Babylon 5: Season 4 or Season 5?

[sidious618]

I'd definately end it with season five, no doubt about it at all.

 

[Procutus]

I vote for Season 5 as well. While I agree that the Telepath Arc wasn't the high point of the show, the rest of the season helped to give closure to the rest of the show. I've just begun collecting the show on DVD and watching it again, this time at leisure and in order.

 

[Neroon]

There's no question in my mind, that you need to take season 5 warts and all. The telepath sub-src is best left forgotten, but ... there is too much else of superb quality to let go. Aspects like Londo and what he has to do to save his world. G'Kar and his struggle to avoid what his world wants to force upon him. Lyta. Vir. "Day of the Dead". And more.

 

[Mr Light]

This is a little off-topic but how about you use the events of In the Beginning, Thirdspace, and Call to Arms to replace half of the top half of S5? That would do a LOT to improve the median.

 

[JediKnightButler]

I agree with the majority of the people here in saying that, as imperfect as the telepath arc was, a few episodes like "The Kingdom of the Blind", as well as the entire second of half of S5 was simply freakin' awesome!!! Every episode from "The Ragged Edge" all the way through "The Fall of Centauri Prime" was superb and kept me glued to my seat. When I rewatch S5 I tend to rewatch those the most. The remaining episodes provide some much needed closure to the series and characters, although "Sleeping In Light" somehow always feels out of place at the end of S5. I think that it's because it was filmed along with the rest of S4 and *looks* and *feels* like it should be a S4 episode more than a S5 episode, particularly because Ivanova reappears after having been gone for an entire season. "Deconstruction of Falling Stars" felt similarly out of place tacked on to the end of S4 since they were definitely going on to another season at that point. I think it might've made a better standalone post-series TV movie if they expanded it a little bit.

 

[Mr Light]

My what if continues... Of course it would be more organic if you melded ITB into S4's "Atonement" and put Thirdspace into S4... and Call to Arms would have been cooler if it was part of the Centuari War in S5. This gives you only FOUR Byron episodes!!!

501 No Compromises
502-3 IN THE BEGINNING
504 The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari
505 Strange Relations
506 Day of the Dead
507 In the Kingdom of the Blind
508 Phoenix Rising
509 The Ragged Edge
510-1 THIRDSPACE
512 Meditations on the Abyss
513 Darkness Ascending
514 And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder
515 Movements of Fire and Shadow
516 The Fall of Centauri Prime
517 The Wheel of Fire
518 Objects in Motion
519 Objects at Rest
520-1 A CALL TO ARMS
522 Sleeping in Light

Excising: The Paragon of Animals, A View from the Gallery, Learning Curve, Secrets of the Soul, A Tragedy of Telepaths (condense those events into Phoenix), The Corps is Mother the Corps is Father

 

[Jan]

Excising: The Paragon of Animals, A View from the Gallery, Learning Curve, Secrets of the Soul, A Tragedy of Telepaths (condense those events into Phoenix), The Corps is Mother the Corps is Father

Not in MY B5 universe! I might...perhaps...maybe <shudder/wince> be able to deal with losing episodes but if so, "A View from the Gallery" and "The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father" wouldn't be among them!

What can I say, I love the off-format episodes.

Jan

 

[Neroon]

If you excise "The Paragon of Animals", you have to move the recitation of the Declaration of Principles to another episode. We can't lose that!

And I actually liked "The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father". it was for me an interesting look at "the other side of the coin", though Bester comes off as only a little less disturbing. And I also liked the different perspective of "View From the Gallery". Byron's brief appearance is actualy quite interesting and good, imho.

 

[Mr Light]

The Declaration stuff can just go into No Comp or Strange Relations. Personally I found the whole Drazi / Alien of the Week story to be extremely uninteresting. When it first aired I loved View Gallery (because it had action) but looking back on it, meh. I never cared for the Corps episode. Well you could probably smush together Abyss and Ascending, do we really need the whole bit with Lennier and the looser in the asteroid field?

 

[Sky]

Season 5 but mostly because of the Centauri story.

 

[Jan]

<snip>...do we really need the whole bit with Lennier and the looser in the asteroid field?

I think so. If Lennier had really paid attention to the lesson he and Captain Montoya taught Findell, the unfortunate situation between Lennier and Sheridan might not have happened. Lennier joined the Rangers for the wrong reason, just as Findell did and ended up betraying the Rangers as well as Sheridan & Delenn.

No...just as all of the Season 1 episodes are needed to really give us a feel for the scope of the B5 universe, I think that all of the Season 5 episodes are needed to finish the series properly.

Jan

 

[MyCylon]

I'd certainly keep S5, "warts and all", as Neroon put it very fittingly. The whole telepath arc is really bad, and (like most) I cannot stand Byron. The season also gets off to a really, really weak start IIRC, and remains somewhat weak until about the half way point.

But the run right through the finale IIRC is just as strong as some of the S3 or 4 material and really worthwhile.

So, yes, I'd keep S5.

 

[Mr Light]

Of course the big qualifier is whether it's the originally intended S5 or what we actually got. If it was the show with Ivanova instead of Lochley, more money to film action/CGI and that extra day for filming, I'm sure it would have been much better. Oh and also if JMS didn't loose his notes in the hotel room that made the Byron story run much longer than it was supposed to.

 

[Jan]

I like Lochley better than Ivanova in general but I'll admit that the Telepath arc would have been much more interesting if Claudia had stayed and we'd had Ivanova fall for Byron and perhaps have to yell for help from Bester. What I'd be concerned with is whether Claudia would be enough of an actress to pull it off. Remembering her rant to Marcus about not knowing where he fit in, I tend to doubt it.

Jan

 

[Neroon]

The problem with having ivanonva in the S5 story is that we don't get Tracy Scoggins in her Bunny outfit.

 

[Harvey]

Remembering her rant to Marcus about not knowing where he fit in, I tend to doubt it.

True, but recalling her final scene of dialogue in Rising Star as she laments Marcus' death, I suspect she might have been able to after all. Scoggins certainly didn't do anything to impress me, until Crusade.