A Niner Watches Babylon 5 (NO spoilers, please)

Yes, but you are so adamant in how "bad" season one is, and you don't really fudge it at all, thought I'd add some perspective. Plus, I knew it would annoy you.



Dude, you would be a bit irked if someone insisted in coming to, say, a Farscape thread and repeatedly slamming that show, repeating essentially the same points as if they are gospel.

You should be. It's annoying.

 

Can we have this thread locked until TGB adds another review? This is just ridiculous...

Please people, can't we create a separate "B5 Debates" thread since all B5 threads just go to shit immediately from the pent up discussion demand?

 

Eh, this isn't bad as these things go. Fairly long-winded, though, huh?

 

I'd argue with the guy but I wouldn't do the quotey thing.

And I don't think I've repeated myself that much. Pretty much only on In the Beginning, I talked about that at the start of the thread.

 

I'm shocked too. I'm seriously beginning to worry that this forum will continue to exist without me should death or a girlfriend drag me away from it. I had always assumed the whole place would disband due to grief.

A little. I'm just a little fish surrounded by sharks, and one or two people here might be on the same intellectual level as me. Not actually smarter, I hasten to add, but they're so close to matching me that they present a threat to my superiority complex.

I wont be too much longer, I wasn't even intending for it to be this long but I had a busy day today and when I got home I had so many things I had to do that I didn't have to time to watch an episode. I vow to watch the next episode, The Parliament of Dreams, tomorrow evening and hopefully that will get me back on a once per night schedule.

 

You'd better. I'm just kicking around for the snark.

I may watch "Parliament of Dreams" tonight myself, to refresh my memory.

 

But when he wears purple, Canadave is stunning!

 

I think if I was Centauri, I would participate in a lot more religious ceremonies.

 

I hope those DVDs show up soon. I don't know what the fuck you guys are talking about.

 

The Parliament of Dreams (**½)

I'm beginning to regret my earlier love of Londo and G'Kar because the more I see of them the more I think they're cartoon characters that somehow ended up on a drama series. Take Londo: his main role in this episode was to get really drunk, shout nonsense about gods and pass out on the table. I don't have a problem with comedic elements in a drama series, I love The Way of the Warrior partly because of how funny it is, and the episode which made me a fan of BSG was Six Degrees of Separation, an episode with some hilarious Baltar moments. But Londo getting drunk and passing out feels forced, and drunk jokes are only a few steps up from fart jokes, in my opinion.

As for G'Kar, he also act rather comically for a man whose life in is danger, he stomps around the station in a huff and he freaks out when Garibaldi finds underwear (presumably female) in G'Kar's couch. G'Kar's suspicions of Na'Toth seem pointless for anybody who has been paying attention to the opening credits, she's hardly going to be an assassin sent to kill G'Kar and then stick around for the rest of the show after failing. This story isn't all that ground-breaking, although it did teach me what a man without an ear pinna (I learned that word so I could type it here) would look like when wearing glasses. Answer: silly.

By the way, I think I've figured out who the Big Bad of this show is. It's that insect mafia guy, right? The final episode will have an epic confrontation between Sheridan and big insect man, and it will probably end with the two of them falling into a pit of fire.

Then there's the b-plot where Sinclair meets an old flame... with sexy results! You can tell that Catherine is a love interest the moment Garibaldi sees her step onto the station and Moments in Love starts to play in the background. As far as romance on television goes this is quite cheesy, but when it comes to romance in science-fiction this isn't that bad, it's way, way above Meridian. The dialogue is at the standard level of awkwardness for science fiction romances, but I do appreciate the fact that Sinclair's back-story is being filled in and we get to see another side to him beyond reckless endangerment of his own life.

There's a c-plot about the different religious customs of the various alien species, but there's not much to that beyond Delenn and Sinclair getting married, or something. The episode ends with Sinclair introducing all the various faiths of Earth, a scene made laughable by the stereotyping done by the costuming department.

 

Just wait until they get to the, er.. "appendage" jokes.

 

And so it begins....

I don't think it's spoilery to say that there's not just one Big Bad on this show.

Parts of that dialogue came from real life. Guess Geek Romance and SF Romance have some parallels.

Many of the people in that scene provided their own formal religious costumes.

Jan

 

You thought that scene was laughable? Wowzas.

 

Actually, I believe G'Kar's first aide, Ko'Dath, was in the opening credits for the first few episodes originally. She had to be replaced due to makeup problems after her first appearance IIRC.

The DVDs do not contain that version of the credits; and there are a few other places where originally the credits were a bit different for a few episodes, but the generic season credits ended up attached on the DVDs for whatever reason. Stuff like a character's rank or status changing was originally reflected in the credits only after it happened, but on the DVDs that isn't always the case.

They do include "special" credits in a few particular cases, though.....

 

Never mind the music, I fell for her the second I saw her!

 

A suggestion about DVD credits: Skip the season two credits for the first two episodes, they're spoilerific as well.

Ah, yes. That.

The problem is less the characters and more JMS's sense of humour. He is not good at telling jokes and any one of his characters can sacrifice whatever respect I had for them trying to set up a punchline.

But nevermind, I suspect the point about characters will be hashed to death in an episode or two's time. Fivers already know the episode - and indeed the speech, for there is always a speech - which I mean.

Upon rewatch it bugged me that Sinclair identified the Daoist as 'a Taoist'. While that's a common alternate spelling, the word is correctly pronounced daoist.

This is true right up to the point an earnest person more informed than me corrects my vague understanding of pinyin transliteration and pronunciation (likely shortly.)

 

I loved that scene. Best part of the episode, IMO.

 

Yeah, "Parliament of Dreams" can be pretty stilted in places. It has its moments, and count me in as a fan of the ending, but it's still pretty average overall. The next episode is pretty cool, though, an it introduces one of the series' best recurring characters.