100 Reviews: 89
Another day another round of B5 reviewing. And much like yesterday I’m starting off not sure if I’m in the mood for reviewing, but we’ll see what that mood does as I get into it.
Babylon 5: 1x07: The War Prayer
This episode is kind of misleading in the grand scheme of things isn’t it? It acts like Homegaurd type sentiments are an episodic plot rather than connected to the larger attitudes and ideas that are part of the Clark story. And with that it’s kind of...bothersome how easily it’s dealt with here. On one hand yes, it’s important to stop this particular plot by the Homegaurd but on the other...this seems like a time hint at greater tensions still being out there.
I hope Sheridan and Delenn have Mayan over for dinner on Minbar sometimes, as Delenn ends up with a shortage of Minbari friends by the end of the series; she has plenty of followers and associates but kind of short on actual friends.
I feel like I should comment on the kid (supposedly, they don’t look that young) Centauri love birds plot being kind of bland, but since the plot is really about Londo and to some extent Vir it’s not about whether the love birds are all that interesting. And Londo and Vir get a fair amount to chew on in the plot surrounding it.
This seems a big of a step backwards for G’Kar’s development over the past couple episodes. But it’s kind of excusable given the circumstances pushing him to become more aggressive and fear-mongering. But we’re really not given a ton of alien views on what’s happening here, just sort of snapshots into how the other races feel about what’s going on, not from one of their POVs. Which also kind of makes sense, but is a little narrow.
I think there was a better story that could have been told here with Malcolm. Like he’s this really charming and charismatic guy who’s working against the show’s heroes in this but you can see better why people follow him and why Ivanova misses what a creep he is and such. As is he’s basically just two different characters, the charming guy for Susan but once the cat’s out of the bag he just acts like a creep and an obvious villain. It kind of ties in with making this issue seem a lot more easily beaten than it is, in the context of the show and in the obvious metaphor for our world. As is it’s not a bad story, and the fact that for our show’s heroes and therefore the show morality in general there are no shades of grey on this issue isn’t really a flaw, but it’s not presented as well as it could be.
Since this is the major episode for a while to give voice to the Earth First types, I do wish it got a little more development. Because for a growing movement we didn’t really get a ton of insight into what drives these feelings. And it’s implied that there a lot of people who wouldn’t outright join hate-groups like that, but don’t exactly oppose them either which is a lot of what will feed into Clark’s policies but could have used more than a passing reference or two here to give insight into how this will all snowball in the next few years. I’m not even arguing that it should be more nuanced, that we should ever have thought ‘hmm maybe they have a point’ but a more in depth view of what’s driving this attitude and its growing acceptance. Nor am I saying it’s not believable in the years following the Earth-Minbari War that these attitudes would be there, even several years later tempers have a had a chance to flair but there would be plenty who settled into a fair amount of residual hatred; I just think there’s a better story that could have been told especially where it didn’t act like stopping this string of attacks was the end of it.
And I have to question a plan to kill off all the major ambassadors. Contrary to the title of the episode I don’t think the Homegaurd really wanted to start a war (and since I can see a lot of alien hate stemming from the last war you’d think a lot of members/sympathizers would also not really want another war) but a coordinated attack like that would seem likely to start a war with someone if not everyone. Random acts of terrorism are one thing, that hideously bad idea would have been quite another. Really really dumb idea Homeguard. And that’s before we get into how truly atrocious an idea it would be to attack Kosh.
I will say that pissed Delenn over Mayan’s attack does sort of foreshadow...backshadow...how her rage over Dukat’s death pushed her into starting the war in the first place. And Delenn, I’m pretty sure you do have regrets over the choices you’ve made that brought you here, just saying.
Okay, that seems like a reasonable amount of things to say for this episode.
Next time:
Seems pretty likely it will be B5.
But here’s the suggestion box
Babylon 5: 1x07: The War Prayer
This episode is kind of misleading in the grand scheme of things isn’t it? It acts like Homegaurd type sentiments are an episodic plot rather than connected to the larger attitudes and ideas that are part of the Clark story. And with that it’s kind of...bothersome how easily it’s dealt with here. On one hand yes, it’s important to stop this particular plot by the Homegaurd but on the other...this seems like a time hint at greater tensions still being out there.
I hope Sheridan and Delenn have Mayan over for dinner on Minbar sometimes, as Delenn ends up with a shortage of Minbari friends by the end of the series; she has plenty of followers and associates but kind of short on actual friends.
I feel like I should comment on the kid (supposedly, they don’t look that young) Centauri love birds plot being kind of bland, but since the plot is really about Londo and to some extent Vir it’s not about whether the love birds are all that interesting. And Londo and Vir get a fair amount to chew on in the plot surrounding it.
This seems a big of a step backwards for G’Kar’s development over the past couple episodes. But it’s kind of excusable given the circumstances pushing him to become more aggressive and fear-mongering. But we’re really not given a ton of alien views on what’s happening here, just sort of snapshots into how the other races feel about what’s going on, not from one of their POVs. Which also kind of makes sense, but is a little narrow.
I think there was a better story that could have been told here with Malcolm. Like he’s this really charming and charismatic guy who’s working against the show’s heroes in this but you can see better why people follow him and why Ivanova misses what a creep he is and such. As is he’s basically just two different characters, the charming guy for Susan but once the cat’s out of the bag he just acts like a creep and an obvious villain. It kind of ties in with making this issue seem a lot more easily beaten than it is, in the context of the show and in the obvious metaphor for our world. As is it’s not a bad story, and the fact that for our show’s heroes and therefore the show morality in general there are no shades of grey on this issue isn’t really a flaw, but it’s not presented as well as it could be.
Since this is the major episode for a while to give voice to the Earth First types, I do wish it got a little more development. Because for a growing movement we didn’t really get a ton of insight into what drives these feelings. And it’s implied that there a lot of people who wouldn’t outright join hate-groups like that, but don’t exactly oppose them either which is a lot of what will feed into Clark’s policies but could have used more than a passing reference or two here to give insight into how this will all snowball in the next few years. I’m not even arguing that it should be more nuanced, that we should ever have thought ‘hmm maybe they have a point’ but a more in depth view of what’s driving this attitude and its growing acceptance. Nor am I saying it’s not believable in the years following the Earth-Minbari War that these attitudes would be there, even several years later tempers have a had a chance to flair but there would be plenty who settled into a fair amount of residual hatred; I just think there’s a better story that could have been told especially where it didn’t act like stopping this string of attacks was the end of it.
And I have to question a plan to kill off all the major ambassadors. Contrary to the title of the episode I don’t think the Homegaurd really wanted to start a war (and since I can see a lot of alien hate stemming from the last war you’d think a lot of members/sympathizers would also not really want another war) but a coordinated attack like that would seem likely to start a war with someone if not everyone. Random acts of terrorism are one thing, that hideously bad idea would have been quite another. Really really dumb idea Homeguard. And that’s before we get into how truly atrocious an idea it would be to attack Kosh.
I will say that pissed Delenn over Mayan’s attack does sort of foreshadow...backshadow...how her rage over Dukat’s death pushed her into starting the war in the first place. And Delenn, I’m pretty sure you do have regrets over the choices you’ve made that brought you here, just saying.
Okay, that seems like a reasonable amount of things to say for this episode.
Next time:
Seems pretty likely it will be B5.
But here’s the suggestion box