going to the stars in this future does not automatically confer enlightenment: the Centauri Republic is technologically second only to the Minbari and it's an absolute monarchy with an imperial cult and vivisection as a form of public execution.
Yes! I really enjoy how believably complex and flawed the various alien cultures of the show are - the Centauri who still have monarchs and torture and ruthless court politics, the Narns who are clearly suffering a vast cultural wound and have reacted to it by becoming as destructive in their own way as the people who conquered them, the Minbari whose Vulcan-like serenity turns out to be a thin veneer over ethnic turmoil that erupts as soon as their government is no longer holding them in check.
He really looks like he cannot be asked to care about the nineteenth appalling thing thrown casually in his direction that morning.
Truth.
I have never seen Wortham Krimmer in any other role and he's so spectacular as Cartagia, I kind of can't imagine it.
He is a perfect Cartagia. I looked up some pictures of what he looks like normally, and I cannot get over how completely ordinary (and wrong) he looks without the Centauri hairstyle and Cartagia's overall affect.
They took different kinds of damage. What G'Kar requires to heal is textually not what Londo originally knows how to offer.
Yeah, and I love how they do eventually find their way to healing, in spite of all of that, and in spite of the sheer amount of fumbling that it takes to get there.
(That said, the part about the obligation of a witness to speak out does sound like G'Kar to me, because his entire history—the history of anyone who lived through any part of the occupation of Narn—is woven with atrocities that have not been acknowledged outside the community that suffered them and certainly not officially by anyone who inflicted them, R.I.P. Emperor Turhan.)
Yes, that's a good point, and you're right - the mere recognition and acknowledgement of his people's wounds is something he's very clearly and textually been searching for since season two at least. Would he have wanted it in the moment, in that particular context ... perhaps not. But Londo's apology is clearly very meaningful to him, the sentiment behind it even more so.
(I would love to know if they ever talked about this again.)
And obviously, this is also one of the episodes where the show states one of its themes in plain text. (And Comes the Inquisitor is another one that does the same with a different theme, re: the definition of heroism - I had guessed that even when I watched it on my original run-through, and I'm even more sure of it now.)
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Yes! I really enjoy how believably complex and flawed the various alien cultures of the show are - the Centauri who still have monarchs and torture and ruthless court politics, the Narns who are clearly suffering a vast cultural wound and have reacted to it by becoming as destructive in their own way as the people who conquered them, the Minbari whose Vulcan-like serenity turns out to be a thin veneer over ethnic turmoil that erupts as soon as their government is no longer holding them in check.
He really looks like he cannot be asked to care about the nineteenth appalling thing thrown casually in his direction that morning.
Truth.
I have never seen Wortham Krimmer in any other role and he's so spectacular as Cartagia, I kind of can't imagine it.
He is a perfect Cartagia. I looked up some pictures of what he looks like normally, and I cannot get over how completely ordinary (and wrong) he looks without the Centauri hairstyle and Cartagia's overall affect.
They took different kinds of damage. What G'Kar requires to heal is textually not what Londo originally knows how to offer.
Yeah, and I love how they do eventually find their way to healing, in spite of all of that, and in spite of the sheer amount of fumbling that it takes to get there.
(That said, the part about the obligation of a witness to speak out does sound like G'Kar to me, because his entire history—the history of anyone who lived through any part of the occupation of Narn—is woven with atrocities that have not been acknowledged outside the community that suffered them and certainly not officially by anyone who inflicted them, R.I.P. Emperor Turhan.)
Yes, that's a good point, and you're right - the mere recognition and acknowledgement of his people's wounds is something he's very clearly and textually been searching for since season two at least. Would he have wanted it in the moment, in that particular context ... perhaps not. But Londo's apology is clearly very meaningful to him, the sentiment behind it even more so.
(I would love to know if they ever talked about this again.)
And obviously, this is also one of the episodes where the show states one of its themes in plain text. (And Comes the Inquisitor is another one that does the same with a different theme, re: the definition of heroism - I had guessed that even when I watched it on my original run-through, and I'm even more sure of it now.)