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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.)