jedi_of_urth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jedi_of_urth) wrote2015-10-06 05:41 pm
jedi_of_urth) wrote2015-10-06 05:41 pm
B5rewatch: Eyes
So I don’t have a great excuse for taking so long to get back to this after saying I was going to be getting back on track, but here’s the next one, I make no promises about when I’ll get another one out. But at least it’s a better episode than the last one.
1x16: Eyes
I’m torn on the preview, because it’s actually a decent preview that I think could be good for getting people excited to see the next episode; the problem is that the preview bears little resemblance to the plot of the ep itself. It’s barely even true from a certain point of view, and it contains clips that aren’t in the episode. It’s not that I dislike this episode, it’s way better than the last couple, but I wonder if part of the reason I like the promo is because it’s basically advertising a different story than what’s in this one. It seems to do a good job selling that other episode, but it also can’t really be judged relative to the quality of anything else. So...yeah, mixed feelings.
I suspect this is going to mean me just getting many of my opinions of the motorcycle plot out early but I have thoughts now so I guess I might as well get into it. For one, as I recall this wasn’t actually product placement, but damn does Garibaldi go on too long about its features (actually, being so obvious almost helps sell that it wasn’t product placement, someone would have been more subtle then). For two, as we’ve never seen this hobby of Garibaldi’s before or after, it’s not particularly convincing here; although I will say that it sort of fits Garibaldi’s character...if this show were set on Earth and not a spacestation where they have to pay for everything they ship in (and he would have been shipping it from outpost to outpost in the years before coming to B5). For three, I just don’t really like this plot.
But the reference to Mayan is always appreciated.
Though, given that they eventually are shown to have Narn translators, how hard could it have really been for Garibaldi to translate Japanese?
On one hand, being the blind-to-social-cues person that I am, a real life Ben Zayn could have probably been just that obvious with me and I wouldn’t have found him terribly suspicious. On the other, you would really think someone from internal affairs investigations would not rely on people being as socially unperceptive as me to get away with their cover story. Since Lou has a much better perception score than me, he finds it as obvious as I do watching it from here.
Back in By Any Means Necessary (which I kind of like that it would be abbreviated BAMN but thought it might look weird) I noted the odd seating in Sinclair’s office; but while this episode uses the same general seating ideas, it doesn’t feel odd. Because this time it’s not a conversation, it’s a confrontation, so staging it with the regulars on one side and their opponents on the other feels natural and how they would probably chose to sit.
B5 uses the interweb; I’m sure that wasn’t so funny at the time, but that just makes it funnier now.
Now I would think the DiTillio knew the Ivanova as latent telepath issue; I wouldn’t swear to JMS letting anyone in on it early, but if he did let anyone know it was probably relevant to DiTillio’s writing, especially in this episode. Because Gray’s entire speech about wanting to serve in EarthForce and not being able to as a telepath must really strike a chord with Susan (plus the dream scene later on is pretty clearly in on the Ivanova story). But I also don’t think it’s telegraphed that what he’s saying is so fully relevant to her character, and I like that. Still, I also have to wonder why Gray wasn’t tapped for Black Omega. Is it just for Psi Cops? Or just for colossal douchebags like Byron?
I do know the story behind Lennier’s little chant of the motorbike, but I’ve also kind of snagged it; anytime I find myself needing to chant something it tends to ‘za ba ga be,’ it’s a good string for chanting.
Stage whispers don’t really work in this context, when you’re standing only a couple feet from the person you’re stage whispering about and only partially even turned away. Also Michael, you (probably) have no idea how right you are about how killing friends of Delenn can start a war; maybe not so much anymore, but there’s always a chance.
Added to the list of things I really can’t judge how they look to a newbie, but to an old hand at this, the symbolism of Ivanova’s dream seems pretty obvious. Like I said, it seems pretty clued in to what’s really going on with Ivanova; I just don’t want to say the foreshadowing is completely blatant to a newbie just because it seems that way on rewatch.
Ben Zayn’s outburst at Sinclair kind of makes no sense. Sinclair isn’t exactly some whiz kid who shot up through the ranks on the sole basis of surviving the Line. He’s a middle aged guy who’s been a career officer most of his adult life and is still just a commander, and even that rank seems partly to justify his command of Babylon 5 instead of being long standing. (Ivanova is more than ten years younger than him, didn’t fight in the War at all, and will make captain in three and a half years.) Sinclair did only get the job here because of how he survived the Line, but that’s not what the Colonel says.
Given how much the rules for when Gray is allowed to do stuff was so much legalese that I kind of tuned out, I could have missed something; but wasn’t there some mention that five senior officers needed to sign off on letting a telepath get involved in investigations? Maybe Ben Zayn is expecting the Joint Chiefs to rubber stamp his quickie request, but things aren’t quit tracking for me.
Aww, Ivanova wants to go serve with the Minbari. Why has no one written AU of this; Ivanova, Sinclair, Catherine, and Marcus are all training with the Rangers during s2?
How did Garibaldi forget about Ivanova in the ten minutes he told her he’d be before joining her? He shouldn’t have said he’s meet her that soon with all the research he was going to go off and do, but that’s a different point. It does however explain why Ivanova was on her forth drink before the fight broke out, I was wondering about that.
Even when Ben Zayn does bring up Sinclair’s relationship with the Minbari, I end up having thoughts about his “trio of misfits” characterization of the command staff. Sinclair and Garibaldi yes, I suppose; but Ivanova? The episode has made clear what’s already pretty clear, that she’s spotless. On the flip side, if they are a trio of misfits, whose fault is it that they ended up all out here on B5? The people who didn’t think the positions were worth enough to put tighter quality controls on. The Minbari requested Sinclair and he requested Garibaldi, while – again – Ivanova seems to have been assigned entirely on her record (Sinclair might have requested her based on it, but they weren’t old friends or anything). Now we know that she’s a bit of a misfit behind the record, but there’s little to nothing at this stage to show that to investigators.
So the Minbari are using tesseract technology?
Let’s do some general thoughts before getting into the thinky thoughts this one inspired. The writing of this one is functional, nothing special or great but a long way from bad. The acting doesn’t do anything to help it out though. It’s...bland acting for the most part, although there are some places where it gets actually bad and rarely gets actually good. The real problems are when people are called on to actually act; while they’re just kind of inhabiting the roles, they’re doing okay, but when actual acting is called for it doesn’t work. Which may be a directing issue, or it could be that people had started to check out since this was the last episode of the season produced.
Ben Zayn is obviously a problem, but I kind of have less issue with that (the average acting ability of a B5 guest actor being highly suspect, and the writing could have sent a better actor to an over the top performance too) than I do CC’s performance. She is the only main character with much to chew on this episode, and while most of it is good for the character, the performance isn’t that good.
Speaking of this episode being done out of order, it shows in the writing because in a lot of ways this episode feels like the season wrap up, even though some of what it’s echoing are events that haven’t happened yet (the Mars situation mainly). I know that’s largely by design, it’s supposed to be an episode to catch people up on what’s been happening all season and if it can set up the next events so much the better; but the tone is that of putting a stamp on season 1 as a whole.
When you consider Michael O’Hare’s issues by this point in the season, he gives a pretty good performance, but it’s also no surprise that he isn’t exactly the focus of the story. He’s sort of at his most quintessential Sinclair, but in spite of being the one at the center of the plot, both as Ben Zayn’s adversary and the one able to resolve the situation though wisdom and logic, he’s not driving the story or the one with the most going on internally even though he’s the one being targeted in this. It’s a combination of Garibaldi and Sinclair who work out the behind the scenes plot (even if Sinclair gets to be the hero and solve the crisis) and Ivanova is the one with an actual personal plot going on.
It’s actually kind of weird that Garibaldi doesn’t have a personal story in the A plot. He’s used by the plot, but there’s no real feeling of stakes for him. He’s not tempted by Ben Zayn’s interest in him (Ben Zayn’s too obviously the bad guy for Garibaldi to have ever been tempted); nor is he given any kind of protection by Ben Zayn that could have given him some drama while his friends were being persecuted but he wasn’t in the crosshairs; he’s barely even given any reaction to them all being targeted like this, he’s just sort a tool of the plot. And B plot isn’t exactly taking up the slack in terms of Garibaldi depth, either in itself or in reaction to what’s going on in the A pot, the B plot’s just there to be kind of cutesy and fill out the episode.
I did have a thought that this is really the first time the B5 crew have been confronted with the nastiness inside EarthGov/EarthForce. Mind War hinted Psi Corps might be pulling strings, War Prayer hinted that some in government/military were sympathetic to the Homeguard, By Any Means Necessary reminded us that the government aren’t exactly angels when it comes to the working class; but none of it really showed what nastiness was already there. This is still Santiago’s Earth, and already this sort of witch hunt can only be stopped at the tip of the spear (to mix metaphors) because the person at the front of things is so obviously unhinged.
Not that Santiago is the clear cut good guy that in-universe history will likely eventually paint him to be. At this point, while he’s still alive, he’s more or less just a run-of-the-mill politician. He happens to be supportive of B5’s mission, so that endears him to our heroes and shows a decent amount of ‘good’ principles. But since our, and the characters we know, view of him is usually through the lens of his relationship the Babylon Project we don’t know a lot about his policies within the Earth Alliance. He is strongly focused on defense, is not particularly generous towards Mars, and has at least not stopped – if not outright approved of – increased internal security measures that lead to the situation here. I do suspect that the power allowed to internal security is not a sudden thing; likely in fact has been happening ever since the EMW, because historically and modernly governments can pass laws in times of war and crisis that take longer to repeal afterward than they did to initially pass. It’s kind of like the situation with the Homeguard; while our heroes are shown as being well past the EMW, the Earth government, military, and general population are not so over it or the effects and legacy it left behind.
And those thoughts lead me to think about the eventual conflict between our heroes and Clark. They’re really battling forces much bigger than that man himself, though I’m not sure how much they ever completely realize that. When it comes to the Civil War they know they’re fighting more than Clark because all his supporters need to be taken in too, but there’s very little acknowledgement that things weren’t that great before either. The assassination became a rallying point, but was it really the first thing that made Hague and Sheridan and others question Earthgov? Because I would like to make a case that what happens in this episode is a big part of why Ivanova is so ready to sign up for Sheridan’s conspiracy (and maybe had an effect on Garibaldi too I suppose), that she could already see what was happening to EarthForce here, and by then she’s quite ready to start taking it back; but I’m not sure how much that is reflected in the story.
Enough babbling, onward.
Next time: Legacies, oh good time for some Minbari babbling.
1x16: Eyes
I’m torn on the preview, because it’s actually a decent preview that I think could be good for getting people excited to see the next episode; the problem is that the preview bears little resemblance to the plot of the ep itself. It’s barely even true from a certain point of view, and it contains clips that aren’t in the episode. It’s not that I dislike this episode, it’s way better than the last couple, but I wonder if part of the reason I like the promo is because it’s basically advertising a different story than what’s in this one. It seems to do a good job selling that other episode, but it also can’t really be judged relative to the quality of anything else. So...yeah, mixed feelings.
I suspect this is going to mean me just getting many of my opinions of the motorcycle plot out early but I have thoughts now so I guess I might as well get into it. For one, as I recall this wasn’t actually product placement, but damn does Garibaldi go on too long about its features (actually, being so obvious almost helps sell that it wasn’t product placement, someone would have been more subtle then). For two, as we’ve never seen this hobby of Garibaldi’s before or after, it’s not particularly convincing here; although I will say that it sort of fits Garibaldi’s character...if this show were set on Earth and not a spacestation where they have to pay for everything they ship in (and he would have been shipping it from outpost to outpost in the years before coming to B5). For three, I just don’t really like this plot.
But the reference to Mayan is always appreciated.
Though, given that they eventually are shown to have Narn translators, how hard could it have really been for Garibaldi to translate Japanese?
On one hand, being the blind-to-social-cues person that I am, a real life Ben Zayn could have probably been just that obvious with me and I wouldn’t have found him terribly suspicious. On the other, you would really think someone from internal affairs investigations would not rely on people being as socially unperceptive as me to get away with their cover story. Since Lou has a much better perception score than me, he finds it as obvious as I do watching it from here.
Back in By Any Means Necessary (which I kind of like that it would be abbreviated BAMN but thought it might look weird) I noted the odd seating in Sinclair’s office; but while this episode uses the same general seating ideas, it doesn’t feel odd. Because this time it’s not a conversation, it’s a confrontation, so staging it with the regulars on one side and their opponents on the other feels natural and how they would probably chose to sit.
B5 uses the interweb; I’m sure that wasn’t so funny at the time, but that just makes it funnier now.
Now I would think the DiTillio knew the Ivanova as latent telepath issue; I wouldn’t swear to JMS letting anyone in on it early, but if he did let anyone know it was probably relevant to DiTillio’s writing, especially in this episode. Because Gray’s entire speech about wanting to serve in EarthForce and not being able to as a telepath must really strike a chord with Susan (plus the dream scene later on is pretty clearly in on the Ivanova story). But I also don’t think it’s telegraphed that what he’s saying is so fully relevant to her character, and I like that. Still, I also have to wonder why Gray wasn’t tapped for Black Omega. Is it just for Psi Cops? Or just for colossal douchebags like Byron?
I do know the story behind Lennier’s little chant of the motorbike, but I’ve also kind of snagged it; anytime I find myself needing to chant something it tends to ‘za ba ga be,’ it’s a good string for chanting.
Stage whispers don’t really work in this context, when you’re standing only a couple feet from the person you’re stage whispering about and only partially even turned away. Also Michael, you (probably) have no idea how right you are about how killing friends of Delenn can start a war; maybe not so much anymore, but there’s always a chance.
Added to the list of things I really can’t judge how they look to a newbie, but to an old hand at this, the symbolism of Ivanova’s dream seems pretty obvious. Like I said, it seems pretty clued in to what’s really going on with Ivanova; I just don’t want to say the foreshadowing is completely blatant to a newbie just because it seems that way on rewatch.
Ben Zayn’s outburst at Sinclair kind of makes no sense. Sinclair isn’t exactly some whiz kid who shot up through the ranks on the sole basis of surviving the Line. He’s a middle aged guy who’s been a career officer most of his adult life and is still just a commander, and even that rank seems partly to justify his command of Babylon 5 instead of being long standing. (Ivanova is more than ten years younger than him, didn’t fight in the War at all, and will make captain in three and a half years.) Sinclair did only get the job here because of how he survived the Line, but that’s not what the Colonel says.
Given how much the rules for when Gray is allowed to do stuff was so much legalese that I kind of tuned out, I could have missed something; but wasn’t there some mention that five senior officers needed to sign off on letting a telepath get involved in investigations? Maybe Ben Zayn is expecting the Joint Chiefs to rubber stamp his quickie request, but things aren’t quit tracking for me.
Aww, Ivanova wants to go serve with the Minbari. Why has no one written AU of this; Ivanova, Sinclair, Catherine, and Marcus are all training with the Rangers during s2?
How did Garibaldi forget about Ivanova in the ten minutes he told her he’d be before joining her? He shouldn’t have said he’s meet her that soon with all the research he was going to go off and do, but that’s a different point. It does however explain why Ivanova was on her forth drink before the fight broke out, I was wondering about that.
Even when Ben Zayn does bring up Sinclair’s relationship with the Minbari, I end up having thoughts about his “trio of misfits” characterization of the command staff. Sinclair and Garibaldi yes, I suppose; but Ivanova? The episode has made clear what’s already pretty clear, that she’s spotless. On the flip side, if they are a trio of misfits, whose fault is it that they ended up all out here on B5? The people who didn’t think the positions were worth enough to put tighter quality controls on. The Minbari requested Sinclair and he requested Garibaldi, while – again – Ivanova seems to have been assigned entirely on her record (Sinclair might have requested her based on it, but they weren’t old friends or anything). Now we know that she’s a bit of a misfit behind the record, but there’s little to nothing at this stage to show that to investigators.
So the Minbari are using tesseract technology?
Let’s do some general thoughts before getting into the thinky thoughts this one inspired. The writing of this one is functional, nothing special or great but a long way from bad. The acting doesn’t do anything to help it out though. It’s...bland acting for the most part, although there are some places where it gets actually bad and rarely gets actually good. The real problems are when people are called on to actually act; while they’re just kind of inhabiting the roles, they’re doing okay, but when actual acting is called for it doesn’t work. Which may be a directing issue, or it could be that people had started to check out since this was the last episode of the season produced.
Ben Zayn is obviously a problem, but I kind of have less issue with that (the average acting ability of a B5 guest actor being highly suspect, and the writing could have sent a better actor to an over the top performance too) than I do CC’s performance. She is the only main character with much to chew on this episode, and while most of it is good for the character, the performance isn’t that good.
Speaking of this episode being done out of order, it shows in the writing because in a lot of ways this episode feels like the season wrap up, even though some of what it’s echoing are events that haven’t happened yet (the Mars situation mainly). I know that’s largely by design, it’s supposed to be an episode to catch people up on what’s been happening all season and if it can set up the next events so much the better; but the tone is that of putting a stamp on season 1 as a whole.
When you consider Michael O’Hare’s issues by this point in the season, he gives a pretty good performance, but it’s also no surprise that he isn’t exactly the focus of the story. He’s sort of at his most quintessential Sinclair, but in spite of being the one at the center of the plot, both as Ben Zayn’s adversary and the one able to resolve the situation though wisdom and logic, he’s not driving the story or the one with the most going on internally even though he’s the one being targeted in this. It’s a combination of Garibaldi and Sinclair who work out the behind the scenes plot (even if Sinclair gets to be the hero and solve the crisis) and Ivanova is the one with an actual personal plot going on.
It’s actually kind of weird that Garibaldi doesn’t have a personal story in the A plot. He’s used by the plot, but there’s no real feeling of stakes for him. He’s not tempted by Ben Zayn’s interest in him (Ben Zayn’s too obviously the bad guy for Garibaldi to have ever been tempted); nor is he given any kind of protection by Ben Zayn that could have given him some drama while his friends were being persecuted but he wasn’t in the crosshairs; he’s barely even given any reaction to them all being targeted like this, he’s just sort a tool of the plot. And B plot isn’t exactly taking up the slack in terms of Garibaldi depth, either in itself or in reaction to what’s going on in the A pot, the B plot’s just there to be kind of cutesy and fill out the episode.
I did have a thought that this is really the first time the B5 crew have been confronted with the nastiness inside EarthGov/EarthForce. Mind War hinted Psi Corps might be pulling strings, War Prayer hinted that some in government/military were sympathetic to the Homeguard, By Any Means Necessary reminded us that the government aren’t exactly angels when it comes to the working class; but none of it really showed what nastiness was already there. This is still Santiago’s Earth, and already this sort of witch hunt can only be stopped at the tip of the spear (to mix metaphors) because the person at the front of things is so obviously unhinged.
Not that Santiago is the clear cut good guy that in-universe history will likely eventually paint him to be. At this point, while he’s still alive, he’s more or less just a run-of-the-mill politician. He happens to be supportive of B5’s mission, so that endears him to our heroes and shows a decent amount of ‘good’ principles. But since our, and the characters we know, view of him is usually through the lens of his relationship the Babylon Project we don’t know a lot about his policies within the Earth Alliance. He is strongly focused on defense, is not particularly generous towards Mars, and has at least not stopped – if not outright approved of – increased internal security measures that lead to the situation here. I do suspect that the power allowed to internal security is not a sudden thing; likely in fact has been happening ever since the EMW, because historically and modernly governments can pass laws in times of war and crisis that take longer to repeal afterward than they did to initially pass. It’s kind of like the situation with the Homeguard; while our heroes are shown as being well past the EMW, the Earth government, military, and general population are not so over it or the effects and legacy it left behind.
And those thoughts lead me to think about the eventual conflict between our heroes and Clark. They’re really battling forces much bigger than that man himself, though I’m not sure how much they ever completely realize that. When it comes to the Civil War they know they’re fighting more than Clark because all his supporters need to be taken in too, but there’s very little acknowledgement that things weren’t that great before either. The assassination became a rallying point, but was it really the first thing that made Hague and Sheridan and others question Earthgov? Because I would like to make a case that what happens in this episode is a big part of why Ivanova is so ready to sign up for Sheridan’s conspiracy (and maybe had an effect on Garibaldi too I suppose), that she could already see what was happening to EarthForce here, and by then she’s quite ready to start taking it back; but I’m not sure how much that is reflected in the story.
Enough babbling, onward.
Next time: Legacies, oh good time for some Minbari babbling.