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I stand by my position that if you read it as a horror story, it's fine
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May 5, 2023 02:01
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Thirdspace was a pretty good horror story, all things considered, in the Babylon 5 universe. If you like Lovecraft stuff. And of course everything related to the plot-line with Cartagia is horror, poor G'kar.
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May 5, 2023 06:55
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There was no Marcus thing, let's change the subject!Rappaport posted:Thirdspace was a pretty good horror story, all things considered, in the Babylon 5 universe. If you like Lovecraft stuff. Thirdspace worked pretty well as a standalone movie, the horror aspect were well executed imho.
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May 5, 2023 14:25
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I didn't like it much. I think the movies generally suffered from not having any B-plots to round them out, so despite having a much longer run, it feels like less is happening than in one normal episode. And then after the action gets going, the fact that the monsters aren't so much unknowable terrors as they are just a bunch of mean bastards and Sheridan beats them just with a bomb seems to undercut the horror aspect of things.
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May 5, 2023 14:31
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Rappaport posted:Thirdspace was a pretty good horror story, all things considered, in the Babylon 5 universe. If you like Lovecraft stuff. The thing that bothers me about Thirdspace is that I've always wanted to know more about the creepy space squid thing Sheridan runs into when he goes to do what he does best. Nuke the everloving poo poo out of something.
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May 5, 2023 14:32
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SlothfulCobra posted:I didn't like it much. I think the movies generally suffered from not having any B-plots to round them out, so despite having a much longer run, it feels like less is happening than in one normal episode. And then after the action gets going, the fact that the monsters aren't so much unknowable terrors as they are just a bunch of mean bastards and Sheridan beats them just with a bomb seems to undercut the horror aspect of things. Sheridan with a bomb is the horror aspect. For the bad guys, at least.
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May 5, 2023 14:44
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SlothfulCobra posted:I didn't like it much. I think the movies generally suffered from not having any B-plots to round them out, so despite having a much longer run, it feels like less is happening than in one normal episode. And then after the action gets going, the fact that the monsters aren't so much unknowable terrors as they are just a bunch of mean bastards and Sheridan beats them just with a bomb seems to undercut the horror aspect of things. This is probably a "you can't argue with taste" type stuff. This is a fair criticism, most of Babylon 5 the series had a lot of plots running co-currently in every episode, and the movies had less of that. I think it's Thirdspace where Zak and Lyta have a flirtation thing going on that doesn't actually lead to anywhere? And the monsters being essentially Lovecraft monsters that are undecipherable works, for me, because that is scary to me. There's no real motivation, as there is in say the Narn-Centauri conflict, the monsters just want to destroy. They don't fit into the wider Babylon 5 universe really at all, except that the Vorlons say "whoopsie doodle", but the Vorlons turned out to be monsters in the end too.
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May 5, 2023 14:57
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SlothfulCobra posted:I didn't like it much. I think the movies generally suffered from not having any B-plots to round them out, so despite having a much longer run, it feels like less is happening than in one normal episode. That's a really good point. It hadn't occurred to me before and I think you're right. Rappaport posted:I think it's Thirdspace where Zak and Lyta have a flirtation thing going on that doesn't actually lead to anywhere? Zack and Lyta have a bit of flirtation (well, Zack does, really; Lyta's always too busy with her own life being a disaster to notice) in the main show. It's in Thirdspace when they're in an elevator alone together and he lays out his feelings to her. Meanwhile, Lyta is basically not conscious, and is being used as a conduit for some kind of wisdom / information from the Vorlons (or somebody) about what the Thirdspace aliens are. (See: Lyta's own life being a disaster, constantly.) Her not responding to him (because she's mumbling ALIEN KNOWLEDGE constantly and is nonresponsive to everything) is what, if you incorporate Thirdspace into the main show's timeline, leads to the flirtation never really going anywhere and just stopping. I should note: the characters in Thirdspace were chosen on a basis purely of "what actors are available?" and then its place in the main show timeline is determined by "when are all those people actually on station at the same time?" So I always think of it as a basically disconnected sidestory that should be considered a part of Season Five (when it came out) that just happens to take place a year earlier.
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May 5, 2023 15:07
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Q_res posted:The thing that bothers me about Thirdspace is that I've always wanted to know more about the creepy space squid thing Sheridan runs into when he goes to do what he does best. Nuke the everloving poo poo out of something. Speaking of things we'd all rather forget weren't the Hand from LotR supposed to be ex-thralls of the thirdspace aliens the way the Drahk were for the Shadows?
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May 5, 2023 15:18
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Love to see the blind thread get “spoiled” by a red herring.
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May 5, 2023 15:24
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Zack was kinda trying to get something started with Lyta, and then he was the guy who had to break it to her that they wanted to move her to smaller quarters since she hadn't had a job or anyone to pay for her stay since the Vorlons left, and that was about the end of things. Lyta was an alright character, but she lacked connections with the rest of the cast and the rest of the plot, which in-universe is why the station felt free to downgrade her when she was no longer providing any service, but out-of-universe, the psychic aspects of Babylon 5 not being integrated into anything else really weakened the whole cult plot. Doctor Zero posted:Sheridan with a bomb is the horror aspect. For the bad guys, at least. 
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May 5, 2023 17:21
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The whole telepath arc, along with a lot of S5 got heavily derailed with Claudia leaving the show. Survivors guilt coupled with her being a self-hating telepath makes her a prime victim for a cult. Also, ConfusedUs posted:Holy poo poo this was my experience exactly, except that I didn't get to watch Season 5 when it came out because it moved to a cable network, and we were too poor for cable. Get the hell out of my lived experience! Ciao Wren fucked around with this message at 17:42 on May 5, 2023 |
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May 5, 2023 17:34
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Ciao Wren posted:Speaking of things we'd all rather forget weren't the Hand from LotR supposed to be ex-thralls of the thirdspace aliens the way the Drahk were for the Shadows? All we know on the basis of what we learn in LotR is that the agents working for the Hand claim that the Hand are older than the oldest races and super-powerful, and that they were exiled from the universe for millions of years. It's possible that that describes the Thirdspace aliens. We know that their servants were operating organically-based ships and appeared to have fairly good technology. Based on how JMS approaches things, I sincerely doubt the claims of the Hand were accurate. My suspicion is that they were pretending to be an ancient and powerful race because they had pretty good tech and because they'd found evidence of this race's existence. I also suspect the actual people the Hand pretended to be were going to make incursions into realspace with ironic implications for the fakers. But my evidence for that is essentially zero, aside from all the B5 fake-outs and what we know of the Crusade fake-outs.
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May 5, 2023 19:12
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Yeah I thought it was from show notes that got released after the show wasn't picked up. I agree there would have been some kind of a fake-out.
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May 5, 2023 19:47
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Another blind watcher hit the halfway point and was asked to make predictions:F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Fun question!
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May 6, 2023 04:10
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honestly p solid. I'm annoyed by lyta, she's a good character and actor and really should have had a lot more to do in the telepath arc. as it was she just got converted then wafted round smiling benignly.
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May 6, 2023 04:19
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I always have to fight the urge to break the news that Talia isn't coming back. It doesn't feel like a spoiler since I'm pretty sure we all knew that back when the show was new, but it's still a spoiler.
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May 6, 2023 06:46
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Polaron posted:I always have to fight the urge to break the news that Talia isn't coming back. It doesn't feel like a spoiler since I'm pretty sure we all knew that back when the show was new, but it's still a spoiler. Knowing what happens to her is the part I wouldn’t mention, even if it is just talked about briefly in a later episode.
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May 6, 2023 06:50
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JAG could have been cancelled or she could have found time to cameo. The latter is unlikely given JMS's mercurial nature but I'm not sure how well known that would have been at the time of Talia leaving the show. Even his petty killing General Hague was more of an inside-baseball thing at the time that we only know now because all the laundry got aired in the years since.
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May 6, 2023 06:52
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Talia is the big missed opportunity of the show for me. But, realistically, I doubt the network would have ever let her and Ivanova be a couple, and that's a big part of why I feel so annoyed that the character was written out. I also think she's just a better character than her replacement, and she's certainly a far better actor than Tallman. Honestly, I reckon she's giving one of the best performances* in the first season, despite also receiving some of the most uninteresting plotlines. I really love the way her performance is quite sensitive and brittle, but also has moments when she's a bit icy and professional. You get a strong sense from the performance how she's been systematically broken down by her fascist overlords and then given purpose again by them. *obviously Jurasik is the best, and Katsulas, but I think Caitlin Brown is up there too. She makes Na'toth is such an awesome, swashbuckling piece of poo poo. Has anyone ever talked about the original plan for Na'toth's arc? From moments like the slavery conversation you get the sense that she'd probably have ended up in a villainous place.
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May 6, 2023 07:19
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Ciao Wren posted:JAG could have been cancelled or she could have found time to cameo. The latter is unlikely given JMS's mercurial nature but I'm not sure how well known that would have been at the time of Talia leaving the show. I don't think she had any interest in working on the show again after how horribly Jerry Doyle treated her throughout their (thankfully short) marriage.
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May 6, 2023 07:19
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Timby posted:I don't think she had any interest in working on the show again after how horribly Jerry Doyle treated her throughout their (thankfully short) marriage. I do not know how the timeline of that intersects with the show. Just how it all started on the turbolift. I don't pay attention to celebrity gossip so I'm also unaware of how widely known that was at the time. I certainly had no idea they were even married until B5 actors started dying like crazy in the 2000s. That's probably on me but maybe not? Ciao Wren fucked around with this message at 07:28 on May 6, 2023 |
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May 6, 2023 07:25
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I like tallman! I think they are both good.
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May 6, 2023 07:27
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On the one hand, I do think it's a shame Talia left and never came back, but on the other, I think having Lyta worked out better storywise. Having the super-telepath be enhanced by the Vorlons rather than empowered by some guy we never see again tied everything together better, and it makes more sense that she's seen by everyone else as a bit of an outsider because she wasn't around for the first couple seasons.
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May 6, 2023 07:41
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I said come in! posted:Knowing what happens to her is the part I wouldn’t mention, even if it is just talked about briefly in a later episode. An that is said by Bester to try to get emotional reaction. It's mention previously that telepaths can hear thoughts with strong emotions without actively scanning. For all we know the new personality is now running PsyCorps.
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May 6, 2023 08:40
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It would seem kind of foolish of PsyCorp to vivasect a superpowered telepath who is totally loyal to them when they could get much more valuable information out of her being alive, able to do experiments and breed her with another powerful telepath or tk to get more superpowered telepaths.
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May 6, 2023 10:32
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Lyta is a fun character, even if she's used horribly by the Vorlons when we start to see they're not exactly good guys. Talia was good as well, and she helped Ivanova's character development a lot, even if the studio (?) at the time was maybe a little prudish about it. I can't recall exactly all the things we learned about Psy-Corp, but the interactions I do recall with Bester make me think they might not be the most rational organization as a whole. Sure they want to murder the billionaire dude who hates teeps, that's just self-preservation, but how much does the Corp buy into its own fascist propaganda, thereby being willing to just murder someone to have a brain in a glass jar somewhere? ultrafilter posted:Another blind watcher hit the halfway point and was asked to make predictions: I wish I could remember what I thought about this stuff on my first watch, back in the early Pleistocene. These are all very good, but also just wrong enough that I bet this person will have a wonderful time watching it unfold.
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May 6, 2023 12:50
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Rappaport posted:Lyta is a fun character, even if she's used horribly by the Vorlons when we start to see they're not exactly good guys. I don't think any of the new watchers have mentioned getting suspicious of the Vorlons even in late season 3. That was a big part of the reaction during the original run, and it seems like the show is pretty blatant about it, so it's odd that no one has picked up on it.
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May 6, 2023 15:23
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ultrafilter posted:I don't think any of the new watchers have mentioned getting suspicious of the Vorlons even in late season 3. That was a big part of the reaction during the original run, and it seems like the show is pretty blatant about it, so it's odd that no one has picked up on it. That's surprising. I remember being suspicious of the new Kosh as soon as he turned up, even before Lyta said that carrying him was darker and more painful. His encounter suit was explicitly demonic in both design and colouration, and his attitude was far more aggressive. Compare that to the original Kosh risking everything to save Sheridan and ultimately sacrificing himself to bring the younger races together.
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May 6, 2023 15:32
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The group of fans I chat with on the regular are all fairly anti-Talia/Andrea Thompson which I never got. I like Lyta, but I just liked the overall narrative of Talia being this professional true believer who slowly has everything break down in front of her, and I thought that the performance really reflected a person torn between what she's always believed and what she saw.
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May 6, 2023 15:35
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It was so long ago I can't remember, but yeah Newkosh does not exactly come across well from jump. I was surprised when it went full on oh these guys are just as bad or worse than the Shadows though.
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May 6, 2023 15:36
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Grand Fromage posted:I was surprised when it went full on oh these guys are just as bad or worse than the Shadows though. The show is so weird about that. On the one hand we have all the S3/4 revelations about them. On the other, we have humanity's new home being the Vorlon homeworld and that being treated as a good thing. Plus, the Vorlons didn't leave anyone like the Drakh lying around (and in fact one of the few times we see post-Vorlon communications it's a warning about the Thirdspace guys).
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May 6, 2023 15:59
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I always thought it was weird how Shadow tech is treated as inherently corrupting and evil, but everyone's cool about Vorlon tech being used in the White Stars and other Alliance ships. I mean, sure, they don't use people as CPUs, but their own living ships that kill themselves when their duties are complete raise a bunch of ethical red flags as well.
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May 6, 2023 16:05
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The first Kosh is sort of nice, even if he is very cryptic. But nu-Kosh is fairly explicitly a bad dude, and the Vorlon civilization just out-right using planet busters is a level of war crimes that'd make Nixon swear. The Vorlon homeworld probably has a lot of Cool Sci-fi Tech poo poo, and becoming beings of energy etc. is sort of presented as an evolutionary step, as nonsensical as that is from an actual biology point of view.
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May 6, 2023 16:11
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Evolving into a being of pure energy seemed to be a fairly popular sci-fi trope at the time. See: TNG, Stargate, and I guess you make an argument for Earth Final Conflict with the Taelons being part of the way there.
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May 6, 2023 16:21
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Polaron posted:The show is so weird about that. On the one hand we have all the S3/4 revelations about them. On the other, we have humanity's new home being the Vorlon homeworld and that being treated as a good thing. Plus, the Vorlons didn't leave anyone like the Drakh lying around (and in fact one of the few times we see post-Vorlon communications it's a warning about the Thirdspace guys). One issue is playing up the Morden “does nothing evil but you’re sure he’s evil” versus Kosh “does lots of evil things but you’re sure he’s good” in S1, which cements some misconceptions. But the larger issues relate to the “right” approach to the Questions (that you need to know who you are BEFORE you ask what you want), which grants more weight to the Vorlon way, and the fact that the show gives us two distinct Vorlon characters but zero actual Shadow characters. The idea is that the Vorlon way works initially but once you understand yourself, they expect you to do what they say and to refuse any change or growth. We do see signs of that early in the series, right down to Kosh admitting he’d gotten “set in his ways”. But given the Shadows can’t really show the transition very well, and that they’re associated with the various tyrants (Clark, especially) instead of the Vorlons, the anti-Vorlon message doesn’t really cohere and it’s their “dark turn” after Kosh dies that makes them villains, when in fact they’re supposed to be all along (though maybe “lost” is better than “villainous”). Angry Salami posted:I always thought it was weird how Shadow tech is treated as inherently corrupting and evil, but everyone's cool about Vorlon tech being used in the White Stars and other Alliance ships. I mean, sure, they don't use people as CPUs, but their own living ships that kill themselves when their duties are complete raise a bunch of ethical red flags as well. Kosh’s ship is described as “doing its last duty,” by Delenn. But of course, Minbari culture is very Vorlon-influenced. I think the Vorlon use of telepaths is a better example, especially the Lyta-Ulkesh relationship. “Obedient tools” are creepy but mainly in the attitude of the “tool” users: telepaths on the show are people in ways that Shadow-modified pilots aren’t. But if you want tech, an “obedient tool” is inherently safer than, say, the technomages.
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May 6, 2023 16:26
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Polaron posted:The show is so weird about that. On the one hand we have all the S3/4 revelations about them. On the other, we have humanity's new home being the Vorlon homeworld and that being treated as a good thing. Plus, the Vorlons didn't leave anyone like the Drakh lying around (and in fact one of the few times we see post-Vorlon communications it's a warning about the Thirdspace guys). The Vorlons' equivalent to the Drakh are the Minbari.
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May 6, 2023 16:31
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When I first watched Babylon 5, I was really down on the ideaof the whole main conflict seemingly becoming a generic good vs. evil thing, and was kinda blindsighted when it turned out the Vorlons were also apparently bad. And everything turning out like that kinda makes some earlier bits confusing. How good was it that Sinclair went back in time to lead an alliance against the Shadows if it was all part of some manipulation? What was the point of sending Jack the Ripper to test Delenn if the Vorlons needed somebody who would unquestioningly follow prophecy?
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May 6, 2023 16:44
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It was more of a chaos vs order thing that people mistook for good vs evil.
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May 6, 2023 16:47
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How much of the Sinclair going back in time story was because of his illness? But still, the Shadows were bad dudes too, and they were aware of humanity a thousand years ago since they planted the ship on Mars. I have no clue about Jack the Ripper, really. Was he a part of big Vorlon scheme to drive Delenn and Sheridan closer together, because they knew that would influence his decisions about Z'ha'dum? That's some 12-dimensional chess right there. But it was a cool episode.
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May 6, 2023 16:57
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