Lost Tales: Over There discussion

[ruuger]

I suppose it's fitting that the last ever discussion post would be two days late :) My apologies in any case.

This is the discussion post for Lost Tales: Voices in the Dark: Over There. 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:
Sheridan returns to Babylon 5 for the tenth anniversary of the Alliance together with a young Centauri Prince who has a dark future ahead of him according to Galen.

Extra reading:
The article for Lost Tales: Voices in the Dark at The Lurker's Guide.

Comments

[alexcat.livejournal.com]

Even though we had watched them, I had totally forgotten the p[lots of these two tales. I found this one a bit of fun. The boy looked like the certainly ought to be Cartagia's son. I'd love to see a fiction about what happened after John and Delenn took him in! Maybe he still became emperor after Vir and destroyed earth!

Galen was even more cold and forbidding in this one than in others I thought. Perhaps it had to do with whatever happened during the rest of Crusade!

Even though this is not like our old B5, when it came out after so long, it was just nice to have a new B5 story to watch.

[beatrice_otter]

I know--I want to see what happens next! What difference does it make? What's life like for a Centauri princeling on Minbar?

[4thofeleven.livejournal.com]

We really should have held back “In the Beginning…” for the end, so we could go out on a high note....

Anyway. So, I thought this was a brilliant exploration of what the anti-Alliance holographic propaganda from “Deconstruction of Falling Stars” would look like, with Sheridan portrayed as a-

Wait, no, this was serious? Oh dear.

Let’s see. Sheridan’s apparently become something of a recluse, with a worse reputation among the media than most real-world despots. He’s also apparently pretty willing to go along with Galen’s plan despite reservations, only seeing an alternative at the last moment. One wonders just how many Alliance citizens have ‘disappeared’ in the ten years he’s been in power, considering how shaky Galen is as a source of information…

See, the thing that makes ‘Killing Hitler as a baby’ a viable moral choice is that, well, you know it’s Hitler, you know what he’ll do. Even then, it’s not clear cut, but agreeing to do it wouldn’t automatically make you a monster. This isn’t that situation. Galen is not a reliable source of information, and in fact offers no explanation as to why he’s so sure the prince will be a threat. To murder someone in cold blood based on what you think they’re going to do years in the future… Honestly, that’s the sort of thing you expect of Cartagia, not Sheridan.

Fortunately, Sheridan manages to stop himself from crossing that moral event horizon at the at the last minute, and instead invites the Prince to stay with him at the Alliance’s royal palace (?!) The prince is, of course, suspicious, and suspects Sheridan really wants to gain a foothold in the Centauri royal court.

He is, of course, completely right, though Sheridan doesn't seem to realise this, instead congratulating himself for being led around by the nose by Galen for the whole story...

Anyway, I want to see this backfire and instead have the prince influence young David Sheridan, teaching him the subtle arts of backstabbing, treachery and Machiavellian politics.

Oddly, I can see this storyline working fairly well, and actually being pretty compelling – if it had been a purely Centauri story. Centauri, after all, do have seers and visions of their own death; throw one of them into the story instead of Galen, someone who’s actually been established as having reliable knowledge of the future, and this could be an interesting spin on the classical Greek tragedy. Probably have Vir as the central character instead of Sheridan, and focus on his guilt over killing Cartagia, and this could have been a great note to end the series on, instead of… this.

So, we're going to start again with The Gathering next week, right? :)

[kathrid.livejournal.com]

I second the motion of starting again. All in favour say aye.

[widsidh.livejournal.com]

not sure I'd have the stamina again straight away, but I think rewatching Sleeping in Light to round it all off might be a good idea.

[lifeistoobrevis]

Aye. :)

[dragonladyk.livejournal.com]

Of all the "Lost Tales," this one actually made the least sense, for all the above-stated reasons you just said.

DragonLady

[nic]

You know, I found the sheridan piece an absolutely perfect little "remember this show and how awesome it was?" piece to show up a few years later.

If you watched it directly after the series, I'm not sure if the impact would be as strong. But when I first saw it, it was just perfect. Nostalgia mixed with intrigue and reminder that the story always goes on.