9 thoughts on “Earhart’s: “Meditations on the Abyss” Spoiler Space”

  1. I can sort of see what those fans were thinking (and I don’t remember what I thought at the time).

    But leaving aside that it’s putting Lennier in the position to play a critical role in the Mysterious Raids storyline that (really soon) is going to lead to the bombing of Centauri Prime — when you know where Lennier is going at the end of the season, watching him progress through this episode is quite powerful. At least for me.

    Because this shows that Lennier, for all that he’s a Ranger for all the wrong reasons, is actually pretty well-suited to it. And when he says that he may have found a home with Captain Montoya’s ship — he really has, and he really should have. Not on Babylon 5, away from Delenn, having adventures on the Maria, with his own, new, relationships, the hero of his own story.

    Well, OK, Montoya is probably the lead of that show. But Lennier comes next in the opening credits! And he has a plotline in which he has this on-again, off-again relationship with a brilliantly witty Narn that’s one of the great ships in all of the history of science-fiction television!

    Ahem. But that’s one of the things that’s artful about putting this right after The Corps Is Mother, The Corps Is Father, which gave Bester his own show. This gives Lennier his own show, just for a little while. And that would have saved him.

    But, of course, he’s not going to be saved.

  2. You discussed if Delenn was leading Lennier on and I think she just has a blind spot. She is so convinced that Lennier’s feelings for her are the same as hers for Dukhat that she really can’t see the turn they are taking.

    1. I agree, we don’t see any other close family relationships… i agree that the touching must be incredibly personal for a Minbari, but I wonder if Delenn always meant it in a motherly way.

      1. I think Delenn knows better than to think it’s just the close but non-romantic mentor-mentee relationship that she had with Dukhat. The evidence, for me, is her reaction in The Fall of Centauri Prime.

        But I think she thinks Lennier is handling it much better than he actually is, and (as she says in Objects at Rest) she doesn’t realize how strong Lennier’s feelings are. To put it another way, Delenn only sees the Lennier that we’ve seen on the show, not the obsessed and dangerous Lennier about whom we retroactively find out in Objects at Rest.

        On a related note, I don’t have the same problem as our hosts with the plausibility of what Delenn says in this episode about Sheridan realizing how much Lennier means to her.

        It’s the inverse of my problem with the Lochley retcon. It is implausible that Sheridan has never mentioned a first marriage to Lochley to Delenn before Lochley arrives on the station.

        By the same token, it’s plausible that Delenn has revealed sides of herself to Sheridan that we haven’t specifically seen her reveal to Sheridan onscreen. Think back to when Sheridan and Delenn were dating in S3-4: if one remembers how much of her day-to-day working life at that time was spent with Lennier, how often must the answer to “So how was your day, Delenn?” have involved her talking about Lennier.

        1. I think I’m with you on most of that, except whether Lennier makes a good ranger. The events to come, the LenDelenJohnnier of things, prove that he doesn’t. Maybe B5 is just toxic for him at this point.

          The expressions of Delenn in sneaking around John raises how we’re to read ‘alien’. If Delenn as hybrid is human-alike, then Lennier is presumably further from our ability as viewers to interrogate in human terms. Reasoning his moment of madness therefore is difficult, because the moment is so ‘other’. If I remember the episode rightly, Delenn explains it’s a mental state affecting a small percentage of Minbari, a moment brought on by great stress. We’ve learned a few episodes ago of the demand of Ranger training, and through Marcus, despite Jason Cole making it look “a piece of cake” half the time. Stoicism is Bill Mumy’s defining trait though. With only two episodes of Lennier as an active ranger it’s difficult to ascribe definition to the other/alien. In this episode the precarious future of Alliance-Centauri relations are put on his back. Marcus, a trained ranger, could have handled the task. The wisdom of Delenn and Lennier, each pro-active and consenting, shows us the consequences of a race that only speaks in a third of the truth.

          1. Delenn says to Lennier, “After Marcus’s death he is reluctant to send anyone close to me. As a friend he would want to protect you.”

            In that second sentence, which of the three of them does “a friend” refer to, and how do the speaker/listener intend/interpret it? Room for interpretation.

  3. I started re-watching B5 for the fourth time late last year and discovered the B5 Audio Guide around the time I was finishing watching the 1st season. So listening to the Guide has been like re-watching my favorite Sci Fi show of all time for a 5th time.

    I have listened to all of the podcasts and finally caught up to you in real-time. It just so happened to be when MY favorite Director, Mike Vejar, directed this episode. Of the many observations I have about the Audio Guide is the love of Mike Vejar (thanks to Stephen, although we all like Vejar). From the very first time I watched B5, there was always something about the episodes directed by Vejar and I’m not usually one to notice directors of TV shows. So after listening to the Audio Guide, I have finally figured out exactly why I like Vejar so much.

    Thanks for the analysis of this incredible series. I’ll be “seeing” you at the next jump gate.

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