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sebmojo posted:Have the newbies met Mr morden yet? Is he s1? Signs and Portents I think.
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Mar 16, 2023 22:48
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ozmunkeh posted:Signs and Portents I think. Ah right.
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Mar 16, 2023 23:04
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And the finale as well.
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Mar 16, 2023 23:14
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ozmunkeh posted:Signs and Portents I think. Yeah, I'm not quite sure he's registered yet with my roommate, who looked away when you see the shadows for the first time, so I had to rewind it 
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Mar 17, 2023 14:37
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It can be weird watching with someone for the first time. You know something's coming up that's gonna be important later, but often that payoff comes from how insignificant it seems at first. So do you draw attention to it and ensure they get the payoff, even if a little diminished because they're expecting it, or just let things go, and hope they get interested enough to do rewatches every couple of years and start catching these things themselves?
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Mar 17, 2023 15:32
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I'm watching the show through now with friends who've never seen it before, and I can't see any reason to shape their experience by pointing stuff out or underlining ideas, structures, patterns, etc. I'd rather people form their own connections with the show rather than mediate that connection. Like, I just watched Eyes, and watching it I remembered that this is one of the few times the show hinted at Ivanova being attracted to Winters, or that Bester was originally meant to be in this story (he was, wasn't he?) but there were actor scheduling problems, but I think it'd more interesting to let people come to their own conclusions. I wonder if there was some version of Eyes where Talia replaces the guest star psychic, was that ever a thing?
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Mar 17, 2023 15:40
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Open Source Idiom posted:or that Bester was originally meant to be in this story (he was, wasn't he?) He was not. Knight 2 from And the Sky Full of Stars was written with Koenig in mind, which may be what you're thinking of. Also, Talia wouldn't have worked in the Harriman Grey role in the plot, because she knows Sinclair already and is sympathetic to him. MrL_JaKiri fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Mar 17, 2023 |
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Mar 17, 2023 15:47
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Ah, yeah, that makes sense. It's such an odd episode from modern sensibilities, since it draws on a lot of continuity and references a lot of past characters (everyone loves DEATHWALKER*) but it doesn't have any of them show up, even regulars who you'd think would be more involved. *actually everyone loves Na'toth shouting at her.
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Mar 17, 2023 16:13
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Open Source Idiom posted:Like, I just watched Eyes, and watching it I remembered that this is one of the few times the show hinted at Ivanova being attracted to Winters I'm in the latter stages of a rewatch to introduce my gf to the show, and after Ivanovna and Talia's very first onscreen interaction (which I think must be before Eyes), she turned to me and said, "Those two are gonna do it, aren't they?"
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Mar 17, 2023 20:58
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Open Source Idiom posted:Ah, yeah, that makes sense. It's basically a clip show in terms of getting people up to speed for the back end of the season
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Mar 18, 2023 13:11
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It's kind of funny how insanely well-suited Babylon 5 fits into the post-Lost obsession with poring over and discussing every detail of a show, while also being so obviously dated in ways that would make it pretty unappealing to that crowd. Or maybe I'm wrong and things actually, properly foreshadowing future events and having concrete answers makes it less suitable for that kind of internet obsession. Either way, I don't think you can really force someone to be a detail-obsessed watcher so imo pointing out little details and clues to first-time watchers isn't really productive. You can enjoy the show just fine without noticing how much everything is plotted out right from the beginning.
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Mar 18, 2023 22:55
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I think you have it backwards: there was a lot of internet obsession at the time. It initiated this kind of poring and obsessiveness. The Lurker's Guide was the first "media wiki".
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Mar 18, 2023 23:45
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Having concrete answers to most of the big questions means that although you could have obsessive theorycrafting as it aired, at this point there isn't a community of people who are watching it but haven't seen the whole thing. It's fun reading someone in the blind watch thread speculating about what the Shadows want or what happened to Babylons 1-4 or whatever, but we can't really have a detailed conversation with them about it.
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Mar 19, 2023 00:42
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I think you have it backwards: there was a lot of internet obsession at the time. It initiated this kind of poring and obsessiveness. The Lurker's Guide was the first "media wiki". I know, but what I'm saying is that nothing on the internet at the time that B5 aired could even remotely be called mainstream. B5 pre-dated the phenomena being something that was a part of popular culture instead of a nerd obsession.
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Mar 19, 2023 00:59
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So what you're saying is, Babylon 5 should've had more cute kittens? 
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Mar 19, 2023 15:00
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Rappaport posted:So what you're saying is, Babylon 5 should've had more cute kittens? You mean the ones that goes "quack"?
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Mar 19, 2023 15:33
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They had a dude guarding a flower, surely there could've been a cat somewhere, quacking away merrily!
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Mar 19, 2023 15:40
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I forgot about Londo and Lennier bonding at the Dark Star 
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Mar 19, 2023 22:42
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Tom Guycot posted:s2e19 What does the centauri do in this episode? I remember it as being the whole psychic password Winters sendoff thing.
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Mar 20, 2023 02:09
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CainFortea posted:What does the centauri do in this episode? I remember it as being the whole psychic password Winters sendoff thing. I think Tom Guycot is using HBO Max ordering, which makes that episode The Long, Twilight Struggle -- so, the bombardment and fall of the Narn homeworld.
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Mar 20, 2023 02:19
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I hope the centauri comeuppance is sufficient for him
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Mar 20, 2023 02:54
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Powered Descent posted:I think Tom Guycot is using HBO Max ordering, which makes that episode The Long, Twilight Struggle -- so, the bombardment and fall of the Narn homeworld. That would make a lot more sense
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Mar 20, 2023 04:27
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sebmojo posted:I hope the centauri comeuppance is sufficient for him I think that it would be, but Tom may not get that far. He'd need to get at least to War Without End, and even that shows a future that Sheridan wants to avert. I think it also comes after G'Kar saying that he now pities the Centauri because they are lost, which might give him some "nice German" vibes.
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Mar 20, 2023 11:01
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I don't want to add needlessly to the conversation in the blind watch thread, but, brought on by the tone question from Tom Guycot , I do find es interesting how much B5 almost feels like a serialized modern day prestige drama, even though its not. I think that's relevant to the tone question, because it results in many of the episodes having a very standard three act structure, which means you often get some amount of (positive) emotional closure at the end, while the modern format allows for episodes, or even seasons, that are just entirely bleak without any catharsis at all. It's a product of hindsight of course, but it is utterly fascinating how the show clearly has a well defined overarching arc, that is clearly the focus of the story, but the Zeitgeist just wasn't there yet and though it's still told through the conventional episode format, with the occasional multiparter, even though it really strains against it.It's an interesting comparison to DS9, which fits much more conformable into the episodic format.
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Mar 20, 2023 20:06
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The purely serialized format can also lead to some deeply tedious tv tbh. I actually think buffy and b5 got a really good balance.
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Mar 20, 2023 20:15
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sebmojo posted:The purely serialized format can also lead to some deeply tedious tv tbh. I actually think buffy and b5 got a really good balance. Agreed. I've used B5 as an example of getting the long-story-arc thing right, especially when compared to modern TV that treats a season as a single 10-hour movie and so specific episodes tend not to have an identity of their own.
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Mar 20, 2023 20:27
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Was 24 the first prime-time/non soap opera show to set itself up that way, or was there an earlier arc-only show?
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Mar 20, 2023 21:25
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Was 24 the first prime-time/non soap opera show to set itself up that way, or was there an earlier arc-only show? Dallas comes to mind.
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Mar 20, 2023 21:29
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e X posted:I don't want to add needlessly to the conversation in the blind watch thread, but, brought on by the tone question from Tom Guycot , I do find es interesting how much B5 almost feels like a serialized modern day prestige drama, even though its not. I think that's relevant to the tone question, because it results in many of the episodes having a very standard three act structure, which means you often get some amount of (positive) emotional closure at the end, while the modern format allows for episodes, or even seasons, that are just entirely bleak without any catharsis at all. Even though it's not strictly spoilery, my take would be that Tom is coming at B5 with a Star Trek mindset. He was watching 2X18 and saying the Centauri had best get a comeuppance by series end. In Trek that would happen; sometimes things would occur over a few episodes, but mostly there'd be a return to status quo very quickly. But as the opening narrations suggest, B5 is a future history. Things change, but they usually change slowly and have ramifications that lead to other events.
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Mar 20, 2023 21:56
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I think a modern viewer this side of the Prestige TV thing is also likely to be worried about grimdark misery porn, even for an older show. They called it "make you feel like poo poo TV," so I suspect they're worried it might turn into that genre.
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Mar 20, 2023 23:34
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After The War posted:I think a modern viewer this side of the Prestige TV thing is also likely to be worried about grimdark misery porn, even for an older show. They called it "make you feel like poo poo TV," so I suspect they're worried it might turn into that genre. Yeah. But again: it's history, isn't it? I had a post composed to reply to Tom that I chose not to hit send on. In that post I analogised Trek and B5 with people in the Blitz. Everyone was scared, but they dealt with it in different ways. Some people drew strength from the knowledge that things were bad now but in the morning they'd go outside in the sun. That's Trek - times may be bad, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel and the tunnel isn't long even if you're never really far away from the next tunnel. Meanwhile, other people were loving in the bomb shelters because hey! a bomb might land on us! And that's B5 - times may be bad, but they're the times you've got so don't stop living. Yes, they rock straight from crisis to crisis. Yes, it's grim and a little hopeless sometimes. But there's always room for a moment of humour, love, kindness or strength. (And of course, B5 absolutely fucks.)
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Mar 21, 2023 00:08
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Babylon 5 is definitely serialized in a way that most mainstream TV wouldn't really be for decades. To a lesser degree, so was the X-Men animated series, by being built around linear plotlines with lots of multi-episode arcs. I'm not sure if there were any other 90s shows with that sort of structure. I think it was probably the idea that between the availability of VCRs and maybe scheduled rerun timeslots, and then the fact that they could do official home media releases fairly quickly, they could be reasonably sure that people could go catch up on the earlier bits to view the whole show linearly instead of just catching episodes as they come on. I know that Japan was especially into home media in the 80s and 90s, which may have influenced anime being more linear, but I don't really know much about classic anime. I know some stuff was even dtv ovas instead of being on air, and I think japan's strong manga industry might've even helped things since narrative anime stories would be mirrored in comic form that could more easily be distributed in cheap collected volumes. sebmojo posted:I hope the centauri comeuppance is sufficient for him I don't think there's ever really a "comeuppance" for the Centauri. For Londo, maybe, but the Centauri aren't grandly defeated, they just pull back from Narn and go back into anew form of decline as the story mostly loses sight on the Centauri as a whole.
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Mar 21, 2023 00:09
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SlothfulCobra posted:I don't think there's ever really a "comeuppance" for the Centauri. For Londo, maybe, but the Centauri aren't grandly defeated, they just pull back from Narn and go back into anew form of decline as the story mostly loses sight on the Centauri as a whole.  
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Mar 21, 2023 00:24
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I think the season 3 intro sums it up very well. "In the year of the Shadow War it became something greater. Our last best hope for victory"
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Mar 21, 2023 00:34
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SlothfulCobra posted:I don't think there's ever really a "comeuppance" for the Centauri. For Londo, maybe, but the Centauri aren't grandly defeated, they just pull back from Narn and go back into anew form of decline as the story mostly loses sight on the Centauri as a whole. Episode 519 is titled "The Fall of Centauri Prime" and it's about exactly what you might think it is from the title.
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Mar 21, 2023 00:35
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e X posted:I don't want to add needlessly to the conversation in the blind watch thread, but, brought on by the tone question from Tom Guycot , I do find es interesting how much B5 almost feels like a serialized modern day prestige drama, even though its not. I think that's relevant to the tone question, because it results in many of the episodes having a very standard three act structure, which means you often get some amount of (positive) emotional closure at the end, while the modern format allows for episodes, or even seasons, that are just entirely bleak without any catharsis at all. B5 can be amazingly bleak for serialized TV of its era, even if it doesn't hit the unrelenting qualities of the BSG reboot. The end of S1, for example, or multiple ending episodes for S2. (Believers and Passing through Gethsemene are also grim.) Even the final episode manages to hit an air of optimism coupled with mourning the past yet recognizing how it shapes the people who build the future. I still can't think of very many shows that would have the guts to do something like Confessions and Lamentations. It's hard to set the episodic episodes against the arc episodes properly, because the arc episodes are almost all JMS-written and lots of the episodic ones aren't. And there's often something arc-specific buried in the episodic stories. I suspect S3 & S4's reputation is so strong partly because so many more episodes are arc-focused and it's easy to forget the non-arc stories being told alongside them (with a few embarrassing exceptions like Grey 17 is Missing).
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Mar 21, 2023 01:28
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sebmojo posted:The purely serialized format can also lead to some deeply tedious tv tbh. I actually think buffy and b5 got a really good balance. absolutely. b5's combination of 'arc episodes' and stand-alones is something i really miss.
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Mar 21, 2023 04:22
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They were a serial navigating an episodic world.
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Mar 21, 2023 04:23
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Tom Guycot posted:s2e6 dust to dust Oh man they're *really* not going to like Lochley if they get that far. Did we ever know if the whole "you left we were stuck behind and closed our ears because it was all we could do" was a planned part or was it just making do with having to replace Ivonava and cramming someone in?
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Mar 21, 2023 06:19
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Horizon Burning posted:absolutely. b5's combination of 'arc episodes' and stand-alones is something i really miss. Star Trek: Prodigy has a really nice balance between standalone episodes and long story arcs. It's areally good show and is now my standard "I'd like to get into Star Trek" recommendation. See, the main characters start off never having even heard of the Federation or Starfleet, or even dreamed that a society with those values could exist. The audience learns about Federation values along with the main characters making it an excellent starting point. Highly recommended on its own merits, as well as for being a really good Star Trek show.
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Mar 21, 2023 06:25
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