Babylon 5 - General Discussion

[Anduin]

Marcus was all right when not around Ivanova.

[Joe Hellandback]

23 hours ago, Ubiquitous said:

They were playing Arena on CometTV earlier this week! I don't recall if I have already seen it at the time, but I remember noticing the similarities. 

"The stones have no say in an avalanche..."

 

If memory serves, several races were aligned with the Shadows. Right before it self-destructed,  they saw several races, some unknown,  fleeing with what they could scavenge. 

 

Were Mack and Bo the celebrities that visited the station and were sppsd to be great comedians? If so, that's a tough  choice! 

 

I didn't like Marcus at first, but grew to like him without realizing it.

 

Believers is the tipping point ep for me, because when the child died so tragically,  I realized this was NOT Star Trek and they were willing to not use a happy ending. I think that was the first time a show had done that.

Well it was much more ST;DS9?

16 hours ago, ketose said:

I always liked Marcus. I think he had just the right amount of self-deprecation to not make him arrogant. On the other hand, Byron was a humorless zealot who came off as a jerk because the audience already sympathized with telepaths and he constantly whined about how they were treated badly by even the people who were trying to help them.

Marcus made my skin crawl, Byron was just corny as hell. 

[Joe Hellandback]

11 hours ago, Anduin said:

Marcus was all right when not around Ivanova.

Nah, disagree, even when he was partnered up with Marcus he hacked me off. 

[ProfCrash]

The struggle with most of Babylon 5 is that the story was pretty amazing, the acting was really hit or miss, and production qualities never really did the story justice.

The Actors who played the Aliens were pretty awesome but the vast majority of the human characters were, well, average to sub par. And it kills me to say that because I love the character of Sinclair and Garibaldi and Ivanova and Marcus but none of them were really all that well acted. They all had their moments but there was a fair amount of time that the acting just wasn't great.

I don't think better acting could get me to like Sheridan, he was just too shallow of a character, or Byron, who was just awful and should have been killed by Bester when the two first met.

I would love to see B5 remade with better actors and better production values. I think the story would shine so much better. Heck, it might allow them to clean up some of the season 4 and 5 mess.

[DoctorAtomic]

They should reboot it with the original treatment that had B4 being the actual end of the series and Sinclair as the leader of the Shadow War. Cut out a lot of the side episodes and you have a good 10-12 hour season. 

No Byron goes without saying. 

 

[ketose]

2 hours ago, DoctorAtomic said:

They should reboot it with the original treatment that had B4 being the actual end of the series and Sinclair as the leader of the Shadow War. Cut out a lot of the side episodes and you have a good 10-12 hour season. 

No Byron goes without saying. 

 

I'm not one to think lightning strikes twice. I didn't even like the BSG remake and it definitely didn't follow the story of the original.

[ProfCrash]

5 minutes ago, ketose said:

I'm not one to think lightning strikes twice. I didn't even like the BSG remake and it definitely didn't follow the story of the original.

I enjoyed BSG but I never watched the original all that closely. I think that B5 is a good one for a remake because they can focus on the 5 year story arc and have room to work with the various clunker/filler episodes.

[starri]

Might also help to do more to lock down the cast.  Someone getting sick like Michael O'Hare did would be unavoidable, but the other cast changes...

[DoctorAtomic]

I don't know if you have to adhere to a 5 year story. JMS showed he can put a show together in a postmodern viewing paradigm with Sens8.

[starri]

I have a few episodes in both my Amazon and iTunes libraries.  I noticed that the Apple ones were listed at Babylon 5: Remastered, which from what I can find online is a very recent (like within the last few months) change.  It doesn't look like they've done any actual remastering, but it does look quite a bit cleaner than it used to.  It looks like they replaced the very bad-looking 16:9 aspect ratio copies that were available previously with a much fresher-looking 4:3 version.

It's a good change.  It's much more watchable.

[ProfCrash]

It is available in Amazon? Cool. I have all the DVDs...

[starri]

Only for purchase right now.  I'm hoping it pops up on HBO Max at some point, but I can't figure out what their strategies are right now.

[ProfCrash]

I am hoping they reboot the series.  The series could be great with an upgrade in actors and the chance to rewrite and shoot some of the awful episodes. Really do season 4 and 5 properly, instead of the rushed method that they landed on because of the cancellation issues.

[call me ishmael]

5 hours ago, ProfCrash said:

I am hoping they reboot the series.  The series could be great with an upgrade in actors and the chance to rewrite and shoot some of the awful episodes. Really do season 4 and 5 properly, instead of the rushed method that they landed on because of the cancellation issues.

Unfortunately most reboots aren’t really the same story.  I worry that rather than get an appropriate run we would simply get the same characters with a different show.

[starri]

16 hours ago, ProfCrash said:

Really do season 4 and 5 properly, instead of the rushed method that they landed on because of the cancellation issues.

This is perhaps a Hot Take, but I'm not sure those cancellation issues hurt the story all that much.  If you look at the 4th season, yes, they had to trim stuff, but I'm not sure that's such a bad thing.  When I look at the entire season, I don't see anything that's really missing.  This is not really a slam on Stracynski, who is a good writer and really needs to be commended for being able to pull the thing off at all.

But he's so in love with his own writing, I don't know if he's capable of seeing that he doesn't need to put every little thing in.  Famously, there's a scene in "Into the Fire" between Ivanova and Lorien that was supposed to be in an earlier episode but had to be cut for time.  It was supposed to go prior to their heading off to find the remaining First Ones and takes place in Ivanova's quarters on the station.  So the show has to contort itself (rather unconvincingly) to justify them heading back to B5 after gathering the final First Ones, which doesn't make a lick of sense in terms of the actual story.  And the thing is, there isn't ANYTHING in the scene that really requires it be there.  We get most of the same information in the climax of the episode.  The only thing that really happens is that Lorien gets to wax poetic again.  And honestly, if Wayne Alexander wasn't so charismatic, I would probably find Lorien as annoying as I find Byron and Galen.

S4 wraps up two major and one minor arcs.  We get a satisfactory conclusion to the Shadow War (I don't mind it being a philosophical one rather than a bunch of ships shooting each other, but there's something about how it's dramatized that vaguely doesn't work for me).  We get a great ending to the machinations on Earth.  We get....an ending to the Minbari conflict, which, apart from Delenn breaking the Grey Council, they seemed to largely forget about after the second season.  I just look at all that, and I can't figure out what more any of those stories needed.

[DoctorAtomic]

I've said before, they should reboot with the original concept, which was somewhat different enough that it would be a different show. 

[starri]

7 minutes ago, DoctorAtomic said:

I've said before, they should reboot with the original concept, which was somewhat different enough that it would be a different show. 

Ah, but which one?  The one we would have had without the cast changes in the first two seasons, or his original plan for two shows, B5 and Babylon Prime?

Because honestly?  What we got sounds a lot more interesting that the latter option.  That completely skips what is arguably the MOST interesting part of the show, the transformation of Earth into a dictatorship and the civil war to overthrow it.

[DoctorAtomic]

I meant the original. With Sinclair all the way to the end. 

 

[starri]

But is that from what we see in "The Gathering" or in "Midnight on the Firing Line?"  Because those are different, in ways beyond just the cast changes.  Even Londo's accent isn't quite the same.

It's all just a mental exercise, ultimately.  Straczynski doesn't own B5, Warner Bros does, and they clearly don't see it as a potential money-maker, or they'd be talking about rebooting it.  They were even willing to give it another go with The Lost Tales, but that didn't really set the world on fire.

And it's a shame.  I wouldn't mind a reboot, and, while this might be heresy, I'd be interested to see what a different team could do in the sandbox.

[DoctorAtomic]

I'd rather get more Crusade tbh. 

[starri]

I could get onboard with that.  Although I think it would be interesting to try something in the B5 universe that doesn't really involve "scrappy crew uncovers eldritch horror."  Given that that was the premise to literally every show they've launched or tried to, at least, it would be an interesting change of pace.

[ProfCrash]

On 11/21/2020 at 12:29 PM, DoctorAtomic said:

I meant the original. With Sinclair all the way to the end. 

 

Sinclair was never meant to go to the end. He left the show earlier then planned because of O’Hare’s illness but Sinclair completed his planned arc. 

[starri]

That's not true, though.  As originally planned (though the story of the Original Plan has changed a lot over the years)  B5 would have originally ended with the destruction of the station, but Delenn, Sinclair, and their son escaping.  That would have lead to a sequel series which would have been about the actual Shadow War, which required they go back in time to steal Babylon 4 and bring it forward in time.  Instead of Valen, the idea was that the Minbari were dying out, and the Religious Caste had a prophecy that Sinclair would save them, which required Delenn to go through her transformation and have a baby with him.  But the Warrior Caste thought he would destroy them instead (that's seeded in "The Gathering"), and so decided to restart with Earth-Minbari War.

I have a hunch some of the details changed between "The Gathering" and "Midnight on the Firing Line," but we're told very pointedly that the Minbari Rebirth Ceremony in which Sinclair partakes also doubles as a marriage ceremony, which seems like an extremely unsubtle foreshadow.

[DoctorAtomic]

I think that's the one I'm thinking of. 

[starri]

It also puts a lie to the claim that the idea for DS9 was stolen from his pitch.  The show he would have been trying to sell is quite different from the one we got.

I'm sure "The Gathering" was made with the Original Original Plan in mind.  But in the year between it and the series proper, the tone has shifted and I think you can also see another subtle shift toward the end, once they knew O'Hare likely wasn't going to be able to continue.  That's a bit skewed, because the airing order is quite a bit different than the production order.

[ottoDbusdriver]

Borrowing this from the Lost forum.

Mira Furlan has passed away at the age of 65.

https://www.today.com/popculture/mira-furlan-lost-babylon-5-actor-dead-65-t206584

[Morrigan2575]

I'm gutted. This show has lost so many, so young

[starri]

It sounds like she was sick for a while.  I think one of the obituaries I read said it was complications of West Nile.

[SVNBob]

I will say the same thing I said when I first read the news.

 

Farewell, Ambassador.

[starri]

Her final message on Twitter (I assume she wrote it knowing she was dying to be posted posthumously) kind of gutted me.

It's somehow sobering to me that B5, not quite 30, has lost more cast members than Star Trek: TOS, which turns 55 this year.

[starri]

In sadly ironic timing, B5 is coming to HBOMax on Tuesday.  It'll be the cleaned-up version.

[ProfCrash]

22 hours ago, starri said:

Her final message on Twitter (I assume she wrote it knowing she was dying to be posted posthumously) kind of gutted me.

It's somehow sobering to me that B5, not quite 30, has lost more cast members than Star Trek: TOS, which turns 55 this year.

Wow. Going to miss her spirit.

[statsgirl]

I saw a clip of one of her panels at I think Dragon Con talking about acting. (I looked but can't find it on youtube now.)  Someone asked her about mental illness and creativity. She mused that because actors get so deeply into roles and then switch out of them so often, the barrier between acting and illness is thinner. I can't describe it the way she did but the insight really struck me.

A sad loss.

[starri]

So, the remastered version actually is a true remaster, which I didn't realize.  They scanned the original film negatives and color-corrected them, and then upscaled (although didn't redo) the special effects.  It's true HD.

[ProfCrash]

How does it look? we don't have HBO Max and I don't see us paying for it anytime soon

[starri]

Terrific. It’s brighter and sharper. 

If I have to make a choice between image quality and aspect ratio, this really makes the argument for quality. 

[ottoDbusdriver]

4 hours ago, starri said:

Terrific. It’s brighter and sharper. 

If I have to make a choice between image quality and aspect ratio, this really makes the argument for quality. 

Wow !!!   And the colors are so much brighter -- especially the blues and greens.   I second the argument for quality.

[SVNBob]

On 1/27/2021 at 10:36 PM, ottoDbusdriver said:

And the colors are so much brighter -- especially the blues and greens.

What about the purples?

[starri]

19 minutes ago, SVNBob said:

What about the purples?

GREEN!

It's interesting to see what things HD reveals.  I would never have guessed the level of detail on some of the costuming, especially on the aliens.  Which actually contrasts against the pre-Army of Light uniforms, which are really ill-fitting, and so many background characters in 90s Business Casual.

Same thing with the sets.  The amount of little stuff around C-and-C is quite remarkable.  But then you get to, say, Ivanova's quarters, and you're in an IKEA showroom.  Which is not a criticism, because sci-fi always has to get creative with that stuff.  But I do find it amusing.

[ProfCrash]

7 hours ago, SVNBob said:

What about the purples?

"But in purple I am stunning" 

 

[DoctorAtomic]

Ivanova always struck me as minimalist anyway, so I could see her telling the plant services people to just put in whatever - I need a place to sit, eat, and sleep. 

[DoctorAtomic]

I fired up Messages From Earth and watched the run into Jupiter. It's, yeah. I just like that I can dial any moment up at any time I want. 

[Morrigan2575]

I'm doing a rewatch (found it on HBO) and, for the first time in forever I started from The Gathering.  

Soooo many things were setup right from the beginning, just blows me away to see the beginning of Talia/Susan, Londo talking about his (and G'Kars) death, hell just saw the election that put Clark in as Veep 

 

Edited August 15, 2021 by Morrigan2575

[ProfCrash]

53 minutes ago, Morrigan2575 said:

I'm doing a rewatch (found it on HBO) and, for the first time in forever I started from The Gathering.  

Soooo many things were setup right from the beginning, just blows me away to see the beginning of Talia/Susan, Londo talking about his (and G'Kars) death, hell just saw the election that put Clark in as Veep 

 

That is the beauty of the show. So much is set up from day one. I still get pissed that the show got screwed with the cancellation in season 4. Just so annoying.

[Morrigan2575]

16 minutes ago, ProfCrash said:

That is the beauty of the show. So much is set up from day one. I still get pissed that the show got screwed with the cancellation in season 4. Just so annoying.

Yeah, I remember that and it moving to TNT for S5.

Normally when I do re-watches I skip S1 and S5 but, this time I decided to watch with S1. I don't know if I'll actually watch S5 but, we'll see how it goes.

Edited August 15, 2021 by Morrigan2575

[call me ishmael]

41 minutes ago, Morrigan2575 said:

Yeah, I remember that and it moving to TNT for S5.

Normally when I do re-watches I skip S1 and S5 but, this time I decided to watch with S1. I don't know if I'll actually watch S5 but, we'll see how it goes.

Is this on HBO or HBO Max?

[Morrigan2575]

1 hour ago, call me ishmael said:

Is this on HBO or HBO Max?

HBO Max

[Driad]

I watched B5 when it first aired, except season 5, which was on cable (I have never had cable).  One aspect I enjoyed was that JMS sometimes posted behind-the-scenes descriptions online.  Once he said that for an early episode, he had asked casting for a dozen people to play ship captains.  They sent him a dozen white men in their 40s.  He complained, and casting told him that was the default, so if he wanted diversity he had to be specific.  After that, he did.

[Anduin]

38 minutes ago, Driad said:

I watched B5 when it first aired, except season 5, which was on cable (I have never had cable).  One aspect I enjoyed was that JMS sometimes posted behind-the-scenes descriptions online.  Once he said that for an early episode, he had asked casting for a dozen people to play ship captains.  They sent him a dozen white men in their 40s.  He complained, and casting told him that was the default, so if he wanted diversity he had to be specific.  After that, he did.

On the one hand, good for him. On the other, I'm a white man in my 40s. I don't quite know how to feel.

[Driad]

 

 

JMS was a white man in his 40s when this happened.  He felt it would be good to have more diversity.