B5rewatch: Survivors
Aug. 6th, 2015 10:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urthSo, where were we? Oh yeah, last time was a lot of babbling and complaining, let’s see how this one fares...
1x11: Survivors
Straight on to the promo, which is...odd. It’s a little bit wrong in a lot of ways; it’s a little too spoilery, a little bit missing the point, a little bit overdone, and a little more than a little ridiculous; and yet I think it’s maybe...okay. It’s not a great trailer by any stretch, but it’s not horrible. I can definitely see it enticing a few people in, so good there. While not pretending for a moment that Garibaldi actually did anything wrong isn’t a bad more since it’s in keeping with the episode, the opening trailer line that ‘a dying man never lies’ is not a good line and is a lie itself obviously.
I tend to have two main thoughts about the opening core-shuttle scene. One: that the only times I seem to entertain the idea of Ivanova/Garibaldi come in non-JMS episodes; not that they should be together, just that a slightly more romantic (or at least sexual-ish chemistry) edge to their interactions seems to slip in that isn’t there in JMS’s story. And two: they’re in the Cobra Bay zone, why is there a random Centauri getting off the tube behind the command level officers? If it had even been a red herring about Centauri involvement, which it could have been considering the plot, it would have been something. Oh, and I guess the effects looks crappy, but we all know that these days.
Until the BOP started putting names to the trope, I hadn’t given much thought to how often, especially early on, random old connections of the crew how up. I do suppose it’s a consequence of the station setting, especially for the time; you can’t have a planet of the week so you have to bring something drama-causing to the station (not that sci-fi with ships doesn’t have old connections show up out of the blue too). Once the station had its own internal story going, was in fact driving events on a galactic level instead of just being small potatoes in interplanetary affairs, the need for that kind of drama lessened.
It is nice to be in an episode where Sinclair and Garibaldi’s interactions come off fairly natural and close after noting the apparent influence of Compton so many times. Also, G’Kar is awesome.
Now, it’s never explained, and it’s not important exactly, but was Frank the target of the sabotage or did he just happen to be the victim of Garibaldi’s battle with the bad guys? Either way he’s the innocent victim caught in the middle, which is why I'm not sure it matters; but I mean that he could have been just the one who happened to be on the pad when the bomb went off, that it didn’t matter to the crime lords who it was that died so that Garibaldi could be blamed for negligence. Or it could have targeted him specifically and I’m asking a question that would be obvious to most people.
On one hand, the “dying man doesn’t lie” element has a point; that being, how would a guy that messed up manage to think up a lie with his last breath to point the finger at Garibaldi? And that has to be a big question for the script. But then in story, even if it were true...how would this guy know that Garibaldi had planted the bomb anyway? Obviously Garibaldi wasn’t there working on planting the bomb right before it went off, so how would this guy just happen to figure out that Mike did it?
I don’t know much about police procedure, but it does seem reasonable that when someone is implicated in a crime that some measures would be taken to make sure they can’t interfere with investigating said crime (hell, Benson was suspended while under suspicion for over betting, so this seems in line with that). I’m not sure if suspension would be 100% necessary considering Kimmer had already taken over the investigation (bang up job she’s doing so far, what she did shouldn’t be allowed either), but it doesn’t seem an unreasonable rule either. Not that Garibaldi’s anger isn’t understandable, he knows he didn’t do anything so even being implicated is going to make him angry, much less being investigated; but I don’t share his anger for others following the (probable) rules.
I would say that out of the ambassadors, G’Kar is the one me most often see leading the Narm population on station, so while the idea that they all have staff that are keeping watch on each other rings a little false since we never see these larger staffs, it rings a little less false for G’Kar than it might for the others.
The entire scene with G’Kar is something I’ve been thinking about regarding the possible reboot. G’Kar does come off a lot more Machiavellian here than he often does, and I kind of feel like that’s what we would end up getting in a modern reboot. That all of the ambassadors, and to a lesser extent the humans, would be political sharks playing games within games with each other. And it’s not like that isn’t there in the series, but the characters are usually too...romantic for that (not always or even often in terms of romance, but romantic ideals of nobility or destiny or their people’s greatness). The galaxy isn’t plunged into chaos, or rescued from it, but people playing the game of thrones/in a house of cards; but by passion and desire and the road to hell or out of it being paved with good intentions. It’s the sort of thing I worry about losing with a reboot.
The scene in Na’grath’s is really awkwardly staged. But the line about Garibaldi still being police in spite of everything is well thought.
It’s oddly weird to hear them refer to Garibaldi as a ‘blip.’ Now, it makes perfect sense that this term for those fleeing the law would be end up used for those fleeing the Corps as well; it’s just a word I expect to hear coming from Bester more than anyone else on this show.
While my countdown didn’t exactly pace with the on-screen one, and they did still go for the cliché of stopping the countdown at 1, it was pretty close to being exactly the amount of time they said it would be, so at least a few kudos.
Okay, so one thing that gets discussed occasionally is how we never meet Santiago, and I’m never sure whether I think that’s the right move or not. On one hand yes, his death would hold more meaning if we knew the man; but that doesn’t really feel like the point of Santiago. I’ve never felt like it was something lacking in the series, but I guess I understand how some people might. It’s kind of like I brought up with how over time the station/crew went from being the lens through which we saw the galaxy to being the driving force of it; at this point the movers and shapers of the galaxy are only important in how their actions impact our little crew, so it fits that we don’t really know them either (Delenn is the exception to that as she is already a ruler of her people, and maybe Kosh as we don’t know exactly his position in Vorlon society, but they’re playing a different game).
So the acting in this episode is middling to fair (although I will say CC has really gotten a handle on playing Ivanova’s character by this point) and direction nothing special and the writing just okay; still, as a full picture it’s not bad. Not one of the series’ standouts, but a serviceable first season episode.
But the structure of the story has some issues. This isn’t a story where we, the audience, ever have reason to suspect Garibaldi, and that’s a valid story telling choice that I don’t fault the episode for. Nor is it necessarily a flaw that Garibaldi’s flee from the law accomplishes nothing, even though it takes up a decent chunk of the episode for accomplishing nothing (I actually give it some credit for not having Garibaldi go underground and manage to solve the case and clear his name outside the law). But the episode never really goes far enough selling the desperation Garibaldi feels, for why he runs or why he falls back in the bottle. I don't thing it wouldn’t take a lot to make the story a lot better without changing that much, it really just needed another pass (a thorough one though) to bring out more of the emotion and tension and loneliness that I think it must have already been going for. It was never going to be an absolute classic, but it could have been improved a few notches easily; which is sometimes more frustrating than if it was just a miss, but it a damn sight better than the last episode so in this case I don’t take that side.
That said, Conflicts of Interest is one of my least favorite episodes of s4, so maybe Garibaldi on the run episodes just don’t please me that much.
Next time: By Any Means Necessary
1x11: Survivors
Straight on to the promo, which is...odd. It’s a little bit wrong in a lot of ways; it’s a little too spoilery, a little bit missing the point, a little bit overdone, and a little more than a little ridiculous; and yet I think it’s maybe...okay. It’s not a great trailer by any stretch, but it’s not horrible. I can definitely see it enticing a few people in, so good there. While not pretending for a moment that Garibaldi actually did anything wrong isn’t a bad more since it’s in keeping with the episode, the opening trailer line that ‘a dying man never lies’ is not a good line and is a lie itself obviously.
I tend to have two main thoughts about the opening core-shuttle scene. One: that the only times I seem to entertain the idea of Ivanova/Garibaldi come in non-JMS episodes; not that they should be together, just that a slightly more romantic (or at least sexual-ish chemistry) edge to their interactions seems to slip in that isn’t there in JMS’s story. And two: they’re in the Cobra Bay zone, why is there a random Centauri getting off the tube behind the command level officers? If it had even been a red herring about Centauri involvement, which it could have been considering the plot, it would have been something. Oh, and I guess the effects looks crappy, but we all know that these days.
Until the BOP started putting names to the trope, I hadn’t given much thought to how often, especially early on, random old connections of the crew how up. I do suppose it’s a consequence of the station setting, especially for the time; you can’t have a planet of the week so you have to bring something drama-causing to the station (not that sci-fi with ships doesn’t have old connections show up out of the blue too). Once the station had its own internal story going, was in fact driving events on a galactic level instead of just being small potatoes in interplanetary affairs, the need for that kind of drama lessened.
It is nice to be in an episode where Sinclair and Garibaldi’s interactions come off fairly natural and close after noting the apparent influence of Compton so many times. Also, G’Kar is awesome.
Now, it’s never explained, and it’s not important exactly, but was Frank the target of the sabotage or did he just happen to be the victim of Garibaldi’s battle with the bad guys? Either way he’s the innocent victim caught in the middle, which is why I'm not sure it matters; but I mean that he could have been just the one who happened to be on the pad when the bomb went off, that it didn’t matter to the crime lords who it was that died so that Garibaldi could be blamed for negligence. Or it could have targeted him specifically and I’m asking a question that would be obvious to most people.
On one hand, the “dying man doesn’t lie” element has a point; that being, how would a guy that messed up manage to think up a lie with his last breath to point the finger at Garibaldi? And that has to be a big question for the script. But then in story, even if it were true...how would this guy know that Garibaldi had planted the bomb anyway? Obviously Garibaldi wasn’t there working on planting the bomb right before it went off, so how would this guy just happen to figure out that Mike did it?
I don’t know much about police procedure, but it does seem reasonable that when someone is implicated in a crime that some measures would be taken to make sure they can’t interfere with investigating said crime (hell, Benson was suspended while under suspicion for over betting, so this seems in line with that). I’m not sure if suspension would be 100% necessary considering Kimmer had already taken over the investigation (bang up job she’s doing so far, what she did shouldn’t be allowed either), but it doesn’t seem an unreasonable rule either. Not that Garibaldi’s anger isn’t understandable, he knows he didn’t do anything so even being implicated is going to make him angry, much less being investigated; but I don’t share his anger for others following the (probable) rules.
I would say that out of the ambassadors, G’Kar is the one me most often see leading the Narm population on station, so while the idea that they all have staff that are keeping watch on each other rings a little false since we never see these larger staffs, it rings a little less false for G’Kar than it might for the others.
The entire scene with G’Kar is something I’ve been thinking about regarding the possible reboot. G’Kar does come off a lot more Machiavellian here than he often does, and I kind of feel like that’s what we would end up getting in a modern reboot. That all of the ambassadors, and to a lesser extent the humans, would be political sharks playing games within games with each other. And it’s not like that isn’t there in the series, but the characters are usually too...romantic for that (not always or even often in terms of romance, but romantic ideals of nobility or destiny or their people’s greatness). The galaxy isn’t plunged into chaos, or rescued from it, but people playing the game of thrones/in a house of cards; but by passion and desire and the road to hell or out of it being paved with good intentions. It’s the sort of thing I worry about losing with a reboot.
The scene in Na’grath’s is really awkwardly staged. But the line about Garibaldi still being police in spite of everything is well thought.
It’s oddly weird to hear them refer to Garibaldi as a ‘blip.’ Now, it makes perfect sense that this term for those fleeing the law would be end up used for those fleeing the Corps as well; it’s just a word I expect to hear coming from Bester more than anyone else on this show.
While my countdown didn’t exactly pace with the on-screen one, and they did still go for the cliché of stopping the countdown at 1, it was pretty close to being exactly the amount of time they said it would be, so at least a few kudos.
Okay, so one thing that gets discussed occasionally is how we never meet Santiago, and I’m never sure whether I think that’s the right move or not. On one hand yes, his death would hold more meaning if we knew the man; but that doesn’t really feel like the point of Santiago. I’ve never felt like it was something lacking in the series, but I guess I understand how some people might. It’s kind of like I brought up with how over time the station/crew went from being the lens through which we saw the galaxy to being the driving force of it; at this point the movers and shapers of the galaxy are only important in how their actions impact our little crew, so it fits that we don’t really know them either (Delenn is the exception to that as she is already a ruler of her people, and maybe Kosh as we don’t know exactly his position in Vorlon society, but they’re playing a different game).
So the acting in this episode is middling to fair (although I will say CC has really gotten a handle on playing Ivanova’s character by this point) and direction nothing special and the writing just okay; still, as a full picture it’s not bad. Not one of the series’ standouts, but a serviceable first season episode.
But the structure of the story has some issues. This isn’t a story where we, the audience, ever have reason to suspect Garibaldi, and that’s a valid story telling choice that I don’t fault the episode for. Nor is it necessarily a flaw that Garibaldi’s flee from the law accomplishes nothing, even though it takes up a decent chunk of the episode for accomplishing nothing (I actually give it some credit for not having Garibaldi go underground and manage to solve the case and clear his name outside the law). But the episode never really goes far enough selling the desperation Garibaldi feels, for why he runs or why he falls back in the bottle. I don't thing it wouldn’t take a lot to make the story a lot better without changing that much, it really just needed another pass (a thorough one though) to bring out more of the emotion and tension and loneliness that I think it must have already been going for. It was never going to be an absolute classic, but it could have been improved a few notches easily; which is sometimes more frustrating than if it was just a miss, but it a damn sight better than the last episode so in this case I don’t take that side.
That said, Conflicts of Interest is one of my least favorite episodes of s4, so maybe Garibaldi on the run episodes just don’t please me that much.
Next time: By Any Means Necessary
