A Niner Watches Babylon 5 (NO spoilers, please)

[Reverend]

That wasn't solely directed at you, just a general statement so don't get your knickers in a twist.

[Brian]

Not twisted, I just realized that the post might elicit some, "How can you give episode X three stars? It's clearly a two-star episode!" replies, when I didn't even look at the episode list when making that post. Anyway, the two carats (^^) indicated that I was replying to my own post (two up the thread), not yours, so don't you get your knickers twisted either.

In fact, I think my post and yours were meant to convey the same message.

Mine was just much more creative.

[TheGodBen]

Sean_McCormick wrote:

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With the "Captain Grayshirt" counter being tied to the new character, shouldn't it be resetted to 0?
After all, there was a psychological reason for Sinclair to act, as he did, so such behaviour is more unrealistic with Sheridan as with him.

The Captain Greyshirt counter is new to this thread, but it built up 8 points while it served in a thread in the QSF forum. I'd feel bad about taking them away from it now.

brian wrote:

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Not to spoil you or anything, TGB, but here are the ratings you should come up with for the beginning of the third season:

**
***
*
**
****
***

If you don't come to the same conclusions, then you obviously haven't paid enough attention to all of the pre-viewing discussion of them.

If you give me the scores for the rest of the show then I can skip the whole reviewing thing and just pop in at random occasions to make Scott Bakula jokes. It will save us all some valuable time.


A Spider in the Web (**)

Wow. I guess immigration really did destroy San Diego.

To be honest, the story here is very dull for the most part, and it was obvious from the beginning that Earth was behind killing Isogi, I had just assumed it was the Psi Corps or some part of Earth Force. The episode is propped up a bit by the suggestion of black-ops group working on Earth's behalf, a section of numbers 1 and 3, but it doesn't really rescue the episode. Bureau 13 seems like they could be interesting, but I'm not really sure what they're about. Earth already has a secretive organisation that's up to no good, does it really need two? Possibly. I guess I'll find out in good time.

As for the rest of the episode, something happened with a robot man who was very angry that he didn't have enough money to buy his favourite chocolatey snack, so he roamed that station electrocuting people while shouting "Free Mars!" Frankly, I can't summon up the effort to delve into this episode, it just wasn't interesting enough for me to want to do that, and I can't justify the time doing that while I have ominously titled emails that I'm hiding from. So let's just do the Scott Bakula counter and call it an evening, shall we?

Scott Bakula: 22
Captain Greyshirt: 10

[Harvey]

JMS found out after the episode aired that an RPG existed called Bureau 13, so it doesn't come up, at least in that name, again.

It is also the first episode to feature Zack Allen.

[stonester1]

I didn't love this ep, but really liked it. Not only for what it had, but yet more peeks into the history and the goings on in the B5U.

[Lindley]

Harvey wrote:

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It is also the first episode to feature Zack Allen.

Although I think he's credited as "Security Guard" or something equally generic at this point.

[Harvey]

^^
I think that's right. His role is awfully generic in that episode, anyway.

[Silvercrest]

You know, they were showing "Grease" on TV a few days ago. I did a double-take when I saw Zack at the beginning of the movie.

[RoJoHen]

Is it bad that I'm not even remembering most of these Season 2 episodes? Maybe I skipped over them the second time around.

[stonester1]

Silvercrest wrote:

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You know, they were showing "Grease" on TV a few days ago. I did a double-take when I saw Zack at the beginning of the movie.

A hickey from Kinniky is like a Hallmark card...

[Brian]

I wish Grease was all I had seen him in recently. Two seasons of Celebrity Rehab has really ruined my view of the guy. He's such a mess, it's a wonder he's still alive.

[Kegg]

RoJoHen wrote:

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Is it bad that I'm not even remembering most of these Season 2 episodes? Maybe I skipped over them the second time around.

Even when I marathon the show I feel like I'm marathoning past them; they're speedbumps between me and the next big arc event. As observed, B5 is IMHO mostly terrible when it comes to standalones, and I think it's been hit why upthread: They frequently feel upstaged by their own foreshadowing. When the background noise is more enticing and is more carefully designed than the main event, well, what's the point?

[teacake]

I watched A Spider in the Web last night and I enjoyed it, great pace and more development of Talia Winters. I hadn't exactly warmed to her before this episode but I'm now more interested in her, because of the secrets she is keeping. I hope we get to see that mystery red haired "deceased" psi corp agent again.

[Vestboy]

With the S1 and S2 one-shot episodes, especially those written by someone other than JMS, that's unfortunately what they are-- mostly handwaving in the foreground to while things are being set up in the background. You almost get the sense that JMS didn't care much about what they were about as long as the bits that he needed name-dropped were in there.

Although I think he's credited as "Security Guard" or something equally generic at this point.

I remember reading about how he got on the show. Apparently Conway was home sick and flipping channels, caught an episode and decided he had to be on the show.

[Silvercrest]

I was home sick and flipping channels when I saw him in "Grease." Maybe I can get in on the next iteration of B5.