To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

Now that I'm unpacked and recovered from my move, back to the rewatch. S3 ahoy!

Matters of Honor
We get a Marcus! Yaaaay, Marcus! Though he seems to be acting oddly unlike I remember him (i.e., mouthing off all the damn time). Like, he even tells Ivanova that he tends not to say anything unless he has something relevant to say. To which I had to reply, "Oh, that's BS right there." But perhaps it just takes him a while to warm up to people. That would give him something else in common with Susan. (Oh, yes, I see what you did there, JMS, with both of them following dead brothers into military organizations.) Yeah, the UST is being very obviously set up here, but I love Marcus so much, and Ivanova/Marcus is such a cute ship, that I don't really care. Besides, after that breathtaking display of competence which serves as his first introduction to her, I can hardly blame him for falling hard. Hell, her awesomeness makes me swoon on a fairly regular basis.

In lieu of not talking as much as he usually does, Marcus gets to fight people! With a stick! As does Delenn! This is the first time we get to see her physically kicking someone's ass rather than mentally or diplomatically, yes? Hee. Oh, Delenn.

I think it's a shame that Marcus never got to, I dunno, quote from LOTR, or reference them as his favorite books, or something like that, because seriously, the man stepped right out of them. Oh, JMS. Your claim that you weren't blatantly stealing from making an homage to LOTR falls flat on its face with Marcus.

Anyway, so there was other stuff in this episode, too. Like both Kosh and Delenn basically telling Sheridan not to be a pompous ass. I particularly enjoyed Kosh's mysteriousness.

In theory, this is an episode where we can see that Delenn and Sheridan are supposed to balance each other out in this war. She's got the knowledge he doesn't, but knowing about it for so long has trained her to think along certain lines (once a Shadow ship locks on to you, you're dead no matter what). Sheridan hasn't got that background, so he's more open to daring measures like running and then blowing up the Markab gate. However, if anyone's going to get them all killed, it's him.

Speaking of blowing up the Markab gate: hello, White Star! You're such a pretty ship. (Hee, Delenn was totally thinking, "I maded you a ship.") I seem to remember that staffing the White Stars with only religious caste members comes back to bite her in the ass later, but don't remember the details. (That's pretty much what I'll be saying about S3 and S4 as wholes--so much happened that I only recall the broad strokes and some of the small ones with clarity.)

Other big things include Londo telling Morden to take a long walk off a short pier. Except it doesn't really get him anywhere, because Refa has taken on the stooge mantel. Oh, Londo. Even when you try to do the right thing, the universe conspires against you.

Not only do the Shadows still have an in with the Centauri, we see them with the Earth government! And a Psi Cop! Raise your hand if you saw that one coming. This time I caught the cop saying they can use the "threat to planetary security" to "speed up the program"; Clarke & co. appear to be more organized than I remember as well.

I can't finish without saying how much I enjoy Tucker Smallwood. He's appeared in pretty much everything Glen Morgan and James Wong had a hand in, particularly Space: Above and Beyond, and I've liked him in all of them. Endawi here was definitely fun, especially when he was interacting with Garibaldi and G'Kar.

Convictions
aka "Londo and G'Kar are stuck in an elevator together," which, though it doesn't take up much screen time, is surely the most salient and memorable part of the episode. I pretty much love their plotline here; yes, G'Kar is totally cutting off his nose to spite his face, but damn, I can't blame him, you know? I think even Londo can't blame him; he only starts the insult war when it's clear they're going to be rescued. (The insult war = one of my favorite things ever, BTW.) Again, we see exactly how similar they are, both in the elevator and in the fact that both of them go to the station staff and point fingers at the other's species in connection with the bombing.

I also like Londo's reaction to Lennier saving his life. Sometimes he's not a total bastard. And I think he's had a soft spot for Lennier ever since he taught him to gamble. (Heh, now I totally have this image in my head of him telling Vir to go make friends with Lennier because he'd be a good influence. *snerk*) I did get a bit of a chill down my back when Lennier said that he feels he may have "served the present by sacrificing the future" when he pushed Londo out of the way. You wouldn't really think Lennier would even have such thoughts--and he wouldn't, early on--but he's done some growing. And the irony is that in the last episode, Londo was trying to disentangle himself from the Shadows, and claw his way closer to being someone Lennier would save without reservation.

Re: the bomber himself: I have to admit that I don't really care for this show's garden-variety one-off crazy people. Maybe it's the acting, or possibly it's the writing, but it seems like there's always a lot of frothing at the mouth, and the motivations, which are better than on lesser shows, are still just kind of boring. Maybe it's because we get such excellent crazy in the main characters, and everyone else pales in comparison.

Two last things: one, Sheridan couldn't have taken two seconds to think about it and put the damn link on his hip rather than his butt? *facepalm*

Two, I find Brother Theo's assertion that there is one god who goes by many names to be very similar to the philosophy G'Kar starts espousing, about truth being a river and God being the mouth of it, no matter what other guises each go in. Except Theo is interested in the variety of names God gets, while G'Kar is more interested in the truth and the divine itself. I can't remember if we see the monks again after the upcoming episode with Brad Dourif; they would make a nice addition to S5 if they aren't there in canon.