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Babylon 5 Rewatch: War Without End (1 & 2)
Yep, still in love with this two parter as much as ever. I'll never forget first watching it, in Los Angeles, where I had a scholarship. Until that time I had watched B5 in German on German tv, then I came to the US, and caught up with the show in English, and "War without End" were the third and fourth B5 episode I first watched in English, full stop. Also I was blown away by the content.
It would be a remarkable pair of episodes even if JMS didn't have to pull a rabbit out of his hat to adjust the already established Babylon Squared stuff to the change of leading man, and make it feel entirely natural. (Which it does. Well, almost. Older Sinclair's "I tried to warn them" line doesn't quite fit anymore, as the only one he tried to warn was Garibaldi, but honestly, I don't care.) Michael O'Hare gives what is to me his best performance on the show, serene and moving at the same time, and I'm struck this time around again by how much you can read into his stillness at the very beginning, after Sinclair has read that message. And both his words about and to Garibaldi in both parts made me think in a way, they're Frodo and Sam if Frodo hadn't taken Sam along and/or Sam hadn't managed to track him down at the end of Fellowship.
(Poor Garibaldi, I say not for the first time. Lise not withstanding, Sinclair does have claims of being the love his life.)
Of course, the first time I watched this, the big Sinclair = Valen reveal was only of secondary iimportance to me, though I found it stunning enough. Naturally, this two parter was to me The One Where We See Londo's Death Vision Play Out, the one where we learn the ghastliness of Londo's fate before that, and the one which completely recontextualizes said vision in a way neither I nor, I dare say, any other unspoiled viewer could anticipate. I.e. instead of killing each other in a final fit of hate, Londo and G'Kar by the time of their deaths are friends, Londo asks G'Kar to kill him to save the Centauri (!), and is counter attack is not something he himself controls. From this point onwards, the big question of the show was to me "how do we get from lethal feuding to "my old friend"?", never mind whether or not Sheridan goes to Z'ha'dum. Okay, I also wanted to know what happened to Centauri Prime, and how far or little Londo was exaggarating/being unfair/completely faking it for the Keeper's benefit when he blamed Sheridan for it, but really, Londo/G'Kar and their mutual arc forever, and that feeling became definite when I first watched this two parter and hasn't left since.
(My flinching upon the sight of the Keeper hasn't changed, either, upon nth repetition. Mind control is vile, body control of that type isn't any better, and I remember how urgently younger me hoped Londo would SOMEHOW manage to avoid that fate.)
One of the benefits of repeated viewing is that one can pay attention to the details which weren't the original focus of one's viewing. So this time, I smiled when thinking of how JMS avoided the usual (then and now) build up to "first kiss" and "first "I love you" for a leading couple and making this a very special episode by letting it happen in the one and only big time travel story of the show, so that for Delenn, "I love you" is old news and the kiss is one after a life time, it's only the first time for Sheridan and they both have so much else going on right then that they're not lingering at the experience.
Back to Sinclair: because Sinclair is actually Valen in the flesh, not a reincarnation but the one and only Valen, I thought until I started this particular rewatch of the show that JMS managed to keep it ambigious as to whether or not the Minbari are right in their belief about human and Minbari souls, or whether the device recognizing Sinclair simply reacted to, well, Sinclair. Then, last year, when rewatching s1 I was reminded the soul hunter episode actually features souls going after said hunter when no one else is present, and the s2 opener has Lennier claim that after Sinclair, other human pilots were kidnapped, tested and also showed Minbari souls, which makes it look like the narrative supports Minbari faith as being factually true. The glowy orbs in "Soul Hunter" are actually more of a problem here than Lennier's claim, because Lennier is delivering exposition to humans, and I bet the Grey Council kept the part where Sinclair was identified not just as having a Minbari soul but the soul of Valen extra secret, wanting absolutely no one to know.
Aaaanyway. I also noticed on this rewatch that the Gethsemane episode sneakily includes some pretty specific Valen info when Brother Edward is interviewing Delenn and Lennier about their faith - "a Minbari not born of Minbari", "came out of nowhere a thousand years ago", "established the Grey Council" etc. Making Sinclair essentially the Minbari Messiah these days could have come across as problematic, but I think not only does the time travel factor negate it - i.e. Sinclair is removed frm the present almost as soon as he finds out, and he ends up in a time where being Valen hasn't (yet) any meaning to his new environment, he has to earn that meaning - but the fact that Sinclair, who had a traumatic war experience and had to learn archieving peace for himself, who has seen both Minbari and humans at their best and worst, is not someone likely to feel himself entitled to lord over anyone. And he'll be alone (at least at first), cut of from anyone he's known and loved. (Unless you take the novel "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" as canon, in which case he'll flind Catherine Sakai again who earlier had a time shaped accident.) In a new body, without the help Delenn had in her equivalent situation (though with Delenn's example proving to him it can be done). Sinclair closing that time loop is sacrifice as much as it is anything else, and Delenn clearly takes it as such.
(On a more frivolous note: as fans pointed out back in the day, every time a Minbari says "In Valen's name!", they actually say "In Sinclair's name", which doesn't quite have the same ring to it....)
Trivia: the first time I watched this, I had no idea who "Lucy and Ethel" were and thus Sinclair's reference completely went beyond me. ("I love Lucy" had not been shown in German tv.) I did know who "Lewis and Clark" were, though I first heard it as "Lois and Clark" before realising he couldn't have meant them... could he?
Delenn's hybrid status is of course why in "Babylon Squared", we hear her voice but don't see her yet in the final scene, since her eventual transformation is one of the s1 mysteries.
Marcus volunteering for the one way ticket to the past gig is neither the first nor the last proof of his tendency to jump on any potential self sacrifice assignment there is, but it's interesting that he does it now when he's started to develop feelings for Ivanova (of whom he would in such a scenario be separated for good).
Londo actually has just a short screen time in this two parter, but Peter Jurasik makes every second count, especially since we get basically three versions of Old Londo The Emperor: the one with the Keeper awake, angry with Sheridan and condemning him to death, drunk Londo revealing the truth to Sheridan and Delenn, asking them to help the Centauri and saving them, and then Londo with G'Kar. I'm differentiating between the last two because I think that while Londo is sincere with Sheridan and Delenn, he's also still playing a role, just a different one, since he really wants them to come through for Centauri Prime, whereas with G'Kar, he's just stripped of everything but the real deal. Note that Londo, if he wants to be, is a good liar, and like all good liars does employ parts of the truth, which is why I think the anger at Sheridan in his first scene isn't all faked (though not for the reasons he gives, more about this in later seasons).
Draal and the Great Machine being able to engineer time travel (through sector 14) was a potentially tricky element to introduce to the saga, which is, I guess, why JMS at the end of the two parter establishes that the Quadrant 15 gap is really really closed, and Our Heroes won't be able to do it again. If the reboot version of the show also uses time travel this one time, I wonder whether it will happen at the end of the saga, as was orginally planned for Sinclair?
The other episodes
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b) the new mysteries come by being solved by the old ones, so it's not just a case of new shit being piled on top of old shit until you're so frustrated you don't care any longer.
haha, yeah, this was so me and X-Files! (Which I bailed out of... sixth season? Something like that?)
I do like that explanation of time and of Garibaldi, thank you!
And that was a great fic -- heh, I came out of that episode thinking, "It would be really cool to read a fic about what Sinclair was thinking inside that chrysalis," and lo.