#b5 rewatch

B5 rewatch: Divided Loyalties

In honor of that, I would like to share the rules of a game that makes any rewatch of the series more entertaining.

*The Babylon 5 Drinking Game*

Drink when-

Someone says "Back Home"

When an alien race says a "My God" i.e. "In Valen's Name", "Great Maker", "By G'quan"

Londo Drinks

When Delenn says "A Thousand Years ago"

Bonus Drinks-

Sheridan mentions oranges, or you spot oranges in his room.

Bester says "Mundanes"

I'm sure there could be more rules, but I found these were the most reliable to the point now if I'm just chatting with a couple friends, who I started this drinking game with, and anyone says "Back home" we reflexively say "Drink!"

It's such a great pilot episode – the foreshadowing and the strong establishment of iconic characters...

Londo telling his death-dream to Sinclair and promising Sinclair there will be war, G'Kar owning the council floor, Talia telling Ivanova she doesn't feel like a victim, "…They are a dying race…"/"Who? The Centauri or the Narn?"/"Yes." – great foreshadowing moments

As much as I love The Gathering, The Gathering only feels "canon-adjacent" – a lot of things changed between the movie and the first season

As a true start to B5, Midnight on the Firing Line absolutely EATS (and not just because of Londo and G'Kar although they are a HUGE reason why. Katsulas and Jurasik absolutely devoured those roles)

I really love the moral ambiguity of the Narn – shady arms dealers who will sell to anyone willing to pay, all out of desperation as a people whose resources and economy were destroyed by colonization and still struggling to rebuild after their uprising against the Centauri… I just really appreciate the difference between B5 and DS9 in this respect – as much as I love Kira Nerys specifically, the Bajorans were kinda boring to me 😔

And that was when I realized that I was applying the literary analysis skills that I'm learning in my A.P. English Language and Composition class to a sci-fi show.

Okay let's get back into it after over a month!

Well if you're going to fight in public better wear a cape for it...

If I ever get stabbed for having important information, I'm going to make sure to not use any pronouns in my last words. It will be specific proper nouns ONLY. "They're gonna kill him." Man there's 250,000 people on Babylon 5

Oh hey it's that woman who's name I sadly forget because I didn't realize she was going to be a recurring character

Aw, Sinclair's proposal

Oh Lando, you haven't even BEGUN to offend gods yet

"After I while I might even come to enjoy it" and the "nibbled to death by cats" thing have stuck in my head for 30 years

MORDEN >:(

Watcha building Delenn? (And what did you ask Kosh 👀)

I find shady shipping/smuggling interesting on Babylon 5, because it's such a controlled/constructed environment, you can't just go a few miles down the coast. Like, presumably there has to be a lot of corruption in official channels to make it work. It just seems like there's more "chaos" for lack of a better word, on Babylon 5 than you'd think, given that it can't be approached or boarded without being tracked somehow.

"We're simply here to help." MORDEN

I didn't remember that Delenn got a Kosh reveal before her project, I wonder why/what it confirmed for her

More alienfuckery confirmed for G'Kar lol

Oh, that would be a lot of time in makeup. Love to see the extra effort.

The "him" they're going to kill has to be the Earth President, right? What with the unnumbered PPG

Well. That is one way to "take care of" a military outpost

Oh and the security forces ARE corrupted hey

Sinclair: Dealing with Garibaldi missing, then Delenn shows up with the triluminary "it's time to learn about the most mysterious incident in your past RIGHT NOW" That's just how it is on Babylon 5

I like G'Kar immediately recognizing that there's another force at play now

Seeing the president's ship explode on live TV--what had been comparable to that in 1994? I don't know what kind of awful "this changes everything" moments had been televised by then; I'm of the age where it made me think of 9/11.

Oh whatever is going on with Delenn does not sound good

The Centauri government thinks Lando did this somehow in secret??? Many people are sticking their fingers in their ears and covering their eyes.

Kosh feeling talkative today, I see

Ah yes. The chrysalis.

I feel like this is a major turning point in G'Kar's characterization

Delenn: