A Niner Watches Babylon 5 (NO spoilers, please)

[Forbin]

What's worse, I can never get my wife to dress up in ANY genre costume.

 

[JoeD80]

Don't think it's a scratch so much as just data corruption. The rest of the disc plays fine.

My old DVD player did not do the layer changes on dual layer discs, and for some reason on the B5 discs the layer changes are sometimes in the middle of the episode instead of between episodes, so this could affect it as well (I never saw the end of All Alone in the Night because of this until I had a PS3).

 

[CorporalClegg]

What's worse, I can never get my wife to dress up in ANY genre costume.

That sucks.

 

[AdmiralGarak]

Worst of all, there was no Scott Bakula in the dream.

He wasn't in the dream. He was in your bedroom, watching you sleep from a dark corner.

 

[TheGodBen]

Scott does that most nights. It really freaks me out sometimes when I get up in the middle of the night to pee and he doesn't say anything, he just smiles.

What's worse, I can never get my wife to dress up in ANY genre costume.

My condolences.

 

[Seven of Five]

My genre dreams are never hot. They usually involve getting muddled up with the stress dreams about work.

 

[TheGodBen]

Messages from Earth (***½)

I have to admit, I found this episode a little disappointing. I feel that there is a problem with the pacing of this episode and that the first 10-15 minutes go by too quickly, then the show slows down to a standard speed. For example, in terms of screen-time, it takes Sheridan about a minute to make the big decision to fly back to Earth, then two minutes later he has already left. At this point the episode slows right down, there's ten minutes of people waiting for something to happen, then there's a space battle for another 10 minutes. Personally, I feel this episode would have felt better as a two-parter, that way the beginning wouldn't have felt so rushed and there would have been more time for nice scenes like the one between Sheridan and Delenn on the White Star.

The b-story was more interesting, and it actually had an actor from Enterprise for real this time. That's right, Scott Bakula. He played the strangely named Security Guard #1, which shows that his parents had his life planned out for him from the start, and in the future the hash symbol will be a valid character to put on a birth certificate. So, the Night Watch is sinister, big things are about to happen on Earth, and Sinclair is under suspicion of subversion. All while Zack has a crisis of conscience about whether or not the Night Watch are in the right. And it seems like the next episode might go back to this story, which would be welcome.

One thing, the incident on Mars with the Shadow ship would have happened back when Santigo was President, but presumably Santiago wasn't involved (considering the fact that the Shadows killed him). So the Psi Corps must have been working with the Shadows long before Mordin showed up on B5. Interesting.

Captain Greyshirt: 14
Scott Bakula: 41

 

[Deranged Nasat]

... that way the beginning wouldn't have felt so rushed and there would have been more time for nice scenes like the one between Sheridan and Delenn on the White Star.

Is that the "rain" scene? It's been a while since I watched season three. If it was that scene, I really like it. It sold me on the idea of Sheridan and Delenn's developing relationship and had me actually truly invested in them emotionally, which is a refreshing change from most TV.

 

[Lindley]

Point of trivia: I believe, but am not certain, that the events Garibaldi described on Mars is a recounting of one of the B5 comics. I haven't read it, though.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Point of trivia: I believe, but am not certain, that the events Garibaldi described on Mars is a recounting of one of the B5 comics. I haven't read it, though.

I think it's called "Shadows Past & Present" -- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Babylon-Shadows-Past-Present/dp/1852867353

 

[TheGodBen]

Is that the "rain" scene? It's been a while since I watched season three. If it was that scene, I really like it. It sold me on the idea of Sheridan and Delenn's developing relationship and had me actually truly invested in them emotionally, which is a refreshing change from most TV.

Yeah, that's the one. It was a very nice scene, here's hoping there's more like it.

 

[JoeD80]

Point of trivia: I believe, but am not certain, that the events Garibaldi described on Mars is a recounting of one of the B5 comics. I haven't read it, though.

Yes, the event was shown in the comics and the person Garibaldi refers to as "a friend" in this episode is Sinclair. Garibaldi mentions this incident way back in the episode "Infection" as well when talking to the reporter.

 

[Aeon]

I have been reading pretty much all the posts from JMS since the beginning and this reminded me of TheGodBen's thoughts about the current Earth Alliance political situation in his review of The Gathering...

The questions concerned B5 and the political situation on Earth at this time. Back home, there is an Earth Senate, which is made up of elected representatives from each nation-state; the larger and more powerful the nation, the more reps they get. Which annoys the smaller nations no end. (And there's quite a bit of conflict between them; the smaller nation-states, with limited resources, keep grousing about why they should support B5 financially, as well as other space endeavors, when their economy really isn't set up to take as much advantage of the situation as the larger nation-states.

In the 10 years (not 17 as Navas suggests) since the Earth/Minbari war, there haven't been any major dictatorships, but we've strayed awfully close on more than one occasion. As for the nature of B5, yes it is a (let me try this again) there is a military component to it, but for the most part it is a civilian operation. In the same sense that, in the early history of our country, you sometimes had a military governor assigned to a state or province.

Interesting background information, but obviously by the time of Messages From Earth the situation has already started to change and not for the better.

 

[Neroon]

Is that the "rain" scene? It's been a while since I watched season three. If it was that scene, I really like it. It sold me on the idea of Sheridan and Delenn's developing relationship and had me actually truly invested in them emotionally, which is a refreshing change from most TV.

Yeah, that's the one. It was a very nice scene, here's hoping there's more like it.

Back when he was a freshman, my son emailed me one morning. He had trouble sleeping that previous night. While lying in bed and struggling with his lack of sleep, it began to rain. That made him recall this scene you speak of (we used to watch B5 together), and he idly mused that maybe I was outside with a garden hose spraying on the roof, trying to help him get to sleep.

To him it was a simple sort of throw away email, the kind you send when you want to ask how someone's day is going. To me it meant a helluva lot more.

 

[Jan]

Interesting background information, but obviously by the time of Messages From Earth the situation has already started to change and not for the better.

That's one of the cool things about B5 is that we actually get to see the process of those changes and how they can/do occur gradually enough that the people accept them.

Jan

 

[Reverend]

One thing, the incident on Mars with the Shadow ship would have happened back when Santigo was President, but presumably Santiago wasn't involved (considering the fact that the Shadows killed him). So the Psi Corps must have been working with the Shadows long before Mordin showed up on B5. Interesting.

I won't spoil, but I'll point you in the right direction if you want to come back to this after you're done with the DVDs. The event's on Mars have been previously mentioned by Garibaldi way back in season one's 'Infection' as the first time he and Sinclair met, leading to him being hired on B5 and are depicted across 4 issues of the limited run of Babylon 5 DC comics series. Unfortunately the artwork in those books were a little hit and miss (more miss than hit) and for some reason there's this lame framing device where Garibaldi is telling the story to Keffer while they're stranded on some random planet running away from space hobbits. I don't know why they just didn't tell the story straight up.

As for Morden, his story and that of the voyage of the Icarus is covered in the Novel "The Shadow Within", but yes, as you'll see later on down the line, this and the dig on Mars are related.

Interesting background information, but obviously by the time of Messages From Earth the situation has already started to change and not for the better.

That's one of the cool things about B5 is that we actually get to see the process of those changes and how they can/do occur gradually enough that the people accept them.

Jan

What's more it shows that events and circumstances are fluid and every changing. Without getting too much into future events, even when certain situations are "resolved", or so much as they can be it doesn't reset everything back to a status quo, but instead changes things again.

As it was put in 'Signs and Portents': "We create the future with our words, our deeds and with our beliefs."

 

[Aeon]

Interesting background information, but obviously by the time of Messages From Earth the situation has already started to change and not for the better.

That's one of the cool things about B5 is that we actually get to see the process of those changes and how they can/do occur gradually enough that the people accept them.

Jan

Yeah, something like this doesn't happen overnight.

 

[Forbin]

100 Pages!

 

[Jan]

100 Pages!

And just reaching the "Point of No Return"

Jan

 

[JoeD80]

for some reason there's this lame framing device where Garibaldi is telling the story to Keffer while they're stranded on some random planet running away from space hobbits. I don't know why they just didn't tell the story straight up.

Because it had to connect to real time of season 2 somehow. I think it worked quite well like that myself, and the art for these issues was better than the earlier ones.