Babylon 5
- Thread starter Kail
- Start date
Robin Atkin Downs is not 15 years older than me. Robin Atkin Downs is 8 days older than me. On the set of Babylon 5 he was 21 years old making the sex with a 40 year old actress who just had had a baby.
Byron acts like a well preserved old man who is some how still sexy, when he should be falling apart, cranky, and mostly bald.
Twenty fucking one.
Either the character is older, and still looks like a boy, great genes, avoids the sun, I hate him, or the charcter looks just a little more like a thumb than Michael Garibaldi, and vain, and wears a glamour, to look like a sexy boy, superficially, and I hate him.
Jesus wept TWENTYONE!!!!!
Byron acts like a well preserved old man who is some how still sexy, when he should be falling apart, cranky, and mostly bald.
Twenty fucking one.
Either the character is older, and still looks like a boy, great genes, avoids the sun, I hate him, or the charcter looks just a little more like a thumb than Michael Garibaldi, and vain, and wears a glamour, to look like a sexy boy, superficially, and I hate him.
Jesus wept TWENTYONE!!!!!
I see somebody was jealous of "Robin Atkins Downs" for getting to have a love scene with Patricia Tallman.
I wold STILL do a love scene with Pat. We're about the same age, so that helps.
Sorry my point is whether real or Simulated, a 21 year old would shit himself when put into a position of authority in a terrorist sex cult.
A few pages ago, I was saying that Byron is a fake puppet they use to distract the mundanes, and that Byron, at least to begin with was Simple Simon. I looked up the actor for Simon. He's 19.
If the actors, if not the characters, are almost exactly the age, 19 and 21, and Byron acted like Simon's dad who was also Jesus and Superman, what a %%cking condescending pretentious twat.
Downes was obviously playing older. Byron had been a young, but fully graduated, Psi-Cop in 2256, six years before he arrived on B5. He was certainly in his early-to-mid twenties then, so he was probably at least thirty in season five. I doubt the Psi-Corps lets many rogue telepath ringleaders grow into the position of gray emeritus, so it makes sense he'd be fairly young (which would also fit with his charisma, drive, and naiveté, he didn't have a wealth of life or leadership experience, having basically been raised in a cult, becoming disgusted with it, and then founding his own little counter-cult because that's the only way he knew for people to relate to each other).
I never realized the actor was that young when he was on Babylon 5. His career does make a bit more sense now (though, forget Byron; he was a year younger than that when he first played the veteran Gray Council member Morann, who was definitely not fresh out of college, opposite Mira Furlan as young Delenn, who at the time was twice his age while playing someone much younger than him).
I never realized the actor was that young when he was on Babylon 5. His career does make a bit more sense now (though, forget Byron; he was a year younger than that when he first played the veteran Gray Council member Morann, who was definitely not fresh out of college, opposite Mira Furlan as young Delenn, who at the time was twice his age while playing someone much younger than him).
For anyone that is interested, B5 Books has re-released the CNN Documents Babylon 5 DVDs in streaming format (with a downloadable option). I started watching part 1 last night and it's a lot of fun. Claudia is an absolute trip 
https://b5books.com/cnn-documents-babylon-5/
https://b5books.com/cnn-documents-babylon-5/
I got the email about that, but did I read it right that one would be paying to view streaming content but wouldn't receive any media? The cost seems a bit steep for something impermanent.
I also picked up the Blu-rays...coincidentally just as KRAD's about to start a rewatch on (Reac)TOR, and watched "Severed Dreams" last night. I haven't watched the DVDs in some time now, but my feeling is that on my system the video was better but definitely not pristine, the audio was great but not necessarily much greater than the DVDs, and after having gotten used to the DVD presentation it was a bit jarring to see the episode in 4:3. I almost think I should try watching it on DVD again so that the quality improvements might be more apparent to me.
The lack of commentaries and the other extras on the Blu-rays is, of course, deplorable.
I also picked up the Blu-rays...coincidentally just as KRAD's about to start a rewatch on (Reac)TOR, and watched "Severed Dreams" last night. I haven't watched the DVDs in some time now, but my feeling is that on my system the video was better but definitely not pristine, the audio was great but not necessarily much greater than the DVDs, and after having gotten used to the DVD presentation it was a bit jarring to see the episode in 4:3. I almost think I should try watching it on DVD again so that the quality improvements might be more apparent to me.
The lack of commentaries and the other extras on the Blu-rays is, of course, deplorable.
There is a steaming only option and another that allows downloads. I got the downloadable version. There are no options for DVDs.
As far as the Blu-rays, go back and... try to watch a DVD. The difference is jarring. That said, there are audio sync issues for a minute here and there on a few episodes which drive me nuts. The lack of commentaries is mind boggling. The video quality for The Gathering is also ludicrous.
Last edited:
I'm considering it. The upscale doesn't thrill me, but I am interested in all the vintage behind-the-scenes featurettes and ads (I recognized quite a few in the list, I first watched a lot of B5 off of duplicated VHS recordings of the TNT run). It's a pretty hefty chunk of change, though, considering I already have the main feature.
It seems as though the one thing that's most ultimately consistent about Babylon 5 is that WB will do whatever they can to save a few bucks. Besides the lack of extras, the packaging is terrible. While the discs at least indicate which season the episodes on them are from, there's no directory in either the packaging or on the discs themselves to indicate which episodes are on which discs.
It's really annoying that even with what WB has on hand in terms of B5 without doing any more production work, we still haven't gotten a complete home video release that can be called "definitive."
The special features (and the sides of the live-action footage) are all on DVD, the best quality live action footage is on Blu-Ray, and the visual effects have one weird glitch or another on both, so those were only presented in maximum quality on the VHS and Laserdiscs releases, which didn't even include the complete series before DVDs made them obsolete (at least, not the ones for retail sale, the Columbia House VHS release had the whole show, so I guess that's the best version by default). Plus the stupid commercial-bumpers on the Blu-Ray. And, to nitpick, the Blu-Rays did a bad job with the captions and credits, the colors are all wrong.
The special features (and the sides of the live-action footage) are all on DVD, the best quality live action footage is on Blu-Ray, and the visual effects have one weird glitch or another on both, so those were only presented in maximum quality on the VHS and Laserdiscs releases, which didn't even include the complete series before DVDs made them obsolete (at least, not the ones for retail sale, the Columbia House VHS release had the whole show, so I guess that's the best version by default). Plus the stupid commercial-bumpers on the Blu-Ray. And, to nitpick, the Blu-Rays did a bad job with the captions and credits, the colors are all wrong.
I wonder if the same people who built the Shadow hybrids in "Crusade" also had their own knockoff Excalibur-type ship as well. In "To the Ends of the Earth" Gideon and Matheson think the blast crater looks like one the Excalibur could make with it's main gun and I always assumed they mean the Shadow hybrid torched the site with it's own version of the main gun. But then if Season 2 was supposed to have the Excalibur crew framed and go on the run, having some evil twin of your own ship be running amok and causing damage with identity theft would be a good way to set it off.
Also, I was thinking about if Babylon Prime had gone ahead, imagine the scale of the space battles if you had B4 flying into scene! All the enemy ships would look like ants around it!
Also, I was thinking about if Babylon Prime had gone ahead, imagine the scale of the space battles if you had B4 flying into scene! All the enemy ships would look like ants around it!
The Starfuries in B5 often looked the wrong scale in comparison with the station. If they had been correctly depicted to scale I expect they would have been been nearly invisible.
Maybe it was forced perspective and the station was much farther away from the Starfuries than we thought.
My favorite example of a scale glitch had been that the Sanctuary (the observation room below the Cobra Bays in several episodes) was much bigger than it should've been, which was really shown off in the season 5 premiere, where a Starfury flew up to it, scaled to the Sanctuary, and you could see that it was three or four times wider than the bay doors it had just launched out of a minute earlier.
At least, it had been. I recently caught a shot in "In the Beginning" of an Earth fleet where there's an Olympus corvette in the foreground, and a shuttle-sized Olympus flying right next to it. Netter Digital didn't give a frag, they did whatever they wanted with scale.
At least, it had been. I recently caught a shot in "In the Beginning" of an Earth fleet where there's an Olympus corvette in the foreground, and a shuttle-sized Olympus flying right next to it. Netter Digital didn't give a frag, they did whatever they wanted with scale.
Whatever is dramatically necessary works. It's just oddballs like me who notice.
