jedi_of_urth

This is an episode that...well let’s just say I expect to have things to say.

1x07: The War Prayer

I’m actually going to give my opening thoughts even before I do the promo this time. Because there are some things I want to get out there before I get started: this episode should be so much better than it is...or at least have been more than it is in terms of story build up and pay off. The problem is that it treats one of the central conflicts of the entire series as if it’s a plot that can be resolved in an episode; so it should be good because it’s relating to those big themes, but it doesn’t work because it treats the issue as if it’s only an issue of the week. In essence, it treats a Babylon 5 arc issue as a Star Trek episode problem.

And that isn’t really a criticism of DC Fontana, in spite of her being best known in genre circles for her work on Star Trek. I actually feel like she understood B5 pretty well as her episodes were always solid and able to tap in to the emotional core of the series. But this episode is difficult; it needed to be done this early so that we could get set up on the problems it’s setting up, but that means it had to be done while the show was still finding itself, while viewers weren’t prepared to deal with the longer arcs, and where guest writers – even ones who do get the B5 world and characters – haven’t really adapted their writing style to it either.

I do like the episode, I just...wish it could have played out in a longer form; even a s2 era mini arc; except like I said, we needed to have it introduced in s1, so there’s just no clear solution to me.

That off my chest, it actually has a pretty solid promo. In fact it might be a little too accurate, making the story a tad predictable (which I guess it kind of is anyway once you get past the setup). It also looks super cheap, it may be the difference 20 years makes but I kind of feel it would have looked cheap even then.

Getting right into the episode now, I always wish Mayan had made an appearance later in the series. There could have been some point in s5 for her to show up and remark on how much things have changed and how much history they’ve seen; by that point Delenn could really have used a friend that she could just talk to. The two have a really sweet chemistry that speaks of old friendship that would have been nice to see again. That and I always laugh at Delenn’s admission that she “sometimes has regrets” as if she’s not planning on putting herself in a cocoon in fulfilment of prophesy in an attempt to atone for those things she “sometimes regrets.”

I meant it when I said earlier that Fontana seems very in touch with the spirit of the show, including things she probably didn’t know she was tapping into at this point. Because the attack on Mayan (and probably on the Centauri kids later on, but I’m only up to Mayan now) connects strongly to JMS’ fears about being attacked in alleys and left injured in the dark. And the fact that the attack on a close friend goes and brings out the side of Delenn that once declared genocide over the death of a close friend, something we hadn’t really seen up until this point in the show. Knock her off her serene spiritual center and there’s a frightening warrior to be found; which she already knows but fears about herself, others have yet to learn.

Damn it, this studious watch I’m doing is making me start to actually recognize directors, Richard Compton is recognizable by actors losing the ability to act. I was watching the scene between Sinclair and Garibaldi talking about the attacks as couldn’t help think both of their performances were really stiff and ill-pitched and then low and behold Compton. I don’t know why these two seem to get it so bad when this director shows up, but it’s making me think that if Compton hadn’t directed so many episodes of s1, O’Hare (and Sinclair) wouldn’t have the reputation of wooden performances that he often gets saddled with.

What is it about this show that makes it super hard for me to figure out what anyone’s ages are supposed to be? Well aside from the fact that the cast ages often aren’t much to go by. Stephen Furst was a middle aged guy but Vir is supposed to be fairly young (the same goes for Bill Mumy), and the other Centauri this episode are even more difficult in that they’re treated basically as kids but obviously are played by actors in their 20 (I watch plenty of teen-y TV where teenagers are played by much older actors and my suspension of disbelief just rolls with it, but these two still jump out as me as clearly too old for this treatment). While I think Sinclair’s age given in the next episode was probably O’Hare’s age or close to it, he looked old for that age so it was never quite rang true even though it probably was. On the flip side Bruce looked so young for his age (especially early on) that he always looked younger than Sinclair even though the characters were basically peers and I think Sheridan is supposed to be a year or two older even.

I can’t decide if the guy playing Roberts is a really bad actor or doing a good job of playing a narrow minded bigot; and the writing is kind of the same issue, it’s either pretty stiff clichéd racist diatribe or it’s ‘cliché for a reason’ and to show that nothing fundamentally changes about that kind of talk.

Hold on a sec, didn’t they promise not to let it get out that Lyta scanned Kosh and here Jeff’s just talking about it with Susan? I have no problem buying that Psi Corps would get wind of it, and I can maybe allow that it wouldn’t be as closely guarded a secret now as it was supposed to be then, but it niggled me. Particularly when that whole scene is a little weird in that it’s hanging a lantern on a plot hole that’s never really resolved: how the poison got inside Kosh’s encounter suit in the first place?

I’ve seen it brought up in a few places lately and I thought I would say, I have no problem reconciling Londo’s “What does love have to do with marriage?” statement with his romanticism with Adira. That was love, marriage is something else. Especially when you factor in his first marriage, the one where he did love her and married her and was taught quite clearly the lesson the love has nothing to do with marriage. Really we know very little about how relationships work for the Centauri outside the nobility; they clearly as a culture understand romantic love, the nobility just don’t think that’s what marriage is for.

I’ve never (or at least not in a while) had a problem with Ivanova’s side of her relationship with Malcolm in this episode. She was young and in love with this guy and then she left and while he’s not the great unanswered question of her life (even to date) she has regrets about how it ended. So here he is, and maybe he’s coming on a little strong, but she’s interested in seeing what it could be now; I don’t even think she’s falling for him again in this story but she’s interested and there’s no harm in being interested. But, from his side, oh boy is he coming on too strong and presuming too much. And either way...he clearly doesn’t really *get* Susan Ivanova; if it’s genuine interest on his part then he also ought to know and understand her better and not push things so fast; and if he’s just playing her (kind of more logical since he’s not being honest about who he is when he’s around her) then aside from being a massive tool – and playing with fire when you screw with our Susan – he’s also not very bright because at no point in the story does she actually seem played.

Pair that with how, up until we learn the Malcolm’s a bad guy at which point his presentation on all levels (writing, acting, directing, musical accompaniment) changes completely, there isn’t a ton of difference between this and Jeff/Catherine a couple episodes ago. Old lovers reconnect and people come on a little strong maybe because the reconnecting has to be forced into a single episode; although in this case it’s obvious from the start that Malcolm is going to turn out to be connected with the Homeguard.

A sure sign that I’m getting older, of late I’ve really started to be able to relate to the “My shoes are too tight, but it’s okay because I have forgotten how to dance” sentiment. I always thought it was a lovely line and thought I understood it even as a kid, but of late it’s really started to hit me in the feels. If I was going to turn these reviews into being about my life I’d probably be sent into a spiral for that one. But is a lovely scene (as is the one between Londo and Mayan, I just couldn’t think of anything to say on it besides ‘Nice scene’ and maybe that Mayan could one day write epic love poems about John and Delenn because healing power of love and all that).

I find Jeff’s performance of a racist dickbag really...strange. It is super badly performed (I usually try and be Watsonian about it and say it’s supposed to be Jeff having a hard time playing it, but here I’m thinking the problem is more Doyalist than that and the direction screwed it up) but at the same time, well it feels like it’s coming from a real place. It’s part of the issue with this entire plot, the feelings Jeff is tapping into for his racist douchebag persona are feelings that are most likely really present in human society right now still barely a decade after the Earth-Minbari War; but this specific episode is not interested in going to that place. This isn’t about the world that so easily embraces people spouting racist diatribes, the fear and doubt and anger starting to come to a boil now that the collective relief at survival has passed; it’s a single episode plot about racist douchebags being obviously racist and douchebags and our heroes being such pure hearts that they just don’t get it and are bad at pretending to get it.

The Homeguard’s mass assassination scheme is part of what makes this feel a little too divorced from where its roots should really be after the War. Although I guess it is somewhat consistent with Fontanta’s next script where EarthForce officers somehow don’t know how the War began. But even ignoring recent in-universe history that should tell these people how bad an idea that is, how much logic does it really take to see that that’s a dumb plan; random acts of terrorism are one thing, coordinated assassination plots are going to make you a big target. Even within the Earth government, publically they’re going to talk against the random acts of terrorism, because that’s going to be expected, but you can bet (even if you don’t have the long view to know) that some of them actually support the sentiment behind the scattered attacks so aren’t working too hard to stop them; but they’re going to have to take actual steps to stop the splinter groups if they cause interplanetary issues on this kind of scale.

As I was watching the close of the episode I was going to have a discussion about how the last several episodes have ended the plot after act four and used the rest of the episode as wrap up, but then this episode actually has the plot cover all but the last couple minutes. I’ve actually thought about commenting on it in those episodes that B5 (mostly JMS at this point) has a very five act structure frame of mind and thinks act five resolution deserves plenty of focus too (to be played out on a grand scale in the seasons of the show). But then watching the last scene specifically, I had to laugh at Mayan’s comment about “Such hate for no real reason, seems incomprehensible;” because, lady, you’re standing next to Delenn (who probably thinks you could be talking about her owing to those regrets she “sometimes” has, because she can totally comprehend that kind of hate) and G’Kar (who only doesn’t think you’re talking about him because he hasn’t yet had his revelation about hate not having a good reason); if only Londo had been there too to make Mayan’s comment even more comical given her audience.

(Okay, a little behind the scenes of the recaps note; I’m writing well ahead of posting to give myself time to sit with what I write and edit with clearer eyes (and it still sometimes doesn’t help enough I know), and this was actually where I went on vacation and had a brain freeze on B5 for a while. I hadn’t even finished writing up this episode so if my thoughts don’t flow very well from during-episode thoughts to post-episode thoughts well it’s been a couple weeks.)

Part way through the episode I realized someone who isn’t in it: Jack. Sure the Clark conspiracy and the Homeguard are not the same thing going on in the universe, but it sort of feels like another missed opportunity in the story, in this case to set up things with Jack. But then that may be the least of missed opportunities going on here.

As I’ve said repeatedly, this episode suffers a lot from being a single episode, but I think even some of that could have been mitigated by better handling the Malcolm character. Why is Malcolm not ex-military? Because not being military standing next to our heroic military main characters codes him as lesser, a cowardly instigator who doesn’t even serve his people. Why doesn’t Malcolm try and feel Ivanova out for whether she’d be open to his ideals? Why can’t he still be charismatic and persuasive once his motives are revealed? Because he needs to be entirely two faced to the point where he doesn’t even feel like the same character once the mask is dropped. Malcolm could have been a dark mirror for our main characters, especially Jeff (and probably Garibaldi with little rewriting), and at least a temptation for Ivanova, and he could have been a pretty good villain (I’m thinking Bester type, close-minded and definitely bad news but you understand why he is the way he is) but he’s not anything special, he’s not really anything at all. He’s not even the obvious thing he should be, which is an embodiment of the Earth-first/anti-alien sentiment that has so much relevance in the series; he’s too underdeveloped for that.

Most of the time I don’t really want a reboot, but this is a plot thread I think would be well served by a modern TV writing style. It’s not a one episode story, we know it isn’t because we’ve seen the rest of the show to know that it’s not, so why is all of the introduction crammed into this one go? There’s a lot in this episode to like, but it does next to nothing for me emotionally or intellectually because everything is so obvious and rushed.

One thing that did come of this apparently is Claudia Christian went to JMS and said she didn’t want to get saddled with ex’s showing up all the time and he agreed to that. So whatever Ivanova ship one likes I think we can all be glad we don’t have to deal with any more ex-of-the-week stories...well except for Lise...and Anna...and Londo’s wives...and arguably Lochley...and...look CC, I agree with that in principle we don’t need to fall back on that trope repeatedly for the same character over and over, but having it happen once didn’t mean it was going to be a pattern for one specific character; doesn’t mean it’s not a bit of a motif for the show as a whole, but I wouldn’t say any one character got it more than any other.

I hadn’t encountered the story the title comes from until recently (one of the B5 podcasts I listen to read it when discussing this episode) and is it posted on TLG so if you haven’t read it either, go give it a look. It’s quite relevant to B5 as a whole (in fact, if S&P wasn’t the season title, this might work, the crew of B5 trying to preach to the galaxy the dangers and futileness of wars that seem so inevitable or desirable to people caught up in events), but I’m not sure it quite works for this episode.

Next time: finally get to move on the And the Sky Full of Stars