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Blindeye posted:This is the first TV show that heavily relies on CGI and it improves substantially over the years. Part of the frustration is the models are higher res but were never remastered: To add to what's already been shared: the CGI on the show was extensive for the time, and it was done in Lightwave on Amiga computers. Personal computers. They made the foresighted decision to shoot the show in widescreen, anticipating that in the future that format would become standard. The guy running the CGI shop went to one of the executive producers and said he needed $10,000 for a widescreen monitor and they could render all the CGI, both composite shots and full CGI scenes, in widescreen. The EP said no. So when the time came for the Sci Fi channel to snap up the show for rerunning and they opted to pay to get the widescreen version, but none of the CGI was in that format. Solutions ranged from stretching the image to putting black bars at the top and bottom of the screen for CGI-rendered scenes. None of this has helped with the image quality, which was much better on original broadcast. The EP who I'm fairly sure nixed the widescreen monitor purchase, Doug Netter, also replaced the original CGI folks on the show in the fourth season with Netter Digital, run by you can guess who. It's unclear whether that, plus the collapse of that company soon after the first B5 spinoff got canceled, is responsible for all the apparently missing CGI models, or whether they were handed over to Warner Brothers appropriately and WB either lost them or is deliberately withholding them. It's probably worth briefly covering the B5/WB thing: B5 was a show on the PTN network, which was essentially a syndicated package of shows developed and peddled by a subdivision within the WB corporate structure. This subdivision was NOT the WB TV subdivision, which had been working on a WB network. That effort ended up competing with PTN. The other PTN shows died out, with B5 remaining in syndication, but the WB TV executives didn't consider it theirs and believed its success would undermine them. Creator JMS has said that one WB executive despised the show and did everything possible to damage it, including screwing with advertising, and that person is still at WB in a senior position. So WB, despite owning the show, has been actively disinterested in doing anything even vaguely like what Paramount did with Star Trek. JMS claims WB demanded that film masters of every episode, in its original airing format, be submitted to them by the production, and that they still have these masters in the vault. WB shows no interest in making them available for a potential original aspect Bluray set, or even for a higher quality digital source. Doctor Who had the cheapskate BBC funding it, and at least at times wasn't very popular with their execs. B5, when produced, had amateur execs who essentially allowed the production team to do what they wanted, which was good, but that same circumstance means that the show had no champions at WB later on, only enemies.
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Jun 2, 2020 19:19
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Koenig was originally going to be cast as one of the Knights in “And the Sky Full of Stars” but was unable to do the show after suffering a mild heart attack. He was given the Bester part to make up for it. Another interesting bit of trivia: for the most part, the performers playing human leads were not especially “method” and would break character after every take. Conversely, Andreas Katsulas would come in for his G’kar makeup and then stay in it all day, leading visitors to the odd experience of seeing a Narn on a smoke break.
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Jun 5, 2020 04:37
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Anonymous Zebra posted:My point from all this hurf blurf is that B5 is a good show, that looks like a cohesive story in the end because the show-runners kept the themes consistent and developed plot points based on information previously given to the viewers in early seasons. But by no means was any of that actually planned, and in fact, how far things went off the rails is actually pretty amazing. Once everyone’s posted their thoughts on the final episode, I’ll be happy to post a synopsis of the original plan for the Five Year Arc (the original is eight pages long) from the B5 Script Book series. That’s also a good time for our posters to reflect on how things developed in comparison to their thoughts now in S1, and maybe even for the rest of us to chime in as well. Also, when “off the rails” describes the normal conditions of TV development and production, I don’t think the analogy fits. No show survives first contact with actual production. When the time comes, I’ll be interested to hear what the new viewers think of what we got in comparison to the original plan, and we’ll see whether “off the rails” or “massively revised and improved” work better to describe what happened. TheAardvark posted:One thing that's helping me with the sets is trying to think of the show more as a play than as television. It fits with some of the acting, too, you can tell Michael O'Hare spent a lot of time on stage. Another thing to keep in mind is that B5 was on the air at the same time as TNG and Deep Space Nine, but its budget was half as much as for those shows. The sets might be cheap, but on things like alien prosthetics and make-up or costuming, B5 can compete.
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Jun 6, 2020 16:01
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1 X 12 "By Any Means Necessary" was written by Kathryn Drennan, who at the time was married to JMS. (He had to be hands-off through the whole process and she got extra vetting as a writer/contributor, so the relationship was a hindrance as much as a help.) In her section of the B6 script books, she answers a bunch of questions about the episode. I've extracted a few comments related to our new watchers' responses; spoilers for this episode only: She doesn't remember where Zento's name came from, just that she wanted a name that didn't sound like a 20th century name (for a change). To the "things got worse in the future" point: she was inspired by the PATCO strike in 1981, when over 12,000 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization went on strike nationwide for shorter work weeks and better benefits for those retiring early due to the stress of the work. President Ronald Reagan declared the strike illegal, ordered them back to work in 48 hours, and fired all the ones who didn't return (11,000+ did not). The original story got a lot of rewriting, mainly because JMS had to be hands-off and everyone else got their say. Then the director came in and said he preferred her original draft. JMS got permission from her to add Zento into the original draft (he appeared only in later drafts) and also added the ISN reporter: Drennen believes they had the actress contracted for the episode and would have to pay her regardless of whether or not she appeared. (It's possible that was due to the late switch back to the original draft, or she may have been scheduled to appear in another episode and then cut from it before production started.) For the scenes with G'Kar praying, JMS wrote the prayers but Andreas Katsulas added the chants himself.
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Jun 6, 2020 23:59
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A story or two about 1 X 16 "Eyes" shared by the author, Larry DiTillio: The actor playing Ben Zayn, Gregory Martin, was apparently going through a nasty divorce during the shooting of this episode. He decided to work through it by playing his part as big as possible. The director desperately tried to reign him in but failed. DiTillio indicates that most of the cast and crew (definitely including Michael O'Hare) genuinely hated him by the end of the shoot. Both director Jim Johnston and DiTillio wanted the shot of Garibaldi and Lennier riding the motorcycle. They were told it wasn't safe and directly refused permission. They ended up doing the shot anyway and getting into trouble... but they used it in the episode along with the expected digital composite shot.
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Jun 7, 2020 18:51
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Agronox posted:Don't feel too bad. People have been calling them the Mimbari for 25 years now so a Zorlon for a new viewer is nbd My favorite is the blooper in a later season where a guest actor who is supposed to be referencing the war between Earth and the Minbari refers to it as "the Minibar War."
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Jun 8, 2020 18:42
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VideoGames posted:Ok just watched Deathwalker and that was pretty decent too. This thread has now given us Josh the Zorlon and I am here for it.
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Jun 17, 2020 15:05
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Unkempt posted:
Can this discussion get moved into the other B5 thread?
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Jun 20, 2020 14:43
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:I think the DVDs had subtitle/dialogue disagreements, too. Maybe they drew subtitles from the scripts-as-written versus as shot or something? For the latest example (upthread in TheAardvark’s spoilers), the script book agrees with the spoken line, not the subtitles. Either the subtitler was taking liberties in the name of brevity, or it’s an example of WB’s active disinterest in the show.
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Jun 21, 2020 13:59
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Very mild s2e7 spoilers: Production story told by Peter David, author and there as extra for Londo’s big celebration scene: The director, John Flinn (who was B5s director of photography) had all those barefoot extras and was having trouble getting all the coverage for the scene. As midnight approached, it became clear that he couldn’t possibly get all the shots he needed in time, and it’d thus be his fault for extending the shoot into overtime territory. The Suits were on site to cut off filming, allowing only time for one master shot of Londo collapsing and Sheridan saying “Medlab, this is Sheridan!” Bruce Boxleitner leans in, hits the comm link, and says “Medlab, this is Sinclair!” Filming comes to a screeching halt, everyone bursts out laughing, with Boxleitner saying “What was I thinking?!” (This blooper is on the S2 blooper reel, but spoilers for other S2 episodes, so I won’t link it.) The Suits laughed, and authorized the overtime. Flinn was able to finish all his shots. And Peter David, who was there as an extra in the crowd, is convinced Boxleitner deliberately flubbed the line. Given that he’d not been on the show in S1 when Sinclair was still there, I’m inclined to believe it.
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Jun 26, 2020 15:18
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Groke posted:I'm sure I've said it already, but Katsulas and Jurasik are the best things about the whole show. I think Furlan is usually underrated. She gets saddled with a lot of exposition and a lot less opportunity for emotional outbursts, but does a fascinating job. But we should save this discussion for when the blind watchers have finished S5 and are ready to revisit their impressions for the last time.
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Jul 1, 2020 18:48
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Sanguinia posted:Now I want to somehow see Bablyon 5 in stage play format. Check out Babylon 5: The Lost Tales. Produced with so little budget, it might as well be a stage play with CGI.
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Jul 1, 2020 23:58
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TheAardvark posted:S2E12 Acts of Sacrifice I’m not going to make a habit of doing this, but the script for this episode helps contextualize the performance here. G’kar emerges from the room and nearly falls. He puts a hand to the wall to steady himself. At this moment, he doesn’t know whether to laugh because he’s gotten something, or cry because all the pain has not gotten him military aid. And so, as he makes his way slowly into the transport tube... he does both.
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Jul 10, 2020 21:51
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Confessions and Lamentations: They made a whole bunch of Markab prosthetic masks ramping up for this episode, a number of background masks but also plenty that were for specific performers. For a species that would be wiped out in this episode. JMS reports that both the makeup and wardrobe people were disbelieving when they saw the Markab were all gone now and they wouldn’t be using the masks and costumes again.
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Jul 16, 2020 05:56
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Vavrek posted:You've hit on my favorite dumb thing about the Kosh costume: It doesn't fit through the doors on Babylon 5. This is why Kosh is always mysteriously already standing there in any scene he appears in. Another example of how a limitation leads to something that greatly enhances the show.
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Jul 30, 2020 19:15
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TheAardvark posted:Contains some specific thoughts up through S3E3: B5 took some heat at the time (and to some extent still does) from “bad acting,” which firstly is a dead giveaway of someone who hardly watched the show, but I think it’s largely related to the human characters and largely a matter of the direction they got. The alien actors had some freedom to map their own path—Jurasik coming up with the accent and kinda the hair, for example—and their performers were more confident and experienced. But it’s also much harder to play a human in sci-fi, because you might sort of be like humans today, but how much? What does being a Russian Jew in the future mean, exactly? On most shows, the performers take possession of their characters, but that was harder here because of the serial story arc and hence the need to adhere to the script as written. Even late in S2, that madman down the hall with the office next to the electrical mains has some plan for your character that you can’t even guess, but every throw-away line might end up not being a throw-away. If the director guides or even just affirms your choices, great, but if you get no direction, or mixed signals, or bad direction, you’re likely to play things uncertainly. JMS started adjusting characters to their performers over time, and by S3 having just one writer helped with consistency of depiction. Plus the show developed a cadre of good directors, ones distinctive enough you can probably guess them.
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Aug 6, 2020 00:02
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The_Doctor posted:S2ep21 - Comes the Inquisitor What's particularly wonderful about the performance is that you can clearly sense how much G'Kar wishes that it were possible for Vir to be forgivable; that his question, ultimately, is not rhetorical, but also that he is not the same person we saw in early S1 where he would take pleasure in the discomfort (or worse) of any Centauri. He knows Vir means what he say, and he also knows that doesn't make a drat bit of difference, and he's not going to allow Vir comfort at the cost of his own principles. Just a really amazing piece of work, even without the prosthetic. Stephen Furst told a story about this scene: That was horrible for me. I'm telling you, he is such a good actor and it's even harder to act under rubber and these red lenses. I'm in the elevator and I'm nervous around him, the character. We're in the elevator and I'm just trying to avoid his eyes. He takes out a knife and I don't know what the hell he's going to do with a knife. He cuts his hand. Every drop of blood he goes, "Dead. Dead. Dead." Did the scene and they yell cut and I go, "I'm so sorry!" Tears were just streaming down my face! I was just, oh my god, I kept apologizing. Finally at lunch, Andreas said, "Get away already!" (from 20th anniversary conventions annotated panel transcripts book)
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Aug 13, 2020 18:48
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“No expense spared! We bought you another Amiga this season.”
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Aug 21, 2020 19:23
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Son of Sam-I-Am posted:If you're talking about the starfuries left to fill in B5's complement, all berths were filled on the surviving ship(s) (I forget the actual tactical situation), so while they could escape, the rebels would always have to have a fighter wing outside the ship, or wait until they join up with another ship that lacked fighters. It's a matter of efficience and practicality. No, that’s not what he’s referring to. At the opening, the Alexander can’t jump without dealing with the pursuing ship because that would mean leaving the fighters behind. It’s never explained. We do know fighters can’t open their own jump points and that they have the endurance to travel some distance in hyperspace. It’s possible these fighters were burning fuel during the escape and lack the endurance, and maybe returning via the hangar is too tricky with hyperspace currents. Alternately, the fighters jumping would require the Alexander to hold the jump point longer, exposing it to further attack, though that doesn’t seem to be the implication of the discussion. Presumably the pursuing ship could just jump after them, so there’s other good reasons to disable or destroy it.
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Sep 20, 2020 05:11
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Lemniscate Blue posted:This implies that something bad happens if a ship that's bigger than the current configuration tries to use a jump gate, which leads me to wonder: could you effectively block a jump gate by moving it's struts to, say, 20 meters apart? And if so what happens when a big ship tries to come through? Destroying your own jump gate essentially isolates you, as only large warships have jump engines, not trading ships or freighters. I would assume you’d get maybe one ship coming out, destroy your gate, and the rest jump in manually. As no warship is worth more than a gate, it isn’t worth doing. It’s also probably true that the jump gate can’t function unless there’s a minimum distance between the struts creating enough room for the jump point to form. If you could form jump points inside solid objects, jump drives would be effective weapons. Mines might be effective, but as they are presumably cloaked or EM shielded they would probably pose a hazard to civilian traffic even if you deactivated them. It’s unclear how large B5 mines are and there’s a clear reluctance about using them outside an active combat.
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Sep 20, 2020 14:48
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Antifa Poltergeist posted:Have one jump gate in front of another that leads directly into the first so that you have a jumpgate ouroboros Just don’t put them too close together. That would be a bonehead maneuver (no offense). An interesting nuance to consider: an attacking fleet puts itself at something of a disadvantage coming through a jump gate, although that does allow a jump with fighters already deployed. The main reason to attack in this way is to make it much harder for anyone to escape, as only a jump-capable ship can get away; anyone else has to come straight through you to get to the jump gate. A few systems have multiple gates, but they’re always so far apart that the attackers could jump cross-system to catch anyone fleeing unless they lose the battle.
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Sep 20, 2020 15:56
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B5 is also firmly in the subgenre of theatrical sci-fi, like classic Trek or the original Twilight Zone. Star Wars is absolutely about effects, though not necessarily exclusively so, and it would never attempt something like Trek's "Spectre of the Gun" episode, where the effects were terrible but that wasn't the point. Dinging B5 on the quality of its effects is like complaining that a Shakespeare play doesn't have any car chases. I'd argue that most of the flaws in S1 are connected with one or two of the directors being in "action" mode, perhaps in part because they thought the dialogue was bullshit. Yes, if you ignore the reason for which the episode exists and concentrate your time on trying to do something you lack the resources to do, the resulting episode doesn't come out very well. So while it's true that an episode like Severed Dreams is great, and that the effects and action portions of the episode are all effective, the heart of the episode is about characters, choices, changes, and relationships. One might compare with classic Trek's "Balance of Terror." There's action, there's space battles, but every single important thing in the episode has to do with characterization, decision-making, and character conflict. B5 allows characterization and decisions to develop and resonate across five full seasons instead of being episodic.
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Sep 27, 2020 18:54
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mllaneza posted:Wait, what ? That episode is aggressively stylistic, but it's gorgeous. It's not trying to look realistic, and that is the point - the whole environment is a construct, a stage for a morality play. It may not be the most visually appealing episode, but it's certainly the most effective use of design in TOS. I agree. I also like the effects in B5. But they are not always “good” effects for a value of good that’s more concerned with hyper-realism than theatricality. Some people hate that episode either because they don’t appreciate the difference or they don’t like theater. My point was that classic Trek and B5 fit into a theatrical tradition. Compare to the “new” Star Trek movie franchise, which definitely does not fall into the same tradition. “This is a big fight scene with effects and Kirk on a motorcycle” doesn’t compute in classic Trek (plus there’s not enough shirt-ripping).
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Sep 28, 2020 14:47
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Mr. Morton provides salts and spices for the Zorlons.
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Apr 27, 2021 02:15
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Jedit posted:Do bear in mind that once Babylon 5 had its models, it was pretty much stuck with them. There simply wasn't time, money or even really the option to redesign things. With each iteration, though, the CGI evolved. For example, this is a jumpgate from S1: Sadly, that 240p Youtube clip doesn't really get across the real impact, especially after hearing for years that all the original models had been lost by WB and having no idea how any of the effects would look. B5 always went for a more colorful aesthetic than the BSG reboot, too. It'll be interesting to see what the B5 reboot opts to do in that regard. I don't think it's a Vorlon or Minbari ship without the bright colors, for example.
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Oct 18, 2021 00:14
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http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/making/write-direct.html#JMichaelStraczynski In this interview, JMS says their budget started at $650,000 per episode. He cites TNG at $1.5 million per episode. Deep Space Nine, according to the Internet, was $2 million per episode, or about three times the B5 early budget. And S5 saw the budget get cut with the move to TNT: to cut costs they had to manage with one fewer day of filming (without going overtime) and JMS had more characters to shuffle because they couldn’t afford to pay all the regulars for 22 episodes, meaning someone like Londo could only appear in 13 episodes across S5. At times, the penny pinching constraints lead to massive creativity and viruoso design. They had to reuse as much of the alien prosthetics as possible, for example, and streamline the make-up process. At other times, it shot the show in the foot: the best example to my mind was the S1 decision not to spend $10,000 on widescreen equipment for the visual effects team. JMS knew high-definition would eventually become the standard, and it cost no more with the cameras they had to film for wide-screen, so the directors were told to frame shots so they’d still work in wide-screen format (no crew on the sides of shots, for example). But Doug Netter said no to the CGI shop’s request for a monitor which would allow them to create wide-screen CGI. It sounds likely that JMS knew but was under the false impression that it would eventually be cheap to redo all the effects. As a result, the show exists in widescreen, but the pure CGI space shots do not, and there’s a huge drop in quality in composite shots because the CGI is in the wrong aspect format. Naturally, the show has mainly been available in widescreen format since its original run, with cropped/pan and scan CGI. That’s why the remaster in the original format was such a big deal. And a good example of the corners the show had to cut because of its low budget.
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Nov 1, 2021 15:46
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Grand Fromage posted:B5 has a fairly large cast and they just don't try to shoehorn everyone into every episode. Also, not enough money to pay everyone in the large cast to appear in all 22 episodes per season. 13 is more common, with 22 episodes reserved for the main human cast, although later seasons may change that up some. That means some characters have to be “rested” because they have to sit out 9 episodes. B5 is pretty good about making you lose track, though.
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Nov 3, 2021 05:27
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Jedit posted:It's a standard part of a TV actor's contract that they get paid for every episode on which they are credited, whether they appear or not. They are also not able to work on other projects on shooting days in case rewrites require them on set. JMS has repeatedly contradicted that statement, and he ought to know. Actors who are series regulars may indeed have contracts that specify they get paid for the whole season, appear or not. That ends up being an issue with salary negotiations at some point (can’t say more in the newbie thread, but everyone who watched the show knows what I refer to). But the terms of a contract are whatever they are written to be, and that includes receiving on-screen credit while being unpaid. I don’t know what the union rules were in the 90s, but I’d guess you don’t either; I know the B5 crew were non-union, and would assume the actors all were union. Could be Chevy Slyme’s workaround, could be something else. I don’t know why JMS would lie or why he’d have paid actors for all 22 episodes and then only used them in 11. I’d refer you to that interview I posted previously, but somehow I posted the wrong link. A quote from JMS: “ Some actors were hired for a full 22 episodes per season, some were hired for 16, some were hired for 11, some were hired for 8. So I had this spreadsheet in my office of what episodes we could put actors into. And an actor I might need to have for a particular arc piece might not be available to be in that episode. So do I move the arc piece earlier, or pay the extra fee to have the actor come in? Or give the arc slot to someone else? It’s like this giant LEGO set. But the difference is the pieces are always moving.” Edit: link removed out of spoiler concerns. Narsham fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Nov 4, 2021 |
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Nov 3, 2021 15:21
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Jows posted:And a picture that's from way later - Blind watchers: this is not a place of honor. There is no treasure here. I don’t think you’d know that picture was a spoiler unless you’d watched to that point, but I’ve pulled the link anyway.
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Nov 4, 2021 14:51
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Powered Descent posted:Switching back to the bullet-point format so the blocks of spoilertext look nicer. JMS originally wanted Patrick McGoohan for that role. Apparently he was interested, but had a scheduling conflict.
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Nov 20, 2021 16:12
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ultrafilter posted:The Time a NASA Experiment Gone Wrong Almost Killed Someone The linked article claims death in 90 seconds. I don't think that can be correct. Wikipedia claims you can last up to 90 seconds without suffering permanent damage; I doubt death comes one second after that. Apparently, animal experiments suggest that after 90 seconds, the kind of permanent damage you'll suffer will kill you, but that doesn't address the original question. Poking around on different sites suggests that organs die from lack of oxygen around 2 minutes in.
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Nov 22, 2021 01:56
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The United States posted:(Image omitted) Much like the S2 DVD set, this picture has a spoiler in it.
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Dec 6, 2021 06:20
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Powered Descent posted:s02e05 - The Long Dark Episode spoilers only: Writer Scott Frost (who I see has a pretty short IMDB page) did not write for the series again. In his preface to this script in the B5 Other Voices Script Book, looking back from 2008, he has this to say: "I don't think Cirrus's character was fully explored. Her pain seems to only touch the surface and her relationship with Dr. Franklin could have been more complicated considering the grief she is suffering." He still doesn't seem to find the relationship problematic. Yeeeck.
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Jan 22, 2022 21:10
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Powered Descent posted:s02e22 - The Fall of Night We do see him leap out, which would give him a bit of momentum, and the blast-wave from the explosive would presumably propel him downward faster even before he arrives at the wind. More to the point, it's Ivanova's understanding of what's happening that we're getting. She doesn't have to be right, and it's a good character moment if she's being obtusely optimistic at this moment given her usual personality. She doesn't want to admit that there's nothing that can be done in time.
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Jan 30, 2022 01:18
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Day of the Dead spoilers: Neil Gaiman wrote this episode. I don’t think he requested Penn and Teller, but he appears to like them and they were fans of the show. Given that JMS clearly establishes them as “comedy duo that YOU don’t think is funny but everyone else seems to love,” it strikes me as excellent casting. And Gaiman mostly maintains that conceit, just with a different character as the “I don’t get it,” by having their best comedy bit be Minbari comedy and thus be incomprehensible to us.
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Feb 1, 2022 16:34
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discoukulele posted:As I start heading toward the end of Season 5, I'm thinking about doing JMS' preferred viewing order going forward - Season 5 up to through the penultimate episode, then River of Souls, Legend of the Rangers, Call to Order, Crusade, Lost Tales, and then the Season 5 finale. Would that be the best way to do it? I would suggest the final B5 episode after either River of Souls or Call to Arms. It really has no reference to the other work and works much better as the bookend to B5 itself than as the bookend to all the spin-off episodes.
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Feb 8, 2022 05:48
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A production thing to know about The Lost Tales: WB offered JMS the chance to make direct-to-DVD stories. Then they gave him almost no money to do it. If you get your hands on the DVD, you'll see multiple mentions of staging scenes with puppets, because JMS' original response to WB's budget was "well, we could afford to produce the first stories if instead of actors, we used puppets." In the end, he had $2 million to produce the equivalent of two B5 episodes. B5's budget was around $800,000 per episode in the 90s. Correcting for inflation in 2007, that's $1.14 million. So JMS had less money to produce The Lost Tales, starting from scratch (no sets paid for by the pilot movie, for example--in 2007 dollars, The Gathering cost over $5 million). There's a reason he directed the thing himself and used so few actors. OTOH, CGI advanced a lot between 1993 and 2007.
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Feb 11, 2022 20:45
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Powered Descent posted:s03e05 - Voices of Authority It's unclear what's happening, although Ivanova surely believes she's using reverse psychology. We only know a few things: the Walkers don't like the Vorlons, they rejected a request to fight alongside them against the Shadows, and when Ivanova communicated that they really didn't need the extra help because they had the Vorlons, the Walkers said something rude again about the Vorlons and then agreed to assist. Their anger toward the Vorlons does not show up in their final (English) response to the request. That suggests that agreeing to help isn't the product of their rage toward the Vorlons, though they certainly have such rage. It's possible they want to show the Vorlons up. But it's also possible that they got emotionally prodded out of their initial response and then rethought the implications of the situation. Powered Descent posted:s03e06 - Dust to Dust Sure, if you take them regularly over a period of years. Bester isn't doing that. Powered Descent posted:s03e07 - Exogenesis Unstated in the episode, but I always thought the implication was that the aliens had money (in order for their hosts to survive and travel), they appreciated the sacrifice he made to preserve them, and they provided him with the funds he needed.
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Feb 28, 2022 01:34
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Powered Descent posted:s03e10 - Severed Dreams If you saw a giant hologram of Sheridan appear, would your first thought be "I bet he's using that big buried device on the planet below to do that?" More likely, it'd be more like "How the heck is he doing that" or "I didn't know the station had giant hologram projectors." Whereas firing the frankly not THAT effective missiles would be a pretty obvious give-away.
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Mar 2, 2022 00:59
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 01:21 |
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Polaron posted:Didn't the Great Machine whip out a giant beam cannon at some point too? Spoiler for Voice in the Wilderness, part 2 Yes, it fires once and destroys an alien ship. But that beam weapon takes 50 years to recharge.  Seriously, Draal makes clear the weapons are to defend the planet, and Sheridan makes the decision not to use the Great Machine's weapons to defend the station. It's unclear what their range is, anyway, so it's possible they're only effective against enemies entering the planet's atmosphere or on a close approach; the alien ship that gets blown up was approaching the planet and it's hard to judge distance precisely.
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Mar 3, 2022 01:06
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