#technomages

table of contents • previous episode

That’s a pretty cool tricorder medical diagnostic device.

“Sinclair I could trust...this guy I don’t know.”

Honestly I can only hope that Sheridan won’t put up with nearly so much assaulting civilians. Hold him to a higher standard.

“I keep wondering what qualifies me to take back my job,”

me too,

“and I don’t have an answer.”

me neither.

Londo, instead of enjoying the curiosity and adulation of the other Centauri, maybe be worried about what the fantastically powerful war crimes committing Morden Et Al are up to??? And promising favors to more shady people, even if they’re Centauri, isn’t improving things! Londo needs - very badly - to learn to look beneath the underneath (I am so sorry for quoting Naruto but it really is a good life lesson put succinctly).

Bazaar fight with a previous un-introduced (I think?) species is a great way to roll into the opening credits, hah. Drazi fight! I’m guessing they aren’t just paler Narns.

They took away Na’Toth’s lipliner for the s02 opening credits!

Techno-mage - another new thingy. They use science to achieve the effects of magic. The Centauri have and have had them. They don’t like to leave their places of power, so seeing them is rare, and to the Centauri, seeing one of them is a bad omen. And here’s three! There are endless new mystical aspects to this show!

YES promotion and diplomatic training for Susan Ivanova!! Really, she only needs a reminder that her more thinly veiled threats like “You’re too young to experience that much pain,” is more diplomatic than “I’m going to put your seats in the fusion reactor and you along with them.”

Vir’s cosmological views are both interesting and make total sense that he believes that (derogatory).

I 100% believe that Londo Mollari would be utterly miserable with more power. As the Emperor, or whatever he has in mind, once he gets there, he’ll be miserable.

Unfortunately, John Sheridan is going to convince Garibaldi to stay. But hopefully him staying does come with some character development that I find less annoying. How sad for me that in the Gathering I was like “He’s adorable. A wringable dishrag of a man,” and now he’s just a cop who is a little bit likable.

Green vs Purple Drazi is an absolute nightmare of a way to try to begin diplomatic training. Hope that tackle didn’t break anything!

Oh, Vi (Vir Cotto, apparently!)r. I don’t care about him at all. But I do care about these extremely cool technomonsters!!!

Technomage: “You don’t frighten easily.”

Vir: “I work for Ambassador Mollari. After awhile, nothing bothers you.”

Laughed out loud at that.

Technomage: “There is an old saying: do not try the patience of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.”

Are these guys human? That’s mostly a Tolkien quote. Londo will certainly go storming in there, since Vir seems smart enough to refuse to go back. I wanna know where the technomages are headed. Are they going to oppose the Shadows? Join them? Investigate them? Fuck around with something totally different? Any of these eldritch beings that Catherine encountered going to come into play?

It is extremely interesting that, while the Minbari seem to be the most mystical, we have been shown more Narnuan direct connections to actual mystic things, like the eldritch beings, the previous war against the Shadows, and these technomages which seem to straddle science and magic.

Ivanova did break something(s)! Drazi 1, Ivanova 0.

The Drazis’ habit of dividing themselves arbitrarily and killing each other till only one faction remains sure is a cultural trait of all time.

There’s over a hundred technomages on b5! That seems like a lot when they don’t usually ever leave their places of power at all.

Technomage: “Captain, you have been used. This...creature...has been seeking an audience with me ever since I arrived.”

lmao.

Technomage: “You must learn manners and respect. From this moment on, you will!”

Well. I’m down for Londo Mollari learning some sense of a.) common sense, b.) empathy, c.) practical morality, but idk if I’m down for whatever this gothic af dude’s going to dish out.

I do want his robe, though. SO BADLY. I am trying very hard not to mentally plan out a whole new sewing project on top of all the others I’ve been daydreaming about.

“It is within that ambiguity that my brothers and I exist. We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner. Holographic demons, and invocations of equations. These are the tools we employ, and we know many things.”

These guys are my aesthetic. I want to quote literally everything he says.

And they do know about the Shadows that are coming, and they’re going to hide themselves and their knowledge from being either destroyed or misused. New life goal: be a technomage. Love the drama, the robes, the poetry, the pretentiousness, and the practical ability to back all that up.

Smart of Ivanova to deal with one color of Drazi at once. Greens first, since they’re actively killing off the Purples now. Love that their solution for stopping the fighting is to vent all the Purple Drazi into space.

It’s a heavy-handed metaphor, but it checks out.

Goddamn it, Garibaldi is going to, very likably, go back Ivanova up just based on his gut feeling that she needs backup.

What did I say! Faking selling Acme products a la Looney Tunes and bringing back his love of the cartoon from the Gathering is absolutely adorable.

Mollari is having his life being hacked to embarrassment and inconvenience by the technomage and actually I am absolutely here for what is being dished out. Idk what a spoo ranch is, but I hope it’s deeply embarrassing to Centauri. Londo needs his hubris checked before he gets literally every sentient in the universe killed.

BAHAHAHA Drazi Rules haven’t been changed because they’re caught up in committee, therefore, Ivanova is the Green Leader since she’s holding the green star scarf.

It’s...depressingly nice to see that Mollari is capable of apologizing, and almost without caveats and qualifiers, too.

Sheridan: “In other words, you’re perfect for [Head of Security] because you’re compulsive and paranoid.”

Garibaldi: “Or, compulsively paranoid!”

both funny, and also kind of a good point.

Oh man, I am so about this technomage in every possible way. When people in the future ask what my pronouns are I will say techno/mage. When people ask what my gender identity is, I will hold up a little printed out photo of this guy in an anatomically-realistic locket. I am a little crossfaded right now because that’s way more fun than a max dose of tylenol/ibuprofen combo.

Sheridan likes to repeat things that series guests say to him, and I like that about him.

The Geometry of Shadows:

Lord Refa appears. This dude is such a slimy twerp. It’s so satisfying when he gets what’s coming to him. 

Ivanova's smile when she learns she's been promoted to Commander is a treasure. Look at it. Fuck. She’s so amazing.

Bless Vir. Bless this stressed out awkward young man. "I work for Ambassardor Mollari. After a while, nothing bothers you." He says that now, but we all know that he never stops being bothered by Londo’s bullshit.

I loved the idea of the technomages. Their utility in this episode is pretty nice, as it sets up a number of things:

1) Technomages! God we thought they were cool.

2) More hints at the coming of the Shadows. They’re leaving for the Rim to get away from the war that they know is coming.

3) Alric’s prophesy to Londo. It’s an early, early warning to him that he is on a dark, bloody path, and of course he ignores it because he’s Londo Goddamn Mollari. 

4) Galen. We were so fuckin hot for Galen back in the day. 

A Distant Star: Ahhh, another episode where Franklin gets wayyyyyyy too involved. Franklin often comes across as this guy who very strongly believes that he can Fix Everything, and this is one of the things that comes out of that. Another, of course, is the Stim use, because going hand-in-hand with the idea that he can fix everything is the idea that he MUST. And so he pushes himself, certainly harder than he would push anyone else.

A lot of this early part of season two is devoted to pushing the danger and mystery of the Shadows. Season one was mostly hints and omens, and the increase in what we're seeing now really pushes the escalation.

these are the sources I know of:

-the 1 second we see of Galen’s back implants from the side in The Memory of War -one behind-the-scenes pic of the tech on Peter Woodward’s back from roughly a 3/4 view -the written description in Jeanne Cavelos’ books - which is cool but also different to what we see in the show

@pazithigallifreya

“I loved Crusade, what little we got of it before the network cancelled it, because that cast of characters had such great potential, but it definitely was not a high-budget production a la star trek“

Indeed, there was a lot there that could have been fleshed out and made awesome... I was frustrated by the uneven writing, though.

I know they didn’t have much money for production, but to make this particular scene more accurate, they could have just used a Sharpie - even better if they’d also used some paint that glows in UV light (which would be a little different from the books, but it would achieve the effect of “something otherworldly is going on here” without being either clumsy or making it seem like the Shadows were just as broke as they were. >_< This is Shadowtech?).

There was also a glaring production error in the scene when Franklin shows up and is in quarantine to keep him from infecting the crew... he’s standing behind glass, and in one of the shots, there is a completely clear shot of the cameraman and the camera and everything behind the camera (whereas the scene before and the scene after were fine). It was startling to me - wait, who are these people?! before I went back and paused the DVD and saw what had happened. (And for some reason they didn’t reshoot that moment?!)

- We usually get our magic supplies and occult books in amazon or ebay.

- Our book of shadows are actually our tumblr/pinterest accounts.

- We collect herbs from parks, while taking our dog for a walk.

- We live in small flats, instead of haunted mansions or old cottages.