Ok, so whilst my SO is abroad for a couple of weeks I’m indulging my sci fi love by watching some stuff she’d never want to sit through. As I pretty much missed it when it came out, and because it gets good recommendations here and elsewhere, I have watched the first few episodes of Babylon 5.
Unfortunately I have a problem - they’re rubbish. A few points:
[ul]
[li]Aliens with funny hair and / or forehead rubber bits. Ok, they’ve tried with a couple of races to make them look weird (or at least like insects), but the main ones are still TNG specials.[/li][li]There’s a bloody telepath. I’m can’t wait for the time travel episodes as well.[/li][li]They send the leader of the station off on dangerous missions.[/li][li]The security chief looks like he based his life and acting style round Bruce Willis.[/li][li]The “Russian” chicks accent.[/li][li]The comedy is dreadful - particularly funny hair guy’s “hilarious” assistant.[/li][li]The whole “it’s the UN in Space” thing.[/li][li]The cringe worthy voice over in the credits.[/ul]I’m sure I could think of more, but that will do for now.[/li]
So does this shit get any better? And does it do it quickly? Because I’m at the point of giving up.
No spoilers please, just opinions.
And can anyone recommend an alternative. I have Buffy and Firefly, and have just started to get into Angel. I thought BSG season one was excellent, but then gave up when it got all religious. I dislike most of Star Trek, but probably only saw the first couple of seasons of Deep Space 9. I don’t want to see them again, but could I skip in somewhere - people say it got good.
Yeah, it gets a lot better. Seasons 2, 3, and 4 are the best. Season 5 is a major drag.
The show has not aged well. The super cheezy credits, bad costumes, cheapo CGI, etc. can be pretty glaring if you’re been spoiled by Battlestar Galactica or Firefly. But then again, B5 was a pioneer in a lot of areas: it was the first space show to rely entirely on CG for its exterior shots rather than models.
The science part of it makes a lot more sense than Star Trek stuff, too. Their station is a giant cylinder. They get their gravity from centrifugal force. When there is weird magickal alien stuff or fantasy-type elements, it’s usually accepted for what it is rather than explained with technobabble, which is nice.
Don’t bother with the first two seasons of DS9, it gets totally awesome beginning with season 3. But it has many religious themes too. So does B5.
ETA: Avoid Voyager at all costs. Well, maybe except for the ones where the Doctor is being funny.
Even most fans admit that the first few episodes are well below the rest of the series. It gets better later in the first season, and much better in seasons 2-4, with something of a dropoff in 5.
Sadly, what we have here is the collision of realism, with the limitations of sci-fi special effects budgets. If that really bothers you, I’m afraid most aliens are like that in B5.
Several, actually. The telepaths especially are common factors in the show. And while it only happens three or four times IIRC, the time travel is an important plot point. If that bothers you too much, then B5 might not be your show.
He becomes a more serious character, eventually. And the funny parts get better IMHO.
It develops well beyond that eventually.
I recommend trying it a bit more; possibly with some fast forwarding ( some of the early stuff is indeed rather bleh ( *TKO *and Grail being two of the more skippable episodes in the first season IIRC )). If you still think it’s awful, or stuff like telepaths are a major turn off for you, then it’s probably not to your taste.
That’s good to know, but does Season 5 spoil the rest?
I’m not too bothered by the effects, they’re perfectly acceptable. And I appreciate the odd nod towards science.
I might give that a go, then.
Why do they always do this? It really puts me off. (Conversely, I was far happier with the Force before the midchloriwatsits got involved).
Yes, I saw a few and they were pretty poor.
Again good to know.
I am probably being a bit unfair. I can overlook that stuff if the plots and dialogue are good. So far, not so much.
Oh lord, I was kidding about the time travel. Again, as long as it isn’t too gratuitous and with good writing, I can forgive the woo woo. But why do they do it?
I’ll keep going for now, I guess. Thanks for the replies.
That’s pretty much what I think after three episodes, but I’ve always heard good things, so will persevere. How much did you watch before giving up?
Note that the time travel only involves a few years and bears directly on the characters and concepts of the show–we do not see Babylon 5 visiting 20th century New York or Shakespeare’s England or anything like that.
What’s wrong with time travel and telepaths? They’re perfectly respectable science fiction tropes.
The show definitely started slowly (much like the current Dollhouse). Straczynski had to do some routine stuff in the beginning to placate the suits. Maybe the first half of the first season had that predominating. After that, the main story took off.
Also, after you see each episode, think about it. The entire show had a story arc, and things characters said and did in every episode (even the very first) foreshadowed or were relevant to later events. It’s even more interesting to watch after you’ve seen the entire series when you realize things you overlooked turned out to be part of the overall plot.
No holodecks! Not even a transporter to cause convenient plot accidents.
The show’s exploration of telepaths is pretty interesting, IMO. In the B5 universe, human telepaths are tightly controlled by a nefarious organization which was set up to keep tabs on them, but ends up becoming a force of their own. And Lyta Alexander is hawt.
Evil looking Devil guy and funny haired funny guy turn out to be much different characters than you would expect from the beginning. I think they are two of the best characters ever in SF TV or movies.
You really don’t get a sense of the main story in season 1 until the end. Then it takes off running in season 2. Once the serial episodes start taking over from the self-contained ones, you’ll start to see why it’s considered such a good show. In seasons 2 through 4, even the more episodic episodes tend to have a bearing on the overall plot, and continuity is never disregarded.
That’s pretty surprising given what I’ve seen so far, although there is just a hint that they could do the whole “antagonists bound by mutual respect” thing. In fact when funny hair guy talked about his dream of them both dying in 20 years whilst strangling each other, my first thought was that I bet they’re actually embracing.
As I say I shall carry on. In fact I’ll probably do 2 or 3 episodes tonight, so I might report back. As an early guess at a story arc I’d say the “raiders” are a lot more than simple pirates. Don’t tell me if I’m right!
Because religion and the tensions around it are a large part of the human experience, and it’s silly and unrealistic to pretend that it doesn’t exist or just ignore it. Given that one big advantage of the SF genre is that you can address those important human/philosophical-type questions in a sort of bubble, it’s only natural to use that advantage to address one of the biggies.
Let’s just say that, when you get to the end, the prophecy will not be anything like what you might be imagining now.
And yes, G’kar and Lando show fascinating character change through the course of the series (as so many other of the characters). That’s another strength of the show – character change and growth (or, in some cases, regression). For many, your impression of them will evolve.
You make a good point. I have a hope that religious belief would not survive contact with alien civilizations, but I’m probably wrong to be so optimistic. I object more to the “mystical” elements more than the religious, but I object to the woo woo back here on Earth as well.
I’d love to see a sci fi show that portrayed the human race as free from old fashioned superstition.
My other objection is that sci fi shows seem to make up religions that are just farcical. I just couldn’t watch BSG after the Spear of Apollo thing came up.
I can be unreasonably stubborn with no good reason. See, I like sci-fi a lot. I really like it when it’s well done. I had just finished DS9 and thought it was great overall, and I was looking for something to fill the gap. Like you, I had seen people raving about B5 for years and years, with nary a negative comment to be seen, so I gave it a go. And it just sucked and sucked and sucked and I wasn’t sure what I was missing, so I kept waiting for it to get good, and it just kept sucking and sucking, and I went back and read peoples’ descriptions of which scenes they thought were amazing, and they were all ones that made me roll my eyes at the cheesiness, and then it was over and I had seen the whole damn series and I wanted my life back.
I haven’t seen S5, however as I understand it they weren’t sure if they’d get to do the fifth season and so finished the main plots during S4. There were still threads left dangling, and I’d like to see S5 to see how some of them resolve, however you can safely skip it and the main body of the show will still be complete.
The Minbari religion will make a lot more sense as you get farther into the show. None of the other races have well-defined religious beliefs, though they do come into play a couple times.
This list is very similar to what you would get with TNG: they have an empath, with a bad accent; despite his protestations early on Picard often went on away missions later in the series; Security Chief Worf had his own issues; the comedy was very hit-or-miss; & they had the whole “we come in peace, shoot to kill” we-aren’t-sure-if-we-are-a-military-organization-or-UN-in-space thing.
Never was impressed by B5 myself tho. I am a very character-driven person and none of them in this show really grabbed my fancy.
Agree with the rest of you that Season 1 of B5 was not very good.
It definitely picks up speed, and the acting gets better. Especially once Commander Sinclair (or, as my wife and I called him, Commander Wood, due to his limited acting range) is replaced by Captain Sheridan.
And, I also agree that Season 5 wound up being very anti-climactic, since the main storyline was wrapped up in Season 4.