An image that has been haunting me all week is an exchange between G’Kar, the Narn ambassador to Babylon 5, and Vir, the Centauri junior diplomat, after the Centauri have used mass-drivers to hurl asteroids into the Narn homeworld, killing millions and turning Narn into a Centauri possession.
Vir goes up to G’Kar and attempts to apologize for the damage his people have done to G’Kar’s. G’Kar turns to Vir. He slices his hand, letting the blood drip on the floor. “Dead… dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead… How do you apologize to them?”
“I can’t,” Vir admits.
“Then I cannot forgive,” G’Kar tells him, and walks away
In fact, a lot of B5 quotes seem relevant right about now. Do any of you see any B5 or science fiction analogues to the tragedy in NYC?
You are not the only one. I didn’t read your post in full becuase I am watching B5 through for the first time.
In fact, Sci-Fi themselves see the connection. They haven’t been airing B5 all week out of respect. I’ve been kinda frustrated about it because I was hoping to have it as a release from all the news. I understand though.
The international aspects of the show are very closely related to what is happening now.
I posted about this in another thread when folks were trying to decide how to memorialize/remember the WTC. Many came down on the side of rebuilding, rather than having a park or something. I mentioned the scene in the B5 pilot when Delenn asks Sinclair “Why Babylon 5?” After all, the first four stations were blown up or disappeared. Sinclair explains that humans keep on doing something until they get it done right, or finished. They are stubborn that way. So when the first four were destroyed, they built it AGAIN.
I’m not the only one! Oh, and they DID run it last night.
Spoiler material below…
…I keep thinking about how I reacted when Clark’s people blew up that transport carrying 10,000 civilians, and how I reacted to thousands of REAL people getting killed similarly. It’s creeping me out.
And I keep calling them “rat bastards.” They ARE, of course, though I guess that’s an insult to rats. You’d think Susan would have thought of that.
Yow. A lot of “Farscape” fans love “Babylon 5”, too, and I’m beginning to see why.
The SciFi Channel yanked its scheduled episode of “Farscape” (“Suns And Lovers”) last night for similar reasons. A space station is attacked, trapping the protagonists with a bunch of civilians, including children. Turns out it was…a religious fanatic. I won’t critcise SciFi for this decision.
I also see parallels between the Shadows and the terrorists. Both of them strike randomly to cause maximum terror and to set different races to war against each other. At least the Shadows had a purpose: to strengthen races through conflicts in which the strong annihilate the weak.
I’m also reading Terry Pratchett’s Jingo with a new perspective.
IMHO, the opening theme for B5, season 4 (read as a multi-voice monologue) says it best.
SPOILER SPACE
“It was the year of fire…”
“the year of destruction…”
“the year we took back what was ours.”
“It was the year of rebirth…”
“the year of great sadness…”
“the year of pain…”
“and the year of joy.”
“It was a new age.”
“It was the end of history.”
“It was the year everything changed.”
“The year is 2261. The place:”
“Babylon 5.”
The scene Baker described is the one that has been running through my head most often these days, but there’s no question that B5 is full of shockingly appropriate scenes and quotes.
And Mars, the opening for season 4 has always given me chills. Now it does so more than ever.
Yeah, Jingo is a great book and has some good connections to this. I’m trying not to read my Pratchett lately (because I’ve been neglecting other good books to reread them over and over) but I think I may need to go back to Jingo.
G’kar always got the best lines:
“G’Quan wrote: ‘There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.’”
Was just re-reading Pratchett’s Small Gods which i thought has a couple of really appropriate scenes too, especially the last scene/exchange.
All week my boyfriend has been repeating a Kosh quote. Sheridan or Sinclair asks Kosh what he thinks of the Narn and the Centauri.
Kosh says, “They are a doomed race.”
S. says, “The Narn or the Centauri?”
Kosh, “Yes.”
Sorry if I misquoted it a bit, we don’t have cable so neither of us has seen the episode in a long time. B5 was such a good show; watching it felt like reading a book. BTW, I agree that Small Gods is a wonderful book. I think I’ll re-read it this weekend.
I see it as giving the show more resonance. Art (which B5 unquestionably is) serves as a funhouse mirror to reflect the best and worst of humanity.
Kosh’s quote is apposite, “The avalanche has started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote.”
