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pentyne posted:Briggs was 90% deaf and had some medical issues but a heart attack in his early 40s is still a shock. Richard Biggs died of a massive aortic aneurysm, not a heart attack. This type of aneurysm can be induced as an after-effect of blunt force trauma, so it's a bit less shocking than a heart attack (which implies an inherent weakness in the heart). Terrible news about Stephen Furst. As a diabetic myself it hits quite hard.
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Jun 18, 2017 09:04
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Pick posted:My parents have been rewatching the series lately--it's one of their favorites--and one thing I noticed is the change with their 4K TV. This is where it seems like I'm about to veer into something critical, but quite the opposite. One of the first things I noticed on their 4K is that TV shows and movies looked a lot more like crappy theater sets than they used to. So when I sat down to watch some B5 with them, I thought, "Oh man, I can only imagine how Babylon 5 is going to look, considering it looked like a live theater stage in fricking 1995." And the answer is, I think it actually looks basically the same, which is good! Most of the shows look worse on the 4K, but Babylon 5 seems to have the stage-set mentality from the get-go, so if anything it works better because it was going for a more authentic presentation from the start. That's a false observation, I think. B5 was made very much in the movie mindset, being framed for 16:9 despite 4:3 being the industry standard and the transmission format. Only the VFX shots were done 4:3 to save cash. If it looks like proscenium arch, that's probably an artefact of the station design: lots of small rooms and narrow corridors. It's a lot more obvious that it's filmed on set in the exteriors, particularly the garden in the central hub and outside the Imperial Palace on Centauri Prime. Also I'm not sure why B5 would look any better or worse on a 4K TV. Unless it's been remastered for HD or UHD - which it hasn't, because the files for the VFX have been lost and it would be too costly to remake them - it's going to look the same as it did brand new.
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Jun 27, 2017 09:03
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Dirty posted:
Dude, the entire United States can be run from a room 50' x 110'. Iron Crowned has expressed more clearly what I was saying. Most 4:3 television would be filmed on 16:9 stock, but the portions outside the 4:3 frame would include rigging, crew etc. because they were never meant to be seen. Everything of major importance in a B5 shot is in the central frame, but unlike other shows they protected the full 16:9 frame.
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Jun 27, 2017 13:36
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Innerguard posted:Yeah, we saw Garibaldi's / Head of Security office a few times and it always looked like the pokiest little hole. I'm pretty sure that there's more than one Medbay on the station as well, but Franklin operates out of the main Medbay.
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Jun 27, 2017 17:02
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The Unlife Aquatic posted:Her solution was pretty amazing, admittedly. I'm glad these nerds never show up again. They sort of do. There's a scene a few episodes later where Delenn is sending a report back to Minbar and says "There have been ... difficulties ... in concluding a trade agreement with the Lumati." It's a throwaway gag, but great fun if you spot it.
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Jun 30, 2017 07:49
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bobkatt013 posted:Unless he decides to make a deal with the devil or go on a long boring pointless walk across america, and then quits halfway through He finished Midnight Nation, though. 
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Jun 30, 2017 09:12
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pentyne posted:Marcus was so over the top it's hard to believe he was supposed to be a secret agent. He was always wearing the elaborate Minbari robes like a space weeaboo and waxing poetically whenever he got the chance. It would make more sense if he was so bad at spycraft they just made him the main face of the group to handling the face to face stuff with the B5 crew. My copy of To Dream In The City of Sorrows is not to hand, but as I recall it's more that Marcus was super driven and angry because of guilt over his brother's death. He joins the Rangers to kick rear end and get revenge, not to skulk about, and that's always buried away behind the flippant veneer.
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Jul 3, 2017 21:47
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pentyne posted:
It's that too. The Ikarrans were straight up fascists, after all. What's interesting, though, is that the Ikarrans developed the weapon that destroyed them as a defensive measure in the last Shadow War. They don't appear to have taken a side in that war and we never find out if they were defending themselves from invasion by servants of the Shadows or the Vorlons. (It doesn't seem likely that it was the Shadows or Vorlons themselves; the defence obviously succeeded, or they wouldn't have been around to wipe themselves out.)
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Jul 5, 2017 01:28
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pentyne posted:I don't think there's a single character who doesn't have to eat a big bowl of poo poo at some point because of their hypocrisy or beliefs. Even Sheridan has his "loving kill this guy" face when he sees the mind wiped killer come back as a new monk. Well, Vir.
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Jul 5, 2017 06:52
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Platonicsolid posted:But the back half is so much better! They needed someone at least ten years older. The difficulty was casting someone in their mid to late 30s who could conceivably be Bester's protege. Bester was meant to be 72 at the time; we can take it that 23rd century medicine would make that the new 60s, but Walter Koenig looked a lot younger than even his actual age of 61. They tried to make it work by casting to the appearance of age instead of throwing in some minimal exposition, and it didn't work.
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Jul 9, 2017 01:36
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:...what?! Really? Yep. Bester's canon date of birth is September 3rd 2189. The Unlife Aquatic posted:One thing I really notice so far is when things get weirder and more surreal JMS's dialogue really improves. Like the bit in All Alone In The Night and Z'ha'dum. Isn't that an example of dialogue getting worse as things get more surreal?
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Jul 9, 2017 10:00
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Narsham posted: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. It's not so much a shift in the dynamic as a shift in the perception of it. G'Kar is the sabre rattling angry alien from a species on the rise, Londo is the drunken old fool from the declining power who also looks a lot like we do. Morden shows us the reverse of that: G'Kar wants justice in the form of revenge, but when Morden asks him what he wants after he genocides the Centauri he has no answer. His dreams aren't big enough for the Shadows because they stop once the perceived wrongs against his people have been avenged. And all Londo has is a wistful longing for the past, but that wish for old glories is enough because when you want to be a conqueror there's no end to that. Neither of them really understands what he wants or where it leads until they're shown, but neither of them changes either.
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Jul 9, 2017 17:18
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Maelstache posted:It's a classic Mephistophilean bargain; a mysterious and powerful stranger shows up and offers you the thing you want most in the universe, in exchange for a terrible price. The twist that JMS put on the idea was essentially making him a sales rep for the forces of evil. Versions of the tale of the Smith and the Devil have been found that predate Classical mythology. The story may be as much as 6000 years old.
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Jul 10, 2017 00:02
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mossyfisk posted:Season 5 has "The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari", that makes it worthwhile alone. It has Sleeping in Light, more importantly.
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Jul 10, 2017 13:40
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Narsham posted: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. You mean Nameless Bridge Officer #2 in the pilot?  (I joke, of course. The character was called Guerra. )
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Jul 10, 2017 20:46
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mossyfisk posted:I always assumed the shadows were a hivemind, but there's not actually any evidence for it. There's some. Morden has a direct physical reaction when Londo nukes the Shadow base. It's also hinted at in how the Shadows control their ships - while the living minds within do the actual piloting, they are still being controlled by the Shadows at a distance.
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Jul 12, 2017 00:52
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Timby posted:And then after he couldn't do that story with Crusade, what was his plan for The Memory of Shadows? Oh, just an Earthforce officer and Galen uncovering an EA conspiracy based around Shadowtech. Telling the second part of a story in a different medium after being unable to tell it in the original medium is not repetition.
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Jul 12, 2017 18:09
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The Unlife Aquatic posted:Just finished S4E3 and You ain't seen nothing yet.
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Jul 15, 2017 10:35
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Dirty posted:Yeah, I remember at the time the networks, from Season 2 onward, decided to keep the last 4-5 episodes of the season, and run them as a lead-in into the new season. Apparently it was to give them a "head start" over other networks, I guess with airing new episodes before everyone else starts. I don't really get American TV, but that's how I understood it at the time. Channel 4 were always as supportive as they could be of B5, airing it in a prime slot and treating it the way most networks would treat Trek. As a result they got at least one intentional namedrop a season - "Commander, message coming in on Channel 4" - so they could if they wished use a clip from the show to advertise their screenings.
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Jul 16, 2017 13:20
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pentyne posted:I'd watch it after they get through 1/3 of season 1 to see if they like the show and want to see the pre-cursor. This is actually how it first aired in the UK. I'm one of the few people who actually watched The Gathering before the series, as it was released on home video before getting to TV. I'd heard about the show from an article in Amiga Format talking about Lightwave and was interested to see how the effects looked. Watching The Gathering first didn't cause me any problems. It has the usual recasting and redesign, and a few things that were dropped because they didn't work (the rings), but it's pretty solid and they made the changes work within the show. Lyta of course turns up later to explain what happened to her, and it's explained that Dr Kyle was recalled to Earth and promoted and more than implied that he was killed in the sabotage of Earthforce One. Laurel Takashima is the only character disappears into thin air because her original purpose was to be the Psi Corps sleeper, but officers get reassigned all the time. The biggest throw is the change to Delenn's appearance. The Minbari were originally intended to be hermaphrodite, but this was hard to get across and they wisely decided to drop it in favour of simplifying the make-up job.
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Jul 29, 2017 09:27
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Dirty posted:But I didn't feel any wiser for watching it. And, in fact, it sort of broke the Vorlons a little bit for me. Suddenly big mysterious and powerful Kosh can be poisoned like a regular person. In Lyta's contact with Kosh she sees the poison tab being applied to her hand, but Kosh's hand would of course not be exposed under any circumstances. There's been speculation that it was actually Kosh's encounter suit that was poisoned, not Kosh himself; he was affected because he's bonded to the organic technology in the same way as he's bonded to his ship. And of course the poison comes from a Minbari. If anyone other than the Shadows knew how to poison a Vorlon it would be them.
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Jul 30, 2017 00:39
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Party Plane Jones posted:There was also that secret symbol easter egg; that was good for a laugh. I'm pretty sure one of the reasons they don't want to remaster for HD is because people would be able to read all the jokes on the arrival boards. One S1 episode has a board indicating the imminent arrival of the Rolling Stones farewell tour.
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Aug 8, 2017 20:42
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Clouseau posted:I liked the original doctor though. I have no idea what was up with Laurel. 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. Dr Kyle was intended to be retained for the series proper, but Johnny Sekka had recurring health problems that forced him first to decline the part and then to retire from acting. B5 was his final role.
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Sep 20, 2017 01:08
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Milky Moor posted:Technically the Vorlons aren't energy beings (that is to say, non-corporeal). The Vorlons have physical forms. No, he didn't. That's how Lyta's mind interpreted Kosh's memory of the event, but Kosh himself had to have been poisoned through his encounter suit. It's the big unexplained plot hole of the pilot. My preferred explanation is that it was actually the encounter suit that was poisoned. Kosh was affected because he was connected to it in the same way as he connected to his ship.
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Sep 20, 2017 08:28
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Pick posted:Babylon 5's relationship with Earth is part of what keeps it grounded as something more than "humans hooray!" On the other hand, The Parliament of Dreams. Other B5-era SF TV: Robocop, VR.5. And of course, if you want to see exactly how much Paramount stole from the B5 playbook there's Dog poo poo Nine.
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Oct 20, 2017 08:25
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Did someone say "90's sci fi" shortly followed by the word "Lexx"? We were talking SF TV that coincided with B5. Only the original TV movies of Lexx did that, the three regular seasons came after B5 ended. Regarding Andromeda, it's a sin how much potential was wasted there in the name of dumbing down. There's an early S1 episode where Hunt finds an old outpost inhabited by the descendants of Navy cadets who have turned their training into a religion. The cadets have weapons of mass destruction, too, and when Hunt shows up they're all "Yay, now we can restore the Commonwealth and if anyone argues we nuke the fucker!" Hunt gives them the expected "You can never build anything good with war, threats and fear" speech and takes their nukes away ... so he can rearm the Andromeda Ascendant. But all the moments like that were gradually stripped away; I stopped watching long before the end, but I understand at one point they took the arm spines off the Nietszcheans "so they wouldn't have to explain them every week".
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Oct 20, 2017 18:36
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Morally Inept parachute account spotted, inform the Mods! Neither could Morally Inept.
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Oct 22, 2017 23:41
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Q_res posted:Supposedly there's still some Shadow influence in there too. I thought the Warlock class were the hybrid Shadow/EF ships from the civil war.
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Nov 13, 2017 14:20
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McCloud posted:I've recently begun rewatching the series again. Been over 15 years since I saw this show, and just gotten to "the point of no return". Londo had to take one of five chances to avoid the fire, and he took the last. Morella mentions that two have already been missed; those are when he made a bargain with Morden and when he requested the aid of the Shadows to destroy the Narn at Gorash 7 in The Long Twilight Struggle. The others are deliberately more ambiguous, and how you interpret them depends on what you think it is that Londo is trying to avoid - his death at the hands of G'Kar, or the downfall of the Centauri Republic. It's the third that makes this unambiguous: "At the last, you must give yourself to your worst fear, knowing it will destroy you." Londo's fear is of his vision, not of dying. He doesn't want to live in a future where the Republic is burnt and fallen, but ultimately the only way to save it is to let G'Kar kill him so that Sheridan could escape and allow Vir to rebuild. Knowing that puts the others into perspective.
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Nov 26, 2017 01:42
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Milky Moor posted:Londo screwed up his first two chances (don't kill Morden, didn't save G'kar's eye) but passed the third (give up his freedom). He had to complete any one of them to avoid the fire or whatever. There's contention about the Morden one where people claim it is Sheridan but the third one is predicated on failing the other two. There's also contention about the eye; it could refer to the Eye worn by the Centauri Emperor.
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Nov 26, 2017 01:43
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Milky Moor posted:The chances are implied to be arranged in chronological order though. They are. The Eye is symbolic of either the Emperor or the Republic. The third chance is in Interludes and Examinations: Londo has forced Refa to suspend hostile actions and removed Shadow access to the Centauri Republic. Morden retaliates by murdering Adira Tyree and blaming it on Refa. After this Londo resumes cooperation with the Shadows and takes the Centauri back to war. That's his lost chance - when he chooses vengeance over the Republic.
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Nov 26, 2017 02:59
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Don't worry, his trolling became obvious when he recommended Agents of poo poo.
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Dec 19, 2017 16:43
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Peter Jurasik is still alive, although Londo was not by this point. Mumy was main credit cast for the entire run, he's definitely central. Of the original S1 main credit cast Andrea Thompson is also still alive.
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Dec 31, 2017 02:17
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hangedman1984 posted:Is it really only 3 episodes? It feels much longer. Because it was. Robin Atkin Downes was in nine episodes, although not all of them as Byron. I'm honestly willing to cut Downes a lot of slack for B5. He was given rush job material that had to live up to what is still one of the strongest sustained arcs in television, it was his first major acting gig, and unbelievably he was barely 21 when he did it.
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Feb 21, 2018 13:15
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hope and vaseline posted:Ditto. ASM and Supreme Power before he lost interest and abandoned it were all good poo poo. Everything else though. He didn't lose interest in Supreme Power, he was ordered to tone it down and quit rather than comply. Rising Stars and Midnight Nation are also well worth a read, so long as you stick to the core issues of the former.
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Feb 22, 2018 13:00
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hope and vaseline posted:Tone it down in a Max series? That's... that was the original point of the brand... Yeah, Marvel wanted to take it out of the MAX line. JMS was mostly OK with dropping the extreme violence and sexual content because by then he'd made his point in those matters, but apparently the editors continued to ask for more - making Hyperion more conventionally heroic, stopping Varda being a psychopath and so on. Basically Straczynski wanted to tell a story about how superheroes would in reality be beholden to no one, paying due respect to Greunwald's maxi-series where the Squadron decided to take over the world. Marvel just wanted Justice League 616.
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Feb 22, 2018 16:03
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Neddy Seagoon posted:There's a few actors doing multiple characters like that, generally referred to as the Babylon 5 Players Kim Strauss, Jonathan Chapman and Mark Hendrickson being the main three. Strauss is best remembered as the leader of the Drazi Green (and the only one of the Players to appear in the show without make-up), Chapman as the Brakiri ambassador to the League, and Hendrickson as practically every Narn in the first two seasons.
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Feb 23, 2018 01:48
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ConfusedUs posted:Haha yeah it's 100% clearly the same dude when you compare Lorien and the Drazi ambassador. I'd just never really thought about it before. That's because the Drazi are one of the most powerful races in the League, along with the Markab, Brakiri and Pak'mara. The Pak'mara get pushed into the background a lot because they don't speak - in fact they were originally meant to be the race destroyed by plague; the Markab got it instead because JMS felt they were more relatable - and the Brakiri were to some great degree a replacement for the Markab as League front men so it wasn't all Drazi all the time.
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Feb 23, 2018 10:44
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fist4jesus posted:Just hit my favorite episode. Here it is, folks. The one person on the planet who liked Grey 17 Is Missing. E: in order to restore sanity, here's a site selling hoodies with an Earthforce uniform print. Jedit fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Feb 24, 2018 |
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Feb 24, 2018 15:47
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Grand Fromage posted:Last time I was in Japan I noticed they still somehow have Zima. I had to get one because of B5. A post/avatar combo for the ages.
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Feb 24, 2018 22:12
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