Discussion Post - 1x01 "Midnight on the Firing Line"

[bluefall]

It's Friday night, it must be time for a discussion post! This week's offering:

1x01: Midnight on the Firing Line

When the Narn attack a Centauri colony, Londo and G'Kar nearly come to blows. Meanwhile, raiders are attacking transport ships near the station.

Vital Stats
Production number: 103
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Richard Compton

Original air date: January 26, 1994

Arc Notes / Story Points of Interest
- This season's intro narration, along with the emphasis of this story on the Narn/Centauri conflict and the role of the B5 staff in the Council, sets the stage for the primary five-season theme of war and peace among the stars. More subtle is the apparently "flavor" information about the presidential elections back on Earth. Sinclair's waning attention at Santiago's winning platform is an especially sneaky touch.
- The fate of Sophie Ivanova, though rather harder to miss, is likewise subtle in that it seems to be merely a combination of character detail and "this is how telepathy works here" Psi Corps exposition.
- The most deft moment has got to be Sinclair's conversation with Kosh. It's astonishing how much more sense the Vorlons make once the series is over.

Trivia
- The episode title comes from a song by Harry Chapin, specifically the lyrics
and if our future lies on the firing line
are we brave enough to see the signals and the signs

JMS also picked the name for somewhat meta reasons, referring to his belief that the show would come under fire and his decision to be cool with that.

- Part of the purpose of putting Sinclair in a Starfury was to prove that Babylon 5 "isn't Star Trek," since of course you'd never see Picard flying around shooting shit in a fighter craft. You may speculate amongst yourselves as to how JMS factored Kirk into this equation.

- It had been a while since the pilot movie was filmed, and most of the returning actors took a while to get back into character and remember their various motivations and secrets and tics and whatnot. Apparently Peter Jurasik just stood up straight and yelled "MISter GariBALdi!" and boom, just like that he was Londo.


Our story begins here, guys. So exciting! What were your first impressions? Your favorite characters out of the gate? Your questions and speculations? How'd you feel about the sets and costuming and special effects?

A reminder: not everyone playing along has seen the series before, so please be considerate about major spoilers. Vagueness, warnings and/or spoiler tags are appreciated.

Comments

Comment written during view

[01d55]

Someone thought that CG would look better than what Star Trek and Star Wars had been doing.

They were wrong.

The WB stream keeps track of which ads you've seen so you can rewind without having to rewatch an ad! BETTER THAN YOUTUBE OMG.

Everyone who isn't green is white.

Centauri ambassador is way too honest when it comes to admitting how unqualified he is for his job.

Woah wait he gets clever when he's drunk.

"YOU WANT ME" ahahahahaaha.

Not as clever as Naarn. Damn that was smooth.

BUT: owned by evidence.

[bluefall]

Everyone who isn't green is white.

An interesting thing I learned from Stargate fandom: notice that, in the credits, all humans have both full names and titles, while all aliens are first name only. It's especially noteworthy because they actually use Londo's surname in this very episode, yet we're still meant to think of him as just "Londo," not "Ambassador Mollari".

In a genre where species conflict is consistently and repeatedly used as a metaphor for race conflict, there's a subtle insult in regularly assigning names to aliens that code as more 'primitive' and treating them less formally than the humans around them. It's less blatant here than it was in Stargate because everyone is white, aliens included, rather than the "white humans, nonwhite aliens" thing the Gateverse was so fond of, but it still makes me raise an eyebrow whenever I see it.

They were wrong.

I don't mind it. The station kinda looks like it escaped from a Reboot episode, but not to a distracting degree, and I think the Starfuries look pretty cool.

That thing with that Vorlon

[01d55]

I'm going to have to take your word on him making more sense later.

Am disappointed that a pair of supposedly experienced diplomats fell for the old logical or misunderstanding.

[bluefall]

Pretty good bet Kosh knows exactly what Sinclair was saying and was deliberately turning the phrase on him. You'll notice fairly quick that Vorlons enjoy being mysterious and sagely and get off on being smarter than us, they're kind of like Tolkien elves IN SPACE with an attitude problem.

[bluefall]

So if you start from "plot" = "what does this character want, and what's keeping hir from getting it," here's the breakdown for the cast motivations this ep.

Sinclair: wants to keep his jurisdiction safe, and facilitate peace.
Garibaldi: wants to stop the raids.
Londo: wants revenge.
G'Kar: wants revenge, with a side order of respect.
Ivanova: wants her boss to get what he wants.
Talia: wants Ivanova to like her.

Lulz.

In other news, while most of the sets here are pretty good considering the era and the budget - the Zocolo especially really feels like it's on a space station, kind of industrial and cramped but also vaguely futuristic in a fairly timeless way - I think the Council room does a serious disservice to the series. Babylon 5 is supposed to be, like, the UN of outer space; this is a place where a group of ambassadors vote on sanctions that impact multiple species across hundreds of worlds. But visually, it's less impressive than a town meeting on Gilmore Girls. With those few extras, that quiet and that small of a space, there's no real sense that anything that happens there is even that important to the station, much less the galaxy beyond.

When you are more bloodthirsty than an elected government that's just been attacked...

[01d55]

I felt that the quality of the meeting room was consistent with the quality of the diplomats. That one human dude was doing both their jobs for them while also stopping pirates!

I also felt that these both point to governments that aren't especially invested in not going to war with each other and not at all invested in third parties not going to war with each other.

So basically, exactly like the UN.

[rahxepheon]

I haven’t seen the series before, so I was curious as to why the human race is (or seems to be) in charge of Babylon 5, and if the crew becomes more diverse as the series continues? Also, is there a reason for Londo having a significantly different accent from the rest of the Centauri we have seen, particularly when compared to his nephew?

[bluefall]

Babylon 5 doesn't suffer as badly from "race of warriors, race of scientists, race of diplomats," etc etc, as most sci-fi franchises - the Narn aren't the Klingons by a long shot - but each species does still kind of have a shtick, and apparently, "multiculturalism" is humanity's. Delenn actually has a line about that, later in the show, that only humans would build and staff a space station and then invite other races to come hang out there. So basically the humans run B5 because nobody else would have thought to have created such a place.

is there a reason for Londo having a significantly different accent from the rest of the Centauri

Actually yes. Jurasik came up with the accent himself, because he thought it would make him more convincingly alien, and then once they actually start casting other Centauri, they didn't make anybody else use it.

[aulayan]

so I was curious as to why the human race is (or seems to be) in charge of Babylon 5

IIRC, there might be more reasons given in "Sky full of Stars" and "Babylon Squared", so I won't spoil the reasons here (even though it's background information).

Needless to say...It actually makes sense why it happened that way. It's more than just the multicultural humanity thing, but it also plays off humanity's previous experience with aliens. (Humans have a naivete problem, oh yes.)

[rahxepheon]

Cool, thank you both for the explanations.

[galateus]

Yeah a lot of early scenes were really awkward and made it hard to forget they were on a set and were waiting for prompts instead of having an organic conversation.

Talia Winters was getting kinda slashy at the end in the bar scene. "I just wanted to know if it was me" sounds like an awkward breakup line.

I did notice that Delenn's Minbari-head looked waaay cheaper than in the pilot. And I loled heartily at the space-CGI, considering the first season of ReBoot was airing about that time.

This Sinclair guy is still incredibly boring and annoying and needs to die yesterday. I was kinda hoping in my ignorance that he was just a pilot character who'd get replaced like with Ivanova, but no. (Is the pilot in continuity? Confusingly TheWB.com put up the wrong summary for this episode so I thought it'd be a retelling at first.)

And this is kinda par for the sci-fi course, but it seemed really incongruous to have on the one hand, blatant foreshadowing of a speciesist human supremacist political plotline, and on the other, blatant generalizations about how Narns all sell out to the highest bidder and Minbari are all "honorable" and would never use sneak-attacks (...except for that sneaky assassin that tried to start a war by framing the commander for murder?), and the narrative just presents those as basic facts that the whole plot hinged on.

G'Kar is so awesome, I don't even know.

[aulayan]

I did notice that Delenn's Minbari-head looked waaay cheaper than in the pilot.

Actually...They were trying to make her appear more masculine than, and decided that was rather stupid and went with something more appropriately shaped for the actress.

this is kinda par for the sci-fi course...

Now this is interesting and I wonder what it really is doing. You learn a lot more about the various alien species the further you go in, and they feel more culturally real (not completely, not at all, but a lot more) than they do here at first glance. So I'm wondering if the writer, JMS, wrote it this way because he knew a lot of people would have more familiarity with Trek, so was playing off their expectations on aliens..

This Sinclair guy is still incredibly boring and annoying and needs to die yesterday.

I felt like you once. By the time I was 3/4ths through the first season, I liked him a lot more. You may too, keep an open mind.

G'Kar is so awesome, I don't even know.

No, you don't. But you will.

[galateus]

was playing off their expectations on aliens..

That would be interesting, but what's weird is they actually treated the post-imperialist Centauri as more like people this week, what with the in-fighting and giving Londo half the episode's PoV time. Whereas the oppressed!species and the exotic-religious!species were pretty well othered, and not in the intriguing actually-alien way the Vorlons are.

[aulayan]

Well, The "Exotic Religious!Species" is going to be..uh...way too center stage IMO. At least that was my opinion years and years ago. It may change with these repeat viewings.

And to the oppressed!species. Oh how I love the Narns. trust me. The three major alien species are, IMO, given a lot of time throughout the series.

[aulayan]

The main thing I loved about this episode after I saw it the first time (which was well into season 3, if not season 4...I was a latecomer) was the political asides.

It was rather nice to see that there were elections going on, and people were talking about them. It made the world feel more real, right there in the first episode.

Also they set up the Londo/G'kar stuff immediately. Because, hands down, the two best actors on the show.

Other than that, I was meh to the episode for the most part, and still am. Season 1 was rather clunky, but had a few really decent points. JMS was still trying to find his legs, and of course, other people were still writing episodes. (He later becomes a control freak and writes all of season 3, 4 and most of 5 excepting a Gaiman-penned episode).

Also I so need to check my dreamwidth account more often. Totally forgot about this until just now, eep.