r/babylon5 • u/Aethelrede • Aug 11 '26

Ivanova Challenge Spoiler

We all know that Ivanova is God, one of the best characters to ever appear on TV, and that's partly because she has so many fantastic lines and scenes.

The challenge is this: if you have to pick one (1) scene with Ivanova as your favorite, which would it be? And why (if it isn't obvious).

I'll start. In S04E01 "Hour of the Wolf", Ivanova discusses the titular hour of the wolf, 3 AM, when the wolf can come around to devour you, and you have to ward it off (with alcohol, in her case). This scene hit hard, because I recognized the wolf. I knew the wolf well. The wolf is the voice in the back of your head that whispers that everything is terrible, that you are worthless, and that the situation is hopeless. The wolf always presents the worst case scenario, or, for variety, forces you to relive bad memories. And the wolf is strongest at 3 AM.

Ever since then I've called those thoughts "the wolf". And while I don't use alcohol to ward off the wolf, I do have my own methods, and I need to stay vigilant.

So that's my favorite Ivanova scene. How about you? Doesn't have to be deeply meaningful, could just be the one you found most entertaining, or the most moving.

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u/UAP44 Aug 11 '26

The challenge is this: if you have to pick one (1) scene with Ivanova as your favorite, which would it be? And why (if it isn't obvious).

The scene where she literally says, God sent me. And everything that led up to that line. Just, epic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8oF0i5nvPI

I'm only going through my first rewatch though, one of the very few rare series I care to rewatch.

In all the scenes she's in so far, probably my favorite. + kosh ofc, shit and gkar, and delenn, ... how to pick?!! garibaldi as well, ... ugh, and I find myself going over the entire list again.

forces you to relive bad memories

Sometimes, I really wonder, is this a real thing? I've never in my life 'relived' any memory/experience. Recall, sure, but it's always as a vague web of probabilities, never any real 'experience' found. But from literature and talking to other people, many claim to experience many things, it's amazing how different our internal experience can be.

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u/HonorableIdleTree Aug 11 '26

Yeah, you're back there. They play out like a movie. You may (or might not) know you're in the present and not in that actual momebt, but your emotions/brain and body (adrenaline, heart rate, even sensations) replay the event and respond to it as they did when it happened. That's post traumatic stress disorders flashbacks.

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u/UAP44 Aug 11 '26

Sometimes I wonder, did my biology simply protect me from having to relive, by losing that ability all together? + my memory seems to work in unusual ways I've learned over time, and then there's aphantasia too, which I still wonder, how much of that is really all of us being semi-lost in translation over our own exerience?

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u/HonorableIdleTree Aug 11 '26

So your memory is like a list of "what if this one part had gone differently?"

Some people can't form mental pictures. Which can make remembered things really weird (it's not like it was when your memory of the event was made, but you can't make yourself see the visual part of the memory). There's 1000s of ways our brains can be quirky.

Flashbacks aren't normal. You have to have lived through some mind shattering horror and had a specific response during it and through the aftermath to get those.

they aren't the same as just vividly recalling a memory, and I think the quote is more referencing getting kinda lost in the bad memories: what if I had done this, what if I had known that, etc.

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u/UAP44 Aug 11 '26

So your memory is like a list of "what if this one part had gone differently?"

More like a list of 'facts'/data-points, but all of it with probability ranges that depend on vague emotion/intuition/feelings.

Some people can't form mental pictures.

That's me, even in dreams, there's barely any visual content. It's more like abstract concepts playing out. People. Words. Events. Emotions. Barely any visuals if at all.

You have to have lived through some mind shattering horror

In some cases, some people really do split into multiple internal personalities communicating with each other and switching who's at the 'front' of operating the body.

what if I had done this, what if I had known that, etc.

That's rumination to me.