Sfdebris.net

I've been binge watching Babylon 5 recently. (And from examining these forums I'm not the only one) since I was lucky enough to find the whole series at half price books. I've never watched the whole series before, though I have seen Chuck's reviews of course, vaguely remember watching some episodes with my dad ages ago, and have seen some bits on youtube. So I know spoiled bits and pieces on how certain things will go, but not everything.

I'm part way through season 3 now, just got done with "Sic Transit Vir" (so there will be spoilers if any of you haven't gotten that far). And it pissed me off so much that I felt I had to rant about it, figured this might be as good a place as any.

This is the episode where it's revealed that Vir is pulling a Schindler's List and smuggling Narns off their homeworld. It's also the episode where Vir learns he's had an arranged marriage set up and he meets his future wife, Lyndisty. Sounds kooky! So Vir and his new beau are walking through the halls when a Narn cries out something like "murderer!" and attacks them. But who would attack poor innocent Vir??? One very obvious plot twist later, it turns out the Narn was attacking Lyndisty, not Vir. Why did this Narn and later his brother try to attack her? Oh nothing, it just turns out she sent their family to a concentration camp. She peer pressures Vir to kill the Narn she has tied up. He presumably refuses. And then . . . Vir and his girlfriend break up. Episode ends. What. The. Fuck.

First of all, it's weird how it cuts off before we see what happens to the tied up Narn. I mean, we know Vir isn't gonna kill him, but what happened? Did she do it? Was security called, were charges pressed, on either the Narn or her? That's kind of important.

But that pales in comparison to the tone shift. She is a monster. The Narns have had their planet bombarded, and we've heard mention of work camps, but this is the first confirmation of death camps. I mean, Londo has become a pretty dark character and he started this war in the first place, but he is interesting and has some redeeming traits. Lyndisty? At least President Clarke hasn't done any ethnic cleansing. (not yet anyways). Not only does she rant about the Narn being genetically inferior, she thought giving the Vir opportunity to kill the Narn prisoner would be a real treat for him. She uses phrases like "culling the herd". She thinks that when her father "put them to sleep", that he was being "charitable" and that it was "more humane than they deserved". She talks about it dispassionately except when she says the fires were beautiful. When she tells Vir to stab the Narn, she says she's done it herself "hundreds of times."

So how do we follow that up? As she departs B5 Vir says things like "I know we had some problems" and "I think you can change". Lyndisty tells Vir "I will wait for you", and gentle romantic music plays as she strokes Vir's face. She kisses him and she says she'll see him again. The last lines of the episode are "What relationships don't have their ups and downs?". Said by Vir as if it was a punchline. Can you imagine this sort of cheesy ending to a story where someone smuggling Jews out of Germany finds out their fiance is taking an active role in the holocaust? I thought "maybe she shows up again and they do something with this", but I looked on the B5 wiki and she's never seen again. The romance of the week plot just happened to involve a Nazi this time. I'm not asking for a perfect fairy tale ending where all the bad guys get their comeuppance (though I do hope her shuttle crashed on the way home), but can we maybe be not so tone deaf?

Hey, we're applying Allied "collective guilt" logic, Londo, despite his horror, is a high-level official, so he's just as guilty as the rest. Also, yeah, I really disliked the girl too. What's confusing is Vir still wants to be with her at the end, and when I first watched it, not finding out that Narn's fate confused me as well. Not a great episode, tbh.

You're right, I may be giving Londo more slack than he deserves since I find him well acted and well written as a character. (Just like Tywinn Lannister). But no, not a very good episode at all.

At least I found the "What's worse than a locked room full of angry Narns?" bit funny.

As you know, I reject collective guilt except for those directly involved in atrocities. And while Londo is, he has sympathetic motives. I'm sure many who saw the evils taking place in the USSR and Eastern Europe were appalled, but had their reasons. If you can feel bad for that, it makes all the difference. I've seen people try and apply this to huge populations, though. I've even met a few who think it'd be good if all the Centauri were wiped out. Based on the crimes of their leadership? When the Narn were just as imperialistic a few years prior? GEEZ... yes, they were doing it out of what they felt was "defense," but two wrongs don't equal a right!

I think the tonal dissonance you're feeling is actually deliberate rather than a mistake. This episode is one of the best for illustrating:

1. How utterly effed up Centauri society is.
2. How Vir is the odd man out of it.

The Centauri are engaged in full-on genocide with the rest of the galaxy more or less turning a blind eye to it while Vir is doing his best to save as many lives as possible. It also kind of calls out Ivanova who is more interested in going after what she sees as a specific criminal (Vir) when the entire institution of Centauri has normalized mass murder.

Even the romantic elements of the plot are useful for illustrating this because Vir, to move up in society, has to essentially accept the horrifying racism/persecution of Narn as normal.

And yet let's not ignore the Narn kept stupidly pushing the Centauri. Granted, it's not an excuse and does not justify what they did, of course, but Londo even admitted it felt like "being nibbled to death by [cats]." One could argue the problems were always about Centauri prejudice against what they saw as animals, which I would agree with, but two wrongs don't make a right. Their imperialistic expansion hardly amounted to the "defense" of their people the Narn thought it was, it was just about making themselves feel better by aping their conquerors and bullying weaker worlds. Even Sinclair said as much. G'Kar could see this and thankfully it's why he decided to teach his people, and lead them off that path, while the Centauri at the same time had fallen.

CharlesPhipps wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2019 12:44 pm I think the tonal dissonance you're feeling is actually deliberate rather than a mistake.

I mean to me it was also about being comedic, treating an enthusiastic genocidal streak as a quirky personality trait that stops a relationship always struck me as a joke (treating something monumental as more trivial). I guess it is in poor taste.

I would say doing this sort of thing (wrapping up a message in comedic clothing), can be an effective way to get past people's natural recalcitrance to hard truths. A colonial occupation and pacification campaign is going to entail lots of violence, a successful one (as opposed to one plagued by an endemic insurgency say) is going to involve lots of tyranny, arresting people without trial, sending them to camps, and extrajudicial killing them etc. To me it is not surprising those things happen, it is to be expected. I submit this story is trying to convey that message (just how much bloodshed the conquest of Narn by Centauri implies) with a comedic overlay as a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. I would argue on the score of getting the message across it seems to have worked really, if it brings home how horrific the Centauri occupation must be.

Vir even talks about how every relationship "needs work" or something like that, so yeah, it's more comedic. Who wrote that, seriously? Can't have been JMS... right?

Pretty sure JMS wrote this episode, I have mixed feelings about it.
I've never been a fan of JMS's comedic writing, aside from some nice character moments here and there (particularly the stuff between Dr Franklin and Marcus in season 4) it either felt too forced or the one-liners wern't very good.

I do like the overall storyline of this episode but as TheStarWarsTrek pointed out, the way Vir and Lyndisty's relationship ends is rather weird and ambiguous.

Vir was always one Centauri who was worried about others and didn't look down at Narn as inferior species like most other Centauri seemed to do. Maybe it's why he was send as Lando's assistant to B5 so that he would be out of way.