Episode 1.7: The War Prayer
Another Londo episode 😐
This one works a little better than most, though, because this time Londo's the voice of reason instead of the goofball man-child trying to get away with something. Winnie from the Wonder Years shows up and wants to marry her boyfriend for love, and Londo tries to convince them that love is beside the point in Centauri marriage, but they won't go along with it and he gives a labored speech about dancing, and then in the end he uses his own culture against itself: he won't allow them to marry against their parents' wishes, but he will totally hook them up with highly-placed aristocratic sponsors who will take them in and teach them the ways of the upper crust, which is a neat loophole that basically overrides their arranged marriages and gives them a chance to grow up enough to choose for themselves. I fully assume that, when the time comes, they will not marry each other, because they're both currently airheaded morons, and a few years of maturity will move them far away from each other emotionally, but I think that's part of the point. Young love, as sweet as it is, is often misguided, and it helps make Londo's predicament of how to handle the lovers a lot more interesting when we can clearly see that, for all the platitudes, these are basically a couple of callow idiots throwing their lives away. We don't want them to be forced into loveless arranged marriages, but we don't really want them to marry each other, either. Londo threads that needle pretty dang well, and I admit he's starting to grow on me.
In other news, it's apparently Old Flame Night on Babylon 5, as Catherine Sakai is still around plus now Ivanova's ex shows up as well. They get together more quickly than I'd expected, but it turns out this is because the REAL plot is about how he's secretly an anti-alien terrorist, and now Ivanova has to turn against her love. This whole story is a little too rushed to have the weight it thinks it has, but at least it ends with Sinclair doing Garibaldi's job again, so all is well. Someone on the station is attacking and even killing aliens (which seems like a weird word for non-humans to use about themselves, but there you go), and of course Ivanova's ex is part of it, and of course it ends with Sinclair punching people while Garibaldi races through the halls, trying desperately for once in his life to arrive at a fight before it's already over. He sort of does, but Sinclair still gets the Hero Moment, and the day is saved.
One deft little retcon here refers back to two of the characters from the pilot who didn't make it into the series: the doctor and the telepath. In reality, the show took almost a year to get picked up, so the actors eventually took other jobs and moved on; in the world of the show, it's revealed that they are the only two humans to have seen what's inside of a Vorlon environmental suit, so they were pulled back to Earth for new assignments and, we assume, extensive debriefing. That wasn't part of the original plan for the series, but it's a brilliant way of using the loss of key actors to further the story. I dig it.
I assume that we'll be seeing a lot more of the anti-alien Homeguard and their cool stealth technology in future episodes. And I dearly hope that we'll eventually see more of Winnie from the Wonder Years, once she's been properly trained by super competent Centauri politicians, but I think that's less likely.
I further hope that the next episode does not begin with yet another old flame showing up out of nowhere: we've had three episodes in a row with that plotline, not to mention a subplot in THE GATHERING, which means out of the first eight installments of Babylon 5 fully half of them have revolved around old lovers showing up to cause trouble. I'm sensing a theme, J. Michael Straczynski.
This one works a little better than most, though, because this time Londo's the voice of reason instead of the goofball man-child trying to get away with something. Winnie from the Wonder Years shows up and wants to marry her boyfriend for love, and Londo tries to convince them that love is beside the point in Centauri marriage, but they won't go along with it and he gives a labored speech about dancing, and then in the end he uses his own culture against itself: he won't allow them to marry against their parents' wishes, but he will totally hook them up with highly-placed aristocratic sponsors who will take them in and teach them the ways of the upper crust, which is a neat loophole that basically overrides their arranged marriages and gives them a chance to grow up enough to choose for themselves. I fully assume that, when the time comes, they will not marry each other, because they're both currently airheaded morons, and a few years of maturity will move them far away from each other emotionally, but I think that's part of the point. Young love, as sweet as it is, is often misguided, and it helps make Londo's predicament of how to handle the lovers a lot more interesting when we can clearly see that, for all the platitudes, these are basically a couple of callow idiots throwing their lives away. We don't want them to be forced into loveless arranged marriages, but we don't really want them to marry each other, either. Londo threads that needle pretty dang well, and I admit he's starting to grow on me.
In other news, it's apparently Old Flame Night on Babylon 5, as Catherine Sakai is still around plus now Ivanova's ex shows up as well. They get together more quickly than I'd expected, but it turns out this is because the REAL plot is about how he's secretly an anti-alien terrorist, and now Ivanova has to turn against her love. This whole story is a little too rushed to have the weight it thinks it has, but at least it ends with Sinclair doing Garibaldi's job again, so all is well. Someone on the station is attacking and even killing aliens (which seems like a weird word for non-humans to use about themselves, but there you go), and of course Ivanova's ex is part of it, and of course it ends with Sinclair punching people while Garibaldi races through the halls, trying desperately for once in his life to arrive at a fight before it's already over. He sort of does, but Sinclair still gets the Hero Moment, and the day is saved.
One deft little retcon here refers back to two of the characters from the pilot who didn't make it into the series: the doctor and the telepath. In reality, the show took almost a year to get picked up, so the actors eventually took other jobs and moved on; in the world of the show, it's revealed that they are the only two humans to have seen what's inside of a Vorlon environmental suit, so they were pulled back to Earth for new assignments and, we assume, extensive debriefing. That wasn't part of the original plan for the series, but it's a brilliant way of using the loss of key actors to further the story. I dig it.
I assume that we'll be seeing a lot more of the anti-alien Homeguard and their cool stealth technology in future episodes. And I dearly hope that we'll eventually see more of Winnie from the Wonder Years, once she's been properly trained by super competent Centauri politicians, but I think that's less likely.
I further hope that the next episode does not begin with yet another old flame showing up out of nowhere: we've had three episodes in a row with that plotline, not to mention a subplot in THE GATHERING, which means out of the first eight installments of Babylon 5 fully half of them have revolved around old lovers showing up to cause trouble. I'm sensing a theme, J. Michael Straczynski.
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