The biggest problem with Season 5 is that the entire time they were filming Season 4, up to and including the final episode, they didn’t know if there was going to BE a Season 5, so JMS was trying to wrap as much as possible up in 4 seasons instead of the planned 5. So season 4 is pretty much one big WHAMWHAMWHAM in every episode, and Season 5 suffered a bit between not being WHAM in every episode and JMS being, frankly, pretty wrung out. He wrote all but 12 (or was it 18, I forget) episodes of the entire show, and most of the farmed out ones were in the first 2 seasons, so by season 5 he was … well, he was, as stated, pretty wrung out. Plus there was that thing with Claudia, which made things even more interesting. And I never liked the way Lyta got screwed over. He also had the problem that most if not all of the notes and write ups he’d made for S5 were lost at a convention he was at (I think the housekeeping staff threw it out by accident), so he had to reconstruct. Time and memory limits being what they are, it’s not quite what he’d planned.
Don’t get me wrong, Season 5 has its moments, but it also feels like a let down because it isn’t as WHAM as S3 and S4. Still, the episode originally filmed as the S4 ender and moved to S5 after TNT picked the show up is joy, well seasoned by tears.
Season 5 definitely has its moments, but it pales next to Season 4. When you get there, just ask and we’ll give you our opinions on what is essential (“Day of the Dead”).
In short, they worked overtime to tie up almost all of the loose ends in S4, leaving very little for S5. So most of S5 is stretching the one remaining loose end beyond all belief, mixed in with a smattering of stand-alone episodes which really could have gone anywhere at all in the show’s run.
Ok…I will be starting Season 3 tonight and tomorrow night, and then Neflix will stop streaming it. I should be able to get through the first four episodes - I get off tomorrow at noon - so I should be able to just order the second disc of Season 3. Don’t worry, at this point I have no intention of stopping. I think if they stopped carrying it altogether I’d have to go around whining until someone lent me their copy.
Heh heh…I remember hooking my mom on it. Great fun.
I got hooked on it a while back when they were still SciFi and running it every evening at 7PM. I stumbled across it one night and I don’t remember exactly which episode but it was a few from the end of the first season, and I thought, “Well, I’ve heard this got good, I’ll give it a shot.” I was a goner within a week. For months, I was home at 7…weekends nearly killed me! And I know about the huge gaps in the original airing and I don’t think I could have survived those.
Now I want to break out my DVDs and watch it again. It’s been a couple years.
Yes, please keep to the spoiler boxes, I will watch it TONIGHT and I’d rather not have it ruined for me! As a matter of fact I appreciate all of the spoiler boxes here, so I can discover things on my own.
The first 11 episodes of S5 suffer heavily from a painfully bad story arc about a guy named Byron and his followers. This half of the season includes some excellent episodes (notably “A View From The Gallery” and “Day of the Dead”) but the Byron-heavy episodes are dire. Whether you’re willing to suffer through these to follow the other story arcs is up to you, but know that after episode 11 it picks up quite significantly and the last three episodes in particular wrap up pretty much everyone’s story arc as neatly as could be expected given the various re-jiggings the show went through.
Well, Gyrate and others, when the time comes, I fully expect you all to tell me which episodes to watch. I still have, what, 50? episodes to go before then.
(Anaamika, don’t click!)