B5 - what was the turning point for you?
Daryl Nash
Line. I had been aware of Babylon 5 for about a year before the pilot even
aired, when Joe began talking about the show on GEnie (all the Grid Epsilon
Irregulars raise your hands). I taped the pilot, and tried to be enthusiastic,
but it honestly did not live up to the expectations that Joe's hype online had
instilled in me. Still, I was watching breathlessly one year later when the
first episode aired. It was everything I had hoped for. The conflict between
Londo and G'Kar was wonderful drama. But the biggest revelation from that one
episode, which is more difficult to notice these many years later since there
have been so many examples in later episodes, was the denoument. The simple
fact that there was another act after the major crisis of the episode had been
resolved was wonderful--instead of ending on the height of the conflict, it
ends with quiet, important moments between the characters.
It wasn't until The Coming of Shadows that I realized that Babylon 5 was
perhaps the best SF TV show ever, but I knew that it was something special with
the very first episode.
Daryl
emma...@panix.com wrote:
> I've thought about this off and on over the years - at some point for me
> I realized that Babylon 5 was going to be something exceptional. I know
> that one of the elements I found intriguing in the pilot was the way
> Kosh was presented - it added mystery in a way I found appealing. But
> the real turning point for me had to be in "Mind War" at the very end
> when G'Kar parallels human understanding of the Sigma 957 creatures with
> an ant's understanding of humans. That was the point where Babylon 5 really
> became a story that *appreciated* the mysteries of space, not just a
> story that happened to *be* in space.
>
> I was wondering if others have such turning points - when for you did
> the story become something worth following and telling people about?
>
> emmanuel
Kerry Casey
> .................But the biggest revelation from that one
> episode, which is more difficult to notice these many years later since
there
> have been so many examples in later episodes, was the denoument. The
simple
> fact that there was another act after the major crisis of the episode had
been
> resolved was wonderful--instead of ending on the height of the conflict,
it
> ends with quiet, important moments between the characters.
>
> It wasn't until The Coming of Shadows that I realized that Babylon 5 was
> perhaps the best SF TV show ever, but I knew that it was something special
with
> the very first episode.
That also was one of the (many) things that struck me the first time I
watched B5. The denouement would come, I'd be waiting for the end credits,
then I would look at my watch and realise there was over ten minutes still
to go. After years of watching Star Trek, I was conditioned to expect an
episode to end within a minute or two of the denouement (which never failed
to annoy me). The different pacing was refreshing. Some of the best moments
in B5 episodes are in those quiet moments after the denouement (reflection,
consequences, change)
Kerry
--
Kerry Casey
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
E-mail kca...@bom.gov.au
j...@gte.net
Kurtz wrote:
>
> "Flameholder" <ni...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:4JP05.10132$hp4.2...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
> > Babylon Squared
> >
> > That's when I realized the show was actually going somewhere.
> >
> >
> >
>
> I never thought we'd ever see it again. The story in "Babylon Squared"
> led you to believe it was needed in the *future*, especially with the
> old Sinclair appearing. So I figured it was just one of those things -
> B4 vanishes, and re-appears way in the future in the final battle
> against the Shadows, just in the nick of time.
>
> You know, before Babylon 5, I was just so used to story lines along
> the style of Trek. You know, story lines getting dropped, aliens you
> meet once and never again, technology appearing for one episode
> and the reset button. Characters who can be relied upon to never
> change, major players who will survive (because you know they can't
> die) and the major episode conflict resolved for the better of everyone.
> It was one of the things I liked the most about B5 - characters *change*,
> people can die, you can't depend on your friends or allies, and sometimes
> how you deal with failure and defeat and catastrophe is more interesting
> than always winning out in the end.
The way I described B5 to those who hadn't seen it was "Star Trek is
the idealized future we would like. Babylon 5 is the future we are
more likely to get."
Jon
j...@gte.net
interesting, with good possibilities. When the actual series showed
up over a year later, I started watching and taping them. Gradually
they got better, and I good hooked. I don't believe that I can point
to a particular episode or scene. Like a good book, it just reeled me
in until I would come home late from a rehearsal, rewind the tape, and
watch the new episode even though it meant being late for work in the
morning. B5 hooked me like nothing else ever did. I cried at the end
of Sleeping in Light, which I didn't do for anything else ever on TV.
JMS may think he is just learning to write well, but to me he is an
absolute genius.
(That does not mean every episode was an individual gem. It means the
series as a whole was better than any other ever.)
Jon
Jms at B5
>the idealized future we would like. Babylon 5 is the future we are
>more likely to get."
I once got an email from somebody at the Fermi Lab, who saw on a bulletin board
there, "Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
jms
(jms...@aol.com)
B5 Official Fan Club at:
http://www.thestation.com
(all message content (c) 2000 by
synthetic worlds, ltd., permission
to reprint specifically denied to
SFX Magazine)
David Moore
chronology, but I think it went like this:
I really didn't respond all that well to the pilot,
nor to the first couple of episodes, and so I (Dave,
you idiot) stopped watching.
Then I happened to catch "By Any Means Necessary,"
in which a commander of a major military installation
is essentially ordered to be a bastard, and instead
turns the order against his masters to do what is
right, at no small cost to himself.
"Whoa," says I, "A dock worker's strike? Star Fleet
would never allow things to get that far out of hand
and if they did, they would /never/ be that nasty,
and if they were, they would realize they were wrong,
and reconcile with The Captain, and we'd never, EVER,
hear about it again.
"This, though...This is going to cost Sinclair. This
CANNOT be fixed with the Reset Button. This show has
TEETH. Maybe I should start watching again...."
So I caught maybe every third or fourth show for
the rest of the season, and although I was intrigued,
I didn't like the acting or the dialog, and the CGI
was kinda cheezy, and so I (Dave, you idiot) didn't
invest enough time to get a sense of the arc.
Then, early in the second season, I think, there
was a scene in a garden, and I said, "Hmm, this
space station must be kind of big." And at the end
of the scene, the camera pulled up, and up, and up,
so you could see that the garden was in the middle
of a huge grassy field, with, by the Lord Harry,
dirt trails cutting through it. "Dirt trails on
a space station? I don't think there's any dirt
anywhere in the entire trekiverse!"
That was when I /knew/. I knew the station was big,
the B5 universe was big, the story was big; I knew
the people making this show understood they were
creating a universe, they cared about that universe
and the people in it, and they were doing their
damnedest to make it as real as they could with what
they had, and they were getting better at it as they
went along.
I never looked back.
Babylon 5 became the one TV show I have ever watched
passionately, abandoning friends, family and work to
catch the current episode.
I'll never forget how gods-be-feathered priviliged
I felt to watch "The Coming of Shadows," certainly
the best hour of SF ever televised, and up in the
top 10 of best TV, period.
I'll never forget suddenly realizing, "Hey! I bet
there's a newsgroup for this show!" and being
totally blown away on discovering the actual
producer of the show actually talking on a daily
basis about what he was trying to do and how
he was doing it.
I'll never forget watching Delenn watching that final
sunrise, and giving Joe my tears, not because he
manipulated them out of me, as many shows had done
before, but because he earned them.
Gods, I love this show.
Thanks, Joe.
--
Dave Moore == DJM...@UH.EDU == I speak for me.
"Out of the darkness of the prehistory of the human race,
a superb and splendid hero emerged, to do battle with the
monstrous forces of evil." -- Lin Carter on Beowulf
Pelzo63
>"Dirt trails on
>a space station? I don't think there's any dirt
>anywhere in the entire trekiverse!"
yes, there's dirt in trekiverse, just watch closely when one of the Conn panels
blow up, dirt and rocks fly out of it. <g>
--Chris
no, really, i'm serious!
TN...@aol.com
several times, but everything seemed off to me -- the acting, the dialogue...
still don't much care for it.
I had given up on B5; then one day by chance I caught the second half of
the ep. (sorry, I don't know the ep. names) which ends with G'Kar looking
in his ancient book at pictures of the Shadows from 1000 yrs. ago. That
was the moment for me. I need a bit of a mystery to keep me watching long
enough to get interested in the characters, and once I start to care about
the characters, I'm hooked. That scene with G'Kar and the book sparked
the mystery, and not too long after that I was addicted.
TNW
Pål Are Nordal
>
> I had given up on B5; then one day by chance I caught the second half of
> the ep. (sorry, I don't know the ep. names) which ends with G'Kar looking
> in his ancient book at pictures of the Shadows from 1000 yrs. ago.
That would be 3.1 "Matters of Honor".
--
Donate free food with a simple click: http://www.thehungersite.com/
Pål Are Nordal
a_b...@bigfoot.com