B5, S04E19-22
May. 9th, 2012 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyHey everyone did you miss my B5 reviews? Lie to me if you must. Seriously, I did not intend to take such a long hiatus, but at first I was in too much pain to watch TV, and then I caught an episode of Fringe, and then I felt compelled to catch up on Fringe, and yeah. But I’m back now.
Between the Darkness and the Light:
At first I was like this:
But then I was all:
I don’t know where to start with this episode. You know how Ivanova is normally all badass and stuff? My theory with this one is that she actually had more badassery than could be contained in a single character, and that badassery spread to every other character to the point where even Lyta was badass. It is magical.
When last we left off, Sheridan was imprisoned on Mars, being interrogated and tortured by a Hey, It’s That Guy. He’s got a beard. Sheridan, I mean, not the interrogator. Still a good look. So I’m initially surprised when he is suddenly back on B5 talking to Franklin until, d’oh, he’s just been drugged. Anyway, even with the drugs, the interrogators are not having a great deal of success because they didn’t take into account the aforementioned storms of badass that are brewing in this episode.
A newly de-brainwashed Garibaldi is trying to get in good with the Mars Resistance. Number One (who is always badass, of course) is ready to kill him—or better yet, have Franklin kill him—but Garibaldi insists that that it’s Bester who’s responsible for turning in Sheridan, not him. Franklin is willing to hear him out (but in an entirely gritty 90s antihero kind of way), but Number One is having none of it. They suddenly remember that hey, there’s a telepath hanging around. Except that the Mars Resistance still don’t like telepaths, so Lyta whips out a machine gun and starts shooting wildly until they let her scan Garibaldi.
Lyta! Girl! What’s gotten into you? Keep this up and I may warm up to your character.
Bester has put up serious blocks in Garibaldi’s brain (okay, one can argue that Garibaldi’s brain is already a block), but Lyta don’t give a shit. Lyta just waltzes right through those blocks and is like, “WANNA SEE HELL NUMBER ONE?” and makes Number One experience everything Garibaldi went through. Also, she’s gotten infected with the Black Oil from the X-Files. Lyta is starting to scare me a bit. There is an annoying banter scene later that returns her to her more typical level of not being awesome, but it’s only a temporary dip.
Delenn returns to B5 just in time to be informed by Lennier that Londo has called a meeting of the Non-Aligned Worlds and invited everyone but the Minbari. Hah Londo. Delenn is pissed and barges in on them, only to find out that it’s actually a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, and probably Vir’s idea. The Centauri, Narn, and Non-Aligneds have all decided to team up to help Ivanova’s forces retake Earth, because they owe Sheridan big time, and also because it makes sense politically. The reason why they didn’t invite Delenn was because they didn’t want anyone to think that she was influencing them. The whole scene stops just short of a group hug and I swear that’s just grit in my eye.
Meanwhile, Ivanova is blowing the shit out of everything. I think she’s just trying to win the war all by herself, and I kind of think she can. Marcus is crushing out on her in a way that verges on creepy except I can totally understand because girl’s on a roll. A guy on one of the ships that blew up civilians tries to defect, and when they point out that he’s kind of a war criminal anyway, he tells them that some of the defectors are actually spies and Clark knows that they’re headed for Mars. He’s planning an ambush. With a lot more firepower than they’re expecting. Ivanova decides that the White Star fleet is best equipped to handle this, and goes ahead of the warships to clear a path.
Now that Garibaldi has proven himself, he, Franklin, and Lyta go off to rescue Sheridan. The dialogue immediately takes a turn for the brilliant and hilarious. Everyone who watches ISN still assumes that Garibaldi is loyal to Clark and lets him through, until they reach a guard who doesn’t watch TV because:
Well then, Fox News. But that’s okay because Lyta is still being badass and gets the entry codes for Sheridan’s cell from his brain, while psychically transmitting pain to another guard. Go Lyta! And Sheridan is free. And bearded. They encounter a bit of trouble on the way out, but everyone is shooting to kill and Sheridan is actually shooting to overkill. Though one can hardly blame him.
Finally, we come to my favourite and least favourite moments of the episode. The White Stars reach the rendezvous point, and sure enough, there are the new secret Earth ships commissioned by Clark. Using Shadow technology. Oh. Fuck. Someone has the gall to suggest that Ivanova surrender, whereupon she replies:
True to form, Ivanova blows the shit out of all of those ships too. Except that the last one kamikazis right into her and crushes her under a pile of destroyed bridge. What? No!
And okay, this last scene? We’re going to pretend that it didn’t happen. Ivanova is in a head brace and a neck brace and begs Sheridan to tell her the truth. Which is that she’s not going to make it. UM WHAT. The doctors have given her a week to live WTF that doesn’t even make sense. Medically speaking, I mean, that doesn’t make sense. Also don’t they have a machine that can heal anything? Now would be a good time to use that, don’t you think?
While I’m still crying like a wee infant, Sheridan assumes control of his old ship, the Agamemnon, and prepares to kick untold amounts of ass in Ivanova’s name.
Endgame:
Resolution to the Earth/Mars storyline: Awesome. So much more awesome than the end of the Shadow War. There are epic space battles and military strategy and ethically questionable decisions and yay!
I had completely forgotten about the telepath popsicles, but we finally find out what Sheridan was planning to do with them. They’re smuggled on board Earth Force destroyers and awakened by Lyta, which means that they basically go nuts and try to bond with all of the computer systems. Everyone agrees that this is fucked up, but hey, it works. You know who I bet will love this strategy? Bester. And given how telepaths take revenge, I am really not sure this plan will work out long-term.
Meanwhile, Garibaldi is in ur Mars base, killing your doodz. Earth Force, despite being led by Sheridan’s old instructor, totally falls for it and sends all the ships to defend Mars, leaving Earth wide open. Ass-kicking ensues. Clark offs himself—that’s unsatisfying, but whatevs—but before doing so, turns Earth’s defense grid against the planet because he’s a sore loser, and also, I think, because he’s being controlled by Skeletor’s eye things. I’m not sure. Anyway, Sheridan blows up those too. Earth is free! And there was much rejoicing. Also, the old ISN crew is back—well, the ones that weren’t murdered, anyway.
The Ivanova plotline is resolved in a much stupider way. On the plus side, at least Lennier, unlike everyone else on the show, remembered about the alien device that cures everything. On the minus side, he chooses to share this information with Marcus, who is a fucking idiot. Marcus abandons the fleet mid-battle and goes back to Babylon 5 to sacrifice himself to save Ivanova.
You know what else he could have done? Actually told someone else about this plan because the device didn’t kill Sheridan and Franklin the time that they used it. Maybe like five people could go on it and only use up a bit of their life force? That would probably work better. Anyway, RIP Aragon son of Arathorn. It is so sad that you died a virgin and completely unnecessarily too. At least this means that Ivanova is going to live, though. She’d better live, or I will be mightily pissed off.
Rising Star
SHOW DON’T EVER MAKE IVANOVA CRY LIKE THAT AGAIN, YOU HEAR ME? Holy balls that is hard to watch. After a really brutal monologue that I don’t want to recap because it’s really too depressing, Ivanova says, “All love is unrequited” and stop doing this to my heart.
Except it then cuts directly from that line to Londo and G’Kar, and from there on in, the episode is pure awesomesauce. By the way, I’m kind of on a lot of strong painkillers lately and someone needs to tell me if it’s actually canon that they’re having all of the sex. Because from this discussion I conclude that they are. I’m just not sure if it’s subtext or text. At any rate, it’s definitely buttsex. Or, uh, tentacle/pouch sex. It is kind of jarring to have one of the most heartwrenching scenes in the show thus far immediately followed by xenophilia.
Hey, I was right about Bester. He is not best pleased at the telepath popsicle thing. Also he doesn’t give a shit that Garibaldi is out for his head. Anyway, Sheridan toys with him for a bit before telling him that his girlfriend was not one of the sacrificial popsicles, which calms him down a bit but don’t think Evil!Chekov isn’t planning about a million different ways to make Sheridan die horribly.
Anyway, Sheridan turns himself in to face court martial. Earth has a new president, Luchenko, who has a worse Russian accent than Walter Koenig. I like her! She is a complete politician. Personally, she agrees with what Sheridan did. Politically, he is inconvenient, so she agrees to an amnesty for his crew if he’ll resign at the press conference. And if he doesn’t go along with this, it’s a dishonorable discharge with no pension for everyone. So he agrees.
Back on Mars, Garibaldi is on a mad hunt for Lise. I mostly don’t care about this except that he makes a funny grenade thing. He rescues Lise and they have all the sex too. There’s lots of sex in this episode.
Meanwhile, Delenn, Londo, and G’Kar are up to something besides, or at least in addition to, all the sex. They convince the League of Non-Aligned Worlds to become Aligned, in a Lawful Good alignment if you’re at all curious, with the Rangers as a peacekeeping force. Guess who their new president is. Just guess.
Mars is independent! Yay! Londo is going to be Emperor! Less yay!
Then President Sheridan, in his last act as an EarthForce officer, promotes Ivanova to captain and YOU MEAN THEY’RE GOING TO WRITE HER OUT OF THE SHOW ALL SAD AND SHIT? FROWN. SO MUCH FROWN.
And finally, Sheridan and Delenn get married. Then they consummate the marriage. G’Kar watches while hanging out with Londo. I can’t believe that they were allowed to show this but not allowed to have Ivanova and Talia make out. What. The. Everloving. Fuck.
Also, hahha. That’s so creepy and hilarious. Londo knows about the detachable eye? Why would G’Kar tell him? Did he find out in some other way besides G’Kar telling him? I need to know this.
Oh, and a new age begins.
The Deconstruction of Falling Stars:
I was a little confused since episode 21 seemed like a very final finale, but there was one more in the season. It is at once really cheesy and heavy-handed and really fantastic.
Sheridan and Delenn are back from their honeymoon—well, I don’t know if it’s an actual honeymoon, since they took over Earth, headed back, and elope—but anyway everyone throws them a big party and G’Kar and Londo are basically married too. Seriously, if they stood any closer together they’d be violating the Pauli exclusion principle. Sheridan wants to know if anyone will remember him in 100 years.
Cut to the future! Fox News debates the future of the Interstellar Alliance. Well, no, only one interviewee is really Fox Newsing it, but the performance is just flawless.
100 years into the future, two space academics, one a space Hegelian and the other a space Jungian, and every bit as broadly caricatured as you’re picturing, debunk the Great Man Theory as it applies to Babylon 5. Then old!Delenn appears and shames them for being such eggheads. I really could have done without old!Delenn, show.
Then 500 years into the future is a heavy-handed 1984 reference where everyone speaks in Newspeak and use holograms of the B5 gang as propaganda in their war against the Alliance. But Hologram!Garibaldi manages to pwn them. Also, it’s comforting to know that even 500 years in the future, green screen is still a big thing.
But it’s all for naught, as 1000 years from now, there’s basically a new Dark Age. The history of B5 has been distilled to its most over-the-top religious metaphors. As it turns out, though, one of the monks has actually been sent to Earth by the Rangers to reintroduce science to the planet and eliminate the anti-alien sentiment that screwed them over with the Oceania guys.
Anyway, it all turns out fine as a million years into the future, humanity is enlightened enough to escape the Sun going supernova and seem to change into Vorlons or something. Is this another stable loop?
Rather clever way to end the season if they weren’t sure if the show would be renewed or not.
And there ends Season 4, which I’m gathering by consensus is the best season. It’s predictions time!
- I was accidentally spoiled for this on iO9, but no Ivanova in Season 5. All of the frowns.
- The various future plot hints we got in the episode—the telepath colony, the terrorist-type people holding Garibaldi hostage, and the war with Skeletor—will be the focus of the last season.
- Return of the technomages!
- G’Kar and Londo will get married.
- At least one fake news episode.
- Sheridan and Delenn’s son will be born, and will be a freaky mutant thing and subject to ham-handed allegories for racism.
- President Luchenko will be a major antagonist of the obstructive bureaucrat variety.
- Former Nightwatch members will join up with Home Guard to be a serious threat and the forerunner of the Oceania dudes.
- Lyta is possessed by the Shadows.
- Londo will die.
- I will find a lot more to mock in the next season than I did in any of the previous four.
Between the Darkness and the Light:
At first I was like this:
But then I was all:
I don’t know where to start with this episode. You know how Ivanova is normally all badass and stuff? My theory with this one is that she actually had more badassery than could be contained in a single character, and that badassery spread to every other character to the point where even Lyta was badass. It is magical.
When last we left off, Sheridan was imprisoned on Mars, being interrogated and tortured by a Hey, It’s That Guy. He’s got a beard. Sheridan, I mean, not the interrogator. Still a good look. So I’m initially surprised when he is suddenly back on B5 talking to Franklin until, d’oh, he’s just been drugged. Anyway, even with the drugs, the interrogators are not having a great deal of success because they didn’t take into account the aforementioned storms of badass that are brewing in this episode.
A newly de-brainwashed Garibaldi is trying to get in good with the Mars Resistance. Number One (who is always badass, of course) is ready to kill him—or better yet, have Franklin kill him—but Garibaldi insists that that it’s Bester who’s responsible for turning in Sheridan, not him. Franklin is willing to hear him out (but in an entirely gritty 90s antihero kind of way), but Number One is having none of it. They suddenly remember that hey, there’s a telepath hanging around. Except that the Mars Resistance still don’t like telepaths, so Lyta whips out a machine gun and starts shooting wildly until they let her scan Garibaldi.
Lyta! Girl! What’s gotten into you? Keep this up and I may warm up to your character.
Bester has put up serious blocks in Garibaldi’s brain (okay, one can argue that Garibaldi’s brain is already a block), but Lyta don’t give a shit. Lyta just waltzes right through those blocks and is like, “WANNA SEE HELL NUMBER ONE?” and makes Number One experience everything Garibaldi went through. Also, she’s gotten infected with the Black Oil from the X-Files. Lyta is starting to scare me a bit. There is an annoying banter scene later that returns her to her more typical level of not being awesome, but it’s only a temporary dip.
Delenn returns to B5 just in time to be informed by Lennier that Londo has called a meeting of the Non-Aligned Worlds and invited everyone but the Minbari. Hah Londo. Delenn is pissed and barges in on them, only to find out that it’s actually a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, and probably Vir’s idea. The Centauri, Narn, and Non-Aligneds have all decided to team up to help Ivanova’s forces retake Earth, because they owe Sheridan big time, and also because it makes sense politically. The reason why they didn’t invite Delenn was because they didn’t want anyone to think that she was influencing them. The whole scene stops just short of a group hug and I swear that’s just grit in my eye.
Meanwhile, Ivanova is blowing the shit out of everything. I think she’s just trying to win the war all by herself, and I kind of think she can. Marcus is crushing out on her in a way that verges on creepy except I can totally understand because girl’s on a roll. A guy on one of the ships that blew up civilians tries to defect, and when they point out that he’s kind of a war criminal anyway, he tells them that some of the defectors are actually spies and Clark knows that they’re headed for Mars. He’s planning an ambush. With a lot more firepower than they’re expecting. Ivanova decides that the White Star fleet is best equipped to handle this, and goes ahead of the warships to clear a path.
Now that Garibaldi has proven himself, he, Franklin, and Lyta go off to rescue Sheridan. The dialogue immediately takes a turn for the brilliant and hilarious. Everyone who watches ISN still assumes that Garibaldi is loyal to Clark and lets him through, until they reach a guard who doesn’t watch TV because:
It's a cultural wasteland filled with inappropriate metaphors and an unrealistic portrayal of life created by the liberal media elite.
Well then, Fox News. But that’s okay because Lyta is still being badass and gets the entry codes for Sheridan’s cell from his brain, while psychically transmitting pain to another guard. Go Lyta! And Sheridan is free. And bearded. They encounter a bit of trouble on the way out, but everyone is shooting to kill and Sheridan is actually shooting to overkill. Though one can hardly blame him.
Finally, we come to my favourite and least favourite moments of the episode. The White Stars reach the rendezvous point, and sure enough, there are the new secret Earth ships commissioned by Clark. Using Shadow technology. Oh. Fuck. Someone has the gall to suggest that Ivanova surrender, whereupon she replies:
Who am I? I am Susan Ivanova, Commander. Daughter of Andre and Sophie Ivanov. I am the right hand of vengeance and the boot that is going to kick your sorry ass all the way back to Earth, sweetheart! I am death incarnate, and the last living thing that you will ever see. God sent me.
True to form, Ivanova blows the shit out of all of those ships too. Except that the last one kamikazis right into her and crushes her under a pile of destroyed bridge. What? No!
And okay, this last scene? We’re going to pretend that it didn’t happen. Ivanova is in a head brace and a neck brace and begs Sheridan to tell her the truth. Which is that she’s not going to make it. UM WHAT. The doctors have given her a week to live WTF that doesn’t even make sense. Medically speaking, I mean, that doesn’t make sense. Also don’t they have a machine that can heal anything? Now would be a good time to use that, don’t you think?
While I’m still crying like a wee infant, Sheridan assumes control of his old ship, the Agamemnon, and prepares to kick untold amounts of ass in Ivanova’s name.
Endgame:
Resolution to the Earth/Mars storyline: Awesome. So much more awesome than the end of the Shadow War. There are epic space battles and military strategy and ethically questionable decisions and yay!
I had completely forgotten about the telepath popsicles, but we finally find out what Sheridan was planning to do with them. They’re smuggled on board Earth Force destroyers and awakened by Lyta, which means that they basically go nuts and try to bond with all of the computer systems. Everyone agrees that this is fucked up, but hey, it works. You know who I bet will love this strategy? Bester. And given how telepaths take revenge, I am really not sure this plan will work out long-term.
Meanwhile, Garibaldi is in ur Mars base, killing your doodz. Earth Force, despite being led by Sheridan’s old instructor, totally falls for it and sends all the ships to defend Mars, leaving Earth wide open. Ass-kicking ensues. Clark offs himself—that’s unsatisfying, but whatevs—but before doing so, turns Earth’s defense grid against the planet because he’s a sore loser, and also, I think, because he’s being controlled by Skeletor’s eye things. I’m not sure. Anyway, Sheridan blows up those too. Earth is free! And there was much rejoicing. Also, the old ISN crew is back—well, the ones that weren’t murdered, anyway.
The Ivanova plotline is resolved in a much stupider way. On the plus side, at least Lennier, unlike everyone else on the show, remembered about the alien device that cures everything. On the minus side, he chooses to share this information with Marcus, who is a fucking idiot. Marcus abandons the fleet mid-battle and goes back to Babylon 5 to sacrifice himself to save Ivanova.
You know what else he could have done? Actually told someone else about this plan because the device didn’t kill Sheridan and Franklin the time that they used it. Maybe like five people could go on it and only use up a bit of their life force? That would probably work better. Anyway, RIP Aragon son of Arathorn. It is so sad that you died a virgin and completely unnecessarily too. At least this means that Ivanova is going to live, though. She’d better live, or I will be mightily pissed off.
Rising Star
SHOW DON’T EVER MAKE IVANOVA CRY LIKE THAT AGAIN, YOU HEAR ME? Holy balls that is hard to watch. After a really brutal monologue that I don’t want to recap because it’s really too depressing, Ivanova says, “All love is unrequited” and stop doing this to my heart.
Except it then cuts directly from that line to Londo and G’Kar, and from there on in, the episode is pure awesomesauce. By the way, I’m kind of on a lot of strong painkillers lately and someone needs to tell me if it’s actually canon that they’re having all of the sex. Because from this discussion I conclude that they are. I’m just not sure if it’s subtext or text. At any rate, it’s definitely buttsex. Or, uh, tentacle/pouch sex. It is kind of jarring to have one of the most heartwrenching scenes in the show thus far immediately followed by xenophilia.
Hey, I was right about Bester. He is not best pleased at the telepath popsicle thing. Also he doesn’t give a shit that Garibaldi is out for his head. Anyway, Sheridan toys with him for a bit before telling him that his girlfriend was not one of the sacrificial popsicles, which calms him down a bit but don’t think Evil!Chekov isn’t planning about a million different ways to make Sheridan die horribly.
Anyway, Sheridan turns himself in to face court martial. Earth has a new president, Luchenko, who has a worse Russian accent than Walter Koenig. I like her! She is a complete politician. Personally, she agrees with what Sheridan did. Politically, he is inconvenient, so she agrees to an amnesty for his crew if he’ll resign at the press conference. And if he doesn’t go along with this, it’s a dishonorable discharge with no pension for everyone. So he agrees.
Back on Mars, Garibaldi is on a mad hunt for Lise. I mostly don’t care about this except that he makes a funny grenade thing. He rescues Lise and they have all the sex too. There’s lots of sex in this episode.
Meanwhile, Delenn, Londo, and G’Kar are up to something besides, or at least in addition to, all the sex. They convince the League of Non-Aligned Worlds to become Aligned, in a Lawful Good alignment if you’re at all curious, with the Rangers as a peacekeeping force. Guess who their new president is. Just guess.
Mars is independent! Yay! Londo is going to be Emperor! Less yay!
Then President Sheridan, in his last act as an EarthForce officer, promotes Ivanova to captain and YOU MEAN THEY’RE GOING TO WRITE HER OUT OF THE SHOW ALL SAD AND SHIT? FROWN. SO MUCH FROWN.
And finally, Sheridan and Delenn get married. Then they consummate the marriage. G’Kar watches while hanging out with Londo. I can’t believe that they were allowed to show this but not allowed to have Ivanova and Talia make out. What. The. Everloving. Fuck.
Also, hahha. That’s so creepy and hilarious. Londo knows about the detachable eye? Why would G’Kar tell him? Did he find out in some other way besides G’Kar telling him? I need to know this.
Oh, and a new age begins.
The Deconstruction of Falling Stars:
I was a little confused since episode 21 seemed like a very final finale, but there was one more in the season. It is at once really cheesy and heavy-handed and really fantastic.
Sheridan and Delenn are back from their honeymoon—well, I don’t know if it’s an actual honeymoon, since they took over Earth, headed back, and elope—but anyway everyone throws them a big party and G’Kar and Londo are basically married too. Seriously, if they stood any closer together they’d be violating the Pauli exclusion principle. Sheridan wants to know if anyone will remember him in 100 years.
Cut to the future! Fox News debates the future of the Interstellar Alliance. Well, no, only one interviewee is really Fox Newsing it, but the performance is just flawless.
100 years into the future, two space academics, one a space Hegelian and the other a space Jungian, and every bit as broadly caricatured as you’re picturing, debunk the Great Man Theory as it applies to Babylon 5. Then old!Delenn appears and shames them for being such eggheads. I really could have done without old!Delenn, show.
Then 500 years into the future is a heavy-handed 1984 reference where everyone speaks in Newspeak and use holograms of the B5 gang as propaganda in their war against the Alliance. But Hologram!Garibaldi manages to pwn them. Also, it’s comforting to know that even 500 years in the future, green screen is still a big thing.
But it’s all for naught, as 1000 years from now, there’s basically a new Dark Age. The history of B5 has been distilled to its most over-the-top religious metaphors. As it turns out, though, one of the monks has actually been sent to Earth by the Rangers to reintroduce science to the planet and eliminate the anti-alien sentiment that screwed them over with the Oceania guys.
Anyway, it all turns out fine as a million years into the future, humanity is enlightened enough to escape the Sun going supernova and seem to change into Vorlons or something. Is this another stable loop?
Rather clever way to end the season if they weren’t sure if the show would be renewed or not.
And there ends Season 4, which I’m gathering by consensus is the best season. It’s predictions time!
- I was accidentally spoiled for this on iO9, but no Ivanova in Season 5. All of the frowns.
- The various future plot hints we got in the episode—the telepath colony, the terrorist-type people holding Garibaldi hostage, and the war with Skeletor—will be the focus of the last season.
- Return of the technomages!
- G’Kar and Londo will get married.
- At least one fake news episode.
- Sheridan and Delenn’s son will be born, and will be a freaky mutant thing and subject to ham-handed allegories for racism.
- President Luchenko will be a major antagonist of the obstructive bureaucrat variety.
- Former Nightwatch members will join up with Home Guard to be a serious threat and the forerunner of the Oceania dudes.
- Lyta is possessed by the Shadows.
- Londo will die.
- I will find a lot more to mock in the next season than I did in any of the previous four.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
I keep the clip around for when I am depressed.
Date: 2012-05-10 04:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-10 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 04:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-10 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-10 06:39 pm (UTC)So yeah, JMS didn't know if it was going to get renewed. He filmed the final episode for this season and it fits because it takes place 20 years in the future. So you get one more Ivanova. When the series moved to TNT, they wanted everyone to renew their contracts and Claudia Christian wanted a clause to let her opt out for a few episodes to work on other things. TNT said no. JMS said "sorry, but she left" and later on, JMS had his sour relationship with TNT.
So Deconstruction of Falling Stars was written.
I loved it when I saw it on television, but I found it kind of lame the last time and then JMS on the commentary talking about how deconstruction is bullshit because it doesn't believe in Great Men (or Women) kind of made it obvious that the episode was preaching at me (and man it really made those academic guys into total assholes)
no subject
Date: 2012-06-17 07:15 am (UTC)Claudia wanted to be able to take a couple of episodes off, as you said, and the show said fine, but then her agent I think it was or someone needed it to be in writing, rather than just this casual "Yeah, we can totally work around her off-B5 shooting, no biggie" verbal agreement they had. And once they needed it set in stone in writing then it all fell apart, because now if she's actually officially absent for a couple of episodes then suddenly she's making more per episode than she should be, so they wanted/needed her to take a pay cut so the other actors wouldn't be going "What the hell, dude? She's making $xxx in 20 episodes instead of 22 (or whatever the numbers were)?"
And so then it kind of became this renegotiating-her-contract thing (which again was iirc complicated by the fact that no one else was getting their contracts renegotiated, what the hell), and there was all this question of whether or not they could do it in a way that was fair to all the other actors too, and they were running out of time for figuring it out, and so then finally they just had to go, "We can't make this work" and not renew her. Which is a real shame.
Iiif I recall things correctly, a lot of the fault lies with the network for not deciding until the very last minute whether or not it was going to pick B5 up for that fifth season, because of course no matter how much you want it to be there and to be able to work on it again, you gotta eat, so you can't really turn away the bird in the hand, if you know what I mean. So not knowing if there even was gonna be a fifth season, and all indications looking like there wasn't, Claudia took the movie job. And then tried to just get a few episodes off so she could meet that obligation...
no subject
Date: 2012-05-10 11:35 pm (UTC)Actually, I was about to give you shit about neglecting your duties, but I realized that would have been a dick move.
100 years into the future, two space academics, one a space Hegelian and the other a space Jungian, and every bit as broadly caricatured as you’re picturing, debunk the Great Man Theory as it applies to Babylon 5.
JMS really hates academics because "they don't believe in heroes."
no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 04:33 am (UTC)And how does that woman's mouth move in so many directions at once? She's even more distracting than the guy that calls Darth Vader a dipshit for believing in the Force in Star Wars (I will always call it Star Wars - never The New Hope)
no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 05:59 pm (UTC)It's in JMS's commentary track, not the script. And I am quoting from memory, so it may not be exact.
I will always call it Star Wars - never The New Hope
Same here.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-17 07:21 am (UTC)For Peter Jurassik and Andreas Katsulas, in order to basically keep things equal between the two actors, they swapped out who was the "with" and who was the "and" each season. If you look at the opening credits for each season in order, they alternate who is where each season, which I think is neat.