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Babylon 5

I thought the Ivanova plot was decent enough, but what really spoiled that episode for me was the editing at the end, when the cut back and forth between the fight and the shiva ceremony. Those two scenes did not compliment each other.
 
TKO also has the story about Ivanova being persuaded to sit shiva for her father but, all in all, it's a skippable episode. In the UK, I seem to recall Channel 4 showed it at a much later time than usual because of the violent content.

The Ivanova storyline is why I don't hate this episode. It's a follow up from an earlier episode and helps Susan grow her backstory and her somewhat tragic childhood.
 
TKO also has the story about Ivanova being persuaded to sit shiva for her father but, all in all, it's a skippable episode. In the UK, I seem to recall Channel 4 showed it at a much later time than usual because of the violent content.

I doubt that would happen today, censorship seems to be more relaxed these days than in yesteryears.
 
Is it fair to say season 4 was the birth of Binge Watching

Im in season 4 of my rewatch and after the Shadow War ended, the series just kicked it in gear with the Minbar civil war and the earth arc. I'm finding this season more bingeable than ever before and I'm starting to wonder. Did season 4 give birth to Binge Watching a TV series? Yeah there were other arc based shows but Babylon 5 kicked it off and everything from Racing Mars to Rising Star was golden.
 
The Ivanova storyline is why I don't hate this episode. It's a follow up from an earlier episode and helps Susan grow her backstory and her somewhat tragic childhood.
Claudia Christian played her well. I always looked forward to the scenes where she appeared.
 
There are three episodes I've seen in sci fi that I feel handle torture really well, Chain of Command, Improbable Cause, and Intersection in Real Time. I think Intersections is the best of the three. They really go for the psychological in this episode.
 
My only issues with torture portrayed on TV is that for obvious reasons most of the time they don't really go into exactly how unpleasant it can actually get.

Sheridan didn't have to deal with bamboo shoots being shoved under his fingernails.
 
The nice thing about scifi is that you can portray torture that you couldn't in a regular drama because you can just make up technology that causes extreme pain without having to show anything gruesome on screen.

I just got to season 2. Interesting that in the credits, they show Delenn in her changed state, before she emerges from the Cocoon. Couldn't spring the extra few bucks to have a slightly different credit sequence for just the premiere to preserve the surprise? ;)
 
The nice thing about scifi is that you can portray torture that you couldn't in a regular drama because you can just make up technology that causes extreme pain without having to show anything gruesome on screen.

I just got to season 2. Interesting that in the credits, they show Delenn in her changed state, before she emerges from the Cocoon. Couldn't spring the extra few bucks to have a slightly different credit sequence for just the premiere to preserve the surprise? ;)
IIRC, they didn't show her in the first run episode. But they don't bother using different credits for syndication after that.
 
The nice thing about scifi is that you can portray torture that you couldn't in a regular drama because you can just make up technology that causes extreme pain without having to show anything gruesome on screen.

I just got to season 2. Interesting that in the credits, they show Delenn in her changed state, before she emerges from the Cocoon. Couldn't spring the extra few bucks to have a slightly different credit sequence for just the premiere to preserve the surprise? ;)

The Region 2 DVDs show bonehead Delenn for the episodes 1 and 2 intros of season 2 and hairgrip Delenn from episode 3 onwards.
 
I don't know if this is old news for the posters here, but I always wondered why Delenn came out with that "handle" and how did her hair seem to go under it if it was part of her skull? The Minbari don't have a "bone" on their head, even though everyone calls it that, it's closer to an antler and it doesn't grow from the back, it grows from the temples. Babies don't have them but they start to grow and they are shaped into different shapes up to the individual, which is why many of the religious caste have smoother crowns and the warriors are spikier. So that's just kind of a single bar still attached to Delenn's temples and her hair really does go down under it. It also explains Dr. Franklin's line about Lennier's bone protecting his skull in the bombing, it's not really part of his skull, it's like an antler helmet.
 
I just got to season 2. Interesting that in the credits, they show Delenn in her changed state, before she emerges from the Cocoon. Couldn't spring the extra few bucks to have a slightly different credit sequence for just the premiere to preserve the surprise? ;)

There are one or two other times when the widescreen transfer didn't bother with variants in the opening credits that were present in the original 4x3 cut. The season 4 finale originally had one actor's named removed because of a contract issue, for instance. However, they did keep the most important opening credits alteration in season 5.
 
There are three episodes I've seen in sci fi that I feel handle torture really well, Chain of Command, Improbable Cause, and Intersection in Real Time. I think Intersections is the best of the three. They really go for the psychological in this episode.

No credit for Abyss?
 
That one surely deserves some points for the fact that the person being tortured actually dies each time and even when they're brought back to life they're fighting a downhill battle.
 
Did they ever plan for Warren Keffer to be anything? My only memory of him is him being in the credits for a season then being killed by shadows. Was he originally supposed to be relevant but then the actor didn't work out?

I'm curious about a lot of the decisions that shaped B5. Like, did they always know Sinclair was only going to be around one year or did the actor quit or something? Or did they decide Sinclair was too much like a Star Trek captain and decide to go in a different direction with their lead? Did they know from the start that Sinclair would go back in time to become Valen or was that storyline a result of needing to close the loop opened by Babylon Squared after the actor left?
 
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I'm almost entirely sure Keffer was something forced on JMS by TPTB and that consquently JMS essentially always intended to eliminate him ASAP.

That said, I suspect that if JMS had found the character (and/or possibly the actor) more to his liking than things could have gone differently, but I don't recall B5 having any runaway characters in that manner? Maybe he could have ended up as a captain of a White Star or such.

The actor playing Sinclair and JMS reached an agreement for him to leave the show due to his suffering from mental illness, though JMS promised not to reveal this until the actor had passed away.
 
Wow. That's interesting to learn. Nothing but respect for the way they handled it.

Is there any kind of similar story for Talia Winters or was that just a planned part of the story?
 
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