Babylonia!

Patrick

Patrick is a mid-40 year old geek with an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a master's degree in Information Systems. Nothing he says here has anything to do with the official position of his employer or any other institution.

Related Post Roulette

7 Responses

  1. James K says:

    I’ll pause here for a second to note that this is a topic that rarely gets play in SF. You either have no religion at all, or you have a religious-caste-empire sort of deal going on, but very rarely do you have interspecies ecumenicalism. The only two that pop immediately into my head is Alan Dean Foster’s Humanx stories with their United Church (which is a little bit star-chamber-cabalish), and James White’s mention of Padres in the Sector General series.

    I recall JMS saying that while he is an atheist, he doesn’t believe religion is going anywhere in the next 200 years, so he wanted to show religion as a part of human culture.

    Londo just sits. Londo really doesn’t know how to deal with this whole gratitude thing. Fade to commercial.

    I suspect the problem is that his normal methods of showing gratitude involve a combination of political concessions and alcohol, neither of which are applicable to Lennier.

    See, even when you’re running an SF campaign, it pays to have a cleric in the party.

    Win!Report

  2. Pinky says:

    The bit with Londo and G’Kar felt really contrived to me. We get it – they don’t get along, and their actors are good. And there aren’t many scenes at this point in the series for those two to interact. It was just too forced. And without their scenes, there wasn’t much else to this episode.Report

    • KatherineMW in reply to Pinky says:

      I loved that scene, because it was a complete subversion of the “two characters who hate each other need to work together to survive (and start to understand each other better in the process)” scenario.

      The reactions of both Londo and Lennier to Lennier saving his life were also excellent.Report

    • Patrick in reply to Pinky says:

      I’m a fan of the stare war. I also kinda like G’Kar’s digression into flat-out goofiness, which seemed a better play than stone-cold I Will Die With Honor Rather Than Help You that we would have seen if he was a Klingon. But yes, overall the scene was a little forced.

      As to the episode, I’m deliberately erasing my brain going through the series this time. In the context of seeing this for the first time, with the previous episode as the set-up, it does kinda make me wonder if PsiCorp is out there bending people’s brains to make them Space Madness for the sake of adding general FUD (no spoilers on whether that conjecture is correct or not!). But aside from that, there wasn’t all that much too this episode other than establishing Lennier’s character better, which I think was useful, and introducing Brother Theo, who I like.Report

  3. Jaybird says:

    Last night we had a date night and watched an (upcoming) episode when it hit me:

    Imagine House on B5.

    And then the idea kept evolving… you know how The Office had all sorts of subplots that were obvious to the camera guy (and audience) but oblivious to the main character? They could totally do stuff like that too.

    A doctor, on a space station, worrying about Tharaxian Flu while, oh, a revolution plays out behind him.

    Anyway, we saw this episode and found it surprising that it happened before not only 9/11, but before the 2nd Intifada. Had it come out after, we would have said that it was hammily unsubtle. As it is…Report

    • Patrick in reply to Jaybird says:

      @jaybird

      You’re watching these as date night fodder?

      You know what would be space awesome? Getting Maribou to do a recap.

      Plus you, of course, your recaps are always good. But Maribou.Report