b5_revisited | "Chrysalis" discussion

I'm so glad I rewatched season 1. I picked up on so many more things this time around. I've always been a Sinclair fan, but I've gotten to appreciate him even more; as much as I love Sheridan, I'm gonna miss Jeff, and particularly his relationship with Garibaldi. From now on, we're going to see a Garibaldi who is a lot less certain of himself and his place in the world, I think, and of course it's partly because of what happened to him in this episode, but also because of Sinclair not being around. It's fascinating to watch his future development, of course, but sad for someone who genuinely likes the character and the person.

Great episode for all of the aliens, too -- not only the ambassadors but Vir, Na'Toth, and Lennier all have memorable moments in this ep ("cats!") Londo and Morden's scenes are fantastic and chilling, of course, but I think I was most struck this time around by G'Kar, knowing how much change lies ahead of him.

Just a terrific episode, with so many hints of things to come.

Due to being in Paris right now, I can't rewatch Chrysalis for another week, but: yes, the impact on Garibaldi both of the shooting and of Sinclair`s departure is really noticable when one goes back to s1 with the later seasons in mind. (It struck me so much that I put some Garibaldi/Sinclair vibes into the multiverse story.:) Mind you, some of the things that happened to Garibaldi would have occured whether it was Sheridan or Sinclair in command of B5; but I think others wouldn't, such as the hitting the bottle again in s5, because I think he would have told Jeff about the Asimov...

When I rewatched S1, I really felt sorry for Jeff; truly they are "using him".

Michael seemed to never be as good friends with Delenn after her transformation. In S1 they seemed close, and that seems to change once she leaves the Chrysalis for some reason.

Perhaps Michael thought she was involved with getting Jeff reassigned, thereby leading to him losing his friend, and his reason for being on the station in the first place.

Oh, that's a good theory.

I keep hearing Dukhat in "In the Beginning" telling Delenn that if she ever doubts herself, she should look in the face of a Vorlon. And I like Dukhat and all, but I wonder how the Minbari let themselves be manipulated by the Vorlons. I mean, I like Delenn both pre- and post-transformation, but she gave up a lot for this, and I'm not completely sure what the point was other than to make her attractive to human men. And that's just really skeevy. I know that to her, this was largely penance for her sins, but I think I would like the Vorlons more if they didn't feed on that kind of thing.

Okay, that was a ramble, but this episode makes me think about how differently I thought about the Vorlons after I had seen all of the series.

I think of the parallel transformations of Sinclair -> Valen and Delenn's transformation in the chrysalis was to bring home the similarity of Minbari & human souls. As far as making her more attractive, I don't know that there's a reason to think that Sheridan would have found her less attractive pre-transformation, but perhaps the transformation was needed so they would be physically compatible to have a child, thus further entwining the fates of the races? I don't remember if that's explicitly stated, though.

No, I think the compatibility for childbearing was the reason; I didn't word that well when I said it was just about being attractive. And maybe I'm just not willing to cut them a break, but it makes me uncomfortable that the Vorlons encouraged this - using the power that they had set up by making themselves appear angelic to all these races. I don't trust their motives.

My belief is that the soul thing was an explanation that the Minbari believed but that the show itself was not making a judgment on. So Delenn thought her transformation was to stop the "bleeding" of Minbari souls to human, but the whole thing is predicated on them concluding that the souls were leaving after examining Jeff and discovering that he "had Valen's soul" when what the triluminary might have been detecting is DNA equalities.

Oh, I get that at the Vorlons' motives being sketchy, I just hadn't questioned the transformation itself before. And I have to admit, I always took the Vorlon/human souls parallel at face value, too, although -- since the show never really approves or dismisses anybody's theology -- it makes more sense to think of it as the Minbaris' interpretation. And you're right, the similarity to Valen would be there because he WAS Valen, and the Minbari religious leaders, looking for something they wanted to see if they were against the war in the first place, extrapolated that to all humans. Huh. This is why rewatching is so interesting!

My rewatches have made me fascinated with the triluminary and chrysalis and where they came from, so this is something that I've thought about quite a bit. Because they never do tell us who created the Great Machine, and the triluminaries and chrysalises came from that planet. That is the entitled-fan-wants-to-know question that I NEED JMS to answer some day.

Oh hah. R has a huge theory about this, (the Great Machine and the triluminaries) and periodically pesters me to write it up for him. I can never quite grasp his intricate explanation for the triluminary's travels through time, and how many there are are at which time. Sigh. You suppose JMS touches on it in all those posts-from-years-gone-by in the new books?

Ooooh, I am going to start pestering you to write it up now, cause I want to know what he's thinking! He could maybe do an outline or timeline for you, and you could use that to ground you when writing it.

I have never seen anything about it anywhere, and I'm not buying those new books. Hopefully if somebody knows the answer, they'll tell somewhere, but I have specifically searched for this and come up short.

I agree with this: the Vorlons had their own particular motives and they weren't terrifically concerned with anyone else (except maybe Kosh the rebel). And their manipulation of the Minbari was not terribly attractive.

I believe that Kosh genuinely came to care for Sheridan. I don't know about Delenn.

The ambiguity about the Vorlons is what makes Kosh such an interesting character especially in retrospect. Statements that he made that seemed enigmatic the first time around make a lot of sense subsequent times. His mission to Babylon 5 was essentially to position member worlds of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds into opposition against the Shadows. I felt that Kosh's respect for Sheridan made him warm up to him (at least as warm as a Vorlon could possibly get). But while he may have made personal allowances for Delenn, his purpose is to use her.

Yeah, that's my feeling as well. I never saw any sign that Kosh *liked* Delenn. And him giving her encouragement to transform doesn't seem to me like an act of pure kindness.

I don't think that Kosh has any reason during the first season to have warmed up to any of the younger races, even Delenn. I think that at that moment he is simply doing what the Vorlons want.

Sheridan comes to him looking for knowledge, and I think that process made him feel that these species may indeed have some potential (I also think that he is impressed with what Sheridan can do). Yes, I do feel that Kosh developed some affection for Sheridan, and by extension felt somewhat protective towards some others, but I think that was something that he developed, not something that was there the whole time.

They manipulated everyone, not just the Minbari, and no, it's not particularly attractive. As to Vorlon motivations, I don't think attractiveness/childbearing are an issue. Sinclair had to change because otherwise the Minbari wouldn't have accepted him, even with the gift of Babylon 4. From his appearance in the past, and what he said of the future (i.e. the present of Babylon 5), the Vorlons knew that Humans and Minbari would need to fight together against the shadows. A dramatic picture of what is possible (and a pointed reminder to the Minbari of what is necessary) might be the kind of thing they want. Besides, they probably know from Sinclair/Valen that she did.

I think I'm going too fast, but this is really funny. I have just got the biggest urge to watch B5 again, and have been plowing through it for the past two weeks or so. I'm at the end of Season 3, but maybe I'll follow this community and give some insights, and possibly rewatch a few episodes again to discuss. :)

Cooool. Haha.

"We know what we're doing."

Ironic, considering that no one at this point knows what they're doing. Everyone knows what they think they're doing. It's not even remotely the same thing. Narn, Centauri, Human, Minbari, Vorlon, Shadow--everyone is in the process of making a fundamental mistake, and the concatenation of those mistakes is going to destroy civilization as they know it and replace it with something different. And all of them believe they know what they're doing and that they can control the events they are unleashing.

"And so it begins ..." indeed!

Well this is a cheerful episode, isn’t it?

I’m reminded of Londo’s line in “Signs and Portents” – “I’m sick of running through my life like a man late for an appointment” – because this is an episode almost entirely about people being just a little too late for things. Garibaldi just fails to stop Santiago’s assassination. Sinclair’s just a little too late to talk to Delenn. For that matter, G’kar recognises the truth of what Sinclair had said to him too late to resolve Quadrant 37 peacefully. The only person who is on time for anything is Londo – and of course in the long run, he’d have been better off to miss his meetings with Morden…

Coming off a rewatch of Season 1, and knowing what’s going to happen next, really accentuates the theme of missed opportunities. I can’t help but feel somehow that if the assassination had been stopped, if Delenn and Sinclair could have gotten everything else out in the open, if G’kar and Londo could have negotiated a compromise… well, then, somehow, all the other problems would have gone away, that Sinclair would have stayed on, and the crew could have gone on happily having minor stand-alone adventures for the rest of the show’s run…

Regarding Delenn and the Chrysalis – I’ve always felt one of the weaknesses of the show is that Delenn got increasingly short changed character wise as the show went on. There’s issues related to her transformation that never got properly addressed. For all the importance she placed in it, it didn’t really do anything to bring humans and Minbari together. If anything brought the two species together, it was the opening of the Rangers to humans… and that’s assuming you think the two species ever really came together, something which doesn’t seem to be implied by “Deconstruction of Falling Stars”. That’s not a flaw in the plot – the whole Chrysalis thing seems to be almost purely a Vorlon project, not a Minbari or a human one, and obviously events played out in a way that makes it unclear where the Vorlons planned on taking things… it also seems clear that the Vorlons never expected the Shadows to gain influence over Earth as much as they did, and they certainly weren’t expecting to be leaving the galaxy forever in a mere couple of years.

Still, it’s interesting to consider that Delenn is almost as much a cast-off, unfinished and unsupported, project of the Vorlons as human telepaths. It could have been interesting to see that explored in Season 5, which was, after all, almost entirely concerned with the remaining legacies of the Vorlons and Shadows…

Minor notes:

- The lurker Garibaldi talks to is the rogue telepath from “A Race Through Dark Places”, yes? Always nice to see minor characters introduced a few episodes before they become important. Is this the first appearance of that ISN newsreader too, or had she appeared earlier in the season?

- I’m always amused by the security guard’s half-assed efforts to delay Garibaldi with the transmitters – “Duh, I can’t read the serial code” (Heh, that’ll delay him almost a whole thirty seconds before he grabs them off me and reads them himself!)

- The scene in C&C as Santiago is killed is very well done – both the series regulars and the extras do a great job of conveying the seriousness of the moment and the sense of despair as the news comes in of Earth Force One’s fate.

- Clark’s swearing in is, of course, a reference to LBJ’s swearing in… which has always struck me as something of an insult to Johnson who was, after all, at least as good a president as Kennedy, if not as charismatic…

- Shame Talia didn’t get a line somewhere or something – every other regular character’s in the episode.

- Every time I watch Season One, I’m reminded of what a shame it is that Julie Caitlin Brown didn’t stay on as Na’toth.

- Last scene with Morden is just one more nail in the coffin of Jeanne Cavelos’ attempts to re-characterise Morden as an unwilling and coerced agent of the Shadows in “The Shadow Within” and the Technomage trilogy. I think if Morden is counselling and reassuring Shadows that ‘destiny is on our side’, it’s a pretty good clue that he’s perfectly happy with his job.

My feeling with the Johnson thing is that it adds a little extra punch to Clark's assassination, given that any viewers old enough to have seen that scene the first time are going to have a lot of emotional association with it.

EvilGuard's "I can't read the code" was pretty lame, though I guess you could justify it by saying he was already half-planning to kill Garibaldi and was just trying one last delaying tactic before he had to play his hand.

Now for a real EvilGuard evilidiot moment, you've got to watch "Points of Departure", where he stands behind the station's commander, second in command, and chief medical officer, uninvited, with his hand on his PPG waiting to see if Garibaldi remembers him (from his shooting him in the BACK). He only holsters the thing when Garibaldi says he can't.

Yeah, guess I'm not of the right generation or nationality to get that reference the way it's intended.

I guess the conspiracy underestimated Garibaldi - assumed he was a screwup who only got the job because he's friends with Sinclair - and didn't bother assigning anyone particularly competent as their agent on B5... and he ended up way in over his head because nobody had a plan worked out for what to do if they got exposed on the B5 end of things, rather than at Io or on Earth Force One itself.

This is one of my favorite episodes of the series. Delenn and Garibaldi's storylines leave great cliffhangers, and for some reason, one of my favorite scenes is Kosh telling Sinclair that he forgot something.

I guess my favorite part was "And so it begins." Everything begins! It was like all of season qne was ever so slowly cranking up for the last episode in which we are all thrown into the fire!

Aha, I love this episode! Everything starts out so cheery, like things are wrapping up for the season, and then it all implodes in spectacular fashion.

So this is where the "stop looking into mirrors" business first comes up. That's the line that always kills me in Vir's drunken S4 monologue.

Speaking of scenes that kill me, watching Londo talk to Morden just...hurts. You can tell that he knows damn well what a bad idea it is, and yet he asks for Morden's help anyway. Then it turns out to be even worse than he thought, and he's clearly shaken, but he doesn't back down. I noticed, this time around, the way he pours himself a drink after telling Vir to send the message, then pours it back in the bottle. It's like he can't let anyone even think that he might be drunk, or, possibly, that he won't let himself get drunk, which is interesting, considering how important alcohol ends up being much, much later.

I wonder what it is about Babylon 5 that makes it a good place to set up the jamming devices? Is it just easier to smuggle things there, or was there stuff going on at other majpr ports, or what? That always struck me as a little odd, though not as odd as the senator's reaction. I can only assume that Clark had her in his pocket already.

On a completely unrelated note, I kinda like Ivanova's dress.

It occurs to me that we do know Morden had some connection to Clark - perhaps he wasn't on station just to talk to Londo, but also to provide the jamming devices?

As for the senator - one of the things that's help fuel conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination is how quickly the government went into cover-up mode... not because they were necessarily in on it, but seemingly more out of a desire to prevent a panic and look like they were in control. Could be a similar case here.

"Chrysalis" discussion

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