B5, S05E07-09
May. 28th, 2012 03:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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kore_on_lj. All the hugs, bb. I hope some of this makes you smile.
Secrets of the Soul:
Despite the godawful title, this one starts on a promising enough note. A pakh’mara projectile vomits all over Med Lab. That’s great. More pakh’mara, please. That is the best thing about this episode and sums up how I felt after watching the whole thing.
Let’s get the other good bits out of the way:
Byron gets punched in the face three times.
Ivanova is not on the show anymore, so her character was not tainted by association with this episode and Lyta gets the horrible romance plot instead.
Lyta’s rant at the beginning is kind of good. I mean, I would like it if I liked the character/actor more.
Approximately five seconds of Kosh, and the strong implication that Kosh and Lyta had the sex. Though how that is possible I’m not sure.
Franklin’s storyline was actually really good. I mean, it was a heavy-handed metaphor about racism, but it was a clever heavy-handed metaphor and honestly, I’ll take what I can get at this point. As he goes about collecting the medical information on all species in the ISA, he encounters a race called the Hyach. They’re a geritocracy, which is cool in and of itself, and both Hyach characters are women. Badass elderly women. I like this. But their medical history only goes back about seven centuries, and their civilization is tens of thousands of years old. They’re extremely reticent about why. Oh good, I love a medical mystery.
So Franklin does Research! And figures out that there were once two species on the planet, and they interbred. Then the Hyach got all racist and committed genocide against the other species. But they needed that genetic diversity, and now they’re dying off. He agrees to help figure out why if they will admit to the unsavory bits of their history.
And it works. It’s a good metaphor. I didn’t see the genocide angle coming. Neat alien race, scientist character doing science. Too bad it was the B-plot.
The A-plot is also a heavy-handed metaphor and it is terrible.
How terrible?
This terrible…if the cakes were made of shit and then Lex Luthor made Superman eat them and then tweeted about it and that somehow caused the Republicans to pass a law outlawing puppies.
All of the things that happen:
Zack reminds us that he is the Worst Ever by turning this into an 80s teen comedy. He’s jealous that Lyta is spending all of her time with Byron. Oh, how I hate this plot. Lyta delivers a kind of righteous rant about how everyone takes her for granted and Byron is the only one who understands her. This, as I’ve said, is okay, because it’s true that the normals treat Lyta like shit, and it’s also how people get sucked into cults and abusive relationships. So I can buy Lyta falling for Byron, even though I loathe their storyline.
There is a new Space Hippie who can do telekinesis and stutters. His name is Peter. I’m not going to make fun of him but I am going to make fun of the way Byron acts like he’s really special. Hey, Byron, people with disabilities are not children, stop being so fucking condescending.
Some junior high bullies Down Below want to beat up the Space Hippies for reasons I can understand. Byron talks them out of it. And by “talks them out of it,” I mean that he is all Fight Club without the fun bits to the lead bully. He’s like, “HIT ME. HIT ME AS HARD AS YOU CAN. AGAIN.” Which is admittedly nice to watch. But then he has to make it into a moral lesson and asks the guy whether he would get anything out of hitting him a bunch more times. The answer is “YES,” Down Below bully! I would get something out of it. I would get to watch Byron get punched in the face a bunch more times.
Man, Byron is a really crappy Space Jesus compared to Kosh. Kosh had style.
So then Byron goes on about pacifism for about a hundred years or so. Dude, the real-life metaphor kind of falls short when the pacifists in question can actually alter people’s thoughts. It’s why I couldn’t stand the ending of Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred Thing. If your political ideology requires magic to work, it kind of falls apart.
ANYWAYS the bully is still unsatisfied so he and his guys beat up Peter (who is actually able to defend himself by teleporting a steel pipe at their heads; not well enough, though). This pisses all of the Space Hippies off and they forget all about their Space Pacifism and go on a roaring rampage of Space Revenge. Byron is unable to prevent this because jealous Zack locks him up for a night in a classic Idiot Plot misunderstanding.
Then it gets worse. Byron convinces Lyta that she belongs with him in a way that involves group hugs and hair-touching.
Then it gets much worse. So much worse.
Lyta proposes that she be Byron’s willow and he rests in her and oh God are you going to make me recap this whole thing? You are? Okay, Lyta and Byron have the sex. It’s bad 80s softcore with bad 80s hair. THE OTHER TELEPATHS WATCH. AND TELEPATHICALLY FEEL IT.
What are you doing, show? Stop that. There is not enough D: face in the world.
Because this is not horrible enough, the sex causes Lyta to flash back to that time that she had sex with Kosh (what) and the Vorlons experimented on her and made Vorlon-human hybrid fetuses and the show is suddenly X-Files but not in a good way.
THE HORROR. THE HORROR.
The point of all of this is Zionism, somehow.
what
I kind of want to stop watching but I’m dead curious to see how bad this plotline is going to get, and also it’s kind of like rubbernecking a car crash. How did B5 get this bad this quickly?
You said it, pakh’mara!
Day of the Dead:
We’re back to decent episodes and there’s no Byron. Neil Gaiman penned this one. It has a lot of good bits.
Penn and Teller visit the station, because God knows we can’t have a GREAT episode at this point in the series. The only good thing about this plot line is how unhappy this makes Lochley. Hah. I am really starting to like Lochley.
The main plot involves Brakiri, whom I’ve decided are Space Mexicans because they celebrate the Day of the Dead with sugar skulls. It’s a more literal Day of the Dead than one might expect, though. They arrange to buy a square mile (why Imperial measurements?) of the station for a night, and it is surrounded by bad CGI and transported to the Brakiri homeworld. Then the dead start coming back. Naturally, some people’s quarters are in the part of the station that’s now magically Brakiri. G’Kar kind of knows what to expect, but for some reason doesn’t tell anyone, and just goes off to have a sleepover with Dreamy Corwin for the night. Everyone else gets ghosts.
So! Londo gets Adira, and lots of tentacle sex. I don’t mean to be flippant—these scenes are really good. Garibaldi gets Dodger (¡I missed you, Dodger!) and they have lots of sex too, but with fewer tentacles and more hacking. Lochley gets a woman named Zoe, who given the context I assume is her lover, but I think they’re just friends. Anyway, Zoe died of an after school special 20 years ago. It would have been cooler if Ivanova was on the show, because you know we’d have gotten her dead mother and it would have been creepier.
Lennier gets HOLY FUCK IT’S MORDEN OH GOD. I am delighted. Also, Morden is reading a newspaper. Why are there newspapers in the future? There are barely newspapers now. Anyway, I am less delighted about where Lennier’s plot is going. He’s going to betray the Rangers. Yawn. Probably because he’s jealous of Sheridan. Lennier is above that. But Morden is deliciously creepy and talks about how his head is rotting on a pike and can we see that again, please?
In case you were wondering how this fits into the show’s arc, Zoe gives Lochley a message from Kosh. There aren’t even enough exclamation points. Alas, Kosh has only gotten more cryptic after having died, been kind of sort of reborn as a bit of CGI, and then gone out beyond the Rim or whatever. So, something something something is about to happen. Yay!
In the Kingdom of the Blind:
So a small part of my disdain for S5 so far is the lack of a credible Big Bad. It’s been a bit downhill since the end of the Shadow War, really. Without a scary threat, all of the diplomacy seems like window dressing—raiders here, bickering diplomats there—without a sense of urgency. This episode goes a small way towards fixing that, though I’m not sure if Byron’s Space Hippies or the Drakh or the new and improved raiders measure up to the Shadows or Clark and definitely not to Cartagia.
The new and improved raiders are blowing up ships and not taking anything. But then we don’t hear about them anymore. I actually thought they might be linked to the telepath storyline, but Violence Is Not Our Way. Sigh. That would have been cool.
Byron pulls a Wikileaks on the ISA, which again would be a cool strategy if I cared at all. In response, the Drazi beat up a telepath, and a bunch of the other telepaths disagree that Violence Is Not Our Way and split off with a Malcolm X wannabe. The rest barricade themselves in Byron’s Byronic Love Nest and declare that they shall not be moved.
You know what else I don’t get about the telepaths wanting a homeland? How do they expect to defend it? I mean, are they going to stop being pacifists and get an army? Otherwise, what’s to stop the PsyCorps from just landing on the planet and arresting all 150 of them? This is a stupid plot.
The Centauri plot is cool, though. Londo and G’Kar get all buddy cop, investigating what exactly is up with the giggly, dying Regent. In the process, one of Londo’s friends gets killed, another lord makes an attempt on Londo’s life but is killed by a Jawa, and the Regent makes chills go down my spine. I have not forgotten that the Drakh are growing an eye on him.
Also, the Drakh now look different and not as hilarious. Oh well. The Jawa is pretty funny looking. I guess the Drakh are the new and improved raiders. Let’s play a game! It’s called: “What’s My Motivation?” If you blow up ships, you should take stuff. I’m going to be bored if they’re just interested in terrorism.
Not as bored as I am by the scene of Lyta and Byron in bed together with soft light and candles. Can we speed up the Space Jesus thing and get right to the crucifixion bit? Thanks.
kore_on_lj. All the hugs, bb. I hope some of this makes you smile.Secrets of the Soul:
Despite the godawful title, this one starts on a promising enough note. A pakh’mara projectile vomits all over Med Lab. That’s great. More pakh’mara, please. That is the best thing about this episode and sums up how I felt after watching the whole thing.
Let’s get the other good bits out of the way:
Byron gets punched in the face three times.
Ivanova is not on the show anymore, so her character was not tainted by association with this episode and Lyta gets the horrible romance plot instead.
Lyta’s rant at the beginning is kind of good. I mean, I would like it if I liked the character/actor more.
Approximately five seconds of Kosh, and the strong implication that Kosh and Lyta had the sex. Though how that is possible I’m not sure.
Franklin’s storyline was actually really good. I mean, it was a heavy-handed metaphor about racism, but it was a clever heavy-handed metaphor and honestly, I’ll take what I can get at this point. As he goes about collecting the medical information on all species in the ISA, he encounters a race called the Hyach. They’re a geritocracy, which is cool in and of itself, and both Hyach characters are women. Badass elderly women. I like this. But their medical history only goes back about seven centuries, and their civilization is tens of thousands of years old. They’re extremely reticent about why. Oh good, I love a medical mystery.
So Franklin does Research! And figures out that there were once two species on the planet, and they interbred. Then the Hyach got all racist and committed genocide against the other species. But they needed that genetic diversity, and now they’re dying off. He agrees to help figure out why if they will admit to the unsavory bits of their history.
And it works. It’s a good metaphor. I didn’t see the genocide angle coming. Neat alien race, scientist character doing science. Too bad it was the B-plot.
The A-plot is also a heavy-handed metaphor and it is terrible.
How terrible?
This terrible…if the cakes were made of shit and then Lex Luthor made Superman eat them and then tweeted about it and that somehow caused the Republicans to pass a law outlawing puppies.
All of the things that happen:
Zack reminds us that he is the Worst Ever by turning this into an 80s teen comedy. He’s jealous that Lyta is spending all of her time with Byron. Oh, how I hate this plot. Lyta delivers a kind of righteous rant about how everyone takes her for granted and Byron is the only one who understands her. This, as I’ve said, is okay, because it’s true that the normals treat Lyta like shit, and it’s also how people get sucked into cults and abusive relationships. So I can buy Lyta falling for Byron, even though I loathe their storyline.
There is a new Space Hippie who can do telekinesis and stutters. His name is Peter. I’m not going to make fun of him but I am going to make fun of the way Byron acts like he’s really special. Hey, Byron, people with disabilities are not children, stop being so fucking condescending.
Some junior high bullies Down Below want to beat up the Space Hippies for reasons I can understand. Byron talks them out of it. And by “talks them out of it,” I mean that he is all Fight Club without the fun bits to the lead bully. He’s like, “HIT ME. HIT ME AS HARD AS YOU CAN. AGAIN.” Which is admittedly nice to watch. But then he has to make it into a moral lesson and asks the guy whether he would get anything out of hitting him a bunch more times. The answer is “YES,” Down Below bully! I would get something out of it. I would get to watch Byron get punched in the face a bunch more times.
Man, Byron is a really crappy Space Jesus compared to Kosh. Kosh had style.
So then Byron goes on about pacifism for about a hundred years or so. Dude, the real-life metaphor kind of falls short when the pacifists in question can actually alter people’s thoughts. It’s why I couldn’t stand the ending of Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred Thing. If your political ideology requires magic to work, it kind of falls apart.
ANYWAYS the bully is still unsatisfied so he and his guys beat up Peter (who is actually able to defend himself by teleporting a steel pipe at their heads; not well enough, though). This pisses all of the Space Hippies off and they forget all about their Space Pacifism and go on a roaring rampage of Space Revenge. Byron is unable to prevent this because jealous Zack locks him up for a night in a classic Idiot Plot misunderstanding.
Then it gets worse. Byron convinces Lyta that she belongs with him in a way that involves group hugs and hair-touching.
Then it gets much worse. So much worse.
Lyta proposes that she be Byron’s willow and he rests in her and oh God are you going to make me recap this whole thing? You are? Okay, Lyta and Byron have the sex. It’s bad 80s softcore with bad 80s hair. THE OTHER TELEPATHS WATCH. AND TELEPATHICALLY FEEL IT.
What are you doing, show? Stop that. There is not enough D: face in the world.
Because this is not horrible enough, the sex causes Lyta to flash back to that time that she had sex with Kosh (what) and the Vorlons experimented on her and made Vorlon-human hybrid fetuses and the show is suddenly X-Files but not in a good way.
THE HORROR. THE HORROR.
The point of all of this is Zionism, somehow.
what
I kind of want to stop watching but I’m dead curious to see how bad this plotline is going to get, and also it’s kind of like rubbernecking a car crash. How did B5 get this bad this quickly?
You said it, pakh’mara!
Day of the Dead:
We’re back to decent episodes and there’s no Byron. Neil Gaiman penned this one. It has a lot of good bits.
Penn and Teller visit the station, because God knows we can’t have a GREAT episode at this point in the series. The only good thing about this plot line is how unhappy this makes Lochley. Hah. I am really starting to like Lochley.
The main plot involves Brakiri, whom I’ve decided are Space Mexicans because they celebrate the Day of the Dead with sugar skulls. It’s a more literal Day of the Dead than one might expect, though. They arrange to buy a square mile (why Imperial measurements?) of the station for a night, and it is surrounded by bad CGI and transported to the Brakiri homeworld. Then the dead start coming back. Naturally, some people’s quarters are in the part of the station that’s now magically Brakiri. G’Kar kind of knows what to expect, but for some reason doesn’t tell anyone, and just goes off to have a sleepover with Dreamy Corwin for the night. Everyone else gets ghosts.
So! Londo gets Adira, and lots of tentacle sex. I don’t mean to be flippant—these scenes are really good. Garibaldi gets Dodger (¡I missed you, Dodger!) and they have lots of sex too, but with fewer tentacles and more hacking. Lochley gets a woman named Zoe, who given the context I assume is her lover, but I think they’re just friends. Anyway, Zoe died of an after school special 20 years ago. It would have been cooler if Ivanova was on the show, because you know we’d have gotten her dead mother and it would have been creepier.
Lennier gets HOLY FUCK IT’S MORDEN OH GOD. I am delighted. Also, Morden is reading a newspaper. Why are there newspapers in the future? There are barely newspapers now. Anyway, I am less delighted about where Lennier’s plot is going. He’s going to betray the Rangers. Yawn. Probably because he’s jealous of Sheridan. Lennier is above that. But Morden is deliciously creepy and talks about how his head is rotting on a pike and can we see that again, please?
In case you were wondering how this fits into the show’s arc, Zoe gives Lochley a message from Kosh. There aren’t even enough exclamation points. Alas, Kosh has only gotten more cryptic after having died, been kind of sort of reborn as a bit of CGI, and then gone out beyond the Rim or whatever. So, something something something is about to happen. Yay!
In the Kingdom of the Blind:
So a small part of my disdain for S5 so far is the lack of a credible Big Bad. It’s been a bit downhill since the end of the Shadow War, really. Without a scary threat, all of the diplomacy seems like window dressing—raiders here, bickering diplomats there—without a sense of urgency. This episode goes a small way towards fixing that, though I’m not sure if Byron’s Space Hippies or the Drakh or the new and improved raiders measure up to the Shadows or Clark and definitely not to Cartagia.
The new and improved raiders are blowing up ships and not taking anything. But then we don’t hear about them anymore. I actually thought they might be linked to the telepath storyline, but Violence Is Not Our Way. Sigh. That would have been cool.
Byron pulls a Wikileaks on the ISA, which again would be a cool strategy if I cared at all. In response, the Drazi beat up a telepath, and a bunch of the other telepaths disagree that Violence Is Not Our Way and split off with a Malcolm X wannabe. The rest barricade themselves in Byron’s Byronic Love Nest and declare that they shall not be moved.
You know what else I don’t get about the telepaths wanting a homeland? How do they expect to defend it? I mean, are they going to stop being pacifists and get an army? Otherwise, what’s to stop the PsyCorps from just landing on the planet and arresting all 150 of them? This is a stupid plot.
The Centauri plot is cool, though. Londo and G’Kar get all buddy cop, investigating what exactly is up with the giggly, dying Regent. In the process, one of Londo’s friends gets killed, another lord makes an attempt on Londo’s life but is killed by a Jawa, and the Regent makes chills go down my spine. I have not forgotten that the Drakh are growing an eye on him.
Also, the Drakh now look different and not as hilarious. Oh well. The Jawa is pretty funny looking. I guess the Drakh are the new and improved raiders. Let’s play a game! It’s called: “What’s My Motivation?” If you blow up ships, you should take stuff. I’m going to be bored if they’re just interested in terrorism.
Not as bored as I am by the scene of Lyta and Byron in bed together with soft light and candles. Can we speed up the Space Jesus thing and get right to the crucifixion bit? Thanks.
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no subject
Date: 2012-05-28 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-28 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-28 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-28 11:23 pm (UTC)I would watch the shit out of that. They are like the Ood but way more fun because they're carrion eaters and not a horrible metaphor for slavery.
EVEN BETTER: PRESUMABLY _EVERY_ TELEPATH IN THE STATION DOES? MAYBE
Wait, how far is the range? Does it have to be line of sight? Like, is Bester asleep somewhere and wakes up to visions of Lyta and Byron having sex? Because that would be horrible. Also hilarious. He has a little calendar where he checks off the days until the "quarantine" is lifted and he gets to kill Byron.
Oh God, they were so not-funny. At the time I think JMS did some fumfuh-fumfuh about how humour changes over the centuries. Nice try, dude.
Penn and Teller are not funny in any century.
Lochley is like the Frustrated Single Mom for the whole station. You can't beat up Bester! You can't look at classified files! Go clean up your room!
She's making life miserable for everyone and fun for me. I kind of love her now.
considering this is the same place that smuggled Narns and coffee and teepsicles and God knows what else, the dilemma doesn't seem that convincing.
It would seem to me that they'd be better off on the station where at least they have some allies.
Oh! Or! They could go to the Narn homeworld because they would be totally safe from persecution in exchange for sometimes having to have sex with Narns (I'm sure they wouldn't mind) or to Minbar where teeps are treated really well. Like, literally anything would be less stupid than the idea that they're running with.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-29 12:41 am (UTC)See, now that actually made me laugh. But at the time I thought it was meant to be horrible.
Shit, the Minbari basically own B5, right? Why don't they just say "We're whisking all these people off tonight"?
B5 is independent, possibly to be bought by ISA (with what money I don't know). But they totally could. The girl in S1 sets a precedent. Clearly, the Minbari don't want hippies crashing on their Space Couch either.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-29 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-29 03:11 am (UTC)You might even like those cheesy tv movies they did for the series. Hell, even Lost Tales was pretty good because she was in it (although it was obvious that the budget came from JMS' royalty check from the Clint Eastwood movie after he made payments on a car and a house and bought himself a couple of nice shirts)
no subject
Date: 2012-05-29 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-29 12:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-29 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-29 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-29 10:57 am (UTC)Also, too badass to die like that. I also see Lennier ending up a wise old man, kind of a cross between Yoda and Iroh from Avatar. Yes.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-29 02:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-29 03:20 am (UTC)(I could lying)
no subject
Date: 2012-05-29 02:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-30 06:42 am (UTC)Man, if I wasn't lying about this one it'd be more of a warning than a spoiler.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-29 07:55 am (UTC)Glad you're enjoying B5. There's not enough good tv sci-fi.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-29 02:27 pm (UTC)