The Personal and the Political: Londo, G'kar and Vir
by Selena
Babylon 5 did change the rules of TV, for good or ill. (The ill would be Chris Carter trying to improvise gigantic arcs without having thought them through first.) To this day I'm still amazed JMS managed to pull it off: his five-years-long novel on TV. All these plots and subplots. Episodes which didn't get their pay-off until two seasons later at which time the viewer had to be ready to remember exactly what had happened back then.
Rewatching the first season, which I did some months ago, brought back the very early days. As with most shows, there are highlights and some utterly forgettable episodes at the start, but unlike some fans, I wouldn't ever recommend starting the show with season 2 (which is when the action gears up in speed). Season 1 moves more slowly, but you have to meet Londo when he's still a tired-old never-quite-has-been with a romantic streak and in a position which he knows was meant as a joke, you have to meet G'kar when he's full of bluster and ruthlessness. You have to meet Delenn as the mysterious, somewhat dangerous Minbari ambassador. You have to meet Vir as the bumbling aide, and Lennier as the shy acolyte who does not dare to look Delenn in the face until she tells him to. Their character arcs are so important to the show that you can't miss the first chapter.
The amazing thing is how layered even those early scenes are. For example, Londo keeping everyone waiting because he's in bed with Adira is one level funny, and his speech to her about what she means to him terribly sweet; on the other hand, the fact he can't bring himself to seriously try and negotiate with G'kar is, if you think about, quite worrying, because that is his job, and it basically shows Londo doesn't really believe he could do anything effective with his position. Similarly, telling Adira about wearing masks and his inner emptiness is really how he feels; and emptiness demands to be filled. It's Londo's inner romantic, not his inner cynic, who has that fatal longing for "the old days", that dream of leading the Centauri back to the stars. (Over dead bodies, if necessary.) "I can see your heart now Mollari, and your heart is empty," G'kar tells him much later, in season 4 after he has lost an eye thanks to Cartagia. "Do you know that?" Londo knows, alright.
Watching "The Geometry of Shadows" makes it clear this is when Vir starts to come into his own. They're an amazing pair, Londo and Vir; if you watch the Babylon 5 pilot and the first two or three episodes, you could be forgiven for thinking they're the comic relief ambassador and his bumbling even more comic relief sidekick. By the end of season 1, it's already clear Londo is definitely not comic relief (not that, praise the Great Maker, he'll ever stop getting the good lines, though); with Vir, the second sesaon starts the change. "The Geometry of Shadows" points out his courage when confronting the Techno Mages, and, though it's done in the background, show his unease during Londo's conversation with Lord Refa. Which grows into Vir becoming simultanously Londo's argued-against-conscience and confidant. When a friend and I talked about Vir, I said he's basically Sam (from Lord of the Rings, not Stargate): begins as bumbling and funny, ends up as quietly heroic. (Or not so quiet when he thinks Londo needs to be yelled at.) Sam goes with Frodo to Mordor; Vir goes with Londo through a more metaphorical Mordor (and season 2 is certainly Londo at his darkest) as his only companion, and the fact he (and he's the only one) never loses faith in Londo's better side keeps the viewer hoping, too. Two scenes out of many come immediately to my mind when I think of Vir and Londo, one from season 2 and the other from season 4. The season 2 one is from "The Coming of Shadows" when Vir tries to persuade Londo from making one of his most fatal decisions:
"I know you don't listen to me, but don't do this. Londo, Londo don't do this!"
"I don't have a choice."
"Yes, you do."
(And Vir's reply is correct of course - he does have a choice. That's the tragedy.)
The other one, two years later, comes after Vir has killed for the first time. Out of most dire necessity; but he did kill, and it burdens him terribly. So he gets drunk about it. Thus, we have Londo in the unusual position of comforter, and his quiet lines show how far these two have come since we met them at the beginning of the show.
"I can not tell you that your pain will ever go away. I cannot tell you you will ever forget his face. I can only tell you that it was necessary. You did a hard thing. But you still have your heart. And your heart is a good one. You would not be in such great pain otherwise. And for that, I find I still envy you."
Which is a summing up of their two paths, one could say.
Rewatching "The Geometry of Shadows", when Londo starts his association with Lord Refa, and lobbies to get some techno mage support to make political points with the folks back home, it struck me as well that we get one of those patented JMS foreshadowing sentences: Confronting the techno mage one last time, Londo demands to know whether he'll spend the rest of his life paying for one mistake (i.e. trying to trick the mages) and gets the reply: "Yes, you will. Oh, not for this one; it was trivial. But there are others." (And then of course we get the "My followers?" "Your victims" exchange with Michael Ansara's deep voice used to terrific effect.) Ouch, ouch, ouch. Oh yes.
Babylon 5 married personal drama with political drama, in all of its plot threads. In more than one case, the political change causes the personal change.
The first slow and subtle, then increasing development of Earth from a democratic society into a dictatorship challenges Sheridan's (and with him his command staff's) belief system; when Sheridan, in the third season, decides to declare independence he goes, in one sense, against everything he was ever taught as a member of the military. He proceeds to become someone he'd never been if Earth had remained democratic.
Of course, the idea that "my country, right or wrong" or "always rally behind the commander-in-chief in times of crisis" are NOT the principles to follow above the dictates of your own conscience is a message quite worth listening to, but I wonder whether B5 could have been made the way it was these days. (It didn't surprise to read JMS' take on Bush and the war some months ago.) For Babylon 5, it's a central message and not just in the Earth arc.
The Centauri/Narn conflict, and Londo's and G'kar's overall storyarcs, are excellent examples of this as well. Let's take a look at G'kar, who begins the show quite convinced nothing is wrong with a universe where his people, the Narn, are finally the coming, aggressive power. Well, save the fact there are still some Centauri around. (Lest we forget G'kar is the only other ambassador who answers Morden's "What do you want" question.) In "The Coming of Shadows", not just one of the best B5 episodes but one of the best hours on TV I've ever seen, G'kar acts in complete accordance to these convictions, with his government and no doubt with the majority of his people when he decides to assassinate the Centauri Emperor. For no other reason than the fact this IS the Centauri Emperor, not because of any personal guilt of this man. He's a Centauri, he's the Emperor, it's enough. G'kar is not naïve; despite recording a message declaring himself the sole responsible party for the future assassination, he must know that the murder of the Centauri Emperor by the Narn Ambassador will mean war. Yet he still is willing to go through with it.
But fate intervenes, the Emperor has a heart attack before G'kar can carry out his murder, and G'kar gets a second chance and his first epiphany when he hears the Emperor had, in fact, intended to apologize to the Narn in the name of all Centauri. Then comes the first test - G'kar finds out that the Centauri, using the Emperor's impending death, have somehow carried out an attack which not only gave them a Narn outpost but also killed thousands of Narn. Not surprisingly, G'kar's first impulse, still in tune with the above named belief systems, is to kill Londo. But it's here where the change in him starts, when Sheridan challenges him to consider what was more important to him: revenge or getting help for his people. And we get one of Andreas Katsulas' truly stellar moments as an actor, as the enraged G'kar breaks down, sobbing.
How much of a turning moment this truly was is pointed out first by "Acts of Sacrifice", when G'kar is challenged by the other Narn on the station who want to kill the Centauri on B5 in retaliation to what the Centauri are doing to the Narn in the war which is by now in full swing. Season 1 G'kar would have agreed. Post-"Coming of Shadows" G'kar does not because he sees the big picture, and he has understood that love for one's people and patriotism does not have to mean killing as many enemies as you can. Not that G'kar is over his temper or personal vendettas yet; "Dust to Dust", the season 3 episode in which he beats up and basically mind-rapes Londo only to get his second big relevation, is yet to come. But he has started to develop a certain mind-set. By the time Babylon 5 ends, G'kar will have gone through a Martyr phase and a Messiah phase, while the Narn simultaneously go through occupation, pain and then a renewed angry independence. But though G'kar is ready to go through hell for his people - and does - he's unable to live with them again. In the fifth season, he's closer to Londo than to any other Narn (or anyone else, for that matter), and then withdraws from society altogether rather than allowing the Narn to make him into a worshipped leader.
Londo's entire arc - which JMS once called the heart of the show - , of course, is unthinkable without politics. If the Centauri weren't regarded as wimps and burned out has-beens by everyone else at the start of Babylon 5, as the camp joke of the Galaxy, Londo, who is very much an embodiment of Centauri society, its best and its worst, would never have made his fatal decisions. Londo's reply to Morden in season 1 - "I want it all back; I want it the way it was" (re: Centauri glory) - qualifies him for the Shadows, and it sounds entirely logical and understandable. Season 2, however, which is when Londo starts getting what he wants, shows just what such an imperial aim demands in terms of lives. If the Earth arc is a convincing and chilling warning against the erosion of democracy by fascism, the Centauri arc uses another political pattern, traditional Imperialism in the Roman, Spanish or Napoleonic vein. "The Coming of Shadows" is the turning point for Londo as well as for G'kar, because up to then, while he did accept Morden's help and started the connection with Refa, he reacted rather than acted; other people provided the opportunities. "The Coming of Shadows", however, sees Londo acting quite deliberately, choosing a target, being willing to go literally about thousands of dead bodies (it's going to be many more). It's Londo who starts a war.
"You don't know what you're doing", says Vir to him, and Londo replies: "Yes I do. I do." Not in the sense of "it's not what you think" but "it's just as terrible as you think, but in my opinion, it's worth it". Unlike Lady Macbeth and like Macbeth himself, Londo knows you don't just kill one person and be done with it; he walks into his tragedy open-eyed, and this makes it a tragedy. The moment when an exuberant G'kar who has just had his first epiphany offers him a drink and an appalled Londo, who knows what G'kar does not yet know, accepts, with a horrified look because he's aware of just what he did and just what G'kar will find out pretty soon, is one of B5's iconic scenes. We'll come back to this in season 4.
The Centauri, becoming full-fledged imperialists again in season 2 and 3, get presented with the traditional bill for imperialism in 4 and 5. There is the drawback of mad leaders, and I'm already looking forward to the time the season 4 DVDs will be out, because those scenes on Centauri Prime with the mad Cartagia (clearly modelled on Caligula in the "I, Claudius" interpretation) and Londo making his "I'll help you save your people if you help me to save mine" alliance with G'kar are pure gold. But even more importantly, there's the drawback of everyone else out of your blood, and nobody believing you if you protest you do NOT want to conquer the universe anymore. The isolation of Centauri Prime in season 5, and the fact it gets "bombed into the stone age" by a vengeful alliance (of the willing?), is only possible out of the combination of Londo's personal actions in season 2, and the general Centauri behaviour throughout.
The marriage between personal and political holds till the end as far the storylines of Londo, G'kar and Vir are concerned. Of the three, only Vir gets a genuine happy ending. Throughout the show, we've seen him growing; risking so much to help the Narn, rejecting Morden from the get-go, both standing up to and standing by Londo, helping to free his homeworld from its tyrant, ultimately having to be the one to kill him. Through the time-travelling episodes "War Without End", we know since the third season Vir will in fact be there to take over as Emperor after Londo's death, and by the time the show finishes, there is no doubt he'll be capable of it. Then, the very last episode presents us with Emperor Vir Cotto, leading a Centauri Prime which is again a trusted member in the alliance of worlds and free of any shadow remains. It is as good a fate as one can hope for, but when Vir talks with his old friends, he doesn't dwell on the long-delayed good fortune of the Centauri, or his own happiness. Instead, he remembers Londo and tells them a story which sums up Londo in a heartbreaking fashion. It's a bittersweet moment, and yet very appropriate, because Vir's loyalty to and love for Londo has been one of his defining traits throughout the show, and it's fitting it is showcased in the last episode.
Londo and G'kar, of course, have the most foreseen fate of the entire series. And the way the meaning of Londo's vision, which haunts him and the viewer, changes is one of the marks of their complex relationship: from the obvious interpretation of them killing each other as the end of a life-long feud to the stunning revelation in season 3 that it will in fact come at a time where the two will be friends and will be done at Londo's request, to the last two seasons showing us their way to this point. When G'kar tells Londo during their last conversation while Londo is still free of the Keeper that while the Narn will never be able to forgive the Centauri, and neither will he, he does forgive Londo, it's a superb moment of grace in the midst of an incredibly painful tragedy, and I think it helps Londo through his ensuing ordeal. It is also the finishing note as far as the two of them as symbols of their people are concerned. The G'kar who returns to Babylon 5 is unable to live with them any longer and leaves with Lyta, another outcast; Londo is a prisoner in his own body on Centauri Prime but no longer capable of exerting his free will, and thus no longer responsible for his actions. When they finally die together, they have given Narn and Centauri respectively all they could give, but it is their own personal relationship which provides them with the ultimate escape and freedom.
