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Vavrek posted:The what? Please explain for those of us who came to the show slightly later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V90fc-iTIY4
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May 29, 2020 02:12
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Raiders not Centauri, it’s been a while. SciFi Channel has to recompose a lot of scenes for their widescreen broadcast and they inserted that shot of the teapot instead of the correct shot of a ship. In a different episode some people are looking at a security recording and talking about it but instead of the scene it was supposed to be, the composited shot had the standby screen on the display so it looked like they were talking and pointing to things that weren’t there. These mistakes were all cleaned for subsequent broadcasts and the DVD releases.
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May 29, 2020 03:07
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I loved the small scale of the ship to ship dogfighting in season 1, you have the CO heading out with a half dozen fighters to attack a raiding party like its some D&D party trying to rescue a caravan. Also, literally everyone in command positions having Starfury training, like Garibaldi, the enlisted security chief is a trained pilot. It'd be like if Miles O'Brian was part of a crack commando unit.
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May 29, 2020 03:14
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How dare you slander the tactical prowess of the hero of Setlik 3!
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May 29, 2020 03:18
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pentyne posted:I loved the small scale of the ship to ship dogfighting in season 1, you have the CO heading out with a half dozen fighters to attack a raiding party like its some D&D party trying to rescue a caravan. I'd imagine in garibaldi's case it's a holdover from the earth-membari war and he just kept on flight status for the flight pay. Actually that's probably a lot of them.
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May 29, 2020 04:47
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Midjack posted:I still have the Sci-Fi first broadcast tapes with the composition errors and Centauri teapot mistake as well as first pressings of everything B5 that came out on DVD because I’m a sucker like that. Nice! But no pre-dub recording of the end of “Comes the Inquisitor?”
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May 29, 2020 05:15
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CainFortea posted:I'd imagine in garibaldi's case it's a holdover from the earth-membari war and he just kept on flight status for the flight pay. I guess the supposition though is that there isn't a separate aviator branch of Earth Force. I mean it'd be really crazy if Franklin hopped out in a Starfury for some reason.
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May 29, 2020 10:02
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V-Men posted:I guess the supposition though is that there isn't a separate aviator branch of Earth Force. It's only really A Thing early on when they're mostly dealing with Raiders, to be fair. You could argue it's because they've got the experience and flight time to lead a squadron of military combat craft to go stomp some rear end in a top hat pirates picking on civilians, plus it's the only fun to be had in the middle of nowhere.
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May 29, 2020 10:27
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I think it was established that maintaining flight status for the extra flight pay is the reason they go out.
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May 29, 2020 12:01
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Soylent Pudding posted:I think it was established that maintaining flight status for the extra flight pay is the reason they go out. JMS said that in his usenet posts iirc, not sure if it came up in the show.
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May 29, 2020 12:30
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sebmojo posted:JMS said that in his usenet posts iirc, not sure if it came up in the show. It does multiple times.
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May 29, 2020 12:35
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pentyne posted:I loved the small scale of the ship to ship dogfighting in season 1, you have the CO heading out with a half dozen fighters to attack a raiding party like its some D&D party trying to rescue a caravan. [Glances around Ops] "Chief! Drop what you're doing."
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May 29, 2020 13:03
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Neddy Seagoon posted:It's only really A Thing early on when they're mostly dealing with Raiders, to be fair. You could argue it's because they've got the experience and flight time to lead a squadron of military combat craft to go stomp some rear end in a top hat pirates picking on civilians, plus it's the only fun to be had in the middle of nowhere. It makes perfect sense in Sinclair's case since he was a fighter pilot and commanded at least a squadron by the end of the Minbari War. And I don't know what Ivanova's job was before she was Sinclair's second in command.
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May 29, 2020 14:08
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I could have sworn they hand waved something about all Earthforce officers having to take pilot training, but I could be making poo poo up (kind of like JMS!  )
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May 29, 2020 14:16
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CainFortea posted:I'd imagine in garibaldi's case it's a holdover from the earth-membari war and he just kept on flight status for the flight pay. I don't recall Garibaldi being established as actual military-military, more of a law enforcement type. But he has been shown piloting shuttles, so maybe he can handle a Starfury from Point X to Point Y, but would be cold meat in combat in one.
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May 30, 2020 05:23
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mllaneza posted:I don't recall Garibaldi being established as actual military-military, more of a law enforcement type. But he has been shown piloting shuttles, so maybe he can handle a Starfury from Point X to Point Y, but would be cold meat in combat in one. He's been shown piloting a Starfury in combat, though. Official backstory is that he was a gropo during the Earth-Minbari War and after demob became a shuttle pilot on Mars. He didn't even become a security officer until after he met Sinclair in the early 2250s, and there's no indication of where or when he trained to pilot a Starfury. On the other hand, he's absolutely the kind of person who would insist on doing combat pilot training so he could claim the bonus pay.
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May 30, 2020 08:57
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Garibaldi is a member of Earthforce's security division, which I'm guessing are something like military police. He's not a space police officer, per se, as he's a member of Earthforce which is the EA military. I think it's feasible that he could've got Starfury flight certification at some point.
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May 30, 2020 12:16
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That's what I mean when I talk about an aviation branch. You wouldn't typically just learn to be a fighter pilot over a like a 6 month training course just for the money. Typically that kind of training is complicated and expensive and dedicated to those who want to be fighter pilots full-time. If you're going to train someone to fly a Starfury, you wouldn't just let them go back to being security or whatever. You'd make them be a fighter pilot for years, at least until they paid back what you spent training them. The most obvious answer to this is that JMS doesn't know squat about the structure of a military.
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May 30, 2020 20:48
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V-Men posted:That's what I mean when I talk about an aviation branch. You wouldn't typically just learn to be a fighter pilot over a like a 6 month training course just for the money. Typically that kind of training is complicated and expensive and dedicated to those who want to be fighter pilots full-time. If you're going to train someone to fly a Starfury, you wouldn't just let them go back to being security or whatever. You'd make them be a fighter pilot for years, at least until they paid back what you spent training them. Most SF writers don't, and when their mistakes become popular it influences everything that follows. Example: Star Trek's division color uniforms. Every wannabe worldbuilder making a sci fi universe has their Space Navy uniforms with the same color coding.
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May 30, 2020 21:02
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V-Men posted:That's what I mean when I talk about an aviation branch. You wouldn't typically just learn to be a fighter pilot over a like a 6 month training course just for the money. Typically that kind of training is complicated and expensive and dedicated to those who want to be fighter pilots full-time. If you're going to train someone to fly a Starfury, you wouldn't just let them go back to being security or whatever. You'd make them be a fighter pilot for years, at least until they paid back what you spent training them. When you're living on what is essentially a metal bubble where if it pops you die the more people able to fly the other smaller bubbles that aren't popped are probably a wildly good idea.
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May 30, 2020 22:17
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I always imagined it as the 'furies having massive amounts of computer assistance in flight, so they don't end up tumbling out of control every time the pilot makes a high-G manoeuvre on more than one axis. So yes, you need training to fly one, but not so much that you have to be Chuck Yeager just to get out of the station.
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May 30, 2020 23:37
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Possibly Earth had to do a mass draft during the Minbari war and lowered their standards for pilots in the process. JMS does seem to treat fighter pilots more as some kind of frontline space infantry than some kind of heavily-trained specialists like they are in the real world. Not that I think JMS particularly knows much about military structure, I just think that people forget about how much military structure changed over history from the specific circumstances of the wars people found themselves in, and would definitely change further in the future.
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May 31, 2020 00:06
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I always got the impression you weren't really going to get anywhere in Earth Force without some stick time in a Star Fury. Now it might just be B5's equivalent to the way Star Trek has Captain's going on away missions, but I can kind of buy the "I was a pilot earlier in my career and now I maintain flight status so I don't lose that extra pay." Was it Garibaldi that was begging flight time so he didn't lose his status and extra pay?
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May 31, 2020 00:15
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IMO there's also an element of dramatic license for TV. See also Space: Above and Beyond where the main cast were sometimes fighter pilots and sometimes ground troops.
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May 31, 2020 02:04
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1000 Brown M and Ms posted:IMO there's also an element of dramatic license for TV. See also Space: Above and Beyond where the main cast were sometimes fighter pilots and sometimes ground troops. They were marines tho so that makes a modicum of sense. They spent most of the time in the hammerheads this if I recall correctly.
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May 31, 2020 02:38
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Q_res posted:Was it Garibaldi that was begging flight time so he didn't lose his status and extra pay? I know Sinclair makes a reference to needing to get some flight time to keep his extra pay, and there's another moment when something needs investigating and Sheridan casually ignores that Ivanova's a qualified pilot until she points out that she hasn't gotten out in a starfury in way too long. I don't think Garibaldi ever mentions flight pay specifically.
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May 31, 2020 04:27
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Here's from the lurker's guide.quote:In your complaints regarding the commander flying off on occasional missions (and he only does it about 3 times out of 22 episodes, so I hardly see this as a problem), you are forgetting several other *realities* of military life. If you're a pilot, even as a commander, you have to log in X-number of hours flying time per month in order to continue to qualify for flight pay. This is a *requirement*. And it doesn't just mean flying around the station a few times.
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May 31, 2020 04:33
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V-Men posted:That's what I mean when I talk about an aviation branch. You wouldn't typically just learn to be a fighter pilot over a like a 6 month training course just for the money. Typically that kind of training is complicated and expensive and dedicated to those who want to be fighter pilots full-time. If you're going to train someone to fly a Starfury, you wouldn't just let them go back to being security or whatever. You'd make them be a fighter pilot for years, at least until they paid back what you spent training them. It makes a certain amount of sense when viewed alongside the Battle of the Line. Earthforce probably never wants to run out of combat-qualified people again.
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May 31, 2020 06:09
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TK-42-1 posted:They were marines tho so that makes a modicum of sense. They spent most of the time in the hammerheads this if I recall correctly. Haha Fox couldn't afford for the 58th to spend so much time in Hammerheads. They are called an air/ground element so I always took it to mean that they were within a specialized wing that could deploy for either. Even when you looked at the ground missions they did, they typically weren't just regular infantry missions, except for maybe Dark Side of the Moon where they went to the refining facility. It was usually "insert -> selective strike -> extract". So in that respect they were used almost like special operations forces, like when they went to medevac a unit in Stay With The Dead, or blow up a supply depot in Dear Earth, or do behind the lines reconnaissance with very limited ROE in Toy Soldiers. In case you can't tell, I love Space: Above and Beyond.
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May 31, 2020 07:23
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Well, they're marines. Of course they fight in the air, and land, and sea.
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May 31, 2020 07:49
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the problem with writing TV shows is, you don't have the benefit of decades and legions of nerd headcannon at your disposal, that only comes after the fact
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May 31, 2020 08:20
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Garibaldi, as a character, struck me as paranoid & hands-on enough to have gotten shuttlecraft/Starfury pilot training just so he could personally inspect the various open-to-vacuum docking ports/airlocks/niche areas in his role as space station security chief of Babylon 5.
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May 31, 2020 17:01
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For any voyeurs itt who haven't seen it there's a thread in SciFi Wifi with some newbs doing a blind watch
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Jun 2, 2020 12:49
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Polaron posted:It makes a certain amount of sense when viewed alongside the Battle of the Line. Earthforce probably never wants to run out of combat-qualified people again. To add more fancannon to the mix. Building an Omega probably takes a lot longer than building a butt load of starfurries. I would imagine during the war and after getting everyone into fighters was a way to quickly rebuild military and fighting capacity while waiting on capital ship construction.
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Jun 2, 2020 14:49
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Soylent Pudding posted:To add more fancannon to the mix. Building an Omega probably takes a lot longer than building a butt load of starfurries. I would imagine during the war and after getting everyone into fighters was a way to quickly rebuild military and fighting capacity while waiting on capital ship construction. Just for argument's sake, the Omega's don't really turn up til season 2 either (Late season 1 maybe?).
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Jun 2, 2020 18:20
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Right, I think the Omega is a post war design and Earthforce relied on Hyperions and Novas for the Minbari war and maybe also the Dilgar war.
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Jun 2, 2020 18:29
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Soylent Pudding posted:Right, I think the Omega is a post war design and Earthforce relied on Hyperions and Novas for the Minbari war and maybe also the Dilgar war. No they had Omegas during the war, Sheridan was the captain of one. Key word there though being had  . (Pretty sure their presence/existence was a retcon once they had CGI models for the Omega to play with).edit: No wait, you're right. I was thinking of the Agamemnon rather than the Lexington. Neddy Seagoon fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Jun 2, 2020 |
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Jun 2, 2020 18:32
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Neddy Seagoon posted:No they had Omegas during the war, Sheridan was the captain of one. They had nova classes that were the same without the spinning section
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Jun 2, 2020 18:45
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The spinning section is why the Omegas are one of my favorite sci fi ship designs ever. They're clearly human and futuristic but convey so much about the technology and aesthetics of the setting. It also sends such an in universe message. Actual artificial gravity is pretty much reserved for the most advanced races and the majority of the League species just accept microgravity on their ships. Some like the Brakiri, I think, use acceleration / deceleration to simulate it. Actually building a rotating section on a mobile ship, let alone a warship with all the stresses on the rotation mechanism that implies, was a tremendous feat of engineering and industrial accomplishment. The Omegas, simply by sitting there rotating, are announcing to the galaxy that whatever happened with the Minbari, Earth is back in the game and a dangerously potent force to be reckoned with.
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Jun 2, 2020 18:58
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I thought that way until someone pointed out that gyroscopic forces would make such a ship almost completely unmaneuverable. I wish they'd had extra CGI capacity to show them spinning down for combat.
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Jun 2, 2020 19:01
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