The episode begins with a representative of the Ministry of Peace(!) coming to B-5 to "assist" Sheridan. This assistant is one amazingly beautiful but cold and ambitious lady--as she is both quick to offer her body to an embarrassed Sheridan AND she's a propaganda-spewing machine that never seems to quit in spouting platitudes and disinformation! She's like morphing Miss American with Joseph Goebels!! And, with this snoopy and obnoxious lady following him, Sheridan is having a devil of a time attending to business--particularly that involving his blossoming conspiracy against Earth Gov! In addition, Ivanova is sent to try and establish contact with "the first ones"--people who preceded the Shadows and might be powerful enough to assist them in the upcoming war. This part is only mildly interesting, at best and features a really weird alien who is practically beyond description! All-in-all, not a bad episode--particularly in regard to the evil and insidious nature of "the Ministry of Peace"--a brilliant insight into evil.
3 Reviews
Not so alien after all
phenomynouss27 October 2010
Warning: Spoilers
In what should be a non-filler episode, we get a continuation of two story lines---the big war against the Shadow, and the murder of the original president.
We also get an insight into the dismal future Earth has come to, apparently while we were all busy looking at Babylon 5. 1984-style tyranny has apparently swept up the planet and no one on Babylon 5 was ever aware. This political "assistant" woman is a pure Party sycophant, spouting anti-democratic Party propaganda all the time, and using her sexuality to get to Sheridan. People who express opinions that question the government are to be ARRESTED as SEDITIOUS.
Particularly frustrating is that this is never addressed, this sudden, seeming tyrannization on Earth is pretty much ignored by everyone.
Given how little the main characters care about this, why should we care, either? At least the Federation in Star Trek tried to be peaceful and benevolent.
On the other hand, Susan Ivanova steps into the matrix thing that the Mimbari guy on the Epsilon planet is locked into. She goes to make contact with one of the "first" ones---an alien species being billions of years old, and on a level of existence far beyond that which could possibly be understood by us...
...and Ivanova gets it to help them with schoolyard reverse psychology.
This being, represented by what looks like a giant Tiki head with red lights inside of it, rejects them, and she manages to convince this MAJESTIC, GODLIKE BEING by claiming "the VORLONS said you'd chicken out. They did most of the work in the great war while you took most of the credit" and such like that.
Amazing that the aliens are supposedly supposed to be "alien" from us. But given how two-dimensional the characters have been, and how unrealistically stale and cliché the dialogue has been for three years now, I'd say they're far more alien from real people than we could truly imagine.
We also get an insight into the dismal future Earth has come to, apparently while we were all busy looking at Babylon 5. 1984-style tyranny has apparently swept up the planet and no one on Babylon 5 was ever aware. This political "assistant" woman is a pure Party sycophant, spouting anti-democratic Party propaganda all the time, and using her sexuality to get to Sheridan. People who express opinions that question the government are to be ARRESTED as SEDITIOUS.
Particularly frustrating is that this is never addressed, this sudden, seeming tyrannization on Earth is pretty much ignored by everyone.
Given how little the main characters care about this, why should we care, either? At least the Federation in Star Trek tried to be peaceful and benevolent.
On the other hand, Susan Ivanova steps into the matrix thing that the Mimbari guy on the Epsilon planet is locked into. She goes to make contact with one of the "first" ones---an alien species being billions of years old, and on a level of existence far beyond that which could possibly be understood by us...
...and Ivanova gets it to help them with schoolyard reverse psychology.
This being, represented by what looks like a giant Tiki head with red lights inside of it, rejects them, and she manages to convince this MAJESTIC, GODLIKE BEING by claiming "the VORLONS said you'd chicken out. They did most of the work in the great war while you took most of the credit" and such like that.
Amazing that the aliens are supposedly supposed to be "alien" from us. But given how two-dimensional the characters have been, and how unrealistically stale and cliché the dialogue has been for three years now, I'd say they're far more alien from real people than we could truly imagine.
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