(Belated) Happy Captain Picard Day!
No, really! (Also, I apparently fail at reading a calendar.)
I have things to say about work right now, but they can mostly be summed up by: "RRRAAAAAAARRRR." But my stomach has finally stopped doing weird things after a week, so that's good.
* * * * *
Babylon 5 4.13 - "Rumors, Bargains and Lies"
While I like the title of this episode a lot because there were certainly a lot of all of things going on in it, I also have an issue because it's called the SERIAL COMMA, JMS. Ahem.
So Sheridan sends the White Stars to the Centauri border to blow up asteroids, to fool the League's representatives into thinking they need the patrols: not quite a lie, since he never says the words, but he lets their assumptions do the work for him, and gets his agreement--patrols, a shared fleet, a system of protection, with Babylon 5 in its center. The members of the Minbari religious caste are all too willing to believe that Delenn is going to surrender to the warrior caste, and that their own martyrdom will be a noble sacrifice, and Lennier lies to protect them because he doesn't want Delenn to learn that her own side nearly betrayed her. And Neroon tells the most terrible lie of all, the most direct one, the one that would make the best truth--that he's willing to work with Delenn to bridge the gap between the two castes and stop a civil war. I like that there is so much deception going on in this episode, for so many different reasons, and with so many different potential results.
Babylon 5 4.14 - "Moments of Transition"
I found what we learn about Minbari politics in this episode really interesting. They are a spiritual people--up to a point. The castes struggle for power, though, and always have. The motives seem to be less about personal aggrandizement than about collective political ideas--the warrior and religious castes each have a set of governing philosophies, each group believing that it knows what's best for the Minbari people as a whole. In this way the Minbari political structure is very different from that of the Narn--which is more representative--or the Centauri, which hinges on individual rulers (albeit individual rulers who generally believe they know what's best for the entire planet). So Centauri political struggle is all about intrigue and assassination; the removal or marginalization of individuals. Minbari political struggle, on the other hand, is all about worthiness, put to an impartial test. It's not the least bit surprising that Delenn is 1000% AWESOME, that she negotiates with both feet planted on the ground of collective tradition and her eyes focused on the goal, that she's willing to be tested and abide by the judgment because there's no way her people can lose. It plays out like a repetition, with bigger stakes, of her assumption of Ranger leadership: Neroon recognizes, at last, that she's demonstrated, in her willingness to step up and end the conflict, her leadership.
I can't say I'm surprised to see that Bester has taken an interest in Garibaldi's predicament, and is even helping his isolation along. It seemed quite obvious that PsiCorps was responsible for his lost time, the gap in his memory. I'm also not surprised to see that he's playing hardball with Lyta. What is interesting is the way Garibaldi's mysterious boss plays into it, since he doesn't trust telepaths: it costs Lyta work, and drives her toward Bester.
The final transition is Sheridan's, it seems. He never wanted the war, and he's been pushed toward the conflict with Earth the entire time; now the Teeth are angry!
Babylon 5 4.15 - "No Surrender, No Retreat"
Sheridan's plan is horribly risky, because it depends on military leaders choosing principle over their positions and their loyalty to Clark. I think the show has established that Clark has cemented his power through the selective application of force rather than by creating agreement among the other elites; the Night Watch and the ISN propaganda feed are enough to keep the rest of the population quiet, by creating an atmosphere of suspicion, and by playing off of people's already-existing fears. Sheridan is offereing a lot of those military commanders their first real choice, since he's human too, since he was once one of them and says he's fighting for humans. Still, it's risky, because it's an open rebellion, and that's a big step. And he seems to know how risky it is himself, because the bumper sticker on his White Star says Earth or Bust.
I was so completely delighted with the scenes between Londo and G'Kar in this episode! Londo rallying the other alien worlds to Sheridan's cause is a surprisingly unselfish thing, a real change: a recognition that his judgment has been faulty, even when his intentions were good. There were many moments when he was bargaining with Morden, when he was on that ship looking down at the bombardment at Narn, where you could tell he was telling something inside himself to shut up, that this was what he wanted, that it was the only way to accomplish his goals. It seems he's started to listen to that thing instead. But as much as he's capable of making better decisions now, he can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. G'Kar will join the cause, because he can recognize its rightness, but he won't share a drink with Londo, at least as first, and he won't sign on the same page. (So petty! Oh G'Kar, you drama queen). They're not friends, and forgiveness isn't that easy, not after what they've been through.
And the whole episode is payoff, because the Teeth came to the help of a lot of people when he could have
Babylon 5 4.16 - "The Exercise of Vital Power"
One of the things that makes Garibaldi's alienation so distressing for me is that his view of things is not completely cracked so much as seen through a grungy filter. Sheridan has been different since he came back from Z'ha'dum; his view of the situation is much wider, and he's been so thoroughly cut off from Earth. Clarke has made Babylon 5, and Sheridan himself, villains in a propaganda morality play, and he's not going to let them go peacefully; Sheridan has had to start looking at alternatives. And along the way, he's started playing hardball with anyone who gets in his way. Garibaldi's not wrong to notice that.
Still, Garibaldi's lack of trust, his touchiness, are wrong; his reactions are all off, in subtle but important ways. He doesn't need to be alone, but he's created a bubble around himself. He didn't like what Clarke was doing; he was part of the cabal that was working to spread word of Clarke's involvement in Santiago's death. I can understand his misgivings about Sheridan, and about an attack on Earth. But Garibaldi was from Mars, which had its own prickly relationship with Earth even before Santiago died and Clarke took over; he once sympathized with the rebels. This very episode is a reminder of the ties he still has there. His hostility to telepaths is also new; he knew Talia, and he knows Susan, and he never liked the PsiCorps, but it was a pretty specific kind of dislike before. More things that are off and wrong, but subtly; not a complete change.
Edgars has slick answers for all of his questions, and exploits Garibaldi's doubts and fears. But I still think he'd listen to his own instincts--he clearly doesn't like either Edgars or his thugs--were it not for Lise's assurances that Edgars is a good man, and that he caught her when Garibaldi couldn't. Garibaldi, stop being so noir! (The hard-bitten voiceover does not help in this regard. On the other hand, the way the seams in the tubes cast shadows over the transport cars as they pass through it was pretty cool.)
I'm not sure what Lyta can do with the telepaths who have the Shadow implants, but I suspected they weren't going to hang out in the fridge forever. Hm!
* * * * *
Books -> February:
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy: Like many of McCarthy's novels, the story of No Country for Old Men is partly about what happens when men at cross-purposes run across one other, and partly about the landscape in which they do so, and how that landscape shapes who they are and how they react. It's the story of a mistake, and then a chase: a hunter named stumbles across a drug deal gone bad out in the wilderness, sees the bodies and takes the money. Then he goes back, out of some poorly understood need to do something about that carnage, and is seen. That sort of human impulse is never anything but a terrible mistake in this landscape; the man who's chasing him, Chigurh, is not troubled by such qualms and doubts. The local sheriff is able to piece together what happened, but he isn't able to get to Moss in time; and, indeed, Moss was never expecting any help from outside himself. He and the man who's chasing him are both lone actors, moving across border towns, living off the land. McCarthy's point seems to be that that wide open, harsh landscape has always attracted people like that, but I found the single-minded remorselessness of the hitman somewhat unsatisfying. The novel traces the roots of Sheriff Bell's deep sense of decency through his family and history, his connection to others; but Chigurh is just a force of evil, sui generis.
Seeing by Jose Saramago: Blindness was, to me, a moral story: what happens to people when society collapses, and everyone is uniquely vulnerable; how individuals deal with their power, or lack thereof, over others. Seeing--which is, if not a sequel, then at least a follow-up to Blindness--is, by contrast, an explicitly political fable. Faced with an ongoing silence from the government about the terrible past epidemic of blindness, and by an array of ballot choices that don't answer their questions, the public chooses to cast blank ballots. In the face of a supposedly rebellious public, and of the breakdown of democracy, the government reacts with a series of increasingly brutal and authoritarian measures. And Seeing is a fable, rather than a story--sketched in wide, dreamlike lines, an exploration of paranoia and the incremental traps of using the ends to justify the means, and finding that the means have along the way made the ends impossible.
An Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai: A really lovely and complicated look at the legacies of colonialism: the Nepalese insurgency in the local area, so long after the British arbitrarily drew borders and then left; the older, Anglophile upper class people of the area who had adapted themselves to the Raj and hadn't been able to adjust to what replaced it; and the Indian diaspora in America as experienced by an immigrant who has no hope of becoming a citizen; everyone in this novel is caught between to worlds, and doesn't entirely belong to either. It's beautifully written, and wonderfully bittersweet: an examination of the external events that catch people up and the internal mental architecture they develop to help them navigate their days.
Right now, I'm reading CJ Cherryh's Cyteen, and am utterly delighted with its exploration of power dynamics and gender, nature and nurture, individuality and personality--what makes people people, or not quite people, as the case may be. I understand that a sequel, Regenesis, was released this year, but I haven't heard anything about it. Does anybody know if it's any good?
I have things to say about work right now, but they can mostly be summed up by: "RRRAAAAAAARRRR." But my stomach has finally stopped doing weird things after a week, so that's good.
* * * * *
Babylon 5 4.13 - "Rumors, Bargains and Lies"
While I like the title of this episode a lot because there were certainly a lot of all of things going on in it, I also have an issue because it's called the SERIAL COMMA, JMS. Ahem.
So Sheridan sends the White Stars to the Centauri border to blow up asteroids, to fool the League's representatives into thinking they need the patrols: not quite a lie, since he never says the words, but he lets their assumptions do the work for him, and gets his agreement--patrols, a shared fleet, a system of protection, with Babylon 5 in its center. The members of the Minbari religious caste are all too willing to believe that Delenn is going to surrender to the warrior caste, and that their own martyrdom will be a noble sacrifice, and Lennier lies to protect them because he doesn't want Delenn to learn that her own side nearly betrayed her. And Neroon tells the most terrible lie of all, the most direct one, the one that would make the best truth--that he's willing to work with Delenn to bridge the gap between the two castes and stop a civil war. I like that there is so much deception going on in this episode, for so many different reasons, and with so many different potential results.
Babylon 5 4.14 - "Moments of Transition"
I found what we learn about Minbari politics in this episode really interesting. They are a spiritual people--up to a point. The castes struggle for power, though, and always have. The motives seem to be less about personal aggrandizement than about collective political ideas--the warrior and religious castes each have a set of governing philosophies, each group believing that it knows what's best for the Minbari people as a whole. In this way the Minbari political structure is very different from that of the Narn--which is more representative--or the Centauri, which hinges on individual rulers (albeit individual rulers who generally believe they know what's best for the entire planet). So Centauri political struggle is all about intrigue and assassination; the removal or marginalization of individuals. Minbari political struggle, on the other hand, is all about worthiness, put to an impartial test. It's not the least bit surprising that Delenn is 1000% AWESOME, that she negotiates with both feet planted on the ground of collective tradition and her eyes focused on the goal, that she's willing to be tested and abide by the judgment because there's no way her people can lose. It plays out like a repetition, with bigger stakes, of her assumption of Ranger leadership: Neroon recognizes, at last, that she's demonstrated, in her willingness to step up and end the conflict, her leadership.
I can't say I'm surprised to see that Bester has taken an interest in Garibaldi's predicament, and is even helping his isolation along. It seemed quite obvious that PsiCorps was responsible for his lost time, the gap in his memory. I'm also not surprised to see that he's playing hardball with Lyta. What is interesting is the way Garibaldi's mysterious boss plays into it, since he doesn't trust telepaths: it costs Lyta work, and drives her toward Bester.
The final transition is Sheridan's, it seems. He never wanted the war, and he's been pushed toward the conflict with Earth the entire time; now the Teeth are angry!
Babylon 5 4.15 - "No Surrender, No Retreat"
Sheridan's plan is horribly risky, because it depends on military leaders choosing principle over their positions and their loyalty to Clark. I think the show has established that Clark has cemented his power through the selective application of force rather than by creating agreement among the other elites; the Night Watch and the ISN propaganda feed are enough to keep the rest of the population quiet, by creating an atmosphere of suspicion, and by playing off of people's already-existing fears. Sheridan is offereing a lot of those military commanders their first real choice, since he's human too, since he was once one of them and says he's fighting for humans. Still, it's risky, because it's an open rebellion, and that's a big step. And he seems to know how risky it is himself, because the bumper sticker on his White Star says Earth or Bust.
I was so completely delighted with the scenes between Londo and G'Kar in this episode! Londo rallying the other alien worlds to Sheridan's cause is a surprisingly unselfish thing, a real change: a recognition that his judgment has been faulty, even when his intentions were good. There were many moments when he was bargaining with Morden, when he was on that ship looking down at the bombardment at Narn, where you could tell he was telling something inside himself to shut up, that this was what he wanted, that it was the only way to accomplish his goals. It seems he's started to listen to that thing instead. But as much as he's capable of making better decisions now, he can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. G'Kar will join the cause, because he can recognize its rightness, but he won't share a drink with Londo, at least as first, and he won't sign on the same page. (So petty! Oh G'Kar, you drama queen). They're not friends, and forgiveness isn't that easy, not after what they've been through.
And the whole episode is payoff, because the Teeth came to the help of a lot of people when he could have
Babylon 5 4.16 - "The Exercise of Vital Power"
One of the things that makes Garibaldi's alienation so distressing for me is that his view of things is not completely cracked so much as seen through a grungy filter. Sheridan has been different since he came back from Z'ha'dum; his view of the situation is much wider, and he's been so thoroughly cut off from Earth. Clarke has made Babylon 5, and Sheridan himself, villains in a propaganda morality play, and he's not going to let them go peacefully; Sheridan has had to start looking at alternatives. And along the way, he's started playing hardball with anyone who gets in his way. Garibaldi's not wrong to notice that.
Still, Garibaldi's lack of trust, his touchiness, are wrong; his reactions are all off, in subtle but important ways. He doesn't need to be alone, but he's created a bubble around himself. He didn't like what Clarke was doing; he was part of the cabal that was working to spread word of Clarke's involvement in Santiago's death. I can understand his misgivings about Sheridan, and about an attack on Earth. But Garibaldi was from Mars, which had its own prickly relationship with Earth even before Santiago died and Clarke took over; he once sympathized with the rebels. This very episode is a reminder of the ties he still has there. His hostility to telepaths is also new; he knew Talia, and he knows Susan, and he never liked the PsiCorps, but it was a pretty specific kind of dislike before. More things that are off and wrong, but subtly; not a complete change.
Edgars has slick answers for all of his questions, and exploits Garibaldi's doubts and fears. But I still think he'd listen to his own instincts--he clearly doesn't like either Edgars or his thugs--were it not for Lise's assurances that Edgars is a good man, and that he caught her when Garibaldi couldn't. Garibaldi, stop being so noir! (The hard-bitten voiceover does not help in this regard. On the other hand, the way the seams in the tubes cast shadows over the transport cars as they pass through it was pretty cool.)
I'm not sure what Lyta can do with the telepaths who have the Shadow implants, but I suspected they weren't going to hang out in the fridge forever. Hm!
* * * * *
Books -> February:
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy: Like many of McCarthy's novels, the story of No Country for Old Men is partly about what happens when men at cross-purposes run across one other, and partly about the landscape in which they do so, and how that landscape shapes who they are and how they react. It's the story of a mistake, and then a chase: a hunter named stumbles across a drug deal gone bad out in the wilderness, sees the bodies and takes the money. Then he goes back, out of some poorly understood need to do something about that carnage, and is seen. That sort of human impulse is never anything but a terrible mistake in this landscape; the man who's chasing him, Chigurh, is not troubled by such qualms and doubts. The local sheriff is able to piece together what happened, but he isn't able to get to Moss in time; and, indeed, Moss was never expecting any help from outside himself. He and the man who's chasing him are both lone actors, moving across border towns, living off the land. McCarthy's point seems to be that that wide open, harsh landscape has always attracted people like that, but I found the single-minded remorselessness of the hitman somewhat unsatisfying. The novel traces the roots of Sheriff Bell's deep sense of decency through his family and history, his connection to others; but Chigurh is just a force of evil, sui generis.
Seeing by Jose Saramago: Blindness was, to me, a moral story: what happens to people when society collapses, and everyone is uniquely vulnerable; how individuals deal with their power, or lack thereof, over others. Seeing--which is, if not a sequel, then at least a follow-up to Blindness--is, by contrast, an explicitly political fable. Faced with an ongoing silence from the government about the terrible past epidemic of blindness, and by an array of ballot choices that don't answer their questions, the public chooses to cast blank ballots. In the face of a supposedly rebellious public, and of the breakdown of democracy, the government reacts with a series of increasingly brutal and authoritarian measures. And Seeing is a fable, rather than a story--sketched in wide, dreamlike lines, an exploration of paranoia and the incremental traps of using the ends to justify the means, and finding that the means have along the way made the ends impossible.
An Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai: A really lovely and complicated look at the legacies of colonialism: the Nepalese insurgency in the local area, so long after the British arbitrarily drew borders and then left; the older, Anglophile upper class people of the area who had adapted themselves to the Raj and hadn't been able to adjust to what replaced it; and the Indian diaspora in America as experienced by an immigrant who has no hope of becoming a citizen; everyone in this novel is caught between to worlds, and doesn't entirely belong to either. It's beautifully written, and wonderfully bittersweet: an examination of the external events that catch people up and the internal mental architecture they develop to help them navigate their days.
Right now, I'm reading CJ Cherryh's Cyteen, and am utterly delighted with its exploration of power dynamics and gender, nature and nurture, individuality and personality--what makes people people, or not quite people, as the case may be. I understand that a sequel, Regenesis, was released this year, but I haven't heard anything about it. Does anybody know if it's any good?