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pensnestI have failed to write down my thoughts as they occurred, which I shall try to amend in future. So here's a bunch of fairly random thoughts. I'm half-way through season two at the moment (but don't worry about spoilers, I have seen the whole show).
Well. The final episode of Season One (Crysalis) pretty much draws a thick black line across everything we've come to expect from B5 and says, that show you thought you were watching? Hah! Going somewhere new now! G'Kar is gone, Delenn is in a cocoon, Garibaldi is in a coma. It must have been very exciting, worrying and bewildering for those fans who watched it 'live' back in the '90s.
And season two throws another change into the mix by disappearing Sinclair and installing a very different leader in John Sheridan. Overall, I think the change made great sense for the story of B5, and the way they'll be using Sinclair is great... I miss his narration, though, over the opening credits. Sinclair had more gravitas than Sheridan, who seems human-sized in his narration instead of epic-hero-like. And actually, on this re-watch, I found Sinclair more interesting than hitherto.
A brief thought or two along the way, as I don't seem to have been making notes: that scene with Delenn's HAIR (Soul Mates) annoyed me so much. I can't quite define why, but it felt like a mockery of All Those Women With Their Hair And Their Shampoo And Conditioner And Aren't They Hilarious. Ick. Now, it's probably fair to say that Delenn needed a good talk with someone who could explain human female physiology to her, but I don't think making it comic was a pleasing choice.
Another highly displeasing choice to make comedy out of something is that hideous plotline in 'Acts of Sacrifice' in which Ivanova is supposed to have sex with the pompous alien. For Franklin to make a joke out of the idea that a command officer, a representative of EarthForce, a representative of Earth, a woman whom he would probably have classified as a friend, an independent and autonomous human being, dammit, could seriously consider being prostituted out for the sake of a treaty—I find that atrocious. And nobody in the production seems to have thought it was anything other than funny. Graaar!! I mean, if you have to go *there*, take it seriously and think it through.
An aside: I wish they had used a general term such as 'sentients', which would have been more honest, a better language presentation of the fact that the other races are human equivalents in abilities, and would have provided an easy means of telling who was a bigot. If someone says 'humans and aliens' they are lumping together the Minbari and the PakMara, the Narns and the Vorlons, and so forth. They're all "OTHER". We're trying to do better right here, right now; it would be nice to posit a future in which we at least try to get the language right. And from a writerly perspective JMS was getting the 'alien' POV quite wrong. A Centauri such as Londo would not consider himself to be an 'alien', he'd consider the humans to be the 'aliens'. Sadly, in the show, the non-human races seem perfectly happy to be lumped in as 'non-humans', a category which almost inevitably carries a connotation of "less than". Bah. Language, people.
I love how Vir pleads with Londo not to make the choice he's making, not to have the mysterious 'associates' destroy the Narn. But Londo insists that he has no choice—of course he has a choice, and he chooses his own personal advantage even though he was shocked and horrified by the original destruction of the Narn colony. It worked for him, for his political reputation, so it must have been the right choice... Such petty priorities he has.
Well. The final episode of Season One (Crysalis) pretty much draws a thick black line across everything we've come to expect from B5 and says, that show you thought you were watching? Hah! Going somewhere new now! G'Kar is gone, Delenn is in a cocoon, Garibaldi is in a coma. It must have been very exciting, worrying and bewildering for those fans who watched it 'live' back in the '90s.
And season two throws another change into the mix by disappearing Sinclair and installing a very different leader in John Sheridan. Overall, I think the change made great sense for the story of B5, and the way they'll be using Sinclair is great... I miss his narration, though, over the opening credits. Sinclair had more gravitas than Sheridan, who seems human-sized in his narration instead of epic-hero-like. And actually, on this re-watch, I found Sinclair more interesting than hitherto.
A brief thought or two along the way, as I don't seem to have been making notes: that scene with Delenn's HAIR (Soul Mates) annoyed me so much. I can't quite define why, but it felt like a mockery of All Those Women With Their Hair And Their Shampoo And Conditioner And Aren't They Hilarious. Ick. Now, it's probably fair to say that Delenn needed a good talk with someone who could explain human female physiology to her, but I don't think making it comic was a pleasing choice.
Another highly displeasing choice to make comedy out of something is that hideous plotline in 'Acts of Sacrifice' in which Ivanova is supposed to have sex with the pompous alien. For Franklin to make a joke out of the idea that a command officer, a representative of EarthForce, a representative of Earth, a woman whom he would probably have classified as a friend, an independent and autonomous human being, dammit, could seriously consider being prostituted out for the sake of a treaty—I find that atrocious. And nobody in the production seems to have thought it was anything other than funny. Graaar!! I mean, if you have to go *there*, take it seriously and think it through.
An aside: I wish they had used a general term such as 'sentients', which would have been more honest, a better language presentation of the fact that the other races are human equivalents in abilities, and would have provided an easy means of telling who was a bigot. If someone says 'humans and aliens' they are lumping together the Minbari and the PakMara, the Narns and the Vorlons, and so forth. They're all "OTHER". We're trying to do better right here, right now; it would be nice to posit a future in which we at least try to get the language right. And from a writerly perspective JMS was getting the 'alien' POV quite wrong. A Centauri such as Londo would not consider himself to be an 'alien', he'd consider the humans to be the 'aliens'. Sadly, in the show, the non-human races seem perfectly happy to be lumped in as 'non-humans', a category which almost inevitably carries a connotation of "less than". Bah. Language, people.
I love how Vir pleads with Londo not to make the choice he's making, not to have the mysterious 'associates' destroy the Narn. But Londo insists that he has no choice—of course he has a choice, and he chooses his own personal advantage even though he was shocked and horrified by the original destruction of the Narn colony. It worked for him, for his political reputation, so it must have been the right choice... Such petty priorities he has.