Third Age Thursday 7

"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 to Third Age Thursday, an ongoing feature here at Unfettered Brilliance! Along with Ensley, 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 commander of 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 סוזן איבנובה).

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?”

Really, how can you not love her?

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Halloween Plans!

Halloween is the traditional time of the year for scares and chills. While I have a liking for the classic Universal horror movies (really, Bride of Frankenstein is just fantastic) and a soft spot in my heart for the "jump scare" as exemplified in the psychological thriller Cat People (the original, please - the one with Simone Simon and the creepy shadows in the pool), I understand that other people have other likes. So - a quick list of favorites, followed by "things that will guarantee I don't see that movie" followed by a quick list of "well, I'll try that" and an invitation if you happen to be near my hometown.

A few Halloween favorites:

• The aforementioned Bride & Cat People
• Nosferatu
• The Crow (only the first one)

OK - movies that feature the following are right out:

• Maniacal toy monkeys banging cymbals together (seriously creepy)
• Possessed dolls (yeah, I wouldn't get near the new release Annabelle - really, you couldn't tell there was something off about that so-called toy??)
• People just being flat-out awful to each other - I don't get (truly do not get) the appeal of the Hostel movies

On the other hand, I'll try:

• Monster movies (were-creatures, vampires, hauntings, etc.)
• Silly "it came from outer space!" flicks (I'll include irradiated critters in this category)
• Psychological horror, including demonic possession as a theme

So there's a lot I'll try and I have to admit to really enjoying this season of American Horror Story with its gracious nods to Tod Browning's Freaks.

And I'm trying something new this Thursday! A local venue, the Don Gibson Theater, features classic movies for super-cheap on Thursday nights - the line up for November is especially impressive and more about that soon! This week, they're showing their first "R" rated movie (their classics are usually from before the modern MPAA came around in 1968) and it's a fun one. Come out and see 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street on the big screen! You can't find a better deal - tickets are a paltry $2, and another three gets you popcorn and a drink. Really - you can't beat that deal with a book written in Latin and a two-ended stick! Showtime is at 7 pm, which gives you plenty of time to get home safely before the ghouls come out!

Hope to see you there!

Third Age Thursday 6

"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 to Third Age Thursday, an ongoing feature here at Unfettered Brilliance! 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. I enjoy writing these posts, but this one is just - different.

Yesterday, a gunman shot a soldier guarding Canada's National War Memorial and then grimly continued his rampage inside Parliament before being shot dead by Kevin Vickers, the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Commons. As I'm writing this, there is much that remains unknown - was the gunman working alone? Was this horrible attack motivated by religious fervor? Is this tied to the killing of another Canadian soldier in Quebec earlier this week? And what's "normal" going to look like for my neighbors to the North after this?


I'm sad, and my heart is heavy, so at first, I just wasn't even going to write a "Third Age Thursday" for this week. But then it occurred to me that actually, Babylon 5 has dealt with these issues, albeit in a fictional universe. In fact, isn't that one of the notions that first caught our attention - JMS's attention to detail in creating a universe that wasn't like ours, yet was similar enough that we recognized the battles, both internal and external, that we saw playing out? War, espionage, distrust, terrorism, even a simple desire to get one over on the next guy - we've seen all of this on Babylon 5.

Faced with the events of today, I don't know what Sinclair would do. Or Sheridan. Or Garibaldi. I'm pretty sure Ivanova would threaten to rip someone's head off and make sure they saw their own twitching body before she drop-kicked the head out an airlock. As for the nonhumans - well, I'm pretty sure Kosh would say something cryptic. Vir would dither and Londo would shout. Delenn would light a candle and shake some chimes while intoning solemn blank verse and G'Kar would sell arms to both sides. (Well, early G'Kar would.) 

I hate to say it (truly), but I think Bester might have some useful ideas right about now.

Humans. We often don't want justice nearly as much as we crave the coppery taste of revenge. It's a desire that can cause us to go on vendettas, begin multi-generational feuds, and sacrifice our own values. We'll eat our own entrails just to make sure the other rat bastard doesn't get away with it.

Be careful, Canada. My country's never been the same since 9/11 and not all of the changes we've made in the name of security have been worthy exchanges. Step lightly and look around before you act.  Please.

My heart mourns with yours for this senseless loss of life. I'm so, so sorry. 

The Pittsburgh Penguins played the Philadelphia Flyers Wednesday in Pittsburgh. Obviously, neither one is a Canadian hockey team but tragedy can sometimes overcome such pitiful differences. And yes, O, Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

Fury

Fury is writer-director David Ayer's angry, resigned warsong and it's a rough ride, but one well worth carving out time to see.

Ayer likes war/police stories, having Training Day, U-571, and Dark Blue to his credit as a writer. With Fury, he takes on a story seldom told - set at what will be the end of WW2, audiences are painfully reminded that the soldiers don't know how long the tail-end of the war will drag on and, in the meantime, they're tasked with achieving the objectives set for them by others who aren't living in the small, foul-smelling steel box known as a Sherman tank and, by the way, those objectives involve killing the other guy before he has a chance to kill you. Living in such a pressure cooker will fundamentally change who you are, or at least who you were, and into this atmosphere the audience is thrust through the character of Norman Ellison. (By the way, I love the name. "Norman" sounds an awful lot like "Normal" and "Ellison" makes him sound like the child of Ellis Island, the famous "gateway to America" immigration point.) Norman didn't train as a tank gunner; he was supposed to type 60 wpm as a clerk, but it's the end of the war and we're running out of soldiers, so off he goes.

The crew of the Fury has been together since the tank battles of North Africa (roughly late 1942) and their sergeant, nicknamed "Wardaddy" (played by Brad Pitt with a subtlety that reminded me that Pitt is capable of great things in his acting), promised to bring them all home. The death of their gunner and the introduction of Norman has upended the status quo. Further, they really don't have time to train a greenie, whose hesitation could easily get all of them killed. All of the main cast deserves accolades (yes, even Shia LaBeouf, who went very publicly off the rails lately), but Pitt and Logan Lerman (who plays Norman) are absolute standouts. Lerman is best known for playing the title role in the Percy Jackson franchise and for his role as Charlie in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but this is the sort of role that generates major awards buzz, and well it should. Seeing Norman's transformation is both uplifting (we don't want him to get killed) and horrific (how can such a nice boy get so merciless?) and we can't look away.

Make no mistake - Fury is a tough movie to watch. It's brutal in its depiction of violence and what that can do to even a good man. Yet I also think Fury is a movie that needs to be watched. We're very used to a comfortable fairy tale about WW2 - namely, that American soldiers were all good, kind, decent men who did what they had to do to save the free world and then came home to adulation and kisses from nurses in Times Square before returning to good, sturdy jobs and American prosperity.

Crap and fewmets, and believing such codswallop disrepects every soldier who ever served.

Yes, it involves bravery and honor, but war is primarily blood, violence, bad food, cold mud, desperate prayers, and constantly living hyped-up on the edge of insanity. When you go to see Fury (and you should), notice who rides the white horses and who lets who live when it really is to their advantage to not do so. Battle is complicated and sometimes the narrative is so snarled that we just say, "Forget it" and crown the last one standing who's wearing our uniform a hero.

Third Age Thursday 5

"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 to Third Age Thursday, an ongoing feature here at Unfettered Brilliance! Along with Ensley, who's posting the wonderfully-named "Tuesdays with Mollari" over on his blog (click here for the latest!), 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.

For this "Third Age Thursday," I wanted to talk about conflict. Sure, we hate it in our everyday lives (well, most of us do), but without it, drama gets pretty darned dull. As I've been known to tell my film and theatre students, "Yes, we like calm in our personal lives, but I'm not paying out good money to watch people get along." So a key way in to any piece of drama is to figure out the "versus" of the piece - whether that's "Man v. Shark" (Jaws), "Luke v. Darth Vader" (Return of the Jedi), "Frodo v. All the Hordes of Mordor" (LotR). You get the idea.

There's no worry about running out of conflicts on Babylon 5. While there are many, many, MANY conflicts we can discuss here, let's just take a teensy glimpse at one of the core conflicts that will play out over five seasons. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to direct your attention to the Council Chamber, where you can view two ambassadors, both working for the benefit of their people and hating each other with a fiery passion, G'Kar of Narn (played by the late Andreas Katsulas) and Londo Mollari of the Centauri Republic (played by Peter Jurasik).

The Narns had been slaves of the Centauri Republic for many years and many Centauri still view the Narn race as primitive, barbaric, and less-than. As far as the Narn are concerned, the Centauri are a race of bloated, privileged, cruel people who can never be trusted. As the story of Babylon 5 slowly unfolds, viewers see that there is much more to this two incredible characters, who are gradually revealed to be foils to one another. In fact, their stories are so intertwined that it's impossible to imagine the show without this anchoring conflict.

JMS saw this all-important relationship as being central to the story of Babylon 5 as well. He's claimed that he would look at the filming schedule to be sure that he was present for scenes that involved both of these two intense characters, knowing that he'd be certain to see something extraordinary.

Yes, there are many other conflicts that are worth talking about on Babylon 5, but this is where it all starts.

Families Are Tough

Before I go any further, let me say how great it is to have the late summer doldrums over with! Seriously, both of these are good, solid films that deserve to be seen. For some reason, the studios prefer to release their "prestige" pictures in the last quarter of the year - this probably has to do with the perceived short attention span of awards voters, but October is when you start seeing the "good stuff for grown ups."

In his novel Anna Karenina, the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote that "all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." It may well be a universal truth, as opposed to something that Tolstoy had specific insight into by dint of his Russian-ness. At any rate, Tolstoy's principle is on display in two new releases - Gone Girl, which deals with the husband/wife relationship, and The Judge, which deals with the father/son relationship.

So - Gone Girl. I have to admit that I was supposed to read the novel for my book club quite a while back, but it was during an incredibly hectic time and this one slipped by me. Therefore, I stayed spoiler free and cannot comment on how the movie compares to the book, although I was pleased to see that the author, Gillian Flynn, was responsible for the screenplay. Directed by David Fincher (of Se7en, Fight Club, and The Social Network, among others), this film is stylish and slippery. If you've ever wondered what the literary critic folks mean when they talk about an "unreliable narrator," watch this film - both Amy Dunne and her husband Nick are telling only partial stories. Not that the media does any better here, content instead to go for the sensational sound bite rather than digging for anything resembling facts. There's much in here about distrust, psychopathy, and our willingness to rush to judgment on flimsy circumstantial evidence. Strong performances all the way around, with Ben Affleck reminding viewers that his strengths aren't just as a director and the astonishing Rosamund Pike leaving me breathless more than once. It's also worth mentioning that Tyler Perry is actually capable of more subtlety than his drag role of Medea and Neil Patrick Harris has a quiet menace that you don't necessarily expect from his Barney role on How I Met Your Mother. Truly - every aspect of this film is worthy of praise, from the casting of small roles to the deconstructed industrial soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. All that said, I saw a group of seven teenage girls walk out part way through, no doubt expecting a romantic thriller rather than an exploration of infidelity and psychopathy. Be warned. 

Meanwhile, in The Judge the focus is on the fractured relationship between a brash son (Robert Downey Jr.) and his prickly, upright father (Robert Duvall). Downey's Hank is the middle son, with his older brother (Vincent D'Onofrio) staying behind in Small Town, Indiana (not its real name, but seriously - the town is a John Mellencamp song) following the crushing loss of his own dreams to help take care of his younger, mentally challenged brother (played with remarkable grace by classically trained actor Jeremy Strong). While the plot and characters could easily have become a quickly-sketched cliche, the actors here rise above that to create a film that shows tenderness and depth. Hank's an ass, but he's a really good lawyer. His father was unyielding and intractable, and his own stubborn adherence to his personal code creates massive problems for those who, despite their better judgment, love him. I really think Vera Farmiga as Hank's old flame should be singled out for praise - it would have been simple to make her a rapidly-drawn cartoon, but she approaches the role with flair and verve. I may have enjoyed this one more due to my own training as an attorney - I saw some of the legal issues and problems before some others in the theater did - but I still think The Judge is well worth seeing. 

Third Age Thursday 4

"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 to Third Age Thursday, an ongoing feature here at Unfettered Brilliance! Along with Ensley, 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.

At this stage of the project, I'm still in Season 1. What I wasn't really expecting was to enjoy it so much! Let's face it, most shows struggle a bit in the first season to find their footing - the actors are still getting comfortable with each other, the writers are figuring out who can deliver deadpan lines and who is better at purple prose, design folks are still working the fine details (Londo's hair, for example, gave JMS fits throughout Season 1). In Babylon 5 almost all the seeds that would sprout such fantastic stories are planted by midway in the first season and are lovingly tended. Case in point - the introduction of Morden in episode 13, "Signs and Portents." The answer to the question "What do you want?" matters a great deal in this universe - and the answers change. (Plus, I love that Morden was a lowly C&C tech in "The Gathering." No, it's not significant, but it's one of those cool details that I just love.

These characters, while not all human, are human in the sense of being relatable. They have flaws and foibles - look at Garibaldi's struggle to maintain sobriety in "Survivors." They can show remarkable kindness and compassion - honestly, if Londo's line in "The War Prayer" about "tight shoes" doesn't get to you, check yourself for gills. You might not be human. Does everything totally work? No, of course not. The character of Catherine Sakai (played by Julia Nickson) never really worked for me and the computer generated effects look clunky by today's standards. So what? It is often said that the best science fiction explores the Big Questions - what values we hold, how we make the big decisions that affect our lives and how we live those lives in the first place. It also considers how we react to injustice, to love, to loss, and to fear. In short, the best science fiction explores what it means to be human. In that, JMS succeeded marvelously - and he did it for five seasons, plus a host of television movies, spin-offs, novels, comics, and even a cookbook!

That's right - a cookbook.

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Third Age Thursday 3

 "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 to Third Age Thursday, an ongoing feature here at Unfettered Brilliance! Along with Ensley, who's posting the wonderfully-named "Tuesdays with Mollari" over on his blog (click here for the latest!), 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 all sorts of other ways to pass along the news that a comprehensive Babylon 5 book is in the works! 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.

In this post, I want to talk about an issue that doesn't come up all that much on network television even now, twenty years after the initial broadcast of Babylon 5 - major characters who suffer from mental illness. We've come a long way from being expected to believe that a cop can blithely shoot any number of bad guys and still be just jim-dandy to have on the job, and that's a good thing. I don't think taking a life should be depicted as being easy, even if the situation and circumstances leave the character with little choice. I want to see a character who's gone through something so difficult to wrestle with it, not to simply take a long weekend in Vegas and be back at work whistling "Dixie."

Babylon 5 got that right.

Just look at Season 1 - Jeffrey Sinclair, who is shown to be a capable commander, a competent administrator, and a skilled fighter, struggles with the aftermath of the Earth-Minbari War. While I'm not flat-out saying that Sinclair suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder ("PTSD") brought on by his experiences in that horrific conflict, others have been quite willing to go in that direction. However, it is undeniable that he certainly shows symptoms that are consistent with that diagnosis* and that is the centerpiece of the Season 1 episode "And the Sky Full of Stars." In that episode, we see Sinclair as a man haunted by his actions, even the ones he's not entirely sure he took. His mind is presented as fragmented and disjointed, a far cry from the pulled-together multitasker that is his public persona. Viewers have known from "The Gathering" that Sinclair has "a hole in [his] mind," and maybe those enigmatic words shouldn't have been dismissed as the ravings of a lone madman. However, we don't see Sinclair repeatedly wrestling with these demons and being laid low by them - as the writer of the linked piece puts it, Sinclair has "PTSD in a can."

For Michael O'Hare, who played the role of Commander Sinclair with authority and sensitivity, this was not the case. For years, speculation swirled around his abrupt departure after Season 1, but not much was spoken about the issue over the years. Then, in 2012 - and far too soon - O'Hare passed away and JMS felt free to speak about the issue, thereby putting some rumors to rest and, in the process, making me admire both men that much more.

You see, O'Hare knew Sinclair all too well. O'Hare suffered from paranoia and delusions that rendered working nearly impossible - there was a point in which O'Hare was combing through newspapers looking for secret messages that had been planted there for him. JMS considered shutting down production of Babylon 5 to give O'Hare the time necessary to seek treatment - maybe there was a combination of medications and other treatments that could push the monsters back under the bed - but O'Hare wouldn't have it. Shutting down production meant that dozens of people - from actors to grips to caterers - would lose their jobs. He'd find a way to tough it out. And that's what he did, by the skin of his teeth and the clawing of his nails. JMS worked with him (and his family) for a solid year, then brought him back to finish his arc. Once that was done, JMS swore he'd keep O'Hare's secret to his grave, but O'Hare interrupted him and said:

"No. You don't have to. Keep it 'til my grave. Because if anything ever happens to me, I want people to know . . . because people need to know if there's a problem in their family, if this can happen to an actor, a star of a show, the commander of a station, it can happen to anyone and it's not a scandalous thing; it can be dealt with."

And it was - for a time. O'Hare married, started a family, and began working again. But at some point, for reasons that remain unclear, O'Hare went off his medication and disappeared. He emerged in a halfway house and continued to struggle with his mental illness until his death in 2012.

Compared to the real story, Sinclair had a walk in the park.

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* As does Chief of Security Michael Garibaldi, but that's a separate discussion.