2259

[DigiFluid]

Like the other thread, ready to be posted now that I've finished reading To Dream in the City of Sorrows

Incidentally, that book had a LOT of trouble keeping in line with the established timeline of the TV show. It was an interesting read, but you really need to give it a little slack with regards to how many months go by at a time. Anywho!


2259 // Season 2

• No matter how many times I re-watch this show, I still and always think that Delenn's post-chrysalis make-up really sucks. Half the time the 'bone' isn't stuck to her head properly, and all the time the relation between her hair and her head bone doesn't make any sense =\
• The Passing of the Techno-Mages Book II: Summoning Light -- Wow does this ever re-write The Geometry of Shadows! Holy crap... Completely changes the story of the episode. Puts the Techno-Mage trip to B5 in a whole new light, makes it longer, involves Morden, and changes the Londo subplot from light and amusing to both Shadows and Techno-Mages using him as a pawn. Very cool.
• The book also is really neat at showing the growth of the Shadow war machine. Blaylock and Galen's trip to the rim and their encounters with the surgeons and the Drakh and others aligned with the Shadows, neat stuff.
• 2.04 A Distant Star -- No matter how many times I re-watch this episode, it never ceases to bug the hell out of me. A deep space explorer ship going beyond the range of established jumpgates has to be able to generate its own jump points. Unless Earth explorer ships are COLOSSALLY inefficient, there's just no getting around this technological necessity. So the idea of them getting lost and adrift in hyperspace always rings completely false and ridiculous to me.
• There's some really nice foreshadowing going on that does a wonderful job of setting up what Earth becomes under Clark. In Summoning Light/concurrent with The Geometry of Shadows, Sheridan is ordered by Earth to get as much information as possible on the Techno-mages, detaining them if necessary. In 2.06 A Spider in the Web, an Earth Senator orders Sheridan to spy on the business deal that Talia is observing because things are changing back home. And then in a more roundabout way....Control (later revealed to be Talia), working for Bureau 13/Psi Corps, attempts to use Abel Horn to undermine the Mars independence movement. This didn't even completely click for me (the Talia connection) until I was writing this
• A Spider in the Web has some interesting other implications to it too. We're told that Earth was doing experiments with human/machine integration as far back as the 2230s. Could the older races have had a hand in either prompting or inspiring this?
• Let's talk about Talia in Divided Loyalties for a moment. Canon (in the Shadows Past and Present comic) says that Talia was there for the Syria Planum incident, had her memory wiped of what happened, and at the same time was implanted with Control. After the destruction of the original Talia's personality, it seems that Control is in actuality, a complete personality. Does this personality have as much right to life as the original Talia? It seems to be conscious, sentient, aware, and angry at having been imprisoned for years.
• Still on Talia/Control here: Control seems to have been capable of taking some measure of control, as we saw back in A Spider in the Web. Given what we know about the phenomenal powers that Jason Ironheart endowed her with back in early 2258/Season 1--why did Control never call Psi Corps for extraction?
• There's a little bit of a CGI flub in [i]Comes the Inquisitor. Whenever we see the Vorlon ships of the class that Kosh flies, the 'fins' are on the back end of the ship with the pointy 'whisker' things on the front. In this episode, as Sebastian's ship comes through the jumpgate, it appears to be flying in reverse
• Anyone have any guesses as to why the Vorlons abducted Sebastian/Jack the Ripper to be their inquisitor? Kind of an interesting, if puzzling choice, isn't it?

[maneth]

Jack the Ripper completely ruined Comes The Inquisitor for me. No logic in that choice at all. He was just the first British mass murderer to gain media attention, that's all.

Divided Loyalties is interesting admittedly. But given the choice, I'd always give precedence to naturally occurring sentiences over artificial ones. It was just a very clever bit of programming.

There are experiments with human-machine integration going on now, at least when it comes to artificial limbs, computer vision for the blind, cochlear implants for the deaf and direct brain/computer interfaces for quadriplegics, no need to wait until the 23rd century.

[Cold Fuzz]

Regarding Sebastian: Morden proved to be an interesting human face for the Shadows. Slimey smile, charm, deception, and manipulation. That's a shark's smile if I've ever seen one.

We got virtually the polar opposite with Sebastian as the face for the Vorlons. I think his coldness, ruthlessness, disdain for chaos, and rigid thinking was a good look into how Vorlons like Ulkesh think and operate. Kosh, I think, was an aberration with the Vorlons and the rest of them were more like Ulkesh. The choice of Sebastian as their tool reflected their thinking. Conversely, the same could be said of the Shadows choosing Morden.

[maneth]

Absolutely and you're right. That's something I hadn't thought of before, but it just goes to show that the Vorlons weren't really the angels they wanted to show themselves as. On the other hand, it would make sense that the agents of chaos would look finer and feel fouler than the agents of order...

[DigiFluid]

Regarding Sebastian: Morden proved to be an interesting human face for the Shadows. Slimey smile, charm, deception, and manipulation. That's a shark's smile if I've ever seen one.

We got virtually the polar opposite with Sebastian as the face for the Vorlons. I think his coldness, ruthlessness, disdain for chaos, and rigid thinking was a good look into how Vorlons like Ulkesh think and operate. Kosh, I think, was an aberration with the Vorlons and the rest of them were more like Ulkesh. The choice of Sebastian as their tool reflected their thinking. Conversely, the same could be said of the Shadows choosing Morden.

See, this is what I love about messageboards. You post something that you find interesting or curious, and someone will come along with a thought that you love but completely hadn't thought about

[Cold Fuzz]

Absolutely and you're right. That's something I hadn't thought of before, but it just goes to show that the Vorlons weren't really the angels they wanted to show themselves as. On the other hand, it would make sense that the agents of chaos would look finer and feel fouler than the agents of order...

Sheridan was always skeptical of the Vorlons and their motives, despite the fact they (as in Kosh) seemed very interested in him holding the younger races together. It was always about control with the Vorlons, and much the same with the Shadows. The way they went about exerting their control was completely different from the Shadows, who preferred the carrot and stick approach. Given their angelic projections, I think the Vorlons favored using religion and similar means to maintain their influence. This was certainly reflected in what happened to G'Kar. Don't get me wrong, I think G'Kar went through a positive change in personality in "Dust to Dust." But how would he react if he found the real truth behind his epiphany, that a Vorlon was responsible for the vision and not G'Lan?

See, this is what I love about messageboards. You post something that you find interesting or curious, and someone will come along with a thought that you love but completely hadn't thought about

Why thanks Digi.

[maneth]

That would be the basis of a great story, G'Kar learning the truth about his vision...

[Redhooks]

2259 // Season 2[*]2.04 A Distant Star -- No matter how many times I re-watch this episode, it never ceases to bug the hell out of me. A deep space explorer ship going beyond the range of established jumpgates has to be able to generate its own jump points. Unless Earth explorer ships are COLOSSALLY inefficient, there's just no getting around this technological necessity. So the idea of them getting lost and adrift in hyperspace always rings completely false and ridiculous to me.

I think you should realise that if the Cortez could jump back into normal space with its damaged engines, it is unlikely they would be any where near a star system, let alone one that has been mapped. Journeying in hyperspace is done by going between beacons that can be followed to the next beacon until you reach your destination. The ship was being pulled off the normal shipping lines due to the gravitational forces within hyperspace. By staying in hyperspace, there was a chance for someone to find them as what ended up happening.

I guess theorectically, they could have jumped out of hyperspace if their engines would allow it to see if they were near any habital star systems, but I think that would only be done as a last resort. Just my thought on the premise of the episode, but I do think it is one of the weakest in Season 2.

[maneth]

Yeah, hyperspace in B5 is a different animal compared to most other shows. Seems to me that mostly if the hyperspace engines (warp, subspace, FTL, whatever depending on the show) fail for any reason, the ship just drops to normal space. That apparently isn't the case with B5.