The Babylon 5 Rewatch: 1.01 and 1.02.
Dec. 5th, 2021 05:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakAnd so it begins.
Even after all those years and at the nth rewatch, I still think this series opener is great and pulls off something I've only seen the BSG episode 33 pull off, which is: being essentially a second pilot without repeating what the pilot did. (In the BSG case, put "miniseries" instead of "pilot".) The episode has to reintroduce some of the surviving pilot characters, introduces new ones, sets up the basic s1 premise of the station, and do so in a way that doesn't feel like endless exposition hammering down. At the same time, if you watch it after knowing the rest of the show, you're aware just how much JMS has set up, introduced and reintroduced here.
For example:
- the Narn/Centauri conflict and backstory
- Londo's dream
- Susan Ivanova and Talia Winters along with Ivanova's backstory and the basics about the Psi Corps and the legal situation of telepaths in this universe
- Earth elections, the identity of the candidates (Santiago's VP isn't mentioned by name, but he is mentioned) and a hint of "Earth First" xenophobia in the election pogram
- Viiiiiiiiiiir.
Now, with the acting, I think at time it's obvious this is early days and not everyone is comfortable with their characters yet. For example, this time around I found Claudia Christian a bit stiff at first (not just during the initial encounter between Ivanova and Talia, when she's meant to be), with her coming across as the Susan Ivanova I remember only in the last scene with Talia when she talks about her mother. Whrereas Andrea Thompson as Talia is there from the start, but her reaction when accidentally reading Londo's mind is terribly over the top and feels clumsy. (She's fine in all other scenes, though.) Londo and G'Kar, by contrast, already feel themselves throughout. Mind you, I remember when a friend of mine who had followed the terrible advice of starting the show with s2, had already finished it and then started with s1, she took great offense at G'Kar's characterisation in this episode. Which I think is one of many reasons why you should not start with s2. G'Kar's character development - and his and Londo's arcs are the best of the series - just can't be appreciated in its full greatness if you start with s2 and haven't seen G'Kar in his conniving expansionist smugness. Note that the script and Andreas Katsulas' performance do mention the brutal backstory, that Narn has been occupied by the Centauri for a century, that G'Kar as an individual and the Narn as a people aren't just acting out of nowhere. But he's still the antagonist in this first episode. The way the season has been planned (let alone the show) becomes apparent for the first time when you're reaching the s1 finale and remember it openened with a Narn attack on a civilian Centauri outpost disguised as something else, with no warning.
Not that the entire episode is a continuity feast. The existence of Londo's nephew Karn and Londo feeling close to him is one of the few bits of backstory referenced this once and then never heard of again in the entire show. (My personal headcanon for this which I used in one fanfiction is that after this episode, Karn felt pressured into committing suicide, and that this was yet another element souring Londo's relationship with the Turhan government. But that's just fanfiction.) And in retrospect the raider subplot starting here really was only there because the network told JMS they wanted some space fighting scenes in their new space show. Oh, and speaking of the network, I can never decide whether Garibaldi's fondness for Warner cartoons is there because the series was produced by WB. Here in this episode it feels a bit too quirky.
The scene with Garibaldi stopping Londo reminded me how much I liked the early friendship between Londo and Garibaldi, and it serves as a great mirror to a certain scene in The Coming of Shadows in s2, which I think I forgot until this rewatch (the mirroring, not the scene!).
Delenn's comments about the pointlessness of revenge and what a bad cycle this is: on the one hand, yes, otoh, she's one to talk. On the third, yes, she is, precisely because revenge isn't a foreign concept to her. Also, this rewatch carries an extra does of poignancy for me because of how many of our cast are dead by now, and Mira Furlan was the most recent to go. When I heard her voice for the first time in this episode, my throat felt constricted.
Costuming: you can tell they went for the film noir/1940s association with Talia in a way they just didn't with Lyta, neither in the pilot nor later. Otoh, no one else from Earth dresses like this, but then most of the human women we see are in uniform. Vir's hair crest looks a bit dishevelled which feels ic for Vir at this point, and I appreciate the way Vir's hair crest through the show changes and grows and tells us something about where Vir's in his development by itself. Londo's s1 purple suite always makes me think of the dream, even before he mentions it. And Great Maker - when you watch that scene where he tells Sinclair about the dream for the first time you have NO idea what's coming, and yet, it's all there. This feels to me this time around a bit like an Agatha Christie novel where in retrospect you can spot all the clues, but only in retrospect.
Make-up: It still slays me how well Andreas Katsulas is able to act through all that latex. G'Kar's face and body language never feel any less vivid and full of expressions as those of the human characters, au contraire. And this is true from his very first scene onwards.
Lastly; I think it was definitely the right decision not to introduce the other s1 regulars (Dr. Franklin, Lennier, Na'Toth) in this episode as well, but let them show up one by one in the next few eps. This way, you can get to know them far better. But seriously: in terms of pacing, character introductions, theme introductions, this is just a very very good opener, and I still love it to bits.
Whereas I haven't rewatched this episode once until now. I don't violently object to it or anything, otherwise I'd have left it out. It does its job in the overall narrative: more exposition disguised by action, because the Minbari belief in souls and reincarnation is really incredibly important to the show, and of course it's a reminder to the audience of a central s1 mystery, i.e. "Why did the Minbari suggest Sinclair for the running of B5 and what happened to him at the Battle of the Line?" , along with "what is Delenn up to?" You also see (or see again, if you have watched the pilot) that Delenn isn't all wise space elf-ness as she tried to kill the Soul Hunter on sight, and it hammers down how strongly the Minbari feel about the whole soul concept.
Perhaps because I hadn't watched this episode more than once, I had misremembered it as being more ambigous as to whether or not the Minbari (and the Soul Hunters) are actually correct re: the existence of transferable souls. The show otherwise is pretty careful not to mark anyone's beliefs as the one true belief, or others as false, but the soul globes swarming around the mad Soul Hunter in a vengeful manner and Delenn releasing them in the final scene are pretty definite.
Also, Franklin saying that maybe you could reproduce someone's personality in a matrix, but not a soul: possible set up for a fix-it for you -know-who after s2?
Aaanyway, the concept of souls locked up in globes for eternity did strike me as pretty horrible this time around even without a Minbari-like belief in reincarnation, but the scene where the Soul Hunter catches a glimpse of Delenn's long term plan doesn't work for me as well as the scene with Londo telling Sinclair his dream did in terms of foreshadowing and knowing how the narrative twists the expected. I mean, JMS is a bit coy here, trying to make it sound as if Delenn is Up To No Good, but I'm not sure whether I ever believed that, and certainly rewatching the scene reawakens my annoyance that with a very few exceptions, characters who critique Delenn and Sheridan in this show are either mistaken or villainous or both. But that's in the future.
Leaving aside one of the movies, JMS didn't use the Soul Hunters again, perhaps because having characters who know where and when someone will die, far more precisely than in a Centauri death dream, would be a narrative short cut our regulars shouldn't have. But on a Watsonian level, I wonder why the Soul Hunters didn't show up for a couple of significant deaths in future seasons. Surely Sinclair's "keep away from this station" wasn't that impressive?
Lastly: Christopher Franke's soundtrack and the s1 version of the B5 credits theme do all kinds of nostalgic things to me. Oh show, I love you so much, still.
The other episodes
Even after all those years and at the nth rewatch, I still think this series opener is great and pulls off something I've only seen the BSG episode 33 pull off, which is: being essentially a second pilot without repeating what the pilot did. (In the BSG case, put "miniseries" instead of "pilot".) The episode has to reintroduce some of the surviving pilot characters, introduces new ones, sets up the basic s1 premise of the station, and do so in a way that doesn't feel like endless exposition hammering down. At the same time, if you watch it after knowing the rest of the show, you're aware just how much JMS has set up, introduced and reintroduced here.
For example:
- the Narn/Centauri conflict and backstory
- Londo's dream
- Susan Ivanova and Talia Winters along with Ivanova's backstory and the basics about the Psi Corps and the legal situation of telepaths in this universe
- Earth elections, the identity of the candidates (Santiago's VP isn't mentioned by name, but he is mentioned) and a hint of "Earth First" xenophobia in the election pogram
- Viiiiiiiiiiir.
Now, with the acting, I think at time it's obvious this is early days and not everyone is comfortable with their characters yet. For example, this time around I found Claudia Christian a bit stiff at first (not just during the initial encounter between Ivanova and Talia, when she's meant to be), with her coming across as the Susan Ivanova I remember only in the last scene with Talia when she talks about her mother. Whrereas Andrea Thompson as Talia is there from the start, but her reaction when accidentally reading Londo's mind is terribly over the top and feels clumsy. (She's fine in all other scenes, though.) Londo and G'Kar, by contrast, already feel themselves throughout. Mind you, I remember when a friend of mine who had followed the terrible advice of starting the show with s2, had already finished it and then started with s1, she took great offense at G'Kar's characterisation in this episode. Which I think is one of many reasons why you should not start with s2. G'Kar's character development - and his and Londo's arcs are the best of the series - just can't be appreciated in its full greatness if you start with s2 and haven't seen G'Kar in his conniving expansionist smugness. Note that the script and Andreas Katsulas' performance do mention the brutal backstory, that Narn has been occupied by the Centauri for a century, that G'Kar as an individual and the Narn as a people aren't just acting out of nowhere. But he's still the antagonist in this first episode. The way the season has been planned (let alone the show) becomes apparent for the first time when you're reaching the s1 finale and remember it openened with a Narn attack on a civilian Centauri outpost disguised as something else, with no warning.
Not that the entire episode is a continuity feast. The existence of Londo's nephew Karn and Londo feeling close to him is one of the few bits of backstory referenced this once and then never heard of again in the entire show. (My personal headcanon for this which I used in one fanfiction is that after this episode, Karn felt pressured into committing suicide, and that this was yet another element souring Londo's relationship with the Turhan government. But that's just fanfiction.) And in retrospect the raider subplot starting here really was only there because the network told JMS they wanted some space fighting scenes in their new space show. Oh, and speaking of the network, I can never decide whether Garibaldi's fondness for Warner cartoons is there because the series was produced by WB. Here in this episode it feels a bit too quirky.
The scene with Garibaldi stopping Londo reminded me how much I liked the early friendship between Londo and Garibaldi, and it serves as a great mirror to a certain scene in The Coming of Shadows in s2, which I think I forgot until this rewatch (the mirroring, not the scene!).
Delenn's comments about the pointlessness of revenge and what a bad cycle this is: on the one hand, yes, otoh, she's one to talk. On the third, yes, she is, precisely because revenge isn't a foreign concept to her. Also, this rewatch carries an extra does of poignancy for me because of how many of our cast are dead by now, and Mira Furlan was the most recent to go. When I heard her voice for the first time in this episode, my throat felt constricted.
Costuming: you can tell they went for the film noir/1940s association with Talia in a way they just didn't with Lyta, neither in the pilot nor later. Otoh, no one else from Earth dresses like this, but then most of the human women we see are in uniform. Vir's hair crest looks a bit dishevelled which feels ic for Vir at this point, and I appreciate the way Vir's hair crest through the show changes and grows and tells us something about where Vir's in his development by itself. Londo's s1 purple suite always makes me think of the dream, even before he mentions it. And Great Maker - when you watch that scene where he tells Sinclair about the dream for the first time you have NO idea what's coming, and yet, it's all there. This feels to me this time around a bit like an Agatha Christie novel where in retrospect you can spot all the clues, but only in retrospect.
Make-up: It still slays me how well Andreas Katsulas is able to act through all that latex. G'Kar's face and body language never feel any less vivid and full of expressions as those of the human characters, au contraire. And this is true from his very first scene onwards.
Lastly; I think it was definitely the right decision not to introduce the other s1 regulars (Dr. Franklin, Lennier, Na'Toth) in this episode as well, but let them show up one by one in the next few eps. This way, you can get to know them far better. But seriously: in terms of pacing, character introductions, theme introductions, this is just a very very good opener, and I still love it to bits.
Whereas I haven't rewatched this episode once until now. I don't violently object to it or anything, otherwise I'd have left it out. It does its job in the overall narrative: more exposition disguised by action, because the Minbari belief in souls and reincarnation is really incredibly important to the show, and of course it's a reminder to the audience of a central s1 mystery, i.e. "Why did the Minbari suggest Sinclair for the running of B5 and what happened to him at the Battle of the Line?" , along with "what is Delenn up to?" You also see (or see again, if you have watched the pilot) that Delenn isn't all wise space elf-ness as she tried to kill the Soul Hunter on sight, and it hammers down how strongly the Minbari feel about the whole soul concept.
Perhaps because I hadn't watched this episode more than once, I had misremembered it as being more ambigous as to whether or not the Minbari (and the Soul Hunters) are actually correct re: the existence of transferable souls. The show otherwise is pretty careful not to mark anyone's beliefs as the one true belief, or others as false, but the soul globes swarming around the mad Soul Hunter in a vengeful manner and Delenn releasing them in the final scene are pretty definite.
Also, Franklin saying that maybe you could reproduce someone's personality in a matrix, but not a soul: possible set up for a fix-it for you -know-who after s2?
Aaanyway, the concept of souls locked up in globes for eternity did strike me as pretty horrible this time around even without a Minbari-like belief in reincarnation, but the scene where the Soul Hunter catches a glimpse of Delenn's long term plan doesn't work for me as well as the scene with Londo telling Sinclair his dream did in terms of foreshadowing and knowing how the narrative twists the expected. I mean, JMS is a bit coy here, trying to make it sound as if Delenn is Up To No Good, but I'm not sure whether I ever believed that, and certainly rewatching the scene reawakens my annoyance that with a very few exceptions, characters who critique Delenn and Sheridan in this show are either mistaken or villainous or both. But that's in the future.
Leaving aside one of the movies, JMS didn't use the Soul Hunters again, perhaps because having characters who know where and when someone will die, far more precisely than in a Centauri death dream, would be a narrative short cut our regulars shouldn't have. But on a Watsonian level, I wonder why the Soul Hunters didn't show up for a couple of significant deaths in future seasons. Surely Sinclair's "keep away from this station" wasn't that impressive?
Lastly: Christopher Franke's soundtrack and the s1 version of the B5 credits theme do all kinds of nostalgic things to me. Oh show, I love you so much, still.
The other episodes
no subject
Date: 2021-12-05 05:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-05 08:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-05 12:05 pm (UTC)- I'm sure I read somewhere that they hoped to shift some of their back catalogue of cartoons.
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Date: 2021-12-05 12:07 pm (UTC)Anyway: agreed that Midnight on the Firing Line is a truly remarkable achievement in setting up characters and situations for the next five years. (Oh, Londo, if only seeing the future ever did you the slightest bit of good ...)
Good observation about Talia's wardrobe! She is a bit of a tragic noir heroine (not that she knows herself that she's the femme fatale here) so I imagine that was deliberate.
Make-up: It still slays me how well Andreas Katsulas is able to act through all that latex. G'Kar's face and body language never feel any less vivid and full of expressions as those of the human characters, au contraire. And this is true from his very first scene onwards.
JMS has said that, unlike some of the actors (although one assumes not the ones that stuck around for the long haul) Andreas Katsulas found the make-up freeing rather than restrictive for his acting. It is indeed an amazing performance right from his first scene.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-05 12:42 pm (UTC)This reminds me that the first time I watched this show, I was still wired to believe bad futures and the like only get brought up to be foiled by the heroes later on. I certainly did not expect to ever see Londo‘s dream played out in real time, let alone in a completely different manner than Londo himself believes at this point….
BTW, and speaking of dreams, with a certain conversation between Londo and Vir in a dream from s5 in mind, do you think the B5verse postulates the future is predetermined or created by choices? I mean, clearly we‘re not dealing with a fictional universe where there are multiple time lines, but what would have happened if Sheridan had told everyone what he saw in the future, speaking just in Watsonian terms?
! She is a bit of a tragic noir heroine (not that she knows herself that she's the femme fatale here) so I imagine that was deliberate.
I‘m sure it was. Also, given the time of original broadcast, I think Garibaldi‘s interest in her is a deliberate mislead, since a first time tv audience would assume they‘re the ones who are going to have a relationship - the cop and the film noir lady - when otoh today it‘s very clear Susan/Talia as the central relationship for Talia to have with another regular is set up from the start… and that makes Susan the noir hero, which fits her character completely.
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Date: 2021-12-06 02:24 am (UTC)I think that what happens in Babylon Squared and War Without End mean that it has to be free will rather than fate - Sinclair sees the timeline where Garibaldi boards the station and dies and as a result prevents that timeline from happening. Unless it's fated that Sinclair sees the future and thereby changes it, I guess?)
(If things are not fixed, it means that Londo not only missed four chances to change his fate, but also that he could have missed the redemption boat entirely. One shudders to think.)
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Date: 2021-12-06 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-05 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-05 02:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-06 01:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-05 04:29 pm (UTC)Re: the rewatch effect - One of the UK stations showed the series again and I tried to write about the first couple of episodes and realised it was all "oh, oh, that bit hits differently when you know where it goes in the end while still working as a standalone." Which was mostly Londo (or Londo 'n' G'Kar) bits.
Re: the other regulars - yes, a very wise decision.
The thing I remember about the Soul Hunter episode is that sound Delenn makes when she hears one is about.
Re: Soul Hunters - handwaving excuse, maybe there's a squad of Rangers whose job is to make sure the Soul Hunters understood the keep away was meant?
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Date: 2021-12-05 05:01 pm (UTC)Maybe so. Otoh, it occurs to me that there might be other cultures quite eager to be assured of mental immortality, so maybe the Soul Hunters were busy with them during the next few seasons...
no subject
Date: 2021-12-06 05:16 am (UTC)- Susan Ivanova and Talia Winters along with Ivanova's backstory and the basics about the Psi Corps and the legal situation of telepaths in this universe
I'm really interested to see what happens with this!
For example, this time around I found Claudia Christian a bit stiff at first (not just during the initial encounter between Ivanova and Talia, when she's meant to be), with her coming across as the Susan Ivanova I remember only in the last scene with Talia when she talks about her mother.
Yes, I agree! But that last scene sold her to me.
G'Kar in his conniving expansionist smugness.
Heh, I liked G'Kar too, and it did remind me of
I can never decide whether Garibaldi's fondness for Warner cartoons is there because the series was produced by WB. Here in this episode it feels a bit too quirky.
I did laugh at that! But it did seem a bit... weird.
The scene with Garibaldi stopping Londo
I really liked this scene. I really liked Garibaldi and his annoying extremely-competent self. I have this vague feeling from osmosis that he gets more annoying over the course of the show, but I did like him in this episode :)
And Great Maker - when you watch that scene where he tells Sinclair about the dream for the first time you have NO idea what's coming, and yet, it's all there. This feels to me this time around a bit like an Agatha Christie novel where in retrospect you can spot all the clues, but only in retrospect.
Welp, I look forward to finding out, then, because I definitely have no idea what's coming!
I also appreciated the advice above not to (in general) read the comments, but omg that's going to be hard! I don't suppose it would be possible to ask for rot-13-ing explicit spoilers? I do rather enjoy interacting with other people in comments, as you know, lol :)
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Date: 2021-12-06 06:18 am (UTC)Re: pilot - the actual pilot that caused the show to be picked up was „The Gathering“. However, JMS had to exchange half the cast (Talia Winters replaces telepath Lyta Alexander, Dr. Franklin who shows up in the next episode replaces Dr. Lyle, First Officer Susan Ivanova replaces First Officer Laurel Takashima), and had to change one concept for one of the key aliens - the Minbari envoy, Delenn - somewhat according with her makeup. (The Minbari were supposed to be non-binary, and Delenn’s makeup in “The Gathering” reflected that. Pilot viewers reacted badly. Therefore, alas, Minbari non-binaryness is gone, and Delenn is definitely female, with the make-up adjusted.) Now, events from The Gathering still happened and will later get referred to in dialogue in-universe (JMS found a good in-story explanation why the station’s telepath and doctor had to go at the same time), but from a Doylist pov, that’s why this opening episode works essentially as a second pilot.
Garibaldi: I like him throughout the show. He’s never my favourite character, but always among those I like a lot, and I could tell you several favourite scenes of mine featuring him through all five seasons, but that would be spoilery. :) Re: annoying, there’s a terrific quote from Londo coming your way next week,since it’s said in “The Parliament of Dreams”.
Comments: not everyone can rot-13, but maybe just leaving spoiler space would work?
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Date: 2021-12-06 07:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-06 08:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-06 09:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-06 10:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-10 08:34 am (UTC)Just by coincidence i watched the same first two episodes last week.
As you said, they did a marvellous job establishing everything. I think they didn't engage me that much on an N'th rewatch for that reason, I'm much more interested in how things are set up than invested in the current happenings which I know mostly don't lead into future plot -- eg Garibaldi Delenn popcorn scene establishes both characters great, but they don't usually hang out at home together, maybe only because we don't have that many side characters. But the looks held up amazingly, both the space combat and alien races.
When I first watched it I thought it was handwaving the existence of souls as most sci-fi does. Now I rewatch carefully, I THINK that it established that "putting dead people in orbs" was really real. But it was carefully unspecified whether "escape" meant dissipating or reincarnating. The glowy things implied external existence, but knowing JMS's attitudes it seems through all the seasons they never suggest there IS an eternal soul, at most that there might be...
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Date: 2021-12-10 08:52 am (UTC)You know, that makes me wonder whether I'd feel different about the final scene (and the slight sense of artificiality in Garibaldi's WB cartoon fondness9 if it would have led to a Garibaldi/Delenn friendship. Very possible. And yes, they basically get no more scenes a deux together after that, only as parts of a larger ensemble.
Re: reincarnation in general, I've seen it argued the Valen thing proves it (in-universe), but to me, it's rather the opposite, since the person the device reacted to wasn't a reincarnated Valen but the one and only, in the flesh. So the glowy orbs aside, the rest of the show really is careful not to verify/deny anything else. Like the idea of the Centauri soul wanting to leave an unworthy body that Londo and Vir talk about at the end of "The very long night of Londo Mollari" in s5 - it could be one explanation of what happens in this episode, but a far more likely one is that all Londo has been repressing and not wanting to deal with psychologically came to the fore in his subconscious.
no subject
Date: 2022-01-02 09:17 pm (UTC)Or for that matter, I think it would have fit better for me if they'd e.g. been at a diplomatic function and the same thing had happened, or if one of them had unwisely been romantically interested in the other, and they'd always been a bit awkward afterward. I would like to see more of both of them: their similarities and differences contrast each other quite well, so a friendship would have been interesting too. But I think what bugged me about it (even in first watch) is that there didn't seem to be any reason for them to hang out together other than that they were both main characters (bridge crew DO have a reason to socialise mainly with bridge crew, but ambassadors and chiefs of security less so).
You make an excellent point about the cartoon -- I hadn't thought about WHY they did that, but for me, I thought it fit Garibaldi very well! :)
Yeah, that's about right. There's studiously never any actual evidence, which definitely suggests "there isn't any soul afterlife", but could also read "we left it ambiguous"
no subject
Date: 2022-03-26 02:59 am (UTC)I watched B5 out of sequence, somehow seeing "The Gathering" and then missing everything on air until S2, when I found the show while flipping channels on broadcast TV. I wasn't able to pick up S1 until either during the TNT era or when the DVDs started coming out. So, I've never watched "Midnight on the Firing Line" without some B5 background.
But now I am older, perhaps wiser, and can look at old stories with new eyes.
I appreciate your comments about some of the early continuity established in this episode.
The first time I watched S1, I didn't like Sinclair much at all (teenage me: "...stiff, low energy. Meh."), but 20 or 25 (!) years later, he reads as thoughtful and a little more contemplative rather than disengaged.
Londo and G'Kar do not read as either contemplative or disengaged. Ahem.
"Midnight on the Firing Line" juggles a lot of elements, but through interconnection and resolution, makes the episode feel reasonably resolved at the close. This is a big difference from how some contemporary shows feel - maybe I've been doing too many marathons of shows from Disney / Netflix / etc with 10 - 13 episode seasons, but a lot of episodes seem to surrender closure in favor of a multi-episode plot arc, and somehow diminish both the episode and the longer arc in the process.
"Soul Hunter" - now this feels like '90s cinematography, CGI, special effects, and writing. Straight on A plot, with feeder elements, like Dr. Franklin's arrival.
I mean, JMS is a bit coy here, trying to make it sound as if Delenn is Up To No Good, but I'm not sure whether I ever believed that, and certainly rewatching the scene reawakens my annoyance that with a very few exceptions, characters who critique Delenn and Sheridan in this show are either mistaken or villainous or both.
I wish I could disagree with you, but... I think you're on to something younger me didn't notice, and would not have questioned if she did notice.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-26 06:48 pm (UTC)