• The new B5TV.COM is here. We've replaced our 16 year old software with flashy new XenForo install. Registration is open again. Password resets will work again. More info here.

The Illusion of Truth - Worst Episode?

I agree with you. This ep held absolutely NO surprises for me. 100% predictable, which I can't say about any other ep. Unlike Jan, I was saddly aware of this sort of "journalism" long before I saw the ep.

Exactly...it made its point in the first minute of the broadcast...we didn't have to see ALL of the propaganda...oh well, just finished Atonement and loved it.
 
Exactly...it made its point in the first minute of the broadcast...we didn't have to see ALL of the propaganda...oh well, just finished Atonement and loved it.
That's just it, though. From the start B5 has shown us the whole process of how and why things happen as they do and the manipulation of the media was a big part of that process.

Jan
 
Yes, when the episode begins, we know what's going to happen with the broadcast.

That is the whole point

And really all we knew is that they'd screw over B5. But did you all actually predict that they'd come up with that whole genetic hybrid conspiracy theory?
 
It wasn't so much that we as the viewers knew that they'd twist it all beyond belief .. it's that Sheridan didn't. That he thought there was some hope for a "fair" story there. That just didn't make sense to me.

Aside from that though, I could actually enjoy it, seeing the twisting in action. And I guess one could say that Sheridan just assumed they had nothing to lose.
 
Who could forget that?


(Me, apparently. That was a fantastic moment that somehow slipped my mind...)
 
It wasn't so much that we as the viewers knew that they'd twist it all beyond belief .. it's that Sheridan didn't. That he thought there was some hope for a "fair" story there. That just didn't make sense to me.
<snip>
And I guess one could say that Sheridan just assumed they had nothing to lose.

No, I think Sheridan just didn't think they'd twist it completely beyond belief. He didn't think it'd be THAT bad.


BTW, further B5 Universe "worsts":
Worst B5 Universe Movie: "To Live and Die in Starlight" (B5:LotR pilot).
Worst B5 Novel: "Clark's Law" / "The Touch of Your Shadow, the Whisper of Your Name" (tie)
Worst Novelization: "A Call to Arms"


Bests? ....
Best TV Episode: Impossible to pick, because there are so many that are A++++.
Best TV Movie: "In the Beginning" / "A Call to Arms" (tie)
Best Novel: Centauri trilogy / Technomage trilogy (tie)
Best Novelization: "In the Beginning"
 
How can worst B5 novel be anything but "Personal Agendas"?

"Personal Agendas" was short and harmless. People make too much of a deal about the humor in it.

OTOH, "Clark's Law" and "The Touch of Your Shadow, the Whisper of Your Name" are like inoperable, malignant tumors that cause a long, painful death.
 
Sheridan's naivety is what made Illusion work. It's that quality about him that makes him such a great hero- he's really an innocent soul.

By that episode, he was a master of military strategy, ethics, leadership, etc. But he was still a little naive about politics and very naive about propoganda, because he just had no experience with it. What ISN did was so completely outside of his way of thinking.
 
I thought it was a bit of a sly dig at Fox and found it quite amusing.I think the response is what the story was about it,it has a recurring theme with the voice of the resistance.

Not sure what my worse would be but never considered any as bad.
 
I thought it was a bit of a sly dig at Fox and found it quite amusing.

According to wikipedia, Illusion of Truth aired only four months after the initial air of Fox news. Especially considering how much time it takes from script penning to airing, and how Fox news would not have been big within a few days on the air, I really doubt there is a connection there, it's not like Fox news invented the concept of propaganda...
 
According to wikipedia, Illusion of Truth aired only four months after the initial air of Fox news. Especially considering how much time it takes from script penning to airing, and how Fox news would not have been big within a few days on the air, I really doubt there is a connection there, it's not like Fox news invented the concept of propaganda...

Ironic, isn't it- this is the one time where CH could've made an analogy to Nazi Germany (with their propoganda techniques) and it would actually have made some sense, and ruins it by connecting it to something that didn't exist yet when the episode was made.

And even if one did want to make that analogy, FNC doesn't do what IoT did. Fox is more like the earlier episode about journalists, where they had some real footage, presented it as filmed, and then had pundits oversimplify it to nonsense.

If you want to compare IoT to real life, you can point to some of the anti-semetic propoganda of the Russian empire, the catholic church, or for something more modern, extremist Muslim terrorist recruiting propoganda. For a taste of it in our own country, there was the Hearst papers.
 
I can't see that kind of propaganda going through in a country like the US at all. Where you do, actually, have freedom of press, no matter how much some American publications can be full of crap. If you were to publish this kind of complete fabricated rubbish in the US, everyone would be free to check your story, and debunk it within days. I don't for a second believe that Illusion of Truth was aimed at propaganda as encountered in democratic societies. It's propaganda in countries where the powers controll all media, such as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.
 
I can't see that kind of propaganda going through in a country like the US at all. Where you do, actually, have freedom of press, no matter how much some American publications can be full of crap. If you were to publish this kind of complete fabricated rubbish in the US, everyone would be free to check your story, and debunk it within days. I don't for a second believe that Illusion of Truth was aimed at propaganda as encountered in democratic societies. It's propaganda in countries where the powers controll all media, such as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

Exactly.
That's why the criticism "they already had one episode about journalism" makes no sense. The first one was about how it works in a democratic society, the second is about how a fascist power abuses propoganda.
 
Exactly.
That's why the criticism "they already had one episode about journalism" makes no sense. The first one was about how it works in a democratic society, the second is about how a fascist power abuses propoganda.


Yea, it's the otherside of the coin, and the payoff of the Journalism arc, like War Without End was to B-Squared
 
I'm afraid that the point of the episode is that it CAN happen in a democratic society or any society and that unless the population is aware and on guard, that it will.

Jan
 

Latest posts

Members online

No members online now.
Back
Top