Yora reviews Babylon 5

[Grey Watcher]

S2E12: Acts of Sacrifice

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At times, this episode does come close to actually being good. It still doesn't manage though. Both Londo's and G'Kar's stuff are pretty decent material that advances the plot and their character arcs.

But the Ivanova B-plot is abominable. It's not just bad, it's also complete filler and it won't change a single thing if it were cut out completely.
I watched all seven seasons of Deep Space Nine last year, and I've come to the conclusion that the 90s format of A-plot/B-plot is terrible. The B-plots are almost never good and rarely relevant, making them a complete waste of time. And not just in the sense that they are pointless, but that they are actucally wasting valuable time and resources that could have gone into expanding on the main story of the episode. I guess the intention might have been to have most of the cast appear in every single episode, so that it doesn't feel like multiple disconected shows, but in practice it still doesn't make for good episodes.

Honestly, the B-plot is another "Are we sure this isn't Star Trek" episode. Entire civilizations built around one very simple concept (the Klingon's are obsessed with channeling their inner Zuko a narrow definition of honor, Ferengi are greedy, the J'naii are genderless, etc.) is so very Star Trek (note, I haven't seen Enterprise or Discovery or whatever, so I don't know how much they've improved on this since the 90's). This new civilization seems cast in that same mould. They have exactly one thing, tailor-made to the point the episode wants to make, and nothing further.

Honestly, I would not be surprised to learn that someone had the idea for the "sex" scene and was essentially writing backwards from that to try to justify it. Yes, it's a dumb joke, but I did find it funny in its sheer absurdity the first time, and it still can bring out a smile in me, if only because Claudia Christian just commits to the bit so damn well. So, despite the corny "we were rooting through the dumpster behind the TNG/DS9 writers' offices and found this" plot, I give it a pass. (I've always liked Paul Williams's performance here, so that helps too.)

S2E13: Hunter, Prey

... store brand Steven Segall ...

I lol'd.

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I had to think a while about how I want to rate this. This is not a fantastic episode and you could afford skipping it without too much trouble, but I think this one does rise above being merely decent. It just barely makes it there, but I think this one deserves to be rated as good. At the very least in regard to the rest of this season.

I think Kosh is talking more in this episode than he did in the whole one and a half seasons before. There's an actual conversation with Sherridan and there's some really useful things in it.

Spoiler: What Kosh is refering to

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He does become slightly agitated when Sherridan asks "What do you want?", but having just watched all the episodes that came before it, I don't think this would ring any bells with first time viewers at this point.
He also mentions that the Vorlon's hide their true form from the other species beause "They are not ready. They would not understand." Great implications, but I feel this might also slip under the radar.
Because the big thing is that Kosh wants to teach Sherridan to fight the war that he knows is coming.

What I found weird about the episode is the surface of Kosh's ship. Having seen many video games having loading problems on slow computers, I think they are using the same digital model with the same surface textures for the close ups in the docking bay that is intended for distant shots in space. It looks very blurry, but not like something you would make if it were intentional blurry. It looks like a highly downscaled version of a texture that then got blurred so you don't notice the downscaling from a distance. Close up it just looks wrong.

To me, it always read as deliberate. Or at the very least a "leave it in" kinda thing. I think they were specifically trying to make it seem like it's hard to get your eyes to focus on specific details of the ship's hull or something. Basically, it's not a bug, it's a feature.

The President storyline is still treading water and we're not really any further than we were at the start of the season. But here we have stuff actually happening with people trying to smuggle important information through the station and the crew being involved. That's a big step up from previously, where we always only had character saying that something is happening somewhere else.

Spoiler: Stuff up to Season 3, Episode 10... ish. Probably not actually spoilers, but better safe than sorry I guess.

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I kinda like the overall slow burn of the (direct) threat the new administration poses. It does sort of make it feel like B5 is just not a priority to the Clark administration so they're able to get away with a lot just because they keep getting put on the back burner in favor of stuff happening on Earth itself and Mars and whatnot.

I have reviews for 10 more episodes already written out and will upload them one per day to talk about the episodes. They might not contain mention of things that we'll be talking about in the meantime. After that it will be back to the regular program.

Man, the floors on this shiny new server are going to get all scuffed in no time!