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I only managed to watch a few episode of the series when it first aired since it kept disappearing and popping up on another channel at a different time. I did however get to see all the films that were released because the Sci fi channel made a big deal of showing them. Like one a week, I was able to piece most of it together and it intrigued me enough to buy the dvd box set that came with everything including the crusade spin off. I've caught up with the show and watched everything apart from the spin off, I did catch a few episodes years ago but aside from the premise it didn't really leave an impression on me. Is it worth watching?
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Sep 6, 2016 18:25
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Speaking of early B5 roughness, what was the deal with that Praying Mantis crime lord? I think they just dropped him without a trace because it looked terrible and I bet was a pain in the arse to get working. But it just sticks in my head. It was on the show right? I didn't just dream it up? I tried looking it up on the B5 fan wiki but couldn't find anything. It just kept linking me to the shadows. Data Graham posted:
Yeah I think there were two explanations, one is that Londo is from the Centari Republics nobility, most of the other nobles also speak with a stereotypically toff accent though they mainly spoke with Britishish accent while Londo always reminded me of a Romanian Boyar. I don't know why because he doesn't sound like any Romanian I've ever met, but I just can't help seeing Carpathian castles. The other one which I think might have been a fan answer was that he learnt English from a bloke who talked like that (a Romanian Boyar perhaps?) so he emulated the accent while Vir just speaks like a guy from tech support.
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Sep 7, 2016 02:40
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adhuin posted:People only wish that Nagrath was a product of a fevered nightmare. He's real and pretty much got canned, because humans with rubber-masks are easier to work with. Angry Salami posted:Yeah, N'grath. He appeared a few times in the first season but got dumped because they never felt the prop looked right. The costume ended up appearing on Buffy as a one-off monster. Aha! for context, this is what I was talking about  I can see why they thought it was a good idea on paper, he looks pretty menacing in that close up above but all he did was stand around in a gassy room, and looked really fake in wide shots. Baka-nin fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Sep 7, 2016 |
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Sep 7, 2016 03:56
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adhuin posted:Or characters: JMS was so pissed about this that he had the character killed off entirely after quite a bit of build up. Ended up making the threat posed by President Klark a lot more effective when the guy building the resistance gets murdered before we even see him.
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Sep 8, 2016 00:10
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Payndz posted:IIRC, the guys at Foundation Imaging put their hearts and souls into the VFX for B5, going well beyond what they were asked to do to make the work as impressive as possible given the tight time and the limited budget on the grounds that they were blazing a trail and wanted to show that awesome CG wasn't just for big-budget movies. Then Doug Netter thought "Wait, why should these nerds be getting money from Warner Bros that could be coming to me?", set up Netter Digital Imaging, ordered Foundation to turn over all the art assets to his new company, then fired them. The FI crew were understandably pissed off. Ah I see, an excellent display of the Rodenberry manoeuvre.
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Sep 12, 2016 08:22
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Yes Legend of the Rangers is terrible. I remember the Scifi channel had a Babylon 5 week, each day was a marathon of the show ending with one of the films. I think it was in release order because Legend was last, and man was it awful. Not only was it a rather dull story but the very tone of it was noticeably different from the rest of the show, and its plot basically cheapened the struggles in the main show by introducing an even more powerful ancient and secretive alien empire of evil.
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Sep 13, 2016 17:31
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Data Graham posted:First season's done. Nice! Well, Morden is a German word that means to kill with premeditation, but in English is just a meaningless and unassuming name. So yeah I can see a bunch of authors who like hidden meanings and the "you get more than you bargain for" theme using it for that type of character.
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Sep 19, 2016 05:21
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Party Plane Jones posted:The biggest obstacle to me rewatching Babylon 5 is finding my DVDs in storage because apparently the streaming rights lapsed from Netflix 4 or 5 years ago and the show has never returned since to any service. Same, I have the complete Boxset but in the past few months I've become streaming spoiled and lazy. Though this thread is getting me more and more curious to dive in again, and I have a four day weekend coming up.
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Sep 21, 2016 17:52
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The original idea was to have Delenn be male until he came out of the chrysalis to make for a more dramatic change. But the poor effects of the makeup meant they ditched it early on.
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Sep 22, 2016 02:47
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When I first watched that episode I was horrified with the idea that he was supposed to be legit ala Jack. I was also annoyed because they were going with the chivalrous order of knights version of the Arthurian legend and ignoring the far more interesting original Celtic folk tale versions. Seriously in the really old tales, Arthur hangs around with the now dispossessed Celtic Gods(because Wales was heavily Christian by that point, they no longer had jobs) and fights cat monsters, divine boars and Dog Heads, (yes dog heads). I mean I liked Michael York in the episode but I was just waiting for the stupid tv show reveal that he was just another case of being unstuck in time. Thankfully it didn't go in that direction, and ended up being one of my favourite episodes. To take such an absurd premise and take it where it went with York walking the tightrope between tragic farce and camp lunacy was just incredible. Data Graham posted:
Yeah, that's what they meant by him speaking contemporary English. If Arthur was ever a real person who existed in history then English simply wouldn't have existed in any form while he would of been alive. He would of spoken very archaic Brythonic, (ye olde Welsh), or maybe some form of Latin because the name Arthur is almost certainly from the Roman Artorious. Bedivere (or Bedwyr) was one of his earliest companions and so has had many different connections to Arthur in most versions of the tale. Some of which say he has family connections to Arthur, or he's related to Kay or Lucan who are sometimes brothers to Arthur, or foster brothers or blood brothers or so on. In some versions Arthur is so reliant and trusting of Bedivere their relationship was referred to as brotherly, so they didn't exactly make it up out of thin air. Though everyone else did so I wouldn't begrudge them doing it too. Basically I think they just simplified the relationship so the episode wouldn't be bogged down in one version of the Arthurian legend that probably won't be familiar at all to the audience. I mean, would losing his one handed cup bearer carry the same weight, or the brother of his foster brother, or marshal of his table? Even if you don't know anything about Arthur, the brother connection should tell you they were close
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Oct 6, 2016 01:20
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Neddy Seagoon posted:That's actually not true, as the Humans challenged the Minbari to combat so it's their own fault they got slaughtered by Minbari standards. The humans really pissed them off with the double-insult of attacking when they were displaying a gesture of respect (flying with gunports open), and offing their most respected leader in the first volley. MonsieurChoc posted:Getting angry at "tricks" when your ships are basically immune to them otherwise is being really bitter about the other guy daring to fight back. Its been awhile since I watched In the Beginning, but wasn't the ship Sheriden blew up also using the same trick he ended up doing? I'm fairly certain I remember there was a smaller Minbari ship that pretended to be in trouble to lure earth ships out in the open, and then that great big battle cruiser jumped in to kill them all. And Sheridens ship only survived thanks to
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Feb 25, 2017 07:50
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hangedman1984 posted:It was mentioned in some season 1 episode (I forget which) that G'kar has a...fondness for human females  and yeah. they also did that thing where G'Kar tries to get Talia to agree to a Narn human telepath breeding program, where its played ambiguously as to whether he thinks this will actually work, or if he just wants to have sex with her.
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Mar 6, 2017 06:23
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Finally cracked open my DVD collection and started rewatching. S1 is pretty good, I don't know if its me knowing how much of this will payoff later or the DVD format letting watch several episodes in one go. If anything I'm getting more frustrated with mid to late S2 now that the plot has finally got going. Every time an episode looks standalone or filler I think "get back the Narn-Centari war" or "show me more Shadows being mysterious and evil dammit!" I forgot just how callous Bester was, I thought he was a telepath supremacist but in his second appearance he murders three psychics and thinks he gunned down a dozen more and isn't affected at all.
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Mar 23, 2017 23:22
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Yeah I was hoping when I saw twenty+ replies in this thread that it was just a slap fight. I really liked Vir, he was one of my favourites. I liked the subplot where he's been using his connections to smuggle Narns out of the warzone. Well I've been rewatching the show, I'm in the middle of Series 3 at the moment, I was surprised just how well established the all powerful Earth Gov was in the early days of the show. Even before Clark comes to power there are already numerous ominously authoritarian actions by the government and multiple plots about secretive groups within the military.
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Jun 18, 2017 20:44
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pentyne posted:Of by a factor of 10x. Still, there must've been 30-40k people living in extreme poverty on the station at least. Reminds me of that episode where Ivanova accidentally gives that Darwinist species the idea to ghettoise its poor, sick and downtrodden. That was a fun subplot.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:27
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The Rangers always confused me, and I still don't see how Marcus is supposed to work, he's supposed to be helping run a secret underground network of soldiers and scouts, but he's so loud and flamboyant in mannerism that he sticks out like a sore thumb.
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Jul 1, 2017 23:00
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Duck and Cover posted:I don't recall clicking on this thread. I mean I have Enterprise running in a tab so maybe my brain is deteriorating. There is a hole in your mind
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Oct 21, 2017 04:26
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Narsham posted:"It's the Summer of Kosh!" You could recycle the script for the episode where George is mistaken for a right wing extremist and stuck in a private limo with his followers. "The Minbari uses the Narn as muscle in their war against... human colonies must expand,  "And have George's father in the line up of earth religions with the Festivus poll.
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Dec 26, 2017 19:51
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I just got past the end of the Shadow war in my rewatch. Its a great episode despite its odd placement in series four. In the next episode they celebrate stopping not one but two genocidal crusades by throwing the lamest party in the galaxy. I'm not being critical, I find that some how really charming. Especially Franklin throwing himself fully into the dancing despite being terrible at it.
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Apr 22, 2018 00:18
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In series four in the ISN interview episode they say that 2018 was the year the first lunar base was established, so I guess Babylon 5 is what happens in the timeline where Newt Gingrich won the elections. Also in that episode where Marcus and Doctor Franklin smuggle themselves to Mars there's a joke subplot about same sex marriage being legal, so they have to pretend to be newlyweds.
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Jun 21, 2018 21:48
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Hmm, Guess I should finally dig my copy of Dangerous Vision's from the cupboard and finish it. Speaking of which Ellison's contribution to it has very strong connections to the episode The Inquisitor. Ellison apparently had a decades spanning obsession with the old Ripper.
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Jun 29, 2018 00:49
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Doctor Zero posted:That episode comes from JMS’ obsession with ol Jack. He even gives his own opinions of his true identity in the script book. Although as consultant I’m sure Uncle Harlan has a hand in it too. JMS sharing the obsession would explain how it got shot and broadcast, given how well, unique it is, but the episode is just a transplant of Ellison's short story "The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World" Jack has the same motivations for the killings and both Jack's were sent into the future by a group of people who are so technologically advanced they may as well be magic. He becomes their puppet and both have this weird need to empathise with the `woe is me` pleas from a brutal serial killer. And Ellison wasn't one to let people even potentially get away with slightly ripping off his ideas without raising a massive fuss in public so they must have come to an agreement. Even the structure with Delenn's interrogation is quite similar to Jack and Juliette. Basically what I'm saying is if you liked Comes the Inquisitor but are curious to see what would happen if Delenn failed track down The Prowler in the City.
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Jun 29, 2018 03:23
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pentyne posted:One thing I'll never forgot about Star Trek TNG/DS9 was that they cast the best actors as Cardassians. Like it was on their casting sheet "Be able to go toe to toe with Patrick Stewart or similar" Tomalak was not a Spoonhead 
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Jun 29, 2018 04:17
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 22:33 |
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Action Jacktion posted:JMS posted his memories of Harlan Ellison (too long to post here): Not if Gingrich were in the Whitehouse 
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Jul 7, 2018 05:36
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