Politics in Sci-Fi TV
Jun. 2nd, 2003 04:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakSo, do you prefer your TV with or without politics? Rewatching Babylon 5's award-winning episode "Coming of Shadows" and later "Acts of Sacrifice" has reminded me again how very few genre shows manage to make politics essential to their drama. Farscape comes close, with the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans, but there's a different quality here I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it's because while we see how the Peacekeeper/Scarran conflict affects our regulars, the status quo of the societies themselves does not change. In other words: after four years, John Crichton is very different, Aeryn Sun is very different; Crais changed as much as Aeryn; whether or not Scorpius has changed is debatable. But the societies Crichton (and with him we, the audience) found when the show started are pretty much as they were.
(Well, except for the Scarrans now being deprived of a certain flower, but that's not exactly what I'm talking about.)
Babylon 5, on the other hand, married personal drama with political drama in a quite different manner, in all of its plot threads. In more than one case, the political change causes the personal change.
The first slow and subtle, then increasing development of Earth from a democratic society into a dictatorship challenges Sheridan's (and with him his command staff's) belief system; when Sheridan, in the third season, decides to declare independence he goes, in one sense, against everything he was ever taught as a member of the military. He proceeds to become someone he'd never been if Earth had remained democratic.
Of course, the idea that "my country, right or wrong" or "always rally behind the commander-in-chief in times of crisis" are NOT the principles to follow above the dictates of your own conscience is a message quite worth listening to, but I wonder whether B5 could have been made the way it was these days. (It didn't surprise to read JMS' take on Bush and the war some months ago.) For Babylon 5, it's a central message and not just in the Earth arc.
The Centauri/Narn conflict, and Londo's and G'kar's overall storyarcs, are excellent examples of this as well. I already talked about Londo quite a bit, so I'll start with G'kar, who begins the show quite convinced nothing is wrong with a universe where his people, the Narn, are finally the coming, aggressive power. Well, save the fact there are still some Centauri around. (Let's not forget G'kar is the only other ambassador who answer's Morden's "What do you want" question.) In "The Coming of Shadows", not just one of the best B5 episodes but one of the best hours on TV I've ever seen, G'kar acts in complete accordance to these convictions, with his government and no doubt with the majority of his people when he decides to assassinate the Centauri Emperor. For no other reason than the fact this IS the Centauri Emperor, not because of any personal guilt of this man. He's a Centauri, he's the Emperor, it's enough. But fate intervenes, the Emperor has a heart attack before G'kar can carry out his murder, and G'kar gets a second chance and his first epiphany when he hears the Emperor had, in fact, intended to apologize to the Narn in the name of all Centauri. Then comes the first test - G'kar finds out that the Centauri, using the Emperor's impending death, have somehow carried out an attack which not only gave them a Narn outpost but also killed thousands of Narn. Not surprisingly, G'kar's first impulse, still in tune with the above named belief systems, is to kill Londo. But it's here where the change in him starts, when Sheridan challenges him to consider what was more important to him: revenge or getting help for his people. And we get one of Andreas Katsulas' truly stellar moments as an actor, as the enraged G'kar breaks down, sobbing.
How much of a turning moment this truly was is pointed out first by "Acts of Sacrifice", when G'kar is challenged by the other Narn on the station who want to kill the Centauri on B5 in retaliation to what the Centauri are doing to the Narn in the war which is by now in full swing. Season 1 G'kar would have agreed. Post-"Coming of Shadows" G'kar does not because he sees the big picture, and he has understood that love for one's people and patriotism does not have to mean killing as many enemies as you can. Not that G'kar is over his temper or personal vendettas yet; "Dust to Dust", the season 3 episode in which he beats up and basically mind-rapes Londo only to get his second big relevation, is yet to come. But he has started to develop a certain mind-set. By the time Babylon 5 ends, G'kar will have gone through a Martyr phase and a Messiah phase, while the Narn simultaneously go through occupation, pain and then a renewed angry independence. But though G'kar is ready to go through hell for his people - and does - he's unable to live with them again. In the fifth season, he's closer to Londo than to any other Narn (or anyone else, for that matter), and then withdraws from society altogether rather than allowing the Narn to make him into a worshipped leader.
Londo's entire arc - which JMS once called the heart of the show - , of course, is unthinkable without politics. If the Centauri weren't regarded as wimps and burned out has-beens by everyone else at the start of Babylon 5, as the camp joke of the Galaxy, Londo, who is very much an embodiment of Centauri society, its best and its worst, would never have made his fatal decisions. Londo's reply to Morden in season 1 - "I want it all back; I want it the way it was" (re: Centauri glory) - qualifies him for the Shadows, and it sounds entirely logical and understandable. Season 2, however, which is when Londo starts getting what he wants, shows just what such an imperial aim demands in terms of lives. If the Earth arc is a convincing and chilling warning against the erosion of democracy by fascism, the Centauri arc uses another political pattern, traditional Imperialism in the Roman, Spanish or Napoleonic vein. "The Coming of Shadows" is the turning point for Londo as well as for G'kar, because up to then, while he did accept Morden's help and started the connection with Refa, he reacted rather than acted; other people provided the opportunities. "The Coming of Shadows", however, sees Londo acting quite deliberately, choosing a target, being willing to go literally about thousands of dead bodies (it's going to be many more). It's Londo who starts a war.
"You don't know what you're doing", says Vir to him, and Londo replies: "Yes I do. I do." Not in the sense of "it's not what you think" but "it's just as terrible as you think, but in my opinion, it's worth it". Unlike Lady Macbeth and like Macbeth himself, Londo knows you don't just kill one person and be done with it; he walks into his tragedy open-eyed, and this makes it a tragedy. The moment when an exuberant G'kar who has just had his first epiphany offers him a drink and an appalled Londo, who knows what G'kar does not yet know, accepts, with a horrified look because he's aware of just what he did and just what G'kar will find out pretty soon, is one of B5's iconic scenes. We'll come back to this in season 4.
The Centauri, becoming full-fledged imperialists again in season 2 and 3, get presented with the traditional bill for imperialism in 4 and 5. There is the drawback of mad leaders, and I'm already looking forward to the time the season 4 DVDs will be out, because those scenes on Centauri Prime with the mad Cartagia (clearly modelled on Caligula in the "I, Claudius" interpretation) and Londo making his "I'll help you save your people if you help me to save mine" alliance with G'kar are pure gold. But even more importantly, there's the drawback of everyone else out of your blood, and nobody believing you if you protest you do NOT want to conquer the universe anymore. The isolation of Centauri Prime in season 5, and the fact it gets "bombed into the stone age" by a vengeful alliance (of the willing?), is only possible out of the combination of Londo's personal actions in season 2, and the general Centauri behaviour throughout.
And then we have the Minbari arc. Here, too, the entanglement of personal (Delenn, Lennier and of course Sinclair in season 1 and "War without End" in season 3) and political is completely fused. The Minbari are introduced as an old, hierarchic people, but unlike the Centauri they are no has-beens. Their three-caste-structure, the ongoing conflict between military and religious caste, heated up because of the way the Council ended the war against the humans a decade before the show starts, are crucial for the way Delenn's personal arc plays out. Her decision to become part-human, fuelled not only by her with to unite before the Shadows strike but by her guilt about her part in starting the Earth/Minbari war, leads in turn to her alienation from Minbari society, and yet expresses the turnmoil of this society perfectly. When watching the season 2 episode "Alone in the Night", where Delenn gets banished and replaced by her enemy, the warrior Neroon, in the Grey Council, I couldn't help but admiring the perfect irony and logic in which this will end; the Minbari will have to go through a civil war, and Neroon will take Delenn's place in a very different sense, before warrior and religious caste are at peace again, and change in Minbari society will be irreversible.
(Well, except for the Scarrans now being deprived of a certain flower, but that's not exactly what I'm talking about.)
Babylon 5, on the other hand, married personal drama with political drama in a quite different manner, in all of its plot threads. In more than one case, the political change causes the personal change.
The first slow and subtle, then increasing development of Earth from a democratic society into a dictatorship challenges Sheridan's (and with him his command staff's) belief system; when Sheridan, in the third season, decides to declare independence he goes, in one sense, against everything he was ever taught as a member of the military. He proceeds to become someone he'd never been if Earth had remained democratic.
Of course, the idea that "my country, right or wrong" or "always rally behind the commander-in-chief in times of crisis" are NOT the principles to follow above the dictates of your own conscience is a message quite worth listening to, but I wonder whether B5 could have been made the way it was these days. (It didn't surprise to read JMS' take on Bush and the war some months ago.) For Babylon 5, it's a central message and not just in the Earth arc.
The Centauri/Narn conflict, and Londo's and G'kar's overall storyarcs, are excellent examples of this as well. I already talked about Londo quite a bit, so I'll start with G'kar, who begins the show quite convinced nothing is wrong with a universe where his people, the Narn, are finally the coming, aggressive power. Well, save the fact there are still some Centauri around. (Let's not forget G'kar is the only other ambassador who answer's Morden's "What do you want" question.) In "The Coming of Shadows", not just one of the best B5 episodes but one of the best hours on TV I've ever seen, G'kar acts in complete accordance to these convictions, with his government and no doubt with the majority of his people when he decides to assassinate the Centauri Emperor. For no other reason than the fact this IS the Centauri Emperor, not because of any personal guilt of this man. He's a Centauri, he's the Emperor, it's enough. But fate intervenes, the Emperor has a heart attack before G'kar can carry out his murder, and G'kar gets a second chance and his first epiphany when he hears the Emperor had, in fact, intended to apologize to the Narn in the name of all Centauri. Then comes the first test - G'kar finds out that the Centauri, using the Emperor's impending death, have somehow carried out an attack which not only gave them a Narn outpost but also killed thousands of Narn. Not surprisingly, G'kar's first impulse, still in tune with the above named belief systems, is to kill Londo. But it's here where the change in him starts, when Sheridan challenges him to consider what was more important to him: revenge or getting help for his people. And we get one of Andreas Katsulas' truly stellar moments as an actor, as the enraged G'kar breaks down, sobbing.
How much of a turning moment this truly was is pointed out first by "Acts of Sacrifice", when G'kar is challenged by the other Narn on the station who want to kill the Centauri on B5 in retaliation to what the Centauri are doing to the Narn in the war which is by now in full swing. Season 1 G'kar would have agreed. Post-"Coming of Shadows" G'kar does not because he sees the big picture, and he has understood that love for one's people and patriotism does not have to mean killing as many enemies as you can. Not that G'kar is over his temper or personal vendettas yet; "Dust to Dust", the season 3 episode in which he beats up and basically mind-rapes Londo only to get his second big relevation, is yet to come. But he has started to develop a certain mind-set. By the time Babylon 5 ends, G'kar will have gone through a Martyr phase and a Messiah phase, while the Narn simultaneously go through occupation, pain and then a renewed angry independence. But though G'kar is ready to go through hell for his people - and does - he's unable to live with them again. In the fifth season, he's closer to Londo than to any other Narn (or anyone else, for that matter), and then withdraws from society altogether rather than allowing the Narn to make him into a worshipped leader.
Londo's entire arc - which JMS once called the heart of the show - , of course, is unthinkable without politics. If the Centauri weren't regarded as wimps and burned out has-beens by everyone else at the start of Babylon 5, as the camp joke of the Galaxy, Londo, who is very much an embodiment of Centauri society, its best and its worst, would never have made his fatal decisions. Londo's reply to Morden in season 1 - "I want it all back; I want it the way it was" (re: Centauri glory) - qualifies him for the Shadows, and it sounds entirely logical and understandable. Season 2, however, which is when Londo starts getting what he wants, shows just what such an imperial aim demands in terms of lives. If the Earth arc is a convincing and chilling warning against the erosion of democracy by fascism, the Centauri arc uses another political pattern, traditional Imperialism in the Roman, Spanish or Napoleonic vein. "The Coming of Shadows" is the turning point for Londo as well as for G'kar, because up to then, while he did accept Morden's help and started the connection with Refa, he reacted rather than acted; other people provided the opportunities. "The Coming of Shadows", however, sees Londo acting quite deliberately, choosing a target, being willing to go literally about thousands of dead bodies (it's going to be many more). It's Londo who starts a war.
"You don't know what you're doing", says Vir to him, and Londo replies: "Yes I do. I do." Not in the sense of "it's not what you think" but "it's just as terrible as you think, but in my opinion, it's worth it". Unlike Lady Macbeth and like Macbeth himself, Londo knows you don't just kill one person and be done with it; he walks into his tragedy open-eyed, and this makes it a tragedy. The moment when an exuberant G'kar who has just had his first epiphany offers him a drink and an appalled Londo, who knows what G'kar does not yet know, accepts, with a horrified look because he's aware of just what he did and just what G'kar will find out pretty soon, is one of B5's iconic scenes. We'll come back to this in season 4.
The Centauri, becoming full-fledged imperialists again in season 2 and 3, get presented with the traditional bill for imperialism in 4 and 5. There is the drawback of mad leaders, and I'm already looking forward to the time the season 4 DVDs will be out, because those scenes on Centauri Prime with the mad Cartagia (clearly modelled on Caligula in the "I, Claudius" interpretation) and Londo making his "I'll help you save your people if you help me to save mine" alliance with G'kar are pure gold. But even more importantly, there's the drawback of everyone else out of your blood, and nobody believing you if you protest you do NOT want to conquer the universe anymore. The isolation of Centauri Prime in season 5, and the fact it gets "bombed into the stone age" by a vengeful alliance (of the willing?), is only possible out of the combination of Londo's personal actions in season 2, and the general Centauri behaviour throughout.
And then we have the Minbari arc. Here, too, the entanglement of personal (Delenn, Lennier and of course Sinclair in season 1 and "War without End" in season 3) and political is completely fused. The Minbari are introduced as an old, hierarchic people, but unlike the Centauri they are no has-beens. Their three-caste-structure, the ongoing conflict between military and religious caste, heated up because of the way the Council ended the war against the humans a decade before the show starts, are crucial for the way Delenn's personal arc plays out. Her decision to become part-human, fuelled not only by her with to unite before the Shadows strike but by her guilt about her part in starting the Earth/Minbari war, leads in turn to her alienation from Minbari society, and yet expresses the turnmoil of this society perfectly. When watching the season 2 episode "Alone in the Night", where Delenn gets banished and replaced by her enemy, the warrior Neroon, in the Grey Council, I couldn't help but admiring the perfect irony and logic in which this will end; the Minbari will have to go through a civil war, and Neroon will take Delenn's place in a very different sense, before warrior and religious caste are at peace again, and change in Minbari society will be irreversible.
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Date: 2003-07-27 02:04 am (UTC)Which is why...
Date: 2003-07-27 05:50 am (UTC)