A Niner Watches Babylon 5 (NO spoilers, please)

[Harvey]

Come to think of it, was Garibaldi there when Kosh made his appearance? We know he's an atheist, so what did he see?

Garibaldi was an agnostic not an athiest

I stand corrected.

 

[Kegg]

I do. Originality is not just in plot elements (B5 does have originality there), but in how those elements are used and how the story unspools.

Lots of talking where aliens through a human avatar teach our heroes valuable lesson? There are a few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation that play out in a similar manner.

I'm trying to decide how much to say here.

I'll say that TGB is absolutely right and it's a very silly moment. It's Childhood's End in reverse, and in reverse it's less interesting. More importantly Kosh is really glossy.

TGB, I'm trying to decide if you really reacted that way to the episode or if you're just trying to provoke a reaction of a sort. You surely would know by now that with incidents that seem to surprise you into disbelief like this, are all too often just the beginning of something that is revealed more fully later on.

It seems genuine. He has a history of hating things that try to validate theology even a little, such as the existence of Minbari and human souls.

I don't think it's fair to chalk up his reaction to hating theological framework; as he's expressed a fondness for BSG and, besides, it implicitly undoes religious assumptions. While not directly stated, it's now very obviously hinted that the Abrahamic religious traditions were either created or manipulated by Vorlons.

A thought on the Centauri: I like that Londo sees nothing because it reflects the encroaching darkness that has fallen upon him and his world. It never needed to be apropos of anything other than that to me.

 

[Reverend]

Come to think of it, was Garibaldi there when Kosh made his appearance? We know he's an atheist, so what did he see?

I highly doubt a person's individual belief would alter a Vorlon's projected appearance, it's more of a race psychology thing. Remember that G'Kar, a follower of G'Quan saw a vision of G'Lan, a distinctly different religious figure.

Or, to put it in human terms, people of say a judo-christian-islamic cultural background will see a winged human being of light and their brain will assign that image to the word "angel" because that's their background, whether they believe in them or not. Someone with a different cultural background, like for instance (to borrow an example from the Psi Corps books) a Zuni tribesperson will see the exact same image but their brain will assign that image to "Shalako spirit".

If you actually look at Kosh's image it's not an exact match for the classical Christian angel with the halo and the feathered wings, little trumpet and whatnot, it's more generic and intentionally so.

 

[Neroon]

In this instance, all of the images seen were winged creatures robed in white light. The only variation we saw was in their head. Knowing that each of the races observing Kosh has a somewhat different belief system, it's interesting that they still see a very similar image. When you think about it, their belief systems may not be all THAT different, so I can see why some might conclude that religious belief systems would affect that perception. Individual belief however may not have an effect at all, so we're back to a more genetic caused reason for what they saw

 

[Truth_Seeker]

A frickin angel?! Not a hot blonde chick in a skimpy red dress, but an actual angel, with wings and everything. This is one of the silliest things I've ever seen.

I'm going to reply to that outrageous B5 heresy () with a few quotes:

ATTENTION TGB:

"The Vorlons have been to Earth, the Vorlons have been everywhere, the Vorlons ARE!"

"You are not ready for immortality!"

"That's why Kosh cannot leave his encounter suit. He will be recognized.
Recognized. By whom?
Everyone!"

"Are we just toys to you"

"There are beings in the universe billions of years older than either of our races. Once, long ago, they walked among the stars like giants, vast, timeless. Taught the younger races, explored beyond the rim, created great empires, but to all things, there is an end."

"You wanted to see me."
"Oh, I guess everybody does. To see what you really are, inside that encounter suit."
"They are not ready. They would not understand."

"For millions of years the Vorlons have visited other worlds. Guided them and..
"Manipulated us? Programmed us, so that when we saw them we would react the right way?
It is, as you say, a matter of perspective."

P.S. Why do we prevent small children from watching movies containing violence. Not because violence do not exist, but because they are not ready for that information.

 

[Fist McStrongpunch]

Ooh, and that Dr. Kyle quote from the end of The Gathering.

There are moments in your life when everything crystallizes…and the whole world reshapes itself, right down to its component molecules. And everything changes. I have looked upon the face of a Vorlon, Laurel, and nothing is the same anymore!

 

[Forbin]

TGB, I'm trying to decide if you really reacted that way to the episode or if you're just trying to provoke a reaction of a sort. You surely would know by now that with incidents that seem to surprise you into disbelief like this, are all too often just the beginning of something that is revealed more fully later on.

It seems genuine. He has a history of hating things that try to validate theology even a little, such as the existence of Minbari and human souls.

The interesting thing is that Babylon 5 often dealt with religious themes despite the fact that J. Michael Straczynski is very open about his own atheism. But I guess you can have no religious beliefs whatsoever and still be fascinated by religion as a concept.

Or annoyed by it.

 

[Forbin]

Or, to put it in human terms, people of say a judo-christian-islamic cultural background...

...worship by throwing people around?

 

[stonester1]

ing where aliens through a human avatar teach our heroes valuable lesson? There are a few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation that play out in a similar manner.

Yes...that was every episode of Babylon 5, along with generous use of the reset button.



You know, for a guy who claims to be a fan, you spend LOTS of time trying to run this show down, on some piddly ass shit, no less, as more than one person has observed.

 

[stonester1]

TGB, I'm trying to decide if you really reacted that way to the episode or if you're just trying to provoke a reaction of a sort. You surely would know by now that with incidents that seem to surprise you into disbelief like this, are all too often just the beginning of something that is revealed more fully later on.

It seems genuine. He has a history of hating things that try to validate theology even a little, such as the existence of Minbari and human souls.

Yet at the same time, when I called him on this, he claims NOT to hate it when religious/supernatural elements are put in science fiction and not technobabbled away/taken seriously within the setting.

I believe him, BUT this knee jerk reaction to such in B5, especially w/o taking a chance to find out it's meaning...

...he should know better by now re. Babylon 5.

 

[TheGodBen]

I'm guessing the apology ceremony went about like this--

Ambassador: "Captain! Tell us about the angel!"
Sheridan: "First, I really should apologize."
Ambassador: "For what?"
Sheridan: "The Centauri incident."
Ambassador: "The Centauri did something to the angel!?"
Sheridan: "No, I mean the earlier thing."
Ambassador: "Oh, that? There's a fucking angel here! For god's sake, man! We don't care about that apology business anymore!"
Sheridan: "Oh... I'm sorry."
Ambassador: "We don't care!"

But, in the best thing to come from the angel scene, Londo says that he saw nothing, and I doubt that the Centauri government would drop their demand for an apology because of rumours about an angel that their ambassador didn't even see.

I'm trying to decide how much to say here. I suppose I'll just say, what the characters see is not necessarily intended to be the objective reality from the viewer's perspective.

Oh, I get that Kosh doesn't really look like an angel, that's just the way that he appears to humans (or at least to humans that follow a religion which believes in angels) whereas his real form is probably incomprehensible to us. It's sort of like the Pleasure GELF from Red Dwarf. At least, that's what I'm expecting the explanation to be.

The deus ex machina angel ending I didn't mind since it actually worked for this episode. It works in the same way the Worm Hole Aliens in DS9 save the entire Federation by gobbeling up all the Dominion ships and cutting off access to the Alpha Quadrant. Corny to an extent, yet done in a believable way that helps to progress the story.

The difference is that after the deus ex machina in Sacrifice of Angels the story continued and entered what was arguably its best phase; the Dominion are forced to abandon the station, Dukat has a mental breakdown, Damar shoots Ziyal, Garak mourns over her body, Dukat hands Sisko his baseball back... If the episode went straight from the deus ex machina to a scene of Sisko in his office saying "Wow, those Prophets sure are useful guys" it wouldn't have worked at all.

And that's essentially what happens here, something happens involving an angel and suddenly the rest of the plot is forgotten about. Did Sheridan apologise? Did EarthGov push ahead with its plans for a non-aggression pact with the Centauri? I don't know because those infinitely more fascinating aspects of the story (to me, at any rate) weren't resolved.

This didn't come out of nowhere. This had been hinted at since the first episode with Dr. Kyle's comments about "looking into the face of a Vorlon". That doesn't mean you see the whole picture at this episode either.

I didn't mean deus ex machina as in a plot element which came from nowhere, I meant it in the sense of "god" showing up and fixing the problem for the main characters. Which, admittedly, did not happen here, what happened here was that "god" showed up and the episode neatly forgot almost everything else that was going on. The show's mythology essentially took control of the episode, which was a pity because I was enjoying the story the episode was telling.

Garibaldi was an agnostic not an athiest.

<nitpick> Most agnostics actually are atheist, anyone who does not have a belief in a god or gods is an atheist (as in they are not a theist). Agnosticism is actually the position that the existence of a god or gods is not knowable, and that is not mutually exclusive with being an atheist. I myself am an agnostic atheist, which means that while I do not believe in any gods at the moment I certainly don't claim to know that there are no gods, because that would be silly. I would presume that Garibaldi is in the same boat. </nitpick>

TGB, I'm trying to decide if you really reacted that way to the episode or if you're just trying to provoke a reaction of a sort.

There's only one poster on this board that I try to provoke a reaction out of, and he doesn't post in this thread (praise Jebus!). Hell, even the jokes are just there so that I can read them back later and say "Hahaha! I'm so funny!"

(I wish that was a joke. )

No, that was my actual reaction, I was silent for a few several seconds by the absurdity of it all, but once Kosh nodded to Sheridan I burst out laughing, and later that night as I thought back to it I burst out laughing again. I knew it would be somewhat controversial to post it, but it's what really happened.

It seems genuine. He has a history of hating things that try to validate theology even a little, such as the existence of Minbari and human souls.

Frankly, I don't think that the existence of souls can be considered a "little" part of theology, from my perspective it is an even larger part of religions than the whole god thing. Are souls possible? Oh, certainly. I happen not to believe in them, but their very nature means that they cannot be ruled out. Are souls interesting? Not in the slightest. They're a very boring and simplistic concept (to my mind) based on an irrational human desire to be more than what we appear to be. The first season of this show was dominated by a mystery surrounding Sinclair and what happened at the Battle of the Line, so when all of that turned out to be something as underwhelming as the shared soul explanation I was hugely disappointed.

I don't think it's fair to chalk up his reaction to hating theological framework; as he's expressed a fondness for BSG...

Spoiler: BSG

The thing about BSG is that while I don't believe in a god, if there was one then the BSG "god" is more in line with my interpretation of it than most religions. The BSG "god" seemed to be like a child playing with ants in the garden, he doesn't love or care about the ants, he's more interested in testing how the ants will respond to various situations. "If I put this block here, will the ants climb over it or around it? Or if I place this piece of straw across the puddle, will the ants use it as a bridge?"

And he didn't show up as a giant bearded guy in a robe, that helped.

Yay, I finally got to use a spoiler tag!

P.S. Why do we prevent small children from watching movies containing violence. Not because violence do not exist, but because they are not ready for that information.

But not correctly informing children about violence will cause them to act out in violence. I know that's what happened to me, I was constantly getting into fights because I didn't know how to control my temper. When I was 12 my brother brought home a new game called "Grand Theft Auto" and (coincidentally, I'm sure) that's around the time when I declared myself a pacifist. Now I'm no longer a pacifist, I'm just lazy.

 

[DWF]

The first season of this show was dominated by a mystery surrounding Sinclair and what happened at the Battle of the Line, so when all of that turned out to be something as underwhelming as the shared soul explanation I was hugely disappointed.

You're sure that Lennier was told the truth? And that's hardly true of the first season it was about the awakening of the Shadows, the name of the season was Signs And Portents it was all foreshadowing so to speak of things to come.

 

[chrisspringob]

In its first run back in the 90s, I only caught episodes from the first two seasons sporadically. And I didn't know that there was a pre-planned arc. I saw episodes like "And the Sky Full of Stars", and figured that storylines like that would either be wrapped up by the end of the season, or they'd just eventually be dropped. That was simply the expectation based on how most TV shows I'd seen had worked. Then I read at TV Guide interview with JMS in the summer of 1995, where he talked about his story arc for the series, and I was intrigued. I watched the final four eps and Season 2 and was greatly impressed.

But the thing that hooked me for life was the closing minutes of "Fall of Night" and Ivanova's voiceover narration. This was not like any season finale I'd ever seen before. There was no twist thrown in for shock value (like, say, Denise Crosby showing up as a Romulan). There was no sense that the show had set up some kind of artificial danger for our heroes that we knew would be resolved in the following season premiere. Rather, this was the closing of a chapter in a novel. The Ivanova narration reinforced that perception, that I was watching the end of a chapter in a novel, that had a beginning, middle, and end. And she was recounting the things that were going on, that represented gradual forward movement of a coherent storyline.....a storyline that wasn't set up just to keep us tuned in as we go from one season to the next, but a storyline whose throughline runs through the entire series.

And that's the sort of thing that I had never seen before.....and honestly, haven't seen since either. I mean, I don't mean to start a big argument over this, but I don't see, say, BSG or Lost having the same sort of coherent storyline with a beginning, middle, and end running through the entire series. I like those shows, but (to me) they don't really feel like novels for television in the sense that B5 does.

 

[Myasishchev]

Ben's reaction was pretty similar to mine. It may just be the FX alone--Kosh the Angel just looks kinda goofy.

I actually don't mind the concept, though someone at some point should put 2 and 2 together and get really really really pissed at the Vorlons.

Go Shadows!

 

[Lindley]

And that's essentially what happens here, something happens involving an angel and suddenly the rest of the plot is forgotten about. Did Sheridan apologise?

Well, a Centauri did just try to assasinate him. Politically that swings things in the other direction; even if he did apologize at that point, he'd still have the political high ground, so I wouldn't be surprised if the Centauri backed off about that. In the big picture it's not terribly important what he said, because we heard what he was thinking plainly enough.

Did EarthGov push ahead with its plans for a non-aggression pact with the Centauri?

Yes, as I believe Ivanova's monolog stated. I don't recall it word-for-word, but I think it was in there.

The first season of this show was dominated by a mystery surrounding Sinclair and what happened at the Battle of the Line, so when all of that turned out to be something as underwhelming as the shared soul explanation I was hugely disappointed.

You do not yet have the complete story there either. What you have is a partial explanation, not untrue (since Minbari do not lie), but omitting important details. The storyline had to be shunted to the background since Sinclair wasn't around anymore, so they put a band-aid on it so it'd keep until it's time to revisit that tale.

 

[JoeD80]

And that's essentially what happens here, something happens involving an angel and suddenly the rest of the plot is forgotten about.

The first season of this show was dominated by a mystery surrounding Sinclair and what happened at the Battle of the Line, so when all of that turned out to be something as underwhelming as the shared soul explanation I was hugely disappointed.

Did Sheridan apologise? Did EarthGov push ahead with its plans for a non-aggression pact with the Centauri? I don't know because those infinitely more fascinating aspects of the story (to me, at any rate) weren't resolved.

Perhaps you should watch the rest of the show before making such conclusions? It's not called a five-year arc for no reason. Plots are going to spill into other episodes.

 

[Skywalker]

Perhaps you should watch the rest of the show before making such conclusions? It's not called a five-year arc for no reason. Plots are going to spill into other episodes.

Obviously, but he can only watch one episode at a time. If he weren't going to review each episode based on their individual merits, there wouldn't be much point in this thread at all.

 

[Kegg]

ing where aliens through a human avatar teach our heroes valuable lesson? There are a few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation that play out in a similar manner.

Yes...that was every episode of Babylon 5, along with generous use of the reset button.

What? We're talking about a specific episode here, not the whole series.

You know, for a guy who claims to be a fan, you spend LOTS of time trying to run this show down,

Somebody's gotta. Besides, I'm a fan who finds B5 significantly overrated. So I'm in an interesting albeit lonely place when it comes to this series.

Ben's reaction was pretty similar to mine. It may just be the FX alone--Kosh the Angel just looks kinda goofy.

And the makeup. As I observed he's a little glossy. He's an angel, not a dancing queen.

 

[JoeD80]

Perhaps you should watch the rest of the show before making such conclusions? It's not called a five-year arc for no reason. Plots are going to spill into other episodes.

Obviously, but he can only watch one episode at a time. If he weren't going to review each episode based on their individual merits, there wouldn't be much point in this thread at all.

Did I say anything about not reviewing specific episodes based on their individual merits? No. But there are many plot points which carry over to more than one episode, and the fact that those particular points (of which I picked out a few which are definitely there in the background) aren't resolved in one episode doesn't invalidate that particular episode.

Also, BTW, I just realized that the Earth DID move ahead with their non-aggression pact in that same episode as Lindley said; so that part DID get resolved.

 

[Truth_Seeker]

Oh, I get that Kosh doesn't really look like an angel, that's just the way that he appears to humans (or at least to humans that follow a religion which believes in angels) whereas his real form is probably incomprehensible to us. It's sort of like the Pleasure GELF from Red Dwarf. At least, that's what I'm expecting the explanation to be.

I'm surprised that you consider it "the silliest thing you have ever seen". I've been an atheist all my life and when I first saw that scene I thought that it was one of the greatest things I've ever seen.

Think about it. Every alien race representative in the garden saw Kosh as a different kind of mythological creature from the legends of their own worlds. What JMS was trying to tell his viewers was that all those Earth and alien myths probably had a common source and it had nothing to do with the supernatural.

I've recently heard this quote on "Fringe":
"Very advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".