves.
Back in the past, everyone prepares for ACTION, and Zathras sounds like a Jewish mother. TO BE CONTINUED. Hah, I’m glad I live in the future and can torrent all of the episodes rather than waiting a week for the thrilling conclusion.
War Without End Part II
Emperor Londo chews all the scenery and then tosses Sheridan in a cell with…Delenn! She is genre-savvy enough to know that he means it when he says that he’s from the past, but it doesn’t matter because Londo’s going to have them killed either way. She’s pretty accepting of their fate, however, and assures him that it’s worth it to defeat the Shadows, and also that their son is safe. Despite the grimdark, Sheridan seems kind of happy that their relationship works out.
But Londo doesn’t have them killed after all! He is apparently possessed by some evil spirit that goes to sleep when he drinks to excess. Hah, I love this show so much. Londo can out-drink anyone. Sheridan and Delenn are his last hope for saving his people, so he sends them away before his controller wakes up and has them killed. Then someone steps out of the shadows, and it’s Future!G’Kar, with his badass eyepatch. Londo tells G’Kar to kill him before his keeper wakes up. What’s this, like the third time G’Kar strangles Londo to death? Anyway, the evil spirit wakes up and strangles G’Kar to death too, and then Vir appears, ankle-deep in dead bodies like it’s the last scene in Hamlet and picks up the imperial seal. Have I mentioned lately that I love this show?
The rest of the episode is basically a remix of Babylon Squared, this time from the POV of Zathras and Future!Sinclair. Behind the scenes, Sinclair, Delenn, and Sheridan all end up in the Blue Astronaut Suit of Predestination Paradoxes, which is explained at the end as all of them being The One (ugh, sometimes I don’t love this show), past, present, and future respectively. They are able to get B4 safely pointed towards 1000 years ago, but someone has to drag it there. And that would be Future!Sinclair, obviously, because he’s the only one not in the main cast, and also he’s aging faster than normal because of the timey wimey. Also, he’s destined to become Valen, the ancient Minbari religious leader who was a “Minbari not born of Minbari.”
Which is to say in the final scene, Sinclair activates the same device that cocooned Delenn at the end of the first season, and transforms into a Minbari, then travels into the pasts, where the Vorlons put on a nice light show for the Minbari as they arrive on B4.
And with that, we lay to rest the human-Minbari reincarnated souls plot? Yes? Please say yes.
Anyway, Emperor Vir! Sabotabby is a happy fangirl.
War Without End Part I:
One of the many sci-fi tropes I adore is the time-skip into a future that everyone would rather avoid. Cities are in flames, major characters are dead, other major characters have mysterious scars—love it. The episode has two of those, and other things that I love.
Minbar looks exactly like I imagined it would. Ahahaha. Planet of the Space Elves! Oh look, there’s Sinclair in a ridiculous cape! You know the episode is going to be good when Sinclair is in it and is wearing a ridiculous cape. I like Sinclair so much better as a special guest star than as a main character. A Minbari is scurrying around carrying what I think at first is a take-out container but is actually a box that has a (paper, natch!) letter in it addressed to Sinclair from 900 years in the past. Yes, we already knew that Sinclair is a closed loop, let’s move on. Also there is a Vorlon on Minbar. Not Kosh. You can actually tell because the voice is different and the lens of his face camera is also different.
Delenn has received a similar letter, and B5 has received a distress call from 15 minutes into the future, so Garibaldi is off to investigate the rift in time, now double its usual size, and everyone else is off to the White Star for a massive infodump. “Everyone else” includes Sinclair, who just misses Garibaldi but gets to say hi to Zack. Man, predestination blows. The reason for this seems to be that when he was last on B4, one of the flashes of the future that Sinclair saw was Garibaldi sacrificing himself. So he’s taking great pains to prevent this from happening.
As much as predestination sucks for Sinclair, though, it really, really sucks for ZOMG IT’S ZATHRAS! HI ZATHRAS! The infodump reveals that when B4 became unstuck in time, its final destination was the earlier Shadow War, which it helped the Minbari and Vorlons to end. But before it originally vanished, the Shadows tried to destroy it so that it wouldn’t go back in time and defeat them, so now the White Star has to go back in time to stop the Shadows from destroying B4 and then unstick (?! Stop messing with my grammar, time travel!) it from time and send it back 1000 years ago.
WHAT
Either way it is bad for Zathras.
Everything goes according to predestination until Sheridan gets zapped with an energy thing and gets unstuck in time himself, where he winds up in the aforementioned horrible future where Londo is Emperor. Emperor Londo has great fashion sense. Centauri Prime is on fire, though. Like the entire planet. Apparently Sheridan wins the Shadow War, but a few stragglers blow up Centauri Prime for shits and giggles. This is really terrible but I’m distracted by Londo’s fantastic gloves.
Back in the past, everyone prepares for ACTION, and Zathras sounds like a Jewish mother. TO BE CONTINUED. Hah, I’m glad I live in the future and can torrent all of the episodes rather than waiting a week for the thrilling conclusion.
War Without End Part II
Emperor Londo chews all the scenery and then tosses Sheridan in a cell with…Delenn! She is genre-savvy enough to know that he means it when he says that he’s from the past, but it doesn’t matter because Londo’s going to have them killed either way. She’s pretty accepting of their fate, however, and assures him that it’s worth it to defeat the Shadows, and also that their son is safe. Despite the grimdark, Sheridan seems kind of happy that their relationship works out.
But Londo doesn’t have them killed after all! He is apparently possessed by some evil spirit that goes to sleep when he drinks to excess. Hah, I love this show so much. Londo can out-drink anyone. Sheridan and Delenn are his last hope for saving his people, so he sends them away before his controller wakes up and has them killed. Then someone steps out of the shadows, and it’s Future!G’Kar, with his badass eyepatch. Londo tells G’Kar to kill him before his keeper wakes up. What’s this, like the third time G’Kar strangles Londo to death? Anyway, the evil spirit wakes up and strangles G’Kar to death too, and then Vir appears, ankle-deep in dead bodies like it’s the last scene in Hamlet and picks up the imperial seal. Have I mentioned lately that I love this show?
The rest of the episode is basically a remix of Babylon Squared, this time from the POV of Zathras and Future!Sinclair. Behind the scenes, Sinclair, Delenn, and Sheridan all end up in the Blue Astronaut Suit of Predestination Paradoxes, which is explained at the end as all of them being The One (ugh, sometimes I don’t love this show), past, present, and future respectively. They are able to get B4 safely pointed towards 1000 years ago, but someone has to drag it there. And that would be Future!Sinclair, obviously, because he’s the only one not in the main cast, and also he’s aging faster than normal because of the timey wimey. Also, he’s destined to become Valen, the ancient Minbari religious leader who was a “Minbari not born of Minbari.”
Which is to say in the final scene, Sinclair activates the same device that cocooned Delenn at the end of the first season, and transforms into a Minbari, then travels into the pasts, where the Vorlons put on a nice light show for the Minbari as they arrive on B4.
And with that, we lay to rest the human-Minbari reincarnated souls plot? Yes? Please say yes.
Anyway, Emperor Vir! Sabotabby is a happy fangirl.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 12:53 am (UTC)Either way it is bad for Zathras.
It always bad for Zathras.
(I really need a sad Zathras icon.)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 12:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 01:59 am (UTC)I wonder whose password is "zip." That's an even worse password than most of Garibaldi's passwords. Actually, I wonder more whose password is "Susan."
Worst: that Lucy and Ethel bit. Gahh, JMS, you suck at writing comedy, and O'Hare sucks at delivering it.
It's actually pretty funny in how not-funny it is.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 02:05 am (UTC)Hahaha.
People used to say, if you could get a series going with Whedon writing the snappy dialogue and JMS doing the worldbuilding, it would be awesome. But I don't know, what if JMS wound up writing the dialogue and Whedon worldbuilding?
There would be no Asians and only your grandmother would get the jokes.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 02:18 am (UTC)It's still a pretty white main cast, but at least a lot of the guest stars are POC, which puts JMS (or his casting department) above Whedon.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 04:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 03:23 pm (UTC)*nod* I notice this too, on re-watching the series. Sadly, this seems to have run its course by Season 3 -- by Season 3, we're more interacting with aliens, and the vast majority of them are played by white actors. I don't think we have the same frequency of POC guest cast in later seasons.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 02:21 am (UTC)Kosh's password: NO
Marcus' password: YOU SHALL NOT PASS
no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 02:27 am (UTC)FFFFFFF
no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 02:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 04:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 08:32 am (UTC)I should not stalk people's B5 posts while drinking tea because hot tea really hurts if you get it up your nose...
no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 10:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 04:26 am (UTC)Points for self-awareness, but come on man.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 04:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 06:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 04:33 am (UTC)It's all the same death but the context changes.
I thought that was the coolest thing ever when I saw it the first time and I still like it.
Sadly, they came back to Londo as the drinking emperor in the Prequel Movie (the one about the Minbari/Earth War which is actually worth watching) in order to have him tell the story of how Earth and Minbar had a misunderstanding. Apparently this happens after he throws Sheridan in a cell and before he calls upon G'Kar to kill him (the movie ends with him calling for wine).
The novels about Londo's emperor career by Peter David get really loaded at the end when David has to push everything into that last day and the reader realizes just how much JMS stuck into that scene.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 04:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 03:15 pm (UTC)Recall that the device that the Minbari used to determine that Sinclair had a "reincarnated Minbari soul" was a triluminary, which Delenn also used to transform into her partially-human form. The triluminary doesn't originate on Minbar -- it came from the Great Machine, and the Minbari only have it because Sinclair/Valen brought them with him.
Basically, they used Sinclair's gizmo to determine that Sinclair is Sinclair. But they're religious nutters, so they read it as "he has a Minbari soul!"
no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 04:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 04:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-12 04:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 03:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 12:44 am (UTC)