|
Milky Moor posted:I adore the show because the reusable sets, melodramatic acting and rotating cast of guest stars who you begin to recognize by voice because they're always in alien masks gives it this wonderful stage production feel, as others have pointed out. Yes, the theatrical ACK-ting! is something you kind of have to learn to love about Babylon 5. Everything about the show is inherently stagey, but having grown up on British sci-fi and children's dramas that doesn't bother me at all. Seems obvious to say it, but if B5 were to ever get rebooted it would have to be a very, very different show, as there's no way you could make it in that "people having arguments in very similar-looking sets" style now. Wait, Jerry Doyle died? poo poo, I had genuinely no idea. The B5 Reaper claims another one. Just Ivanova and Sheridan left of the B5 command staff, then? Oh, and Corwin. And those others that never spoke.
|
#
¿
Sep 7, 2016 17:06
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 06:51 |
|
|
Timby posted:Lochley. Duh, of course. Shbobdb posted:Also, did they ever fix the CGI on the releases we can watch now? If not are there :files: of the non broken stuff like with Bevis and Butthead or are we all just stuck? Short answer: Nope. The best source I've been able to find, short of hunting down all the VHS releases, is buying episodes through the VUDU streaming service, which has them in the 4:3 original broadcast versions. I experimented using a capture card to try recording some of them via my Xbox(their PC streaming app is dogshit and seemingly designed to make screen capture impossible) and the results were pretty good, but the thought of actually sitting down and recording the entire lot is a bit of a daunting prospect.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 7, 2016 18:35
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:On Londo's accent, the best part is they specifically told him not to do that and he'd say okay, then when the cameras rolled Jurasik went with that crazy rear end vampire accent thing and they couldn't make him stop it so they just went with it. Then you see a few of the other old family types have a similar one. I liked that the Centauri had a range of accents, the Minbari did sort of too. I think I also read that Jurasik did Londo's hair the way it was as a joke, but then everyone just went along with it because they thought it was what he really wanted.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 8, 2016 16:00
|
|
|
Kingtheninja posted:I think I got as far as the mind war episode with chekov. Which was an awesome surprise, BTW. It's kind of funny how they have to just sort of brush aside the implications of what happens to Ironheart. I mean, he effectively transforms into some kind of God-like being, and everyone just kind of shrugs and goes, "Huh, that happened." In a way that ending feels much more Trek-like than any other B5 episode, in the sense that the Enterprise crew have mysterious God-like beings dropping by every other week, whereas on B5 it's a little bit rarer(well, early on at least). MrL_JaKiri posted:I've been working through B5 with an ex (although it's currently referred to as "Space James" because Sinclair looks like a mutual friend) and we're almost up to Intersections in Real Time. There's one I'm always interested in getting peoples opinions of First episode I saw all the way through. I'd had the show on in the background before without really paying attention to what was going on, but I think this one grabbed me as I'd recently read Nineteen Eighty-Four for the first time and something in the dialogue between Sheridan and the Interrogator brought up echoes of Smith and O'Brien. It does work really well as an introductory episode, as you don't need to know anything about the characters or their history. All the pertinent information about how the main guy got into this scrape emerge during the interrogation, and it leaves you intrigued to find out how he got to this point. Of course, TNG later did their own even more blatant Orwell homage, with Picard and the David Warner Cardassian. Which is also a great episode. 
|
|
#
¿
Sep 10, 2016 21:08
|
|
|
MrL_JaKiri posted:Well, 5 years earlier but who's counting! Oh man, what a goof. In my defence, the huge time delay in TNG being run on British TV meant we were still getting "new" episodes several years after the show went off the air.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 10, 2016 22:05
|
|
|
Milky Moor posted:It's a quirky classic sci-fi thing, really, but also lays seeds for the fact that the Vorlons aren't on the level. Deathwalker illustrates their approach towards politics (gently caress you, that's why) but Inquisitor illustrates that they care more about the end result than petty things like morals or justice. I've just watched this episode again and is it me or is Alexander totally channelling Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes? Maybe it's just the eyebrows. .jpg)
|
|
#
¿
Sep 29, 2016 22:32
|
|
|
drat, this is too intriguing to let slip by. PM me up, someone?
|
|
#
¿
Oct 19, 2016 08:14
|
|
|
King Doom posted:poo poo, I remember the first time that episode premiered in the UK, it was on at something ridiculous like two AM, and I had the first of my GCSE exams the next morning. Still watched it, and I still get misty eyed thinking back. In fact, Channel 4 decided it would be a great idea if the final five episodes were shown on weekday mornings in the middle of The Big Breakfast. Because what everyone wanted to hear was Johnny Vaughan and a house full of people talking very loudly over the end credits. After many complaints they ran them again...in the 1pm graveyard slot. Season 5 really did kicked around the schedules as I remember. They didn't know what to with it. At one point it was on at lunchtime on a Sunday.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 11, 2016 01:15
|
|
|
Zaroff posted:While they did gently caress up with the final 5 episodes of Season 5, they did make up for it by starting a repeat run of the entire series late night on Sundays! Except for the fact that they didn't want to cough up for the repeat rights for Season 4 & 5, so the repeat run stopped dead after the cliffhanger ending of Za'ha'Dum Still, at least we got to see Crusade! 
Maelstache fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Nov 11, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Nov 11, 2016 20:55
|
|
|
Payndz posted:Crusade was badly hosed over by the network (I can't recall the details, but wasn't the whole thing with the change in uniforms to do with forced reshoots?), and the music was indeed poo poo, but JMS has to shoulder some of the blame himself. It's years since I saw it, but the main thing I remember is thinking that he'd burned through all his best ideas on B5 and was now trying to make a meal with leftover scraps. They had to reshoot the whole first episode, didn't they? I think it might've been shown out of order as well but I can't recall the details. I just remember how cheap and badly made it looked. Even without the interference from TNT it would've still been a disappointment. Going straight into the continuation of B5 directly after B5 ended was clearly a massive mistake on JMS's part. Some episodes further in the run weren't too bad, the problem was the show had such an awful start I don't think it ever really recovered. I remember the very last episode had some promise (and Dr Franklin), but it was too little too late.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2016 22:38
|
|
|
Dirty posted:Gideon's hover-bike chase and the Homunculous were particular low points, but I think they'd have looked bad in any series around that time period - they were both overambitious. I get that the homunculous wasn't supposed to be photoreal, but I assume was also supposed to not look laughable. There was still a sizeable gap between Crusade and Firefly going to air. I think a better comparison might be Farscape, which actually debuted the same year as Crusade and pretty much outstripped it on every level, especially visual effects.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2016 23:28
|
|
|
Neddy Seagoon posted:It still casts a shadow over the entire first half of the season as the primary story arc. Once it gets put to bed the season makes a massive jump in quality. It kind of sticks in the craw that so much more time was spent on that storyline than, say, whatever was originally planned for Lennier's arc. But you know what the worst part about it was? That loving song. Someone on the comments for that clip has it right, Byron was essentially a Jim Jones figure but this doesn't come across at all in the direction of the show. Especially when they're putting him in what looks like a soft focus new age music video(see clip above). pentyne posted:Morden oozed raw evil from every moment on the station. Behind his weirdly out of place hair and soft spoken manner it was extremely obvious he was not there to do favors for people for charity. He had that kind of creepy niceness to him that you normally didn't get on early 90s serial television that made you think he was there to ruin someone's life despite all the manners in the world. It's a classic Mephistophilean bargain; a mysterious and powerful stranger shows up and offers you the thing you want most in the universe, in exchange for a terrible price. The twist that JMS put on the idea was essentially making him a sales rep for the forces of evil. I wonder if that character archetype existed before Faust or if it's even older than that? Pretty drat old in any case.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2017 22:38
|
|
|
Dirty posted:Yeah, I remember at the time the networks, from Season 2 onward, decided to keep the last 4-5 episodes of the season, and run them as a lead-in into the new season. Apparently it was to give them a "head start" over other networks, I guess with airing new episodes before everyone else starts. I don't really get American TV, but that's how I understood it at the time. I just looked up the UK airdates, and there was a four month gap between "Movements" and those last five episodes, which aired the week after Christmas 1998. Sleeping In Light went out on New Years Day(that ties in with my memory of being at my grandparents for the holidays when it was on). This was apparently due to TNT being dicks about the distribution rights, which meant Channel 4 was not allowed to run the episodes before their US broadcast as they had done previously. They did show the final five again in a late night slot, which was supposed to lead into a complete rerun of the whole series. The problem was they'd burned through their repeat rights for Season 4 and didn't want to pay for it again, so it ended abruptly at Za'ha'dum. I remember anxiously checking the TV schedules every week to see when it was coming back, but it never did  Of course, if we'd had the Sci-Fi Channel we could've seen it twice a week forever, but we...didn't.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2017 13:06
|
|
|
B5's back on in the UK from next Monday, the Freeview channel Pick TV is starting a complete run every weekday evening. Mildly curious as to which version of The Gathering they're going with, or whether it's going to be 4:3 or 16:9.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 8, 2017 22:31
|
|
|
Marmaduke! posted:I noticed watching Despicable Me yesterday that Gru has the same voice as Londo. Which is neat. I always thought Tom Hardy's Bane voice sounded like he was doing an impression of Andreas Katsulas.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 11, 2018 00:16
|
|
|
Jedit posted:Some of those threads shifted even before S1. The Psi-Corps sleeper agent was originally going to be Laurel Takashima, so Andrea Thompson wanting to leave turned into a happy coincidence. Eh, weren't those storylines pretty much separate? Takashima was supposed to be the traitor that shot Garibaldi in the back, the role that got shifted to a random dude who was in the background of a couple of episodes. There was nothing in the script to say Jack was mind-controlled, he was just a true believer Psi-Corp scumbag. Presumably Takashima would've been the same. The worst part about the Ironheart episode is that he basically turns into loving God, and everyone just kinds of shrugs and goes "Eh, weird day, huh." and just carry on like nothing happened. It's the kind of thing that would fly in Trek where they meet magical omnipotent beings every other week, but in B5 it felt like a weird tonal misstep.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 17, 2018 10:57
|
|
|
JMS really, really wants to do the Lord Of The Rings TV show. https://twitter.com/straczynski/status/982770201136541696
|
|
#
¿
Apr 8, 2018 10:28
|
|
|
Tsaedje posted:UK had it all on Amazon last year, then it was being shown on a freeview channel from beginning to end until a couple of months ago. Now they've shown it all Amazon might get it back. Eh, it was never taken off Prime in the UK as far as I can see? Annoyingly it's not in the subscription package though, you still have to pay for individual seasons/episodes.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 2, 2018 17:32
|
|
|
The curse strikes again, Harlan Ellison now. https://deadline.com/2018/06/harlan-ellison-dies-sci-fi-writer-was-84-1202419133/ Well, maybe not. Unlike some of the others he lived to a good age and had a long career outside the show. One of the last from that golden era of sci-fi writers, I guess.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2018 21:34
|
|
|
LongDarkNight posted:With LeGuin dead who else is left? Michael Moorcock, Robert Silverberg, Gene Wolfe are Samuel R Delany are still kicking around.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2018 23:52
|
|
|
turn left hillary!! noo posted:That's why the sfx on the DVDs already look like crap - for all the effects shots they had to use the NTSC broadcast masters, which were 4:3 on video, and upscale/crop them to 16:9. The actual filmed portions are fine, but every single shot with any kind of effect would need the effect recreated from scratch and recomposited. And it probably has way more effects than TNG, which, as a more popular show already proved... unfulfilling from a monetary investment standpoint. JMS has claimed recently(in relation to Amazon Prime getting the US streaming rights) that 35mm prints of all the episodes exist in the Warner archives, implying it would be possible to put out a near-HD quality 4:3 release of the entire series. The hard part would be convincing WB to give a poo poo about putting out a better quality release than the one that's already available. I'm pretty sure he said some of the CG sequences used on the DVDs had actually been sourced from the laserdisc versions, which would explain an awful lot. http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2018/05/hd-version-of-babylon-5-may-be-possible.html
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2018 17:59
|
|
|
Timby posted:The news reports at the time suggested that PTEN told Straczynski to change the lead actor or else the show would be canceled. At the time, he obfuscated, saying that it was always part of the plan to move Sinclair to a background role and introduce a new "soldier" commander of the station (which everyone with half a brain could see was PR spin). He basically completely poo poo-talked O'Hare on his radio show, calling him crazy and impossible to work with. And this was while he was still around, and when everyone else who knew the truth about his leaving was still keeping a lid on it. RIP Jerry, you loving piece of poo poo. Here we are, actual quote: https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/39270/ "My first season of Babylon 5 working with Michael O'Hare, he's a whack-job a complete lunatic. He flies out from New York, he gets the gig, we're doing our rehearsels he says to me one day "Uh can you give me a ride out the the set?" yeah sure! "Wanna stop and have breakfeast?" yeah good! He gets in the car and he's playing with the buttons in my car trying to turn the radio off and I'm like what are you doing? And he goes "I don't want any sound" and I go well why dont you just ask me to turn it off? And he goes "I dont want to talk today!" And I say well why do you want to go to breakfeast and he goes "you talk, I'll listen!" so obviously we hurry through breakfeast, we go out to the set and I realise I'm dealing with a complete nut-job here."
|
|
#
¿
Aug 15, 2018 21:43
|
|
|
Jedit posted:Timov does return in the Fall of Centauri Prime novels. Unfortunately you're unlikely ever to read them, because they're long out of print and hard to find. I won't post a link because  but I would suggest googling "hungry-ewok babylon 5" might produce startling results.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 16, 2018 23:00
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 4, 2018 12:05
|
|
|
Doctor Zero posted:Oh god I always wanted to find that and then the internet came around and I found it and then really wish I hadn’t. It’s awful. The script I'd want to see adapted is the Vincent Ward space monks version, it was basically The Name Of The Rose with xenomorphs.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2018 15:58
|
|
|
Payndz posted:Wouldn't be surprised if someone from Foundation Imaging has the entire library of ship models on a Zip disk in their attic. Ron Thornton confirmed as much in an interview years back. The problem isn't sourcing the models necessarily, it's that the technology and software involved is so archaic(we're talking Lightwave and Video Toaster here) that even if all the model data survives I doubt it would be of much use. Short of re-creating all the CG from scratch, the only real option for an HD upgrade is the archival film copies held by Warners. hope and vaseline posted:Definitely this. At some point it was even streaming on some service at 4:3 SD quality without the jarring transitions and cropping. It is (or was) on VUDU in 4:3. I figured out a way to capture from there using an Xbox Gold Account and a VPN and then feeding out to an Elgato to record to my PC, but it was pretty tedious and I didn't get very far. And I think they've blocked VPNs now.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 25, 2018 21:13
|
|
|
I decided to start reading the original novels based on the series, just out of curiosity as it was a part of the franchise I hadn't previously engaged with. For better or worse I started with the first one, "Voices" by John Vornholdt, and, well...huh. For the most part it feels "off" in a way that a lot of tie-in novels based on shows are when the person writing it doesn't really know a lot about the show or characters. B5 as a setting is hardly used, which is a bit odd considering this is the first book in a series based on a series set on a goddamn space station, in space. instead, the story largely concerns Talia Winters being framed as a terrorist(!) and having to go on the run from Psi-Corp on Earth, so most of the story takes place there and on Mars. We find out Talia has an Uncle on Mars called Ted who's some sort of revolutionary-dissident. The story is full of elements like this that feels thrown in but don't really connect to anything else or have a payoff. There's also a long drawn out diversion in the middle where Talia escapes captivity with this guy and hangs out at a hippy commune in the desert for a while, before both of these story points are dropped and never referred to again. I did think it was funny that Bester uses a lot of British idioms, e.g. "Not bloody likely!" as if the writer wasn't sure where he was supposed to be from and just assumed evil dude = English. There was one amazing part which made me stop reading out of sheer disbelief. It's when Talia is on a shuttle in disguise on Mars. Garibaldi is there as well looking for her and he is able to identify who she is...by checking out her rear end. Not making this up, this is the actual text from the book: quote:You pig, quit staring at her, he told himself. But the woman had almost struggled to the end of her row and was about to hit the aisle, so he thought he would hold on to catch her rear action. Garibaldi wasn't disappointed - it was the finest can he had seen in a long time. In fact, it was reminiscent. He sat up in his seat and stared at the woman's buttocks as she sauntered away from him. Then he gripped Gray's arm. Almost tempted to tweet JMS to ask if Garibaldi's rear end-recognition powers are canon.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 12, 2019 00:15
|
|
|
Old Boot posted:In contrast to good art (I rather like the designs, though I had a moment of looking at Londo and thinking 'oh god it's ultra-weird pony fanart isn't it' before my brain snapped back into gear), let's have some bad official art Oh wow, is that Ridgway art? Dude was so good on Hellblazer and the old Dr Who comics. Uh, must've had some trouble drawing B5 likenesses I guess?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 26, 2019 23:40
|
|
|
Gnome de plume posted:He even does the "my love for her is pure and different, you wouldn't understand" speech at one point. I guess the question is did JMS write Lennier like that intentionally or did those characteristics come about about as a consequence of his own goonish tendencies (thinking of that time he tried to hit on Claudia Christian and got firmly shut down)? Does he actually think Lennier is a good guy and not a hapless jerk?
|
|
#
¿
May 1, 2019 21:44
|
|
|
TraderStav posted:
I always get that confused with the The Babylon Podcast, which is so ancient in podcast terms it predates Skype calls being a thing - whenever a guest called in they had to ring them on an actual phoneline. They did manage to get a good number of the principal cast and crew to talk to them though (although it probably helped that one of the presenters had actually worked on the show).
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2019 23:26
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 06:51 |
|
|
JMS saying he's hoping to shoot a pilot in the spring, aiming for a full series pick-up by the summer. https://bleedingcool.com/tv/babylon-5-jms-sees-pilot-shoot-early-spring-possible-fall-2022-debut/ drat, that's moving ahead pretty quickly. I figured it would be a lot longer before we heard anything concrete about this.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2021 10:54
|
|