Farscape or Babylon 5?

[kirk55555]

That JMS quote doesn't fill me with confidence. Basically, he's proud of writing something really stupid and passing it off as a literary trick. I had already assumed the war would be won. That part I can live with. The fact that he decided to ruin the ending of Londo's whole story and acted like it was a good thing does not help restore my lowered opinion of his ability as a writer.

[JoeD80]

kirk55555 wrote:

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I wanted to learn what would happen to Londo over the course of the rest of the show. Now, I know, and it makes every appearance of his from now on pointless.

Actually, you don't know at all. And your assumptions are way way off.

[Snatcher42]

The keyword there is trick. You don't know what you think you know (how's that for Vorlon cryptic, lol). How we get from point A to point B will actually change your assumptions about what point B means. Revisit them as early as mid-season 4.

[kirk55555]

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. I don't see anyway to come back from this when it comes to Londo's storyarc. JMS ruined it completely. I'll still enjoy seeing Londo and watching his scenes, but anything he does I'll always be able to know what the end result will be, atleast in a big picture sense. There is no room left for surprise. Ok, maybe I'll be surprised if he goes on a random murder spree or something. But, they might as well make him emperor and kick him off the show now. Why would they bother giving him any more screen time, atleast past him making announcements for his Shadow overlords? We know that whatever he does he ends up as a broken old man who only gets kind of redeemed at the end, after almost 20 years of siding with evil. There is no room for any character growth, we know who he turns out to be. at this point, the "journey" for his character is meaningless, except to give us more scenes with a cool character.

[Professor Zoom]

Kirk, don't listen to everyone else. You are absolutely right in every one of your assumptions.

[Snatcher42]

kirk55555 wrote:

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after almost 20 years of siding with evil.

That's an assumption you'll want to revisit from time to time.

[kirk55555]

Its fine if we disagree. Its just my opinion. I know how I feel about stuff like this, and I doubt anything will change my mind. To be clear, I'm sure I'll still enjoy B5. But, there is nothing that can effect Londo whatsoever from now on. I don't care about how he got there at this point. I wanted to see where he was going. If I was rewatching a series, this wouldn't be an issue (I'd already know everything), but as a first time viewer I now have no reason outside my own enjoyment of Londo as a character to pay any attention to him ever again.

[Snatcher42]

Well, lets just save these messages and revisit them halfway through Season 4, and then again at the end of the show. Londo has my favorite character arc on television, and is in many way the heart of the series. It's also why I've come to appreciate Season 5 more. Due to cancellation fears, many plot threads were wrapped up in Season 4. But had the show ended there, Londo's arc would not have been fully told. So I'm glad we got the full story.

Again, sorry if any of this is spoilers. I'm terrible with that stuff!

[Professor Zoom]

kirk55555 wrote:

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Its fine if we disagree. Its just my opinion. I know how I feel about stuff like this, and I doubt anything will change my mind.

It's fine to hold an opinion, but I believe what everyone is saying: your opinion is an uninformed one as you haven't seen the whole story.

[sojourner]

But Kirk55555's specialty is forming opinions on things he hasn't seen yet.

[Jan]

kirk55555 wrote:

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I don't care about how he got there at this point.

Babylon 5 is about choices and the consequences of those choices and believe me, Londo still has choices to make.

Jan

[Aeon]

I guess other's have already said everything and I agree, the future flash really doesn't ruin anything.

[Lindley]

JoeD80 wrote:

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Yeah, how Londo was going to die was stated in the very first episode of the first season. There's still not enough information to know exactly how Londo and Centauri Prime got to this state; that's in seasons four and five, so stick around for the Londo ride; there's still plenty of twists and turns coming on that particular roller coaster.

Actually, the exact events that brought Centauri Prime to that state aren't in the show at all, they're in the Centauri book trilogy. The show hints at what happened, though.

[kirk55555]

sojourner wrote:

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But Kirk55555's specialty is forming opinions on things he hasn't seen yet.

Well, it seems like 90% of the time, my ideas are right, atleast to me. I generally know my reaction to things. I know what I like and dislike. In this case, I dislike spoilers that ruin an arc, except its usually my fault when it comes to spoilers. I stopped watching BSG because

I wanted to know how to spell colonel tigh's name for a reason that I can't remember now, so I went to wikipedia and looked at the BSG main page. I happened to click on the section about him, and looking over his page, to the side I saw the words "Species: Humanoid Cylon" At that point, I just stopped. It wasn't helped by the fact that the library only had the first one and a half seasons, and I was beginning season 2. Now, it has all the seasons, so I've been considering trying to watch it again when I'm done with Babylon 5, even though that was a really bad spoiler to get.

But, having the actual writer ruin a character arc in the show is a weird experience. Anyway, there is nothing I can do about it now. I'll just have to deal with if they ever try to build suspense or mystery with Londo again. Now, back to my watching B5 episodes.

Walkabout - The B5 space suit looks weird. The helmet seemed weirdly shaped. Still, it was a cool scene, seeing Sheridan face the vorlon ship in space. It was nice to see that narn ship guarding B5, and having it be the same ship B5 saved. The new vorlon ambassador is interesting, although I'm starting to wonder he is the vorlon equivalent of Darth Vader The stuff with franklin was ok, until he meets the singer. every scene with her is just painful. I liked seeing them test out using telepaths against the shadows, but the narn commander was a jerk for not helping. If it wasn't for B5, he'd be dead. The fight against the shadows was cool. I guess telepaths are good against them. It was weird to see Lyta apparently crying blood after the attack, in most things like this the person usually gets a nosebleed. Seeing the cavalry arrive was a cool scene. I'm glad Garibaldi showed G'Kar what he had to do as a leader. Seeing the shadows take some losses was also nice. Overall, this wasa decent episode, although the stuff with the singer stops it from being great.

[Aeon]

kirk55555 wrote:

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The stuff with franklin was ok, until he meets the singer. every scene with her is just painful.

I totally agree. Also the songs just went on and on and weren't very good.