End of Shadow War = Lame

[Neroon]

I suspect this is true of just about any well-loved series that still brings in new fans. You get to watch the reactions unfold, some similar to your own original reactions ... and some new. Plus, it's a good incentive to brush up on what you may have forgotten or at least let dim.

[Jan]

Neroon wrote:

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I suspect this is true of just about any well-loved series that still brings in new fans. You get to watch the reactions unfold, some similar to your own original reactions ... and some new. Plus, it's a good incentive to brush up on what you may have forgotten or at least let dim.

Good point. And one thing about B5 is that there are so many stories that weave in and out of focus that it's easy to forget something. Just another excuse to watch the whole thing again!

Jan

[stonester1]

This is true. I'm rewatching the X-Files, just started season two, also a landmark show with it's own magic, and I'm feeling it.

I was a latecomer to Buffy/Angel, and I had friends having fun watching me discover it.

I've had much fun introducing friends to Firefly, Farscape, Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who.

It's good to be a geek.

[stonester1]

Jan wrote:

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Good point. And one thing about B5 is that there are so many stories that weave in and out of focus that it's easy to forget something. Just another excuse to watch the whole thing again!

Jan

I make a point to do it annually, and occasionally, just popping in some of my fav eps.

Problem doing that, though, is it's hard to resist going onto the next ep, the next ep, the next...

[Neroon]

* - sigh - * - Guess it's time to host another B5 marathon.

I was going to make it centered upon the "hidden gems", those underappreciated episodes that don't often get viewed or mentioned in such events. But the success of this thread may make me rethink that. It might be fun to show episodes that highlight plots where there's a wide variety of opinion. WAtch an episode, then discuss it for a bit and see what happens ....

[Forbin]

stonester1 wrote:

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It's good to be a geek.

We need that on a T-Shirt!

[Jim Steele]

If people wanted it to end with another shooting match, they've missed the point entirely.

[MyCylon]

Neroon wrote:

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Mira Furlan has a very different style and background from Andy, both in acting as well as in geography. Ergo, it makes sense how there can be so varied an opinion on her actiing abilities.

Personally, I don't feel it comes down to different acting styles. I'm fine with that. I just don't feel she can act worth a dime. Granted, that's my personal judgement, and I'm by no means an expert.

I was always interested in the character of Delenn, for example, but it was a constant battle for me. Having to take her seriously meant filtering out big parts of Furlan's performance which I just found absolutely cringe worthy a lot of the time.

The interesting thing for me is that I CAN actually enjoy watching people who aren't what I consider good or great actors and enjoy myself anyway. Arnold is a great example of this, but he's got such good screen presence that I get a lot of fun out of his movies.

Furlan IMHO just doesn't have that. She basically lacks the skill AND the presence to pull off the Delenn part sufficiently.

I think it's to the show's credit that it works (for me) anyway. Delenn is well defined as a character. There's many different sides to her, and she has some darker qualites about her that I really like.

If people enjoy Furlan's performance, that's great. But personally, I don't see how one can even begin to compare her with the likes of Robinson or others. But then, such is life that we don't always understand the people around us .

Mr Light wrote:

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One larger problem though, which was systemic of the entire series, was how the villains failed to be characterized as individuals and rather as vague ideological forces. We never had a Shadow as a character, for example, just Morden.

That's a quibble I have with the show myself. It doesn't bother me as much today but I remember it really stood out to me during the original run.

One of the things I remember (and I know this is venturing into dangerous territoriy ) is that I found the Dominion threat on DS9 to be a lot more menacing for that reason precisely.
On B5, you'd have these spider-like Shadow ships appear, blast everything to bits and disappear. That's frightening on a rational level but not so much on an emotional one, I find.
On DS9, on the other hand, you were constantly confronted with the face of the enemy. The combination of cruelty, ruthlessness, intelligence, and charm that characterizes one Gul Dukat is IMHO a lot more menacing.
I think you can see this phenomenon if you watch the news. It's the close-up and personal tragedies that really move us, not the broad, sweeping disasters, I think.

Neroon wrote:

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I suspect this is true of just about any well-loved series that still brings in new fans. You get to watch the reactions unfold, some similar to your own original reactions ... and some new. Plus, it's a good incentive to brush up on what you may have forgotten or at least let dim.

Very true.

I've also found that it's a reminder to keep an open mind to new shows. Sometimes you'll see somebody react very negatively to a show, and you remember how negative you were before you really gave it a chance yourself.

[Jan]

Justtoyourleft wrote:

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That's a quibble I have with the show myself. It doesn't bother me as much today but I remember it really stood out to me during the original run.

One of the things I remember (and I know this is venturing into dangerous territoriy ) is that I found the Dominion threat on DS9 to be a lot more menacing for that reason precisely.
On B5, you'd have these spider-like Shadow ships appear, blast everything to bits and disappear. That's frightening on a rational level but not so much on an emotional one, I find.
On DS9, on the other hand, you were constantly confronted with the face of the enemy. The combination of cruelty, ruthlessness, intelligence, and charm that characterizes one Gul Dukat is IMHO a lot more menacing.
I think you can see this phenomenon if you watch the news. It's the close-up and personal tragedies that really move us, not the broad, sweeping disasters, I think.

There's a JMS post where he discusses showing vs not showing something that might be relevant to this.

There's an old saying: to suggest is to create, to define is to kill. No
matter how amazingly I had described Kosh's ship -- and I do happen to know
what's inside and how it looks -- it would have eliminated the mystery of it.
The way it's written, you can see anything you want, as big as you want, and it
stays mysterious. It's the "behind the door" scenario: you hear something
knocking on the other side of hte door, and for as long as you don't open the
door, it could be ANYthing. The moment you open the door, and see that it's a
six foot cockroach, you can think, "Well, it could be worse, it could've been a
ten foot cockroach."

As he indicated at times in the script books, sometimes he tried to convey a sense of something kind of subliminally rather than pointing a spotlight at it. That was behind his not giving Morden a first name, too, as I recall.

Jan

[stonester1]

Like some of what is going on with Fringe. I suspect that show will be one of those which may turn out to be a genre classic, if not a phenomenon. But a pilot that had a show feeling it's way and seeking to differentiate itself from it's famous pod-brother, The X-Files, has some people writing it off right out the gate.

I'm one of those who is cautious about new shows, but I do have a few I'm looking forward to, mostly due to the pedigree of their creators (Abrams, Moore, Whedon). But I am open to others, and if the geek meter seems to tickle my genre sweet spots, I may give a gander.

[RoJoHen]

Jim Steele wrote:

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If people wanted it to end with another shooting match, they've missed the point entirely.

I don't think anyone has said that they wanted that.

[Jim Steele]

RoJoHen wrote:

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I don't think anyone has said that they wanted that.

Just saying.

Personally I think it was a perfect resolution to that whole arc.

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

Justtoyourleft wrote:

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I was always interested in the character of Delenn, for example, but it was a constant battle for me. Having to take her seriously meant filtering out big parts of Furlan's performance which I just found absolutely cringe worthy a lot of the time.

The interesting thing for me is that I CAN actually enjoy watching people who aren't what I consider good or great actors and enjoy myself anyway. Arnold is a great example of this, but he's got such good screen presence that I get a lot of fun out of his movies.

Furlan IMHO just doesn't have that. She basically lacks the skill AND the presence to pull off the Delenn part sufficiently.

My favorite was how, whenever Delenn had to be profound or wise or all holy-like, she'd just raise her voice to a high whisper, and that's it. Or when she had to be serious or bad-ass, just make her voice real deep (to the point where she would actually croak out words), and that's it, no body inflection whatsoever.

Delenn had some powerful WRITTEN moments. Some of that stuff would be mind-blowing television with a truly great actress.

A lot of B5 actors though do get by out of sheer earnestness, though. You can just see and hear that Boxleitner isn't a praticularly good actor, but he does it with such gusto that its hard not like him, sort of like some of the dodgy but fun action in the original star wars movie.

[Neroon]

Justtoyourleft wrote:

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But personally, I don't see how one can even begin to compare her with the likes of Robinson or others. But then, such is life that we don't always understand the people around us .

I was thinking the very same thing.

I grant that Mira wasn't quite adept at comic moments for the most part, yet there were several dramatic ones which I felt she nailed beautifully. We shouldn't concentrate on comparisons between her and Andy any more, since the topic here is the End of the Shadow War. Since the quality of acting is an art very much in the eye of the beholder, suffice it to say that we simply have to agree to disagree.


SO returning to the actual topic, the Shadows' malevolence didn't require getting to know them on such a personal level. It was very real and palpable to me, because of the way we understood their modus operandi. They used other people, other races to achieve their goals. The Vorlons did as well. That was central to the overall story. These shepherds for the younger races had no trouble getting someone else to do the dirty work for them until the time was right for more direct involvement. Hence why we had people like Morden, Justin and Anna. Seeing them and the way their lives were manipulated and torn apart by the Shadows agenda was more than enough cause to be frightened by a race with such disregard for other lives. We see their evil through the way they turned Londo and the entire Centauri race into agents of that evil. THAT was the face of the Shadows. THAT is what personalized them if such was needed.

This was a very different kind of villain from what Trek spoon-fed us. It was a villainy that wasn't quite so easy to define. And when the Vorlons, previously thought to be mroe or less "good guys" turned out to be not so good after all, that jsut kicks the legs out of it altogether

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Starfleet Engineer wrote:

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***Don't post spoilers for stuff after the Babylon 5 Season 4 episode "Into The Fire"***

I recently saw the episode that ends the Shadow War (I'm not just taking their word that it's over, though). I must say that this end to the war was quite unsatisfying. The unsatisfying part is the Vorlons and Shadows being reduced to the level of whining children. Lorien explains stuff and the whiny Vorlon and Shadow ask him if he'll go with them when they leave and go beyond the rim. They were shockingly whiny and childlike. It felt totally unbelievable. Lorien says yes and it's all over. Also in this scene, Sheridan and Delenn do a lot of talking/explaining the overall picture of what's been going on and it was quite clunky and Sheridan's acting was quite wooden. Did this scene come off unsatisfyingly weak to anyone else? In my opinion, the Londo storyline has been done very well and is the best part of the series.

Yep, it was terrible - bargain-basement "Captain Kirk," and it eliminated the last pretense the series had to complex and sophisticated storytelling.