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Babylon 5 through 2x19 "The Long, Twilight Struggle"
I'm leaving on Tuesday and trying to get through season 2 before I go, but GOODNESS. I was expecting the show to get dark, but not this fast!
- The Shadows are so deeply creepy, the ships as well as the stalking-spider forms they have. I gasped out loud at the scenes where they're revealed next to Morden. Even the one where he's in the cell and I *know* they're there! But still! AAAAAA! The f/x team did such a good job making them eerie and unnerving.
- Can now see why Sheridan's dead(?) wife was introduced as early as she was. I care enough about Sheridan now to care about that storyline too, oh no.
- In the episode with the news crew on B5, I am extremely pleased with myself for catching the subliminal PsiCorps message in the fake PsiCorps ad; it only flashes on the screen for an instant. (I couldn't actually read it and even running the streaming episode back, couldn't get it to pause in the right place to read the text; I had to Google it. It's only on screen for a frame or two! "Psi Corps is Your Friend, Trust the Corps.")
- The "peace" guys with black armbands and payments in exchange for ratting out people being Not Peaceful definitely aren't any kind of trouble, I'm sure.
- The episode with the plague, where they find a cure - then discover that every single victim is already dead! That's definitely not how you generally expect that plot to go on TV.
- The episode with the end of the Narn-Centauri war is just one big "ouch" and "nope" from start to finish. The destruction of the Narn fleet, and Londo watching the bombardment of the Narn homeworld (with internationally banned WMDs, no less) - the way he finally ducks his head and looks away - and then his absolute complicity in everything that comes after, including attempting to get G'Kar sent back to the Narn homeworld to face a sham trial and probably execution. I mean, here again, I knew he went dark but not that dark. And then his face as he's watching the news later - in his quarters, in the dark - and sees that the Centauri have started annexing other worlds and realizes what he's unleashed. Oh no.
- Given how much has happened in the last couple of episodes (conspiracies! Shadows! war! genocide! treason!) I can't even begin to guess what the final episodes of the season are going to contain.
I'm starting to wonder how much of this show I actually saw back when it was airing. I do know some stuff about the end, due to having been randomly spoiled over the years, but I had been thinking I saw the first 3 seasons and now I'm thinking, based on air dates, it may just have been the first two and possibly sporadic episodes from season 3. (I definitely saw *some* of season three, I'm almost sure of it. Maybe when I was home during summer break? I quit watching it in fall 1995 when I went off to college and didn't have a TV for a few years, so I could only have caught random episodes here and there.)
- The Shadows are so deeply creepy, the ships as well as the stalking-spider forms they have. I gasped out loud at the scenes where they're revealed next to Morden. Even the one where he's in the cell and I *know* they're there! But still! AAAAAA! The f/x team did such a good job making them eerie and unnerving.
- Can now see why Sheridan's dead(?) wife was introduced as early as she was. I care enough about Sheridan now to care about that storyline too, oh no.
- In the episode with the news crew on B5, I am extremely pleased with myself for catching the subliminal PsiCorps message in the fake PsiCorps ad; it only flashes on the screen for an instant. (I couldn't actually read it and even running the streaming episode back, couldn't get it to pause in the right place to read the text; I had to Google it. It's only on screen for a frame or two! "Psi Corps is Your Friend, Trust the Corps.")
- The "peace" guys with black armbands and payments in exchange for ratting out people being Not Peaceful definitely aren't any kind of trouble, I'm sure.
- The episode with the plague, where they find a cure - then discover that every single victim is already dead! That's definitely not how you generally expect that plot to go on TV.
Brief discussion of Covid
It's also very much an experience to watch this episode in modern times. It reminded me that in early Covid days, no one really had much of an idea how it spread and most people had no idea that masks would help; that's so ingrained now, in this kind of situation, that I kept thinking MASKS! AAAAA! and then remembered that there was at least a month or two in early Covid times when almost nobody wore masks in most places, and the entire focus was on using hand sanitizer and staying at least 6 feet away from people. And this show was also pre-SARS, so wearing masks as a disease prevention measure wasn't even slightly on anyone's radar in the mainstream TV-viewing population of 1994 - like, of course SOME people might think of it, but the general population wouldn't notice it as something missing from those scenes. At the time, of course, it would have been much more understood as an AIDS metaphor, which I'm sure is what was intended when the episode was written. Different times for sure.- The episode with the end of the Narn-Centauri war is just one big "ouch" and "nope" from start to finish. The destruction of the Narn fleet, and Londo watching the bombardment of the Narn homeworld (with internationally banned WMDs, no less) - the way he finally ducks his head and looks away - and then his absolute complicity in everything that comes after, including attempting to get G'Kar sent back to the Narn homeworld to face a sham trial and probably execution. I mean, here again, I knew he went dark but not that dark. And then his face as he's watching the news later - in his quarters, in the dark - and sees that the Centauri have started annexing other worlds and realizes what he's unleashed. Oh no.
- Given how much has happened in the last couple of episodes (conspiracies! Shadows! war! genocide! treason!) I can't even begin to guess what the final episodes of the season are going to contain.
I'm starting to wonder how much of this show I actually saw back when it was airing. I do know some stuff about the end, due to having been randomly spoiled over the years, but I had been thinking I saw the first 3 seasons and now I'm thinking, based on air dates, it may just have been the first two and possibly sporadic episodes from season 3. (I definitely saw *some* of season three, I'm almost sure of it. Maybe when I was home during summer break? I quit watching it in fall 1995 when I went off to college and didn't have a TV for a few years, so I could only have caught random episodes here and there.)
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The use of mass drivers in the destruction of Narn is an image which has recurred to me with nightmare specificity at multiple points in the twenty-first century to the point that it has acquired a kind of Manchurian Candidate prescience despite obviously having been inspired by pre-1995 precedents, which is really not how I want the futurism of my science fiction to work.
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Yeah! That!
(And also feels of the unexpected darkness you mention with the extinction of the Markab: usually the heroes can do something. Here, not turning over G'Kar to the Centauri occupation is it. And that's not nothing, but it doesn't stop the impact winter.)
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Absolutely. And I would identify that insistence on the show's part as one of the reasons that it doesn't risk tipping over over into grimdark, where it would be ironically realpolitik-meaningless. I edited it out of my previous comment because I was trying to pull back from the reductio ad WWII, but it is very much that saving a single life/saving an entire world ethos.
And it stands in obvious contrast to Londo, who has the power/position to push back more than he does, but he not only chooses not to at this point, but goes full steam ahead on indulging and abetting the worst of his nation. He may be having private doubts, but he's not acting on them
[rot13 just in case] V svaq guvf cunfr bs Ybaqb rkpehpvngvat gb jngpu—qenzngvpnyyl bhgfgnaqvat, va nal qrpnqr yngre guna gur '90'f ur'q unir orra hc sbe na Rzzl sbe uvf jbex nf bccbfrq gb gur frevrf whfg trggvat n ohapu bs grpuavpny abzvangvbaf yvxr ivfhny rssrpgf naq pbfghzr—cerpvfryl orpnhfr ur'f abg Ybeq Ersn jub qvfzvffrf gur vyyrtnyvgl bs znff qeviref nf n grpuavpnyvgl naq boivbhfyl ertneqf pvivyvna pnfhnygvrf va gur ovyyvbaf nf n srngher engure guna n oht. Ur qbrfa'g fghzoyr cnfg uvf bja zbeny rirag ubevmba, ur xabjf vg sbe jung vg vf naq ur pebffrf bire. V fgvyy svaq vg evirgvat naq oryvrinoyr naq njshy.
as opposed to the B5 directorate, for whom collaboration would certainly be easier and less risky, but they're willing to risk conflict with the currently ascendant Centauri and potentially their own government by pushing back and sheltering G'Kar.
It's nice to see!
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...he's not Lord Refa who dismisses the illegality of mass drivers as a technicality and obviously regards civilian casualties in the billions as a feature rather than a bug. He doesn't stumble past his own moral event horizon, he knows it for what it is and he crosses over.
Yes! I was taken aback and also truly appreciate it dramatically, because there are so many narrative ways out, in which he could be given at least a small handwave of plausible deniability for his actions: he might not know, he might not realize, he might have bought into a lot of different beliefs about Narns deserving this level of retaliation (interestingly, although he does think of them as barbarians, he doesn't think of them as subhuman or deserving of destruction in general; he knows they're people and interacts with them one-on-one just fine) - but the show doesn't give him a pass on anything. He might have plausible-deniability'd his way through his early interactions with the Shadows, but at this point he is perfectly well aware of the consequences of his actions, and the moral dimension to it, and commits to it anyway. It's one hell of a bold writing choice, and I hate it and also love it.
Edit: Also very much agree about Peter Jurasik deserving an Emmy nomination for his acting this season.
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No worries!
(interestingly, although he does think of them as barbarians, he doesn't think of them as subhuman or deserving of destruction in general; he knows they're people and interacts with them one-on-one just fine)
When you were discussing in an earlier season how surprisingly people-oriented Londo is, I think it is a major contributor to this set of decisions hitting as hard as they do, because it was true then and it hasn't changed about him and it's another way the show doesn't give him an out—he's not an emotionally disengaged careerist or even too burned out to care about his collateral damage, he has that weird, deep strain of idealism which is different from mere nationalistic nostalgia, it's impossible for him not to understand what he's killing in himself as well as around him. That extroverted hedonism on display in the first season really can't camouflage how much he wants connection and the choices he's making are all the kind that will cut him off. Refa makes a great foil for Londo (and I respect the actor for coming up with a version of the Centauri accent that at least sounds like it might hail from an adjacent dialect to Londo's) but as a social engagement? I'll pass on the chance of window poisoning, thanks.
Edit: Also very much agree about Peter Jurasik deserving an Emmy nomination for his acting this season.
Just give him one now! Like a Retro Hugo! Outstanding Individual Achievement in Completely Fucking the Viewer Up!
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LONDO. ;__; I love that analysis; it's brilliant and it hurts and I think it really makes his uniqueness as a character stand out. I especially love "what he's killing in himself as well as around him" - Londo. And it's so true, and he knows it.
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It's yet another element of the show that I couldn't register at the time because my points for TV comparison were basically a handful of Star Trek, but I have to say that in hindsight the flashover from "business as slightly tense normal" to "FUCK!!!!" feels distressingly true to life. (I would still never describe the show as grimdark. I probably would remember to warn people about the genocide more now these days.)
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I think the show intentionally leads you in with a fairly typical upbeat TV scifi pattern and then whiplashes you straight into "What the FUCK did I just watch?" My guess is that a) in early 90s scifi, the lighter lead-in was necessary to get the network to sign on, and b) the emotional whiplash is part of the point. (I have mixed feelings about this; I can see why they did it narratively while also being a little more jaded about whether it was really necessary.) Nowadays I think it would be a lot more common to lead with the darker tone, even if the darkest elements don't come in until later. But we as an audience also more likely to expect things to go dark and look for the bleak underbelly by default.
Interestingly, the other thing I can think of off the top of my head that has this exact tone isn't scifi at all; it's Farley Mowatt's (I think?) explicitly antiwar WWII war memoir. From an author known for generally upbeat humor and satire, it starts out in that tone and goes on in that vein for most of the book with breezy anecdotes about basic training and the absurdity of Army life -- and then whiplashes with neck-breaking intensity in the last few chapters into mud, death, blood, everyone he knows dying horribly, and ends with a mental breakdown on the battlefield, where you're left with him mired in bloody mud with no idea what happened to him afterwards. (Obviously he survives, and just as obviously he's making a point; and from what I've heard the book is at least as much fiction as reality, but that wild 180 degree swing from light, funny Army memoir to DEATH BLOOD DESTRUCTION and a complete open ending with no resolution is something I'll probably never forget, which was the intent in a way that a memoir that was far bleaker and bloodier from the get-go couldn't have done.)
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Our comments are crossing, but I am really enjoying this conversation. As should be evident from space, enormous quantities of feelings about Babylon 5 reside in my head.
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I think this is probably a definitions thing, because for me the essence of grimdark is "you're foolish to try" - it's not that there aren't good and decent people within the narrative, but being a good person will never get you anywhere; if you trust someone they'll betray you (or die), if you believe in something it will turn out to be a lie, if you try to do things the right way it'll backfire on you.
The feeling I'm getting from B5 at this point is more like that clair pockets in a noir universe thing (had to go dig up the link) - where the characters exist in a dark universe but are able to create lighter pockets within it.
.... That being said, it's definitely not a happy, heroic universe, and the first season did feel very different! I just don't think it slides over to what I'd personally call grimdark (but there are still three seasons to go, so it definitely may get darker and more hopeless yet).
Edit: And also, I definitely don't want to get too far into the weeds on arguing about it! As you've said, I'm okay with more darkness/bleakness in entertainment than you are, and I think that's true. (Though mood is also a factor for me.)
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I missed that post of yours originally, like it a lot as a formulation, and would agree that it applies to Babylon 5.
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All of which I am finding so fascinating to read you reporting on as you watch through this show, because thanks to missing most of the first season in order I did not experience this effect!
(Obviously he survives, and just as obviously he's making a point; and from what I've heard the book is at least as much fiction as reality, but that wild 180 degree swing from light, funny Army memoir to DEATH BLOOD DESTRUCTION and a complete open ending with no resolution is something I'll probably never forget, which was the intent in a way that a memoir that was far bleaker and bloodier from the get-go couldn't have done.)
I have never read that book of his and now really want to track it down for that effect, which I agree with you sounds very similar.
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[1] The same friends who insisted on either renting or borrowing someone's VHS tape of the first? Conan movie and also Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail and Galaxy Quest to Remedially Educate Yoon. I think we watched all of those movies in the lounge/basement of Young Israel Center for Jewish Living. (Two of said friends are Orthodox Jewish.) :grin: The only reason I didn't get shown Indiana Jones (one of said friends has degrees in anthropology and archaeology, it's a Rite of Passage I'm told) was they didn't realize I could possibly be so sheltered as to not...have seen...any Indiana Jones.../o\
Also Expanse starts with Too Much Holden and Miller in S1. I swear Miller is a more interesting character in the book but that's because (imo) you get more of his sad sack interiority.
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The Babylon-5 CCG, which used screenshots from the TV show, had some Psi Corps faction card that had the "subliminal message" featuring prominently. :D
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It was both. The part of it they were dealing with was on the space station, but it turned out the aliens who had it had already spread it to their entire planet and colonies. But yeah, they weren't aware of it until people started to die on the space station, then they figured that the entire station was definitely wall to wall contaminated (because recycled air) so it was a matter not so much of not getting infected via airborne material but of trying to figure out how infectious it was and from how close. The aliens who had it ended up self-isolating - because they believed it was a punishment from their god - and when the protagonists invented the cure and opened the door to the section of the station where the infected had isolated themselves ... they found wall to wall dead people and not a single survivor, then discovered that the plague had burned itself out on the homeworld as well. It was both refreshingly realistic, given the extreme lethality of the plague, and bleak AF! (I think I believed the station section full of dead people more than the dead homeworld in the timespan the episode was dealing, tbh, because it's much easier for pockets of survivors to exist in a planet-sized environment, but the floor carpeted with the dead was both a horrifying image, and horrifyingly realistic. Including
child harm
the adorable little kid we met earlier in the episode, which definitely would not have happened in a conventional sci-fi show!)Another thing I found realistic about that episode is that they started out assuming it *wasn't* contagious outside the originating species, then that was thrown into major doubt by someone from another species dying, then they figured out that it was only contagious within a certain subset of physiology - but not to humans or most humanoids - which is definitely a lot more biological realism than you tended to get in "oh NOES, there is a plague on the spaceship!" TV sci-fi at the time!
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I find "rapid spread, incubate asymptomatically for 20 years, actually 100% fatal once it accelerates" type infectious diseases to be fucking terrifying. Like, Ebola is horrifying but it's almost spreads too fast and too dramatically to cause that scenario above IIRC. :]
And yeah, zoonosis is horrible. :] Although I learned that...from McCaffrey's Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern and then verified the science (in loose terms) with...my dad.../o\
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I really enjoy your episode reviews :) It reminds me of the parts I really enjoyed and also several things I forgot.
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:D (by the time I watched s2e1 and Sheridan's introduction, I had already finished watching the show, so it was interesting to read in your first impressions that it came across as just too much backstory for this new character)
The news crew episode was the first one I watched. JMS had apparently said, a couple of weeks before it aired, that it was going to be a good introductory episode for new people to jump on board before the Shadow War arc hit in earnest, and my friend convinced me to give it a shot, and it did turn out to be a really good intro.
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