meganbmoore | Babylon 5 2.17-2.22 (Reply)

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.