Babylon 5 | Season 2: Episode 18 "Confessions and Lamentations" | Reaction & Review!
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- Опубликовано: 6 авг 2024
- Babylon 5 | Season 2: Episode 18 "Confessions and Lamentations" | Reaction & Review!
Welcome back to yet another reaction to Babylon 5! Today we will be watching Season 2 Episode 18 titled "Confessions and Lamentations" - Hope you enjoy!
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Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
3:53 - Reaction 
Развлечения
"I did not know that similarity was required for the exercise of compassion". Delenn puts her finger on the whole problem with the world: we only care about bad things when they happen to people who are like us.
i remember at the time being surprised sheridan even said that
@@JamesC1981 It was so forced and out of character. Cringe.
@@JamesC1981 I felt it was him trying to find a reason to talk her out of it. It's not really who he is, but something he said out of desperation.
One thing I love about B5 is how it treats religion, and you get the full force of it in this episode. It criticises the ignorance and bigotry it can create (and enforce), if shows how odd and awkward the rituals can be to an outsider (some of the actions here are based on the Passover Seder(?) from Judaism), but it also shows the levels of strength and compassion it can inspire people to have.
A fantastic feature about the episode (and I don't think I've seen it done in any other sci-fi show) is how they have the question about cross species infection. It's maybe going to be a huge question about alien species if we ever make contact - could we be carrying bacteria that is harmless to us, but deadly to a non-native species? Or Vice Versa? WIll diseases affected different species the same way? We have some studies about Zoonotic Diseases to maybe give us some sort of baseline, but it's a very interesting territory to explore for stories
The ritual reminding us of Passover then forces reflection on what Passover means and how this relates to what happens with the Markab. Beware the dark angel of Drafa.
"Nothing changes" is one of the most bleak lines that you could end an episode like this on and I don't blame Franklin for feeling that way.
Something that I love about this episode is the believable way the episode approaches the response to the disease. It looks at it from both the biological and sociological angles like a epidemiological study would. It's not just Franklin working on the cure but the entire medical team with their own specialisms. The disease also kills in a plausible manner and is explained without resorting to technobabble.
When this was on in the 90's, Star Trek was seen as peak sci-fi TV. A Trek episode would have ended with a cured population. B5 had the balls to say "sometimes you just run out of time" and actually have the ending as a defeat.
This was like Believers 2.0. Season 1 - kill a kid, Season 2 - kill a kid + an entire race
I am reminded by the DS9 episode when the founders unleashed a plague against an alien race that opposed them. I wont give a spoiler on how it ended
The Markbab doctor is played by Jim Norton, who also played the Ombuds back in season 1
And Bishop Brennan in Father Ted.
This was certainly a hard hitting episode at the time, but it definitely hits you with a different punch post Covid
I can't think of another show that leaned in to the whole idea of 'zoonotic infection' and ramped it up to include other sentient species. From a science point of view, a disease affecting different species in wildly different ways makes sense, but most shows I see typically have the same symptoms universally when they do a disease story.
The moral opprobrium associated with it was (probably intentionally) reminiscent of the early days of AIDS, when it was only _those_ people who got the disease, and how dare they spread it to moral people like _us_ ?
@@neilbiggs1353It doesn't affect them in different ways as such, but what it does do is target neurotransmitter production nearly universally - what differs is how the species produce those neurotransmitters.
Which, thinking about it as a physiologist, would have to mean that different alien species nonetheless had similar enough biochemistry that the disease was effective.
@@simongiles9749 Yep, fair, I should have written my point slightly differently - when I said "wildly different" I wasn't just thinking of this episode, I was thinking of a broader possibility, as yes, there is a biological similarity in the species which helps Franklin in this episode. I didn't want to just dig at an 'aphasia virus' in a different show where most species have exactly the same disease pathway (I think that is the correct term for it).
Although in my defence, I would say it having an indifferent effect on most species is wildly different from it being fatal in very short order! ;-)
@@neilbiggs1353 Oh, your point was a good one, I was just being needlessly pedantic!
This is an intense and heart breaking episode. This show demands intelligence and maturity.
This is always a hard-hitting one, showing where B5 is willing to go unlike many other shows.
To the present day the best piece of television I ever saw.
It's one of those that was way more shocking back in the day because shows did not really do this. The standard was that the Doc finds the cure just in time and saves everyone. I remember this being truly shocking.
Yeah. We were all used to Star Trek, and they would definitely have made it in time to save the cute kid and her mother.
Such an intense, profound & well-acted episode!
And terrifyingly applicable given recent events.
"They were AFRAID!" - the fear & sadness in his OWN voice was so heartbreaking! That actor did an excellent job!
Faith Manages.
I thought this was such an amazing episode. A real gut punch. The Minbari like you said, I feel are amazing. Delenn was amazing. Franklin was incredible. I genuinely feel like he is one of the main group, even though he isn't included in that in the credits. He was really great here.
Bruce Boxleitner is left-handed
The actor who played the Markab doctor also played Bishop Brennan in Father Ted!
Jim Norton has a few roles in B5.
Bruce Boxleitner is left handed. That's why the way he holds his flatware seems odd to you.
This episode hits hard, even more so after covid.
Jones: "That's getting smashed!"
One second later - SMASH!!!!
Me: BAH HAHAHHAHAHA!!!!
The ultimate "This isnt Star Trek" episode...
Still one of the shows best. Having grown up in the time period this one mirrors (HIV in the 80's and early 90's) its a hard hitter and an excellent example of what SciFi does best.
Oh, yes. The Minbari have ceremonies for *everything*, don't they?
Delenn's comment about compassion (not) requiring similarity hits home a lot these days.
Seeing Delenn and Lennier emerging from the room gets to me every single time.
Faith Manages!
In Star Trek this scenario would be called Kobayashi Maru - (the no-win scenario).
Much like Believers in season 1, I consider this episode the Kobayashi Maru for Franklin.
Some times you are just too late.
Altruistic? The Minbari and their care for seekers, interest in protecting others, main care to be of service, it's basically a semi-utopian society that we can see as an ideal in opposition and comparison to our own. But of course they almost destroyed Humanity just a decade and a half before this. They're older too. A much older race that has really grown over time. And yet... their souls are becoming human. Mysterious and marvelous B5. And also, well, the Minbari sometimes seem like the utopian humans of the Federation in Star Trek. Certainly it's one of the things that really differentiates Trek and B5, the humans being so much more like us now in B5.
The moral of the story is, never take medical advice from politicians - talk to your doctor.
Would have been a different world if people had remembered this in 2020.
Which doctors? The ones who took Big Pharma money and lied or the ones who resisted, were deplatformed or lost their licenses?
Ah, but not if your doctor is a pharma whore.
@@sdfried4877 Your comment is shadow banned.
@@miller-joel There’s a shock. Fuckers sure are afraid of hearing things they don’t like. Why have a discussion when you have the ban hammer?
If it’s shadow-banned, how do you see it?
Who would have thought that listening to someone who openly mused about injecting bleach was a bad idea?...
And the B5 child body count continues to rise.
They don't explain what happens with the drug manufacture in the show, Babylon 5 tended to avoid techno-babble as far as possible. My guess would be that they have something like a 3D printer than can create the molecules on demand. I'd like to say I invented that concept, but I think there is some real world experiments towards being able to do that (not sure if they ever got anywhere, but the concept seems fairly sound)
Not a happy episode, but a very good one, and very well acted
This is one of those hit you in the face episodes. It's very prophetic to what we had with Covid (although that went relatively well all things considered). In the 90's it didn't mean as much, the AIDS breakout was happening far away, people didn't really think about it. But it hit hard for people watching this episode now. Great episode, I never rewatch it.
For me, it's the not so much about the disease as it is the reactions from people that make it hold up. It was edited out, but I've always loved that moment of doubt from Garibaldi before helping up the Markab, you can almost hear the debate in his head about maybe increasing his chances of catching it as they aren't sure if they can yet. Not to mention how the Markabs are being attacked in the same way there was a rise in assaults against Asian people thanks to ill-informed commentary from certain politicians in the US.
Welcome to Covid-2359
Close
@@ianstopher9111 🤣 Sure. Identical.
"This is getting smashed..." Had a good laugh, there. It seems we cannot escape that old cliche of an upset character taking it out on the furniture. So overdone. Otherwise, good episode, yes. JMS is really not afraid to go all the way. It's not often, in Sci-fi, that an entire species gets wiped out.
There is some discussion in circles more devoted to this show than I am, that this plague was caused by the Shadows (I can also find no cannon reference to back this up, so ultimately it is just a theory. No spoilers here, even if it is super hard to do so.). One of the things that they point to is waaaaaaay back in season 2 episode 5, (13 episodes ago, so still no spoilers) there is a council meeting during which the Markab Ambassador states that "a great darkness" that was once defeated and is now recalling its agents hidden throughout the galaxy*. This is pointed out as reasoning for the Shadows instigation of the Markab plague; so that it could silence any potential coal mine canaries, so to speak.
*What I find intriguing is that neither Delenn nor Kosh were at this assembly meeting. Had one, the other, or both been there, how differently things might have unfolded. Could the Markab still be alive? ? ? . This all goes to demonstrate the amazing plot and writing of JMS, when even episodes like this contribute to the overarching plot, though often in ways we do not catch upon our first viewing (or even our 5+th, in my case. Of course I also tend to skip episodes where I catch "feelings" in subsequent viewings, clearly to my detriment).
I am of the opinion that Drafa (or the re-emergence of Drafa) is not a Shadow plague. Sometimes a banana is just a banana. There are a lot of bad things in the world and it is all too comforting to just ascribe them to some dark agency to provide meaning.
@@ianstopher9111 And it could be that. A banana could be a banana. As I said, it is a theory that some espouse. Given some commentary I have seen of later episodes, I'm inclined to agree with it though. I may also be wrong. I'm also not sure how to tell if I am or not.
That's main theory I've heard. The second one I've heard about bout is that it was planted by Deathwalker before she arrived at B5 a year prior (about the same time it's mentioned the first cases started). As a brilliant and evil biologist who was an enemy of the Non-Aligned Worlds, she would have the means and motivation to craft a plague that had the same symptoms as the legendary Drafa, so this exact scenario would play out.
@@DoctorWortspieler Wow, I had not heard of that theory. It does sound possible; I'm still going with "The Shadows Did It" though. :D
That guy with mask at the end of episode. Answering could be a bit spoiler and I'd try to avoid spoiling the series.
I wouldn't call it a spoiler at all... im sure they've been seen as background aliens since season 1.