A Niner Watches Babylon 5 (NO spoilers, please)

I can't wait a day or two. I want it now!

 

The Rules of the Game (**½)

There's two plots in this episode, an A-plot that's not really important and which is more interested in Lochley's boobs than the alien-of-the-week, and a B-plot that's about how Max is something of a badass.

In the A-story, Gideon is trying to negotiate the right to land on some planet because some people died there at one point a long, long time ago and Earth Force has a good feeling that maybe there's a clue there about the current unrelated plague. But more on that tomorrow. Gideon is really stressed out from having the weight of the world on his shoulders, so he focuses his energy on trying to get his hands on Lochley's boobs. But first he has to meet with some obnoxious aliens who decide to kill him with magic rubies. This leads to a chase and a fight which gets him and Lochley all sweaty and their hearts pumping, so they rush into the shower like a couple of horny teens. Gideon has finally achieved his goal for the series, he got to wash Lochley's boobs. Yay. If this plot has a fault then it's me, because I just don't care about Gideon's attempts to fondle Lochley. I barely even care about Gideon or Lochley.

In the B-story, Max's ex-wife took out a ridiculous loan and needs Max to bail her out. Max agrees to help but he insists on a haircut on the debt. If I had more skill and it wasn't rapidly approaching 3am then I'd make some sort of topical joke about the eurozone debt crisis, but you'll just have to settle for this sentence. Anyway, Max's cat gets abducted and he decides to break bad (have I used that colloquialism correctly?) by threatening to kill the loanshark with a magic necklace that will decapitate him if he doesn't give the cat back. The cat is saved, Max goes back to work and everybody is happy. Yay. This plot wins points because I got to see more of Max, who is a much bigger badass than Galen can even dream of being.

Scott Bakula: 94


Alright, I'll do a wrap-up of Crusade tommorow (hopefully), then I'll watch the finale two movies.

 

Having never seen Crusade, I honestly can't tell if this synopsis is obfuscating jokes or actually semi-legit.

 

Nope, that was the plot all right!

 

At least it focused on the one redeeming aspect of Crusade.

*wink wink - nudge nudge - know what I mean know what I mean*

 

All the Galen hate is a little surprising--always liked him. Probably my favorite character on Crusade, largely informed by the trilogy though, I think.

 

I loved Galen. He had some of the best lines in Crusade.

 

I was a huge Max Eilerson fan and I loved DDK's character. I was so tickled when he popped up on Lost. (Can't get into the cop show though.)

 

Crusade Review

WHO ARE YOU? TheGodBen, nerd, member of the TrekBBS forums.
WHAT DO YOU WANT? Breaking Bad season 5, before I tear out all the hair on my head.
WHERE ARE YOU GOING? To get some mints, back in a mo'... Okay, back now.
WHO DO YOU SERVE? AND WHO DO YOU TRUST? My hairdresser, Tony Danza, Nelson Mandela, Anthony Daniels, Markus Persson, Omar Little and Scott Bakula.
WHO DO YOU SERVE? AND WHO DO YOU TRUST? I just told you!



No, I didn't change the colour of the graph for Crusade and you're silly for thinking I would.

This graph shows what everybody told me at the start, that the grey uniform episodes tend to be better than the black uniform episodes. What does this mean? That those grey uniforms were magic, clearly. Or that network interference screwed the show, whichever you choose to believe. The average score for the show was 4.538, which is the second lowest score I gave to a season, just above Voyager's 3rd season. The trendline is pretty useless this time around because all the episodes were jumbled, but it's part of the graph template so I left it in.



With so few episodes, this graph is almost meaningless, but it's my job to pretend that there's meaning here and pretend I shall. If it wasn't for all those 3s then the season would be fairly balanced. In spite of the overall score, there are a number of good or enjoyable episodes here, and while there's no episode that I consider great, there's also no episode that I consider awful.

Best episode: The Needs of Earth
Worst episode: War Zone


Statistics

Captain Greyshirt: 22 (+6)
Scott Bakula: 94 (+20)
Scott Bakula?!: 4 (+0) (I don't even remember what this counter was for. )

B5 Season 1 Average: 5.045
B5 Season 2 Average: 5.682
B5 Season 3 Average: 6.5
B5 Season 4 Average: 7.136
B5 Season 5 Average: 6.545
B5 Overall Average: 6.171

Crusade Average: 4.538

Voyager Final Average: 4.875
Enterprise Final Average: 5.206


In Summation

Wow, what a journey Crusade has been, a whole year. I'd like to think that I'm a better man now than I was when I started; wiser, and with softer skin. None of that has anything to do with Crusade because I wasn't even watching the show for most of that time, I just want you all to know that my ego has improved while I was away.

Since this is officially a Star Trek board (I know, I forget sometimes too), I'm going to have to say that Crusade reminds me the most of Enterprise. That's not intended as an insult, I felt that Enterprise was okay overall, but I have to say that I find both shows somewhat disappointing. Crusade had an opportunity to explore the Babylon 5 universe and visit the worlds of aliens we have come to know, but instead it introduces lots of new aliens and tells stories about them. And, sadly, a lot of those stories felt uninspired. Also, and I've said this before, Gideon reminds me most of Captain Archer. In both cases I want to like the character because I like the actor that plays him, but in both cases I was left wondering why these men were given such important jobs.

I have also come to the opinion that the show's hook, finding a cure to the Drakh plague, was a poor one. Excalibur travels the galaxy looking for evidence that this artificial plague has been used before; it's hard to imagine an endgame for that. A mysterious alien that's building a super-weapon to blow up Earth real good is an arc that you can get your head around, the heroes need to find the weapon and blow it up. Finding a cure for a plague on some random world and curing everyone just doesn't quite work in my head. It's difficult to even see how such a search could even come up with any leads to find a cure. And it almost universally doesn't, most episodes use the premise to tell an episodic story that's not related to the search for a cure.

What hurts the show the most for me is probably obvious; Galen. I can't stand him. I can't stand what he is, I can't stand his personality, I can't stand his hair... there's nothing that I can think of that redeems him for me. The best thing about finishing Crusade is that I will never have to see his odious face ever again.

Next up is The Legend of the Rangers, followed by The Lost Tales. Oh, the box-art for The Lost Tales looks interesting, there's Lochley, and Sheridan, and... godammit!

 

I think the "Scott Bakula?!" counter was for every time someone came into the thread without realizing the Scott Bakula joke and tried to correct you.

Now that you're finished with Crusade, I say you get out while the getting's good and finally do your long-awaited DS9 thread.

 

Enterprise feels apt. Certainly it's the only Star Trek series that comes to mind which has episodes that drove me up the wall as much as Crusade's X Files parody.

Farscape thread?

Seconded.

 

I was going to say Farscape originally, but I vaguely recall him saying something about DS9 at one point. Or maybe he'll retire after this!

 

[Rumours, bargains, and lies]
The series would have switched into a different arc at the end of season 1 when the Excalibur crew would expose Earth Gov as secretly developing Shadow technology, and they would have to go rogue. A cure would be found for the plague that probably was ethically questionable - possibly using the healing device from Bablyon 5 to extract the life force from criminals and other people considered undesirable. Galen and Gideon would have fallen out when the technomages were revealed to depend on Shadow technology and to require the deaths of sentient beings to maintain the continuation of their order. Gideon would have died and had his mentality downloaded into the Apocalypse Box. The rumour is that Garry Cole might only have been on board the show as a main character for one season - sound familiar? After some sort of quest, Dureena would have received a magic sword that went "Ting". How it would all work out I don't know. I've never played D&D.
[/Rumours, bargains, and lies]

 

Oh dear God!

 

DS9 is next, it has been almost 5 years since I last watched it. For a Niner like me, that's an intolerable length of time. After DS9 I'm open to suggestions, including Farscape.


The Legend of the Rangers (*)

David Martell, a Ranger, made a mistake. His mistake was not killing himself in a hopeless battle. For this, he must be expelled from the Rangers because it goes against all the rules, except the rules of logic. It's been a while now since I finished B5, but I don't remember the Rangers being this dumb in the show, but in B5 they would never have let Tirk join the organisation. Is it possible that this is a different group of Rangers that happen to wear the same uniform?

Anyway, President Sheridan and Citizen G'Kar intervene to save David's career, but he's given a crappy, haunted ship called the Liandra as a way to stick it to him. This was a brilliant decision by JMS, he obviously saw Star Trek V and realised that there's a lot of drama and comedy that can be squeezed out of having the hero ship be a malfunctioning wreck. But the real genius was in making the ship haunted because everyone loves ghosts. After all, that Parick Swayze movie made $500 million at the box office, so adding ghosts to your movie is money in the bank.

The Liandra, worthless wreck that it is, is sent to escort the most advanced ship in the Alliance as it transports some important ambassadors to a remote planet. This may seem like a ridiculous decision to the uninitiated, but those that understand the powerful force known as "the narrative" know that the big expensive ship will be destroyed and the small crappy ship will save the day. The leaders of the Rangers are wiser than I give them credit for.

So, the two ships come under attack by a mysterious enemy and in the middle of the battle Cantrell runs away to play some 0-G Kinect. As a result, the big expensive ship has to ram the enemy ship so that the small crappy ship can get away with the ambassadors. You'd think they'd do things the other away around, but you'd be wrong.

Anyway, some stuff happens involving ghosts, comets, and a suspiciously evil looking ambassador, and then...

In my time as a television viewer, I have seen many horrific things. I've seen a body that was semi-dissolved in acid come crashing through a ceiling. I've seen a man's head crushed by the wheel of a car. I've seen a woman brutally raped. I've seen a man poison his wife and child before shooting his brains out. I've seen a man lose half his face in an explosion. But none of those things prepared me for the horror of seeing a woman hanging in space shooting lasers from her hands and feet while screaming her head off. That was just... wow.

The movie bravely continues after this moment of madness, but I have to question why it bothers. It's like watching a play where one of the actors has a mental breakdown in the middle of the show, but she pulls herself together and continues the performance. Brave, perhaps, but there's only one thing that people will be talking about in the bar afterwards.

Anyway, the suspiciously evil looking ambassador actually is evil and he lays out what's really going on. It turns out that there's an even older, more powerful, and more evil force than the Shadows and they're called The Hand of God. Oooooooh. They're returning for some reason and some new aliens have decided to get in on the evil act. It's like JMS took what he had with the Shadows and turned it up to 11, which obviously makes it better. The obvious solution to all the Liandra's problems is to put the evil ambassador in an escape pod with some grenades and unwillingly use him as a mine. This works and it blows up the evil ship real good, David is commended for his good work and they all go to Babylon 5 to celebrate. The End.

The movie is full of clichés and I imagine it is referenced often over on TV Tropes. There's nothing fresh or exciting about it, it feels like a generic action movie in the Babylon 5 universe. The only reason I'll remember it at all is because of that one scene, and it wont be a fond memory.

 

At least the Brakiri ambassador had a scene. He was always one of my favourite supporting characters (not quite sure why, I just like seeing him).

Ah.

About that...

But you've already worked that out, I see.

 

I rather liked the dynamic between Martell and Dulann. And the music rocked. But otherwise, Legend ain't all that.

 

That stupid, stupid kung fu weapons room is the only thing I remember about Legend of the Rangers. Ugh.

 

See, Legend of the Rangers is all about people seeming to do the same thing twice... but they're actually not. So I think JMS had a cunning plan.

The problem with that is that he had to do the same thing twice to pull it off. And that was boring.

 

LotR is the only bit of B5 I still haven't watched but from everything I've heard I'm probably better off remaining blissfully unexposed to it.