Legions of Fire, Book I: The Long Night of Centauri Prime - Chapters 6-13

[ruuger]

This is the discussion post for chapters 6-13 of Peter David's Legions of Fire, Book I: The Long Night of Centauri Prime. Spoilers for the whole of the series, including the spin-offs and tie-ins, are allowed here so newbies beware.

Next week, we'll discuss the rest of the book (Part II, chapters 14-22).

MOD NOTE: Since I'll be on my summer vacation for the next few weeks, I've set the posts to appear on schedule but probably won't monitoring the comm very actively, so if the discussion posts fail to appear on Sundays or there some other problems, please send me a PM.

P.S. babylon5_love could use some more contribuors.

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

The good:

I hearby apologize to Peter David for accusing of not bringing anything new to the Centauri table; I had forgotten the story of Emperor Karn, which was new, and works well as a bit of Centauri history. 

Londo's and Vir's dialogues. David in both his other tie ins and in tv episodes excells at witty banter (if he reigns it in and doesn't go overboard into slap stick) with the occasional character revelation, and it shows.

Bringing Mariel back. Like Timov, she was a character David had created, and so I was hoping he would back in the day. Of course, given what he eventually did with Mariel I wish he hadn't, but strictly in this section of the book, we're good. I can see her becoming a spy, female amoral characters with brains are rare, and I like the neat detail of Mariel warning Lione not to underestimate Timov (and her awareness that Timov actually has non-hostile feelings for Londo) 

The bad:

The only purpose for the random canon change in declaring that TWO YEARS passed between "Objects in Motion" and "Objects at Rest" seems to be so that Vir can prevent a Sheridan assassination. He couldn't have done that during a Sheridan visit on B5? 

Critique to JMS rather than Peter David: if the Drakh can use Londo to smuggle a Keeper into the Sheridan Household on Minbar, why on earth not have the wretched thing attach itself to Sheridan and Delenn right there instead of waiting for fifteen years and the kid? Because why should the kid matter to the Drakh anyway? President of the Alliance and Anlashok aren't heredical positions the last time I looked. Here we run into the problem of JMS applying Tolkienesque fantasy narrative tropes to what's supposed to be a sci fi story featuring advanced societies again.

Durla and his Hitler Youth. Just in case we miss it, we even get a dialogue reminder that the Centauri are just like Weimar Germany. Err, no. (Coming from a German.) Going for Nazi parallels is just so bloody lazy and easy, and in this particular universe also repetitive because we've done the fascism gig with Clark and NightWatch already.  It's been said before by others and more eloquently: a more sensible historical parallel to draw with Durla would have been Sejanus, the Pretorian prefect under Tiberius who was the most powerful man in Rome for a while. It would even have fitted with the developing Mariel subplot, given Sejanus had an affair with Tiberius' daughter in law and niece and was hoping to marry into the imperial family.

The hm:

Kane the technomage. From a purely objective pov I can see the point in bringing the technomages back. They play a role in the larger B5 universe thanks to Crusade, and Geometry of Shadows certainly provided canon backstory with Vir and a reason why they should remember him.

But. Subjectively, I can't stand them. I'm not rational about this, I know. But I hate them and their smug know it all superiority. I think I disliked them even before Galen in Crusade became my least favourite character on that show, but certainly my unending Galen hate doesn't help me here. Bloody technomages.

[ruuger]

The only purpose for the random canon change in declaring that TWO YEARS passed between "Objects in Motion" and "Objects at Rest" seems to be so that Vir can prevent a Sheridan assassination.

Yes, this. You would think that a tie-in writer who has also written for the actual show would be familiar enough with the canon to realise that it makes no sense - especially when Delenn's pregnancy in his version of the story lasted for over two years...

eta: Oh, and I agree with you about Mariel. She could have been an awesome character, but what eventually happens with her is on my very short list of canon (or 'canon') moments in any of my fandoms that have actually made me angry.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

It's one of many reasons why I prefer my own headcanon where Mariel makes a lot of money writing a trashy tell-all instead.:)

(A serious Mariel rant will come at the section in question.)

Clearly, Delenn's hybrid physiology strikes again, in David's universe, with the two years of pregnancy. I'm assuming everyone else (except for Vir) took two years in order to get their new jobs as well. It's just such a nonsensical canon change that it makes my head ache every time I think about it.

[athena799.livejournal.com]

Spoiler Warning: I read these books fairly recently so I'm not following along chapter-by-chapter as such. I make a lot of references to events from later in the trilogy, so if anyone is reading at the same pace as the discussions I would suggest they do not read my commentary.

I had always wondered about the idea of David Sheridan getting a Keeper instead of John or Delenn. As you said, neither Alliance nor Anla'Shok are hereditary, all you'd be doing is ruining the personal lives of the Sheridan family, and if that's your goal why wait so long? Ever since reading your rather excellent summary of how you'd handle a Legions of Fire rewrite I've been wondering about how Keepers are supposed to work. In my own Trilogy re-write, I had them extremely limited to one at a time, two maximum, but your idea of having hundreds in order to have an aura of paranoia works very well too. So which one is it, and why don't the Drakh try to get Keepers on Sheridan and Delenn in addition to David? Is it meant to be insurance? If so, against what? And again, why wait so long to put that insurance in place? Furthermore, this ties into one of my biggest issues with Season 5, namely that after discovering the existence of Keepers with Captain Jack on Mars, the issue is never brought up again and treated as a dead end. Excuse me, but if I found out that there's an unknown enemy that could place a parasite on key influential people in order to control their actions you can bet your ass my first order of business would be to find a way to detect these things in advance and have every key authority figure tested regularly to make sure they're clean! Ah well, it's just one more problem with the whole "15 years" issue, I suppose.

As for the Technomages, I enjoyed their role in Geometry of Shadows, even if it did seem like a strange fantasy element to place in a sci-fi show. I've heard them referred to humorously as intergalactic LARPers (live-action role players) which seemed fitting. Still, it gave us some of Londo and Vir's best scenes so I don't complain.
But the thing about mysterious entities is that they're at their best when they remain mysterious. And the best way to do that is use them sparingly. Using them in such numbers in the Trilogy opens all sorts of plot holes, and as much as I can believe that they know about Vir because of their dealings with him, I have trouble believing that Vir would ever work with them. Of all the people on the show, one would think that *Vir* would know "that some favors come with too high a price." and would reject such help on principal, instead turning to trustworthy allies like the rest of the B5 cast, who we've seen him interact with over the course of 5 years, for help. And yes, their smug superiority is bloody infuriating, in particular when it comes to the Mariel situation which I will not go into detail on until we get to that point. Goddamn Technomages, stay out of my Centauri storylines!

Yes, the Londo and Vir dialogue was quite good, and when I first read it it gave me immense hopes for the rest of the trilogy (hopes that were rather dashed when Vir fell out of character and stayed there for the remaining books).

[athena799.livejournal.com]

I hadn't caught the two years addition between the episodes, but it seems that the amount of attention he paid to the timeline is symptomatic of the amount of care he put in to some other parts of the books.

Sorry my responses are a bit all of the place, but I did get really excited when you said that Sejanus would have been a much better parallel for Durla, as in my own Trilogy rewrite fanfic I've made a very big point that my re-imagination of Durla is based on Sejanus. I also rewrote the Drakh effect on Centauri Prime to more closely resemble the Roman proscriptions under Sulla or Tiberius, ie that any nobles that came too close to finding out the Drakh secret suddenly find themselves up on treason charges, and in this version Durla is the one who manages the fallout in order to better hide their existence and also uses the opportunity to kill off some of his own personal enemies. Bah, but I'm rambling, this is not the place for fanfic discussion. Still, what a terrible shame that Peter David didn't take the time to make Drakh transformation of Centauri Prime resemble something other than a very poor and transparent Fascist parallel. There were so many other points in history that would have been more fitting with the Centauri national character, and which are not quite so overused.

As I've said before, the Centauri Hitler Youth made me scream with frustration when I first encountered them, and my poor bf can attest to the many hours I spent chewing off his ear over this outrage. As if the Lords and Ladies of Centauri society would allow their children to join such an organization! As if the Centauri themselves would have any interest in a Fascist society, becoming faceless soldiers in service of another man's glory, be it the Emperor or Durla, men who in their eyes are hardly worthy of playing secretary to some of the great Houses, let alone serving as Emperor.

*Sigh* Sorry, this post has gotten away from me. Honestly the opening of Book 1 isn't that bad. I am loving the discussion too, thank you for organizing this read-through, Ruuger!

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Re: fascism. Well, to play devil's advocate - what I could see happening is that the Centauri in the fallout of the s5 events have a major social revolution, because it's the nobility with their endless scheming and powerplays that brought them to this point. And when was the last time Centauri Prime itself got bombed, anyway? Not during the Narn-Centauri war of old, because that took place on Narn, and various Centauri colony worlds. If we're into glib superficial historical parallels, I imagine Centauri Prime was a bit like the US and 9/11 in this regard. Or the US and Pearl Harbor. Wars happened elsewhere, not on the homeworld, not since the early days of the Republic.

So in the shock of having lived through the mass driver attack, I could see a grass root mass movement (how about a tea party? Okay, that's just mean) starting. But you know, definitely not by the surviving artistocracy, which brings us back of David not featuring any Centauri commoners. Also, it would go directly against the Drakh interest, because the thing about revolutions is that they upset any structures of command for a considerable time before resettling into new ones, and the Drakh are depending on the chain of command from the Emperor downwards to be intact. This includes the rise of a successful fascist party. Presumably David skipped the part of post WWI, pre WWII German history where there were street battles between Nazis and Communists, failed coup attempts and generally a lot of anarchy. It wasn't something that came from above, though Hitler of course later, once he was a significant factor, acquired backers in the industry and some allies among aristocrats like von Papen who thought they could use him and ended up being used by him instead.

Incidentally, if we do go for a revolution on Centauri Prime, overturning the old power structures, the human model I'd follow would be the French Revolution. Which means once the dust was settled there would be a new Emperor and a new aristocracy (with some leftovers from the old, but mainly New People), and some better laws for the population en masse, while if CP is unlucky the new Emperor would also be into conquering other worlds, but the Centauri flamboyance and individual need to show off florishing as much as ever.... and again, something like the French Revolution contains far too much anarchy and quick turnover rates of important power players to be compatible with what's supposed to be the secret assimilation of a planet by aliens.

[athena799.livejournal.com]

Lovely commentary, as ever. I think the conclusion is that a realistically rendered Fascist takeover of the Centauri culture would incompatible with Drakh goals. As things stand, you have an opaque aristocracy where there's all sorts of backroom dealings and power plays, where everything is quite secretive. That is much more conducive to the Drakh interest of secrecy. How Peter David showed the Fascist take over was unrealistic and were it done realistically the Drakh would have been at a disadvantage. *Sigh*

Which actually reminds me of one question I've always had - how much do normal Centauri know about the events of Cartagia's reign, the Vorlon attack, the deals with the Shadows, etc.? In my headcanon I assume Vir brought it all to light during his reign. However, from an outsider perspective, Cartagia's reign would be a golden age characterized by the return of Centauri glory. After all, the Emperor would get credit for Londo's accomplishments back on homeworld, and all of those were during Cartagia's reign. The first thing that happened after Cartagia was Londo ceding the Narn back their planet, which was necessary but from a popular point of view might appear to be weak.

Anyway, yes, I imagine the Centauri would freak the heck out over being bombed, having not experienced what they had been dealing out to others for centuries. In that the US parallel is quite apt. And I understand how the Drakh would hope to take advantage of that to further isolate the Centauri and cut them off from former allies, which also worked well in the US. What I don't understand is how they planned to sustain that hatred for so many years without some form of action? Were the Centauri supposed to just seethe against the Alliance for decades without any catharsis? And if revolution was required, as you say since it makes total sense that normal Centauri would get annoyed by Londo's class at some point (despite the racial obsession with status). However, such upheaval would probably not be in the Drakh's best interest. Honestly I think again its just lazy, American-centric writing. Americans (and I speak as one of them) make a national hobby of over-simplifying Fascism and the circumstances that gave rise to it. If I see one more lazy Nazi-parallel bad guy in any medium it will be too soon. The thing is, I don't mind Fascists-as-bad-guys, or Nazi-parallel bad guys when its done effectively and with a mind for what really happened. NightWatch was a well done example of this, the Prime Candidates were not.

A French Revolution style upheaval would be very convincing for Centauri culture to be honest, and something that would be very interesting to see. One can't help but wonder how alone Urza Jaddo was in his Narn sympathies, one would assume there must be factions of Centauri who outright opposed the war. The Centauri Trilogy would have been an excellent place to mention them, pity it never did.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

One can't help but wonder how alone Urza Jaddo was in his Narn sympathies, one would assume there must be factions of Centauri who outright opposed the war.

I think there were; my headcanon, which I believe I used for some stories like "Lost in Translation", is that Turhan as a younger man became the focus point of the peace party, much as Cartagia a generation (or two!) later became the "candidate", so to speak, of the war party. That's assuming that the Centauri occupation of Narn went on for a century or so, and by the end there must have been anti war attitude both for utterly pragmatic reasons (Narn was costing far more than it was bringing in, in terms of money and manpower) and for moral reasons (note that Urza was a former war hero, btw). So Turhan, backed up by a sizaable contingent in the Centaurum, orders the first withdrawal from Narn. (This is also why House Mollari loses seriously in influence, because Londo's grandfather was a hardcore Narn occupier and warmongerer.) But then as the Narn turn into an up and coming power and start to not just to compete with but to best the Centauri, you get the "we could have kept that planet if only those peaceniks hadn't stabbed us in the back, and look how humiliated we are now!" propaganda starting, and by the end of Turhan's reign, Turhan and Malachi and their reconciliation policy are very much a minority opinion, and they're seen as failures.

re: your question how Cartagia's regime would have been seen - I'm tempted to go with the Caligula and Nero receptions, of course, i.e. people would assume Cartagia got off to a great start and renewal after his uncle's age of decline, and then went bonkers. (If they're rumours about Cartagia's craziness at the Royal Court, they must have been among the population as well. Plus the Shadows openly arrived on Centauri Prime, and I can't imagine any Centauri glad about having those creepy ships around. If humans went crazy touching them, it must have happened to Centauri as well. I'M taking Londo at his word that the people remaining on Celini to trick the Shadows volunteered, and for this to happen, my guess is at that point the general opinion, carefully expressed only in private, was "the Emperor went mad, these creepy aliens probably had something to do with it, have you heard what happened to cousin X who, etc., and by the way, my uncle says critisizing the Emperor's hair cut is now punishable by death".

[4thofeleven.livejournal.com]

I can easily see Cartagia as a Nero figure - very unpopular among the aristocracy, who don't see him as behaving 'properly' even before he turns out to be insane, but at the same time, his flamboyance and rejection of upper-class traditions endearing him to the common people - who, after all, aren't the ones being executed on a whim.

Hmm, now there's a fun idea for the direction Centauri facism/popular unrest could go in - revolts led by Pseudo-Cartagia figures. If nothing else, the suspicious nature of his death would certainly have led to conspiracy theories, and if he was popular, the idea that he wasn't really dead might flourish for a long time...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Oh, a Cartagia equivalent of the False Neros who kept popping up would be brilliant. And, err. It's not like in this 'verse the idea of people coming back from the dead would be unheard of. Also: Cartagia made a deal, which Londo knows. Doesn't everyone who tells Morden what they want get it? So I could see Londo, upon hearing there are rumours about Returned Cartagia, first going "thanks for giving me the laugh of the day" and then "...." mentally.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I had always wondered about the idea of David Sheridan getting a Keeper instead of John or Delenn. As you said, neither Alliance nor Anla'Shok are hereditary, all you'd be doing is ruining the personal lives of the Sheridan family, and if that's your goal why wait so long?

As I said, I think that's the result of JMS applying a fantasy concept to what's not a fantasy type of story. I mean, I can completely believe the Drakh feeling particularly vengeful towards John and Delenn. (If they're pissed off at Londo for bombing the Shadows on Celini, how must they feel about Sheridan and the nuke on Z'ha'dum? And then Lyta blows up Z'ha'dum, which was her idea, but the Drakh probably think she acted on Sheridan's orders.) So I can even buy them feeling the wish to destroy their personal future in the form of their child (in addition to plotting against humanity in totem, which happens pre-Crusade). However, what I'm struggling with is the idea they would do the David thing instead of, as opposed to in addition to, going after John and/or Delenn themselves, because if you're the Drakh and want to Drakhify the verse long term, and you do have the opportunity to get a Keeper next to two of the most powerful people on the current galactic scene, you go for that.

Unless we want to be unkind and say that Sheridan did such a bad job as President in the first year that the Drakh thought, as they do about Durla in (Peter) David's book: we don't need a Keeper on this guy, he does everything we want him to do anyway!

But the thing about mysterious entities is that they're at their best when they remain mysterious. And the best way to do that is use them sparingly.

I agree, but in David's defense, that particular cat was already out of the bag. Crusade by featuring a Technomage regular in the cast, two episodes featuring other Technomages as guest stars and a storyline building up to the Technomages-were-originally-created-by-Shadows revelation had made the Technomages mainstream, so to speak.

Vir agreeing to work with them is for the next section of the book, but I'm so with you on this subject.