The Babylon 5 Rewatch Thread

[Werthead]

Let the fun commence!

I couldn't find a copy of The Gathering so screw it, let's jump straight into Season 1.

1.01: Midnight on the Firing Line

This was the first episode of B5 I ever watched, at 6pm on Monday, 16 May 1994 when it was shown on Channel 4. I was fifteen. Yeah, this show had a big impact on me.

So, the Narns (lizard guys) have captured an agricultural colony belonging to the Centauri (guys with crazy hair). We find out through some extremely subtle worldbuilding (about as subtle as being whacked in face with a brick) that the Centauri used to control the Narn homeworld and oppressed them. The Narns are out for revenge and are taking advantage of a weak Centauri government that is determined to avoid war. At the same time, a group of pirates are hitting ships bound for the station and B5's fighter wings can't cover all the routes that are in danger. Finally, a representative of the Psi Corps, Talia Winters, has arrived on the station but is having difficulty checking in with the new executive officer, Lt. Commander Ivanova.

This is a mixed first episode which suffers from some pretty heinous problems, such as some amazingly clunky dialogue and chunks of exposition that are almost jaw-dropping in how contrived they are (Garibaldi and Londo spontaneously having a conversation about what happened when the humans and Centauri first met is eye-wateringly bad). OTOH, JMS suddenly turns it around with some fantastic dialogue (such as Londo dismissing diplomacy as "a paper fantasy," and Kosh's proclamation of the Centauri and the Narn as "a dying race," to Sinclair's bewilderment) and G'Kar's superb turning-of-the-tables on Londo at the council meeting. The CGI is still pretty impressive: it's only in the last couple of years that the average desktop PC has been able to render images like those in this episode in real-time. The 'proper' zero-G space battle is quite nifty (although why the Raider waits about ten seconds without firing before Sinclair kills him is inexplicable). There's also the establishing of the intriguing Ivanova-Talia relationship which develops nicely over the next two seasons.

It's an okay first episode with some great eye candy which is let down by some bad dialogue and a rather predictable mixing up of the A and B-stories, but the B5 universe is established as a rich, intriguing and colourful place. And we learn that the Psi Corps are bad.

Nit of the Week: Londo assembles his PPG from bits of furniture in his quarters, A-Team style, and sets out to kill G'Kar. Londo is living in the diplomatic wing of the station in Green Sector. To reach G'Kar's quarters, which are, controversially, located in the diplomatic wing of the station in Green Sector, Londo goes down to the Zocalo in Red Sector (where he bumps into Talia) and wanders up to the command and docking sphere (Blue Sector) where Garibaldi stops him. Londo is either obviously extremely confused or decided to go shopping along the way ("Let's see, fresh spoo, Carnellian wine, kill G'Kar, toilet roll, toothpaste,").

1.02: Soul Hunter

Better. An alien with the unfortunate species name of Shag'Tot is rescued from his damaged ship and brought aboard, so newly-arrived Dr. Stephen Franklin (sniff) can patch him up. Obviously, the alien is extremely grateful and leaves peacefully without incident.

Okay, that was a lie. The alien turns out to be a demented nutcase, kidnaps Minbari Ambassador Delenn and tries to drain her soul out of her body and store it in a glass sphere just for the sheer hell of it. Sinclair manages to stop him with the help of a second Soul Hunter that shows up. Along the way enigmatic things are said by the Soul Hunter and by Delenn that lead us to believe that something is going on behind the scenes. These are the first stirrings of the ongoing story arc (okay, the second, but the first was the "there is a hole in your mind," thing in The Gathering, which I hadn't seen by this point) but it's still pretty vague at this point.

By focusing on the Soul Hunter plot rather than trying to do fifty things at once, JMS creates a much stronger, better-paced episode. W. Morgan Sheppard (who later plays G'Kar's uncle and in RL is the father of Mark 'Romo Lamkin/Badger' Sheppard) makes the episode with his barmy-eyed performance as the Soul Hunter and Mira Furlan, a long way from the jungle of Lost here, adds some more weight to the character of Delenn. We also get some backstory on the Earth-Minbari War, learning that the Minbari supreme leader, Dukhat (must remember the 'h' after writing 'Dukat' for two months in the DS9 thread), died during the war. Actually, we find out later that his death caused the war, but the Soul Hunter probably wasn't as much of a pedant as I am.

Nit of the Week (and I'm not doing this for every episode): where the fuck did the Soul Hunter get his gigantic soul-absorbing machine from, given his ship was under armed guard? I have this image of the ship being watched over by the two guards from Swamp Castle in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, only in Earthforce uniforms and not batting an eyelid as the Soul Hunter wanders past with tons of equipment.

[potsherds]

Sweet!!! Um... I started a rewatch myself, which consisted of skipping the entire first season, other than the pilot.

I'll try to keep up with you. For now though, I'm liable not to have anything to say.

Keep posting, please!

[Werthead]

Cool. I'm only going to watch two episodes a night though (unless I hit a really good run, like the mid-Season 3 trilogy) as there are significantly fewer episodes of B5 than there was of DS9.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

It is never good to over-analyze Sci-Fi shows. It never holds up.

[williamjm]

I couldn't find a copy of The Gathering so screw it, let's jump straight into Season 1.

If you're going to nitpick, it is probably best to avoid The Gathering, since you could probably write an essay on the inconsistencies with the rest of the series.

1.01: Midnight on the Firing Line

From what I remember MotFL makes a pretty good first episode. It does do an efficient job of introducing many of the series plotlines (although not the Shadow War yet) and manages quite a good plot out of it.

To reach G'Kar's quarters, which are, controversially, located in the diplomatic wing of the station in Green Sector, Londo goes down to the Zocalo in Red Sector (where he bumps into Talia) and wanders up to the command and docking sphere (Blue Sector) where Garibaldi stops him. Londo is either obviously extremely confused or decided to go shopping along the way ("Let's see, fresh spoo, Carnellian wine, kill G'Kar, toilet roll, toothpaste,").

Londo obviously went to G'Kar's quarters via the Zocalo's bar. It wouldn't be in character for him to do anything else

(or maybe JMS hadn't thought through the station's layout in too much detail at the time).

An alien with the unfortunate species name of Shag'Tot

I hadn't noticed this before. It is an unfortunate name, you can see why the Soul Hunters went a bit odd, they were probably tired of being picked on by all the bigger races for having such a silly name.

[Werthead]

It is never good to over-analyze Sci-Fi shows. It never holds up.

This is true, especially of shows which were 90% written by one person who was also producing the thing and getting four hours sleep a night if he was lucky, which is why the nitpicking thing will stop (except for the most heinous cases: the Soul Hunter machine is an example of particularly lazy writing).

The success or failure of JMS as the auteur writer-script editor-producer-creator of B5 is something I'm going to be looking at over the course of the rewatch as it's something pretty unprecedented in SF TV. Other arc shows such as DS9, Lost, BSG etc all had/have teams of writers guided by producers with a vision of where the show as going (albeit not very far ahead in at least two of those examples) and who had the time to correct such problems as the show went along.

Something else that intrigued me was that in the introduction to The Babylon File, JMS lists Melinda Snodgrass and GRRM as vital writers of SF literature who had become important writers for television, but as far as I can tell he never asked them to write for B5 (whilst others such as David Gerrold and DC Fontana were brought aboard for the first two seasons).

[Anya, Vengeance Demon]

I had been under the impression that bad blood developed between JMS and GRRM because of the debate over whether to offer a Dramatic Nebula. Here's what JMS wrote on the subject back in 1997. Obviously I can't speak for the incident mentioned, since I'm just a dude who spent a lot of his high school career reading B5 fan sites--so grain of salt and all that--but the Dramatic Nebula has spawned a number of memorable rants from JMS over the years.

[Ran]

GRRM has obliquely referenced the fact that JMS and he don't agree on a lot in his LJ post regarding the Spider-Man "Brand New Day" story, namely remarking after reading JMS's thoughts on the subject [JMS was the writer on Amazing Spider-Man fo r the story, and made it clear he had significant problems with editorial requirements for how the story played out] (and I paraphrase; look it up to get an exact quote) that he didn't often see eye to eye with JMS, but JMS seemed to be making sense. I believe JMS's particular remarks were his referring to the fact that the approach Marvel took broke major rules that he had learned as a genre writer.

[Lord of Oop North]

1.01: Midnight on the Firing Line

I thought it was a fairly strong first episode, as far as first episodes go.

Nit of the Week: Londo assembles his PPG from bits of furniture in his quarters, A-Team style, and sets out to kill G'Kar. Londo is living in the diplomatic wing of the station in Green Sector. To reach G'Kar's quarters, which are, controversially, located in the diplomatic wing of the station in Green Sector, Londo goes down to the Zocalo in Red Sector (where he bumps into Talia) and wanders up to the command and docking sphere (Blue Sector) where Garibaldi stops him. Londo is either obviously extremely confused or decided to go shopping along the way ("Let's see, fresh spoo, Carnellian wine, kill G'Kar, toilet roll, toothpaste,").

This is the best part of the episode. I always envisioned that Londo wanted to get a little drunk before taking on G'Kar because he was frightened of him. Especially after seeing how badass G'Kar was in hand-to-hand combat in the later seasons.

Nit of the Week (and I'm not doing this for every episode): where the fuck did the Soul Hunter get his gigantic soul-absorbing machine from, given his ship was under armed guard? I have this image of the ship being watched over by the two guards from Swamp Castle in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, only in Earthforce uniforms and not batting an eyelid as the Soul Hunter wanders past with tons of equipment.

I actually never noticed that. Nice. I like the Swamp Castle Explanation though. It fits well.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

Security guards are the Ensign Rickys of the B5 Universe.

[Werthead]

GRRM has obliquely referenced the fact that JMS and he don't agree on a lot in his LJ post regarding the Spider-Man "Brand New Day" story, namely remarking after reading JMS's thoughts on the subject [JMS was the writer on Amazing Spider-Man fo r the story, and made it clear he had significant problems with editorial requirements for how the story played out] (and I paraphrase; look it up to get an exact quote) that he didn't often see eye to eye with JMS, but JMS seemed to be making sense. I believe JMS's particular remarks were his referring to the fact that the approach Marvel took broke major rules that he had learned as a genre writer.

Indeed, plus the SFWA thing was eleven years ago. Since they both regularly attend Worldcons and have mutual friends or acquaintences (Harlan Ellison, for one), I assume they're still not at odds, and outside of that incident JMS had only good things to say about GRRM (the introduction to The Babylon File is a reprint of an article printed in Foundation magazine in 1995 and JMS is - briefly - praising of GRRM; OTOH he also rips into epic fantasy as a genre in the same article so who knows what he made of ASoIaF?).

Plus my thought was why he didn't ask GRRM to write for B5 in the first two seasons, which was a good two years before the SFWA disagreement.

[Anya, Vengeance Demon]

Plus my thought was why he didn't ask GRRM to write for B5 in the first two seasons, which was a good two years before the SFWA disagreement.

I was under the impression that the origins of the debate, vituperation, and so forth began well before 1997, actually. His posts from the time suggest as much. I don't know when specifically, however.

In trying to pin down the date, I ran across this post from JMS, and it seems clear that my previous post was overstating the case (assuming that JMS isn't simply being diplomatic):

I'm certainly pleased to hear that GRRM is currently SFWA's veep. George is a VNM (Very Nice Man).

Of course, that's got nothing to do with SFWA's general attitude toward this area, scriptwriters in general, or the dramatic nebula (they get to like George because a) he's an accomplished novelist, and he's a VNM, and ignore the rest of it if they so choose). Still, it's good news for George, and I'm pleased for him. It's a good thing to have George, since some others, like Harlan Ellison, also refuse to rejoin SFWA over the dramatic nebula question, and the treatment of scriptwriters in general. George is a much more patient and generous man.

As for your original question... perhaps because GRRM had already left Hollywood by then and started writing A Game of Thrones in earnest?

[Werthead]

You could be right about the timing actually. I think GRRM wanted out of Hollywood by 1994-95 after Doorways fell through and wanted to get back to AGoT.

Something that did amuse me whilst reading the Foundation article was that GRRM does reference the SFWA thing in there as well. In fact, he actually names Larry Niven as sitting on a panel slagging off TV writers for writing for 'big bucks' whilst novelists live on peanuts. Which JMS was rightfully infuriated by because 1) it was bullshit and, 2) Niven was independently wealthy long before he started writing full-time and never had to live on peanuts.

[Shryke]

What's this argument over the Dramatic Nebula again?

[Werthead]

They abolished it. JMS disapproved and, with Harlan Ellison, walked out of the SFWA and refused to go back until it was reinstated. To be honest, given how little esteem the Nebulas are held in now, I'm surprised it was such a bit deal. If it had been the Hugos, fair enough.

[Shryke]

Oh. Well, no one cares anyway I guess.

[Jaxom 1974]

Nice go on the B5, Wert. I'm sketchy at best on virtually all of this, having only watched most of seasons 3-5. B5 is absolutely something I want to get in a boxed set at some point...

[MinDonner]

Gah. If I hadn't just finished my rewatch, I'd be joining in with this. Season 1 I've only seen once through (missed it on telly, bought the set despite much advice to the contrary) so it's good to see an episode-by-episode reminder.

[drawkcabi]

I'm in.

I just started a rewatch last weekend. First time I heard of B5 was at a convention in the summer of 1992. They had a trailer for "The Gathering" which pretty much enthralled all of us.

Then I saw "The Gathering" and well...I watched and taped it but never watched it again until Season 2 of the series. A year later the regular series began. It was a good thing "Midnight on the Firing Line" was such a great episode or I might not have stuck with it.

Ok, so I started with "The Gathering". I have both versions: TNT Special Edition and PTEN's original version. If you're gonna watch it, I definitely recommend the TNT version.

So, to say the pilot had a lot of inconsistancies with the regular series is an understatement, but it also has a lot of the seed that will grow into the the B5 universe within it. (i.e. G'kar's meeting with Lyta Alexander, when he tries to obtain genetic material from her, preferably from a direct mating, because his race "doesn't have telepaths".)

G'kar looks malnourished. His face is so gaunt. When the series proper begins his make-up looks better, less rigid more smooth. The original pronunciation of his name was supposed to be "Gee-car" but the late, great Andreas Katsulas decided his character's name had a French pronunciation and turned it into "Zhi-Kar" and JMS let him go with it. Also, Katsulas thought G'kar should be a bit foppish, hence the embroidered hanky in his sleeve.

Delenn is very different. Orignally, JMS planned for Delenn to start out as a male Minbari and then become female by the second season, she has a much more androgenous look in the pilot. Also, her voice was supposed to be altered to sound deeper, more male, but Mira Furlan's voice and delivery was so good, they decided to leave well enough alone.

The uniforms are a little different, the leather stripe going down the front isn't there. Mr. Morden works in C&C, well okay, it's not Mr. Morden, but a guy that looks a lot like him and happens to be played by the same actor.

The less said about Kosh's poisoning and how he was poisoned, the better.

Londo's worst hair day is in this episode, and that is saying something.

I've watched "Midnight on the Firing Line", "Soul Hunter", "Born to the Purple", and "Infection" so far. I don't want to jump ahead of you so I won't say much about the latter episodes except to bring up one thing. In "Born to the Purple" we see Ko D'ath, G'kar's original diplomatic attache. She doesn't seem to have the warmest of personalities and only appears in one episode and is quickly replaced by Na T'oth. There is a brief explanation about what happened to Ko D'ath in Na T'oth's first episode...somehow she stumbled out an airlock, G'kar doesn't seem too upset about it.

Anyhow, even though Na T'oth doesn't appear in the series until the fifth episode, I believe, she is listed in the beginning credits from the first episode, same with Lennier. However, I looked back at my old B5 tapes I taped from PTEN and for that one episode that has Ko D'ath, she was listed in the beginning credits. But on the DVD, it's always Na T'oth in the credits for every episode.

[Werthead]

Yep. Ko'Dath was supposed to be a recurring character, but after her appearance in Born she freaked out about the make-up and had to leave the show. Caitlin Brown was brought in as a replacement and did the whole of the first season, but she had a reaction against the make-up. Since she was also getting feature film roles at the time, walking around with red skin for two or three days after each week of filming was not a goer, so she left as well (although she came back as a once-off favour to JMS in Season 5).

JMS was then going to kill off Na'Toth and have a different Narn attache every other episode. The idea is that they would die in an accident or be transferred off the station or misfortune would befall them and a new one would turn up. However, he decided against the Murphy Brown's Secretary route and instead just recast Na'Toth. And the actress playing the second version of Na'Toth, Mary Kay Adams (Grilka on DS9), completely went against Brown's portrayal by making Na'Toth much softer. After seeing her in two episodes JMS threw his hands up in despair and got rid of her.

Apparently there would have been a line in late Season 2 saying that Na'Toth had joined the war effort and was then MIA after the Centauri bombardment, but it was cut for time reasons. She just disappeared off the show with no explanation (although JMS did explain what happened in his online discussions, I believe).