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Jedit posted:Furlan had only just escaped from the breakup of Yugoslavia. I'm inclined to give her benefit of the doubt for having a strong accent. And Doyle was surprisingly good considering he'd been working as a stockbroker and his acting CV amounted to two walk-on guest appearances and a single two-episode gig. Doyle was practically cast as himself, which helps a bit, though I wouldn't want to strip him of credit for his performance. He (and all of the main cast) make some really good acting choices, but only a few of the performers are extremely consistent across the show's five years. Even the best actors aren't convincing at every moment; movie actors get help in the sense that they have more takes and fewer hours on-screen. Honestly, after watching the "behind the scenes" footage of some of the rehearsal process, it's really telling the differences in acting and performance style between most of the human main-cast versus the aliens. Boxleitner, Doyle, and Christian drop character instantly when a scene is cut and they're constantly joking and laughing and conversing between set-ups. IIRC, we see a little footage of a scene with Furlan, and she stays mostly aloof and in-character. On the far end of the scale, stylistically, is Katsulas, who basically stayed in character for the whole shoot. B5 cast seem to get more heat for their performances with less nuance to the criticisms than the cast of several of the other big genre shows (Star Trek, BSG), and only rarely do the critics provide specifics that indicate they have any training in performance. Whenever a conversation starts along these lines, I am always quick to remind that directors have a great deal to do with the quality of performances that they get, whether it's by contradicting good choices (see Jurasik's story about getting JMS to intervene with a director in a scene with Cartagia where the director insisted he play it wrongly) or providing no guidance or feedback and moving on to the next take. Sometimes, infamously bad performances turn out to be down to the writing and direction. The most famous example that springs to mind is the "No, not the mind probe" line in The Five Doctors. At least one of DVD versions of that story has alternate takes of that scene, and you can compare between two takes they didn't use and the terrible line delivery we got on-screen. Both of the other takes on that line were better, not that it's easy to imagine any performer making it work in the context. The other problem in assessing performances is that sometimes the hardest acting jobs draw no attention at all if done successfully. Not everything can be "To be, or not to be." My favorite B5 example is the elevator scene in Thirdspace, where Jeff Conaway learned the whole scene at speed and delivered it in one take. That's not to take away from the obviously superlative acting also seen on the show, whether in the other elevator scene, or Choate's Zathras. It's just that viewers are more likely to be impressed with Choate's performance than with Forward's performance as Refa or with London's minister/regent.
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Aug 5, 2018 19:49
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SlothfulCobra posted:The acting seems stilted at times, but it's hard to tell how much of that is writing and directing as well as the actor's fault. Hell, there's even a degree of generational separation where the medium of television has changed a lot since then (while it was harkening very strongly towards 60s and 70s shows as well). Checked the script book, and it's even worse than you think. I figured "Bab-ber-lon 5" might have been specified in the script, which would excuse Boxleitner. But the script book has the following: SHERIDAN "Bear-Bylon Five." That's cute. I'd have gone with "Bab-bear-lon Five" myself, so I could imagine having trouble with the line. And yes, I should maybe have the Wolfcastle emote somewhere in that response. As for stilted acting, go back and watch the first few seasons of Star Trek: TNG. Or 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or the original BSG. I partly blame the affectless delivery that real astronauts tended to have in stuff that NASA released, too, as fitting into a mindset of "professional behavior IN SPACE."
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Aug 6, 2018 19:33
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I said come in! posted:My wife is sad that Claudia Christian isn't in season 5. I guess she gave WB the cold shoulder for the season and just outright ignored them when they needed to know if she wanted to be back? There's a longer "three-edged sword" version of the story, but the gist is that she wanted a few episodes off to do a movie but wanted to get paid for them. This would have meant being forced to give raises to the rest of the cast, and the show got S5 via going cheap. Christian's agent decided to play hardball, figuring she was indispensible. By the time it became clear how very wrong that was, both Christian and JMS were pissed at each other and the possibility of working things out became nil. I should probably add that the agent decided to play hardball at the last possible minute, leaving no time to negotiate even if that had been possible.
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Aug 22, 2018 03:32
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I said come in! posted:That's such bullshit. G'Kar would never go along with being a body guard. It makes absolutely no sense. Plus in season 5, Zack Allen learns absolutely nothing from his him in the Night Watch and goes back to being a space nazi. Just because characters on screen say G'Kar is a bodyguard doesn't mean he's a bodyguard. Precisely how many attempts on Londo's life has he foiled? How many had there been before he took the "job" and how many since? How is this "bodyguard" armed? Do either of the two characters seem to take that duty seriously? He is Londo's "bodyguard" because that offers a convenient excuse for him to remain in Londo's presence at all times. (After a certain point that won't work any more, of course.) And it sounds like you're blaming S5 for something we saw in S4: a complex relationship building between the two characters that moves from an alliance of convenience to a real friendship. "I will sign my name... but not on the same page. You understand that..." Granted, the process could have played out a little longer if S4 hadn't gotten somewhat compressed.
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Aug 25, 2018 19:49
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Jedit posted:Timov does return in the Fall of Centauri Prime novels. Unfortunately you're unlikely ever to read them, because they're long out of print and hard to find. Unlike most of the novels, these three are worth tracking down. Garabaldi gets what might be his best line in the final book. Timov and the other wives were deliberately written as famine, pestilence, and death, leaving Londo as war. Timov is, of course, famine.
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Sep 8, 2018 04:38
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Sanguinia posted:I've been marathoning through this show for the first time in almost 20 years since I saw it airing on TV as a wee lad. Even though I didn't fully get it, this show was one of the most formative pieces of fiction for me growing up. Boy does it hold up despite some obvious flaws... until Season 5. Nightwatch got applause. Morden was just trying to make people happy. Londo's guilty of far, far worse than Lochley is. And people who make bad decisions are often self-righteous about it. You can not like whatever you want. But B5 never endorses Lochley any more than it does any other character. (Yes, Delenn and Sheridan can be idealized sometimes.) Part of the point of S5 is to take big-drat-hero Sheridan, who is an inspirational warleader, and show that as an interstellar administrator, he's only so-so and he makes lots of mistakes.
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Sep 19, 2018 00:24
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Sanguinia posted:But drat does it not sit right with me to see a guy who was mentally violated in one of the most horrific ways imaginable and a guy who was tortured nearly to death by the state tuck tail instead of taking her to task on her 'arguments.' Lochley certainly suffers from lack of development. But you're taking a rather black & white position here. Best to avoid modern political examples, but take the American Civil War (or heck, the English Civil War) as an example, and you'll see that afterward, a whole bunch of people who were almost certainly war criminals and traitors of various stripe were granted amnesty in the interests of moving things back to normal instead of having mass executions over a period of years. Garibaldi was indeed violated, yet he tries to recruit telepaths to act as spies for the Interstellar Alliance. Sheridan was tortured, but he also deliberately sacrificed the lives of some Shadow-tech telepaths in order to save lives. More to the point, Garabaldi called Lochley out in public, without knowing what she did during the civil war (if he knew he wouldn't have asked). That was out of line in several ways. Our heroes have grown accustomed to handling things their own way, to making their own decisions, but that's not always right or called for, and it's dangerous when exhibited by the first leaders of this new political organization which could quite easily die on the vine. (What due process does Delenn give to the Drahk on that mothership? How many civilians does she kill? Isn't she a war criminal?) Worth providing this JMS material from the script books, I think: quote:We, as viewers, believe that our characters were right... Lochley took a different position. The key is to present that point of view not as a straw man to be easily knocked down by our favorite characters, but rather as something to which should would have given considerable thought. It can't be arbitrary. If you're going to present that side of the discussion, then to play fair with the characters and the story and the audience there has to be sufficient logic to the position to say, Y'know, she's got a point. I don't agree with her, but I can see how she'd feel that way. So when I had her sit down with Garibaldi, it was essential to present her perspective fairly, and in the long run I think that worked well to define the character in a positive way even though given what we've seen over the past four years she was absolutely on the wrong side. Listening to someone and thinking about what they say isn't the same as agreeing with them. Garibaldi shoots from the hip a lot; he also gives screw-ups second chances, and he respects someone who won't back down when he comes at them hard. And frankly, he and she are fairly similar. All that doubt that Bester kicked up in his head that led him to abandon B5 and betray Sheridan wasn't just a constructed personality or mind-control: those were all decisions he could reasonably have made after seeing someone he used to know "come back from the dead" with a creepy alien whose presence can't be questioned giving him marching orders. Garibaldi's position right before S3 ends is that "you do what you're told because your CO has the moral authority that says 'You may not come back, but the cause is just, and fair, and necessary.'" But what's necessary to make that judgment? And how do you do that when none of the information at your disposal seems trustworthy, or, worse, if you trust information that's pure propaganda? As for G'Kar's "dead, dead, dead" moment: he himself will find a way to forgive by the end of the series, at least in part. Because part of what the show is about is understanding each other, and how imperfect we are, and how repeatedly surprising it is that we get second chances.
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Sep 20, 2018 19:54
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In a follow-up, Lindelhof stressed that the character of John Sheridan is NOT, under any circumstances, Khan. In other news, Mark Wahlberg was seen testing uniforms that expose a significant amount of his chest, and Walter Koenig has refused to discuss whether Bester will experience being mind controlled. (You can tell its a fake because Warner Brothers doesn't want to spend a dime on B5 and all the mentioned people cost top dollar.)
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Oct 1, 2018 15:02
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Timby posted:That's what Straczynski claims, but I've never found that to be particularly plausible, just as much as I find it incredibly implausible that he claims to have never, ever seen Homicide: Life on the Street at the time, yet somehow they mimicked the stuttering jump cut to a T (might not have been that episode, I forget, but it happened). Really? I can't look up a random episode in the Script Book, but the Intersections script doesn't mention such a jump cut if that's where it happened, and Straczynski only directed "Sleeping in Light" which means that everyone involved in the actual filming could have seen Homicide. And of course, while he was part of editing each episode, he wasn't alone in the room there, either. I don't understand the equation of "the shot wasn't a coincidence" and "JMS must have seen Homicide, its source." Putting Intersections at the end of S4 would be comparable to the end of S3 (our main character's fate is the cliffhanger), and it would set up the S5 arc conclusion to happen in the first quarter of the final season, which fits the "now what?" structure of the bits of S5 which weren't invented to plug a gap.
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Nov 4, 2018 16:49
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Doctor Zero posted:While he is guilty of that sort of thing in general he’s very open about being hugely influenced by Tolkien. During production it must have been frustrating. Either a sci-fi show is run by someone who has avoided fantasy and sci-fi (and often, their ignorance and contempt show through), or it's operated by a fan. We know JMS was the latter, so would expect a show to have lots of little in-references and influences all over the place. He has his idea and then works ten years to get it in the air. In the process, he faces lots of execs who have no knowledge of sci-fi and insist that there's only room for Star Trek on TV. They also want to air something "original" but also something where there's a long precedent of this kind of show going well (ie something extremely derivative). Finally, he gets the series placed, is in production, hears about DS9 (which regardless of all the other things, makes B5 look like it's derivative of Star Trek), reads comments on the show, and runs into lots of other fans recognizing the operational DNA of the series through conscious or unconscious influence. And of course, some people use that as a stick ("JMS claimed it would be original but it's massively derivative") while others see it as a good thing. When the show was on, I can totally understand being hypersensitive about the whole "influence"/"clever in-reference"/"derivative" thing. In the 1990's, being pigeon-holed as "just like LotR" wasn't very good; post-Peter Jackson, that reads very differently. By 2002, JMS was writing Legend of the Rangers during the success of the films and clearly decided to have the series abbreviation be LotR and take advantage of the similarities and references. In 1994, that would have been a much harder sell.
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Nov 4, 2018 19:38
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Grand Fromage posted:Then again there are other episodes that suggest the show takes place across the entire Milky Way. Like all TV scifi series, it's not entirely consistent about space geography, even with as much planning as there was behind B5. If it's the scene I'm thinking of, then it makes sense Morden would be using a map that shows more stuff than all the active races are aware of. And if memory serves, they're dividing the galaxy up, which isn't quite the same thing as claiming that all of territory is inhabited or occupied right then and there.
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Nov 8, 2018 03:39
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MrL_JaKiri posted:It's conspiracy theory. You don't get magically better writing - about unrelated topics - because you read a treatment for another programme. Especially when it's the executives who saw the treatment and are the "vector" for its influence. They didn't meddle to a specific-enough point to reshape the stories on TNG, beyond dumping Roddenberry, and JMS didn't give them much to steal on the level of individual plots. For DS9, though, the situation is far more plausible. Paramount execs read the B5 treatment, ask themselves why JMS should get a piece of the profits when they own a perfectly good sci-fi franchise already, turn him down, and then call in the Trek showrunners and ask if they ever thought about a "Casablanca in Space" concept before. "We've had a brilliant idea!" The Trek folks come back with a treatment, and the execs make comments like "you should have a shapeshifter in the show" or "religion should play more of a part." After the fact, JMS will be complaining bitterly, while the DS9 folks can honestly say that they never saw or even heard about the B5 treatment, because none of those executives are participating in that conversation and they're the thieves if anyone was. Knowing how a certain kind of executive can be, it's quite possible that they managed to convince themselves that all their great ideas were developed independently because they forgot JMS' name the instant he walked out the door with a "no."
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Nov 9, 2018 16:23
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Lemniscate Blue posted:I haven't checked this myself, but this is allegedly foreshadowed all the way back in The Gathering, where an Earthforce access code is used to let the would-be assassin do something or other, and it's Takashima's code or hand or whatever in the shot. Yes, it's her code. Additionally, she's repeatedly said to play strictly "by the book" but we find out she has a secret coffee plant in the garden area, which is against regs. These were the initial clues. Talia would presumably have gotten triggered and then saved by the recording Kosh and the VCR made of her, if she hadn't been escape-hatched.
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Nov 17, 2018 01:45
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Doctor Zero posted:(Pat Tallman left under similar circumstances- asking for too much money and thinking her character irreplaceable- but that was all her agents fault and not hers so JMS left the door open. Lesson - do not piss off JMS is you ever want to work with him again) That's not what Tallman says (with JMS confirming): Tallman's account is that one of the Warners execs hit on her and when she turned him down, he intervened to ensure Tallman got an offer of scale (minimum wage) with a 24-hour window to accept or decline. (This would have been $1200 per episode, vs the $5000 per episode rate offered the performers for the pilot.) Then JMS was told that Tallman asked for $10,000 per episode. Tallman tried to call JMS but he was at an event and unavailable (the exec in charge of negotiating the contract knew this). She did communicate with JMS afterward, shared her bit of the story, and when Andrea Thompson said she was planning to quit JMS offered Tallman a guest star spot immediately (bypassing the Warner executives) and she accepted. Note that according to Tallman's account, Jerry Doyle and Andrea were engaged at this point, Andrea left because she wasn't getting the storylines she wanted and had other offers, and the parting was amicable.
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Nov 18, 2018 00:22
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Midjack posted:I don't doubt you, but do you have a source for that? I had thought that Netter or JMS were the source of the 4:3 CG claim but it's been a while since I went mining that deeply. When Amazon started streaming JMS posted on his Twitter account that Warners still had the original film master negatives the production was required to submit, and that they could cheaply strike a new transfer at 4:3 which would be trivial to upgrade to HD quality for a Bluray release. I'm unaware of any statement about CGI at higher than broadcast standard. I do know that there's been some ambiguity about the "CGI is lost" statement as to the best of my recollection, everything was turned over to Warner Brothers who pretty much want nothing to do with the show and thus may be sitting on the CGI.
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Nov 19, 2018 05:51
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:As I get into season two, it’s striking me more and more that G’Kar being some kind of womanizer is at odds with the rest of his character. He seems more like he should be awkward or intimidated by women rather than doing libertine Benny Hill poo poo in his office with the other ambassador out at the desk. Evidently Katsulas in the costume drew women's interest in a way he didn't out of the costume. I don't see why the same couldn't be true in-setting. We never see him sleeping with another Narn, either. Also, I don't know why you think G'Kar and awkwardness have anything to do with one another. Although he has been taken aback fairly frequently.
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Nov 20, 2018 20:27
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McSpanky posted:There's also the very first monorail shot with Ivanova in it where something hosed up with the chroma key and her uniform turned deep green with a black center panel, they couldn't even spring for half a minute of color correction? Deep Space Nine had a budget of about $1.5 million per episode. B5 had a budget of $800,000 per episode. So no, they probably couldn't spring for half a minute of color correction. Warners has not wanted to spend an extra dime on the show for VHS or DVD or streaming, from what I've seen.
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Nov 26, 2018 01:40
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Platonicsolid posted:Pretty sure that was the original treatment, or at least the concept at some point in drafting. The cycle would be have been closed at the end of the series, when Sinclair got sent back to be Valen. Not in the original plan. Spoilers for the plan of a TV show that got abandoned entirely: Originally, Sinclair would have been bringing B4 twenty years into the future to help in the war against almost everyone, after the Minbari warrior caste destroy Babylon 5 following the destruction of a massive Vorlon ship by Shadowmen and Centauri which got blamed on Earth. This would have been part of a spinoff Babylon Prime series that resolves the war and ends with Sinclair, alone, fishing. Most of the time, I'm just grateful we didn't get anything near to that in the actual show. Every so often, I find myself wondering if Ron Moore read that treatment and liked how it ended.
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Nov 30, 2018 01:31
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:That makes the line where Sheridan has to ask what kind of sensor system Babylon 5 is using a bit strange, then. The fact that he asks about the hardware B5 has implies that the EA has the capability to detect them and it's a matter of tech. Otherwise, you'd think he'd just be mystified that they can detect them at all. In Season 4, there's mention made of the Agamemnon being able to track Sheridan's forces with their sensors, too. "Track" is different from "lock-on." Yes, they can detect a huge ship and a bunch of fighters. The Minbari jamming tech isn't a cloaking device like in Star Trek. Their weapons systems cannot lock-on to Minbari ships or fighters. The Agamemnon was tracking Sheridan's forces (hey, they are that direction) and General Lefcourt is monitoring the situation in Endgame, but neither refers to locking weapons systems onto Minbari ships. In the Babylon 5 Wars game, which was at least hypothetically canon, the Minbari jammers have the effect of breaking lock-on, which doubles the effect range between a firing ship and the Minbari target. Shooting from right on top of the ship is still likely to lead to hits. The problem is that the Minbari fleet is built to take you apart from long range and you can't shoot back from that far away. (The fighters also have jammers, which make them nearly impossible to shoot down.)
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Dec 11, 2018 20:08
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Seemlar posted:At the time of the season 4 incident where Earth ships are started to engage White Stars and can detect and lock onto them with ease, Earth had been working with the Shadows for a considerable amount of time - if they hadn't already figured out Minbari stealth technology on their own before then, I always assumed the Shadows would have quietly handed over the ability to do it. B5 Wars cheated the question by having the White Stars be underpowered (which is what forced Ivanova to shut down the jump engines to put full power to the weapons that one time); fighting alongside the non-loyalist Earthforce Destroyers, the White Stars would shut down their jammers for more weapons power and to try to draw fire away from the larger ships. I'm unsure if the Shadows would have handed that technology over in a form usable by non-Shadow-tech ships. The truncated plot of Crusade implies that Earth was doing research into Shadow tech, which implies the Shadows didn't just explain things or hand over technology themselves. It's unclear in the Shadow Omega fight whether the ships could lock on or not, as we never get their perspective on the battle.
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Dec 12, 2018 20:34
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:Lots of people don’t actually mind, which is a great detail I’m glad the show got right. Like the political officer lady, who seems kind of dumb but is totally fine doing whatever and assumes everyone else is just like her. Let's just say that there have been multiple examples since then of people using precisely that kind of language in precisely those kinds of contexts, and almost certainly with the same cynicism behind it all. As for the sleeping with the commander thing, some of the framing may have aged poorly, but I otherwise don't agree. First, there's Plotac 75's point about seducing Sheridan as a point of control: she was sent to ensure Clark's control of the station, after all, and Sheridan is still in his "safe on paper" stage but with the station as a whole both far from Clark's direct control and dangerously rife with aliens and alien thinking. More to the point, though, the underlying story of the woman who sleeps her way into a position is actually deep cover for sexually-exploitative men. Take the old canard of the talentless actor who "slept her way" into a movie role. The role wasn't given her by some magical sex osmosis, but by a powerful man (let's say a male executive) in a position of authority whose job is presumably not to ensure that women who sleep with him get cast, but rather that the best actor for the job is cast. So it's the man who didn't do his drat job. Worse, as we're now seeing increasingly come to light, the equation isn't "innocent male executive gets bushwacked by hot woman into casting her" so much as "abusive male executive demands women he finds hot sleep with him before he will cast them, and ruins them if they turn him down." Musante doesn't stand to gain money or power from sleeping with Sheridan. She's either doing what the men who put her in her current position expect of her, in the sense that she was sent to seduce and control Sheridan, or what they expected of her as a quid pro quo for granting her a position of authority. If she's prostituting herself here, her pimp is taking all of the money for himself. I have to say, her frustration the following morning hints that she didn't consider this particular part of her job to be especially distasteful and is annoyed that she wasn't able to "seal the deal."
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Dec 20, 2018 20:31
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Vavrek posted:She never seemed particularly dumb, just kind of confused/exasperated that Sheridan wasn't on board. When she's delivering the party line, she's doing the dumb act, but it's clearly an act and she reveals it to be so to both Sheridan and Zack. One of the really interesting things to notice in that episode is that her benevolent "one big happy planet" rhetoric doesn't make its way into the Nightwatch meeting. So there's the big lie she tells to people who aren't "on side" and then the more revealing (if not truthful) line of rhetoric for those already trusted.
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Dec 21, 2018 01:08
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Just as an FYI, that elevator screen was all G'Kar adlibbing. The script called for G'Kar to be dour and serious the entire scene, and Katsulas took the scene to a logical conclusion instead - a colossal cosmic joke The script doesn't call for anything at all, beyond saying that G'Kar "nods uncommittally" after Londo suggests they could force their way out through the ceiling, and that he hums to himself after the "up yours. Die" lines. JMS himself describes the scene as-written as presenting G'Kar with a "fairly straight-forward and Zen-like" attitude, "quietly content and happy." Katsulas was absolutely the one to find this interpretation, but what was on the page didn't actively conflict with his take. He just knew precisely how far to go. I'll also note (not to be contrary to Kashia) that the difference between scenery-chewing and the elevator scene, from an actor's standpoint, is that one performance doesn't work and the other does. Scenery-chewing isn't a flaw, it's the consequence of taking performance risks that don't pan out. Certainly, it can be a sign of a bad or uncaring actor, but it's at least as likely that the performer thinks that a particular set of lines or a whole characterization is flawed and that the only way to salvage the situation is to take bigger performative risks. Making a TV series isn't a puzzle where you can simply not do wrong things, it's a series of choices which inevitably involve trade-offs and often the choices that lead to the biggest potential flaws also lead to the greatest accomplishments. On balance, B5's risk-to-reward ratio involves fairly high risks and comparably high rewards, especially given the many constraints under which the show was made.
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Jan 7, 2019 20:36
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Bell_ posted:It boggles my mind how different the Centauri arc would have gone if they needed Vir to take Londo's place around the end of season 2. Londo has to get to his War without End death, so he's recalled to Centauri Prime and sets Vir up as his replacement. Vir gets instructions through intermediaries or off-screen conversations. And JMS probably desperately tries to get Jurasik to come back for S4. Failing that, Cartagia sends Londo off to some remote post and it's Vir and G'Kar trying to fix things.
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Jan 30, 2019 05:49
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neongrey posted:I'm still convinced the marcus thing was intended to be creepy and hosed up and will loudly yell DEATH OF THE AUTHOR at anyone who tries to suggest otherwise to me. As a horror story, I don't mind it. JMS is on record as saying that it was meant to be ambiguous, so no need to invoke death of the author. That said, it is ambiguous whether JMS registers quite how creepy that short story is. I mean, the story works much better if you add a frame narrative at the end of Marcus dying in the tube and make the whole thing an extended hallucination. That's rarely a good sign if your story is supposed to be leading to the "is this terrible or OK" conversation afterward. I choose to read the story as a commentary on the "nice guy" mythology that Marcus, as a character, strengthens in potentially unintended and disturbing ways. If JMS can himself be fit into that mythology, I'd just as soon not know.
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Feb 1, 2019 21:49
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I just watched And the Sky Full of Stars because it was brought up here, and (a) I'm glad Koenig got a recurring role and not that one-off and (b) Delenn used to be a lot more sinister in the first season. I feel she really loses that edge by the end, and not just because of the S1->S2 transformation. You're forgetting Lines of Communication in S4. "END THIS." She also has that conversation with Sheridan where she has to go away because she needs to do things she doesn't want to do with him around, which implies that she still has that edge and just doesn't want him to see it.
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Feb 2, 2019 19:39
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ThingOne posted:It felt like that entire episode existed just to give us the scene with Londo and G'Kar in the elevator because there wasn't much to it beyond that. It's kind of heartbreaking how much Londo seems to value Lennier as a friend while Lennier can barely stand him. Lennier may have a point that saving Londo could lead to more bad things in the future. But it's also true that Londo will be in a position to reciprocate. Indeed, if one includes both Lennier and Delenn, saving Londo pays off with interest. Part of Londo's tragedy is that he pushes away all of his friends in the process of becoming who he becomes. But he is generous to them when he can, as that happens. There is no tragedy in someone who sacrifices what he perceives to be of no value to achieve ends that may not be as virtuous as he believes. Giving up everything that's truly of value in order to get what you deserve rarely ends well.
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Feb 3, 2019 06:00
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McSpanky posted:Is this a "WB doesn't give a poo poo about B5" thing? Worse: the PTEN thing was operated by a different arm of WB than normally handles TV stuff (the regular arm was working on the WB network), so the success of any PTEN show is a slap in the face of the executives who still run the TV side of things. Kung Fu and Time TRAX aren't successes, really, so B5 is the one threat. As a result, the corp as a whole wants to squeeze every penny from the show without making any additional investment or doing anything to raise its profile. Top decision-makers stood to lose power and influence if the show became the equivalent of Star Trek for Paramount (not that they've handled that property well in recent times).
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Feb 12, 2019 16:45
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Son of Sam-I-Am posted:Who is this executive and what is his most treasured dream that we can make come true, in exchange for retiring? There's a surprising number of execs at WB who have been with the company since the early 90s; most of them arrived as VPs and moved up from there. If anybody wants to grant a large number of treasured dreams all at once, I wouldn't object. One can't discount the possibility that all the internal-political reasons for an exec to hate B5 must be mixed with JMS' unique ways of dealing with people. If I were a betting man, I'd look either to the people who were in marketing (who did little to help B5 and who may have been in communication with JMS to get offended) or whoever the exec was who harassed Pat Tallman (not that he has been identified).
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Feb 13, 2019 19:39
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Doctor Zero posted:I always loved Tomalok. Now, when I see those episodes I find that I cannot make myself NOT think that it's actually G'kar in some elaborate disguise. Which just makes me love the character more. In some better reality, there was a DS9 spin-off featuring Bashir, Garek, and Tomalok as secret agents. Every so often, Avery Brooks appears playing a detective who insists he's never heard of this Sisko fellow.
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Mar 16, 2019 00:03
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McSpanky posted:I looked into this and there was exactly one Paramount exec who pitched the idea of a third Trek series to Berman and Piller, and it was just that: the idea of "hey, let's keep milking this cow and make a third series". All the details came from them, elaborated from initial notes they developed with Roddenberry before he croaked. That exec wasn't even around when JMS made his pitch to Paramount in the late 80s, he was president of NBC's Entertainment Division and was busy making them king of the networks. I'm not saying it was anything more than a coincidence, but I'm also not saying that it is inconceivable that one or more of the people pitched B5 might have had conversations with other people besides the DS9 creators, who in turn had conversations with them about B5. Remember that B5 was getting pitched at a time where the commonplace wisdom was that a non-Trek sci-fi show was no longer viable. Does anyone really think that nobody who had heard about the pitch would mention it to any of the people working on Trek? That said, it's ludicrous to think that Berman and Piller sat down and said "let's reconstruct every single detail we heard about B5 in our own show." What is not so ludicrous is the possibility that they received suggestions from the network about tweaks or changes to make in the show that were in part motivated by a desire to make B5 look like a cheap knockoff. Barring a TNT/Crusade-style meltdown, no creative team is going to itemize the list of minor changes they may have made during the process because it was easier giving in to some ill-informed executive on a minor point than to fight. In this case, it's possible that one or more of those ill-informed executives might have known something Berman and Piller didn't.
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Apr 14, 2019 19:30
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Anyone expecting anyone in show business to go on the record saying "yeah, we ripped this off" has way too high evidentiary standards. You couldn't get anyone to admit that either of Rhapsody Rabbit and The Cat Concerto were ripped off from each other, and there the similarities were even closer. Some of the overlaps have obvious explanations, like the shapeshifting element in the B5 pilot and DS9. "Morphing" CGI had just been developed and that encouraged everyone with a genre show to propose using it: anyone hungry for Manimal? As mllaneza notes, DS9 seems to have leaned in B5's direction once they started airing. Certainly the shift away from the most distinctive difference (Bajor and matters relating to it) in favor of a war smacks of series one-upsmanship.
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Apr 15, 2019 15:57
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The Unlife Aquatic posted:I think it's a little bit of both. I admit this is pure supposition but I feel like he started writing Lennier this particular way unconsciously, and somewhere along the line he realized what he was doing. I feel like his whole conversation with Dead Morden doesn't work otherwise. Mumy came to JMS at some point (I think in S2) and said "I think Lennier is in love with Delenn" and JMS said "you really want the character to go that way? OK." Mumy was not happy about where that story took him in S5 and my impression is that he's still peeved with JMS; JMS in turn still seems annoyed that Mumy slipped a few easter-eggy references to his band into the show.
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May 2, 2019 04:37
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Son of Sam-I-Am posted:It's (half of) season 1 of what was supposed to be another planned-out show. I think it's at least as good as the equivalent portion of B5 - that is, it'd likely improve on a rewatch with the hypothetical full series. It has a lot of promise, and besides Gary Cole I also liked Galen, even though I can't remember any other characters. If you start with what were supposed to be the first episodes, it's immensely better out of the gate than B5 S1. Then the network trolling starts up and it gets worse over time. Those episodes are more fun if you look up details on the notes they were getting because JMS basically takes those notes and executes some of them ironically. His response to the "add more alien sex" note is unforgettable.
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May 2, 2019 15:55
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Polaron posted:The jellyfish? Yes. (Spoilers!) It could at least have bought them a drink, first. Bonus points for the scene subtly mocking Star Trek TNG.
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May 4, 2019 15:44
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Absurd Alhazred posted:
Spoiler response (Intersections and ST:TNG Chain of Command): Sheridan has arguably cracked already in the following episode. While Picard says he could see a fifth light, Sheridan is hallucinating having escaped from imprisonment and being back on B5 having a conversation with Franklin. And the interrogator says he's close to giving them what they want. Look at the expression on Sheridan's face during the breakout when he kills a guard and tell me he's not unstable. The show does gloss over his recovery after that, although it could be argued that his resolution to go with the gambit he goes with is strengthened by the experience. Then again, Picard is back to normal in his next episode, too.
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May 14, 2019 18:57
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Absurd Alhazred posted:One of the things I think is a shame about the compressed Season 4 is the way-too-abrupt change of the dynamic between Londo and G'kar. It should have taken way longer for them to transition from enemies to enemies of the same enemy to sharing jokes with each other. I'm willing to let the "...not on the same page..." B-plot do a lot of the heavy lifting there. The initial steps happened on-screen. S5's interminable promos on TNT tended to repeat a line about our heros winning the war, but can they "win the peace," which is a nice way to look at S5. Sheridan was a great war-leader, but can he meet the challenges of leading people in peacetime? I also find myself being more and more forgiving of it as a final season as more and more shows arrive at unsatisfying final seasons that don't take any time to breathe.
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May 17, 2019 16:08
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Habibi posted:Yeah, I enjoyed it. Only qualm was the "capital F-fantasy" bit, which I think took some liberties. It was good. I objected more to misspelling Richard Bigg's name as "Briggs," than the science fantasy distinction, which was really driven by the author's belief that the show was both depicting the world we live in and yet simplifying or denying it. It did make me realize that the whole B5 series could be compared to the Millennium Falcon: she may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts.
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Jun 14, 2019 20:16
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Noooo, no no no no... he'll just put on that big ol' goofy grin, and give you some folksy advice his dad gave him. "Never start a game, but always finish it."
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Jun 19, 2019 06:52
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Jedit posted:S1E2: Soul Hunter The episode has aged fine, it's just that TV sci-fi has moved so far away from "Star Trek or nothing" that having an episode that declares "we aren't Star Trek" seems pointless. Sheppard's very deliberately playing a character who barely knows the language he's using for part of the episode, and he's given the thankless task of playing a psychotic alien, meaning he has to get into a foreign head-space and then deviate from that space. I agree that the episode doesn't do Franklin any favors, although as it turns out the first impression of him as an arrogant perfectionist is going to be spot on. The plot contrivance are indeed huge (can we get some guards on the alien's ship after he escapes, please?) but I now consider it classic early B5 to see an episode which bobbles the action part while the underlying philosophy and ontology are fascinating and expansive. We don't precisely get confirmation that souls exist at the end of the episode, but ask yourself how you respond to the scene where Delenn releases whatever it is that the Soul Hunter caught. Is she releasing souls to go on to their next lives? Freeing artificial duplicates of living beings from an existence dominated by the terror of their original's final moments? Murdering people? The way the scene is shot and framed, the sound Delenn makes, the sound effects, all contribute to a general sense of what is happening while giving us no obvious answers. Comment on the S1 spoiler above: I think Delenn was already pretty certain, after what she saw at the Line, but there's a difference between an abstract conviction that someone is your savior and actually having him save your soul. There's probably a resonance here with the story she tells about getting lost and ending up in a temple in a later season.
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Jul 6, 2019 01:40
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