"Chrysalis" discussion

[ruuger]

And so we have reached the end of season 1.

This is the discussion post for the episodes 1X22, "Chrysalis". Spoilers for the whole of the series, including the spin-offs and tie-ins, are allowed here so newbies beware.

Summary:

Garibaldi discovers a conspiracy to assasinate the president. Meanwhile Londo gets help from his new allies.

Extra reading:

The article for "Chrysalis" at Lurker's Guide.

Comments

[4thofeleven.livejournal.com]

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.

[traviswells.livejournal.com]

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.

[4thofeleven.livejournal.com]

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.