I am SO PROUD of this! A Dream Given Formwas officially published yesterday and copies that were pre-ordered should be showing up in mailboxes over the next couple of days. As I said in my last post, this was a project that was delayed for a while, but people never gave up hope on it.
Not only is our baby seeing the light of day, the Kindle edition is currently the #1 new release in the category of Television Guides & Reviews.
Turns out that faith really does manage!
A Dream Given Form is available everywhere fine books are sold.
Finally! A Dream Given Form, the new book by Ensley F. Guffey and me, will be published in three weeks! This book has been a long time coming, since it was delayed by my Unfortunate Brush with Not-Quite Cancer at the end of 2014. Surgery and post-surgical treatment involving non-gamma rays made this a lengthy delay, but ECW Press never wavered in their commitment to the project. Nor, should I add, did Ensley who is my husband, on top of being a dedicated and talented writer. Really - he is.
Then, just as we thought we had Dream through it's really-no-kidding final check, the planets aligned and we were able to arrange an interview with Peter Jurasik, who brought the magnificently-flawed character of Londo Mollari to life. (Seriously, the manuscript was three days away from going to the printer.) We scrambled to make the interview happen, and wow! readers will be rewarded for that, I think. Jurasik was so generous and kind and funny with his recollections and he's very serious about his craft. The interview is an amazing addition to a book that we already thought was pretty darned nifty.
Publication is scheduled for September 19, but we'll have the official book launch here in our hometown of Shelby, NC in two weeks. On Saturday, September 9, Ensley and I will sign copies at Hip-O-Kat Retro & Vintage.* There will be food, beverages, and treats. Hopefully some other uptown merchants will be in on the action! Final details are being ironed out in the next few days, but I wanted to go ahead and mention this now, in order to help you make plans to enjoy uptown Shelby that day and come on by to talk Babylon 5 with us!
*Can't make it, but want a signed copy? Never fear! Simply contact us through the comments here on the blog and we'll make payment and shipping arrangements!
What a year it's been! There seem to have been more losses in the film world (not to mention the "real world") than are either usual or warranted. For Babylon 5 fans, the loss of Jerry Doyle hit especially hard, and the fact that he and Garibaldi had so many similarities is a cause for great sadness.
I know that I have not been a faithful correspondent this year and I vow to do better in 2017. This year was just cram-packed with things that took me away from this blog, which is - in the final analysis - a labor of love, rather than a paying gig. And bills (like pipers) must be paid. That being said, Rogue One and Moana - I loved you both and you deserved full write-ups.
However, 2016 also brought the delayed-by-cancer completion of Dreams Given Form. Ensley and I are in the copy-editing phase, having sent off the publication catalog blurb. We still have work to do, but we are firmly in the final stages and Dreams Given Form will be given form in 2017! And really - I cannot say enough good things about ECW's support for this project. There are some publishing houses who would've reacted to my diagnosis by saying, "That's awful! So you can't make the contract deadline. Hmm - well, you get better and we're passing on the book." ECW never wavered in their support and I hope the book sells truckloads to reward them for their loyalty. (Do what you can on that, won't you?)
In the final week of 2016, I hope to see both Fences and Hidden Figures. And how great was it to come out of a store after making a candy cane run to have someone holler at me from a parked car, "Fences. Yeah, Fences. Worth seeing?" When I said I hadn't seen it yet - Meet Me at the Movies doesn't get advance screenings - he cheerfully asked, "Okay, then. What about Rogue One?"
Movies bring people together. So please - watch us on TV19! New episodes every Friday and you can watch us anywhere in the world through streaming! Just go to clevelandcc.edu and select CTV19 at the top of your screen. That'll take you to all the fabulous TV19 shows that stream - we're the first one on the left!
And Merry Christmas to you all! May 2017 be wondrous to all of us!
Okay, okay - so it's not Thursday. There was NO WAY I was going to wait!
For you see, I have exciting news that I cannot keep to myself - the manuscript draft for Dreams Given Form: The Unofficial Guide to the Babylon 5 Universe is done!Done! DONE!!!!As in, the final bits were sent to our editor today! As in, so recently that my final Post-It notes and flags are still stuck to the edge of my desk where I put them as I finished with each portion they were marking in the final few days of drafting.
Whew.
Now, there's still work to be done that will take a minimum of several months. We've been sending each "chunk" to our editor as we finished it, so a good portion has already gone through the initial edits, but remember that Dreams Given Form is an ambitious piece of work that brings together everything that has been designated as canonical for Babylon 5 - the episodes, the movies, Crusade, the novels, the comics, and the short stories, as well as some "extras." (I drew the line at action figures . . .) That made for a crazy amount of work, even with wonderful materials such as The Lurker's Guide and Terry Jones' exhaustive chronology, which was so detailed it was adopted by the production company to keep timelines straight. (I swear, the implications of "War without End" on later works nearly drove me to tears a couple of times and Terry saved my bacon.)
Plus, this project came to a screeching halt when I was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ (think "junior auxiliary breast cancer") until I completed radiation treatment and got my strength and energy levels back. (Imagine a disease in which voluntarily subjecting yourself to radiation sickness is the best scenario and you'll understand why research and writing fell low on the list.) So publication was delayed, but it's all in the editing stage now!
We weren't able to reach one goal - we wanted to get the rights to reprint the six canonical short stories since they've never been collected in one place, but Warner Brothers has no interest in that, which is their prerogative as the copyright holder. Still, we include summaries, analysis, and highlights from each of those in Dreams Given Form. Also, we still have a few interview requests out there and we have our fingers crossed, but those chips will fall where they may.
We'll start conversations with our publisher, ECW Press, about cover design and possible sites to promote the book, which will be available in 2017 - we'll announce specific details when we know more.
For now, though, I think Ensley and I have some serious celebrating to do, because right now, everybody's cute. And in purple, I'm stunning.
Quick update on Dreams Given Form - we turned in the draft for Season 3, so we're now deep in Season 4. Ah, Season 4! Cartagia, Lorien, war, betrayal, tenderness, and hope. Ensley and I have said for years (long before we started this project with ECW Press) that JMS follows Freytag's Pyramid throughout B5, with each season roughly correlating to one element of the pyramid (which is really a triangle, but whatever. 19th century Germany). That puts Season 4 in the role of "falling action" following the climatic Season 3. In no way does that mean that Season 4 is a snoozer - quite the opposite. As the result of decisions made in the climax (Z'ha'dum, anyone?) events - quite LARGE events - happen. I love Season 4 for a fierce passion and I'm looking forward to this part of the project.
In movie news, last weekend I took my parents to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. Let me set the stage here a bit. Mom and Dad don't go to movies - it can be a hassle for them, their hearing isn't what once it was, and many movies just aren't made with them in mind. So when I mentioned this one and they both agreed to go - great jumping frog of Calaveras County! Off we went and I asked the manager what sort of captioning devices they have available for the hearing impaired. (Side note - always ask about this if you or someone you are with could benefit from such a thing. Movie theaters are places of public accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act and they should have something to help their patrons. This manager, in fact, was delighted that someone had asked! Theaters have to spend money to make these things available, but many folks don't even know about them.) Dad got rigged up with this nifty doo-hickey that fit in the cupholder and had a little rectangular screen on a flexible arm that he could adjust to suit his eye level. The screen projected the closed captions for the film and he could easily see the image on the big screen.
As to the movie itself - you know, I can't be fair about this one. I adored the first one (2002, directed by Joel Zwick) and they may well have taken too long to get the second one together. But they re-assembled the key cast (a near miracle, considering how large an ensemble piece it is) and, while some of the jokes may seem a bit forced, I loved seeing this movie with my parents. I loved seeing them see the movie. I loved being able to go out with them to a movie. So yeah - I'm biased on this one.
It's a sweet movie - very Capra-esque in its optimism and zaniness (think about the whimsical family in You Can't Take It with You). Unfortunately, we live in a highly cynical age where that sort of thing is routinely dismissed as corny fluff. Get over it. Let yourself go and have an hour and a half of fun and unplug the sardonic circuits for a bit.
And take someone who doesn't get out to the movies much. You won't regret it!
Yes, Windex got in on the action! If you've seen the first movie, don't worry - your favorite VERY multi-purpose cleaner is back!
"The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. It failed. But, in the Year of the Shadow War, it became something greater: our last, best hope... for victory. The year is 2260. The place: Babylon 5." -- Susan Ivanova
Well - THAT break was longer than I ever wanted it to be! "Third Age Thursday" was supposed to be a weekly post about Babylon 5, and particularly about the progress being made on Dreams Given Form, the companion guide to the show I'm co-authoring with Ensley F. Guffey. We tag-teamed on Wanna Cook?, a similar guide to Breaking Bad which was released in 2014 (available at fine booksellers everywhere!) and enjoyed the experience enough to look around for another project that would let us work together and settled on this one. And all was wonderful.
Until . . .
I won't say the Shadows ambushed us, but I had a health scare that put the entire project back a year while I recovered and poor Ensley did his best to soldier on until I could take up my share of the load. But we're both back and in fine fighting form!
In fact, we just turned in the draft manuscript for Season 3. (Wow - I just love that season!) Seasons 1 and 2 have already had their first turn through the Great Machine of Editing, so we're back on schedule. Well, we're back on our new schedule, at any rate. ECW Press (our publisher) has been exceptionally kind to us and we're looking forward to moving forward with this sizable project.
Keep in mind Dreams Given Form isn't limited to the five seasons of Babylon 5. No, sirree! We're covering that, sure, but we're also providing material on the official novels, movies, comics, and other canonical sources. It's a big project and one of our biggest challenges is figuring out how to do the universe of Babylon 5 justice without the book becoming a multi-volume set.
At any rate, today is a rare day off from watching, annotating, drafting, and screaming (that often accompanies the drafting stage for me) but I'm back at it tomorrow and I realized that I hadn't posted about the project in far - FAR - too long.
“The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. A
self-contained world, five miles long, located in neutral territory. A place of
commerce and diplomacy for a quarter of a million humans and aliens. A shining
beacon in space, all alone in the night. It was the dawn of the Third Age of
mankind. The year the Great War came upon us all. This is the story of the last
of the Babylon stations. The year is 2259. The name of the place is Babylon 5." -- John Sheridan
SHERIDAN, BABY!!
That's right - I'm now well into Season 2 of my detailed re-watch of Babylon 5. (See how the opening quote has changed?) The re-watch is part of my research for Dreams Given Form, which will be an unprecedented guide to the universe of JMS's brilliant, long-arc show that I'm co-authoring for ECW Press, scheduled to be released sometime in 2016. As I've said here before, deeply re-watching Season 1 brought me new insights, including an almost complete revising of my opinion about the character of Jeffrey Sinclair. (Further, knowing what we now know about the seven hells Michael O'Hare, the actor who brought Sinclair to life, was going through, I get chills watching a few scenes in that season, I can tell you. Not sure what I'm talking about? Click here.)
But for now, Sinclair is serving as Earth's first ambassador to Minbar and John Sheridan has been plucked from his rootin', tootin', shootin' command of a Omega-class destroyer to ride herd over the diplomatic squabbles of dozens of races on B5. It's a post he's not especially suited for, in part because of his role in the Earth-Minbari war, in which he managed to destroy the Minbari flagship through trickery. That action made him a hero on Earth, but the Minbari refer to him as "Starkiller," making him a very unlikely choice to command B5.
However, life is strange and it'll get stranger. But now it comes with oranges!
PS - I should probably mention at this point that Sheridan [along with Buffy] served at the cake-topper at my wedding. Make of that what you will.
"It was the dawn of the third age of mankind, ten years after the Earth-Minbari War. The Babylon Project was a dream given form. Its goal: to prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call, home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night." - Jeffrey Sinclair
Third Age Thursday is back, baby!
And it's good to be back - the holidays demanded some time and attention and an unpleasant health issue had be be addressed, so a break was indicated. But now the New Year has been rung in, the decorations have been packed away, and a map for moving forward has been crafted, so let's get to it! As regular readers know, Third Age Thursday is a weekly posting on this blog written to support the writing of Dreams Given Form, which will be far more than just an episode guide. This book will examine not just the five seasons of Babylon 5, but the auxiliary shows such as Crusade, the canonical novels and comics, and so on. No one has ever attempted to gather all the material concerning the complex universe created by JMS for Babylon 5 in a single printed work and our goal is to create a companion guide that will be useful to the die-hard fan who has seen every episode multiple times as well as the new fan who is just getting into the show ahead of the rumored big-screen movie which is scheduled to being production in 2016.
Recently, I finished my critical rewatch of much-maligned Season 1. Yes, that's right - even among dedicated fans (and I think I'm one of them), Season 1 isn't a fave. I have to tell you, though, I have a much, MUCH deeper appreciation for it this time around. Like many fans, I really like Bruce Boxleitner's Captain John Sheridan, who takes over command of the station in Season 2 from Michael O'Hare's Commander Jeffrey Sinclair. Watching this time, however, I think Sinclair gets a bum rap. His style is different from Sheridan's - it's much more methodical and deliberate, which has some advantages in the first days of running a station that is, after all, far more of a diplomatic posting than a military one. I'm into the rewatch of Season 2 now and I still like Sheridan's more wide-open, cowboy take on things, and I'm convinced it makes for really good TV, but yeah - I like Sinclair, too. Gotta love a combat fighter pilot who was taught by Jesuits. That'll give you some depth and perspective! I've heard people claim proudly that they just skipped Season 1 and dove straight into Season 2. I don't get that, although people are, of course, free to watch as they wish. But Babylon 5 is an intricate show full of transitions, shifting alliances, and character transformations and bounding over Season 1 means you miss so much of where these magnificently-complex characters begin and what prompts the shifts. Skipping the first season means you miss (among many other things):
Londo and G'Kar's hands around the other's throat (for the first time)
Londo's melancholy speech about "tight shoes"
The first mention of unrest of Mars and the threat of groups like the Home Guard
G'Kar's first references to G'Quan & his role in the Narn faith
Ivanova's exasperated explanation about the B5 "mantra"
The first appearance of Bester
The first appearance of Mr. Morden and his "associates"
The first appearance of Zathras
And so much of what happens in Season 1 will come back - sharply and in highly unexpected ways - much, much later. Rewatching Season 1, I was once again just impressed as all get-out by the vision JMS showed in crafting this universe. Honestly, there's great stuff in Season 1 - don't believe me? Check out this scene from the Season 1 episode "Babylon Squared." It might not make much sense in Season 1, but - boy howdy! - it's a very good scene to keep in mind as things unfold.
I know, this has become the spot for "Third Age Thursday," a weekly post devoted to Babylon 5 and particularly the ongoing construction of Dreams Given Form, which is the current project Ensley F. Guffey and I are working on for ECW. Publication is expected sometime in 2016 and Dreams Given Form will examine all aspects of the Babylon 5 universe, not limiting itself to the five seasons that were broadcast.
But it's my blog and this week, I'm bursting with news about our first project for ECW, Wanna Cook? The Complete, Unofficial Companion to Breaking Bad which was published this spring and would make a truly excellent gift for the Breaking Bad fan in your life.
Breaking Bad had appeal that transcended the borders of the United States - early on, ECW struck a publishing deal with Myrmidon Books in the United Kingdom (Wanna Cook? was Myrmidon's first non-fiction book, a fact of which we're both quite proud) and that was followed by an arrangement with German publisher Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf to have the book translated into a German edition (which, due to different copyright laws in Europe, is also titled Breaking Bad, which is very, very cool). By the way, the link I included here has been translated into English, but yes - it's a German translation of the original book.
Then Brazil got in on the Breaking Bad act. That edition, which will be published in Portuguese by LeYa, is not available yet, and Ensley and I plan to do some (English language) interviews and publicity to promote the book in that great country.
And we thought that was just fantastic - an embarrassment of editions, actually. (Really - we squee'd every time ECW gave us the news of another foreign edition. Seriously. We did.)
But then, almost as a holiday gift, we received the news that Epsilon, a Turkish press, wants to translate and publish Wanna Cook? into Turkish. Turkish!
That makes five publishers (including ECW, of course, about whom praises cannot be sung highly enough!) on four continents and three foreign language editions. We're a pair of turtledove authors, so hand us a partridge in a pear tree and we're nearly half a Christmas carol!
So really - don't you want to buy a couple of copies of this incredible book? You know you do! Amazon has it in stock and you can even get free shipping if you have Prime!
"It was the dawn of the third age of mankind, ten years after the Earth-Minbari War. The Babylon Project was a dream given form. Its goal: to prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call, home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night." - Jeffrey Sinclair
I know that Third Age Thursday has taken a semi-hiatus as one co-author (me) has been dealing with some health issues and the other one (the handsome and talented Ensley F. Guffey, whose blog about this project can be found over here) has had his hands full dealing with co-author 1. Fortunately, the tests have borne fruit and we're closer to an answer and an answer brings us closer to a plan. The whole unexpected, occasionally painful, and certainly an annoyance of an issue has put us behind where we hoped to be by December, but we've got plenty of time to make our deadline. Remember, we're creating a guide (not merely an episode recap - Ensley's blog explains the scope of the project very well) to not just the five seasons of Babylon 5, but the auxiliary shows such as Crusade, canonical novels and comics, and so on. JMS created a complex universe for his stories and material about all of that hasn't been collected in a single place. It's a yeoman's job and yes, we're up to it. Our goal is to create a companion guide that will be useful for the die-hard fan who has seen every episode multiple times as well as the new fan who is just getting into Babylon 5 ahead of the rumored big-screen movie which is scheduled to begin production in 2016. That's a wide audience, but we think we can do it - and we've accepted that there will be a few fans who will be disappointed that their favorite episode/character/ship/quip didn't get more page-time. But unless we want to create an expensive treatise covering absolutely every instance of everything (which our publisher would balk at), cuts have to be made. We've done this before - really, you should buy copies of Wanna Cook? The Complete, Unofficial Companion to Breaking Badas holiday gifts to see our approach - and remember that show had about half the number of episodes as Babylon 5! - and it hurt to cut favorite quotes to make room for really important themes that came back later in the show, but it had to be done. Ensley and I are C&C on this mission and our goal is to get everyone to their destination in one piece.
In the meantime, entertain yourself with two very different fan mashups of the brilliant show Breaking Bad. The first is Narvinek's gorgeous recap of the show set to the spaghetti Western classic "Ecstasy of Gold" and blows me away each time I see it.
The second, by Rhett & Link, who have made a stunningly funny series of local commercials, is Breaking Bad re-imagined as a middle school musical. The thing that always leaves me gape-mouthed is that both of these, different as they are, WORK.
"It was the dawn of the third age of mankind, ten years after the Earth-Minbari War. The Babylon Project was a dream given form. Its goal: to prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call, home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night." - Jeffrey Sinclair
Welcome back toThird Age Thursday ("TAT"), an ongoing feature here at Unfettered Brilliance! Along withEnsley, who's posting the wonderfully-named"Tuesdays with Mollari" over on his blog, these posts are written to keep you up to date on the writing and publication of Dreams Given Form: The Unofficial Companion to the Universe of Babylon 5. Please feel free to comment, re-post, tweet, plus-one, pin, and use all sorts of other ways to pass along the news that a comprehensive Babylon 5 book is in the works with publication ETA sometime in 2016. And remember that you can always search through these posts to find all the "Third Age" posts by using the search feature on the right. Just use "Babylon 5" or "Third Age" as your search term. Unfortunately, I've been put in quarantine for this week. I had thought that, since the dock workers' strike had been resolved (that Sinclair is a slippery eel sometimes and I have to admit that, while I don't know Neeoma Connally personally, she seems tough but fair), I'd be able to nose around, maybe even sneak around the Green Sector and give you some insider information on a few of the ambassadors and their staff, but Dr. Franklin is insisting on keeping me in one of the medlabs. He assures me it's nothing like drafa (and that's a good thing!) but he wants to keep an eye on me. So no new post this week. Instead, enjoy this short example of Mr. Garibaldi's work as a motivational speaker.
"It was the dawn of the third age of mankind, ten years after the Earth-Minbari War. The Babylon Project was a dream given form. Its goal: to prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call, home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night." - Jeffrey Sinclair
Welcome back toThird Age Thursday ("TAT"), an ongoing feature here at Unfettered Brilliance! Along withEnsley, who's posting the wonderfully-named"Tuesdays with Mollari" over on his blog, (he's is a little behind as he took some time to help me deal with those tests Dr. Franklin insisted on me having - check the previous TAT here), these posts are written to keep you up to date on the writing and publication of Dreams Given Form: The Unofficial Companion to the Universe of Babylon 5. Please feel free to comment, re-post, tweet, plus-one, pin, and use all sorts of other ways to pass along the news that a comprehensive Babylon 5 book is in the works with publication ETA sometime in 2016. And remember that you can always search through these posts to find all the "Third Age" posts by using the search feature on the right. Just use "Babylon 5" or "Third Age" as your search term.
Babylon 5 is such a rich, deep, complex text to explore that sometimes it's hard to know where to start these posts - should I discuss an episode, a particular character, the nature of telepathy, maybe the relationship between a couple of characters . . . which way to go?
Well, today, I want to talk about an odd episode that happens late in the run of Babylon 5. The only one to be written by someone other than JMS so late in the run of Babylon 5, "Day of the Dead" (5.08) sees characters visited by dead people from their past. For years, JMS had asked/hounded/stalked Neil Gaiman to write an episode of the show, but the scheduling never quite worked out.
That JMS is a fan of Gaiman is evidenced by
His persistence in getting Gaiman onboard and
JMS' introduction of a race of methane breathers that wear a mask on their heads to breathe.
The race is called the "Gaim."
That mask looks a whole lot like the one worn by Dream in Gaiman's Sandman series.
JMS's "Gaim"
Gaiman's "Dream" w/Helm
Case rested on that point.
The episode itself is interesting as we see crew members face the dead, who (let's face it) nearly always carry guilt for the living, intentional or not. Season 5 gets a lot of flack - often from viewers who wanted things to end of the wham-boom-crack! of Season 4, but life goes on, and that's a lesson Season 5 of Babylon 5 teaches us.
"It was the dawn of the third age of mankind, ten years after the Earth-Minbari War. The Babylon Project was a dream given form. Its goal: to prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call, home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night." - Jeffrey Sinclair
Welcome back toThird Age Thursday, an ongoing feature here at Unfettered Brilliance! Along withEnsley, who's posting the wonderfully-named"Tuesdays with Mollari" over on his blog, these posts are written to keep you up to date on the writing and publication of Dreams Given Form: The Unofficial Companion to the Universe of Babylon 5. Please feel free to comment, re-post, tweet, plus-one, pin, and use all sorts of other ways to pass along the news that a comprehensive Babylon 5 book is in the works with publication ETA sometime in 2016. And remember that you can always search through these posts to find all the "Third Age" posts by using the search feature on the right. Just use "Babylon 5" or "Third Age" as your search term.
Unfortunately, this post has to be a short one. Dr. Franklin wasn't too pleased with my latest scans - to tell you the truth, I'd been putting them off so I could nose around Downbelow - there's a lot going on there that "they" don't want you to know about - but it seems I got a little too close to - well, I'm not ready to say just yet. Let's just say Franklin wants to keep a close eye on me for a few days. I keep telling him it's not necessary, but he says that if I cooperate, he knows where he just might be able to get his hands on some real, honest-to-God coffee, so I'm stuck here for a few days.
Won't keep me from making notes, though. There are things about this place that people need to know about!
"It was
the dawn of the third age of mankind, ten years after the Earth-Minbari War.
The Babylon Project was a dream given form. Its goal: to prevent another war by
creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences
peacefully. It's a port of call, home away from home for diplomats, hustlers,
entrepreneurs, and wanderers. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million, five
hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night." -
Jeffrey Sinclair
Welcome back toThird Age Thursday, an ongoing feature here at Unfettered Brilliance!
Along withEnsley, who's posting the wonderfully-named"Tuesdays with Mollari" over on his blog, these posts are written
to keep you up to date on the writing and publication of Dreams Given Form: The Unofficial Companion to
the Universe of Babylon 5. Please feel free to comment, re-post, tweet, plus-one, pin,
and use all sorts of other ways to pass along the news that a
comprehensive Babylon 5 book is in the works with publication
ETA sometime in 2016. And
remember that you can always search through these posts to find all the
"Third Age" posts by using the search feature on the right. Just use
"Babylon 5" or "Third Age" as your search term.
Today I want to focus on one particular character – I’ll do
this from time to time as the project progresses and Valen knows there’s no
shortage of fun, interesting characters to examine on Babylon 5.
For today, let’s take a
look at Susan Ivanova. Her character is missing from the pilot movie “The Gathering” – there, the role of the lieutenant commanderof Babylon 5 is still played by a
female (Tamlyn Tomita) but “Laurel Takashima” was written out of the series
when full-scale production began. (Viewers hear that Takashima was recalled to
Earth on a classified mission, which freed Tomita to pursue other roles, which
she has done with success.) And thus the station became home to a new
second-in-command, a strong-willed, smart-as-a-whip Russian Jew named Susan
Ivanova (known in Russian as Сюзан Иванова and in Hebrew
as סוזןאיבנובה).
Now, there are many character arcs on Babylon 5 that I enjoy and that are well worth exploring, but Susan’s
dry wit attracted me from the get-go. She’s very well aware of protocol, has a
highly-developed sense of duty and honor, and yet is often a tragic figure.
(Oh, the weight of that single earring she wears!) She’s also funny, provided
her well-timed sense of snark isn’t directed at you, as in her warning to a
nosy reporter who’s getting in the way – “Don’t. You’re too young to experience
that much pain.” (1.04) And there’s her advice in Season 4 to “Trust Ivanova.
Trust yourself. Anyone else? Shoot ‘em.”
And she’s got the absolute
best ever answer to one of the key questions that runs throughout Babylon 5 – “Who are you?”
