“Sic Transit Vir”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Jesus Treviño
Season 3, Episode 12
Production episode 313
Original air date: April 15, 1996
It was the dawn of the third age… Ivanova has the classic walk-into-work-completely-naked-and-not-realizing-it-until-way-too-late dream, from which she wakes up screaming.
On Centauri Prime, Vir is told by a minister that his report on Minbar is well-received by Emperor Cartagia, though they detect Mollari’s editorial commentary in the report, which Vir admits to being the case. The minister first tells Vir to be more honest in his reports and not let Mollari’s tendency to tell them what they want to hear guide him. Then he shares a Narn joke with Vir, who politely laughs before taking his leave—only to find himself being greeted by a large number of Narns in his quarters…
Ivanova talks to Sheridan about her dream over breakfast, though she doesn’t give specifics regarding the nudity. Sheridan figures it’s her subconscious’ way of dealing with the uncertainty of their lives since they broke off from Earth. And hey, he says, it could be worse, you could be dreaming that you show up to work naked…
Mollari is stalking the vermin in his quarters. Maintenance is backed up, so he’s on his own. His bug hunt is interrupted by the arrival of Lyndisty, a beautiful young Centauri woman, who is Vir’s fiancée. Vir arrives at B5, not greeted by Mollari as expected. When he goes to Mollari’s quarters, the ambassador gleefully introduces Lyndisty.
Because things are quiet for the moment—on Earth, Clark is consolidating his power base and dealing with issues there, so he’s leaving B5 alone for the nonce, and there are no other crises looming—Sheridan asks Delenn out to dinner. She happily accepts.
Vir is nonplussed by the notion of a betrothal. He would prefer to marry for love—he’s silly that way—but Lyndisty refuses to accept that and insists that he will grow to love her as she does him, even though she only just met him. Her dedication to their impending marriage is intense, so much so that Vir starts to buckle.
Allan goes to Ivanova in CnC—his first time there, as it happens. Once Ivanova gets him to stop gaping at the view, he shows her a report he has of some Narns moving through the station. Their transit papers are sponsored by a Centauri official named Abrahamo Lincolni, and they were done through the office of the Centauri ambassador to Minbar.
Vir goes to Ivanova to explain to her about Abrahamo Lincolni, and he’s surprised to see that she already knows about it. He explains that he’s trying to get Narns off the homeworld to work camps. The work camps aren’t great, but they’re way better than being on the Narn homeworld right now.
Sheridan cooks Delenn a Minbari meal, resulting in a truly messy kitchen and flarn that is desperate need of more flavor. Delenn gamely eats the meal, surreptitiously adding a ton of salt and pepper to it in order to make it edible.
Vir and Lyndisty are ambushed by a Narn who says he has found the murderer. There is a fight, and a security alert. Sheridan interrupts dinner to deal with it, along with Allan, who is forced to shoot the Narn with his PPG when he won’t lower his weapon. His last words are a declaration of a blood oath.
Lyndisty treats Vir’s injuries. Ivanova learns that the Narn’s pouch-brother is also on the station, which means the blood oath will transfer to the brother. Ivanova shares this with Vir, but he’s mostly thinking about Lyndisty, and he asks Ivanova for advice on dealing with her, advice Ivanova is in no position to give, both as a non-Centauri and as someone whose own love life is something of a mess.
Further research reveals a connection between Vir and the Narn who attacked him: he’s related to some of the Narns Vir provided transit papers for. However, Ivanova has also discovered that all the Narns Vir gave transit papers to are listed as dead. While Mollari is thrilled to see that Vir is killing Narns by the truckload, Sheridan and Ivanova are disgusted.
However, Vir says that they’re not dead, he just had them declared dead so they’d be safe. They’re civilians who were in need of medical treatment. By getting them off the Narn homeworld and declared dead, they could be treated and sent elsewhere. Now Mollari is disgusted.
Lyndisty finds a depressed Vir, and offers to cheer him up: she has captured a Narn! The Narn’s pouch-brother has indeed attacked, and it turns out he wasn’t attacking Vir—he was attacking Lyndisty. Her father was in charge of culling Narns, and Lyndisty helped him with it. She gleefully talks about all the Narns she’s killed, and offers this Narn to Vir to kill.
Mollari is able to minimize the damage to Vir’s career, but he is recalled from his ambassadorial post and brought back to B5. Minbari influence is said to be the cause of his problems. Because of the loss of prestige, the marriage to Lyndisty is postponed, though Lyndisty promises to wait for him.
Ivanova fleshes out “Abrahamo Lincolni,” giving him a visual profile that is basically Sheridan as a Centauri. Mollari doesn’t know about “Lincolni,” so Ivanova plans to use that cover to smuggle more Narns off the homeworld. It may not be possible to do it, but even getting one Narn to safety would make it worth the effort.
Get the hell out of our galaxy! Delenn expresses concern over Sheridan’s tendency to jump into dangerous situations, as she is blissfully unaware that he’s the lead in a TV show and therefore must do that sort of thing.
Ivanova is God. Ivanova confesses to Sheridan at the end of the episode that she enjoys being a sneak, and so Sheridan proclaims her to be B5’s official sneak-in-residence, a position she accepts gleefully.
If you value your lives, be somewhere else. While Minbari supposedly don’t lie, they will lie in order to save face—their own or someone else’s. Which explains why Delenn lies like a cheap rug when Sheridan asks her how his homemade flarn is and she says it’s good….
In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Mollari’s quarters are overrun by bugs. At one point, he swears that they’re evolving before his eyes, and urges Vir and Lyndisty to keep their eye out for them, as he needs to kill them before they develop language skills.
Though it take a thousand years, we will be free. Vir has found a way to save some Narn lives, and Ivanova finds a way to keep it going even after it’s been exposed.
Looking ahead. Vir’s longing stare at the emperor’s throne is at least in part due to the prediction made by Lady Morella in “Point of No Return” that Vir would one day be emperor, an ascension that we will see before the show’s conclusion.
No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Lyndisty does a decent job of seducing Vir right up to the part where it turns out she’s a psychopath. Meantime, the Sheridan-Delenn pairing continues apace with a lovely, if barely edible, dinner in the captain’s quarters.
Welcome aboard. Damian London officially makes his Centauri official recurring, as he returns from “The Quality of Mercy.” He’ll be back in “The Hour of the Wolf” at the top of season four, and will eventually be named Milo Virini.
Carmen Thomas plays Lyndisty.
Trivial matters. The episode was obviously inspired by the actions of Oskar Schindler and especially Chiune Sugihara during World War II. Schindler, an industrialist, and Sugihara, a diplomat, were able to save the lives of many Jews living under Nazi rule by employing them in factories that were safer than the concentration camps (Schindler) or giving them transit visas that enabled them to travel through Japan-controlled territory to safety (Sugihara). Schindler’s actions were dramatized in the 1982 novel Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally, which was adapted in 1993 by Steven Spielberg into the movie Schindler’s List.
Jerry Doyle was given this episode off to allow the broken wrist he suffered during the filming of “Severed Dreams” to heal. Garibaldi was the only character to have appeared in every episode of B5 to date, a streak broken by this episode.
We saw Mollari editing Vir’s reports on Minbar in both “Dust to Dust” and “Point of No Return.”
Lyndisty is never seen or referenced again, not even in the “Legions of Fire” novel trilogy by the late great Peter David that centered on the Centauri Republic.
While the final fate of Lyndisty’s Narn prisoner is never revealed onscreen, scripter J. Michael Straczynski said online that there was a line of dialogue from Ivanova that the Narn was recovering in medlab, which wound up being lost in editing.
The echoes of all of our conversations.
“I heard a new joke! What is more dangerous than a locked room full of angry Narns?”
“I don’t know—what is more dangerous than a locked room full of angry Narns?”
“One angry Narn with the key!”
—The minister telling a joke to Vir.
The name of the place is Babylon 5. “If kisses could kill, that one would’ve flattened several small towns.” When Steven Furst initially appeared as Vir way back in the first season, it was mostly just, “Oh, look, it’s Flounder as a Centauri.” In particular his sitting in the meeting room playing video games in “Born to the Purple” was, to say the least, embarrassing, and didn’t speak highly of Vir as a character.
But the character has been permitted to evolve beyond his Animal House-ish origins. As Mollari has fallen further and further into the darkness, Vir has had the unenviable role of his conscience. It’s a thankless role, and one that shows very little sign of working, but it’s one the viewer can appreciate, even if the ambassador can’t.
The plot of this episode stems from a particularly powerful scene back in “Comes the Inquisitor,” when Vir found himself stuck in an elevator with G’Kar. Vir desperately wants to apologize to G’Kar, but nothing he can say would be of interest to the Narn, who cuts himself and screams, “Dead!” every time a drop of blood falls to the deck. In the ensuing months, Vir has come up with a way to make up for the horrible crimes of his people.
Unfortunately, he is betrothed to a psychopath. Carmen Thomas does a wonderful job of portraying Lyndisty’s bland sincerity, giving the same earnest tone to her description of Vir’s kind face that she does to her description of how she helped her father commit mass murder. But of course, she doesn’t view the Narns as people. I was going to say she views them as animals, but that’s not even fair, because you just know that Lyndisty would be kinder to an animal. (There has been no character on B5 more likely to own a puppy than Lyndisty.)
The rest of the episode is fine. The Sheridan-Delenn pairing continues to be charming, Vir trying to ask Ivanova for advice on sexual relations is a rare case of a humorous scene in B5 actually being funny (in direct contrast to the opening scene of Ivanova’s naked-to-work dream, which was just tired). And Mollari’s ongoing battle against bugs is a delight, magnificently played by Peter Jurasik.
Next week: “A Late Delivery from Avalon.”
This is, honestly, one of my favorite episodes. Funny, but dark, and still hopeful. Vir has a really good character arc in the series and this really moves it along.
Yes, when Vir first shows up, he seems to be just a nebbish. But his true defining character trait is simple decency (something that is all too rare). And it’s a joy to see him grow to the point where he can act on that, and eventually become just the Emperor the Centauri are really going to need.
Add Raul Wallenberg to the list of WWll heroes who probably inspired JMS’s portrayal of VIr in this episode.
I like this episode more than I have any reason to, given its flaws. It makes no sense that Ivanova and Sheridan would have that crucial confrontation with Vir (about the Narns sent to labor camps apparently being dead) in the presence of Mollari, as it should have occurred to them that appearances and reality aren’t always the same thing, and that Vir isn’t a carbon copy of Mollari. And that last line of Vir’s “What relationship doesn’t have it’s ups and downs?” lands flat given what Vir knows about Lyndisty’s actions against the Narns. It might have worked if the episode had portrayed Lyndisty had been portrayed as an approving bystander of her father’s actions rather than a direct and frequent participant in them, as that would give Vir some reason to believe she was just brainwashed and could come to change. But she’s a mass murderer who clearly has shown she views the Narns as animals. That’s a gulf too broad for love to bridge.
But seeing Vir’s reaction to actually being wanted by a beautiful young Centauri woman of high rank is just priceless. And seeing his quiet, behind-the-scenes heroism on behalf of the Narn makes it clear he’s more than just Mollari’s timorous conscience. He’s becoming a force to be reckoned with in his own right, and has grown hugely from his first days on Babylon 5, where he was just “Flounder in SPAAACE!” You can see this Vir eventually ably filling Turhan’s shoes.
Yes, thank you for the Wallenberg mention. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t exist to type this comment.
“It makes no sense that Ivanova and Sheridan would have that crucial confrontation with Vir (about the Narns sent to labor camps apparently being dead) in the presence of Mollari, as it should have occurred to them that appearances and reality aren’t always the same thing, and that Vir isn’t a carbon copy of Mollari.”
According to JMS’s commentary, they confronted Londo about it because they assumed Londo was the mastermind behind the killings and that he was pressuring Vir to handle the paperwork. In the scene, it’s mainly Londo that they’re confronting over it.
I agree, though, that Vir’s final line was ill-conceived.
Yes, for that final line to land as it’s intended to, Lyndisty can’t be portrayed as an active participant in mass murder and genocide. It only works if she’s a passive (and somewhat distant) spectator to the atrocities her father is committing; that way Vir might be convinced she could eventually come to see the Narn as he sees them. No amount of flattery and feminine beauty would lead to Vir swooning over an actual genocidal murderer.
People pick up their moral ideas from the people around them. No one became anti-slavery because they lived surrounded by slaves. Only because they lived in a society without slaves. Vir and Lyndisty presumably come from very different parts of Centauri society.
A fairly obvious exception would be people who were slaves becoming anti-slavery despite being surrounded by slaves.
However you presumably mean slave owners and their families. There were some who became anti-slavery. Best known, in the US, might be Sarah and Angelina Grimké, daughters of a very wealthy South Carolina slave owning family, who moved north and became prominent abolitionists.
Honourable mention to the OG Cassius Clay, born to a prominent family of Kentucky slave-holders and one of the more outspoken abolitionists of his day.
“No one became anti-slavery because they lived surrounded by slaves.”
I doubt that very much. I think a lot of people who saw the way slaves were treated would have realized it was wrong and chosen to oppose it. A lot of people develop their prejudices based on stereotypes of people they’ve never met, then become more accepting once they get to know the real people and see that the stereotypes were wrong. Sure, a lot of slaveowners must have been content with the status quo, or it couldn’t have persisted, but there were bound to be exceptions. After all, many families have rebellious children who reject their parents’ values.
I think it’s like the idea of power corrupting. Studies have shown that power doesn’t corrupt everyone; rather, whether people use power positively or negatively depends on how they were already inclined to behave before they got power. Similarly, whether people raised in a slave society embrace slavery as just or recognize it as unjust is probably a function of their own innate capacity for empathy as much as a function of their upbringing. People are shaped by both nature and nurture, not exclusively one or the other.
I think Vir and Lyndisty come from the same general background of Centauri nobility, but Vir’s time on Babylon 5 and Minbar has broadened his mind, because he’s gotten to know a lot of aliens and come to appreciate them as people rather than racial caricatures. It’s like how people raised in conservative, prejudiced communities often go to college and become more tolerant and broad-minded, simply because they get to know a more diverse range of people and come to appreciate them as individuals. It’s probably a combination of that and Vir’s intrinsic decency, given that Londo’s spent even more time on B5 but hasn’t become more enlightened.
He’s not quite there yet, but you can draw a straight line to the Emperor Vir we see, who first appears in bed working on larger numbers with two women, turns on a dime from irritated to somber, and gets to play wistful statesman as well as “man who still doesn’t drink very much who found an occasion to get drunk.”
I like a lot about this episode, particularly for how it continues to show Vir’s evolution. The script is a nice mix of romance, comedy, and psychopathy, It’s a shame that Lyndisty didn’t show up in the novels, because one would think she should have. Then again, by that point, she and her family might have fallen completely out of favor.
While I love some of the scenes with Londo, such as his “bug hunt”, his bloodthirsty racism feels just a bit out of character. Or perhaps amplified for “comedic” effect. He always seemed more motivated by the desire to see the Centauri Republic restored to its former glory; putting the Narn in their place was simply the initial means to that end. Here he is hardly better than Lyndisty. It just always seems so jarringly over the top compared to what we have seen up to this point.
The alternative interpretation is that Londo knows perfectly well what Lyndisty is and what Vir is doing, and tries to cover for him and acts over the top to get him to play along.
I agree. Most of the time Londo’s racism seems performative. Like it’s a hat he puts on while representing the interests of the Republic. This time it seems a bit too sincere.
I think this episode suffered by being a designated funny episode. It would have benefited from a little bit less commitment to the bit.
I think that’s a bit of a misread of Londo’s initial pleasure over hearing Vir killed several thousand Narns. He is very much surprised, and very much playing his affable “Londo in the commander’s office” persona (as opposed to Council Chambers Londo, who is rarely affable). And it’s a parallel with Delenn’s lies during dinner: privately Londo might have a more ambiguous “I didn’t know you had it in you” response, though he’d also be happy for the same reason he’s happy when Vir later goes after a Drazi merchant with a sword. This is not the time and place, and Vir obviously wouldn’t get in trouble for killing Narn in the wa he (and Londo) could should the truth come out. Note Londo’s change in tone and attitude learning the truth: he isn’t mad all those Narns are still alive, he’s upset that it could get out and cause political problems.
I enjoy this episode, but I really dislike Carmen Thomas’ performance. She’s a working actor with a longish list of roles, so I can only assume that her somewhat stilted delivery is a choice meant to reflect her psychopathy. It grates on me, though.
Back when Vir told Mr. Morden where to get off, I wondered if his little wave was a rude gesture among the Centauri. After all, they have six… uh, six. I now have to say that it isn’t, since Vir gives a similar, but much more timid version of that wave when he first meets Lyndisty. It does appear that clasped fingers are slightly rude, though, maybe the equivalent of sticking a finger into a circle made by the thumb and forefinger of the other hand. We’ve also seen Londo do a two-handed jab just below the rib cage, which seems to be the equivalent of an “I gotcher [X] right here” crotch grab. You rarely get that sort of fine detail for alien cultures.
“She’s a working actor with a longish list of roles, so I can only assume that her somewhat stilted delivery is a choice meant to reflect her psychopathy. ”
I think it’s rather to show that she’s trying to get on the good side of a man she doesn’t know but is under orders to marry. It’s already been made clear in earlier episodes that high-ranking Centauri marry for political reasons, which can mean being forced to marry someone who doesn’t really suit you and may even actively dislike you. The former may not be fixable, but it may be possible to prevent the active dislike, and Lyndisty’s trying to do that. It’s understandable that insincere flattery would come across as stilted.
Yes, Londo is an example of marrying 3 women that he dislikes intensely. Trying to keep that from happening is a good idea. No one wants to be stuck in a loveless marriage, they want even less to be stuck with a spouse who despises them.
Yes. And that is why Lyndisty is trying (too hard) to make Vir fall in love with her. And who can blame her for that? If she can, by flattering Vir, make genuine love grow between them, they will both be better off. (Well, they would have been if the marriage had actually happened, that is.)
I found it rather antiquated thinking the way everyone assumed that the Narn must have been targeting Vir and just dismissed the woman with him as a nonentity. I mean, it was really quite obvious that Lyndisty was the real target, and it’s implausible that none of the characters even considered that possibility. As misdirects go, it was very unconvincing.
I guess the Centauri equivalent of insects have eight legs, though on Earth they have six, and it’s arachnids that have eight. Given how bad JMS is at science, though, I can’t be sure if he was trying to convey alienness or just made a mistake.
“Sic transit vir” is Latin for “thus passes the man,” so the title has a double meaning. In the context of the saying sic transit gloria mundi, “thus passes the glory of the world,” it means that it fades quickly, that nothing lasts forever, so I guess it refers to the passing of Vir’s high standing in court and his brief happiness with Lyndisty.
Giving “Abrahamo Lincolni” the face of someone as prominent as John Sheridan seems unwise, since it increases the odds that someone will recognize it and realize it’s a fraud. Wouldn’t it make more sense to use the face of someone unlikely to appear in interstellar newscasts, like some maintenance tech? Or just use AI to generate an imaginary face?
I read that Claudia Christian was clothed below her shoulders in the dream scene, so I was watching her reflection in the window behind her to see if I could spot any clothes, but they controlled the camera angle well.
I’m not sure how many times I have seen this episode, but every time I do, when the picture of Abrahamo Lincolni is displayed, I struggle to see Bruce Boxleitner even though I know it’s his face. It doesn’t look recognizably like Sheridan to me. /shrug. So, it might have fooled me, but maybe not Brother Theo.
I mean, the only ones who would be checking into this would be Centauri, and for all we know, humans could look very similar to them ,so they can’t tell the difference.
Except humans and Centauri look almost exactly alike, so the idea that Centauri couldn’t tell humans apart makes far less sense than it might for Narn or Drazi, say. I mean, do you have trouble telling individual Centauri apart? Or if you see a Centauri played by an actor you know from other shows, are you unable to recognize them with Centauri makeup? If not, then you can assume the reverse isn’t true either.
Besides, why would Ivanova take the chance? Even if most Centauri might not notice the resemblance, there are bound to be some who are more perceptive, so why would she gamble with it? Why not just pick an obscure face, or generate an imaginary one? Statistically speaking, the more Centauri who see that image, the more probable it becomes that one of them will recognize it. Using Sheridan’s famous face is just tempting fate.
Given the limitations of computers at the time B5 was made, I can see why using AI to generate a completely imaginary face didn’t occur to anyone (the same way that the Padds the Starfleet crew on DS9 use are crude compared with a modern iPad, let alone whatever people would have available in Star Trek’s time). But it would make a lot more sense from a security standpoint to use a heavily Photoshopped version of some nobody’s face for “Abrahamo Lincolni,” and that was computer technology that did exist when B5 was made. Picking Sharadin to be the model for Vir’;s fake Centauri bureaucrat was clearly an instance of getting a chuckle from the audience at the expense of realism, which unfortunately happens more than once on B5.
“Given the limitations of computers at the time B5 was made, I can see why using AI to generate a completely imaginary face didn’t occur to anyone”
No, the idea of using computer imagery to create imaginary faces has been around far longer than that, since people can always anticipate technology beyond what exists in their present. I’m sure there were STAR TREK episodes in the ’80s-’90s where people instructed the holodeck to modify holo-characters’ appearance based on verbal instructions, e.g. when Lal in TNG: “The Offspring” simulated a variety of potential appearances for herself.
After all, the idea for what AI can do today had to exist long beforehand in order for people to spend decades advancing the technology to the point that the idea could become reality. It didn’t just spontaneously spring into being out of nowhere, after all. It’s getting it backward to assume that the imagination of science fiction writers is limited to the known technologies of their era. Rather, the technologies imagined by science fiction are what inspire inventors to create them for real.
The assumption about who was the target had nothing to do with male or female. Vir is best known as the aide to Londo Mollari — to the extent that Sheridan and Ivanova assumed Mollari was the one behind the dead Narns and ordered Vir to execute the plan, and also that the emperor and his people assumed that Mollari heavily edited Vir’s reports about Minbar — and Mollari is one of the most prominent people in the current Centauri government. This would be the same Centauri government that just conquered Narn. It really isn’t that big a leap to assume that Vir is the target of a Narn assassin rather than some random Centauri woman…….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Also Vir is in the opening credits, and that has to count for something.
The characters don’t know that.
Except Londo Mollari: tell me this is a man who doesn’t regard himself as the star of his very own Life Drama and I must call thee “Fibber”.
Yes, but in Londo’s mind, he’s the top-billed star, and there are few other regulars. Probably Garibaldi gets second billing as the best friend, followed by Vir as the comic relief, with G’Kar as the archvillain, and everyone else is guest stars.
Yes, I was being facetious.
Competent investigators never assume anything. It’s their job to consider every possibility. The only times fictional investigators fail to do so is when the writers force them to overlook an obvious solution in order to manufacture an artificial mystery.
Besides, Lyndisty is hardly “some random Centauri woman.” She’s the daughter of the Lady Drusella, thus a member of the Centauri nobility, and if she’s considered a good match for Vir, her family’s status must be comparable to his. So it makes no sense to fail even to look into her background and explore whether she might have been the target.
This wasn’t important enough to mention in the entry itself, but since Christopher went ahead and mentioned the phrase “sic transit gloria mundi,” I have to mention my favorite newspaper headline of all time, in the New York Daily News, when a strike by the workers of the Mass Transit Authority ended on a Sunday night, meaning that subway and bus service was being restored the following morning, which led to the headline: SICK TRANSIT, GLORIOUS MONDAY.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, who likes that one even better than HEADLESS MAN FOUND IN TOPLESS BAR
Not to appear pedantic, but it was actually HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR. It’s the greatest New York Post headline ever.
In the movie and TV series Alien Nation, the alien Newcomer immigrants were given Earth names that were often bad puns, and my favorite was in one of the tie-in comics, which featured a Newcomer woman named Gloria Mundy. She was introduced getting off a bus, and I’ve always wondered that was an intentional pun on “transit” or just a lucky accident.
Puns are any language family’s greatest gift to it’s children, it’s true.
Headline Humor perfection!
I find it interesting that “Ceremonies of Light and Dark” ends with the command staff getting the new black uniforms and then this episode opens with Ivanova having a nightmare at CnC with no clothes on. I would have thought the uniforms would have factored into Sheridan’s explanation, but it’s just as well it didn’t. It would have been a bit too obvious.
I never get over the fact that it took three seasons for the show to have actual scenes between Vir and Ivanova. She calls him “Mr. Cotto” and my first thought was: “who the hell is she talking about?” No one calls him by his family name.
They play off great with some nice comic timing, and their self-deprecating brand of humor is similar enough to make for some delightful moments. And unlike trying to shoehorn the A.I. plot into last week’s brutal episode, “Sic Transit Vir” crafts a Vir story more than able to transition between the darkly comic vibe and the more genuinely unsettling aspects of Centauri oppression. It’s a welcome break from the Earth fascism arc, and it still manages to retain the political undertones while also somehow being ‘lighthearted’.
This is a great use of a one-off guest character. It’s a reminder that the Centauri’s disdain for the Narn can easily be seen in other echelons of their society besides the political one. We hadn’t seen a lot of Centauri women on the show. And the ones we’ve seen like Adira or Lady Morella have always been level-headed progressive people who would never indulge in violence or prejudice. Even Londo’s wives didn’t seen particularly wired for interspecies hate the way we see the Centauri men in general. And Lyndisty now proves it can happen. She disarms Vir and the audience completely.
Her beauty aside, she seems so willing to engage in a marriage and even contemplates building a foundation out of love for Vir’s sake. She seems perfect at first glance, which makes that twist all the more expected but still powerful. We know Vir would never harm a Narn willingly, which makes her the only logical candidate. She doesn’t even break her smile when she presents the Narn to Vir. That’s how messed up it gets. Racial superiority – yet another central component to fascism. No wonder Kosh declared the Centauri a dying people in the first season.
I could see Lady Morella being willing to use violence, just not in the service of cheap nationalism or racial prejudice. She struck me as someone it would be unwise to cross.
Delenn and Sheridan are about to smooch, but then Ivanova calls Sheridan and a video call automatically starts without him doing anything, ruining the moment. And this is the same guy who’s office doesn’t have a door. Remember, soldier, everything you use was built by the lowest bidder…
that was yet another ridiculous moment in this terribly written and directed episode.
That only happens when it is maximally embarrassing, such as when Sheridan was, err, negotiating with Ms. Musante. The rest of the time, one has to actually answer a call.
I suspect this is something Ivanova in particular (and probably Sheridan’s superiors) can do. It seems like a reasonable “urgent call” option. Or at least it would be if it wasn’t basically a videophone in his bedroom. Um.
“Carmen Thomas does a wonderful job of portraying Lyndisty’s bland sincerity”
I think she was simply terrible. Most of the acting in this episode felt significantly worse than usual, but her dialogues with Vir were dreadful, mechanical, fake, like an amateur actor trying to deliver a role and completely overdoing it.
Overall, I liked Vir’s Schindlerness, but that’s the only thing i liked about the episode, the rest was just sad and amateur. There was no real point in Ivanova’s dream and why it would be significant.
And then “Abrahamo Lincolni”?
Anyway, after the last two episodes this was a terrible one in comparison and i had to force myself to watch through it…
I dunno… On the one hand, I think Thomas’s stilted delivery was probably a conscious choice to convey Lyndisty’s shallowness, vanity, and emotional deadness. But on the other hand, I think maybe it was the wrong choice to give that away so soon, that it would’ve been better to convince us she was this warm, wonderful person so that we’d be more shocked to learn she was a mass murderer. But the choice of how to play the character would’ve been as much the director’s responsibility as the actress’s.
I think it’s fair to characterize Lyndisty as a very amateur actress – or, better, a very good one, as she’s no doubt been carefully schooled to keep her true feelings to herself at all times when in public or interacting with other who aren’t (yet) family. So it’s no wonder she’s completely unable to fake real sincerity!
yeah, i’m not blaming the actress, i actually think that the director did a bad job with this episode as i constantly found myself thinking at various scenes “oh, this looks like just two people practicing for a crappy theatre play” and did not believe that they are inside the story…and it wasn’t only her, i had the same with dialogues between Sheridan and Ivanova and normally their dialogues feel natural and their acting is good enough to convince me. Not in this episode. But Thomas was even worse than the others, but i agree, i don’t think that it would be due to lack of talent on her side.
As a big Vir fan, this is one of my favorite episodes. It is great to see him growing into a larger role, which is balanced by the comic elements of his betrothal.
The difference between this and Schindler’s List is that the the latter didn’t end with its title character snogging Adolf Eichmann’s daughter.
No thank you.
Yes, the humorous ending simply doesn’t work. Once Vir knew what Lyndisty was truly like, he’d not want anything to do with her. That’s why I’ve said her actions should have been toned down to make her a spectator rather than an active participant.
Can you imagine, though, if Vir HAD ended up married to her? That would make Londo’s three marriages look calm and sedate!
I think it would’ve weakened the reveal too much if she’d been a mere spectator. They should’ve changed the ending to fit the reveal, not changed the reveal to fit the ending.
That would work, too. Vir could have ended the episode grateful for the stay in execution, and wondering what he’d need to do to convince his family and Lyndisty’s family to call the whole marriage off instead of merely postponing it. (No doubt someone could have found a way to right the necessary dialogue in a light fashion, perhaps with Vir saying that he’d no doubt have better luck the next time.)
I’m not saying that the reason we never see the Might-have-been-Mrs Vir ever again is that the next Narn Avenger did rather better than the one we see in this episode, but that would make quite a bit of sense.
Just because true-blue villainy has worked out for you so far doesn’t mean it will continue to work out for you (Just ask Heydrich).
Or maybe she was killed in the Shadow War or
In defense of the ending:
We the viewers are not Centauri. We are the ones who have “corrupted” Vir with our attitudes. To paraphrase Lennier last episode “They may look like us, but they are not us.”
Lyndisty is a typical Centauri in terms of her views on Narns. Vir is the outlier.
Vir is someone who has never had a chance with any women who now finds himself with a Centauri supermodel actively liking him and wanting to help him become the best he can be, even after discovering that he has radical views on many subjects. Even though the engagement is on hold and she is free to look for someone better suited, she declares that she will wait for him.
The only reason Vir would have to outright reject someone like her is the fact that she has killed large numbers of Narns. So have a large portion of the Centauri nobility, either directly or through exploitation (evidenced by the conditions on Narn that Vir is trying to save them from). He feels she is capable of learning why the current Centauri thoguhts on Narns are wrong (and tells her so). He wants her to have a chance at redemption. It’s a hard path, but worth the effort. And he’s an eternal optimist.
I think you have this exactly right. The episode is asking how Vir will react when his principles come into conflict with his self-interest, which hasn’t really been the case up to this point. Vir hasn’t really been *tempted* with much, except for Morden’s somewhat vague but open-ended offer. This is different. It is specific and, although it isn’t necessarily apparent on-screen, it seems likely that it is something Vir really does *want*.
Moreover, I think the attraction for him goes beyond the sex, although that’s certainly part of it. It’s also status and respectability within his society that is being held out to him. (Consider the emphasis that the script places on his Uncle’s low opinion of Vir.) So it’s not at all surprising to me that he would want to try to find a way to try to have his cake and eat it too, so to speak. People of good intent sometimes find themselves contorting themselves into all sorts of rationalizations when confronted with these kinds of dilemmas.
I think where the script fails is by not showing us how Lyndisty reacted to Vir’s refusal to kill the Narn prisoner. (The line of dialogue that JMS says was dropped for time confirming that the Narn was recovering in medlab doesn’t help in this regard.) If, for example, she had indicated some openness to changing her views (not to mention, you know, stopping the mass murders), then Vir’s line is optimistic, and maybe even hypocritical and self-serving, but not entirely delusional. On the other hand, it would play quite differently if she remained resolutely committed to murdering Narns every chance she gets. In the latter case, Vir is at least acquiescing to that conduct, which is a much larger subversion of his principles, even if he is grasping for some possibility of redemption that she doesn’t want.
Either of those scenarios *could* have been part of a good story about how far Vir is willing to go, what he’s willing to tolerate, and what he is willing to forego. But I think it was a miss on JMS’ part not to give us enough information to really explore that more.
“This is different. It is specific and, although it isn’t necessarily apparent on-screen, it seems likely that it is something Vir really does *want*.
Moreover, I think the attraction for him goes beyond the sex, although that’s certainly part of it. It’s also status and respectability within his society that is being held out to him. (Consider the emphasis that the script places on his Uncle’s low opinion of Vir.) So it’s not at all surprising to me that he would want to try to find a way to try to have his cake and eat it too, so to speak. People of good intent sometimes find themselves contorting themselves into all sorts of rationalizations when confronted with these kinds of dilemmas.”
Given what Vir says to Londo after
I think maybe the biggest problem is the tonal mismatch of revealing this hideous thing about Lyndisty as a mass killer, then trying to wrap it up with a lighthearted joke about relationships having ups and downs. You’re right, an exploration of Vir’s ambivalence could’ve been done effectively, but reducing it to an episode-ending punch line was a misfire.
Agreed, the tone doesn’t work. The only way I can make sense of it is as an attempt to portray cognitive dissonance, but the direction and score don’t convey that successfully.
Maybe that’s what ultimately ends the marriage proposal: After considerable time and much effort on his part Vir learns that Lyndisty’s not going to change her views, and Lyndisty and her family realize that Vir’s a radical who’s going to continue to hold what are (by their standards) treasonous views about the Narn.
Lurker’s Guide mentioned this with JMS, but this show was notorious for the PTEN promo that out-and-out spoiled the Lyndisty twist.
I know that this one is kind of a fan favourite, but I’m going to be honest: I fucking hate this episode.
The thing is that it could have been brilliant if the script had actually leaned into the tonal dissonance. It could have started off as a light comedy about Vir’s arranged marriage and then swerved violently into horror and moral disgust two thirds of the way through when Vir realises that his sweetly tempered bride-to-be is actually an unrepentant war criminal to whom it doesn’t even occur that she’s done anything wrong. It could have been a brilliant commentary upon the banality of evil and given a great moment to Vir as a character as he’s forced to take a moral stance against the diktats of his culture and his position. But instead, it comes across as “lol, Vir’s new wife is actually a war criminal, can you even imagine?” and what ever moral stance Vir takes happens off screen. We don’t even get to see what he does with the Narn at the end, something that should have been an actual crowning moment of awesome for the character.
And okay; I know that Vir is the designated Comic Relief Character(TM) on the cast. But if you’re going to do an episode where you basically turn a doofy loser into Oscar Schindler, you need to actually take him seriously for a moment, and this script never does.
Ugh.
I agree that for the episode to work and also be light (and I do see why JMS would want this episode to be lighter, after the heaviness of the previous two episodes), Lyndisty needs to be a naïve bigot who’s just reflexively buying into the things her horrible father has taught her, not an actual murderer herself (and certainly NOT a murderer multiple times over). I think that change, as well as seeing her reaction to Vir NOT killing the bound and helpless Narn be one of baffled acceptance,, would allow the end of the episode as written to work while still showing Vir’s growth as a character. He’d have some reason in that case to think she might indeed be capable of change.
Vir’s earlier reaction to Morden has already shown he’s more than a doofy loser. We already know he has a conscience, so seeing him actually taking some action based on that isn’t huge a surprise, but it is a welcome character development.
“I know that this one is kind of a fan favourite, but I’m going to be honest:…”
Thank you jaimebabb for widening my focus to the central issue.
I (and some of the comments) have been considering individual things in this ep that didn’t work. The script was disappointing here, or could have done that better over there… My wistfully thinking, “well, this episode’s always been a little hard to watch, but I’ll just examine it as a flawed piece of craft” is just wrong.
It’s clumsy and ham-handed with nearly every point or even joke it tries to make, and instead of making Vir more of a hero, manages to belittle and cheapen his actions and moral torment, weakening his role in the entire story to come.
jaimebabb, you are absolutely correct. This episode is bad, bad, bad, and I agree with everything you wrote.
When I got my wife to watch through the series with me a couple years ago, it was around this time she decided Vir was her favorite character – though I’m sure it began with his spectacular answer to Morden’s standard questioning, our first glimpse of the Centauri equivalent of brass balls.
She swore to me that she’d quit the show if Vir died. I did my best to just shrug and give her no indication one way or the other.
Hmm. I don’t think the show to this point has given viewers any reason to fear that it would kill off a regular character. Certainly it’s written a few out — Takashima and Kyle were dropped after the pilot, Sinclair left, Na’Toth vanished, and Talia suffered an effective death of personality — but the only main-title character I can think of who’s actually rung up the curtain and joined the choir invisible has been Lt. Keffer, who was basically a nonentity.
Now that I think about it, it’s a little surprising how few lead-character deaths B5 has had, compared to a number of other serialized shows. Given the nature of its storytelling, you’d think there would’ve been more.
I for one am glad B5 didn’t resort to killing off characters left and right. Not only it would cheapen the story, but as we later find out, when the show uses death as a story point, it really twists the emotional knife. I don’t think I could handle more than the show already gives on that regard.
Folks, real life has gotten in the way, and I didn’t have the ability to write up B5 this week. So the rewatch of “A Late Delivery from Avalon” will be here next Monday.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Thanks for the notice.