Babylon Five: Knives

[CrypticMirror]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/babylon5/b5s2e16.php

I would rate it better than just fine, it is a great look at Londo if nothing else. It shows he is a romantic with a romantic's view of the past and of tradition; but also he is a realist too. Londo learns more about the things you need to do to survive in high politics, something that Urza fails to learn. He is just a romantic, and he maintains his romantic view of the world right up until all he can do is die for his family.

That line about how you cannot build an Empire based on slaughter kinda seals it, no Empire has ever been built on anything else. If you want an Empire, you better be okay with slaughtering the innocent to get it.

The Sheridan side drags it down on repeat viewing, but I remember when I first watched it that I found it gripping; just once you know the twist there is nothing much else to hang it on.

Still, a nice episode that shows us flashes of Londo's youth and how he was, as a younger man, far different from the drunken wastrel we saw at the start of S1. If JMS ever returns to Babylon Five, unlikely I know, then I wouldn't mind a prequel series based around young Molari the musketeer.

[Enterprising]

It's a pretty sharp episode.

[CrypticMirror]

It's a pretty sharp episode.

Cutting commentary.

[Nealithi]

Oddly I liked this one. As it showed that Londo knew how to act and do what was right. The fight to the death? Urza gains nothing in winning. So he had to leave an opening for Londo to kill him. And they both knew that before they walked onto that floor.
Years later Londo would to something similar to bend rules to free Nat'oth. (I think I have her name right).

[CrypticMirror]

Oddly I liked this one. As it showed that Londo knew how to act and do what was right. The fight to the death? Urza gains nothing in winning. So he had to leave an opening for Londo to kill him. And they both knew that before they walked onto that floor.

At very least he must have known when Urza gave him that opening to stab him that was so big even I would have been able to do it. And that is a pretty big opening. I personally think that Londo began the fight just emotionally hurt and angry at his friend and not really thinking about what it all means, and gradually figured it out over the course of the fight, culminating in that moment where he is looking up at his old friend's belly in a moment that is going for far too long, and that is when the enormity of all questionable decisions he has been making has taken him. Like all his choices these last two seasons Londo has leapt before he looked and found himself somewhere he doesn't want to be but cannot get out of, and all the choices he has left are bad ones and at best he can only minimise the damage he has caused.

[Rocketboy1313]

I remember liking it a bunch when I first saw it.

Even tho the Sheridan story is almost so derivative that I think it is what auto populates when you type science fiction at the top of script software, "oh, your strange visions after encountering a mysterious alien thing was actually a life form that just needed to get home?" Shit, replace "alien" with "magical/haunted/cursed" and you could have a ghost story.

[Robovski]

It's a pretty sharp episode.

Cutting commentary.

Edgy opinions.

[TheGreenMan]

It's a pretty sharp episode.

Cutting commentary.

Edgy opinions.

I think you all have a point.

[Thebestoftherest]

This place dripping with excitement.

[G-Man]

This is the episode where Londo Mollari kills Samantha Carter's father*.

Surprised there were no jokes about Urza having a Tok'Ra symbiote.

*I would say Jacob Carter, but I figured that would take longer for people to figure out.