More Babylon 5
Nov. 16th, 2003 08:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakMore revelling in season 3 of Babylon 5. Ah, those were the days. Am I ever so glad JMS got the show made when he did, because these days he'd be rejected by every network for sure. Not just because of the arc-ness but because of the content. As with DS9 which couldn't get made today (imo as always of course), with important elements like Kira's background. Specifically, the part of the content which deals with Earth politics.
Does Julie Musante remind anyone else of a) an attractive blonde version of Dolores Umbridge (of Harry Potter fame), and b) a not-so-satire on present-day politicians? I didn't make the Umbridge connection the first time around, of course, this being eight years ago. But now the plot of Order Of The Phoenix, with the ministry of magic sending Umbridge to bring Hogwarts to the party line, looks suspiciously familiar. (Only JKR, with the exception of young Tom Riddle, tends to write her villains as ugly.) Mind you, I suppose Musante's attempts to bed Sheridan are more easy on him than Umbridge's blood-drawing methods to abuse Harry, but otherwise… And Umbridge even has her personal version of the Nightwatch!
Criticism of the ministry or the President? Disloyal. Social problems? Don't exist; there are only people refusing to work. Prejudice? Doesn't exist. "And when did all this happen?" asks a slightly dazed Sheridan (who doesn't know that if he were Harry Potter, he'd have to write "I must not tell lies" into his own skin by now). "When we redefined the dictionary," replies Ms. Musante. Newspeak, here we come.
Going slightly out of order - because I want to talk about Dust to Dust and the other Narn/Centauri/Bester stuff all together in a moment: Point of No Return, Severed Dreams and Ceremonies of Light and Dark can be seen as an unofficial three-parter and bring the story arc dealing with slow destruction of democracy on Earth to a head. It's very well executed; just because I love the Centauri and Narn most of all doesn't mean I don't care about the other arcs. Having had Zack whom the audience knows and likes join the Nightwatch in season 2 was an excellent idea; when I first watched these episodes, I kept hoping he'd make the right choice but wasn't sure, which is as it should be. Rewatching it, it strikes me how difficult JMS makes things for Zack because Garibaldi is really anything but nice and asking for sympathy here, but in full-on, angry and vicious mode. And he gets group pressure squared. Still, I'd say it's the friendship and veneration Zack feels for Garibaldi which is the decisive factor.
Meanwhile, Sheridan and the rest of his command staff cling for a surprisingly long time to the hope that Hague will manage a military coup and oust Clark from government, that they won't really have to go up against Earth; in my memory, the decision was made faster which shows you how malleable memory is. (I didn't rewatch these episodes the way I did others until now.) Back in season 2, at one point during In the Shadow of Z'ha'Dum, Sheridan told Ivanova he lived only for his wife and his career, and that after losing Anna, he clung to what was left, the career. Which naturally means JMS is going to take the career away and confront him with the wife in a nightmarish fashion. Sheridan was never my favourite character on the show but I don't dislike him, either, and in seasons 2 and 3 I even have a lot of empathy for him. A lot of B5 is about transformation, the willingness to change in painful ways (for oneself and others), and Sheridan does so here. Again, I can't think of another show which marries the political and the personal so well as B5 does.
It strikes me that the Minbari civil war arc, which doesn't come to the fore until the middle of season 4, really starts here, too, when Delenn breaks the Grey Council into the Religious and Worker Caste which follow her and the Warrior Cast which stays behind. It's the parallel to what goes on with Sheridan and Earth, naturally, but there are differences, too. Earth society going wrong is obvious (unless you think a fascist state is a good idea); the fact that Minbari society has been going wrong for a while is less so. Vir, for example, who is otherwise quite insightful and sees people like Morden and Refa as the trouble they are from day 1, has a distinct rosy-eyed look at Minbar; the only thing even slightly critical he ever says about the Minbari is that the Warrior Caste aren't as friendly to off-worlders as the rest. And yet in less than a year, Minbar will be embroiled in a bloody civil war with all the Castes fighting, and it starts when Delenn, frustrated at the Grey Council's continued refusal to become involved, breaks them apart. She couldn't have done so if they had been truly united to begin with, but we saw the hostility between the castes as early as season 1.
Side observation: Mira Furlan is great in these scenes; Delenn's most memorable moments - that is, my choice of them - tend to be with other Minbari, or with the other ambassadors, and her steely-eyed confrontation with the guard (complete with "I am the Chosen of Dukhat" speech) and breaking of the Grey Council is one of them. In terms of the overall show, I also admire how this moment, which at first glance looks like exactly the right thing to do, is returned to in a slightly different light when Delenn and Neroon discuss it in Rumours, Bargains and Lies in season 4. When she says that the civil war will destroy their people and Neroon replies "You should have thought of that before you broke the Grey Council".
The Delenn moment which is certainly her most quotable comes in Severed Dreams, when she rescues Sheridan & Co. from being blasted into oblivion by the new reinforcements from Earth. "Only one human captain ever survived a fight with a Minbari cruiser. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else." Generally speaking I tend to go more for quiet character moments, but I have to admit I love this one.
Speaking of quieter moments for Delenn, in my last post I talked a bit about Londo regretting the loss of Lennier's and her friendship. Seeing Ceremonies of Light and Dark made me aware again of something I had forgotten - Delenn invites Londo to the ceremony of renewal and healing as well; she even tells both Sheridan and Londo himself that she thought of him first when making a guest list for this particular ceremony. (Unfortunately, she delivers her invitation in a slightly patronizing manner, and he declines.) It made me think a bit about Delenn and Londo in general, which isn't a relationship I had previously wondered about. The fact she does invite him indicates that as opposed to Lennier (at this point), she doesn't think Londo is beyond help yet. Delenn during the entire run of the show isn't ever close to Londo but often proves herself quite insightful when it comes to him. She knows he's lying when he gives her an "official" reason for his request about Vir in A Day in the Strife and correctly states he needs Vir; she fixes him up with G'Kar as bodyguard in season 5 (irreverent aside: wouldn't put it past Delenn to be a secret matchmaker, or to believe that what worked for humans and Minbari might be the idea for Narn and Centauri*g*), and senses his tortured state of mind despite his pretense to the contrary in Objects at Rest. (As opposed to clueless Sheridan.) The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari probably shows most clearly how they feel about each other; the Delenn in Londo's mind is a mysterious, impressive presence who dispenses implacable judgment and points out his flaws; meanwhile Delenn in the real world sums up her view of him like this: "He has made me angry, he has made me laugh; I even liked him from time to time, as much as I haven't wanted to, but I never pitied him. Until now." And then she adds the sentence he hears in his coma: "Get well, Mollari."
The reason why Delenn in earlier seasons feels occasional sympathy but not pity, as opposed Lennier who at a guess would say he feels pity but, after Londo's actions in the war, no more sympathy (as opposed to pre-Coming of Shadowstimes) is, if I have to guess, that she understands Londo a bit too well for mutual comfort despite their very different personalities. For Delenn, let's not forget, has arguably as much blood as Londo on her hands due to her kill them all call after Dukhat's death. Londo despite his doubts did nothing to stop the destruction of Narn, and for a long time thought that having started it, he had to go the whole way, and after one attempt to break with Morden returned for a while longer before stopping; Delenn despite her doubts made only one attempt at peace but when that failed went through with everything until the very end and the discovery of Sinclair's soul. For years. "We went insane together," she says about this time to the human who takes her hostage in Ceremonies of Light and Dark, "and then we woke up together." But is that really a better excuse than what Londo tries to bring up with his inner G'Kar in The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari? Delenn, as opposed to Sheridan, knows what it is to be guilty and plug on regardless and this arguably gives her a better insight into Londo than anyone other than Vir and G'Kar.
"Insight" being somewhat of a euphemism for what happens in Dust to Dust, and episode which I could hug and squeeze to death in fannish delight except it would bite me quite severely. There are so many important elements here; Londo and G'Kar, Londo and Vir. And Bester. Did I mention Bester is my favourite recurring guest star? After two straight forward appearances as a villain, Dust to Dust is when he gains layers, and not just it breaks with the "Bester comes to the station, makes trouble, is foiled, departs" mould of the previous two. Babylon 5 isn't a show where all antagonists signed on for the same Villains Incorporated Schemes, and while Bester in Dust To Dust tells the B5 crew only half of the truth and has his own or rather in this case the Corps' reasons, he doesn't work against them, either. The great thing about Bester from this point onwards is that he's a wildcard, working both as an antagonist and as an ally - you just never know which it is going to be. Also, JMS not only gives him the best lines but lets him win every verbal battle with Garibaldi, who isn't bad at this kind of thing himself, in this episode. (My favourite bit is when Garibaldi comes with "yeah, we could do that or we could hang you up like a piñata" and Bester returns "ah piñata, hm? So you think of me as something bright and cheerful, full of toys for little children; that makes me feel so much better about our relationship.) Mind you, Bester's final line to Garibaldi - "it was good working with you - we must do it again sometime" is ever so chilling if you know what's to come. This was probably the episode in which Garibaldi impressed Bester enough to be considered a great tool for investigation. Poor Garibaldi.
Wile it's difficult to say just where Londo hits rock bottom (though it's easier to say when he starts the hard path back - The Hour of the Wolf), I think there can't be much argument for G'Kar - Dust to Dust. Did he really think invading Londo's mind would in some way help the Narn resistance? Perhaps on one level, but you can't tell me that the more important motivation wasn't payback. G'Kar's first reaction in Coming of Shadows was All About Londo, and the hatred only intensified after that; in Convictions he was willing to die so he could see Londo die as well. In Dust to Dust there is no one to hold him back in time, and he unleashes on Londo what was gathering ever since the he betrayed me moment in season 2. And it's brutal. Just so we really get the full extent of the mental and emotional violence in addition to the physical one, JMS has Bester use the term "mind rape" when explaining about Dust earlier. What G'Kar finds in Londo's mind at first - the humiliation when being given the assignment as ambassor, that humiliation which during the entire first season fed into Londo's inner bitterness to the point where he was ripe for Morden, and the guilt in the memory of Morden's "they're Narn, why should you care" question - isn't really surprising though after repeated viewings I wonder how this artificial telepathy thing works; G'kar's "show my your secrets" isn't exactly a specific question, after all. Since next when he wants more we got mostly flashbacks of Londo which are connected with G'Kar and the Narn (like the offered drink, or the gesture silencing Vir while he tells Refa he'll take care of quadrant 14) as well as finally the death vision (and to this day I wonder whether G'Kar ever understood what he was seeing there) it's probably a stimulus-response method; because it's G'Kar who asks, Londo gets these specific memories.
The ensuing epiphany for G'Kar, orchestrated by Kosh, illustrates that what Lyta later says about Kosh I is true - he did come to care about the younger races, or at least their B5 representatives. (Can't imagine another Vorlon giving a damn about whether or not the Centauri and Narn tear each other apart.) But be that as it may, G'Kar doesn't get hypnotized into accepting what he's told. And I think if he later found out it had been Kosh, not a vision of his late father or G'Quan, it wouldn't have mattered anymore; the message is what he comes to believe in, not the messenger. With hindsight, it's also the last time G'Kar acts against Londo in hatred. His feelings for Londo don't change overnight; but without this one time of unleashed hate, I wonder whether we would have ever gotten to their strange alliance in season 4 and completely against the odds friendship in season 5.
It's also an important episode for the relationship between Londo and Vir, and not just because of the ongoing "Londo rewrites Vir's reports" gag which starts here. It's in Dust to Dust that Vir first verbalizes his faith in Londo, and does so at a moment where not just Lennier and Delenn but probably a large part of the audience was understandably sceptical. (And he does so while being quite exasperated with Londo; Vir's is not a blind affection or belief.) And the silent moment when Vir, after telling Franklin "he needs me" touches the glass and Londo looks at him and tries to raise his hand back puts a lump into my throat every time. Finally, Londo's statement, telling Vir "don't let them see you as a joke" is yet another reminder of Londo not wanting Vir to follow the same path. Tender moments like this keep Londo complex in his period of darkness where most other shows would have simplified him into either a villain or, if they intended to keep him on the heroes' side, would never had let him descend this far.
Not that all of Londo's dark deeds are painful to watch. I have to admit that the Londo and Refa scene in Ceremonies of Light and Dark fills me with glee every time. "Because I asked you to. Because your ambition should be less important to you than our people. And because I have poisoned your drink." That's Londo in completely ruthless mode, but you have to admit - it's also classy, and fun. Not to mention it showcases the difference between Refa and Londo. Londo might be ambitious himself, but he always puts Centauri Prime first, and of course he's more intelligent than Refa (who still hasn't figured out the shiny Shadow-lent power comes with a price tag and that being at war with everyone else really isn't a good idea).
Ship of Tears brings Bester back to the station for the second time in the same season, and G'Kar into the B5 council, something long overdue. I do like the scene in which Delenn tells Sheridan it's her responsibility to tell G'Kar that they deliberately kept silent because she was the one who together with Kosh insisted on it (which is true, but a lot of people would still have dumped the unpleasant business of having it out with an angry Narn on Sheridan), and the ensuing conversation between Delenn and G'Kar. But the main reason why I love this episode is You-know-who. (Not Voldemort.) Walter Koenig named this as a favourite and it's easy to see why - he gets to play the whole scala between Bester as smug and superior (again getting the better of the B5 crew in the verbal battles) and stunned and emotionally shattered (a first for the character). With some manipulative thrown in, since Bester not only gets Sheridan to rescue some telepaths for him (bear in mind Bester didn't know his lover Carolyn was one of them in advance) by dangling the "weapons" carrot in front of him but gets on the station to begin with. (This also took courage; as Sheridan points out, they had no reason not to blow him out of the sky the minute he showed up.) (And I also think he deliberately provoked Ivanova into slapping him which gave me a neat fanfic idea, but that's just a minor side issue.) Again, the fictional reality of the B5 universe is strengthened by the fact not all villains have automatically the same aims; even before discovering Carolyn, Bester prefers the much weaker B5 crew to the Shadows as allies because he sees the Shadows (correctly) as a threat to telepaths.
The scene in which he does discover Carolyn is great, great acting by Koenig because we have to believe that Bester loves this woman in just a few moments and nearly no dialogue so that his explanation afterwards doesn't come across as a lie. Given that the character also has to be kept as manipulative and ruthless, that's no small challenge.
Arc-wise, Bester's visit together with Garibaldi finally making headways with the book of G'Quan leads to the important discovery that telepaths can be used as weapons against the Shadows, and this beautifully connects the ongoing telepath arc with the Shadow war arc. (Not to mention that it sets up a crucial element for the season 4 conclusion.) One does wish headwriters of other shows were watching B5 before attempting multiple storylines of their own; not because B5 is without flaws - it absolutely isn't - but because when it comes to weaving a complex tapestry without making it look awkward, it really is a template heard to beat.
Does Julie Musante remind anyone else of a) an attractive blonde version of Dolores Umbridge (of Harry Potter fame), and b) a not-so-satire on present-day politicians? I didn't make the Umbridge connection the first time around, of course, this being eight years ago. But now the plot of Order Of The Phoenix, with the ministry of magic sending Umbridge to bring Hogwarts to the party line, looks suspiciously familiar. (Only JKR, with the exception of young Tom Riddle, tends to write her villains as ugly.) Mind you, I suppose Musante's attempts to bed Sheridan are more easy on him than Umbridge's blood-drawing methods to abuse Harry, but otherwise… And Umbridge even has her personal version of the Nightwatch!
Criticism of the ministry or the President? Disloyal. Social problems? Don't exist; there are only people refusing to work. Prejudice? Doesn't exist. "And when did all this happen?" asks a slightly dazed Sheridan (who doesn't know that if he were Harry Potter, he'd have to write "I must not tell lies" into his own skin by now). "When we redefined the dictionary," replies Ms. Musante. Newspeak, here we come.
Going slightly out of order - because I want to talk about Dust to Dust and the other Narn/Centauri/Bester stuff all together in a moment: Point of No Return, Severed Dreams and Ceremonies of Light and Dark can be seen as an unofficial three-parter and bring the story arc dealing with slow destruction of democracy on Earth to a head. It's very well executed; just because I love the Centauri and Narn most of all doesn't mean I don't care about the other arcs. Having had Zack whom the audience knows and likes join the Nightwatch in season 2 was an excellent idea; when I first watched these episodes, I kept hoping he'd make the right choice but wasn't sure, which is as it should be. Rewatching it, it strikes me how difficult JMS makes things for Zack because Garibaldi is really anything but nice and asking for sympathy here, but in full-on, angry and vicious mode. And he gets group pressure squared. Still, I'd say it's the friendship and veneration Zack feels for Garibaldi which is the decisive factor.
Meanwhile, Sheridan and the rest of his command staff cling for a surprisingly long time to the hope that Hague will manage a military coup and oust Clark from government, that they won't really have to go up against Earth; in my memory, the decision was made faster which shows you how malleable memory is. (I didn't rewatch these episodes the way I did others until now.) Back in season 2, at one point during In the Shadow of Z'ha'Dum, Sheridan told Ivanova he lived only for his wife and his career, and that after losing Anna, he clung to what was left, the career. Which naturally means JMS is going to take the career away and confront him with the wife in a nightmarish fashion. Sheridan was never my favourite character on the show but I don't dislike him, either, and in seasons 2 and 3 I even have a lot of empathy for him. A lot of B5 is about transformation, the willingness to change in painful ways (for oneself and others), and Sheridan does so here. Again, I can't think of another show which marries the political and the personal so well as B5 does.
It strikes me that the Minbari civil war arc, which doesn't come to the fore until the middle of season 4, really starts here, too, when Delenn breaks the Grey Council into the Religious and Worker Caste which follow her and the Warrior Cast which stays behind. It's the parallel to what goes on with Sheridan and Earth, naturally, but there are differences, too. Earth society going wrong is obvious (unless you think a fascist state is a good idea); the fact that Minbari society has been going wrong for a while is less so. Vir, for example, who is otherwise quite insightful and sees people like Morden and Refa as the trouble they are from day 1, has a distinct rosy-eyed look at Minbar; the only thing even slightly critical he ever says about the Minbari is that the Warrior Caste aren't as friendly to off-worlders as the rest. And yet in less than a year, Minbar will be embroiled in a bloody civil war with all the Castes fighting, and it starts when Delenn, frustrated at the Grey Council's continued refusal to become involved, breaks them apart. She couldn't have done so if they had been truly united to begin with, but we saw the hostility between the castes as early as season 1.
Side observation: Mira Furlan is great in these scenes; Delenn's most memorable moments - that is, my choice of them - tend to be with other Minbari, or with the other ambassadors, and her steely-eyed confrontation with the guard (complete with "I am the Chosen of Dukhat" speech) and breaking of the Grey Council is one of them. In terms of the overall show, I also admire how this moment, which at first glance looks like exactly the right thing to do, is returned to in a slightly different light when Delenn and Neroon discuss it in Rumours, Bargains and Lies in season 4. When she says that the civil war will destroy their people and Neroon replies "You should have thought of that before you broke the Grey Council".
The Delenn moment which is certainly her most quotable comes in Severed Dreams, when she rescues Sheridan & Co. from being blasted into oblivion by the new reinforcements from Earth. "Only one human captain ever survived a fight with a Minbari cruiser. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else." Generally speaking I tend to go more for quiet character moments, but I have to admit I love this one.
Speaking of quieter moments for Delenn, in my last post I talked a bit about Londo regretting the loss of Lennier's and her friendship. Seeing Ceremonies of Light and Dark made me aware again of something I had forgotten - Delenn invites Londo to the ceremony of renewal and healing as well; she even tells both Sheridan and Londo himself that she thought of him first when making a guest list for this particular ceremony. (Unfortunately, she delivers her invitation in a slightly patronizing manner, and he declines.) It made me think a bit about Delenn and Londo in general, which isn't a relationship I had previously wondered about. The fact she does invite him indicates that as opposed to Lennier (at this point), she doesn't think Londo is beyond help yet. Delenn during the entire run of the show isn't ever close to Londo but often proves herself quite insightful when it comes to him. She knows he's lying when he gives her an "official" reason for his request about Vir in A Day in the Strife and correctly states he needs Vir; she fixes him up with G'Kar as bodyguard in season 5 (irreverent aside: wouldn't put it past Delenn to be a secret matchmaker, or to believe that what worked for humans and Minbari might be the idea for Narn and Centauri*g*), and senses his tortured state of mind despite his pretense to the contrary in Objects at Rest. (As opposed to clueless Sheridan.) The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari probably shows most clearly how they feel about each other; the Delenn in Londo's mind is a mysterious, impressive presence who dispenses implacable judgment and points out his flaws; meanwhile Delenn in the real world sums up her view of him like this: "He has made me angry, he has made me laugh; I even liked him from time to time, as much as I haven't wanted to, but I never pitied him. Until now." And then she adds the sentence he hears in his coma: "Get well, Mollari."
The reason why Delenn in earlier seasons feels occasional sympathy but not pity, as opposed Lennier who at a guess would say he feels pity but, after Londo's actions in the war, no more sympathy (as opposed to pre-Coming of Shadowstimes) is, if I have to guess, that she understands Londo a bit too well for mutual comfort despite their very different personalities. For Delenn, let's not forget, has arguably as much blood as Londo on her hands due to her kill them all call after Dukhat's death. Londo despite his doubts did nothing to stop the destruction of Narn, and for a long time thought that having started it, he had to go the whole way, and after one attempt to break with Morden returned for a while longer before stopping; Delenn despite her doubts made only one attempt at peace but when that failed went through with everything until the very end and the discovery of Sinclair's soul. For years. "We went insane together," she says about this time to the human who takes her hostage in Ceremonies of Light and Dark, "and then we woke up together." But is that really a better excuse than what Londo tries to bring up with his inner G'Kar in The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari? Delenn, as opposed to Sheridan, knows what it is to be guilty and plug on regardless and this arguably gives her a better insight into Londo than anyone other than Vir and G'Kar.
"Insight" being somewhat of a euphemism for what happens in Dust to Dust, and episode which I could hug and squeeze to death in fannish delight except it would bite me quite severely. There are so many important elements here; Londo and G'Kar, Londo and Vir. And Bester. Did I mention Bester is my favourite recurring guest star? After two straight forward appearances as a villain, Dust to Dust is when he gains layers, and not just it breaks with the "Bester comes to the station, makes trouble, is foiled, departs" mould of the previous two. Babylon 5 isn't a show where all antagonists signed on for the same Villains Incorporated Schemes, and while Bester in Dust To Dust tells the B5 crew only half of the truth and has his own or rather in this case the Corps' reasons, he doesn't work against them, either. The great thing about Bester from this point onwards is that he's a wildcard, working both as an antagonist and as an ally - you just never know which it is going to be. Also, JMS not only gives him the best lines but lets him win every verbal battle with Garibaldi, who isn't bad at this kind of thing himself, in this episode. (My favourite bit is when Garibaldi comes with "yeah, we could do that or we could hang you up like a piñata" and Bester returns "ah piñata, hm? So you think of me as something bright and cheerful, full of toys for little children; that makes me feel so much better about our relationship.) Mind you, Bester's final line to Garibaldi - "it was good working with you - we must do it again sometime" is ever so chilling if you know what's to come. This was probably the episode in which Garibaldi impressed Bester enough to be considered a great tool for investigation. Poor Garibaldi.
Wile it's difficult to say just where Londo hits rock bottom (though it's easier to say when he starts the hard path back - The Hour of the Wolf), I think there can't be much argument for G'Kar - Dust to Dust. Did he really think invading Londo's mind would in some way help the Narn resistance? Perhaps on one level, but you can't tell me that the more important motivation wasn't payback. G'Kar's first reaction in Coming of Shadows was All About Londo, and the hatred only intensified after that; in Convictions he was willing to die so he could see Londo die as well. In Dust to Dust there is no one to hold him back in time, and he unleashes on Londo what was gathering ever since the he betrayed me moment in season 2. And it's brutal. Just so we really get the full extent of the mental and emotional violence in addition to the physical one, JMS has Bester use the term "mind rape" when explaining about Dust earlier. What G'Kar finds in Londo's mind at first - the humiliation when being given the assignment as ambassor, that humiliation which during the entire first season fed into Londo's inner bitterness to the point where he was ripe for Morden, and the guilt in the memory of Morden's "they're Narn, why should you care" question - isn't really surprising though after repeated viewings I wonder how this artificial telepathy thing works; G'kar's "show my your secrets" isn't exactly a specific question, after all. Since next when he wants more we got mostly flashbacks of Londo which are connected with G'Kar and the Narn (like the offered drink, or the gesture silencing Vir while he tells Refa he'll take care of quadrant 14) as well as finally the death vision (and to this day I wonder whether G'Kar ever understood what he was seeing there) it's probably a stimulus-response method; because it's G'Kar who asks, Londo gets these specific memories.
The ensuing epiphany for G'Kar, orchestrated by Kosh, illustrates that what Lyta later says about Kosh I is true - he did come to care about the younger races, or at least their B5 representatives. (Can't imagine another Vorlon giving a damn about whether or not the Centauri and Narn tear each other apart.) But be that as it may, G'Kar doesn't get hypnotized into accepting what he's told. And I think if he later found out it had been Kosh, not a vision of his late father or G'Quan, it wouldn't have mattered anymore; the message is what he comes to believe in, not the messenger. With hindsight, it's also the last time G'Kar acts against Londo in hatred. His feelings for Londo don't change overnight; but without this one time of unleashed hate, I wonder whether we would have ever gotten to their strange alliance in season 4 and completely against the odds friendship in season 5.
It's also an important episode for the relationship between Londo and Vir, and not just because of the ongoing "Londo rewrites Vir's reports" gag which starts here. It's in Dust to Dust that Vir first verbalizes his faith in Londo, and does so at a moment where not just Lennier and Delenn but probably a large part of the audience was understandably sceptical. (And he does so while being quite exasperated with Londo; Vir's is not a blind affection or belief.) And the silent moment when Vir, after telling Franklin "he needs me" touches the glass and Londo looks at him and tries to raise his hand back puts a lump into my throat every time. Finally, Londo's statement, telling Vir "don't let them see you as a joke" is yet another reminder of Londo not wanting Vir to follow the same path. Tender moments like this keep Londo complex in his period of darkness where most other shows would have simplified him into either a villain or, if they intended to keep him on the heroes' side, would never had let him descend this far.
Not that all of Londo's dark deeds are painful to watch. I have to admit that the Londo and Refa scene in Ceremonies of Light and Dark fills me with glee every time. "Because I asked you to. Because your ambition should be less important to you than our people. And because I have poisoned your drink." That's Londo in completely ruthless mode, but you have to admit - it's also classy, and fun. Not to mention it showcases the difference between Refa and Londo. Londo might be ambitious himself, but he always puts Centauri Prime first, and of course he's more intelligent than Refa (who still hasn't figured out the shiny Shadow-lent power comes with a price tag and that being at war with everyone else really isn't a good idea).
Ship of Tears brings Bester back to the station for the second time in the same season, and G'Kar into the B5 council, something long overdue. I do like the scene in which Delenn tells Sheridan it's her responsibility to tell G'Kar that they deliberately kept silent because she was the one who together with Kosh insisted on it (which is true, but a lot of people would still have dumped the unpleasant business of having it out with an angry Narn on Sheridan), and the ensuing conversation between Delenn and G'Kar. But the main reason why I love this episode is You-know-who. (Not Voldemort.) Walter Koenig named this as a favourite and it's easy to see why - he gets to play the whole scala between Bester as smug and superior (again getting the better of the B5 crew in the verbal battles) and stunned and emotionally shattered (a first for the character). With some manipulative thrown in, since Bester not only gets Sheridan to rescue some telepaths for him (bear in mind Bester didn't know his lover Carolyn was one of them in advance) by dangling the "weapons" carrot in front of him but gets on the station to begin with. (This also took courage; as Sheridan points out, they had no reason not to blow him out of the sky the minute he showed up.) (And I also think he deliberately provoked Ivanova into slapping him which gave me a neat fanfic idea, but that's just a minor side issue.) Again, the fictional reality of the B5 universe is strengthened by the fact not all villains have automatically the same aims; even before discovering Carolyn, Bester prefers the much weaker B5 crew to the Shadows as allies because he sees the Shadows (correctly) as a threat to telepaths.
The scene in which he does discover Carolyn is great, great acting by Koenig because we have to believe that Bester loves this woman in just a few moments and nearly no dialogue so that his explanation afterwards doesn't come across as a lie. Given that the character also has to be kept as manipulative and ruthless, that's no small challenge.
Arc-wise, Bester's visit together with Garibaldi finally making headways with the book of G'Quan leads to the important discovery that telepaths can be used as weapons against the Shadows, and this beautifully connects the ongoing telepath arc with the Shadow war arc. (Not to mention that it sets up a crucial element for the season 4 conclusion.) One does wish headwriters of other shows were watching B5 before attempting multiple storylines of their own; not because B5 is without flaws - it absolutely isn't - but because when it comes to weaving a complex tapestry without making it look awkward, it really is a template heard to beat.
