Rewatching Babylon 5- So is it really any good?

[sidious618]

I've counted myself as a B5 fan for quite some time. I first watched it when I was 11(!) when sci-fi reran the show in 2000/2001. I jumped on board at the tale end of season three and then watched through to the end. I then watched season one through three. So my viewing order was a little askew to say the least.

But my mind was blown. I loved the show. LOVED it. I'd never seen anything like it. I rewatched the show many, many times.

I had a look through The God Ben's thread and was enjoying reading it when I realized I haven't watched Babylon 5 from start to finish since I was in my mid-teens. Sure, I'd seen a few episodes since then when I was in the mood but that's hardly a fair way to judge it.

So the question came to me: is it any good now or is it too much of a product of its time and we all were just amazed at new sci-fi? Was my goodwill towards the show based just off of nostalgia or is it actually a quality drama? These questions lingered in my head and I decided I'd need to rewatch the show.

Then I did the only sensible thing a person would do: decide to make a thread about it on an internet message board.

So today I'll be starting with Midnight on the Firing Line, the first episode of season one (I don't have the TV movie The Gathering). Will it be good? Or will time have made it unwatchable? Or was it maybe never all that great to begin with?

Some things I'm going to keep in mind as I go along are complaints that have been leveled at the show:
1) The acting- specifically of Michael O'Hare and Bruce Boxleitner.
2) The SFX- do they suck or are they very good for the time?
3) The story-arc- does it go off the rails or does it tell a coherent story?
4) Do Season 1 and 5 suck?
5) Is characterization sacrificed because of JMS' plotting ahead of time?
6) Does Babylon 5 really deal with great ideas or does it just mention some themes and make itself look smart while not actually saying anything (something Star Trek has often been guilty of)?

So if you fine folks are interested I'll be posting as I go along. If you're not then I'll keep it to myself. I think this could be a really interesting discussion, though. I will warn you that I'll be discussing some spoilers as I go by referring to events that will occur later in the show.

Anyone coming along for the ride?

 

[Jan]

Anyone coming along for the ride?

Would you mind if I came along with you? It's been some time since I did my last, incredibly intense re-watch and it seems like a good time.

Don't mean to horn in on your thread, though, so if you'd prefer I didn't, feel free to say so.

Jan

 

[sidious618]

No, feel free to join in! The more the merrier. I don't know what pace I'll be keeping but I'll try to do a few episodes a week.

 

[Distorted Humor]

I just started up mine, but am early enough to join you

 

[sidious618]

So let's begin!

Midnight on the Firing Line

So it's the early 90s. Clinton has taken over The White House, America has just gotten out of a recession and a small show called Babylon 5 is coming on the airwaves. I can only imagine what unsuspecting viewers' reactions were to the first scene which involves the Centauri. I can only imagine it went something like, "Wait, what's with... what the fuck is going on with that guy's hair?!" The he gets blown up but it's not before long that we find out the hair is only going to get even more wild.

After that we have a few introductory scenes which do their job. I watched off of hulu.com and some of the scenes looked badly dubbed but that could've just been hulu.com acting up.

Then we have the opening credits, something that Babylon 5 has always been good at. There's something very epic about Sinclair's monologue along with the music that goes with it; you really feel like you're in for something special, a big story that'll take you places you've never imagined.

That doesn't happen in this episode, though. It's a fairly... not slight but commonplace story. That's not a terrible thing as there's a ton of exposition to get out of the way and while it's sometimes clumsy by the end of the episode you know the players pretty well which is what's important. That said, what is missing is a feeling about the station itself. For a show called Babylon 5 the first episode doesn't really give us a feel for the station and what exactly its purpose is. Now I know The Gathering doled out some of this information but The Gathering aired well before MotFL according to wikipedia so this episode should be an all new introduction.

The main things of note tend to be small touches such as Londo's dream which will become very important down the line and certainly shows that JMS had a lot planned out. I also particularly enjoyed the scene in Kosh's quarters which was genuinely unnerving.

It's funny. Today a show that deals with an arc will almost always throw in a ton of mythology elements in the pilot. B5 doesn't do that at all. It starts very quietly on the mythology front. After watching this a viewer could be forgiven for thinking most of the episodes are going to just be standalone.

So the groundwork has been put out and a few interesting touches raise eyebrows but the two plots aren't exactly leaving me breathless. Oh, and Andrea Thompson is an atrocious actress in this. I don't recall her being noteworthy but this is worse than I thought.

Should I grade these? I'll do a letter scale for now and maybe drop it later.

B-

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

It's funny. Today a show that deals with an arc will almost always throw in a ton of mythology elements in the pilot. B5 doesn't do that at all. It starts very quietly on the mythology front. After watching this a viewer could be forgiven for thinking most of the episodes are going to just be standalone.

Except that the pilot episode is The Gathering, isn't it?

I enjoyed the review by the way.

 

[Starkers]

I started my rewatch in January and finished it a month or so again. First time I'd watched it all over again in a loooong time.

And I still love it.

I think an issue with the first season is that it does feel like a lot of stand alone episodes...although many of them actually turn out to be arc related, you just don't realise it till season 2!

I'll keep an eye on this thread with interest. Be interesting to see what your view of Sheridan is. I remembered really liking him, but my rewatch has actually shown me this wasn't the whole story, and my views changed over the course of the four seasons he was in.

Agree about Andrea Thompson's acting. Nice to look at but poor at acting. On the whole though I don't think the acting overall is that bad, and there are some real standout for me (basically the amabassadors!) And I don't care that Jerry Doyle isn't a great actor, and in fact might be a bit of a dick, I still love Garrabaldi

On a sadder note it's a shame just how many of the cast aren't with us anymore

 

[Myasishchev]

The answer to Question 6 is "yes, absolutely." I mean, I like Babylon 5. It's good entertainment. There's nothing ruinous about it like Battlestar Galactica, or even attempted ruin like season 7 of DS9. But there's a lot of stupid stuff, it accumulates. The comedy is... very hit and miss, to be charitable. The antagonists make no real sense. Now, to be positive, Londo is excellent, I'll say that with passionate sincerity. G'Kar too.

But a guy plotted out an arc? Chris Rock sez: you don't get credit for doing what you're supposed to.

Squadron Supreme was pretty great, though. You know, what he finished of it. Oh.

P.S. walkabout walkabout walkabout walkabout. "Walkabout." Walkabout? Walkabout. Is Stephen still on walkabout? Could this truly have been in your plan, Lord?

 

[Jan]

Midnight on the Firing Line
Filmed 3rd, shown 1st

I think my posts are going to be more of an out-of-order commentary than reviews. Others have reviewed the episodes and shows better than I ever could. One thing that I can do is include a few of the "Joe Cuts", differences between the script and DVDs. Not all of them, since the finished project belongs to those who hired me, but a few might be of interest.

It's probably been two or three years since I fired up an episode just for fun rather than for work but when I watched "The Gathering" last week and "Midnight" last night it was like curling up with a favorite book that I've read many times but still love.

One thing I noticed is just how much background sound there was early on. Larry DiTillio was in charge of the background 'walla' (loudspeaker announcements, crowd conversations, etc.) and my current impression is that when he left, much of that fell by the wayside. We'll see if I'm right when we get to the third season. On a similar note, the music was much more noticable but I did enjoy hearing several of the passages I hadn't heard for a while.

Boatloads of exposition in this episode but the only one that made me really cringe was Garibaldi's "Oh, right, you're new here..."

In a lot of ways, I think Sinclair was better suited for command of the Station than Sheridan. Sinclair was able to play the politics game along with the ambassadors while Sheridan was an idealist. Wonder where and how Sinclair learned to play the game?

I agree with several others - the Talia character really didn't work well for me. And I really disliked that dress she wore.

Silly background observation: Several scenes in this episode were in the bar where green cocktail napkins with the EA logo appear. I have several of those napkins but I'd always assumed that they were from Earhart's bar since that was the officer's club and they had the EA logo.

Joe Cuts: (Note: In the first few scripts, Lyta was still the telepath as negotiations were still in progress with Pat Tallman) After Ivanova tells Lyta about her mother having been a telepath, Lyta asks if Ivanova is a telepath also. Susan replies that the telepath gene is recessive and skips generations.

Jan

 

[Forbin]

Oddly enough, my wife is currently engaged in her own full rewatch of B5. Without me! She's watching an episode a night in her craft room while she works on her dollhouses. She's almost finished. I poked my head in a couple of night ago just in time to see Byron explode. She cheered.

 

[OmahaStar]

Agree about Andrea Thompson's acting. Nice to look at but poor at acting. On the whole though I don't think the acting overall is that bad, and there are some real standout for me (basically the amabassadors!) And I don't care that Jerry Doyle isn't a great actor, and in fact might be a bit of a dick, I still love Garrabaldi

Could not agree more about Andrea Thompson. I've mentioned before that - for me - it always felt like she played every scene she was in, as though she was on the verge of tears. If she's not crying, she's getting ready to cry. And that just doesn't work for me.

For all the really good actors on the series, there were some that always leave me with a "What the fuck were they smoking?" feeling. Not just Andrea, but later the actress who plays Garibaldi's sort-of niece ... the "Drunk again, Uncle Mike?" one. She is just terrible.

But the one who takes the cake, for me, is the one who played Lyndisty ... supposed to be Vir's wife ... it's like she walked off an elementary school play, where she was playing one of the trees in the background. Seeing that actress on screen with the likes of Stephen Furst, Peter Jurasik, and Andreas Katsulas is almost ... offensive.

Oddly enough, my wife is currently engaged in her own full rewatch of B5. Without me! She's watching an episode a night ...

Tell your wife I love her.

 

[Starkers]

For all the really good actors on the series, there were some that always leave me with a "What the fuck were they smoking?" feeling. Not just Andrea, but later the actress who plays Garibaldi's sort-of niece ... the "Drunk again, Uncle Mike?" one. She is just terrible.

Oh yeah, she was just so rigid and uptight, as if she thought that was how a military officer should be, almost robotic!

I didn't think Vir's supposed wife (whatever happened to her?) was so bad, I mean she was supposed to be away with the fairies!

 

[OmahaStar]

she was supposed to be away with the fairies!

So there I am, surfing through the site for a few minutes before going back to work. I'm enjoying my morning tea, not thinking too much about what I'm going to read, when suddenly the tea that was just about to go down my throat ends up splattered on my keyboard. It takes a few moments to clean things up, then I re-read the post to make sure it was as funny as I initially thought.

It is.

I nominate that post for "Funniest post of the week."

It's funny, cuz it's true.

 

[Sindatur]

Agreed Andrea Thompson, never really worked for me, shame they ever replaced Pat Tallman in the first place (And to think Andrea Thmpson ended up leaving because her head got too big for her britches, thinking she should be the big star of the show).

And yea, Lyndisty and Leanna were both pretty bad.

 

[Jan]

Agreed Andrea Evans, never really worked for me, shame they ever replaced Pat Tallman in the first place (And to think Andrea Evans ended up leaving because her head got too big for her britches, thinking she should be the big star of the show.

Andrea Thompson was her name. It came out in the recent "Pleasure Thresholds" book by Pat Tallman that what JMS had previously thought had been an issue with pay negotiation that kept Pat from taking the offer for the series was actually a likely case of studio shenanigans (read: she didn't do the 'casting couch' thing).

And yea, Lyndisty and Leanna were both pretty bad.

I didn't care for Leanna but I agree that Lyndisty was played well as being totally out there, nuts, insane, coo-coo...well, you get the idea.

Jan

 

[Sindatur]

Agreed Andrea Evans, never really worked for me, shame they ever replaced Pat Tallman in the first place (And to think Andrea Evans ended up leaving because her head got too big for her britches, thinking she should be the big star of the show.

Andrea Thompson was her name. It came out in the recent "Pleasure Thresholds" book by Pat Tallman that what JMS had previously thought had been an issue with pay negotiation that kept Pat from taking the offer for the series was actually a likely case of studio shenanigans (read: she didn't do the 'casting couch' thing).

And yea, Lyndisty and Leanna were both pretty bad.

I didn't care for Leanna but I agree that Lyndisty was played well as being totally out there, nuts, insane, coo-coo...well, you get the idea.

Jan

Thanks for the correction Jan, don't know how my fingers typed Evans?

 

[sidious618]

A mention of humor in B5 came up on the last page so I'll mention that Londo's "Here open my wrist" line made me laugh. On the other hand Ivanova's line about Santiago having no chin and Clark having several was... odd. And weirdly played.

 

[Jan]

On the other hand Ivanova's line about Santiago having no chin and Clark having several was... odd. And weirdly played.

This was the Ivanova who had a stick up her...er...spine in the beginning. In the script book version of the script, she actually quoted a regulation back at Sinclair about not being required to express political views to a superior officer before she told who she planned to vote for. I have a feeling that it may have been filmed and then edited which didn't help anything.

Jan

 

[sidious618]

On the other hand Ivanova's line about Santiago having no chin and Clark having several was... odd. And weirdly played.

This was the Ivanova who had a stick up her...er...spine in the beginning. In the script book version of the script, she actually quoted a regulation back at Sinclair about not being required to express political views to a superior officer before she told who she planned to vote for. I have a feeling that it may have been filmed and then edited which didn't help anything.

Jan

Yeah, Ivanova is definitely a repressed character but what was weird is that it sounded like she should've been making a joke yet Claudia Christian (who was otherwise quite good) didn't play it that way and Sinclair looked similarly unamused. Odd scene.

 

[Starkers]

she was supposed to be away with the fairies!

So there I am, surfing through the site for a few minutes before going back to work. I'm enjoying my morning tea, not thinking too much about what I'm going to read, when suddenly the tea that was just about to go down my throat ends up splattered on my keyboard. It takes a few moments to clean things up, then I re-read the post to make sure it was as funny as I initially thought.

It is.

I nominate that post for "Funniest post of the week."

It's funny, cuz it's true.

That's not even a phrase I use very often!