b5_revisited | "War without End" discussion

The first time I attempted to watch B5, as a teenager around 1998, it was mostly because I'd read a summary of "Bablyon Squared" and "War Without End", and it hit a whole lot of my early narrative kinks: time travel, closed temporal loops, flash-forwards, flash-forwards to dystopic futures, doomed couples stealing moments together in cells before execution, OTPs producing spawn who end up in danger. (They're not very sophisticated narrative kinks.)

Needless to say, when I finally got to watch WWE last year, it had a lot to live up to. The amazing thing is how perfect it is: passable time travel logic (I agree with

4thofeleven that destroying B4 changes maybe too much to be sure that the Bablyon Project would even happen, although I'm prepared to believe that it's what the Tenth Doctor would call a "fixed point"), a neat balance of ensemble work, individual character moments, plot, etc.

Also, my latent inner Delenn/Sinclair shipper gets wibbly at the bit where they speak Adronato, because I'm a pathetic fool like that.

At

selenak's suggestion, I recently bought and read the In the Beginning novelisation, whose framing device is set concurrently with Sheridan's flash-forwards. I read that, and then I gritted my teeth and ~~read~~ ~~attempted to read~~ skimmed relevant bits of The Fall of Centauri Prime, the novel that deals with the same period. And I was really quite annoyed to realise that PDavid's two versions of the same events don't even add up (yes, I am comfortable with my identity as a pedantic nerd), plus I have a hard time reconciling the David-Sheridan-with-Keeper story as PDavid tells it with (a) Delenn's claim to Sheridan in the cell that their son is safe and she's ready to face death, or (b) the mention of the incident in "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars", which implies something far more devastating and scandalous than what we got. And I have a hard time believing that the Drakh's plan went:

1. Give David Sheridan a Keeper.
2. Wait 17 years for it to activate.
3. ??????????????
4. Profit.

It just seems like there are more straightforward ways of torturing and killing Delenn and Sheridan, if that was their goal. Even for Shadow servants, it's a bit arcane.

Dystopic flash-forwards, man. I'm all over that.

For someone who mainly writes media tie-ins of one form or another, Peter David is really terrible at continuity - even when it is, as you noted, his *own* continuity he's dealing with.

IT IS VERY AGGRAVATING! I mean, I've written novel-length fics, I know it can be tough to keep everything in the right place, but he has proper editors! Not to mention, one assumes, the same access to paper and Blu-Tac and coloured pencils and Post-It notes that I have!

The David thing is the exact point where genre conventions start seriously clashing with the political ideologies JMS consciously wants to promote, because there is no reason in a democratic universe for anyone to assume that David will be a politically influential figure because of who his parents were. (It would be great if the Drakh, because of their own feudalist thinking, ended up wasting their top Keeper on the 23rd-century equivalent of Mark Thatcher.)

I assume that's the advantage of getting him when he's very young -- the adult children of Margaret Thatcher being douchebags isn't really all that newsworthy or interesting in and of itself, but George W. Bush's teenaged daughters being caught drunk driving (or ... something?) is.

Also, I discard Peter David's novel, and assume that the Keeper had David do something actually significant, like an assassination attempt on Vir, for example. But mostly I think he was bait to put Delenn within the hands of a Keeper*; I just don't know why that would take sixteen years.

* Because I said so? Also, killing Sheridan and Delenn shouldn't have that devastating effect on an ostensibly-democratic Alliance, but killing Sheridan and putting Delenn under a Keeper's control would be fantastic. Not least because Delenn has a history of becoming, shall we say, a bit despotic when grief-stricken.

I always assumed it was just petty personal revenge - it doesn't get them anything other than a chance to hurt the individuals who destroyed their home world, and they wanted David old enough that he could easily leave Minbar and head to one of their strongholds.

And who said the Alliance was democratic? I mean, yes, it may vote on things, but it didn't seem any more democratic than, say, the Holy Roman Empire. Earth seems to be the only major democracy in the Alliance, and they don't seem to get an ambassador!

I always assumed it was just petty personal revenge...

But petty revenge is so ... petty! And why settle for a petty revenge, when you can torture and humiliate people first?

And who said the Alliance was democratic?

It does seem like an increasingly generous assumption, I'll grant. I choose to believe it's a mutated version of the Westminster system, with presidents voted by member representatives, who are in turn chosen by whatever method is most appropriate to their homeworld.

Earth seems to be the only major democracy in the Alliance, and they don't seem to get an ambassador!

I like to think that was an oversight as a consequence of all the chaos after Clark was deposed, and eventually Luchenko looked up and said, "Hang on, what? Wow, that's embarrassing."

I've always thought that, as well as a bit of personal revenge, the purpose they had for David was part of a plan to use the Centauri as an assult on the alliance as a whole.

They know the Alliance is the direct result of Sheriden/Delenn's leadership. By hitting their son with a keeper they have a great way of luring the two most inspirational and important Alliance figures away from their posts, possibly even without anyone knowing why they've disappeared. Then they have the ideal opportunity to attack the Alliance without the uniting guidance of their two leading lights.

Then all you need is a staged transgression (easy to do with keepers, or the shadow-pods they used to stage Centauri attacks, or even with the lasting hatred some races have towards the Centauri) from an Alliance race, say the Narn or the Drazi, and you have a war with a resurgent Centauri Republic that many Allinace races could easily be reluctant to join in, especially if the Centauri play a cunning game of divide and conquer. This may, of course, explain the renewed bitterness in the G'Kar-Londo relationship which makes him the ideal assassin at the end.

You do see renewed bitterness there at the end with G'Kar then? There are two alternate readings of that; that G'Kar hates Londo and takes this opportunity to kill him (certainly my first interpretation) but I also think there's some validity to the idea that G'Kar is killing Londo cause Londo asked him too.

I like both, but I'm flexible that way.

I like your idea of a staged transgression starting the war. What I'm working towards is this being the 'Drakh War' Delenn mentions in the S4 epilogue. It would seem to be Centauri at first, of course. I want to bring in the long history of the Centauri as an aggressive race...I read in the Chronology (I think?) that the League of Non-Aligned Worlds was formed by those races that had thrown off the yoke of the Centauri Empire, and then were threatened by the Dilgar. War without end, indeed.

I think it's something of both alternatives, that G'Kar kills Londo to release him from the keeper, but also because he knows that only Londo has the talent to do... well, whatever he's done to the Alliance at this point. Certainly I think there's more than a little feeling in the words Londo uses 'I am as tired of my life as you are', which is very different from their almost playful banter during S5. It's primarily this line that implies some renewed bitterness.

As far as my reading of likely events is, the Drakh are likely to be using the Centauri as a tool against the Alliance, but their involvement is revealed when Sheriden escapes from Londo and returns to the Alliance. They then have to link with the resistance led by Vir to locate the Drakh bases.

Personally, I suspect that Londo will have been using his drunk time to help Vir infiltrate the Centauri military, so a large chunk of it will immediately switch sides, but then I've always felt that when the Drakh took over Londo they were making their own Sword of Damocles. I love the idea of Londo and Vir playing the long game and slowly forming a weapon against the Drakh, primed to fire when Londo dies at G'Kar's hands. There's a part of his speech made before his crowning that mentions turning their anger against those responsible for the destruction on Centauri Prime. When the screen cuts to an approving nod from the Drakh controlling Londo, that just makes me think 'I know exactly who you're thinking of, and it's not the Alliance'. The Drakh should know better than to think they can out-intrigue the Centauri.

I always felt bad for David that he was the only one not around to see his dad off on that "Sunday drive". I understand JMS' explannation of why we never saw him and I can understand Sheridan not wanting him there. I would think that would hurt on some level.It's a heavy burden being the son of two legends. He probably joined the Rangers because he felt it was expected of him. I'm sure John and Delenn would never push this on him, but others certainly would have had their own expectations.

I like David as a character to write, but feel he probably joined the Rangers of his own volition, out of not fitting in anywhere else. I have them as extended family in his childhood and so it's natural he stays with them.

My explanation for the Sunday drive has always been that John didn't have an exact date/time for his demise, only the approximate year. It would have warped David, I think, for him to be waiting around Minbar so he could be there. The one time I wrote this out, I had David off-planet on a mission, getting a message from his father when he started having the dreams to come home, but arriving just too late. Yes, I do love me some angst :)

I can see David joining the Rangers for that reason. I figure he looked mostly human but just alien enough to look different. The cultural diversity of the Rangers would be a perfect fit.

If there was enough time to get the rest of them there, there was enough time to get David there. I figure they never told him about his dad's condition until after the fact. I see John as leaving him one of those messages like we saw in "Sleeping In Light".

No, no. The rest of them were on Earth and Mars and Centauri Prime. And since everything is three days away from everything else (source: JMS hand-waving :) they were really quite close. David was away away--you know, out towards the Rim. A rare-ish opportunity to get out there. He couldn't not go, and John wouldn't ask him not to. Alternately he was somewhere he couldn't get the message right away. He got back as quick as he could. (I'm taking this too seriously, aren't I?)

I see John as leaving him one of those messages like we saw in "Sleeping In Light".

Heh. We think alike.

I have to dig up my laboriously arrived at distance chart now and check figures. I do remember Z'ha'dum is nowhere near as far away as it should be. *waves hands furiously*

He's one of those characters who just seems set up for years and years of therapy, even before the Drakh get their hands on him. Which just makes him interesting to me, because I like stories about characters struggling to get out of the shadow of extraordinary parents, and also stories about mothers and sons.

But excluding him from the farewell gathering in "Sleeping in Light" seems like a really terrible choice, and the emotional consequences for David (and Delenn) are potentially profound.

*is routing for David Sheridan to be Mark Thatcher as well*

That's a great idea. Someone should write the fanfic.

"War without End" discussion

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