not what they seem
Jun. 5th, 2010 11:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivendellroseContinuing the Babylon 5 rewatch - just a quick note:
As Ironheart is leaving/blowing up/ascending he tells Sinclair he'll see him again in a million years. I'm thinking a million years in the past, as Valen (in which case Ironheart will somehow end up traveling back, too, or being so transcendental that time no longer matters to him)? Or is that another stillborn relic of when Sinclair was meant to be Sheridan as well, in which case obviously something else was meant to end differently since I can't think of any canonical contact between Sheridan and a million years in the future? Or is he possibly just referring to the "next step" in Human evolution?
On a less confusing note, G'Kar's lines about no one there being quite what they seem pleases me immensely this time around, because they are of course so delightfully true. And then there's the speech about the ants. I remember that speech being one of the first times I really started to appreciate the show on a deeper level, and now, knowing where it's headed, it makes me even happier.
Another thing I noticed here - it seems to me that what we have in the first season is a very good setup for Catherine Sakai to get the same storyline that was eventually pushed on Anna Sheridan, and it occurs to me... I would have been a whole hell of a lot more sympathetic if it had been Sakai. Not only because I like Sakai and generally feel that she's an interesting and fun character, but also because we'd have all the necessary lead-up to make that plot-line really felt rather than just "oh, okay, Sheridan has an ex-wife and, oops, now she's been subverted by the Shadows" (or however exactly it played out - my memories of that whole plot-line are a little hazy). With the lead-up that Sakai was getting here it would have been a much more interesting (and much less out-of-the-blue) story.
That fits in with what else I've been feeling on my second time through about how many bits of story line seem to get sort of chopped into bits or weirdly rehashed in order to give Sheridan exactly the stories Sinclair was meant to live out. Someone elsewhere (I think it was![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ariastar? Sorry, it's late, and I'm too lazy to confirm that...) commented that Sheridan and Sinclair would be able to bond over their mutual love of reciting Tennyson... but really, that just makes me think what a lazy writing job that was on JMS's part. Really, he couldn't even be assed to pick a different poet? Of course, I shouldn't be surprised - even on my first viewing I noticed that Sheridan and Sinclair have the exact same initials... exactly the same as JMS's. What a shocking coincidence. I'm just saying, if I ever get that self-congratulatory in my writing, I hope somebody smacks me with a nice fat hardcover of Bartlett's Quotations.
Toaster (the kitten) is gleefully tearing up some little piece of paper over on the other side of the room. I'm tired, and it's cute, so I really hope it's not something important.
As Ironheart is leaving/blowing up/ascending he tells Sinclair he'll see him again in a million years. I'm thinking a million years in the past, as Valen (in which case Ironheart will somehow end up traveling back, too, or being so transcendental that time no longer matters to him)? Or is that another stillborn relic of when Sinclair was meant to be Sheridan as well, in which case obviously something else was meant to end differently since I can't think of any canonical contact between Sheridan and a million years in the future? Or is he possibly just referring to the "next step" in Human evolution?
On a less confusing note, G'Kar's lines about no one there being quite what they seem pleases me immensely this time around, because they are of course so delightfully true. And then there's the speech about the ants. I remember that speech being one of the first times I really started to appreciate the show on a deeper level, and now, knowing where it's headed, it makes me even happier.
Another thing I noticed here - it seems to me that what we have in the first season is a very good setup for Catherine Sakai to get the same storyline that was eventually pushed on Anna Sheridan, and it occurs to me... I would have been a whole hell of a lot more sympathetic if it had been Sakai. Not only because I like Sakai and generally feel that she's an interesting and fun character, but also because we'd have all the necessary lead-up to make that plot-line really felt rather than just "oh, okay, Sheridan has an ex-wife and, oops, now she's been subverted by the Shadows" (or however exactly it played out - my memories of that whole plot-line are a little hazy). With the lead-up that Sakai was getting here it would have been a much more interesting (and much less out-of-the-blue) story.
That fits in with what else I've been feeling on my second time through about how many bits of story line seem to get sort of chopped into bits or weirdly rehashed in order to give Sheridan exactly the stories Sinclair was meant to live out. Someone elsewhere (I think it was
ariastar? Sorry, it's late, and I'm too lazy to confirm that...) commented that Sheridan and Sinclair would be able to bond over their mutual love of reciting Tennyson... but really, that just makes me think what a lazy writing job that was on JMS's part. Really, he couldn't even be assed to pick a different poet? Of course, I shouldn't be surprised - even on my first viewing I noticed that Sheridan and Sinclair have the exact same initials... exactly the same as JMS's. What a shocking coincidence. I'm just saying, if I ever get that self-congratulatory in my writing, I hope somebody smacks me with a nice fat hardcover of Bartlett's Quotations.Toaster (the kitten) is gleefully tearing up some little piece of paper over on the other side of the room. I'm tired, and it's cute, so I really hope it's not something important.
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Date: 2010-06-06 09:32 am (UTC)Well, for Sheridan, it was more, "Oh, Sheridan's wife is dead--oh, she died waking up the Shadows--OH, she's not dead! Which means Delenn was lying to him!"
And... have you seen the original 5-year-plan memo? I've got a copy of it, and...
...
It's bad. Okay, it's really bad. If you take all the bad habits that JMS has and all his worst instincts as a writer, you get that document. His original plan for Sakai involved amnesia. Via mental rape. Erasing her marriage to Sinclair so he could later marry Delenn and father the magical universe-healing messiah-baby. Who ages to thirty (magically!) leaving him with the innocence of a child but oh my God I really can't believe I'm typing this. Trust me, what we wound up with was much, much better.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-06 03:08 pm (UTC)Oh, yikes. This feels like reading the original plan for the Doctor Who TV Movie, and that's...oh, ouch.
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Date: 2010-06-06 06:35 pm (UTC)And now I know why I always had a faint terror of David. I must have somehow picked up the original plan (maybe you should me the memo while I was visiting?), and it stuck subconsciously, because I have always been freaked by the very mention of that kid. Like, seriously wigged and creeped and "oh god please stop talking about him, can we please not have creepy messiah-baby?"
...And he would age to thirty magically because why? Given that Minbari age more slowly than Humans?
I should send Michael O'Hare flowers and chocolates for inadvertently stopping all of this from happening in the way it was planned, shouldn't I?
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Date: 2010-06-09 06:35 am (UTC)Or is there some other time Sheridan quotes Tennyson?
no subject
Date: 2010-06-09 09:19 pm (UTC)Sinclair certainly was big on his notes when he left... both times.