b5_revisited | "Midnight on the Firing Line" discussion [spoilers]

I liked all the open trunks in Londo's quarters...was he waiting for Vir to arrive and unpack for him? (My god, that almost sounds right!) Let's talk interior decorating later...it's one of my favorite things about the show!

I thought the Narn were slaves for a hundred years, not freed a hundred years ago. *is confused*

Confession: I am a Geek. I looked it up. The Centauris invaded Narn 2109 0r 2113. G'Kar was born 2201 0r 2182, and Narn is freed 2209 or 2228 or 2231. JMS and chronology; not close friends.
The humans are still mayflies however. I still haven't gotten over Delenn's being such a cradle-robber...

I'ts always startling to me to see just how...scruffy...the Centauri hairpieces were in S1, and how different some of the costumes look. Especially in the case of poor Vir, looking confused and half-terrified here.

Oh, and Garibaldi sharing his second favorite thing in the universe with Delenn always kills me. I wonder how he talked her into it?

Bear in mind Kosh has factual knowledge of everything that will happen up until Sinclair leaves on Babylon 4. He knows there will be war between the Centauri and the Narn and the Narn will be crushed to a horrific extent, and he knows the Centauri will side with the Shadows. He may be making an assumption there that the Centauri will be destroyed because of it, based on his own ideology.

There's nothing to show long term that he's right, either. Their power may have waned, but in both cases under terrible pounding the race and cultures go on.

Well, in the commentary on The Gathering, JMS mentions that they were never supposed to be such big hairpieces, it's just that Peter Jurasik was playing a joke on JMS and came in before they got his trimmed down, saying, "I like it just like this!" JMS went with it.

However, the Centauri in question are sort of their planet's rejects, so a little bit of inattentiveness re: personal grooming is in keeping with that, I think. It's when Londo gets sleek that he becomes so scary.

Oh, gosh, if my brain were less mushy I'd look up the length of time between the Gathering and Midnight, and I'd have some idea if that was reasonable or not.

They keep saying a hundred years ago in the episode. But you're right, JMS and chronology are *not* close friends.

Truly? That's awesome!

That's true, too.

Yeah, Babylon 5 is really a very dense show. It's amazing how much you notice once you know what's coming.

I so love this opener. As has been said, so many important plot arcs are introduced here, in addition to three new characters (Ivanova, Talia and Vir), and yet it doesn't feel overcrowded at all.

Observations upon rewatching: I had forgotten JMS even smuggled in a brief remark about Santiago's Vice President (as a reason not to vote for him). All the bits about Earth elections is neatly done. The first time I watched, I thought it was just to explain the Senator's order to Sinclair, but in retrospect it's of course part of the build up to the season finale and beyond.

I had a friend who had followed the bad advice of starting with s2 and who watched s1 only later, after she had seen the other seasons, and who felt disturbed and angry to see "G'Kar in the wrong, almost like a baddie" - she wanted the G'Kar of later seasons. Whereas to me the first season, as epitomized in this episode, is why JMS was so great with his character arcs for Londo and G'Kar. If G'Kar had started out as being the way she wanted, there would have been nearly no growth. Instead, you have the backstory - the Centauri occupation of a hundred years, liberation from slavery - introduced from the start, but you also see G'Kar arrogant as hell, bent on vengeance, enjoying every chance he has to humiliate Londo and looking forward to wiping out the Centauri. You see G'Kar being perfectly fine with sneak attacks on civilian planets and ensuing occupations, provided the Narn are the ones carrying them out. (The parallel between this and what happens in Coming of Shadows in s2 is obvious.) This is both why G'Kar has the possibility of growth (and why it's all themore impressive when he takes it) and, I think, a big reason why he eventually is able to forgive Londo. Because he understands him all too well. (As for the audience, I maintain that if you haven't seen where Lodno is coming from in season 1, then you will react completely differently in season 2.)

And Londo! There is so much important character stuff in this episode. The dream, of course, but more importantly his frustration about the fact his goverment isn't willing to do anything about the Narn attack and is prepared to sacrifice everyone on Ragesh III as lost. The sense of humiliation and helplessness boiling over in violence. The way this is all intensely personal for him. In one of the few continuity glitches for Londo, we never hear from his nephew Karn again (which is why my fanon is poor Karn committed suicide after being called back to Centauri Prime because of his forced speech), but I think it's important, character wise, that Londo is still concerned for him after the speech and the public humiliation, because as we later learn this isn't typical the Centauri, who put saving face first. Vir's uncle would have disowned his nephew at once.

Speaking of Vir, this is both where he gets introduced and where his relationship with Londo starts, which is going to become one of the most important of the show. At this point, they simply start off as yelling ambassador and bumbling assistant, but note Vir already keeps switching between addressing him as "Ambassador" and "Londo", and for the first time is asked to keep one of Londo's secrets, and does.

The Susan/Talia tension set up is great, and I think the only time Andrea Thompson didn't convince me as Talia was when she ran into Londo - that was a bit too theatrical. But she's great in her scenes with Garibaldi and Ivanova both.

What strikes me that the s1 set up is in several ways the reverse of the s2 set up, as very visible in this episode: here, Ivanova is the newbie in the core command staff, Garibaldi is the one who is close to the commander and knows him from the old days. Whereas Ivanova is the one who knows Sheridan, Sheridan himself is the newbie, and Garibaldi even at the best of times was never that close to Sheridan. (This, btw, is why Garibaldi's s4 storyline doesn't have quite the intended impact for me - I mean, it's horrible for Garibaldi in any case, but JMS clearly went for a "best friend forced to betray best friend" scenario, and Sheridan and Garibaldi simply weren't. With Sinclair, the same scenes would have been even more powerful.)

Also, Sinclair at this point clearly doesn't like and distrusts G'Kar (no kidding, since G'Kar had tried to hand him over to the Vorlons and in this story is involved in an attack and some piracy), and sympathizes with Londo. While Sheridan's very first encounter with Londo painted Londo as untrustworthy and powerhungry (he never got to meet first season Londo), whereas to him G'Kar always comes across as well-meaning, if at times frustrating. (He's not aquainted with "hooray for sneak attacks, as long as they're ours" G'Kar, either.)

Garibaldi stopping Londo from going after G'Kar with a gun finds its echo in Sheridan stopping G'Kar from going after Londo, and so forth.

Garibaldi's fondness for cartoons is by and large an endearing character trait, but I can understand why Jerry Doyle felt it was shameless product placing by the WB...

This, btw, is why Garibaldi's s4 storyline doesn't have quite the intended impact for me - I mean, it's horrible for Garibaldi in any case, but JMS clearly went for a "best friend forced to betray best friend" scenario, and Sheridan and Garibaldi simply weren't. With Sinclair, the same scenes would have been even more powerful.

Maybe that was part of the original plan was to have Garibaldi betray Sinclair, but when the story changed, so did the situation. I agree with you here - to me, it just doesn't make sense that Garibaldi is targeted the way he is. It would make more since for Ivanova to have been captured by Bester and implanted with the orders. Just think of the coup that would have given Bester. Granted, it would keep her away from developing the relationship with Marcus, but the ramifications of those actions would have been even more devastating on Sheridan, Garibaldi, etc. than what we were presented with. To me, it just felt like "dogpile on Garibaldi" from the beginning of season 4 to the end of the series.

Well, I could see why Bester went for Garibaldi - because his (Bester's) motivation wasn't to deal a blow to Sheridan & Co. (though that was an okay side effect after Epiphanies), it was to ferret out what Edgars had planned for telepaths. And for this, he needed both a good detective - which he knew Garibaldi was - and someone Edgars would plausibly hire. I can't imagine a scenario where Edgars would hire Ivanova, and remember, Edgards didn't know Garibaldi was brainwashed. To repeat: for Bester, it never was about Babylon 5 or Sheridan, it was about all things telepaths. So from his perspective, the use of Ivanova would not have made sense. Unless JMS had changed Bester's motivation, but I always liked the fact that Bester was an antagonist who wasn't an evil sadist (tm) for the hell of it but saw himself as doing the right thing for "his" people. (That he was deluded there is no question, but it's what makes him an interesting character.)

He's not bad once the series starts. Every season a year, January to December pretty much. The station goes online 2256, The Gathering is 2257, MotFL begins 2258, and so on.
I tend to write long complicated B5 epics, and timelines drive me mad. I appreciate shortcuts like that. Every place is three days travel apart. You can communicate instantaneously, and you hand-wave the time differences. Yay.

I think it's one of those collective memory things for G'Kar, or maybe the royal 'we'. It's one of the things you notice about both Londo and G'Kar; their people's history is not past to them. All their grievances are viewed as current, and they can't move past them.

This was the first B5 episode I ever saw - not because I missed The Gathering but because Channel 4, in their wisdom, chose not to show it first. I can't now remember how many episodes of season 1 I'd seen before I saw The Gathering, though I do remember that when I finally did get to see, I was blown away by how much had been set up in it (principally the Sinclair/Minbari stuff) that had had me scratching my head while watching the following episodes (which I saw before the pilot).

So, on viewing MotFL again for the first time in years, I guess it's a tribute to how gripping B5 is right from the start that I kept on with it, because the episode doesn't make any concessions. It just throws you right in there.

Yes, Ivanova and Talia (and Dr Franklin in the next episode)are new characters, but the others already know each other and I found myself dropped right into the middle of things knowing nothing about them. I hadn't been introduced. So, Sinclair is incredibly hostile towards G'Kar, for reasons that were at the time unknown to me - as was the history between the Centauri and the Narn, so Londo and G'kar's enmity was also inexplicable. (And who was this Dr Kyle that Dr Franklin told Sinclair he'd met on Io in Soul Hunter I had no idea?

Speaking of whom, I suppose if Dr Kyle became the President's personal physician, he must have died too during the assassination?)

Anyway, despite being totally bewildered, way back then (1994?), there was enough in this first episode to draw me in and keep me coming back, even though I remained in the dark about a lot of things until I saw The Gathering.

For a start, there's Londo and G'kar. So much about their interactions here and about Londo's with Vir adds richness to their various cultures. Weirdly, for me with Londo, it was the fact that he was so concerned about his nephew that drew me in, because it sets up so well and so economically the Centauri preoccupation with the extended family. Have to admit that on my first watch, I just presumed the Narn were going to be the villains. Brash, arrogant, look like lizards therefore treacherous and bound to be the bad guys. Yet even in this episode, there are hints that all is not quite what it seems.

I'm also so impressed by how much is set up here that turn out to mean so much later in the series, which is also true in Soul Hunter, such as Londo's dream of fighting to the death with G'kar, and Earth's political troubles. Also, I know it's hindsight talking, but it looks to me like Talia had set her sights on Ivanova right from the start, which reminds me all over again how innovative B5 was, not just for its own time, but still, in suggesting that same sex relationships are no longer thought of as 'difficult' or unusual.

And I don't think Sinclair's wooden.

Edited 2009-01-26 11:13 (UTC)

Speaking of whom, I suppose if Dr Kyle became the President's personal physician, he must have died too during the assassination?)

Wasn't the guy who was hiding on B5 in S2 the president's physician? I have a vague recollection that it was mentioned that Kyle was the head of the xenobiology whatever, and Franklin replaced him (or joined him?) when he left B5 at the end of S5.

A while ago, I wrote a full review of this episode here.

Every time I watch this episode, I am surprised all over again that the Narn on the Raider ship didn't destroy those data crystals or throw them out an airlock as soon as it became clear that the ship was going to be captured. I can only imagine what the Narn regime did with him when he got home.

In one of the few continuity glitches for Londo, we never hear from his nephew Karn again (which is why my fanon is poor Karn committed suicide after being called back to Centauri Prime because of his forced speech)

That makes a disturbing amount of sense. Otherwise, you'd expect Londo to be advancing his career later on when he goes up in the world.

Also, not only do we never hear from Karn again, but his existence implies that Londo has a brother we never hear a single thing about. Londo is the head of the family, so either his sibling is younger or he died young.

Either way, I suspect he's dead by this point given his conspicuous absence in this episode. If he was alive, you'd expect Londo to mention him.

I'm afraid I can't remember. It's so long since I saw all of this. I haven't watched these episodes since they were first aired.

All those little details escape me, though some of the things I do remember are not what might be expected. I've forgotten all the details of the Telepath War, for instance, but still remember vividly Sheridan telling Delenn about how he loved the sound of rain and how his father sprayed the roof with a hose so he would hear the sound he loved while he was studying for exams.

The sense of humiliation and helplessness boiling over in violence. The way this is all intensely personal for him.

Yeah, I thought that was so key here - Londo's terrible frustration. You can really see where his later poor decisions are coming from...

I think part of the reason I'm so fond of G'Kar is exactly that growth. He starts out so unlikeable, so manipulative and arrogant and full of hate, that his changes, even before Dust to Dust, are that much more striking. Londo always has that humanity, that decency, within him - when he volunteers for the machine in A Voice in the Wilderness, it's unexpected, but not implausible. He falls and then rises, but he's always Londo. G'Kar, on the other hand, shows a lot less of his potential at this point - his growth is believable, but it's hard to imagine when we see him like this!

I was struck by Sinclair's attitude to G'Kar, actually. I suppose I'd forgotten that Sinclair only knows Angry!G'Kar, that he doesn't magically watch the changes like the rest of them *g*. It's entirely plausible that he should dislike G'Kar - I mean, G'Kar has more than justified it - but I generally think of Sinclair as being pretty even-tempered and diplomatic, and he's really not here! *g*

a big reason why he eventually is able to forgive Londo. Because he understands him all too well.

That's a good point, and one I hadn't actually thought of. It's clear from Morden's reaction to them that Londo's answer gives him more scope but you're right, it's a difference in degree rather than kind; G'Kar (perhaps because he's been able to do more fighting back himself, and see more actual results from his struggle? The Narn *did* get rid of the Centauri, after all) is less frustrated, less bitter, but the two of them are very similar.

I'm voting for both "younger" - otherwise Londo would have had more freedom in his choice of wife, one presumes - and "died young".

Londo's readiness to plot against Turhan in s2 would also gain additional weight of Turhan's policy was the direct cause for his nephew's death...

I heard Peter Jurasik tell that story at a con, too

If both parties agree, it is probably true :-)

Originally watching things in an odd, I first came across Sinclair in "War without End", so whenever I see his earlier character, that is still present in the back of my mind.

My favourite line in this episode is said by Ivanova, when Talia is trying to check in with her.
She says (to dismiss the unwelcome introduction) "Then you'll excuse me, but I'm in the middle of 15 things, all of them annoying"

That was Clark's physician in Hunter, Prey, tho I don't remember his name. I love the letter he left for his wife Mary. I always wonder what happened to her once his report came out, showing Clark wasn't really ill when he jumped EarthForce One before the explosion.

G'Kar has a story about his father and mother being slaves to the Centauri while he was growing up, so no, it's not the royal we.

Also, I've noticed that Centauri Prime is very close to Babylon 5 (Londo sitting upright in a transport that looks very much like the coach section of a plane indicates a quick trip) and while the Grey Council ship is not far, Minbar is quite further. I always thought that the Narn homeworld was pretty close, too, considering the amount of meat G'Kar eats, as is the Markab homeworld, although the Markab homeworld isn't on route to anywhere else, so it's just a little side pocket in space.

Earth is hard to judge, because our ships are crap, so travel time might be exacerbated by that.

But if it takes an episode or two in a top of the line Minbari ship to get somewhere, a la Delenn's visits to homeworld? Yeah, that's far.

I suppose I'd forgotten that Sinclair only knows Angry!G'Kar, that he doesn't magically watch the changes like the rest of them *g*. It's entirely plausible that he should dislike G'Kar - I mean, G'Kar has more than justified it - but I generally think of Sinclair as being pretty even-tempered and diplomatic, and he's really not here! *g*

Nope. He is when dealing with both Londo and G'Kar being asses in the strike episode in the middle of the season, and in the season finale he really goes out of his way to bring G'Kar around by diplomacy, but early on, especially in this episode, he's indeed downright hostile. As you say, it's understandable given how G'Kar has behaved so far, and that in this episode in particular Sinclair has seen him first insincerly expressing his condolences for the attack and then smugly taking pride in it while enjoying Londo's humiliation (boy, does G'Kar rack up the bad karma there, and boy, does it ever come home soon). But Sinclair rarely is this partisan with his ambassadors.

It's a fascinating what if to wonder how Sinclair would have responded in s2. Because the first thing Sheridan sees Londo doing is to pull a fast one with the technomages, and the first thing he sees G'Kar doing is to warn everyone about the Shadows. It makes it easy to choose whom to side with later on. Not that I don't think Sheridan wouldn't have chosen the Narn anyway, given how the Centauri were behaving in s2, mass drivers and all, and of course Sinclair would have seen a similar right and wrong situation - but with his different relationship with the ambassadors, he might have tried to talk to Londo on a personal level to make him see reason. (Not that he would have succeeded, since Vir didn't, but he probably would have tried.) On the darker side of things, I wonder if G'Kar would have founded it harder to trust Sinclair than Sheridan given their backstory?

"Midnight on the Firing Line" discussion [spoilers]

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Observations, Part II

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Re: Observations, Part II

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Great comment!

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