The Babylon 5 Rewatch Thread

[drawkcabi]

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).

But I remember a line about Na'Toth in season 3.

SPOILER: Season 3

When Londo wanted to get even with Lord Reefa for (what he thought at the time) killing Adira, he lured Reefa to Narn under the ruse that he was supposed to kill G'kar, and Londo said G'kar would be lured there to free Na'Toth after hearing she was captured.

[Jon AS]

I think I am going to join in on this rewatch this evening.

On the first two episodes, I remember "Midnight on the firing line" as a seviceable first episode, though I had actually seen "The Gathering" when it first aired in Germany and was very intrigued by it.

The Soulhunters just bug me, though I can't really express why, so the second episode always left me cold. Maybe I'll start with "Born to the purple".

Short sidenote: the German episode titles are criminally lame: "Midnight..." becomes simply "Ragesh 3", later on the "A Voice in the Wilderness" two parter is given the wonderfully evocative title "Attack of the Aliens". Oh, and sometimes they managed to spoil the episode's plot right in the title.

[drawkcabi]

I think I am going to join in on this rewatch this evening.

On the first two episodes, I remember "Midnight on the firing line" as a seviceable first episode, though I had actually seen "The Gathering" when it first aired in Germany and was very intrigued by it.

The Soulhunters just bug me, though I can't really express why, so the second episode always left me cold. Maybe I'll start with "Born to the purple".

Short sidenote: the German episode titles are criminally lame: "Midnight..." becomes simply "Ragesh 3", later on the "A Voice in the Wilderness" two parter is given the wonderfully evocative title "Attack of the Aliens". Oh, and sometimes they managed to spoil the episode's plot right in the title.

I thought "Mignight" was a great first episode, especially compared to "The Gathering". You not only get to see the star furies, you get to see them fight. You get to see the council in action. G'kar being firmly positioned as the resident "bad guy", Londo as the guy you're supposed to like or at least feel sorry for (for the first season that is), Ivanova's problem with telepaths and the reason behind it and the foreshadowing of the relationship between her and Talia (whether you want to call it friends or "more-than" it begins there), and you see a kind of, sort of, in a way gimpse of Kosh without the suit and his rigid/inigmatic attitudes.

"Soul Hunter" was ok, but not the best. You learn what "Setai" means and that Delenn is part of the ruling body of Minbar.

"Born to the Purple", I think is one of the better episodes of B5, especially if you like Londo/Vir, Londo and G'Kar irritating each other episodes. As good as "Purple" is, "Infection" is equal bad, kind of preachy, but the interview Sinclair gives at the end is pretty cool.

[DivisionByZero]

I'd actually started a rewatch of this a while back to show it to one of my friends who had never seen the series, so I'm glad we're getting a WertWatch of this one. I have very fond memories of B5 and I've always thought the fourth season was one of the best seasons of television ever, but the level of almost criminally bad dialog and acting in the first season makes me think it was a miracle the show made it that far. My friend only agreed to keep watching because I assured her that it got better.

It makes me wonder, if the show had been introduced today, how long would it have lasted? I don't know if the market for Sci-fi shows was different back then or what, but when a show as good as Firefly gets canceled, pretty much before it's aired, then what chance would poor first season B5 have had?

Anyway, I love B5 and I can make it through the earlier episodes to get to the better ones later on. Whoo!

[Xanrn]

Ah yes Ivanova and Talia Winters what a waste that was, they finally sleep together and Talia's psi-programming kicks in and bye bye Talia.

[MinDonner]

But I remember a line about Na'Toth in season 3.

Yeah, but... (only spoilered cos the original question was)

SPOILER: blah blah

We never hear how or why she got there, and also never actually see her; as far as we know, it's just a name that Londo threw up for his plot, and who knows where she actually is?

[beniowa]

It makes me wonder, if the show had been introduced today, how long would it have lasted? I don't know if the market for Sci-fi shows was different back then or what, but when a show as good as Firefly gets canceled, pretty much before it's aired, then what chance would poor first season B5 have had?

That's a good question as the market has shifted away from it in the last few years. Though with Firefly I blame the idiots at Fox for that more than the market. They must have the stupidest producers and executives in network television.

[Werthead]

It makes me wonder, if the show had been introduced today, how long would it have lasted? I don't know if the market for Sci-fi shows was different back then or what, but when a show as good as Firefly gets canceled, pretty much before it's aired, then what chance would poor first season B5 have had?

Depends. If B5 got the ratings now it got back then (7-8 million per ep, about what Heroes got in Season 2), it would probably have been absolutely fine and the vague question marks over cancellation that came up at the end of Seasons 2 and 3 and certainly 4 would never have come up. OTOH, B5 today would have needed a bigger budget and certainly wouldn't have been able to have anywhere near as much CGI. Foundation Imaging signed a very dubious contract that basically meant they had to provide all the CGI the show needed regardless of quantity. Season 3 had something like four or five times the amount of CGI as Season 1 but they still got paid the same money for it and had to produce it in the same amount of time. That very definitely wouldn't be the case today (and why shows like BSG are a lot more sparing in their use of CGI than B5 was).

1.03: Born to the Purple

An episode I thought was quite poor when I first saw it but has improved on rewatches. Jurasik and Katsulas are starting to hit their stride but Ko'Dath isn't a great character and it's relief that Na'Toth replaced her. Clive Revill, normally a fine Shakespearean actor (and the original Emperor on the holo-communicator in Empire Strikes Back before he was replaced by McDiermid in the DVDs), is basically just another alien thug as Trakis. Dialogue cut from the episode would have revealed that Trakis is a Golian, whose race was once enslaved by the Centauri, but his motivations in the episode are completely unexplained. There's some good comedy and the Garibaldi/Ivanova friendship is set up nicely by the discovery of her communications with her father.

1.04: Infection

This is Not a Good Episode. David McCallum turns up as Franklin's mentor but it turns out he's a bit dodgy (putting it mildly) and is trying to sell alien bioweapons from a dead race for profit. One of the weapons takes over his friend and turns him into an armour-plated killing machine which tears up the station before being stopped by Sinclair (Michael O'Hare overacting like no human being has ever overacted before).

There some nice pipe-laying for future storylines: the first mention of Interplanetary Expeditions, the first nods towards organic technology, the establishing of ISN as Earth's primary source of news programming and Garibaldi's brief mention of being in a shuttle crash on Mars with Sinclair becomes very important in Season 3 (and reminded me of something I'm going to do to mix up these episode reviews a little ). There's also some nice triva to know that the guy taken over by the alien tech is the same actor who plays the recurring Narn character Ta'Lon in later seasons. But the episode is mostly lowest-common denominator drivel. Not the worst episode of B5 but not too far off.

[PhelanArcetus]

Well, fortunately, Infection is one JMS recognized as a bad episode. Still does have a decent point, with the ending interview.

Grabbed from wikiquote:

Mary Ann Cramer: Is it worth it? Should we just pull back? Forget the whole thing as a bad idea, and take care of our own problems, at home.

Sinclair: No. We have to stay here. And there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes…[and] all of this…all of this…was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars.

Categorically the best part of the episode.

[Lord of Oop North]

Well, fortunately, Infection is one JMS recognized as a bad episode. Still does have a decent point, with the ending interview.

Grabbed from wikiquote:

Mary Ann Cramer: Is it worth it? Should we just pull back? Forget the whole thing as a bad idea, and take care of our own problems, at home.

Sinclair: No. We have to stay here. And there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes…[and] all of this…all of this…was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars.

Categorically the best part of the episode.

Definetely. When I think of Infection, I just remember that quote and it kind of redeems itself a little bit.

[Ran]

IIRC, the timing of the creation of the organic tech -- "a thousand years ago" -- leads to the inference that the alien race created it as some sort of spillover from the last war with the shadows. They were apparently a common target for attack -- invaded "half a dozen" times -- but I'd guess the last one finally pushed them over the edge to creating their superweapon that could destroy anyone who was not "pure Ikarran", which rather makes one think of the Vorlons setting out to destroy any hint of Shadow influence.

ETA: And of course, Sinclair is unwittingly rather close to the money in his remarks regarding when the sun might die out, as we learn at the end of the fourth season.

[Rimmer]

I won't be joining in as I watched it through just last year, but it's interesting reading your thoughts.

For any other nerds, it's fun to read these as you go - they've got a lot of analysis on each episode, plus all JMS's posts on each one.

[Anya, Vengeance Demon]

Mary Ann Cramer: Is it worth it? Should we just pull back? Forget the whole thing as a bad idea, and take care of our own problems, at home.

Sinclair: No. We have to stay here. And there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes…[and] all of this…all of this…was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars.

Looking at that quote, it's, um, not very convincing. Obviously the sun is going to go out at some point, but--in our universe, not the B5 one--what are the chances that it will go out in the next hundred years, or even the next thousand? They're astronomically small, I would think.

[Lord of Oop North]

Looking at that quote, it's, um, not very convincing. Obviously the sun is going to go out at some point, but--in our universe, not the B5 one--what are the chances that it will go out in the next hundred years, or even the next thousand? They're astronomically small, I would think.

It is still going to happen. And when it happens, humans and all record of them will be gone from the face of existence.

In the Babylon Universe, I always got the impression that human colonization of space was still very tentative and that there were not really that many people out of the Sol System. And with all the inherant dangers in that universe, I imagine some colonization would be a good idea.

[Shryke]

Looking at that quote, it's, um, not very convincing. Obviously the sun is going to go out at some point, but--in our universe, not the B5 one--what are the chances that it will go out in the next hundred years, or even the next thousand? They're astronomically small, I would think.

The point is, it's happening EVENTUALLY. No one with a brain disputes this.

Hence, we must leave this planet at some point.

[Werthead]

That is correct. I think it is mentioned somewhere that Earth's population at the time of the series is 10 billion (which is way optimistic given how fast it's shooting uo at the moment, but we'll assume some kind of population control method came into use that kept the population level). The next most-populous world is Mars, with a population of just 2 million two hundred years after it was colonised. The only other populations we hear about are tinier, in the hundreds or tens of thousands at the most. Only 250,000 humans died in the Earth-Minbari War, for example. So whilst the Earth Alliance indeed covers 14 major colonies in 12 star systems (plus assorted military outposts) we're talking about a tiny fraction of the human race being in space, with an absolutely vast sum of money being spent on keeping them there that people on Earth probably resent quite a lot.

At the same time, the Dilgar and Minbari wars show it is important to keep a military presence in space to keep such threats away from Earth in the future.

[Shryke]

Yeah, that's why the plague in Crusade is such a big deal. 90% of the human race right there.

[Anya, Vengeance Demon]

It is still going to happen. And when it happens, humans and all record of them will be gone from the face of existence.

Well, sure. But the risk of it happening any time soon is so astronomically small that it can be ignored over more immediate priorities. At some point in the lifetime of the Earth, the house in which I live will collapse and become unlivable. There is a chance, however infintesimal, that it may happen this afternoon, that I will arrive home tonight to discover that my home has been destroyed by a meteor, and that would be a substantial loss to me. Do you recommend that I spend a lot of money this afternoon trying to find a new place to live? Should I skip class to consult apartment listings instead? Of course not.

In the B5 universe, Sinclair's rationale is more convincing, but not because there's a large chance that the sun is going to go supernova next week. The _real_ trouble that humanity has to worry about there is the possibility that super-powerful alien races will destroy the Earth with their planet-busting weapons or cause the sun to go supernova substantially early. (JMS has suggested that this is what ultimately caused the destruction of the sun in "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars," realizing correctly that the natural destruction of the sun after only a million years was not very plausible.) So as a statement of reality in the B5 universe, it's not particularly crazy.

However, it's pretty clear that JMS intended Sinclair's statement to be convincing not simply to ISN viewers but to B5 viewers as well, inserting his own views and not for the first time. He said of it later:

Sinclair's final speech there is the simplest truth about space exploration that I can think of...and the most compelling..and the most overlooked. As Henry Kissinger once said, "It has the added benefit of being true."

Shryke:

Of course it's going to happen eventually, but how many people will argue that we should never, in the span of human existence from now until extinction, try for the stars? That's a strawman. It doesn't mean that this is a particularly good reason to try for the stars now.

[Shryke]

Shryke:

Of course it's going to happen eventually, but how many people will argue that we should never, in the span of human existence from now until extinction, try for the stars? That's a strawman. It doesn't mean that this is a particularly good reason to try for the stars now.

It's not a strawman, it's a fact. Why NOT now?

It's like the "Alternative Energy" shit. "Oh, we've got oil, we don't need to worry about it now". And we'll keep putting it off. Humanity is fabulous at procrastination.

[Anya, Vengeance Demon]

It's not a strawman, it's a fact. Why NOT now?

It's like the "Alternative Energy" shit. "Oh, we've got oil, we don't need to worry about it now". And we'll keep putting it off. Humanity is fabulous at procrastination.

Why _not_ now? Because the resources might be better spent on more immediate threats. Concerns about oil are not remotely analogous, btw; we're talking about a catastrophic event that will almost certainly happen millions if not billions of years in the future, not some time within my lifetime or that of my nieces. People prioritize all the time based on what risks need to be handled right away, and what can be put off until the next geological age. It's not that crazy.