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Babylon 5

Harry working both shifts has always bothered me, that is just completely nuts. I would think that would have to add up to at least 24 hours straight, and I can't image it would be a good idea to have one of you're bridge officers working on that little sleep.
Stim addiction.

On Babylon 5 it was a shameful crime, but on BattleStar Galactica you were ordered to knock back a handful of pills before you went into the thick of it.

Voyager was almost between those two shows.

I have a distinct memory of Rom going on about being assigned to the swing shift...I'm guessing some time in season 4 or 5?

Haven't watched DS9 in forever.

Oct 28, 1996 - The Assignment

ROM: Is that what we drink on the swing shift?
WHATLEY: You can drink anything you want.
ROM: I'll have a raktajino. It's not like this on the night Shift

I did not scroll over to page two.

It was just pages of people swinging swords, and swinging punches.

Byron was 22 and Lyta was 41?

Actors ages don't represent characters ages.

But Pat must gave felt like she was robbing the cradle.

Teep sex = mind to mind, and the body is just something along for the ride?

Older probably makes for a sexier brain until it starts breaking down.

Why didn't they treat Byron like a child?

But it explains why he is so basic.
 
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The novels say that one of Bester's arms is lame.

Is that ever contradicted on screen?

Did the novel's also say that Bester was working directly for the Vorlon's before they went batshit and started burning through worlds?

I can't be remembering that right.
 
The novels say that one of Bester's arms is lame.

Is that ever contradicted on screen?

Did the novel's also say that Bester was working directly for the Vorlon's before they went batshit and started burning through worlds?

I can't be remembering that right.
I am pretty sure Koenig was consistent in the lame hand. I believe the novel was offering a backstory for that hand. I don't think any reason was ever given during the show for the hand being lame. The novels implied Bester was one the the more powerful telepaths but he was never working for the Vorlons. The Vorlon influence that got the telepath gene more active on Earth had withdrawn before Bester was born. That's how I recall the telepath novels, anyway.
 
Something about an egg/football piece of Vorlon Technology.

They told him to protect it or look after it.

One mission.

Not exactly the equal and opposite of Morden.

I noticed that Morden is Swedish for murder yesterday.

Probably a coincidence.
 
The novels say that one of Bester's arms is lame.

Is that ever contradicted on screen?

Bester having a bad hand was Koenig's idea from his first appearance, sort of showing that his mental powers outweighed his physical injury. The only time I remember really noticing off-hand is in Season 5, when he needs to put his bare hand on a bulkhead to counter some of the rogue telepaths on the other wide of the wall, and he pulls his glove off with his teeth, but it's definitely consistent throughout the show.

Something about an egg/football piece of Vorlon Technology.

They told him to protect it or look after it.

One mission.

I think that's conflating a few things. The "egg" was a piece of Shadow technology IPX's early probes found on Z'ha'dum which prompted them to launch an expedition there (as far as the crew was told; unofficially, they were already sending probes because they tracked the buried ship from Mars there). Bester, in a throwaway line, was said to have been the one who ordered a Psi-Corps operative to go along on the mission, since earlier encounters with (what they later learned was) Shadow tech had been so damaging to telepaths.

Bester's (secret) grandfather, an early head of the Psi-Corps who was secretly a top-level telepath himself, had had an encounter with the Vorlons. Prior to that, he'd been tacitly encouraging the renegade telepaths and allowing them to grow, on the theory that to develop stronger telepaths, he'd get the best results doing both selective breeding within the Psi-Corps, and having a holistic, evolutionary approach by hunting rogue telepaths and leaving only the cleverest, most powerful of them to escape and have families. After tracking down the Vorlons responsible for introducing telepathy into humans where they were hiding near Venus, the Vorlon gave him a good talking-to about how selective breeding was good and orderly, and evolution was chaotic and evil, so he changed his approach and came down hard on the rogue telepaths, which led to Bester, the infant child of the leaders of the free telepaths (one of whom was the child of the head of the Psi-Corps) being orphaned and raised by the Corps from birth. Bester finding out about this is how he hurt his hand, continuously firing a PPG at the man who told him in a rage, until it overheated and caused nerve damage (though it was heavily implied to be psychosomatic and that Bester's hand had healed fully afterward). The head of the Psi-Corps, meanwhile, had ditched Earth and found a Vorlon planet full of their seed-populations of younger-race telepaths they used to introduce and enhance telepathy in their genetic experiments (since sufficiently powerful telepathy obviated all other social development, as the telepaths could simply hide themselves from predators and induce prey to surrender themselves to them, they lived lives of simple, infantilized contentment, and the Vorlons could only get use out of them by apply their powers in a diluted forms to species that had already developed civilization).

But Bester himself had no encounters with the Vorlons in canon, as far as I can recall. Just dear old granddad.
 
Byron was 22 and Lyta was 41?
Pat had just had a child around then as well. When they filmed the love-making scene between Lyta and Byron, Pat was semi-nude on stage, and she says she jokingly pointed out to jms (paraphrasing) "After all this time, NOW you have me do a nude scene, when I've just had a kid and my boobs are huge? Hmmm..." :lol:
 
I didn't read this entire thread but I do have some info on Besters hand.
I read several of the novels about B5 and also about Galen the Techno-Mage.

To the best of my memory, in the books Bester is the infant son of rogue telepaths that led a revolution against "The Corps". They were killed and he was taken by the Corps. To keep that memory locked away he keeps his hand clenched at all times. There is a statue at Corps HQ of a happy family, father and mother holding a baby. They are his parents and he is that baby.

If you are enjoying B5 I suggest reading some of the books that came out after, especially the Techno-Mage books.
 
IIRC you have that a little off...

I seem to recall the statue is built after the Corps has been shut down, to memorialize Bester's parents the rogues, and nobody realizes (or ever will) the irony that the baby is Bester, who's a prisoner-for-life at that point.

Also IIRC, it's not so much that Bester intentionally represses the memory as that it was an unconscious urge. A friend of his parents tries to tell Bester who he truly is, and Bester so violently resists the information that his hand gets permanently clenched.

I kind of liked the Techno-Mage books, and there's a lot of nifty world-building/backstory in them, but at times I found the writer's style a little silly.

The Centauri Prime trilogy is very worth checking out as well. I feel Peter David's writing sometimes lurches into excess, but here it's pretty well-controlled most of the time.
 
The thing that holds the Technomage books back for me is the sheer amount of stuff that's crammed in between scenes, or even between cuts, of episodes. The biggest one is probably the complete rewrite and reframing of "The Geometry of Shadows" which ends with all the Technomages faking their deaths, but I thought the most egregiously unnecessary one was in the third book, where Galen was on Z'ha'dum at the same time as Sheridan (that part is fine, as was Galen's off-screen contributions to the episode's events), and they ran into each other after Sheridan shot his way out of the Shadows' job interview, just before he ended up cornered at the balcony.

Well, that, and I think the author kind of hated Londo's guts. He's consistently written as he was during his most loathesome moments on the show, during mid-season-two, which on-screen was mostly his politician-persona being on display more and leaking into his personal life during the war. It's didn't feel right to have him fretting with Vir over something but talking in full council-meeting-trantrum mode.
 
IIRC you have that a little off...

I seem to recall the statue is built after the Corps has been shut down, to memorialize Bester's parents the rogues, and nobody realizes (or ever will) the irony that the baby is Bester, who's a prisoner-for-life at that point.

Also IIRC, it's not so much that Bester intentionally represses the memory as that it was an unconscious urge. A friend of his parents tries to tell Bester who he truly is, and Bester so violently resists the information that his hand gets permanently clenched.
^ Exactly. He was very much an infant so he'd have no memory of it himself. It was only when he scanned someone who was there that it sent him into a fugue state, and where the clenched fist thing started.

Honestly, when I first watched the show I don't think I even once noticed the clenched fist until I saw (or read?) an interview with Walter talking about his reasoning behind it.

Anyway, as for the novels in general: I never got around to reading the techno-mage books, though I've heard some very mixed reports, and only partially got through the first of the Centauri books before I did my usual thing and got distracted with something else and took so long before around to picking it up again that I'd need to start over and thus, never did. One of these days...maybe. That said, what I did read sounds as if it had some of the same issues @David cgc mentioned above. An over reliance on meshing events in and around episodes in such a was as it really shouldn't be possible.

So with all that in mind, it's no surprise that pretty much by default I consider the Psi Corp trilogy to be the best of the three. It's never going to happen, but I've always thought that it'd make a good basis for a mini-series. Think 'Roots' meets 'Taken'.

For those looking into it: other than what's already been mentioned the only other B5 books worth bothering with are 'The Shadow Within' and 'To Dream in the City of Sorrows'.
The former is really only *half* worth reading as it tries to inter-cut the story of the Icarus going to Z'ha'dum, and Sheridan thwarting some random terrorist plot around the same time. I'd much rather the author had ditched the Sheridan B-plot and just focused and fleshed out the Anna/Morden side of things in greater depth.
The latter is a much better book all around as while it also intercuts between the off-screen backstory of some established characters, all three actually matter both in terms of personal stakes and the larger mythos, AND play well off each other. Specifically: what Marcus, Catherine Sakai & Sinclair got up to during the course of season 2. And yes it's canon; has a JMS foreword of approval and everything.
 
I'm pretty sure "The Shadow Within" was the first B5 book I ever read/purchased, and while I agree that the John Sheridan plot is a little...non-essential...I don't really know how you can tell Anna's story without making John a main character as well. Unfortunately they're also almost never in the same place at the same time, which is part of the tragedy of the whole thing, so you end up needing a B-story.

I did like what the Techno-mage trilogy did rather unexpectedly in terms of picking up Anna's story. Also, if you're a Kosh fan, you really need to read at least the beginning of the third book. I also kind of liked the spin the second book put on "The Geometry of Shadows". I'm not entirely sure it works, but I'll give them credit for trying to reframe the episode.
 
I'm pretty sure "The Shadow Within" was the first B5 book I ever read/purchased, and while I agree that the John Sheridan plot is a little...non-essential...I don't really know how you can tell Anna's story without making John a main character as well. Unfortunately they're also almost never in the same place at the same time, which is part of the tragedy of the whole thing, so you end up needing a B-story.

Yeah, I just think it would have worked better with John as a presence felt from Anna's POV rather than seen. Especially if he's just going to be seen in some dead-end tale just there to fill up pages. I mean you still get them together at the beginning, so he'd hardly be a non-entity and I guess there's always the option of an epilogue from John's POV.
Besides, it's not like Anna was really present in the show all that much and it didn't stop her casting a long shadow (pun maybe not intended?) So why not just flip that dynamic around since this is Anna's story after all. Plus of course it's pretty much a given that anyone reading the book knows exactly who John Sheridan is before they even turn to page 1.

I did like what the Techno-mage trilogy did rather unexpectedly in terms of picking up Anna's story. Also, if you're a Kosh fan, you really need to read at least the beginning of the third book. I also kind of liked the spin the second book put on "The Geometry of Shadows". I'm not entirely sure it works, but I'll give them credit for trying to reframe the episode.

I think part of the reason I'm almost subconsciously avoiding finishing up those books is that it's pretty much the only B5 story content that I haven't consumed yet (not counting the early novels, because they're universally panned and don't really count.) So once I do...it's done. No more B5, probably ever at this point.
 
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It may have been felt that John needed to be a significant part of the novel to draw in readers who otherwise wouldn't have picked up the book. I'm not exactly sure how many readers that may have been, but it's not an entirely unreasonable concern.
 
I've been curious to check out the books, but they only appear to available through the Amazon Marketplace, and places like that, and I'm always a little nervous ordering stuff from third parties like that. If they rereleased them as e-books, I would snap them up in an instant. Of the canon books, I've been most curious to read the Centauri trilogy, since they're written by Peter David and I've been curious to get the gaps around the flashforwards filled in.
 
It may have been felt that John needed to be a significant part of the novel to draw in readers who otherwise wouldn't have picked up the book. I'm not exactly sure how many readers that may have been, but it's not an entirely unreasonable concern.

I really can't see that as being a concern. I mean at least it shouldn't have been since this kind of tie-in media is only ever really marketed towards existing fans of the show and it's whole point is "this is what went down one the Icarus with Anna and Mr. Morden". I can't see many B5 fans picking this up and thinking to themselves "hmm, I don't know if this is a story I'm interested in" then seeing the part of the blurb that says "...oh and also Sheridan does a thing with lasers and a bomb...or something" and being all "damn, now we're talking!"

My suspicion is that the author realised (maybe early on) that there just wasn't enough material to get the page count up to make it a full novel so the Sheridan B-story was literally made up to be filler.
Personally I'd have sooner had the main story interspersed with extended flashback chapters about Anna's early life; training to be archaeologist, her courtship and marriage with John, etc. etc. Even frame the whole thing as a reminiscence by Anna, that in the final epilogue chapter we learn that all of these memories, indeed the entire book has been what's been going through her mind as her personality is being deleted and she's put inside a Shadow vessel...now. I mean this story is supposed to be a dark tragedy no? May as well own it!

I've been curious to check out the books, but they only appear to available through the Amazon Marketplace, and places like that, and I'm always a little nervous ordering stuff from third parties like that. If they rereleased them as e-books, I would snap them up in an instant. Of the canon books, I've been most curious to read the Centauri trilogy, since they're written by Peter David and I've been curious to get the gaps around the flashforwards filled in.

Thanks to the byzantine nature of WB's internal structure and corporate culture (long story), that's probably never going to happen...officially. I did manage to track down a hard copy of all of them about a decade back, though the techno-mage books were especially tricky as the prices very easily get a little bit silly (there was only ever one printing for them, and they didn't sell well which makes them very scarce.)

Now I certainly wouldn't actively endorse visiting your local mariner of the one-eyed and peg-legged persuasion to acquire an ebook compatible solution to an inability to acquire long out of print media at a reasonable price, but I would at least suggest that the possibility that this option may or may not exist is possibly a distinct prospect if one were so inclined as to extend enquiries in that general direction.
 
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Garibaldi is drinking, which considering the actor eventually died from alcoholism, is a depressing foreshadow.

Yay for Lennier not being dead!

Callback to The Gathering with Lyta taking up G’Kar’s offer.

Oh and Vir taking the sword to prove his toughness was hilarious!
 
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