“A View From the Gallery” is Season 5. “Grey 17 Is Missing” is smack in the middle of Season 3.
Regardless of how bad the “A” plot was (and it was!) the episode is essential viewing for the “B” plot, which involves Marcus, Neroon and a revelation.
Seconded.
The Lensman Series by Doc Smith is vintage, OG space opera, and not to be missed. His Skylark of Space series is also worth a look.
The problem is that, like “Grey 17”, even the crappy S1 episodes often have important backstory or foreshadowing in them. Miss them and later things will lose impact or be confusing.
I really liked “A View From the Gallery”… except for the scene with Byron, where the whole vibe switches into Maximum Suck mode for the duration. I know why JMS was forced to mess with S5 (the show was on track to be cancelled at the end of S4 and he had to move plot points from S5 to S4 to close arcs, and then it got a new lease of life on a different channel and he had to replace the missing S5 material at short notice) but man, the Byron storyline is bad. But the second half of S5, where the arcs all come to proper closure, is really good.
Bookwise, if you like dark, gritty steampunk-ish stuff, I never tire of recommending Philip Reeve’s “Mortal Engines” tetralogy. And if you like those, there’s also a prequel tetralogy (“Fever Crumb” et alia).
Every episode of B5 has something that you can’t miss. But for a few of them, you can skip the episode and get away with a three-sentence summary of the important parts.
I used this guide in 2009 to re-watch Babylon 5 season 1. It’s from Doper Miller.
If I watched b5 I wouldn’t skip any episodes.
Farscape has some episodes that don’t move the story along, and in some cases are downright horrible, but even those are worth the watch for the sake of completion.
Not saying I’m going to watch b5, but if I did I’d watch it all.
I guess so. Farscape bad episodes are a lot better than B5 bad episodes, though.
Thought of one more that might be worth watching (At least I thought so based on the two episodes I’ve seen) is Continuum. Kind of like Quantum Leap meets cop show. It won a fair bit of critical acclaim but I can’t honestly say I’ve seen more than the first season. The premise was interesting, though.
I’ve started reading the Expanse. Yay! Six books. That should keep me going for a couple weeks.
I haven’t decided on a show yet. I was hoping Dark Matter or The Expanse was on Netflix or Amazon Prime, but no such luck.
-
Funny, I came into thread to recommend Dark Matter, saw a ton of people do so, looks like I might help after all.. :)
Dark Matter is on Netflix, I’m looking at it now. Try searching again…if it’s not there, might be a geographical restriction, try viewing Netflix through a good VPN set to the U.S.
Also seems to be on Amazon, don’t know if this is covered under Prime. I don’t have Prime or want it:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/deta…_season_select
Appears to be on iTunes as well per scifistream.com
ETA: Appears the sci-fi anthology show “Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams” will be premiering tomorrow on Amazon. Looking forward to it, loved all of Dick’s books.
One thing I really liked about Continuum is that the main protagonist
never quite figured out that she was the bad guy.
Farscape bad episodes are certainly a lot weirder than B5 bad episodes.
For that matter, the same is true of Farscape good episodes.
I’m not sure if you’d like it or not, but I thought Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles tv series was an entertaining show. It only lasted two seasons though.
Eureka, WH13, and Alphas were all in the same universe. Eureka and WH13 had direct crossovers. Artie’s doctor GF shows up in an Alphas ep (but as far as a cross over was pretty low key).
Be warned, Alphas ends on cliffhanger. That nerd on big bang (the really annoying one with the prequel show) was very pissed about that.
No, the terrorists were the bad guys.
The alien race of the daughter is one of the most unappealing looking group of aliens on a show on a mainstream channel/movie.
Caprica was much better than the mediocre BSG reimagining ever was.
The Expanse is definitely on Amazon Prime (well the first season). That’s how I originally watched the show (I didn’t have cable when the first season was on).
Andromeda has been like a reasonably entertaining series so far. The premise is a bit different than most, and it lies in a bit of an odd area between shows like Star Trek or Farscape. The plot can basically be summarized as “what would happen if James T. Kirk saw the Federation’s destruction, then three centuries later he and the Enterprise popped out of a time portal?” I’ve heard the later seasons run downhill, however.
Maybe not in the uk? I looked for it. The book is awesome though! When I’m done reading I will definitely be downloading the show. Don’t even care that I might have to pay for it.