Babylon 5: What should One watch?

[Alexa]

A ghost in the machine?
Husband and I are watching B5 every night. Enjoyable, esp seeing who can quote what.

FB has palled for me, I mostly read my groups and use it to stay in touch with family.

[Looney]

HA! Are you keeping score on the quotes?

[Ubik]

I kinda wish I'd never watched Crusade, or LOTR... Lost Tales was also pretty awful but almost worth it for the updated CGI.



The series proper, In the Beginning and The Gathering are superb. Nothing else was really needed.

[Alexa]

Originally Posted by Looney

HA! Are you keeping score on the quotes?

No...he could not win. I like to be nice to him...

[Looney]

Originally Posted by Ubik

I kinda wish I'd never watched Crusade, or LOTR... Lost Tales was also pretty awful but almost worth it for the updated CGI.

I don't get this. You'll have to explain why you wish you had never watched CRUSADE. And if you'd never seen LOTR you would eventually have watched it out of curiosity. I don't get THE LOST TALES comment either. I agree that the first half is kind of a waste of time, but I feel the implications of the second half make it all worth while. We find out that there is another person Delenn and Sheridan took under their wings. So many possibilities there.

Originally Posted by Alexa

No...he could not win. I like to be nice to him...

LOL I'm glad you are able to be nice to him, but what happens when he misquotes?

[Triple F]

John Copeland summed it up pretty well. How it is difficult to make lightning strike twice, and how jms hadn’t had anything like the same amount of time to work out the Crusade story. . . I know it’s something I can harp on about, but a tv show is also a lot more than simply the vision of one man – it’s visual story telling - and by the time you got to Crusade a lot of creative types who had been involved with developing the show were no longer around.

Crusade had potential but it felt largely mailed in with regard to the writing, acting and especially the visual FX – the music was a pretty big mis-step as well. If I remember right even jms said something to the effect that returning to the ‘verse was an error with hindsight, and the choice of music was not a good one. By the time you get to LoTR jms is basically on his own, and it showed BIG time – there was a lot of rehashing of ideas going on.

Lost Tales was better (yet another not so subtle link with Tolkien), but that was largely down to the CG lead being a fan of the show and even though he wasn’t asked to, he introduced the new updated ship designs – and did a LOT of unpaid overtime to make things look as good as they could (the addition of the Warlock was his idea as well). . . That kind of commitment (severely lacking with LoTR) was almost like having some of the old original team back onboard . . and it resulted in some impressive visuals.

[Springer]

Originally Posted by Triple F

Lost Tales was better (yet another not so subtle link with Tolkien), but that was largely down to the CG lead being a fan of the show and even though he wasn’t asked to, he introduced the new updated ship designs – and did a LOT of unpaid overtime to make things look as good as they could (the addition of the Warlock was his idea as well). . . That kind of commitment (severely lacking with LoTR) was almost like having some of the old original team back onboard . . and it resulted in some impressive visuals.

I didn't realise that. The CGI person did a really great job. Hat's off to them.

With regards to the poll, if someone is going to sit down and watch the entire five years, they might as well watch all of the rest hadn't they? Surely they'd be curious.

I haven't watched Legend of the Rangers since it was first released, so my memory of it is fuzzy. I remember thinking it was okay, a little pedestrian, not impressed by the mysterious baddies and the weapon system was embarrassingly bad, in concept and in practice. But hey, it had G'Kar.

Lost Tales, I Iiked the Sheridan story. I'd have been happy with more instalments like that.

Crusade is a mix. Sometimes I watch it and think it's decent, other times I watch it and think it's not so great. And it's hard to disentangle exactly what's going wrong, given the studio interference. I thought JMS' writing for Crusade was by and large good, particularly the characterisation; Path of Sorrows is a good example.The virtual sets were really bad though and just made the show look cheap – something I never felt with B5. And yes, the music was dreadful, though I think JMS realised his mistake. I wonder, if there had been a second season, whether Franke would have come back. He could still have scored Crusade in a different style – his style kept changing throughout B5, just compare season one's music to season five's.

As for the TV movies, I like them all, even some parts of River of Souls (I think I'm in a minority in that I enjoyed Martin Sheen's performance – it's a little odd, but you can see he's trying to get into the part and do something different).

[GeoKuutio]

Originally Posted by Springer

Crusade is a mix. Sometimes I watch it and think it's decent, other times I watch it and think it's not so great.

I actually enjoy the atmosphere of the Crusade a lot. It had a completely different vibe than B5. Not to mention highly likable characters and crew members which I grew fond of quite quickly. Sure some the episodes were quite sub-par quality wise, but sill Crusade worked well. Even for people who weren't so fond of B5.

[Triple F]

Originally Posted by Springer

I didn't realise that. The CGI person did a really great job. Hat's off to them.

Yup,
http://www.b5scrolls.com/#Screen1_18_5

[Looney]

Originally Posted by Triple F

John Copeland summed it up pretty well. How it is difficult to make lightning strike twice, and how jms hadn’t had anything like the same amount of time to work out the Crusade story. . . I know it’s something I can harp on about, but a tv show is also a lot more than simply the vision of one man – it’s visual story telling - and by the time you got to Crusade a lot of creative types who had been involved with developing the show were no longer around.

Yes it is interesting to look at the history of the show as it pertains to the chronology versus the team making it.

Originally Posted by Triple F

Crusade had potential but it felt largely mailed in with regard to the writing, acting and especially the visual FX – the music was a pretty big mis-step as well. If I remember right even jms said something to the effect that returning to the ‘verse was an error with hindsight, and the choice of music was not a good one.

A question I wonder is did he ever have to put more effort into the overall arc for CRUSADE before it was dead in the water? What I mean is that we often discuss getting an ending for CRUSADE in some other form, ie a Comic or Radio Drama or whatever. So did JMS ever take the time to sit down and right out the rest of the story? Or did he at least know how he wanted the story to end? Or did the cancellation mean the end of the process of finishing the story?

If JMS said "returning to the 'verse" was an error then he is in error. What he probably should have said was returning to the 'verse without having the time to be better prepared was and error.

And I definitely feel the music was a misstep. I think it is fine as music, but I just don't think it fits the show.

Originally Posted by Triple F

Lost Tales was better (yet another not so subtle link with Tolkien), but that was largely down to the CG lead being a fan of the show and even though he wasn’t asked to, he introduced the new updated ship designs – and did a LOT of unpaid overtime to make things look as good as they could (the addition of the Warlock was his idea as well). . . That kind of commitment (severely lacking with LoTR) was almost like having some of the old original team back onboard . . and it resulted in some impressive visuals.

Yes it did.