Babylon 5, first episodes feedback

[Danoz]

I just finished the first two episodes.

I found the first episode a little dry. The writers shockingly delve into this new world of intergalactic diplomats all on the same ship a little overwhelmingly fast. Aliens are a bit odd/eccentric... potentially overdone (war between big-hairs and lizard faces, the Londo/G'Kar conflict)-- humans recovering from war, hundreds of species aboard.

Sinclair is a pretty neat character, probably the only one I particularly like at this point. Ivanova is a bit annoying... she doesn't really pull off the "bitchy-but-lovable" quite yet, but it's very early and I don't remember liking Kira in Ds9 until much later.

Umm... Steven Furst (Vir the bighair) is flounder from Animal House . His character is a bit bumbling and overdone like an early TNG Feregi.

It appears I'll need to watch for spoilers if I stay with this show because of the suggestion of massive, arch-altering plot changes. One thing, the visual effects are terrible for 1993, and not very well planned. They're kind of a joke and the costuming is bad. Camera work/lighting and sound could also be better. So far, this is my biggest critique of the show. Star Trek TOS ran in the late sixties and those visual effects rival B5 produced almost thirty years later? Inexcusable. If you don't have the funding, scale back-- don't produce shoddy material.

Before I get reamed for that critique, I'm going to stay with the show because I think it has some interesting qualities and a lot of room for growth. Having said that, it's only out of my love for sci-fi that I'm able to stomach some of these early episodes. I don't know this universe yet, slow down!

 

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

its worth noting the visual FX of the time were pretty much some of the first purely CG effects done on television, so they definitely have that stiff 'gleam' on them. They were, I believe, somewhat unique/revolutionary for the time. The show gets better later in the season and particularly in the 2nd season.

 

[Lindley]

The pilot, "The Gathering", won a visual effects Emmy. At the time, no one had ever done a purely-CG show on television, so there was a lot of R&D needed to make it look good. The lense flare effect was added to Lightwave specifically for the B5 season 1 title sequence. The season 1 DVDs contain a featurette filmed back then in which Walter Keonig explains this revolutionary new idea of filming without models or cameras, as I recall.

As B5 progresses, it's like watching a history of early CGI technology. If you watch carefully, you can even see the continuity of effects technology from the end of B5 season 3 (when Netter Digital split off from Foundation) to DS9's "Call to Arms", when Trek first started going heavily CG. DS9's effects did tend to look a lot better, both because B5 had ironed out the most glaring issues already, and because they were less daring with its use, needing to keep visual continuity with their previous model work; however, the same weaknesses are there if you look for them.

All that said, I agree that B5's first season doesn't look that good.

 

[Angel4576]

I think the thing to take into account here is that for a lot of people they're used to Star Trek and the available budget and quality of CGI/Costuming/Makeup that that brings. B5 was done on a much tighter shoestring budget. The effects, the costumes, the makeup, all get better as the series goes on. Re the FX, especially in the combat sequences, one advantage that B5 had over Trek was that the sequences were logical and felt fairly fluid. In the combat sequences you actually got the feeling that tactics were employed. DS9 in particular, as great a show as it is, often had the Defiant just basically flying around blasting other ships at random.

Worth noting the music as well. Being used to Trek's orchestral themes I honestly thought I'd hate Chris Franke's scoring for B5. Although it's completely different, I ended up loving it. Some of the scores are just phenomenal.

You're absolutely spot on re spoilers though. You'll kick yourself for finding out too much before you're supposed to!

 

[Leroy]

Everyone blasts B5 for poor VFX quality but what's a good example of starship CGI from that era?

 

[Harvey]

Joe Straczynski admits that the diplomatic thread in Midnight on the Firing Line falls flat in the Babylon 5 Scriptbooks. The broad humor, too, is slowly refined (although not nearly enough to my liking, but your mileage may vary). Claudia Christianson slowly settles into her character, and her acting gets better over the course of the series (compare her work in the episode Rising Star [4x21] to this one and you'll be surprised its the same actress). That said, in my opinion, her acting in Babylon 5 doesn't compare to any other role I've seen her in--be it the fault of the writing, the directing, or the acting.

And the visual effects are improved in each episode*, and the difference you'll see between the work in each season is dramatic in its improvement (up to season three, where the CGI work levels off in quality, likely due to a split with Foundation imaging and a decision to do the CGI work of the last two seasons in house).

Season one is very much a work in progress.

*That said, the quality of the visual effects is still, in my not so humble opinion, inexcusable. A weekly television series is not the place for VFX research and development. Did the visual effects artists deserve that Emmy for all their groundbreaking work? Absolutely. That doesn't stop the work from looking extremely fake, and make it especially jarring to go from the live action scenes to the visual effects, ultimately undermining much of the action. Deep Space Nine, as it has been said, played it safe. They used motion control models until the computer generated ones were ready, and even then they didn't overuse the digital technology. They definitely had more money to spend on the visuals. But, in the end, it holds up.

Of course, my advice is much the same as anyone else here, in the end. Just ignore the effects. There are much better parts of the series to be focusing your attention on. And always remember, as I said before, that season one is a work in progress. The show has to work to hit its stride, and it has to work harder to hit its stride consistantly. It doesn't do that in the first season (in my opinion, of course), but in the end you still manage to get And the Sky Full of Stars, Signs and Portents, Mind War, Babylon Squared, and Chrysalis out of the whole affair.

 

[Danoz]

Everyone blasts B5 for poor VFX quality but what's a good example of starship CGI from that era?

1987

Whether not not this is a model is irrelevant. It looks 100X better.

 

[Harvey]

^^
As the flood of posters who have been waiting will no doubt point out, that's a physical model, not a CGI ship.

 

[Danoz]

^^
As the flood of posters who have been waiting will no doubt point out, that's a physical model, not a CGI ship.

I pointed that out myself .

 

[Harvey]

So you did. I missed that line of text. But I should point out that Babylon 5, with its grand scope, bit off more than it could chew so to speak. CGI was employed because it was cheaper than motion control work, and by cheaper I mean to say it was the only thing the show could afford a the time on its relatively limited budget.

 

[Worf412]

Whether not not this is a model is irrelevant. It looks 100X better.

Of course, TNG had a budget of 1.5 Million an episode (in 1987), while B5's was around $800,000 (in 1993).

 

[Frontman]

I'm also starting to watch B5 and watched already 5 episodes and also didn't find them very interesting but I heard it's best between season 2 and 4 so I keep watching.

 

[Harvey]

I'm glad Paramount was willing to make the investment there. Warner Bros. has been mismanaging the Babylon 5 property from day one, as far as I'm concerned. They still can't get their act together, which has probably ended for good what is now, "deep space franchises" aside, a franchise in itself.

 

[Kegek]

That said, the quality of the visual effects is still, in my not so humble opinion, inexcusable. A weekly television series is not the place for VFX research and development. Did the visual effects artists deserve that Emmy for all their groundbreaking work? Absolutely. That doesn't stop the work from looking extremely fake, and make it especially jarring to go from the live action scenes to the visual effects, ultimately undermining much of the action. Deep Space Nine, as it has been said, played it safe. They used motion control models until the computer generated ones were ready, and even then they didn't overuse the digital technology. They definitely had more money to spend on the visuals. But, in the end, it holds up.

I agree. I think the only credible excuse for the effects is the show's smaller-than-Star-Trek budget. As an ironic aside, I recall reading an old comment by JMS from the 1990s when the show was nominated for an effects Emmy - and that one person viewing the CGI clips took an interest. That person was George Lucas.

Anyway, B5 is a show where the effects were dodgy, the acting was frequently wooden, the music is cheesy, and the makeup/costuming ran the gamut from acceptable to positively laughable (look at the extras in the background, Danoz. Look at them!) It's a good show mostly because of the writing, although the actually good acting efforts of some of the B5 cast also deserve a nod.

And though the writing has plenty of problems of its own, it's good enough to hold the series together and justifies its cult fanbase. Keep watching.

 

[Harvey]

The alien extras in The Gathering are particularly egregious. Even Joe Straczynski points out how stupid they look in the audio commentary. Thankfully, much of that was toned down for the series proper (although there's no way you're going to escape the cheapness that is inherent in the look of the Drazi, for example).

 

[Sean_McCormick]

Regarding the budget, i recall reading, that jms once said, that for the money, the Star Trek Voyager pilot movie alone had cost, he would get 1.3 seasons of B5.

Regardingt the makeup i have the impression that the extent of the the makeup is usually greater as compared to Star Trek, where most aliens only have a forehead appliance and you get to see a fairly consistent amount of heavy makeup on B5.

 

[Mr Light]

B5 is my favorite show and I'll be the first to admit it looked pretty bad at first. But all areas of production improve drastically; by the end of the first season it's MUCH better. The CGI gets better fast (but the 2nd year is the real improvement), the makeup/prostetics improve very quickly after the laughable beginning.

The acting gets better to. I didn't like Ivanova at ALL in the first year, but in the second year she transforms into one of my favorite characters on the show and one of the best comedians in the cast. Vir also gets toned down fast. And Londo's hair gets so much better looking, trust me!

 

[Lindley]

Everyone blasts B5 for poor VFX quality but what's a good example of starship CGI from that era?

1987

Whether not not this is a model is irrelevant. It looks 100X better.

And for establishing shots, that's great. But B5 could not have done the shots they wanted to do using models, even with a higher budget. Notice the lack of space combat in TNG? As an early example, when Sinclair is trying to grapple the Soul Hunter vessel in the episode of that name, you simply couldn't *do* that shot with models. It's impossible, because the ship is rotating too much. And we all know fighter combat in general, particularly with large numbers of ships at once, is very tough with models. You can't throw a gazillion dollars at the problem like Return of the Jedi could.

The question to ask is, if they had waited to adapt CGI until it was a more mature technology.....would it have ever *become* a more mature technology? Someone has to be the driving force.

 

[David cgc]

1987

Whether not not this is a model is irrelevant. It looks 100X better.

That's also a poster, made in a high resolution with a great deal of time and detail put in. On-screen, TNG's effects didn't look anything near as good.

 

[Danoz]

Everyone blasts B5 for poor VFX quality but what's a good example of starship CGI from that era?

1987

Whether not not this is a model is irrelevant. It looks 100X better.

And for establishing shots, that's great. But B5 could not have done the shots they wanted to do using models, even with a higher budget. Notice the lack of space combat in TNG? As an early example, when Sinclair is trying to grapple the Soul Hunter vessel in the episode of that name, you simply couldn't *do* that shot with models. It's impossible, because the ship is rotating too much. And we all know fighter combat in general, particularly with large numbers of ships at once, is very tough with models. You can't throw a gazillion dollars at the problem like Return of the Jedi could.

The question to ask is, if they had waited to adapt CGI until it was a more mature technology.....would it have ever *become* a more mature technology? Someone has to be the driving force.

No, these are all good points! I stand corrected. I didn't know, for one, the B5 was on the first shows (if not the first show) to use CGI in this way. If that's the case, kudos! From my standpoint, however, it's a bit distracting... like I'm watching a fan production of trek... I feel like I'm in a studio flipping back and forth between CG and the set, and for any show that detracts from the story and the drama.