S5: No Compromises, The Very Long Night, Paragon

[alto2]

I'm pinch-hitting here, and am mostly concentrating on the Londo episode because, well...I can. And it's Londo being so, so Londo. Feel free to comment on any of the three, though.

Comments

[vjs2259]

My very long and interesting reply to this was lost somewhere around Hartford on I-91 yesterday. *shakes fist at Verizon*

I can't remember the details of Londo's abortive attempt at a rapprochement with G'Kar...was it a direct apology or one of those 'things have not always been right beteween us' or 'things happened that shouldn't have'? The whole thing seems to be more about the torture which is why I don't really include Vir--he was directly apologetic and bravely so, about the bombing of Narn. But this seems to be more about the torture. Londo, I think, needed to confront an individual that he had wronged, and apologize directly.

As for the teeps, yeah, I believe they were abused. PsiCorps was developed to keep them in check and under control, and as a result of our fear of them. So they were taken from their families, whether they wanted to go or not, forced to choose between staying with their family and being drugged out of their minds or leaving them, brain-washed into believing the Corps was their only family, told when and who to mate with to generate more and better telepaths, experimented on (Ironheart, Talia), told when and who they could work for, set apart by their clothing so they could be identified and (potentially) avoided...it's a terrible system. Understandable in some ways, but still terrible.

[alto2]

Eee, sorry to hear about the lost post!

I just hauled out the DVD and watched that scene again, and it turns out I'm wrong--Londo does not actually say he's sorry--he thanks G'Kar for his part in the events that not only freed Narn but also rid the universe of Cartagia. That said, I'd still say that he says a helluva lot more--in a much more meaningful way--in this scene than he does simply by saying, "I apologize," but I may be the only one who thinks so.

PsiCorps was developed to keep the teeps under control, yes, but now they've got so much power that they seem to be controlling everyone else--which is why I question how much we can say that the teeps are currently abused. (Rogues are another story altogether, and an argument could be made that the Corps abuses rogues at least as much as normals do.) In the beginning, you get no argument from me that they've been abused, but since the number of rogues is far less than the number of Corps, I am just not sure you can say, overall, that the normals are the ones doing the abusing, either. The Corps seems to run itself, and as we saw when Bester made his deal with Lyta, they're the ones who enforce things like the gloves. I dunno, I see it as two distinct time periods and thus two distinct sets of circumstances.