There seem to be a fair number of Babylon 5 fans here, so let’s have some in-group fun: Name the most outstanding moment for each character, anywhere in the series. I have mine but will just throw out two to start:
Vir: after Londo tells him he is drunk. (“Ohhhhhh, you BETCHA!”) One of the finest exposition speeches in the whole show.
Zack: “Don’t say that until you know what I was shooting at.”
Susan Ivanova: “God sent me.” (And the speech that precedes it.)
Ivanova: Have you ever heard of the hour of the wolf?
Lyta: No.
Ivanova: My father told me about it. It’s the time between three and four in the morning. You can’t sleep, and all you can see is the troubles and the problems and the ways that your life should’ve gone but didn’t. All you can hear is the sound of your own heart. I’ve been living in the hour of the wolf for seven days, Lyta. Seven days. The wolf and I are now on a first-name basis. In times like this, my father used to take one large glass of vodka before bed. ‘To keep the wolf away,’ he said. And then he would take three very small drinks of vodka, just in case she had cubs while she was waiting outside. (takes a drink)
Ivanova: It doesn’t work.
Londo and Lord Refa:
Lord Refa: “Why would I abandon them?”
** Londo:** “Because I have asked you too, and because your loyalty to our people would be greater than your ambition, and because I have poisoned your drink.”
**Vir Cotto to Mr. Morden: **“I want to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and put it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come at too high a price. I want to look up into your lifeless eyes and wave, like this <smiles and waves his fingers at Morden>. Do you think you and your associates can arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?”
And of course, the later scene where he does exactly that.
Nonsense. His signature moment is when Morden asks him what he wants.
Only one human captain has ever survived battle with the Mimbari fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else.
Well, I don’t mean this to be an argument thread, but I selected that one because while the Morden scene is both funnier and more chilling, it’s kind of out of character for Vir at that point in his development. The drunk scene starts with Vir at his earliest stage - a bumbling fool - and progresses into deeper and deeper waters until it’s almost too painful to watch. It’s the moment we learn that Vir really has more to him than being a third-rate bureaucrat from a second-rate family.
I love this one, but for me, it was the conversation between Delenn and Sheridan:
“Ivanova sent me to find you. She said you haven’t been sleeping, that you’ve barely been eating. She said that you have been, in her words, carrying on ‘cranky’. I looked up the word cranky, it said ‘grouchy’. I looked up grouchy, it said ‘crotchety’. No wonder you have such an eccentric culture. None of your words have their own meanings, you have to look up one word to understand another. It never ends.”
I loved Delenn and Sheridan’s romance. It was so sweet and natural, and it took so long to bloom, and every time they looked at each other starry-eyed I thought “Now this is the way to showcase a romance. YOU HAVE TIME. Use it.”
…nah: disagree, and agree with RealityChuck. The original speech, and the wonderful follow up, is one of the greatest character moments on TV.
Lyta: “Oh, and you mentioned wondering what my pleasure threshold is. I just recently found out…I don’t have one. Have a very, very nice day, G’Kar.”
G’kar:
Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.
And it’s truly a testament to Andreas Katsulas that he could make a line like that a signature moment.
I don’t know if I can pick just one line for either Londo or G’Kar, especially the latter - just too damned many good, salty ones.
“It’s like being nibbled to death by cats!”
“Perhaps it is *everything *you say.”
“We don’t treat all of our guests so badly.” “Yes, you do.”
And maybe the one line of G’Kar’s that resonates the most: “…but not today.”
G’kar: Not many fishies
Left in the sea
Not many fishies
Just Londo and me…
Almost any scene with Londo and G’kar was gold.
THIS was one of my very favorites.
Londo: We’re in here! Can anyone hear us?!
G’kar: I hear you.
The best thing about this scene, beyond showing the depths of hatred G’kar has for Londo, is the fact that Andreas Katsulas decided to take a scene that was written to be dead serious, and play it with G’kar laughing about their predicament. True genius!
Love, love, love that scene - in fact, any scene with the two of them together. As you watch the seriers it becomes more evident that it is really about the two of them, more than anything else.
Ivanova and Lt. Corwin:
“If I’ll live through this job … without completely losing my mind, it will be a miracle of biblical proportions.”
“Well, there goes my faith in the Almighty.”
Poor Corwin. Always the guy on the outside, never important enough to get into the Inner Circle.
Although I agree with this quote, an honourable mention should be awarded to the B5 mantra.
Also, here is the God sent me speech.
Zathras have very sad life. Probably have sad death, too. But at least there is symmetry.
G’Kar in The Long Twilight Struggle
“No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by the force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments, and tyrants, and armies can not stand. The Centauri learned this lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.”
Delenn, in Comes The Inquisitor
Delenn: If I fall, another will take my place, and another, and another.
Sebastian: But your great cause!
Delenn: This is my cause - Life! One life or a billion, it’s all the same!
Sebastian: Then you make the sacrifice willingly? No fame. No armies or banners or cities to celebrate your name. You will die alone and unremarked and forgotten.
Delenn: This body is only a shell. You cannot touch me, you cannot harm me. I’m not afraid.
Ivanova : well Captain’s going where every man has gone before.
Sheridan-> Bester: Get out of my chair
The marriage scene between Franklin and Marcus
Declan
Dr. Stephen Franklin(while Marcus is irritating him): Marcus, this is the kind of conversation that can only end with a gunshot.