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Dirty posted:Looking forward to seeing reactions to the rest of season 3 since it contains possibly my all-time favourite "holy poo poo" ending to a season. It's not even really a cliffhanger, it's just a "yup, everything just went to poo poo" ending. Finished season 3. Have a big ol’ block of spoiler text; I want to speak freely without disrupting anyone else who’s still watching. So I guess here is the morally grey area alluded to earlier. Taking them at their word, the Shadows want to uplift the younger races and make them stronger by pitting them against each other. The Vorlons are sticks in the mud who want to play it safe and slow.* I was glad for this explanation because up until now their motivations seemed pretty opaque. It was not clear at all what they possibly stood to gain from the Centauri by supporting them. So the question Sheridan is presented with is “is it worth it to cause mass strife and suffering if it’s for the betterment of all?” This is tough to swallow and I don’t think it was presented very sympathetically. I didn’t feel like I was supposed to seriously entertain the thought that the two sides are equally valid. Sheridan certainly didn’t. By human measures of morality, the Shadows are clearly wrong.** They attack random civilians across the galaxy. They install prisoners in their ships as organic software. They enable the Centauri to obliterate the Narn homeworld and create death camps. The only way that these could possibly be justified is from a non-human perspective. And since science fiction is only able to make us think and present meaningful dilemmas inasmuch as we can put them in terms we can relate to, the only way I can relate to that perspective is by putting it in terms of a god. Pick whatever deity(ies) you prefer, provided they have a capacity for knowledge and action beyond human potential. In other words, Sheridan’s question becomes “is it worth it for God to create mass strife and suffering if it’s for the betterment of humanity?” (I guess I should not be surprised that a show that has been more about religion than any other science fiction show I can think of would end up tackling the problem of evil.) I think that the answer to that question is yes—provided that you have full faith in said god, an absolute trust in their plan, however inscrutable and ineffable it may be. If you fully believe that God knows more than you could possibly ever know, and has the purest and best intentions for you, then you should trust the grand plan even if it hurts and you don’t understand it. Otherwise how can you say you have faith? But I don’t have that faith, personally. Not with a god in the real world and not with the Shadows in this fiction. So I’m totally on board with Sheridan rejecting that plan. *No mention of any other old races that stuck around; in fact Morden explicitly says there were only two. But we have seen the ones that Sinclair’s girlfriend and later Ivanova encountered, so this already makes the Shadows unreliable. **But continuing to take them at their word, the Vorlons aren’t perfect either. Adding telepathy to the human genome is very much relevant to this week’s news of a scientist who altered the genes of some newborns, and that’s a whole different conversation about consent and eugenics.
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Dec 1, 2018 19:07
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Man, you're gonna love season 4.
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Dec 1, 2018 19:41
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wizzardstaff posted:spoiler block Not to mention the Vorlons' habit of genetically engineering the species they visit to view them as literal Angels outside of their encounter suits. And other shifty stuff they've done up to that point in the series, like destroying that immortality cure in season 1.
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Dec 1, 2018 19:43
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/\/\/\ To be fair, Kosh was right about that one. But there's plenty of other examples, like telling Sinclair to just take his hands off the wheel and let the Centauri and Narn destroy each other.hope and vaseline posted:Also has my favorite G'Kar monologue in the series.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iCPsR_KTL4 McSpanky fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Dec 1, 2018 |
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Dec 1, 2018 19:46
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Also, I think the end of season 3 marks the passage of all the various things I’ve been spoiled on, except maybe the knowledge that a few more cast members come and go. I am looking forward to two seasons of completely unexpected developments.
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Dec 1, 2018 20:25
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McSpanky posted:/\/\/\ To be fair, Kosh was right about that one. But there's plenty of other examples, like telling Sinclair to just take his hands off the wheel and let the Centauri and Narn destroy each other. I like that delenn is embodying the minbari motto at the beginning there
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Dec 1, 2018 20:33
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hope and vaseline posted:Not to mention the Vorlons' habit of genetically engineering the species they visit to view them as literal Angels outside of their encounter suits. And other shifty stuff they've done up to that point in the series, like destroying that immortality cure in season 1. The Vorlons as a whole seem like their entire set up to convince the younger races to trust them became an own goal. All that work developing telepaths that for Earth at least got co-opted by the shadows. Then the reveal that they make themselves look like angels, so after the surprise wore off its was then "Hey wait theyve been manipulating our society for 1000s of years" and finally the moment they decide to finally get involved they go with planetary genocide and somehow think it'll be fine. The rules of the Vorlons/Shadows conflict never made sense either. So the shadows starting openly killing a bunch of races, but the second the Vorlons retaliate they assassinate a diplomat? Then its back to non-interference until their planet killers are ready.
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Dec 1, 2018 21:47
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pentyne posted:The rules of the Vorlons/Shadows conflict never made sense either. So the shadows starting openly killing a bunch of races, but the second the Vorlons retaliate they assassinate a diplomat? Then its back to non-interference until their planet killers are ready. The main rule I think was that as elder races, they leave each other alone direcly. However, the Shadows' philosophy of strength through chaos never prevented them from openly attacking the younger races to force them to respond. The Vorlons' philosophy of strength through order put themselves in a sort of non-interference model, but they got through with the loophole by seeding the younger races with ways to respond to the Shadows, via telepaths. It's almost like a secretive arms-race they were supplying them with. Openly engaging a shadow fleet was taboo because both races never actually engaged each other prior to that, and then all the rules went out the window.
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Dec 1, 2018 22:00
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I’m not quite done with season three, but does Londo get a single, much more prominent age spot above his right eye when het gets the black jacket in season two? It’s been driving me crazy, and I swear it’s not there in season one. And I know it’s the prosthetic and not Jurasik’s face, because I looked up an old auction where he signed a bunch of old ones to give away or something, and it’s on all of them.
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Dec 2, 2018 01:31
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wizzardstaff posted:Finished season 3. Have a big ol’ block of spoiler text; I want to speak freely without disrupting anyone else who’s still watching. JMS has said that feedback has people falling into each camp, regarding the other as a silly choice; I think it achieved what it set out to do really well.
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Dec 2, 2018 12:45
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wizzardstaff posted:So I guess here is the morally grey area alluded to earlier. [not really a spoiler but spoiler tagged anyway cuz its starting to get near that line] Its not so much anything really being 'morally grey', but more the specific line you used ("maybe they're doing the wrong thing for the right reasons") having some relevance at the end of season 4
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Dec 2, 2018 13:09
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MrL_JaKiri posted:JMS has said that feedback has people falling into each camp, regarding the other as a silly choice; I think it achieved what it set out to do really well. Non-spoilery reply, yes. Exactly. I remember following along on the Lurker boards on Usenet and JMS saying that he guessed that once the real motivations were revealed, about 30% of the fan base would agree with the shadows. Everyone said "NO! that will never happen! nobody would!" And then after the season 3 finale, about 30% of the fan base said, "you know what? They're right.". 
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Dec 2, 2018 14:57
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I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by that, there are also people who think Thanos was right. I’d like to believe they’re just being ironic edgy contrarians, but then again there are plenty of people who flat-out support eugenics and imperialism. All I know is my big spoiler block felt like a lot of  to say “genocide is bad”.
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Dec 2, 2018 17:15
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hope and vaseline posted:The main rule I think was that as elder races, they leave each other alone direcly. However, the Shadows' philosophy of strength through chaos never prevented them from openly attacking the younger races to force them to respond. The Vorlons' philosophy of strength through order put themselves in a sort of non-interference model, but they got through with the loophole by seeding the younger races with ways to respond to the Shadows, via telepaths. It's almost like a secretive arms-race they were supplying them with. I do like how the Vorlons weren't just consummate good guys. They used the younger races as pawns and didn't give a poo poo about them at all. skooma512 fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Dec 2, 2018 |
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Dec 2, 2018 17:35
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I just finished the one where Michael York was King Arthur. I’m surprised nobody suggested that he go hook up with the construction guy from season one who went off looking for the holy grail.
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Dec 2, 2018 20:57
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Doctor Zero posted:Non-spoilery reply, yes. Exactly. I don't want either but if i had to choose I'd go with Shadows. The Vorlons are all about obedience, the Shadows are just "gently caress each other up".
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Dec 3, 2018 00:48
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LongDarkNight posted:I don't want either but if i had to choose I'd go with Shadows. The Vorlons are all about obedience, the Shadows are just "gently caress each other up". The Shadows are about greifing and kicking over sandcastles. The Vorlons are carebears and all about building them. In typical MMO fashion, the Shadows pitch a fit when someone actually challenges them in PVP...
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Dec 3, 2018 01:16
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I don't like the methods the Shadows used but their ideology has its merits.
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Dec 3, 2018 01:19
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I take the third edge and tell both of them to gently caress off beyond the rim.
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Dec 3, 2018 02:40
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Bieeanshee posted:I take the third edge and tell both of them to gently caress off beyond the rim. ^^^
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Dec 3, 2018 03:39
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dreadmojo posted:refresh my memory? it's been a while What Jedit said, but also Sherdian shoving a nuke in Z'Ha'Dum's pie hole was ultra satisfying and very dramatic.
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Dec 3, 2018 10:48
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I wasn't expecting the alien execution device to actually be relevant outside its episode  .
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Dec 4, 2018 04:20
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ThingOne posted:I wasn't expecting the alien execution device to actually be relevant outside its episode Have you not yet learned that B5 has very few throwaway lines and unused Chekov's guns?
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Dec 4, 2018 04:24
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Have you not yet learned that B5 has very few throwaway lines and unused Chekov's guns? It's been years since I watched the show and I didn't catch all of it so I'm going in almost fresh. I like how quickly they've made it clear that the Minbari are nowhere near as above it all as they pretend to be. The war was apparently more of a slaughter, yet Sheridan hits them back once and they won't shut up about it. It didn't even matter in the grand scheme of things.
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Dec 4, 2018 04:41
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Delenn should probably get some cream for that  .
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Dec 4, 2018 04:47
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So I recently started my first rewatch of Babylon 5, about twelve years after I saw it for the first time. Due to Stellaris and having gone on a binge through some old sci-fi books(Dune, Foundation, Hitchhiker's Guide) as of late, I decided that it was about time to pick it up again, and trying to average about one episode per day. Saw 'Believers' last night, and I still remember that this episode was what really put Babylon 5 on the map for me and made it clear that this wasn't a Star Trek rip-off. Now, I really enjoy going through the Lurker's Guide after watching an episode, but I have to admit that I've found it a bit difficult to read on my mobile or tablet. So I decided to create a simple web app that would let me read through the contents more easily on a smaller screen AND give me the option to keep track of what episodes I've seen. This wasn't all that hard, to be honest, because the owners have been gracious enough to put the entire source code online. It was basically just reading out their files and transforming it to a format I could use. It's available at https://lurkers-guide.netlify.com if anyone else is interested. One thing I would like to note is that this is a PWA(Persistent Web App), meaning that for most modern Android and iOS devices, you can save the web page to your home screen. This will download the site to your device, will hide the URL bar if you click on it(giving the impression of it being a normal app), and will make it available at all times, even if you're offline. On each episode page, there is a toggle in the header which you can use to indicate what episodes you've already seen. It's the first time that I've built something as a PWA, so it was a good learning exercise as well.
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Dec 5, 2018 01:28
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Baron von der Loon posted:So I recently started my first rewatch of Babylon 5, about twelve years after I saw it for the first time. Due to Stellaris and having gone on a binge through some old sci-fi books(Dune, Foundation, Hitchhiker's Guide) as of late, I decided that it was about time to pick it up again, and trying to average about one episode per day. Saw 'Believers' last night, and I still remember that this episode was what really put Babylon 5 on the map for me and made it clear that this wasn't a Star Trek rip-off. How neat! Nice work, looking forward to diving back into this.
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Dec 5, 2018 05:54
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Thus is great, thanks! I had come across the lurker’s guide before but kind of bounced off it due to readability issues. Now I’m going through your treatment and looking up notes from episodes across the series.
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Dec 5, 2018 08:33
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Baron von der Loon posted:One thing I would like to note is that this is a PWA(Persistent Web App), meaning that for most modern Android and iOS devices, you can save the web page to your home screen. This will download the site to your device, will hide the URL bar if you click on it(giving the impression of it being a normal app), and will make it available at all times, even if you're offline. On each episode page, there is a toggle in the header which you can use to indicate what episodes you've already seen. You're going to have to explain how this works. It's just a web page in my browser.
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Dec 5, 2018 09:34
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Jedit posted:You're going to have to explain how this works. It's just a web page in my browser. Basically, a popup should appear at the bottom upon visiting the page automatically. I was playing around with the web page a few minutes ago and might have briefly broken it. You can try to close your browser, open it again, and then go to the webpage again. If the popup does not appear, then you can also do it manually by going to the settings menu in the upper-right, and click on 'Add to Home Screen'. If you're on iOS, then you have to press the 'Share button', and then 'Add to Home Screen'. I only briefly tried it out on my test device yesterday, and it seemed to work as advertised.
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Dec 5, 2018 10:37
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Baron von der Loon posted:Basically, a popup should appear at the bottom upon visiting the page automatically. I was playing around with the web page a few minutes ago and might have briefly broken it. You can try to close your browser, open it again, and then go to the webpage again. Nope, sorry. No pop-up, no settings menu. Working on Android.
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Dec 5, 2018 10:40
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I may be explaining it wrong. Maybe the instructions on this page can help?
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Dec 5, 2018 10:48
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McSpanky posted:Man, you're gonna love season 4. I am five episodes in and so far you are very correct. e: I posted too soon, clearly “Into the Fire” was the better place to jump back in here. The JMS note in the lurker’s guide (thanks again for making that more accessible) says very accurately that this is the kind of episode you’d put at the end of a season, not six episodes in. But those six episodes really pack in a lot. I look back up at my reaction to the season 3 finale at the top of the page and I see how much I didn’t know. I don’t think any new information changes my answer, but it sure changes the context of the question. wizzardstaff fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Dec 6, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 03:17
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Into the Fire is great for multiple reasons, not the least being a notable phrase of get the hell out of our galaxy Now the fun ride really begins! Also,  for Meeester Morrrrrrden
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Dec 6, 2018 20:18
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I'm just gonna leave this here.
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Dec 6, 2018 20:25
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Dec 6, 2018 20:39
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You know what, I'm going to say it: going full screen on my work monitor, that's still not much of an improvement over what we have on the DVDs other than the framing.
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Dec 6, 2018 21:11
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I've never seen the DVDs but it looks hella better than the Amazon streaming. Then again I'm streaming over a 3G phone so maybe it's not that great for anyone else 
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Dec 6, 2018 21:15
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It looks like what I remember from the DVDs, but I wouldn't be surprised if my memory is ignoring fuzz/blur/general-low-res-woes and focusing instead on composition, lighting, etc.—the stuff that wouldn't be affected.
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Dec 6, 2018 21:51
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Really the best improvements imo would be the live action/cgi composite scenes that look noticeable horrible when it cuts back and forth from the widescreen live action shots
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Dec 6, 2018 22:39
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