"The Fall of Centauri Prime" discussion
Feb. 28th, 2011 09:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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b5_revisitedThis is the discussion post for the episode 5x18, "The Fall of Centauri Prime". Spoilers for the whole of the series, including the spin-offs and tie-ins, are allowed here so newbies beware.
Summary:
Alliance ships bomb Centauri Prime, and Londo accepts a Drakh keeper and becomes the Emperor to protect his people.
Extra reading:
The article for "The Fall of Centauri Prime" at The Lurker's Guide.
Summary:
Alliance ships bomb Centauri Prime, and Londo accepts a Drakh keeper and becomes the Emperor to protect his people.
Extra reading:
The article for "The Fall of Centauri Prime" at The Lurker's Guide.
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Date: 2011-02-28 07:49 am (UTC)*sniff*
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Date: 2011-02-28 08:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-28 09:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-28 11:21 am (UTC)1.) This is the episode which made me hate whoever is responsible for making the dvds in Germany because they actually start it with the credits, minus the teaser scene where Londo drags G'Kar out of the cell. Which is why, when I rewatch, I haul out my old video tapes. That scene is so them, with the quintessential L/G dialogue:
"You saved my life, at the risk of your own."
"Bah, you would have done the same for me."
"Yes, but I am the better person."
2.) In an episode that breaks my heart multiple times on Londo's account, there is always a little sadness for the Regent as well, and his very Roman death (JMS, your I, Claudius influences show again, and I mean that in a good way).
3.) re: Delenn and Lennier: or, why good intentions pave the road to, and you know the rest. For Delenn to acknowledge his love with "I know" (and she does, and did for a good while) and then pretend it doesn't happen when it turns out they'll survive was the worst thing she could have done, and yet, what ELSE could she have done? When they were about to die, it would have been callous to say "yes, I love you too, just not in the way you love me", and afterwards she was trying to help him save face in that very Minbari way. Only they're way beyond that.
4.) Who am I kidding? Londo. G'Kar. Best scenes ever. LONDO. Oh, and yes, why this season so was necessary. Londo's challenge was a) to acknowledge what he'd done in the past (which he did in The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari) without excuses, and b) to face that worst fear. Because I don't think Londo's worst fear is death at G'Kar's hands, hasn't been for a good long while (imo not after Dust to Dust anymore). It's seeing his homeworld threatened with ruin because of himself and to give up any hope for himself and control over his own life in order to save it. He's wrong, he does have a choice. Refa, in his place, would have high-tailed it out of Dodge; so would a great many other people of a more benevolent persuasion. But he faces his fate with courage and dignity, and the love he always had for the Centauri.
If "I'm sorry" were the words Londo needed to say to G'Kar at the start of this season (and remember, all the way back in s2, Coming of Shadows, Emperor Turhan said the Centauri and the Narn would not have a chance until a Centauri would say these words to a Narn on neutral ground, on Babylon 5), G'Kar's challenge was to say "I forgive you" and mean it. (BTW, note, and I appreciate that, that the show also lets him make the important distinction between personal forgiveness from one individual to another, which G'Kar can extend, and general forgiveness, which he can not. "My people will never forgive you. You understand that, don't you?" "Yes." "But I can forgive you." This scene will never fail to tear me apart.
5.) The montage is responsible for me being unable to rewatch Parliament of Dreams without feeling a pang.
6.) Poor Vir.
7.) LONDO.
*goes back to crying*
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Date: 2011-03-01 05:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-07 05:18 am (UTC)How can people have problems with this episode? I don't understand. Then again, being a rabid Londo fangirl, it's been over an hour and I can't stop crying hysterically.
Light depression out of the way first, Lennier's confession on its own would have been enough to reduce me to tears. Stop toying with his heart, Delenn! Ahh....well, it's ok, I still love you and there's not much else you could have done but still, why not be an adult and explain why you can't love him? Or, y'know, just tell him to wait 20 years...
ONTO THE IMPORTANT BITS!
Like I said, after over an hour of sobbing over Londo its hard to remember every detail like you did. But watching him drive away everyone one by one until he was alone (horrible flashback to him telling Morden that he wanted to "Be left alone" aside) was enough to leave me a wreck. All I could think when he was talking to the Regent was "RUN, RUN!! Explain everything to the people on B5, there's still hope! They'll help you!"
But in the end, Londo's stubborn streak of nobility won out and he had to save his people rather than only himself. I had echoes of your fic about the Centauri telepaths analyzing his inner soul playing in my head, that selfishness mixed with impossible bravery. Watching the Keeper crawl up him, with horrible flashbacks of "War without End" also playing my head *sob*. Seriously, I thought I cried hard when I saw him at the end of his life, forced to drink himself to death just to save his friends, with his time constantly running out. Clearly I had not yet seen this episode or I would have really known what tears were.
Umm...really, I can't stop crying. This is kind of embarrassing, I haven't sobbed this hard in years.
Also, POOR VIR indeed!
*goes back to crying as well*
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Date: 2011-02-28 02:33 pm (UTC)We finally meet the Keeper too, such a nasty, ugly little thing! The Drakh are not much fun in the way of bad guys. I liked them better when they were those freaky out of phase things that we saw several seasons back. Their loyalty to the Shadows is rather amazing, especially since the Shadows finally went beyond the Rim with Lorien without a backward glance. Maybe it was Stockholm syndrome... they do call them master after all.
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Date: 2011-03-01 06:21 am (UTC)Commenting on things nobody else has mentioned: It feels slightly odd to have Sheridan on Centauri Prime to me – we’ve discussed many times how the Centauri plots don’t really interact with the Sheridan plot during the Shadow War; the Centauri Court always feels like a different narrative space to the station or anything associated with it. It’s a little disconcerting to have them directly interacting for once.
(It doesn’t help that Sheridan’s cheerfully naïve brand of diplomacy feels utterly out of place in the byzantine heart of the Centauri Republic – I’ve mentioned this before, but it always strikes me as strange how season five seems to go out of its way to demonstrate Sheridan is completely out of his depth as a political leader. He actually seems confused that no, Londo doesn’t really want the Centauri to rejoin the Alliance after they, you know, bombarded the Centauri capital…
And what, exactly, would Londo have been able to say if he hadn’t been under Drakh control to convince the Centauri not to be resentful of the crippling sanctions the Alliance is imposing? Then there’s the way he feels Londo saying “The Regent bought the Shadow-pods off the black market” a dead-end, rather than, you know, a new lead to investigate…
Are we sure Sheridan didn’t get a keeper of his own when he visited Z’ha’dum? Would explain an awful lot…)
(Sorry, criticising because it stops the tears.)
We discussed a while back that it would have been better if Byron had been angry at the Alliance because of Sheridan’s use of telepaths as weapons rather than because of what the Vorlons did – I had forgotten at the time, but in hindsight, it was obviously to emphasise the symmetry with the Drakh here. It doesn’t quite work as well as it could, but it does provide some sort of a connecting thread between the two halves of the season.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, and I think this is my last chance to - The small Centauri ships are probably my favourite ships in the show. Menacing, but elegant looking.
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Date: 2011-03-01 11:18 am (UTC)Oh, that's true! The only other occasion are the flash forwards in War without End, and to say time-travelling Sheridan is out of his depth there is putting it mildly. (No fault of his own on that occasion, of course.) It really does feel as if a character from Lord of the Rings suddenly shows up in I, Claudius, doesn't it? Two very different types of narrative.
Someone brought up Churchill in a comment to the last episode; it occurs to me that with JMS' beloved WWII parallels (specifically Churchill-Sheridan in In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum), he could have gone the whole way and let Sheridan be voted out of power as soon as possible after that season 5 demonstration, whereupon Sheridan retires with Delenn to Minbar as a private citizen, but I guess he was too much in love with the king archetype (as opposed to the Cincinnatus one). (Not, err, that Churchill was Cincinnatus, either. For from it.)
Well spotted about the Vorlon-telepaths, Drakh-pods & Centauri parallel. Yes, uneven, but at least there is a kind of symmetry.
Centauri ships: my favourite thing about them is that they're purple. Only the Centauri could carry that off in style. In purple, they are stunning.:)
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Date: 2011-03-01 11:29 pm (UTC)not that Churchill did that ;-)
BTW, while watching Londo being takenby the Keeper, I think I suddenly realized the point of Exogenesis - it was to get us used to the idea of species which merge with others. It makes the Keepers less unusual, and in a horrible way, more believable.
Other than that there is probably nothing to add to what has already been said. I shall join the general sob-fest...
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Date: 2011-03-02 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-04 03:46 pm (UTC)I'm sure that even then Londo is starting to plan how, over decades, he'll gain vengence on the Drahk in the corner, who right then feels so in control.
Also, I agree about the Vorchan. Those eagle-beak prows and the crescent wings make it really menacing, very much a bird of prey swooping down on the Centauri's enemies.
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Date: 2011-03-01 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-02 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-02 10:56 pm (UTC)