Babylon 5 Rewatch: The Fall of Night
The finale of the second season, which is an episode I don't like much while acknowledging it's well done, and certainly a fitting thematic ending for this particular season that wraps up an era of the show and moves us to the next.
My relative coldness towards this episode is entirely subjective, and I'll try to name my reasons, but first, let me say on the darkly amusing side that JMS killing off the character whose existence was foisted on him with some bare nod to plot necessity (Warren Keefer manages to record a Shadow ship and thus make their existence public...but this is not a good thing from the pov of the main characters at all) and with exactly zilch emotional regret on the audience's part because the writing pointedly refused any effort to make the guy into a person all through the season is a case of creator tantrum that manages not to damage the story it tells at all. ((Unlike other cases of creator tantrums. Looking at you, Aaron Sorkin, in the infamouos "Lemon Lymon" incident on West Wing. Or for that matter, you, JMS, with the Great Man Of History rant at the end of s4.) I mean, the show really did not need a star fury pilot character, and at least this way, he didn't take any screen time away from the stories B5 needed to tell.
Now. In this episode, and a few s3 ones, the WWII analogies fly thick and fast, and you know, I really could live without another character saying "Peace in our time" to signal this character is utterly and completely wrong in any story not featuring actual Neville Chamberlain whatsoever. (It was especially groanworthy when Tony Stark got to say the line in Age of Ultron, not least because it really didn't need this line for the audience to realize Ultron wasn't a good idea.) I will say that rewatching the episode in the current situation as the dubious benefit of seeing it in a current context instead of in a pop culture WWII one, and I appreciate that JMS didn't make Roy Doctrice twirl his mustache got had the character come across as sympathetic and charm Ivanova with this grandfatherly behaviour - despite being an employe of the Ministry of Peace - right until it became clear what his actual mission was, and even then he, unlike Mr. Wells from Night Watch who comes across more creepy the more he shows up, is painted as someone not evil but misguided. This is why the unfolding events don't come across as a caricature, and why I think the episode is well made, despite not liking it.
Also: it either hadn't occured to me before or I had forgotten, but in additon to the very pointed Chamberlain/Munich analogy going on in this episode, we have another stark WWII reference - to the Hitler/Stalin-Pact, which was declared to be a "Non-Agression Pact". Incidentally, this casts Earth as Stalin. (And I can imagine a secret additional protocol between President Clark and Centauri Prime at this point.) Not a usual analogy 1990s US tv would draw. Yet fitting in an episode that also shows Night Watch revealing its colors, and Zack realising that by joining, he didn't just sign up to wear an additional badge and do the job he already does. The way Zack is pressured to go from saying the shop owners disgruntlement is harmless to joining the denouncing is chilling, as is the final image of the shop being closed for "sedition" and the owner arrested. Again, this had historical relevance the first time I watched, and a very contemporary one today.
The Vir and Lennier scene is great, and like many a fan I imagine they really do this a lot for the remainder of the show, and very much regret we don't get to see as much. Garibaldi's observation re: Londo being secretly afraid are to the point and show what a sharp judge of character he can be. And the big Kosh reveal, with everyone seeing him as a positive religious figure from their religion, is less of an unambiguous moment than I recalled, since Sheridan actually does ask Delenn later whether the Vorlons manipulated the younger races into seeing them this way. Lastly, the final monologue by Ivanova as she lights the candles is poignant (and starts a new tradition, i.e. that the character saying the final monologue of one season gets to speak the voice over in the credits for the next) and both a good ending for the "last, best hope for peace" era of the show and the "hope for victory" era that starts with this, determined, but also with melancholy, because this is the acknowledgement that the original B5 mission did fail.
So, with all these positives, why do I don't like the overall episode? I think it's because I have a dislike of genre tv invoking WWII analogies as easy characterisation and a way to get the conditioned responses. Unless, of course, they do the actual work. So, for example, what JMS does with Night Watch, or the rising xenophobia on Earth which you can spot throughout the first two seasons before it becomes what it does in s3, that's a very resonant, convincing story about a democracy turning increasingly authoritarian and fascist to me, precisely because the Zoccalo isn't called "Weimar", if you see what I'm getting at. It's of course influenced by awareness of the past, but it tells the B5 story on its own terms. Handing out lines like "Peace in our Time", otoh, is a narrative sledge hammer that gets my hackles up.
Lastly, I will say that it does work like a narrative big herring, planned or not, in that I bet once these words were said the general audience expectation was that the Centauri, now coded as Space Germans in addition to the Space Romans they already were, would inevitably attack Earth later and would be defeated by an alliance of everyone else (including Earth) against them. That this isn't how the story unfolds, but that it becomes far more unique and complicated, is to JMS' credit.
The other episodes
My relative coldness towards this episode is entirely subjective, and I'll try to name my reasons, but first, let me say on the darkly amusing side that JMS killing off the character whose existence was foisted on him with some bare nod to plot necessity (Warren Keefer manages to record a Shadow ship and thus make their existence public...but this is not a good thing from the pov of the main characters at all) and with exactly zilch emotional regret on the audience's part because the writing pointedly refused any effort to make the guy into a person all through the season is a case of creator tantrum that manages not to damage the story it tells at all. ((Unlike other cases of creator tantrums. Looking at you, Aaron Sorkin, in the infamouos "Lemon Lymon" incident on West Wing. Or for that matter, you, JMS, with the Great Man Of History rant at the end of s4.) I mean, the show really did not need a star fury pilot character, and at least this way, he didn't take any screen time away from the stories B5 needed to tell.
Now. In this episode, and a few s3 ones, the WWII analogies fly thick and fast, and you know, I really could live without another character saying "Peace in our time" to signal this character is utterly and completely wrong in any story not featuring actual Neville Chamberlain whatsoever. (It was especially groanworthy when Tony Stark got to say the line in Age of Ultron, not least because it really didn't need this line for the audience to realize Ultron wasn't a good idea.) I will say that rewatching the episode in the current situation as the dubious benefit of seeing it in a current context instead of in a pop culture WWII one, and I appreciate that JMS didn't make Roy Doctrice twirl his mustache got had the character come across as sympathetic and charm Ivanova with this grandfatherly behaviour - despite being an employe of the Ministry of Peace - right until it became clear what his actual mission was, and even then he, unlike Mr. Wells from Night Watch who comes across more creepy the more he shows up, is painted as someone not evil but misguided. This is why the unfolding events don't come across as a caricature, and why I think the episode is well made, despite not liking it.
Also: it either hadn't occured to me before or I had forgotten, but in additon to the very pointed Chamberlain/Munich analogy going on in this episode, we have another stark WWII reference - to the Hitler/Stalin-Pact, which was declared to be a "Non-Agression Pact". Incidentally, this casts Earth as Stalin. (And I can imagine a secret additional protocol between President Clark and Centauri Prime at this point.) Not a usual analogy 1990s US tv would draw. Yet fitting in an episode that also shows Night Watch revealing its colors, and Zack realising that by joining, he didn't just sign up to wear an additional badge and do the job he already does. The way Zack is pressured to go from saying the shop owners disgruntlement is harmless to joining the denouncing is chilling, as is the final image of the shop being closed for "sedition" and the owner arrested. Again, this had historical relevance the first time I watched, and a very contemporary one today.
The Vir and Lennier scene is great, and like many a fan I imagine they really do this a lot for the remainder of the show, and very much regret we don't get to see as much. Garibaldi's observation re: Londo being secretly afraid are to the point and show what a sharp judge of character he can be. And the big Kosh reveal, with everyone seeing him as a positive religious figure from their religion, is less of an unambiguous moment than I recalled, since Sheridan actually does ask Delenn later whether the Vorlons manipulated the younger races into seeing them this way. Lastly, the final monologue by Ivanova as she lights the candles is poignant (and starts a new tradition, i.e. that the character saying the final monologue of one season gets to speak the voice over in the credits for the next) and both a good ending for the "last, best hope for peace" era of the show and the "hope for victory" era that starts with this, determined, but also with melancholy, because this is the acknowledgement that the original B5 mission did fail.
So, with all these positives, why do I don't like the overall episode? I think it's because I have a dislike of genre tv invoking WWII analogies as easy characterisation and a way to get the conditioned responses. Unless, of course, they do the actual work. So, for example, what JMS does with Night Watch, or the rising xenophobia on Earth which you can spot throughout the first two seasons before it becomes what it does in s3, that's a very resonant, convincing story about a democracy turning increasingly authoritarian and fascist to me, precisely because the Zoccalo isn't called "Weimar", if you see what I'm getting at. It's of course influenced by awareness of the past, but it tells the B5 story on its own terms. Handing out lines like "Peace in our Time", otoh, is a narrative sledge hammer that gets my hackles up.
Lastly, I will say that it does work like a narrative big herring, planned or not, in that I bet once these words were said the general audience expectation was that the Centauri, now coded as Space Germans in addition to the Space Romans they already were, would inevitably attack Earth later and would be defeated by an alliance of everyone else (including Earth) against them. That this isn't how the story unfolds, but that it becomes far more unique and complicated, is to JMS' credit.
The other episodes