Cogito, Ergo Sumana for 2008 June 19

# (1) 19 Jun 2008, 04:00PM: Summy-Come-Lately Nitpicks B5: Babylon 5 has enraptured the Harihareswara-Richardson household; we're up to 4 or 5 episodes a week. Quick review, halfway through the first season: I love the political intrigue and much of the dialogue, but Sinclair can be incredibly wooden, almost as wooden as the cheesy set for the B5 equivalent of the Promenade.

I've been reading the Lurker's Guide to B5 after each episode to grok them better. The creator, J. Michael Straczynski, communicated with fans on the net as the episodes first aired in the 1990s, and the lurker's guide collects and displays these notes as well. Some episodes, and some of JMS's posts, have aged better than others. For example, the guide for "Believers" has JMS chortling that the ending is completely unexpected. Leonard and I called it twenty minutes in, but we're watching it 14 years later. JMS also notes in that message that "TV-SF is generally 20-30 years behind print SF," and Leonard agrees. Maybe Leonard and I are used to the plot twists of print.

We just saw "Signs and Portents," which I keep calling "Shadows and Portents" because freaking every other episode has "shadows," "dark," "twilight," or "night" in the title.

And now the question for Riana, John, and other B5 fans who are 14 years ahead of me:

As Sinclair and Garibaldi left the lavatory, another person entered. From the person's appearance, it seemed to be a woman, even though they were leaving the men's room (the "Male" symbol was clearly visible on the wall outside.)

Is this a hint to some huge arc later? Or a nod to the existence of trans people on B5? Or just a continuity error? Leonard and I have seriously spent twenty minutes trying to figure this out. Please leave insights in the comments so Leonard and I can start talking about Shadows.

# 19 Jun 2008, 04:14PM: Semifinal Thoughts: Zed wrote me several weeks ago with some research on Trollope and the "metropolitan moon". He gave me permission to post it so here goes:

The context was a spat between Trollope and the Anglican church over
Trollope criticizing how badly rural curates (or deans) were paid. As
Leonard notes, a metropolitan is an Anglican archbishop. So it's just
a reference to curates being envious of archbishops' riches. Holly, in
your comments, quotes the relevant passage, but missed that a dean is
the lowly underpaid figure.

Also, the phrase alludes to Hamlet.

Hamlet, Act I, Scene 4 (Hamlet addressing the ghost of his father).

Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again. What may this mean,
That thou, dead corpse, again in complete steel
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous; and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?

What he meant by alluding to Hamlet, and why it should be profane
(simply because he's suggesting the deans are violating the
commandment against coveting their neighbor's ox?) still escape me.

But at this point, I think it was totally not a sex thing.