A Niner Watches Babylon 5 (NO spoilers, please)

Have been on limited Internet access of late, due to being out of town. So if I'm commenting less, that'd be why. Still enjoying the reviews, though, TGB, and looking forwards to your thoughts on "Signs and Portents."

 

Signs and Portents (****)

Okay, here's my guess about what just happened and where I think the show is going from here:

There's some sort of alien race known as the Shadows and they're either dormant or in hiding somewhere but wish to take control or enslave this section of the galaxy, and they wish to align with one of the major powers in order to achieve their goals. They have some sort of animosity with the Vorlons. They send a Shadow in human form, or they somehow captured a human and took control of his body, and sent him to the one place in the galaxy where all the major races have a representative, but they waited until Kosh was off the station in case they're found out.

The Narn do not wish to control the galaxy, they only wish revenge upon the Centauri, therefore they are not suitable as allies. The Minbari somehow know about the Shadows, or they can sense creatures like them, therefore they would not make suitable allies. The Centauri wish for control, and their empire is in a state of decline, so they would be willing to make a deal with the devil if it meant they would be rulers of this region of space once again. So the Shadows make an overture to the Centauri by giving back their gaudy eye thing. My guess is that this will lead to closer ties between the Shadows and the Centauri, and the Centauri will align with them, much like the Cardassians aligned with the Dominion, and the other major powers will unite to stop them. And that will be the basis of the Shadow war I've heard so much about.

The one thing that sticks out about this episode is that the Shadows didn't approach the Earth representative, at least not on screen, so it seems as if the Shadows could never view humanity as a potential ally. So what do they know about us? Are we somehow special? Are they able to see possible timelines like Lady Ladira and see humanity as a threat to their plans? If the Minbari know of the Shadows, do they also know that humanity has a special destiny? Is that why they stopped the war? Does that have anything to do with what happened to Sinclair during his memory loss? Are the Minbari also capable of seeing alternate futures, and they requested Sinclair as commander of Babylon 5 because they know he's the only one able to deal with the Shadows? Wait, that can't be it, Sinclair is going to be replaced with Sheridan next season.

What I've just said is probably a load of rubbish, but please don't confirm or deny it, I just wrote it so that you could get an impression of what I think is going on.

Okay, time to talk about the episode itself.

It's interesting, but I wasn't completely blown away by it. You get the sense throughout the episode that something important is up, and I'm not sure if that's because it has been hyped up by everyone or if it was because of the drawn out synthesiser notes. I enjoyed watching the Shadow guy talking to the three ambassadors, and I enjoyed all the material about the Centauri and the downfall of their civilisation. But more than anything else there is an intriguing mystery here, and unlike shows like BSG and Lost where I watched them for the first time unsure if the writers even knew the answers to the mysteries they were creating, in this case I feel I can relax in the knowledge that all of this was planned out, so it should fit together quite nicely.

I wasn't a big fan of the raiders plot, but at least it tied in with the rest of the story neatly when we learned that Lord Kiro (played by Scott Bakula) hired them for his own nefarious deeds. Lady Ladira could be quite annoying, and I'm not sure I like the idea of someone seeing premonitions of the future, it seems a bit superpowerish. So are the telepaths, but I'm still assuming that the existence of telepaths will be explained at some point, perhaps it was an industrial accident such as the one which led to human biotics in the Mass Effect universe.

One interesting thing I noticed was that the station didn't shake during the battle and the consoles didn't explode randomly. Thank the gods! I've had quite enough of that, thank you very much.

Scott Bakula: 8

 

There are probably a few pages I could write in response but I can't. They're all fairly complimentary, I assure you. But yes, by far the most satisfying thing about B5 is the way its arcs are planned in advance and make sense. That really struck me when rewatching the show; I couldn't but help compare B5's revelations to BSG's, and while BSG had better acting, writing, music, SFX, B5 never suffered from the infuriating nebulousness that was the Cylon Agenda.

Spoiler: For the rest of you spoiler whores

Now there's a thought: Why didn't Mr. Morden approach the humans? Is it because they wanted to make their deal directly with Clarke, or has that deal already been made?

 

Spoiler: humans

There are two possible reasons not to do something: Because you think it would be fruitless, or because there is no need. I'm betting on the latter, although *if* the Shadows had some inkling about Sinclair's "identity", that might be related as well.

Yes, the significance of telepaths developing within the next few hundred years is addressed later.

 

Signs and Portents isn't in my B5 Top 10 or anything, but it does a really good job setting things in motion. It's a really important episode for season one, and the show in general.

I found it a lot better during my rewatch and rerewatch.

 

Spoiler: Same

I think it's simply a matter of them already having their deal/plot in play by the time of the episode. In the vid from Voices of Authority of Clarke plotting Santiago's death, it's clearly Wasser's voice on the other end. And one would assume that conversation took place sometime before Chrysalis which would put it right around the time of S&P.

 

As I recall, JMS's DVD commentary for "Signs and Portents" is hilarious, in part because of the way he makes fun of himself for using the Raiders as stock villains. (Though I think all the DVD commentaries include spoilers for future seasons, so don't watch them until you've gotten much farther along in viewing.)

Also, for TGB, while I'm not going to give spoilers about what's going to happen, I would caution you not to expect the arc development to accelerate much at all any time soon. The show is still mostly standalone episodes** until well into Season 2. But yes, you're right that there's no need to worry about JMS not knowing the answers to all the mysteries that he introduces. He doesn't write stuff just for the sake of it being mysterious, only to try to work out what it all means some time later.

** Though "standalone" is relative I guess. Many of the supposedly standalone episodes will actually be referenced in some capacity some time later, though often in passing.

 

I'd say you have a reasonably good grasp of things based on what you've seen up until this point. Doesn't mean you're right about any of that, of course, but it'd be a pretty rubbish mystery if you could deduce anything with a degree of accuracy at this early stage.

As for prophecy, if you remember it's established right from the off in "Midnight on the Firing Line" that even some non-telepathic Centauri like Londo can sometimes get obscure glances at their personal future. Though when it comes to prophecy in B5, context is everything. As for the nature of telepaths, yes some light will be shed on that down the road a ways.

As I'm sure others will point out, 'Signs and Portents' is one of those B5 episodes that takes on a new meaning on second viewing, after you've finished watching the rest of the show. Lines that seam innocuous will later echo, rather loudly in some cases.

Spoiler: humans

Defiantly the latter. Humans were the first race they encountered when they awoke. It makes sense that was the first place they looked for allies.

On top of that if I recall, the Psi Corps & Technomage novel have Department Sigma (the shadowy little corner of Psi Corps that was running Bureau 13) making an alliance with the Shadows pretty early on. Plus remember that Justin didn't arrive on Z'ha'dum with the Icarus, he came later.

 

I think with this right here you've aptly summed up what I like about "Signs and Portents." It's certainly not the most action-packed, dramatic episode of television ever made, but I remember the first time I watched it there was a great feeling of foreboding, of something being about to happen. As others have mentioned, it takes a little while for them to really cash in on it, but it is a great start. It's all uphill from here.

Well, okay. Except for "TKO." I recommend alcohol.

 

TKO, ugh. That's one you can skip and never miss it.

Why does every SF show have to have one crappy fight club/boxing episode?

 

Thing is, I like all of them. Hell, BSG's was one of my favorites of that series.

Voyager's was the lamest, but still had 7o9 skin and the Rock.

Oh, the one on Charmed was simply bad, but then...it's Charmed we are talking about.

 

Actually, the one on Angel wasn't that bad. It did introduce Lilah, and give Wesley one of his first truely badass moments with the crossbow.

 

You've just taken your first step in a much larger universe.

 

Totally agree. I would just pretend it wasn't there and skip to the next episode.

 

TKO had a decent B-plot.

And Voyager had two of them!

 

I thought we weren't going to talk about episodes in advance? Surely smacking them down is as bad as bigging them up!?

 

Why did I have to read this comment after watching the episode? And why was I out of beer?!!


TKO (*)

Oy vey.

There's an a-plot and a b-plot, and they're both so dull that after watching one minute of the a-plot you're wishing it would switch back to the b-plot, and after one minute of the b-plot you're wishing it would go back to the a-plot. Rinse and repeat for 42 minutes, and that's TKO.

A-plot: Some guy I never heard of, and who I'll probably never see again, comes to the station in order to get into a fight, and since Garibaldi seems to be one of the few people on a 22 episode contract he decides to help him out. This is about as mind-numbingly dull as an episode can get, and it doesn't help that at times it is offensively stupid. Why would you replace safety ropes in a boxing ring with neon lights?! That's dangerous!!

I'm a really big nerd, so sports scare me, and the sport I find most boring in the world is boxing, or wrestling, or martial arts, or anything that involves two people getting into a ring and hitting one another for the entertainment of others. So I had absolutely no interest in this story at all, and even my hope that the human guy would die in the ring and we'd get the moral message of not being overconfident, that didn't pan out. Instead we had an inspiring ending about humans being allowed into this alien tournament thing, and I am going to pray to space Jebus Sisko that this episode does not lead to more moronic fight episodes.

Plot score: (0)

B-plot: Ivanova's dad is still dead. Her uncle (played by Scott Bakula) arrives and tries to convince her to undergo some Jewish ceremony but she refuses to do it because of mixed feelings about her father. Can you guess how this plot will turn out? In fairness, I can appreciate that this story was trying to further establish Ivanova's character, and it tried to build on something we saw earlier in the season, but that doesn't stop it from being boring, and the way the story was told was stale.

Plot score: (*½)

If I average out the scores I get a score of (¾), but I'll round that up to a full star because I'm such a nice guy.

By the way, was anyone else distracted by the picture of Saturn in Sinclair's office? Because the light seems to be hitting the three moons from the side but it is hitting Saturn almost head on. I think it may be a 'shop.

Scott Bakula: 9

 

I'd say that "TKO" is certainly one of the four worst episodes of the entire show. The other three are: "Infection", "Grail" (that's the next after "TKO" actually ), and Season 3's "Grey 17 is Missing".

 

Is it bad that after reading that review, I still don't remember what that episode is about? I think I must have blocked it from my memory?

That said, I actually rather like "Grail," though it does have a pretty odd premise.