13 thoughts on “Earhart’s: “Racing Mars” Spoiler Space”

  1. This episode and the last one could be subtitled “Sheridan gets more of an idea of what engagement to a Minbari means he’s really signed up for.”

    If he wasn’t such an ass to Delenn in later episodes I’d feel sorry for him.

    Poor Lennier….

    Is this the episode where the first keeper pops up (on Captain Jack) and no one finds it even remotely alarming? I never understood the complete lack of response from everyone on this. Invisible parasites that are able to change their victims’ loyalties are nightmare fuel and ought to have been treated by something other than a shrug by both the Mars rebels and Sheridan’s minions.

    Finally, I wonder about the decision to paint the Mars resistance (and, as the season progresses, most humans in general) as a bunch of xenophobic racists with few redeeming qualities. These people aren’t inherently sympathetic and the show doesn’t make a strong enough case for why I (or the B5 crew) should care about them as opposed to letting Clarke do whatever it was that Clarke was doing to them.

    Clarke is obviously bad news but why should I care about liberating EA from Clarke when most humans we see on screen seem to–more or less–agree with his ideology?

    1. Good catch on the Keeper. It really should have been a bigger deal, and in particular someone should have thought of it when Garibaldi betrays Sheridan later on.

      On the other hand, I have no particular problem with the way in which the Mars resistance are portrayed. Just because people are a bunch of unpleasant thugs, doesn’t mean that they deserve to be ruled by fascists. And going back to S1, the Mars resistance has been consistently – which is to say realistically – portrayed as having a definite edge of terrorism to it. If anything, I fault the portrayal of our heroes on the station as being too pure and uncompromised.

      1. It’s a Keeper, or is it? Like other body-jack parasites of back episodes, this one doesn’t look like the scourge of Virini and Londo. The physical differences between the types (if we believe Jack has Keeper), suggest the Vindrizi of Exogenesis and the bioweapons of S1’s Infection are Keepers or Keeper-related. One could even go as far as to make the argument that the parasite which plagued the Copernicus and Amis (Schultz) was some differently manifesting super-cousin.

        I’m with Voord on the Martian thuggery. I see subterraneans without the luxury of general assembly or blast doors, subject to execution for existing. And I’m with Cassandra in that a more inclusive point-of-view would have been welcome alongside. There have been a lot of Mars links in the B5 story, but always in the back until now. I shake my fist, network TV restrictions!

  2. There were a few buzzes about this episode in the previous columns and rightly so. It’s laden with arc-heavy stuff yet manages to present a stand-alone adventure. Funny, pointing to deeper intrigue and full of drama.

    On the Garibaldi front we still get expertly deft hiding of the Psi-Corps storyline. There was the barest hint they were involved episodes ago, but whatever else is going on, there’s much more than that and it effectively takes the attention away. His conflict with Sheridan strained credibility that he wasn’t diddled with but when he joined forces with Jack, Doyle gives us the muted response as if he’s maybe playing a Garibaldi who wants to get in under cover and find out what this threat is.

  3. Yep, Marjorie Monaghan (Number One) did TV staples by this point: Quantum Leap, Law & Order, Moider She Wrote, LA Law, about ten others less known. All one episode, but six in something called Space Rangers where it appears she played a similar-to-B5, new-Starbuck lead role. Apparently she was considered for the role of T’Poi in Star Trek: Enterprise, which would have been a lot of fun.

    1. Law and Order is the place I recognize her from. I don’t watch the show much, but it’s on syndication like Everybody Loves Raymond used to be.

  4. What’s wrong with a character being both a “tough guy” and intelligent? I am a weight-lifting UFC fan who fights in judo tournaments, and I have a “scowly” face. I also have a PhD in psychology, love performing Shakespeare, read a little too much philosophy for my own good, and have strong opinions about Stephen Sondheim.

  5. I’ve been catching up on the Babylon 5 Audio Guide and by this episode my disappointment with the current events comments has gotten to be too much. The bullet necklace comment, claiming North Carolina is transphobic (podcast 55), and joking a Roger Ailes-type created ISN (podcast 58) were jarring enough. But the claim America was sliding to authoritarianism, Fox News being an inspiration for ISN (podcast 73), and Wade’s future talk about natural selection echoing a Trump White House type are really sad. And listening in June 2017 such comments either sound dated or a leap to connect dots (who was even watching Fox News before 2001?). With as much bad news as there are the B5 Audio Guide has been an enjoyable indulgence’ yet these references to current events give a permanence to Trump he does not deserve.

    I’d like to share Babylon 5 with my children when their old enough. It’d be sad to have to explain dated views on a past executive likely to have as much staying power with the public as President Franklin Pierce. And a President elected 19 years after Babylon 5 went off the air isn’t much of an inspiration or descriptor. Take Wade’s future comment about natural selection which provoked a reference to the Trump White House. To me, it harkened more to the eugenicists movement of the 20th century who become so enthralled with evolutionary theory they other’ed humanity itself. A fictionalized view of their beliefs is mentioned in the eighth episode of Murdoch Mysteries third season. Wade’s views seem the same type which inspired the Nazi’s and had the state of North Carolina sterilizing African Americans well in to the 1970s.

    But otherwise I really enjoy the Audio Guide. Hope Crusade will be included after Season 5 & the movies.

    1. Hear, hear. I cringe at these comments, too.

      I’m catching up as well. I wonder if it would be as noticeable if I were only listening every 2 weeks.

      I really appreciate hearing a slightly different perspective on the show.

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