B5, S04E05-7
Mar. 28th, 2012 06:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyThe last few Shadow War episodes and the first whatever-the-next-arc-is episodes, here we go! Warning: This is long, image-heavy, and incredibly silly.
The Long Night:
You can just picture me drawing hearts and painting glitter all over this episode, okay? I haven’t been so happy since they offed Refa.
Half the episode I was like this:
And the other half I was like this:
Which is saying a lot because most of the episode was people sitting around and talking.
THINGS I LOVE:
1. Ivanova’s story that she tells Sheridan. There are depths here, people. At one level, Ivanova’s desperate enough to open up when she’s normally so guarded, and it drives in the seriousness of what they’re all about to do. At another level, any Ivanova backstory is awesome. And then there’s the trope where there’s about to be a big battle but a female character gets sent off to do something less dangerous, except Ivanova is all, “fuck that trope, I wanna BATTLE.” Except that on yet another level, it’s actually a smart decision because I complained earlier about all of the command crew doing dangerous things in the same place at the same time, which could lead to them all getting killed in the same place at the same time. And so on. It’s a great scene is what I’m saying.
2. The scary weapons possessed by both sides, but especially by the Shadows. HOLY CRAP THAT THING IS SCARY. You can just see all the extras quaking under their forehead prosthetics. I love that Sheridan has created this massive, unified alliance of all different species, but they’re going up against two forces that each can crush them like bugs.
3. G’Kar and Londo. Just. Kiss. Already. Stellar fuckin’ dialogue.
4. The liberation of Narn, and G’Kar’s refusal to replace one tyrant with another. I love G’Kar so much, you guys. SO MUCH. (But not as much as Londo does.)
This is really a Sad Lizard moment but it makes me a happy snake. So.
5. Sheridan sending Ericsson on a suicide mission. First of all, it’s really strategically clever, and I love it when Sheridan is strategically clever. Second of all, it’s heartbreaking and echoes the A-Plot, which doesn’t even warrant a mention on this list because it falls under the category of:
THINGS I LOVE MORE THAN CAKE AND SUNSHINE AND PUPPIES
I would like to thank everyone who has been reading these posts for not spoiling me for the bit where Vir kills Cartagia, because it’s the kind of thing I wanted to happen but didn’t actually expect to happen. I actually didn’t expect any sort of assassination plot to succeed so soon. I did hope that Cartagia would stick around until the end of the season because of his fabulousness, but well. Vir killed him. That’s so much better than having him until the end of the season.
I think the only thing I loved more than that was Vir’s breakdown right after. In an episode about good people getting sacrificed or making horrible sacrifices for the greater good (G’Kar, Ericsson), the biggest dramatic wallop was delivered by having one of the few characters who’s been consistently honourable and ethical have to do something nasty but absolutely necessary. I got shivers. Happy shivers.
You can tell me if you ever get sick of my emotional animal pictures.
By the way, Sheridan’s plan really sucks for Coriana VI. I mean, yes, they’re going to be massacred if he does nothing, but given what we know about the Vorlon and Shadow forces, luring both into an epic battle in that star system seems like an epically bad idea.
Into the Fire:
This episode was about 60% this:
and 40% this:
The good stuff:
Epic space battles! The entire Centauri plot, and in particular Vengeful!Londo! The message, which I think was very humanist and anti-imperialist! And of course, no more Lorien!
The bad stuff:
The end of the Shadow War was just too easy. We’ve had several seasons of the Shadows as implacable, incomprehensible evil and the Vorlons being powerful and inscrutable (then incomprehensibly evil)—and they were convinced to just go away because Sheridan figured out their motives. It was a big let-down; too much talk, not enough rock. And the dialogue, which was amazing last episode, suddenly fell to cheesy again. All of the First Ones leaving was a bit too Grey Havens for my liking. It’s not like I was particularly attached to the First Ones other than the Vorlons (well, I rather liked the Tiki mask), but it takes away from their mystique if their answer to, “GET THE HELL OUT OF OUR GALAXY, both of you!” is, “…okay, fine.”
The great stuff:
Londo granting Vir his greatest wish, and Vir obliging Morden’s severed head with his little wave.
This pretty much made the episode for me. If it was 40 straight minutes of Vir waving at Morden’s severed head, it would have been a fantastic episode. Instead, it was merely good but an anticlimactic end to the Shadow War arc.
Epiphanies:
Ah, show! You giveth and you taketh away. And while I might have found the ending of the Shadow War arc a wee bit disappointing, this episode is a return to Earth politics and has Bester in it, so I am once again a pleased fangirl.
So President-For-Life Clark (gotta get him a new nickname, since President-For-Life Too-Many-Chins is a pain to type), having lost his Shadow buddies, is now determined to take out B5. Sweet! I mean, DUN-DUN-DUNNNNN! Because he is clearly an idiot, part of his strategy involves getting one of his ministers to send Bester to the station. This is dumb. I’m unclear on what it was he wanted Bester to do there, but it doesn’t matter, because Bester is the kind of magnificent bastard who immediately spills the beans on what the actual plan is.
Also showing up on the station are Prime Minister Londo (who has appointed that foppish dude, what’s his name, as Regent while the government decides on an inbred fucktard to replace Emperor Crazypants), and a troupe of Elvis impersonators. (You’d like to think I made up the last bit, wouldn’t you?)
G’Kar is also back. He has an incredibly strange reunion with Garibaldi and an even stranger one with Londo. Errr, if you remove the heteronormative framework of nearly all mass media, it comes off as the bizarrest of bizarre love triangles. Anyway, he might get a new prosthetic eye owing to Franklin remembering that medical technology should have advanced past late 20th century levels by now. (Oh, and don’t you have a machine that can heal anything?)
Garibaldi up and quits, despite G’Kar’s one-sided crush on him. Again, I really wish they wouldn’t telegraph the fact that he’s mind-controlled so much, because the reasons he gives for leaving are good and believable ones, and I’d like this plot so much more if it were a bit more ambiguous. But anyway. He gets trippy signals on his TV that tell him to quit his job, stop drawing meh-faces on his bathroom mirror, and kill his parents. I think this plot will replace Franklin’s Very Special Storyline in being the plot I don’t give a shit about this season.
But back to the more interesting telepath stuff! Sheridan wants Lyta in on the unavoidable meeting with Bester. Lyta reminds him that she’s a rogue telepath. I like saying that. “Rogue telepath.” Like a rogue demon hunter. But someone has to make sure that Bester doesn’t read everyone’s mind, even though everyone still thinks that Lyta is a less powerful telepath who doesn’t have Vorlon upgrades.
Also, Sheridan has clearly been taking classes at the Susan Ivanova School for Oddly Specific Death Threats. She is still the undisputed master, but he’s not bad!
President Clark’s plan is twofold: First, a propaganda campaign and a travel embargo, which is not that successful because a lot of the military still sympathize with B5. After all, last time they tried to take the station by force, it did not go so well. The second part involves sending a black ops ship through the last guard post between Earth and B5. This ship will attack the Earth pilots and make it look like B5 did it. Then the truth will be covered up and only Alex Jones and the guys who made Loose Change will figure it out, but no one will believe them. (I may have made up the last bit.)
In exchange for this bit of intel, Bester wants Sheridan to take him on a road trip to Z’ha’dum. Oh good, we remembered about Bester’s frozen girlfriend. Franklin has still not managed to get the neurotransmitter thingamabobs out of the telepaths’ brains, so they’re all still in cryo. Bester thinks that technology that the Shadows used to put them there might have been left behind on Z’ha’dum. So once again, the captain, the Minbari ambassador, and the resident telepath all go off together on a dangerous mission. At least they have the good sense to send Ivanova on a different dangerous mission this time. She’s off preventing the attack on the Earth guardpost.
Before they can land on Z’ha’dum, they see a bunch of ships leaving. Sheridan’s spidey-sense goes off and they barely manage to escape the planet going BOOM. And in case that passive voice was misleading, it was Lyta that made it go BOOM by triggering a telepathic I don’t even know. Vorlons did it. Sheridan figures it out and they have words.
Ivanova is much more successful in her mission, managing to blow the shit out of the black ops ship and save the Earth pilots. And of course she lets them know that it was B5 to the rescue. Yay! Only it turns out that this was Bester’s plan all along, because he’s a magnificent bastard whose only flaw seems to be villain-monologuing to his frozen girlfriend.
Two other plotlets. In one, Lyta feels unappreciated because no one ever comes over to her place unless they need something. So Zack—now the new head of security, my god is that ever a terrible idea—brings her pizza and helps her unpack. I wonder if the show is actually going to pair up the two most annoying characters. If so, I hope I don’t have to see it.
The other is much cooler. The new Regent has a growth on his shoulder with an eye on it. And it’s the same eye that was controlling Londo in the future. (Time travel is messing with my tenses again.) It is completely gross and awesome.
The Long Night:
You can just picture me drawing hearts and painting glitter all over this episode, okay? I haven’t been so happy since they offed Refa.
Half the episode I was like this:
And the other half I was like this:
Which is saying a lot because most of the episode was people sitting around and talking.
THINGS I LOVE:
1. Ivanova’s story that she tells Sheridan. There are depths here, people. At one level, Ivanova’s desperate enough to open up when she’s normally so guarded, and it drives in the seriousness of what they’re all about to do. At another level, any Ivanova backstory is awesome. And then there’s the trope where there’s about to be a big battle but a female character gets sent off to do something less dangerous, except Ivanova is all, “fuck that trope, I wanna BATTLE.” Except that on yet another level, it’s actually a smart decision because I complained earlier about all of the command crew doing dangerous things in the same place at the same time, which could lead to them all getting killed in the same place at the same time. And so on. It’s a great scene is what I’m saying.
2. The scary weapons possessed by both sides, but especially by the Shadows. HOLY CRAP THAT THING IS SCARY. You can just see all the extras quaking under their forehead prosthetics. I love that Sheridan has created this massive, unified alliance of all different species, but they’re going up against two forces that each can crush them like bugs.
3. G’Kar and Londo. Just. Kiss. Already. Stellar fuckin’ dialogue.
4. The liberation of Narn, and G’Kar’s refusal to replace one tyrant with another. I love G’Kar so much, you guys. SO MUCH. (But not as much as Londo does.)
This is really a Sad Lizard moment but it makes me a happy snake. So.
5. Sheridan sending Ericsson on a suicide mission. First of all, it’s really strategically clever, and I love it when Sheridan is strategically clever. Second of all, it’s heartbreaking and echoes the A-Plot, which doesn’t even warrant a mention on this list because it falls under the category of:
THINGS I LOVE MORE THAN CAKE AND SUNSHINE AND PUPPIES
I would like to thank everyone who has been reading these posts for not spoiling me for the bit where Vir kills Cartagia, because it’s the kind of thing I wanted to happen but didn’t actually expect to happen. I actually didn’t expect any sort of assassination plot to succeed so soon. I did hope that Cartagia would stick around until the end of the season because of his fabulousness, but well. Vir killed him. That’s so much better than having him until the end of the season.
I think the only thing I loved more than that was Vir’s breakdown right after. In an episode about good people getting sacrificed or making horrible sacrifices for the greater good (G’Kar, Ericsson), the biggest dramatic wallop was delivered by having one of the few characters who’s been consistently honourable and ethical have to do something nasty but absolutely necessary. I got shivers. Happy shivers.
You can tell me if you ever get sick of my emotional animal pictures.
By the way, Sheridan’s plan really sucks for Coriana VI. I mean, yes, they’re going to be massacred if he does nothing, but given what we know about the Vorlon and Shadow forces, luring both into an epic battle in that star system seems like an epically bad idea.
Into the Fire:
This episode was about 60% this:
and 40% this:
The good stuff:
Epic space battles! The entire Centauri plot, and in particular Vengeful!Londo! The message, which I think was very humanist and anti-imperialist! And of course, no more Lorien!
The bad stuff:
The end of the Shadow War was just too easy. We’ve had several seasons of the Shadows as implacable, incomprehensible evil and the Vorlons being powerful and inscrutable (then incomprehensibly evil)—and they were convinced to just go away because Sheridan figured out their motives. It was a big let-down; too much talk, not enough rock. And the dialogue, which was amazing last episode, suddenly fell to cheesy again. All of the First Ones leaving was a bit too Grey Havens for my liking. It’s not like I was particularly attached to the First Ones other than the Vorlons (well, I rather liked the Tiki mask), but it takes away from their mystique if their answer to, “GET THE HELL OUT OF OUR GALAXY, both of you!” is, “…okay, fine.”
The great stuff:
Londo granting Vir his greatest wish, and Vir obliging Morden’s severed head with his little wave.
This pretty much made the episode for me. If it was 40 straight minutes of Vir waving at Morden’s severed head, it would have been a fantastic episode. Instead, it was merely good but an anticlimactic end to the Shadow War arc.
Epiphanies:
Ah, show! You giveth and you taketh away. And while I might have found the ending of the Shadow War arc a wee bit disappointing, this episode is a return to Earth politics and has Bester in it, so I am once again a pleased fangirl.
So President-For-Life Clark (gotta get him a new nickname, since President-For-Life Too-Many-Chins is a pain to type), having lost his Shadow buddies, is now determined to take out B5. Sweet! I mean, DUN-DUN-DUNNNNN! Because he is clearly an idiot, part of his strategy involves getting one of his ministers to send Bester to the station. This is dumb. I’m unclear on what it was he wanted Bester to do there, but it doesn’t matter, because Bester is the kind of magnificent bastard who immediately spills the beans on what the actual plan is.
Also showing up on the station are Prime Minister Londo (who has appointed that foppish dude, what’s his name, as Regent while the government decides on an inbred fucktard to replace Emperor Crazypants), and a troupe of Elvis impersonators. (You’d like to think I made up the last bit, wouldn’t you?)
G’Kar is also back. He has an incredibly strange reunion with Garibaldi and an even stranger one with Londo. Errr, if you remove the heteronormative framework of nearly all mass media, it comes off as the bizarrest of bizarre love triangles. Anyway, he might get a new prosthetic eye owing to Franklin remembering that medical technology should have advanced past late 20th century levels by now. (Oh, and don’t you have a machine that can heal anything?)
Garibaldi up and quits, despite G’Kar’s one-sided crush on him. Again, I really wish they wouldn’t telegraph the fact that he’s mind-controlled so much, because the reasons he gives for leaving are good and believable ones, and I’d like this plot so much more if it were a bit more ambiguous. But anyway. He gets trippy signals on his TV that tell him to quit his job, stop drawing meh-faces on his bathroom mirror, and kill his parents. I think this plot will replace Franklin’s Very Special Storyline in being the plot I don’t give a shit about this season.
But back to the more interesting telepath stuff! Sheridan wants Lyta in on the unavoidable meeting with Bester. Lyta reminds him that she’s a rogue telepath. I like saying that. “Rogue telepath.” Like a rogue demon hunter. But someone has to make sure that Bester doesn’t read everyone’s mind, even though everyone still thinks that Lyta is a less powerful telepath who doesn’t have Vorlon upgrades.
Also, Sheridan has clearly been taking classes at the Susan Ivanova School for Oddly Specific Death Threats. She is still the undisputed master, but he’s not bad!
President Clark’s plan is twofold: First, a propaganda campaign and a travel embargo, which is not that successful because a lot of the military still sympathize with B5. After all, last time they tried to take the station by force, it did not go so well. The second part involves sending a black ops ship through the last guard post between Earth and B5. This ship will attack the Earth pilots and make it look like B5 did it. Then the truth will be covered up and only Alex Jones and the guys who made Loose Change will figure it out, but no one will believe them. (I may have made up the last bit.)
In exchange for this bit of intel, Bester wants Sheridan to take him on a road trip to Z’ha’dum. Oh good, we remembered about Bester’s frozen girlfriend. Franklin has still not managed to get the neurotransmitter thingamabobs out of the telepaths’ brains, so they’re all still in cryo. Bester thinks that technology that the Shadows used to put them there might have been left behind on Z’ha’dum. So once again, the captain, the Minbari ambassador, and the resident telepath all go off together on a dangerous mission. At least they have the good sense to send Ivanova on a different dangerous mission this time. She’s off preventing the attack on the Earth guardpost.
Before they can land on Z’ha’dum, they see a bunch of ships leaving. Sheridan’s spidey-sense goes off and they barely manage to escape the planet going BOOM. And in case that passive voice was misleading, it was Lyta that made it go BOOM by triggering a telepathic I don’t even know. Vorlons did it. Sheridan figures it out and they have words.
Ivanova is much more successful in her mission, managing to blow the shit out of the black ops ship and save the Earth pilots. And of course she lets them know that it was B5 to the rescue. Yay! Only it turns out that this was Bester’s plan all along, because he’s a magnificent bastard whose only flaw seems to be villain-monologuing to his frozen girlfriend.
Two other plotlets. In one, Lyta feels unappreciated because no one ever comes over to her place unless they need something. So Zack—now the new head of security, my god is that ever a terrible idea—brings her pizza and helps her unpack. I wonder if the show is actually going to pair up the two most annoying characters. If so, I hope I don’t have to see it.
The other is much cooler. The new Regent has a growth on his shoulder with an eye on it. And it’s the same eye that was controlling Londo in the future. (Time travel is messing with my tenses again.) It is completely gross and awesome.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 12:04 am (UTC)It's been hard, I gotta tell ya. Vir's breakdown speech is full of woe.
JMS claims that the master plan was always that Londo would kill Cartagia, but as he was writing the script for that episode, suddenly he hit upon the idea that it should be Vir, and he felt compelled to run with that. And I agree that using Vir gives the show far more oomph.
I was surprised, on re-watching, to see that Bryan Cranston plays Ericsson. I had no idea who Cranston was back when I first say the show, but that scene has stayed with me since I first saw it.
Another scene I quite enjoyed on re-watching was the scene in which Londo is urging G'Kar to scream while being whipped. I remembered that the scene took place, but I'd sort of forgotten how long and drawn out that scene was, and how powerful it was seeing Londo mouthing the word "scream!"
You'll be pleased to know that they do acknowledge, in an episode later on in the season, that after they healed Garibaldi in Season 2, they came to the conclusion that the alien healing machine was
too much of a plot killertoo dangerous to use. It's really much better sitting on a shelf in the props department.no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 12:14 am (UTC)It's so much better. I mean, you can see that Londo has this great plan that should work, only everything goes wrong, and it works in spite of him. Also the emotional fallout is amazing.
Bryan Cranston plays Ericsson
I seriously didn't notice that. He's so young! And now I'm disturbed that I found him kind of cute.
The scene with G'Kar being whipped had some, um, overtones. It was uncomfortable to watch on a number of levels.
With the plot device, yes, absolutely. I just want someone to say it out loud.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 01:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 01:30 am (UTC)Hahaha. I'm glad my nerd rage is shared.
kickass scene with Bester
I will suffer a great deal of stupid for any scene with Bester.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 12:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 01:24 pm (UTC)Hahahaha.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 01:32 am (UTC)And he had Lorien with him, who both races apparently defer to, so it actually was a different "Why The Fuck?" "Why the fuck didn't Lorien make them play nice in the first place?" is what you should be asking. Of course, the obvious answer to that question is the younger races were "not yet ready" or some such, which is equally annoying as "The One" shit. Still, I like the notion that all the Galaxy's religions are the result of Vorlon trolling as another poster put it. All that said, it is actually not all that easy. There are always residual ripples to deal with. That's one thing I love about this show.
I think this plot will replace Franklin’s Very Special Storyline in being the plot I don’t give a shit about this season.
Apart from their hammering home the mind control too much, I think it is a good story arc. The pay off is amazing. Trust me.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 01:44 am (UTC)Lorien was the worst kind of deus ex machina, which was half of why I wanted to punch him. HE WAITED FOR SHERIDAN IN THE PIT FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS. Why can't he have died?
no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 01:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 02:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 02:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 02:14 am (UTC)Also, the end of the Shadow war was why I needed a B5 break. What the hell was that?
no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 02:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 03:01 am (UTC)On the other hand - . I wonder if the show is actually going to pair up the two most annoying characters.
Yes, but not in the way you're thinking. Just wait until season 5 for that storyline that we've been obliquely warning you about.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 03:38 am (UTC)The worst character ever is in season 5.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 03:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 12:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 04:11 am (UTC)It is actually done very subtly and well which is why the audience reminders are so unnecessary and thus annoying. There is actually much more than mere mind control going on as Bester later explains. We have already said too much.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 04:09 am (UTC)The Vir-wave gets a lot of use in our household. (With a hand sticking up from the back of the head to represent his hair.)
Yeah, keep an eye on that eye. And that other eye.