Babylon 5: Believers

[Wargriffin]

http://sfdebris.com/videos/babylon5/b5s1e10.php


Oh gawd this one.

[Darth Wedgius]

I enjoyed the episode (on an intellectual level -- not having kids probably helps), and I thought Chuck's review was really, really well done.

You don't need a villain to tell a compelling story. I don't mind villains who want nothing but power, revenge, money, cake, etc., because there are people like that, but it's nice to also have stories like this.

[Wargriffin]

No Score

No Stinger

We're just done


It is the bit where Franklin start morally being smug with himself... that you know its gonna be bad cause Yay Karma's a bitch.


Shit... Frankly If the kid himself refused the operation 'which he clearly did' I'm pretty sure most modern hospitals would demand Franklin's licenses to practice for violating his patients wishes

Maybe its the fact I lived with someone for six years that had a Do not resuscitate order if we found her not breathing in morning.


I always found the Raiders fighters rather lame... they look like Space Doritoes

[Abstruse]

This episode is in my opinion the worst of Babylon 5. At least "TKO" was enjoyable trash for the sheer WTF tonal dissonance of cross-cutting between a Jewish wake and an MMA match. This one is far worse because it's trying very, very hard to be a TOS-style morality play and JMS was so willing to get up on his soapbox that he threw out anything that got in the way including his own "grand plan".

To start, I think Charles does a disservice by frequently pointing out the episode is "not about religion" when it clearly is if you remember the period it was written and aired in. In the early 1990s, a big deal was made over several court cases involving parents who denied life-saving medical treatment to their children for religious reasons. It was a fairly big deal and was the subject of many stories on 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, Current Affairs, and other "news magazine" shows. To reframe the episode as about informed patient consent ignores the political climate and contemporary events it was directly commenting on and would be like claiming that DS9's "Far Beyond the Stars" was REALLY all about censorship. Technically not wrong, but also very, very wrong.

That said, the episode itself has always been the low point for Babylon 5 for me and the reason it took me over a year to finally finish watching it…not because of the moral dilemma in the episode, but because of how ham-fistedly it was handled. For one, it ignores the worldbuilding that has already been done because “souls” are straight-up real. The senior staff and Sinclair especially knows this because, just a handful of episodes previously, they had definitive, objective proof that the soul is a real thing that really exists in a measurable, provable way. Not only that, but the soul being real later becomes a cornerstone of the mythology of Babylon 5 in a huge way. Which means either JMS was full of crap when he claimed he had the entire five-season story planned out that he "forgot" a huge part of it involved souls being real...or he decided climbing up on his soapbox was more important than plot, world, or character consistency.

[ORCACommander]

Abtruse, this is one of the episodes with commentary on it in the dvd sets. did you listen to that commentary track? It paints are really different picture than what you describe

[CrypticMirror]

To me, Franklin's only failing is that he didn't do his follow up research on these yahoo's idiot beliefs. In my country we yank kids away from parents who'd rather get their kid dead than treated. If the kid wants to die because of their religion, they get to do it themselves when they are a legal adult. So very few do. I'd have had the kid in care, and the parents having only supervised visitation rights, long before he acted and I'd also have checked up on whatever hooha these idiots believe to insure there wasn't any funny business either.

Franklin's flaw here is not thinking he knows better than them, but thinking he can show them reason and they will come around. He gives them too much credit, a sin you'll rarely find in real life doctors, nurses, and associated professions. Franklin thinks that he can not only cure the disease, but he can cure stupid too. You can't cure stupid.

I don't give the show that much credit either, in order to make their point work (in its own way just as preachy as S1 TNG) they fall into the old planet of single religion trope. If they really wanted to commit to it then instead of Londo being skeazy or Delenn being... Delenn, they could have showed us someone from their actual species who believed something different but still vacillated or threw the kid under the bus for some reason, or backed Franklin for the surgery but forced him to give the kid back to his murderers without telling him why. Then it would have had its nuance.

Frankly, as far as I care, I hope those parents exited the station through the same airlock as KoDath did.

[Admiral X]

The obvious parallel seems to be Jehovah's Witnesses and their refusal to have blood transfusions, and shunning of members of their faith who do accept them.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

There's souls in B5, but there's no reason for Franklin or Sinclair to think someone's soul will start leaking out of the body if that person has a surgery, gets a cut, or whatever. This is also one of the minority of episodes not written by JMS; this is David Gerrold's script.

The first time I watched this episode I was convinced that Franklin would be proven wrong and that "something" (something he would describe in medical terms and the parents in spiritual terms) would happen to the kid after the surgery, a possibility that Franklin dismissed in his arrogant presumption that their differing precluded them from knowing what was best for their family. Of course the angle they went after wasn't to show Franklin as wrong, or even to show the parents as wrong per se. According to JMS, the idea was to create a true "no win scenario." Not all that pleasant, but fairly effective.

A couple of weaknesses- the two plots don't really mesh together very well, in my opinion, and while a breather from the heavier story is welcome, the two plots kind of stumble over each other. I also think that just how "alien" the family's beliefs seem to us today makes the episode a little less hard-hitting. That's part of the point, but it allows for some detachment that would put many viewers squarely in Franklin's corner.

[Nealithi]

I read Cold Equations when I was young. And I read much later that the original author had to demand people stop pointing out how it should not have happened.
This episode had a different feel to me. The religious belief seems ludicrous. And if I recall the episode correctly, these people had been to several doctors before Franklin. And had gotten pretty much the same answer.

Why is their belief ludicrous to me. 'Any puncture of the torso' Why are they not wearing body armor? That is rather easy to do. So I have trouble seeing them as a space faring race with this holding them back.

Next up, was a line thrown at Franklin. "Who named you God?!" And Franklin's response. "Every person that comes into his medbay. They want him to perform his miracles and cure the sick and injured." Okay that last is a paraphrase. But it is a point. If you do not like medicine, why do you go to the doctor at all? Why not stay at your home and wait, or see your priest? No it was shoved into a doctor's face and then told him but do not touch.

As to the House episode. I think Foreman wanted to be pissed at House. He went in pissed the 'wrong' blood pressure medicine was given. Then was more offended that the 'right' medicine was given. And his claim of civilizing the hedons? House did not go to this man's home and force this medicine on him. The man came to him to be healed. Then felt slighted by the healer trying to help him. If you don't want the help, do not ask for it.

Back to B5. You do not like the doctor's prognosis nor his manner? Take your child from his facility. So as hard a choice as this may seem there seems to be arrogance to go around on it.

[CrypticMirror]

And another thing!

How could a species get to spacefaring technological status if they had such a strong disbelief in medicine, that seems like the sort of socially limiting belief that would have doomed them to extinction long before that. I doubt they'd even have got to industrial revolution level, hell, even the Ancient Greeks and Romans believed surgery was necessary and acceptable, so there is the upper bounds of that one. You cannot organise a society if you are letting people go around believing that a single cut of the scalpel dooms you, not on any scale or for any length of time.

These folks are either part of their lunatic fringe or this is some real The Handmaid's Tale level of social regression. Neithercase should merit any credence.

Also: To answer Chuck's point on would I force meat on a vegan to save their life? I would on their kid, until legal adulthood of course, but on an adult Vegan? Nah, that seems like a self-correcting problem if you ask me. I'd go ahead and let Charles Darwin and his Chainsaw of Natural Selection solve that one.