Rewatch: "The Fall of Centauri Prime"

[ruuger]

Bonus reading:

Analysis on Lurker's Guide
Discussion at B5_revisited

Comments

[vjs2259.livejournal.com]

"You must surrender to your greatest fear, knowing that it will destroy you. If, at the end, you have failed with all the others, that is your final chance for redemption."

So Londo's greatest failing, his love for his people, proves to be the source of his redemption.

Although if you think his greatest fear was death, that chance still awaits. I think it was surrendering control to the Keeper. But maybe not.

"When we first met I had no power and all the choices I could ever want. And now I have all the power I could ever want and no choices at all. No choice at all."

"There is always choice. We say that there is no choice only to comfort ourselves with a decision we have already made."

Did Londo have a choice at this point? Would the destruction on Centauri Prime have been any worse if he'd let the Drakh blow up the capital? Could he have gotten a message out that it was Shadow allies behind the attacks? Would anyone have believed him? If Sheridan believed him could he have called off the assault? Or would that have ripped the Alliance in half just at the beginning?

The picture of all those ships nose downward blasting away at Centauri Prime is as horrific as the destruction of Narn with mass drivers during The Long Twilight Struggle. And Londo is the observer in both.

The idea of reparations is almost obscene given the destruction...hadn't the common Centauri paid enough?

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if there was anything better Londo could have done at this stage - it seems like it was mostly too late for anything. I'm not sure how much he would have survived to say -- although if he and G'Kar both died in mysterious circumstances it might have rung warning bells (but could Londo die at that point -- I wonder how set the future death he sees is). I think without better evidence, the alliance would have fractured if they had been denied all the revenge, but maybe it could then have been built stronger if the Centauri had remained involved.

In some ways it strikes me as this being a similar situation to the Franco-German rivalry at the end of the First World War -- where both sides had suffered so much, but the winners were determined to make the losers pay despite everything...

[philstar22.livejournal.com]

Oh, poor Londo. This is where you really start feeling bad for him. Because he understands all the damage he has caused. And it hits more home because it is now to his own people who he has always loved and wanted to help achieve greatness. He finally, truly gets it now, but it is far, far too late.