B5 Rewatch: 1x12, 15, 16, 21 (oops)
Jun. 20th, 2010 12:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieHmmm. The website I'm watching these on apparently has put three of the episodes slightly out of order. I think I'll be back on track once I watch the small part of "TKO" that doesn't suck. For S1, it doesn't matter much anyway, I suppose.
By Any Means Necessary, aka The Episode Where Sinclair Proves That No Matter How Fine A Hair Is Split, He Can Split It Further.
Sinclair really is an incredibly sneaky bastard, isn't he? Despite O'Hare, I find myself liking Sinclair a lot more this time around, even when he's being perhaps a little too consistently crafty for believability. (I think they should've had either the strike or the G'Quan/sunlight solution, but not both in the same episode.)
I always enjoy seeing the nitty-gritty workings of the station, so I like this episode. Conley is one of the better one-time guest characters. Her observation about Garibaldi--that he's "blue collar under all that EarthForce"--is something I hadn't given much thought before. Now I'm curious about how class works in the context of this universe. Of course, with downbelow, B5 has its own sort of class system, but I wonder how much of our present day preconceptions people come in with.
This is also the episode where get an intimation of the religious diversity on Narn, which goes a long way towards mollifying my annoyance at "Parliament of Dreams." (Also, Londo calling G'Kar a pagan is kind of hilarious.)
Also hilarious is Ivanova, who gets to scare the reporter, Londo, and G'Kar out of C&C. (Ha, now I have a vision of G'Kar taking Garibaldi aside at some point and asking if he has any idea how scary she is. I may have to include that in one of my CI 'verse fics...) Oh, Ivanova. ILU.
This Quality of Mercy
Between this and "Eyes," I think I uttered "Oh, Lennier," and then collapsed into helpless laughter at least three dozen times. He just...I...oh, Lennier. You are SO CUTE. Even when you're using Minbari kung fu on a bunch of poker players, you remain cute. (Also: "In my eleventy-fifth year...in my eleventy-seventh year..." was adorable. Either Lennier is 117+, or he was referring to his sixteenth and eighteenth years respectively, I'm not sure which.) It's interesting that he says it's an honor for a Minbari to help another save face. I feel like this explains much about the Earth-Minbar war.
And Londo, Londo, Londo..."Here, my friend, here you will see the heart and soul of Babylon 5. Also, its spleen, its kidneys, a veritable parade of internal organs." *snerk* Speaking of organs, I'm pretty sure this is the only show I've ever watched where the inevitable tentacle porn is, you know, based in canon. (Please don't point me to it.)
Less cute was Talia. You know, I think what really irritates me about her, aside from the lack of spine, is that Andrea Thompson always sounds on the verge of tears when she speaks. It makes me wonder if she's trying to pitch her voice much lower than it naturally is or something. But anyway, in this episode, it...mostly worked, actually. This was a genuinely distressing experience for her, and instead of just sounding like she was whining, the constant nearness to crying seemed natural. There also wasn't a lot of time spent on her collapsing, etc., like there has been in the past. It worked out much better.
I liked the Chekhov's guns strewn throughout the beginning of the episode. We get the setup of the brainwipe sentence--with the poor judge getting the exposition ball this week--and the machine, and of course they come together at the end, when Mueller dies, just as Garibaldi said he wanted. Not only that, but some of these guns go off years later--the machine, of course, in "Endgame" (...oh, Marcus), and Nora/Maura/Laura/whatever her name was's stim addiction comes back around for Franklin. I can't remember if he says in S3 when he started using them; I wonder if it was around this time.
I also enjoyed the little interaction Ivanova and Garibaldi had near the end, when she tells him who was responsible for the brawl. There's something about the way they keep saying "There you are" to each other that seems very...intimate? Like there's something more than just the phrase being communicated. (Yes, yes, I am reading entirely too much into three words. I'll be over here in a corner cheering on my doomed OTP.)
Grail
Ohhhh, man, this episode is like an entirely different experience after seeing WWE and the rest of S3/4. B4's disappearance is no longer mysterious! Sinclair really doesn't "know [him]self as well as [he] thinks"! Delenn is not kidding when she says the religious and warrior castes agreeing on something is a terrible thing! (Uhhhh, apparently JMS hadn't thought up the worker caste yet? Er.)
I get the impression this might have been a bottle show of sorts--Londo's prehensile penis made a return as the Nakaleen feeder's tentacle, and they seemed to be awfully fond of the court set for a few episodes around this time. But it led to things like Londo telling Vir that he'll efficient the empire into extinction, so hey, I'm not complaining.
But really, the best part? "No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. ...What? Somebody's gotta have some damn perspective around here! Boom. Sooner or later...boom!" (I think I might want this chiseled on my gravestone.) Can anyone not love her after that? Anyone? If you don't, I don't think you have a PULSE.
(Runner up for the best part: the human demanding reparations from the little gray men for his great-grandfather's abduction. Bwahahahahaha!)
Eyes
Okay, let's just forget the...ill-conceived...motorcycle subplot (except for the "Oh, Lennier" opportunities) and concentrate on the rest of this really quite good episode. It further sets up the turmoil/isolationism on Earth and the increasing culture of paranoia in the military, introduces the Free Mars movement, and reminds us that Bester pulls some pretty long strings. Impressive.
We also get further evidence that Susan Ivanova is one of the most tragic characters ever conceived. Oh, Susan. I think the combination of biting sarcasm and a tragic past might be my bulletproof characterization kink. If the character in question can also put the fear of god into others, all the better. ("I'll twist your head off and use it as a chamber pot!")
Feeding into my swirling metaish thoughts on her is the bit where she tells Sinclair that no one but her mother "has ever been that close to [her]." I wonder if, subconsciously, she's been searching for that kind of connection since her mother died. Maybe with Talia, she got it for the shortest of whiles.
I liked the meek little telepath who could, Harrison Grey. Bester is so much the face of Psi Corps for me that it's good to see another representative of them who is neither evil himself nor thinks the Corps is evil. (Well, there's Talia, but for various reasons, I don't think she quite counts--she doesn't have the highest opinion of them by the time she gets her personality erased, as I recall, and then there's always the other personality hiding in her head...) The thing about the Corps is that as abhorrent as the very concept is, I can see exactly why it would've come into existence when telepathy started manifesting among humans, and why it would've been considered a good idea at the time, then twisted into the extremely problematic institution it became.
Of course, I also enjoyed the whole bar brawl and aftermath scenes. (Not to mention the moment in the hall where Michael is physically trying to hold Susan together.) One should never try to touch/seduce Ivanova without her permission, especially when she's having a very, very bad day. And then Garibaldi's like, "Uh, please don't kill me?" when he comes to break things up. Oh, they are so cute.
You know, it occurs to me that they never got their drink together. Hmmm. Excuse me, I have to go...do something... *scurries away*
By Any Means Necessary, aka The Episode Where Sinclair Proves That No Matter How Fine A Hair Is Split, He Can Split It Further.
Sinclair really is an incredibly sneaky bastard, isn't he? Despite O'Hare, I find myself liking Sinclair a lot more this time around, even when he's being perhaps a little too consistently crafty for believability. (I think they should've had either the strike or the G'Quan/sunlight solution, but not both in the same episode.)
I always enjoy seeing the nitty-gritty workings of the station, so I like this episode. Conley is one of the better one-time guest characters. Her observation about Garibaldi--that he's "blue collar under all that EarthForce"--is something I hadn't given much thought before. Now I'm curious about how class works in the context of this universe. Of course, with downbelow, B5 has its own sort of class system, but I wonder how much of our present day preconceptions people come in with.
This is also the episode where get an intimation of the religious diversity on Narn, which goes a long way towards mollifying my annoyance at "Parliament of Dreams." (Also, Londo calling G'Kar a pagan is kind of hilarious.)
Also hilarious is Ivanova, who gets to scare the reporter, Londo, and G'Kar out of C&C. (Ha, now I have a vision of G'Kar taking Garibaldi aside at some point and asking if he has any idea how scary she is. I may have to include that in one of my CI 'verse fics...) Oh, Ivanova. ILU.
This Quality of Mercy
Between this and "Eyes," I think I uttered "Oh, Lennier," and then collapsed into helpless laughter at least three dozen times. He just...I...oh, Lennier. You are SO CUTE. Even when you're using Minbari kung fu on a bunch of poker players, you remain cute. (Also: "In my eleventy-fifth year...in my eleventy-seventh year..." was adorable. Either Lennier is 117+, or he was referring to his sixteenth and eighteenth years respectively, I'm not sure which.) It's interesting that he says it's an honor for a Minbari to help another save face. I feel like this explains much about the Earth-Minbar war.
And Londo, Londo, Londo..."Here, my friend, here you will see the heart and soul of Babylon 5. Also, its spleen, its kidneys, a veritable parade of internal organs." *snerk* Speaking of organs, I'm pretty sure this is the only show I've ever watched where the inevitable tentacle porn is, you know, based in canon. (Please don't point me to it.)
Less cute was Talia. You know, I think what really irritates me about her, aside from the lack of spine, is that Andrea Thompson always sounds on the verge of tears when she speaks. It makes me wonder if she's trying to pitch her voice much lower than it naturally is or something. But anyway, in this episode, it...mostly worked, actually. This was a genuinely distressing experience for her, and instead of just sounding like she was whining, the constant nearness to crying seemed natural. There also wasn't a lot of time spent on her collapsing, etc., like there has been in the past. It worked out much better.
I liked the Chekhov's guns strewn throughout the beginning of the episode. We get the setup of the brainwipe sentence--with the poor judge getting the exposition ball this week--and the machine, and of course they come together at the end, when Mueller dies, just as Garibaldi said he wanted. Not only that, but some of these guns go off years later--the machine, of course, in "Endgame" (...oh, Marcus), and Nora/Maura/Laura/whatever her name was's stim addiction comes back around for Franklin. I can't remember if he says in S3 when he started using them; I wonder if it was around this time.
I also enjoyed the little interaction Ivanova and Garibaldi had near the end, when she tells him who was responsible for the brawl. There's something about the way they keep saying "There you are" to each other that seems very...intimate? Like there's something more than just the phrase being communicated. (Yes, yes, I am reading entirely too much into three words. I'll be over here in a corner cheering on my doomed OTP.)
Grail
Ohhhh, man, this episode is like an entirely different experience after seeing WWE and the rest of S3/4. B4's disappearance is no longer mysterious! Sinclair really doesn't "know [him]self as well as [he] thinks"! Delenn is not kidding when she says the religious and warrior castes agreeing on something is a terrible thing! (Uhhhh, apparently JMS hadn't thought up the worker caste yet? Er.)
I get the impression this might have been a bottle show of sorts--Londo's prehensile penis made a return as the Nakaleen feeder's tentacle, and they seemed to be awfully fond of the court set for a few episodes around this time. But it led to things like Londo telling Vir that he'll efficient the empire into extinction, so hey, I'm not complaining.
But really, the best part? "No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. ...What? Somebody's gotta have some damn perspective around here! Boom. Sooner or later...boom!" (I think I might want this chiseled on my gravestone.) Can anyone not love her after that? Anyone? If you don't, I don't think you have a PULSE.
(Runner up for the best part: the human demanding reparations from the little gray men for his great-grandfather's abduction. Bwahahahahaha!)
Eyes
Okay, let's just forget the...ill-conceived...motorcycle subplot (except for the "Oh, Lennier" opportunities) and concentrate on the rest of this really quite good episode. It further sets up the turmoil/isolationism on Earth and the increasing culture of paranoia in the military, introduces the Free Mars movement, and reminds us that Bester pulls some pretty long strings. Impressive.
We also get further evidence that Susan Ivanova is one of the most tragic characters ever conceived. Oh, Susan. I think the combination of biting sarcasm and a tragic past might be my bulletproof characterization kink. If the character in question can also put the fear of god into others, all the better. ("I'll twist your head off and use it as a chamber pot!")
Feeding into my swirling metaish thoughts on her is the bit where she tells Sinclair that no one but her mother "has ever been that close to [her]." I wonder if, subconsciously, she's been searching for that kind of connection since her mother died. Maybe with Talia, she got it for the shortest of whiles.
I liked the meek little telepath who could, Harrison Grey. Bester is so much the face of Psi Corps for me that it's good to see another representative of them who is neither evil himself nor thinks the Corps is evil. (Well, there's Talia, but for various reasons, I don't think she quite counts--she doesn't have the highest opinion of them by the time she gets her personality erased, as I recall, and then there's always the other personality hiding in her head...) The thing about the Corps is that as abhorrent as the very concept is, I can see exactly why it would've come into existence when telepathy started manifesting among humans, and why it would've been considered a good idea at the time, then twisted into the extremely problematic institution it became.
Of course, I also enjoyed the whole bar brawl and aftermath scenes. (Not to mention the moment in the hall where Michael is physically trying to hold Susan together.) One should never try to touch/seduce Ivanova without her permission, especially when she's having a very, very bad day. And then Garibaldi's like, "Uh, please don't kill me?" when he comes to break things up. Oh, they are so cute.
You know, it occurs to me that they never got their drink together. Hmmm. Excuse me, I have to go...do something... *scurries away*
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Date: 2010-06-20 10:20 pm (UTC)So, yes. This is first to say YAY to everything you've said, and second to ask if you mind terribly if I friend you?
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Date: 2010-06-20 11:53 pm (UTC)Please do friend me, either here or at DW (or both, if you like). I'm about to jump over and friend you. :)
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Date: 2010-06-21 12:42 am (UTC)Yay! I'll probably friend both - it helps me remember to crosspost, having friends on both systems. ;)