Downbelow: A Babylon 5 IntroCast

One Response to “Episode 130 – Commentary for Learning Curve”

1. Voord 99 Says:
   August 5th, 2016 at 5:52 pm

   [Spoilers for Strange Relations]

   And this is it. The big secret about Lochley that we’ve been building up to since the beginning of Season Five. And it’s – by far the worst plotting decision that JMS makes in the entire series.

   Obviously, the marriage is something that didn’t exist before Claudia Christian’s departure caused JMS to create the character of Lochley in the first place, so the fact that the viewers have never heard anything about Sheridan’s first marriage is something that one has to accept.

   But within the world of the show itself, it has now supposedly always been the case that Sheridan was once briefly married to someone called Elizabeth Lochley. And there is simply no way to make it plausible that Sheridan has never mentioned this to Delenn before now. For that matter, he’s been working alongside other people, including Garibaldi, for years – it might have come up at some point. Not only that, but Garibaldi back in S2 supposedly investigated Sheridan thoroughly after Sheridan arrived on the station.

   This would all make sense if the marriage were some dark and shameful secret that Sheridan had to conceal. But it’s not – and Sheridan is too much the pure and perfect hero to have that sort of secret. The whole thing is blatantly there solely to create an artificial mystery around Lochley. Unfortunately, I at least can’t see why that was so necessary as to justify breaking the credibility of the narrative. Best just to pretend it never happened.

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