"The Parliament of Dreams" discussion [spoilers]

[ruuger]

This is the discussion post for the episode 1X05, "The Parliament of Dreams". Spoilers for the whole of the series, including the spin-offs and tie-ins, are allowed here so newbies beware.

Extra reading:

The article for "The Parliament of Dreams" at Lurker's Guide.

Comments

[4thofeleven.livejournal.com]

Hey, we’re getting into the good stuff now!

- There’s a fair number of aliens at the Centauri ceremony – including at least one Narn. League ambassadors, civilians just there for a free meal, or did the Centauri dominance of the region give their religion a chance to aquire at least a few followers among their former subject peoples?

- The Centauri god of the underworld is also protector of front doors? Interesting – presumably a god of liminality, then, like Hermes or Janus.

- Of all the characters who left the show, I think Na’toth is the one I most wish had stayed on. She gets a great introduction here, and I’d really liked to have seen her as a more level-headed assistant to G’kar during the rest of the series.

- G’kar can breathe unaided in n’grath’s quarters – I think this is the only time his ‘gill implants’ from the pilot are even obliquely mentioned.

- G’kar swapping the fruit he’s given is one of my favourite jokes in the whole series.

- The Narn don’t seem to have organised a ceremony. Could be it already happened, or G’kar cancelled it so he could focus on avoiding assassins. Could just be the Narn religion is meant to be private – though G’kar seems pretty casual about lending the Book of G’Quan to Garibaldi later on. Could be the Narn aren’t generally religious – either G’kar’s somewhat unusual among Narn, or that they tend to consider their beliefs more philosophies than religions. We never really get a good idea of how common followers of G'Quan are among the greater Narn population - though there only seems to be a couple on station in "By Any Means Necessary", and Na'Toth isn't religious.

- On the subject of characters who left the show, I’ve always felt that had Sinclair stayed on, and assuming Sakai would have ended up with the Anna Sheridan plot – a reasonable assumption – well, that’d be pretty damn depressing to watch, yes? I mean, the return of (shadow)Anna isn’t too bad, because it’s pretty obvious what’s going on, and we never really knew the original – but if it was the return of a character we knew and who I at least rather liked… Plus, it’d cast something of a pall over a Sinclair/Delenn relationship if it was starting with Sakai only recently missing. I think at least as far as this story thread is concerned, things worked out for the best.

- The ending is great – though, as people have pointed out, it does stretch credulity that Earth organised the festival without first giving Sinclair some pretty clear guidelines on how human religions should be represented. A little odd that Sinclair refers to one of the representatives as simply ‘an Aborigine’, rather than by the specific tribe he belongs to…

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

- The Narn don’t seem to have organised a ceremony. Could be it already happened, or G’kar cancelled it so he could focus on avoiding assassins. Could just be the Narn religion is meant to be private – though G’kar seems pretty casual about lending the Book of G’Quan to Garibaldi later on. Could be the Narn aren’t generally religious – either G’kar’s somewhat unusual among Narn, or that they tend to consider their beliefs more philosophies than religions. We never really get a good idea of how common followers of G'Quan are among the greater Narn population - though there only seems to be a couple on station in "By Any Means Necessary", and Na'Toth isn't religious.

I think JMS mentioned that in his background for this, the followers of G'Quan and the followers of G'Lan couldn't agree on a presentation. On a production side it was probably because the Narn got a lot of focus in G'Kar's plot and there wasn't time in the episode. Still, it's good we got to see more later.