Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Issaries
Sep 15, 2008

"Negotiations were going well. They were very impressed by my hat." -Issaries the Concilliator"

head58 posted:

Sense8 is a glorious mess.

I still love the Jeremiah. a Very underrated post-apocalyptic show.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.

adhuin posted:

I still love the Jeremiah. a Very underrated post-apocalyptic show.

Isn't it based on an eurocomic? I haven't watched the show but I read some of the books way back and there probably wasn't an episode named Afromerica.

Issaries
Sep 15, 2008

"Negotiations were going well. They were very impressed by my hat." -Issaries the Concilliator"

MonsieurChoc posted:

Isn't it based on an eurocomic? I haven't watched the show but I read some of the books way back and there probably wasn't an episode named Afromerica.

the Show has little to do with the comics. One of the main characters name is Jeremiah and it's post-apocalyptic. That's about it for the similarities. It's 99,99% JMS show.

Roth
Jul 9, 2016

Just a reminder to be careful with how you react to speculation if you've seen the show. It can end up being very telling.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

MonsieurChoc posted:

Honestly, pretty much everything JMS did after Babylon 5 sucked.

But B5 is great.

Changeling is a truly remarkable movie and one of my favorites.

e: for nerds: it's not about "changelings", it's about a real historical event where the police were absolute fuckers and it resulted in very bad real things :smith:

quote:

Changeling is a 2008 American mystery crime drama film directed, produced, and scored by Clint Eastwood and written by J. Michael Straczynski,[1] that explores child endangerment, female disempowerment, political corruption, mistreatment of mental health patients, and the repercussions of violence. The script was based on real-life events, specifically the 1928 Wineville Chicken Coop Murders in Mira Loma, California. The film stars Angelina Jolie as a woman united with a boy who she realizes is not her missing son. When she tries to demonstrate this to the police and city authorities, she is vilified as delusional, labeled as an unfit mother, and confined to a psychiatric ward.

Working in 1983 as a special correspondent for the now defunct TV-Cable Week magazine, Straczynski first encountered the story of Christine Collins and her son from a Los Angeles City Hall contact.[2] Over the ensuing years he kept researching the story, but never felt he was ready to tackle it.

Pick fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Jun 4, 2020

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









i really liked Ninja Assassin (not a ninja who is an assassin, an assassin... of ninjas!) it was just good pulpy fun. and sense8 is fairly extra, but it's a lot of fun.

AARD VARKMAN
May 17, 1993
Watched a couple more episodes. This show is seriously so good. I will let the other 2 posters catch up so we can discuss.


Fellow blind watchers when you finish 1x9 please help me figure out wtf was going on with the "recorder of thoughts" things w/ Abbutt.

E: Also when we finish the season we should discuss and speculate

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

Seeing this thread full of newbies just bursting with love for SEASON ONE is making me salivate.

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




TheAardvark posted:

Watched a couple more episodes. This show is seriously so good. I will let the other 2 posters catch up so we can discuss.


Fellow blind watchers when you finish 1x9 please help me figure out wtf was going on with the "recorder of thoughts" things w/ Abbutt.

E: Also when we finish the season we should discuss and speculate

That's some of the ripest grounds for discussion of the whole season.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









In the interests of reducing yelling, please don't even hint that some things are more important than others. Go over to the other thread and delight in their speculating instead.

Torrannor
Apr 27, 2013

---FAGNER---
TEAM-MATE
It's really cool to see all of you happily watch B5. And you're fortunate, you don't have to wait a week between each new episode, or even months between seasons, like we had to back in the day. You can watch it at your own pace. :)

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!

Torrannor posted:

It's really cool to see all of you happily watch B5. And you're fortunate, you don't have to wait a week between each new episode, or even months between seasons, like we had to back in the day. You can watch it at your own pace. :)

Didn't have to scour the tv guide like a hawk to work out where it had moved to

S4: 11pm on Thursday evenings
S5: 10am on a Sunday morning during a beach themed breakfast show

Torrannor
Apr 27, 2013

---FAGNER---
TEAM-MATE

MrL_JaKiri posted:

Didn't have to scour the tv guide like a hawk to work out where it had moved to

S4: 11pm on Thursday evenings
S5: 10am on a Sunday morning during a beach themed breakfast show

Yes, exactly. Once, I couldn't watch an episode live, so I asked my parents to record it on VHS. They did watch it, but forgot to set the VCR. And later they told me "the episode wasn't that great". It was the second episode of a two parter...

To say I was unhappy would be an understatement. I had to wait like 5 years for re-runs to finally get to see that episode.

Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:

Torrannor posted:

It's really cool to see all of you happily watch B5. And you're fortunate, you don't have to wait a week between each new episode, or even months between seasons, like we had to back in the day. You can watch it at your own pace. :)

Something interesting that does reveal with the show, you'll see a lot of episodes where some information seems to be redundantly repeated from one episode to the next, but it's because originally folks were waiting a week between episodes so like drat. I can't barely even imagine that now though plenty of shows still air an episode week.

This and Twin Peaks and X-Files were considered very experimental for their time and now successful for really getting TV storyline plotting as we know it now off the ground.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

Sanguinia posted:

Seeing this thread full of newbies just bursting with love for SEASON ONE is making me salivate.

Seriously, if they are fully engaged on Season 1, they are going to explode with joy watching the rest of the series.

Zaroff
Nov 10, 2009

Nothing in the world can stop me now!

MrL_JaKiri posted:

S5: 10am on a Sunday morning during a beach themed breakfast show

I still remember that Christmas, when they broadcast the final few episodes with a great big obnoxiously-coloured clock in the bottom corner!

Channel 4 were great insofar as getting international premieres of the final few episodes of each season, but by the end they really didn't care. At least they were nice enough to have a repeat run of the series at 1am on Monday mornings...

Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:

TraderStav posted:

Seriously, if they are fully engaged on Season 1, they are going to explode with joy watching the rest of the series.

I still remember seeing the season 3 intro for the first time, like, drat.


Not that characters in DS9/etc. sci-fi shows of the time didn't go through serious poo poo, but when I watched it again I really respected how much the writing of the show puts most of the cast through the loving ringer on an emotional and existential level in ways a lot of those other shows just, like, didn't.

AARD VARKMAN
May 17, 1993
I would appreciate it ITT if you just don't post anything about the content of future seasons, even spoiler tagged. Hell even I'm taking a break from posting my thoughts to give the other posters the chance to catch up without maybe accidentally getting spoiled.

It doesn't help that you literally can't quote a post without seeing the spoilers contained therein. And I'm on a lovely trackpad/navigate mostly by keyboard so having to move my cursor to make scrolling not accidentally uncover spoilers is actually annoying.

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

thankfully that is a very mild and general spoiler, but people definitely need to keep it in their pants itt

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

maybe rename the thread something like Babylon 5 Newbie Nature Preserve

Polaron
Oct 13, 2010

The Oncoming Storm
I love this thread and am looking very crossly at the people who can't keep their excitement to themselves :mad:

VideoGames
Aug 18, 2003
Just watched Mind War and The War Prayer!

1-6 Mind War

Best episode of the series so far and probably the richest one in terms of character and story!

Walter Koenig as Bester is a real treat :D Also am I reading too much into it, or is he called Bester due to Alfred Bester?
(I liked the way Ironheart pronounced Seratonin.)

Learning more to the way telepaths work was very welcome but the idea of a telepath police force frightened me as soon as they mentioned it. That Ironheart commented about the psi corps taking over the government was chilling and also the eventuality that my mind had conjured. Who could feasibly stop them if level 12s are as powerful as they claim.

Also the idea about using telekenesis to stop an artery was equally as chilling.*

I liked that Ironheart evolved fully and it feels very old school scifi that he turned into a being of pure light and transcendance. I always liked that idea as a future for humanity when I had read it in the past.

The G-Kar subplot was absolutely ace. His message at the end about ants was gorgeous and yet again poetic about the nature of being. He is such a great written character and it was excellent to see him interacting with Sakai who is essentialy a tertiary character. Again it really adds to the feel of the station that not everything is contained to the main group.


1-7 The War Prayer

Written by DC Fontana!

This had quite a few good moments!

Kosh appearing again was welcome. I had completely forgotten about them because the Gathering was the last time we saw them. I wonder what they have been ip to all this time.

Also tying in the absence of Ben Kyle and Lyta Alexander with their having seen a vorlon was awesome. I am not sure if planned or just excellent writing to explain but I really dug it.

I was originally confused as to why G-Kar was being so eager to incite riots when I remembered his great lines from the previous episode about saving Sakai because it helped him by keeping Sinclair happy and wondered what his bringing down the command structure of Babylon 5 would do for him this episode, but I assume he must have had a good plan.

Londo was the real heart here and I feel like his immediate dismissal was due to him still smarting due to his earlier heartbreak in Born to Purple. I do utterly love his little tale to Vir about his father saying his shoes were too tight. It is such a simple thing but conveyed so tremendously.

This episode also felt extremely apt for watching it in this wild year. I am glad Sinclair got the better on the idiot humans but I foresee them appearing again in some fashion.

All the while when Sinclair was pretending to be sympathetic to the bad humans, I was worried and hoping he would go over to Delenn and reassure her! Haha, I was genuinely concerned for their friendship!


I may get a chance to watch another tonight, but I will definitely have some more time tomorrow. I have already purchased season 2 in preparation because having others at the same level I am is really good at pushing me onwards :D


* spoiler for tv show misfits

Reminds me of the finale of season 2 where everyone had been making fun of a guy whose super power was controlling 'milk' and he made it terrifying by doing such things as controlling the milk in someone's body and making it climb through their blood vessels, go up their spine and render them braindead.

Zaroff
Nov 10, 2009

Nothing in the world can stop me now!
Question to the newbies - what triggered watching Babylon 5? As far as I'm aware it's now only available on DVD (wasn't it taken down from Amazon Prime?), so to have several people all jumping in at the same time is a welcome surprise.

I'm enjoying watching this thread; but unlike something like Star Trek which is on Netflix it seems like this is a less likely show to have multiple people start fresh at the same time.

Agronox
Feb 4, 2005

Polaron posted:

I love this thread and am looking very crossly at the people who can't keep their excitement to themselves :mad:

AARD VARKMAN
May 17, 1993

Zaroff posted:

Question to the newbies - what triggered watching Babylon 5? As far as I'm aware it's now only available on DVD (wasn't it taken down from Amazon Prime?), so to have several people all jumping in at the same time is a welcome surprise.

I'm enjoying watching this thread; but unlike something like Star Trek which is on Netflix it seems like this is a less likely show to have multiple people start fresh at the same time.

I started for a couple reasons, personally. I was reading the space ships thread in this forum and saw some of the ships from this show posted, plus a video of the "remastered" CGI.

Seeing those made me remember thinking I had tried to watch the show years ago and bounced off.. and realized I'd been conflating Deep Space 9 and Babylon 5 as the same show in my head for years. I'd never tried Babylon 5 at all. I'm a huge science fiction fan so I felt like it deserved a chance.

Agronox
Feb 4, 2005

VideoGames posted:

1-6 Mind War

Walter Koenig as Bester is a real treat :D Also am I reading too much into it, or is he called Bester due to Alfred Bester?


You got it right. JMS was perfectly happy to rip off anything that wasn't nailed down pay homage to various other works, and as you'd guess the structure of the Psi Corps owes quite a bit to Bester's The Demolished Man.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


VideoGames posted:


Walter Koenig as Bester is a real treat :D Also am I reading too much into it, or is he called Bester due to Alfred Bester?


Discussion of a character's name: Yep, it's a reference. The character's full name is also Alfred Bester.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

Son of Sam-I-Am posted:

maybe rename the thread something like Babylon 5 Newbie Nature Preserve

Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



Son of Sam-I-Am posted:

maybe rename the thread something like Babylon 5 Newbie Nature Preserve

Rename it to whatever you want but include "spoiler = 1 week probe" or whatever punishment mods deem appropriate in the title since we've already seen several examples of nerds physically unable post here without playing smirking “I KNOW MORE THAN YOU” dickwaving games about a media property and the thread is barely five days old.

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."
S1E7 - The War Prayer

“My shoes are too tight and I have forgotten how to dance.”


Oh, how relevant an episode. Racism in space, following a long and pathetic line of people. KKK, Proud Boys, and now the Home Guard. Truly, we never get any better. Tear it all down, G’kar, let it burn.

Knowing there’s a different order makes me wonder if this episode was earlier in the season as it brings up Kosh’s attack and the disappearance of Dr Kyle and the other telepath. Sinclair and Ivanova’s conversation about the Vorlons is very clear ‘well isn’t that interesting’ setup stuff, adding to the pile of things I’m sure we’ll come back to.

Talking of whom, it’s Ivanova who gets the ‘returning flame’ trope this episode, and is easily the most boring of them so far, and it’s really obvious where it’s heading.

I have to say, I love every shot of the inside of the giant rotating station cylinder. All the fields and whatnot that make up the interior leave a lot to the imagination; even in really ropey SD. I read somewhere recently that every CG shot that’s superimposed with actual people in B5 has the CG degraded to terrible resolution?

Londo on the edge of breaking down is a real emotional moment, saying the line at the top, his voice catching. Goddamn that’s some good acting. :gbsmith:

That poor alien ambassador who thinks she’s about to be offed, just gets ignored as Sinclair and Ivanova dive for cover and don’t attempt to protect her in any way from the shootout. Maybe the senior staff could use some racial sensitivity training?

The revelation that there’s hundreds of people all through Earthforce who would willingly kill all aliens at a moment’s notice would be rather chilling if it weren’t really loving relevant right here and now.

“Such great hatred for so little real reason.”

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

The_Doctor posted:

S1E7 - The War Prayer

“My shoes are too tight and I have forgotten how to dance.”



Knowing there’s a different order makes me wonder if this episode was earlier in the season as it brings up Kosh’s attack and the disappearance of Dr Kyle and the other telepath. Sinclair and Ivanova’s conversation about the Vorlons is very clear ‘well isn’t that interesting’ setup stuff, adding to the pile of things I’m sure we’ll come back to.



That’s all from the prequel movie, “The Gathering” that came before the series started.

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."

TraderStav posted:

That’s all from the prequel movie, “The Gathering” that came before the series started.

Yes, I know.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

The_Doctor posted:

Yes, I know.

So far all of the episodes you have watched are in the correct order. Any modifications are pretty subtle and does not have large implications.

AARD VARKMAN
May 17, 1993

TraderStav posted:

So far all of the episodes you have watched are in the correct order. Any modifications are pretty subtle and does not have large implications.

Can you or someone please post the two different episode orders with titles? It would be nice just to ensure we're watching in the same order, as I believe The_Doctor is watching on Plex, and I don't know what VideoGames is watching on. I'm personally going by the order they're in on Amazon streaming.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Stick to the original broadcast order. I’m pasting season 1 below. Don’t want to show season and episode titles for future seasons at this point.


Season One ("Signs and Portents")

code:
Air Date  Ep#  Prod#  Title
03/03/31              The Gathering part 1
03/04/01              The Gathering part 2
03/04/02    1   103   Midnight on the Firing Line
03/04/03    2   102   Soul Hunter
03/04/04    3   104   Born to the Purple
03/04/07    4   101   Infection
03/04/08    5   108   The Parliament of Dreams
03/04/09    6   110   Mind War
03/04/10    7   107   The War Prayer
03/04/11    8   106   And The Sky Full Of Stars
03/04/14    9   113   Deathwalker
03/04/15   10   105   Believers
03/04/16   11   111   Survivors
03/04/17   12   114   By Any Means Necessary
03/04/18   13   116   Signs and Portents
03/04/21   14   119   TKO
03/04/22   15   109   Grail
03/04/23   16   122   Eyes
03/04/24   17   115   Legacies
03/04/25   18   120   A Voice in the Wilderness part 1
03/04/28   19   121   A Voice in the Wilderness part 2
03/04/29   20   118   Babylon Squared
03/04/30   21   117   The Quality of Mercy
03/05/01   22   112   Chrysalis

AARD VARKMAN
May 17, 1993
Wow, they originally showed it 5 nights a week? That's crazy, but man watching this show air like that in 93 must have been incredible.

e: VVVVV lol that makes way more sense.

AARD VARKMAN fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Jun 4, 2020

Vavrek
Mar 2, 2013

I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?
I think those are from a rebroadcast in 2003.

Here's the modified order:

code:
    Midnight on the Firing Line
    Soul Hunter
    Born to the Purple
    Infection
    The Parliament of Dreams
    Mind War
    The War Prayer
    And The Sky Full Of Stars
    Deathwalker
    Believers
    Survivors
    By Any Means Necessary
    Signs and Portents
    Grail
    Eyes
    A Voice in the Wilderness part 1
    A Voice in the Wilderness part 2
    Babylon Squared
    The Quality of Mercy
    TKO
    Legacies
    Chrysalis
It's pretty much entirely little changes based on things JMS said, like "Oh, the show was going on hiatus for a few weeks here and we didn't want to come back on a downer episode" or "Yes, this episode was supposed to happen then, but it took so long to render the CGI that we bumped it back." It makes a lot of subtle little character details flow much better, but they're not big enough deals to worry about.

Zaroff
Nov 10, 2009

Nothing in the world can stop me now!

TheAardvark posted:

Wow, they originally showed it 5 nights a week? That's crazy, but man watching this show air like that in 93 must have been incredible.

No - those dates are from when Sci-Fi repeated the show daily.

Babylon 5 was originally broadcast weekly.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
My mistake, I didn't look at that when I pulled it off of the lurkers guide. I'm assuming that's the same airing order from 93 though?

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

VideoGames
Aug 18, 2003
I am in the UK and luckily iTunes uk has all 5 seasons available to buy for £15 each. I own 1 and 2 so far and the order looks like the aired order to me. I would have to do a double check.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply