Entry tags:
Babylon 5 5x11-12
"Phoenix Rising" and "The Ragged Edge"
5x11"Phoenix Rising"
And so Byron dies as he lived: making the worst possible decisions at all times and being a problem for everyone else, including his own side. (Pacifist cult to Waco-Jonestown speedrun ...)
I feel like Byron's history with the Psi Cops and having been Bester's protege would have worked much better if it had been factored into the season earlier (we had like 10 episodes to do it! including another episode with Bester!); instead it felt very shoehorned into this episode (though it does put an extra slant on Bester talking about family in the last episode he was in; it's not just general for the telepaths, but specifically him and Byron). Also, Byron realizing extremely belatedly that welding all the doors shut to keep people out works both ways, once he and Lyta actually wanted to get out to stop the hostage standoff, was next level unintentional hilarity, and also typical of how his plans tend to go.
The Bester and Garibaldi part of the plot was the best thing about the episode by far - Garibaldi fully prepared to kill Bester if he doesn't confess, Bester's "You won't do it" which, it turns out, is not "You won't do it because you're a good guy" (he absolutely would!) but "You won't do it because you can't." Finding out that Bester left some unnoticed programming in him is really horrifying; no wonder he goes a little off the deep end at finding out.
I also really enjoyed the hostage standoff in the medbay, including Sheridan having to take a hard line on negotiation even though his friends are in there - the scene where he's talking about how he doesn't know how he'd live with himself if Garibaldi got killed was really touching. I see this is where we got the clip at the end of last season of Garibaldi as a hostage. (That scene very much had the feeling of "Okay, we know what this needs to look like, now let's make that happen in the show" - complete with the smoldering fires that no one trapped in the medbay seems particularly interested in putting out during the HOURS they've been sitting there.)
I do not really understand how Lyta giving the other telepaths the underground railroad information at the end of the episode is supposed to be a help when she's doing it right in front of the Psi Cops and they know what she's doing. Isn't that just going to compromise the entire network? (To be fair, I didn't care enough about that aspect of the storyline to really try to follow it closely.)
ETA: Although I haven't enjoyed the telepath storyline much this season, one thing I will give it is that I didn't feel like it was doing the "we're going to make the rebels dangerous and clearly in need of being stopped, no matter how good their arguments are" thing that's frequently common in SFF TV. They do end up that way, but they don't start out that way, and most of the way things eventually went off the rails was down to Bester escalating things and Byron being extremely bad at actually controlling his people, which were both believable factors in how something like that might play out.
(In another example of mirroring storylines, although more across the season than in the same episode, it is interesting to see G'Kar starting his own pacifist movement among his people in a way that reads very differently, more tempered by realism and a lot less dysfunctional, than Byron's.)
5x12 "The Ragged Edge"
Okay, Londo being shut out of the Alliance investigation once they found out the Centauri are involved in the raids hurts! A lot! I have really enjoyed him being so much more a part of things with the rest of the cast this season than previously, and I understand that they're trying to protect him (and G'Kar is probably right that if he finds out, he'll immediately start asking questions and get himself killed) but I really hate that it's his friends doing this to him, and actively lying to him; it feels like a betrayal, even if they're doing it out of concern + not wanting him to be an unintentional leak, rather than thinking he's actually involved. Anyway, I did not want. :(((
(Although at least this is a telling change from Londo being excluded from the season 2-3 conspiring because he was literally on the other side. At least now it's because they don't want him to be hurt or killed, rather than actually not trusting him. I still do not want!)
Garibaldi's plot is also made of ouch, though I really enjoyed him suddenly dropping into spy thriller as a genre for the course of the episode - that was a fun sequence, and the drinking and the dark outcome goes along with the plot mode he's suddenly in. I like how even after five seasons, it's *still* extremely hard to predict how any individual plot element on this show is going to work out, in this case their one witness/survivor getting killed before Garibaldi can get to him. (And also the death of Garibaldi's friend on the Drazi homeworld, who was more interesting in like 2 scenes than Byron in an entire half season; sorry, Byron.)
Franklin leaving is also sad - I notice his new job starts Jan. 1, i.e. after the end of the current season. It feels like, after the togetherness of the first half of the season, everyone is starting to fracture. Though I enjoyed Franklin checking in with Garibaldi on a friend level. It would have been nice if anyone had thought to do that back in season four!
Everything with the Book of G'Kar and G'Kar adjusting with baffled horror to his new role as a prophet was absolutely delightful. ("Five or six hundred .... thousand.") Londo and G'Kar continue to be a delight as well, with the mutual teasing when they get off the shuttle - clearly they worked out whatever they needed to work out on the trip home. And the bar scene. ("I didn't know you had children." "Neither did I." "Most unsettling when that happens.")
G'Kar's "Where he goes, I go" about Londo (in his role as his bodyguard) is a bit on the nose considering what we know about how they die.
It was nice to see Ta'Lon again! And I liked the acknowledgement in the scene with the Narn at the end of the episode that the book also chronicles G'Kar's evolving thoughts on the Centauri as various events of seasons 3-4 happened to him; it's probably just as well Londo decided not to read it. Still occasionally laughing when I think about "Put your face in the book." And the off-camera slamming noise! That is such a very Narn way (and a very G'Kar way) of making a point.
5x11"Phoenix Rising"
And so Byron dies as he lived: making the worst possible decisions at all times and being a problem for everyone else, including his own side. (Pacifist cult to Waco-Jonestown speedrun ...)
I feel like Byron's history with the Psi Cops and having been Bester's protege would have worked much better if it had been factored into the season earlier (we had like 10 episodes to do it! including another episode with Bester!); instead it felt very shoehorned into this episode (though it does put an extra slant on Bester talking about family in the last episode he was in; it's not just general for the telepaths, but specifically him and Byron). Also, Byron realizing extremely belatedly that welding all the doors shut to keep people out works both ways, once he and Lyta actually wanted to get out to stop the hostage standoff, was next level unintentional hilarity, and also typical of how his plans tend to go.
The Bester and Garibaldi part of the plot was the best thing about the episode by far - Garibaldi fully prepared to kill Bester if he doesn't confess, Bester's "You won't do it" which, it turns out, is not "You won't do it because you're a good guy" (he absolutely would!) but "You won't do it because you can't." Finding out that Bester left some unnoticed programming in him is really horrifying; no wonder he goes a little off the deep end at finding out.
I also really enjoyed the hostage standoff in the medbay, including Sheridan having to take a hard line on negotiation even though his friends are in there - the scene where he's talking about how he doesn't know how he'd live with himself if Garibaldi got killed was really touching. I see this is where we got the clip at the end of last season of Garibaldi as a hostage. (That scene very much had the feeling of "Okay, we know what this needs to look like, now let's make that happen in the show" - complete with the smoldering fires that no one trapped in the medbay seems particularly interested in putting out during the HOURS they've been sitting there.)
I do not really understand how Lyta giving the other telepaths the underground railroad information at the end of the episode is supposed to be a help when she's doing it right in front of the Psi Cops and they know what she's doing. Isn't that just going to compromise the entire network? (To be fair, I didn't care enough about that aspect of the storyline to really try to follow it closely.)
ETA: Although I haven't enjoyed the telepath storyline much this season, one thing I will give it is that I didn't feel like it was doing the "we're going to make the rebels dangerous and clearly in need of being stopped, no matter how good their arguments are" thing that's frequently common in SFF TV. They do end up that way, but they don't start out that way, and most of the way things eventually went off the rails was down to Bester escalating things and Byron being extremely bad at actually controlling his people, which were both believable factors in how something like that might play out.
(In another example of mirroring storylines, although more across the season than in the same episode, it is interesting to see G'Kar starting his own pacifist movement among his people in a way that reads very differently, more tempered by realism and a lot less dysfunctional, than Byron's.)
5x12 "The Ragged Edge"
Okay, Londo being shut out of the Alliance investigation once they found out the Centauri are involved in the raids hurts! A lot! I have really enjoyed him being so much more a part of things with the rest of the cast this season than previously, and I understand that they're trying to protect him (and G'Kar is probably right that if he finds out, he'll immediately start asking questions and get himself killed) but I really hate that it's his friends doing this to him, and actively lying to him; it feels like a betrayal, even if they're doing it out of concern + not wanting him to be an unintentional leak, rather than thinking he's actually involved. Anyway, I did not want. :(((
(Although at least this is a telling change from Londo being excluded from the season 2-3 conspiring because he was literally on the other side. At least now it's because they don't want him to be hurt or killed, rather than actually not trusting him. I still do not want!)
Garibaldi's plot is also made of ouch, though I really enjoyed him suddenly dropping into spy thriller as a genre for the course of the episode - that was a fun sequence, and the drinking and the dark outcome goes along with the plot mode he's suddenly in. I like how even after five seasons, it's *still* extremely hard to predict how any individual plot element on this show is going to work out, in this case their one witness/survivor getting killed before Garibaldi can get to him. (And also the death of Garibaldi's friend on the Drazi homeworld, who was more interesting in like 2 scenes than Byron in an entire half season; sorry, Byron.)
Franklin leaving is also sad - I notice his new job starts Jan. 1, i.e. after the end of the current season. It feels like, after the togetherness of the first half of the season, everyone is starting to fracture. Though I enjoyed Franklin checking in with Garibaldi on a friend level. It would have been nice if anyone had thought to do that back in season four!
Everything with the Book of G'Kar and G'Kar adjusting with baffled horror to his new role as a prophet was absolutely delightful. ("Five or six hundred .... thousand.") Londo and G'Kar continue to be a delight as well, with the mutual teasing when they get off the shuttle - clearly they worked out whatever they needed to work out on the trip home. And the bar scene. ("I didn't know you had children." "Neither did I." "Most unsettling when that happens.")
G'Kar's "Where he goes, I go" about Londo (in his role as his bodyguard) is a bit on the nose considering what we know about how they die.
It was nice to see Ta'Lon again! And I liked the acknowledgement in the scene with the Narn at the end of the episode that the book also chronicles G'Kar's evolving thoughts on the Centauri as various events of seasons 3-4 happened to him; it's probably just as well Londo decided not to read it. Still occasionally laughing when I think about "Put your face in the book." And the off-camera slamming noise! That is such a very Narn way (and a very G'Kar way) of making a point.
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Btw, another problem which s5 has due to all the remodelling is that Sheridan has to be President for the entire season. And frankly, he‘s not good at it, while the show claims he is. The Telepath plot is a case in point. At the start of the season, he makes the decision to grant Byron & Co sanctuary on B5 over Lochley‘s objections, then leaves her to deal with the consequences despite knowing that as opposed to him, she‘s still an Earth Force officer who has to obey Earth laws.
(Oh and this reminds me - aside from a few remarks in s1 and 2 the show‘s characters don‘t acknowledge that Psi Corps didn‘t create itself. It was created, along with the Apartheid laws for telepaths, by a still democratic Earth. Not a single character, including Ivanova, seems to think that instead of railing against Psi Corps, maybe they should lobby the Senate the change the bloody laws for Telepaths to begin with. But this is actually the kind of thing politicians do, and Sheridan still doesn‘t think like a politician but like a military commander, with his original reason for giving Byron sanctuary being „hey, the Telepath War will be inevitable, we need some of those on our side“, not „let‘s work hard to change the general legal status of telepaths in human society, THEREBY also removing the (established by normals not telepaths) Psi Corps.)
All this being said, I regard the Telepath arc as a not-loss because it brought Bester back, who is probably my favourite non-Centauri non-Narn character on the show. And yes, the scenes between him and Garibaldi were intense and fabulous. (And dark humored, despite how awful this is for Garibaldi; I mean, when he said „on a scale of 1 to 10, how stupid do you think I am anyway?“, I must admit I snorted.) I remember a late season interview with JMS where he said that Londo and Bester were the two characters who just always talked to him whenever he wanted them to, and whose voices he could most easily access, and I think it shows.
(One of many reasons why Dust to Dust in s3 is one of my favourite episodes: it has a Bester and Garibaldi plot and a Londo, G‘Kar and Vir plot.)
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So my not remotely unpopular opinion about Babylon 5 is that with the screaming exception of the fourth/fifth season de-cancellation dumpster fire, most of its departures from its original five-year plan were to its benefit, since they tended to result in more creative and organic television for which I will put up with the occasional loose end or AU not taken. That said, while I have not confirmed them as far as Word of God, I have seen claims that what ended up as the Byron/Lyta plot was originally conceived for Talia/Ivanova and if so, my God, how many orders of magnitude more interesting that would have been.
Still occasionally laughing when I think about "Put your face in the book." And the off-camera slamming noise! That is such a very Narn way (and a very G'Kar way) of making a point.
Yes! I love that so much.