Quote Originally Posted by bguy View Post
Ugh! Didn't care for this one. The government negotiator seems like a Captain Planet villain, and the idea that a democracy with a televised media would even consider using lethal force on striking workers is just absurd. (Governments using force on striking workers was highly controversial in the 19th century, so there's no way I could see it in the 23rd century barring total societal collapse somewhere along the way.)
I don't want to go too far into this (because real-world politics), but a quick Google search proves this as being entirely wrong. There have been modern, 21st century strikes in democracies that have escalated to the point of worker deaths. If it's happening now, what makes you think it wouldn't be happening a couple centuries from now?

Especially since the Earth Alliance is shown to be significantly more repressive than many modern nations, even right from the start of the show. The Rush Act first came into being during, guess what, societal collapse. It was used as a way to put down work stoppages during the Earth-Minbari War. They just kept it around after the war was over.

On the episode itself, it's one of my favorite of the first season episodes. It first time we see G'kar and Londo truly going at one another, and the dynamism of that relationship is the best in the entire show. For the A plot, we have something that was noticeably lacking from DS9 - the station actually being a station. For all that DS9 was meant to be a trading hub for the gamme quadrant, we never saw any traffic going to and from the place. It was a stationary starship where we only ever saw the command staff, just like previous Star Trek shows. Babylon 5 feels like an actual place. Ivanova is constantly busy managing station traffic, and there are a couple of recurring minor characters on the command staff who we see regularly helping with this. The dock crew workers show up in several episodes. The Zocolo marketplace is always bustling with people. There's actual waiting rooms for passenger ships, just like in an airport, and we periodically have scenes in them.

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Signs and Portents has the space battle that actually looks good. I like how they deliberately showcase tactics that only work in space with realistic physics, like Garibaldi shunting his Starfury sideways while still maintaining forward velocity.

Spoiler: On the raiders
Show
This is indeed the last time we see the raiders. They were clearly meant to be a starter villain, something to fill the space until the Shadows could be introduced. This episode wipes them out and sets up the growing threat, all in one go. Very sharp writing.


My one complaint is that the mysterious vessel obviously attacked the raiders to get the jewel back...which it did by lasering the ship in half. Good job the jewel wasn't in the way of that laser...or damaged by the explosion...and didn't have a bulkhead drop on it...or any of a hundred things that could have gone wrong.