Babylon 5
- Thread starter Kail
- Start date
The mere inclusion of Neil Gaiman automatically elevates it to that level.
Yeah, the telepath arc was poorly executed (erm...) but overall I think the season is good. It just doesn't stand strong when compared to what just came before it.
Yeah, the telepath arc was poorly executed (erm...) but overall I think the season is good. It just doesn't stand strong when compared to what just came before it.
It always bothered me how the show treated Lyta. Like “Thanks for defying your peeps to save the universe. Now we’re raising your rent.”
Yes, but the show (or at least some characters within the show) also acknowledged it, and Lyta made some of her own mistakes, including, if not pissing off Sheridan, at least giving him reason to doubt her. It's admittedly hard to tell how many of her decisions were truly her own versus influenced if not dictated by what the Vorlons did to her, but by the end of the series she isn't the person I really liked for most of her appearances anymore.
I love this one story about Tracy Scoggins...
She appeared in a DS9 episode, playing a Cardassian scientist. She had so much fun playing that role that she would hang around the studio lots, in full Cardassian makeup, and she'd pop out and scare the people on the tour buses.
The security guards would call in and go "Could y'all keep your aliens contained here?"
Tracy Scoggins is also quite friendly in person. When I met her years ago, she was really, really fun to talk to.
Was she Quark's ex?I love this one story about Tracy Scoggins...
She appeared in a DS9 episode, playing a Cardassian scientist. She had so much fun playing that role that she would hang around the studio lots, in full Cardassian makeup, and she'd pop out and scare the people on the tour buses.
The security guards would call in and go "Could y'all keep your aliens contained here?"
IIRC, Pat Tallman said that the cast starting treating her poorly off camera because they became wrapped up in the plotline of Lyta being abused. She finally had to call them on it, and they all were mortified with themselves for not realizing they were doing that.
IMHO the only good thing about the telepath arc was that Pat had more screen time than usual. More Pat was always a good thing.
I'm only four eps into S5 and I'm sick of Byron already.
His haircut doesn't make it first, by a small number of seconds.
I didn't find Byron himself to be nearly as annoying as his followers, a significant number of whom, as it turned out, weren't willing to hold to his principles when things got tough. Of course, he betrayed his principles himself, soooo...
I want to say that I understand what JMS was trying to do, but I don't think the message ends up being at all clear.
I want to say that I understand what JMS was trying to do, but I don't think the message ends up being at all clear.
This. I don't have a problem with Byron. It's everyone else around him
Byron's characterization is, in part, some of the damage that was done to the show by the abruptness of the season 4/season 5 renewal. The long hair and english accent is a hangover from when Ivanova was still going to be the Captain. Byron would be superficially similar to Marcus, which would draw Ivanova in and make her more receptive to him as a kind of second chance at the relationship she lost when Marcus died, only for him to turn out to be kind of crappy in a way Marcus wasn't (this a perfect moment for the "We have Marcus at home" meme). There was barely enough time to make up and cast a new captain after Claudia left, retooling Byron to work outside of the context of Ivanova fell by the wayside.
I think Byron also suffers because it was essentially Robin Atkin Downes' first major role as an actor. He was terribly inexperienced and didn't have the skills at the time to deliver Straczynski's dialogue, which--let's be honest, here--could be ham-fisted on a good day.
Though the short story that continued the Marcus and Ivanova story made Marcus seem kind of crappy in his own way. I'm happy I don't need to consider it 'official'.
If long hair and an accent is all it takes to remind someone of someone else, that really is superficial...which is to say, those are about the only ways I'd say Byron comes off as being similar to Marcus.
OTOH, if Marcus had stuck around, it could have been interesting to see him sympathizing with the Telepaths' plight. But I liked that Lyta got this story given that she had arguably been mistreated by everyone else whom she'd done so much for (that I don't like the person she became doesn't mean I'm unsympathetic).
I always thought that Byron was unspecifiedly old.
But if Byron really was really as young as Robin, then he should have been a hamfisted mess who was faking it with ideals he couldn't possibly understand.
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