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Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

abrosheen posted:

Sheridan literally says, in a season 2 episode I recently watched, that his wife could still be alive for all he knows. This is when Kosh and Delen are trying to get him to release Morden. They set it up for viewer speculation.

That's the ep we're talking about. But Delenn literally contradicts him by saying that those who wouldn't work for the Shadows would be killed. Sheridan doesn't start to accept that Anna is dead until after that, because he knows she would never work for them. As it turns out he was right and Delenn was wrong, but as painted she's the one who has the knowledge and we're not meant to think that either she is mistaken about the Shadows or that Sheridan is mistaken about his wife.

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Erulisse
Feb 12, 2019

A bad poster trying to get better.
Nah I think he's genuine. Notice the handwave note. The rest of the post indicates that he did read the clues properly. An experienced sci-fi viewer.
Also ultrafilter please stahp. The point of Kosh being all Kosh together (hivemind, telepathy?) with only a small bit of personality residing in Sheridan is a matter of future episodes.
Delenn said what she said, that Kosh is the last remaining First One.

Doctor Zero
Sep 21, 2002

Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Jedit posted:

That's the ep we're talking about. But Delenn literally contradicts him by saying that those who wouldn't work for the Shadows would be killed. Sheridan doesn't start to accept that Anna is dead until after that, because he knows she would never work for them. As it turns out he was right and Delenn was wrong, but as painted she's the one who has the knowledge and we're not meant to think that either she is mistaken about the Shadows or that Sheridan is mistaken about his wife.

Delenn wasn't wrong. She and Kosh knew and hid it from him.

Eighties ZomCom
Sep 10, 2008




Delenn assumed Anna was dead because Anna wouldn't willingly work for the Shadows. She didn't know about people being used as CPUs for Shadow vessels or what effect that has on people.

Issaries
Sep 15, 2008

"Negotiations were going well. They were very impressed by my hat." -Issaries the Concilliator"

Eighties ZomCom posted:

Delenn assumed Anna was dead because Anna wouldn't willingly work for the Shadows. She didn't know about people being used as CPUs for Shadow vessels or what effect that has on people.

Delenn Lied, Sheridan Died.

Don't trust her.

BigShasta
Oct 28, 2010

Jedit posted:

That's the ep we're talking about. But Delenn literally contradicts him by saying that those who wouldn't work for the Shadows would be killed. Sheridan doesn't start to accept that Anna is dead until after that, because he knows she would never work for them. As it turns out he was right and Delenn was wrong, but as painted she's the one who has the knowledge and we're not meant to think that either she is mistaken about the Shadows or that Sheridan is mistaken about his wife.

Fair point, but I think it's perfectly reasonable at that point to doubt that they are certainly right and she must be dead. I think we're meant to be unsure and wonder if she could still be alive. Nothing they could say can contradict that Morden is there, and the series has already shown that minor plot details will come back to matter at future points.

The real question is: Why did Morden quit his cushy bridge job from the pilot? A perfect place to spy for the shadows. :cheeky:

Anonymouse Mook
Jul 12, 2006

Showing Vettel the way since 1979

I figure the important thing is that because of both Kosh and Delenn insisting she is dead, it is believable that Sheridan thinks that is the case. This way when the revelation hits him it works, rather than us just sitting there thinking "Why did he not think she could still be alive?" After all, he does accuse Delenn of hiding the truth when he found out.

CainFortea
Oct 15, 2004


Bell_ posted:

That post made me suspicious, too, but maybe if you watched enough other shows one could pick it up?

How about the bit about "I hope Vir gets a chance to do it"

Anonymouse Mook
Jul 12, 2006

Showing Vettel the way since 1979

CainFortea posted:

How about the bit about "I hope Vir gets a chance to do it"

To be fair, I think we all wished Vir would get his wish. That scamp.

Bell_
Sep 3, 2006

Tiny Baltimore
A billion light years away
A goon's posting the same thing
But he's already turned to dust
And the shitpost we read
Is a billion light-years old
A ghost just like the rest of us

Anonymouse Mook posted:

To be fair, I think we all wished Vir would get his wish. That scamp.

Vir was my surrogate when I was watching the show years ago, even if G'Kar was my favorite character. I wished for this too, but I forgot about it until the payoff next season.

Absurd Alhazred
Mar 27, 2010

by Athanatos

Bell_ posted:

Vir was my surrogate when I was watching the show years ago, even if G'Kar was my favorite character. I wished for this too, but I forgot about it until the payoff next season.

What's funny is that I saw the payoff before the foreshadowing, due to the way I picked up the reruns, so for me the foreshadowing was the payoff. Happened with a lot of things in this show.

Blindeye
Sep 22, 2006

I can't believe I kissed you!

ultrafilter posted:

About halfway through the series a discussion came up online about the predictability of the series. JMS's response is worth reading. From the guide page for Messages From Earth:


Somebody's who's familiar with science fiction, fantasy and story conventions in general is going to see a lot of what's in B5 coming because it's a fairly typical saga. The details are novel, but the story structure isn't, and it's not trying to hide where it's going from the audience.

If only the GoT showrunners followed his advice instead of seeking to make sure NO ONE sees what's coming.

That's how you get King Bran

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Anonymouse Mook posted:

To be fair, I think we all wished Vir would get his wish. That scamp.

That payoff was good, but it's a bit weird because the setup is made in a private conversation between Vir and Morden. How did Londo know that Vir wanted it?

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


B5 does so much foreshadowing. I didn't pick it up until I rewatched, but it's totally believable to me that someone else would. It's all in there.

Absurd Alhazred
Mar 27, 2010

by Athanatos

Jedit posted:

That payoff was good, but it's a bit weird because the setup is made in a private conversation between Vir and Morden. How did Londo know that Vir wanted it?

The Shadows were the ones who set it up. Everyone gets what they wish for. Everyone.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


I just assumed the head on a pike was the standard Centauri way of dealing with people like Morden.

ConfusedUs
Feb 24, 2004

Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!





Also, if I recall correctly, Vir does not hide his hatred of Morden from Londo.

Vavrek
Mar 2, 2013

I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?
I figured there was some conversation later about it. You get one really good burn on somebody and then you're tempted to repeat it awkwardly to your friends. I can picture Vir saying, at some point, "You know, he asked me what I wanted once, and I told him ..."

MikusR
Jan 5, 2008

AntherUslessPoster posted:

Delenn said what she said, that Kosh is the last remaining First One.

Delenn said that Kosh is a Zorlon and Zorlons are the last remaining First Ones

DrBouvenstein
Feb 28, 2007

I think I'm a doctor, but that doesn't make me a doctor. This fancy avatar does.

Vavrek posted:

I figured there was some conversation later about it. You get one really good burn on somebody and then you're tempted to repeat it awkwardly to your friends. I can picture Vir saying, at some point, "You know, he asked me what I wanted once, and I told him ..."

Yeah, either that or Londo had telepaths scan Morden to get any possible info that might be helpful, like if more Shadow vessels were hiding on Centauri Prime, or if anyone else had been working with him other than Refa and Cartagia. They picked up that bit of info and passed it along.

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

How do the shadows get around when they're invisible? Like if they were just ethereal floating tentacle blobs I could imagine them taking up space where nobody is, but they're big and six-legged.

I thought that there was some implication that when Morden was asking "what do you want" there was some shadow-mojo coaxing more passionate answers out, but when Londo answers, he just went through a cramped elevator with Morden.

Doctor Zero
Sep 21, 2002

Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Eighties ZomCom posted:

Delenn assumed Anna was dead because Anna wouldn't willingly work for the Shadows. She didn't know about people being used as CPUs for Shadow vessels or what effect that has on people.

Maybe I’m being too harsh on the character but her going “but we didn’t know for sure” I felt was a totally cop out to try to do damage control. She even says that if they gave him hope he would have went to Za’ha’dum after her and the whole galaxy would fall, so at the very least she intentionally hid the possibility. And I still feel like they would have had a pretty good suspicion that she wasn’t dead.

Vavrek
Mar 2, 2013

I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

SlothfulCobra posted:

How do the shadows get around when they're invisible? Like if they were just ethereal floating tentacle blobs I could imagine them taking up space where nobody is, but they're big and six-legged.

They're spiders. They scurry around constantly. This is JMS's official answer.

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

The mst3k theme comes to mind.

McSpanky
Jan 16, 2005






SlothfulCobra posted:

How do the shadows get around when they're invisible? Like if they were just ethereal floating tentacle blobs I could imagine them taking up space where nobody is, but they're big and six-legged.

They were crawling on the ceiling, like spiders do.

Narsham
Jun 5, 2008

Doctor Zero posted:

Maybe I’m being too harsh on the character but her going “but we didn’t know for sure” I felt was a totally cop out to try to do damage control. She even says that if they gave him hope he would have went to Za’ha’dum after her and the whole galaxy would fall, so at the very least she intentionally hid the possibility. And I still feel like they would have had a pretty good suspicion that she wasn’t dead.

Delenn wanted Sheridan to quit poking the Shadows by looking into the fate of the ship, and if he knew Anna might still be alive, that would mess up the plan. Delenn is probably the most deceptive character on the entire show, which doesn't make her bad or evil necessarily, but I think that gets ignored between the "Minbari do not lie" stuff and her obvious position as the moral compass/goody two-shoes of the cast.

The show even pays that off at the end of S3 when Sheridan has to weigh what to do in response to what Delenn told him during War without End.

I also love how JMS plays with ambiguity in relation to Delenn, whether in Soul Hunter, where the end scene shows Delenn either releasing simulated versions of dead people or freeing souls back to the Great Wheel or murdering/euthanizing people, or in that War without End moment, where it's unclear whether Delenn's apparent last-minute interjection had the effect she intended (ie. she said that knowing what would have happened, as an act of sacrifice) or the opposite of that effect (ie. she was trying to change the past).

Doctor Zero
Sep 21, 2002

Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

The_Doctor posted:

Morpheus? :stare:

Are they background League of Non-Aligned Worlds?


Okay, okay. I am impressed. Fine.

Also, SlothfulCobra!!! :argh: The Gaim don't show up till the end of Season 2, and only Aardvark is past that point, I'm pretty sure.

That thread is getting dangerously close to spilling the beans on important poo poo, what with talking about what they did with Kosh's costume and whatnot. :siren:

Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



Doctor Zero posted:

Okay, okay. I am impressed. Fine.

Also, SlothfulCobra!!! :argh: The Gaim don't show up till the end of Season 2, and only Aardvark is past that point, I'm pretty sure.

That thread is getting dangerously close to spilling the beans on important poo poo, what with talking about what they did with Kosh's costume and whatnot. :siren:

Report the post, ultrafilter has previously displayed poor discipline in that thread.

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

I didn't remember them showing up later into the show, and so far as I can tell, their appearance isn't at all plot-relevant, they're just in the background and are sort of implied to have been just one of the many background races all along, so it doesn't seem like a spoiler at all to me? I can't even find it written down when their first appearance is, but their wiki page implies that they were part of the League of worlds since long before the fall of Narn.

Like what'd be a spoiler would be the blurry aliens.

Torrannor
Apr 27, 2013

---FAGNER---
TEAM-MATE
As for Anna, every character but Franklin gets a visit from their ex in their first season. Sheridan gets a visit from his sister to talk about his dead wife. Also, important character who "died", but we didn't see them die, and there's no body. I think modern viewers have a good chance to pick up those clues.

It's a bit like when people criticize certain older mainstream works for using now common tropes, not realizing that the show/film/book was actually the first medium to use the trope, and everybody else is copying them.

Doctor Zero
Sep 21, 2002

Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

SlothfulCobra posted:

I didn't remember them showing up later into the show, and so far as I can tell, their appearance isn't at all plot-relevant, they're just in the background and are sort of implied to have been just one of the many background races all along, so it doesn't seem like a spoiler at all to me? I can't even find it written down when their first appearance is, but their wiki page implies that they were part of the League of worlds since long before the fall of Narn.

Like what'd be a spoiler would be the blurry aliens.

Not a spoiler per se, but we had a huge debate about whether or not someone should get an AV that contains Marcus, and ultimately many thought that it's best not because it's something that hasn't shown up before. I'm not trying to say you ruined the show so I'm not reporting anyone, but you did ruin my game of trying to see if The Doctor would pick up on the Sandman connection on his own. :sigh:

BTW - I knew they weren't in the show early on, so this page seems right.

http://www.frostjedi.com/vex/html/notes.html

Entry: Gaim
Appearance: First appeared in a few blurry frames in "And Now For a Word" (Thanks to Kurt L. Reisler for discovering this!); seen clearly twice in "Confessions and Lamentations," "A Day in the Strife," "Exogenesis," thereafter became a regular background alien...



E: Man, it's going to be a trip when the Younger Races join us here and read all of us talking about them behind their back. :haw:

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Hah! I completely had forgotten that G'kar was banging one of Londo's wives.

TheDiceMustRoll
Jul 23, 2018
Watch group plowed through 10 straight episodes of Babylon 5 on wednesday. It was a good use of a day that was way too loving hot, had four dysons working that night.

They actually took a shine to marcus right away, one of the viewers just refers to him as "the jedi" but one of them picked up on the LOTR poo poo pretty hard. I mean it's really hard not to, with the scene where Ivanova is using the space palantir to find lost secrets, and then is found by the enemy, to the point where it zooms in on the loving Great Eye of one of the shadows, I mean come on.

They also loved the two episodes that frequently end up on "skip this, its garbage" lists: the black rose killer and the Vindrizi episodes. I get they aren't balls to the wall crazy like episodes 9 and 10 where the Clark administration takes over the government, bombs mars, and attempts to board and take over babylon 5, but they're also really loving good episodes, with the Black Rose Killer episode being a Star Trek episode that's better at doing a Star Trek story than Star Trek is.



Jedit posted:

That payoff was good, but it's a bit weird because the setup is made in a private conversation between Vir and Morden. How did Londo know that Vir wanted it?

The Centauri are ridiculously backwards and barbaric, with constant assassinations, honor duels, changing emperors, obsessions with past glories, putting someone like Morden's head on a spike is not, under any circumstance, out of character.

Angry Salami
Jul 27, 2013

Don't trust the skull.
The hell kind of crazy people say you should skip "Passing through Gethsemane"?

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

TheDiceMustRoll posted:

The Centauri are ridiculously backwards and barbaric, with constant assassinations, honor duels, changing emperors, obsessions with past glories, putting someone like Morden's head on a spike is not, under any circumstance, out of character.

Of course it isn't - for Londo. What's odd about it is that Londo tells Vir he's got a gift for him outside in the garden. This is Vir, who of all the Centauri is not the way you describe and would not under normal circumstances find it pleasant to see a head on a stick.

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




Jedit posted:

and would not under normal circumstances find it pleasant to see a head on a stick.

And it's nominally out of Vir's character. I'm starting to subscribe to the "the Centauri court telepaths stripmined Morden's mind" theory.

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!

TheDiceMustRoll posted:

They also loved the two episodes that frequently end up on "skip this, its garbage" lists: the black rose killer

I haven't seen any lists that skip Passing Through Gethsemane, and I've seen the list SyFy published that recommended skipping Signs and Portents, Confessions and Lamentations and The Long Twilight Struggle. (Although it also says "if you're feeling lazy" you should skip to Severed Dreams. Watching just the final episode of a 3 parter kind of sums up the list, as does recommending skipping all of s5 bar Sleeping in Light but watching ThirdSpace)

Doctor Zero
Sep 21, 2002

Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

MrL_JaKiri posted:

I haven't seen any lists that skip Passing Through Gethsemane, and I've seen the list SyFy published that recommended skipping Signs and Portents, Confessions and Lamentations and The Long Twilight Struggle. (Although it also says "if you're feeling lazy" you should skip to Severed Dreams. Watching just the final episode of a 3 parter kind of sums up the list, as does recommending skipping all of s5 bar Sleeping in Light but watching ThirdSpace)

What the actual gently caress?

Erulisse
Feb 12, 2019

A bad poster trying to get better.

TheDiceMustRoll posted:

skipping literally any episode of B5 should be a crime

I highlighted the important parts of this message along with italicizing the most important ones.

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CainFortea
Oct 15, 2004


Jedit posted:

Of course it isn't - for Londo. What's odd about it is that Londo tells Vir he's got a gift for him outside in the garden. This is Vir, who of all the Centauri is not the way you describe and would not under normal circumstances find it pleasant to see a head on a stick.

A) Vir did not appear to keep his intense dislike of Morden secret. It would not take a telepath for Londo to go "you know who hates Morden the most? Vir."

2) It doesn't matter if Vir would never actually put someone's head on a pike, if it's a common enough thing in a society he was raised in then that's a threat he will know about.

C) I also don't think Vir was ever someone who is against putting heads on pikes. Vir was against doing it for political infighting, or slavery reasons. He would have absolutely no problem doing it for "you are actually evil and can gently caress right off" reasons.

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