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#1
09-02-2008, 12:19 PM
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Babylon 5 and Farscape
After 3 days at Dragoncon I was inspired to watch the pilots of Babylon 5 and Farscape.
I had watched an episode or two of B5 many years ago and thought... meh. Same with the pilot. It actually reminded me a little of ST: TNG's "Encounter at Farpoint." The actors didn't really seem to know what they were doing and there were lots of flashy lights for no particular reason. I'm going to give B5 a few more episodes to hook me. I understand the creator of the show mapped out all 5 years before hand, so maybe I just need to stick it out. Farscape, however, had me hooked form the start. Watched four episodes in a row. Maybe because it had more action, probably because of Claudia Black  Actually, I felt the actors took to their roles and made it seem more believable... and Claudia Black And the muppetty goodness was a plus. ...and Claudia Black in tight shorts, a tank top, and sweat (episode 3) 
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#2
09-02-2008, 01:22 PM
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Babylon 5 had some great episodes and in some ways seem more realistic than ST for a number of reasons. For example, some semblance of an economy, the humans weren't always the good guys, and lots of different style ships. I have watched it again recently and I found it terribly dated but it holds up in the best episodes.
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#3
09-02-2008, 01:39 PM
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Babylon 5 definitely shows its age these days, but the story (esp. seasons two, three and four) can't be beat.
Farscape bored the piss out of me from the get-go; I've tried multiple times to sit through an entire episode, and am simply unable to do so.
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#4
09-02-2008, 01:42 PM
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As much as I love the Lando/J'kar relationship in season 1 of B5, the plot doess't really take off until season 2. That's one thing that makes it much different from ST for me--there's an overarching story. I've heard the fifth season is a let down (I haven't seen it--Owls refuses to get it), but the forth ends quite nicely.
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#5
09-02-2008, 02:02 PM
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The CGI and production values are crappy, the fashion even worse. But it still survives as one of the two* best stories on tv ever. Also - there are a lot of 80's movies and tv shows that are cringeworthy when it comes to fashion/hair. I was in my 20's then. It's terrible to revisit one's own bad fashion choices. *The Wire
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#6
09-02-2008, 02:04 PM
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If the search function is up and running, you should be able to find a number of threads with advice about Babylon 5 -- mostly about how the first season is spotty, but gets awesome at the end. It's definitely worth sticking around for Season 2.
I first saw Farscape a little over a year ago, and it instantly became one of my all-time favorite shows. Season 1 is sort of Farscape Lite; it's pretty good throughout but gets a significantly more awesome towards the end of the season.
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#7
09-02-2008, 02:24 PM
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B5 had a great story and I'd like to see the visual effects updated. Imagine those starfuries pulling the kind of maneuvers you see used on Battlestar Galactica. I picture it as something akin to the Homeworld games.
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#8
09-02-2008, 02:41 PM
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Anyway, Farscape is probably the better show, in my opinion. I know Babylon 5 was genius and it's even more genius since JMS wrote every episode of seasons 2-4(and all but one in 5), but Farscape is more enjoyable for me. My wife and I are watching Farscape again now, actually . I think the show peaked in season 2(Crackers Don't Matter should be on any list of great TV episodes). I'll never forget the day it was announced Farscape was cancelled. It was so sudden and unexpected. It marked the beginning of the end for the Sci-Fi channel, which Bonnie Hammer has destroyed.
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#9
09-02-2008, 02:47 PM
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The pilot aired Feb 22 '93, so likely shot mid to late 92. 80's fashion was still very much around at the time.
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#10
09-02-2008, 03:00 PM
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Quote:
The pilot aired Feb 22 '93, so likely shot mid to late 92. 80's fashion was still very much around at the time.
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#11
09-02-2008, 04:08 PM
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Quote:
The pilot aired Feb 22 '93, so likely shot mid to late 92. 80's fashion was still very much around at the time.
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#12
09-02-2008, 04:34 PM
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What? Last edited by Swallowed My Cellphone; 09-02-2008 at 04:35 PM.
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#13
09-02-2008, 04:52 PM
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It's probably not a good idea to judge any TV show too harshly by its pilot. Any sets will have been just dashed together, the actors haven't had a chance yet to really get into their characters, the writers don't know yet exactly what they can aim for with the story, etc. The Babylon 5 pilot is, indeed, fairly cringeworthy, but the series gets much, much better than that. If you like other science fiction TV shows, you're very likely to like B5, too, once you give it a chance.
__________________
Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. --As You Like It, III:ii:328
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#14
09-02-2008, 05:27 PM
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I tried really hard to get into Farscape and just never could figure out what was so special about it. It bored me, to be honest.
I've never seen B5 but I like a lot of the comics JMS has written so I still intend to watch it . . . eventually. It's hard to make time for this stuff anymore since my wife doesn't much care for sci-fi.
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#15
09-02-2008, 06:40 PM
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Hey, look! I can post again! That'll have to be another thread.
I hated hated HATED Babylon 5. Watched it all the way through waiting for it to be good. It never did. All the scenes that people quote as being especially moving or amazing tended to make me roll my eyes at the cheesiness. YMM, of course, V.
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#16
09-02-2008, 07:10 PM
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It's certainly worth enduring until you get towards the end of the first season - I agree that the second, third and fourth seasons have some great stories.
I haven't seen Farscape yet, so I can't compare. Overall, though, Deep Space Nine is my favorite - better actors, good story (skip the Nagus episodes, though), and a bit of darkness missing in the rest of Trek.
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#17
09-02-2008, 07:23 PM
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Never could get into Babylon 5. Occassionally I'd catch an episode on a Sat afternoon if there was a CGI space battle but for the most part it was too much of a Star Trek knockoff and too much with "aliens" that are really humans except they have an ass or something on their head.
The Earth fighters and capital ships with the rotating sections were kind of cool looking though. I generally liked Farscape, but there were a lot of really boring episodes. Also, the show was a little trippy at times. That's ok though as I imagine being a smartass human in an alien ship surrounded by aliens halfway across the galaxy would be a bit surreal and bizarre. Of course, like all "stranger in a strange land" Sci Fi stories, John Crighton goes from not being able to use the space toilets on Moya to being the badess ass in the galaxy.
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#19
09-02-2008, 08:20 PM
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(Woo hoo, I'm posting!)
Anyway. Farscape is one my favorite sci-fi shows of all time. I think it has the best group of female characters of any television series ever. (Really, can anyone think of a show that has better?) I also found it funny when I was re-watching season 1 how accurately the show portrayed the "in a foreign land" feeling. It reminded me so eerily of living in Spain and feeling like a strange, funny, idiot who didn't know the most basic things about life. All I know about Babylon 5 is that it always seemed terminally uncool. My junior high English teacher forced us to watch a ham-handed episode in which a ethnic-cleansing robot was a metaphor for the Holocaust.
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#20
09-02-2008, 08:22 PM
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I went into Babylon 5 with eyes open, having asked some questions about it here first. The first one and a half seasons really sucked, but they are essential viewing for the setup of the characters, conflicts, and backstory. If I hadn't been promised that it gets good in season 3, I totally would have walked away from it. I'm just about to start season 3, and if it isn't good, I'm going to be seriously pissed. It does look like it's coming together though.
Last edited by HMS Irruncible; 09-02-2008 at 08:22 PM.
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#21
09-02-2008, 09:47 PM
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I find it a fairly deep show. ST is very one-dimensional--even the main characters don't have much depth to them. B5 is much more complex--it delves into the politics of more than one culture, and the characters can have wonderful love-hate relationships. It's also more consistent, with earlier plot-points coming back later on.
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#22
09-02-2008, 10:05 PM
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#23
09-02-2008, 10:11 PM
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Well, it had a sort of "First they came..." theme in which first one group on this planet was singled out, and then the robot decided another group had to go, and then another and another, etc. As far as terminally uncool, well, it just seemed a step below even Star Trek on the cool-o-meter, with the starched uniforms, stiff actors, and silly hair. (Hey, I only saw one episode, I'm just saying!)
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#24
09-02-2008, 10:34 PM
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Ah, found the episode! It was "Infection" from Season 1. The guy was more like a weapon/human hybrid...he was pretty robot-y. You can watch the badness here: http://video.aol.com/video/infection/1668170
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#25
09-02-2008, 10:55 PM
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Ah, I remember that one. Definitely a non-typical episode, and if that was the only episode of B5 that you ever saw, I can understand why you wouldn't think much of it.
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#27
09-03-2008, 01:07 AM
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#28
09-03-2008, 06:08 AM
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#29
09-03-2008, 06:34 AM
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#30
09-22-2008, 09:04 AM
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SFX obviously make a difference in Sci-fi shows, but they shouldn't be the main thing in them. Take Blake's Seven....it looks like it had a SFX budget of 15 bucks. But the characters were interesting enough that I actually preferred watching it than ST: TNG. Farscape, however, rocked. I wish they had given it one more season.
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#31
09-22-2008, 09:46 AM
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I've watched a few epsiodes of Babylon 5, and one thing bothers me and makes it hard for me to take the show seriously—and then the fact that it bothers me bothers me even more, because it makes me feel like a pedantic nitpicker:
The whole voiceover intro during the opening credits explaining about "humans and aliens" coming together, as though "alien" meant "non-human." Doesn't the word "alien" mean an outsider, someone who came here from somewhere else? If a story is set on Earth, then yeah, the aliens are the ones who aren't from Earth. But if it's set somewhere else, out in space somewhere, wouldn't the aliens be anyone who isn't from that place? Doesn't calling non-humans "aliens" display a staggering degree of non-PC ethnocentrism, that undercuts the whole "coming together" idea?
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#32
09-22-2008, 09:51 AM
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But yeah, possibly not the best choice of words.
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#33
09-22-2008, 09:52 AM
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Babylon 5 improved as it went on -- good in the first season, but better from then on, until the fifth season, which was a drop off, but still pretty good.
Farscape was probably a bit better than B5 in the first season, but was only marginally better in the 2nd and 3rd (where B5 supassed it). The final season sucked so bad that it removed all air from large rooms. Stupid science, terrible scripts, acting that was just a bunch of people screaming at each other for 48 minutes. It jumped several sharks all in one leap.
__________________
"One never knows, do one?" Provider of quality fantasy and science fiction since 1982. Last edited by RealityChuck; 09-22-2008 at 09:53 AM.
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#34
09-22-2008, 09:56 AM
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If I could complain about one thing about Babylon 5 (and I could complain about a lot of things, although I...more or less...liked it), it would be that it turned JMS into "I'm J-f'n-MS!"
Maybe you just had to be there on the message boards at the time, but damn, he really, really got on my nerves.
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#35
09-22-2008, 12:37 PM
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Another Dragon*Con-inspired plan-to-watch-these-shows person checking in to ask, given what's being said over in the "shows that fell apart at the end" thread, is it worth watching all five seasons of Babylon 5 when I get around to it, or should I stop after season 4?
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#36
09-22-2008, 12:49 PM
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As it went, the momentum was lost, but there are great episodes and almost all loose ends are tied up. It feels a bit clunky after the tour de force that was going from mid season 2 to the end of season four, but it's not bad in any way. Last edited by Charlie Tan; 09-22-2008 at 12:50 PM.
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#37
09-22-2008, 04:35 PM
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I'm in the B5 rocked, Farscape didn't camp.
Just never could get into the Farscape universe. But with the ongoing plot threads you couldn't miss more than a couple of B5 episodes without getting totally lost. And Lyta Alexander. Rowr. I've always had a weakness for redheads.
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#38
09-22-2008, 06:58 PM
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I own seasons 2-5 of B5 on DVD, and seasons 1-3 of Farscape. Never bought s1 of B5 because by the time I had the money, I couldn't find it locally. Never bought s4 of Farscape, because by the time it came out, I didn't have the money. Someday I may just complete the collection.
As for the shoulder pads, check out the pilot of DS9. Major Kira wore huge shoulder pads, had this god awful big nose and makeup that made her look very vulture-like. Was very happy they softened that up over time. Oh, and Lita Alexander. Yup, rowr. Of course, the best bits of trivial are that Patricia Tallman also played the possessed witch in Army of Darkness, appeared in 3 episodes of ST:NG, 3 episodes of DS9, and 1 episode of Voyager.
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#39
09-22-2008, 09:12 PM
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I am primarily a character-driven viewer, not so much a plot-driven viewer. B5 just didn't seem to have any characters which resonated with me, they all seemed very flat-ish, even the guy with the poofy hairdo. To those who are much more familiar with the show you may find that an unfair comment, and I won't argue with you. Just my impressions after catching a few eps here and there. For a plot-driven show I guess that may be par for the course (possible false dichotomy fallacy warning).
Farscape tho was very much a character-driven program, out the wazoo really, which sucked me in right from the beginning. The creators truly went out of their way to fill their universe with compelling personalities of all stripes-wisecracking Crichton, honor-bound Crais who discovers his humanity, Scorpius the Villian who really isn't a villian, Proud Warrior Race guy D'Argo who is more than some brainless brute with a sword, etc. The females were an interesting lot as well (not giving them short shrift by any means-and Chiana is as hot any any alien babe, ever). The Muppet made for good comic-relief but was more than that. I'll probably restart watching it from the beginning again soon (I've probably let them sit there and re-ripen long enough), but I will skip the "fungus invades the ship" eps, as they had a few too many of those. The overall series arc I found pretty compelling, if you want to focus on plot. And "Harvey" was a pretty inspired concept.
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#40
09-22-2008, 09:58 PM
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I'm lucky. I watched both shows when they were being originally broadcast. They both rocked.
But, of the two, I'd rather re-watch Farscape. Like John DiFool says, it's more character driven and I quickly fell in love with, and felt like the whole crew was my family. I'm a sucker for that. Firefly got me that way too.
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#41
09-22-2008, 10:06 PM
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#42
09-22-2008, 10:24 PM
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She also appeared uncredited in Roadhouse, in which she tried to stab a guy in the hand. (We were recently watching the Rifftrax of Roadhouse, which is a truly awful movie, and...hey, it's Lyta! Oh, she's gone.) Might have been her first appearance, though I don't know.
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