You know a date isn't necessarily going to go well when the first thing she says when she sees your flowers is "What the hell are those?"
That line made me laugh. Also, I'd LOVE to see the legal waiver for consenting to merge with an alien knowledge parasite. I'm not in the med-mal field, but I took a torts class way back in law school and I can only imagine.
JMS has a lot of references to outside media and real world people this week.
Marcus and Duncan talk Shakespeare.
The shuttle at the top of the episode, the "Dyson," presumably refers to futurist, physicist, and engineer Freeman Dyson. Or, JMS really likes vacuum cleaners.
Duncan's, "I don't like being poked by doctors," may be a "Clockwork Orange" reference.
Duncan's speech about the memories he held when joined to the Vindrizi includes "...fires off Orion 7," may be a "Blade Runner" reference.
Marcus tosses some Dickens at Garibaldi.
Marcus, when deceiving a Vindrizi guard, refers to his fighting pike as a "Copeland J-5000 medical scanner." Producer John Copeland got off easy. Exec Producer Douglas Netter had a fake disease named after him by Lennier.
On the tonal mismatch - JMS has written that a production interruption meant he walked away from this script for a week partway through the first draft. He considers this the least effect script of season 3.
***SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT***
JMS is wrong.
"Gray 17 is Missing" is the least effective script of Season 3, but this re-watch is still a couple months out from that episode.
I forgot to mention how much I enjoyed Garibaldi's "do you ever shut up?" The bashing together of Marcus' English classicism and literary references with Garibaldi's very American, right-leaning, chuck-em-out-the-airlock-and-watch-Daffy-Duck is absolutely hilarious in this one.
Marcus's "package from Mars," due in "about a week," is, of course, Dr. Kirkish. She will drop one hell of a bombshell.
The Vindrizi echo the Techno-Mages in that both are fleeing local space to avoid the coming war. The differences are the Vindrizi are passively fleeing to preserve knowledge for a later era. The Techno-Mages are refusing to perform the tasks for which they were created.
B5 never makes this clear, and Crusade was cancelled before this was revealed, so one must have the trilogy of Techno-Mage novels for this information - Techno-Mages are Shadow Weapons. They are designed to counter the telepaths created by the Vorlons. So, while the Techno-Mage Elric may have told Sheridan the Techno-Mages were leaving to preserve knowledge, they are actually "deserting their posts." Now, since we've talked about how Vindrizi parallel the Techno-Mages, let's note Exogenesis echoes the Techno-Mages in another way - what do you do if you are in a military organization and are given illegal or immoral orders?
Didn't actually have the above insight before tonight. Over 30 years later and I'm still uncovering new facets to B5 storytelling!
Um - Shadows gathering near Sector 800. Don't think that's direct foreshadowing, but, checking the varied fan Wikis, here's what's near Sector 800 (things within one or two sectors). Zagros VII (Ranger camp Marcus escaped from), Markab Homeworld, and a colony of Telepaths Lyta will mention in season 5 - where Earth teeps fleeing Psi-Corp, and exiled non-human telepaths all fled to. Plenty of mischief for the Shadows to get up to there.
IMHO opinion JMS's most successful exploration of the theme of preserving knowledge in the B5 universe is the Crusade episode, "The Needs of Earth." The crew of Excalibur is trying to save a alien dissident fleeing a newly fascistic government with a cache of vital data. The crew of Excalibur hope for medical data to help cure the Drakh plague. Instead, it's a record of all the art, music, and literature banned by the government, slated for destruction. In this case the theme isn't obscured by a rom-com.
Anyways, Exogenesis is a nice character episode with an interesting alien. Coming up, a trilogy of episodes moving to the exact halfway point of the show that turns everything on its head...
Oh, yes, Sheridan and Ivanova don't want to risk even being SEEN with Marcus, but Marcus has a very loud discussion with Garibaldi in the Zocalo about his contacts and information network. Marcus is a good guy, but he's just not good at covert.
Ok, seriously, no more complaining about the Rangers and dubious secrecy - except to note JMS will give Dureena Nafeel the line "There's no use belonging to a secret organisation if you go around *telling*everyone about it!" in the B5 movie "A Call to Arms." 1999 JMS needs to have a chat with 1996 JMS.
In the Rangers' defence, I never ONCE noticed people in Ranger uniform on the station prior to their official introduction. So maybe it works better than you might think...
Perhaps - but our vision is limited to a small window of what the camera could see, for episodes with, perhaps, a minute or two in a group location with intercutting.
Now, imagine we're security - trained to observe - in a location for hours, days on end.
On the other hand, with a constant shifting of population of roughly a quarter million people, ok still plausible to not be noticed.
But everyone's ident is logged, entry and exit, so I'd still expect individual security guards to occasionally note, "Huh - another person dressed like that." and, possibly, eventually, "Wait, that other one was Minbari!"
Now, that said, I note when Delenn introduced Sheridan to the Rangers on the station in S2 most of them were in civilian clothes. Perhaps they were Rangers ordered into "deep cover Ranger" while Marcus is a "beat cop Ranger."
Ultimately, it's the first thing I said - Marcus gets the uniform to quickly and instantly recognizable for the audience, because it's a TV show. We can assume Marcus would be the type to always wear his uniform because he's proud of his affiliation, and quite dramatic. And, it IS a cool coat.
FFS my brain isn't letting this go. Of all the crap in the world my possibly OCD, Autistic, or otherwise neuroatypical self WILL NOT drop it until I add this last point:
In "The Coming of Shadows" a security guard says to the guest Ranger, "Gee, you come here a lot," (ok, I different order of words meaning the same thing) and that's a guard we've seen in the Zocalo, or show up on security teams when Garabaldi calls for one (obviously Garibaldi rotates postings to keep people from getting bored - or the production team only keeps the same ten background artists around most of the time, but staff rotation is smarter to keep people from being bored and complacent), and Garibaldi himself flags the guy, meaning there's an arrest/detain order (unless Garibaldi erased it) on the Ranger (holy shit, this is a long sentence).
Point being B5 security has already twigged someone in Ranger uniform and likely HAS noted others. Since Ranger involvement is still in the secrets it's not like Garibaldi could say to his troops "People in these cool coats with that distinct broach showing Human and Minbari are A-OK... Don't ask me how I know."
So we come back to "let it go, it's a TV show and Marcus's uniform is for audience identification."
Hopefully my brain will now LET IT GO, and not punish me with an ear worm from "Frozen," which has become more likely from typing this.
On my possible neurodivergence: My parents and schools sent me to shrinks send me to many a psychologist through childhood trying to figure me out. This was before conditions like autism and ADHD had been identified, so the consensus was, "Well, he doesn't have any learning disabilities, and he tests as a genius, but he's weird" (not in those words, but I've read the reports, and that is what they boil down to). Certainly I have many signs of being somewhere on the spectrum. But I'm not going to spend money and time on diagnosis, because officially gaining the label or not won't change what I am or change my efforts to compensate to keep myself from pissing too many people off socially.
But this verbosity and over ANALytical nature I possess - like totally being able to drop the damn "Rangers shouldn't have 'uniforms'" thing (which has literally been gnawing at me all day, including in my sleep) is one of the things that points to neurodivergence.
That other response to one of your posts - your contrast of Marcus's Britishness vs Garibaldi's Americaness... I originally had a much longer response partly typed before the brain went, "No, just give the most British response possible, the "Quite" and flip the trope. Simon will get it. Only stupid humor short circuits the over-detailed shit I'm spewing now.
Right, need to medicate the cat. Insulin for Scott.
The biggest issue with this episode is a hefty dose of tonal whiplash.
The Vindrizi plot begins as pure horror movie (the creature puppet is suitably creepy, the VFX in the teaser of the merging holds up pretty well, and was quite ambitious with no less than four stages being animated between the puppet-on-back and unblemished skin, and the CG on the Vindrizi filament Franklin examines is absolutely on-point), which then segues into lyrical fantasy. Then we have the "can we trust Corwin?" plot which is political thriller - but we keep cutting away from these two serious subplots to act 1 of a rom-com. Every individual piece works well, but, mashed into a 45 minute narrative, the rom-com undercuts the horror.
Franklin gets a good episode. There's the nice world building with his meeting with other Medlab staff (and an early appearance from Carrie Dobro, who will move to a front credit position as Dureena Nafeel in the spin-off "Crusade"), which also highlights part of why Franklin can be grouchy and using stims. The first Doctor who performed the initial autopsy on the dead Lurker obviously didn't perform a neural scan. Oops.
Possible Spoiler, but not plot-significant, so I'm dropping it. There are multiple episodes where we see Franklin fight. I believe one has already happened. While Franklin is a Doctor he was raised my a military man. It's obvious Franklin has martial arts/close combat training (he can spin kick), and, at least the US military does require doctors to be proficient with a pistol. Chances are Franklin is absolutely combat trained. It's his ethics keep him from killing.
This episode highlights a bit of an ongoing glitch with the Rangers - the secret organization with a distinctive uniform. We have a discussion in Earhart's about keeping Marcus low-profile, then Marcus has his little info meeting at a bar. Here he meets another Ranger - because only a Ranger brings a direct message from "Ranger One..." And this Ranger is in civilian clothing. OK, it's a TV show and the rules are each character has their distinct outfit for easy identification, so I'll never point it out again. Just saying....
Otherwise - GREAT episode for Marcus. Besides setting up his crush on Ivanova, we see Marcus use skills in detection, his tasks as a Ranger, his ability to think and plan under pressure, more of his wit, and, most importantly, his empathy. I admit it - in the final Marcus/Duncan scene, when Duncan says, "You did what you did because you *care*," I got a little misty. Marcus may genuinely be the most empathic character in the series. Prior episodes had Marcus on a mission, and cracking his jokes. Here we move him from being one-note into rounded.
Aubrey Morris is always fun to watch being a theatrical ham. He only gets four scenes, but he shades them all distinctly. Always glad to see him pop up in a show.
Joshua Cox is a solid actor, who has mostly been saddled with exposition dialog. He hasn't had a good character bit since "And Now for a Word," so it's good to see him getting a little mini arc. Again, he is hysterical in this episode, playing a man who is both utterly terrified of, but strangely attracted to the force of nature that is Susan Ivanova. I'll have more to say about him come "Severed Dreams" three episodes down, because he is REALLY good in that episode. When you get there, pay attention to his performance, because he's got a hell of a lot of emotion happening there.
The theme of preservation of knowledge is important to JMS. We had it with the Techno-Mages, with the Vindrizi, and it will come up at least one more time in B5, as well as his most successful exploration of the theme in "Crusade." That's a discussion for Spoilers.
I always wonder with a case like Corwin, whether it was always intended to upgrade him to a proper character (hence hiring a decent actor), or whether that upgrade only really happened BECAUSE they lucked out by hiring a better actor than was strictly needed for the background extra role.
I doubt it was planned for Corwin to "become a character." I believe Joshua Cox was one of the readers they used in auditions (as was Ed Wasser), so he was given the C&C tech role because he IS a good actor and dual reader/bit part role gave enough paycheck where Cox wouldn't need to find other work, so he'd stick around.
And, there's always the possibility of needing to give a C&C tech more to do. At that point you use the good actor you already have hanging around.
You know a date isn't necessarily going to go well when the first thing she says when she sees your flowers is "What the hell are those?"
That line made me laugh. Also, I'd LOVE to see the legal waiver for consenting to merge with an alien knowledge parasite. I'm not in the med-mal field, but I took a torts class way back in law school and I can only imagine.
But anyway.
Ha yes, I laughed quite loudly at Ivanova’s delivery there.
Non Spoiler addendum 2.
JMS has a lot of references to outside media and real world people this week.
Marcus and Duncan talk Shakespeare.
The shuttle at the top of the episode, the "Dyson," presumably refers to futurist, physicist, and engineer Freeman Dyson. Or, JMS really likes vacuum cleaners.
Duncan's, "I don't like being poked by doctors," may be a "Clockwork Orange" reference.
Duncan's speech about the memories he held when joined to the Vindrizi includes "...fires off Orion 7," may be a "Blade Runner" reference.
Marcus tosses some Dickens at Garibaldi.
Marcus, when deceiving a Vindrizi guard, refers to his fighting pike as a "Copeland J-5000 medical scanner." Producer John Copeland got off easy. Exec Producer Douglas Netter had a fake disease named after him by Lennier.
On the tonal mismatch - JMS has written that a production interruption meant he walked away from this script for a week partway through the first draft. He considers this the least effect script of season 3.
***SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT***
JMS is wrong.
"Gray 17 is Missing" is the least effective script of Season 3, but this re-watch is still a couple months out from that episode.
I forgot to mention how much I enjoyed Garibaldi's "do you ever shut up?" The bashing together of Marcus' English classicism and literary references with Garibaldi's very American, right-leaning, chuck-em-out-the-airlock-and-watch-Daffy-Duck is absolutely hilarious in this one.
Quite.
SPOILERS
.
..
...
....
.....
......
.....
....
...
..
.
Marcus's "package from Mars," due in "about a week," is, of course, Dr. Kirkish. She will drop one hell of a bombshell.
The Vindrizi echo the Techno-Mages in that both are fleeing local space to avoid the coming war. The differences are the Vindrizi are passively fleeing to preserve knowledge for a later era. The Techno-Mages are refusing to perform the tasks for which they were created.
B5 never makes this clear, and Crusade was cancelled before this was revealed, so one must have the trilogy of Techno-Mage novels for this information - Techno-Mages are Shadow Weapons. They are designed to counter the telepaths created by the Vorlons. So, while the Techno-Mage Elric may have told Sheridan the Techno-Mages were leaving to preserve knowledge, they are actually "deserting their posts." Now, since we've talked about how Vindrizi parallel the Techno-Mages, let's note Exogenesis echoes the Techno-Mages in another way - what do you do if you are in a military organization and are given illegal or immoral orders?
Didn't actually have the above insight before tonight. Over 30 years later and I'm still uncovering new facets to B5 storytelling!
Um - Shadows gathering near Sector 800. Don't think that's direct foreshadowing, but, checking the varied fan Wikis, here's what's near Sector 800 (things within one or two sectors). Zagros VII (Ranger camp Marcus escaped from), Markab Homeworld, and a colony of Telepaths Lyta will mention in season 5 - where Earth teeps fleeing Psi-Corp, and exiled non-human telepaths all fled to. Plenty of mischief for the Shadows to get up to there.
IMHO opinion JMS's most successful exploration of the theme of preserving knowledge in the B5 universe is the Crusade episode, "The Needs of Earth." The crew of Excalibur is trying to save a alien dissident fleeing a newly fascistic government with a cache of vital data. The crew of Excalibur hope for medical data to help cure the Drakh plague. Instead, it's a record of all the art, music, and literature banned by the government, slated for destruction. In this case the theme isn't obscured by a rom-com.
Anyways, Exogenesis is a nice character episode with an interesting alien. Coming up, a trilogy of episodes moving to the exact halfway point of the show that turns everything on its head...
Ah yeah, I forgot about Marcus 'package'. That line is delivered so casually it's easy to miss!
Yet a nice example of cheeky foreshadowing.
Non Spoiler addendum:
Oh, yes, Sheridan and Ivanova don't want to risk even being SEEN with Marcus, but Marcus has a very loud discussion with Garibaldi in the Zocalo about his contacts and information network. Marcus is a good guy, but he's just not good at covert.
Ok, seriously, no more complaining about the Rangers and dubious secrecy - except to note JMS will give Dureena Nafeel the line "There's no use belonging to a secret organisation if you go around *telling*everyone about it!" in the B5 movie "A Call to Arms." 1999 JMS needs to have a chat with 1996 JMS.
In the Rangers' defence, I never ONCE noticed people in Ranger uniform on the station prior to their official introduction. So maybe it works better than you might think...
Perhaps - but our vision is limited to a small window of what the camera could see, for episodes with, perhaps, a minute or two in a group location with intercutting.
Now, imagine we're security - trained to observe - in a location for hours, days on end.
On the other hand, with a constant shifting of population of roughly a quarter million people, ok still plausible to not be noticed.
But everyone's ident is logged, entry and exit, so I'd still expect individual security guards to occasionally note, "Huh - another person dressed like that." and, possibly, eventually, "Wait, that other one was Minbari!"
Now, that said, I note when Delenn introduced Sheridan to the Rangers on the station in S2 most of them were in civilian clothes. Perhaps they were Rangers ordered into "deep cover Ranger" while Marcus is a "beat cop Ranger."
Ultimately, it's the first thing I said - Marcus gets the uniform to quickly and instantly recognizable for the audience, because it's a TV show. We can assume Marcus would be the type to always wear his uniform because he's proud of his affiliation, and quite dramatic. And, it IS a cool coat.
FFS my brain isn't letting this go. Of all the crap in the world my possibly OCD, Autistic, or otherwise neuroatypical self WILL NOT drop it until I add this last point:
In "The Coming of Shadows" a security guard says to the guest Ranger, "Gee, you come here a lot," (ok, I different order of words meaning the same thing) and that's a guard we've seen in the Zocalo, or show up on security teams when Garabaldi calls for one (obviously Garibaldi rotates postings to keep people from getting bored - or the production team only keeps the same ten background artists around most of the time, but staff rotation is smarter to keep people from being bored and complacent), and Garibaldi himself flags the guy, meaning there's an arrest/detain order (unless Garibaldi erased it) on the Ranger (holy shit, this is a long sentence).
Point being B5 security has already twigged someone in Ranger uniform and likely HAS noted others. Since Ranger involvement is still in the secrets it's not like Garibaldi could say to his troops "People in these cool coats with that distinct broach showing Human and Minbari are A-OK... Don't ask me how I know."
So we come back to "let it go, it's a TV show and Marcus's uniform is for audience identification."
Hopefully my brain will now LET IT GO, and not punish me with an ear worm from "Frozen," which has become more likely from typing this.
On my possible neurodivergence: My parents and schools sent me to shrinks send me to many a psychologist through childhood trying to figure me out. This was before conditions like autism and ADHD had been identified, so the consensus was, "Well, he doesn't have any learning disabilities, and he tests as a genius, but he's weird" (not in those words, but I've read the reports, and that is what they boil down to). Certainly I have many signs of being somewhere on the spectrum. But I'm not going to spend money and time on diagnosis, because officially gaining the label or not won't change what I am or change my efforts to compensate to keep myself from pissing too many people off socially.
But this verbosity and over ANALytical nature I possess - like totally being able to drop the damn "Rangers shouldn't have 'uniforms'" thing (which has literally been gnawing at me all day, including in my sleep) is one of the things that points to neurodivergence.
That other response to one of your posts - your contrast of Marcus's Britishness vs Garibaldi's Americaness... I originally had a much longer response partly typed before the brain went, "No, just give the most British response possible, the "Quite" and flip the trope. Simon will get it. Only stupid humor short circuits the over-detailed shit I'm spewing now.
Right, need to medicate the cat. Insulin for Scott.
Non Spoilers.
The biggest issue with this episode is a hefty dose of tonal whiplash.
The Vindrizi plot begins as pure horror movie (the creature puppet is suitably creepy, the VFX in the teaser of the merging holds up pretty well, and was quite ambitious with no less than four stages being animated between the puppet-on-back and unblemished skin, and the CG on the Vindrizi filament Franklin examines is absolutely on-point), which then segues into lyrical fantasy. Then we have the "can we trust Corwin?" plot which is political thriller - but we keep cutting away from these two serious subplots to act 1 of a rom-com. Every individual piece works well, but, mashed into a 45 minute narrative, the rom-com undercuts the horror.
Franklin gets a good episode. There's the nice world building with his meeting with other Medlab staff (and an early appearance from Carrie Dobro, who will move to a front credit position as Dureena Nafeel in the spin-off "Crusade"), which also highlights part of why Franklin can be grouchy and using stims. The first Doctor who performed the initial autopsy on the dead Lurker obviously didn't perform a neural scan. Oops.
Possible Spoiler, but not plot-significant, so I'm dropping it. There are multiple episodes where we see Franklin fight. I believe one has already happened. While Franklin is a Doctor he was raised my a military man. It's obvious Franklin has martial arts/close combat training (he can spin kick), and, at least the US military does require doctors to be proficient with a pistol. Chances are Franklin is absolutely combat trained. It's his ethics keep him from killing.
This episode highlights a bit of an ongoing glitch with the Rangers - the secret organization with a distinctive uniform. We have a discussion in Earhart's about keeping Marcus low-profile, then Marcus has his little info meeting at a bar. Here he meets another Ranger - because only a Ranger brings a direct message from "Ranger One..." And this Ranger is in civilian clothing. OK, it's a TV show and the rules are each character has their distinct outfit for easy identification, so I'll never point it out again. Just saying....
Otherwise - GREAT episode for Marcus. Besides setting up his crush on Ivanova, we see Marcus use skills in detection, his tasks as a Ranger, his ability to think and plan under pressure, more of his wit, and, most importantly, his empathy. I admit it - in the final Marcus/Duncan scene, when Duncan says, "You did what you did because you *care*," I got a little misty. Marcus may genuinely be the most empathic character in the series. Prior episodes had Marcus on a mission, and cracking his jokes. Here we move him from being one-note into rounded.
Aubrey Morris is always fun to watch being a theatrical ham. He only gets four scenes, but he shades them all distinctly. Always glad to see him pop up in a show.
Joshua Cox is a solid actor, who has mostly been saddled with exposition dialog. He hasn't had a good character bit since "And Now for a Word," so it's good to see him getting a little mini arc. Again, he is hysterical in this episode, playing a man who is both utterly terrified of, but strangely attracted to the force of nature that is Susan Ivanova. I'll have more to say about him come "Severed Dreams" three episodes down, because he is REALLY good in that episode. When you get there, pay attention to his performance, because he's got a hell of a lot of emotion happening there.
The theme of preservation of knowledge is important to JMS. We had it with the Techno-Mages, with the Vindrizi, and it will come up at least one more time in B5, as well as his most successful exploration of the theme in "Crusade." That's a discussion for Spoilers.
I always wonder with a case like Corwin, whether it was always intended to upgrade him to a proper character (hence hiring a decent actor), or whether that upgrade only really happened BECAUSE they lucked out by hiring a better actor than was strictly needed for the background extra role.
I doubt it was planned for Corwin to "become a character." I believe Joshua Cox was one of the readers they used in auditions (as was Ed Wasser), so he was given the C&C tech role because he IS a good actor and dual reader/bit part role gave enough paycheck where Cox wouldn't need to find other work, so he'd stick around.
And, there's always the possibility of needing to give a C&C tech more to do. At that point you use the good actor you already have hanging around.