Babylon 5 blind watch thread: Maybe they're Zorlons?

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Sci-Fi Wifi > Babylon 5 blind watch thread: Maybe they're Zorlons?

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

TraderStav posted:

Should the newbies watch in the standard order or the modified order? I did the modified order after I found out about it half way through Season 1 and some stuff made more sense that way.

Watch it in the order it aired. :colbert:

# ¿ Jun 2, 2020 19:56

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# ¿ Sep 22, 2023 19:47

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

I would avoid podcasts and more reading until you finish the show, even episode by episode writing. You want to form your own opinions and thoughts on your first watch through. And sometimes those analyses will have spoilers, especially if it was written 26 years later.

Even the lurkers guide which IIRC is broken up episode by episode drops some hints.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2020 11:16

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Quality of Mercy fun fact: (back scenes talk only no plot revealed, but spoiler it in case someone may be surprised by the casting)

The guest star and Lennier’s actor were both in Lost In Space as mother and son, but in this episode of B5 they don’t share a scene!

Bill Mumy actually walks through a scene out of costume behind her at one point :ssh:

Doctor Zero fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Jun 8, 2020

# ¿ Jun 8, 2020 19:11

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

TheAardvark posted:

Also my mom has some kind of eidetic memory for 60s TV shows and asked me if that was Billy Mumy during a Lennier scene. I just set her up with my Amazon account so she might be watching it too

Your mom must be a huge Lost in Space fan because I loved that show growing up and even I didn’t realize who it was for several episodes. (I think I missed his name in the credits for a while)

# ¿ Jun 14, 2020 12:59

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Polaron posted:

Or they're drinking some weird, highly processed Nu-Caff that's sorta like coffee if you're still waking up.

Zima brand coffee

# ¿ Jun 27, 2020 16:56

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

TheAardvark posted:

i'm more interested in figuring out how Garibaldi managed to get all of the parts to a 1990s motorcycle shipped to him unassembled

Lots of time on Space eBay.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2020 18:38

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

We know it’s TV because if it was real life there would have been about four seasons of “wait... this part isn’t a KZ-458T/12 - it’s a KZ-485T/12!!!! :argh:

” before it was put together.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2020 21:19

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

TheAardvark posted:

someone's gonna click on this seeing a bunch of unread posts and they're going to find out it's all domes all the way down

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNL8J1CM04E

# ¿ Jul 10, 2020 00:15

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

I still think it should have been Bear-ba-lon 5.

:colbert:

# ¿ Jul 13, 2020 18:27

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

TheAardvark posted:

S3E1 - Matters of Honor

Koshy boy. Being seen by so many at once was a great strain? That fits with it all being psychic projection.

"Nobody knows it was you"? What lol. I guess he was only near Delenn so no one else tied it to Kosh?

"I have always been here." Love this conversation. So many big sci-fi concepts that could be referring to, or just casual cryptic Vorlon nonsense. I'd give it good odds that that line is one of the most important in the entire series.

Kosh's "Good" whenever Sheridan says he doesn't understand Vorlons. Great start to the season. This is the first season purely by J.M.S. so I am looking forward to this

CGI has been improving steadily since season 1, this space battle actually looks kinda real, not like a PlayStation game anymore, so that's nice.

British guy! He's on the season header so I guess this is a new main cast member.

Hey, they gave Ivanova the season opener voiceover. welcome to 2260, the year of the Shadow War!

Yup there's Marcus Cole right up front in the intro credits. No Na'Toth though, I was hoping she'd be back with the original actress.

God Garibaldi's hair is worse than ever. New medbay set, wonder whether something happened to the old one, or if they just needed to spruce it up for all the inevitable scenes here once the SHADOW WAR begins. It was one of the worst sets, to be fair.

Let me guess, he's one of the Rangers?

Ahhh Londo. That's not how this kind of thing works. You have to know how hopeless this is, your race is locked in to this alliance now.

poo poo. Earth Alliance knows about the Shadows finally. Lol jk they just saw the vid.

I like Londo's justification for drinking 24/7, it being a duty. I should try that one on my boss. Centauri Dreams have been shown to be A Thing so that's not good.

This is some LOTR poo poo right here, I take it JMS is a fan. Cloaked rangers, special blood soaked jewelry.. the alliance of elves and man.

and now there's a loving barbarian in the down below they have to fight lmao

It feels like they're going to need a lot more than whatever the hell the rangers are good at to fight "thousands" of shadow ships.

Oh my God Garibaldi give up that strip of hair, it's ridiculous.

Ahh why is Sheridan personally flying this mission

Yup of course they don't specifically need Londo to maintain their ties to the Centauri.

Ohhh poo poo Zagro 7.

Whoa The White Star! Sick.

Ok I'm a big fan of Garibaldi's explanation for not knowing where the Captain is.

The White Star uses Vorlon technology! With artificial gravity! And disgusting looking denture bridge consoles!

At least the existence of this ship somewhat negates the problem of why Sheridan had to fly this mission.

G'Quan! Thousand year old religious scripture! The Shadows visiting the Narn world back in what I would guess are pre-technology days. Fascinating.

A little backstory for Aragorn here, not bad.

Not sure Ivanova makes the most sense to man this alien weapons system she was just shown.

Ohhhhh gently caress the Shadows.. not good. They knew they were going in to battle, so again questioning putting Sheridan in charge without full knowledge of the ship.

gently caress yes Sheridan's plan to open a jump up in the jump gate. Sick!!!!!

Earth Dome!

Oh gently caress Morden working with the humans. Psi cop saying "speed up the program here at home".. what is going on.

Also, yet another set on Babylon 5 that wasn't shown before.

I have literally used Garibaldi’s line about not telling himself things at work before

# ¿ Jul 26, 2020 22:24

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

I want to say the original was fiberglass but I can’t find any evidence of that with a quick search. In any case you could (relatively) easily make something vacuform or even warbla foam. The glossy finish might be tough on warbla though.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2020 17:58

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Ayin posted:

Man, if my old tapes still work... and if I knew someone who knew how to transfer VHS to digital...

(my dad & I taped the whole show _{except one episode}, including movies, off tv as it aired, it was a fantastic choice)

I got a decent Sony VHS in good shape off eBay and a digital recorder off amazon for a grand total of $60. The recorder even has an LCD so I don’t have to hook it up to a TV.

Most of our recordings aren’t first run though, my dad taped the reruns.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2020 03:04

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Midjack posted:

Got a link to the recorder from Amazon?

Yes. But first let me say that I am an idiot and have poor long term memory or something, because the recorder is a lot more than I remembered. I was probably thinking of a cable that would allow me to connect the VHS to my Mac, and that was $30, not the one I ultimately bought. So I was off by a factor of 4.

Regardless, if you are interested, it does do a fantastic job.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07V9JNRZY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

# ¿ Aug 9, 2020 12:47

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Son of Sam-I-Am posted:

If I can pipe in with one last thought on the movies, I'm not sure how a contextless optimized watch order for them could be considered a spoiler, any more than an optimized episode order is. If I'm watching something serialized I always appreciate a guide, like when we were going through Stargate my wife found an optimized watchlist that maximized the number of SG-1 and Atlantis episodes we could watch, without spoilers, sequentially rather than just going back and forth between the shows, and I found that really helpful and enjoyable. I guess you could say, if you're paranoid to an unhealthy degree, that led us to know that e.g. season 9 episode 1 ended a multi-part episode or had something referred to in the next episode of the other show. But that's a little extreme.

On the other hand, some people don't even look up future episode titles, so best to err on the side of caution. IMO the "blind watch" should be as close to the pure 1st time viewing experience as possible.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2020 14:38

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Qwertycoatl posted:

It came up in S1 that she doesn't care about dietary laws

I knew a professor of biblical studies who was Jewish and we went out to lunch. I asked about the dietary restrictions, which he told me about while ordering a cheeseburger (dairy on beef is a no no). so yeah, there's a wide difference between faith and orthodoxy.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2020 11:57

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Antifa Poltergeist posted:

Have one jump gate in front of another that leads directly into the first so that you have a jumpgate ouroboros

Now you're thinking with portals.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2020 15:45

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

*warble warble* ~interesting~ *warble warble*

# ¿ Sep 26, 2020 00:39

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

BLIND. WATCH. THREAD. MOTHAFUCKAS!

# ¿ Nov 10, 2020 23:37

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Sad King Billy posted:

I'm talking about an episode you've seen, season 2.

I've seen them all several times, and I didn't point that at you only. Just reminding. Still, there could be people still on S1, which is why the episode thoughts are spoilered as well.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2020 19:42

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

ikanreed posted:

I sense the rule has been that you should spoiler tag it with episode number if it's about an already watched episode, not even spoiler tags are good enough for unwatched content. and don't overfocus on already discussed things that might hint at relevance.

And since I just caught up with the thread

S3e10

When I was a kid I thought delenn's "he is behind me, you are in front of me, if you value your lives be somewhere else" was one of the most badass moments I'd ever seen, and I was disappointed that the_doctor didn't pick it for his quote

Made all the better by Mira Furlan's delivery where you can hear the barely controlled fury. When strong words like that come out of the quiet and calm characters, it's always badass.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2020 01:53

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

No you didn't miss a post but yes, she has passed and the light is a little bit dimmer. She was a lovely person from everything I've read.

https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/mira-furlan-dead-babylon-5-lost-1234890117/

# ¿ Jan 22, 2021 14:40

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

The_Doctor posted:

TNG got blu-rays by CBS re-editing the episodes together from the 35mm film dailies, so now it looks gorgeous. It was expensive to do, and the blu-rays didn't sell nearly as well as they wanted, so they didn't even break even.

Yeah, and now you can see details that were obviously never foreseen for people to be able to be read.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2021 15:49

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

That episode was what turned the series from great to amazing for me.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2021 04:51

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

oh yeah? Well UP YOURS

# ¿ Feb 14, 2021 04:57

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Empress Brosephine posted:

I listened to the first two episodes of that goons podcast, it seems good but I think there was a spoiler or two right away in the first two episodes that you eventually go to babylon 4 and that someone in the crew is going to turn on everybody kinda pissed if those are true but oh well.

Thanks for reading.

Oh yeah, how crazy is it that I want to buy the DVDs and watch this on my ps2 connected to a crt. Bad idea or great idea?

Yeah, avoid guides and podcasts until you are done. It's hard to talk about the show without spoilers if you have already seen it. As far as your idea goes, it's a neat one, but really you won't get anything special over watching good version on streaming. Maybe the 2nd time through if you really want to get that 90s experience.

Psycho Landlord posted:

I am watching this show for the 2nd time decades later with my SO who has never seen it before and we have both decided that....

You should join us in the other thread and let the first timers watch without any expectations.

:siren:

NEW WATCHERS DO NOT GO HERE UNTIL YOU ARE COMPLETELY DONE WITH A FIRST WATCH :derp:

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3785889

Doctor Zero fucked around with this message at 13:16 on Mar 8, 2021

# ¿ Mar 8, 2021 13:12

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

ultrafilter posted:

Earlier in the thread there's a recommended order for season 1. It doesn't really matter whether you watch that or follow the list on the Lurker's Guide.

The Lurkers Guide is chock full of spoilers. Don’t go there until you are done. You might click something and then BAM spoilers in your face. :siren:

# ¿ Apr 18, 2021 14:51

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Mr. Norton goes BANG straight to the moon

# ¿ Apr 27, 2021 02:22

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

jng2058 posted:

I mean the address she has for people to send fan mail and the like to her is in Wales so.....

I live on the East Coast of the US but my accent is midwestern.

People can move :ssh:

# ¿ Jul 12, 2021 13:22

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

The_Doctor posted:

??

# ¿ Jul 12, 2021 13:49

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Alhazred posted:

You call them ducklings.

If my cat had kittens in an oven, you can bet money I would name of one them. 'biscuit.'
(BTW, I hope that was a Babylon5 joke)

E: very old edit to remove something I thought I was posting in a different thread.

Doctor Zero fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Sep 14, 2021

# ¿ Aug 3, 2021 14:31

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

IIRC it was more about the reaction to the situation, rather than any kind of allegory of current events. But we are skirting the edge of spoilers here, so probably the rest is best discussed in the other thread once your first watch is finished.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2021 13:59

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

That episode really hits you from all angles.

There’s an interesting story about Vir in that episode.

JMS originally planned to have Londo kill the emperor but as he wrote the scene, his head-Vir said that it had to be him. (I know it sounds corny but if you write something for any length of time, characters start to do that. It’s kind of strange) and upon reflection it made sense. Everyone expected Londo to be capable of doing it, but nobody expected Vir - Mr Abrahamo Lincolni - to murder anyone. It’s a bittersweet moment in the series - Vir loses his innocence and changes as a character in ways that are logical, affecting, and unforeseen. It’s wonderful writing.

THAT is why I have faith in JMS doing a reboot right. I wouldn’t trust anyone else with his universe.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2021 20:28

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Lawman 0 posted:

Just picked this up and holy poo poo is the cgi terrible

It gets better as the seasons go on. At the time it was the first show to do all-CGI space scenes.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2021 12:42

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

jng2058 posted:

We should point out that the CG for the pilot were done on an Amiga. Given the tools they were using back in 1993, what they managed to accomplish was nothing short of miraculous.

Wellll it wasn’t *AN* Amiga, it was a farm of them, but it’s still drat impressive.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2021 00:45

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Jesus a 12 gig 486. That was some serious storage at the time. And no, this isn’t sarcasm. I worked for a phone book company whose entire company was stored on a terabyte (actually one and a quarter) storage array. That was millions of dollars.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2021 04:24

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Narsham posted:

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.

Thanks for that. Blind watch thread is blind.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 15:17

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

MrL_JaKiri posted:

Spoilers suck if you're trying to avoid them, but B5 is much more about the journey than the destination. My first episode of B5 was the start of S4 - when you get there, consider how confusing it was.

While you are correct, there's a difference between foreshadowing and shots called by JMS, and seeing OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE MAINTENANCE TECH 2 IS SPIDER-MAN! WHAT A REVEAL!

The ideal experience of b5 is to get :tviv:

where it is intended, like us old timers got. Then going back and watching it again and :doh:

where things were sitting right there but you didn't know the context so you missed it.

# ¿ May 5, 2023 16:06

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Not a spoiler IMO, but I always err on the side of caution. On the subject of Stephen Furst as Vir and RL health: In addition to what was already mentioned, JMS says in the script books that Furst also had a really bad spine curvature which they tried to downplay with camera work. Between seasons he had surgery to correct it and then they had to be careful to keep his back brace out of shot. You can see in later seasons that he's standing ramrod straight compared to before.

# ¿ May 24, 2023 15:47

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

DrBouvenstein posted:

Zooty, Zoot Zoot!

# ¿ Jul 10, 2023 15:40

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# ¿ Sep 22, 2023 19:47

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Just Another Lurker posted:

Forgetting NuBSG?

I know it got gimped by ~~the writers strike~~ Ron Moore back then but it wasn't bad.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2023 19:59

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Sci-Fi Wifi > Babylon 5 blind watch thread: Maybe they're Zorlons?