Babylonia!

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11 Responses

  1. Jaybird says:

    I’ve a question about G’Kar. They’ve made the point a handful of times about how much he enjoys the company of alien females.

    Is that related to the plot at all or is that just “color”?Report

    • Damon in reply to Jaybird says:

      I think it’s color. There are some tangents of this when G’Kar offers to buy certain human DNA from a future human woman in the show (reasons spoilers) and he mentioned that the Narn are interested in combining human and Narn DNA and essentially offers “we can do it in a lab or the more traditional way”. Nothing like serving your race and getting some alien strange at the same time. 🙂

      I have to agree about the subplot vs main plot. I’m much more interested in the internicine petty diplomat squabbles as they show more of a “real” life of diplomants-particularlly ones that have a long warring history.Report

    • NoPublic in reply to Jaybird says:

      It’s not entirely color.

      ROT13ed for the spoiler averse:

      Aneaf unir ab angvir gryrcnguvp novyvgl.
      Gur pebff-fcrpvrf oerrqvat vf na nggrzcg gb pbeerpg guvf.
      Guvf vf na vzcbegnag fho-cybg cbvag va frireny cynprf nybat gur jnl.Report

  2. James K says:

    To me this is a showcase for Sinclair’s deviousness. Firs the turn the Senate’s commands against itself, secondly he uses a chain of technicalities to please G’Kar without offending Londo. At times we’ve wondered how Sinclair got as far up the tree as he has, it’s episodes like this that help explain how he managed it.Report

    • Dman in reply to James K says:

      Good point. Sinclair definitely showed that he could play politics with the best of them. It did make me feel more comfortable with a lowly commander being in such am important position.Report

    • Pinky in reply to James K says:

      Sinclair mentions in this episode that he was schooled by Jesuits. The order is well-known for its thinking outside the box, or reconciling the nearly-impossible. It’s an insight into his thinking, and this thinking turns out to affect the intellectual style of any peoples that he happens to influence.Report

  3. Jaybird says:

    This episode demonstrates one of the things I like so much about the show.

    In Star Trek, everything worked, pretty much. Even in DS9, you had to deal with “evil” or “interests” more than you had to deal with “the computers aren’t talking to each other” or “my communicator never gets more than two bars”.

    In B5? Stuff breaks. Whoa. You mean we still have to deal with crappy tech in the future?Report

  4. Jaybird says:

    Having finished Season One, I brought the box set upstairs to Maribou so she could start watching it and I watched the first episode again… and I realize that Londo was a rogue, a scamp, and a bit of a rascal until this episode in which he pretty much just became a jerk.

    Against the Narn, true.Report

  5. KatherineMW says:

    Been away for a while. Just wanted to comment to say that I loved this one. It’s makes it umistakeably clear that JMS is a liberal (he named the Rush Act after Limbaugh, FYI; but it also seems partly inspired by the Riot Act, where “reading the Riot Act” was prelude to violent suppression of demonstrations), and it’s entertainingly down-to-earth – how many space-science-fiction works deal with labour unrest? The solution’s a sensible one, and both the union and the station are presented fairly sympathetically (or at least as sympathetically as police suppressing a labour demonstration ever can be…I didn’t much like Garibaldi and his black-uniform folks).

    The London-G’Kar dispute is also entertaining. Overall, the episode does a good job of showing why Sinclair is good at his job. He does seem far more liberal that I would expect of a military man, reflecting JMS’ own inclinations.Report