🖖 #Trekkies reassemble!
Since two episodes were released last week, there are two reviews of #StrangeNewWorlds today.
This time, we go deep into the challenges of war trauma, in an episode that asks questions for which we should never expect tidy answers: not in any age, and *certainly* not with all the suffering that exists around us every day.
M'Benga's struggle is not a hypothetical - and that's the bleakest part of the quandary here.
#GlobalHumanism #TV #StarTrek https://onlysky.media/mclark/whose-justice-will-emerge-from-under-the-cloak-of-war/
@MLClark Someone made a point -- which I don't necessarily agree with -- that Rah dishonored himself under Klingon tradition by fleeing and leaving his men to die. By slaying Rah in hand-to-hand combat, M'Benga gave Rah an honorable death.
I'm not sure that's what was going on at all, just mentioning it.
On "Ready Room" they said two versions were shot. In the other version, Chapel saw what happened. They used the frosted glass version instead.
Hah. That's a generous reading. I was thinking the buffer would be used again, considering its role in the flashbacks - but no!
They chose the right one, though. The frosted glass version allows for that room to be our "cloak of war".
Although... I didn't mention in this piece, but BOY do these episodes rely heavily on a lack of monitoring equipment.
(Jumping franchises now, but I swear: half the plots in Babylon 5 were caused by a lack of station-wide comms & cameras systems.)
I genuinely wonder how they didn't have more hull breaches and water contamination issues, considering how many people were wandering about in altered states of mind / destitution & despair in the Downbelow. They had one heck of an insurance nightmare among gen-pop!
@MLClark There probably were. JMS just didn't tell those stories.
Ha! Now I want a proper Lower Decks spin-off from B5!
Oh, or maybe a riff on Touched By An Angel, only with a Vorlon offering a different hard-done-by Downbelower a chance to change their life each episode.
(I think I would've been a menace if I'd ever gotten into a TV writers' room. 🙃)
@MLClark Did you know I wrote a B5 cookbook? Licensed by a U.K. publisher. WB had me write it, working with a food consultant. JMS snuck it into a fifth season episode as a prop, so it's canon.
Woo! That's fantastic.
What was your favourite recipe from the collection, and did the book have a punny name?
@MLClark I'm under siege right now so my PC is unplugged. Back after it passes.
@MLClark Well, B5 can be explained by it being the fifth attempt at a station. It was a low-budget station.