TheGodBen Revisits Deep Space Nine

[DalekJim]

R. Star wrote:

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I tried watching a few season 1 B5 eps a few months back and... it just failed to hook me. I dunno why... the station was interesting and more... rough... so to say, but the cast just fell flat.

I really love all the cast apart from Talia Winters who is pretty dull. I think Michael O'Hare as Sinclair gave one of the definitive sci-fi leading man performances, though many dislike his old fashioned style of acting.

I'd definitely recommend you stick with the show. Londo Mollari's arc is among the most powerful drama you'll see on screen. Him and G'Kar are ultimately the reason I'd pick B5 over any Trek.

[TheGodBen]

DalekJim wrote:

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You might have a point there as a fair chunk of my favourite DS9 episodes are standalones whereas none of my favourite B5 episodes are. However, B5 was also a much more serialised show, with S3 and S4 being much, much more serialised than DS9 ever was. B5 was actively trying to show how television could be transformed in to something more literary, whereas DS9 was just a very awesome Star Trek show.

That's all true, and I give B5 a lot of credit for that. But as neozeks said, DS9 had the edge on the craft side of things. The dialogue on B5 was very hit and miss; when it worked it was great and when it was bad it was cringeworthy. DS9 had some terrible dialogue in places, but it generally it came across more naturally as it wasn't trying as hard to be clever. In terms of acting, particularly guest acting, DS9 comes out on top. And DS9 obviously had a bigger budget and could afford greater quality in most areas of production. There are other things I could criticise about B5 on a personal level (technomages being high on that list) but I already did a thread doing that.

But just to be clear, Babylon 5 was a great show, and I particularly loved Londo's character arc. I can completely understand why many people prefer it to DS9.

R. Star wrote:

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I tried watching a few season 1 B5 eps a few months back and... it just failed to hook me. I dunno why... the station was interesting and more... rough... so to say, but the cast just fell flat.

I know, everyone says it's better later on and to be fair season 1 of both tng and ds9 fell fairly flat too. Just one of those things, I haven't really gotten into yet.

That seems to be a common story as that's exactly what happened to me the first time I tried to watch it. That's why I started watching B5 as a review thread, because I needed something to force me to keep watching through that rough first season. I'm glad that plan worked.

Did you get to episode 4, Infection? Because that's godawful, it's honestly one of the worst episodes of television I've ever seen, and it's the reason I gave up on the show first time around. If you can survive that episode, you'll survive the rest.

[Sindatur]

Yea, Infection is pretty bad, and the "Ultimate Fighting" in TKO didn't sit well with me at first, though the B-story for Ivanova in TKO is a great character piece. Other than that, Grey 17 is Missing (Not a Season 1 episode) the A-Story in Grey 17 is pretty bad, but, the B-Story with Delenn and Neroon is fantastic. Really, those are my only complaints in B5 episode-wise.

I know many people mistake Sinclair's character as poor acting, but, I think he does a fantastic job, playing a man who isn't whole, has Survivor's Guilt and has a hole in his mind.

Of course, I've never understood the "DS9 Season 1 is horrible" complaints either

[TheRoyalFamily]

R. Star wrote:

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I tried watching a few season 1 B5 eps a few months back and... it just failed to hook me. I dunno why... the station was interesting and more... rough... so to say, but the cast just fell flat.

I know, everyone says it's better later on and to be fair season 1 of both tng and ds9 fell fairly flat too. Just one of those things, I haven't really gotten into yet.

Some would consider this heresy, but I would say just skip season 1, and maybe even season 2. I think I went straight into season 3, and I was able to figure things out just fine. Yah, there's some stuff you lose, but it isn't that bad.

[DonIago]

Yeah, I ended up getting into the show in S3 and backtracking later.

There's still S1 episodes I haven't seen and have little interest in seeing even if it means I miss parts of the backstory.

[Harvey]

Despite being heavily serialized, one of the virtues of Babylon 5 was its ability to catch up viewers with all the necessary backstory in any given episode. At times, however, this was also one of the show's greatest flaws, since it meant characters frequently informed each other of things they already knew. Expository writing was not JMS' strong suit.