I point out in most versions of the Arthur myth Merlin is taken out of the story after being killed or imprisoned by Morgana le Fay. I also note John Boorman's "Excalibur" is a REALLY good movie, I'm utterly shocked Laura's never seen it, and, once we're in our final house and get our extensive DVD collection out of storage, she must watch it...
But I digress...
*Ahem*
Anyways, soon as Marcus called Kosh "Merlin," I said, "Great. He's gonna die this season." And he did.
Of course Anna Sheridan is Morgana le Fay. Oh, that rascal JMS dropping his hints while tweaking noses of the fans...
Oh, Marcus also calls himself "Galahad," as he is "without sin." I doubt Marcus is "without sin," but he is a virgin. And, yes, Ivanova, you totally should have boffed him.
In the original presentation order we had not yet learned Delenn was the final vote to blow the shit out of the humans following the death of Dukhat (c.f. "Atonement" in season 4), but, with that knowledge, it's even more moving and tragic David's broken mind wants to give Delenn the sword. His healing is not Delenn's healing, else "Atonement" could not happen. I'll go as far as to speculate her accepting the sword, in fact, heightens her own lingering guilt and shame. Here's the actual triggerman who fired the shot which killed Dukhat, broken, desperate, seeking absolution only she can give. Delenn absolutely would have been told who David McWhirter was. In healing his "old wound," she rips her own open.
Mira wouldn't have known this subtext, but it reads on Delenn's face when she takes the sword.
In non-spoilers I said I suspected director Mike Vejar may have had a reduced budget:
We'd come out of the "Independence trilogy" which was very ambitious in terms of VFX. Coming up in a couple of weeks we'll have Ship of Tears, Interludes and Examinations, War Without End, and Walkabout, all of which are VFX heavy episodes. I suspect Ceremonies of Light and Dark, Sic Transit Vir, and Late Delivery from Avalon are all "cheapies" (low VFX, lots of stock footage) to give the VFX teams extra resources for the insane things ahead.
Non Spoilers 2 (The League of Non Aligned Worlds):
According to the B5 fan Wiki "The Babylon Project" these are the species seen to be League Members. Note the membership seems to ebb and flow, and perhaps not all species have ambassadors on B5 at all times, since, as of this episode, we haven't seen an Abbai since season 1, don't see a Gaim until season 3, and the Markab are all dead:
Abbai Matriarchate
Balosians
Brakiri Syndicracy
Cascor
Drazi Freehold
Gaim Intelligence
Grome Marga Chulda
Androma Republic
Hyach Grand Council of Elders
Iksha
Llort Mi-Ma-Ti
Markab Confederacy (Extinct)
Onteen
The pak'ma'ra
Ventuki Conglomerate (Vree)
Yolu Ingyo
Some of these species only appear in books and spin off media.
Anyway, this episode features Drazi, Brakiri, Llort, Grome, pak'ma'ra, and Hyach on camera. Five of sixteen species. Of those five I will go ahead and say future episodes with show Brakiri and Drazi ships guarding Babylon 5 (yup, another "Don't care Spoiler"), along with the Vree... Yet the Vree are not on camera in this episode (Vree are the "stereotypical Gray aliens" seen in s1 when the one guy says, "HIS grandfather abducted MY grandfather!"). Obviously the outreach for the defense treaty continues outside this episode.
There are also species who just aren't part of the League. Like whatever N'grath was. Money was spent on that suit and you'd think they'd re-paint it a bit occasionally stick it behind a table in the back row.
I suppose the biggest problem is, by using the sword metaphor, the entire story is forced to sidestep a basic premise of the B5 universe - no unauthorised weapons allowed on Babylon 5. While I absolutely buy Dr. Franklin, as main command staff, could get security to stand down and let him take "Arthur" with him, it's - as Simon so correctly noted - a dude walking around the station with a big honking sword... Which he uses to hit people. Yeah, he doesn't kill anyone, but, in the fight with G'Kar, one assailant is cut in the leg, another in the arm. There's a missing scene where Garibaldi is unhappy about this...
Fortunately for "Arthur," Garibaldi is too busy being preoccupied with his box o' food to care?
Franklin is NOT a psychologist or psychiatrist. It's also true that said option is never brought up. Now, in general, I like Franklin as a character, but my personal B5 drinking game has, "drink when Franklin says 'I'm a Doctor,' and 'finish your drink when Franklin gets too self righteous about his job.'" DRINK!
Even more unfortunately for Franklin, his "mitigating factors" for his mistakes in the episode are, "Franklin is taking too many stims and isn't on top of his game."
Sigh.
Mike Vejar... Yeah, there aren't that many excellent touches in this episode - but there are a few. There's a nice 270° tracking shot in Isolab, the redress of the central corridor into the "endless hallway," a nice tracking shot of Marcus and Franklin as they leave customs and head up stairs... Vejar's "money shots" for the episode are during the flashback to Prometheus - namely, using a small LCD projector (new tech at the time) to throw the approaching Minbari ship and it's explosion across David's face. He'll use it again in a few episodes when Sheridan is being flight-trained in a Thunderbolt.
Yeah, that's technically a spoiler. Don't care. Unimportant. Hey, in a future episode Sheridan will be trained in a Thunderbolt. This follows "All Alone in the Night" where he discusses how he needs X amount of flight hours to keep his certification and flight pay.
Michael York tries his hardest to make the silly material work. I smile when he tells the old lady "Eyes as lovely as yours were not made for tears," I laugh during the scene where he and G'Kar are drinking (and Andreas Katsulas tries to steal the scene - against a lesser actor than York he would, easily). I admit to tearing up during the breakdown scene. Michael York's reading and Vejar's tight closeup and swelling orange light (another nice director touch) on, "The horses...the horses were on fire!" hits. The logic flaws in the episode are ALMOST swept aside by the power of that scene. It's horrifying. I don't know if his scream when the visuals intercut between the quarters and the endless hallway was just pulled from one of the production takes, or if it's ADR, but it does work.
Mira Furlan's performance also works, but that's a spoiler discussion.
The Post Office stuff is funny, and there's a legitimate story function there helping highlight the difficulties B5 faces as an independent state without Earth backing, but maybe that could have been trimmed a bit for more time on the Arthur/David plot?
What if we DID bring in a headshrinker and had Franklin ignore their advice and do what he does anyway? This would help further the "stims/mistakes" arc and would have at least given lip service to proper mental care. Especially as JMS himself IS trained in psychology. Ok, it's easy for me to second guess the writer 29 years later, but, yeah, I stand by this wish.
The Arthur myth comparisons at the end of the episode shouldn't be taken TOO seriously. Part of it is JMS having a little fun tweaking the audience. In online interactions during the initial run there'd be varied people saying, "Oh that's a Lord of the Rings reference," or, "That's a Star Wars reference," and JMS would often respond with something like, "Actually, I was pulling from history and Greek myth, and there are things older than Tolkien, so expand your frame of reference." I'm sure the mapping of B5 characters into Arthurian myth was a bit of a tweak to those fans. In part.
That dialog raises a follow up question. The FIRST question is, "Who the hell told Marcus about Sebastian?" The follow up is, "We all know who Mordred is." Um. We do? Morden, maybe, but who told Marcus about Morden? Things happen off screen and between episodes, and Marcus has been around for several months (Severed Dreams is April, Marcus arrives in January), so we'll lump those questions in with "How did Khan recognize Chekov?"
Here's the thing - this isn't anywhere near a top tier episode, but it's not a clunker, either. Neither of us have rejected the base premise of having a traumatised soldier break with reality seek metaphorical redemption. Meaning we haven't gone, "Why THIS?" We just think the execution was flawed. Ultimately the two core beats of the episode - the catatonic break and the passing of the sword to Delenn - work damn well.
Your first paragraph summed it up eloquently.
I think there's tonal mismatch. We'll have to see how Sic Transit Vir flows next week, but I almost feel the post office plot should have gone in that one. We're going from psychodrama to bureaucracy/heist farce from moment to moment, while the treaty bit - and forming that alliance could have been a B-plot with some ambassadors being assholes and others reasonable, but it's two scenes: "Here's a proposal." and "How'd it go? Good enough." to plug a logistics issue in the story. It's a two-scene version of "By Any Means Necessary," in showing how the command staff has to worry about supplies and bills - with the post office being the comic relief spin on the same thing.
The main thing I was curious about that I don't know they explained properly was, how'd he get the sword in the first place?
Drunk G'Kar makes this episode for me though. "A very satisfying *thump!"*
I imagine it takes quite a lot to get a Narn drunk. I wonder what was in that beer.
SPOILERS
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I point out in most versions of the Arthur myth Merlin is taken out of the story after being killed or imprisoned by Morgana le Fay. I also note John Boorman's "Excalibur" is a REALLY good movie, I'm utterly shocked Laura's never seen it, and, once we're in our final house and get our extensive DVD collection out of storage, she must watch it...
But I digress...
*Ahem*
Anyways, soon as Marcus called Kosh "Merlin," I said, "Great. He's gonna die this season." And he did.
Of course Anna Sheridan is Morgana le Fay. Oh, that rascal JMS dropping his hints while tweaking noses of the fans...
Oh, Marcus also calls himself "Galahad," as he is "without sin." I doubt Marcus is "without sin," but he is a virgin. And, yes, Ivanova, you totally should have boffed him.
In the original presentation order we had not yet learned Delenn was the final vote to blow the shit out of the humans following the death of Dukhat (c.f. "Atonement" in season 4), but, with that knowledge, it's even more moving and tragic David's broken mind wants to give Delenn the sword. His healing is not Delenn's healing, else "Atonement" could not happen. I'll go as far as to speculate her accepting the sword, in fact, heightens her own lingering guilt and shame. Here's the actual triggerman who fired the shot which killed Dukhat, broken, desperate, seeking absolution only she can give. Delenn absolutely would have been told who David McWhirter was. In healing his "old wound," she rips her own open.
Mira wouldn't have known this subtext, but it reads on Delenn's face when she takes the sword.
In non-spoilers I said I suspected director Mike Vejar may have had a reduced budget:
We'd come out of the "Independence trilogy" which was very ambitious in terms of VFX. Coming up in a couple of weeks we'll have Ship of Tears, Interludes and Examinations, War Without End, and Walkabout, all of which are VFX heavy episodes. I suspect Ceremonies of Light and Dark, Sic Transit Vir, and Late Delivery from Avalon are all "cheapies" (low VFX, lots of stock footage) to give the VFX teams extra resources for the insane things ahead.
Non Spoilers 2 (The League of Non Aligned Worlds):
According to the B5 fan Wiki "The Babylon Project" these are the species seen to be League Members. Note the membership seems to ebb and flow, and perhaps not all species have ambassadors on B5 at all times, since, as of this episode, we haven't seen an Abbai since season 1, don't see a Gaim until season 3, and the Markab are all dead:
Abbai Matriarchate
Balosians
Brakiri Syndicracy
Cascor
Drazi Freehold
Gaim Intelligence
Grome Marga Chulda
Androma Republic
Hyach Grand Council of Elders
Iksha
Llort Mi-Ma-Ti
Markab Confederacy (Extinct)
Onteen
The pak'ma'ra
Ventuki Conglomerate (Vree)
Yolu Ingyo
Some of these species only appear in books and spin off media.
Anyway, this episode features Drazi, Brakiri, Llort, Grome, pak'ma'ra, and Hyach on camera. Five of sixteen species. Of those five I will go ahead and say future episodes with show Brakiri and Drazi ships guarding Babylon 5 (yup, another "Don't care Spoiler"), along with the Vree... Yet the Vree are not on camera in this episode (Vree are the "stereotypical Gray aliens" seen in s1 when the one guy says, "HIS grandfather abducted MY grandfather!"). Obviously the outreach for the defense treaty continues outside this episode.
There are also species who just aren't part of the League. Like whatever N'grath was. Money was spent on that suit and you'd think they'd re-paint it a bit occasionally stick it behind a table in the back row.
Non Spoilers:
As noted, this is a fairly silly episode.
I suppose the biggest problem is, by using the sword metaphor, the entire story is forced to sidestep a basic premise of the B5 universe - no unauthorised weapons allowed on Babylon 5. While I absolutely buy Dr. Franklin, as main command staff, could get security to stand down and let him take "Arthur" with him, it's - as Simon so correctly noted - a dude walking around the station with a big honking sword... Which he uses to hit people. Yeah, he doesn't kill anyone, but, in the fight with G'Kar, one assailant is cut in the leg, another in the arm. There's a missing scene where Garibaldi is unhappy about this...
Fortunately for "Arthur," Garibaldi is too busy being preoccupied with his box o' food to care?
Franklin is NOT a psychologist or psychiatrist. It's also true that said option is never brought up. Now, in general, I like Franklin as a character, but my personal B5 drinking game has, "drink when Franklin says 'I'm a Doctor,' and 'finish your drink when Franklin gets too self righteous about his job.'" DRINK!
Even more unfortunately for Franklin, his "mitigating factors" for his mistakes in the episode are, "Franklin is taking too many stims and isn't on top of his game."
Sigh.
Mike Vejar... Yeah, there aren't that many excellent touches in this episode - but there are a few. There's a nice 270° tracking shot in Isolab, the redress of the central corridor into the "endless hallway," a nice tracking shot of Marcus and Franklin as they leave customs and head up stairs... Vejar's "money shots" for the episode are during the flashback to Prometheus - namely, using a small LCD projector (new tech at the time) to throw the approaching Minbari ship and it's explosion across David's face. He'll use it again in a few episodes when Sheridan is being flight-trained in a Thunderbolt.
Yeah, that's technically a spoiler. Don't care. Unimportant. Hey, in a future episode Sheridan will be trained in a Thunderbolt. This follows "All Alone in the Night" where he discusses how he needs X amount of flight hours to keep his certification and flight pay.
Michael York tries his hardest to make the silly material work. I smile when he tells the old lady "Eyes as lovely as yours were not made for tears," I laugh during the scene where he and G'Kar are drinking (and Andreas Katsulas tries to steal the scene - against a lesser actor than York he would, easily). I admit to tearing up during the breakdown scene. Michael York's reading and Vejar's tight closeup and swelling orange light (another nice director touch) on, "The horses...the horses were on fire!" hits. The logic flaws in the episode are ALMOST swept aside by the power of that scene. It's horrifying. I don't know if his scream when the visuals intercut between the quarters and the endless hallway was just pulled from one of the production takes, or if it's ADR, but it does work.
Mira Furlan's performance also works, but that's a spoiler discussion.
The Post Office stuff is funny, and there's a legitimate story function there helping highlight the difficulties B5 faces as an independent state without Earth backing, but maybe that could have been trimmed a bit for more time on the Arthur/David plot?
What if we DID bring in a headshrinker and had Franklin ignore their advice and do what he does anyway? This would help further the "stims/mistakes" arc and would have at least given lip service to proper mental care. Especially as JMS himself IS trained in psychology. Ok, it's easy for me to second guess the writer 29 years later, but, yeah, I stand by this wish.
The Arthur myth comparisons at the end of the episode shouldn't be taken TOO seriously. Part of it is JMS having a little fun tweaking the audience. In online interactions during the initial run there'd be varied people saying, "Oh that's a Lord of the Rings reference," or, "That's a Star Wars reference," and JMS would often respond with something like, "Actually, I was pulling from history and Greek myth, and there are things older than Tolkien, so expand your frame of reference." I'm sure the mapping of B5 characters into Arthurian myth was a bit of a tweak to those fans. In part.
That dialog raises a follow up question. The FIRST question is, "Who the hell told Marcus about Sebastian?" The follow up is, "We all know who Mordred is." Um. We do? Morden, maybe, but who told Marcus about Morden? Things happen off screen and between episodes, and Marcus has been around for several months (Severed Dreams is April, Marcus arrives in January), so we'll lump those questions in with "How did Khan recognize Chekov?"
I absolutely love York’s delivery of the line “the horses…the horses were on fire!” Such a powerful image, and he hits it perfectly.
Here's the thing - this isn't anywhere near a top tier episode, but it's not a clunker, either. Neither of us have rejected the base premise of having a traumatised soldier break with reality seek metaphorical redemption. Meaning we haven't gone, "Why THIS?" We just think the execution was flawed. Ultimately the two core beats of the episode - the catatonic break and the passing of the sword to Delenn - work damn well.
Your first paragraph summed it up eloquently.
I think there's tonal mismatch. We'll have to see how Sic Transit Vir flows next week, but I almost feel the post office plot should have gone in that one. We're going from psychodrama to bureaucracy/heist farce from moment to moment, while the treaty bit - and forming that alliance could have been a B-plot with some ambassadors being assholes and others reasonable, but it's two scenes: "Here's a proposal." and "How'd it go? Good enough." to plug a logistics issue in the story. It's a two-scene version of "By Any Means Necessary," in showing how the command staff has to worry about supplies and bills - with the post office being the comic relief spin on the same thing.
Too much logistics, not enough psychodrama.