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?
