Babylon 5 2.17-2.22

[meganbmoore]

First! My rant! That will probably not surprise anyone!

Jack the Ripper! Why why why??? Furthermore, Jack the Ripper spending an entire episode torturing Delenn (and Sheridan a bit towards the end) and throwing moral judgments at her, and then in the final scene being all “Woes! I had these moral ideas and they only remember me as Jack the Ripper! Woes! And you know, until then, it was a really awesome episode? Like, when Sebastian showed up, I thought we were getting Jack the Ripper? But then I decided Babylon 5 had too high standards for that. Sadly, I was wrong. This is the kind of thing I expect from Supernatural.

Sadly, my distaste for that kind of dwarfs how everything else was great? (Like, even in that episode, there was cool war stuff and Delenn was super-awesome throughout it and Sheridan and Lennier were also pretty cool? But the episode also had Jack the Ripper torturing people. So. You know.

But the rangers! They finally did something with them! I find that while I like Babylon 5’s approach to storytelling and the way it doesn’t follow the same characters every episode, this also means that some plot points can wallow in the background forever and not really get developed the way I’d want them to.

Like, I’m told that part of why Andrea Thompson left (This is me drowning in my woes!) was because Talia wasn’t really getting any plots? This is true, but I think it’s true of most characters. Only Delenn, Sheridan, G’Kar and Londo really have their own plots. Sinclair too, if we count season 1. Everyone else has character arcs and roles in the main plot. (Mind you, pretty universally awesome character arcs so far.) Except for Na’Toth and Talia, who are awesome but who don’t really have plots or character arcs so much as they hang around people who do. Oh, and Keffler. Who was a pretty decent character, but far too easy to forget due to the show not really having a clue what to do with him. (I think someone told me they were told to add a more action-hero type of character?)

The war continues to be great, especially now that it’s over and now we have the base being sekritly used to help in the rebellion. Londo, though, seems to have given up on the “not totally evil” thing. (Well, I don’t think he’s passed the point of no return yet, but I think that he thinks he has.) And I like how seemingly random extras continue to end up important, like Random Centauri Roughhouser planting the bomb to try to blow Sheridan up.

And I admire you all for staying silent about Lennier and Vir regularly getting together to discuss the strange things happening with their ambassadors.

Sheridan/Delenn continues to be rather awkward, but it’s starting to be cute awkward. And he seems to have appointed himself her guard dog. Lennier and he might squabble over whose job that is. And I am quite amused by how he is accidentally teaching her raunchy terminology and his “Noes! What have I done!” reaction to her trying out slang.
 

Comments

[eisen]

They did the best they could with Keffler, but he was forced into the show over Straczynski's protests because the network mandated it, IIRC - and it shows. JMS wrote him into the plot as minimally as possible and tried to undercut his heroism as often as he could at the same time, although you can tell his distaste for editorial fiat went to war with his personal law of conservation of plot and conservation of plot won out in the end, since Keffler did end up being the one who blew the lid on the Shadows.

I kind of wondered if you were going to be upset with Sebastian! Obviously your objections are sound (except I disagree with your interpretation of Sebastian's final lines - I always read it as a caution to Sheridan about remembering that he should not let himself fall into the trap of thinking he is always going to be on the side of moral justice - because Sheridan makes a bad habit out of doing it, and because Sebastian always did, and he was a homicidal maniac until the Vorlons brain-fried him), but I'd like to point out something to keep in mind: if the Vorlons were willing to brain-screw a homicidal killer into their personal inquisitor only because his principles were wrong, consider what that says about the Vorlons.

[meganbmoore]

Oh, I think Sebastian's final lines were meant as a warning for Sheridan, but I also think they were meant to create sympathy and a degree of understanding.

The episode is actually what inspired the recent rant.

[eisen]

Oh, I see! I had read the rant thinking "boy, when she gets to 'Comes the Inquisitor', she's going to really get annoyed with B5," only now it turns out you'd already gotten there and that's why you were annoyed already.

Yeah, I don't know; it's a hard line to draw and I think it's just a difference in interpretation, but I always interpreted it as sympathy and understanding for the broken, repentant tool Sebastian was now rather than for the murderer he was then, rather than a blanket sympathy for the Ripper. I think that explanation makes me feel better, at least, although it's been a while since I saw the episode and in thinking about it I am not sure my interpretation's all that supported by the episode itself. :/ I suppose I'll have to rewatch it to be sure, but I don't know if I want to expose myself to an hour of Delenn!torture so readily this afternoon.

[meganbmoore]

I don't know. I think there's an inherent misogyny in any attempt at sympathy for Jack the Ripper. I think what people miss is that he didn't just murder women (presumably for what he considered to be sexual immortality) he mutilated them, and his murders were becoming more and more sadistic. It's why even if the "FOR THE CROWN!" theories were true, that would only explain the killings, not the sadism involved in the killings.

[eisen]

No, I think you're right; I'm not very well-versed in the Jack the Ripper murders, and I'd honestly never cared to be, so it's more that I'd never given it much thought and the nature of the murders as what they were hadn't sunk in very much until your rant the other day. (I've been giving it some thought, off and on, ever since.)

As I was saying, I'd always interpreted it that way - but now I'm reconsidering, based on what you've had to say, whether or not that interpretation can be justified, and I think the answer is that it can't.

(P.S. While I'm thinking about it, don't read Hiromu Arakawa's SHANGHAI YOUMA KIKAI, ever, if you've not read it yet; Jack the Ripper's one of the main characters.)

[meganbmoore]

Another way of thinking of it is this: do we think we'd even SEE anything about Jack the Ripper outside of "evil monster" if he'd killed housewives or schoolboys? What makes it "acceptable" is the subconscious belief that the people he killed were doing wrong themselves (I'm not addressing any morality involved in prostitution here) and somehow "asked for it" or "didn't deserve better."

[eisen]

Probably not!

I am not arguing with you. I agree with you! I just hadn't thought about it before, is all I'm saying; had I thought about it I'd have come to the same conclusions you have, and I should've been thinking along those lines from the start - but I didn't know better the first time I watched "Comes the Inquisitor", specifically, and my reactions to it have kind of grandfather claused their way down the years without changing. :/

[meganbmoore]

Oh, I know. I'm just saying that this is one of those things where things suddenly become much clearer if you try replacement. It's like this one class I had in college where the teacher asked who liked Enimem's music, and then asked the people who raised their hands if they thought the music was insulting to women. Most of them said that it wasn't serious and didn't mean anything, and then she passed out papers where the derogatory remarks about women had been replaced with racially derogatory remarks, and made them read rewitten lines out loud. And most couldn't finish their assigned segment.

[eisen]

Oh, my, yes; that doesn't shock me even a little. (Not the part about Eminem's lyrics, but the part about how different the before/after reaction was and what that says about our social conditioning.) We're goddamn trained to justify and accept and obfuscate abusive behavior towards women, especially the sexual kind - it's amazing how easy it is for people to just ... glide right over it, so apathetic we don't even notice we're apathetic anymore.

My attitude towards the media fascination with Jack the Ripper before your rant the other day is, in fact, a pretty damn good case in point! >:[