Episode 020 – Signs and Portents
The raiders are coming and Londo acquires a valuable artifact. What do YOU want? Shane joins us to discuss episode 1×13 – “Signs and Portents”.
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Tags: a babylon 5 introcast, downbelow, episode 1x13, signs and portents
May 8th, 2014 at 12:06 pm
[Spoilers for TKO] From Signs and Portents to TKO is probably the single biggest collapse in quality from one episode to the next in the entire series, I’m afraid. TKO is, for me, about on a level with Infection.
There is perhaps something a little problematic when the first episode in which the major guest character is played by an African-American has that actor play a boxer. But that might be intended to point to the parallel between his exclusion from the Mutai and the history of African-American athletes, especially in boxing, in the US.
But that runs into the obstacle that “humans in B5 = African-Americans in the US c.1900” really doesn’t work. Humans in Babylon 5 are the popular species that builds the big station to which all the other species send ambassadors and who get called on to mediate between other species when they have conflicts. They’re clearly something of a Great Power despite being new arrivals on the scene.
TKO is like an episode from some other science-fiction show in which humans are at the bottom of the heap. That might be a good show, but it’s not the one that we’ve been watching. Plus, of course, this is “Sports drama cliché – but in space!”