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A sad reason to discover the new thread. RIP. If we want to have non-death-related discussion, I wonder if I can get people to discuss acting on the show in a more specific sense, beyond "x is a bad actor" or "I really liked y." An example of what I mean: Stephen Furst's performance is really interesting because he's initially cast in a part that appears to fall into his Flounder wheelhouse--nebbish comic relief, good-hearted but not competant. Neither he nor JMS saw all of what he would go through as a developing character. And I suspect that like most of the cast, Furst wasn't getting much support from the S1 directing staff. As a result, he's somewhat cringeworthy in his S1 appearances but much stronger in S2, getting some real subtlety into his performance and especially showing that Vir is often terrified and yet very brave (vs technomages, Morden, G'kar...). The character's turning point is the "I"m sorry" scene, and Furst has some amazing performances in the remaining seasons, including his two scenes with Mumy, his anger at Londo in "Rock Cried Out," and the brilliant getting drunk on Narn scene. Furst gets to show his true range in "Sleeping in Light," playing an older and responsible Vir who mixes some of his old goodness and goofiness coupled with a powerful dignity and wisdom. Just look at when he receives Sheridan's message: he switches from "frolic" to "somber" in an instant, and of all who receive the letter he seems fastest to register what it means. Contrast his S1 performance to the story he tells about pak'ma'ra song. This isn't an actor becoming good over time, this is an actor frequently typecast who realizes an opportunity to show his true range and leaps at it. But it's also a performer who goes from supporting cast to director: his relationship to his fellow performers shifts in much the same way as Vir going from attache to Emperor. As with so many of the main cast, Furst had his best chance to show his range on B5 and he seized the opportunity. To be a bit critical, you can see during the Ambassador to Minbar segment, when Furst was doing another show, that he has some trouble moving back and forth between that (which I believe was a failed comedy) and Vir. It takes him until late in the season to really dial into the subtler element of his performance, and even then he tends toward overexpressiveness, though given that that's his meal ticket it's completely understandable. Until he sheds the character's anxiety late in the series, there's always a feeling that Furst and Vir are both equally anxious about what they're doing.
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Jun 19, 2017 05:14
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Neddy Seagoon posted:You're forgetting one of the best scenes was made that way through improv though (G'Kar and Londo trapped in a lift). The lines all got said, just in a different way than was scripted. JMS describes G'Kar's scripted attitude as "Zen-like." He also describes walking past the set during the first take, hearing gales of laughter, coming in and being asked whether they could play the scene that way... and they proceeded to do a second take. And that's what aired. I'm still bitter at how many B5 performers died too soon.
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Jun 28, 2017 06:00
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ConfusedUs posted:...I hear you! Double-checked the script book, and that comment (along with the quiet "We're in here" which follows it) were in fact ad libs. Brilliant.
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Jun 29, 2017 05:29
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Panzeh posted:I thought it was a cool line but delenn's delivery was flat, much like her character overall. The religious caste all play affectless for the most part. Furlan's delivery is deliberately flat, with increasing exceptions later in the series, usually either associated with anguish or with anger or with her relationship to Sheridan. You might look up Furlan's voicework as Silver Sable for one of the Spider-Man cartoons to get a sense of the specific performance choices she's making and of her range. Greater dynamism isn't built in to the character. If you think that doesn't work, it's on JMS for writing her that way, not Furlan for playing her as she was written. If Furlan takes a hit here it's that she may have been overly deferential to JMS' vision of the character; OTOH, she appears to have generally been letter perfect on her lines where some of her castmates were, shall we say, sometime casual with what was written for them. Neo Rasa posted:Was that The Lost Tales movie they did in like 2007 any good? Not especially. It isn't entirely irredeemable but it screams "we didn't have a budget." There's an extra feature with JMS discussing how they're going to stage the whole thing with puppet performers against greenscreen; evidently this is a bit of an inside joke as he complained to Warner Brothers that the budget they were offering him was so small that he'd have to use puppets instead of actors. I keep wondering when the Warner Bros executive who hates B5 is going to retire... not that they'd restart the franchise then, either.
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Jun 30, 2017 01:44
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turn left hillary!! noo posted:This is what I've always said. It gets a bad rap on the internet, and it's finding its legs for sure, but even very early on it's got inklings of greatness, and by about the last quarter of the season it's really coming together. Early to mid season 2 is when the quality starts rocketing up as it fully hits its stride, but I wouldn't ever want to watch it without season 1. "Infection" is like a miniature version of one of the main plotlines. "Soul Hunter" is remarkable and really unusual and challenging intellectually, especially if you're not rewatching, because why trust a Minbari's opinion over that of the Soul Hunter, or Franklin? There's something in those floaty ball-things, but who can prove that they're souls? Feed in the possibility that some viewers will believe souls actually exist and some won't, as well as Minbari-soul-related stuff that becomes important later on, and it's an interesting story quite apart from plot and performance. W. Morgan Sheppard gets to play a crazy alien who is different crazy from the rest of his people. There's some horror-not just the "painless death" rig but the strange non-violent violence of the Hunter's death. And the coda, where Delenn smashes globes with an odd expression of pleasure on her face, is downright chilling, because either she's freeing trapped souls to go on to where they should go, or she's releasing duplicates of dead people, or she's sending actual preserved life force into oblivion, or some permutation of those. Sure, she is absolutely convinced she's doing good, and maybe the show is, too, on balance, but as presented the situation is chillingly ambiguous. It is certain that Delenn never consulted these souls before releasing them. Maybe some of the earlier souls weren't forcefully taken and wouldn't want to be released.
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Jun 30, 2017 05:10
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Platonicsolid posted:But the back half is so much better! Big case of miscasting, IMO, perhaps worsened by the directors and the fans missing what JMS had in mind for the character (and JMS doing nothing to course correct). I also suspect the character would have worked better as Ivanova's love interest. What was needed is someone you could believe as a cult leader, another hippie Jesus-alike, but with a sense of creepiness and underlying darkness. Basically, exactly the character Zack sees and describes to Lyta. But Downes is simply too clean-cut and good/good-looking to make that work, and as a result the telepath cult comes across as genuine as good despite the plot desperately saying otherwise again and again. And instead of having an Ivanova falling for someone superficially like Marcus and refusing warnings because the last time she didn't take a chance she regretted it, we end up with poor abused Lyta in circumstances where she's getting empowered. We want Byron to be better than he is, but the show too often makes us think that it agrees and just can't quite stick the landing. The intent that he be Ivanova's next tragic mistake would have provided a sense of inevitable doom that the show struggles to replicate with mixed success, forced instead to rely on the Byron-Lyta-Bester relationships to function. I think Lorien has the same problem: he's so obviously wise and good that the level of mistrust and creepiness we should feel (is he another Kosh, or more like Ulkesh?) simply isn't there at all. The show has the same problem with Sheridan, who's clearly supposed to be different enough that we wonder if Garabaldi might be right about him, but who's both played and shot as pretty much fine.
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Jul 9, 2017 05:16
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pentyne posted:Basically James Callis as Gaius during his Messianic phase in BSG would've been a phenomenal direction to go, but B5 wasn't good about subtle or seductive evil it was all pretty 100% obvious from the get go and you'd see the characters convince themselves they were making a good choice. Well, Morden/Kosh was subtle early on, and the Narn/Centauri conflict at least sees a shift in the good/evil dynamic across the series.
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Jul 9, 2017 16:57
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pentyne posted:Morden oozed raw evil from every moment on the station. Behind his weirdly out of place hair and soft spoken manner it was extremely obvious he was not there to do favors for people for charity. He had that kind of creepy niceness to him that you normally didn't get on early 90s serial television that made you think he was there to ruin someone's life despite all the manners in the world. Kosh was also extremely creepy, especially in the first season, where the audience perception of them as "good" didn't in any way match their behavior. Morden, on the other hand, started out genuinely helpful to Londo, though obviously a creep. If Londo hadn't ditched him, he probably would have remained so, despite being obviously "evil." Given the Vorlon/Shadow conflict was configured along Law/Chaos anyway, it's tough to be too clear on their Good/Evil natures. Maelstache posted:It kind of sticks in the craw that so much more time was spent on that storyline than, say, whatever was originally planned for Lennier's arc. The song works better when they all kill themselves. The problem is that at that point, you're more happy that they did than creeped out.
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Jul 10, 2017 01:42
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mllaneza posted:Remember the Underground Railroad for telepaths episode ? My contention is that the spokesman for the railroad, the man with a lisp and some physical issues, should have been Byron. In fact, I propose that the whole Telepath arc in season 5 would have been gold if he'd been re-used instead of a new character. He certainly had the acting chops, but I don't think he had the charisma to sell himself as a face of a cult. Plus there'd be the whole "yes, this apparently heroic but actually kind of creepy" character being played by an actor with disabilities. There's enough of that already. A James Callis/Baltar type would have been just about right. A shame Jeffrey Combs/Harriman Gray wouldn't have served the story, because he could probably have pulled it off. Honestly, the best casting would probably have been Ed Wasser if he hadn't already played another very important character in the series. Would have been interesting to cast George Takei, but he wouldn't have been a credible protege for Bester.
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Jul 10, 2017 20:01
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e X posted:Honestly, there a so few shows that actually have the heroes deal with the political fallout of their actions, especially genre shows like Babylon 5. I am a huge fan of space politics and the fact that Babylon 5 prominently deals with them is the main reason I love the show so much. The missed trick here really is that none of the telepaths came to Franklin first because of his underground railroad connection, and none of them mentioned the use of telepaths as weapons in the end of the Earth Civil War. Pressing Franklin to come clean about that would have led to all sorts of interesting consequences and helped to motivate what happens with the colony, as well as their increasing distrust of the station staff. Milky Moor posted:One of my favorite small things in S4 is the EAS Furies, one of the Proxima blockade ships, ends up rejoining the loyalist forces. It might just be a CGI goof but a few episodes after No Surrender, No Retreat, the Furies is fighting on the side of Clarke again. Furies doesn't join up, they commit to defending Proxima against retaliation. I wouldn't put it past Clark's people to conceal their losses in the early days by repainting the name on some of their ships, too.
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Jul 11, 2017 00:42
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McSpanky posted:Yeah everything about him just blatantly says "don't give a gently caress about your meatbag sensibilities, do as I say or screw". The question is, are most of the Vorlons like Kosh 1 or Kosh 2? I'm guessing 2. Are most of the Vorlons like Kosh 1 or Kosh 2? The correct answers include: "Yes." "Gesundheit!" "Why are you asking me, I'm a Na'ka'leen Feeder?" Clearly, closer to Ulkesh, or even worse, given that both Kosh and Ulkesh had more contact with other races than the majority of the Vorlons. It's never quite clear what their leadership structure is, or the Shadows' either. One would expect an absolute ruler for the Vorlons and an anarchy for the Shadows, but all the evidence suggests that both groups move as a collective and it's only with the Kosh replacement that we get a sense of different styles or perspectives within either species.
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Jul 11, 2017 20:14
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Timby posted:Going back to the "there's a conspiracy within Earth's government and there's Shadow fuckery involved" well after doing it in B5 proper is absolutely repetition. Why would you think repetition is a bad thing? "I am bored with this plot," sure, but the act of repeating in itself says nothing about how well or poorly something is done. I do think there's a distinction between "Morden infiltrates Earth's civilian government and Psi Corps" and "agents within the military decide to exploit all this ancient biotech," especially given that we know nothing about the goals or objectives of the latter group save that they evidently didn't want Earth to be saved. In any event, it's hard to judge how Crusade would have turned out given that if we only had the first season of B5 it probably wouldn't rate a thread here and that JMS' original outline for B5 is not nearly as good as what we ended up with.
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Jul 12, 2017 19:46
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Some people just won't take "zog" for an answer. If anyone needs me, I'm getting the bucket.
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Sep 2, 2017 04:59
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Jedit posted:The original plan was to have Laurel Takashima be the Psi-Corps sleeper agent, too, so they'd want you to like her as much as Ivanova. I'm guessing they just caught Tamlyn Tomita on a bad day, because she's had zero problems finding work since. Some actors rely a lot on directors, especially if they're uncomfortable with their role, and some don't. I think much of the "bad acting" in the early part of the show is down to actors getting little or no help from their directors. Try watching S1 performances from episode to episode tracking the director and you'll see some interesting variation. Compton appears to have been more interested in action and effects than in characterization, and he directed "The Gathering".
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Sep 20, 2017 05:03
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Milky Moor posted:When talking about a text should I not rely on the text-as-presented? If you want an explanation in-setting that explains what we actually see, simply imagine that Sinclair described this incident to Kosh after travelling back in time and that leads to Kosh deliberately allowing himself to be poisoned by extending a hand/whatever. Milky Moor posted:but seriously what happened to lorien's ship Obviously, there was never a ship: that was all Lorien. The Babylon 5 Wars game (which is, arguably, canon, or at least JMS endorsed) identifies one of the First One groups as the Triad, a group of three entities born immortal like Lorien who have the ability to create limited amounts of matter at will and who thus can create ships that way. When they stop maintaining a ship, it just disperses again. So Lorien just did that. You would think someone would notice it was missing, but presumably we just missed that scene. Would have been useful for Garibaldi to notice and add that to the list of suspicions.
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Sep 21, 2017 05:02
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How about Bashir and Zathras? Or Dax and Ivanova?
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Oct 5, 2017 15:26
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MisterBibs posted:I'm kinda on a B5 kick but I don't have the time to watch it all to answer my question: what was the supposed-to-happen endgoal for the Vorlons and Shadows? Each of them inspire a bunch of lesser races, and have them goad their respective disciples into a war to see who wins (and thus is proven right)? I get it from a conceptual level ("you lost your way, you were obsessed with being proved right"), but the Shadows were actively involved in the last Shadow War, which seems like it wasn't supposed to be part of the deal. Endgoal when? Near the start of the process, when they stayed behind when the other First Ones left, or in the time of the show? For the latter, presumably the Vorlons wanted all the races to reject the Shadows and band together in unison to destroy them, but after the Z'ha'dum Boom they decided it'd be faster to simply eliminate all the races with Shadow-taint ensuring that the survivors would reject the Shadows. The Shadows appear to have wanted constant recurring cycles of war and conflict, without any obvious "end" state, but with the implicit assumption that the ants would never get clever enough to stop the Shadows from kicking over their anthills. It's unclear whether Justin's "do what you're told" solution to the Sheridan problem was his own or Shadow-generated, and it's unclear whether the Shadow planet-killers were deployed for any reason beyond retaliating for Vorlon planet-killing. In theory, the original endgoal was to be mentors and teachers for the younger races, helping them to develop, presumably offering them a choice of paths between Order and Chaos, but with the somewhat secret goal of constraining them so that they choose between one or the other. See Sheridan's metaphor of the two as parents trying to force their children to choose sides. That imperative meant that neither group genuinely wanted those they nurtured to "grow up" and move out.
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Oct 20, 2017 20:24
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Midjack posted:I have all the rules for that and Fleet Action. It plays like Star Fleet Battles, and in B5W more than about 4 ships on either side is severely unfun to manage. Fleet Action is better. I've played a few games. The main problems are that absent the story, it does almost take SFB-amounts of time to play, though at least the rules aren't as complex. The one time back in college that I introduced it to my regular gaming group, one player suffered an unlucky engine hit through an untouched ship side and was left to drift off the map, while another didn't understand the thruster limitations and went too fast, "falling" off the map. There were no further games played. I do have a persistent fantasy about putting together a thread here in the Let's Play section built around a mirror-universe style B5, which wouldn't exactly make our heroes the villains but would make Jah'dur and Bester main characters and start Londo as a decorated military leader and head of the prominant House Mollari. Then run B5W scenarios built around a developing story the thread votes on. Problem is that it's a hell of a time investment, I don't know if enough people like the setting to make the investment worthwhile, and I don't know if the game plays easily enough to have a pool of players big enough to sustain an ongoing campaign. I got into the game right before the designers/company that sold it lost the rights and sold off their supplies at steep discounts, so I have a carrying case of minis and all the rules as a result of that. For a while there was an active, if tiny, online fan presence that put out a newsletter and converted ships from Star Wars, Star Trek, Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, Star Control 2, and entities from the Cthulhu mythos into the rules-set. Short version: B5W is to Star Fleet Battles as B5 is to Star Trek.
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Dec 20, 2017 16:41
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Pick posted:I had a dream last night that I won a call-in trivia show hosted by Alex Trebek. My final question required me to know that Babylon 5 had a crossover episode with Seinfeld. I know this didn't happen, but... it's too bad. "It's the Summer of Kosh!" "This spoo is makin' me THIRSTY!" Jerry walks up to a Vorlon. It stares at him for a moment before saying *Jerry. Hello.* "Why is this Narn wearing an eyepatch?" "Emperor, you said you wanted his eye..." "I said I wanted RYE! Marble rye!" Bester and Jerry look down to see no sign of the shipping containers full of Dust, save for a mail-carrier's bag. They meet each other's eyes and say in unison, "NEWMAN!" Close on a landing bay, empty save for a single shuttle. They climb in. Sheridan tries to start the engine. It fails.
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Dec 24, 2017 19:45
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MrL_JaKiri posted:The Lochley stuff was an interesting diversion into "What if B5 didn't religiously follow the great man theory of history" (see also Deconstruction of Falling Stars) Most of S5, really. As a politician, Sheridan is a really good military commander. Honestly, even earlier seasons chip away at the "great man" theory even as they build it up in other ways, but it's usually easier to go with the obvious and overt text over the subtext, especially whenever JMS goes into speechify mode. And Grand Fromage, The Real Ghostbusters would like a word with you over that "one-hit wonder" comment...
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Feb 21, 2018 20:55
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OK, getting increasingly confused by the "Wayne Alexander was the Drazi Ambassador" conversation. I'm pretty certain (and IMDB states) that the only Drazi Wayne Alexander played in B5 was the one in Intersections in Real Time. Alexander played Lorien, Sebastian, G'Dan, and of course the Drahk leader. Mark Hendrickson and Kim Strauss played the Drazi ambassador: IMDB gives Hendrickson credit in Shadow Dancing, and Hour of the Wolf, while Strauss went from the Green Drazi in Geometry of Shadows to the ambassador in The Fall of Night and multiple S5 episodes. Ron Campbell is credited as Drazi Ambassador on IMDB for The Long Night, Rumors, Bargains, and Lies, and Meditations on the Abyss. While poking around, I find myself interested in which rarely-appearing characters made the strongest impression on people. Not thinking Refa and Neroon (with 8 and 7 episodes), but the rarely appearing characters at or below the Zathras level (4 episodes). Zathras, obviously, but who else? There's a lot of small and effective performances. Captain James, for example (new commander of the Agamemnon), or Dr. Lilian Hobbs.
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Feb 23, 2018 21:49
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Midjack posted:Takashima being mind controlled would also be a great excuse for Tamlyn Tomita's acting if The Gathering was any indication of how she would have been on the series. I'd have to watch her in something else before I made that leap. A lot of the bad early performances in B5 are clearly down to a combination of the performers being too tentative about how to play in a setting and with a character background they knew almost nothing about and several of the early directors giving them either no help or actively encouraging them to make poor choices. It's possible the plan was to have her be cool and in control at all times, then have her emerging persona be a raging fanatic. It's a BAD plan, but it's possible that's where they were going. But it's also possible that the actress hadn't the foggiest how to proceed and nobody was giving her any help working things out. I got curious and looked up performer ages for the year 1994 (when B5 S1 started): Andreas Katsulas: age 48 Peter Jurasik: age 44 Mira Furlan: age 39 Michael O'Hare: age 42 Jerry Doyle: age 38 Claudia Christian: age 29 Richard Biggs: age 34 Andrea Thompson: age 35 Tomita in 1993 was age 28, BTW. Clearly talent and age aren't the same thing, but if you're not getting the kind of direction you need, age and experience are what's needed to fill in the gaps. Hmmm... In their debut year on Star Trek, both Shatner and Nimoy were 35, Deforest Kelley and James Doohan were 46, Nichelle Nichols was 34, George Takei was 29, and (the following year) Water Koenig was 31. Koenig played Bester starting at age 58.
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Feb 25, 2018 19:29
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Timby posted:Bear in mind, though, that any statement from Straczynski has to be taken with a grain of salt, because he has a long, long history of filtering the truth to make him look good; he's almost Roddenberry-esque in that regard. For all we know, he went to WB and asked for a Blu-ray release, but then added, "Also, I want the full rights to B5 back, I want you to resurrect Katsulas and Biggs and Conaway, and also I'd like a pony." He's admitted fault a lot more frequently than Roddenberry ever did. Then again, the number of professional relationships he's had that have gone utterly sour has been conspicuously high. We do have multiple other people corroborating his explanations of why WB has treated the show so poorly, and it certainly fits with other accounts of their corporate structure. The mess with the human weapons interface comes down to his statements about thinking audiences need identifiable human figures to identify with in space combat. I'd say that reflects a fundamental failure of imagination. I've watched Trek spin-offs where I identify with the ship more than with any of the actual characters. I have no doubt he'd imagined something different (tai-chi in the weapons pod, maybe?), but that's no indication either that this was a solution to the stated problem or that the problem needed solving in the first place.
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May 4, 2018 15:21
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Timby posted:I'm not saying he's explicitly wrong--I have no problem believing that WB doesn't want to throw one more cent at B5--I'm just saying that he's high on his own farts most of the time, so anything he says has to be taken with that in mind. You write as if that were unusual and unexpected? JMS wrote so drat much in relation to B5 that it's pretty easy to get a line on his particular brand of BS (like the grandiose Studio JMS plans) in comparison to other writer/producers. Ron Moore managed to string out the "they have a plan" thing for years and has since admitted that catch-phrase got inserted into BSGs opening by someone else and he knew quite well how big a lie it was. It's perpetually hard to tell whether Steven Moffatt is trolling, lying, or being completely sincere. And don't get me started on JJ Abrams. Unless you're the sort who doesn't get that people can offer distortions or lies on the Internet, JMS is generally much easier to decipher than most. I'm not sure why this particular line of discussion triggered a warning from you not to trust what he's saying, when this looks like an example (rare or not) of him being relatively straight. It is believable that the other obstacle to negotiations is that JMS is an obstinant control-freak with poor people skills. Then again, JMS doesn't exactly go out of his way to conceal that, either, and it's doubtful we'd have the show if he weren't.
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May 4, 2018 19:09
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Doctor Zero posted:Started my ... hmmm let’s see. 4th watch through of the series. This time reading the corresponding episode notes from the script books like I always wanted to. I agree with something said waaaaaay back that the 1st season really isn’t all that bad in retrospect. I used to think O’Hare to be awfully wooden and sometimes he is, but it’s not as bad as I thought. Knowing what he was going through mentally, his performance is actually fairly amazing. You'd only guess that he was suffering from paranoid delusions and hallucinations when that's in character!
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May 6, 2018 00:39
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Doctor Zero posted:Supposedly because nobody at WB thinks anyone would buy it and they just keep ignoring JMS. You have to think like an established Hollywood executive: Scenario 1: someone offers to buy the B5 property. Nobody is going to do that unless they plan to produce a new series. That series will compete with WB properties. If it flops, it might still hurt WB profits. If it's a wild success, then you are the idiot who sold a valuable property for too little money. If nobody is doing anything with the property because you're still sitting on it, nobody (who matters to you) will complain. Scenario 2: somehow, WB funds a new half-series of B5. 13 episode order, cost around $5 million per episode = around $65-100 million if you expect some cost overruns. If the series flops, WB loses lots of money doing something dumb (why reboot/revive such an old property?) and it was your doing. If it's a wild success, the people getting the credit are likely JMS and the original people who green-lit the show, not you. If you were going to take the risk, you would do it on the property that you licensed/discovered yourself and be able to take all the credit when it succeeds. Scenario 3: an outside actor (like Amazon) funds a new half series of B5, paying WB both for the rights and to produce the show. It's easiest to say yes in this instance as it was Amazon being stupid if the show flops. But even this one is a difficult "yes," because again, the execs approving the deal can't take credit for B5. They had no role in it whatsoever. Amazon and JMS get the praise for reviving the series and there are articles on how it all started with the PTN idea. Soon Kung Fu: The Legend Continues gets remade and you and your fellow execs all look like idiots. If you, as exec, find and cultivate the next Game of Thrones, you look like a guru. If you respond to GoT's success by saying "let's reboot Wizards and Warriors," you look like an idiot even if the idea works.
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May 18, 2018 15:56
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Someone in the thread might find it to be of interest that JMS said, in a recent Twitter thread, that he's been diagnosed with both Asperger's syndrome and reactive attachment disorder (inhibited). That gives a different context to a few of the management-related things that went on over B5's run, including the S4 Claudia Christian departure.
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May 25, 2018 18:28
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hope and vaseline posted:Amazon's encoding is all messed up for the cgi scenes. In the dvds I think it's 30fps for the cgi and 24 fps telecined for live action, it looks like they reverse telecined the cgi and hosed up the frame rate badly in the process. What is it with this show and any kind of delivery of the episodes post-original airing? Zathras can never have anything nice.
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Jun 2, 2018 00:42
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Doctor Zero posted:I support this only so long as we somehow get Dukaht and Dukat in the same room. Garek and Morden, together at last. "Oh, what do I want?" Leeta and Lyta might or might not work out, though. Depends on where Lyta is in her character arc.
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Jun 11, 2018 16:27
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hope and vaseline posted:You gonna watch Legend of the Rangers now? Talk to the Hand, buddy. We live for the One, we watch for the One. (Headcanon: G'kar becomes head of the Rangers before his death.)
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Jun 12, 2018 05:11
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Neddy Seagoon posted:I've been rewatching it too, and I've actually come to love any scene involving Kai Winn. Every word she speaks has some underhanded inference behind it, and just about everyone else can still talk circles around her because they're not taking any of her poo poo. I still don't know about Winn. She was written and played in a way that made sympathy for the character impossible, but also without the zest of someone like Refa, where he deserves what he gets but you still like the way he's being played (the villain you love to hate). Winn was so on the nose as a social critique and so carefully and skillfully performed as "nails on a blackboard" antagonist that I couldn't ever feel for her or even look forward to her inclusion in a story (though I usually did look forward to Fletcher's performance). Her closest equivalent on B5 would be all the one-episode Downbelow thugs and criminals.
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Jun 29, 2018 17:24
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Jedit posted:You missed his first appearance as the Soul Hunter, then? W. Morgan Sheppard is hugely underrated, he pretty much made that episode work. And he was almost cast as G'kar. Would have made for a very different show...
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Jul 8, 2018 15:20
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Isn't it two days' time for the White Star, though? I don't think your average freighter is hauling rear end like that. That said I think the transit time for Franklin and Marcus to get from B5 to Mars was like two weeks, although that was on a relatively circuitous route as to avoid being picked up, so maybe a week is more normal? Aside from the other points already raised, what about the disease risk? Quite aside from the bird flu issues, it's highly unclear whether having animals on the space station poses a health risk to the many alien species you expect to move through there. From what we see in Season 1, it's obvious the senate would point out that the safe alternative is considerably cheaper, too, leading B5's staff to make do with "bac'n" instead. Neddy Seagoon posted:It was indeed. The mystery of the scene being just how the gently caress he managed to get her bacon and eggs out in deep space. "I always say, you can get more bacon and eggs with a kind word and a two-by-four than you can with just a kind word."
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Jul 10, 2018 16:03
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Dirty posted:Surely all the aliens would be more of a health risk to each other? Adding a few chickens doesn't seem like that much of a difference. A few chickens always make a difference. Just ask this guy: 
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Jul 11, 2018 00:10
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Q_res posted:I've seen some "fanon" that suggests that Jha'Dur (Deathwalker) was responsible for the Markab plague. I don't think there's anything to suggest it in the actual show though. Given the original plague struck Drafa in ancient times, at best she could have been responsible for reviving it. But there's no clear mechanism through which that could have happened. The Shadows seem more likely, though it's also possible that the disease recurred randomly and it was the Markab response that guaranteed their extinction.
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Jul 14, 2018 18:46
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Wait, really? Am I thinking of that other Markab-ish race? The Hyach, yes. With the Hyach-do as the other species.
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Jul 15, 2018 05:24
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skooma512 posted:I also like they weave it into the story later but using the markab gate as a weapon, because it's not being used by anyone by scavengers now. This is far better than having an entire species wiped out and it not having any kind of consequences later. Well worth watching. Even at its worst, it's better than most of S1 and there are some really interesting structural things JMS does. Everyone just gets distracted by the dropping number of WHAM episodes or misses the degree to which the whole season is about how being a big-drat-hero doesn't necessarily make you a highly qualified and successful political or administrative leader. If you find Sheridan being a bit humbled and massively in over his head, you might not like those bits much, but you're missing not just great Bester bits but almost all the great G'Kar/Londo double-act scenes as well as a few more great moments for most of the remaining cast. Just accept that all the cringeworthy telepath cult stuff was deliberately written as cringeworthy and cult-ish; it just has staging, acting, and writing decisions that work against that and make it feel like someone trying to give us a Christ-like hero and failing (and not someone giving us a Christ-like hero and insisting we should be very frightened). Byron isn't quite as bad as the Nightwatch officials we loved to hate earlier in the series, but he's not all that far removed from them, either. I've watched through four times now and I like S5 better and better with each rewatch.
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Jul 15, 2018 18:49
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Burning_Monk posted:Didn't we also have several dead worlds in Crusade that were said to have been wiped out by the Shadows and their minions? Seems like they really didn't have too many issues wiping out whole civilizations. Yes. And the Drahk plague in Crusade was itself Shadow technology. I presume that the Shadows would have deployed the plague in a number of situations: 1. Someone else answers "what do you want" not as a "return to glory" but "every last stinking X wiped out" and the Shadows oblige with a plague. That's species specific, 100% contagious and 100% fatal. And takes just enough time to kill everyone that they can cause maximum chaos through their response. (Keep in mind that the Shadows would potentially be OK if a race managed to survive the plague.) 2. Plague a race, then offer them a cure. Instant slaves. One presumes that this approach eventually fell out of favor. 3. Technomages have capacities with nanotech that sounds pretty much exactly like how the Drahk plague works. It's possible that in earlier times, individual technomages were capable of plagues similar to that if they so desired, meaning the Shadows would only be indirectly responsible. The advantage of the plague over a planet-killer is that the victims have time to respond (and nothing to lose), and that it can't easily be traced back to the Shadows.
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Jul 18, 2018 03:55
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Darth Freddy posted:Passed a war with out end, part two. Holly poo poo balls I remember none of this besides the comedy relief. Ending was bad rear end. Only question where the hell didthe two Vorlon come from? "We have always been here."
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Jul 25, 2018 03:49
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 06:01 |
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Midjack posted:You need a computer to play it with more than 2 or 3 ships on each side. It was Star Fleet Battles levels of complexity. It's easier than SFB was at the time they were both in release. My understanding is that the SFB reboot is somewhat easier to play. I never needed a computer, but a reasonable-sized conflict (5 ships on a side) can take 5 hours to play through, and it became obvious when I tried to teach the game recently just how old-school it is, and just how much of the old school is needlessly complex. Not unlike SFB, B5W is in many ways "ship damage, the game" as that's the most enjoyable part of it, and you have to put in a fair amount of time to work out the tactics to the point you can enjoy on that basis. I once made an attempt to GM a mini-campaign with six people, online, but only two of them could meet deadlines and the thing ground quickly to a halt. As I think I've mentioned before ITT, I do have an idea for a modified version of the game to be played here in the Let's Play forum, but it'll probably be several years before I have any chance of spending the time necessary and I have no idea if there will be interest. I think the biggest flaw with B5W is that the meaningful combats in the show are tied to story, but the combats in the game are largely instead of story. An ongoing campaign alongside an ongoing story is the only solution I can see. For those who still run B5W at conventions, I had sketched out a scenario to run in such circumstances based upon Endgame; the biggest flaw is that you have to stick potential new players in White Stars, but there's major advantages to having one side run by the GM.
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Jul 30, 2018 00:43
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