Yora reviews Babylon 5

[factotum]

I'm not so sure about that, huttj509. Sure, that's what JMS claimed, but there's evidence out there that things were supposed to go very differently than they actually did:

Spoiler

Show

In the original concept, there were going to be *two* five-year arcs. The first would follow the fortunes of Babylon 5, and would end with the station being destroyed. We would then move to Babylon 4 for the second five-year arc (which would have been called Babylon Prime). In this concept, Babylon 4 was being taken FORWARD in time in "Babylon Squared" to act as B5's replacement, hence the stuff we saw in that episode like an aged Sinclair--that was nothing to do with time shenanigans, it was because he was actually older!

I don't know when JMS finally gave up on the idea of getting the full ten-year arc done--presumably sometime after the first season was written, hence Babylon Squared and the prediction showing B5 blowing up. He then had to make some pretty major changes to his planned plotline to accommodate those things, which is why B5 gets blowed up in "Sleeping in Light" despite there really not being a good reason to do that.

[Cikomyr]

I'm not so sure about that, huttj509. Sure, that's what JMS claimed, but there's evidence out there that things were supposed to go very differently than they actually did:

Spoiler

Show

In the original concept, there were going to be *two* five-year arcs. The first would follow the fortunes of Babylon 5, and would end with the station being destroyed. We would then move to Babylon 4 for the second five-year arc (which would have been called Babylon Prime). In this concept, Babylon 4 was being taken FORWARD in time in "Babylon Squared" to act as B5's replacement, hence the stuff we saw in that episode like an aged Sinclair--that was nothing to do with time shenanigans, it was because he was actually older!

I don't know when JMS finally gave up on the idea of getting the full ten-year arc done--presumably sometime after the first season was written, hence Babylon Squared and the prediction showing B5 blowing up. He then had to make some pretty major changes to his planned plotline to accommodate those things, which is why B5 gets blowed up in "Sleeping in Light" despite there really not being a good reason to do that.

You have to give it to Strazynski. The man worked so hard to give a rock solid structure to his overall story he was able to cope with a number of cast changes and network curve balls.

The worst thing that ever impacted the quality of the show was a maid throwing out his season 5 scripts. Which is why we ended up with only the Telepath Arc early season 5, before he was able to rewrite everything.

[LibraryOgre]

I sometimes wonder how things would have gone if Babylon 5 had done as Buffy, Angel, and Firefly did, continuing their stories in comics. Or retelling Straczynski's original plan over the course of a few years of comics.

[Yora]

S1E2: Soul Hunter

Siclair and Ivanova are welcoming the new chief doctor Franklin to the station. Sinclair is called to the command center because a heavily damaged ship is coming through the jumpgate and hurtling towards the station. Sinclair goes out in a fighter to try tugging it to safety, but tells Ivanova to shot it down if he can't catch it. We basically get the same flying as in the docking scene in Interstellar, showing off their realistic physics approach to space ships instead of the typical airplanes in space.

The passenger is taken to the med station where Franklin tries to save his life and Delenn and Sinclair come to see how it's going. Delenn recognizes the alien and tries to grab Garibaldi's gun and kill it. Sinclair and Garibaldi stop her and she begs them to kill him immediately. She explains that these aliens are dangerous monsters who consume the souls of the dying. Once the word spreads across the station, lots of people want to get passage to other places and several ships request immediate departure.

When a conman in the poor sections of the station gets in a fight, the Soul Hunter wakes up and starts speaking spooking mumbo-jumbo anticipating an approaching death. The man gets stabbed and taken to the medical station where he dies minutes later. Franklin calls Sinclair, and Sinclair wants the Soul Hunter to explain how he knew about it before the man got stabbed. He isn't saying anything until Sinclair calls him a thief of souls. The Soul Hunter takes offense at that and says they are preserving souls, not stealing them, and that the Mimbari are ignorant idiots. Franklin thinks it's ridiculous and Sinclair does not believe it either. But his presence is upsetting the locals and so Sinclair orders that he remains in the sealed hospital room until his ship is repaired and then will have to leave.

Later Delenn comes to the medical station to ask the Soul Hunter if he has any Minbari souls on his ship and tells him she won't let him leave until they are set free and able to reincarnate. Their conversation turns toward the Soul Hunters trying to capture the soul of the Minbari leader Dukhat, and he then recognizes Delenn as one of the members of the Gray Council, wondering what she is doing acting as an ambassador. She quickly leaves, and the security guard hears a noise from the sealed room. The Soul Hunter lies on the floor and when the guard goes inside he knocks him out, takes his gun, and escapes before the doctors arrive. He goes to the section with the alien quarters where he meets with a giant insect man to hire a guide who can get him unseen into restricted areas, since there is a very important soul he has to collect.

Another Soul Hunter ship comes through the jump gate and the pilot asks to dock and talk with Sinclair in private. Garibaldi is super worried, but Sinclair thinks the second Soul Hunter seems genuinely concerned and means them no harm. They meet him and he tells them that he thinks the other Soul Hunter is trying to kill someone. He had a long string of failures when he arrived too late to capture the souls he tried to collect and might have started to skip the waiting and kill them himself instead. An unconscious guard is found near the diplomatic quarters and Sinclair pieces together that the first Soul Hunter is going after Delenn, but her quarters are empty.

The second Soul Hunter guides Sinclair and Garibaldi to where a death will happen next on the station, and somehow Sinclair finds the first Soul Hunter and Delenn all by himself. They fight and Sinclair lands next to his bag, which he opens and the escaping souls distract the Soul Hunter. Sinclair turns the machine he was using to extract Delenn's soul on the Soul Hunter which kills him. But he manages to tell Sinclair that the Minbari are using him for something.

Later Sinclair goes to his quarters and has the computer search for the word zatai, which the Soul Hunter used talking about Delenn. It refers to a member of the Gray Council, which Sinclair finds interesting but sets aside for later. When Delenn is back to her feet, she frees the souls from the shells that were in the Soul Hunter's bag.

--

After the strong start, this episode was rather weak. The story is somewhat slow and stretched out, which you might have noticed seeing how short my plot notes are. There were several stretches where there just wasn't anything of notice to write down for several minutes. The plot is not great and the Soul Hunter not a very interesting villain. Ivanova has barely any part in this story and G'Kar, Londo, Vir, and Talia don't appear at all.

What this episode establishes is that space magic is very much a thing in this universe, that goes beyond just telepaths. The Minbari and the Soul Hunters have been having a supernatural conflict for quite some time. Franklin mentions that it might be theoretically possible to capture a recording of a dying person's memories and personality, but those floating energy clouds in the Soul Hunter's shells clearly did not like anything of that kind.
We also get reminded again that Delenn is somehow involved with the governing council of the Minbari and that the Minbari have a very close eye on Sinclair for yet unspecified reasons.

Making Sinclair a veteran fighter pilot was a smart idea. This provides some justification for the station commander to fly out to where interesting stuff happens in person. A bit weird that Garibaldi and later Ivanova are also expert fighter pilots. That's stretching things quite a bit.

I would say the script of this episode is very weak. But somehow watching the episode still was quite entertaining almost the entire time, even though I already know all the mysteries pretty well, so I still rank it as okay.

[comicshorse]

There's a RPG scenario based around this episode written for the 'Babylon 5' rpg which we played in a B5 campaign way back when.

I don't remember much about it but I do remember N'Grath (the preying mantis like alien) became a semi regular employer of the party

[factotum]

Making Sinclair a veteran fighter pilot was a smart idea. This provides some justification for the station commander to fly out to where interesting stuff happens in person. A bit weird that Garibaldi and later Ivanova are also expert fighter pilots. That's stretching things quite a bit.

Ivanova is a member of Earthforce so it isn't utterly surprising she might have come from the fighter wing. Garibaldi I'll grant you is a bit odd, although I never got the impression that he's an *expert* pilot in the way Sinclair and Ivanova are.

The Soul Hunters were really a bit of a missed opportunity, IMHO. The idea is they turn up to "save" the souls of important people when they die, so you'd expect to see them in dangerous situations all over the galaxy, but they pretty much disappear after this episode, never to be seen again.

[Yora]

I remember the criminal insect man having a couple appearances in the early seasons. He certainly was a cool idea, but I could immediately see why they dropped him. While the costume looks great on pictures, it looks really awful in motion. Maybe should have shown him permanently behind a desk, or do lots of close ups over the shoulder to hide that. Replacing him with CGI probably wasn't worth it, though later on other CGI insects look really good.

[Rodin]

I remember the criminal insect man having a couple appearances in the early seasons. He certainly was a cool idea, but I could immediately see why they dropped him. While the costume looks great on pictures, it looks really awful in motion. Maybe should have shown him permanently behind a desk, or do lots of close ups over the shoulder to hide that. Replacing him with CGI probably wasn't worth it, though later on other CGI insects look really good.

If I recall correctly, the issue wasn't just that it didn't look good. The problem was that N'Grath wasn't an actor in a suit, like Kosh. It was a full animatronic puppet, and it broke down a lot. It was enough of a problem that they got rid of it and threw in a line about him getting killed in a later episode.

On Ivanova being a good fighter pilot:

Keep in mind that Earth just came out of a war that nearly resulted in their extinction. Ivanova was too young to fight in the war, but had joined Earthforce to follow in her brother's footsteps as a fighter pilot. Essentially, she's a fighter pilot who has graduated out of regular combat missions into a command role.

As always, there is also a JMS quote on the matter from when the episode first aired:

In your complaints regarding the commander flying off on occasional missions (and he only does it about 3 times out of 22 episodes, so I hardly see this as a problem), you are forgetting several other *realities* of military life. If you're a pilot, even as a commander, you have to log in X-number of hours flying time per month in order to continue to qualify for flight pay. This is a *requirement*. And it doesn't just mean flying around the station a few times.
Second, many commanders -- as recently as Vietnam and afterward -- did and continue to go out on missions and sorties because it is rather expected of them, and because it maintains the respect of the rest of the squadron(s).

Third, and possibly most important, Earthforce is the same as the contemporary Air Force in one important respect: promotion up the ranks is tied *directly* to combat experience and, in this case, combat flying. That's why women fighter pilots and helicopter pilots have been fighting so *vigorously* to be allowed to fly combat missions; they know that they can't be promoted fully up the line without that. Sinclair has no desire to be a commander all his life, he'd like to move on. Hence it behooves him to get in combat time whenever possible.

Your statement that it "doesn't wash" has nothing to do with how the military *actually* works, and everything to do with the skewed and inaccurate portrayal of the military that you get from Trek. This is absolutely legitimate, and the B5 mailbox these days is partly crammed with letters from vets thanking us for getting this part right.

I suppose I could mention this in passing in dialogue, but then it becomes a matter of sticking in dialogue not because it's important to an episode, but because some folks would like things explained to them. I don't think that's my responsibility.

---

On the Soul Hunter episode itself, I agree that it's a pretty weak episode. But it does show a different philosophy from Star Trek right from the start: The plot continues even in a filler episode. We get a lot of exposition about Dukhat, a pivotal historical figure in the show. We learn that Delenn is Grey Council, and Sinclair learns that the Minbari are manipulating him. This sets up the ongoing mystery of the first season.

Pretty good for an "alien of the week" episode.

[The New Bruceski]

I sometimes wonder how things would have gone if Babylon 5 had done as Buffy, Angel, and Firefly did, continuing their stories in comics. Or retelling Straczynski's original plan over the course of a few years of comics.

I think the most fondly remembered stories have known when to end it. The post-B5 stuff in the same universe ranged from meh to vile.

[LadyEowyn]

I think the most fondly remembered stories have known when to end it. The post-B5 stuff in the same universe ranged from meh to vile.

I thought the Centauri trilogy and the Telepath trilogy of books were both good, though it’s been a while since I read them.

Crusade was middling-to-bad, but by my understanding that was due to budget limitations and to executive meddling rather than due to lack of vision.

All the same, I agree that it was good that B5 ended after five seasons; it gave it a strong arc with a meaningful conclusion.

[Kantaki]

It's interesting how Kosh is clearly a puppet, I can see the dryer hose on the side of his shoulderpads for example and the head's on a stick through the middle, but since they tended to shoot him in dim lighting or mist I never noticed during the actual show.

For some reason that's really, really funny.

[Droid Tony]

Soul Hunter is a werid epsiode as it's a mini Gathering with the bare bones: why did the war end? Who is Deleen and what is she watching Sinclar for? What is Sinclars unknown memory, the hole in his mind?

The soul hunter actor is great though...and he has been in a lot of things, and make up can't hide that VOICE.

Making Sinclair a veteran fighter pilot was a smart idea. This provides some justification for the station commander to fly out to where interesting stuff happens in person. A bit weird that Garibaldi and later Ivanova are also expert fighter pilots. That's stretching things quite a bit.

One of the nice things about the show is that, from what we see, neather Garibaldi or Ivanova are expert fighter pilots. They are fighter pilots, but just average ones. When you live on a space station, it's more then likely you we also be a pilot....same way many folks that live on islands can sail/operate a boat.

[The New Bruceski]

All the same, I agree that it was good that B5 ended after five seasons; it gave it a strong arc with a meaningful conclusion.

You either die with a proper ending or live long enough to see your tired withered show eventually cancelled. Mostly it's Legend of the Rangers I was thinking of as far as "vile" is concerned.

[Corvus]

The Soul Hunters were really a bit of a missed opportunity, IMHO. The idea is they turn up to "save" the souls of important people when they die, so you'd expect to see them in dangerous situations all over the galaxy, but they pretty much disappear after this episode, never to be seen again.

They make one other appearance, in The River of Souls movie, which had Martin Sheen as a Soul Hunter. But, yeah, they were a bit of a wasted opportunity. They did serve to show that there was magic, or something like it, in the B5 universe, beyond that of simple telepathy/mind reacing, which was all that been seen from telepaths so far.

[ImperiousLeader]

The Soul Hunters were really a bit of a missed opportunity, IMHO. The idea is they turn up to "save" the souls of important people when they die, so you'd expect to see them in dangerous situations all over the galaxy, but they pretty much disappear after this episode, never to be seen again.

My head canon is they pulled a Technomage ... they also realized the coming of the Shadows and disappeared.

I remember the criminal insect man having a couple appearances in the early seasons. He certainly was a cool idea, but I could immediately see why they dropped him. While the costume looks great on pictures, it looks really awful in motion. Maybe should have shown him permanently behind a desk, or do lots of close ups over the shoulder to hide that. Replacing him with CGI probably wasn't worth it, though later on other CGI insects look really good.

N'Grath does make another appearance though ... that mantis puppet shows up on Buffy.

[factotum]

The soul hunter actor is great though...and he has been in a lot of things, and make up can't hide that VOICE.

William Morgan Sheppard. Alas, he died in January.

[GloatingSwine]

My head canon is they pulled a Technomage ... they also realized the coming of the Shadows and disappeared.

Nah, they show up again in one of the TV Movies (River of Souls) except this time it's Martin Sheen in the rubber forehead.

(The movies aren't very good so most people don't pay attention)

[Corvus]

(The movies aren't very good so most people don't pay attention)

The movies were a very mixed bag. There were 3 pilot movies - one for the main show, which was decent even if the look of the show changed a bit afterwards, the pilot for Crusade, which was probably better than that spin off, and the pilot for Legends of the Rangers, which was pretty bad.

In the Beginning, which recounts the Earth-Minbari war, is generally received favourably, River of Souls was OK but Thirdspace didn't really work.

[Dragonus45]

Crusade was middling-to-bad, but by my understanding that was due to budget limitations and to executive meddling rather than due to lack of vision.

the executives wanted it totally gone. But contractually couldn’t just end it so instead they sent constant extreme, contradictory, and borderline obscene notes back on episodes to force the ratings down and potentially force them to refuse a few outright to violate the contract. Went way past executive meddling and into outright executive sabotage.

[Droid Tony]

What this episode establishes is that space magic is very much a thing in this universe, that goes beyond just telepaths. The Minbari and the Soul Hunters have been having a supernatural conflict for quite some time. Franklin mentions that it might be theoretically possible to capture a recording of a dying person's memories and personality, but those floating energy clouds in the Soul Hunter's shells clearly did not like anything of that kind.

It's not magic. One of B5's big themes is that there is no magic, just science. Though Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

[Yora]

S1E3: Born to the Purple

Sinclair and G'Kar have to hunt down Londo in a bar to tell him in person that they need to start negotiating about a border conflict between the Narn and the Centauri. Lodo shushes them and tells them to sit down and take a drink, because his favorite Centauri dancer is getting on the stage. G'Kar appreciates the offer but picks a very bad moment for it as his new assistant arrives at just that moment to introduce herself.

The next morning, everyone is in the conference room and waiting for Londo to show up. His assistant Vir is playing on his gameboy, telling Sinclair he already called Londo several times but he isn't answering. Talia excuses herself for a moment and Sinclair follows to see if something is wrong, but she tells him it's just everyone's stress that gives her a headache. Vir calls Londo again and he finally gets out of bed with his dancing girl.

Garibaldi noticed that there was an unaccounted transmission on the secret diplomatic communications channel and worries that someone has gained illegal access to the systems. But Ivanova doesn't think a single incident is cause for worry and could just have been a computer glitch, and there's nothing she can do to help him with it. He goes monitoring activities on the channels and later captures another incident, but before he can track the source the intruder disables the tracker.

The dancer goes back to her quarters where her boss is waiting for her, telling her to hurry up and get Londo's secret files of dirt he has on his enemies. When Londo comes to see her in the evening, he invites her to go to a fancy restaurant with him, where Sinclair and Talia are also eating. When they get back to his quarter, she knocks him out with something in his drink and uses a device that makes him mumble the access code to his secure files when she asks for them. She makes a copy from his computer and leaves him sleeping on his couch, also leaving behind the broche he gave her.

The next day she goes to meet with her boss to give him the files, but then chickens out and goes into hiding. When her boss realizes she's gone, he makes a new plan and goes to Londo to tell him she's an agent for the Narn. Londo does not want to hear anything about it, but before the man leaves he puts a bug on Londo's clothes.

When Londo does not come to the negotiations again, Sinclair goes to find him himself. Londo spills the beans and tells him his secret files have been stolen. If Sinclair can help him get them back, he agrees to go through with the diplomatic settlement Sinclair has worked out. They go back to the bar incognito and Londo offers the other dancers a gold coin for the one who tells him where the woman would be hiding. The criminal listens in through the bug and makes a deal with the insect guy crime boss to have his goons delay Londo and Sinclair while he gets her.

Garibaldi manages to break the encryption on the hidden transmission and discovers that it's Ivanova calling her dying father on Earth.

Sinclair and Londo go to Talia to ask her for help to read the mind of the criminal and find out where he has hidden the dancer and the files. She tells them such a thing is highly illegal, but she will make an exception if the dancer is really at risk of getting killed. However, she won't go digging through his brain, so Sinclair calls in a favor from G'Kar to arrange a meeting with the man. Talia introduces herself to him and just asks him where the dancer is, and can instantly read his reaction. She tells Sinclair who calls security to go and get her. The man tries to run away but Londo catches him and takes the crystal with the files from his pocket. He then tanks G'Kar for just having helped saving his career and preserving the honor of the Centauri Republic.

Londo buys the dancers freedom and a ticket for her to return to her home.

--

This episode was unforunately bad. Londo's plot is not actually bad itself, but it just isn't nearly enough material to fill the whole episode. Garibaldi's plot is tiny and can't take up much more than 5 minutes. This results in the episode often dragging on for way too long with scenes in which nothing of any relevance actually happens. We get some more information about Londo's character, which I think is quite valuable going forward since I see him as the red thread on which the entire continuity of the show is hung. But that doesn't fill out a 45 minute episode. With a proper b-plot that would have taken up about half of that runtime, I think this episode might even have been quite good. But the way it is it's really quite tedious and boring to watch.

While the overall image quality for this episode is pretty good, there are several moments where the film they scanned it off is full of scratches. They really took bad care of their archived shows back in those days.

[factotum]

Can't say I remember much about that episode, which means, to my mind, it's strictly middle-of-the-road fare--not amazing, not terrible. A lot of first season episodes were like that, unfortunately, they can't all be Signs and Portents.

[Cikomyr]

Although this episode is a lot darker considering the paths everyone will take in the future.

[Kantaki]

From what I remember Londo's password was... very him.

[Yora]

"wine, women, and song"

[HandofShadows]

In the Beginning, which recounts the Earth-Minbari war, is generally received favourably, River of Souls was OK but Thirdspace didn't really work.

Hey, I liked Thirdspace. Of course I read the novel and it fleshes out some things and makes the enemy more Lovecraft like. That might have something to do with it.

[tomandtish]

In your complaints regarding the commander flying off on occasional missions (and he only does it about 3 times out of 22 episodes, so I hardly see this as a problem), you are forgetting several other *realities* of military life. If you're a pilot, even as a commander, you have to log in X-number of hours flying time per month in order to continue to qualify for flight pay. This is a *requirement*. And it doesn't just mean flying around the station a few times.
Second, many commanders -- as recently as Vietnam and afterward -- did and continue to go out on missions and sorties because it is rather expected of them, and because it maintains the respect of the rest of the squadron(s).

Regarding the JMS quote above (or that part of it), his take also doesn't wash. Commanders of air squadrens still fly combt missions. Commanders of Aircraft Carriers do not. And that's the more accurate comparison here. Regardless of his rank, he is the LEAD officer on Babylon 5, as well as earth's designated diplomatic representative. As he even refers to himself, he's a military governor. And while military pilots do have to get flight time in to keep that status, it does not have to be combat flight. So a few laps of the station may not be enough, but it isn't going to require him taking the lead in fending off raiders.

Case in point, this is one of my uncles. He flew NO combat missions after Vietnam, and maintained his flight status until 1993.

Truth is it's just the classic problem of lead characters having to do everything. We accept it and move on.

[Corvus]

Regarding the JMS quote above (or that part of it), his take also doesn't wash. Commanders of air squadrens still fly combt missions. Commanders of Aircraft Carriers do not. And that's the more accurate comparison here. Regardless of his rank, he is the LEAD officer on Babylon 5, as well as earth's designated diplomatic representative. As he even refers to himself, he's a military governor. And while military pilots do have to get flight time in to keep that status, it does not have to be combat flight. So a few laps of the station may not be enough, but it isn't going to require him taking the lead in fending off raiders.

Case in point, this is one of my uncles. He flew NO combat missions after Vietnam, and maintained his flight status until 1993.

Truth is it's just the classic problem of lead characters having to do everything. We accept it and move on.

Sinclair was a fighter pilot, not a ship's captain, so commanding a base is probably fairly new to him and getting out in a fighter is familiar to him.

Regardless, the biggest reason he keeps going out on missions is something Garibaldi calls him out for - he has a massive sense of survivor's guilt and is looking for a way to die, hence always going out on dangerous missions. Given he was one of only 200 survivors out of 20,000 at The Battle of the Line, you can understand why.

[Droid Tony]

it is it's really quite tedious and boring to watch.

Yup it's bad. But it does have Lady Adira Tyree in it...and she does come up again.

We see the Fresh Air place...and that almost never seen cylinder of the station.

The whole Gold Channel thing was just odd. Could not Susan just ASK for some time? Sure they are ''official", but REALLY could not Sinclar just log a fake call or something?

[Olinser]

Not a great episode, but it still gave us perhaps one of the greatest spoken lines in any series, EVER.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT YOU MOON-FACED ASSASSIN OF JOY!?!?"