This is how the good ones get twisted, there are alien memory worms that pilot human meat suits, and next week’s episode is far more indicative of what I want to talk about today. Welcome my friends. This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2260. The name of the place is Babylon 5.
Spoilers ahead.
1. After These Messages
I usually try to refrain from drawing too many direct parallels between the show and current events but Donald Trump is literally deploying, and threatening to deploy, a secret police he signed into existence under a department that is about as euphemistically jingoistic & borderline fascist as they get (Homeland Security, established 2002, which also oversees our other extralegal military forces ICE and the current Customs and Border Patrol.)
Next week deals with far more explicit themes of how exactly the wrench is turned and how, when an autocrat masquerading as a democratically elected leader’s feet is held to the fire, they double-down on military might, shows of force, and cracking down on perceived dissidents with illegal, inhumane and swift violence. However, this week is when it’s beginning on the ground and I’d rather take a point out to bring attention to it because Babylon 5 is, as others and I have charted, a show about watching how fascism can, and does, devour democracy from the inside and how difficult it is to fight when the checks on power abdicate their fucking responsibility Mitch you ghoul and your spineless ghoul army.
And none of this shit is new. Ask any Black American. Ask any Asian-American. Ask any Native American/American Indian. Ask any LGBTQ+ person. Hell, ask anyone who’s not a white, male, christian landowner (ie. wealthy) and the story will be similar, though not nearly the same. It’s always been there in some way, shape or form. We’re just seeing the 21st century’s version of it breaking free from what remained of a system meant to contain it. From the ideals and attempts, however well or poorly thought out, that was meant to prevent exactly this kind of shit.
It’s been two months since the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor (and so many, too many, others) and the protests continue and little meaningful change has happened at the top. It’s been half a year since responsibility for fixing or mitigating the public health crisis was denied, delayed, and abdicated, putting the same people at risk as always. It is not surprising. It is the cycle. Maybe this time we can break it for the better. It’s been too fucking long otherwise.
2. Now Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Programming
So. Corwyn. I really liked Corwyn. I think he’s a great character and a great person. I still like Corwyn. Every person thus far who’s been brought into the Conspiracy of Light has been similar to Corwyn or even less known to the crew/us. He should be a shoo-in, right?
Wrong.
Turns out, he’s very loyal to Earth/ It’s a gut punch of a scene not because it’s particularly emotional with swelling music and the like but because of the naivete of his answer. The dramatic irony of the scene is perfect. We, like Ivanova, wanted desperately to trust him and every moment in the episode until their meeting was fun and light and goofy. He’s a good guy! But he can’t be trusted with this.
And what I love about Corwyn is that JMS uses him to show how good people prop up and defend the unconscionable, the wretched, the broken systems without knowing it. His unquestioning loyalty to Earth is a flaw — no loyalty should go internally unquestioned, ever — and a flaw that is so deeply held it cannot be confronted. Moreover, any attempt to confront risks certain death or imprisonment. It is a toxic loyalty that he doesn’t even know is toxic. It is insidious.
It is just like reality and that, that should scare us.
3. Flowers for A Comrade
. . .One of these days I’ll have a fully fun 5 thoughts. Instead, you’ll have to deal with half-ish. The C-plot this week involves a classic love triangle that’s actually just a series of misunderstandings and has exactly zero intention of being a love triangle. Corwyn thinks Ivanova pumping him for information is an invitation for a date which. . .fair. She does invite him to dinner at her place after work and says she wants to get to know him better. That’s pretty standard date start and so, not being a giant wad and also being a giant nervous dork, he gets some synthetic roses (spaaaaccceeeeee) and then spectacularly fails to say the flowers were from him.
Continued below
Thankfully, it was not a date and when he finds out, he’s equally relieved and saddened. You feel for him but, at the same time, I did not want him to succeed and he managed to bow out with minimal embarrassment.
On the other side, Ivanova hates Marcus’ guts and doesn’t trust him. This is not a secret “I love him but I hate him thing,” partially because she’s more into women and partially because Marcus is kinda fucking with the rigid hierarchy she lives her life by and that frustrates her. Marcus, on the other, other hand, seems to potentially like Ivanova but is, at least for the moment, more concerned with her hating and not trusting him.
This all culminates in the final scene of the episode where Ivanova returns the flowers Corwyn gave to her to Marcus, which he is pleasantly surprised by. I laughed. I smiled. It was a great way to end a fairly stressful episode. It also shows the wonderful chemistry the two actors have and I can’t wait to see more scenes with the two of them.
4. Worms. Worms on the Spine.
Nope.
Nope nope nope nope.
Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope. NOOooooooooooope.
Nopenopenopenopenopenopenope. Fuuuuuck these things. I don’t care how tragic or important the Vindrizi are to the memory of the universe or something, the sounds and look of them entering the people’s backs is a whole bucket, no, a whole SPACESHIP of nope.
Nope. Not doing it. Nope.
Nope.
5. Duncan on Franklin
I will, however, talk about Dr. Franklin and Duncan because these two were my favorite characters this week. Ivanova & Marcus are close seconds but the soft spoken old man archetype of Duncan and Dr. Franklin’s “fuck this shit, just let me save my patient” attitude take the cake. They’re just so much fun to watch and can play off of anyone. Marcus is the main foil for the two, with him being the wacky one with respects to Dr. Franklin and the concerned pseudo-son to Duncan.
Duncan gets far more poignant lines, though. I doubt we’ll see him again but, maybe, he’ll be back after his travels, reinvigorated by exposure to the greater universe.
Sometimes a change in perspective is all one needs to grow.
That about does it for now. Join me again in a week for the Nightwatch becoming explicitly, rather than implicitly, the scariest shit in the show, the shadows trying to reclaim their place as the scariest shit in the series, and the first real breakfast the B5 crew has seen in years on the station that, in the year of the Shadow War, became something greater.
This is Elias. Signing out.
Best Line of the Night:
Flower Salesman: “Thinking flowers is good. Giving flowers is better.”
