Text 16532, 84 rader
Skriven 2007-08-02 01:15:51 av Amy Guskin (3008.babylon5)
  Kommentar till text 16516 av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (2992.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Is there any reasonable way to interpret "Over Here" withoutaccpeti
===============================================================================
>> On Wed, 1 Aug 2007 19:44:04 -0400, Josh Hill wrote
(in article <uh62b35dvkk7plnjreethbch7brch1n6sd@4ax.com>):

> On Thu, 02 Aug 2007 02:20:02 +0300, Janne Mikola <janne.mikola@tut.fi>
> wrote:
> 
>> Hello,
>> 
>> I just watched Voices in the Dark and all the extras. First of all I 
>> must say that tears started welling up in my eyes when I watched Andreas 
>> and Richard memorials.
>> 
>> But now to the story of the Lochley-part. Both visiting actors did a 
>> great job. The story would have been very great as a separate movie with 
>> no connections to Babylon 5, just as a random scifi movie. But now that 
>> it is part of the Babylon 5 canon, I'm having difficulties with going 
>> through it.
>> 
>> If I recall correctly, never before has any kind of divine entity 
>> interacted in Babylon 5 universe through miracles. Sure there has been 
>> religion involved in very many occasions starting from Brother Theo and 
>> Minbari's religious cast. Even JMS himself has stated a long time ago 
>> that "religion [...] has always been present. And it will be present 200 
>> years from now. That may not thrill me, but when one is a writer, one 
>> must deal with realities, and that's one of them. To totally ignore that 
>> part of the human equation would be as false and wrong-headed as 
>> ignoring the fact that people get mad, or passionate, or strive for 
>> better lives. [...] In the Babylon 5 universe, all the things that make 
>> us human -- our obsessions, our interests, our language, our culture, 
>> our flaws and our wonderfulnesses -- are all still intact.". I know this 
>> may sound weird to some of you, but simply put: I don't have any 
>> problems with supernatural, it is divine elements of religions I have 
>> trouble with.
>> 
>> Yes, there has been religion involved before. But this time it was 
>> different, now it seems that it is part of the Babylon 5 canon that god 
>> and devil exist and they're able to perform miracles, and even are doing 
>> them, and at least the devil is speaking directly with mortal people 
>> through his minions withs words which can be heard and recorded. Put in 
>> extravagant way - it should be from now on always speculated that why 
>> doesn't Lochley seek for divine intervention when B5 is in trouble.
>> 
>> This is kind of hard to accept as an atheist (JMS has stated he's an 
>> atheist too, btw). Because as JMS said in the extras of the DVD, Babylon 
>> 5 universe works for me as a place to go to "playing" with people I'm 
>> come to like and know. I know I'm getting lots of "get over with it, 
>> it's just a story" -type replies to this message, and of course I will 
>> "get over with it". It's not about that.
>> 
>> During the second half of the Over Here I was all the time waiting for 
>> some small signals somewhere which would hint that the allegedly 
>> possessed person really wasn't possessed - that it would be some plot of 
>> let's say Drakh or other Shadow-minions. Or some kind of chain of events 
>> which would have caused so much doubt that for instance Lochley would 
>> have said that "she doesn't anymore know what that was", or such. Or 
>> mental instability of people, self-suggestion of priest and malfunction 
>> of Babylon 5 scanners. Whatever. But there weren't any. God and devil 
>> from now on exist in Babylon 5 universe, and in any situation it is 
>> possible that they're interacting and intervening again.
>> 
>> Share your thoughts.
> 
> I would have liked to see the religion business made ambiguous, e.g.,
> the characters might have speculated -- as a possibility -- that the
> demon was not supernatural but rather a race cast down by the First
> Ones or some other powerful entity. <<

I assumed this might indeed be the case.  Just because Lochley and the priest 
were satisfied by the end of the 36 (?) minutes that this was a demon of some 
ilk, I didn't feel that that line was definitively drawn in black in the 
story, if that makes sense.  I think we could very likely assume that when 
Lochley is back in her office reporting on this matter, that she might indeed 
have told her superiors back home that they need to be on the lookout for 
some heretofore unknown race of aliens that are 'possessing' people on Earth. 
 For dramatic purposes, though, it was tidier to leave it at the point where 
they did.

Amy
-- 
"In my line of work you gotta keep repeating things over and over and over 
again for the truth to sink in, to kinda catapult the propaganda." - George 
W. Bush, May 24, 2005
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32
 * Origin: Time Warp of the Future BBS - Home of League 10 (1:14/400)