Pliskin Posted September 8, 2015 Share Posted September 8, 2015 A View from the Gallery was a lot of fun. Too bad the two characters were never seen again after that episode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoreOrLess Posted September 8, 2015 Share Posted September 8, 2015 As far as the Shadow war being "rushed" the comparison I always give is the domination war in DS9 that I think dragged on for far too long. B5 handled the build up slowly with losts of mystery to support it but when things were out in the open it was down to business rather than trying to draw things out until they became stale. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
felice Posted September 8, 2015 Share Posted September 8, 2015 Bester didn't do it personally.And it quite possibly didn't happen at all; Bester seemed to relish the idea, which perhaps fits better with it being a lie intended to upset the B5 crew. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bonesy Posted September 9, 2015 Share Posted September 9, 2015 Ivanova specifically tells Garibaldi that Bester is trying to upset him so that he'll be easier to read. They were being protected by some Mimbari telepaths, but I think it wasn't a sure thing that they could completely stifle Bester. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shryke Posted September 9, 2015 Share Posted September 9, 2015 Finally back at a real keyboard, so some comments on S4 and S5. Spoilers Ahead I guess. The thing to remember is that S4 was maybe gonna be the last one so shit from S5 got moved to S4. The specific things effected by this are the Civil War arc getting rushed and the Byron arc getting stretched out, along with more stand-alone filler episodes in S5 then there would have been otherwise. S4 was apparently supposed to end with the Sheridan Interrogation episode. The Shadow War wasn't rushed though as far as we know. It ends the way it does because it's ending is not supposed to be the big climax, the same way the end of the Civil War isn't supposed to be the big climax of the series. This is also why you have the Byron and Centauri arcs in S5 setting up future conflicts that we never see in the series. One of the big ideas in the series, maybe the biggest, is that history doesn't end. One conflict just leaves behind ruins that become the impetus and the stage for the next one. The start of the series is a fallout from the Earth/Mimbari war and the Norn/Centauri conflict. The first leads directly into the Mimbari civil war and the second reignites because of the consequences of the last one. The Shadow War is an old argument between races that plays out again and again. And combines with the fallout of the Earth/Mimbari war to lead to the Earth Civil War. And of course the fallout of the Shadow War is Byron and the Centauri issues that lead into later conflicts like the Telepath War and the Drahk War and almost certainly on into the future. The series ends with the main crew leaving the last Babylon station and not with the end of conflicts because conflicts go on. The Interstellar Alliance doesn't even really end conflicts for a second. S5 was supposed to wrap up the civil war arc, show the founding of the IA and then show the way everything we'd been through was just the stage for more down the line. The end of each season is not really meant for great triumphant endings, but for moments of transition as things change and shift as the universe is want to. The Shadow War and also the Civil War were supposed to end fairly early in the seasons after they are really introduced so that it's obvious how shit just keeps moving on after they are done. And with the Shadow War specifically the whole point is that once the younger races have figured shit out, the jig is up. That's why the Vorlons and Shadows move on to destroying planets and that's why at the end they just give up. Because as Sheridan tells them, it's over now. Everyone knows. The game can't continue short of complete annihilation of all of the younger races in the entire known universe. There's no great story left to tell at this point so the story wraps it all up and moves on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted September 9, 2015 Share Posted September 9, 2015 Thanks for the heads up. Are they a good read? Yes, Peter David's a pretty good writer and they're all based on J. Michael Straczynski's outlines so they're all true to the story. David also wrote two of the TV episodes (Soul Mates and There All the Honour Lies) and uses the books to explore some of the ideas in his episodes, like the eventual fate of Londo's wives. the Telepath War is dealt with in the Psy Corps novels, and the Drakh War in the Crusade spin-off and Legion of Fire novels, right? Sort of. [spoiler]The Telepath War is not dealt with at all. The Psi Corps novels sort of wrap around it, with Book 1 taking place in the 22nd Century and explaining how the Vorlons seeded telepathy amongst humanity and Books 2 and 3 dealing with Bester's eventual fate. The war itself was off limits, because JMS was still hoping to make his movie based on it. The Drakh are dealt with pretty finally in the Legions of Fire novels.[/spoiler] Does anyone know why the sudden change in Drakh design though? The direction and the costume were both really off for the Drakh's first appearance. This was during Season 4 when the pedal was all the way to the metal so they couldn't fix it and had to bodge it. [spoiler]The novels suggest there are different kinds of Drakh, just as the Keepers are a distinct sub-species. I think there was some waffle about the Minbari recognising the Drakh (possibly with a different name) from the last Shadow War, like they did with the Streibs in All Alone in the Night, so they used a different-looking creature as their ambassador.[/spoiler] Do we know what happened to Talia in-universe after they fired the actress? They didn't fire her, she quit. And no, like Lennier's fate it's one of the few things we never got conclusive closure on. Bester's hints to her fate in Dust to Dust may have been him just riling up Garibaldi. [spoiler]At one stage apparently they were talking about using her Ironheart-gifted powers to suggest she could break free of the new personality. However, after Andrea Thompson left JMS was "honked off" and refused to let her come back to wrap up her storyline, even though she was up for it. Y'know, fuck the fans and foreshadowing.[/spoiler] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pliskin Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 Thanks for the info! Talia: [spoiler]Yeah, from what I read on the Lurker's guide, he was very upset with her. It seems that she wasn't a "team player". She always asked for more focus on her during the episodes and was a pain in the ass for him. That's why I thought he got pissed off and fired her, but I can see how her quitting would piss him off even more, to the extent of refusing to do anything with her in the future. I guess he wasn't very proud of the Ironheart thing either, it was I guess just a way of replacing Lyta, since Talia didn't have a contact with the Vorlons and they needed an overpowered Telepath to replace Lyta for the rest of the storyline. But since he got to bring back Lyta... he just erased everything and resumed the initial plan with the Vorlons... which is frankly way better than Ironheart.[/spoiler] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 Talia: [spoiler]Yeah, from what I read on the Lurker's guide, he was very upset with her. It seems that she wasn't a "team player". She always asked for more focus on her during the episodes and was a pain in the ass for him. That's why I thought he got pissed off and fired her, but I can see how her quitting would piss him off even more, to the extent of refusing to do anything with her in the future. I guess he wasn't very proud of the Ironheart thing either, it was I guess just a way of replacing Lyta, since Talia didn't have a contact with the Vorlons and they needed an overpowered Telepath to replace Lyta for the rest of the storyline. But since he got to bring back Lyta... he just erased everything and resumed the initial plan with the Vorlons... which is frankly way better than Ironheart.[/spoiler] It's very important to remember when discussing B5 that the primary resource for information on the show is JMS. Like, 80-85% of everything that's been said officially online with regards to the show comes from him. He's very much gotten to control the narrative over what happened on the show. That's great in most instances, but it does cause issues when JMS is mistaken over something, or his ego is in play, or something happened that he was unaware about but he stormed in and gave his opinion anyway to later find out he was wrong. The three big examples of that were why Claudia Christian left as Ivanova, why Foundation Imaging stopped doing the CGI after Season 3 and why Michael O'Hare left: in each instance JMS gave a view that was at odds with everyone else, and later on the alternate view was proven to be correct (although in the case of the O'Hare thing that was him deliberately lying to protect O'Hare's reputation due to medical issues). As a result I would advise caution in automatically believing JMS about everything. In the case of Andrea Thompson, she was only doing a few episodes a year as Talia but as a paid recurring character, had to keep her schedule clear and couldn't take other work that might conflict. She was being considered for a role on JAG (IIRC) which would be an actual series regular and she'd get more money for it. Given how many episodes Talia was appearing in per season in a key role (6-7, usually), they might have been able to work around it but it would have meant re-employing her as a recurring guest star, which would have been more expensive. I believe her preference was to remain on B5, because she was established there, she liked the show and her co-stars, she was married to Jerry Doyle (Garibaldi) at the time and so on. But she could only justify staying on the show and missing out another, bigger role, if she had a larger role on B5. Since JMS couldn't do that - fair enough because it was an ensemble - she chose to leave. It's pretty much the same thing, but her POV made more sense from a career perspective whilst JMS's POV makes it sound like she was being unreasonable (truth is a three-edged sword, remember?). Ironically, when they brough Patricia Tallman back in she had a pre-existing committment to the Star Trek shows as a stuntwoman, so they had to work around her schedule from that series anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pliskin Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 I see, thanks. He's pretty much the Lindelof of his era, I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bonesy Posted September 11, 2015 Share Posted September 11, 2015 JMS had a thing for Patricia after all. Just saying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pliskin Posted September 12, 2015 Share Posted September 12, 2015 Wow, I'm just completely lost on how to watch Crusade... There are apparently 4 different watch orders. This is insane. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon AS Posted September 12, 2015 Share Posted September 12, 2015 I don't think the show is worth it to put that much thought into it. I'd say just go with the orignial broadcast order, at least that way you won't have to worry about getting distracted by random uniform changes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted September 12, 2015 Share Posted September 12, 2015 Or you could take my stance and just not watch it. I watched three episodes (IIRC) and thought it was one of the very worst TV shows I'd ever watched. And B5 is the biggest thing I've ever been a fan of, GoT/ASoIaF included in that. I just read online summaries and realised I hadn't missed anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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