Babylon 5 - I'm finally going to do it

Garibaldi's an alcoholic. That's the point is that he relapses and that's all it is; although Bester is the trigger in "Phoenix Rising" he just slides farther and farther down the hole. What's odd is people back in season 5 kept asking JMS why they weren't seeing Garibaldi drink more often if he was such an alcoholic? So I'm not sure what this line on subtlety is.

 

I'm sure that Garibaldi rationalized it that way himself. He tried to convince Lise of something along those lines.

The more I've watched the show, the more I've noticed just how often our heroes skate along the edge of right and wrong and there's always a perfectly good rationalization. Gotta have the rogue teep do an illegal scan to save a life. Gotta pry into somebody's finances to see if he *might* be a security risk. Gotta help finance terrorism to help the poor, downtrodden teeps. Lots of examples but we let it slide because they're the 'good guys'.

All I can say is that every day sober *is* heroism for your friend. And every time he or she has to get sober is even more so. Being an alcoholic is no more a character flaw than an allergy to pollen is.

Jan

 

One thing I've often been curious about is exactly how Garibaldi became an alcoholic in the first place. I'm hardly an expert in psychology, but from personal experience I've seen that substance abuse problems tend to stem from trouble early in life (though of course early is a relative term) and all of the "Garibaldi hard-luck stories" we've heard, he's usually already on the sauce before things all go to hell. My personal suspicion is that it's either something to do with his parents (his father's crippling illness, or his mother whom we've heard little about) or something that happened during the part of his childhood/adolescence spent on Mars.

The reason for the latter suspicion come from the place having almost killed him on 3 earlier occasions. One we know of (when he met Sinclair for the first time), a second we can guess at (around the time he met Lise, around the time of the Minbari War) which leaves a third time we can only speculate on.

As far as our "heroes" making flawed (re: human) decisions and choices; personally I'll never forgive Sheridan and the others for the way Lyta was treated.
Not that I have a problem with "heroes" that have realistic (and oft-times rational-able) lapses in judgement or anything, in fact I like it in that it makes them a little bit more like real people. Hell, even Delenn has a subtle note of prejudice towards the worker caste (though that changed overtime.)

 

Sheridan could only see telepaths as tools, which is why his dream in "All Alone in the Night" had him wearing a Psi Cop uniform according to Joe's explanation in the script book. He didn't just use Lyta but other telepaths as well:

Spoiler: Seasons 4 & 5

He used the frozen telepaths to his advantage to win the civil war at the end of season 4, and was hoping to use Byron. His justification for allowing Byron and his group to live on Babylon 5 was not that Byron needed somewhere to stay, but that Sheridan would need some "telepaths in his back pocket" when a telepath war might come.

 

I too had a big problem with the way Lyta was caste aside after the Shadow War. I never understood why Sheridan and the others couldn't put her on the payroll, so to speak. They kept using her and using her, never standing up for their supposed ally and friend.

Moreover, Sheridan didn't really confront his prejudice against Lyta and telepaths on the whole. A few lines here and there, but nothing substantial. Then again, I've always felt that Sheridan was written more as the square-jawed hero than Sinclair ever was.

 

I seem to recall reading from Pat Tallman that, as a result of the way Lyta was treated in the story, the cast unconsciously treated her as an outcast off camera too. Which, as a Pat fan, ya know, kinda pisses me off.

 

I tend to agree with that. Note his initial reaction when Garibaldi suggests the ISA use teeps for covert intel gathering. "There are rules against that kind of thing." As much as he knows, intellectually, what Psi Corps is really about and that most teeps are victims, he's instantly uncomfortable with the idea of free, unregistered telepaths operating that high within the Alliance. I think there's a certain comfort zone inherent in Psi Corps as an easy way to psychologically "deal" with telepaths. So long as they're all over there with "them" I know who "they" are and who "we" are.

Pretty much sums up my feelings too. Not to say that I disagreed with the writers decision (conscious or otherwise) to have Lyta treated like that, it's a totally believable and justifiable story element in the context of a society with a 150 year history of distrust, paranoia and violence between teeps and mundanes. It's more a sense of disappointment in the character, akin to the kind I felt when Garibaldi fell off the wagon in season 5 or when Londo precipitated the Narn-Centauri War.

What did get me though, was why didn't Garibaldi hire Lyta right from the offset when he started using teeps in ICI? You'd think she'd be an ideal liaison officer, acting as Garibaldi's right hand. Perhaps her renewed contract with the Corps would prohibit that, but still...

As for Sheridan, I rather think he has more in common with Sinclair than most seam to think, the vital difference between them is that Sinclair was just further up the curve in terms of his character development. If you look at Sheridan in 'Sleeping in Light', or even 'A Call to Arms' or 'Voices in the Dark', he's much closer to the kind in haunted, introspective veteran that Sinclair was in season one.

I've heard that before, but only second-hand and never with a cited source. Care to elaborate?

 

Wish I could! It's just a 10 year old memory of having heard the story. Though I could'a sworn it was Pat herself who said it. Maybe in one of her fan newsletters (none of which I saved, sadly).

 

Well, now that I finished Farscape (for the most part) I can return to Babylon 5's best season, and what more awesome could that return come with the War Without End two parter, and then the beautiful sounds of Erica Gimpel to follow that up. Yeah, one of the highlights when I watched the series for the first time and got up to Walkabout was the guest actress and how beautiful the songs were that came with this episode.

As for War without End, it's one thing to go through it the first time and just be awestruck at the twist at the end. However, I think I was even more awestruck the second time, not just with the reveal, but with Zathuras, and realizing what he might have meant during the whole thing with Sinclair being the one before, Delenn being the one in present, and Sheridan being the one in the future. That is incredibly awesome forshadowing. Oh, and is Zatharus the one of the more awesome characters in the show. "It's a sad life, it will probably be a sad death, but at least there's symmetry."

Speaking of that last line, I really loved how part one ended:

Delenn: Why is it in your custom you ask are you ready when we're about to do something mindlessly unwise

Sinclair: Tradition.

Awesome way to end part one.

As you can probably guess, I loved these two episodes more now than I did before. Season 3 is an amazing season, but I think it was here the last time when I realized that fact. Hell, I think I remember saying there were positive qualities to Grey 17 is Missing so that ought to say a lot.

 

Of course there's positives in 'Grey 17 is Missing', it's just that none of them involve the part of the episode that takes place in Grey 17. Everything else is fine.

As for Zathras...I think it's possible that he may have the most quotable lines per minute than any other character in the history of television. Almost everything he says is memorable and funny and it never strayed into the Jar-Jar land of offbeat alien side-kicks.

 

BTW, B5 fans.
When did Jerry Doyle become a well known radio host?

I just saw his book in the store today.

 

I think you may be right in that. Even though he talked funny, walked funny and looked funny he managed a certain depth of character. Tim Choate was a nice guy, too.

BTW, now that there's a B5 conversation going again, I thought I'd mention that there's a seller on Ebay selling Psi Corps pins, the genuine ones from the Fan Club, for only $25 with free shipping. To understand what a deal this is, I sold a *broken* (but fixable) one last year on Ebay for $175. (Note: I'm not involved with this seller at all, just passing the news)

Jan

 

I've heard his show a few times. He's another one of those Hannity type people (If I knew who the hardcore liberal person was, I would mention him too but I don't, just incase people think I'm anti-right ) who I wouldn't listen to on a regular basis. I do think it's great though that a well known B5 actor was successful afterward.

As for Zathuras, I'm not sure if he's the best character when it comes to quotable lines, but he's up there. Still like Garek from DS9 though, especially his repartee with Bashier.

 

Pity it's not free international shipping. Twenty odd quid for a badge is a bit much for me.

As I recall Doyle was a wall street banker type long before he was an actor so being a political/economic commentator is more like going back to his roots. I did by chance stumble on an interview with him on CNBC a while back and though I don't necessarily agree with his point of view, it seamed much more articulate, informed and thought out than the liberal bloke they had debating against him. Not that my opinion matters of course, being an evil foreigner and all.

As for Zathras, keep in mind he was only in four episodes, two of which only had one or two scenes with him in. Not much of a comparison to Garek who was a semi-regular who by the 5th & 6th season have become an integral part of the show.

I think part of what made Zathras work, despite (presumably) looking silly on paper, he had a sense of humanity (for lack of a better term) and was fare more astute and intelligent than he let on. In fact I think there was a bit in the 'In Valen's Name' comic where you do get a hint of that side of him.

I've actually recently got a bunch of the old B5 magazines off of eBay and I'm pretty sure there's a Tim Choate interview in there somewhere. I'll have to dig it out at some point to see what his thoughts on the character were.

 

You know, I know they called it Grey 17 is Missing, but they really should have called it something else and got rid of the whole Grey story. Then they could have spent more time maybe with the awesome fight between Marcus and Neroon. Would have made the episode excellent I think.

 

I think JMS has already gone on record with something to that effect. 20/20 hindsight and all that. I do know it was a script that he struggled to write, though I'm sure Jan knows more about it that I.

 

JMS jokes at conventions that the scripts that took the longest to write are generally not his best and that "Grey 17 was a three week write!" In the script book, though, he admits that many of the aspects of the 'missing level' part of the episode were simply done for convenience and "Concenience is the enemy of good writing."

Most people don't notice it, but there's a thematic connection between "Grey 17" and the next episode, "And the Rock..." In both youve got John and Delenn at a ceremony of some kind while a desperate fight goes on elsewhere and they intercut between the two.

Jan

 

He said the Gray plot was something supposed to go in the early seasons but he never got around to it, and then at the end of Season 3 he realized that Garibaldi would never be Chief of Security again so this would be his final chance to ever tell that story.

 

I forgot how much detail we got in Shadow Dancing. Man what an episode that was. It could have been a great season finale, but it wasn't and I think that's the most interesting thing about it. We got the war, Franklin ending Walkabout, and then end it by seeing Sheridan's wife?

I've got to say too I've been seeing a lot of people take issue with the F/X sequences in this series but I was very impressed with the sequences during the battle. Very well done and beautiful looking. Kinda wish it was longer, but with what we got, these were some of the best F/X sequences in the show.

 

The "bad CG" is pretty much limited to the first season. From about the end of the second onwards they'd pretty much got it all sussed out.
Some people just like to whinge but the fact is, even 'The Gathering' for all it's limitations, at the time featured the very best CG work seen on a TV show (other shows were still filming miniatures.) Of course it's crude by modern standards, but then how can it not be?

As for 'Shadow Dancing' as a season finale, it might be worth noting that JMS has never ended a B5 season with a "big battle" or conflagration episode. There's usually one near the end, but the end itself is always about the characters, not the ker'splosions.