So I'm a little late toe the party but what the hell.
First story- sucked. Boring. And just plain... cheesy. All that repetitive talking, the lame "demonic possession," and the camera flying around the dude in the cell for what seemed like an eternity. Bleh.
Mostly I feel sorry for Tracy Scoggins, an actress who's really into the role but keeps getting burdened with the worst storylines- first River of Souls, now this.
I even thought some of the visuals were lame, mostly with how fake some of the backgrounds look and how the green-screen stuff didn't meld well with the actors.
I'm not going to argue if the demon was really a demon or night. It definitely was kept open. But...
The true nature of the 'demon' possessing that bloke was never discussed. It may have thought it was a demon, or could have been an alien that read the bible, was trapped on earth and was hoaxing folks. As for being tied to Earth, sure, there could be another reason for that, maybe some extra dimensional beings rooted to Earth somehow, who cares?
Well, I care. It annoyed me the same way the whole soul hunter thing annoyed me. Ok I dig that JMS wants to leave open the possibilities that something can be "religious" or "scientific" (like that souls can be real spirit things or that the soul hunters were just taking brain patterns, as Franklin thought).
But for the sake of drama and consistent story, at some point you need some sort of stand, some kind of explanation, because otherwise it's hard to give a shit.
Atheists love The Exorcist, too. I don't need JMS or Lochley or anyone to share my worldview if the story is good. But when I think of the plot to this Lochley/demon story, it's "something that may ore may not be a Demon may or may not need to be exorcised to avoid being killed in billions of years." It's just... ridiculoius.
Second story: pretty decent. Seeing Sheridan again makes me happy. He just f'n rules, and Boxleitner didn't skip a beat jumping back into it.
And yes Recoil, the reporter was pretty righteous. I don't know if it's on purpose, but I was reminded of all these suspiciously attractive female news anchors that happen to populate our television screens these days.
Here's my geek nitpick: when Sheridan and the prince are flying and Sheridan's weapons arm, the computer tells him it's doing that. If Sheridan hadn't have canceled it, wouldn't there be some records of that? So either Galen was planning to wipe it after the flight (which still leaves some time for someone to retrieve it) or no one else thought of this.
He was a teenager who was the son of Cartagia
Are you sure about that? Was that ever actually mentioned in the show, or are you assuming that?
And I believe it WAS that one line that stated "scientists have concluded that there has to be some kind of "intelligence" "that really set me off and was the last straw for my patience for this plot. I don't remember the exact line but it's was pretty much that. You can say what you want but when you bring my scientists into this, and put words like this into their mouths, that's where I draw the line. And that's why I got so upset.
I don't think your "us vs them" attitude about science and religion is healthy, or even accurate about reality.
Everyone takes pieces of science and (IMO, almost always, falsely) extrapolates philosophy. And so particles havee "intelligence," or the universe is "just random," or whatever. And it's a simplistic way of looking at things, and priests, like anyone else, are just a susceptibel to it.
Re: Sheridan's moral quandary- I have no problem with how it was presented or the choice Sheridan made. In addition to the moral issue, Sheridan is the kind of guy who would really have a problem with Galen busting in and ordering him around. It suits him to find his own solutions to problems.
Lockley's final speech: "Every few days a new star liner arrives...". This seems to be a much lower volume of traffic than when Ivanova was in charge of CNC. The first sign of the decline in B5's usage?
The success of the IA results in B5 being used a lot less. This would also explain why there are seemingly so few people milling about the place throught TLT.
I do find it a bit silly that Lochley's been commanding B5 for, what, a dozen years? The "this is my home" bit is lame.
What the hell has happened to the Minbari? Galen states that only Earth has the ability to stop the Centari under Vintari's leadership.
Ah, yes, thanks for reminding me- I immediately thought of that and it bothered me throughout the rest of the episode.
By the time of the attack, the IA would be 40 years old and would most likely have a significant fighting force of its own which would not even include the Minbari's own ships.
The IA would be using Whitestars and Excaliburs and all sorts of Minbari/Vorlon bad-assery.
You liked the tilty camera work in Burke's cell, first tilting slowly left 90 degrees, and then slowly tilting right 90 degrees, as it panned around him? I thought it was shot on a ship in heavy seas. C'mon. That was a little much. Kinda reminded me of Sheridan's drug induced view of Garibaldi, Franklin and Lyta as they were rescuing him from Clark's interrogators in Season 4.
It reminded me of Battlefield Earth.
It's very obvious when an atheist writes a story centered on religion. It invariably features a conflict of faith and a Catholic clergyman of some kind.
Heh.
There's no better atheist-factory than a Catholic school.
Tracy Scoggins takes a lot of flack for her portrayal of Lochley, most of which I think is undeserved. I think she brings the authority to her character that would be required of a person in Lochley's position. She's not an outwardly affectionate or passionate person, as we'd expect someone with her good looks to be. Definitely very military, analytical but fair, and calm under fire. I enjoed seeing her back in the blues again.
QFT. And to take it a step further, I think she's a better actress than Ivanova. With better material and more time, she'd have been great. Unfortunately she got stuck with the crappy half of season 5, River of Souls, a little on Crusade, and this.
On Galen- I don't like magic. I think I got burned out on Lord the Rings hype or something, but wizards and mages and sorceror and all the nonsense just makes me gag now. It's why I refuse to read or watch any Harry Potter.
Galen is like an obnoxious Merlin character and I only want to see him suffer. However, I think on Crusade he would've gotten really cool because, knowing JMS' writing style and even the feel of how Crusade was going, the character would probably have been broken down, striipped bare, and re-assembled. Great stories often start with mythic symbols and turn them into humans. It worked great on Sheridan and it would've been great on Galen.
But we never got that, just a grown Harry Potter with a British accent. Meh.
This story "felt" more like B5 to me (something I notice a lot of other people felt too)... and it wasn't just because of Galen, Sheridan, or the ol' spinning metal tube in space herself. Actually, it was the combination of all of those... and the music, and the Starfuries, and the moral conflict between the main characters.
To me, it simply "felt" more B5 because of Sheridan. That character is the "rhythm" of the show.
Frankly, I can't imagine being really into a B5 story that doesn't involve one of the following characters: Sheridan, Garibaldi, Delenn, Londo, or G'Kar (which obviously can't happen). That's not a slight on the other characters, just that they're supporting characters and therefore don't' have the resonance and import of the Big 5.
(but good luck getting Daniel Dae Kim now that he's making a pile of money on LOST! )
Or Mira Furlan.
(I just finished season 3. Mira has one emotion for three seasons: sad. I wish she'd do a B5 Lost Tale.)
(So, thank you Shabaz for posting about the site!)
