So Ambassador Delenn finally emerged from her cocoon. Because of the spoiler on the DVD boxed set, her new appearance wasn’t really a surprise to me. But then I started thinking of some of the loose ends left from last season, like what happened to the secret Minbari marriage between Delenn and Sinclair? I’m assuming that we find out more about that in a future episode. Don’t tell me.
Is it my imagination, or have they changed the actress who plays Na’Toth? Her voice is much softer and she doesn’t hold herself the same way. That plus the lack of dialogue made her character far less interesting in this episode.
Glad to see Garibaldi conscious! What a shock it must have been for him, finding out about Sinclair leaving so suddenly. I’m hoping there’s follow-up to this. Wouldn’t Garibaldi want to keep in touch with his good friend? Wouldn’t Sinclair want to find out that Garibaldi’s ok? Don’t tell me.
Also cool to see the technology the doctor came across in an earlier episode being used to help Garibaldi. I guess I was wrong about the machine having side effects that the characters haven’t discovered yet.
Nice to get a bit more background into Sheridan’s history. Neither Jeff nor I trusted his sister at first; she just seemed a bit too perky. 
I really want to know more about what she and Sheridan were eating at that restaurant. The dish to the left almost looks like a sliced roast of some kind, or maybe a giant sushi roll. He asks his sister how she likes her salad, but her plate doesn’t look very salad-like.
I realize that the chances of the restaurant serving real fish are very low, but I’m still curious, eh?
The star-shaped ships above looked very cool. I’m a bit confused about who they are, however…are these the Shadow guys mentioned before? G’Kar mentions a very old race, so I assume the ships are from that race. Don’t tell me. (unless this is something obvious I’ve missed)
Londo seems so concerned about the Narn finding out that he was the one responsible for the destruction of their base. But of course the Narn WILL find out; it will be interesting to see what G’Kar does when that happens (don’t tell me). G’Kar already suspects Londo of being the one to leak the info about the destruction of the second ship.
So I’m figuring that Morden is connected with the star-shaped ships (or at least the huge spidery ship that keeps blasting smaller ships), and that the spider-things we saw with him last season are also connected, maybe even driving those ships. I still don’t get how Morden, who looks human, got involved with the Shadows, but I assume I’ll find out eventually.
Why is Morden so interested in what happens out at the Rim? Exactly WHAT is his connection with the smaller star-shaped ships? Did he want to find them too? Or just keep others from finding them? Don’t tell me.
Thus far, Londo seems to be getting a way better bargain in his partnership with Morden.
I still have NO CLUE what the Shadow creatures want, though. It doesn’t seem to have to do with any particular race, since Morden originally approached more than one Ambassador. Don’t tell me.
Delenn: Ambassador Sinclair has been allowed to live on my world as an act of good faith to create a greater understanding between the Minbari and humans. In return, I have undergone this … change with the blessings of my government so that I may become a bridge between our worlds in the hope that we will never know war between us again.
Another thing I found interesting: when Londo laughingly suggests that Morden eliminate the entire Narn homeworld while he’s at it. A strange expression crosses Morden’s face and he says, “One thing at a time, Ambassador, one thing at a time.” Londo’s reaction at that response tells me that he didn’t really expect Morden to take him seriously.
Interesting to see the process of Talia Winters helping Garibaldi reconstruct the events of his shooting to find the culprit. Talia still strikes me as a tad wimpy, I have to say. She always seems so freaked out by her mind scans. I can understand her reacting with horror when she scans the minds of twisted psychpaths, but Garibaldi was a willing subject.
I would have thought that her Psi-Corps training would help her with at least a little emotional detachment when she’s scanning a subject. Don’t tell me anything; I’m sure I’ll find out more about Talia and Psi-Corps in future episodes. I just wish Talia was a stronger character.
As for the president being part of the conspiracy:
HA I KNEW IT! He is SO guilty!!
I’m glad Sheridan got some closure:
G’Kar: We must warn the others, Na’Toth. After a thousand years, the darkness has come again.
Intriguing scene where Garibaldi shares his Psi Corps conspiracy theory with Ivanova and the doctor, remembering that Bester gave the same little salute. Jeff recognized the salute as being from The Prisoner.
I liked that poem that G’Kar was reading to Na’Toth in one of the last scenes. I did a Google search and found that it was an excerpt from a poem written by Yeats:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
Next episode: The Geometry Of Shadows.
[For those who comment below: As the title of my blog indicates, I'm watching B5 for the very first time so PLEASE refrain from posting plot/character spoilers/hints about upcoming episodes, or including links to pages with spoilers (unless you warn readers that they contain spoilers). More info about spoilers here. Thanks so much! - Debbie]
20 comments ↓
Yeah, a different actress plays Na’Toth for the rest of the series (save one other episode). Julie Caitlin Brown quit because they didn’t want to offer her any kind of insurance on her face with all the prosthetics she’d be wearing. JCB does come back in a non-Narn role for a later episode. I like her much better as Na’Toth than Mary Kay Adams, but she’s a bitch in real life. I saw her at a B5 panel (which also included Peter Jurasik, Steven Furst, and Mira Furlan) and she hogged all the talking time.
I always love seeing Sheridan’s dropped-jaw expression when Delenn breezes into the room. Mira Furlan is absolutely hot and it was great to see her part-way out of that unflattering Minbari makeup.
There seems to be a bit of confusion exactly why Caitlin Brown left - however it’s clear that it had something to do with the make-up. Somewhere I read that her skin didn’t tolerate the make-up and since she was being offered feature film parts, she couldn’t walk around with red spots and rash on her face for days after filming a B5 ep. Similar problems apparently caused two actresses who were cast for playing Ko’Dath (G’Kar’s first aide) before.
The one obvious non-spoiler thing I can mention is to point out that the little star-shaped ships have the same surface texturing as the big spidery ship.
President Clark == Skinny!Dick Cheney
While rewatching I realized this and thought that one fact explained the entire remainder of the series, as well as the current backstory (well, as far as B5 is concerned, we’re their distant past
here in the US.
A small reminder concerning Morden: When he came aboard the station in Seaxon 1, “Signs and Portents”, he had this little conversation with the security officer:
“Identicard, please … This hasn’t been updated in a while.”
“I’ve been out of circulation. Spent the last few years doing some exploration out on the rim.”
“Find anything interesting?”
“Yes.”
Good to see you followed advice, and went past the credits in the show opening.
From what I recall reading from JMS on the lurker’s guide:
JMS said he was torn between having a new actress in the Na’toth character or having Na’toth have ‘an horrible air-lock accident’ and creating a new aide to G’Kar. He said that Na’toth knew to much information for her to disappear and a new aide take her place. The bond/freindship/trust between G’Kar and Na’toth also played into the casting/character decision. Also, from the guide, since Caitlin Brown came in a personal favor at the last minute to replace Ko’Dath (G’Kar’s first aide), she did not have a long-term contract to play the part…and she was being offered leading-lady type parts at the time.
Since we are on changes, you have or will notice some changes in the C&C pit and the Perfect Hair People (PHP). From the actors point of view, some were not ready to be availabe for this year, from a story telling point of view (from JMS again), it is reasonable to expect that some of the EA crew would only have a one-year tour of duty at B5. Perhaps even being rewarded with their next tour being a promotion to a warship C&C crew. Notice that the Earthforce ships like the Agamemnon have a very similar Command and Control deck. The Aggi and her sisters were built during the Earth-Minbari war and use rotating parts to achieve gravity, while the Hyperion, which we saw last year is smaller and one of the few surving ships of her kind, as they were build before the E-M war and were the first to go into battle.
Wish I could edit afterward, it’s after I hit submit that I see an/a and to/too mistakes.
The salute to the salute from The Prisoner, that one starts at the eye, while the Psi-Corps one starts on the forehead, above the eye acknowledging their mindreading abilities.
“I just wish Talia was a stronger character.”
Um. Would it be too spoilery to say, “be careful what you wish for”?
As to the Shadows and Mr. Morden, we’ll be finding out a lot more of them over the course of the next few years. Keep your eye on them. And no, Londo doesn’t take them as seriously as he should. What you’re seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg–the avalanche is starting, to paraphrase Kosh.
Well, there’s “salad” and then there’s “salad”. If you are expecting lots of leafy green vegetables in a “salad” then you would probably say that “potato salad” doesn’t look like “salad”, nor does “fruit salad”, “macaroni salad” or various other “salads”.
As to what type of salad that was supposed to be, I don’t know.
“But then I started thinking of some of the loose ends left from last season, like what happened to the secret Minbari marriage between Delenn and Sinclair?”
I suggest you think back to that episode again and the *other* possible meaning of that Minbari ceremony… (I can mention this now you’ve watched this particular episode!)
Laura: Thanks for sharing that info. All that makeup and those prosthetics would be a concern for an actor, wouldn’t it? Sorry to hear that Julie Caitlin Brown isn’t that nice in real life.
Terence: I agree; it’s great to see the actress that plays Delenn in more flattering makeup. Though it’s also somewhat distracting since Jeff and I just finished watching the third season of Lost!
Mandragora: Ah, so the actress who played Na’Toth had some kind of allergy to the makeup, eh? I can’t blame her for being uncomfortable with that.
Steve: True. Hm…so it looks as tho the shadow people control both, then.
Mandragora: Oh, thanks for reminding me about what Morden said when he first boarded B5!
A_Tim: Thanks for confirming about The Prisoner nod; Jeff will be pleased to hear that (he noticed).
Phil: Hmm…I forget what the other meaning of the ceremony is…
“Phil: Hmm…I forget what the other meaning of the ceremony is…”
“When Catherine hears about “red fruit” being part of the Minbari ceremony, she asks if there was a serious exchange of looks. When Sinclair confirms this, she chuckles, “Oh it’s a rebirth ceremony all right. It also doubles as a marriage ceremony.”
Rebirth … chrysalis… *grin*
I believe JMS did this on purpose - everyone immediately focussed on the “marriage” part and never considered (or forgot! *grin*) the rebirth aspect.
For one thing, the marriage part was a red herring, but I think it is also referring to something else. JMS often uses metaphorical images in his storytelling, using concepts outlined by C.G. Jung and Joseph Campbell in a space opera setting. For instance, the four younger races, humans, Minbari, Narn and Centauri resemble the “four elements” in classical mythology. Delenn’s transformation, which makes her partly human, is in a metaphorical sense a “marriage” between the human and the Minbari race. I cannot go into more detail, as that would be spoilerish, but as the story progresses, the image becomes more clear.
>>the four younger races, humans, Minbari, Narn and Centauri resemble the “four elements” in classical mythology. <<
Really? Which one is which element? (I’m betting the Minbari are air and the Narn are fire.)
Mind you, this is just my personal interpretation, I’ve not the slightest evidence that it was intended like this. I’m basing this, amongst other things, on their replies to the requests of the parents in “Believers”, as well as their general outlook and course of action. Taking the Tarot assignment as a framework (from the Greek background, things would be different), I’d assign
(1) the Minbari to air (because of their focus on the spiritual realm, as exemplified by Delenn; this obviously is strictly only true for the religious caste)
(2) the Centauri to earth (because of their focus on the material realm, as exemplified by Londo, for whom it’s all about money)
(3) the humans to fire (because they are the agents of transformation)
(4) the Narns to water (this is a bit more complicated; in Jung’s terms the water element is the element that corresponds to the unconscious, which is all about self preservation, as long it is surpressed. The Narn at this point of the story are a people that has just recently come out of slavery, they are considered “barbarian”, a “primitive race”, as G’Kar explains to Morden, all that matters to him is the safety of his people. But the unconscious, once no longer surpressed, has great transformative potential - again, everything else would be spoilerish).
There is a lot more going on in B5 relating to Jungian concepts (jms holds a degree in psychology and has occasionally hinted at Jungian concepts in the series). I’ll mention it when it ceases to be spoilerish
Phil - I, too, forgot about the “rebirth” part of that ceremony. Thanks. There are still websites out there that insist that Michael O’Hara’s departure was an abrupt firing, citing the “marriage” ceremony as one of the proofs that Sinclair was meant to stick around longer. This would seem to put a bit of a monkey wrench in that theory.
Mandragora - I am looking forward to your insights as spoilerage recedes. I recognized much Campbell and Jung in JMS’s scripts, but I doubt I caught them all.
As I said, one of the ground-breaking aspects of Bab5, in my opinion, was how unapologetically he laced his stories with immensely literate references. Bab5 was a comparative-lit major’s wet dream!
I’ve always suspected, based on the various posts that JMS made around that time, that O’Hare’s departure was a confluence of forces at work, of varying degrees of contribution:
1) The network’s dissatisfaction with O’Hare’s acting
2) O’Hare’s fear that he would be typecast
3) JMS’s figuring out that aside from the “hole in his mind” and Sinclair’s ultimate destiny (left unsaid for spoiler reasons), there was really nothing else to the character who was supposed to be the lead
Given all these, the parting of ways seemed reasonable, albeit sudden, at the time.