An excellent title, since this is exactly what I’ve been wondering. Though by the end of the episode, we STILL DON’T KNOW, DO WE???!?? Don’t tell me.
I’m happy to see that Franklin seems to have pulled himself together. My heart ached for Lennier when he comes to get the doctor because something’s wrong with Delenn.
And so now we find out that Sheridan’s been talking with the First, at least on some level of consciousness. For me, the phrase always reminds me of the First in Buffy, but I managed to get my head out Buffyspace fairly quickly.
Lorien: Do you have anything worth living for?
Delenn: Sleep now. I will watch and catch you if you should fall.
Sheridan: Delenn!
As Sheridan hovers between life and death, G’Kar goes searching for Garibaldi (thanks to Shane for the correction). G’Kar is officially my favourite character these days, by the way.
I felt for Delenn, grieving for Sheridan and berating herself for all the things she could have done.
Woohoo, Marcus is in this episode, coming to the rescue of G’Kar! Is it my imagination, or did he cut his hair? I liked his “pike envy” comment. 
Great conversation between G’Kar and Marcus about friendship.
Delenn finds reason to live after seeing the excerpt from Sheridan’s log, yay!
“If you’re falling off a mountain, you may as well fly.”
SO romantic how the love that both of them have for each other provides the strength they each need to live again.
Delenn gives SUCH great speeches, doesn’t she?
POOR G’KAR. The expression on Londo’s face when the Emperor shows him his “present” is SO revealing, isn’t it?
What is heck is going on in this episode? Where is Garibaldi? That’s Morden’s voice on the speaker, asking what Garibaldi remembers. Does Morden already know and just wants to verify what Garibaldi knows? But that wouldn’t make sense. But why wouldn’t the Shadows know what happened to Garibaldi considering he was inside one of their ships?
Don’t tell me.
G’Kar makes a bargain with Londo: “If I remove the monster from your throne, you will remove the monster from my world.”
Interesting to hear from Lorien that the Shadows keep coming back to Z’ha’dum because they think they’re showing respect to him.
Though is Lorien really the being he says he is? What if he’s lying?
Don’t tell me.
Also interesting to find out that the Vorlons can travel inside other beings. I wonder if anyone else has a Vorlon inside them other than Sheridan? MAYBE EVEN SOMEONE WE KNOW!
Don’t tell me.
Next episode: The Summoning
[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]
13 comments ↓
Woohoo, Marcus is in this episode…
Everyone is in this episode. The first time all main title characters are in an episode since the pilot, “The Gathering”.
Yes, G’Kar is officially Made of Awesome. Alas, Andreas Katsulis, the actor who played him, died of lung cancer in 2006. And Richard Biggs, who played Dr. Franklin, died in 2004.
A clarification: G’Kar goes searching for Garibaldi, not Sheridan.
I remembered this episode as being better than it actually is upon recent viewing. I think it was because I could remember the great title from the first time I watched it and over time I assumed that the reason I could remember the title was because it was a good episode rather than just a good title.
To me this episode was rather incomprehensible. What the hell is happening to Garibaldi? What the hell is happening to Sheridan? Maybe I’m just impatient.
Poor G’Kar. Once again he proves that no good deed goes unpunished.
from JMS speaks, in The Lurker’s Guide:
—
About the final scene with Sheridan remembering Delenn
During the music spotting session, where I indicate where music comes in and goes out, my main note to Chris on that final sequence was, “Break our heart.”
He did.
(watched yet again, it’s been 2 weeks since I seen these)
The scene in the jail cell with Longo and G’Kar reminded me of the scene way back, of both of them trapped in the elevator/transport tube. In a sense, both knowing they are trapped, but now looking for a way out and both, perhaps, seeing it; or the hope of it.
I’ve always found it terribly moving that G’Kar risked leaving the safety of Babylon 5 to find his friend Garibaldi and went through all he does after that because of that. B5 brought together the most interesting and unlikely friendships.
JMS was interacting with fans on an unprecedented scale, regularly participating online (a first as far as I know) as well as at conventions and such. Most of the time it worked well (he wouldn’t have continued doing it if it was bad overall). But along with the good there was also some bad.
JMS comments on his actual background in writing B5 vs where some fans thought his background must be:
=====================================
Q: Sheridan’s fall was like Gandalf’s in “The Lord of the Rings,” or like the descent into the underworld in Dante’s “Inferno.”
A: I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I was going more for the roots of this. Though the Dante thread you mention is closest in many ways (again, you dig into archetypes you end up with similar structures, that’s the nature of the beast), it was Orpheus going into the underworld for his wife, and losing her, that was in the back of my head when I was blocking out that part of the story. (You can also toss in Christ’s temptation by the devil, and descent into the wilderness, if you want.)
This will probably get me in trouble, but…on the one hand, I am always delighted and impressed with the breadth and depth of analyses and thought of the larger group of SF fans, and the insightfulness with which they apply those perceptions.
On the flip side of this discussion…for a certain percentage of them, that breadth and depth is only or primarily within SF and mainstream fantasy. The wellspring of material from which to draw when making comparisons is not often as broad as it should be in classical literature, mythology, medieval studies, and so on. They see a drop into a chasm, they think “Oh, Gandalf.” Not understanding that the root of this goes back way, way, way further…to Orpheus and his kindred spirits.
I was copied a note from someone on another newsgroup who insisted that everything in the show had an elvish/Tolkein base, including and *especially* the names of everyone, citing the Agamemnon as meaning something or other in LoTR elvish. The symbol is RIGHT THERE, in the name, Agamemnon, and the whole unfortunate history of that character and his wife, and the Cassandra character (which is at the center of G’Kar’s character)…and yet she says, “No, no, it’s all a clue, it means this thing over here.”
My background is as an SF fan myself, so I offer the above without stereotype or pejorative intent. But as well as reading SF, I spent most of my early adult life reading from classical sources. Goethe’s FAUST informs Londo in many ways, as well as the history of early Rome, and Hegelian notions on the role of conflict, and the divine role of the emperor. You’re talking to someone who read Plotinus’ The Aenneads just for kicks, and whose favorite character was Zeno and his paradoxes. You want to talk Plato’s perfect forms? The Socratic method of teaching? Greek tragic structure as embodied in Oedipus? The overall work of Sophocles? The Bible? I’ve read that one cover to cover twice…anyone else in the room who’s done that, raise your hands and tell me you didn’t fall asleep halfway through Numbers and Deuteronomy, the two most boring books in the whole darned thing.
There was a period in my life — from around 1976 through 1981 — when I devoured everything I could in these areas. Mythology. Existentialism. Zen. 18th century literature. I took part time jobs in libraries so I could get access to the widest possible range of books, especially new ones in areas that interested me. A lot of the details have washed away over the years, but the cumulative *sense* of that remains. I can still remember how excited I was when a brand new translation of the Inferno, the Purgatario and the Paradisio came out (from Penguin, I think), putting it all back into the proper lyric form, and I devoured them, one day each, then read them all again using the footnotes and marginalia.
All that time, I never knew I was preparing myself to write this show, because it could *only* be done with a generalist background, knowing a little about a lot of areas…just enough to get into trouble, ususally, but still the grounding is there.
Funny thing…about two, three weeks ago, I got an email from a woman who is a professor of medieval studies at a major university, who said she’d been nudged into watching the show by her graduate students, and is now a big fan of the show. She said that as she watched, she “clicked” constantly on the sources from medieval and classical literature, mythology, and other deep well sources, and was pleased to see them being used in a contermporary or futuristic venue.
Anyway, it’s what I’ve always said about this show…you see the paradigm with which you are most familiar. Sometimes that’s great, and sometimes it’s a curse.
But the thing is, I wasn’t *thinking* of LoTR…I was thinking of Orpheus going into the underworld, of the classical notion of descending into hell to find oneself or something else…it just bugs me when someone assumes that they know what was in my head at a time when I wrote something, and then take that as a given and start making me explain it or acting as if this is true, when it ain’t.
Yes, G’Kar rocks! I’ve always liked his sense of humor. Also notice some of Vir’s lines too.
Hi Debbie,
Before reading the comments, I was going to ask if you’d noticed any borrowings from LOTR - I recently found your LOTR notes and I’m reading through them.
In response to Hvideo, it may be that he was thinking of Orpheus and that’s what it’s metaphorically like, but it’s still like Gandalf’s fall in a more physical sense - both of them actually fell a distance that should have killed them. And if he’s going to call the character that Sheridan meets “Lorien”, he can’t blame us for thinking of LOTR!
I started re-watching Buffy last night, so your mention of “the First” is making me nervous.
I didn’t recognise the voice interrogating Garibaldi as Morden - now I’m going to have to re-watch that to see. Oh, the pain of having to watch it again…
The relationship between G’Kar and Lando is just amazing though the whole series. We often talk about the relationship of the other characters Delenn and Sheridan for example, but none of the others have the wild swing of G’Kar and Lando. One of my great problems with the later Star Trek shows is that everyone is always nice and happy with each other, but the B5 characters relationships have always felt more real because of the ups and downs.
Not to give anything away, but your jaw will drop by the end of the season when you REALLY learn what happen to Mr. Garibaldi.
Nuts, I forgot to say:
I think that you will find that it’s not Morden’s voice on the speaker. If you remember Morden had some issues with some atomic bombs.
The voice might sound like him, but it’s not him.
Morden should be on Centari Prime in that timeframe that Garabaldi was being interogated. Did you notice it was a PsiCop that pulled him out after he was gassed?
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