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I was considering making this thread with a big effort post about the setting and all the characters and whatnot in the grand TVIV tradition when people in the Trek thread started calling for it. Babylon 5 is one of the foundational works of art and science fiction that shaped virtually all of my tastes, and I freaking love it. The fact that its one of the only shows of my childhood I can't stream at will is a source of constant angst for me because barely a day goes by where I don't think that I want to watch it. If I had the money I'd go buy the DVDs right now because just making this post makes me crave it. We are all made of Star Stuff, B5 thread. 
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Aug 8, 2016 20:27
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I've been marathoning through this show for the first time in almost 20 years since I saw it airing on TV as a wee lad. Even though I didn't fully get it, this show was one of the most formative pieces of fiction for me growing up. Boy does it hold up despite some obvious flaws... until Season 5. I went into Season 5 looking to give it all the benefit of the doubt, thinking it couldn't possibly be as bad as everyone claimed, but man oh man... And it's not even all the Telepath storyline. That's bad, don't get me wrong. The creepy telepath supremacism Byron keeps spouting, about how his followers need to be Better Than Mundanes by escewing violence, and then when they act like normal people he gets all sad and weepy about how they don't understanding his dream, that's bad. Lita letting herself get caught up in his cult, that's bad. The idiot ball Sheridan gets handed in various dealings with them, that's bad. Byron's continual lack of self-awareness in his refusal to take any real responsibility for his actions or those of his followers while doing everything in his power to shield them from consequences, that's bad. But man is the thing that REALLY gets under my skin of Lochley. She's so god drat self-righteous about having collaborated with a murderous fascist regime that tried to literally holocaust the entire planet, and when she gives her big loving speech to Garibaldi about HONOR AND DUTY and he just loving swallows it WHILE THE CREW APPLAUD, I was almost sick to my stomach. I almost couldn't believe the same showrunner who gave us the Clark presidency wrote that garbage. The best part is that we get to see exactly what kind of person she is when Bester shows up. The fact that she can look Sheridan in the eye and talk about Bester's "side of the story," about what he did to Garibaldi, and how right she was for treating him to loving tea and banter while throwing his victim in the brig... She never puts one toe out of line with Bester that entire episode. She folds to everything she's ordered to do, won't bend a single rule despite claiming to hate him and the Psi Corps and what they represent ('yes Mr. President, I grant that they are fascists, buuuuut...'). He marches in Jack Boots a-polished, and she rolls over for him right up until the very last second, when she gets bailed out by a technicality without having to stick her neck out even the smallest bit. And then she has the unmitigated gall to LECTURE BYRON about how much she's risking. gently caress OOOOOOFFFFF. Unless there's some BIIIIIG reveals coming up to make her less of a monstrous quisling, I don't know how much of her I'm going to be able to stomach, especially because all of the characters around her who actually have principles and courage keep bowing to her bullshit arguments.
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Sep 18, 2018 08:52
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turn left hillary!! noo posted:I'm going to take a moment here and be a little contrarian. B5 isn't generally about bludgeoning the viewer with black and white - the Shadows are given their say, the Vorlons prove to be not much better, and all of the individual characters have flaws and virtues - even Bester has moments of genuine humanity. Lochley's devotion to military discipline and the chain of command is both a strength and a weakness. You've covered the weakness part, but it's her loyalty and rock-solid commitment to duty that gets her the job, and the fact she chose the wrong side doesn't make those qualities any less admirable. Narsham posted:Nightwatch got applause. Morden was just trying to make people happy. Londo's guilty of far, far worse than Lochley is. And people who make bad decisions are often self-righteous about it. My issue isn't so much the idea of asking the question 'Who Mourns For The Concentration Camp Guard?' Duet is one of the best hours of television to ever come out of Star Trek. My issue is that so far nobody has taken Lochley to task for her absolute shirking of her own culpability. You say that the show never endorses Lochley just because some background extras clap for her speech because Night Watch got the same treatment and the Shadows had their chance to explain their point of view, but the people she shovels her rationalizations on the most are GARIBALDI AND SHERIDAN. These two were victimized by Clark and the Psi Corps so brutally and so personally that it can't be taken as anything but a "by jove, she's right!" when they let themselves get browbeaten by her perspective on why she Did Nothing Wrong. You're right that one of B5's greatest strengths is not beating you over the head with black and white morality, but that doesn't mean the show doesn't have a moral compass at it's heart. Londo is guilty of horrific atrocities, far worse than Lochley's mere collaboration, but he is absolutely haunted by them to the point where it drastically changes his character direction, and the show frames what he's done as wrong over and over. gently caress, VIR doesn't even get away without the show telling us that he shares at least some moral culpability for the crimes of his government against the Narn. "Dead. Dead. DEAD. DEAD. How do you apologize to them?" She makes a big point in her speech of saying that when a soldier is given an bad order, they have to make a choice and live with the consequences. Garibaldi asks her what choice SHE faced. He's all but daring her to have the guts to tell everyone there what War Crime she was ordered to carry out and then did under the justification that she was Just Following Orders (an argument that Ivanova eviscerates in the episode where she fights the Shadow Destroyers by the way). You can practically see Bester's reflection in his eyes when he asks her. And she 'answers,' by wrapping herself in the flag and dodging the question. Garibaldi deflates, defeated by this tactic. If that doesn't read as an endorsement of her point of view, I don't know what would. Granted, she's a new character so she's got to start somewhere, and maybe something will come of this. Granted, her purpose is to shake up the Status Quo (which she does very well). Granted, she's stuck drowning in this really weird and awkward Telepath Crisis storyline, and maybe that's getting in the way of an effective exploration of her character. Granted, a big part of Season 5 is to show that After The War things only get harder, and our heroes might not be up to this task just because they were up to the last one, and Lochley being a necessary evil to move forward could be taken as a reflection of that. I can concede all those points. But drat does it not sit right with me to see a guy who was mentally violated in one of the most horrific ways imaginable and a guy who was tortured nearly to death by the state tuck tail instead of taking her to task on her 'arguments.'
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Sep 19, 2018 03:21
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Hexyflexy posted:This happens all the time in our lives, that's the point. The individuals in B5 don't really matter, they live, get poo poo on, and die. The universe plods along anyway - you can't even gently caress that process up with super-weapons. Garibaldi fucks over 1984 Super Nazis like 500 years after his death. One of the fundamental thematic underpinnings of Bablyon 5 is putting paid to the notion that individuals are irrelevant in the grand scheme of history. There are literally two university professors who sit there saying that in that same episode and Delenn comes all the way from Minbar just to tell them to gently caress off. This isn't to say that B5 is ascribing to Great Man History Theory, but it does ascribe to the notion that history is made up of a collection of moments and decisions as much as it is grand natural and social forces, and therefore the individuals are enormously important. The Right People, In The Right Place, For The Right Reasons. I mean, poo poo, the climax of the whole series is telling The Gods to get on their bike after a repeated cycle of violence that lasted unknowable millennia, all because the first two people ever got the chance to say it to their faces.
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Sep 19, 2018 04:09
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:You're making an awful lot of assumptions here (and in your previous post). For example, assuming that Lochley committed a war crime. For all we know, she was just a loyal soldier who held to her post as the rest of the EA fell into civil war. Sheridan picked her as his successor to command Babylon 5 based on the strength of her character -- do you think he would've picked a war criminal? I personally don't think Lochley is a very good character but that's more because she barely features in Season 5 and she just feels squandered, unable to fit anywhere. Part of the problem is Lochley is that we don't know. The big reveal about why Sheridan trusts her is because they were married. But the story absolutely frames "she fought on the wrong side," as a big deal, and given that and his own personal history it's absolutely right that Garibaldi assumes the worst about her in the absence of any other information. So naturally he presses her on the issue, and her response is to dodge the question and have the story reward her for it with a tacit endorsement. I peaked at her wikipedia and there was nothing saying what her part in the war was. Leaving that an open question when we see intimately just how awful Clark's regime is is not a recipe to make me assume the best. It's easy to make the inference that she must have clean hands because Sheridan trusts her, but the script treats the question as one that's unworthy of an answer, and in the context of the larger show that is hosed. Again, Vir, a guy who literally Oscar Schindler's thousands of Narns out of nothing but pure morality, is not treated as having clean hands in what his people have done. Lochley doesn't seem to have to play by the same rules as everyone else, and that is frustrating. Yes, the show makes it very clear that people just going along with Evil are not automatically moral cowards or enablers, and their motives for doing so can be pure, as we saw at Proxima. But those people at Proxima at least got called out for what they HAD done, even if it was just sitting back and watching Bob Kelso slaughter civvies instead of doing it themselves. Our heroes confronted them with what they were responsible for, and they had to look in the mirror. Every time so far someone has tried to hold that mirror up to Lochley, she smashes it and gets approving nods for doing so, and that seems very counter to Bablyon 5's general ethos. quote:You mentioned Bester earlier and how bad it is that Lochley entertains him. Remember that Bester still wields a lot of power back on Earth and that he is, all in all, a charming and reasonable fellow -- there's a reason the audience adores him. The central cast of Babylon 5 had the luxury of dealing with Bester when they had no reason to entertain him and no legal structure compelling them to assist him. Lochley, as the commanding officer of an Earthforce installation, can't tell Bester to get hosed, and it's probably in her best interest to treat him cordially (something she even tells Sheridan, which he admits the logic of). Garibaldi, despite his antipathy towards Bester, is a private citizen and it'd be unwise of him to assault a Psi Cop or an Earthforce officer for the crime of talking to each other. Because that's basically what happens: Garibaldi finds out Bester is onboard and rushes to Lochley's office to attack him. I love Bester too. He's a fantastic antagonist and those surprising moments of humanity buried in his evil and his likability and charisma is what makes him special. But first off, being the commanding officer of an Earthforce installation absolutely never stopped Sinclair or Sheridan from telling Bester to get hosed. They were finding ways to screw him and undermine him LONG before they left the Alliance, because he's a backstabbing villain who endangers the station every time he shows up and everyone knows it. Granted to all your points, things would have gone very badly for Garibaldi if he's gotten to execute his well-justified revenge, and Lochley basically saves him from himself by locking him up. Hell, she even says that as long as she and nobody else sees him do it, he can put Bester's face through a grate anytime he gets the chance. But unless Lochley completely disbelieves Garibaldi's story, which she shouldn't because even if it's not admissible in court Lyta's scan is still proof that he is 100% guilty of kidnapping, torture, and violation of every Earth law governing Telepaths, then how she handles Bester strikes me as damning. You say that her following Bester's orders from her superiors isn't folding, but those orders never stopped anyone on the staff before her from putting right and wrong first and skirting those orders as much as possible so Bester would be foiled. You say that she lays out her logic to Sinclair in playing Bester's game and handling him with kid gloves, and he approves of her thinking... but that's part of the problem. He shouldn't agree with her thinking BECAUSE HE NEVER WOULD HAVE DONE IT THAT WAY. He should agree to abide by her approach because in the end she's the commander and it's her call, fine, but give it his blessing as "making too much sense?" Come on. Yes, in the end she's the one that finds the loophole that screws him over, but as I said before once she's done that she starts up a big lecture about how much she's stuck her neck out (she hasn't) and how she's not going to do anything to avert that Sword of Damocles that she's hung over all their heads. Every step of how she deals with Bester in that episode frames her collaboration with Clark's regime in the worst possible light. Have actual knowledge of the horrors right in front of you, ignore them and put on a mask. Get orders to do something morally bankrupt, don't put one toe out of line to do the right thing (which every other protagonist in the story has always done), just let it happen, and then feel superior about yourself for doing so. It's just... frustrating as hell. I dunno, maybe you're right, maybe I'm making leaps and assumptions here, and I'm definitely letting the current state of the world bleed into my reading. But I didn't have this kind of frustration about any other part of the show, just this first part of season 5. I really am trying to judge her by the same standard the narrative has taught me to judge every protagonist by, I'm not trying to argue in bad faith here. It just feels like her character and how it's treated is such a giant crossed wire compared to everyone else. EDITL turn left hillary!! noo posted:I'm guessing you haven't seen yet why Sheridan trusts her despite all that. I don't want to spoil anything so I can't really reply in full, but I do want to add as an aside that this is why I always encourage people to watch everything and form their own opinions. You've made me think and I don't know if I've ever seen your point made in quite this way before, and for that I thank you. Thanks! The tone of my posts probably come off as having an axe to grind or even grognardy, but I really did come in wanting to share my earnest feelings about the text, and I'm glad you found them interesting.  Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Sep 19, 2018 |
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Sep 19, 2018 05:37
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SlothfulCobra posted:I don't think the show ever went into detail on any big programs to remove Clark's influence, cronies, and the remnants of Nightwatch from Earth's governmental institutions. It seems like maybe they're just rushing the re-integration of the elements of Earth's government after the civil war like how America did with its civil war. 
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Sep 19, 2018 06:50
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For the record I have heroically resisted the urge to spoil Bablyon 5 in that thread and limited myself to spoiling Game of Thrones.
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Jun 9, 2020 01:05
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Jedit posted:Make it a 100k probe, cancelled when the Blind Thread gets to the end of S5. I've been biting my tongue not mentioning things in there that aren't even technically spoilers, like telling The Doctor he was right in spotting the Forbidden Planet reference. I'm sure I could confirm that, but the more I post in there the more likely it is I'll slip up. Better not to start. Super same. Like I find it hard to even blame someone for seeing a watcher write "I get a romantic vibe off Ivonova and Talia, but that can't be right in a 90s TV show, can it?" and wanting to reply to let them know that no, that is in fact right. I mean, its not a spoiler exactly even though there is more to that story to come, they've already seen it happen, you're just telling them that they have interpreted what they've already witnessed correctly. But even going that far is clearly too far when you can just let them keep watching and see how their relationship plays out and get their confirmation themselves. Which leaves me just resisting the urge to post anything at all and mostly just lurk the thread.
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Jun 9, 2020 01:33
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pentyne posted:
I don't know about that, I feel like at a certain point that just leaves the thread as nothing but the two watchers talking to each other, or more often past each other since they're not going at the same pace, and us creeping on them with gleeful grins occasionally. A little bit of meta-commentary and cross-talk helps keep the thread feeling lively and everyone feel like they're participating in some way.
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Jun 9, 2020 02:22
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mllaneza posted:Basically, think and act like a Vorlon. The Blind Watch Thread is a three-edged sword.
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Jun 9, 2020 02:30
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McCloud posted:lmao the newcomers absolutely tearing garibaldi to shreds is funny as hell. I admit I haven't watched b5 in several years and Season 1 is mostly a blur to me, but I remember Garibaldi being really sternly anti-fasc once Earth really hits the ground running on being fasc, so its been wild seeing them go so heavy on him being an ACAB Cop. Is he just a full-blown Actual Libertarian? I remember him grumbling about bureaucratic annoyances and espousing his "eye for an eye," model of justice to Delenn, so that would synch with him despising full-blown fascism but still being a right-wing idiot.
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Jun 11, 2020 03:52
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TraderStav posted:Welp. Now I have to get it and put that title card with it. It OK to kind of still hate Kosh because the Vorlons are horrid assholes and it took Sheridan getting in his face to make him stop being a tool for their horrible scheme and actually do something helpful.
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Jun 11, 2020 04:17
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McCloud posted:I think you're being a bit unfair here. There were rules of engagement between the Vorlons and the Shadows that iirc meant they didn't engage each other directly, presumably a rule that had been intact for millenia. They'd been chipping away at this rule for a long time but a direct confrontation would mean their cold war would escalate into full on genocidal war. Lets not forget the ultimate purpose of those rules though: the entire point of the cycle and the war is to prove an ideological point. Its like the One Dollar Bet from Trading Places, the Old Rich Guys don't care about the lives that they're destroying, they care about proving their belief system superior regardless of the cost to those they're using as pawns. Now, granted, Kosh seemed to be a legitimate good person. At the end of the day when the chips were down he stood for the Young Races interests rather than the dumb game and gave Sheridan what he needed. Not only that, he expressed remorse for doing things the way he had done them. Sheridan helped him recognize that he'd been wrong to demand things be done HIS way rather than Sheridan's way, and in retrospect with our eventual discovery of what the Vorlons and Shadows are really up to I like to interpret it as him realizing that the whole thing was wrong, and in his own oblique way that the "set in his ways," he's talking about was the entire manipulation of the Young Races into fighting the war for ideology rather than actual salvation. But I think its fair to call Kosh out for being the instrument of the Vorlon's grand design up to that point.
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Jun 11, 2020 05:18
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Torrannor posted:Oh yes, that part is amazing. It was the first time I really appreciated buying the expensive DVDs. It's the only show I have on record at home, and I'm glad I'm not at the mercy of distributors who may make it free some months and cost 30 bucks per season some other months. There are advantages to having physical possession of some media. I used to buy DVDs of tv and movies on the reg, but now I have nowhere to keep them so I haven't done it in years. Might be changing soon thought
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Jun 11, 2020 07:59
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:As for the rest of Earthforce, President Luchenko says that they'll put on trial anyone who directly performed war crimes in service of the Clarke regime, but that they need time to figure out who was a "willing participant" and who was only doing it out of fear of retribution and/or following orders. She also offers amnesty to anyone who defected to Sheridan's coup but, yeah, that is not exactly a great outlook. Even disregarding that there probably weren't many people in Earthforce who committed war crimes (the bombing of the Mars domes, the Proxima massacre, what else?) the fact there's such a proviso to her statement makes it seem pretty clear that, even post-Clarke, Earthforce would've had a lot of people who had fought for Clarke within it. President Luchenko's first words to Sheridan are that half of the General Staff wants him shot, and when the twist that he's been elected at the ISA's President comes down, the first thing that happens is that some nameless General storms into the office they're holding him in looking to snatch back the Presidential Pardon covering his subordinate officers because he's basically evaded whatever retribution they had planned for him in the wake of his resignation from the military. And of course, nobody seems to have a problem that the next commander of B5 was on Clarke's side of the war, and is extremely Loud And Proud about it. Earthforce and EarthGov clearly did absolutely NOTHING to get the Nazis out of its ranks in the wake of the Civil War. I mean poo poo, in the first conversation with Sheridan Luchenko's first priority is to drum up excuses for why nobody else did anything about Clarke as a preface for explaining why he needs to be punished for saving Earth from being entirely scoured of life by Space Hitler. Its actually incredibly depressing when you think about it. I mean, think about the level of crimes Clarke directed, from the assassination of his predecessor to his collusion with the Shadows to the orbital bombardments and starvation tactics to the incredibly public shootout to seize ISN to deployment of a psychic gestapo to implementing Orwellian torture and brainwashing facilities to ultimately trying to basically wipe out of the bulk of the human race... and his followers were largely not purged from civilian OR military leadership, to the point that the very first thing that happened to the guy who saved the human race from his tyranny was an act of political retribution for having done it and the #1 talking point of the new government being "Lets all move on." Milkfred E. Moore posted:Also, the ISA's whole 'you must let Mars go free if over half the population vote for it' to Earth is kind of hilarious in a post-Brexit context. Like, there's no way Mars is a self-sustaining colony, right? Eh. I feel like there wouldn't be a Free Mars movement on the scale we see in the show if its impossible for the Colony to sustain itself. And there's a pretty consistent implication that Earth squeezes the poo poo out of its Colonies in a very oppressive manner. Marcus brings up his own home's woes to build credibility with the Martians. I think there's even some implication that Proxima is doing better than a lot of other colonies before the war because it has more autonomy because of "The Proxima Treaty." Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Feb 15, 2021 |
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Feb 15, 2021 10:07
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Torrannor posted:It's of course entirely realistic, when you consider "denazification" in Japan or Italy for example, or even the allegedly successful examples in Germany. So many former fascists or fascist supporters ended up in high levels or government. What we really needed was a subplot where the Minbari were secretly sneaking the Shadow Tech Experts off Earth in the chaos of the post-war cleanup and then one of them appears with Minbari Walt Disney to give a fun presentation about how Mind-Machine Interfaces work in primetime.
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Feb 15, 2021 10:28
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sebmojo posted:yeah, it really stands up on a rewatch for all the cardboard sets and occasional hamminess The hamminess makes it better in some ways I think. Babylon 5 was written and acted more like a stage play than a TV drama, and the actors play for the cheap seats while the dialogue pontificates like it was written for people who showed up with their Opera Glasses even as it goofs for the unwashed cretins. Shakespearean in the complete meaning of the term!
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Feb 15, 2021 10:46
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McSpanky posted:Pretty sure JMS said that Kosh himself was poisoned by a crystalline substance that disrupted his energy patterns, something that a noncorporeal being would be vulnerable to (if you were familiar with the particulars of their "physiology", such as it is). More like luxology
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Feb 15, 2021 12:00
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Next thing you're going to tell me JMS ISN'T Merlin! 
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Feb 17, 2021 05:38
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Lockley giving that sanctimonious speech to the cast regulars who risked their lives toppling fascism and saving Earth as a dress-down for daring to question her only to have the Extra Crew give her a loving ovation for it is why I haven't successfully completed a rewatch of Season 5. Her character makes me ill.
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Oct 22, 2021 10:51
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MrL_JaKiri posted:It's a speech that would entirely land well with the rank and file, because it's what they're taught to believe. Would JMS do an in character "and then everyone clapped"? Dunno, maybe. I would hope the rank and file of B5 would have known better after living through the Shadow War and the Civil War. They weren't fed a steady diet of lies and propaganda about what was going on, they knew what Clark did at every step. Also the regulars who she dresses down the with speech fold like deck chairs, as if they're embarrassed when they should be infuriated by this nazi talking down to them after what the people she collaborated with did to Sheridan and the President she stood with almost wiped out the entire population of Earth.
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Oct 22, 2021 11:26
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SlothfulCobra posted:Garibaldi's accusations aren't even much to do with the fascism, he doesn't accuse her of bombing Mars or helping Nightwatch or any of the poo poo they were fighting against, it's just an accusation of "if you weren't with us, you were against us," which is its own perspective that could be problematic. I think this is a fair enough point, but if that's all they were after with Lochley's character then they fell woefully short of what DS9 accomplished on that same theme. Episodes like Duet, The Collaborator, Things Past and Ties of Blood and Water dig deep into the questions begged by the premise of "Good person on the side of fascists," and they don't give any credence to the fascism while they do it. Granted, Season 5 had a lot working against it, but I would have expected better from JMS is all.
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Oct 22, 2021 18:37
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Narsham posted:Ultimately, if your criteria for leadership is that the "peasants" have to be in charge or it's authoritarianism, I wonder what real-world governments have avoided authoritarianism in your eyes. I mean, poo poo, Delenn put the workers in charge of the Minbari when she had absolute power and could have instituted any government she wanted. What more do people want?
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Oct 23, 2021 00:30
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