8 thoughts on “Zocalo: Spoiler-Free Discussion of “Atonement””

  1. “I am the very model of a modern major-general.” I love the ending to this episode. It always makes me laugh.

  2. I never liked Callenn in this episode, he is an arrogant, condescending filth in this episode, and it shows clearly, not only in his actions but also in his tone of voice.

    “You may find reasons for the things you are doing that you do not realise. You may even find that they are the wrong reasons.”- his last words to Delenn before she entered the dreaming.

    With those words he had meant to lead her dreaming down a certain path, to sew doubt in her mind, to control the dreaming.

    Until Delenn realised later what the dreaming was truly telling her, she was playing right into his hands.

  3. Not done listening to the podcast yet, but I think our hosts make an interesting point about this being a natural pairing with The Illusion of Truth.

    I’d add that this pairing is one of the places where I think the story is damaged to some extent by the loss of Sinclair as a central character. (By which, as always, I do not mean the replacement of O’Hare by Boxleitner as an actor.) In particular, the stuff about “Minbari War Syndrome” in TIoT would have packed an additional punch as a revival from a new perspective of themes associated with Sinclair’s character in S1.

    1. Excellent point about Minbari War Syndrome. Raising the symmetrical possibility/accusation that each might be with the other due to psychological “damage” rather than genuine love could have made for some excellent storytelling and character exploration. It could also have provided an opportunity for JMS to take a well-deserved shot at those who tend to pathologize others’ choices and positions (“You only say that because [insert uninformed half-baked armchair psychoanalysis here]”).

  4. I believe that Andreas Katsulas’ natural eye color was brown, which means that the blue eye was also a contact. Blue just probably made a better contrast with red.

    I also absolutely love Richard Biggs and Jason Carter together. Their on-screen chemistry may be at least party explained with the fact that they also hit it off excellently off-screen becaming best friends, until Biggs’ untimely death.

  5. Our hosts may not have watched Thirdspace, but I did so I’m going to discuss it!

    Some random-ish connections back to the main series:

    The shortages caused by the Earth blockade are mentioned again, although again they don’t seem to be having any actual impact on operations.

    Ivanova is not stuck behind a desk. This is a really good “episode” for Claudia Christian with lots to do. I noticed that in the big space battle around the artifact, Ivanova is in command of the station forces, not Delenn.

    IPX must be very confident about their “multi planetary corporation” status to be willing to defy the Earth regime.

  6. I must say, I have not so much problems with the fact, that the Minbari are mostly one colour. They are an alien race, from a planet, that looks rather colder than ours. So perhabs it’s like with the Andorians of Star Trek, who are also only in shades of blue. I mean, you can see, that the Minbari seem to be all even for the equivalent of caucasians quite white, and Delenn is mostly more pigmented because of her human DNA.

    I would say, it’s much more complicated, that also the Centauris are all brown people. I mean, Centauri prime seems to be a well temperate planet, just like the Earth, so there must be also hotter areas of the planet where more Melanin in the skin would be necessary.

    But on the other side: They are ALIENS. They didn’t evolved like us from hairless monkeys who had to evolve the melanin production to save their skin from the direct sun exposure and skin cancer (more on this can be read here: https://www.livescience.com/43674-cancer-skin-color-evolution.html ), I mean, even chimps are white under their fur, because the fur saves the skin from the sun. So when you for example would have Centauris and Minbari evolved to sentient beings in less hot areas, perhabs for example in the steps of Kachastan than the steps of Ethiopia (when they would be human), perhabs the light skin color is explainable.

    On the other side: black vulcans make COMPLETELY sense, as Vulcan is a mostly desert planet, you would expect people there to have often black skin. And even the caucasian like Vulcans are often more reddish in their skin than Europeans or North Americans. I guess, we just didn’t saw so much black Vulcans yet on Starfleet vessels, because as we know they have their own fleet, of which we never see the people and their mixture, and the few Vulcans, who served in Starfleet, are more like outcasts, Spock as a half-human/half-vulcan as well as Tuvok or Saavik, who are it seems more of the militaric tribe (like many of the 21xx Vulcans) than the rational, 100% logical ones after the reformation of T’Pau.

    Yes headcanon, but I don’t believe, that distinct racism was involved. I mean, JMS is not known for having racist opinions.

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