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Love this show. If you are new to it, treat the opening episode of S2 as the pilot. It's in medias res as gently caress but really works. Watch S1 as a filler after S3. Rewatch S2 and S3. Then watch S4. Wait a long while. Then watch S5 and try really hard to love it. Watch the movies in release order given the above scheme. Rewatch the whole thing again. That's more or less the order I watched it in, though for the real experience you need to catch some 5-10 min clips from S1 and S2 (while you were changing channels during commercials from a slow/rerun episode of another show you were watching and maybe got stuck). This is the ONE TRUE ORDER. Also, did they ever fix the CGI on the releases we can watch now? If not are there :files: of the non broken stuff like with Bevis and Butthead or are we all just stuck?
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# ¿ Sep 7, 2016 08:15 |
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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 21:07 |
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Grand Fromage posted:Almost every time something comes up in B5 and you think "this seems important I wonder if it'll come up later" the answer is yes. The arc of Babylon 5 is basically contained in this one scene
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# ¿ Sep 15, 2016 00:20 |
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Data Graham posted:Something tells me I have erred in watching this prematurely. That is . . . the worst scene in B5. I'm trying to think of a tryhard argument but that is really the low point. It's actually kinda funny because JMS was a major goon creeper on Claudia. So, him making her do weird sexual stuff and, being a professional actress (who has worked in some adult material) she's 100% willing to do whatever stupid poo poo she's asked. But she isn't going to enjoy it despite how many "extra" instructions the make-up department were given.
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# ¿ Sep 15, 2016 05:56 |
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Angry Salami posted:I've always found it a bit odd that on one hand there's this running theme that Humans are Special because We Build Communities unlike the other species, but on the other hand, Earth itself isn't ever portrayed as particularly tolerant or open-minded. I mean, granted, I guess 'semi-authoritarian democracy' still looks good compared to 'caste-based theocracy' or 'imperialists with some genocide', but even at its best, the Earth Alliance is never really the Federation... It's heavily implied (and in some cases out right stated) that widescale genocide and imperialism is what made the other races more monolithic. The Centauri unified in their genocidal war against the Xorn. The Narns (while more heterogeneous than other races) unified first when the Shadows knocked over their sand castle and then again after Centauri colonization. The Minbari had some nasty wars in their past and were united through Vorlon Imperialism. The non-aligned worlds became a cohesive political block because of the Dilgar. Humans started to go down that more unifying path after the Minbari War, which is why the new Earthgov is so super hosed up. But it had also clearly been broken for a while. The Rush Act used to break the strikers was named after Buddy Rush Limbaugh. So clearly humanity has been in an uncomfortable crypto-fascist state for a long, long time.
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# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 02:01 |
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I loved the idea of technomages because of the whole Arthur C Cuck thing -- but despite them being obviously corrupt (something the books confirmed) they were better underused. Technology as magic only works when it is mysterious and narrative violating. Keeping in mind the whole "B5 is LoTR with the serial numbers filed off", Gandolf as the Holy Spirit broke the seige because of his glory -- the rising sun was an coincidence. Technomages in B5 worked the same way. In Crusade it was more "Mage with a +5 to conjuration stat" which is hella boring.
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# ¿ Dec 11, 2016 07:19 |
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JMS has a problem with "Tell, don't show". When his ideas are good enough, they can carry it. When they aren't . . .
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# ¿ Dec 17, 2016 00:59 |
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MonsieurChoc posted:It's still hypocrisy though. When you have an overwhelming technical advantage, you don't get to talk about fair fights. Why isn't there a Minbari History Month?
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# ¿ Feb 22, 2017 06:24 |
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Minbari pulling a "fine for me but not for thee" is about the most in character move they could possibly make.
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# ¿ Feb 25, 2017 07:54 |
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One of the things I laud B5 for is rolling with the punches of making a serialized TV show. So, your lead has some serious mental health issues, so you need a new lead. Roll with the punches and be better. So, two of your supports got divorced and one of them has some serious mental health issues, roll with the punches and hire a cute red head to distract the crazy man. So, you're getting cancelled a season early. Find a way to make it satisfying. So, you've got a superfluous season, call me Francisco Scaramonga because that third nipple was kinda weird at first but really grows on you after a while as a nice coda. It's good stuff.
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# ¿ Feb 28, 2017 03:18 |
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But redraftings forced by conflict as opposed to enabled by extension makes a better product. That's what I love about B5. It thrives in adversity, that is what makes it strong. quote:
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# ¿ Feb 28, 2017 05:33 |
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e X posted:I mean, the Religious Caste apparently had the means to build an entire fleet of warships and the ability to command them, so the whole fighting/praying/building thing couldn't have been that strict. I always viewed it as a leftover from the Unification. You've got two superpowers fighting and a mismash of everybody else. After Unification, the Warrior Caste got to keep their societal and religious structure in tact as did the Religious Caste, though the Warrior caste needed to pay lip service to the Religious Caste's creed while the Religious Caste needs to keep its military weaker than the Warrior Caste. This suggests that the Warrior Caste won but similar to the American South, the losing Religious Caste was able to frame itself as the "real" Minbari and gain a lot of soft power influence that way. People descended from the "third world" in this case, exist to serve the two (now at least theoretically) unified superpowers. Nobody cares what they believe because cultural and actual imperialism keeps them in check.
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# ¿ Mar 5, 2017 21:43 |
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gourdcaptain posted:
B5 tried really hard. They did not get a lot right, but they tried. They were calling out fascism before it was cool and trying to blend "good TV" with "Soap Opera" in a pioneering way. Premature anti-fascist is a thing.
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# ¿ Mar 6, 2017 03:14 |
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I get that but that also seems . . . normal to me? I know plenty of people who are like "Oops, I only happen to date this particular race" which is somewhere between "mildly skeevy" and "legitimate preference" depending on how they present it. But when they "enrich their chances" by, for example, moving to a country/area where that is the dominant flavor* it gets real weird real fast . . . but so what? My first real impression of the woman who is now my wife was "I bet this chick would let me gently caress her in the rest room of this bar." Ignoble beginnings can lead to great things. So, she's got human-fever. So what? *In my experience this doesn't work proactively. For example, my buddy who loved loving asian women had a blast when he moved to Beijing. Two other friends of mine went to Japan because they wanted to find their perfect lover and instead found a deeper level of loneliness than they had in the States. In my mind these are extreme examples but there are plenty of other ones to fill in the trend line.
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# ¿ Mar 6, 2017 07:10 |
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Timby posted:If you want to give yourself cirrhosis of the liver, do a re-watch of the series starting with season 2 and take a drink every time Sheridan says, "nonononono." You'll be needing a liver transplant by War Without End. I thought of nonono-nono as more of a catch-phrase/call-back. It wasn't necessarily "good" but I can still hear it in my mind damned near two decades after the show ended. It's not quite a "How you doin'" or "All right all right all right" but it's a perfectly passable quirk. For example, I use "X is a series of tubes" all the time. I spend a lot of time talking about microfluidics, so it's not entirely off target and it usually gets a polite chuckle. It'd be a dated joke anywhere else but in Silicon Valley, "The Internet is a series of tubes" will pretty much never not be funny. Like, so much so that in the future Comp Sci majors who know a lot about their field but not a lot about the history of computer science will assume that the pictures of old school vacuum tube computers also incorporated the early internet. Why? Because every old hand still jokes that it's "just a series of tubes". Anyway, long story long, it's a bad joke I use when I need to redirect the conversation. But my manager now cracks up whenever I use that joke, not even because it is almost sort of funny but because it has become anti-humor. All of my clients are different, so I obviously customize my presentation to my clients. At the same time, all my clients are very similar so I end up having a lot of similar conversations. A lazy grab-bag (especially if you talk to a lot of different people regularly as opposed to talking to the same people regularly -- the latter gets Markov-y real quick) is a great thing to have.
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# ¿ Mar 8, 2017 02:43 |
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For Verizon customers, Go90 is streaming B5. Happy watching.
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# ¿ Apr 4, 2017 07:54 |
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I liked the memoirs of that kid from SeaQuest who committed suicide. He lost his virginity to one of those dolphins and talks about it at length and girth.
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# ¿ Oct 20, 2017 17:53 |
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War of the Worlds had two seasons. One was really bad but the other was an awesome grimdark future where 90% of the episodes ended with someone accidentally eating their child. I'm afraid to rewatch it but I remember thinking it was amazing when I was younger.
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# ¿ Oct 20, 2017 18:27 |
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Dark Distorted Mirror basically addressed this in the best way possible. Now that I'm older I can see the sources it's stealing from but in middle school it was loving amazing. I reread it a decade ago and it was still very satisfying, despite recognizing the parts that are derivative.
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# ¿ Oct 21, 2017 01:20 |
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Timby posted:What the gently caress Jonathan Taylor Thomas says, "Welcome to Tool Time -- An Unauthorized Biography"
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# ¿ Oct 21, 2017 01:32 |
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Si
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# ¿ Oct 21, 2017 04:25 |
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If I could draw in 3D, it's just three curved lines. Personally, I think JMS had one good story in him. And it was a loving great one. After that . . . ehhhh. It's trying to be iconic without actually doing anything. The inkwell is dry.
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# ¿ Nov 10, 2017 02:56 |
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I'm not sure I'd equate B5 with the Legendarium. Unless and you only like LoTRs for some strange reason.
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# ¿ Nov 10, 2017 22:01 |
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Are JMS's comics any good? His post b5 work in tv has been very mixed. Sense8 was fun but felt very much like a wachowski vehicle, and the less said about legends of the rangers, etc the better. Did he just have one story in him?
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# ¿ Nov 6, 2019 14:02 |
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What happened in them that was interesting?
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# ¿ Nov 6, 2019 14:38 |
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People mention Foundation influences. B5 is mostly LoTR and LoTR is awesome. But Asimov is interwoven in the show's DNA and blowing up Earth as a sign of galactic transcendence is very Asimov.
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# ¿ Nov 7, 2019 03:39 |
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Worth noting that's how it ended in Asimov.
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# ¿ Nov 7, 2019 03:58 |
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CainFortea posted:Foundation and Earth shows the "end" of earth being the surface is irradiated beyond repair by the spacer device used 25,000 years previously. Someone destroyed the earth but we dont know who or why. It was robots! Someone destroyed the sun, we dont know who and we dont know why -- new JMS mystery. I think it was the Hand.
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# ¿ Nov 7, 2019 05:08 |
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We do. But (especially in Foundation) the characters dont. Our perspective in B5 is much more limited than in Asimov. It ties into JMSs ecumenical view. As long as there is a homeworld we can't truly be part of a galactic society. The greatest prophets of the show have their homeworld destroyed. Why should humanity experience anything less as a sign of enlightenment. Maybe they should have had Garibaldi kick a cat in S2E1 and Sheridan rescue a dog! Now that's hollywood!
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# ¿ Nov 7, 2019 05:24 |
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CainFortea posted:Uh, yea. In the Foundation series we know exactly what caused the earth to become irradiated. It was spacers. Specifically from Solaria. Stopping them is what caused Giskard to stop functioning because he tried to rely on the 0th law, but wasn't advanced enough. And he passed on his emotional control to R. Daneel Olivaw to carry on his work of protecting humanity as a whole. Can you read? Harry didn't know that. Mule didn't Nor did any of the other characters. Hell, the audience didn't until like 20 years later.
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# ¿ Nov 7, 2019 05:33 |
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CainFortea posted:Okay, so I guess the characters in the foundation series that knew don't count because you can't be wrong on the internet. Okay. Fuckoff. God you are dumb. What part of "we (the audience) do (know) but the characters (in the narrative we are discussing) dont (know). Our (the audience) perspective is more limited in b5 than in Asimov." Was hard for you to understand? Are you one of those gifted kids who did well in elementary school and failed put of college?
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# ¿ Nov 7, 2019 05:44 |
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SlothfulCobra posted:Okay, this I don't get. There's only 2-3 races that lose their homeworld in B5, and none of them seem particularly prophetic. G'Kar and Mollari. The heart and soul of the show, one of whom is hailed as a prophet and the other can see the future. As for the word choice I'm open to suggestions. Humanism? Universalism? Catholic? "Promoting or relating to unity" seemed the best choice despite its ecclesiastical baggage.
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# ¿ Nov 7, 2019 06:02 |
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CainFortea posted:Professional goal post mover here I guess. Just because you forgot or never knew how those stories ended is no reason to get snippy. You are really committed to making yourself look like you can't read. It's a unique gimmick for a mostly text based forum but I appreciate the moxy. Shbobdb fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Nov 7, 2019 |
# ¿ Nov 7, 2019 06:05 |
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That seems weird to me. Did the original Key version have B4 come back to the present? I figured Sinclair as Valen was the original end, so Babylon^2. Did Valen only live 20 years in the past? Seems unlikely since he clearly crushed rear end to dust and had a ton of kids
Somebody fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Nov 8, 2019 |
# ¿ Nov 8, 2019 00:13 |
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SlothfulCobra posted:Now you're losing me further, because I'm pretty sure Narn and Centauri Prime don't blow up during the course of the show. They are destroyed. In an unclean way but it fuels transcendence. Clean destruction to couple with clean transcendence is a nice coda.
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# ¿ Nov 8, 2019 02:32 |
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TraderStav posted:Please fix your spoilers! Aww man Sorry! I dont think I actually spoiled much other than mentioning other episodes that happened for you. But still my bad.
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# ¿ Nov 8, 2019 02:33 |
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TraderStav posted:Oh thank God, I thought B4 came back AGAIN. I could have seen a plot where that happened. No harm no foul, a broken spoiler bracket sent me into a panic and thought it was tied into the series finale. It's an interesting counterfactual: how would the show look if Sinclair had stayed on since he is valen. We know him being valen is set from the beginning
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# ¿ Nov 8, 2019 03:58 |
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I really like the image of younger vim and vinegar vorlons responding to Sinclair/Valen going "Understanding is a three edged sword"
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# ¿ Nov 8, 2019 06:55 |
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Jedit posted:No, it isn't. Originally Sinclair was exactly what the Minbari thought he was: a vessel for Valen's soul. Or, if you prefer, he was a psychological twin to Valen to a degree that the Triluminaries couldn't tell the difference. I actually prefer that explanation myself. It's a much better explanation for why humans other than Sinclair have whole or part Minbari souls, why the Minbari just happened to find their greatest leader's soul on the first pick, and why it appears to be the best souls of the Minbari that are no longer being reborn. Minbari souls aren't actually being reborn in humans; the Minbari are just in decline and no longer have people of such stature, and they discover that humans are no different to how Minbari used to be. The people with partial Minbari souls are like Minbari in some ways but not in others. When B^2 was aired at a con it was described as the original ending. Not sure if that was showmanship but if it wasn't, well. Also since souls are real in B5 it's not like you need a scientific explanation. I agree the DNA makes sense (that's why I mentioned valen crushed rear end) but it doesn't need to be DNA. The soul testing device could just test for souls, which are real. Shbobdb fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Nov 8, 2019 |
# ¿ Nov 8, 2019 16:34 |
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I like in the beginning more than most but think of it as B5:muppet babies. Only it is a movie based on everyone knowing each other earlier than they did in a franchise as opposed to a franchise where everyone knows each other earlier than in a movie. Since they move in powerful circles it isn't totally unreasonable but some of the specifics suffer from prequel poisoning.
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# ¿ Nov 9, 2019 16:36 |
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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 21:07 |
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All of B5 feels like a PBS docudrama and should be understood in that light. "Brought to you by the New Babylon Project (a trust of the Edgars corporation), the Anlashok and viewers like you."
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# ¿ Nov 9, 2019 16:43 |