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Skriven 2007-08-09 16:51:44 av jphalt@aol.com (3468.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Movements of Fire and Shadow: my review
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A countdown to disaster, with all the inevitability that implies.


THE PLOT

As the Centauri/Alliance War escalates, Sheridan mulls an unpleasant
reality. The White Star fleet, created for the Shadow War, has now
been used in three major wars, as well as several smaller skirmishes.
The law of attrition tells him that sooner or later, the last White
Stars will be lost. To this end, he sends Delenn on a mission to
Minbar to ask the Grey Council to approve a joint Earth/Minbari
project, to construct new and larger ships. In the midst of war,
however, Delenn's trip will be a perilous one.

Sheridan has other worries beyond his wife's safety, though. The
Centauri tactics are unusual, with half of their ships acting purely
defensively, and the rest acting with seemingly blind aggression. He
cannot identify any goal behind the attacks by the aggressive ships.
When Sheridan tries to gather the thoughts of the Narn, Brakiri, and
Drazi, the Drazi deflect the conversation away from that topic,
seemingly out of rage. But the Drazi may have another agenda...

...An agenda that comes to light when Vir calls on Stephen and Lyta
for a favor. He tells them that the Drazi have not been returning the
bodies of dead Centauri from any of the attacking Centauri warships
they have destroyed. He convinces them that this is not only a moral
and religious quandary, but potentially a serious intelligence
situation. Soon, Stephen and Lyta are off to the Drazi Homeworld. They
believe they are on a mission of mercy, but what they will discover
will shock them, and change everything they thought they knew about
the current war.

Meanwhile, Sheridan learns that the Drazi and the Narn have violated
his dictate against striking civilian targets. Leaving just enough
forces behind to protect their homeworlds, the Narn and Drazi fleets
have plotted a course for Centauri Prime. This leaves the President
desperately racing to Centauri Prime to stop the incipient disaster -
particularly when Stephen and Lyta report their findings.

But, as Londo learns from the Regent himself, it is already far too
late...


THE GOOD

"Is it me, or has she changed?" Vir asks after Lyta coolly gives her
terms for helping to discover what the Drazi are hiding. Lyta
certainly has changed. She's adopted a leadership role within her
community, and she's developed the confidence to carry that role. At
the same time, she's become hard. The moment where she forces the
Drazi assassin to lift his own gun to his head to shoot himself is
chilling, even horrifying as you see the Drazi fighting to stop
himself, then closing his eyes as he realizes that he can't stop what
she is making him do. Even so, I don't think Lyta is quite as callous
as she would perhaps like others to believe (at least, not yet). The
way she winces after she makes the Drazi kill himself shows that she
does not find such acts pleasant, and her reaction when she discovers
the Drazi's secret shows her morally repulsed, on a level that a
purely cold being (like, say, Bester) would not be capable of.

Lyta and Stephen still make a terrific pair, by the way. Richard Biggs
and Patricia Tallman have an easy chemistry as they play off each
other. The two characters just seem to "fit" in that way that can't
really be forced. I enjoyed every second of their screen time
together, with Lyta grumbling about Stephen's refusal to ask
directions a particular high point.

Meanwhile, though Vir observes that Lyta has changed, that same
statement could just as easily be applied to Vir himself. Though he
still fumbles and flutters a little while laying out his problem and
his suspicions, he does so with intelligence and determination. He has
clearly thought out the situation, and the best way to counter it,
with great care. When Lyta dismisses the Drazi's refusal to return
Centauri bodies as "unfortunate, but..." (not really terribly
important), Vir is immediately able to counter with reasonable grounds
why it might be very important. When Stephen protests that Garibaldi
would be better-equipped to handle an intelligence mission, Vir is
ready with his arguments for why Stephen and Lyta are better choices.
He has his plan ready, he's prepared a ship, he's made all the
necessary arrangements to help Stephen and Lyta succeed in their
mission. It's not only better planned-out than Season One or even
Season Two Vir would have been capable of... it's better planned-out
than virtually any ploy Londo has devised. At this point, it not only
seems conceivable for Vir to be emperor, but it seems quite likely
that he'll be an excellent emperor when the time comes.

As for Sheridan, this episode places him in a position he's been
occupying far too often this season: impotence. Sheridan as President
simply doesn't project the same authority that Sheridan as General
projected last season. In the scene where he tries to reason with the
Narn, Brakiri, and Drazi, he doesn't come across as strong or
formidable at all. He made himself a personal enemy to the Drazi
Ambassador back in "The Paragon of Animals" (Sheridan's greatest
success in a crisis as President), and now circumstances are allowing
the Drazi to take revenge against him, by making him a bystander to
this disaster. If he could summon up the force of presence, if he had
any tangible way to back up his authority, then he might be able to
keep the Drazi in place. But Sheridan comes across as startlingly
weak. He simply makes a dictate, with nothing to back it up; can even
he be surprised when the Narn and Drazi ignore that command? (And
despite his statement that he's going to "skin their hides," it's not
like he ends up doing anything tangible to register his displeasure
against them later...)

Ultimately, Sheridan - and Londo, for that matter (whose plan on
Centauri Prime would have been entirely reasonable had he merely been
dealing with a corrupt Regent) - is defeated by misidentifying the
enemy. Relatively early in the episode, Sheridan notes that the
Centauri war appears to have no clear goal or strategy. That is
because Sheridan is unaware that the Drakh are the architects of both
the war, and its ending. The Drakh do not want the Centauri to win -
quite the reverse. Their goal is to provoke the other races into
striking directly against Centauri Prime. It is worth noting that the
prime mover in this strike is the Drazi - the very race that is trying
to hoard Shadow technology for itself, making the Drazi de facto
Shadow servants. With Shadow servants on both sides, it can hardly be
surprising that the Drakh end up the only winners of the Centauri/
Alliance War.

It might have been stopped had the Narn been able to see reason. I do
not believe the Drazi would have been willing to act alone; it would
be much easier for Sheridan to punish just the Drazi than to punish
both the Drazi and the Narn. Unfortunately, as G'Kar has tried to warn
his people over the past year and a half, the Narn have been struck
blind in their hatred of the Centauri. It is easy for the Drazi to
tempt them into defying Sheridan's orders. Nor does Sheridan make much
of a case to stop this from happening.

In the end, "Movements of Fire and Shadow" is an episode chronicling
the last seconds before a train wreck. You can see the disaster about
to come... You can see how it could have been prevented, by any number
of different parties... You may even cry out for someone - anyone - to
do something to stop it. But in the end, calamity is inevitable, and
all you can do is watch as the worst moves from possibility, to
certainty, to reality. Just like in the case of such a calamity, it's
horrible to watch, and impossible to look away.

My Final Rating: 9/10. Terrific.
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32
 * Origin: Time Warp of the Future BBS - Home of League 10 (1:14/400)