B5 Rewatch: 1x09, 1x10
Jun. 8th, 2010 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixie1x09: Deathwalker"
"The Vorlons are leery of telepaths." AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh, the delicious, delicious dramatic irony.
Which, you know, pretty much describes this episode. Sinclair asks if it's always going to be the little powers at the mercy of the bigger powers--well, uh, not once Sheridan shows up, anyway. (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mylittleredgirl's characterization of him is particularly apt: "Oh, you've got a universe to move? Hang on, I've got a fulcrum and a sense of IMPORTANT DESTINY.") Kosh blows up Jha'dur's ship because he's a shepherd of order and his sheep aren't ready for immortality, but then again, did it really work out so well for the Vorlons and the Shadows?
I'm starting to think that mirrors must be more important than I remembered, because they showed up again in Talia's vision. I've forgotten: do we ever see that data crystal with Talia's "reflection, surprise, terror--for the future" again?
Speaking of Talia, as far as her drinking game goes, for this episode, I got nine sips: four times Talia puts her hand to her head (1 sip each), one time when she complains about the VCR (2 sips), and one time when she nearly faints (3 sips). Oh, Talia. You could have been so great if you only had a spine.
"I will take it from her when I eat her flesh!" Oh, Na'Toth. Stay awesome. Speaking of awesome, Susan getting the ship captains to argue with each other over who had the better claim to Jha'dur was pretty cool. And she claims not to be a diplomat. *snerk*
1x10: Believers
Franklin is just such a great guy. Flawed, perhaps, but he's still just so kind and principled and passionate and interested in everything, and I want to just hang out with him, you know?
I nearly included this episode on the syllabus for my science fiction class this past semester, because it offers a textbook case of recontextualizing human conflicts in order to interrogate them from other perspectives, but there just wasn't time in the semester. I do still like it a lot, even though I didn't get to use it; the parents killing their kid was really shocking the first time around. I'm not really a cultural relativist--had I taken Franklin's hippocratic oath, I would've done the same thing--but I don't find their point entirely unreasonable. Just 99% or so. (I do wonder, though--what do these people do when they get cut by accident? They obviously don't walk around in plastic bubbles...)
However, I thought Garibaldi's and Ivanova's ending dialogue about calculated risks sometimes working out, sometimes not, plus the visual of the kid getting greeted by his parents or whatever, might have put just a liiiittle too fine a point on it. I feel like TV has gotten a bit more okay with letting us just see the parallels for ourselves over the years. (That said, I liked the chumminess they displayed in that scene. Not to mention Susan's original outburst at the beginning of the episode. "I'll just knit something." Hee.)
Another thing I enjoyed was getting to see the response of each of the major races to the same question (will they advocate for the parents). The Narn don't entangle themselves lightly with other races, and they like to get something in return. The Centauri feel similarly, but they use bureaucracy as an excuse. The Minbari rationally consider things, and feel that these matters are too personal to interfere in. The Vorlons...well, they say weird things, but I think Kosh was saying that this matter is too small in the larger scheme of things to warrant attention. The humans, like the Narn, simply refuse to interfere because it would make life difficult, but unlike the Narn, they don't care so much about what the other party can offer (and, to put a different spin on it, they too are looking at the big picture of B5's neutrality vs. this small issue).
Lastly, I can only assume the "Shakespeare Corporation" wanting to import "fingle eggs" has to be a reference to the group that imported the starling, among other birds, to America because they wanted the country to have every bird species mentioned in Shakespeare's plays. Heh. Good on you for stopping them, Garibaldi and Sinclair.
"The Vorlons are leery of telepaths." AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh, the delicious, delicious dramatic irony.
Which, you know, pretty much describes this episode. Sinclair asks if it's always going to be the little powers at the mercy of the bigger powers--well, uh, not once Sheridan shows up, anyway. (
mylittleredgirl's characterization of him is particularly apt: "Oh, you've got a universe to move? Hang on, I've got a fulcrum and a sense of IMPORTANT DESTINY.") Kosh blows up Jha'dur's ship because he's a shepherd of order and his sheep aren't ready for immortality, but then again, did it really work out so well for the Vorlons and the Shadows?I'm starting to think that mirrors must be more important than I remembered, because they showed up again in Talia's vision. I've forgotten: do we ever see that data crystal with Talia's "reflection, surprise, terror--for the future" again?
Speaking of Talia, as far as her drinking game goes, for this episode, I got nine sips: four times Talia puts her hand to her head (1 sip each), one time when she complains about the VCR (2 sips), and one time when she nearly faints (3 sips). Oh, Talia. You could have been so great if you only had a spine.
"I will take it from her when I eat her flesh!" Oh, Na'Toth. Stay awesome. Speaking of awesome, Susan getting the ship captains to argue with each other over who had the better claim to Jha'dur was pretty cool. And she claims not to be a diplomat. *snerk*
1x10: Believers
Franklin is just such a great guy. Flawed, perhaps, but he's still just so kind and principled and passionate and interested in everything, and I want to just hang out with him, you know?
I nearly included this episode on the syllabus for my science fiction class this past semester, because it offers a textbook case of recontextualizing human conflicts in order to interrogate them from other perspectives, but there just wasn't time in the semester. I do still like it a lot, even though I didn't get to use it; the parents killing their kid was really shocking the first time around. I'm not really a cultural relativist--had I taken Franklin's hippocratic oath, I would've done the same thing--but I don't find their point entirely unreasonable. Just 99% or so. (I do wonder, though--what do these people do when they get cut by accident? They obviously don't walk around in plastic bubbles...)
However, I thought Garibaldi's and Ivanova's ending dialogue about calculated risks sometimes working out, sometimes not, plus the visual of the kid getting greeted by his parents or whatever, might have put just a liiiittle too fine a point on it. I feel like TV has gotten a bit more okay with letting us just see the parallels for ourselves over the years. (That said, I liked the chumminess they displayed in that scene. Not to mention Susan's original outburst at the beginning of the episode. "I'll just knit something." Hee.)
Another thing I enjoyed was getting to see the response of each of the major races to the same question (will they advocate for the parents). The Narn don't entangle themselves lightly with other races, and they like to get something in return. The Centauri feel similarly, but they use bureaucracy as an excuse. The Minbari rationally consider things, and feel that these matters are too personal to interfere in. The Vorlons...well, they say weird things, but I think Kosh was saying that this matter is too small in the larger scheme of things to warrant attention. The humans, like the Narn, simply refuse to interfere because it would make life difficult, but unlike the Narn, they don't care so much about what the other party can offer (and, to put a different spin on it, they too are looking at the big picture of B5's neutrality vs. this small issue).
Lastly, I can only assume the "Shakespeare Corporation" wanting to import "fingle eggs" has to be a reference to the group that imported the starling, among other birds, to America because they wanted the country to have every bird species mentioned in Shakespeare's plays. Heh. Good on you for stopping them, Garibaldi and Sinclair.
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no subject
Date: 2010-06-09 06:29 am (UTC)And yay for Franklin! Although, in this case, it didn't end well, and well, I can love him and disagree with what he's doing at the same time - which is the mark of a great character, hooray!
We really do need to invest in a clip-on spine for Talia. She will need it for her vendetta storyline which so needs to happen.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-09 04:14 pm (UTC)They needed him in 1066!
And yay for Franklin! Although, in this case, it didn't end well, and well, I can love him and disagree with what he's doing at the same time - which is the mark of a great character, hooray!
\O/!
We really do need to invest in a clip-on spine for Talia. She will need it for her vendetta storyline which so needs to happen.
It really does. (I vote you write it. *g*)