A Niner Watches Babylon 5 (NO spoilers, please)

[Skywalker]

Lindley wrote:

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The DVDs are widescreen, but since the FX shots were only available in 4:3, they've been cropped. Therefore, the FX shots don't look even as good as they did originally (and this is 90s CGI to start with). Also, any live action scene with a CGI overlay had to get the same treatment.

All in all, it's not great picture quality, but it's good enough to tell the story.

Yeah, I remembered something about that, too, but I wasn't exactly sure what the deal was. Still, it's probably as good as we're going to get for a long time, unfortunately.

[teacake]

I was very upset that the actor who played Na'Toth changed. TERRIBLE replacement. Na'Toth the original had quite a presence about her and I really enjoyed her scenes. Na'Toth the 2nd seems to have very little presence and comes across as actually.. demur. Terrible.

I hope I warm to Sheridan. At this point he is boring but not odious. Sinclair I enjoyed, as someone said above he was "dour". I don't think he was a great character but he grew on me.

Otherwise I am very excited about the way the plot is moving forward!

[Canadave]

Yeah, I forget why the changeover in actors for Na'Toth happened (though I'm sure someone will be along shortly to enlighten us ), but you're right, it effectively neutered the character. Which is too bad, really—it would have been nice to have a third strong "ambassador's assistant" character to go along with Lennier and Vir.

[Reverend]

For an actress, having you face covered by a full latex mask can be a real problem. Mary Woronov who played Ko'Dath quit because she just couldn't deal with it. Fair enough. Caitlin Brown as I recall didn't mind it in and of itself, though it began to have an affect on her ability to get other work because all her demo tapes had a weird lizard woman in it and those every open minded casting directors had trouble seeing lizards as leading ladies, or even in supporting roles. Plus I'm fairly certain the glue and whatnot didn't do her complexion any favours which just compounds matters.
As for Mary Kay Adams (Na'Toth mk2) I gather that while she gave a good audition, she was either unable or unwilling to sustain that.

[D Man]

I've never really thought Na'Toth as a character (regardless of who was playing her) ever went anywhere interesting. The character seemed superfluous since G'Kar was such a strong "solitary" sort of figure, at least IMO. It doesn't help that she shows up so infrequently.

[Starbrow]

TheGodBen wrote:

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Points of Departure (***)

Hmm, not the grandiose start I was hoping for after Chrysalis, but what could JMS do? His lead actor left at a pivotal moment in the series and he had to introduce a new station commander and try to get us all to accept him in 42 minutes, all this after hinting in Babylon Squared that Sinclair was going to be a big deal in the future of this show. So while this episode didn't explain what is going on with Delenn, and we still don't know where G'Kar went, and we don't know the political ramifications of the Earth President being assassinated, and nothing new happened with Garibaldi... I can't blame this episode for dropping all that stuff to introduce Sheridan.

As for Sheridan, I like him, he has let me with a much more positive impression that Sinclair did after his first episode. I guess part of the problem with Sinclair is that I knew he would be leaving, and the episodes that focused on him tended to deal with the mystery of the Battle of the Line rather than exploring him as a person, so I never clicked with him. Sheridan on the other hand doesn't feel like a mystery, he feels like a character front and centre, and while he discusses his actions during the war, and this episode's plot focuses on that era of his life, it doesn't feel like this is all there is to him. And I like that he's more... bitter than Sinclair when it comes to the Minbari. Sinclair seemed to get along with everyone, it seems like Sheridan is going to bring a bit more conflict to the show.

However, I could be very wrong about this, I've only known the guy for a few minutes.

The one piece of the overall plot that did move along was the revelation of what "really" happened at the Battle of the Line, and boy was I underwhelmed by that. I was expecting something Earth-shattering, the revelation that humans have in them something I don't believe in wasn't what I was hoping for. Anything that validates Soul Hunter as an episode in a bad thing in my book. I just don't buy that the Minbari insisted on making Sinclair the commander of Babylon 5 because he was the first human the Grey Council encountered, I have to believe that there is something more to it than that.

I'm a bit rusty, I nearly forgot the Scott Bakula counter!

Scott Bakula: 17

Was wondering, what did you though about his " speech "?
And this i was wondering for awhile now, about the second part of his " speech ", was Sheridan talking to an empty room?

[Reverend]

Technically no, it wasn't empty because he was there.

[Ensign_Redshirt]

To be honest, John Sheridan appeared to me as a pretty shallow character in the beginning. As a result, I actually missed Sinclair for the first half of Season 2 or so. It wasn't until "In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum" that Sheridan became interesting and started to develop something of a personality.

[Kegg]

Starbrow wrote:

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And this i was wondering for awhile now, about the second part of his " speech ", was Sheridan talking to an empty room?

He was. There's a short period in B5's schedule when the control room is entirely empty, and he said the speech then.

That's pretty much the punchline of the sequence; Sheridan finally gets to say his speech but nobody's there to hear it.

[Forbin]

...which made him seem kinda nuts to me at the time.

[TheGodBen]

teacake wrote:

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I was very upset that the actor who played Na'Toth changed. TERRIBLE replacement. Na'Toth the original had quite a presence about her and I really enjoyed her scenes. Na'Toth the 2nd seems to have very little presence and comes across as actually.. demur. Terrible.

I can only agree, while Na'Toth was never all that interesting the original actress at least gave her some personality while this new actress just feels bland. I'll reserve judgement until I see more but she hasn't made a good start.

Starbrow wrote:

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Was wondering, what did you though about his " speech "?

I was a bit thrown by him calling Lincoln an "old Earth President" because Lincoln wasn't President of Earth, he was President of some United States over thataway. I know JMS probably phrased it that way for brevity because saying "an old President of one of Earth's historic nation-states" might have been a bit much, and he was writing for an American audience so he probably didn't care.

Other than that, it was a standard television speech, it was no "The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight."

[Lindley]

I think it just meant "president from Earth".

[RoJoHen]

TheGodBen wrote:

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I'll reserve judgement until I see more

Don't waste your time.

[Lindley]

Yeah, it's not really a spoiler to say that JMS wasn't happy with the new Na'Toth, and as a result she's barely even in the show this year.

[middyseafort]

Ensign_Redshirt wrote:

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To be honest, John Sheridan appeared to me as a pretty shallow character in the beginning. As a result, I actually missed Sinclair for the first half of Season 2 or so. It wasn't until "In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum" that Sheridan became interesting and started to develop something of a personality.

JMS purposefully wrote Sheridan to be light and fluffy in the early half of season two. He wanted to play off Boxleitner's reputation for playing rather lightweight roles, such as in Scarecrow and Mrs. King, before showing the character's real teeth, so to speak.