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selenakSecrets of the Soul
Aka the one with many a fan's least favourite sex scene on the show. Seriously, if this episode gets referenced somewhere, it's because Byron and Lyta have sex in close proximity to a number of other telepaths, not so much for the final reveal (while getting augmented by the Vorlons, Lyta discovered that the Vorlons literally created telepaths in all the younger races by genetically modifying them once they realised they needed telepaths) but for the sex with the group around part. Maybe it's the history fan in me, but I never had a problem with the later. Not in the sense of "I, personally, would not have minded - you bet I would", but in the sense of "yes, this makes sense for these particular people in this particular situation". The telepaths are supposed to be all very poor and living as such in Down Below. Now Byron and Lyta could have gone to her quarters, but the episode earlier prevented that by letting Lyta confess she still doesn't really feel as one of them and letting Byron make a point of letting everyone else hug her and show her she's accepted. Afterwards, going elsewhere with Byron would have come across like a rejection of said acceptance.
Incidentally, watching that hugging scene after reading JMS' memoirs and of how his time spent in a cult as a young man was the first time after the childhood from hell that people were showing him physical affection is something else. Mind you, I still think the Byron casting is a problem because when Lyta tells Zack she'd die for Byron in an instant it still doesn't feel quite real because of the lack of charisma in Byron. But not for the lack of build-up in Lyta's emotional development. She has every reason to feel like an exploited outsider on Babylon 5. That Zack does care for her doesn't negate that. (If you want to be mean: Zack has a crush on her. If he didn't, if she had been a male rogue telepath, would he have brought pizza?) Lyta's brief interactions with other telepaths since the Vorlons changed her basically always involve death: sending the "Control activing" command to Talia, connecting to the frozen teeps and sending them to their death. And sparring with Bester. Now here are Byron and his group, offering acceptance, validation, admiration, a way to connect that isn't hostile. Of course she'd go for it.
The other plot line, with Franklin and the Hyach - and the dead Hyach-do - feels oddly like something that ought to have happened in s1. Including Franklin's judgmental attitude. By which I don't mean you should not judge genocide, of course you should, but holding the descendants of the perpetrators responsible for their ancestor's crimes is a bit of a problem if you come from a planet where a great many people committed genocide on a great many other people. Franklin says he holds them responsible because they attempted to cover the historical wrong up which makes them accessories after the fact. (And thus they have their dying out coming.) I wonder what he'd think of Delenn then, covering up something that happened not a thousand years ago but in her life time, by herself?
Otoh, Franklin does make a good point by saying he can't forgive them, only the Hyach-do could, i.e. you don't ask forgiveness from someone who hasn't suffered from the crime in question, nor do you extend it on behalf of an entire people (definitely not if you're not one of these people, but also not in general). This is pretty important to another storyline, see also Londo and G'Kar, and spoilery spoiler.
The Day of the Dead
The one and only episode not written by JMS ever since mid s2, and one of my favourites. Though it has a bit of continuity weirdness in that Londo and G'Kar, who left for Centauri Prime at the end of "Strange Relations" are back on the station without explanation, and then in the next episode will be on Centauri Prime again. Basically "Day of the Dead" ought to be shown before Strange Relations, I guess, and I suspect JMS put it in this place instead as something of a breather because things are going to get dark both on the station and Centauri Prime.
Be that as it may: the first time I watched this episode, when it was originally broadcast, I hadn't yet read Sandman, so had no idea who Neil Gaiman was, and did not recognize any tropes. The second time I watched it, when the B5 dvds were released, I had read Sandman and thought, OMG, Lochley and Zoe could have lived in a house with Wanda and Barbie and Hazel and Foxglove and Thessaly! Now I also think the fact that what in theory could have been a negative, frightening experience for our main characters - encountering the dead - instead turns out to be a warm, enriching experience (except for Lennier) - is a very Gaiman twist in general. Anyone else would have gone for a Morden/Londo combination, but no, Londo gets one more night of bliss with Adira instead, and Morden messes with Lennier. Garibaldi gets Dodger, which made me happy the first time I watched it and still pleases me, because she was an endearing character in her original episode, and I love the way this episode keeps the vibe between her and Garibaldi - they're attracted to each other, but by not having sex the odd emotional intimacy that developes between them is possibly greater. Not to mention the Yellow Rose of Texas/Emily Dickinson trivia is great.
The segment that goes deepest, though, to me remains the one about Elizabeth Lochley and Zoe. Not simply for the reveal that Lochley the teenager/young woman had a wild running away from home, doing drugs phase, but for the way losing Zoe during that time scarred her. Becoming part of the military, submitting yourself to a regiment of rules (to the the point where you DON'T rebel against a very questionable authority), becoming very straightlaced - if you trace it to the sight of a loved dead girl run over by insects, chocked on her own vomit, it explains a lot. (It also adds something to the prickly relationship between Lochley and that other addict in recovery, Garibaldi, which the show will use later this season.)
The Reboo & Zooty subplot: Neil Gaiman said he was Lochley in that one, i.e. it was inspired by his moving to the US and everyone making Friends and other American comedy shows caused references which he didn't get and didn't find funny, so no, we weren't meant to find them as hilarious as Sheridan & Co. do. Though I have to say, the idea that Minbari comedy humor works differently from human humor is neat world building.
This episode became the inspiration of what is my favourite Babylon 5 vid, by
andraste: Ophelia . Aka: Sometimes the dead girls come back. (Applies to not just those we see in this episode.) No spoilers past Day of the Dead, i.e. cahn ,you can watch it.Some years ago, I participated in a ficathon where I ended up having to write Anna (Sheridan)/Morden. The only way I could manage that, given Anna Sheridan spends her non-flashback time on the show as a lobotomized woman, without going non-con about it was by using the Day of the Dead premise, since presumably dead!Anna would have been restored to her complete facilities. So poor Lennier doesn't just get visited by Morden but by Anna as well: Visiting Hour
The other episodes
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Date: 2022-09-25 03:24 pm (UTC)Day Of The Dead on the other hand I'm not sure I understand the appeal. The visitations to Lochley and Lennier were the most interesting telling us of past and future. But Garibaldi's and Londo's I guess they give us a little about their current mindsets, the present as it were, but not much we didn't already know? I could easily be missing something.
Mr Morden for Lennier was a very interesting choice, being the only one not known to the person they were visiting and explicitly playing up the 'knowledge from beyond the veil' aspect of it.
eta: I guess what surprised me the most was the amount of time spent establishing the 'this bit of the station is now literally on brikar' bit and the interstellar comm hacking to talk to Sheridan to say... not very much, rather than interacting with the dead people.
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Date: 2022-09-26 07:54 am (UTC)I think one problem is that Byron is relying on the One Big Gesture to change someone's mind. And that's not how this kind of resistance works. Neither with Gandhi nor with the US Civil Rights movement. It needed years and years and thousands of people.
Day of the Dead: leaving aside that different things work for different people, and just because I love it, you don't have to: yes, of course we already knew Londo loved Adira, and that he feels less than thrilled now at the prospect of becoming Emperor. But for one thing, we the audience know there is an umpending decades long horror waiting for him, and this is arguably the last time he'll be truly happy (and free). For another, there's Adira. All the dead people coming back for a night, whether they are ghosts or something else, seem to be true to their living incarnations and able to say and do what they want (as can be seen by Dodger still being an agnostic, and Zoe first lying, then saying the truth about her death to Lochley). Now, in s1 Adira was a slave just achieving her freedom. She did seem to have developed feelings for Londo, but how much of this was due to the situation is questionable. We know she wanted to come back to him in s3 when she was killed, but as we never saw her alive, we don't know her reasons. Here, though, it's crystal clear she loves him, she comes back for this season. As for Garibaldi and Dodger, Garibaldi spent most of s4 in an increasingly mind controlled state, and early s5 always tense and on edge and set to prove himself as loyal. And that's when he still believes he can revenge himself on Bester. Once he has his confrontation with Bester, and spoilery stuff happens, it'll get worse. So to me, it makes much sense for this episode to show us Garibaldi at his best. Yes, he still is paranoid (for good reasons) at first, but he's also funny and tender and manages to do what Lochley asks him to in between interacting with Dodger. There's a playfulness, a relaxedness in his scenes with Dodger that remind us what Garibaldi is like when he's happy, and we don't see it again until the series finale.
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Date: 2022-09-25 04:34 pm (UTC)Byron: I am committed to peace and being extremely peaceful even when people are directly awful to us!
Lyta: By the way, telepaths were created by the Vorlons.
Byron: THIS MEANS WAR!! On the normals, who had nothing to do with any of this actually.
Me: ????
Sex scene: So on one hand I did fast-forward through the sex scene (it was long! I find sex scenes boring!) but on the other hand I didn't object to it - actually I thought it sort of made sense for telepaths to have group sex, or at least sex in the presence of a group, anyway. Like, they're not shielding, right? They sort of have access to each other's thoughts in general. So they know when people are having sexual thoughts, and, well, I just sort of assumed that when anyone in the group had sex, it was sort of a group thing just by virtue of the way that unshielded telepaths worked. (I'm sure it's not how it works in the Psi Corps.)
(If you want to be mean: Zack has a crush on her. If he didn't, if she had been a male rogue telepath, would he have brought pizza?)
I mean, I think Lyta was spot on when she said Zack objected to her and Byron because he was jealous. I do think that Zack distrusts Byron for other reasons, but he probably wouldn't have objected in quite the same way if Lyta were male.
I wonder what he'd think of Delenn then, covering up something that happened not a thousand years ago but in her life time, by herself?
Franklin and me more-or-less together: OH DELENN NO.
I ABSOLUTELY LOVED Day of the Dead, I think it's one of my favorite episodes ever <33333 I loved everything about it. I loved the strangely compelling Brakiri. I loved Rebo and Zooty and actually getting to see them! I loved getting to see the ghosts again!
I both think it's totally unfair that Lennier got stuck with Morden and feel like it says something about him... everyone else got to see someone else they had major and unresolved feelings about. Lennier... doesn't have anyone like that, who is dead. Which kind of says something about where all his feelings are being channeled. It was interesting getting to see Morden again. Like the shadow of a shadow... No longer dangerous in the way he was, but that's not to say he isn't dangerous! (Also, poor Lennier, now doomed to betray the rangers and then die! Agh! But then again, if there ever was a character marked for tragic early death, it's... well, Marcus. But Lennier is a good second one.)
It was also amazing to see Adira again and for Londo to get one more night with her <3 And Garibaldi and Dodger, I LOVED getting to see Dodger again and also lol forever to their relationship
And Lochley broke my heart the most, with everything that wasn't said but was implied - that her dad was so terrible that she ran away with Zoe and was hungry all the time, but then once Zoe died she went back and followed in his footsteps, kind of.... And that her password is still "Zoe's dead." Not Zoe - it's that she's dead that stays with her. But she's also grown up, too - she still is focused on getting word to Sheridan.
(I can see why she married Sheridan, too - his all-American-typical-ness must have been very attractive to her. And why they divorced, too. I know Gaiman wrote this episode, but it seems like a very JMS characterization.)
Neil Gaiman said he was Lochley in that one, i.e. it was inspired by his moving to the US and everyone making Friends and other American comedy shows caused references which he didn't get and didn't find funny, so no, we weren't meant to find them as hilarious as Sheridan & Co. do.
I loved that! I thought the ep made it very clear that these were sort of cultural memes that were super funny to them but wouldn't be to people not familiar with them (and not to everyone, like Lochley). (Also brought to you by currently watching Lego Star Wars with my kids, and laughing my head off at some of the jokes and meta, and having to explain "Han shot first!" and other such things to my kids.)
Though I have to say, the idea that Minbari comedy humor works differently from human humor is neat world building.
I was struck by -- I don't think I've ever seen Delenn laugh like that! Not really laugh, the way she was laughing in this episode. <3
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Date: 2022-09-26 08:29 am (UTC)Lyta: By the way, telepaths were created by the Vorlons.
Byron: THIS MEANS WAR!! On the normals, who had nothing to do with any of this actually.
Me: ????
LOL. Well, let's just say Byron is a very recent pacifist, and spent most of his life... you'll find out soon. And I do think he relies a bit on the big gesture in his pacificism, overlooking that the successes Gandhi or Martin Luther King and their respective movements achieved took years and years and thousands of people acting this way. Doing it once and expecting it to change a brute's mind isn't enough. Otoh, finding out that there's someone to blame for the entire telepath situation other than nature and bad laws, that they were created as weapons, would evoke a very different reaction in someone who, I think, needs to feel he's in control of the situation he's in.
I ABSOLUTELY LOVED Day of the Dead,
I hoped you would!
I both think it's totally unfair that Lennier got stuck with Morden and feel like it says something about him...
Among other things, I think it came to be because Lennier, while a genuinely good person, also considers himself to be good and pure and safe from temptation. As I told you, if Marcus was Galahad, he's Lancelot, specifically the Camelot Lancelot, "the godliest man I know". And also, as you say:
Which kind of says something about where all his feelings are being channeled
Yep. Which is a big difference to the other characters, who, no matter how deeply they care, have other people and/or causes in their lives.
I LOVED getting to see Dodger again and also lol forever to their relationship
This was the main reason why I wanted you to watch the season 2 episode GROPOS. :) I also think it's kind of endearing that Neil Gaiman, who got carte blanche from JMS as to which characters to use (the only JMS ordered thing in this episode is the message from Kosh to Sheridan), decided he liked Dodger so much he wanted to include her.
And that her password is still "Zoe's dead." Not Zoe - it's that she's dead that stays with her
*nods* It says so much about her.
I can see why she married Sheridan, too - his all-American-typical-ness must have been very attractive to her. And why they divorced, too.
Exactly what I thought after this episode. You can't read my Lochley story yet, but the brief paragraph on her marriage to Sheridan is:
Most of the time, it was next to impossible to connect the serious bearded man in civilian clothes she addressed as "Mr. President" with the laughing young man she'd been married to for all of three months. They had both been fresh out of officer's training school, and she had fallen in love with him at lightning speed because he was everything she wasn't, except ambitious and dead set on a military career. He had photos of his parents and sister on ready display, called them and received visits on a regular basis, joked all the time, flashing his very white teeth, and was an absolute dork in his obsession with fresh fruit. The worst thing that ever happened to him was a bloody nose in the last fight he'd lost. If you still woke up dreaming of cockroaches and rats crawling all over your best friend who had choked on her own vomit every night, this was incredibly endearing. She never told him more about herself than that she came from a military family and was carrying on the tradition, and he didn't ask. He certainly wouldn't have believed anyone who'd told him the ambitious young officer who never ever touched a drop of alcohol and was so strict even her hair was braided had lived in a run down motel only two years ago, doing absolutely anything to live another day.
What broke them up was her present, not her past, the constant arguments and the realization they had been young and stupid and acting on hormones instead of common sense. After their divorce, they agreed those three months together were best forgotten and kept their distance from each other for the next few years, until they could graduate to being cautiously friendly aquaintances. He moved faster on the career track than she did. When he scored the only human victory in the war against the Minbar, she found she didn't mind anymore.
I thought the ep made it very clear that these were sort of cultural memes that were super funny to them but wouldn't be to people not familiar with them
Yes, and I think most people are familiar with both ends of such a situation - being familiar with the gags and being the baffled outsider.
I was struck by -- I don't think I've ever seen Delenn laugh like that! Not really laugh, the way she was laughing in this episode. <3
She's usually more the Mona Lisa Smmile type, that's true. I bet the direction to Mira Furlan for that scene was "play it like it's the funniest thing you ever heard, abandon all restraint completely", or something like that.