Is it time to give season 5 another chance?

[Springer]

Learning Curve

I originally had this episode down as the nadir of the series but in truth it’s not quite that bad. That’s not to say it’s not without its problems, mostly from the side of the Rangers.

I’ve talked recently about the dark side to the fledgling Alliance and we see more of it here. I’m really getting sick of hearing Delenn talking about inflicting terror. In the 21st Century it just feels unsavoury, and I’m not sure it sounded much better in 1997 either. The two elder Rangers are incredibly racist and condescending about the Pak’mara and Delenn just sits there and tolerates it. And these are the Rangers who are meant to be the saviour of the Galaxy, the police force that will look after everyone?

And where does due process fit into their modus operandi? Of course the terribly cliched gangster got what he deserved, but it was just vigilante action on the part of the Rangers, with no oversight from the law. Shouldn’t he get a trial before the punishment at the very least? These Rangers do not feel like the organisation that Sinclair commanded, or which produced Marcus Cole. When Lochley says she doesn’t believe that Sheridan would have agreed to this - she was damn right because I didn’t believe it either!

Which brings me to the other negative of the episode, which is the soap opera surrounding Sheridan and Lochley’s previous marriage. Why didn’t Garibaldi just ask Sheridan why he hired Lochley? As Head of Covert Intelligence can’t Garibaldi just pull the files anyway? And why wasn’t Sheridan simply honest with Delenn about it right from the start? There’s too much of people acting out of character or not doing the obvious thing just for JMS to create distrust between the characters. The breakfast confrontation between Lochley and Garibaldi in the officer’s mess is a good example. It felt horribly staged, and why did all the officers applaud Lochley after her little speech? The same officers who had done what they believed to be the right thing and risen up against President Clark, now applaud someone who failed to act in the same way? It’s just contrived in order to make Garibaldi look bad.

The whole marriage thing also raises questions about how and why Sheridan is hiring people. For the moment it just seems to be friends and (ex) family. Coupled with the use of teeps and the seemingly above-the-law Rangers, it feels like he’s creating a dynasty rather than a democratic alliance of worlds and then putting in place mechanisms to protect that dynasty. Do we know if his son ever became president?
.
Stuff I did like:
It was cool to see the Pak’mara Ranger, even if he was the butt of the Rangers’ cruel jibes, and the Abbai got another name check.
It was nice to see Turhan Bey again. A shame it couldn’t have been in a better episode.
We get a mention of Na’Grath and learn that some unfortunate fate befell him.
One of the gangster’s henchman has been in the show before, as a dust peddler when Ivanova met with some criminal underlords in season 4. Guess he’s gone back to his old habits.
It was cool to see Minbar again - this season has felt a little claustrophobic with it mostly being set on the station itself, so it’s always good to be reminded that there are other locations in the Galaxy.

Other stuff I didn’t like:
The slow motion action scenes when the gangsters attack the Ranger are dreadful. And when the Rangers get their revenge, the screams as the gangsters are taken out one by one sound way over the top and corny.
There seems to be a lot of music re-use from previous seasons, perhaps one of the signs of the smaller budget (I know there is original music this season too)
I would have liked to have seen more of Zack. At one point, when the gangsters plan to kill Zack, I thought that this could have quite easily become a Zack-centred episode, but nope, it wasn’t to be. Ever since the end of the Night Watch plot in season 3, I’ve felt Zack has been criminally underused.

I continue to find the dark and ugly undertones in the story concerning and it is making the show feel very different and not as enjoyable or relatable as the one we watched during the previous four seasons. Plus there’s still very little momentum so far this season, despite JMS highlighting that it was important to get the momentum back. However, next episode we have the return of Bester, and that’s bound to put a little oomph back into the storyline… isn’t it?

 

[Springer]

Strange Relations

At last, six episodes in and we have some impetus! It takes the return of an arch villain – Bester – to provide that impetus. It’s not quite as explosive or tense as I’d like, but it does give the impression of an opening salvo being fired in the battle for the rogue telepaths and we’ve now got a countdown - 60 days - before it all gets really ugly.

The rogue teeps’ cause isn’t helped by the general characterisation of Byron. His little speech to Lyta about the willow was utterly self-indulgent, pretentious and so over-the-top that you can’t help but cringe. That said – given that we know what his fate is later, and what his origins are – you get the impression that all this twaddle that he spouts is an attempt to create a personality that obscures what he’s done in the past. For me, he would have been more interesting had that aspect been played up – that he’s blatantly developing this personality to hide something awful that he once did, leaving the viewers guessing what that might be. Alas, aside from a cryptic lie from Bester, that doesn’t really happen.

I am curious about the way politics is playing out in these stories. I remarked after watching No Compromises that I felt some of the attention to detail from previous stories was missing - the same attention to detail as in Point of No Return, when Sheridan realises that the order to hand over security to the Night Watch had not come down through the proper chain of command. B5 is Alliance territory, despite having an EarthForce governor. Surely Earth must first request extradition of the telepaths? And it is Sheridan’s prerogative to say no and there would be nothing Earth or the Psi Corps could do about it, especially if they have been officially granted asylum – I’m glad that Sheridan at least stood up to them and told Lochley to find a way around it. Yet those details are ignored for the sake of having a bit of drama and, maybe in the context of providing an hour’s worth of TV entertainment, that’s a valid thing to ignore, but it does detract from the telepath storyline in that it feels like it is being forced rather than being the natural outcome of a cleverly constructed storyline.

Lochley is beginning to grate a little bit at some points in this episode, as though she is going out of her way to be antagonistic. She may not have a personal beef with Bester, but she damn well knows that he is persona non gratis on B5, the least she could do to be diplomatic to the people she works with is to keep Bester at arm’s length, rather than sitting around drinking tea with him. At least she is able to foil his plans at the end. Bester takes it all remarkably well!

I haven’t spoken about the hole left by Ivanova this season yet. I’m not going to compare Lochley to Ivanova or expect Lochley to act like Ivanova – they are two different characters – but there is an energy and a irreverence and a charm missing to the show that Ivanova brought that the other command staff characters lack and it did feel missing in this episode, what with grumpy, suspicious Garibaldi, Bester the villain, Byron the weeping willow, and Lochley’s rigidity.

A couple of plot points that puzzled me. It can take weeks, months, for air-crash investigators to figure out why aeroplanes crash, yet they figure out why the Centauri cruiser explodes within five minutes, even finding a detonator amongst all that wreckage?! That seems unrealistic just to provide convenience to the story. Furthermore, hundreds of people just died on that ship, but nobody bats an eyelid. Maybe everyone has just seen it all before - by my counting, that’s the third Centauri cruiser to have been destroyed outside B5.

There was also the ship that crashed in the docking bay, in what seems to be a deliberate nod back to By Any Means Necessary, even to the point of giving Neeoma Connolly a shout-out. But did I miss its relevance to the plot line? Or was it just an excuse to get Lochley outside in a Starfury? But again, what’s the purpose of that?

The bloodhounds are an interesting addition - it would have been nice to have got a sense of how they work, rather than just leaving them to badly acted extras. Interesting that Bester is using them now, but didn’t bring them to the station to catch Ironheart or the underground railroad (the real reason, of course, is likely that JMS hadn’t thought of them at the time).

And is it me, or is some of the dialogue absolutely terrible this episode? Lines like “riding me since I got here” and “crawled up my butt” – does anybody talk like that (not to mention the sexual connotations that dialogue brings)?

I should say that one of the neat things about this season 5 rewatch is that I actually can’t remember all the episodes – the general story and some of the scenes, yes – but some scenes and dialogue I had completely forgotten about, so it feels fresher to watch as opposed to earlier seasons that I know inside out having watched them so much!

So in conclusion, this episode does bring some much-needed momentum so for that it is a welcome episode, but the care taken in the story-crafting (and by this I don’t just mean JMS’ writing, but overall acting, direction) feels rushed. I don’t feel like I’m watching something great or exciting yet – it feels like just another show and B5 never felt like that in earlier seasons, at least for not such a long run of episodes as these opening episodes of season 5. But we’re an an upward curve now, hopefully it will continue!

 

[Jan]

Lochley is beginning to grate a little bit at some points in this episode, as though she is going out of her way to be antagonistic. She may not have a personal beef with Bester, but she damn well knows that he is persona non gratis on B5, the least she could do to be diplomatic to the people she works with is to keep Bester at arm’s length, rather than sitting around drinking tea with him. At least she is able to foil his plans at the end. Bester takes it all remarkably well!

I *loved* that Lochley didn't allow the prejudices of the previous command to color her relations with Bester! It's exactly what she should have done, IMO. As she said, he hadn't done anything to her personally and she was going to have to be the one dealing with him in the future.

I haven’t spoken about the hole left by Ivanova this season yet. I’m not going to compare Lochley to Ivanova or expect Lochley to act like Ivanova – they are two different characters – but there is an energy and a irreverence and a charm missing to the show that Ivanova brought that the other command staff characters lack and it did feel missing in this episode, what with grumpy, suspicious Garibaldi, Bester the villain, Byron the weeping willow, and Lochley’s rigidity.

Ivanova's sarcasm at times (What, doesn't anything com under warranty anymore?) was about the only thing I missed about her. I preferred that Lochley was a thinker and I'm sure that's how she managed to get through Clark's regime with her crew safe. I also loved her conflict with Garibaldi.

Jan

 

[JoeD80]

I'm still not quite sure how, in the free and democratic society that the Alliance portrays, that Garibaldi, Delenn, Sheridan and JMS himself thought that spying with telepaths was an acceptable thing.

Part of the exploration is - will Sheridan make mistakes as well? Recall in the season two vision Sheridan is in a Psi Cop uniform; and he used the telepaths in the civil war. This is someone who says he hates what the Psi Corps stands for and does the same things. Good things like the Alliance can be created by those who have flaws. Sheridan isn't perfect.

 

[Springer]

I'm still not quite sure how, in the free and democratic society that the Alliance portrays, that Garibaldi, Delenn, Sheridan and JMS himself thought that spying with telepaths was an acceptable thing.

Part of the exploration is - will Sheridan make mistakes as well? Recall in the season two vision Sheridan is in a Psi Cop uniform; and he used the telepaths in the civil war. This is someone who says he hates what the Psi Corps stands for and does the same things. Good things like the Alliance can be created by those who have flaws. Sheridan isn't perfect.

Again, I have no problem with the principle of exploring this, it is the way it's being portrayed that's bothering me. It's the fact that as far as I recall, the show never indicates its a grey area and while there are repercussions involving the telepaths, for Sheridan and Delenn there's no pay-off later on in recognition of these dubious decisions they're making. I may be forgetting something, hence the reason I'm re-watching season 5 to refresh my opinion of it.

I guess the payoff might have been the storyline with their time-travelling son that never happened. But even so, it doesn't feel like a natural progression for their characters. If Sheridan is going to start to move towards becoming the thing he was fighting against, it's got to happen in a realistic way where it creeps up on him until one day he looks in the mirror and thinks, 'what happened to me? How did I become this person?' There's no angst, no tortured decision making, no slippery slope where he's forced to take certain dubious actions because he feels he has no choice. It's the same for Garibaldi and the others. They are decent people at heart so to see them casually make these choices doesn't seem true to who they are.

 

[JoeD80]

it's got to happen in a realistic way where it creeps up on him until one day he looks in the mirror and thinks, 'what happened to me? How did I become this person?' There's no angst, no tortured decision making, no slippery slope where he's forced to take certain dubious actions because he feels he has no choice.

I don't think a character needs to acknowledge his own flaw for it to exist. A lot of people never notice what they do wrong. This gets played out in more subtle ways with the way Lyta feels she is being treated; there is a scene later in the season with Franklin that exemplifies this. If Sheridan had taken a different approach from the beginning Lyta wouldn't have been as willing to accept Byron's message in the first place and the telepath situation wouldn't go the way it does.

It's the same for Garibaldi and the others. They are decent people at heart so to see them casually make these choices doesn't seem true to who they are.

For Garibaldi I don't see him as a character that would have a problem with using somebody if it gets him what he wants.

 

[Springer]

I don't think a character needs to acknowledge his own flaw for it to exist. A lot of people never notice what they do wrong. This gets played out in more subtle ways with the way Lyta feels she is being treated; there is a scene later in the season with Franklin that exemplifies this. If Sheridan had taken a different approach from the beginning Lyta wouldn't have been as willing to accept Byron's message in the first place and the telepath situation wouldn't go the way it does.

Even if the character doesn't acknowledge their flaws (and I maintain these particular flaws are out of character for the way those characters behaved in earlier seasons) the *story* must acknowledge them. Let the viewers decide if they are right or wrong, fine, but at least present it as a dilemma. Decisions like using telepaths to spy on people aren't even presented as ethical dilemmas - Sheridan's just like, go for it. Even pious Byron doesn't seem to have a problem with it. That's where my problem lies – the show in season 5 is presenting these things as though there is no ethical debate to be had and we should just accept them.

For Garibaldi I don't see him as a character that would have a problem with using somebody if it gets him what he wants.

See, Garibaldi was never like that. He was the everyman, the regular joe, the guy who just wanted to try and do the best he could for the people around him. The Garibaldi in seasons 1 to 3 was never selfish, would never use people to do something dishonest and had a clear view of what was right or wrong according to the law. Season 4 Garibaldi, of course, was different. I'm ok with saying that experience changed him if it were acknowledged on the show, but it isn't. The show makes it clear that the consequence of what Garibaldi went through is his descent back into alcoholism, but it doesn't attribute a change in his ethics or morals to Bester screwing with his mind.

Anyway, onto the next episode.

Secrets of the Soul

I quite enjoyed this episode, it's possibly the best of the season so far. Amazingly, only three of the regular cast are featured – Franklin, Zack and Lyta. Is this the first episode that Sheridan has not been in since he arrived on the show? I think it is. Yet the limited cast manage to pull off a fairly engaging episode.

For the first time, the telepath storyline has become interesting. Yes, Bryon still has some awful dialogue, but I feel now we're getting to the meat of his storyline. The scene where he allows himself to be attacked clearly shows he's a martyr in waiting. Zack has realised this, he tries to protect Lyta but it's a shame he's not able to articulate himself fully to warn her.

We also see the vicious side to these apparently harmless rogue teeps. It's interesting that we find that Byron really has no control over them; he's set himself up as their saviour, the leader of their cult, but he's deceiving himself. The ending plays out a bit like the ending to All Alone in the Night, where we get a twist revelation that changes the game. I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember if it was acknowledged earlier in the series that the Vorlons created telepaths? Either way it's news to Byron and it pushes him over the deep end and he plans to lash out at the Alliance. It does feel like he's forgotten that the other races have their own telepaths - it wasn't human telepaths used exclusively in the war, mostly Minbar I think – but also it was Earth' telepaths that were in cahoot with the Shadows. So maybe he needs to get his own house in order before blaming mundanes. Plus, he talks like it was "their" war, but had the Vorlons come for Earth, they wouldn't have spared the telepaths. It was everyone's war.

The Franklin story is nice if inconsequential, but any excuse to learn more about the non-aligned aliens. We get quite a lot of them this season – Pak'Mara, the Hyach, as well as the Brakiri and the Drazi in upcoming episodes. The myriad alien races are one of B5's strongest points so it is nice to see them being fully utilised. Ironically, what the Hyach did to the Hyach-doh! (I'm sure that's not how its spelt, but I can not think their name without Homer Simpson's voice in my mind) is what the Centauri did to the Xon, the difference being the Centauri brag about it to this day and continue to commit atrocities just as bad.

So yeah, this episode gets a thumbs up from me.

 

[JoeD80]

Even if the character doesn't acknowledge their flaws (and I maintain these particular flaws are out of character for the way those characters behaved in earlier seasons) the *story* must acknowledge them. Let the viewers decide if they are right or wrong, fine, but at least present it as a dilemma.

I disagree that the story needs to be that explicit. It wasn't a dilemma to Sheridan at the time; but it ended up spinning out of his control. That is the story showing consequences.

Decisions like using telepaths to spy on people aren't even presented as ethical dilemmas - Sheridan's just like, go for it.

Yes which largely leads to Lyta feeling the way she does. This has been building in season four as well.

 

[Springer]

I disagree that the story needs to be that explicit. It wasn't a dilemma to Sheridan at the time; but it ended up spinning out of his control. That is the story showing consequences.

You may be right, but I'll reply to this once I've watched In the Kingdom of the Blind/Tragedy of Telepaths/Phoenix Rising and I've been able to refresh my memory of what happens!

Next up: Day of the Dead

Another episode that I enjoyed more than I remembered. Like The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari, it's a character exploration piece. Interestingly, despite all the returning characters, it was Lochley's experience with her dead friend - a new character - that was most engaging. It's the first time we've seen some vulnerability in her, and it definitely helps to round her character out and soften the edges - it's another step on the way to establishing her character as someone we should care about. There was also a degree more pathos to her story and to Tracy Scoggins' acting than we might have got had it been Ivanova in her place. It's the first time I've really been able to say, yep, the story definitely benefitted from having Lochley there instead of Ivanova.

It's a shame Marcus didn't come back to see Lennier – Marcus may have been able to help Lennier avoid his fate. Morden felt a bit wasted - he just muttered a few ominous things and read his newspaper. It was good to see Dodger and Adira one last time (and it's nice to see the show still referencing things from season 1).

I did like the ambiguity of the story – were the dead really coming back, or were our characters hallucinating? It reminded me of some of the very early X-Files when some of the stories were ambiguous, was Mulder's supernatural explanation right, or was Scully's more scientific, sceptical version the truth? Except the message from Kosh breaks that ambiguity with an unsubtle sledgehammer, since it implies it must have been real. That was a disappointing little detail.

As in previous episodes, we see more of one of the species from the League of Non Aligned Worlds (I guess the League doesn't exist at such anymore, replaced by the Alliance, but you know what I mean), this time the Brakiri. I'm really digging the exploration of some of the alien cultures that perhaps were just window dressing in previous seasons. (I'll ignore the fact that there being only one comet in the Brakiri system is patently nonsense). Other bits I liked were Garibaldi sleeping with a PPG beneath his pillow, Corwin trying the hat trick in C&C, and G'Kar coming to C&C to sleep – and his realisation that he missed something special afterwards. I can take or leave Rebo and Zooty/Penn and Teller.

So that's three decent episodes in a row and the season is now on the up after a rocky start. Can it maintain the momentum?

 

[Mororless]

I haven’t spoken about the hole left by Ivanova this season yet. I’m not going to compare Lochley to Ivanova or expect Lochley to act like Ivanova – they are two different characters – but there is an energy and a irreverence and a charm missing to the show that Ivanova brought that the other command staff characters lack and it did feel missing in this episode, what with grumpy, suspicious Garibaldi, Bester the villain, Byron the weeping willow, and Lochley’s rigidity.
!

Yeah I would agree with that, I think watching season 5 does rather bring out that Ivanova added alot of personality to the human side of the story, Londo and G'kar have that energy and irreverence to them but I think Ivanova really helps not just to bring it herself but also to in Sheridan, Galabali, Franklin, etc. Without her the human side of the story loses alot of this for me with the characters involved becoming less likable as a result, especially Sheridan.

I do agree with you though that Lochleys section of Day of the Dead is the most effective and one of the best things in the season. Again for me the problem is because the character is having to be dropped in she doesn't really get enough of this kind of buildup and have to fall back onto competence.

 

[Springer]

In the Kingdom of the Blind

The thematic heart of this episode isn’t about telepaths or nefarious happenings on Centauri Prime – it’s about the legacy of the Shadow War and is just as much an ‘arc episode’ as those directly involving the First Ones. I love that everything boils down to the legacy of the actions of the Vorlons and Shadows – here we see the beginning of the downfall of Londo that comes as a result of his relationship with Morden and the Shadows, while on the station we see the consequences of the Vorlons creating human telepaths. The fact that we get to see that legacy on the show and in this episode is incredibly impressive, particularly during a season that has been quite light on ‘arc’ episodes.

However, while I do think this episode sums up the best of B5, it also highlights some of the worst things about this season. I’ll start off with the negative things so we can end on the high points.

After a couple of good episodes, the telepath story returns to the contrived storytelling we saw earlier in the season, with several characters acting without even a modicum of intelligence.

Let’s start with Byron. His feeling that the galaxy owes telepaths something for their services in the Shadow War is compromised by his homo-sapien only viewpoint. Alien telepaths seem well regarded by their individual civilisations, and aside from Lyta it seemed to be mostly Minbari telepaths that we saw employed during the war. Human telepaths barely took part (the human teeps handed over to the Shadows by the Psi Corps being the exception, but then Byron should then direct his ire at the Corps). Byron’s anger against the Alliance seems totally misplaced. Nor do I understand why he didn’t simply take his proposal for a telepath homeworld to Sheridan and Delenn. At least try a reasonable approach first, especially with people who are sympathetic to their cause. I’m mean, Sheridan’s the President of the Galaxy – he can pull strings if he wants to.

Instead, Byron takes the worst course of action, which results in everyone on the station turning against the teeps and Byron’s gang having to blockade themselves into Down Below. Byron even has the audacity to say that cooler heads might prevail in time and that alien races might rally around their cause when they hear about the teeps starving in their self-made blockade. These would be the same alien races you’ve just tried to black mail, Byron? Great plan.

On the Alliance side, we have Sheridan at his reactionary worst, Garibaldi’s continuing change in character to a completely unlikeable person and only Delenn talking sense. Why didn’t Sheridan just have Byron arrested there and then in the council chambers? There’s other story contrivances. Byron claims to have knowledge about the attacks on shipping lanes and Garibaldi allows him to present it to the council without first knowing what that information is or double checking it? For all Garibaldi knows Byron really does have information. What if Byron’s information was wrong? It could worsen the situation. That whole scene just screams contrived. I really hate how Garibaldi is just plain rude to Byron as well in that scene. I really don’t know what has happened to the writing of Garibaldi but I really don’t like his character this season. It feels like JMS is still writing the Garibaldi from season 4 who’d had his personality altered.

There’s also this issue of the telepaths being attacked every time they step out of their territory. To those Drazi, the human teeps just look like normal humans. How are they distinguishing them? And how do ordinary Drazi know about what is going on at a political level? Again, it’s contrived.

Zack’s mumbling on his PA announcement made me laugh.

Season 5 also seems to be plagued by slow-motion fight scenes that look really, really, really terrible and there’s another one this episode. Director David Eagle ain’t John Woo. I can’t tell if these slow motion fights are a deliberate but ill-advised style, or just trying to cover up crappy fight choreography, which I’ve never felt B5 was very good at.

But then we’ve got the events on Centauri Prime, which are much better. There’s intrigue, backstabbing and mystery – everything we’d hope for from a Centauri story! Ian Ogilvy is a touch of class in a season that has been distinctly lacking in good guest stars, while Damian London as the Regent continues to chew the scenery in delightful fashion – I love his range of bewildered and terrified expressions as he brings Lord Jano to his death. “I think we’re well beyond pastels now” is the best line of the season so far.

I do have some nitpicks. Budgetary reasons I’m sure, but why does Londo – the Prime Minister – stay in such a pokey little room in the Royal Palace? Surely he’d have a big, grandiose house! And is the way from his quarters to the Regent’s quarters really through a dimly lit, rocky tunnel? That made no sense. There’s also more overly dramatic and intrusive music – a common occurrence this season which I’ve mentioned before – when they find Jano’s body.

I did laugh at the Centauri women being attracted by G’Kar and his reptilian magnetism! I also liked the transition from Londo wondering what they’re doing with the Centauri fleet to the battle scene in space – but that was a Brakiri battle cruiser, why did it have no weapons? And the dialogue there is so terribly trite, it felt like little thought had been put into it.

I apologise for such a long review of the episode, but the varying quality of the two halves is quite startling. As an aside, Byron describes the events of Secrets of the Soul as being “yesterday” so that confirms that Day of the Dead is in the wrong order (I know it aired out of order, perhaps it would have been better being moved to after Phoenix Rising on the DVDs).

 

[Springer]

Even if the character doesn't acknowledge their flaws (and I maintain these particular flaws are out of character for the way those characters behaved in earlier seasons) the *story* must acknowledge them. Let the viewers decide if they are right or wrong, fine, but at least present it as a dilemma.

I disagree that the story needs to be that explicit. It wasn't a dilemma to Sheridan at the time; but it ended up spinning out of his control. That is the story showing consequences.

Having now watched In the Kingdom of the Blind, I'm still unhappy with the ethical stance of Sheridan and company over this. Sure, using the telepaths backfired on them, but they seem more chagrined at being caught out by the black mail, rather than the ethical considerations of whether using telepaths to spy on people is an appropriate thing to do. The show has just presented that whole notion as though there's nothing ethically wrong about it and that viewers shouldn't think twice about it and that's what's wrong with it. Maybe it's because in the 21st century, after Snowden, we're a little more keyed up on notions of privacy, but I'd like to think ethical considerations of privacy weren't too much different in the 1990s or, indeed, in 2262.

 

[Mororless]

Season 5 also seems to be plagued by slow-motion fight scenes that look really, really, really terrible and there’s another one this episode. Director David Eagle ain’t John Woo. I can’t tell if these slow motion fights are a deliberate but ill-advised style, or just trying to cover up crappy fight choreography, which I’ve never felt B5 was very good at.

B5 was never on the level of a high end Hong Kong actioner but I actually felt that a lot of the previous fight choreography could be pretty good, at least relative to Trek of the same era. The Narn and Centauri especially I think had some well done stuff with a strong sense of physicality to it that again I think Trek often lacked.

 

[Springer]

Season 5 also seems to be plagued by slow-motion fight scenes that look really, really, really terrible and there’s another one this episode. Director David Eagle ain’t John Woo. I can’t tell if these slow motion fights are a deliberate but ill-advised style, or just trying to cover up crappy fight choreography, which I’ve never felt B5 was very good at.

B5 was never on the level of a high end Hong Kong actioner but I actually felt that a lot of the previous fight choreography could be pretty good, at least relative to Trek of the same era. The Narn and Centauri especially I think had some well done stuff with a strong sense of physicality to it that again I think Trek often lacked.

Actually you're right, and I'll take back some of what I said. Some of the smaller punch ups on the show were pretty good – Garibaldi and Sinclair vs the alien thugs in Survivors, Sinclair vs Neroon (always loved that Sinclair beat Neroon*), TKO, Marcus vs Neroon, G'Kar vs the Narn in Acts of Sacrifice. I just felt that a lot of the large riot scenes weren't filmed very well, for example the riots in The Long Twilight Struggle and Thirdspace, you see lots of punches that are nowhere near landing, and they looked a bit fake – but I was ok with that, it was a TV show shot on a weekly schedule, I accepted that simply for reasons of time and budget not everything was going to be perfect.

The slow-mo fights in season 5 though, in my opinion, just look a bit rubbish and I just wondered why they chose to do them like that. That's why I mentioned John Woo, as he's kind of the master of slow-mo fights.

* Sinclair may have been the most accomplished fighter on the show – I think it was in the novel To Dream in the City of Sorrows where he surprises the Minbari by being adept at the pike, I think because he was trained with the staff while he was learning under the Jesuits. Would have loved to have seen a Sinclair vs Neroon fight using the pikes, bet he wouldn't have been battered like Marcus was. Sinclair was awesome

 

[Mororless]

The slowmo stuff was patchy I'd agree, Refa's death and G'kars capture were I think done very well but some of the latter fights it seemed like a bit of a cover.

One thing I always liked in the riots were those high kicking Centauri, they obviously got some well trained stuntmen there and I think it got across the idea that there was a dangerous side behind there outward foppishness very well.

 

[Springer]

Before I talk about the next episode, I just want to go back to the appearance of the Drakh in the previous episode, when the Drakh saves Londo’s life. The implication is that they are telekinetic (though I suppose they could have equally stopped the knife in mid air with some kind of technology). I wonder if their telekinetic abilities were originally created by the Vorlons? Maybe it was the knowledge that they’d been manipulated by the Vorlons that pushed them to side with the Shadows? It would have been an interesting counterpoint to play with this idea later in the season, comparing the Drakh to the reaction of Byron when he discovered telepaths had been created by the Vorlons. It would have been a nice way to unify the two halves of the season.

Anyway, onto A Tragedy of Telepaths.

Like Point of No Return was the midpoint in a trilogy also including Messages from Earth and Severed Dreams, A Tragedy of Telepaths is also the mid-point of a trilogy, except this one is even more serialised than the season three trio. As such, this episode features a continuation of storylines rather than being its own story, so viewing it in that context it works really well. The pace is good, there’s no contrivances like the previous episode, and the arrival of Bester in the second half of the episode sets up the finale in Phoenix Rising.

We’ve also got the Centauri plotline unfolding – and hey, there’s Na’Toth! A little worse for wear though. The scene with Londo smuggling her through the Royal Palace is glorious. That feels like another loose end in the show tied up. Londo’s parable about why things are done just because that’s the way they’ve always been done and nobody questions it could apply to a lot of things in real life. It’s also another indication that the Centauri really don’t have the adaptability to really develop their civilisation much further. As Kosh said, they are a lost species.

A few little notes/nitpicks:

Shouldn’t Lochley be wearing a white shirt beneath her jacket as part of her uniform? Or was it just an excuse to get her in a tight top? I thought B5 was above that kind of thing, though the sexualisation of Lochley in River of Souls suggests that perhaps it isn’t.

Surely Lochley requesting Bester’s help has to be as huge a mistake as the one she thinks Sheridan made in allowing the telepaths to stay on the station in the first place. Sheridan, Lochley and B5 security could have dealt with the telepaths – like Garibaldi says, the ones who have barricaded themselves in aren’t a problem, and those that got out would eventually be captured or negotiated with, so why call in Bester and the Psi Corps just to inflame the situation? Maybe as an Earth Force officer she was obliged to, but still, it was a poor decision on her part.

There’s yet more over the top, intrusive music in this episode - the music playing over when G’Kar gets angry in the cells stood out to me in particular. The music really wasn’t this intrusive in previous seasons; imdb says the editor for this episode was Kathie Burr, who only became editor in season 5, so I’m guessing it’s her choice?

What makes Brakiri metal unique to any other metal? We also get more background on the Brakiri, that they’re pack rats, who take or buy technology from other species rather than invent it themselves. I love the amount of info we’re learning about the different alien species this season, definitely one of the plus points of season 5.

Though you do wonder, given the attitude of the different ambassadors – Brakiri, Drazi etc – whether they wanted the Alliance in the first place, as they don’t seem to want it to work. It’s the old characterisation of the ambassadors as short-sighted, self-interested idiots.

Overall a terrific episode that really sets up Phoenix Rising – hopefully it can maintain the standards set by this one!

 

[JoeD80]

I wonder if their telekinetic abilities were originally created by the Vorlons? Maybe it was the knowledge that they’d been manipulated by the Vorlons that pushed them to side with the Shadows? It would have been an interesting counterpoint to play with this idea later in the season, comparing the Drakh to the reaction of Byron when he discovered telepaths had been created by the Vorlons. It would have been a nice way to unify the two halves of the season.

Hm that's an interesting thought. The Drakh are a bit underdeveloped. Joe had a funny line in his script books saying he "created skeletor [from He-Man] as a species"

The music really wasn’t this intrusive in previous seasons; imdb says the editor for this episode was Kathie Burr, who only became editor in season 5, so I’m guessing it’s her choice?

The way the music worked in the show was that JMS would sit with Chris Franke and "spot" the episode - marking exactly where Joe wanted music and how long it would last and of what type (sad, fast, funny, etc.), and then Chris would compose it.

Though you do wonder, given the attitude of the different ambassadors – Brakiri, Drazi etc – whether they wanted the Alliance in the first place, as they don’t seem to want it to work.

Yep...

 

[Springer]

The music really wasn’t this intrusive in previous seasons; imdb says the editor for this episode was Kathie Burr, who only became editor in season 5, so I’m guessing it’s her choice?

The way the music worked in the show was that JMS would sit with Chris Franke and "spot" the episode - marking exactly where Joe wanted music and how long it would last and of what type (sad, fast, funny, etc.), and then Chris would compose it.

While the spotting is part of the problem, as is the composition, it's also the audio level it is mixed in at. I don't recall there being this problem in the previous seasons but it seems quite prevalent in season 5.

And Skeletor as a species might have been quite fun... or quite grating. Hard to say really! Not sure we really got that with the Drakh though.

 

[JoeD80]

And Skeletor as a species might have been quite fun... or quite grating. Hard to say really! Not sure we really got that with the Drakh though.

With the high-pitched voice and all? That would have been awesome! Ha.

 

[Springer]

Phoenix Rising

It seems fitting after Jerry Doyle’s passing this week that Phoenix Rising has the best Garibaldi scenes of season 5 so far (and with The Ragged Edge coming up next, there’s more to come from his character). The final scene, with him returning to the bottle, is perhaps the most chilling ending to an episode since the door closed on G’Kar’s eye in Falling Towards Apotheosis.

So the Byron storyline is at an end. Byron is generally quite maligned by the fans, but his story wasn’t too bad over the last three or four episodes once it got going. Robin Atkin Downes was a solid addition to the cast, it’s just unfortunate that he was saddled with some weak dialogue and characterisation at times. The telepath storyline probably dragged on three or four episodes too long, and I wonder how the season might have looked and how the telepath story would have been received had the ending to the Earth Civil War been in season 5 as was the original plan, making for a tighter season.

As it stands, Phoenix Rising is a good episode, but I think to really make the telepath story worthwhile it needed to be a great episode and it’s just lacking. It feels anticlimactic, that its going through the motions. There’s no build up in tension that we might have expected from the build up to the climax. We should be biting our fingernails, but there’s just not the emotional content with the telepath characters for us to care enough. Sure there’s Byron and Lyta, but what about the other teeps, especially those that took hostages in Medlab? They felt very one-dimensional, unthinking, one-note characters. It would have helped the telepath storyline and Byron’s character immensely if a few of the others had been fleshed out, so Byron could interact with them on a more complex level.

I wasn’t particularly complimentary about David Eagle’s directing in In the Kingdom of the Blind, but he does a good job in this episode, I thought. I did like the camerawork in the scene between Sheridan, Lochley and Bester in Sheridan’s office – the floating camera gave it a sense of fluidity and immediacy, a bit like the camerawork in something like NYPD Blue. A shame it only appeared in just that scene, for some reason.

I’m a little confused about the legalities of who can claim jurisdiction over the rogue telepaths. They committed their crimes on Alliance territory (B5) against Alliance members, the ambassadors of alien governments. Shouldn’t the ambassadors be demanding their extradition, like they did for Deathwalker? Surely they wouldn’t want those telepaths, with whatever sensitive information they essentially stole from the ambassadors, going back to Earth where they could conceivably give that information to EarthGov, to potentially be used against the League worlds?

I do wonder whether Lochley is now regretting bringing in Bester, who basically inflamed the whole situation leading to Byron’s death. If she hadn’t made that call, Byron would likely still be alive, in Alliance hands and the situation would be resolved.

It’s striking how the rogue telepaths would rather die than go back to the Corps. Bester says he truly doesn’t understand it – I wanted Sheridan to tell him, that’s ultimately why this all occurred.

The best scene of the episode is the Asimov laws scene between Garibaldi and Bester. I like how both actors play it – Bester feigning concern before revealing his trump card, and Garibaldi’s initial frustration at himself while Bester makes himself comfortable was a nice touch to the scene. I love how Garibaldi really throws himself into the telepaths in Medlab and I’ve already discussed the conclusion to the episode. It’s also ironic that Bester uses the analogy of sending the nerve impulse to raise his hand as an example to explain what he’s done to Garibaldi – ironic in that Bester can’t actually open that hand because of his own mental block.

A couple of note/nitpicks:

Does Medlab not have any security?
Could a few flying objects (a scene reminiscent of The Empire Strikes Back) really stop Zack’s security team armed with flak jackets and PPGs?

Lyta, searching for a way out, shows how powerful she is. I wonder how much hyperspace would amplify her powers?

When Bester goes to speak to Byron telepathically, why is Bester stood in a regular station corridor that looks nothing like Brown Sector, while on the other side of a sealed door there’s all the pipes and griminess that you normally find down there? Shouldn’t either side of the door look pretty much the same?

Do they really have hazardous, highly flammable chemicals running through exposed and easily damageable pipes? That seems like a health and safety failure right there!

Lyta seemed to be transferring the details of Byron’s contacts to the other rogue telepaths the same way we download apps. Can telepaths really have total recall of info and the ability to compartmentalise it into nice, ‘downloadable’ parcels? There’s never been any indication before that that’s how telepathy works

Now we’re halfway through season 5, it seems fair to take stock. There’s been some good stuff this season, some bad stuff, and a lot more average stuff than you’d expect from B5. It is startling how one-note the season has felt, and I really do feel that bringing in some outside writers would have helped add some much-needed colour and variety to the season, as they did in season 1. It seems to me that the extra emphasis on the various alien cultures, which I’ve noted on frequently in these reviews, would have been right up Larry DiTillio’s street (I know he was on Beast Wars by this time, but maybe they could have got him back for an episode or two?)

The most telling thing about the way I view season 5, at least the first half, is the colour I give it. I know that sounds a like a strange thing to do, but it’s a mixture of the cinematography and sets used that give a sense of colour, at least to me. I associate season 1 with the metallic blue-grey of C&C (it’s interesting that season 5 has spent hardly any time in C&C, I think just episode 4, and a bit in episodes 6 and 8?), season 2 the rosy colours of Earharts, and so on. The first half of season 5 is a murky brown in my mind, and I think that sums up how much of this season has felt so far.

(I’d be interested in finding out if anyone else does this crazy thing of giving the seasons colours!)