selenak

Okay, the one where Ivanova gets to do the credits monologue, Delenn has her most famous scene of the show, Sheridan decides he and the entire command crew need a fashion makeover as far as their uniforms are concerned and my guys Londo and G'Kar hit at different points rock bottom, which leads to great things in season 4.

No, but seriously, season 3 probably is the one which ends up voted favourite season more often than not, and it's easy to see why. It's where a whole lot of two seasons build up starts to pay off - most notably Earth going from democratic to fascist, which had been a step by step thing for the last two years, and Sheridan finally making the irrevocable step of rebelling openly and declaring independence. Also, the Narn/Centauri having officially ended and the second occupation of Narn having begun, the Shadows now move about more openly, while Londo and G'Kar, as mentioned, arrive at turning points. G'Kar's storyline is the more straightforward one, and yet, it is also subversive of genre expectations. When season 2 ended with G'Kar making a defiant speech about how freedom always prevailed in history and the Centauri would learn that lesson again, most people's expectations for season 3 were that we'd see GK'ar the guerilla fighter eventually leading his people to victory after some tough spots, ending the occupation and defeating the Centauri. This is how these stories are expected to go. Well, not on this show, for this storyline. Instead, G'Kar spends early s3 trying to galvanize his people from exile as things go from bad to worse on Narn... and it doesn't really work. Winning allies also is a tough task (not least because the Narn when being powerful pissed a whole lot of people off), and if Sheridan & Co. hadn't needed G'Kar's exiled Narn once they broke away from Earth, it's at least questionable whether that particular alliance would have happened as fast as it did. Also, it takes care of those Narn not actually on Narn, the exiles. The ones on the home planet and its colonies remain oppressed. When G'Kar gets really desperate mid-season and, courtesy of a drug named Dust which allows non-telepaths to acquire telepathic powers, goes after Londo, he's reached his personal rock bottom, followed by by an epiphany. Not exactly of the Saulus/Paulus type; G'Kar has always, even in his early s1 days, been presented as taking his faith very serious indeed, and being a great demagogue, which is where the later G'Kar the philosopher and inspired speakercome from, and also, having had his epiphany doesn't mean he doesn't still have a temper, or is any less driven to save his people. Or capable of feeling slights, being vengeful, feeling hurt. But he channels it differently. (The sublime scene between G'Kar and Delenn, for example, when she at last tells him the truth re: just how long she and Sheridan had been aware of the Shadows, and why they didn't say anything during the Narn/Centauri war: when G'Kar tells her that some day he might forgive her, but not today...and he says it as a promise, not a threat.) G'Kar at the start of the season is willing to die painfully in an elevator if it means Londo will die with him, rather than team up to engineer a shared escape. G'Kar near the end of the same season is willing to team up with Londo in order to kill a mutual enemy (Refa) and gain liberty for some of his people; it won't be the last time. It's fitting that G'Kar is the one who has the closing monologue of the season.

Londo in season 3 starts with trying to rid himself of the an alliance that causes him much unease by now, not because he's had a moral epiphany but because he can see the Shadows are generally bad news, not to mention the fact that the Shadow driven multiple wars Centauri Prime now engages in are to Londo idiotic. The scene in which he talks about this with Refa early in s3 is one of Londo's most memorable, both for his pity decscription of current Centauri foreign policy and for the casual blackmail of Refa ("...and because I have poisoned your drink"). Things have changed a lot since Londo was the in-over-his-head ambassador bedazzled by Refa the powerful courtier. That this is not the equivalent of a moral turning point, however, is underlined by Londo's general disregard for people who aren't Centauri. By s3, everyone who isn't Vir has given up on Londo changing again for the better (and Vir gets close to washing his hands of Londo in the late s3 episode The Rock Cries Out, No Hiding Place - my choice for The One Where Londo Hits Rock Bottom - after realising Londo was capable of using him ruthlessly as well), and Londo himself of course uses the whole idea of destiny and doom as self justification. (One of Londo's key epiphanies later is the acknowledgment that yes, he did have choices. All the choices.) And yet s3 is also where the show both shows us the end of Londo's life in a flashforward and completely overturns established expectations by doing so. When War Without End first was broadcast, the audience was already familiiar with Londo's dream of his own death - him and G'Kar strangling each other while Londo is clad in the imperial white - and had no reason to assume this would not happen as the end of a life long feud, especially given events in the first half of s3. And then JMS pulls a fast one: War Without End reveals that by the time Londo dies, he and G'Kar will be friends, and he will ask G'Kar to kill him in a last attempt to save his planet (and Our Heroes currently fleeing from same). From this point onwards, the most tantalizing question of the show, well, at least for Centauriphiles like yours truly, was: How do Londo and G'Kar go from where they are in present day s3 to becoming friends?

Something else s3 excells at are not falling into the common SF and fantasy trap of letting everyone on the antagonist side have the same goals, just because they're the designated villains. If it's not true for the Centauri (during this season and the previous one antagonists) , it's even less true for the humans. This is the season when Bester, in his previous two appearances used as the episode villain who comes to the show, causes trouble, is foiled and leaves again, shows up twice in temporary alliances with the human command crew while still playing his own game, not to strike a blow for Earth democracy but because President Clark's goals, especially the alliance with the Shadows, aren't compatible with his goals. Again, this was what set B5 apart from other genre shows and movies at that point (later series are another matter); allowing for complicated, shades of grey allegiances instead of playing the Star Wars game where once a shade of grey character joins the heroic rebels, he ever after becomes a good hero, too.

S3 also manages, with some brilliant retcon and a last appearance of Michael O'Hare, to wrap up what was at the start of the show a key storyline before it had to change main human characters, the story of Jeffrey Sinclair, his connection the Minbari, and what those scenes in Babylon Squared truly meant. Michael O'Hare had his share of critics in s1 (with the knowledge of what he was going through at the time, these have backed up somewhat now), but I don't think many fans of the show deny he was sublime in War without End, selling Sinclair-becoming-Valen with a mixture of serenity, sadness and deep affection for those he leaves behind.

And speaking of wrapped up storylines of human station commanders: I still maintain that as far as Sheridan's personal development as a character is concerned, his arc ends with the s3 finale Z'ha-dum, and that JMS could have continued the show leaving Sheridan dead instead of resurrecting him, and sharing his plot duties between Delenn and Ivanova. Through two seasons, we've seen Sheridan struggle with grief for his wife Anna (and the sudden terrible question mark after he discovers Morden), his duties as a career soldier versus the growing realisation that the Earth goverment's actions are no longer compatible with his own ethics, and with his new relationship to Delenn. In s3, this all reaches a climax as he declares independence from Earth, commits himself to Delenn and finally is faced with the remnant of his wife. These are all emotional challenges. By contrast, s4 and s5 have outward challenges to Sheridan - keep everyone alive in the Shadow War intead of letting the Vorlons and the Shadows burn the universe, defeat the Clark goverment, govern the new Interstellar Alliance (with, herr, questionable success) - but they are no longer inner struggles, which is one reason why Sheridan post Z'ha'dum feels like a less interesting character to me.

Let's see, what else is there to say about s3? Oh, right, Marcus. Well. I warmed up to him a bit a few years back when rewatching the show (hadn't been too keen during the original broadcast), and as far as JMS' tendency to write them dark-dressed, brooding and English is concerned, he's infitely preferable to Galen on Crusade or Byron in s5. Basically, he's another proof JMS really likes Lord of the Rings. I do, too, but Marcus still feels as if he ended up in the wrong universe by mistake. Also? When he identifies himself with Galahad in A Late Delivery from Avalon, we could see his ending coming.