"See the great Centauri Republic! Open 9 to 5... Earth time."
One of Londo's best monologues, from the Babylon 5 pilot movie, The Gathering. Surprised that none of this scene is on youtube elsewhere, to be honest. Really sums up the tragedy of imperialism and its constant eventual endpoint(s) throughout history.
This excerpt was taken from the TNT rerelease, which has a much better soundtrack by Christopher Franke, matching up with the theme and feel of the actual series, instead of the original underwhelming 90s-tv-rock-schlock of Stewart Copeland's original soundtrack. Thank goodness they went with the krautrock legend instead of the drummer from The Police haha
For those unfamiliar with The Gathering, you'll notice the zocalo is much more neon and the patrons a bit more... varied. A lot of artistic differences in this pilot, including a different director of photography, with whom I imagine JMS must not have been the happiest with. Still, I do love this early extra-funky-lighting aesthetic of the zocalo in particular and wish that that had carried over more to the actual series, but understand why it didn't. Just a sucker for neon I suppose.
Nice shark. Pretty shark.
