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Noxville posted:I don't think Grace Park is much of an actress but she's still light years ahead of the woman in the B5 pilot. The "Boom goes the Dynamite" guy is light years ahead of the woman in the B5 pilot. It's like they just pulled some random person off the street and threw them into a TV show.
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| # ¿ Jun 22, 2010 18:16 |
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| # ¿ May 24, 2013 00:19 |
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CommunistMojo posted:Marcus is what goons strive to be and I seriously hated that character from the moment he was introduced and he drat near ruined any episode he was in for me. The exception to that statement of course is when G'Kar was prominent in that episode and it was saved. Marcus and Franklin being fake gay married was the pinnacle of comedy on B5. Of course, the bar is set really, really low, with the Penn and Teller episode being one of the comedy low points (and low points in general).
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| # ¿ Jun 28, 2010 04:36 |
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bobkatt013 posted:You really found an episode written by Neil Gaiman one of the series low points? I found it to be pretty good and have some nioce forshadowing for the rest of the series. It is also way better then the Grey 17 is missing or most of the telepath arc. The whole Reebo and Zooty bits were TERRIBLE. The rest of the episode was okay (I actually liked it quite a bit), but any scene with Penn and Teller was brutal. I can't tell if they thought that was supposed to be funny, or if it was supposed to be ironically funny because they were so terrible. Palleon fucked around with this message at Jun 28, 2010 around 13:40 |
| # ¿ Jun 28, 2010 13:29 |
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:I would've liked the Rebo and Zooty episode a whole lot more if they'd cast anyone besides Penn & Teller, mostly because Penn Jillette was the voice of Comedy Central when they cancelled the greatest show in the history of television. Chocolate News?
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| # ¿ Jun 28, 2010 15:10 |
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So what you're saying is, Rebo and Zooty are the Carlos Mencia and Jeff Dunham of the future.
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| # ¿ Jun 28, 2010 20:12 |
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Kind of unrelated, but I have been watching Chuck for the first time to try to catch up for the new season, and just saw Bruce Boxlietner show up, and he has aged surprisingly well.
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| # ¿ Jul 6, 2010 16:16 |
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Riso posted:I say Delenn has the worst acting in the show. I try to skip any parts with her. She's fine unless she has to show emotion, then it gets really awkward really fast. Ivanova is a pretty bad actress too. Honestly, outside of Londo and G'Kar, most of the cast is a trainwreck, but the writing is good enough that you can forgive.
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| # ¿ Jul 6, 2010 20:24 |
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Timby posted:I'll fully admit that part of it may well be the voice. Boxleitner's voice has this raspy Michael Douglas-esque tone that grates on me. Bruce Boxleitner has the greatest action hero voice in the world.
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| # ¿ Jul 8, 2010 03:16 |
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DAS Super! posted:I'm going through the series again...and I keep wonder how deep the Shadow-earth connection went and how was the psi-core involved. Like was the psi core supposed to be the telepath blockers for the shadows? I was under the impression that the Psi-Corp wanted power, the Shadows recognized this and influenced them, not only to isolate Earth, but also because it eliminated large numbers of telepaths that would be their potential enemies, and gave them a ton of pilots for their ships, so they killed three birds with one stone. I think it's heavily implied that the Psi-Corp were the ones pulling the strings and controlled by the Shadows, and not Clark et al., he was just a convenient puppet. Edit: That is, the Psi-Corps were the ones pulling the strings on Earth, I know that last sentence sounds strange. Palleon fucked around with this message at Jul 14, 2010 around 21:27 |
| # ¿ Jul 14, 2010 21:23 |
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Daimo posted:I think JMS favours green. That episode was blatently an analogy for ourselves squabbling over race colour or creed etc. To be fair though, he was the second worst character on the show next to Byron.
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| # ¿ Aug 23, 2010 14:50 |
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Daimo posted:JMS? Keffler or whoever that pilot was that was shoehorned into season 2 then only got back to the station by following a shadow ship.
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| # ¿ Aug 23, 2010 15:58 |
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Milky Moor posted:So, I'm curious, I'm trying to decide between starting with Midnight on the Firing Line or The Gathering when I watch the series with my girlfriend. I don't suppose this thread could reach a consensus? I'm tempted to start with The Gathering, because it introduces a few things and that it makes Season 1 seem much better. The only reason to watch the Gathering is to put the rest of the bad acting in the series in perspective. "Yes, I know that everyone but Londo and G'Kar are terrible actors, and Sinclair looks stoned out of his mind, but compared to the woman who was replaced by Ivanova, they're practically all Emmy-worthy by comparison".
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| # ¿ Aug 31, 2010 04:35 |
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MrL_JaKiri posted:And he meant Everett McGill not Bruce McGill, but couldn't remember his first name The more people from Animal House they could bring on the show, the better.
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| # ¿ Aug 31, 2010 17:15 |
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MrL_JaKiri posted:The Gathering has some significant production changes (eg Delenn was an androgyne in The Gathering, definitely female in the series proper) that means that you have to readapt to a lot of stuff if you watch it first and everything significant that's covered is either mentioned or rehashed later. They also managed to have an even worse actor play the Ivanova equivilent. Honestly if I had started watching B5 with The Gathering I don't think I would have continued, it was high school play bad (although I do feel, and maybe it's not the popular opinion, that the acting on the show is generally atrotious except for Londo/G'Kar, and it's the story that saves it).
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| # ¿ Feb 1, 2011 15:45 |
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MrL_JaKiri posted:That is the popular opinion, I'd say, apart from some people loving the JS shouty bits. I actually liked Sheridan, the two clear weak links in terms of acting ability were Ivanova and Delenn. Ivanova just delivered everything so stiffly, and her big speech at the end was just dreadful, worse than phoning it in. Delenn on the other hand could be okay for her everyday lines, but could not show emotion at all. Her "angry" and "sad" emotions were particularly jarring, because it's mostly her just standing there with her mouth open gasping, and again, all of her big dramatic speeches had wierd timing and didn't seem genuine to me. Meanwhile, guys who are only around for a bit like Marcus and Morden hit it out of the park.
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| # ¿ Feb 1, 2011 17:45 |
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MrL_JaKiri posted:I didn't like her big dramatic lines (like the "he is behind me" line), but I think she does emotion well. She certainly sells it in Sleeping in Light. It seemed to me like she was stage acting (especially in Sleeping in Light), which looks weird when you're watching it on TV. Maybe that's a stylistic choice that they made, a few other characters seemed like they were acting out a play more than a TV show. They would wildly over-gesticulate and over-exaggerate other motions like they had to make sure that you could see what was going on even in the back.
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| # ¿ Feb 1, 2011 18:06 |
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Miss Fats posted:That's funny. That's one of my favorite scenes/speeches in the entire show. Loved the words, loved the timing of that scene, hated the delivery.
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| # ¿ Feb 1, 2011 19:23 |
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You get to balance B5's severe underacting with Avery Brook's severe overacting. I guess when combined, you get perfect acting!
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| # ¿ Feb 1, 2011 21:59 |
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Lyta (should have added that to the list) She also played a corpse in Castle this season (a perfect use of her acting ability).
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| # ¿ Feb 2, 2011 14:50 |
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Habibi posted:Byron was a prat, but stealing those secrets and holding them ransom doesn't strike me as a completely unjustified move at that point in time. I can see why they did it, but they shouldn't have complained about the consequences afterward. They basically made themselves supreme enemy number one of every race in the galaxy, they're lucky Sheridan didn't nuke them and send them straight to Hell.
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| # ¿ Feb 2, 2011 20:48 |
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General Emergency posted:Were the Babylon stations more advanced than what Earth had before the war? I always figured they were pretty low tech, just tin cans spinning in space. It's their size that makes them useful. Besides the stations were created to prevent wars, not to fight them. So really, the Shadows were defeated with tools of peace. Babylon 4 was designed as a battle station, wasn't it? The whole problem with the "did Valen make it happen" is that it's the self-fulfilling prophecy issue with time travel. In order for him to go back in time, x y and z had to happen, but if he went back in time and makes x y and z occur, then how could it have happened in the first place to let him go back in time and do it in the first place and 
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| # ¿ Feb 7, 2011 18:19 |
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The last few seasons of DS9 are pretty good, but barring that, it's not really an "epic", but you might like Stargate SG-1 or Stargate Atlantis, but there's a fair amount of humor and parody mixed in, especially with early SG-1.
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| # ¿ Mar 2, 2011 19:41 |
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Devil Wears Wings posted:Yeah, that's what I hear about DS9, but after getting as far as I did into the show I decided I couldn't take a single other Ferengi episode or more exposition on Worf and Dax's horribly awkward romance. (Seriously, and I thought some of Sheridan and Delenn's scenes were bad.) It's a shame, too, since there's a lot to like about the show: a darker tone than other Trek series, the Garak episodes, Rene Auberjonois as Odo, some sweet space battles, more loving Worf (before he's shoehorned into the romance subplot), and Armin Shimmerman when the script allows him to be something other than a comic-relief character (which is far less often than he deserves). SG-1 is one of those shows that starts off kind of terrible and hokey, but gets a lot better once they establish what they want to do with the show (until Season 8 when Richard Dean Anderson leaves).
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| # ¿ Mar 2, 2011 20:07 |
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How have I never heard of this show? It sounds awesome. Now to track down a copy...
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bobkatt013 posted:The first season of SG-1 also had he Mongol episode which is easily the worst episode. That and the Space African episode of TNG are possibly the two worst episodes of a science fiction show in history. And unsurprisingly they were both written by the same woman.
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| # ¿ Mar 3, 2011 18:51 |
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alby mangels posted:Just watched In the Beginning, and I'm shocked that the Earth-Minbari war lasted two years. I always figured it was more like two weeks, considering the astounding technological superiority the Minbari had. Why did it take them two years to reach/conquer Earth, when Sheridan could do it in months (right?)? I don't really remember hearing about very many colonies falling to the Minbari either -- never any mention of returning territory to Human hands anyway -- so what on Earth were the Minbari doing for two whole years? I seem to recall the human death toll being something under a million for the whole war, which seems amazingly low for two years of warfare against a race thousands of years ahead technologically. They may not have known where all the human planets were, and Sheridan kind of was under special circumstances.
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| # ¿ Mar 18, 2011 13:10 |
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NoNotTheMindProbe posted:Maybe the Centauri were just more eco-friendly then Humans and decided no to overpopulate their planet. Then again it is the capital of a decaying empire so perhaps it's like Rome just before the barbarian invasions with the population dramatically lower then at its height. Additionally, we don't know what percentage of Centauri Prime is land (at least I don't think we know). It's possible the planet is smaller and/or has a smaller percentage of land than Earth, or that large portions of it are uninhabitable/not ideal for large populations.
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| # ¿ Mar 20, 2011 23:19 |
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Devil Wears Wings posted:It makes sense, though. A person from Spain is Spanish, a person from Thailand is Thai, a person from Canada is Canadian, and so on. Perhaps it's just easy for the various alien races to refer short-hand to a race by its home world's name; i.e., "Minbari" = "aliens from Minbar," and so on. They could easily have a name for themselves that's similar to how we use "people," except it's used only amongst their own race. Sort of like how humans might use the term "Earther" in mixed company, but "humans" or "people" when with other humans. It's not like we call people by their own name, or even call their country what they call it anyway. We say "Japan" instead of "Nippon", "Germany" instead of "Deutschland", and so on, so just because the Humans refer to a race or planet by a name, and/or aliens refer to it that way to humans, doesn't mean that's what they prefer to have it called. I can just imagine a first encounter, the Vorlon introduce themselves, and someone decides "Yeah, we're going to call you Vorlons, get used to it". Palleon fucked around with this message at Mar 21, 2011 around 21:34 |
| # ¿ Mar 21, 2011 21:30 |
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gariig posted:What happens to the chalice that Londo gives Sheridan and Delenn at the end of season 5 with the Keeper in it? From what I remember reading (I'm sure someone here will correct me), It eventually takes over Sheridan's son, and he commits a number of atrocities which are mentioned in the Season 4 finale during the "talk show" (they mention the crimes of his son). Apparently Garibaldi eventually tracks down the Drakh who the keeper is attached to, and Vir kills him, freeing his son from his control (or the other way around)
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| # ¿ Apr 5, 2011 13:47 |
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Every scene in or involving an elevator in B5 is fantastic. My second favorite is of course "Woo Hoo?", followed closely by stalker Garibaldi.
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| # ¿ Apr 7, 2011 02:55 |
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Miss Fats posted:So I'm watching the extras on the Uncut Directors Version of the recent Dawn of the Dead remake. I was watching an old Season 1 episode of MacGyver on Netflix streaming, "Trubo's World", and lo and behold, Peter Jurrasik guest stars as an entemologist trying to study the jungle. We are treated to an hour romp of absurd situations and borderline racist undertones, over the top acting by Peter, and in the end He gets eaten alive by ants.
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| # ¿ Apr 7, 2011 17:22 |
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Doctor Zero posted:O'Hare makes Boxlietner makes look like Peter O'Toole, seriously. I mean I absolutely agree that Katsulas, Jursic and to a point Furlan are way above everybody else's level, but O'Hare's problem is far from "he's not the pretty one." I thought Furlan was one of the worst actors/actresses on the show (O'Hare and Christian are the only people who help her rise out of the cellar). It's a problem with most of the cast (sans Londo/G'Kar), but she cannot deliver any kind of realistic emotion whatsoever. And while she's not the only one to do it, it really bothers me when a character is supposed to be sad or show grief and they just have their mouth hanging unnaturally wide open and sob. I have never in my life seen a person do that, yet that seems to be the only way sci-fi actors know how to express sadness (I saw it on DS9 in the last episode I watched too, which is why it's on my mind I guess). Boxlietner may not be the greatest actor in the world, but he had charisma, and he was in the upper tier of actors on that show, because he could at least do a few things well.
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| # ¿ Jun 8, 2011 21:01 |
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| # ¿ May 24, 2013 00:19 |
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Deakul posted:So, I tried getting my uncle into B5 since he's a huge Trekkie, mostly loved TOS. Season 1 was all kinds of terrible until the end, but it sets up and forshadows so much of what goes on in the later seasons that I don't think you can reasonably skip it except for a few episodes (when I got my wife to watch it, we skipped TKO because she was on the verge of quitting it too, and I knew that would be the last straw).
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| # ¿ Apr 2, 2012 15:33 |
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