Episode 2.12: Acts of Sacrifice
It’s getting so common that at this point I just want to make it a verb: if an episode of a TV show has one really good story and one really dumb one, that’s called Babylon Fiving.
“Hey, did you see Game of Thrones last night? The Jon stuff was great, but the Tyrion stuff was so bad.”
“Yeah, they really Babylon Fived that one, didn’t they?”
Technically, ACTS OF SACRIFICE only Babylon Fived the end of the episode; most of the early stuff was pretty good. The B-plot has Ivanova showing around some pig-faced space Nazis, which sounds like an insult but is a literal description of the characters. They’re called the Lumati, and they’re an allegedly advanced species whose help would be welcome in the war should Earth ever decide to actually get involved in it; Sheridan tells Ivanova to secure their allegiance “no matter what it takes,” and I immediately thought “No matter what? What if she has to have sex with one of them? No, that would be way too stupid.” Well guess what, Past Dan: you’re as dumb as whoever approved this script because that is exactly what happens.
The early stuff is only partly bad: the pig-faced space Nazis take a tour of the ship, and rate everything they see based on how well the Earthers oppress genetically inferior species, which leads to some great conversations and some fantastic questions: how far is Earth willing to go to get the aid it needs? Will they really ally themselves with pig-faced space Nazis? Dr. Franklin, the show’s ever-shining moral center, goes after them with a verbal hockey stick, laying out the case for helping everyone, even the undeserving, and giving in the process one of the most brilliant, subtle, backhanded slaps to Star Trek’s Prime Directive that I have ever heard. It’s a thing of beauty.
The audience is really starting to worry that Earth is going to have to make some kind of serious moral compromise, and then that worry disappears in a scene that I kind of like but also kind of don’t. The Lumati get to choose whatever they want to see, so they head to Down Below and are absolutely thrilled with the Darwinian nightmare of “systemic poverty,” which they apparently don’t have and have never encountered before. Kind of makes you wonder how useful and/or informed these morons really are. And yes, it’s kind of awesome to hear something we consider intrinsic to society being described by an outsider as a deliberate choice, and yes, I am absolutely leftist enough to believe that systemic poverty is a problem we can solve and choose not to. But a) this scene scuttles any need for Earth to make a meaningful moral compromise, and b) this scene is played for laughs, so what could have been a trenchant societal commentary is reduced to an Ivanova eyeroll with that “if it’s not one thing it’s another” kind of look she excels at. What could have been B5’s “In the Pale Moonlight” is now more like B5's “random filler episode with, I don’t know, a baseball game or something.” But please don’t think that this is as bad as this plotline is going to get, because that’s just a misstep, not a full-on disaster, and we are headed straight for full-on disaster territory, believe me.
Ivanova takes the Lumati back to Sheridan’s office and, their useful plot purpose fulfilled, they abruptly become a pair of bumbling idiots demanding that the only way to seal the deal is with—exactly like I feared and discarded as too stupid to use—sex. They can’t make a deal until they seal it with sex. Now it is my turn to eyeroll, as B5 dives into one of those bizarro C-plots that they clearly think is hilarious when really it’s just tedious and, in this case, degrading. Ivanova, rather than rejecting this idiocy out of hand, goes to Dr. Franklin, and Franklin, rather than reject this idiocy out of hand, makes some sexist jokes and lowers my opinion of him significantly. Then Ivanova makes the (completely asinine) assumption that these Lumati don’t actually know what human sex is like, so she decides to pull a bad “When Harry Met Sally” routine and con them into thinking that sex actually took place. She does some quick research on Lumati sex, while meanwhile the Lumati do somehow less than zero research on Human sex, and he shows up and she jumps around and shouts, and it’s agonizingly dumb for the audience forced to watch it and yet somehow the Lumati believe it? Which really only furthers the conclusion that the Lumati are too ill-informed and sheltered to possibly be useful allies in anything, let alone a war?
I am very disappointed in everyone who read this script and allowed it to be filmed. It starts with a cool idea, runs it off the rails, then goes for some cheap laughs and makes a fool out of their lead actress. And I’m sure that somewhere there’s an interview, or one of those old chat room commentaries, where JMS talks about what a great scene this was and how Claudia Christian really hit it out the park, but he is wrong. It is dumb and insulting.
And that's sad, because meanwhile there's a wholeA-plot going on that's genuinely fantastic. The Narn/Centauri war continues apace, and Earth and Minbar are refusing to get involved, and G'Kar is doing his best to change their minds. That makes this a G'Kar episode, so it's already awesome, but Katsulas digs into with gusto and makes it even better than we're expecting. The Narn and Centauri populations on the station are starting to chafe against each other, and I was impressed with how well the day-players represented the overall thoughts and emotions of their respective species: the Centauri are laughing and drinking, mocking others while convinced of their own superiority, and the Narn are seething for retribution and secretly planning a genocidal riot. G'Kar does everything he can to prevent this, up to and including a knife fight with a Narn ringleader, because he is convinced that the only way to win the war is to gain allies, and the only way to gain allies is to always be (at least in public) the good guys on the station. And he is absolutely correct, because by the end of the episode Sheridan and Delenn are both ready to defy their own governments to send him secret aid, which is news that he greets with the most ominous bout of maniacal laughter in television history. Sheridan and Delenn have given him a pittance, but they've also given him leverage: he now has information he can hold over them, at risk of their own careers, to get more out of them in the future. G'Kar manages to be the most villainous good guy ever, and I love it.
Meanwhile there's some kind of C-plot where Londo is besieged on every side by well-wishers plying him for favors, thanks to his newfound celebrity and influence, and all he really wants is to go back to the old days when nobody cared about him and he could drink and gamble his life away in peace. He gives a big speech to Garibaldi about this, but it's only maybe 70% emotionally powerful because it's founded on the idea that apparently Londo and Garibaldi are good buddies? Which Londo has talked about in the past, but which I never believed because they've only told us, never showed us, and Londo is basically a full-time lying and self-delusion machine. But I guess now we're supposed to believe that it's true? Or maybe this is Londo finally confronting the harsh realities underpinning his web of lies, and realizing that no matter how many times he says it Garibaldi not actually his good, close friend? I don't know, man, it was kind of weird. And then at the end Londo 'helps' Sheridan and Garibaldi by not making a big deal about the Narn riot ringleader, which I think was a favor to Garibaldi but which I also think makes no sense because the whole point was trying to avoid a trial, and the things Londo demands would require a trial? This whole Londo thing was weird; it felt like we missed a scene somewhere.
So: how does an awesome G'Kar story, half of a pretty good Ivanova story, a very confusing Londo story, and one numbingly dumb scene shake out in final analysis? I'd say somewhere around a C+? B-? If everything were as good as the G'Kar stuff, this would be one of the best episodes yet, but we need to take the good with the bad.
“Hey, did you see Game of Thrones last night? The Jon stuff was great, but the Tyrion stuff was so bad.”
“Yeah, they really Babylon Fived that one, didn’t they?”
Technically, ACTS OF SACRIFICE only Babylon Fived the end of the episode; most of the early stuff was pretty good. The B-plot has Ivanova showing around some pig-faced space Nazis, which sounds like an insult but is a literal description of the characters. They’re called the Lumati, and they’re an allegedly advanced species whose help would be welcome in the war should Earth ever decide to actually get involved in it; Sheridan tells Ivanova to secure their allegiance “no matter what it takes,” and I immediately thought “No matter what? What if she has to have sex with one of them? No, that would be way too stupid.” Well guess what, Past Dan: you’re as dumb as whoever approved this script because that is exactly what happens.
The early stuff is only partly bad: the pig-faced space Nazis take a tour of the ship, and rate everything they see based on how well the Earthers oppress genetically inferior species, which leads to some great conversations and some fantastic questions: how far is Earth willing to go to get the aid it needs? Will they really ally themselves with pig-faced space Nazis? Dr. Franklin, the show’s ever-shining moral center, goes after them with a verbal hockey stick, laying out the case for helping everyone, even the undeserving, and giving in the process one of the most brilliant, subtle, backhanded slaps to Star Trek’s Prime Directive that I have ever heard. It’s a thing of beauty.
The audience is really starting to worry that Earth is going to have to make some kind of serious moral compromise, and then that worry disappears in a scene that I kind of like but also kind of don’t. The Lumati get to choose whatever they want to see, so they head to Down Below and are absolutely thrilled with the Darwinian nightmare of “systemic poverty,” which they apparently don’t have and have never encountered before. Kind of makes you wonder how useful and/or informed these morons really are. And yes, it’s kind of awesome to hear something we consider intrinsic to society being described by an outsider as a deliberate choice, and yes, I am absolutely leftist enough to believe that systemic poverty is a problem we can solve and choose not to. But a) this scene scuttles any need for Earth to make a meaningful moral compromise, and b) this scene is played for laughs, so what could have been a trenchant societal commentary is reduced to an Ivanova eyeroll with that “if it’s not one thing it’s another” kind of look she excels at. What could have been B5’s “In the Pale Moonlight” is now more like B5's “random filler episode with, I don’t know, a baseball game or something.” But please don’t think that this is as bad as this plotline is going to get, because that’s just a misstep, not a full-on disaster, and we are headed straight for full-on disaster territory, believe me.
Ivanova takes the Lumati back to Sheridan’s office and, their useful plot purpose fulfilled, they abruptly become a pair of bumbling idiots demanding that the only way to seal the deal is with—exactly like I feared and discarded as too stupid to use—sex. They can’t make a deal until they seal it with sex. Now it is my turn to eyeroll, as B5 dives into one of those bizarro C-plots that they clearly think is hilarious when really it’s just tedious and, in this case, degrading. Ivanova, rather than rejecting this idiocy out of hand, goes to Dr. Franklin, and Franklin, rather than reject this idiocy out of hand, makes some sexist jokes and lowers my opinion of him significantly. Then Ivanova makes the (completely asinine) assumption that these Lumati don’t actually know what human sex is like, so she decides to pull a bad “When Harry Met Sally” routine and con them into thinking that sex actually took place. She does some quick research on Lumati sex, while meanwhile the Lumati do somehow less than zero research on Human sex, and he shows up and she jumps around and shouts, and it’s agonizingly dumb for the audience forced to watch it and yet somehow the Lumati believe it? Which really only furthers the conclusion that the Lumati are too ill-informed and sheltered to possibly be useful allies in anything, let alone a war?
I am very disappointed in everyone who read this script and allowed it to be filmed. It starts with a cool idea, runs it off the rails, then goes for some cheap laughs and makes a fool out of their lead actress. And I’m sure that somewhere there’s an interview, or one of those old chat room commentaries, where JMS talks about what a great scene this was and how Claudia Christian really hit it out the park, but he is wrong. It is dumb and insulting.
And that's sad, because meanwhile there's a wholeA-plot going on that's genuinely fantastic. The Narn/Centauri war continues apace, and Earth and Minbar are refusing to get involved, and G'Kar is doing his best to change their minds. That makes this a G'Kar episode, so it's already awesome, but Katsulas digs into with gusto and makes it even better than we're expecting. The Narn and Centauri populations on the station are starting to chafe against each other, and I was impressed with how well the day-players represented the overall thoughts and emotions of their respective species: the Centauri are laughing and drinking, mocking others while convinced of their own superiority, and the Narn are seething for retribution and secretly planning a genocidal riot. G'Kar does everything he can to prevent this, up to and including a knife fight with a Narn ringleader, because he is convinced that the only way to win the war is to gain allies, and the only way to gain allies is to always be (at least in public) the good guys on the station. And he is absolutely correct, because by the end of the episode Sheridan and Delenn are both ready to defy their own governments to send him secret aid, which is news that he greets with the most ominous bout of maniacal laughter in television history. Sheridan and Delenn have given him a pittance, but they've also given him leverage: he now has information he can hold over them, at risk of their own careers, to get more out of them in the future. G'Kar manages to be the most villainous good guy ever, and I love it.
Meanwhile there's some kind of C-plot where Londo is besieged on every side by well-wishers plying him for favors, thanks to his newfound celebrity and influence, and all he really wants is to go back to the old days when nobody cared about him and he could drink and gamble his life away in peace. He gives a big speech to Garibaldi about this, but it's only maybe 70% emotionally powerful because it's founded on the idea that apparently Londo and Garibaldi are good buddies? Which Londo has talked about in the past, but which I never believed because they've only told us, never showed us, and Londo is basically a full-time lying and self-delusion machine. But I guess now we're supposed to believe that it's true? Or maybe this is Londo finally confronting the harsh realities underpinning his web of lies, and realizing that no matter how many times he says it Garibaldi not actually his good, close friend? I don't know, man, it was kind of weird. And then at the end Londo 'helps' Sheridan and Garibaldi by not making a big deal about the Narn riot ringleader, which I think was a favor to Garibaldi but which I also think makes no sense because the whole point was trying to avoid a trial, and the things Londo demands would require a trial? This whole Londo thing was weird; it felt like we missed a scene somewhere.
So: how does an awesome G'Kar story, half of a pretty good Ivanova story, a very confusing Londo story, and one numbingly dumb scene shake out in final analysis? I'd say somewhere around a C+? B-? If everything were as good as the G'Kar stuff, this would be one of the best episodes yet, but we need to take the good with the bad.
I didn’t even talk about the guest stars! The main Lumati dude and the Centauri merchant in an early scene are both well-known character actors from the 80s and 90s, but the biggest shock was the secondary Lumati dude, whose voice I recognized immediately: that’s Paul Williams! He wrote all the songs in The Muppet Movie, among other things. Seeing him as the auxiliary Ugnaut in some random SF show was pretty bizarre.
ReplyDeleteIvanova: "The Centauri government issued a statement saying it didn't break its promise to not attack civilian targets. They accuse the Narns of deliberately placing military targets within the civilian population in order to use their own people as shields."
ReplyDeleteBoy watching this for the first time in May 2021 against the backdrop of the attacks by Israel on Palestinian civilian targets SURE IS INTERESTING.