Overall: 5.3
This episode does serve a purpose. We need to know that EarthGov is growing increasingly militant - and we need to know Dr. Franklin's background. I'm sorry to say, though, that I find this one pretty boring - and vaguely insulting when you get right down to it.
Plot Synopsis:
The Lurker's Guide has a plot synopsis here.
Writing: 5.0
Note to Ditillio and Straczynski: there are some career military officers who don't run their homes like miniature boot camps. Trust me; I should know.
I'm trying to be objective here and not let the fact that this episode follows The Coming of Shadows affect my perspective, but I'm sorry: I wish Londo and G'Kar were in this episode. At least that way, I could enjoy a pleasant distraction from Dr. Franklin's tired and stale Daddy Issues. Like Sheridan's longing to return to starship duty some episodes back, Franklin's storyline in this outing feels like it was copy-pasted from a clipboard of cliches - and in contrast to the tropes we see in Londo and G'Kar's arc, the tropes we see here aren't cleverly reinvented. The elder Franklin resembles countless other career military fathers we've seen in fiction; there's nothing about him that truly stands out.
And as for the GROPOS? Well, I'll have more to say about them in a minute. Here, I will only note that the tryst between Dodger and Garibaldi is completely "what the hell?" worthy. They see each other for five seconds in the Zocalo, and suddenly, Dodger's all, "I might die on this tour. Let's have sex!" I suppose it's to Garibaldi's credit that he doesn't go through with it, but still - what the hell? That whole plot is way, way too rushed.
Acting: 7.0
The performances weren't bad, but there's still significant room for improvement. Paul Winfield and Rick Biggs (God rest his soul) fit decently together, but their scenes aren't exactly astonishing examples of layered subtlety. (Though, to be fair, it's difficult to separate the effects of the acting versus the effects of the writing here.) The GROPOS, meanwhile, were largely utility actors; Marie Marshall was probably the best out of all of them, which is interesting considering her ridiculous subplot. Oh, and by the way: if you're going to include a drill sergeant character, hire R. Lee Ermey. Ryan Cutrona was okay; Ermey would've been better (though I'll grant that he would've been more expensive too).
Message: 4.0
Okay - I have no issue with this episode's message that war is costly. I agree that war is a necessary evil at best and that we should avoid slipping into triumphalism when discussing it. However, I take major issue with the way the GROPOS are written. It's true enough that when soldiers get together, a fair amount of crude locker-room talk tends to result - in reality, the Stargate depiction of the military is very sanitized - but good grief! Very rarely do real infantryman display the kind of piss-poor discipline we see here. According to Dad, if a group of soldiers descended upon a civilian city in the real world and started tearing up the bars and intimidating the female locals (Delenn), the MP's would drag them back to base for punishment in a New York minute. The fact that we don't really see that kind of enforcement in this episode creates, for the uninformed viewer, a false - and potentially dangerous - impression of how the military really works.
For an accurate assessment of how military officers tend to behave whilst on shore leave in large numbers, see: our treatment of European towns during WWII.
ReplyDeleteTHE GOOD: We generally left those towns more orderly and exchanged cultures quite efficiently. A lot of great romances began during this time as well...families from Europe wound up living in the states when all was said and done.
THE BAD: We also generally left a lot of European women "in trouble." Yep...those boys "over there" had a lot of trouble keeping it in their pants and not all of those boys took responsibility for their offspring, though many did try. What happens when you take a bunch of battle-tested men between 18 and 30 and slap 'em into a civilian town with more comforts than they've seen since boot camp began? Sex. That's a fact. The vast majority of that sex was both unprotected (bad) and consensual (good). There wasn't a lot of "intimidation" going on...just a lot of bad-boy flirtations and a lot of European women who impressed with said flirtations.
THE UGLY: Occasionally, when we raided an ENEMY town...we didn't treat the innocent bystanders perfectly. There were the odd reports of towns being sacked and property destroyed unnecessarily. And yet, when we arrived, the reaction was almost universally positive, just as it was in Iraq during OIF, despite CNN's incessant coverage of the comparatively few violent confrontations that ensued, because the bad behavior is deeply outweighed by the positives our soldiers embodied.
I don't think B5's portrayal is particularly accurate when viewed against real history. I think Stargate is considerably closer to the truth despite a bit of disnification.