"Heard things about you too, Garibaldi." "Believe them?" "Hell yeah!"
IN THIS ONE... A human dares enter the Mutai arena and Ivanova confronts her feelings about her dead father.
REVIEW: Though the title would have you think the alien Ultimate Fighters thing was the main plot of this episode, it's really closer to a 50/50 split between it and the more character-driven Ivanova story. Better grounded in emotion, and following from events set up in Born to the Purple, it's much more memorable and watchable than the boxing plot. Cutting from tears to punching isn't the most comfortable of structures, but I do see how the two threads resonate together. Ivanova is "TKO'ed" by her rabbi, making her finally agree to sit shiva for her estranged father, and Garibaldi's buddy Walker Smith is accused (along with all of humanity) in meddling in alien affairs, just as the rabbi meddled with her life. But it's clunky. It doesn't really say anything about either situation, except maybe that meddling can be for the good, and feels more like I'm doing my English lit student thing and forcing connections where there really weren't any. So lets just take each separately...
Ivanova starts the episode off relatively happy, relaxing with a Harlan Ellison book (he was the show's consultant, so a bit of an inside joke there), when her charming and folksy rabbi shows up, intent on making her adhere to Jewish tradition and let go of her grief through the ritual of shiva. Of course, Ivanova bottles her emotions up and besides, never forgave her father for his own emotional distance (think about it, Susan), so she wants nothing to do with it. Sinclair has a few words of wisdom for her, but still, she believes her emotions are her own and she can deal with them however she likes. I tend to agree. I'm not sure I buy her sudden about-face the way it's presented, with her father's dying apology in her thoughts (after all, this is no revelation, it's footage from one of the early episodes), but the cumulative power of words spoken by the people she most trusts makes her give in. The shiva itself is an emotional affair that allows her to reconnect with good memories of her father (no one is all bad). Claudia Christian is, as ever, effective. It's also quite rare to see a human religious tradition shown and explained in a science fiction show, but B5 here treats the shiva like it (and other shows) would present an alien ritual. Other shows do this kind of treatment on alien religions all the time, which is perhaps why humans are so often atheistic humanists. Their real-world faiths would detract from the science fiction.
In the film noir corner - as this is how I've chosen to understand any Garibaldi story from now on - is a tale of humanity rising to the occasion, and showing it can be as good as an alien. It's essentially Rocky IV. Except, I can't quite root for Walker Smith. For one thing, he's a racist, calling the aliens "snakeheads" and "E.T.", though perhaps he learns something of Mutai honor (a martial code shared by several species, looks like). That's just not the focus of the episode. The point made by one alien that humans are meddling in everything, or he should have said, APPROPRIATING everything is a good one, and perhaps Garibaldi shouldn't be smiling about his friend opening the fighting ring to humans - bound to be some deaths resulting. Ultimately, the effectiveness of this story is impaired by the realities of television production. The martial arts just aren't impressive; no one practices defensive pugilism, so it's basically just people punching each other like 80s TV private eyes. For some reason, it makes for some of the LEAST brutal action featured on Babylon 5. And it ends in a draw? Whatever.
REWATCHABILITY: Medium - The Ivanova story is engaging, but the boxing plot doesn't bring a whole lot to the table.
REVIEW: Though the title would have you think the alien Ultimate Fighters thing was the main plot of this episode, it's really closer to a 50/50 split between it and the more character-driven Ivanova story. Better grounded in emotion, and following from events set up in Born to the Purple, it's much more memorable and watchable than the boxing plot. Cutting from tears to punching isn't the most comfortable of structures, but I do see how the two threads resonate together. Ivanova is "TKO'ed" by her rabbi, making her finally agree to sit shiva for her estranged father, and Garibaldi's buddy Walker Smith is accused (along with all of humanity) in meddling in alien affairs, just as the rabbi meddled with her life. But it's clunky. It doesn't really say anything about either situation, except maybe that meddling can be for the good, and feels more like I'm doing my English lit student thing and forcing connections where there really weren't any. So lets just take each separately...
Ivanova starts the episode off relatively happy, relaxing with a Harlan Ellison book (he was the show's consultant, so a bit of an inside joke there), when her charming and folksy rabbi shows up, intent on making her adhere to Jewish tradition and let go of her grief through the ritual of shiva. Of course, Ivanova bottles her emotions up and besides, never forgave her father for his own emotional distance (think about it, Susan), so she wants nothing to do with it. Sinclair has a few words of wisdom for her, but still, she believes her emotions are her own and she can deal with them however she likes. I tend to agree. I'm not sure I buy her sudden about-face the way it's presented, with her father's dying apology in her thoughts (after all, this is no revelation, it's footage from one of the early episodes), but the cumulative power of words spoken by the people she most trusts makes her give in. The shiva itself is an emotional affair that allows her to reconnect with good memories of her father (no one is all bad). Claudia Christian is, as ever, effective. It's also quite rare to see a human religious tradition shown and explained in a science fiction show, but B5 here treats the shiva like it (and other shows) would present an alien ritual. Other shows do this kind of treatment on alien religions all the time, which is perhaps why humans are so often atheistic humanists. Their real-world faiths would detract from the science fiction.
In the film noir corner - as this is how I've chosen to understand any Garibaldi story from now on - is a tale of humanity rising to the occasion, and showing it can be as good as an alien. It's essentially Rocky IV. Except, I can't quite root for Walker Smith. For one thing, he's a racist, calling the aliens "snakeheads" and "E.T.", though perhaps he learns something of Mutai honor (a martial code shared by several species, looks like). That's just not the focus of the episode. The point made by one alien that humans are meddling in everything, or he should have said, APPROPRIATING everything is a good one, and perhaps Garibaldi shouldn't be smiling about his friend opening the fighting ring to humans - bound to be some deaths resulting. Ultimately, the effectiveness of this story is impaired by the realities of television production. The martial arts just aren't impressive; no one practices defensive pugilism, so it's basically just people punching each other like 80s TV private eyes. For some reason, it makes for some of the LEAST brutal action featured on Babylon 5. And it ends in a draw? Whatever.
REWATCHABILITY: Medium - The Ivanova story is engaging, but the boxing plot doesn't bring a whole lot to the table.
Comments
I like the idea of Jews in space (not to be confused with the Mel Brooks version of same), but man, the theological and practical nightmares that must ensue.
*: Though actually, there's nothing that says the Amish can't travel in space; they just can't use modern contrivances. So if they stick to wooden ships powered by horses, treadmills, rubber bands, and propellors, they'll do just fine.
One tragic irony to this story is that "Walker Smith" was the real name of legendary boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, and his actor died of an anyurism on April 12, 1998, the same day Robinson had died nine years earlier.
But you can really tell that the Ivanova story is really where DiTillio's heart was on this one. After writing Born to the Purple, he'd come to regret that while Susan's father said everything he needed to say to her, she didn't get to say everything she needed back, so this story was his way to make up for that. It also provided a handy opportunity to use his mother-in-law's favorite actor Theodore Bikel and get an autographed picture for her.
Harlan Ellison objected to the first title DiTillio gave his supposed future book, so they substituted Working Without a Net, the name he's said he would give his autobiography if he wrote one, which he never will.
But the Torah's failure to mention Centauri is a BS argument, and it sounds like the writer assumes men of the cloth are all BS-ers. That's a pretty dismissive attitude. Living in America as I do, I might expect that sort of BS answer from a fundamentalist; but they are renowned for doing a piss-poor job of honoring Christ and his principles. But rabbis have an actual tradition of scholarship and theological discourse.
Though actually, there's nothing that says the Amish can't travel in space; they just can't use modern contrivances. So if they stick to wooden ships powered by horses, treadmills, rubber bands, and propellors, they'll do just fine.
They won't use modern contrivences, but they'll use rubber bands? Pft.
Sorry, I know the Armish are an easy target, but it reminds me of a comedy sketch I saw several years ago of a group of people who decided to only use technology that was invented before 1973. This meant that they could use dot-matrix printers, but not laser. They were very strict about it.
My understanding is that Islamic law has very similar answers with the obvious substitution of Mecca for Jerusalem.
Now, do we have any Amish readers who can answer the rubber band question?
(A bit like that old questionaire you used to get when flying to the US: "Are you planning on committing any terrorist actions?" "Yes. No, wait, I mean no! Sorry. Forget the first one.")
http://amishamerica.com/do-the-amish-use-computers-and-the-internet/