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Baronjutter posted:What's like the demographics of the mimbari? It can't be an even 3-way split between the castes, you can't have 1 worker supporting 1 soldier and 1 priest. Thing is, the reason it's the Minbari Federation is that they also have some protectorate races in their territory who trade resources and finished goods in exchange for the Minbari guaranteeing their safety. So you can have a 1 to 1 to 1 demo split...if your total 3 caste members are supported by 12 protectorate folks each.
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May 1, 2019 00:47
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sebmojo posted:Press F to dodger To be fair...Dodger is in two episodes.
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Jul 17, 2019 03:52
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SlothfulCobra posted:Babylon 5's CGI is extremely dated, but I guess when they decided what they wanted spaceships to have funky designs like massive rotating sections or weird organic-seeming bits as well as swarms of fighters, that was the only real way to make it work on a TV budget. Some of DS9's Dominion War stuff was pretty good, particularly the big battle shots in Sacrifice of Angels. And the production staff thought so too, because they reused a bunch of those shots for the Battle of Cardassia in the series finale. 
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Aug 17, 2019 21:00
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It's "Infection", we all know it's "Infection".  Keep on keeping on. Considering "Purple" and "Infection" are often considered some of the weaker episodes of the season, I'm looking forward to when you hit the ones that people really like in Season One!
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Aug 23, 2019 19:01
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TraderStav posted:So someone in the Star Trek thread casually mentioned the Mission log podcast and holy hell was that something that I didn't know I needed in my life but it's so great. I LOVE thoughtful recaps of media I've just consumed and it's serving great for my rewatch of all things Star Trek. You might want to try Braving Babylon 5. It's a guy going through B5 for the first time, same as you, with some listener commentary thrown in at the end. He's in the middle of season 5, so by the time you catch up he'll probably have finished the whole show.
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Aug 31, 2019 15:21
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The tragedy of O'Hare's Sinclair was, especially on re-watches, that by the end of Season One Sinclair was finally starting to click for me....and then he's gone. If O'Hare had been able to keep going, I can't help but feel that he'd have grown into the role and we'd have had something really special. It's the lost potential that troubles me the most, I think. Beyond Season One spoilers, protected that the newbies not be spoiled It was a shame, because in War Without End, the depths of emotion that Chrysalis Sinclair was showing had been lost over a season and a half of inactivity and we were back to the overly dry performance of The Gathering Sinclair. 
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Sep 20, 2019 18:04
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The third one burned down, fell over, and sank into the swamp
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Sep 21, 2019 22:15
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sebmojo posted:IT FAILED Bump-bump-BAH, bump-bump-BAH! Ahh, good times.
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Sep 24, 2019 05:07
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TraderStav posted:Season 2, episode 20 A few days late on this one, but I gotta say that The Long Twilight Struggle is my personal favorite B5 episode, mostly because of the circumstances that I saw it in. You see, I was home from college in the summer of 1995, and at the time Babylon 5 was on a weird mid-season break. S2E18 had aired in May but S2E19+ weren't going to air until October. PTEN, man, it was a mess. Anyway, I was home in the NW burbs of Chicago and my mother (who worked for a local newspaper and tended to run into odd bits of local knowledge) mentioned that there was a comic book convention going on in Rosemont, only 15 minutes away. I called around to see if any of my friends wanted to go with me, but everyone was busy or uninterested. So I went by myself, browsed the dealer's room for comics I couldn't afford as a dirt poor college student, then noticed that JMS was in to give a Babylon 5 presentation in the main hall. Well, I was a fan of B5 so I made my way over and JMS gave a little talk about the show....then revealed he had a full print of an episode that he was going to premiere for us! That episode was this one, S2E20, The Long Twilight Struggle. And if you thought watching that particular episode on Amazon was cool and impactful, as I'm sure it was since it's really well done, imagine watching it in a hall full of hundreds of your fellow fans, knowing that you were getting to see it months earlier than anyone else in the world! It was probably the highlight of my B5 fandom, and that episode remains my favorite because of it.
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Oct 16, 2019 04:28
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Print... like a film? Or just a video tape? I dunno for sure, but it was shown projected like a movie. 
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Oct 16, 2019 06:47
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Delthalaz posted:We saw The Beginning movie and are now up to episode 12 (By Any Means Necessary.) The Minbari blew up everything mobile, all starships and the like, and every military base and space station. The plan was to destroy everything that could fight back all the way to Earth, then once there was no resistance, kill everyone on Earth and then move back out exterminating all humans until they couldn't find anymore. This meant that after the war and the Minbari surrender, the civilian colonies were more or less intact, it was just EarthForce that had been crippled. It also meant that the infrastructure to build new ships was still intact so EarthForce could do a crash rebuild, first with existing designs like the Hyperion and Nova classes, then eventually the newer Omega class destroyers. It's also why all the fighters that EarthForce use are the same Aurora class Starfury that date back to the war. EarthForce needed numbers and they needed them fast, so they just kept mass producing the old fighters rather than take the time to tool up a new fighter design.
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Oct 20, 2019 20:04
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think Lennier is probably the pinnacle of the Minbari ideal. Obviously most Minbari can't be prophets or leaders, but the ones that aren't are all supposed to be loyal, obedient, and deferential to a fault. Lennier has the patience and dedication for all those rituals and is basically willing to sacrifice himself for his duty. Well, Minbari Religious Caste anyway. The Warrior Caste clearly value valor and strength more than deference. And we never really find out what the Worker Caste value.
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Nov 2, 2019 00:15
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TraderStav posted:Just finished Deconstruction. What the gently caress? This episode was what happened when they found out they were getting an unexpected season five after being told they were canceled with four. The episode they'd filmed to be the series finale got bumped all the way back to the end of season five, and they had to get a new season four finale in right quick. So JMS put the pedal to the metal and did an anthology ep. I actually quite like Deconstruction, but I know the way it's setup doesn't work for everyone, and that a lot of people dislike one or more of the segments, but personally I really like it, especially the conclusion. The evolved Human from the end's ship even tells him that "unnatural fluctuations in the sun". Someone's blowing the sun up, though no one (not even JMS) has ever figured out who or why. JMS did mention in a post somewhere that humanity was moving to take ownership of the Vorlon homeworld, having finally reached a state advanced enough that the AIs guarding the place will stand down. Also we should note that Jason Ironheart from season one's Mind War, was the very first human to undergo the matter to energy transformation, and that it wasn't a coincidence that he said "I'll see you again in a million years" and that the episode finale is set a million years in the future....
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Nov 7, 2019 03:48
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SlothfulCobra posted:But to get back to Babylon 5, I wonder what the official historical record is would show about everything after the events of the show, because so much that happens is either secret or cloaked in weird mysticism. According to Deconstruction of Fallen Stars Delenn and the Minbari continue to insist on the truth, but human academics continue not to believe them. "Everybody knows Sheridan died on Minbar...."
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Nov 24, 2019 02:03
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Jedit posted:It's not even the only time JMS did it. After he pulled Crusade because Ted Turner was loving with it, he turned Chicago into a criminal wasteland in his comic Rising Stars. But Turner lived in Atlanta, and TNT is still headquartered there. 
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Dec 20, 2019 17:17
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AntherUslessPoster posted:Hey everyone, first time watcher here So hey, I'm always glad to see a new first timer. Welcome aboard! You might want to consider watching "The Gathering", the two hour pilot movie that's set before "Midnight on the Firing Line" to get a better feel for things, though there are some significant changes between pilot and actual show that need to be smoothed over a bit if you do.
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Feb 27, 2020 23:59
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Not really. G'Kar gets MASSIVELY retooled between The Gathering and the series proper, he becomes a lot less underhanded and far more affable. Instead of actually being standoffish and self-interested, he puts it up as a front in the early arc of the actual series to keep the Centauri, and Londo on their toes while being nice to his friends. Saving Catherine Sakai is an example of the mask slipping. Yeah, but that moment only really works BECAUSE you've been thinking of G'kar as a villain from the beginning, and it doesn't land as hard if you don't see him BE a villain in "The Gathering". That scene is the first real indication that there's more to G'kar than just The Bad Guy, but if you want the emotion to work right, you have to see him as The Bad Guy in the first place. 
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Feb 29, 2020 18:40
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Angry Lobster posted:Babylon 5: We are paying off karma at a vastly accelerated rate. Concur.
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Apr 28, 2020 16:10
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mllaneza posted:The whole use of Bester is really masterful storytelling. These days having a (mostly) bad guy be a compelling character is par for the course, but Bester showed the way. Oh there's ONE group for whom the Shadow War has a HUGE psychological impact. That'd be the Drakh, of course.
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May 15, 2020 05:36
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Son of Sam-I-Am posted:I paid $80/season for the original DVD set and didn't blink. ConfusedUs posted:I still have mine. On a shelf like three feet away as I write this. Still got mine, though I got 'em massively on sale and paid like $15 per season for them.
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May 28, 2020 15:46
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CainFortea posted:I think I'm going to have to unfavorite the other thread cause the temptation to talk about stuff is very great. I know what you mean. That's why I've just been lurking over there. Still, it's too fun to watch them go through it to ignore entirely.
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Jun 3, 2020 03:36
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MonsieurChoc posted:Did you know Kosh has a last name? Naranek or something like that as I recall. Can't be bothered to look it up at the moment. 
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Jun 3, 2020 19:24
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Timby posted:Biggs was always stiff. I get that it's in large part because he was almost entirely deaf, but he was not a particularly talented actor. He's daytime soap-opera level at his very best. He got a lot better when he got scenes to do out of MedLab. Steve & Mark's Excellent Adventure is fun, and I rather enjoyed the payoff to Franklin's Walkabout.
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Jun 12, 2020 05:18
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Zaroff posted:I'm enjoying this theory in the newbie thread that Keffer was taken over by the Shadows - shame in reality he never got anything so interesting in the series! I was just coming here to say that! Poor Keffer, the only interesting thing he ever did was die.
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Jun 18, 2020 22:25
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McCloud posted:Why didn't Marcus just get 4-5 other people and then have everyone donate a little bit of life to Susan instead of cranking it up to MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE Because he was a lovesick idiot too busy panicking to think clearly. And possibly, considering that she wasn't attracted to him and wasn't ever going to be with him (creepy as hell short story aside), possibly he decided that he'd rather die for her than live without her. Between Marcus and Lennier, JMS had some things to say about the line between love and obsession, and what happens to people who cross from one to the other.
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Jun 20, 2020 15:21
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ultrafilter posted:I'm not familiar with the short story in question. Is there any value in reading it or should I just go on being unaware? Factoring in the usual disclaimers about each of us having different tastes and what offends me may not you and so on and so forth, I personally am not a happier person as a Babylon 5 fan for having read it.
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Jun 21, 2020 16:57
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The_Doctor just got to A Spider in the Web in the young races thread and is geeking out over the conspiracy stuff. I can't bear to tell him that he'll never hear from Bureau 13 again because of the rights problem!
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Jun 22, 2020 01:58
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Small White Dragon posted:...rights problem? Zaroff posted:There was a Bureau 13 video game released around the same time as Spider in the Web was broadcast. JMS was unaware of the game when he created Bureau 13, but it was decided to remove them to avoid any further issues. Technically, it was a series of books, a tabletop RPG, and a video game in a little franchise. It was sort of a Men in Black idea, where Bureau 13 was a bunch of people in a secret government organization with magic, superpowers, and/or guns fighting against supervillains, vampires, and alien invasions....but secretly so that the normal population never hears of it. There wasn't very much of it and it didn't last very long, but it happened to still be an ongoing thing during the '90s when Babylon 5 was on the air. So they complained when JMS used their trademark in his show, and the words Bureau 13 were never spoken again on B5, though of course the concept of the conspiracy that runs EarthGov from behind the scenes kept on going. Personally, I like to think that Sheridan's hamfisted attempts at conspiracy hunting found him some references to the game franchise, and he just latched onto that as the name for the conspiracy he was after, and he never realized that "Bureau 13" was fictional.
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Jun 22, 2020 04:11
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Data Graham posted:Now I'm trying to think of a way B5 could use a Raymond Reddington style playboy raconteur hitman type of guy. I mean what show wouldn't benefit from a Raymond Reddington style playboy raconteur hitman type of guy?
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Oct 17, 2020 18:13
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quantumfoam posted:Just hit the part in a 1992 mailing list where the initial casting announcements for Babylon 5 pilot episode came out. By all means, we need stuff to talk about here.
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Jan 10, 2021 02:41
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EarthGov, probably. Audience? Nah. Sheridan is never portrayed as anything besides likeable and well intentioned. He needed to be much more of an rear end in a top hat in his early appearances for it to be a surprise that he's really a good guy.
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Jan 11, 2021 01:13
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head58 posted:We’re going to record a remembrance episode for our podcast this weekend. What are some of your favorite Delenn moments (other than “If you value your lives, be somewhere else” of course). Starfire Wheel.
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Jan 22, 2021 19:02
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quantumfoam posted:
Yeah, that's the stuff. Nearly as good as a first watch reaction thread. Only worse because we can't chat with the reactors from back then the way we can with the live reactors here. It's also amusing to see how many of the guesses were right, or nearly so.
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Feb 17, 2021 04:45
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Ayin posted:Well, as long as those live reactors don't melt down! You say that, but one thing I appreciated about B5 after watching a lot of TNG was how B5's fusion reactors were really drat stable compared to the -D's warp core that breached and risked blowing the ship up from pretty much drat near anything happening. The only comparable circumstance for B5 was that time someone stuck a bomb to the reactor!
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Feb 19, 2021 07:05
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Vavrek posted:... What episode do you think that was? Pretty much has to be Intersections in Realtime, don't you think?
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Feb 26, 2021 07:10
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Personally, I've always liked the Vree saucers, especially since I used them to win both of the Babylon 5 Wars Grand Tournaments ever held at GenCon.
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Mar 8, 2021 18:14
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ANOTHER SCORCHER posted:I think I played that game at Origins - what was the advantage of the Vree saucers? Given that the movement system of the game was big on momentum, ie it's harder to turn the faster you go, and the damage system was based on losing armor on your four hull zones (Forward, Aft, Port, Starboard) until you got to the core of a ship and then when the core died so did the ship, the Vree had a number of special rules that made 'em really tough. In the first place, they had six hull zones in pie sections, and secondly they could rotate which section was facing you at any time during their turn and since most of their weapons were 360 degree turrets on the core, it didn't matter which section was pointed at you, you were still getting shot. Vree ships had gravitic drives and could turn a lot easier than non-gravitic races, so combined with their spin rules were the most maneuverable ships in the game. So tough, fast, and they were the only race to make extensive use of antimatter weapons which could do hideous amounts of damage if you got close to your target, but since you were the most maneuverable fleet in the game, it was never hard to get close. Zip in, unload all your antimatter into the enemy's most dangerous ship, eat the return fire, spin so that damaged section is facing away from the next enemy ship, then repeat. It wasn't a perfect fleet, Vree have weak fighters and mediocre anti-fighter defenses (except for the Antimatter Shredder seen at Coriana VI but even that can be worked around if you have enough fighters spread out right). The closest I came to losing was against a Gaim carrier fleet who just filled the sky with more fighters than I could handle, and against fighters the spin trick doesn't work, since they can always get shots into your damaged sections. But fighters don't count towards victory conditions, so when I killed his last carrier I won on points despite the fact that a couple more turns would have seen the bug fighters finish off what as left of my fleet. Fortunately for me the meta in that era tended towards lots of large capital ships and not that kind of carrier fleet, so the rest of the battles I fought both years were a lot easier. tl;dr - Flying saucers kick rear end!
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Mar 8, 2021 20:33
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Shadow war question: how were Ivanova and Marcus able to recruit the other 'First Ones'? Wouldn't they know the whole thing was a bullshit proxy war? Why would they agree to participate? Because they name dropped Lorien and they all showed up to see what finally got him to get his rear end out of the pit on Za'ha'dum.
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Mar 17, 2021 05:53
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The big difference between DS9, besides DS9 having like twice as much money to spend per episode than B5, is that B5 had a plan for all five seasons. Of course life happened and things had to get changed, and characters left, came back, left again and so on and so forth, but B5 knew more or less where it was going from the very first episode. DS9, on the other hand, was episodic Star Trek, especially in the early seasons. Oh there was a little more to it than the other Trek shows, with things being set up early in a season that pays off by the end of it1. And eventually there is an overall plot that ties much of the later seasons together, but you can tell there wasn't really a plan to it all, it just sort of evolved over time. You can get whiplash from the tonal shifts in DS9 sometimes2, but the production values are always top notch, and some of the best DS9 episodes really hold up3, even if they rarely have the same impact as a great B5 episode, since the B5 episode was set up well in advance, where-as the best DS9 episodes tend to be one and done. I like Deep Space Nine, but when I want to see it again, I borrow the DVDs from the library or stream it. I love Babylon 5, and I own a physical copy of every DVD that was ever put out, as well as some of the comics and novels, and I even still have the old Babylon 5 Wars tabletop game in a box in my garage. B5 is the superior show in my opinion, but there's still a lot to like about DS9. 1 = The anti-alien movement among the Bajorans is in the background of the first season and pays off in the season finale and the first three episodes of season two. Then they start mentioning the Dominion here and there throughout season two and pay that off with the season finale and opening episodes of season three. And so on and so forth. But DS9's planning was usually on a season by season basis, rather than showlong like B5's was. 2 = Interrupting your series ending war for a baseball episode? I mean yes, it's a funny episode but Jesus did that need to be in an earlier season! 3 = In the Pale Moonlight and Duet, for example, hold up very well indeed. jng2058 fucked around with this message at 08:34 on Aug 8, 2021 |
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Aug 8, 2021 07:59
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neongrey posted:Yeah, my only S1 skip is Believers. TKO's b-plot is solid gold. I've always thought that was one of the hidden strengths of B5. While there are A- or B- or even C-plots that suck rear end, it's rare that both (or all three in some cases) plots suck. Grey 17 is Missing is often cited as one of if not the worst B5 episode, and the Garibaldi vs. the worst looking rubber suit monster ever A-Plot does indeed suck rear end, but it's splitting time with the actually quite awesome Marcus vs Neroon B-plot. Think the alien probe part of A Day in the Strife is stupid? You're right! But the B-plot with G'kar and Ta'lon is great as is the C-plot with Londo and Vir. And so on and so forth. It's actually pretty hard to find a B5 episode that's terrible from start to finish, where as I can come up with just off the top of my head The Royale, Profit and Lace, and Threshold as TNG, DS9, and VOY episodes that were an entire hour of agony for me, only relieved by the merciful commercial breaks.
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Sep 24, 2021 00:38
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