{"id":7091,"date":"2018-11-30T13:00:21","date_gmt":"2018-11-30T21:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=7091"},"modified":"2018-11-21T13:56:35","modified_gmt":"2018-11-21T21:56:35","slug":"mark-watches-babylon-5-s03e05-voices-of-authority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2018\/11\/mark-watches-babylon-5-s03e05-voices-of-authority\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches ‘Babylon 5’: S03E05 – Voices of Authority"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the fifth episode of the third season of Babylon 5<\/i>, the show goes VERY weird. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Babylon 5<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Trigger Warning: For extensive discussion of fascism and government oppression<\/b><\/p>\n

Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, I would love nothing more than to be able to watch Babylon 5<\/i>and feel like it is a quaint and scathing examination of the horrors of our past. That would be great! Wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that be entertaining and illuminating? Instead, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m watching a show about a world government slipping rapidly into fascism, who is legislating what you can and cannot say about it, who is in collusion with a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153foreign\u00e2\u20ac\u009d government whose aim is to destabilize through fear and misinformation, who is purporting to put itself first at great expense of those who do not look like its version of an ideal, who\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.<\/p>\n

You get the idea. This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just massively uncomfortable; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a terrible cycle that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s beginning all over again. Just because the actors in it are different, and the context is not the same, doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t meant I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t recognize it. I know we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had some unintentional parallels before (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m specifically thinking of what Person of Interest<\/i> \u00e2\u20ac\u0153predicted\u00e2\u20ac\u009d), but this is downright terrifying<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Night Watch<\/b><\/p>\n

JMS pulls no punches here, and that means he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more direct than ever about what the Night Watch is and what its purpose will be. The introduction of Miss Musante is intentional in so many awful ways, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not lost on me that she often drops the pretense of her bizarre (but horrifically recognizable) bullshit speech patterns to just spell out what she means. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get me wrong; the bullshitting and bureaucracy is absolutely infuriating to here because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so obviously propaganda. But she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care at all, and when called on it, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the kind of person who would readily admit to it. Everything is carefully crafted and purposeful because this is a culture war. She is an arm of Earth Force\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s government, and her job here is to continue to meticulously craft a message that makes it nigh impossible to resist. Why?<\/p>\n

Because resistance in and of itself will always<\/i> be painted as treason in the system that she and the government have set up. Look at the way she talks to Sheridan! She is as condescending and insulting about everything because she knows she will get away with it all. Her certainty frightens me, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. She has support back home. She has power that Sheridan doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. And her presence on this station is one GIANT dose of suspense, too. Which isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t to say that Ivanova\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plot wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be as incredible without Musante around. I HAVE LOTS TO YELL ABOUT THAT, OKAY. But knowing that someone who can destroy the careers of anyone she wants is lurking all over the ship, turning people like Zack Allen against his friends and colleagues, makes this all unnerving to experience.<\/p>\n

I am interested in y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s take on the way that Musante is sexualized. I feel like I understood the intent here. Earth Force either directly ordered Musante to seduce Sheridan, or they at least implied that she should use any means necessary to get his confidence, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s certainly one way to do it. It still rung a little odd to me in terms of thinking about how she was crafted as a character. Perhaps there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a historical reference here that JMS was working off of that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m ignorant of! But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d love to hear thoughts on this.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway: fuck the Night Watch. Fuck any government that views dissent as treason or treachery. THIS IS A NIGHTMARE TO WATCH.<\/p>\n

First Contact<\/b><\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m so into the way that Voices of Authority mixes these two plots. There are different types of tension at work here. Obviously, Musante provides the most direct source of it. But once the beginning of the episode established that the team was going to try to seek out another one of the First Ones, I was hooked<\/i>. And there are so many interesting twists before Ivanova faces down the race at Sigma 957! I was thrilled that Ivanova ended up going down to Epsilon 3 because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been wanting the show to further address her big reveal of her latent telepathy from last season. This is not how I expected them to do it, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m utterly pleased. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s especially because this is all so deliberately strange<\/i>. Ivanova gets to impress Draal, but also surprise him with the way she seeks out the First Ones. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, she found a signal FROM THE PAST. Not just any signal, but one where Morden and President Clark speak openly of the assassination of President Santiago. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a huge, huge deal, and IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S NOT EVEN THE WEIRDEST PART OF THIS EPISODE. However, I gotta wonder: What else can she do? What else will<\/i> she do?<\/p>\n

Once she and Marcus board the White Star<\/i>, though, I was just overjoyed. First of all, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m kinda into the antagonistic bickering dynamic that these two have got going? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sold on Marcus as a character just yet because I know so very little about him, but this is one of those character tropes I love a great deal. The two can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to stop insulting one another, and if this leads to some sort of romance, I WILL BE PLEASED. ENEMIES TO LOVERS IS ONE OF THE BEST TROPES EVER. However, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not gonna lie: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the First Ones that excited me the most. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, that spaceship was INCREDIBLE. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the coolest designs for a ship I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever seen. A gay jellyfish ship? YES. THANK YOU. And then those weird\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 rock face beings? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even know what that race is called, but holy shit, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spectacular. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not humanoids at all, they are openly hostile to Ivanova, and then she gets them to agree to help at some point in the future by using reverse psychology on them. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just so\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 so perfectly like Ivanova??? My gods, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just glad that there was humor and levity amidst the plot on the station, which was too goddamn real for words. But I do think that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s part of a pattern. Babylon 5<\/i> can get dark as hell, but there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always these pockets of light within that darkness, and it prevents me from being overwhelmed by the grimness of it all.<\/p>\n

The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Voices of Authority\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can be downloaded here for $0.99<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n

– My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now out in the world!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"