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Babylon 5 The Gathering Turned 30

You are welcome!

SO apologies for the slow response, but shortly after posting that video I fell very ill.

QUESTION (Not that I expect anyone here knows much about how YouTube works.)

Has anyone ever heard of YouTube deleting views? That video had a view count over 600 on the first day, but by the next morning 545 views had been deleted. Now someone told me that Spotify will delete activity if the account gets greatly more activity than is normal for that User. So I assumed YouTube deleted the views because it was greatly more that the channel usually gets or they detected a bunch of Bot views or something. BUT then a few days later on Saturday night the view count was back up to 353 views and by the next morning the count had been reset to 321. As you can tell it hasn't recovered much in the week since then, but what is going on?! What is the point in posting a video if YouTube can just subtract view counts?! :wtf:

If anyone has an answer please let me know. Thank you!
 
HAPPY 33RD Birthday To THE GATHERING (1993). I was reminded by Jan, and my Calendar. Does anyone else still use a physical Calendar? Mine says THE GATHERING AIRED 33TH years ago today. 😁

WATCHING IT NOW.... Should I do a POLL? I was thinking just this morning about what my favorite part of THE GATHERING is? For me I would say it is the first half an hour or so. I just still love the introduction to the Station and all the characters and just all the setup exposition. I love other parts of it as well, but just that whole setup really gets me. 😍
 
Special edition or original version?

As I mentioned in the YouTube thread, I recently watched the special edition and it was so much better than I remembered, even Christopher Franke's music which felt a bit subdued and recycled, though I still feel he should have gone for a style closer to his season 1 music.

I always felt in the original version at least, that B5 was much more on the frontier than it was in the regular series (the special edition used the updated effects shots that showed the station to be much busier). And I love Michael O'Hare's performance in this, you can tell that both himself as an actor and Sinclair as a character were so proud to be commander of the station.

It also feels like a little insight into the B5 that never was, really fascinating. I wonder what the show would have been like if subsequent seasons had gone ahead with Dr Kyle, Takashima, Lyta in from the beginning, Carolyn (and what was the nature of her relationship with Delenn?).

I miss the strobe lights filtering into C&C from spacecraft flying into dock.

In the UK we didn't get the pilot screened on TV until the run-up to season 2 - we started with Midnight on the Firing Line - so it always felt a little weird watching The Gathering after the fact. There had been a VHS release before that, however, though I guess most viewers didn't have that.

Happy birthday B5!
 
Wasn't Takashima supposed to have been The 😮 Traitor later in Season 1?

In the commentary (?) it might have been mentioned that if you watch when the Mystery Assassin enters Varner's room to get the Changeling Net (and kill Varner?) around 14 1/2 minutes-ish in, you can see the screen display "Laurel Takashima Cleared".

Edit: With a teeny reminder that while Roku and Tubi have the Special Edition version "for free", the Prime Video Version is the original 1993 pilot.

LT.jpg
 
ORIGINAL CUT. You know I really like how very early 1990s the music in the original cut is, but WOW does it really point to how Franke's music added a unique element to the series. 🎼🎶🎵🎼

I don't recall so someone else should speak up here. Has JMS officially said that Laurel's name on that screen was really a clue? I'm pretty sure I remember JMS saying that Laurel being The Sleeper was a POSSIBLE thread, but not a guarantee. My memory is shaky on this one though.

And I'm not positive, but I believe there are a few times in the series where the strobe lights of ships entering the docking bay can be seen. I don't remember specific episodes.

There are some major strikes for Looney's memory. 🤪
 
It was meant to have been Takashima who would shoot Garibaldi in Chrysalis, and then her assistant, one Susan Ivanova, would take her place in season 2. The reasoning partially being Tamlyn Tomita had a burgeoning movie career and JMS didn't think they'd be able to keep her longer than one season anyway.
 

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