B5, S05E13-16
Jun. 13th, 2012 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyIt’s the final stretch, kids! Less than half a season to go (are you really going to make me watch the movies?).
The Corps Is Mother, the Corps Is Father:
We haven’t had an outstanding episode in awhile, but I knew this would be FUCK YEAH AWESOME the second I saw the title. The entire episode is from the Psi Corps’ point of view, as Bester tracks down a Psi Corps trainee who has gone batshit nuts, murdered his roommate, and fled to B5.
It’s Take Your Kids to Work Day at the Psi Corps, and Bester gets saddled with two Psi Cop trainees who think he’s the shit. They are pretty adorable. The girl, Lauren, is a Bester fangirl and totally wants to do him, and this is about the funniest thing ever. I mean, not that I blame her. I am amused that Bester has fangirls. He also cracks really dumb jokes, which makes him even creepier.
Everything about our first glimpse of Psi Corps headquarters is freaking perfect, right down to the propaganda videos, which warn that if you try to leave the Corps, you will get bad hippie hair and probably kill yourself, to the posters in the hallways (“Obey,” “Trust the Corps,” “The Corps Is Mother, the Corps Is Father”). Bester’s little tour is interrupted by a gruesome murder, so he and the kiddies are off to B5, where Harris (who is also pretty cute, incidentally) is on a gambling and making-people’s-heads-explode spree. He’s found himself a mundane accomplice with a distinctive tattoo and a terrible accent named Drake of all things.
It’s all fun and games until Drake offs Chen, the other trainee, and then it’s personal. It turns out that poor Harris has Multiple Personality Disorder, and all of his personalities have different psi levels and also some are homicidal. Bester and Lauren manage to arrest them both and take them back to be Dealt With. Well, Harris presumably makes it back. Lauren gets to unceremoniously dump Drake out of an airlock into hyperspace, which she clearly thinks is great fun and it’s all the more chilling because she looks like she’s about 12. I love Lauren. Can we have more Lauren?
Ah, Wikipedia informs me that this is Koenig’s last episode, so I guess we don’t get more Bester or more Lauren. Sad. Bester was by far my favourite villain on B5. Does that mean we never find out what happened to his popsicle girlfriend? Anyway, farewell, my favourite creepy bastard! It shall forever remain my headcanon that you’re Mirrorverse!Chekov all grown up.
Meditations on the Abyss:
YAY VIR IS BACK. I always forget how much I miss Vir when he’s not in a bunch of episodes in a row. But I understand we’re on a run of good episodes, post-Space Hippie, so he’s back.
So! Delenn and Sheridan are sleeping in his quarters (again; poor woman never gets to sleep in her own tilted bed) when—is that her alarm going off? What is that thing? It looks a bit like the metamorphosis device, but I really think it’s some kind of Minbari alarm clock. Anyway, it is a signal for “dress in your LARPer robes and go have a secret meeting with Lennier.” I love it when the Rangers do secret Ranger things, because they always wear those hilarious robes that make it obvious to everyone else that they are up to secret Ranger business.
Anyway, she meets him at a bar and some guy insta-hits on her, despite the fact that you can’t even really see her face in those robes. He gets creepy about it so she breaks a finger, then she and Lennier kick his ass. Hah. Nice reminder that Delenn is pretty badass. She gives him a secret mission while he’s doing Ranger training: Spy on the Centauri hanging around the Drazi border. No one can know, not even Sheridan. Lennier is genre-savvy enough to tell Delenn that Ghost!Morden said he’d betray the Rangers. Nice to know that we haven’t forgotten about that.
Off Lennier goes to White Star 27 to train with my new favourite character, Montoya.
You killed hisfather sister, prepare to die.
Montoya instantly endears himself to me by giving the ship a proper name (Maria, after the dead sister in question) and performing an epic troll on Lennier and one of the other new recruits, Findell. He has them take out a few ships and then takes off, leaving them with an hour’s air supply each. Lennier—who probably figures out that it’s a test almost as quickly as I do—goes into meditation mode, but Findell freaks the fuck out. Poor Findell sucks. We find out that he’s doing the Ranger thing for the wrong reasons, which is to say the same reason Marcus did it. Um? He can’t take the dishonor of returning home having made a mistake, though, so he tries to kill himself in the next training exercise. Lennier sabotages his own grade to save Findell, then covers for him. Montoya figures it out because they had the whole discussion over a private channel that wasn’t private. Heh. I would not mind more episodes about Ranger training if they’re all like this.
Also, Lennier is better than everyone. Well, except Vir. Vir has been living off of fast food when Londo is away but goes grocery shopping for him as soon as he gets back, and I almost ship them as much as I ship Londo/G’Kar. That’s just so adorable. Alas, one of the grocery bags has a monitoring device in it, which Londo finds immediately because he’s not dumb, and figures out that it’s from the Drazi because he’s not dumb. He uses the opportunity to spread some salacious rumours about the Drazi ambassador’s wife (how come JMS can write comedy when it’s Londo talking, and it’s actually funny, but throws in so many other painfully unfunny moments the rest of the time?). Vir uses the opportunity to go on an EPIC ROARING RAMPAGE OF REVENGE with one of Londo’s swords. The only thing funnier than this is a scene where Sheridan, Delenn, Franklin, and Zack are all laughing about it afterwards. Londo is all, “I AM SO PROUD, YOU ARE FINALLY READY TO REPLACE ME AS AMBASSADOR.”
In G’Kar news, he finally has a new eye (hey maybe you should use the old one to spy on the Drazi; I’m just sayin’) that matches his other eye. And he has been put in charge of delivering philosophy lectures to Space Freshmen. I’m not sure if Franklin is impressed by this or is trying not to smirk.
Oh, and Garibaldi is really off the wagon. He drunk dials a restaurant and gets pizza sent to his quarters. As far as destructive alcoholic behaviour goes, this is kind of on the tame side, but I guess we’re going to get a Very Special Storyline about it anyway.
Darkness Ascending:
This one’s all over the place. The Centauri plotline continues to heat up and be exciting, but Garibaldi’s Very Special Plot Tumor is atrocious.
Let’s get the first one out of the way. Garibaldi has nightmares, which are pretty cool, and then Lise shows up, which isn’t. I swear, Lise has a different personality each episode she’s in. This time, she’s Nagging McBitchiface, berating him about his alcoholism and whining about when he’s coming back to Mars. What an irritating character—no wonder he’s driven to drink mid-romantic dinner with her. Also, you know what is not a cool thing to do when you’re having a romantic dinner with an alcoholic and have just made him swear to avoid booze while you’re here? Ordering a glass of wine. That’s just shitty.
Lennier is still on his secret mission, but before he can decode the signals from the New and Improved Raiders, Sheridan finds out that Delenn has sent him on a secret mission, and recalls the Maria. This is why you shouldn’t talk on closed channels, Delenn! Obviously, Montoya was not your instructor. Anyway, Lennier bucks orders and goes off on his own to track the signals, even though he has a very limited oxygen supply. Nice callback to the last episode, by the way. He manages to follow the signal right to the raiders, which—yep, they’re Centauri. And they blow up civilian transports. Lennier gets it all on tape and posts it to YouTube. Now Sheridan and Delenn have all the evidence they need, so they call a meeting of everyone but Londo.
Okay, that’s stupid. I get why they didn’t tell Londo until they were sure it was the Centauri behind the raids, but now there’s no reason to not tell him, since he obviously knows something’s up. Bad strategy that’s going to blow up in their faces.
Meanwhile, Lyta approaches G’Kar with the most awkward of all proposals. She will, uh, offer him/the Narn access to her, uh, genetic material, in exchange for shit tons of money and some ships that the Space Hippies can use to find a home world. Why didn’t they just do that in the first place? She knew the Narn were willing to give telepaths pretty much anything they asked for in exchange for some interspecies boinking. We could have averted a whole irritating plotline that ruined half the season. Regardless, I’m really hoping the show does not give us a Lyta/G’Kar sex scene but it seems to be what they’re implying here.
And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder:
Sheridan and Delenn have compiled the evidence, summoned the gravitas, and now it’s time for the show to do what it does best: diplomacy in the face of war. They fuck up big time by keeping Londo out of the ISA council meeting, even though it’s clear he has no clue what’s going on. He rages and rips up the evidence when he’s finally allowed back in, only to be confronted with Lennier’s definitive proof. You know, I think this is about as bad a move on Sheridan and Delenn’s part as dumping someone over Facebook, only with consequences that involve galactic warfare, especially when they are almost sure Londo doesn’t know what his government’s up to.
Anyway, so Londo gets a statement from the unnamed minister, who’s all, “Deny everything, Narns did it.” He reads it out at ISA, in a way that suggests he thinks it’s bollocks too, then hightails it back to Centauri Prime, leaving Vir behind. ISA’s got a blockade around Centauri space, and both sides are threatening to fire on each other, so if Londo leaves, he’s unlikely to ever be allowed back on B5. Shit’s getting real!
G’Kar decides to permanently break the HoYay scale by going with Londo, even though he knows that if anything goes wrong, he’ll be stranded on Centauri and there’s nothing anyone can do to help him. The Centauri respond by threatening to arrest him, whereupon Londo gets himself thrown in jail as well in solidarity. In case you’re keeping track, this renders the only two characters able to rein in the Regent (in theory; we know the Regent is being controlled by the Drakh Keeper thingie) completely helpless, but at least they’re probably getting a lot of hot prison sex. If you’re wondering, I am really enjoying their storyline this season.
In less cool storylines, Sheridan apparently hasn’t noticed that Garibaldi is not only off the wagon but rolling around in a ditch somewhere, and entrusts him and him alone with the task of passing along information on Centauri positions from his intelligence agents to the White Star fleet. So he promptly falls asleep and doesn’t get the White Stars out in time to prevent the Centauri and the Drazi from shooting at each other, bringing the Centauri and ISA into open war (with all of the requisite shouting that ensues). I do have to give Jerry Doyle credit for a flawless impersonation of a defensive, angry drunk, but the afterschool specialness of this plot is getting to me.
Hmm, this has been a whole run of really strong episodes. I’m not sure how I feel about the order of things—I feel like Earth should have been the Big Bad for the last season, and that would have carried more weight. Conversely, Londo is the most interesting character, so putting him at the centre of the final conflict makes dramatic sense. The ISA-Centauri conflict seems a good deal darker than the other wars; it has the incomprehensible evil of the Shadows plus the tension of both sides not really wanting to kill each other. But I also think that the ISA could easily wipe out the Centauri, so it’s less of an epic fight.
Prediction: Vir saves the day. Londo left him on B5 for a reason.
The Corps Is Mother, the Corps Is Father:
We haven’t had an outstanding episode in awhile, but I knew this would be FUCK YEAH AWESOME the second I saw the title. The entire episode is from the Psi Corps’ point of view, as Bester tracks down a Psi Corps trainee who has gone batshit nuts, murdered his roommate, and fled to B5.
It’s Take Your Kids to Work Day at the Psi Corps, and Bester gets saddled with two Psi Cop trainees who think he’s the shit. They are pretty adorable. The girl, Lauren, is a Bester fangirl and totally wants to do him, and this is about the funniest thing ever. I mean, not that I blame her. I am amused that Bester has fangirls. He also cracks really dumb jokes, which makes him even creepier.
Everything about our first glimpse of Psi Corps headquarters is freaking perfect, right down to the propaganda videos, which warn that if you try to leave the Corps, you will get bad hippie hair and probably kill yourself, to the posters in the hallways (“Obey,” “Trust the Corps,” “The Corps Is Mother, the Corps Is Father”). Bester’s little tour is interrupted by a gruesome murder, so he and the kiddies are off to B5, where Harris (who is also pretty cute, incidentally) is on a gambling and making-people’s-heads-explode spree. He’s found himself a mundane accomplice with a distinctive tattoo and a terrible accent named Drake of all things.
It’s all fun and games until Drake offs Chen, the other trainee, and then it’s personal. It turns out that poor Harris has Multiple Personality Disorder, and all of his personalities have different psi levels and also some are homicidal. Bester and Lauren manage to arrest them both and take them back to be Dealt With. Well, Harris presumably makes it back. Lauren gets to unceremoniously dump Drake out of an airlock into hyperspace, which she clearly thinks is great fun and it’s all the more chilling because she looks like she’s about 12. I love Lauren. Can we have more Lauren?
Ah, Wikipedia informs me that this is Koenig’s last episode, so I guess we don’t get more Bester or more Lauren. Sad. Bester was by far my favourite villain on B5. Does that mean we never find out what happened to his popsicle girlfriend? Anyway, farewell, my favourite creepy bastard! It shall forever remain my headcanon that you’re Mirrorverse!Chekov all grown up.
Meditations on the Abyss:
YAY VIR IS BACK. I always forget how much I miss Vir when he’s not in a bunch of episodes in a row. But I understand we’re on a run of good episodes, post-Space Hippie, so he’s back.
So! Delenn and Sheridan are sleeping in his quarters (again; poor woman never gets to sleep in her own tilted bed) when—is that her alarm going off? What is that thing? It looks a bit like the metamorphosis device, but I really think it’s some kind of Minbari alarm clock. Anyway, it is a signal for “dress in your LARPer robes and go have a secret meeting with Lennier.” I love it when the Rangers do secret Ranger things, because they always wear those hilarious robes that make it obvious to everyone else that they are up to secret Ranger business.
Anyway, she meets him at a bar and some guy insta-hits on her, despite the fact that you can’t even really see her face in those robes. He gets creepy about it so she breaks a finger, then she and Lennier kick his ass. Hah. Nice reminder that Delenn is pretty badass. She gives him a secret mission while he’s doing Ranger training: Spy on the Centauri hanging around the Drazi border. No one can know, not even Sheridan. Lennier is genre-savvy enough to tell Delenn that Ghost!Morden said he’d betray the Rangers. Nice to know that we haven’t forgotten about that.
Off Lennier goes to White Star 27 to train with my new favourite character, Montoya.
You killed his
Montoya instantly endears himself to me by giving the ship a proper name (Maria, after the dead sister in question) and performing an epic troll on Lennier and one of the other new recruits, Findell. He has them take out a few ships and then takes off, leaving them with an hour’s air supply each. Lennier—who probably figures out that it’s a test almost as quickly as I do—goes into meditation mode, but Findell freaks the fuck out. Poor Findell sucks. We find out that he’s doing the Ranger thing for the wrong reasons, which is to say the same reason Marcus did it. Um? He can’t take the dishonor of returning home having made a mistake, though, so he tries to kill himself in the next training exercise. Lennier sabotages his own grade to save Findell, then covers for him. Montoya figures it out because they had the whole discussion over a private channel that wasn’t private. Heh. I would not mind more episodes about Ranger training if they’re all like this.
Also, Lennier is better than everyone. Well, except Vir. Vir has been living off of fast food when Londo is away but goes grocery shopping for him as soon as he gets back, and I almost ship them as much as I ship Londo/G’Kar. That’s just so adorable. Alas, one of the grocery bags has a monitoring device in it, which Londo finds immediately because he’s not dumb, and figures out that it’s from the Drazi because he’s not dumb. He uses the opportunity to spread some salacious rumours about the Drazi ambassador’s wife (how come JMS can write comedy when it’s Londo talking, and it’s actually funny, but throws in so many other painfully unfunny moments the rest of the time?). Vir uses the opportunity to go on an EPIC ROARING RAMPAGE OF REVENGE with one of Londo’s swords. The only thing funnier than this is a scene where Sheridan, Delenn, Franklin, and Zack are all laughing about it afterwards. Londo is all, “I AM SO PROUD, YOU ARE FINALLY READY TO REPLACE ME AS AMBASSADOR.”
In G’Kar news, he finally has a new eye (hey maybe you should use the old one to spy on the Drazi; I’m just sayin’) that matches his other eye. And he has been put in charge of delivering philosophy lectures to Space Freshmen. I’m not sure if Franklin is impressed by this or is trying not to smirk.
Oh, and Garibaldi is really off the wagon. He drunk dials a restaurant and gets pizza sent to his quarters. As far as destructive alcoholic behaviour goes, this is kind of on the tame side, but I guess we’re going to get a Very Special Storyline about it anyway.
Darkness Ascending:
This one’s all over the place. The Centauri plotline continues to heat up and be exciting, but Garibaldi’s Very Special Plot Tumor is atrocious.
Let’s get the first one out of the way. Garibaldi has nightmares, which are pretty cool, and then Lise shows up, which isn’t. I swear, Lise has a different personality each episode she’s in. This time, she’s Nagging McBitchiface, berating him about his alcoholism and whining about when he’s coming back to Mars. What an irritating character—no wonder he’s driven to drink mid-romantic dinner with her. Also, you know what is not a cool thing to do when you’re having a romantic dinner with an alcoholic and have just made him swear to avoid booze while you’re here? Ordering a glass of wine. That’s just shitty.
Lennier is still on his secret mission, but before he can decode the signals from the New and Improved Raiders, Sheridan finds out that Delenn has sent him on a secret mission, and recalls the Maria. This is why you shouldn’t talk on closed channels, Delenn! Obviously, Montoya was not your instructor. Anyway, Lennier bucks orders and goes off on his own to track the signals, even though he has a very limited oxygen supply. Nice callback to the last episode, by the way. He manages to follow the signal right to the raiders, which—yep, they’re Centauri. And they blow up civilian transports. Lennier gets it all on tape and posts it to YouTube. Now Sheridan and Delenn have all the evidence they need, so they call a meeting of everyone but Londo.
Okay, that’s stupid. I get why they didn’t tell Londo until they were sure it was the Centauri behind the raids, but now there’s no reason to not tell him, since he obviously knows something’s up. Bad strategy that’s going to blow up in their faces.
Meanwhile, Lyta approaches G’Kar with the most awkward of all proposals. She will, uh, offer him/the Narn access to her, uh, genetic material, in exchange for shit tons of money and some ships that the Space Hippies can use to find a home world. Why didn’t they just do that in the first place? She knew the Narn were willing to give telepaths pretty much anything they asked for in exchange for some interspecies boinking. We could have averted a whole irritating plotline that ruined half the season. Regardless, I’m really hoping the show does not give us a Lyta/G’Kar sex scene but it seems to be what they’re implying here.
And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder:
Sheridan and Delenn have compiled the evidence, summoned the gravitas, and now it’s time for the show to do what it does best: diplomacy in the face of war. They fuck up big time by keeping Londo out of the ISA council meeting, even though it’s clear he has no clue what’s going on. He rages and rips up the evidence when he’s finally allowed back in, only to be confronted with Lennier’s definitive proof. You know, I think this is about as bad a move on Sheridan and Delenn’s part as dumping someone over Facebook, only with consequences that involve galactic warfare, especially when they are almost sure Londo doesn’t know what his government’s up to.
Anyway, so Londo gets a statement from the unnamed minister, who’s all, “Deny everything, Narns did it.” He reads it out at ISA, in a way that suggests he thinks it’s bollocks too, then hightails it back to Centauri Prime, leaving Vir behind. ISA’s got a blockade around Centauri space, and both sides are threatening to fire on each other, so if Londo leaves, he’s unlikely to ever be allowed back on B5. Shit’s getting real!
G’Kar decides to permanently break the HoYay scale by going with Londo, even though he knows that if anything goes wrong, he’ll be stranded on Centauri and there’s nothing anyone can do to help him. The Centauri respond by threatening to arrest him, whereupon Londo gets himself thrown in jail as well in solidarity. In case you’re keeping track, this renders the only two characters able to rein in the Regent (in theory; we know the Regent is being controlled by the Drakh Keeper thingie) completely helpless, but at least they’re probably getting a lot of hot prison sex. If you’re wondering, I am really enjoying their storyline this season.
In less cool storylines, Sheridan apparently hasn’t noticed that Garibaldi is not only off the wagon but rolling around in a ditch somewhere, and entrusts him and him alone with the task of passing along information on Centauri positions from his intelligence agents to the White Star fleet. So he promptly falls asleep and doesn’t get the White Stars out in time to prevent the Centauri and the Drazi from shooting at each other, bringing the Centauri and ISA into open war (with all of the requisite shouting that ensues). I do have to give Jerry Doyle credit for a flawless impersonation of a defensive, angry drunk, but the afterschool specialness of this plot is getting to me.
Hmm, this has been a whole run of really strong episodes. I’m not sure how I feel about the order of things—I feel like Earth should have been the Big Bad for the last season, and that would have carried more weight. Conversely, Londo is the most interesting character, so putting him at the centre of the final conflict makes dramatic sense. The ISA-Centauri conflict seems a good deal darker than the other wars; it has the incomprehensible evil of the Shadows plus the tension of both sides not really wanting to kill each other. But I also think that the ISA could easily wipe out the Centauri, so it’s less of an epic fight.
Prediction: Vir saves the day. Londo left him on B5 for a reason.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-06-14 02:11 pm (UTC)