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turn left hillary!! noo posted:But for my money, give me ftfy Because, admit it, that would be amazing enough for the conversation to be the entire A plot for an episode.
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Oct 7, 2017 08:01
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I've decided to give season 1 a full rewatch and take it into context with the show, the weird rear end production cycle, JMS being JMS, and what came next. As a metric for quality/substance, are there any small/medium time sci-fi shows to compare it to besides the Treks? I remember 95/96 as the start of serial sci-fi shows on the big 4, mostly Fox, but it's not like B5 existed in a complete vacuum. Also, watching some of the later episodes, the Ministry of Peace and Clark etc. now living in the era of Trump are no longer as fun and entertaining as they were before.
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Oct 20, 2017 03:52
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I was going to say Farscape, but that was something like 5 years later and then I remembered the Muppet technology and more advanced CGI by the time it debuted, so it's not that great a comparison. But in terms of the sets and costumes and stuff it's in the same ballpark. Also if you think the EarthGov stuff is only and suddenly applicable post 2016 then you have really not been paying attention. Winifred Madgers fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Oct 20, 2017 |
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Oct 20, 2017 04:00
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Time Trax was a near contemporary.
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Oct 20, 2017 04:04
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Space: Above and Beyond was the same era.
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Oct 20, 2017 04:05
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Babylon 5 started airing about midway through the first season of seaQuest DSV
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Oct 20, 2017 04:07
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Space: Above and Beyond is what comes to mind.Grand Fromage posted:Space: Above and Beyond was the same era. drat you!
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Oct 20, 2017 04:11
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I think one of the most interesting things about Babylon 5 is the Earth Alliance and EarthGov. The twist to Clarke's autocracy really wasn't that hard to do and isn't that unexpected. It's just this weird thing in the show where everyone thinks it was great. The EA wasn't this bastion of benevolence under Santiago, Clarke just brought it all into the light.
Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Oct 20, 2017 |
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Oct 20, 2017 04:13
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Babylon 5's relationship with Earth is part of what keeps it grounded as something more than "humans hooray!"
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Oct 20, 2017 04:26
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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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TekWar truly is America's forgotten war. 
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Oct 20, 2017 12:13
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Jedit posted:On the other hand, The Parliament of Dreams. DS9 vs B5 is so 90's. Nowadays you can like both of them.
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Oct 20, 2017 13:19
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Jedit posted:Other B5-era SF TV: Robocop, VR.5. I remember the mid-90s seeming like there was suddenly a flood of SFTV stuff. I tried to watch it all, since up to that point I'd had: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Star Trek: TNG, and pretty much nothing else. And suddenly there was sci-fi everywhere and it all seemed new and interesting. I basically watched all of everything, even the bad stuff (which was almost all of it). A few other B5-era shows I remember: -Earth 2 - which was super dull. -Space Precinct - Gerry Anderson's last live-action TV series, simultaneously gritty, over-lit and silly (not in a good way). It did that thing some shows used to do where they put the lead actor's name before the title, so every episode started with "TED SHACKLEFORD", who I'm sure must have been well known in America. -Dark Skies - some kind of UFO conspiracy thing set in the 60s, trading off the X Files popularity. -Earth: Final Conflict - I have a lot of affection for EFC, but it's terrible. -Andromeda - I also have a lot of affection for Andromeda, but it's also terrible. -Team Knight Rider - ugh.
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Oct 20, 2017 15:54
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SeaQuest was my jam even if it was hokey as gently caress
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Oct 20, 2017 15:57
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Dirty posted:-Team Knight Rider - ugh. Sweet loving god, someone else remembers this show existed.
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Oct 20, 2017 15:58
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Oh yeah, Earth2. I totally forgot about that! I really, really tried to like it when it was airing.
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Oct 20, 2017 16:05
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turn left hillary!! noo posted:Oh yeah, Earth2. I totally forgot about that! I really, really tried to like it when it was airing. It had weapons-grade annoying children, if I remember correctly. I had a friend who really got into it and declared it the most realistic space tv-show ever.
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Oct 20, 2017 16:14
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ConfusedUs posted:SeaQuest was my jam even if it was hokey as gently caress seaQuest DSV season 1 is still my jam. I think that bridge set is the best ever. Hilariously there's even Blurays of it out now, apparently it had enough money thrown at it that when they did the CGI renders, they were rendered at higher-than-standard resolution - not high-def, but still high enough to be not as terrible when blown up. And they did 35mm prints of all the episodes for international distribution, so they were able to just rescan those prints and call it good. Like, seaQuest. Who would have ever thought that series would get a Bluray release?
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Oct 20, 2017 16:15
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Dirty posted:-Earth: Final Conflict - I have a lot of affection for EFC, but it's terrible. The first season was passable near-future sci-fi, with basically Roddenberry's treatment of the Vulcan's first contact with earth. Then it went... so far off the rails after that. But I still kept watching to the very strange end.
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Oct 20, 2017 16:19
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:seaQuest DSV season 1 is still my jam. I think that bridge set is the best ever. I really liked the set design on that show, yes. I remember growing bored of the series later in its life. It may well have been a dropoff in quality between S1 and S2. I don't remember enough details to say.
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Oct 20, 2017 16:23
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hope and vaseline posted:The first season was passable near-future sci-fi, with basically Roddenberry's treatment of the Vulcan's first contact with earth. Then it went... so far off the rails after that. But I still kept watching to the very strange end. ConfusedUs posted:I remember growing bored of the series later in its life. It may well have been a dropoff in quality between S1 and S2. I don't remember enough details to say.
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Oct 20, 2017 16:37
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Earth: Final Conflict was good in the first season, went downhill from the second and fell off a cliff in the fifth trying to chase ratings by badly aping Buffy. The actor who played Sandoval turned up in Designated Survivor out of nowhere and made me smile
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Oct 20, 2017 16:43
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Dirty posted:But then Michael Ironside showed up. Everything is better with Michael Ironside. I'm ignoring the fact it was cancelled about 10 episodes later. Season 3 was more consistent than season 2, but it wasn't good. And if that final episode was any indication of where the series was going, it needed to be put down.
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Oct 20, 2017 16:47
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Dirty posted:But then Michael Ironside showed up. Everything is better with Michael Ironside. I'm ignoring the fact it was cancelled about 10 episodes later. What you're saying is that I should rewatch SeaQuest, right?
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Oct 20, 2017 16:47
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Michael Ironside is only in season 3 and it's a bad season. Watch the first season and end there.
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Oct 20, 2017 16:50
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ConfusedUs posted:What you're saying is that I should rewatch SeaQuest, right? Well, now I'm thinking of rewatching it, so definitely.
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Oct 20, 2017 16:53
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Besides some of the actors these days the only things I remember about Seaquest is that there was a dolphin and two of the later episodes, one which had terrorists or whatever blowing up gigantic global carbon dioxide scrubbers (because we killed all the plants???) and another where some guys were doing the decidedly non-sea-related activity of being commandos in a jungle. That may have been the same episode or neither being an episode of Seaquest at all.
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Oct 20, 2017 17:19
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ConfusedUs posted:SeaQuest was my jam even if it was hokey as gently caress SeaQuest was the best when it was hokey as gently caress but totally earnest near-future sea exploration fun. When they kicked the scifi into turbo overload with space aliens and psychics and poo poo it just started getting absurd. Then the third season tried remaking it into the 90s version of a serious business hard-men-making-hard-choices show but, it was the 90s version of that so it was just boring (despite perennial badass Michael Ironside anchoring the effort) and the boat sank for good. hope and vaseline posted:The first season was passable near-future sci-fi, with basically Roddenberry's treatment of the Vulcan's first contact with earth. Then it went... so far off the rails after that. But I still kept watching to the very strange end. Same thing with Andromeda, it was a decent enough low-budget stab at that "Starfleet ship gets thrown into the far future where the Federation is gone and chaos reigns" idea with all the franchise serial numbers filed off, then Sorbo got increasing creative control and it morphed into Space Hercules. And both of those shows had especially terrible final seasons where they ditched nearly all remaining traces of the original premises to take complete left turns into  land.
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Oct 20, 2017 17:32
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Kibayasu posted:Besides some of the actors these days the only things I remember about Seaquest is that there was a dolphin and two of the later episodes, one which had terrorists or whatever blowing up gigantic global carbon dioxide scrubbers (because we killed all the plants???) and another where some guys were doing the decidedly non-sea-related activity of being commandos in a jungle. That may have been the same episode or neither being an episode of Seaquest at all. The giant scrubbers being blown up was part of the second season opener. I don't remember the jungle commandos but I could totally buy that being a second or third season episode.
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Oct 20, 2017 17:38
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I'm kinda on a B5 kick but I don't have the time to watch it all to answer my question: what was the supposed-to-happen endgoal for the Vorlons and Shadows? Each of them inspire a bunch of lesser races, and have them goad their respective disciples into a war to see who wins (and thus is proven right)? I get it from a conceptual level ("you lost your way, you were obsessed with being proved right"), but the Shadows were actively involved in the last Shadow War, which seems like it wasn't supposed to be part of the deal.
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Oct 20, 2017 17:52
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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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Did someone say "90's sci fi" shortly followed by the word "Lexx"? No, of course not
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Oct 20, 2017 18:08
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Kibayasu posted:Besides some of the actors these days the only things I remember about Seaquest is that there was a dolphin and two of the later episodes, one which had terrorists or whatever blowing up gigantic global carbon dioxide scrubbers (because we killed all the plants???) and another where some guys were doing the decidedly non-sea-related activity of being commandos in a jungle. That may have been the same episode or neither being an episode of Seaquest at all. The terrorists were combat replicants, who everyone hated because racism and future-Vietnam veterans. They were also capable of surviving in a lower oxygen environment than humans were, so the plan was to suffocate humanity and take over. There was a big, mentally challenged one on the Seaquest crew too, and I don't want to think too hard about that confluence of traits right now.
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Oct 20, 2017 18:21
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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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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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McSpanky posted:Same thing with Andromeda, it was a decent enough low-budget stab at that "Starfleet ship gets thrown into the far future where the Federation is gone and chaos reigns" idea with all the franchise serial numbers filed off, then Sorbo got increasing creative control and it morphed into Space Hercules. And both of those shows had especially terrible final seasons where they ditched nearly all remaining traces of the original premises to take complete left turns into I seriously forgot that Andromeda existed, but now I'm getting flashbacks to Sorbo wearing chain mail in space. The, uh, ship was cool in it at least?
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Oct 20, 2017 18:43
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Shbobdb posted: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. What the gently caress
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Oct 20, 2017 19:34
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Jedit posted: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". I actually really liked that show when I was younger for pretty much all the reasons mentioned before, and that episode was pretty good for that reason. Then... yeah, Sorbo went nuts.
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Oct 20, 2017 19:45
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MisterBibs posted:I'm kinda on a B5 kick but I don't have the time to watch it all to answer my question: what was the supposed-to-happen endgoal for the Vorlons and Shadows? Each of them inspire a bunch of lesser races, and have them goad their respective disciples into a war to see who wins (and thus is proven right)? I get it from a conceptual level ("you lost your way, you were obsessed with being proved right"), but the Shadows were actively involved in the last Shadow War, which seems like it wasn't supposed to be part of the deal. Endgoal when? Near the start of the process, when they stayed behind when the other First Ones left, or in the time of the show? For the latter, presumably the Vorlons wanted all the races to reject the Shadows and band together in unison to destroy them, but after the Z'ha'dum Boom they decided it'd be faster to simply eliminate all the races with Shadow-taint ensuring that the survivors would reject the Shadows. The Shadows appear to have wanted constant recurring cycles of war and conflict, without any obvious "end" state, but with the implicit assumption that the ants would never get clever enough to stop the Shadows from kicking over their anthills. It's unclear whether Justin's "do what you're told" solution to the Sheridan problem was his own or Shadow-generated, and it's unclear whether the Shadow planet-killers were deployed for any reason beyond retaliating for Vorlon planet-killing. In theory, the original endgoal was to be mentors and teachers for the younger races, helping them to develop, presumably offering them a choice of paths between Order and Chaos, but with the somewhat secret goal of constraining them so that they choose between one or the other. See Sheridan's metaphor of the two as parents trying to force their children to choose sides. That imperative meant that neither group genuinely wanted those they nurtured to "grow up" and move out.
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Oct 20, 2017 20:24
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There were also 'rules of engagement' which the Vorlons broke first by creating telepaths and altering people so they saw angels and such. It seems like the cycle was supposed to be something of a proxy war, too, hence the Shadow killing of Kosh in retaliation for the Vorlons getting involved with fleet assets. So, I guess the Shadows were okay with playing the bad guys until the Vorlons started playing to win, so to speak, which led to the Shadows getting more aggressive and responding in kind.
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Oct 20, 2017 23:29
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