Pah

The Beginning

Nothing more to write right now.

Sometimes the universe requires a change of perspective.

(Delenn, A Distant Star, 2.04)

Nothing more for me to write right now: not enough energy, time, etc. But there is much more to be written, even about the obvious tropes, and especially about what I’ve already written about. Now I’d love to read something about Babylon 5, rather than write.

And, of course, the show grows dim in my mind. When I have time, I’ll watch it again. Perhaps break it up a little. (It occurred to me the other day it might be interesting to watch Atonement (4.09)—where it is revealed that Delenn started the Earth-Minbari War—followed by A Late Delivery from Avalon (3.13)—where Delenn symbolically takes away the guilt of the Earth gunner who fired the shots that enraged her. It’s so easy to forget the extent of things that characters know before we do.)

I’ve been meditating on a scene in The Paragon of Animals (5.03) that I think is worth remembering. It’s when the Alliance Advisory Council are all very pleased at the previously non-aligned worlds signing their Declaration of Principles—under threat of the White Star fleet. This may just be another case of how politics complicates idealism, but it seems to open up two lines of inquiry.

First, how does force function in Babylon 5—or any telefantasy? This is a really big question, probably too big for me.

Second, how do I know that the Council haven’t been blinded by the apparent ends that they can’t see their means have compromised them? I know: everything turns out all right. But everything always turns out all right—or, at least, turns out according to a single paradigm. Doctor Who was a show that always portrayed itself as objective; Star Trek: The Next Generation took a perspectival stance. Babylon 5, while always arguing for a multiplicity, in fact seems to brook no dissent. The only other point of view that ever developed—Garibaldi and Edgars—was brutally put down by the Psi Corps. I’m not sure what to make of this. (In my relay of influence, Buffy is the first show to develop subjectivity.)

Nothing more to write right now. Here’s an index to what I’ve written.

The End

For previous seasons, I’ve written about the tension between myth and history. Writing about Season 5—it’s context of Sleeping in Light (future) and the opening titles (past), the absence and defusing of superstructures, the restoration of normality, the human scale—I’ve been attempting to articulate something about the tension between history and drama.

The previous two seasons ended dramatically: 2260 with a “boom”, 2261 with a happily ever after. 2262 is history. No “boom”, no happily ever after. History never capitalises on what went before.

And where are we now? The end of what? What happened?

When the series started, everyone was basically at peace, G’Kar wanted to kill Londo, the Narns wanted revenge against the Centauri, Earth was busy forming alliances on its way to the stars, the Minbari were stuffy, and the Vorlons were practically absent… at the end of the series, everyone is basically at peace, we know G’Kar kills Londo, the Narns have had their revenge against the Centauri, Earth is busy forming alliances on its way to the stars, the Minbari are stuffy, and the Vorlons are absent…

But remember what it was like living in 2260, 2261, 2262…

And what would you write of this period in an imaginary Encyclopedia Britannica entry on Earth history? How would it look with a little distance? In 2281?—in 2762?

If you were writing a popular history book, who would you choose as the focal character? Though Sinclair and Sheridan make plays, it’s really the story of Londo, G’Kar, Delenn, Garibaldi, and Franklin. Really, the story of a space station, where some interesting stuff happened, for a while. Would that place even be remembered, and what do the stories of those people look like without it?

If you were writing from the Fourth Age of Mankind, a million years away (not five, twenty, or a hundred, as some people now would have you believe), if you even knew about Babylon 5, would it appear in your history of telepaths?

And what if you weren’t a human?

Season 5 is a contemplative space to start thinking about these things. The long tail invites thought, as the story ends; as those who were there at the beginning of the Third Age of Mankind, move on. (I regret leaving it so long after Season 4, reducing the tension.)

The End

The last story, traditionally, is Sleeping in Light, in which JMS fancies the mirror and final scenes. My last story is Objects in Motion/Objects at Rest. I really loved these two episodes, and I want to share three favourite scenes and a line.

From Objects in Motion (5.20), Garibaldi and Sheridan hugging:

Beautiful.

From this episode and the next, two scenes of leaving: first G’Kar and Lyta, then Delenn, John and Lennier. A screen capture can’t do justice to the quietude and starkness of these scenes, generating sadness, happiness, tension, release, irony…

And shortly after in Objects at Rest (5.21), the introduction of the new Babylon 5 command staff and ambassadors: Dr Hobbs (Interludes and Examinations, 3.15), Ta’Lon (All Alone in the Night, 2.11), Zack, Lochley, Vir, and Tessa Holloran (Number One).

And finally, a line from that episode, John J Sheridan’s entreaty to his future son, David:

Fight for what you believe in.

I’m sorry/I forgive

Three years ago, Comes The Inquisitor (2.21):

Vir

I’m sorry. I wish there was something that I could do. I tried telling them, but they wouldn’t listen. They never listen. I’m sorry.

G’Kar

Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead… How do you apologize to them?

Vir

I can’t.

G’Kar

Then I cannot forgive.

Two years ago, Passing Through Gethsemane (3.04):

Sheridan

Forgiveness is a hard thing, isn’t it, Theo?

Brother Theo

I don’t think anything can ever be more difficult! […] Forgiveness is a hard thing, but something ever to strive for.

Last year:

Once Londo and G’Kar have saved their homeworlds, Babylon 5 becomes a staging point for them to support Sheridan’s endeavours. As the station is no longer the place of the series, we do not get to see the development of their friendship which takes place there. It is a mystery, it is magic.

The most mysterious, magical thing about their friendship, which started in No Surrender, No Retreat (4.15), is that it is based on thanks, friendship, and mutual friends—but not on apologies or forgiveness. It is not until The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari (5.02) that Londo says sorry to G’Kar. And it is not until The Fall of Centauri Prime (5.18) that G’Kar accepts:

Mollari. Understand that I can never forgive your people for what you did to my world. My people can never forgive your people. But I can forgive you.

Drinking Game

This isn’t related to my exegesis of Babylon 5, but it came up while I was doing research for same.

The Babylon 5 Drinking Game, created by aus.sf.babylon5.

Nine and a half years ago, William Gauvin thought it’d be great to make this. Alicia Smith kicked off the rules with:

Take a sip every time Kosh says something enigmatic.

To which I replied:

Wow, you must be a newbie to this drinking game business—the object is to get pissed. You’ll never get anywhere with rules like that!

I then contributed 11 rules which made it into the final game, and, I’d like to think, set the tone for the rest of the rules.

Londo

He said, go… take my drinking game back… to the stars.

Refa

Londo… what did he really say?

Londo

He said… that we are both pissed.

This is all very inappropriate considering my last post about Garibaldi. In fact, outside of getting the Babylon 5 made, the only principle that I’ve ever known Joe Straczynski to stick to was his stand against drinking: he cancelled the accidentally granted license of the B5 shot glass.

Garibaldi

I think Michael Garibaldi is the key to the season, somehow. His situation seems to reflect many of the others’ situations. And reflect the theme of the season.

He is, to paraphrase Brother Theo: rudderless, directionless, cast adrift without compass on an ocean of possibilities—tossed by the winds, this way, that way. He digresses from Lise and Mars to Babylon 5; he regresses to alcoholism; he repeatedly fails to do his job (not only through being drunk, but by being insufficiently imaginatively suspicious); he devolves responsibility to Bester.

Like Londo, he literally has his free will limited. Like (and with) the Advisory Council, he is unable to stop the conflict between the Centauri and the Alliance. Like Sheridan, he keeps thing from his partner. Like Delenn and Zack, he treats his friends poorly. Like Lennier, he can’t face forgiveness.

In 2261 Garibaldi had his mind messed with, was turned against his friends. He was almost executed by the Mars Resistance, something that would have meant he could never make up for his betrayal. Saving Sheridan, Garibaldi was stabbed in the back—the universe’s little joke. But Garibaldi wasn’t really responsible for his actions; Bester was: John forgave Michael readily. Garibaldi took part in the taking back of Earth and ended up in the arms of the woman he loved. He had achieved a happy ending. In 2262 he tries to squirm out of that happy ending.

Like Lennier, every time he’s around Sheridan must be a burden. He makes sure Lochley is safe, he signs on with Sheridan’s Alliance, he tries to completely undo what Bester has done. But he must fear it can never be undone. Which is what must scare Lennier after he leaves Sheridan to die in the final episode.

Lennier was responsible for that action, but he was already mirroring Garibaldi, feeling guilty for something that wasn’t his fault: loving someone who did not love him back. He made sure Delenn was alright, signed on with her Anla’shok, tries to make himself worthy in her eyes. And by doing so he was punishing Delenn. Garibaldi didn’t intentionally hurt Lise, but this contrast points to the second main point he has in common with Lennier: they are both control freaks. Hurting Delenn is Lennier’s way of having control over how she feels; getting drunk starts as Garibaldi’s way of controlling his own punishment.

Others have been punished in excess by drugs they sought to help: Stephen Franklin and Elizabeth Lochley. Stephen is over a year recovered; he works hard but he manages to maintain a balance in his life: in 2262 he renews his interests in religion, love, and travel. It’s been many years since Elizabeth had a drink and her life looks great: but she remembers the father she lost to alcohol and she remembers her friend who OD’d. In 2281, Garibaldi’s life looks great, too, and he probably remembers the two friends who died while he was drinking.

The portrayal of drugs in Babylon 5 is sensitive and subtle. It resists either trivialising or blowing the issue up into melodrama (Garibaldi isn’t responsible for the fall of Centauri Prime—it would have happened sooner or later). And there is hope: a future, friends, others who have suffered and recovered.

It’s a human scale story. And Garibaldi’s connections make him an Everyone. After the supercharged previous year, where extraordinary situations brought out extraordinary behaviour, this year we remember the characters aren’t superhuman, are just human.

(I’m sure there’s more, and less, to my symbolic view than that, too. But the sense of Garibaldi being the key is just a feeling: I don’t want to push it too far.)

Superstructures

Perhaps I was wrong to say Season 5 “lacks some quality”. How could I tell? Being eclectic literally means having no system to tell. I recognise that there are things in the world I think are bad and things that just aren’t my thing. When I think of the latter, I think of olives and whisky. Olives have a powerful taste that is alien to me; as my beloved Laphroaig is alien to others. They are both tastes that must be acquired, developed, learned. Once, I didn’t like Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but, rewatching it down the track from a different point of view, I found it most excellent. Perhaps, for Babylon 5 too, I got the wrong impression of the “thing that would leave an impression”.

Rewatching, now, what’s there? I noticed something that means this might be olives rather than Maccas fries.

The First Ones have gone, leaving an absence. Though no one may have recognised them as gods, now they are dead, the absence is bigger than themselves. The superstructures guiding the story and characters have gone. The Great War and the wars it spun off—all gone. The more obvious external references that helped shape the show—absent in this season. Even the characters’ career paths have been blown away. (The Telepath War is yet to start, and the series has often hinted that the scale of it might be too great to comprehend.) So the characters are left to create their own stories, be creative, will things into existence. But a blank page is a hard thing.

Without a great narrative, our heroes don’t know how to act. The story becomes one of repetition, regression, digression, devolution, cliche. It’s like watching a car crash—in slow motion—that we know the characters will walk away from. This last point is not a bad thing, it moderates expectations that could easily get out of hand: the tension of small failures and small accomplishments is too much for me—I just want everything to explode. And the season not only moderates expectations through its context-placing devices, but skewers the longing for catastrophe in A Tragedy of Telepaths (5.10):

Sheridan

I don’t get it, Michael. I truly don’t. I mean, after a while, you’d think this would get a little easier. But lately… it feels like it’s all falling apart. Everything is fraying at the edges. I mean, instead of everybody trying to hold things together, I feel like they’re all grabbing at threads and pulling in a hundred different directions.

Garibaldi

Do you really want an answer to that?

Sheridan

You got one?

Garibaldi

Yeah… Why is it that we always break up our history by the wars, not the years of peace? The Hundred Years War, the War of 1812, the first three World Wars, the Dilgar War, the War of the Shining Star, the Minbari War, the Shadow War… Why the war, but not the peace? Because it’s exciting. And because, on some level, people like to see something big fall apart and explode from the inside out. And right now, John, we’re that something.

There is a war, but—with the outcome known, the First Ones no longer supercharging the story, and the actions that make it inevitable all taking place in previous seasons—it’s a gruelling watch. The loss of superstructure is perhaps also why Sheridan makes no effort to solve the “telepath problem”. Why Babylon 5 lets the marauding alien race pass by without comment (A View From The Gallery, 5.4), something that would have been unthinkable in Season 1 or 2.

But there is a superstructure guiding everything. One that has always been there. Life. Normality. Where most stories deliver a message of peace amidst violence, or use peace as a setting into which violence explodes—Babylon 5 strives to tell the story of everyday life in the future. The story of peace, or at least as much peace as there ever is.

John

I mean, the only reason politics exists is to ensure that people have the freedom to laugh.

Delenn

And to love.

(Day of the Dead, 5.11)

This is ambitious and dramatically difficult material, much as Buffy Seasons 4 and 6 were: it’s establishing a status quo, a new normality composed only of the same small dramas that life has always had. It’s B5 Season 1 in reverse. The story of Babylon 5 is over, but not before making the place ready for those who will follow.

I grew out of my dislike to the resolution of the First Ones’ story, but I can’t find it in myself to like the legacy—the long tail—of that story. It asks too much. “Life goes on” isn’t enough. It just isn’t my thing. I am immoderate. But four seasons demand I develop my taste.

Context

Returning to Babylon 5, picking up where I left off…

I realise now that when I introduced my Pah 2006 Project, though I wrote about wanting to write about works I love, I didn’t require that in the specifications I listed. Awkwardly, the fifth season of Babylon 5 isn’t something I love.

Previously I wrote about the show as I rewatched each season with Penny. This time I’ve been on holiday and gone through the season rather quickly, so I find myself with too many notes and only two episodes left to go as I write this (5.20 and 5.21). And I haven’t loved this season like I loved the others.

It didn’t start well, eight months ago, when I skipped the first episode made for fifth season, The Deconstruction of Falling Stars—originally aired and then collected as the last episode of fourth season. I thought Deconstruction was awful when I originally saw it and couldn’t find anyone to defend it when the time came to rewatch it—and I wanted to experiment in reclaiming B5 from the trickster, JMS. So I replaced Deconstruction with Sleeping in Light, made last for fourth season and intended to conclude the series—and eventually shown as the last episode of fifth season. This substitution completed the series, in a way, and broke the fifth season away as a standalone series. And watching the series this way has been a success! Penny enjoyed the conclusion of Season 4; and, with time and twelve other television seasons, forgot there was a Season 5.

But rewatching this season has been like watching it for the first time for me too. I cannot remember which episodes I have seen and which I have merely read about. Some I know I have seen, but just don’t feel like I have. The season lacks some quality, the thing that would leave an impression. The Paragon of Animals (5.03) and The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father (5.13) are very good. The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari (5.02), A View from the Gallery (5.04) and The Fall of Centauri Prime (5.18) are lame ducks (even allowing for the missing teaser on the PAL DVD of the latter). The rest are merely okay or tolerable. They pass time.

Yet my four-fifths love of Babylon 5 demands I try and speak of this season. I have, perhaps, one or two things worth and worthy of saying.

Just some context.

And given the way I’ve come to watch it, I’ve been thinking a bit about this season’s context.

Sleeping in Light and the opening titles set the context of Season 5.

For Sleeping in Light (my 4.22) you could substitute The Deconstruction of Falling Stars (aired 4.22) or just listen to Delenn’s closing voice over for Rising Star (4.21). They all represent knowledge of where the series ends, something that, ultimately, you’ll know for all but the first viewing of Babylon 5.

This is it, the last year. In the episodes of earlier seasons I often anticipated a single event, but in this season I am anticipating where everything is going. Where it ends up. Where everything ends. Where the story stops.

But, where the opening titles of previous seasons focussed on their respective present times, the opening titles of Season 5 focus on the past, what has gone before, the Second Age of Mankind. A deliberate setting of context.

What will this season be? The Third Age of Mankind. The space between past and future, the place of creative tension. The long tail of the whole series.