I like DSN and I like B5, there is room for both shows without hating on the other. If I don't like a show I either change the channel or turn the TV off.
Babylon 5
- Thread starter Kail
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I like DSN and I like B5, there is room for both shows without hating on the other. If I don't like a show I either change the channel or turn the TV off.
Some people are passionate about both, some hate both, some hate one and love the other. Some like me, love one but never really got the other.
I can watch DS9, but it never really made me care enough, nor was it different enough to B5. I’d never really seen anything about war before, except Star Wars, but along came B5 and DS9, doing very similar things, but one was doing it better, or at the very least, one didn’t waste my time with holodeck filler dross.
I’m not a hater, and it’s not really an either or thing for me, but if anything B5 illustrated at the time how Star Trek wasn’t meeting its potential, and the producers have since admitted that they were winging it. It showed.
I liked both shows but the low points of DS9 story quality seemed lower to me than those of B5. There are a dozen or so episodes of DS9 that I'll probably never feel the urge to watch again - for B5, just two or three.
As I've said before, I don't like to compare the two shows due to their vastly different writing approaches.
Both have great arcs overall (and both have some stumbles along the way). B5 is an example of how a show can be brought to life with a great deal of pre-planning and forethought. DS9, on the other hand, is a great example of how a show can achieve great things even while the writers are, to some extent, flying by the seat of their pants.
I guess we'll never really know how much the two may have influenced each other, but for my money, both are worth rewatching. That said, if I'm forced to pick sides, I will say I think early DS9 flows a bit better (if more episodically) for me than early B5, and the Sinclair-Sheridan swapout while other casting changes are underway is a bit jarring even if one feels that Sheridan is ultimately better suited for what's to come.
Both have great arcs overall (and both have some stumbles along the way). B5 is an example of how a show can be brought to life with a great deal of pre-planning and forethought. DS9, on the other hand, is a great example of how a show can achieve great things even while the writers are, to some extent, flying by the seat of their pants.
I guess we'll never really know how much the two may have influenced each other, but for my money, both are worth rewatching. That said, if I'm forced to pick sides, I will say I think early DS9 flows a bit better (if more episodically) for me than early B5, and the Sinclair-Sheridan swapout while other casting changes are underway is a bit jarring even if one feels that Sheridan is ultimately better suited for what's to come.
DSN had the advantage of having a world to exist in. B5 had to do a fair bit of world building in the first season it was also setting up events for later payoff.
Though didn't even JMS have to make use of some of the backdoors he had created for characters, like Sinclair leaving due to O'Hare's illness, I think Takashima was planned to be the mole that Talia became as well as being the one who would shoot Garibaldi at the end of S1.
If there was the leisure of doing more than one panel, such as there were at the 2013 Phoenix Comic-Con, that might be a great idea to do a panel showing why *both* are worthwhile. It might be hard to keep it from getting adversarial, though.
Thanks,
I am a long time SF fan. 40+ years. Books are better than TV and movies so the story is more important than acting and props. Therefore:
Babylon 5 is the best SF show to date. DS9 is great because it looks like it was largely stolen from B5, but as a Trek show it had a lot more money and consequently looks far better.
Babylon 5 is the best SF show to date. DS9 is great because it looks like it was largely stolen from B5, but as a Trek show it had a lot more money and consequently looks far better.
That's oversimplified. Even if it were true that B5's story was something special, what makes a book worth reading and memorable is a great deal more than the plot of the story.
I'm a few pages behind, but there was a lot more going on in season 5 than the hair bunch. Yes they took up a lot of space, but every single episode had wonderful pieces moving in the background to the final arc that really doesn't finish on TV. You have to read Peter David's Centauri Trilogy Legions of Fire, I couldn't recommend that book enough. But even the third episode in, the Enphili and one of the Interstellar Alliance's first crisis, is worth suffering through hair, hair everywhere.
And I think it's a testament to Robin Atkin Downes acting ability how unlikable Byron is. I think it's a credit to JMS's writing, his constant "turning things on their head" as well. In just about every show, the misunderstood minority turns out to be really nice people that you couldn't possibly not like after you've gotten to know them. In contrast, Byron and his bunch really are a bunch of assholes, but that doesn't make it right to mistreat them, either. I think that's what puts so many people off from that arc, that JMS doesn't give us that easy feel good story, it's wrong to cheer when Byron blows himself up, (even though I do), it's wrong to give into prejudices and justifying it by saying they brought it on themselves.
And I think it's a testament to Robin Atkin Downes acting ability how unlikable Byron is. I think it's a credit to JMS's writing, his constant "turning things on their head" as well. In just about every show, the misunderstood minority turns out to be really nice people that you couldn't possibly not like after you've gotten to know them. In contrast, Byron and his bunch really are a bunch of assholes, but that doesn't make it right to mistreat them, either. I think that's what puts so many people off from that arc, that JMS doesn't give us that easy feel good story, it's wrong to cheer when Byron blows himself up, (even though I do), it's wrong to give into prejudices and justifying it by saying they brought it on themselves.
Interesting...I usually never found Byron himself unlikeable (though trying to blackmail the Alliance was, to put it mildly, ill-advised), but I found the rest of the telepaths to be kind of interchangeable non-entities (except for the part where you had the radicals vs. the not-so-radicals at the end), and I think the tragic part is that Lyta in particular and the others in general use Byron's name to betray his ideals at the end.
Hell, I wish she'd gone through the "Day of the Dead" and had Byron's ghost show up to ask her WTF she thought she was doing, and whether she'd even paid any damn attention to him the whole time.
Hell, I wish she'd gone through the "Day of the Dead" and had Byron's ghost show up to ask her WTF she thought she was doing, and whether she'd even paid any damn attention to him the whole time.
They can be expensive to buy as I've been finding out. Have found "The Shadow Within" and the first two Centauri Prime books so far.
I got really lucky and picked them all up pretty cheaply about 15 years ago on eBay when I guess interest in B5 must have been at a nadir. The books do do seem to have accumulated in value since then (assuming people are actually willing to pay the sums asked). I didn't bother trying to acquire any of the "semicanonical" stories.
I only have the first novel of the Centauri trilogy, the second novel is ridiculous expensive, more than 30 euro.
I don't know if it'll help but sometimes there can be decent prices on the hardcover all-in-one editions of the trilogies.
I was able to find a deal on the second book for $8 on Ebay. Got the first book at Half-Price Books for $4. The third book I've seen listed for anywhere from $20 to $80.
Stupid of me, I do mean book 3
They have some copies of the first Centuari book on the Amazon Marketplace that sound like they're in pretty good shape for under $10. They get more expensive from there though, the second one's cheapest copies are in the low $20s, and it's up to $40s for the third.
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