Nevertheless, for a recurring-as opposed to regular-character, Bester was done well.
And Bester was quite a memorial character. I know that Koenig has done other roles, but the two that come to mind are Chekov and Bester.
Babylon 5
- Thread starter Kail
- Start date
And Bester was quite a memorial character. I know that Koenig has done other roles, but the two that come to mind are Chekov and Bester.
I just finished "The Long, Twilight Struggle"
Fantastic episode. You should hate Londo. But also pity his weakness for not being able to stand up against what is wrong. I've often maintained (though I'm not alone at all) that saying Babylon 5 is the tragedy of Londo Mollari.
That's a great episode. Things are really starting to fall apart, now. Sometimes you want to ask Londo, with his own fascination with Earth culture, if he'd ever watched The Godfather? Londo talks a big game about he and the Centauri being the lion of the galaxy but he and the Centauri elite are also extremely vain and obsessed with honor and name. Vanity, ambition, and a preference for easy and underhanded shortcuts put him where he is now. He's easy to despise at this point.
That's actually something that takes me out of Babylon 5 quite a bit and part of the reason I could never suspend disbelief and buy into the storyline.What I found most impressive is that later in the show they're able to show places other than the inside of the station (Narn, Centauri Prime, Mars and even Minbar) and sell it despite the fact whole show was shot on-stage. No location work, ever. I think the closest they came is a fairly memorable shot (that I shall be deliberately vague about) of Londo standing in a garden looking up at something overhead and that was basically done in the car park just outside the sound stage IIRC. I think it's the only actual natural sunlight you'll ever on B5.
Call it a personal preference if you like, but a lack of location shooting comes across to me as a sign of low production values and makes everything "stagey" in an unappealing way. (This isn't limited to B5 for me--I really disliked that the last stretch of DS9's Season Seven featured no location shooting, either.) Even a barebones series like the original Doctor Who did location shooting sometimes, so it's hard for me to ever get into a series that refuses to even try.
I don't think its absence hurts the story at all but it is an interesting watch. You can see some early things like Delenn's original look which is more lizard-like and androgynous. Also, it has a couple of talks between Londo and Garibaldi which give some insight into Londo's and the Centauri leadership's psychology and why they fell into Morden's schemes so easily. It is a variation on the answer Londo gave to Morden about what he wants.
Season one Londo, yeah, my favorite moment for him there was when he was talking to Delenn and Drall about how when he was young he wanted to go down fighting a hopeless battle doing something noble, brave, and foolish. That and the glee he had flying the ship down to the planet. Seeing him in 'The Long Twilight Struggle' is a wrenching moment.
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I would definitely watch The Gathering. A lot of the basics get repeated but it really sets up the importance of Sinclair as an iconic figure in the story.
Ah, but which version?
Crab... Nebula...
It is interesting to see how this show turns things around. In the beginning, G'kar seemed the obvious choice as the pretty basic villain character and Londo was the jolly good happy drunk, essentially a comic relief. A nice detail to notice is that Londo's clothing and appearance is gradually changing slightly towards the darker side.
Which sets up one of my favorite moments in the show, which I will not spoil for anyone.One of my favorite quotes is from that episode!
Morden: What do you want?
Vir: I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up at your lifeless eyes and wave like this. [gives a mockingly cheerful finger waggle] Can you and your associates arrange this for me, Mr. Morden?
I'm the opposite. Location shooting is fine, but I love set shooting because it looks theatrical. Created sets, like created costuming and makeup, have more artistry.
Stewart Copeland rather than Christopher Franke?
I am jumping a bit forward with the composers but Christopher Franke > Evan H. Chen > Stewart Copeland.
I didn't like Copeland's original score at all in The Gathering - no redeeming qualities there.
When the spin-off Crusade started, Chen was pretty out there with his style and ideas, really weird and alien which I guess was the point, but I like weird stuff (for instance I love the psychedelic ambient stuff that Tangerine Dream made in the '70s - Franke was a member from IIRC 1971 to 1987) and hey, let's face it, Franke's season one stuff was mostly pretty bad! Especially his comedic music, but after that he really flourised during the second season. So I guess what I'm saying is that I would have loved to see how Chen would have evolved.
The problem of the revised version of The Gathering is supposedly that it introduces a spoiler but I doubt a first-time viewer would notice it. It's certainly much slicker production in its production values but the differences from the first season are a bit jarring. It's not essential viewing for the series.
Oh, and my opinion on the music is Franke >> Chen >= Copeland. Copeland's style sounds very dated now. Chen's style sometimes seems inappropriate for the scene to which it's applied or grates on my ear. I can see the show runners for Crusade were going for something different but perhaps Franke could have come up with new themes that were similar but different.
Oh, and my opinion on the music is Franke >> Chen >= Copeland. Copeland's style sounds very dated now. Chen's style sometimes seems inappropriate for the scene to which it's applied or grates on my ear. I can see the show runners for Crusade were going for something different but perhaps Franke could have come up with new themes that were similar but different.
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Need? Not at this point, no.
Indeed you probably know enough lore by now that you might actually catch the foreshadowing/spoiler mentioned above, whereas it wouldn't have even registered if you saw the movie first. It'd be a shame to spoil that little surprise so I'd say avoid it for now, at least until you've seen the third season, it'll be safe by then.
In the grand scheme of things though, yeah, it's worth checking out in and of itself. The original aired version is a bit ropey (because: pilot) with some rather loose editing, CG that's even cruder than the first season's, some ugly make-up design and a syth-guitar sounding score that never felt like it fit the tone.
The special edition is something they did around the production of season five, when they were doing the TV movies for TNT. A lot of the editing was tightened up, some important character building scenes were re-inserted (most notably Sinclair recalling the Battle of the Line) some extraneous material was cut (like a very awkwardly staged and unconvincing tour of the alien sector, which looked like something out of Fraggle Rock) and the whole thing was re-scored to match the established soundtrack of the show.
Some of the CG was replaced too, though mostly just things like establishing shots of the station which I'm pretty sure was all stock footage from season 4. I don't think they re-rendered anything. Which is a shame in a sense because you can clearly spot what's old and what's new just by the aliasing and drop in frame-rate.
Also, just to be clear the movie is still considered canon in that the events depicted *happened*. Indeed by this point you'll already have heard some of the events mentioned on the show (Kosh being poisoned, Lyta being the original commercial telepath etc.)
Just be mindful that details like Delenn & G'Kar's makeup design, the uniforms, PPGs, links etc. are all different, to varying degrees and best not dwelt on in terms of continuity.
There was also some casting changes but those parts weren't recast so much as the characters were said to have left/been reassigned between the pilot & 'Midnight on the Firing Line'. Indeed that why the early episodes make a point of introducing Ivanova, Talia & Frankln since they were directly replacing Takashima, Lyta & Dr. Kyle respectively.
Small bit of trivia: originally Takashima was intended to have the "Control" sleeper personality, but when that leaked after the pilot, JMS decided to switch it to Talia instead of Ivanova.
Strangely while as you've already seen Lyta does come back and Kyle is mentioned in passing a few times, I don't think Takashima is ever mentioned again. The only allusion that she ever even existed is that secret coffee plant of hers that Ivanova found in hydroponics and co-opted.
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I have never seen the new version of the pilot or should I say I haven't managed to find it anywhere. I am also missing all the movies too so does it come with the movie box set? The one I bought many years ago is the original version and for some reason it has the cover of In The Beginning (the back cover is fine, but a pretty big mistake though).
Really. They wrote her off so she could go to NYPD Blue? Never knew that (Or forgot).
This is my favorite episode of the series. Everything about this episode was perfect, the emotion, the darkness, the powerful scene of attacking Narn, and then it ends with a bit of optimism with Sharidan being called leader of the Rangers. Babylon 5 at it's all time best.
That look of Londo on the ship with the pile drivers as a reflection might be the most iconic scene in the entire series for me.
I don't think Andrea Thompson left B5 specifically to do NYPD Blue. IIRC, she left B5 first and then decided later to do the other show.
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