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).
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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).