Babylon 5 viewing order

[OmahaStar]

Day of the Dead - Horay, a good epsiode! It was nice to see the girl from the ground pounder episode, and it seemed to be a bow to let us see some old friends of sorts. Morden coming as Linnier ghost seemed forced. I think its official in my hate of Lockley, as even with her meeting cute Zoe, my two thoughts where other then the actress was cute, but I cared more for the dead that never had showed up before (zoe) and the girl that showed up one time in GROPOS then I do with the women who is a main role. I guess Penn and Teller where big back then.

Of course, Kosh line was very Kosh-like and interests me.

I love the episode. It's easily in my top 10 episodes of everything (not just B5, but all tv), but that is a massive continuity error, that could have been fixed by changing one line.

At the end of the episode, Lochley says to Sheridan she has a message from "Somebody named ...Kosh?" and she acts like the name is foreign to her.

Yet, just a few episodes ago, she boarded the station and said that she had read all the reports, and was completely up to speed on the station. Kosh was there in one way or another for four years. He was the Ambassador from the Vorlon Empire. Even if she just skimmed the reports, his name should have popped out somewhere. I mean, his near-death did put the station's first commander on trial, after all.

Changing it to "someone you know" or "an old/mysterious friend" or something would have worked, and played the same way. But she SHOULD have known of him.

 

[JoeD80]

He was in all the reports as "Naranek" instead.

 

[Reverend]

Or she just forgot? Even if she did at least skim *every* report for the last five to six years since B5 went online (if so it must have been one long arse shuttle ride!) that's an awful lot of information to process and that was at least a few months prior to the events of this episode. Plus she was probably tired from being up all night and Ivanova was the one with the eidetic memory, not Lochley.

Personally though I took her comment as her being "pretty much up to speed" on the current/recent reports. I mean really, reading EVERY report from the station (even if it's just the weekly command staff reports) filed in the last half decade is a monstrous amount and let's be honest, Kosh would very rarely be mentioned since as was made rather clear, he hardly ever even showed up for council meetings. Plus of course Kosh's death was kept off the books so it's even possible she didn't twig that he was dead and thus didn't connect him with the message from beyond the grave.

 

[shivkala]

I had the same thought. Hell, even if she did just skim the reports, I would think the name of the Vorlon Ambassador would rank highly enough for her to remember. Especially given that it's not a particularly difficult one to remember.

Unless if Kosh, as a whole was, as Lt. Corwin put it, something that was too big to fit into a report.

I'm in the final stretch of my re-watch. I've got "Objects at Rest" and "Sleeping in Light" to go. Man, I forgot how emotional these episodes were. For once it's nice to see a show that actually had a climax, falling action, and resolution spread out among a few episodes.

Lastly, maybe it's the absence of Ivanova, but I kind of felt that, G'Kar and Londo aside, Season 5 had less humor in it than any of the other seasons. It comes across as more depressing. I think that also adds to the reason why it does not rank highly with some. The humor it does have is much more subtle (except for when it's not, case in point, Reebo and Zooty).

 

[Distorted Humor]

http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/master/guide/098.html

"A Tragedy of Telepaths" - This episode was just ok. Once again, Londo and G'Kar carry the water in this episode, though at least the poltical stuff is decent. The telepaths, well they could be all vented into space and I wouldn't cry. Funny enough I liked the underground railroad idea and so on, but Byron and his cult bore me to tears. And the worst thing one can be in a show is boring.

 

[Distorted Humor]

I forgot to add, seemed heavy on "Fan service" this episode, though Lockley isn't that appealing to me, and it was great to see bester again.

 

[Reverend]

I think possibly the biggest flaw of the telepath arc this season is a real failure to show exactly what the blips have gone through to get to where they are. It's hard to sympathise with their rhetoric without understanding how they've really been victimised from childhood on, by the mundanes and their own people both. Even on a marathon run the underground railroad episode is a bit of a distant memory so it's easy to forget about the forced medical experiments and impregnations, the secret murders and re-education camps.

It's all a lot easier to swallow after reading the Psi Corps books where you get a real sense of the history of telepath persecution and rebellion, but that's not really an option for most viewers.

 

[Distorted Humor]

Another issue that I have is that I just don't care for Byron, and as the leader of the telepaths, my mind goes numb when he there, and since lyta with him I have a hard time enjoying her as well. I mean, the Drazi and Brakiri ambassadors have 10 times the personality then Byron does. I rooted for the telepaths on the run from Bester in season 2, but they could vent Byron and all his buddies into space and I would not care, I mean I am rooting more for BESTER and his bloodhounds then Byron, and that is bad when you rooting for Fascists who messed with one of my fave characters on Babylon 5.

 

[Reverend]

I honestly never had as huge a problem with Byron as others seem to. He's not a favourite character by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't actively dislike him.

If there is a fault I think it lies with JMS's writing and not the actor (or more probably the loss/theft of JMS's notes in Blackpool.) Of course it doesn't help that he was originally intended to be a love interest for Ivanova and moving that thread across to Lyta just wasn't the best fit.

 

[shivkala]

Well, perhaps your tolerance is higher than mine, Reverend, but when a character responds to a simple comment such as, "You need some sleep," with a lameass parable about how he slept lifetimes ago with the love of his life, who went away, and became a willow, which is deceptively strong, and that willow is Lyta, and so on, I just can't stand it!

The other problem is that none of the telepaths were really presented as sympathetic. Case in point, Peter, who is presented with a stutter, which I think was supposed to engender sympathy. However, it just came across as trying too hard to engender sympathy. The others, except for the ones who went commando, were silent and touchy/feely.

Take the underground telepaths from "A Race Through Dark Places." No real special effort was taken to make them sympathetic, except their stories, which made it more effective. If JMS had taken more time to flesh out the characters and their stories, then maybe it would have worked better.

 

[RoJoHen]

The other problem is that none of the telepaths were really presented as sympathetic. Case in point, Peter, who is presented with a stutter, which I think was supposed to engender sympathy. However, it just came across as trying too hard to engender sympathy. The others, except for the ones who went commando, were silent and touchy/feely.

I found the telepaths more creepy than anything, and I spent most of the time wondering why they all had such long hair.

 

[JoeD80]

The other problem is that none of the telepaths were really presented as sympathetic.

I don't think they're really supposed to be sympathetic. These are the people who's method of "asking" for a homeworld was to blackmail everybody.

 

[OmahaStar]

Another issue that I have is that I just don't care for Byron, and as the leader of the telepaths, my mind goes numb when he there, and since lyta with him I have a hard time enjoying her as well. I mean, the Drazi and Brakiri ambassadors have 10 times the personality then Byron does. I rooted for the telepaths on the run from Bester in season 2, but they could vent Byron and all his buddies into space and I would not care, I mean I am rooting more for BESTER and his bloodhounds then Byron, and that is bad when you rooting for Fascists who messed with one of my fave characters on Babylon 5.

Keep watching. That's all I'm going to say.

 

[shivkala]

The other problem is that none of the telepaths were really presented as sympathetic.

I don't think they're really supposed to be sympathetic. These are the people who's method of "asking" for a homeworld was to blackmail everybody.

True, but, I think it would have been more effective if they were sympathetic. The whole storyline might have been better if we actually cared about them.

 

[Jan]

I'm sure I've posted it before, so forgive the repetition...when I was doing the 'Joe Cuts' for the script books, I did notice that a number of scenes of Byron communing with his people had been cut, which would have at least made it more clear why his followers were devoted to him.

I think that the number of people needed to make even a slightly believable 'colony' of telepaths stretched the budget to the point that very few of them could have speaking roles at all. That made it impossible to have enough of them tell their stories onscreen to remind viewers of the horror stories whe'd heard in 'A Race Through Dark Places'.

With the fact that Byron never really clicked with viewers, what many people miss is that both Byron and Bester say the same things about how the telepaths are 'better' than mundanes and that Byron's reaction when finding out about the meddling of the Vorlons, was that of a child who'd covered up feelings of inferiority with a facade of superiority and then having it ripped away. What was his first reaction? "We could have been normal!" I always found that a very telling scene for the character.

Jan

 

[Snatcher42]

What I'm finding in my most recent re-watch is that, while not terrible, the telepath stuff drags on too long. We could have been done with this in half the time (as much as I love Bester, he didn't need to visit twice). Especially after Kingdom of the Blind, you just want to get back to the Londo and G'kar. Definitely one of the show's bigger missteps, though luckily not a fatal one. The season really recovers in its second half.

It's understandable given the circumstances, I suppose. The telepath arc would have worked better had it started as B-plot during the Earth civil war, only moving to the forefront for a couple episodes. And had Ivanova been involved. Oh well.

 

[Sindatur]

It's understandable given the circumstances, I suppose. The telepath arc would have worked better had it started as B-plot during the Earth civil war, only moving to the forefront for a couple episodes. And had Ivanova been involved. Oh well.

Which I believe was the plan, start the infiltration of the Telepaths, in the background at the end of S4, and stretch the Earth Civil War a few episodes into S5,r ather than the lightning speed it was wrapped up in S4. Darned cancellation threat

 

[Snatcher42]

Yup, that's what I mean. Had everything gone according to plan - no cancellation threat, no sudden cast departure, no lost notes - then the telepath arc could have worked very well indeed. Even Byron would have made more sense, at first appearing as kind of an ersatz Marcus, but then revealing himself to be not much like him at all.

 

[JoeD80]

It certainly would have been dramatic to see Ivanova get involved in this cult, have her telepathic abilities come to the surface, and then end up having to be the one to call Bester in when everything went down.

 

[Aeon]

Also it would have made more sense for the telepaths to arrive during the Civil War, not after. As it is now, they come to a place that is technically under the jurisdiction of Earth Alliance and all the laws are against them. That's not very logical.