B5, S04E15-18
Apr. 12th, 2012 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyHarrumph. Why do I click on io9? I just got spoiled for something that made me a whole lot less interested in Season 5. (Don't worry, I'll still watch it. Probably better that I know now.)
Anyway, penultimate S4 post!
Is it just me, or is it weird to hear, “They killed civilians, women and children,” on a sci-fi show? I mean, yes, the shock at killing civilians and especially children, but there’s no gender discrimination depicted among the human characters on B5 and tons of women serve in the military in the same capacity as men (in fact, probably my favourite thing about this show is its kickass female characters). So why “women and children”? It’s a throwback.
No Surrender, No Retreat:
While I’m sure there are interpretations of this episode that do not amount to “Londo and G’Kar are totally sneaking off to have hate sex and Vir is covering for them,” I am at a loss as to what those might be. Also there are space battles. Which is to say that I liked this episode a whole lot.
Hmm, so I guess I was wrong and Clark did order his dudes to kill 10,000 civilians, and they did it. Sheridan declares the treaties between the Non-Aligned Worlds and Earth to be null and void and tells them not to intervene other than to give humanitarian aid. Then he takes the White Star fleet off to liberate Proxima 3, which is being blockaded by Earth Alliance cruisers. This sets up an interesting conflict where both sides really, really don’t want to kill each other, but have to, and there’s as much verbal volleying as shooting as Sheridan tries to convince the various ships to mutiny. It’s rather tense and wonderfully done. And it works—most ships stay neutral or join Sheridan’s side, but enough get blown up that the human cost seems quite real.
Meanwhile Londo tries to buy G’Kar a drink and visits his quarters and the subtext is delightful. Eventually G’Kar agrees to sign a declaration supporting the liberation of Proxima 3—as long as his name isn’t on the same page as Londo’s. Hahaha. Hah. Also, Vir is drinking to forget that he killed the Emperor, and Garibaldi is off to Mars.
The Exercise of Vital Powers:
Sheridan’s war is going swimmingly. Ships from Earth keep defecting, and they’ve liberated a few new outposts. Ivanova has lots of material for her broadcasts (more of them please). So of course, Sheridan is worried. As well he should be, because meanwhile, on Mars…
…we’ve shifted genres right into film noir, complete with hilarious Garibaldi voiceovers. They should have shot these sequences in black and white. Lise even gets femme fatale hair. Okay, I now officially like this plotline. I’m cheap like the shabby stockings of a two-dollar whore in an empty hotel bar on a Tuesday night.
Shady Wade takes Garibaldi to finally meet the mysterious Bill Edgars, who is so mysterious that Garibaldi has to wear a blindfold on his way to the house. After we’ve checked off a few more tropes, we finally get to see him. I’m not saying that Lise is a gold digger, but she ain’t messin’ with no broke-ass white dude old enough to be her grandfather. Clearly this is a marriage for love. I hope we’re not supposed to root for her ending up with Garibaldi, though, because I’m pretty sure that no one here has chemistry with anyone else.
Garibaldi’s motive (I assume this is Garibaldi’s motive and not the motive of whomever is mind-controlling him, but it’s not actually clear) is twofold: 1) Figure out what Edgars’ deal is, and 2) stop Sheridan’s megalomaniacal plan to take over Earth. Edgars wants to know if Garibaldi can be trusted. Garibaldi tries to ask Edgars straightforward questions. Edgars has Garibaldi dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and brought to an interrogation room where he’s scanned by a telepath, who is then shot and killed by Shady Wade.
Assuming that everyone is mostly telling the truth, it seems that the war is actually three-way, with Edgars (representing one of many mega-corporations) opposed to Clark and the PsyCorps. He claims to want to take down Clark in his own, presumably sketchy and non-democratic way, and Sheridan is a threat to this plan because he’s just making Clark more paranoid. It should be noted that Sheridan, despite invoking the rhetoric of democracy frequently, is basically staging a military coup, so really no one is in the right here. Edgars is also firmly anti-telepath and believes that the PsyCorps are planning to take over (which, as we’ve seen, they totally are).
You know who has a good political system? The Drazi. Simple, egalitarian, and it works.
Green!
So Edgars is willing to trust Garibaldi, even though Garibaldi completely still wants to bone Lise, on one condition—he turns in Sheridan to Clark. Garibaldi is either incredibly stupid or incredibly mind-controlled or both, but he goes along with this and figures out a way to bring in Sheridan’s fugitive dad by tracking a rare medication that he needs. It turns out that I was right about the medical thing that Garibaldi helped him smuggle into B5—Edgars is working on some sort of virus that slowly and painfully kills telepaths. Or the cure to said virus. Either way, he has three telepaths that he’s experimenting on, until he orders Shady Wade to just kill them. Yikes.
Speaking of telepaths, the popsicle telepaths have suddenly become really important and Sheridan is insisting that Franklin find a way to de-popsicleize them ASAP. He won’t say why. By complete coincidence, Lyta happens to be in MedLab while Franklin is experimenting on one and manages to wake him up, kind of. So that’s a breakthrough. Franklin snaps into pissy overworked mode, though, and demands to know why Sheridan is so concerned about telepath-popsicles all of a sudden. Sheridan tells him—but not us—and whatever the answer is, it’s clear that Franklin does not like it at all. Probably Bester will like it even less. Anyway, so now Franklin and Lyta are off to Mars for whatever reason.
At any rate, I am vastly pleased with this turn of events, as it’s obviously going in rather dark directions. It’s less of an epic war than the Shadow arc, but it’s got betrayal, corrupt governments, and evil corporations, so sign me right up.
Incidentally, what exactly is the plan here? I mean, I get that on a narrative level, the plot hinges on Sheridan being cagey and possibly even buying into his own publicity and that we’re supposed to keep wondering if he’s gone too far this time. But within the story itself, what is he telling people the actual plan is? Like, what has he told Ivanova to do if he suddenly dies and she has to take over? Is he actually planning to land the White Star fleet on Earth, shoot Clark right in the face, and then call for an election? Not that I wouldn’t fully approve of this plan, but somehow I doubt that’s it.
The Face of the Enemy:
Speaking of which! Garibaldi finds Papa Sheridan and uses him to lure Sheridan into a trap, where he cunningly uses slow-mo to capture him. There is a pretty decent bar fight in which a dude actually gets thrown out a saloon window. Anyway, apparently the orders to Ivanova were to keep on keeping on, so hopefully she has something more specific in mind for when she actually reaches Earth.
I just realized that the resistance has an optics problem, what with the Minbari ships attacking Earth. Apparently Clark is using this to his advantage and claiming that when Earth ships surrender or switch sides, Sheridan has them all killed and replaced with a Minbari crew. Fortunately, Captain MacDougan from a few episodes ago is around to correct this misperception.
Meanwhile, Franklin and Lyta reach Mars, and Number One is pissy. Not because she’s jealous, though it’s certainly blocked that way. Apparently there’s something called a Bloodhound program, where telepaths are used, sometimes fatally, to scan suspected members of the Mars Resistance. So Number One’s people are not happy when Lyta arrives and even less happy with the cargo of telepathsicles that have come along for the ride. Aww, Number One, don’t be mad at Franklin! I’m rooting for you two crazy kids. Lyta has some horrifying stories to back up the qualms of the Mars Resistance, including the time they screwed up a guy’s brain so badly that he has to be kept in a straightjacket lest he claw his own eyes out. Heh. The PsyCorps don’t fuck around.
Now that Sheridan’s been arrested and punched quite a few times for good measure, Edgars finally opens up about his master plan to Garibaldi. He really has it in for telepaths, hoo-boy. He developed both an airborne virus that can kill them but is harmless to mundanes, and an antidote that must be taken every two weeks once a telepath is infected. He figures that this will even out the natural advantage that telepaths have over mundanes. Garibaldi is like, “Sure, I’m cool with that,” but Lise, who is listening in, is obviously not cool with this.
But don’t worry—he is not really cool with this. As soon as he’s alone, he removes a giant tooth (how did that fit in his mouth? It is huge!) and sends a message to…
…BESTER! Bester was mind-controlling him the whole time, having spirited him away from the Shadows when they captured him. Why did I not see that coming? That’s great. Anyway, Bester gets the whole story from Garibaldi, then engages in some epic villain monologuing where he explains how he did the whole thing. I <3 Bester. I mean, he’s pretty twisted, but it’s quite a sensible plan, and you have to admire that. It’s a pity he has a tragic flaw that I’m sure will lead to his undoing, which is to explain everything and then turn Garibaldi back to normal. Somehow I don’t think this will go well.
Villain monologuing is also Edgars’ tragic flaw, because the PsyCorps kill the everloving shit out of him, and Shady Wade, and take both the virus and the cure with them. Lise apparently got away, though, and will live to irritate me another day.
Meanwhile, ISN has its Best Day Ever.
Intersections in Real Time:
1984, basically.
Thoughts:
- When the interrogator asked Sheridan if he’d been interrogated before and by whom, I was a wee bit disappointed that he wasn’t like, “JACK THE RIPPER, BITCH. And he dressed better.”
- Wikipedia tells me that the Drazi was also Lorien and Jack the Ripper.
- What is the first interrogator wearing? Is that the Nightwatch uniform now? If so I strongly approve. /shameful uniform kink
- Speaking of totally shallow, roughed-up and filthy is a good look for Sheridan.
- The Room 17 thing and the Drazi at the end—brrrrr.
That review was short. Hmm. Okay, how about some jokes about overthrowing the government, via some funny guy on Facebook?
Was that overkill? I’m never sure when it’s overkill.
Anyway, penultimate S4 post!
Is it just me, or is it weird to hear, “They killed civilians, women and children,” on a sci-fi show? I mean, yes, the shock at killing civilians and especially children, but there’s no gender discrimination depicted among the human characters on B5 and tons of women serve in the military in the same capacity as men (in fact, probably my favourite thing about this show is its kickass female characters). So why “women and children”? It’s a throwback.
No Surrender, No Retreat:
While I’m sure there are interpretations of this episode that do not amount to “Londo and G’Kar are totally sneaking off to have hate sex and Vir is covering for them,” I am at a loss as to what those might be. Also there are space battles. Which is to say that I liked this episode a whole lot.
Hmm, so I guess I was wrong and Clark did order his dudes to kill 10,000 civilians, and they did it. Sheridan declares the treaties between the Non-Aligned Worlds and Earth to be null and void and tells them not to intervene other than to give humanitarian aid. Then he takes the White Star fleet off to liberate Proxima 3, which is being blockaded by Earth Alliance cruisers. This sets up an interesting conflict where both sides really, really don’t want to kill each other, but have to, and there’s as much verbal volleying as shooting as Sheridan tries to convince the various ships to mutiny. It’s rather tense and wonderfully done. And it works—most ships stay neutral or join Sheridan’s side, but enough get blown up that the human cost seems quite real.
Meanwhile Londo tries to buy G’Kar a drink and visits his quarters and the subtext is delightful. Eventually G’Kar agrees to sign a declaration supporting the liberation of Proxima 3—as long as his name isn’t on the same page as Londo’s. Hahaha. Hah. Also, Vir is drinking to forget that he killed the Emperor, and Garibaldi is off to Mars.
The Exercise of Vital Powers:
Sheridan’s war is going swimmingly. Ships from Earth keep defecting, and they’ve liberated a few new outposts. Ivanova has lots of material for her broadcasts (more of them please). So of course, Sheridan is worried. As well he should be, because meanwhile, on Mars…
…we’ve shifted genres right into film noir, complete with hilarious Garibaldi voiceovers. They should have shot these sequences in black and white. Lise even gets femme fatale hair. Okay, I now officially like this plotline. I’m cheap like the shabby stockings of a two-dollar whore in an empty hotel bar on a Tuesday night.
Shady Wade takes Garibaldi to finally meet the mysterious Bill Edgars, who is so mysterious that Garibaldi has to wear a blindfold on his way to the house. After we’ve checked off a few more tropes, we finally get to see him. I’m not saying that Lise is a gold digger, but she ain’t messin’ with no broke-ass white dude old enough to be her grandfather. Clearly this is a marriage for love. I hope we’re not supposed to root for her ending up with Garibaldi, though, because I’m pretty sure that no one here has chemistry with anyone else.
Garibaldi’s motive (I assume this is Garibaldi’s motive and not the motive of whomever is mind-controlling him, but it’s not actually clear) is twofold: 1) Figure out what Edgars’ deal is, and 2) stop Sheridan’s megalomaniacal plan to take over Earth. Edgars wants to know if Garibaldi can be trusted. Garibaldi tries to ask Edgars straightforward questions. Edgars has Garibaldi dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and brought to an interrogation room where he’s scanned by a telepath, who is then shot and killed by Shady Wade.
Assuming that everyone is mostly telling the truth, it seems that the war is actually three-way, with Edgars (representing one of many mega-corporations) opposed to Clark and the PsyCorps. He claims to want to take down Clark in his own, presumably sketchy and non-democratic way, and Sheridan is a threat to this plan because he’s just making Clark more paranoid. It should be noted that Sheridan, despite invoking the rhetoric of democracy frequently, is basically staging a military coup, so really no one is in the right here. Edgars is also firmly anti-telepath and believes that the PsyCorps are planning to take over (which, as we’ve seen, they totally are).
You know who has a good political system? The Drazi. Simple, egalitarian, and it works.
Green!
So Edgars is willing to trust Garibaldi, even though Garibaldi completely still wants to bone Lise, on one condition—he turns in Sheridan to Clark. Garibaldi is either incredibly stupid or incredibly mind-controlled or both, but he goes along with this and figures out a way to bring in Sheridan’s fugitive dad by tracking a rare medication that he needs. It turns out that I was right about the medical thing that Garibaldi helped him smuggle into B5—Edgars is working on some sort of virus that slowly and painfully kills telepaths. Or the cure to said virus. Either way, he has three telepaths that he’s experimenting on, until he orders Shady Wade to just kill them. Yikes.
Speaking of telepaths, the popsicle telepaths have suddenly become really important and Sheridan is insisting that Franklin find a way to de-popsicleize them ASAP. He won’t say why. By complete coincidence, Lyta happens to be in MedLab while Franklin is experimenting on one and manages to wake him up, kind of. So that’s a breakthrough. Franklin snaps into pissy overworked mode, though, and demands to know why Sheridan is so concerned about telepath-popsicles all of a sudden. Sheridan tells him—but not us—and whatever the answer is, it’s clear that Franklin does not like it at all. Probably Bester will like it even less. Anyway, so now Franklin and Lyta are off to Mars for whatever reason.
At any rate, I am vastly pleased with this turn of events, as it’s obviously going in rather dark directions. It’s less of an epic war than the Shadow arc, but it’s got betrayal, corrupt governments, and evil corporations, so sign me right up.
Incidentally, what exactly is the plan here? I mean, I get that on a narrative level, the plot hinges on Sheridan being cagey and possibly even buying into his own publicity and that we’re supposed to keep wondering if he’s gone too far this time. But within the story itself, what is he telling people the actual plan is? Like, what has he told Ivanova to do if he suddenly dies and she has to take over? Is he actually planning to land the White Star fleet on Earth, shoot Clark right in the face, and then call for an election? Not that I wouldn’t fully approve of this plan, but somehow I doubt that’s it.
The Face of the Enemy:
Speaking of which! Garibaldi finds Papa Sheridan and uses him to lure Sheridan into a trap, where he cunningly uses slow-mo to capture him. There is a pretty decent bar fight in which a dude actually gets thrown out a saloon window. Anyway, apparently the orders to Ivanova were to keep on keeping on, so hopefully she has something more specific in mind for when she actually reaches Earth.
I just realized that the resistance has an optics problem, what with the Minbari ships attacking Earth. Apparently Clark is using this to his advantage and claiming that when Earth ships surrender or switch sides, Sheridan has them all killed and replaced with a Minbari crew. Fortunately, Captain MacDougan from a few episodes ago is around to correct this misperception.
Meanwhile, Franklin and Lyta reach Mars, and Number One is pissy. Not because she’s jealous, though it’s certainly blocked that way. Apparently there’s something called a Bloodhound program, where telepaths are used, sometimes fatally, to scan suspected members of the Mars Resistance. So Number One’s people are not happy when Lyta arrives and even less happy with the cargo of telepathsicles that have come along for the ride. Aww, Number One, don’t be mad at Franklin! I’m rooting for you two crazy kids. Lyta has some horrifying stories to back up the qualms of the Mars Resistance, including the time they screwed up a guy’s brain so badly that he has to be kept in a straightjacket lest he claw his own eyes out. Heh. The PsyCorps don’t fuck around.
Now that Sheridan’s been arrested and punched quite a few times for good measure, Edgars finally opens up about his master plan to Garibaldi. He really has it in for telepaths, hoo-boy. He developed both an airborne virus that can kill them but is harmless to mundanes, and an antidote that must be taken every two weeks once a telepath is infected. He figures that this will even out the natural advantage that telepaths have over mundanes. Garibaldi is like, “Sure, I’m cool with that,” but Lise, who is listening in, is obviously not cool with this.
But don’t worry—he is not really cool with this. As soon as he’s alone, he removes a giant tooth (how did that fit in his mouth? It is huge!) and sends a message to…
…BESTER! Bester was mind-controlling him the whole time, having spirited him away from the Shadows when they captured him. Why did I not see that coming? That’s great. Anyway, Bester gets the whole story from Garibaldi, then engages in some epic villain monologuing where he explains how he did the whole thing. I <3 Bester. I mean, he’s pretty twisted, but it’s quite a sensible plan, and you have to admire that. It’s a pity he has a tragic flaw that I’m sure will lead to his undoing, which is to explain everything and then turn Garibaldi back to normal. Somehow I don’t think this will go well.
Villain monologuing is also Edgars’ tragic flaw, because the PsyCorps kill the everloving shit out of him, and Shady Wade, and take both the virus and the cure with them. Lise apparently got away, though, and will live to irritate me another day.
Meanwhile, ISN has its Best Day Ever.
Intersections in Real Time:
1984, basically.
Thoughts:
- When the interrogator asked Sheridan if he’d been interrogated before and by whom, I was a wee bit disappointed that he wasn’t like, “JACK THE RIPPER, BITCH. And he dressed better.”
- Wikipedia tells me that the Drazi was also Lorien and Jack the Ripper.
- What is the first interrogator wearing? Is that the Nightwatch uniform now? If so I strongly approve. /shameful uniform kink
- Speaking of totally shallow, roughed-up and filthy is a good look for Sheridan.
- The Room 17 thing and the Drazi at the end—brrrrr.
That review was short. Hmm. Okay, how about some jokes about overthrowing the government, via some funny guy on Facebook?
On Ellis Island, an elderly eastern European man is being processed for immigration into the United States. He stands before the desk of the immigration officer who loudly asks him, without looking up: ‘Do you advocate the overthrow of the United States Government by subversion or violence?’ The old man mulls it over for a few seconds, then answers: ‘VIOLENCE!’
Q: How many anarchists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Don't impose your rules on us. We'll work it out for ourselves.
Two Greek anarchists are making mollys. One says to the other, "so, who do we throw these at, then?" And the other replies, "what are you, a fucking intellectual?"
Q: How many Trotskyists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Only one, but they’ll SWEAR the light glows brighter than if a Stalinist had changed it.
A red anarchist and a green anarchist are riding together in a car. Who’s driving?
A cop.
How many Crimethinc kids does it take to change a lightbulb?
There were only two of us, wandering listlessly in the night. The city glowed bright in all of its excess. When we stepped foot in that abandoned warehouse, the first thing we saw was the burned out lightbulbs, hanging from the mold-spattered ceiling. It only took us a couple minutes to switch out that vacuum-filled shell. We hadn’t only made a change in the warehouse, but in our hearts. We climbed up to the roof to watch the stars, cars zipping by like ants, oblivious to the beauty that rests above them. When we woke up to the sun-rise we knew, we just fucking knew, we could could change a hell of a lot more than just lightbulbs.
Was that overkill? I’m never sure when it’s overkill.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-04-13 01:18 am (UTC)That really stuck out. Particularly since Ivanova said it.
This sets up an interesting conflict where both sides really, really don’t want to kill each other, but have to, and there’s as much verbal volleying as shooting as Sheridan tries to convince the various ships to mutiny. It’s rather tense and wonderfully done. And it works—most ships stay neutral or join Sheridan’s side, but enough get blown up that the human cost seems quite real.
Yup. By this point, you know that almost every government in the show has a coup, revolution or civil war of some kind.
They should have shot these sequences in black and white. Lise even gets femme fatale hair. Okay, I now officially like this plotline. I’m cheap like the shabby stockings of a two-dollar whore in an empty hotel bar on a Tuesday night. ... At any rate, I am vastly pleased with this turn of events, as it’s obviously going in rather dark directions. It’s less of an epic war than the Shadow arc, but it’s got betrayal, corrupt governments, and evil corporations, so sign me right up.
I knew you would - particularly the part where Edgars boasts that the big corporations have essentially always run things. Awesome exposition - almost as good as the one that follows with Bester. Back-to-back monologs. This is why I liked this plot line.
And you get your B&W scene when Bester finds out what Garibaldi knows. The Psi Cop in charge of programming Garibaldi in the B&W flashback was Harlan Ellison, BTW.
When the interrogator asked Sheridan if he’d been interrogated before and by whom, I was a wee bit disappointed that he wasn’t like, “JACK THE RIPPER, BITCH. And he dressed better.”
ME TOO!
no subject
Date: 2012-04-13 10:44 am (UTC)Q: How many anarchists does it take to change a light bulb?
Don't be silly. Anarchists never change anything.
But perhaps that's too cynical this early in the morning.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-17 06:53 am (UTC)A: Fish.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-13 07:52 pm (UTC)I'm in ur post, earning my zipped lip award.
There's some shit coming up that I really want to reinforce your admonition to yourself.
DO NOT read io9. DO NOT.
That is all. *zip*
no subject
Date: 2012-04-15 01:21 am (UTC)Oops.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 01:41 am (UTC)