"Patterns of the Soul" discussion

[ruuger]

This is the discussion post for "Patterns of the Soul". Spoilers for the whole of the series, including the spin-offs and tie-ins, are allowed here so newbies beware. If you have any fanworks related to this episode, you can also leave links to them in this post.

Summary:
The Excalibur looks for a group of human refugees who may be spreading the infection off-world.

Extra reading:
The article for "Patterns of the Soul" at The Lurker's Guide.

Comments

[alexcat.livejournal.com]

I have a soft spot for John Black... no idea why but he's such a good guy. This episode gave us more of the idea that things maybe worse than shadows still work on earth. We get the idea that Gideon will push and poke until he is in the sites of some powerful and angry guns! Od course, that is probably the reason they sent him on the cure mission in the first place.

Every episode makes me wish we'd gotten more or at least a movie to tie it up like Firefly did.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

The second time Gideon's solution was to fake someone's death; it's a good idea, but gets repetitive. My other nitpick for an episode which I otherwise enjoyed isn't really a nitpick but a statement/observation: JMS is in a catch/22 with the B5 verse as he left it versus his desire to tell upstanding rebellious hero versus The Man stories. Because as President of the Alliance, Sheridan is THE MAN now. Now he doesn't want his new hero rebell against his old one. So we get a few EarthGov generals as default bad guys. But if EarthGov is able to do sinister conspiracies and cover-ups beneath Sheridan's nose while Earth is still a member of the Alliance, we end up with the same impression you get when watching s5 of B5: Sheridan's isn't that good or effective a president.

Back to Crusade. The Max subplot comes across as if it was added at the last minute upon discovering the episode runs a few minutes short on time, but never mind, I enjoy seeing my favourite Crusade character on screen, and the fact that he's a Company Man and thus bound to come into conflict with either the Excalibur crew or the company is one of the things that makes Max interesting. Considering the scenes he has with Sarah Chambers in later episodes, I think that would have been an odd couple (not in the romantic sense!) type of friendship between idealist and pragmatist which starts here when she chews him out.

Veterans: does this remind anyone else of that old TNG episode when they were obvious Vietnam soldier allegories?

[dragonladyk.livejournal.com]

sinister conspiracies and cover-ups beneath Sheridan's nose while Earth is still a member of the Alliance, we end up with the same impression you get when watching s5 of B5: Sheridan's isn't that good or effective a president.

Not really. John knows about Bureau 13, for example, but since the Alliance has to respect the sovereignty of member worlds and he has no hard evidence they exist and what they've been up to (and thus nothing to base an official investigation on) there isn't a whole Hell of a lot he can do about it. Fixing bad things is a Hell of a lot harder when you have to be Lawful Good and maintain a system of order than Chaotic Good when you can just hang the rules and do whatever you want. It took Michael ages just to straighten out Edgars Industries (one business he had absolute authority over). He wasn't even done yet when we caught up to him in "River of Souls." Imagine how much longer, then, when you've got 20+ planets to clean out and you've got limited authority bound by a constitution full of requirements. :/

DragonLady