Ok, you all must have been snickering to yourselves when I was going on about how wimpy and uninteresting I found Talia Winters and the doctor. Clearly, I was dead wrong.
So much great stuff in this episode!
Bester’s back, and bad as ever:
Delenn’s exploring her human side as well as hitting it off really well with Sheridan. HMMM, intriguing! I’m not sure if there’s genuine chemistry between them yet, but Sheridan’s at least taking notice.
So of course my mind can’t help but play with the possibilities. It would cause SUCH a huge scandal among the Minbari if Delenn fell for Sheridan, wouldn’t it? Don’t tell me.
“You’re so cute when you’re investigating someone close to you,” Ivanova said to Garibaldi in the scene above. CUTE. Heh…maybe I’ll turn out to be right about them getting together after all! Don’t tell me.
I’m glad they had that flashback of Jason Ironheart; I’d completely forgotten about his mysterious gift to Talia Winters before he “became.” VERY cool that Talia seems to be able to shield her telekinetic abilities against Bester’s scanning.
Loved the scene between Ivanova and Sheridan when she was sleeping on the couch in his office while they protested the new rent policy.
Sheridan: How many Minbari does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Ivanova: I don’t know sir. How many Minbari does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Sheridan: None, they always surrender right before they finish the job, and they never tell you why.
Sheridan: Knock knock.
Ivanova: Who’s there?
Sheridan: Kosh.
Ivanova: Kosh who?
Sheridan: Gesundheit!
So the doctor was the head of the Underground movement protecting unregistered telepaths! That was a complete surprise.
VERY cool how the other telepaths joined forces to make Bester think he had killed them all. I was totally fooled at first.
Also very cool to see a friendship beginning between Ivanova and Talia, esp. considering how hostile Ivanova has been toward Talia up to now.
This series just keeps getting more and more interesting…
Next episode: The Coming 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]
12 comments ↓
Next episode: The Coming of Shadows
Which is also the overall title for this season. Which is every bit as ominous as it sounds. Enjoy.
And, of course, this is the episode that inspired Jodi’s song “Dark Places”
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“The Coming of Shadows” is one of my favorite episodes in the entire series. Love it.
There’s a lot of Talia/Susan femmeslash out there. I wasn’t snickering, I was going through episodes in my head to figure out how long before you got to episodes where they had really good stuff to work with.
As to all the telepath stuff, these issues are going to be prominent throughout the rest of the series.
I just want you to know that Peter & I now have to watch “the Coming of the Shadoes” RIGHT NOW. So much for early to bed.
This ep is also the subject of “Bested” (on one of the Echo’s Children albums).
I’m so excited for you. You will love The Coming of Shadows!!!
I’m just starting re-watching the series, I’m up to S1E8 so a fair way behind you, but remembering your comments on the earlier episodes…
A few more JMS comments:
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“BTW, just to note a little something you might not notice in the show…we’ve adopted the tradition of putting the symbol for a given ship onto the bar in Earhart’s, as many real contemporary officers’ clubs and airforce/naval base clubs put the logos or markings of big planes or ships that come through there. The Cortez symbol is the most visible among the various emblems you can see in a shot of the bar in “A Race Through Dark Places.” It comes at the moment we follow *another* old military tradition.”
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Also, something JMS was very proud of was the fact that they were consistently coming in on time and under budget. So how come they had to switch this episode and the last one? Well, it wasn’t really their fault. They were on time for the schedule as originally given to them – and then PTEN decided to change it, thus:
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“Yes, originally, “Soul Mates” was to air after “Race.” At that time, PTEN was initially going to show just 6 new episodes, and we would have come in after the rerun break with “Race,” then “Soul.” When the ratings came in and looked good, they didn’t want to interfere with the growth, and indicated they wanted to show 7 new eps in the first batch. “Race,” as you can see, was a very complex episode visually, and the only way to get it ready to run #7 in the first batch would’ve been to compromise the integrity of the show, and we simply won’t do that for ANY reason. “Soul Mates,” on the other hand, required very little in the way of post production, so that was moved forward into the #7 slot. ”
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So had PTEN kept to the original schedule they would have had an extra 6 weeks of reruns to finish all that fancy post-production work and would have kept on schedule.
People had been VERY uneasy about whether all this new technology could be made to work the way JMS said it could. Well, they really made it work. If memory serves, the special effects in the first season were done on a large batch of Amiga computers. For various reasons they then switched over to IBM-style computers for the remainder of the series. This really was cutting edge, No-One-Else-Is-Doing-This stuff at the time. Considering how many shows were routinely going over budget with well established special effects processes, doing all this new stuff was risky.
Oh, yes – we’ve seen Bester a few times now, so some additional thoughts there.
Walter had been pretty much a Comic Relief character as Chekov in Star Trek. His transformation into Bester on B5 generally got very good reviews from fandom. They were quite willing to appaud good work on a VERY different type of character.
If memory serves, Walter was also the one to suggest playing Bester with a slight physical handicap. If you watch closely you will see that Bester doesn’t really have full use of one arm/hand.
Oh, I almost forgot — if this is the episode I think it is (haven’t seen it in a while), then you’ve seen one of the telepath leaders before — he was Garibaldi’s Downbelow tipster in (IIRC) “Chrysalis.”
Yeah, I’ve had this episode in mind all the time you’ve been dissing the doc. I know, I know … you didn’t know you were dissing. It’s ok.
I’m glad you’ve seen the light!
“If memory serves, Walter was also the one to suggest playing Bester with a slight physical handicap. If you watch closely you will see that Bester doesn’t really have full use of one arm/hand.”
Yes, you are right. It was Walter’s idea that Bester’s left hand is permanently curled up in a fist, so he’s only got his right hand to use normally.
We talked about this at a SciFi convention, and he said it was a way of giving strength to this character, by giving him a handicap. The idea was that “what does not kill you makes you stronger”.