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Re-Watching DS9

I'm finally over the cold, but I had to take care of some things in Real Life and make up for lost time over there. But now I'm back at it here!

There's also the news. How shall I say it? It's like watching a train-wreck in slow motion. Why am I mentioning the news? Because it perfectly dovetails into the opening teaser of:

"Dust to Dust" (B5 S3E6)

The opening teaser of this episode is like a mini-episode in and of itself. A member of Nightwatch is harassing a merchant on the station for having a poster that protests President "Total Scumbag" Clark. That's my nickname for him. Sheridan stands up for the merchant, and the guard reluctantly backs down, but you can tell there's going to be continuing and ever-growing tension between Sheridan and the Clark Administration. I typed Trump Regime without even thinking about it and then had to correct myself.

Then there's another moment, completely unrelated, where Londo threatens the Drazi, saying the Centauri could do the same thing to them as they did to the Narn. To quote That Orange Guy, who was himself quoting mobsters, "It would be a real shame." "There will be consequences."

Anyway, enough about how much the above relates to someone I've typed enough about and onto the Main Plot.

Bester returns! It looks like Bester is turning into a frenemy on Babylon 5. Sheridan doesn't like him. Ivanova wants to hurt him. Franklin starts to think it's not such a bad idea. Garibaldi can't stand him. Whether they want to admit it or not, I actually have to agree with Bester. They work well together.

But that's getting ahead of myself in the episode. Before Bester reaches the station, Sheridan reminds everyone that they have so much more to hide from Bester than they did before. What they know about Clark, how they leaked that information out, and having a secret resistance of their own are all things Bester can't find out about. To say nothing about the rouge telepaths they helped last season. That all got me imagining about what Bester would do if he found out and how he'd react! The solution to have a bunch of Minbari Telepaths to block out anything Bester can sense is golden. A quick fix before Franklin can give Bester an injection to suppress his telepathy for a few hours.

This time, Bester is after someone who the command crew of Babylon 5 would also like to see arrested: someone, and a main distributer at that, supplying a drug called Dust. It enhances the strength of Telepaths for several hours, and can potentially give others telepathic abilities. If you invade someone else's mind while using dust, you experience everything they experience. The distributor is preparing to sell dust to alien governments to be used as weapons.

G'Kar buys dust off of a dealer, hoping it will harness telepathy in Narns. A twist when the dealer asks who G'Kar will test the drug on and then, after the dealer leaves, G'Kar uses it on himself! G'Kar's eyes turn black. He sees things in a stylized MTV music video way. Then he looks like he's wigging out.

One of the best exchanges when Bester and Garibaldi are looking for the distributor comes from when they're interrogating a suspect who might know where the distributor is, and the suspect denies knowing anything and pulls the old "I have rights!" card. Bester, even without his telepathic abilities can see right threw him and says, "Officially, he has rights. Unofficially, he's lying." Line of the episode! Bester bluffed and got the suspect to tell them everything about where the dirstributor is.

Then comes the scene of the episode! G'Kar goes to Londo's quarters, tosses aside Vir, and heads straight for Londo. G'Kar looks like he's going to tear Londo limb-from-limb. Then the episode cuts away to Garibaldi and Bester catching the Dust Dealer, before cutting back to Londo, who's on the floor. I like that they cut away because now I can imagine G'Kar doing things to Londo that would've been censored for violence on daytime cable TV in the '90s.

After that, G'Kar enters Londo's mind. The black background while G'Kar's in there is perfect. Why? Because there's nothing else there. It's just Londo and G'Kar. He finds out that the only reason Londo was on Babylon 5 was because no one else was stupid enough to take the job. He taunts Londo about it, but it makes him more than just a little bit hypocritical, because G'Kar took the job too!

After the taunting, G'Kar looks through Londo's deep, dark secrets, and finds out that he conspired with Morden. Then G'Kar becomes enraged. He wants to know everything. "All of it, Mollari!!!! ALL OF IT!!!!!!!" Then the images flash by fast and frantically, at the same pace that G'Kar is taking it all in. "ALL OF IT!!!!!!!!" Such an intense scene!

Riding right off of that, G'Kar suddenly sees his father, who's hanging and dying. Then his father tells him, "Honor my name." That would've been bound to send him over the edge for sure. Until Kosh projects an avatar of a Narnian Angel to tell G'Kar to break the cycle of hatred. That was a twist that I didn't see coming, but a twist that had to happen since JMS wasn't going to have G'Kar kill Londo and have Londo be written out of the show.

In the aftermath, G'Kar is sentenced to 60 days in jail. 60 days for drug use, two assaults, and one mind invasion? Ummm... I like G'Kar, but the Judge basically gave him a slap on the wrist. Though I think she only did it because Sheridan stuck up for G'Kar.

Overall, this is another one of my favorite Babylon 5 episodes. Definitely in the Top 5. I would've loved this episode if I'd seen it when I was 16. This series keeps getting more and more exciting as they keep getting deeper and deeper in. It's like a page-turner now. I give it a 10.

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"Exogenesis" (B5 S3E7)

In a Nutshell: This wasn't just a flop. It was a belly flop! And it was just as painful as the real thing would be if you jumped off the diving board and landed right smack-dab on your belly.

The A-Plot: Some weird parasite that looks like a Ceti Eel but it isn't, gets onto some random person's back and dissolves itself into his vertebrae while he screams? This looks like it's going to be a stupid one. But I'll keep an open mind. Interesting shots of Franklin conducting the autopsy, after this person has died.

Marcus gets a storyline devoted to him. He's trying to find out what's going on with his contacts Downbelow. They're not acting normal. Garibaldi essentially blows him off. But Franklin is willing to help. It took until half-way through the episode before I realized that the Marcus Story and Franklin Story were connected. If this episode had held my attention better, I think I would've made the connection a lot sooner.

Marcus and Franklin find a bunch of people Downbelow taken over by the parasite. Just like the Ceti Eels in TWOK, these parasites take over people's minds. I know that in TWOK it only made them highly receptive to suggestion, but you understand what I'm getting at. They weren't in control of their mental faculties.

These people in Downbelow take Marcus and Franklin prisoner. Franklin is then taken to try to cure one of them who's dying from the parasites. Marcus breaks free but no awesome fighting; he just breaks free. Then he finds out the people who've been infected by the parasites are worse than he thought. It goes from feeling like TWOK to feeling like "Conspiracy" (TNG), as they surround Marcus.

Then the parasites give some noble, holier-than-thou speech about what they're doing. I'm not buying it. Franklin is skeptical but says they'll run tests on them. I've stopped caring.

The B-Plot: Someone is promoted to Lieutenant. I can't remember his name, but I've seen him around. Sheridan wants Ivanova to feel him out to see if he can be trusted with top-secret information. That's a stupid, stupid, fucking stupid idea. Just because he's promoted to Lieutenant doesn't mean he's ready to be part of Sheridan's War Council. If anything, he's more likely than not to blow their cover.

Ivanova invites the Lieutenant over to her quarters to get to know him better. He thinks Ivanova might want to go out on a date with him. Which could've led to bad sitcom-level misunderstandings. But it doesn't. What we get isn't ridiculous (which could've been entertaining) but just flat. Ivanova wants to know how he'd react if following orders and protecting Earth conflicted with each other and he said it wasn't for him to make those kinds of decisions. He'd report anyone who goes against orders. She dismisses him and that's it. Now she can tell Sheridan something they both should've already known.

Button On the Episode: Ivanova got flowers from someone earlier, she figures out they were from Marcus, then she gives them back to him and says, "Keep them!" The End.

Overall: By the 35-minute mark, I was struggling to still watch. I kept resisting the urge to either turn it off or skip to the end. And it's bad when I take a break around the 40-minute mark and switch to watching YouTube Videos of pediatrists removing callouses and corns from feet. Seriously, that's what I watched instead for a bit! But after that, I ended up finishing the episode and the whole thing felt anti-climactic.

This one really hurts. Especially coming off of last episode. To go from one of my favorite episodes to what I think is one of the worst episodes ever. Is it worse than some of the worst of Season 1? Well, let me put it this way: I don't remember them feeling this bad! It was a struggle to keep track, a struggle to watch, and a struggle to even care. None of it felt satisfying. Could it have been worse? It can always be worse. But this was pretty bad. I give it a 2.

Yes, you read that right. Not my kind of episode. As bad as a 3 is, it's still watchable. Even if I'm thinking, "What the Hell did I just watch?!" Any worse than that and it becomes a real struggle. With this one, I just had such a hard time getting all the way through it. That's why it's a 2. Hopefully this is the worst episode of the season.

"So what does a 1 look like to you?" You're going to find out, when I get to "Threshold"... Coming Soon!

And with that, I've closed the four-episode gap between DS9/B5 and VOY. So, my next review is going to be "Prototype" over in the VOY Forum, before I come back to DS9 for "Return to Grace".
 
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David Corwin was the one getting promoted.

The reason for the Ivanova subplot does make sense.

Since he will now be in a position where he is much more likely to find things out simply because his scope and level of responsibilities increase, Sheridan needed to know if Corwin could be trusted enough to not rat them out. If he was, they have another person they can rely on. If not, they would need to take extra measures to make sure he doesn't find out what they are doing.

I do agree it's a pretty weak episode, but I tend to give this one a 4. I can assure you, though, that this is the only weak episode of the season. (And season 4, for that matter.)

Of course, that statement is subjective, and you might find another one really weak. (Though I sincerely doubt it.)
 
I agree that it's not B5 at anywhere near its best, but a couple of points:
-The flowers were from Corwin to Ivanova. Ivanova assumes they were from Marcus, which is a bit of a sitcom-level misunderstanding.
-The aliens are symbiotic, not parasitic, so it would be more fair to compare them to Trill symbionts than the "Conspiracy" aliens (of course, in the novelvese those two are connected).

For me the biggest weakness of this story is that it's another case of B5 introducing a concept that might have some long-term story value but that's ultimately never going to be referenced again after the closing credits.
 
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