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Grand Fromage posted:I missed insect dude later on. A friend of mine still carries a candle for that weird mantis dude.
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Nov 4, 2018 04:35
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Forever holding up a card in front of its face, sporting a grim expression
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Nov 4, 2018 05:03
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his name was N'Grath you heathens
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Nov 4, 2018 05:06
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dreadmojo posted:WHO ARE YOU What do you want? Grand Fromage posted:I missed insect dude later on. I thought he was a pretty great secondary character, and a reason to go to the non-human parts of the station that didn't involve Kosh.
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Nov 4, 2018 05:09
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:his name was N'Grath you heathens
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Nov 4, 2018 05:11
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Neddy Seagoon posted:I thought he was a pretty great secondary character, and a reason to go to the non-human parts of the station that didn't involve Kosh. I liked that they were going to bother having a nonhumanoid alien character and then... Okay there's Kosh but, you know. Weird spacesuit guy isn't the same as a mantis dude.
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Nov 4, 2018 05:28
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:B5 gets pretty stagey and theatrical at times, it rules. Oh yes, but it can be so amazing. Like in season 4, when Cartagia has G'kar whipped. It's just a dark room with a chair for Cartagia and something to chain G'kar to. It really focuses the scene on the characters, and makes it all the more chilling.
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Nov 4, 2018 05:47
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Grand Fromage posted:Weird spacesuit guy isn't the same as a mantis dude. 'I have always been here' / 
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Nov 4, 2018 07:22
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Torrannor posted:Oh yes, but it can be so amazing. Like in season 4, when Cartagia has G'kar whipped. It's just a dark room with a chair for Cartagia and something to chain G'kar to. It really focuses the scene on the characters, and makes it all the more chilling. yep, great moment. there's a heap of times where it's basically a stage play and it's great. i genuinely love how much of a play babylon 5 feels like at times, right down to the familiar rotating cast of extras and reused sets.
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Nov 4, 2018 07:38
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:yep, great moment. there's a heap of times where it's basically a stage play and it's great. i genuinely love how much of a play babylon 5 feels like at times, right down to the familiar rotating cast of extras and reused sets. Absolutely. It often feels more like a televised theater production than "television" as we understand it, and that's great. I love theater  .
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Nov 4, 2018 07:41
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Vavrek posted:That new fighter pilot guy was a "suggestion" from higher-up that JMS was given. That also reminds me of weird situation with Mary Kay Adams replacing Caitlin Brown in as Na'toth, JMS apparently hated her performance so much she was given the push after filming two episodes. For contractual reasons, they couldn't drop her name from the credits, so she had to be credited as a recurring guest star on every episode for the rest of the season despite never appearing. Crazy.
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Nov 4, 2018 12:05
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Torrannor posted:Oh yes, but it can be so amazing. Like in season 4, when Cartagia has G'kar whipped. It's just a dark room with a chair for Cartagia and something to chain G'kar to. It really focuses the scene on the characters, and makes it all the more chilling. There's also the entirety of the S4 episode "Intersections in Real Time" which I recall hearing was originally supposed to be the season finale. Maelstache posted:That also reminds me of weird situation with Mary Kay Adams replacing Caitlin Brown in as Na'toth, JMS apparently hated her performance so much she was given the push after filming two episodes. Yeah, apparently she was cast as Na'Toth on the strength of an audition that was very different for how she chose to play the character on camera. Lemniscate Blue fucked around with this message at 12:34 on Nov 4, 2018 |
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Nov 4, 2018 12:25
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That's really weird. Like did she just refuse to accept on-set direction or something?
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Nov 4, 2018 12:50
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I think I remember preferring Caitlin Brown's Na'Toth to Adams' take, so, it follows.
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Nov 4, 2018 13:34
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Lemniscate Blue posted:There's also the entirety of the S4 episode "Intersections in Real Time" which I recall hearing was originally supposed to be the season finale. That's what Straczynski claims, but I've never found that to be particularly plausible, just as much as I find it incredibly implausible that he claims to have never, ever seen Homicide: Life on the Street at the time, yet somehow they mimicked the stuttering jump cut to a T (might not have been that episode, I forget, but it happened).
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Nov 4, 2018 14:35
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As I recall, didn't a lot of the production staff have a theater background, and so use theatrical tricks - lighting, flippable sets, etc - to save money?
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Nov 4, 2018 15:02
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That's probably one of the reasons why I'll always have a warm spot for B5: it reminds me of original-series Doctor Who and BBC Shakespeare productions.
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Nov 4, 2018 16:27
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Timby posted:That's what Straczynski claims, but I've never found that to be particularly plausible, just as much as I find it incredibly implausible that he claims to have never, ever seen Homicide: Life on the Street at the time, yet somehow they mimicked the stuttering jump cut to a T (might not have been that episode, I forget, but it happened). Really? I can't look up a random episode in the Script Book, but the Intersections script doesn't mention such a jump cut if that's where it happened, and Straczynski only directed "Sleeping in Light" which means that everyone involved in the actual filming could have seen Homicide. And of course, while he was part of editing each episode, he wasn't alone in the room there, either. I don't understand the equation of "the shot wasn't a coincidence" and "JMS must have seen Homicide, its source." Putting Intersections at the end of S4 would be comparable to the end of S3 (our main character's fate is the cliffhanger), and it would set up the S5 arc conclusion to happen in the first quarter of the final season, which fits the "now what?" structure of the bits of S5 which weren't invented to plug a gap.
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Nov 4, 2018 16:49
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JMS had a habit of denying any extremely obvious influences, like Lord of the Rings. I don't know why.
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Nov 4, 2018 17:00
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I had been meaning to watch Babylon 5 for ages and never got around to it. Previous attempts never lasted more than a couple episodes but after rewatching Battlestar Galactica recently Amazon suggested I should watch Babylon 5. I figured that was as good a reason as any to finally do it. I know very little about the show as I never paid it much attention when it was on. After TNG ended I was a dumb kid who refused to watch DS9 and thought B5 was a knockoff. Space stations are boring, you need space ships to do cool things! Turns out I was completely wrong as I would much later decide that DS9 is the best Star Trek and learn that B5 was actually made before it. So here I am, marathoning through this show and enjoying it quite immensely. I've been following the Lurkers Episode guide for the most part, starting with the pilot movie The Gathering. Is this the best way to go? That guide says to watch In The Beginning first while other people say to watch it much later. I'm trying to avoid spoilers if possible but if it's really worth watching it sooner then I'll go for it. So far I just finished Knives in season 2. Also, is there a better version to watch than what Amazon has on Prime? The resolution and field of view keeps changing anytime there is a special effect on screen and it's kind of distracting. It was really noticable in And Now For A Word where the reporter would interview people and a news ticker would scroll some info. The image looked zoomed in and low resolution while the ticker was displayed. Then the ticker would go away and the scene would cut back and forth between the news anchor and whoever was being interviewed but it would look perfectly normal since the effect was gone. Is it better elsewhere or is this how the show was originally aired? Anyway, aside from that I'm having a blast. Should have watched this sooner and should have checked for this thread earlier!
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Nov 4, 2018 17:05
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Just watch the poo poo in order, anyone who says otherwise is overcomplicating it for no reason. Or skip the pilot/know the pilot's not great, and watch it in order. If you don't like it, given that, then no amount of careful schedule fuckery is going to change that.
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Nov 4, 2018 17:07
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Don't watch In the Beginning first, that's stupid. Don't bother with the movies until after.
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Nov 4, 2018 17:14
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Hazborgufen posted:I had been meaning to watch Babylon 5 for ages and never got around to it. Previous attempts never lasted more than a couple episodes but after rewatching Battlestar Galactica recently Amazon suggested I should watch Babylon 5. I figured that was as good a reason as any to finally do it. You can watch the episodes in the order they aired. A few episodes might be switched around a little bit, but mostly in season 1 and early season 2. But it makes no real difference, especially if you plan on watching everything in a relatively short time span (so about two or three months). Don't watch In The Beginning first, holy poo poo. It's full of spoilers and doesn't make sense without having watched at least the first three seasons.
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Nov 4, 2018 17:39
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Works for me. Mostly it's been swapping a couple episodes here and there but then I saw people posting flowcharts with movies mixed in at various points. Also something about watching the last episode of season 4 after watching all of season 5 and how the show runners agreed that the order the show aired was not their vision. Or something. I thought the pilot episode was fine. Not great but not horrible. Infection was hard to watch and that episode or Soul Hunter is where I'd usually give up. I used to really dislike mythical or religious elements in sci-fi which is what bothered me about Soul Hunter, but I've gotten over it for the most part.
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Nov 4, 2018 17:47
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The pilot seems to be missing from amazon, so I just started with the first episode and have kept up fine aside from a sense that there’s an extra thing or two I should understand about Kosh’s status or what others think of him. But I feel like anything about him that’s part of the original premise will be recapped when he starts becoming more important.
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Nov 4, 2018 18:07
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Hazborgufen posted:Works for me. Mostly it's been swapping a couple episodes here and there but then I saw people posting flowcharts with movies mixed in at various points. Also something about watching the last episode of season 4 after watching all of season 5 and how the show runners agreed that the order the show aired was not their vision. Or something. I know the exact watch order you're talking about. It's designed for people with short attention spans who want to see the high points of the show, and the context necessary to enjoy those high points, without the slower/outdated/weird episodes that would otherwise drive them away. It's good at that purpose, but you miss out on a lot of the subtle character interactions that make B5 a classic. Go back to it if you get too bored to continue, because peak B5 is better than no B5, but you'll be rewarded by watching the show in order, warts and all. If you think The Gathering is alright, and you didn't stop after Soul Hunter, then you're probably good to go. It only gets better from here.
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Nov 4, 2018 18:07
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Soul Hunter kept me interested because of the totally unremarked-upon acknowledgement that souls exist in Babylon 5, which was just weird enough to keep me watching. Usually sci-fi has to play a game where science explains it but then also some people choose to be religious and call “mind energy” or whatever souls, but there’s none of that unless I missed it.
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Nov 4, 2018 18:11
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:Soul Hunter kept me interested because of the totally unremarked-upon acknowledgement that souls exist in Babylon 5, which was just weird enough to keep me watching. Usually sci-fi has to play a game where science explains it but then also some people choose to be religious and call “mind energy” or whatever souls, but there’s none of that unless I missed it. Yeah it seems to be basically a thing that souls exist. Or something essentially interchangeable with that idea.
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Nov 4, 2018 18:14
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:The pilot seems to be missing from amazon, so I just started with the first episode and have kept up fine aside from a sense that there’s an extra thing or two I should understand about Kosh’s status or what others think of him. But I feel like anything about him that’s part of the original premise will be recapped when he starts becoming more important. I think the Gathering is actually more contradictory with what is later revealed about the Vorlons, tbh, but you're right in that what is followed up on later will be explained. One character, Lyta Alexander, the resident station telepath, was changed when the series went to air into Talia Winters, but they bring Lyta back in significant capacity in later seasons. That's the only really important thing from The Gathering.
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Nov 4, 2018 18:15
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The one place where the Lurker’s Guide master order is I feel important is Walkabout/War Without End is s3. Walkabout aired after WWE but makes no sense that way. Since there are a bunch of people watching for the first time I’ll take the opportunity to plug the B5 podcast I do, The Name of the Pod. We go episode by episode but focus more on the enduring legacy of the show in genre television rather than just synopses, and we try to avoid spoilers of what’s coming. We’re in the middle of s3 right now. We’re not complete garbage so maybe give an episode a listen.
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Nov 4, 2018 18:24
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Grand Fromage posted:Don't watch In the Beginning first, that's stupid. Don't bother with the movies until after. This happened to me, accidentally, and I was fine. The series arcs are set up so well that it works as a retconned-pilot, but it does spoil a lot, so I probably wouldn't recommend doing it on purpose. ITB does have a lot more action and pew-pew, so if you need a Hollywood-opening to pique your interest, it may hold someone's attention more than the actual pilot episode.
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Nov 4, 2018 18:30
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Hazborgufen posted:I thought the pilot episode was fine. Not great but not horrible. Infection was hard to watch and that episode or Soul Hunter is where I'd usually give up. I used to really dislike mythical or religious elements in sci-fi which is what bothered me about Soul Hunter, but I've gotten over it for the most part. Question: By "pilot episode" do you mean Midnight on the Firing Line, the first episode of the first season, or The Gathering, the two-hour long pilot movie where all the alien characters' prosthetic foreheads are slightly different? The dispute among fans (which has been had in this thread before) is whether one should skip The Gathering, because it's slow and clunky, or not (because skipping The Gathering would be insane).
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Nov 4, 2018 18:36
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Grand Fromage posted:JMS had a habit of denying any extremely obvious influences, like Lord of the Rings. I don't know why. While he is guilty of that sort of thing in general he’s very open about being hugely influenced by Tolkien.
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Nov 4, 2018 18:38
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head58 posted:
I'll check it out, I do need more non-political podcasts. I hope it's better than Jumpgate - I listened for a while but something about their tone was very grating.
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Nov 4, 2018 18:52
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head58 posted:The one place where the Lurker’s Guide master order is I feel important is Walkabout/War Without End is s3. Walkabout aired after WWE but makes no sense that way. Isn't that just the production order though? I think the DVDs and Amazon Prime both go by production order rather than air date.
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Nov 4, 2018 19:02
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Vavrek posted:Question: By "pilot episode" do you mean Midnight on the Firing Line, the first episode of the first season, or The Gathering, the two-hour long pilot movie where all the alien characters' prosthetic foreheads are slightly different? I’ve been referring to “The Gathering” as the pilot. “Midnight on the Firing Line” set things up fine for me, as I had seen a few season-one episodes on Comet before beginning. I’m not at all opposed to watching the pilot, but it’s not on Amazon and I don’t have $100 for the full dvd set.
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Nov 4, 2018 19:03
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Was The Gathering actually aired on TV prior to Midnight On The Firing Line?
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Nov 4, 2018 19:06
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Was The Gathering actually aired on TV prior to Midnight On The Firing Line? I believe so, just ... a year before the start of season 1. Lurker's Guide gives Feb 22, 1993 for The Gathering's air date, Jan 26, 1994 for Midnight on the Firing Line.
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Nov 4, 2018 19:22
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Doctor Zero posted:While he is guilty of that sort of thing in general he’s very open about being hugely influenced by Tolkien. During production it must have been frustrating. Either a sci-fi show is run by someone who has avoided fantasy and sci-fi (and often, their ignorance and contempt show through), or it's operated by a fan. We know JMS was the latter, so would expect a show to have lots of little in-references and influences all over the place. He has his idea and then works ten years to get it in the air. In the process, he faces lots of execs who have no knowledge of sci-fi and insist that there's only room for Star Trek on TV. They also want to air something "original" but also something where there's a long precedent of this kind of show going well (ie something extremely derivative). Finally, he gets the series placed, is in production, hears about DS9 (which regardless of all the other things, makes B5 look like it's derivative of Star Trek), reads comments on the show, and runs into lots of other fans recognizing the operational DNA of the series through conscious or unconscious influence. And of course, some people use that as a stick ("JMS claimed it would be original but it's massively derivative") while others see it as a good thing. When the show was on, I can totally understand being hypersensitive about the whole "influence"/"clever in-reference"/"derivative" thing. In the 1990's, being pigeon-holed as "just like LotR" wasn't very good; post-Peter Jackson, that reads very differently. By 2002, JMS was writing Legend of the Rangers during the success of the films and clearly decided to have the series abbreviation be LotR and take advantage of the similarities and references. In 1994, that would have been a much harder sell.
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Nov 4, 2018 19:38
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Man it bums me out when people rag on him, he's a great writer and made a great show I love a lot.
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Nov 4, 2018 20:59
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