Babylon 5, halfway through S3

[cahn]

So I am halfway through B5 now! S3 is interesting because there are some things about it that I don't really like that much (the entire Franklin addiction arc, ugh) and things that --

-- well, I just watched World Without End last week... and I thought those of you who have watched B5 but who aren't following selenak's rewatch would be entertained by my OMG WHAT JUST HAPPENED WITH MANY CAPITAL LETTERS flailing about :P


This is me watching World Without End:

Me: Well, I'll just watch a few minutes of this while I'm tidying up around the house before dinnertime --
Sinclair: *pulls back hood*
Me: WHAAAAT IT'S SINCLAIR???????
Me: ...now wait a moment, I've been told Sinclair comes back once and that is going to HAVE to be the episode where Babylon Squared is dealt with because someone would have WARNED me if JMS didn't close that loop --
Ivanova: They're killing us!
Me: OMG IT'S TIME-WARPED IVANOVA THIS IS DEFINITELY ALL B2 RELATED
Me: WHAT IS GOING ON
Me: SINCLAIR CAME BACK TO B5
Me: Sinclair and Sheridan are super cute together, awwww...
Ivanova: We assumed B4 had been taken into the future.
Me: WAIT! I ASSUMED THIS TOO! WAIT WHAT
Sheridan: Are you saying we stole B4?
Me: ARE YOU SAYING THEY STOLE B4??
Future!Londo: *appears on screen*
Me: LONDO????
Delenn: Our son --
Me: Oh, of course! [Not spoiled, but I had definitely gotten through rewatch osmosis the idea that Delenn has other motives, and ~child of destiny/two worlds/etc.~ is definitely a trope I grew up on, so this was probably the least surprising plot twist. I mean, still surprised! But not AS surprised.]
Me: IS THIS ALL REALLY GOING TO HAPPEN??
Me: LONDO??!!
Londo: Old friend...
Me: Old friend? Vir? That's not Vir? Who is that? G'KAR THAT'S G'KAR OMG
Me: THAT'S G'KAR STRANGLING LONDO LIKE IN THE VISION
Me: OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Me: THERE'S VIR LOOKING AT THE THONE!! OMG HE'S GOING TO BE EMPEROR NOW LIKE IN THE PROPHECY
Me: THE LETTER WAS FROM SINCLAIR??
Me: Is... is Sinclair Valen?
Me: THE ONE IS DELENN?? [I was legit confused about this, as it turns out]
Me: A MINBARI NOT BORN OF MINBARI
Me: He IS VALEN
Me: THE THINGIE THAT TURNS MINBARI INTO HUMANS
Me: AND APPARENTLY VICE VERSA
Me: ALL THAT STUFF IN PARLIAMENT OF DREAMS STARTS TO MAKE SENSE
Me: JMS HAS BEEN PLANNING ALL THIS SINCE S1?????????????????
Me: HE IS LEGIT CRAZY

Comments

[conuly]

LOL, your reaction to this ep...!

[cahn]

This was a 90s show! I know people told me it was good, but people have told me lots of things were good! I wasn't expecting it to, quite frankly, have an arc that would actually hold together so much! (Come to think of it, I don't expect that from non-90's shows either...)

[zdenka]

:D :D :D

"Not the One! Not yet." -Zathras

[cahn]

I didn't know you were a B5 fan! It does seem like the kind of thing you would love :D

[zdenka]

I'm not actively part of the fandom, but I watched it and loved it some years back!

[cahn]

:D

[selenak]

LOL, again. BTW, you‘re two thirds into the third season, not half. Also, I know I said you can skip Walkwabout, but I was just reminded that in addition to the Franklin-wanders-the-station-finding-himself main plot, there is actually continuity relevant stuff, i.e. the arrival of the new Vorlon ambassador and the return of Lyta. So, my advice is to watch those scenes and fast forward through alll the Franklin stuff.

[cahn]

Hee. :D Yeah -- I started reading a synopsis of "Walkabout" as you suggested, and then it started talking about the Vorlon ambassador and I was like... uh, maybe I'd better watch this! So I did :) Was definitely not enamoured of... can you call it fridging if she's not dead yet?... future!fridging? plot line, but glad I watched for the other stuff. So there's part of Kosh in Sheridan's head too?? As if the guy doesn't have enough to do...

Now, Grey 17, on the other hand -- I tried watching it, since Walkabout had worked pretty well, and just gave up ten minutes in.

[selenak]

Grey 17 infamously was the episode JMS wrote when he was sick and which he says he has no memory writing. It shows. I mean, the Minbari scenes are okay (Delenn succeeds Sinclair as Ranger One, Neroon doesn‘t want her to, gets convinced by Marcus‘ willingness to sacrifice himself for Delenn), but they can‘t make up for the overall whole.

[cahn]

Yeah, I was kinda surprised that it was so... blah, which is not a word I have hitherto used with respect to Babylon 5!

And the Rock Cried Out doesn't have that problem at all, though. Ahem :)

[hamsterwoman]

"And the Rock Cried Out" has, if not my favorite, for sure one of my top 3 favorite sequences in B5 (yes, that one :P)

[cahn]

That sequence...!

[selenak]

I'm not saying anything before this Sunday's review to the last one. *veg*

[cahn]

Ha! I will wait :D

[suchasnack]

Me: JMS HAS BEEN PLANNING ALL THIS SINCE S1?????????????????
Me: HE IS LEGIT CRAZY

Yes. Yes, he is and I have no idea how TF he did all of THAT. This was such a good episode!!

[cahn]

So good!! All the plotlines that suddenly came to fruition!! OMG. How do you even do that??

[suchasnack]

I have absolutely no clue, but kudos! *slow clap*

[cahn]

Same!!

[hamsterwoman]

:DDDD (yes, thank you for sharing the capslock on here as well! :D)

Franklin's addiction is also not my favorite thing about S3. Franklin is actually one of my favorite B5 characters (and was even closer to the top of the list the first time I watched) so watching him/his life fall apart was not a lot of fun. Although as far as addiction storylines in SF shows go, I guess it's not as bad as it could've been.

[cahn]

:D I'm glad you enjoyed! :)

Franklin and I had a rough start (I did NOT appreciate the first Franklin-centric episode about the kid who Franklin did surgery on, because I don't think it aged well at all, and it came across to me as a gotcha! episode about religion, because killing your own child because you believe said child doesn't have a soul is just stacking the deck Too Much, in my opinion) but now I quite like him! (although I wouldn't call him my favorite, only because I have a lot of favorites! Ivanova, Lennier, Vir... uh... now that I look at that list, it may be that I have a Thing for loyal subordinates.) But I wouldn't have enjoyed seeing any character I liked fall apart like that, yeah.

[hamsterwoman]

"Believers" (the Franklin does surgery on the kid ep) is an interesting one for me because I found it unsubtle the first time I watched it but it actually grew on me over time as I read a bunch of fan discourse about it (over the past 25 years) which showed me that real people took away really different things from that episode, everything from (real reactions on my f-list) "Franklin fundamentally violated all sorts of ethics and absolutely should've been sacked; he only added to the harm his patient suffered and caused the grieving parents extra grief" to "Franklin did nothing wrong, the parents are murderers, and Sinclair should've backed him and made sure to keep the parents away from him" -- so I guess it's more nuanced than I gave it credit for initially and it felt like an exaggerated strawman argument to me in part because I agree much more with Franklin than with the parents? In any case, when I rewatched the episode, I liked it more, and did find some subtlety there. (I was also rewatching it while introducing the show to my kids, who were then about the kid's age; that was an interesting experience with that episode...)

Ivanova, Lennier, Vir... uh... now that I look at that list, it may be that I have a Thing for loyal subordinates.)

Lennier is one of mine, too! And Vir also, eventually, though I don't think he was yet in S3. Ivanova, it's funny, the first time I watched the show, she was no one of my favorites, partly because she'd been hyped to me a lot, partly because, uh, as a Russian(-speaking) Jew, there are a lot of little details about Ivanova's background that only make any kind of sense only with a lot of handwavy explanations (starting with her name) -- but by rewatch, I'd gotten over boggling at the details and could just enjoy her as she is, which is to say the kind of character I normally like a lot, because I'm also very much someone who likes loyal subordinates.

[cahn]

In AITA terms, Everyone Sucks Here :) I think Franklin was wrong and should have tried to find another solution rather than impose his will (although it's interesting because I do keep reading articles doctors write about how they had to make decisions that sometimes went against the patient's explicit directions -- and they were often right to do so -- but those are usually split-second in-the-moment situations, not this kind of premeditated thing). I also think the parents were wrong, wrong, wrong. But I actually object less to either Franklin or the parents (though I do object to them; like I said, Franklin and I definitely got off on the wrong foot because of that) than to the setup of the episode, which struck me as a "gotcha" kind of setup (particularly in its depiction of a religion with present-day parents literally killing their own children, which I violently object to in terms of how it is clearly set up to manipulate emotions about religion), and I think those kinds of setups have really not aged well.

I thought of "Cold Equations" while watching it, and was utterly unsurprised to later find that JMS was thinking of "Cold Equations" when he wrote it. That's a story that also hasn't aged well; I read it as a kid and was actually really impressed by it at the time, but as an adult thirty-ish years later I feel like there was cheap emotional manipulation going on in service of the intellectual puzzle, and I seem to be allergic to that kind of thing now.

Heh, one of the results of watching in conjunction with selenak is that one is told a lot how great Vir is, which I'm sure is coloring my opinion :D Although I definitely wish he had told G'Kar the truth in "And the Rock Cried Out." Although I suppose I can pretend he did... although I suppose the telepath would have picked up on it...