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selenakI wish I could still remember what my original guesses were at this point re: what happened to Sinclair after the Minbari captured him, and what the Minbari in general and Delenn specifically wanted/didn't want from him now, but I can't, it's been too long, and of course now I know exactly, so it's hard to talk about these scenes without the awareness of all that follows. I'll try, though, and separate the spoilery remarks again so new watchers can skip them.
On this rewatch, it strikes me that there are really a good number of ST veterans in this first season - in this episode, we're treated to Khan's second-in-command Joachim as Knight One, and in the next there'll be Robin "Saavik" Curtis as the main villain. Knight Two is played by Christopher Neame. This was the role originally written for Walter Koenig, and as I said in my review for "Mind War", the seriousness of a heart attack notwithstanding I think Koenig lucked out, because Bester is the better part. Then again, maybe Knight Two as played by Walter Koenig would have been more interesting? Here, he and his fellow conspirator are just boo-hiss worthy villains Up To No Good (and with no loyalty to each other, see Knight One taking off immediately after Knight Two got incapacitated). However, some of the points Knight Two makes aren't wrong, i.e. Sinclair at this point of his life is partly hyperfocused on B5 and his duty there because he hasn't been dealing with the past, and yes, the Minbari reason for surrendering when they were in fact winnning the war is something Sinclair needs to know. But he's not even much of a psychologist, otherwise he wouldn't have been so confrontational. I mean, if you can fake Garibaldi in Sinclair's mindscape, why not try to interrogate him via fake!Garibaldi, instead of freaking him out immediately with the empty station?
(Sidenote: the 1990s, the decade where a space station gets to be the part of at least one of its character's mental landscape so we can save some budget. The DS9 take on this, aka the episode about Julian Bashir's early midlife crisis when turning a measly 30, was just avarage, but B5 got two good ones out of this, this one and s5's The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari.)
Another thing that this rewatch reminded me of or made me realise all over again that if s1 is the leaning most in JMS' original pitch of "Casablanca in Space" with every second episode featuring some illegal actitivies in Down Below, it's also the one showing glimpses of more every day commanding duties like Sinclair and Garibaldi interrogating the guard caught at gambling (too much). Now I'm not a military hierarchy expert, and am going by US tv s how gained knowledge mainly, but isn't that the kind of thing that Ivanova as First Officer should be doing (if someone other than Garibaldi is needed)? If so, is Sinclair doing it together with Garibaldi supposed to be another sign of his work-focus and/or of his easier relationship with Garibaldi?
Now on to the memories we get to see, which I can't talk about unspoilery. But I would like to ask any unspoiled reader not familiar with later B5 what they think and if they have a theory!
You
have
a
hole
I swear, every time I see those scenes I find myself muttering "and that's why "In the Beginning" should have been focused on Sinclair and Delenn, not Sheridan and Delenn". This used to irritate me quite a lot until we learned the truth about poor Michael O'Hare's health, and now of course I understand why it couldn't have been, on a Doylist level. But on a Watsonian, it irks me still. Aaaaanyway: watching that Minbari cruiser destroy one star fury after another until Sinclair decides he'll go out on a suicidal final run underlines in a good "show not tell" way that the humans really were losing, and would have lost, in just a few minutes. The fact that instead of dying, Sinclair gets picked for interrogation and thus is alive long enough to be identified be identified by the triangle, which in turn leads to the shock realization of the Grey Council is one of the few times the show relies on a a couple of breathtaking coincidences, or, as Delenn might put it, Destiny with a capital D. If the pilot pulled in for interrogation would have been, say, the unfortunate Mitchell, would the Earth/Minbari war then have ended with the end of the human race, or would a guilt-ridden Delenn have found another way to sway her fellow councillors? I always saw this as her "there but for Valen go I" moment, as expressed in this short fic.
The Minbari telling Delenn that if Sinclair ever finds out, she's to kill him immediately, otoh, feels like a plot device to heighten the suspense and doesn't really fit with the later reveal. But I suppose one can fanwank that at this point, they were just afraid what an Earth Officer could do if he were to know he's
Sinclair being snapped out of his hallucination by Delenn (and being appreciative, but also keeping his regained memory secret from her) reminds me why I always found the Sinclair & / Delenn relationship more interesting than the Sheridan/Delenn one - it's much more ambiguous.
in
your
mind
.
Another thing about 1990s shows: sooner or later, someone does a plot that owes a lot of its inspiration to the fact that post WWII, the US collected its share of Hiter's scientists (most famously, but by no means limited to, Wernher von Braun) and makes it a moral dilemma episode, with the (usually US) heroes deciding they can't use science gained this way in the end, and rejecting the avatar character, whether or not he (and it's usually a he) helps speeding up this process by kidnapping another regular to conduct evil experiments on. This, of course, is very much not what happened with the space programm and Wernher von Braun.
Now, this episode isn't such an obvious example as, say, the Voyager ep where the Doctor needs to consult a (holo) Cardassian scientist, but it definitely draws from the same narrative well, except JMS does a couple of atypical and interesting things with it, of which the fact that the evil scientist in question is a woman, not a man, is the least. Incidentally, on this rewatch I find myself intrigued by the whole Dilgar backstory, which we hear so much less of than of the Earth/Minbari war. Granted, it's further into the past, but still: just why is Robin Curtis the last of them, why aren't there others around? Are we to infer that the League of Non-Aligned worlds plus humanity wiped them out, or did they do this to each other? If it was 30 years ago, and both Centauri and Narn are accused of having collaborated or at least been neutral, while G'Kar later says defensively it was necessary for the Narn revolution to succeed, does this date for when the Narn gained their independence from the Centauri fit with the later dates?
I do regret that the episode loses sight of Na'Toth a third into the plot and doesn't provide us with a final scene showing her reaction to the death of her foe, but otherwise the G'Kar and Na'Toth scenes are very good in showing their growing relationship, and G'Kar in realpolitic mode, which, again, is something to keep in mind when future developments arrive.
Note that the dilemma in this episode isn't whether or not to use the research/result gained in such a gruesome way, it's whether or not the war criminal who created it can get away without facing a trial by using it as a bargain. And here JMS parts ways from the standard way this goes and stays closer to rl by letting, in the end, all the major governments be willing to go for the science. (Except for the Vorlons, and they have their own motives.) Only in the last minute does Judhar throw in another shocker by revealing you can't create more of her immortality serum unless you're also willing to kill more people for it, and predicting that every single race will follow her footsteps and do it. An appalled Sinclair doesn't look as if he's doubting her on that one, until Kosh ex Machina saves the galaxy from universe-wide genocide. I'm familiar with enough vampire stories to conclude she probably would not have been wrong.
Note that Sinclair at the start calls the Minbari honorable (implication: more so than the Centauri and the Narn) and thus is confident they'll vote with him on the Deathwalker matter. This just after he regained some of his memories. Lennier then has to disillusion him and even adds the information that not only did the Wind Swords harbor Deathwalker for years but all the Minbari used the weapons she helped develop in the Earth/Minbari war. The Minbari: definitely as shady as the rest of the B5 people, no matter what Vir will say in a certain s3 episode. Also another nod to reality over the trope.
On to the Talia and Kosh subplot, which demands spoiler space again.
Pain
and
Terror
Recording
Whatever JMS intended to do with this subplot fell through when Andrea Thompson left, but if he had wanted to bring Talia back, this Kosh made recording of her mind might have been one way to do it. Otoh: leaving Doylist considerations aside, and speaking only Watsonianly, this being a recording is only Garibaldi's interpretation at the end. Maybe what the images of Talia trapped by mirrors show us is an early appearance by Control? In any event, given that we later find out the Vorlons have a very important use for telepaths in their fight against the Shadows, this might have been Kosh's original motivation.
Nonsense
Words
Dialogue
Annoys
The other episodes
VERY spoilery speculation about the Dilgar
Date: 2021-12-27 02:07 pm (UTC)So the Dilgar ideology and the whole "immortality through vampirism" thing retrospectively screams "Shadow influence" to me. Did the Shadow have a past influence on the Dilgar, or was Jha'Dur's research programme being directly guided by them in some way? If so, that might explain why the Vorlons feel that they can intervene so directly here without breaching the "rules of the game" with the Shadows.
As far as what happened to the rest of the Dilgar, it's stated in the episode according to Lurker's Guide that at some point since the war their sun went nova and wiped them all out. Very convenient for somebody...
Also, the Dilgar can't really have been much of a power if the LNAW and Earth together managed to defeat them with nobody else. I wonder if the Dilgar were initially part of the LNAW but decided to attack the rest - if so the Minbari and Centauri might have justified their neutrality on "this is an internal LNAW problem" grounds.
Re: VERY spoilery speculation about the Dilgar
Date: 2021-12-27 02:45 pm (UTC)As far as what happened to the rest of the Dilgar, it's stated in the episode according to Lurker's Guide that at some point since the war their sun went nova and wiped them all out. Very convenient for somebody...
Indeed. Also, given they have space flight, I don't see why they would have still been around to get wiped out if their sun went nova, unless the pace of their sun going nova was seriously excelarated. I mean, nobody has accused Star Trek of being hard core realism, but neither the Reboot movies nor the Picard series had the Romulans wiped out as a species for the identical reason.
Also, the Dilgar can't really have been much of a power if the LNAW and Earth together managed to defeat them with nobody else. I wonder if the Dilgar were initially part of the LNAW but decided to attack the rest - if so the Minbari and Centauri might have justified their neutrality on "this is an internal LNAW problem" grounds.
At the very least, they can't have had access to space tech on a Minbari level. Otoh, if the Wind Swords bothered to shield Jha'Dur, that would indicate their biologenetic search must have been superior, possibly because the Minbari, pre-Earth war, were isolating themselves and showing little interest in other species.
Re: VERY spoilery speculation about the Dilgar
Date: 2021-12-27 03:11 pm (UTC)Re: VERY spoilery speculation about the Dilgar
Date: 2021-12-27 03:25 pm (UTC)ETA: it having been 30 years is also why initially they all declare it can't possibly be Jha'Dur, since the woman would be so much older, and why even before Franklin checks her serum her state of arrested age is seen as proof of her claim. If the Dilgar war was after the Earth/Minbari war, her not having aged would hardly be a surprise!
Re: VERY spoilery speculation about the Dilgar
Date: 2021-12-27 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-27 05:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-28 04:26 am (UTC)I wish I could still remember what my original guesses were at this point
...gosh, I have no idea! I mean, I thought it would be complex and dark if the Knights were right and the Minbari had suborned Sinclair... somehow?... or implanted some sort of suggestion in him to go off at the proper time? IDK. Maybe they programmed him to eat the fruit at that ceremony :P I really have no idea, I don't think I understand the Minbari enough at this point to even take a stab at a guess!
I didn't like this as a standalone so much because, like you say, the Knights are pretty cartoonish villains. (I told D -- who isn't watching them -- that it seemed very 90's to me.) But as part of the overall arc, it was brilliant (I am coming around to your view about watching S1 -- it seems like it would be sort of odd to come to this in S2 and get stuck in the middle of it) and definitely I am on board for finding out what happens next!
no subject
Date: 2021-12-28 12:25 pm (UTC)Agreed that as a standalone, the episode would not shine. The importance lies in the set up, for which there will be excellent pay-off, I promise.
Also: I'm glad you're on board, I really am!