A Niner Watches Babylon 5 (NO spoilers, please)
- Thread starter TheGodBen
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Yeah, I was only comparing the first and second seasons. Enterprise season 3 and 4 were better than the first season, Lost season 4 (and the second half of season 3) were better than season 1, and I'd probably tie the first two seasons of BSG with season 4 possibly matching them.
One day, when I'm 64, I'll have reviewed all these shows in threads like this, then I'll finally be able to provide you with my all time favourite season of science fiction. It will probably be a tie between some season of Farscape and season 18 of Caprica.
By Any Means Necessary (*½)
Get back to work you lazy plebs!
Commander Sinclair needs his caviar delivered on time or else he is not going to have a delicious side with his lobster dinner. Could you really live with yourselves if that happened?
I think an episode about a labour dispute on the station has a lot of potential, unfortunately, this episode wasn't it. Firstly, the dockworkers don't swear enough, it's hard for me to buy into the premise of the episode when the working class Joes don't drop an f-bomb between every second word. But my biggest problem with the episode is how unsympathetic the government is, we only see things from the dockworker's point of view, we get no impression that there is a budget crisis on Earth. In fact, the senate sends the most priggish asshole possible to oversee the dispute. There's no shades of grey here, there's a right side and a wrong side and you're not likely to mistake the two.
I'm reminded of the final season of The Wire; the Baltimore police are undergoing a major investigation into dozens of homicides and it has the potential to bring down one of the biggest gang leaders in the city, but a budget crisis cripples the department and the investigation is scuppered, pissing off all the detectives on the investigation. The difference with that situation was that we had some understanding of why the budget is in such a dire shape because the mayor had to pump money into the public school system, an issue explored throughout the entire fourth season, and we know that the mayor is doing this so he can run for the office of governor of Maryland. Even if we don't agree with the mayor's decisions that led to the budget crisis we can still understand why he thought they were the right decisions.
But in this episode all we get is a prick played with no subtlety who wants the crush the strike because he's a prick. As for the solution to the crisis, it's insane. The government handed all control of the situation over to Sinclair, which makes no sense, and he decided to pay the workers using money from the military budget, which makes no sense. Will he have to let station personnel go, or will he have to cut back station defences because they no longer have the money to pay maintenance on the starfury squadrons? Apparently not, this episode makes it seem like the military budget to B5 is an infinite resource.
There's a b-story about Londo and G'Kar which is mildly interesting, although it does serve to continue their descent into cartoon characters.
One day, when I'm 64, I'll have reviewed all these shows in threads like this, then I'll finally be able to provide you with my all time favourite season of science fiction. It will probably be a tie between some season of Farscape and season 18 of Caprica.
By Any Means Necessary (*½)
Get back to work you lazy plebs!
Commander Sinclair needs his caviar delivered on time or else he is not going to have a delicious side with his lobster dinner. Could you really live with yourselves if that happened?I think an episode about a labour dispute on the station has a lot of potential, unfortunately, this episode wasn't it. Firstly, the dockworkers don't swear enough, it's hard for me to buy into the premise of the episode when the working class Joes don't drop an f-bomb between every second word. But my biggest problem with the episode is how unsympathetic the government is, we only see things from the dockworker's point of view, we get no impression that there is a budget crisis on Earth. In fact, the senate sends the most priggish asshole possible to oversee the dispute. There's no shades of grey here, there's a right side and a wrong side and you're not likely to mistake the two.
I'm reminded of the final season of The Wire; the Baltimore police are undergoing a major investigation into dozens of homicides and it has the potential to bring down one of the biggest gang leaders in the city, but a budget crisis cripples the department and the investigation is scuppered, pissing off all the detectives on the investigation. The difference with that situation was that we had some understanding of why the budget is in such a dire shape because the mayor had to pump money into the public school system, an issue explored throughout the entire fourth season, and we know that the mayor is doing this so he can run for the office of governor of Maryland. Even if we don't agree with the mayor's decisions that led to the budget crisis we can still understand why he thought they were the right decisions.
But in this episode all we get is a prick played with no subtlety who wants the crush the strike because he's a prick. As for the solution to the crisis, it's insane. The government handed all control of the situation over to Sinclair, which makes no sense, and he decided to pay the workers using money from the military budget, which makes no sense. Will he have to let station personnel go, or will he have to cut back station defences because they no longer have the money to pay maintenance on the starfury squadrons? Apparently not, this episode makes it seem like the military budget to B5 is an infinite resource.
There's a b-story about Londo and G'Kar which is mildly interesting, although it does serve to continue their descent into cartoon characters.
He transferred the money from the military budget increase they were getting, on the grounds that he figured their previous military budget was doing just fine.
As for giving Sinclair the authority to do that....they didn't intend to. He used a loophole in the legal language.
Can I just state that, thanks to this thread I ventured into the depths of the ENT forum to read TheGodBen's reviews of that show: fantastic! I'm sorry I missed them as they happened. I may squander an afternoon tracking down your VGR ones soon.
Right, and I was disagreeing. Must we go round about precision in the language?
S'cool, no worries.
Yeah, I was only comparing the first and second seasons. Enterprise season 3 and 4 were better than the first season, Lost season 4 (and the second half of season 3) were better than season 1, and I'd probably tie the first two seasons of BSG with season 4 possibly matching them.
One day, when I'm 64, I'll have reviewed all these shows in threads like this, then I'll finally be able to provide you with my all time favourite season of science fiction. It will probably be a tie between some season of Farscape and season 18 of Caprica.
By Any Means Necessary (*½)
Get back to work you lazy plebs!
I think an episode about a labour dispute on the station has a lot of potential, unfortunately, this episode wasn't it. Firstly, the dockworkers don't swear enough, it's hard for me to buy into the premise of the episode when the working class Joes don't drop an f-bomb between every second word. But my biggest problem with the episode is how unsympathetic the government is, we only see things from the dockworker's point of view, we get no impression that there is a budget crisis on Earth. In fact, the senate sends the most priggish asshole possible to oversee the dispute. There's no shades of grey here, there's a right side and a wrong side and you're not likely to mistake the two.
I'm reminded of the final season of The Wire; the Baltimore police are undergoing a major investigation into dozens of homicides and it has the potential to bring down one of the biggest gang leaders in the city, but a budget crisis cripples the department and the investigation is scuppered, pissing off all the detectives on the investigation. The difference with that situation was that we had some understanding of why the budget is in such a dire shape because the mayor had to pump money into the public school system, an issue explored throughout the entire fourth season, and we know that the mayor is doing this so he can run for the office of governor of Maryland. Even if we don't agree with the mayor's decisions that led to the budget crisis we can still understand why he thought they were the right decisions.
But in this episode all we get is a prick played with no subtlety who wants the crush the strike because he's a prick. As for the solution to the crisis, it's insane. The government handed all control of the situation over to Sinclair, which makes no sense, and he decided to pay the workers using money from the military budget, which makes no sense. Will he have to let station personnel go, or will he have to cut back station defences because they no longer have the money to pay maintenance on the starfury squadrons? Apparently not, this episode makes it seem like the military budget to B5 is an infinite resource.
There's a b-story about Londo and G'Kar which is mildly interesting, although it does serve to continue their descent into cartoon characters.
I think the point was made that the station's military budget was a little inflated, hence the wiggle room to move them across to the docks. Earth won't short change a strategic military installation but they've no problem squeezing what they consider to be a bunch of eminently replaceable and disposable workers, who are under a government contract.
As for the Rush Act, it's something that was cooked up during the Minbari War to prevent opportunistic and "unpatriotic" union leaders and corporations from disrupting supply lines and jeopardising planetary security for the sake of a pay bonus. The Act empowers the senior military authority to resolve an industrial action "by any means necessary". Which of course to any jarhead means start lining people up infront of firing squads until the lazy civilians get back to work. Sinclair isn't a jarhead.
As for the acting...yeah, not much in the way of subtlety from the to main guest actors (a common problem in season one.) The union leader was especially guilty of hamming it up something rotten. Frankly, I think they might have cast the part too young to be even remotely credible. Her line delivery was WAY over the top at times.
As for the way EarthGov was behaving: I won't spoil anything but there will be an ongoing thing concerning the way Earth treats it's off-world civilian populations. Watch this space.
Absolutely, and that's a major flaw of the episode. One thing that slayed me upon rewatching it is just the subtle little point of who Sinclair spends his time with: Any other given scene where the union leader and the smug government prig are negotiating, the prig eventually walks off camera and he banters a few words with the union leader. I think the only scene of him talking to Orin without her there is one where he's called officiously on the monitor. It's setting Sinclair up as a Friend of the People who Doesn't Like the Government.
Also... just about everyone at some point brings their goddamn parents into the conversation. The union leader talks about her working-class father, the Senator talks about his working-class father, I think Garibaldi or someone else might have I don't remember, point is, a lot of daddy talk. Clearly you need an Electra complex if you're a girl and a union leader, it just stands to reason.
I'm eager to see the next review. After that I will know whether I should keep reading this thread or not.
Why thank you.
The Voyager thread should be easier to read because I indexed it with help from the mods in that forum. Personally I preferred the Voyager thread even though I think Enterprise was the better show, the Voyager thread was much more active and Voyager's fans joined in a little more.It just seems odd to me that the government would allocate money to the military side of Babylon 5 without any reason, what was Sinclair going to do with all that extra money? I can understand the government investing more money in the military side of things, I just don't understand why they'd give the station a whole load of money with no indication of what should be done with it.
It's a good thing then that I cut out the paragraph in my review where I talked about my father who was a union rep for the city refuse workers in the middle of pay negotiations, and the threats made against him by the city triggered his Méniere's disease and he has spent the last 20 years on disability for it.
Bugger, I've just posted it.
So my humour and my charm hasn't won you over, you're only reading because of the show?
Frankly, I don't see what's so important about the next episode, its title is only the tagline for the season on the DVD set, so clearly nothing significant is going to happen in it.
Catching up a bit on scenes that were changed or didn't make it into the final episodes (in no particular order):
In "Born to the Purple" there was supposed to be a shot where we saw six gill-like slots on her back. That would have been (and will be) understood later in the show.
In "The War Prayer" a scene was deleted where Vir asks Londo why he arranged fosterage for Kiron and Aria. Londo replies that he was never given any choices and it's too late for him now but not for them.
In "DeathWalker", Senator Hidoshi was originally described as a stylish Japanese woman.
"Believers" had a running joke about 'egg-sucking mammaloids'
In "Survivors, deleted scenes include Garibaldi lashing out at Sinclair for giving in to Kemmer's demands, another scene where Garibaldi resists taking a drink and Ivanova working on C&C to confuse Kemmer's search for Garibaldi.
Jan
In "Born to the Purple" there was supposed to be a shot where we saw six gill-like slots on her back. That would have been (and will be) understood later in the show.
In "The War Prayer" a scene was deleted where Vir asks Londo why he arranged fosterage for Kiron and Aria. Londo replies that he was never given any choices and it's too late for him now but not for them.
In "DeathWalker", Senator Hidoshi was originally described as a stylish Japanese woman.
"Believers" had a running joke about 'egg-sucking mammaloids'
In "Survivors, deleted scenes include Garibaldi lashing out at Sinclair for giving in to Kemmer's demands, another scene where Garibaldi resists taking a drink and Ivanova working on C&C to confuse Kemmer's search for Garibaldi.
Jan
Especially when it comes to military budgets, one can't foresee everything that might come up so there are always discretionary funds available, not earmarked for specific things.
Jan
As a guy who has done some time in S-3 (military operations), all budgets have some discretionary funding to meet unexpected needs in a hurry in each unit. Bigger units tend to have bigger discretionary funds.
B5 is a VERY big unit.
I see what you did there.
Fo'sho. For example, I will never watch The Big Lebowski because friends and strangers alike have hyped this film to me for so long that I know it'll never live up to it. So I've avoid it and will continue to do so.
Oh definitely. I've seen the odd eyebrow raising bit of hype here, personally. I've tried to avoid airing opinions about specific episodes GodBen hasn't seen. The sort of hype I personally dislike tends to be those that give predictions of one's opinion, you know, 'you'll find it the most epic political space opera ever' rather than 'I consider it to be the most epic political space opera ever'. It's a turn of emphasis I'm none too keen on.
You know what? I'd recommend ignoring the hype, but watch that damn movie. Hate it, love it, like but find it overrated, whatever, you'll have an opinion.
Though, to confess, I do adore that movie, I fell madly in love with it and the Coen Brothers the moment I saw it (had no idea about them prior to it.) So don't consider me an unbiased witness here.
Lebowski is certainly worth a watch, but be warned, it's a Coen Brothers film. So if you didn't like any of the others, you probably won't like that one either. As far as their films go, I'd say it's pretty middle of the road. Mostly for me it was just fun to see John Goodman act like a loon and Julianne Moore's entrance was certainly memorable.
And if that's not good enough, you could say that a lobbyist in EarthDome managed to bribe/blackmail a Senator to give some military contractor or another an inflated contract to supply B5 with 500 credit a piece dinner trays.
That may sound wacky, but I've worked around the MOD and have seen metal boxes about a foot across that probably cost pence to fabricate but had a four figure price tag attached. Per unit. So not exaggerating. You'd be surprised how much money gets spent in essentials like silverware for the officer's mess and the CO's nice new desk while luxuries like body armour and radios that work barely get a look in. I doubt this state of affairs would have changed much by the 23rd century.
And if that's not good enough, you could say that a lobbyist in EarthDome managed to bribe/blackmail a Senator to give some military contractor or another an inflated contract to supply B5 with 500 credit a piece dinner trays.
That may sound wacky, but I've worked around the MOD and have seen metal boxes about a foot across that probably cost pence to fabricate but had a four figure price tag attached. Per unit. So not exaggerating. You'd be surprised how much money gets spent in essentials like silverware for the officer's mess and the CO's nice new desk while luxuries like body armour and radios that work barely get a look in. I doubt this state of affairs would have changed much by the 23rd century.
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