Hee! You’re hooked, I see. I hooked my mom on it after I first got hooked. That was fun!
I didn’t see B5 until SciFi started running it daily some years ago (when was that?) – it was on at 7 every evening – and I only started watching it at all because I was channel-surfing one night and recognized it and had heard it got really good so I thought I’d give it a shot. I came in near the end of the first season so I didn’t really miss much that go-round, though I have since found that there are all sorts of bits and pieces of stuff that pay off or at least relate to stuff that happened even years later in there. This was before the DVDs. Within a week I was pretty much hopelessly addicted.
And waiting a day between eps nearly killed me. You people who waited longer, damn, I don’t know how you survived.
I though the fifth season got better later on, but it sort of annoys me largely because: Why not give the teeps a damn planet? This may not be Trek with a million Class Ms out there, but there had to be something somewhere for them to go. I don’t blame them for being pissed. I would be too.
For once, the UK wasn’t far behind you. Channel 4 was the bane of science fiction. The BBC showed the way, every Wednesday, at 6pm, without fail, a little bit of SF. Channel 4? Tuesday, 6pm. Definitely. Except when it was Sunday, a little bit later in the day. Without telling anybody about it. And then maybe it wouldn’t be. :dubious:
IIRC the Queen herself led the nation in a bout of heart bleeding for you North Americans at the time
It wasn’t bad when I saw it first, it really kept me coming back for more, the season finales were pretty decent from what I remember. Catching the first two seasons again on video on demand though, I can only really forgive JMS because of two things. First, Marcus’ zen like speech on the unfair nature of the universe. Second, the little guy really does get his day, several seasons later. I felt even that gave away too much, so spoilered it is.
“You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn’t it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.”
Part of my early liking of B5 was Kosh. At last, an alien who seemed, I dunno, alien. You could hardly understand half of what he said. Later, he seemed to have some agenda that he was both reluctant and eager to let Sheridan in on…“I must teach you about yourself, until you are ready…to fight legends.”
Oh, cryptic elder races are a staple of space opera. Hell, the only part that surprised me is that he’s occasionally useful for something. Of course, there are always other powerful, ancient, and thoroughly deadbeat races to fill the gap.
HA , we were conditioned by the television mafia and we obeyed our masters. They start you at a young age , watching cartoons. So that time of the year when you had to go back to school, at least you took comfort knowing that there were gonna be cool new shows coming out.
You got older and now your in high school, and same thing. The origninal Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, and whole new series of cool stuff , like Magnum PI, Airwolf, Wiseguy and it kept coming, and every spring the hiatus would come and you had to wait.
High school/Grammar School wasn’t a bad time for SF. We were still working our way through TNG in the UK (it ended on the Beeb in my last year IIRC), B5 ended around the same time (again IIRC) and Stargate was ongoing around that time too, depending on when Channel 4 deigned to show it to us.
Even in the 80s, the good old Beeb had something on at 6pm weekdays for us, Star Trek, The Invaders, Buck Rodgers and Channel 4 had Lost in Space or Land of the Giants on Sunday mornings.
I remember a few torturous summers waiting for TNG to start up again. I was eleven when that show started so it took me through my teens. But at least I knew when the next season would start!
I remember being totally pissed about Time’s Arrow being a two-parter. You don’t end the season halfway through a damn episode! Maybe that’s the deep-seated source of my current distaste for broadcast TV…
Thirded. Bester is such an incredibly complex character. Very few people like him (and rightly so) or trust him (even more rightly so) but even with that he has people that he loves and that love him. And even he, the loyal psi-cop, has secrets and places in his mind and heart that he hides from the Psi-Corps.
I find it far too funny to think of Bester being on the Enterprise instead of Chekov. The trouble he could have caused!
I’m glad Walter’s gotten to take on better roles than Chekov. I did notice that there’s a lot of cross-pollination, actor-wise, between the various shows. I suppose there’s only so many actors who are up for the sort of makeup that is often involved.
I find it far too funny to think of Bester being on the Enterprise instead of Chekov. This occurred to me not long ago when I was watching a few old Trek eps for no real reason.
I’m glad Walter’s gotten to take on better roles than Chekov. I did notice that there’s a lot of cross-pollination, actor-wise, between the various shows. I suppose there’s only so many actors who are up for the sort of makeup that is often involved.
Actually the funniest scene that I can remember with Walter Koenig/ Al Bester was when him and Sheridan were on one of the ships , probably a whitestar and the bester character was sitting in the command chair , looking so startrek. Then Sheridan tells him , get out of my chair.
Some of the adult humor was side splitting for its time. As Ivanova quips “to go where every man has gone before”
Actually, it was, ‘Get the hell out of my chair!’ But yeah, Bester manages to be the warmest creepy fucking bastard I’ve ever seen.
Update: “If you value your lives, be somewhere else.” I remember seeing that mentioned as a Crowning Moment of Awesome over at TVTropes, and after watching up till now, I just have to say, 'Fuck. Yes."
I think that’s everyone’s favourite moment of the series. “Only one captain has ever faced a Minbari fleet and lived. He is behind me. You are in front of me.” Brilliantly scripted and delivered.
