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Paradoxish posted:Yeah, I've recommended B5 to a bunch of people and I always feel like I have to warn them that the terrible dialogue is just something you have to accept. It always throws me for a bit of a loop when someone comes back and says that they didn't think it was all that bad, because despite B5 being easily one of my top ten favorite shows of all time I absolutely cringe at most of the dialogue that's supposed to sound poignant or badass. I love it, honestly. It's so-bad-it's-good at it's finest.
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Jul 3, 2017 22:51
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Jedit posted: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. This does come up in the show from time to time too.
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Jul 4, 2017 03:24
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It doesn't matter if Marcus "acts like a spy" it matters if he is an entertaining character who fills a good niche in the show. To be honest he's my least favorite major cast member, but I deal.
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Jul 4, 2017 06:10
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Neo Rasa posted:I also have to say, upon re-watch the first season is....not as rough as I was expecting it to be? The episode with the Quake II Strogg trooper that was unstoppable was cool, and none of them were particularly awful. Yeah, I unironically like Season 1 just for how much it sets up. Soul Hunter is a good episode, and kind of like how JMS predicted about a third of viewers would side with the Shadows, the concept of a devoted, soul-preserving order makes a hell of a lot of sense given the impending Shadow war. The soul hunter obviously comes off as a villain upon the first viewing, but he's kind of like the spiritual side of the Technomages when you rewatch it. Also it's implied that the Strogg trooper was built to fight the Shadows (since the Ikarrans were killed off "a thousand years ago...").
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Jul 4, 2017 22:52
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S3E2 - This loving elevator. That giggle. Goddamn.
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Jul 4, 2017 23:48
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What did Infection set up?
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Jul 4, 2017 23:53
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monster on a stick posted:What did Infection set up? A few things. Off the top my head... Bad things happening a thousand years ago. Organic technology being a really powerful thing. Defeating a powerful enemy by exposing the hypocrisy of their logic.
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Jul 5, 2017 00:08
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There are also references to growing anti-alien sentiment on Earth and IPX being a front for Earthforce bio-weapons R&D.
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Jul 5, 2017 00:11
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Milky Moor posted:A few things. Off the top my head...  I always thought it was some sort of Nazi reference with the whole purity issue.
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Jul 5, 2017 00:12
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monster on a stick posted:What did Infection set up? Infection was basically every Doctor Who serial ever. Including overloaded exposition while walking down a series of corridors.
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Jul 5, 2017 00:55
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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 was going to mention that. But it's also not specifically related to the Ikarrans. I'm pretty sure just about every major faction in B5 wrestles with that. Minbari and Humans, especially. But it's definitely one of the more explicit cases.
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Jul 5, 2017 02:21
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Milky Moor posted:I was going to mention that. But it's also not specifically related to the Ikarrans. I'm pretty sure just about every major faction in B5 wrestles with that. Minbari and Humans, especially. But it's definitely one of the more explicit cases. 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.
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Jul 5, 2017 06:02
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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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Jedit posted:Well, Vir. Vir gets his in the end.
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Jul 5, 2017 06:55
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McSpanky posted:Vir gets his in the end. The betus?
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Jul 5, 2017 06:57
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For anyone lacking the DVDs and looking for a streaming option, I just found the complete series is available on Go90.
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Jul 6, 2017 16:30
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You know, we are making our way through DS9 as well, and we'd taken a break from B5 for quite a while. And I was starting to think the former was getting pretty decent, but then tonight we watched the beginning of season 5, including The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari. This show is just on a whole different level of good. I shouldn't be surprised by it anymore after watching through it probably a half dozen times, but I still am.
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Jul 8, 2017 04:08
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I'm watching through the series for the first time, and I have just one thing to say. ZOG
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Jul 8, 2017 16:37
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thexerox123 posted:I'm watching through the series for the first time, and I have just one thing to say. I hear you! I always loved the encounter with the Walkers of Sigma 957 in season 1, just for G'Kar's speech about them at the end  .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLZW8Deq8vE&t=35s Neddy Seagoon fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Jul 8, 2017 |
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Jul 8, 2017 17:11
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turn left hillary!! noo posted:You know, we are making our way through DS9 as well, and we'd taken a break from B5 for quite a while. And I was starting to think the former was getting pretty decent, but then tonight we watched the beginning of season 5, including The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari. This show is just on a whole different level of good. I shouldn't be surprised by it anymore after watching through it probably a half dozen times, but I still am. Season 5 is a weird experience, because there is so much good going on but then you keep getting all the Byron stuff and it was clearly an attempt to force the desired Telepath War plot into the show but not really making it work because the figurehead character lacked any real charm or gravity to his acting.
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Jul 8, 2017 21:58
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pentyne posted:Season 5 is a weird experience, because there is so much good going on but then you keep getting all the Byron stuff and it was clearly an attempt to force the desired Telepath War plot into the show but not really making it work because the figurehead character lacked any real charm or gravity to his acting. The weird thing is Robert Atkin Downes is a perfectly serviceable voice actor in other things, so I'm wondering if he also got some weird direction on B5 as Byron.
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Jul 8, 2017 22:12
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Most of the time when I do a rewatch I end up quitting somewhere in season 5.
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Jul 9, 2017 00:06
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But the back half is so much better! Downes was early on in his career, with only a few credits before B5. I tend to pin the Telepath arc's crappiness on a lot of other factors before him. Too bad he became the face of it.
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Jul 9, 2017 00:14
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Ha! I never would have expected Majel Barrett to show up in Babylon 5.
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Jul 9, 2017 01:19
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thexerox123 posted:Ha! I never would have expected Majel Barrett to show up in Babylon 5. I recently went through that episode for the first time, it was really good.
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Jul 9, 2017 01:20
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thexerox123 posted:Ha! I never would have expected Majel Barrett to show up in Babylon 5. So does Scott Adams creator of Dilbert who is shockingly further to the right then Jerry Doyle. Brad Dourif shows up too and steals the scene in his episodes. Bill Mumy shows up in DS9. They apparently tried to get him for years but he refused any non-human characters till he finally got cast as a human red shirt for a single episode guest role. Of course B5 fans remember Koening as Bester a character so memorable it's overshadowed anything he ever did in Star Trek.
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Jul 9, 2017 01:34
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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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pentyne posted:Brad Dourif shows up too and steals the scene in his episodes. Yeah, I just watched his episode yesterday, it was heartbreaking and great. Bill Mumy's great, too. I was a big fan of Lost in Space at one point as a kid, so it's been fun seeing him as Lennier.
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Jul 9, 2017 01:47
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pentyne posted:Season 5 is a weird experience, because there is so much good going on but then you keep getting all the Byron stuff and it was clearly an attempt to force the desired Telepath War plot into the show but not really making it work because the figurehead character lacked any real charm or gravity to his acting. I didn't explicitly keep track last time through, but I'm planning on it this time: I don't even think Byron and the telepaths have more than a couple of episodes as the main focus, and not a lot of time spent on them outside of that. In episode 1 of season 5 it was maaaaybe ten minutes, and none in episode 2. That is, I think all the complaints are pretty overblown.
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Jul 9, 2017 02:27
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turn left hillary!! noo posted:I didn't explicitly keep track last time through, but I'm planning on it this time: I don't even think Byron and the telepaths have more than a couple of episodes as the main focus, and not a lot of time spent on them outside of that. In episode 1 of season 5 it was maaaaybe ten minutes, and none in episode 2.  the Telepath Community arc eats nearly half the season.And once it's done the show really makes up for lost time.
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Jul 9, 2017 02:45
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Neddy Seagoon posted:
I know it goes on until the halfway point, what I mean is it's not a constant presence.
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Jul 9, 2017 02:46
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turn left hillary!! noo posted:I know it goes on until the halfway point, what I mean is it's not a constant presence. It still casts a shadow over the entire first half of the season as the primary story arc. Once it gets put to bed the season makes a massive jump in quality.
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Jul 9, 2017 02:58
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pentyne posted:Of course B5 fans remember Koening as Bester a character so memorable it's overshadowed anything he ever did in Star Trek. Bester has more screen time and dialogue in Mind War than he does in probably all of the Star Trek movies combined (well, maybe if you take IV out).
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Jul 9, 2017 03:03
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Timby posted:Bester has more screen time and dialogue in Mind War than he does in probably all of the Star Trek movies combined (well, maybe if you take IV out). He had a big part in II, he was on the Defiant with Paul Winfield.
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Jul 9, 2017 03:41
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Neddy Seagoon posted:It still casts a shadow over the entire first half of the season as the primary story arc. Once it gets put to bed the season makes a massive jump in quality. So you're saying early season 5 has Robert Atkin Downes Syndrome? 
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Jul 9, 2017 03:55
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Robert Atkin Downes voices the TF2 Medic.
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Jul 9, 2017 04:06
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turn left hillary!! noo posted:So you're saying early season 5 has Robert Atkin Downes Syndrome?  But seriously though, even when it's not the focus of an episode, it's often still insinuated into the background as the driving ongoing plot that gets referred to off-hand because nothing else was going on at the time. Without the big galaxy-shaping events of the prior seasons occurring simultaneously with it, it's the only thing that can, and does, get mentioned in conversations.
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Jul 9, 2017 04:26
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Jedit posted:Bester was meant to be 72 at the time; ...what?! Really?
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Jul 9, 2017 04:50
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thexerox123 posted:Yeah, I just watched his episode yesterday, it was heartbreaking and great. It's a good life
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Jul 9, 2017 05:11
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