b5_revisited | "Shadow Dancing" discussion

It's a suspenseful episode - B5 brings on the good space battles - with some nice couple moments for shippers of Marcus/Ivanova and Sheridan/Delenn, but as I ship neither couple, I feel rather neutral about their scenes. (I will say that I've always suspected Delenn of making some of the "Minbari rituals" up simply to a) tease Sheridan and b) do whatever she wanted to do while having a good excuse. I approve of this character trait.) Upon watching again, I found it most interesting that Delenn is the one who persuades the representatives of the other races to commit their ships. Which makes sense to me - she's the politician, Sheridan is the soldier - and reminds me of my slight disgruntlement of the s4 thing where she and Ivanova aren't presented as capable of holding the Alliance together at their own, but more about that when we get to s4.

Franklin meeting himself: Richard Biggs is really good in the relevant scenes, but it's still not a storyline that is anything but predictable. Poor Franklin. First he gets the daddy issues and the "but I do love you, son/dad" cliché scene in s2, and now he gets the "pull yourself together" scene in s3. I think what I liked best about this upon rewatch is that it showcases the friendship between him and Garibaldi. "Don't ever do this to me again."

Anna's arrival: more about Anna when we get to the next episode. Did I realize it was her during first broadcast? I think I pretty much guessed due to Delenn's vision in WWE and other hints over the season. It's still an excellent cliffhanger, and of course the "Z minus..." inserts were terribly efficient the first time around, as we were all waiting for Sheridan to go to Z'ha'dum.

I love Bruce Boxleitner and I really enjoyed the Sheridan/Delenn pairing. The expressions on his face alone make that scene in his quarters worth watching. That and the semi-mullet; I love him wiht the longer hair. Poor guy isn't sure what to do with her half the time and boy, can she tease him. I remember thinking at the time that the Minbari kept reminding me more and more of Vulcans. I also thought it was cute how he still tried to get her to stay behind. Ah, John, that is so not happening. The strong female characters in this show are one of the things I love about it.

I'm all about space battles and even though this wasn't the best one they had, it was still cool. Love Ivanaova in the command chair and the scene in the sleeping quarters mirrors the previous one with John and Delenn. Too bad that couple never got the chance to work things out. The end of the battle with all the pieces of the destroyed ships displayed floating through space was very effective. I know Melissa's voice so I knew it was Anna. I was excited to see her on the show. I think we all knew what was coming as soon as we saw that shuttle depart the Shadow ship.

I must confess not being very interested in the whole "walkabout" plot. I saw as a way to give Richard Biggs a much deserved, but cliched, storyline.

All in all a great penultimate episode for this season which I felt was the best of Babylon 5.

The walkabout plot was never one of my favorites, but I still like it. This time through I noticed Franklin's hammering in the WWE lesson to Sheridan...'the moments are all we have.'

I also like the battle, *especially* that they show the debris, the casualties, and the inside of a ship being hit (and not just a bridge-set wobbling)). Not things often seen on such programmes.

I also like Marcus's lost cause with Ivanova - he's getting really serious now.
However, other than to facilitate these scenes, I'm not sure why Ivanova gets sent out on the scout mission. Marcus could have managed very well on his own, and with Sheridan looking after the fleet, the station is left without senior command staff. Feels tactically dodgy and therefore grates a bit.

As for the countdown, when I first saw this, I'd only seen (most of) S3, and probably failed to pick up a number of hints ion the way, because I didn't know the context. So at that time it "what the hell is this all about", which also worked very well.

Too many of the Marcus and Susan missions seemed redundant. Leaving the station unattended was stupid, and it makes much more sense for Susan to be left behind than Delenn (the whole weird thing with Delenn being left in command at all bothers me.)

I agree - especially that it is unlikely anybody was aware at this point that she had any command competence at all.
Never mind the chain of command (although this was arguably messed up by the split from Earth...)

One of those episodes that’s kind of hard to discuss on its own – its mainly setting up Z’ha’dum, and isn’t entirely satisfying on its own.
The effects in the space battle hold up very well, though it does suffer from lacking any emotional context – it seems to be mainly an excuse to show a lot of ships fighting, which is fun, but it’s not as interesting as the battles in, say, “The Long Twilight Struggle” or “Severed Dreams.” Did like the brief shot of the surviving Narn cruiser taking part. And I always enjoy seeing the Vree saucers in action.

Ivanova/Marcus – I’m reminded again of why I do not like the pairing. If you’re going to hide behind a foreign language even when on a mission with a <50% chance of survival… yeah, it wasn’t ever going to work out.

Franklin. I don’t know, I feel there’s some retconing here with the whole “You run away from things!” idea, when, if anything, I’d have said Franklin’s main flaw is that he’s inflexible. Now maybe we’re not meant to take snarkyFranklin’s critisisms at face value… but then, what’s the point?

I have to agree that the best parts of this whole storyline are the scenes with Garibaldi – mainly because they’re the only scenes where this actually affects anyone other than Franklin, and I don’t care about Franklin on his own that much.

Annoyances: The Dream. Man, but I hate Sheridan’s dream, mainly because of ham-handed scenes like this one that try and emphasise “No, really, this is all *very important*!”, especially since it turned out that, no, most of it wasn’t that important. I guess it implies that Kosh is still influencing Sheridan’s mind – which implies to me that “The man in-between” is Lorien, not Sheridan’s ‘equal and opposite’ as is implied here. Still, not very interesting.

The scene with the tourists in Down Below. I know it only exists to try and bury Anna’s name a bit further in the credits, but couldn’t JMS have come up with a better idea for a scene? A ranger briefing Delenn or something. How many tourists from Georgia do you think there are in Ossetia at the moment?

Minor note: Anyone else think the Shadow scout ship is kinda cute? Every time I see it, I keep thinking “Aww, baby Shadow ship!”

Ivanova/Marcus – I’m reminded again of why I do not like the pairing. If you’re going to hide behind a foreign language even when on a mission with a <50% chance of survival… yeah, it wasn’t ever going to work out.

Well, Marcus did identify himself with Galahad, which really says it all. :) (More seriously, I think he and Ivanova make reasonably good friends, but he's obviously into the longing, not into the having, and on her side, she came acoss as fond, very fond towards the end, but not attracted, if that makes sense.)

Sheridan's dream: suffers by comparison because Londo's dreams are just more impressive with the actual foreshadowing and the snark (Londo's "the metaphor is getting a big thick" in 5.2.). *g* I remember being somewhat intrigued during first broadcast but disappointed by the way it turned out to be, as you say, not that important. Though it does say something interesting that Kosh bothered with the dream sending during the abduction.

Baby Shadow ship: no, you're not the only one.

My son calls those ships the Shadow Combs. Now I only see hair accessories when I see them.

A dramatic episode, that's for sure.

B5 has space battles that are just as good as anything on the big screen today, IMHO. Showing post-battle wreckage too is one of the things that helps make B5 seem realistic, sad as it is to see it.

The first time I watched the epsiode, at the end when Anna comes on board B5, I found it vaguely creepy that from peoples reactions to her, she obviously wasn't giving off 'Was Once A Shadow Ship CPU' vibes. When she spoke to Delenn and appeared to be 'normal', that creeped me out further (perhaps that was one of the reasons why Delenn dropped the globe?).

I got the impression people were creeped out by her. I just love Anna's tone there at the end. If you didn't know she was Shadow-ridden, it was just the right amount of contempt and possessiveness.

I actually like the Marcus/Ivanova bit... I guess the unrequited love thing still appeals to the sappy kid in me. I liked Marcus anyway. He really was Galahad to Sheridan's Arthur. Ivanova... I still think the minister from the week beofre was talking about HER when he spoke to Sheridan about that he could see at the table that 'she' loved him.

I loved the battle scenes but then I always do... the carnage is always a reminder that war is not only about weapons but about people too.

Anna... UGH! Just UGH!

"Ivanova... I still think the minister from the week beofre was talking about HER when he spoke to Sheridan about that he could see at the table that 'she' loved him."

I like that. When John starts referring to Delenn in that convo, it would have been interesting to see the minister go 'No, I didn't mean that one!'

I am a week behind, and still haven't watched Z'ha'dum. Hopefully tomorrow.

This is one of my favorite battle scenes. The backgrounds are so beautiful, so much in contrast to the carnage in the foreground. It is like a dance; a lovely, deadly dance.

The first time I saw this, I was terrifically annoyed by the Franklin storyline because it kept interrupting the battle. I went to the bother of watching the two storylines separately; first Franklin all the way through, then the main story, then as filmed. It's very interesting that way; I recommend it.

Little things that struck me this time: as I mentioned above, Franklin's foretelling of John's fate and echoing Delenn's warning in WWE: treasure the moments, the moments are all we have; and Delenn's not showing John how the holochamber works until the battle starts. 'All in good time' she says, showing her natural secrecy and methods of gradual revelation that will come back to bite her next episode. And 'history awaits'...one of the best come-on lines ever.

There's just tons of foreshadowing of death. Susan's 'who wants to live forever?' and Marcus' reply seemed terribly poignant.

I knew it was Anna when I watched the whole series on DVD, but I had seen bits and pieces when it aired, so I can't be sure what I knew or half-remembered from before. It gave the series the feel of a dream or a re-telling of a myth for me, adding to the impact. The Z-minus was just great.

Oh, and the dream was really dumb. It just doesn't make much sense. Maybe Kosh had to use what he found in Sheridan's mind as imagery and just couldn't find what he wanted. Sort of like Zathras' search for tools 'This will not work. This is not right. Never use that one.'

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