![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakOne of the many virtues of Babylon 5 is that each of the four Ambassadors introduced in the pilot – Delenn, Londo, G’Kar and Kosh – gets an Aide who becomes an important supporting character with their own voice, offering simultanously a chance for the audience to see the Ambasador in question interact with someone from their own culture and see them in their own context, as opposed to them being presented from a human pov.
The big exception here is the combination of Lyta and the two Koshs. We meet Lyta first, before we meet Kosh; she’s the original station telepath, replaced for Doylist reasons but later coming back into the show as a regular with a new official job description (aide to the Vorlon Ambassador). We also see her interact more with other characters than with her ambassador(s), and remain in her pov when she is with either of the Koshs. This is partly due to the nature of the Vorlons, but also because Lyta’s overall function in the story isn’t originally defined by her relationship with Kosh, and doesn’t end once there is no more Vorlon on Babylon 5. Nonetheless, what we do get of Lyta in her capacity as Ambassadorial Aide makes some points about either Vorlon, and thus I won’t leave her out of this post.
Lyta, being born into the Psi Corps, arguably only stops looking for someone to follow and dedicate her life to in mid season 5. Earlier, she exchanges the Corps ideology and constrictions not so much for freedom as for someone else to serve. The Vorlons change her physically and mentally to a degree that Psi Corps could only dream of before making her Kosh’s aide. Note that the reveal in s1 that Psi Corps tries to artificially enhance Psi ratings of telepaths and achieve telekinesis is treated as a significant proof of their sinister nature. („Experimenting on humans“ usually is.) The first time we see Lyta with Kosh and realise she’s been operated on so that she can now breathe in a Vorlon environment, can take the energy being that is a Vorlon inside her, and that her Psi abilities are no longer those she’s been born with, by contrast, is played as a moment of ecstasy and awe on Lyta’s part, but in the overall narrative equally works as one of many hints that the Vorlons aren’t the angelic beings Sheridan & Co at this point assume they are. (Or rather, they’re angels in the grim modern horror movie sense.)
Of all the ambassadorial aides, Lyta is the one most literally used (and almost used up). With Kosh I, this is an experience she treasures, as she gets the sense that he has come to care for „the younger races“ in general and for her in particular. And the visualisation of Kosh transferring from his environmental suit into Lyta certainly has erotic overtones. With Kosh II, however, it’s point blank rape, and visualized as such, the camera showing Lyta after Kosh II has returned into his suit looking brutalized and shaking, and that’s before he starts to inflict telekinetic damage on her. The scene where Delenn finds her is very much an „abused wife told to leave abusive partner“ dialogue. Not surprisingly, subsequently Lyta becomes the only one of the aides to turn against the ambassador she works for, enabling Sheridan & Co to engineer his death. This darkest of all Ambassador-Aide relationships even has a bitter afternote: with the Vorlon government no longer paying for Lyta’s upkeep, and the people on the station she’s just risked her life for unwilling to, she’s forced to return to the original authoritarian regime she came from in order to make a living is only the first part of this. Then comes the reveal that the Vorlons engineered not just Lyta’s new abilities, which make her increasingly unable to live in human society, but are responsible for the creation of all telepaths, as they needed war weapons against the Shadows, without bothering to provide them with a way to live beyond being a weapon. Lyta-as-aide provides possibly the darkest characterisation of the Vorlons the show offers. Yes, there’s also the planet killer used in the final stages of the Shadow war, but the impression the show gives is that this is something unprecedented, something the Vorlons hadn’t done before. Whereas their creation of the telepaths was a long term project that took centuries to achieve, if not millennia, and no matter how much affection Kosh I may or may not have felt for Lyta, the behavior of Kosh II lays bare what Lyta truly is to the Vorlons: a slave.
On to the other Aides, whom we first meet in that function: Vir, Na’Toth and Lennier. The audience sees the first encounter between Na’Toth and G’Kar as well as that between Lennier and Delenn (and in the same episode, too); we don’t see the first meeting between Londo and Vir (Vir gets introduced sarcastically by Londo to Garibaldi in the first episode as „my diplomatic staff, newly arrived), though arguably out of all the aides Vir subsequently becomes the one with both the greatest narrative significance and the closest relationship to his ambassador.
All three of these aides are to a degree consciously mentored and/or seen as younger selves by their ambassadors. This is most explicit with Lennier and Delenn, as their first encounter is later shown to literally repeat the dialogue between Delenn’s first encounter with her Mentor, Dukhat, the leader of the Grey Council. But when you look at their respective characterisations, Lennier and Delenn aren’t that similar. Delenn does see herself as a woman of destiny, is determined to make prophecies apply to her, and while harboring some secret guilt is more or less convinced of her rightousness through the story. Lennier never comes across ambitious in that degree, or indeed ambitious at all. He thrives on serving. Not blindly; he has his own opinions, which are not always Delenn’s. But even had the story taken another turn for him, I can’t see Lennier leading either as a politician or as a religious icon.
Lyta with Kosh I aside, Lennier is arguably the Aide who idolizes his Ambassador the most. The scene illustrating that best to me is during the Minbari Civil War when he tells the other Minbari Delenn lives in a better world than they do and thinks of people better than they are. That would be the same Delenn who carries the secret of having started the Earth/Minbari war around with her without ever telling it to her human husband because she’s convinced Sheridan couldn’t handle it, who makes a „greater good requires sacrifice“ calculation of not revealing the existence of the Shadows to G’Kar when the Narns get slaughtered by the Centauri and their new allies (for which she later apologizes to G‘Kar precisely because she knows it was her call), and who is okay with ordering altering someone’s memory without their consent (Sinclair) for, again, the greater good. No, it seems to me it’s Lennier who lives in „a better world“ here. Which is why as opposed to many a fan I have no problem believing his eventual fall. Because long with living in a better world goes, with Lennier, possibly the most black and white view any of the main characters have.
Don’t get me wrong, Lennier is a really good and endearing person. He’s brave, loyal, willing to risk his life for others (and not just others of his own species), curious about the world around him (that he allows himself to be cajoled into card playing with Londo and into riding a motorcycle with Garibaldi in s1 is a case in point); he’s also a gentle kung-fu monk type whom every Jedi would love to have as a padawan, if you allow me the crossover, excellent at martial arts without ever boasting of it, and not carried away by a killing rage.
But. Lennier also lives in a world where you’re either good, or you’re not. And when you’re not, that’s that. (Which is why he thinks Vir’s deluded when Vir voices his conviction that Londo will one day redeem himself, and instead regrets having saved Londo’s life, for example.) When Lennier realises he’s in love with Delenn, or at any rate when he confesses it to that other believer in knighthood, Marcus Cole, he assumes he can live a life of selfless devotion to Delenn and seeing her with Sheridan day in, day out, because that is what a good person in his view should be capable of. As it turns out, „all true love is unrequited“ is a poetic sentiment, but the reality is rather a mess. Lennier’s first solution when he starts to see he still wants more from Delenn is tojoin the Foreign Legion join the Anla’shok, but one of several reasons that doesn’t work out is that Delenn wants and needs him back with her on Babylon 5 and makes that explicit, at a point where she’s also shown she’s aware Lennier is in love with her (which she does at the start of s5). I think if Lennier had less of an idealistic view of Delenn, saw her as someone who can have contradictory impulses or who might not make always a good and selfless decision, and, even more important, a less rigid view of himself, if he had been capable of admitting to himself that striving to be a good person doesn’t make you immune from feelings of jealousy or anger, things might have worked out better; maybe he could have had an open conversation with her without them thinking they were about to die and Delenn trying to take back what was said immediately after, or he could have stood by his conclusion that he couldn’t manage the selfless devoted knight position any longer unless from a distance. But he’s Lennier, and so he doesn’t, and when that fatal moment comes, he falls.
I’ve seen people argue „Lennier would never!“, including Bill Mumy, re Lennier wanting to let Sheridan die, which he regrets not long after, but too late for Sheridan not to have noticed. Strangely, no one ever said „Delenn would never!“ about Delenn calling for the extermination of the human race immediately after the death of Dukhat. Both are extreme emotional reactions of people whose life otherwise shows far more of their virtues. Lennier exiling himself thereafter is a different reaction than Delenn deciding to become half human, but that is because they’re not the same people, even if the root of the decision is similar. Delenn, as seen clearly in the last scenes of s5, has no problem forgiving Lennier. It’s Lennier who can’t forgive himself.
Na’toth is the Aide we see least of, to great regret and annoying real life circumstances. Starting with the Narn make-up apparantly causing diffficulties for the actresses, which is why G’Kar’s first Aide, Kodath, dies off screen. Which, btw, is all for the good, because her brief appearance in „Born to the Purple“ came across as a humorless female warrior caricature. Whereas Na’Toth, as played by Julie Caitlin Brown, was no less a warrior but displays a sense of humor and sarcasm from the start, which is good, given which Ambassador she’s stuck with. If Lennier is the Aide most idealizing his ambassador, Na’Toth is the one least idealizing hers. She meets G’Kar when he’s almost hysterical over the prospect of getting assassinated, finds out this is due to some shady political dealings of his in the past, and as an aside also sees he’s fond of sex with human women who never seem to stay. This is as unflattering an introduction as you can have, and about the only impressive thing G’Kar does in these first few days, from Na’Toth’s pov, is his endurance of physical pain once the assassin catches up with him. That Na’Toth develops enormous respect for G’Kar is therefore not a given but happens because, along with the viewer, she gets to know him better.
Their interactions also offer the audience a chance of finding out more about Narn culture, and JMS a chance to show it not as uniform; G’Kar is very religious why Na’Toth is not, for example. (Alas, we never find out what her take on G’Kar’s transformation to prophet would have been, as by the time he’s a religious idol and they meet again she’s not in a condition to take that in.) Conversely, Na’Toth’s feuds are not G’Kar’s feuds; she has a personal terrible experience with Deathwalker, while hating the Centauri on general principle, without any particular ire for Londo or Vir.
Julie Caitlin Brown being replaced by Mary Kay Adams in the role, who in turn was written out by the end of s2, with Julie Caitlin Brown making one more appearance as Na’Toth in s5 means we never got a show long narrative for Na’Toth the way we did fort the other aides. But leaving Doylist reason aside, I can accept this because while Na’Toth develops great affection and loyalty to G’Kar (and vice versa), her first priority were always her people, and so her returning to Narn at the time of its greatest need was a plausible explanation for the character’s absence from late s2 onwards until s5. In a way, Na’Toth became what G’Kar wasn’t, not anymore; he became the exile to her on-planet resistence fighter and occupation sufferer. After Na’Toth is freed from her imprisonment, she returns to Narn as G’Kar can’t, again, not anymore; she’s still one of the people which is something taken from him by the different path he took. Her last apperance shows Na’Toth having sufferend horribly through her imprisonment, but with her spirit still intact; note that her response to seeing Londo is wanting to kill him (to which he wearily tells her to get in line), but that doesn’t stop her from going through with his excentric plan for her escape. All of which gives me hope that Na’Toth, once physically recovered, will florish on Narn, whatever she chooses to do next.
Vir: oh, Vir, who features so strongly in a lot of my stories, and often meta. What’s left to say? Kind and good without ever being dull, going against the cliché that only darker characters are compelling. Vir, like Londo, gets narratively used for both comedy, high drama and tragedy, is played by an actor who can carry this all, and has an „from nobody to Emperor“ arc which often nods to Robert Graves‘ interpretation of Claudius while being entirely its own thing. As opposed to all the other aides, whose appointment to their job is seen as a promotion and honor, Vir being assigned as Londo’s aide is a bitter joke (as is indeed Londo’s own posting) from the Centauri pov, since the Centauri expect the station to go the way of its predecessors and end up destroyed soon. While Vir has too low a self image to feel the enormous resentment over this that Londo does, and doesn’t have Londo’s ambition (let alone Londo’s dangerous view of a glorified Centauri past), he’s not entirely free of hopes and ambitions, either. In s4 during one of his best scenes, after Cartagia’s assassination, a drunk, broken Vir sums up the hopes he used to have as „a title, nothing fancy, a wife who could actually love someone like me“. (One of many ways Vir breakes one’s heart in that scene is that sentence.) Vir, who’s been treated as a joke through all his life, gets that part of Londo in a way no one else does, and that understanding feeds into Vir’s determination not to give up on him.
As does the affection that develops between them. Londo, in the same post-Cartagia scene, self critically (and not inaccurately) says he treated Vir poorly when Vir first arrived on B5 („moon-faced assassin of joy“, anyone?), but he never ignored him, and that, as Vir tells Londo and the audience in s2, was what Vir’s family did. Early Londo might yell at Vir, but also laughs with him, sings with him (they seem to share a fondness for the same opera arias), and is physically affectionate (arms aroundn shoulders, chin grabbing etc.) in what according to Vir’s description of his childhood seems to have been unprecedented. Vir responds to this with affection and loyalty which grows instead of withers through all the darkness that ensues, and yet is never blind. He’s got the not often thankful role of Londo’s conscience on the show (which the other three aides don’t play for their ambassadors), but he’s also a reminder that you can be a Centauri and still not share the view of the Narn as colonial material to be exploited, at best. When Vir goes to G’kar to apologize – as Emperor Turhan was planning to but never could, as Londo won’t do until nearly dying in early s5 -, he does so out of his own volition and instincts, simply because he knows the Centauri (not just Londo, the entire government and army) are acting wrongly (inhumanly would be the wrong word between aliens) towards the Narn, and he’s deeply ashamed. Vir does this not in Londo’s place, he does it for himself. G’Kar rejecting his apology doesn’t result in Vir leaving it at that one gesture but in Vir starting to free Narns from their prison camps as best he can. It’s one of the most noble, quietly heroic actions anyone commits on the show.
Mind you: I’m not saying Vir actually is free of guilt. Another choice he makes is to keep Londo’s secrets, all through the second Narn/Centauri war. He could have, say, during Londo’s conspiracy with Refa have decided his loyalty to the Emperor trumps his loyalty to Londo, or that starting another war, which he knew Londo and Refa were about to do, was wrong no matter which loyalty was stronger and needed to be reported, but he didn’t. He tried to persuade Londo not to go through with this, yes, but silence is also support. Lennier, Na’Toth and Vir all are loyal and love their people as well as their ambassadors. But if Lennier ultimately comes to care for Delenn more than for the Minbari and Na’Toth, I’d argue, would put the Narn before G’Kar if she had to choose (and her departure from B5 on a Watsonian level can be interpreted this way), with Vir there’s the additional complication: loyalty to Londo, loyalty to the Centauri, ethics – which trumps which? He tries to find a balance between the three, being loyal to Londo and the Centauri while also acting against the results of their ill deeds. But can there be a balance?
When the Vorlons arrive over Centauri Prime and Londo realizes he’s the one remaining leftover of Shadow influence and that they would destroy his world because of this, he asks Vir to kill him and present the Vorlons with proof so they spare the Centauri. We never find out whether this would have worked (especially given the state the Vorlons were in at that point), because elsewhere in the galaxy, Sheridan and Co provide a distraction, but the impression the show gave me was that Vir would have gone through with it, even if it would have broken his heart. It’s a very Roman moment for him and Londo, and also the expression of both the absolute trust and emotional demands that exist between them by mid s4. An episode earlier, Vir has killed Cartagia, one of the few hands down completely evil characters on the show. Any other series would have gone from there straight to the Narn liberation and then Londo dealing with Morden on Centauri Prime. Babylon 5, however, gave us Vir’s immediate aftermath to having killed a crazy tyrant. Which isn’t „hooray, liberty!“ but getting drunk and working through the enormity of having taken a life for the first time, resulting in a blisteringly honest hurt/comfort scene between him and Londo.
I think it’s also one of the differences between Vir and both Lennier and Na’Toth. Na’Toth wouldn’t see where the problem was, even if Cartagia had been a Narn instead of a Centauri. Lennier would have the ideal of life being sacred but would also see the whole affair as a good and clear choice between letting a terrible man continue to wreak havoc or to save two people (Centauri and Narn), and thus would not feel burdened by the action. (Remember, what he felt guilty for in early s3 was having saved Londo’s life despite knowing Londo to be resonsible for a lot of damage by then.) But neither is familiar with life long shame the way Vir is, or the general guilt of being a Centauri at a time when the Centauri are doing great harm to other people, or the specific guilt that came with being Londo’s aide before the anti Cartagia conspiracy.
It may have been what saves Vir from becoming either a cynic or withdrawing entirely in despair. He’s always known guilt, and it didn’t stop him from trying to do good, without believing himself to be good. He’s capable of looking for alternatives, of questioning his own motives, not least because Londo is such a warning example of where the conviction „there is no other way“ can lead to. And he never, ever, gives up on people. Either people in the plural (Vir might disagree with a lot of Centauri policy in the course of the show, but never does he stop regarding himself as a Centauri, or to want the best for them) or on people individually (Londo).
Ave, Vir. Londo and the Centauri were so lucky to have you.
The other days
The big exception here is the combination of Lyta and the two Koshs. We meet Lyta first, before we meet Kosh; she’s the original station telepath, replaced for Doylist reasons but later coming back into the show as a regular with a new official job description (aide to the Vorlon Ambassador). We also see her interact more with other characters than with her ambassador(s), and remain in her pov when she is with either of the Koshs. This is partly due to the nature of the Vorlons, but also because Lyta’s overall function in the story isn’t originally defined by her relationship with Kosh, and doesn’t end once there is no more Vorlon on Babylon 5. Nonetheless, what we do get of Lyta in her capacity as Ambassadorial Aide makes some points about either Vorlon, and thus I won’t leave her out of this post.
Lyta, being born into the Psi Corps, arguably only stops looking for someone to follow and dedicate her life to in mid season 5. Earlier, she exchanges the Corps ideology and constrictions not so much for freedom as for someone else to serve. The Vorlons change her physically and mentally to a degree that Psi Corps could only dream of before making her Kosh’s aide. Note that the reveal in s1 that Psi Corps tries to artificially enhance Psi ratings of telepaths and achieve telekinesis is treated as a significant proof of their sinister nature. („Experimenting on humans“ usually is.) The first time we see Lyta with Kosh and realise she’s been operated on so that she can now breathe in a Vorlon environment, can take the energy being that is a Vorlon inside her, and that her Psi abilities are no longer those she’s been born with, by contrast, is played as a moment of ecstasy and awe on Lyta’s part, but in the overall narrative equally works as one of many hints that the Vorlons aren’t the angelic beings Sheridan & Co at this point assume they are. (Or rather, they’re angels in the grim modern horror movie sense.)
Of all the ambassadorial aides, Lyta is the one most literally used (and almost used up). With Kosh I, this is an experience she treasures, as she gets the sense that he has come to care for „the younger races“ in general and for her in particular. And the visualisation of Kosh transferring from his environmental suit into Lyta certainly has erotic overtones. With Kosh II, however, it’s point blank rape, and visualized as such, the camera showing Lyta after Kosh II has returned into his suit looking brutalized and shaking, and that’s before he starts to inflict telekinetic damage on her. The scene where Delenn finds her is very much an „abused wife told to leave abusive partner“ dialogue. Not surprisingly, subsequently Lyta becomes the only one of the aides to turn against the ambassador she works for, enabling Sheridan & Co to engineer his death. This darkest of all Ambassador-Aide relationships even has a bitter afternote: with the Vorlon government no longer paying for Lyta’s upkeep, and the people on the station she’s just risked her life for unwilling to, she’s forced to return to the original authoritarian regime she came from in order to make a living is only the first part of this. Then comes the reveal that the Vorlons engineered not just Lyta’s new abilities, which make her increasingly unable to live in human society, but are responsible for the creation of all telepaths, as they needed war weapons against the Shadows, without bothering to provide them with a way to live beyond being a weapon. Lyta-as-aide provides possibly the darkest characterisation of the Vorlons the show offers. Yes, there’s also the planet killer used in the final stages of the Shadow war, but the impression the show gives is that this is something unprecedented, something the Vorlons hadn’t done before. Whereas their creation of the telepaths was a long term project that took centuries to achieve, if not millennia, and no matter how much affection Kosh I may or may not have felt for Lyta, the behavior of Kosh II lays bare what Lyta truly is to the Vorlons: a slave.
On to the other Aides, whom we first meet in that function: Vir, Na’Toth and Lennier. The audience sees the first encounter between Na’Toth and G’Kar as well as that between Lennier and Delenn (and in the same episode, too); we don’t see the first meeting between Londo and Vir (Vir gets introduced sarcastically by Londo to Garibaldi in the first episode as „my diplomatic staff, newly arrived), though arguably out of all the aides Vir subsequently becomes the one with both the greatest narrative significance and the closest relationship to his ambassador.
All three of these aides are to a degree consciously mentored and/or seen as younger selves by their ambassadors. This is most explicit with Lennier and Delenn, as their first encounter is later shown to literally repeat the dialogue between Delenn’s first encounter with her Mentor, Dukhat, the leader of the Grey Council. But when you look at their respective characterisations, Lennier and Delenn aren’t that similar. Delenn does see herself as a woman of destiny, is determined to make prophecies apply to her, and while harboring some secret guilt is more or less convinced of her rightousness through the story. Lennier never comes across ambitious in that degree, or indeed ambitious at all. He thrives on serving. Not blindly; he has his own opinions, which are not always Delenn’s. But even had the story taken another turn for him, I can’t see Lennier leading either as a politician or as a religious icon.
Lyta with Kosh I aside, Lennier is arguably the Aide who idolizes his Ambassador the most. The scene illustrating that best to me is during the Minbari Civil War when he tells the other Minbari Delenn lives in a better world than they do and thinks of people better than they are. That would be the same Delenn who carries the secret of having started the Earth/Minbari war around with her without ever telling it to her human husband because she’s convinced Sheridan couldn’t handle it, who makes a „greater good requires sacrifice“ calculation of not revealing the existence of the Shadows to G’Kar when the Narns get slaughtered by the Centauri and their new allies (for which she later apologizes to G‘Kar precisely because she knows it was her call), and who is okay with ordering altering someone’s memory without their consent (Sinclair) for, again, the greater good. No, it seems to me it’s Lennier who lives in „a better world“ here. Which is why as opposed to many a fan I have no problem believing his eventual fall. Because long with living in a better world goes, with Lennier, possibly the most black and white view any of the main characters have.
Don’t get me wrong, Lennier is a really good and endearing person. He’s brave, loyal, willing to risk his life for others (and not just others of his own species), curious about the world around him (that he allows himself to be cajoled into card playing with Londo and into riding a motorcycle with Garibaldi in s1 is a case in point); he’s also a gentle kung-fu monk type whom every Jedi would love to have as a padawan, if you allow me the crossover, excellent at martial arts without ever boasting of it, and not carried away by a killing rage.
But. Lennier also lives in a world where you’re either good, or you’re not. And when you’re not, that’s that. (Which is why he thinks Vir’s deluded when Vir voices his conviction that Londo will one day redeem himself, and instead regrets having saved Londo’s life, for example.) When Lennier realises he’s in love with Delenn, or at any rate when he confesses it to that other believer in knighthood, Marcus Cole, he assumes he can live a life of selfless devotion to Delenn and seeing her with Sheridan day in, day out, because that is what a good person in his view should be capable of. As it turns out, „all true love is unrequited“ is a poetic sentiment, but the reality is rather a mess. Lennier’s first solution when he starts to see he still wants more from Delenn is to
I’ve seen people argue „Lennier would never!“, including Bill Mumy, re Lennier wanting to let Sheridan die, which he regrets not long after, but too late for Sheridan not to have noticed. Strangely, no one ever said „Delenn would never!“ about Delenn calling for the extermination of the human race immediately after the death of Dukhat. Both are extreme emotional reactions of people whose life otherwise shows far more of their virtues. Lennier exiling himself thereafter is a different reaction than Delenn deciding to become half human, but that is because they’re not the same people, even if the root of the decision is similar. Delenn, as seen clearly in the last scenes of s5, has no problem forgiving Lennier. It’s Lennier who can’t forgive himself.
Na’toth is the Aide we see least of, to great regret and annoying real life circumstances. Starting with the Narn make-up apparantly causing diffficulties for the actresses, which is why G’Kar’s first Aide, Kodath, dies off screen. Which, btw, is all for the good, because her brief appearance in „Born to the Purple“ came across as a humorless female warrior caricature. Whereas Na’Toth, as played by Julie Caitlin Brown, was no less a warrior but displays a sense of humor and sarcasm from the start, which is good, given which Ambassador she’s stuck with. If Lennier is the Aide most idealizing his ambassador, Na’Toth is the one least idealizing hers. She meets G’Kar when he’s almost hysterical over the prospect of getting assassinated, finds out this is due to some shady political dealings of his in the past, and as an aside also sees he’s fond of sex with human women who never seem to stay. This is as unflattering an introduction as you can have, and about the only impressive thing G’Kar does in these first few days, from Na’Toth’s pov, is his endurance of physical pain once the assassin catches up with him. That Na’Toth develops enormous respect for G’Kar is therefore not a given but happens because, along with the viewer, she gets to know him better.
Their interactions also offer the audience a chance of finding out more about Narn culture, and JMS a chance to show it not as uniform; G’Kar is very religious why Na’Toth is not, for example. (Alas, we never find out what her take on G’Kar’s transformation to prophet would have been, as by the time he’s a religious idol and they meet again she’s not in a condition to take that in.) Conversely, Na’Toth’s feuds are not G’Kar’s feuds; she has a personal terrible experience with Deathwalker, while hating the Centauri on general principle, without any particular ire for Londo or Vir.
Julie Caitlin Brown being replaced by Mary Kay Adams in the role, who in turn was written out by the end of s2, with Julie Caitlin Brown making one more appearance as Na’Toth in s5 means we never got a show long narrative for Na’Toth the way we did fort the other aides. But leaving Doylist reason aside, I can accept this because while Na’Toth develops great affection and loyalty to G’Kar (and vice versa), her first priority were always her people, and so her returning to Narn at the time of its greatest need was a plausible explanation for the character’s absence from late s2 onwards until s5. In a way, Na’Toth became what G’Kar wasn’t, not anymore; he became the exile to her on-planet resistence fighter and occupation sufferer. After Na’Toth is freed from her imprisonment, she returns to Narn as G’Kar can’t, again, not anymore; she’s still one of the people which is something taken from him by the different path he took. Her last apperance shows Na’Toth having sufferend horribly through her imprisonment, but with her spirit still intact; note that her response to seeing Londo is wanting to kill him (to which he wearily tells her to get in line), but that doesn’t stop her from going through with his excentric plan for her escape. All of which gives me hope that Na’Toth, once physically recovered, will florish on Narn, whatever she chooses to do next.
Vir: oh, Vir, who features so strongly in a lot of my stories, and often meta. What’s left to say? Kind and good without ever being dull, going against the cliché that only darker characters are compelling. Vir, like Londo, gets narratively used for both comedy, high drama and tragedy, is played by an actor who can carry this all, and has an „from nobody to Emperor“ arc which often nods to Robert Graves‘ interpretation of Claudius while being entirely its own thing. As opposed to all the other aides, whose appointment to their job is seen as a promotion and honor, Vir being assigned as Londo’s aide is a bitter joke (as is indeed Londo’s own posting) from the Centauri pov, since the Centauri expect the station to go the way of its predecessors and end up destroyed soon. While Vir has too low a self image to feel the enormous resentment over this that Londo does, and doesn’t have Londo’s ambition (let alone Londo’s dangerous view of a glorified Centauri past), he’s not entirely free of hopes and ambitions, either. In s4 during one of his best scenes, after Cartagia’s assassination, a drunk, broken Vir sums up the hopes he used to have as „a title, nothing fancy, a wife who could actually love someone like me“. (One of many ways Vir breakes one’s heart in that scene is that sentence.) Vir, who’s been treated as a joke through all his life, gets that part of Londo in a way no one else does, and that understanding feeds into Vir’s determination not to give up on him.
As does the affection that develops between them. Londo, in the same post-Cartagia scene, self critically (and not inaccurately) says he treated Vir poorly when Vir first arrived on B5 („moon-faced assassin of joy“, anyone?), but he never ignored him, and that, as Vir tells Londo and the audience in s2, was what Vir’s family did. Early Londo might yell at Vir, but also laughs with him, sings with him (they seem to share a fondness for the same opera arias), and is physically affectionate (arms aroundn shoulders, chin grabbing etc.) in what according to Vir’s description of his childhood seems to have been unprecedented. Vir responds to this with affection and loyalty which grows instead of withers through all the darkness that ensues, and yet is never blind. He’s got the not often thankful role of Londo’s conscience on the show (which the other three aides don’t play for their ambassadors), but he’s also a reminder that you can be a Centauri and still not share the view of the Narn as colonial material to be exploited, at best. When Vir goes to G’kar to apologize – as Emperor Turhan was planning to but never could, as Londo won’t do until nearly dying in early s5 -, he does so out of his own volition and instincts, simply because he knows the Centauri (not just Londo, the entire government and army) are acting wrongly (inhumanly would be the wrong word between aliens) towards the Narn, and he’s deeply ashamed. Vir does this not in Londo’s place, he does it for himself. G’Kar rejecting his apology doesn’t result in Vir leaving it at that one gesture but in Vir starting to free Narns from their prison camps as best he can. It’s one of the most noble, quietly heroic actions anyone commits on the show.
Mind you: I’m not saying Vir actually is free of guilt. Another choice he makes is to keep Londo’s secrets, all through the second Narn/Centauri war. He could have, say, during Londo’s conspiracy with Refa have decided his loyalty to the Emperor trumps his loyalty to Londo, or that starting another war, which he knew Londo and Refa were about to do, was wrong no matter which loyalty was stronger and needed to be reported, but he didn’t. He tried to persuade Londo not to go through with this, yes, but silence is also support. Lennier, Na’Toth and Vir all are loyal and love their people as well as their ambassadors. But if Lennier ultimately comes to care for Delenn more than for the Minbari and Na’Toth, I’d argue, would put the Narn before G’Kar if she had to choose (and her departure from B5 on a Watsonian level can be interpreted this way), with Vir there’s the additional complication: loyalty to Londo, loyalty to the Centauri, ethics – which trumps which? He tries to find a balance between the three, being loyal to Londo and the Centauri while also acting against the results of their ill deeds. But can there be a balance?
When the Vorlons arrive over Centauri Prime and Londo realizes he’s the one remaining leftover of Shadow influence and that they would destroy his world because of this, he asks Vir to kill him and present the Vorlons with proof so they spare the Centauri. We never find out whether this would have worked (especially given the state the Vorlons were in at that point), because elsewhere in the galaxy, Sheridan and Co provide a distraction, but the impression the show gave me was that Vir would have gone through with it, even if it would have broken his heart. It’s a very Roman moment for him and Londo, and also the expression of both the absolute trust and emotional demands that exist between them by mid s4. An episode earlier, Vir has killed Cartagia, one of the few hands down completely evil characters on the show. Any other series would have gone from there straight to the Narn liberation and then Londo dealing with Morden on Centauri Prime. Babylon 5, however, gave us Vir’s immediate aftermath to having killed a crazy tyrant. Which isn’t „hooray, liberty!“ but getting drunk and working through the enormity of having taken a life for the first time, resulting in a blisteringly honest hurt/comfort scene between him and Londo.
I think it’s also one of the differences between Vir and both Lennier and Na’Toth. Na’Toth wouldn’t see where the problem was, even if Cartagia had been a Narn instead of a Centauri. Lennier would have the ideal of life being sacred but would also see the whole affair as a good and clear choice between letting a terrible man continue to wreak havoc or to save two people (Centauri and Narn), and thus would not feel burdened by the action. (Remember, what he felt guilty for in early s3 was having saved Londo’s life despite knowing Londo to be resonsible for a lot of damage by then.) But neither is familiar with life long shame the way Vir is, or the general guilt of being a Centauri at a time when the Centauri are doing great harm to other people, or the specific guilt that came with being Londo’s aide before the anti Cartagia conspiracy.
It may have been what saves Vir from becoming either a cynic or withdrawing entirely in despair. He’s always known guilt, and it didn’t stop him from trying to do good, without believing himself to be good. He’s capable of looking for alternatives, of questioning his own motives, not least because Londo is such a warning example of where the conviction „there is no other way“ can lead to. And he never, ever, gives up on people. Either people in the plural (Vir might disagree with a lot of Centauri policy in the course of the show, but never does he stop regarding himself as a Centauri, or to want the best for them) or on people individually (Londo).
Ave, Vir. Londo and the Centauri were so lucky to have you.
The other days
no subject
Date: 2018-01-05 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-06 12:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-06 09:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-06 12:50 pm (UTC)And then we find out via Lyta the reason why telepaths exist at all in the younger races was deliberate genetic manipulation by the Vorlons because they knew they needed telepaths as weapons against the Shadows. As I said: a rotten deal all around.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-07 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-07 10:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-14 09:08 pm (UTC)You're so right about Lennier. He can only fall the way he does because of who he is.
And Na'Toth survives, because she is a Narn and she is Na'Toth. (I suspect alcohol [or Narn cultural equivalent] would feature strongly in her response to the prophet G'Kar.)
Vir is interesting because he is explicitly the physically weakest of the aides, so it gives the show the chance to do the non-action hero in a way it can't in a mostly military character cast.
I hadn't even thought to think of Lyta as an aide, so I think you're very right with your summary of why she's different to the others.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-15 07:09 am (UTC)Glad you agree about Lennier. I always felt a bit lonely in my “no, it wasn’t ooc for him to have that moment” reaction.