Babylon 5 newbies? (Richard Biggs - RIP) (1 Viewer)

[Mike Broadman]

Glad to see you liked Intersections. It's another episode that has a play-like structure, and I love those. I know a lot of people who didn't dig that, but it's a personal favorite.

Re: Garibaldi and Sheridan- I don't know if their reconciliation was forced or accelerated, but I look at it as two military men who don't need to talk about everything and hug each other and apologise. Sheridan intellectually understands that Garibaldi's betrayal was not really his fault, but still needs time to come to grip with it emotionally without letting it interfere his work.

Deconstruction was an episode not planned but done when season 5 was picked up by TNT. The series finale was already filmed, but now with a season 5, they needed a new season 4 finale. When you do finally see the series finale, there will be a couple of lines of dialogue that won't make as much sense as it would had their been no 5th season.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

I tend to listen to talk radio while driving to and from work. Yesterday Jerry Doyle substituted for Michael Savage and without getting into any political rhetoric I'll just say when the show began he seemed comfortable sitting in Savage's chair. I did some checking and found out that Jerry started his own radio show back in December and (not coincidentally) it's being syndicated by the same network which distributes Michael Savage.

I thought it was interesting to hear strong political opinions on events taking place on modern day Earth coming from the voice of Garibaldi.

Anyway, back to the discussion.

 

[Kevin Grey]

I don't think there would be any lasting enmity but I would expect Sheridan to be furious about the betrayal until it was explained. One scene would have done it. From Garibaldi I would a strong sense of guilt over what he'd done- yeah it wasn't his fault but I don't believe that you can shrug it off that easily. It seemed like Garibaldi was back to his old, wise cracking self a little too quickly.

Optimally, I would have liked an entire Garibaldi "redemption" episode right after Intersections- showing him trying to explain his actions and formulate a plan to rescue Sheridan while having to deal with suspicion and disgust from all of his old friends. Would have been very fascinating. Still, I undersand why its not there.

In the long run it certainly doesn't bother me much- JMS had essentially three episodes to wrap things up and did a remarkable job of closing as many threads as possible but with a story this epic and cast that large there are always going to be some scenes missing that the viewers would like to have seen. As it is, I read quite a few complaints that "Rising Stars" was "too slow."

Question- Bester alluded to a secret that he knew about Lyta but it was never explained. I assume this is addressed in the fifth season?

 

[Dave Scarpa]

You'll enjoy in the Beginning it was the best of the "Movies" . I think Intersections in real time aired about the same time as TNg's "Torture" ep with Picard. THe one where picard "Sees" three lights. Both were very powerful shows

 

[Dave Scarpa]

I'm dissapointed that Doyle would have anything to do with that idiot shocktalk Savage... but I still enjoy the Garibaldi character

 

[Joshua_W]

Since Jerry Doyle seems to be pursuing new work, can we assume that his attempt to revive Babylon 5 hasn't gone anywhere?

 

[Mike Broadman]

Doyle can "attempt" all he want, but without Warner Brothers it's all useless. He's just one of the actors, he can't do anything about it.

Not surprising to see him doing political talk, as he ran for office before.

I'm actually glad they didn't show Sheridan's and Delenn's wedding. Weddings on TV are always corny.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Kevin Grey wrote (post #383):

If it's what I think it is, the "secret" has already been revealed by Lyta herself, although she doesn't know the depths of it. The details do come out explicitly in a season-5 episode.

 

[Kevin Grey]

Thoughts on "In the Beginning":

Largely very good but I was a bit disappointed by a few parts. My main beef is that it had an aura of fanfic about it. It seemed way too convenient that almost all of the principals from the show had such large and interconnected roles to play.

The Sheridan-Franklin-G'Kar diplomatic mission bothered me. There was never any indication that these three knew each other before arriving at B5. True, JMS never showed Sheridan's *initial* meeting onboard the station with these two but it still felt contrived. Ironically, had it been Sinclair participating in such a mission I wouldn't question it since it was already pre-established that he knew Franklin before his arrival on the station.

I also didn't care for the portrayal of the human captain responsible for the disasterous first contact with the Minbari. He seemed too ego-centric and warmongering- more charicture than character. Its hard to believe that anyone could be so boastful and confident of their success when they've already been warned that the Minbari are far more advanced than the other races humans have encountered.

Ivanova's brother was possibly the most uncharismatic individual ever on B5. What should have been a very touching scene between the two of them was all but obliterated by his wooden performance.

The rest was largely very good. I particularly enjoyed the camera work designed to give a weightless feeling on the human cruisers without actually showing anyone floating around. My favorite sequence was the montage of the human losses primarily because of the haunting musical score that surrounded the images. I would have also liked to see what Sheridan was doing during the Battle of the Line.

Overall it was very enjoyable but I don't think it really added anything to my perceptions of the B5 universe.

 

[Ric Easton]

Kevin,

I remember having high hopes for ItB that Sinclair would have a bigger part to play. Unfortunately all we ended up with wer flashbacks. It would have been great to see him in character one last time.

I guess now you've got a bit of a break coming! Geez, the thing streatched out for 5 years for me!

Ric

 

[Mike Broadman]

IMO, the B5 movies never get better than a longer version of a not-bad but below average episode.

 

[Kevin Grey]

It seems to me, particularly after watching The Legend of the Rangers this weekend, that JMS's strength is long-form story telling over several seasons vice short-form movies.

Even those *great* episodes of the series like Severed Dreams and Z'ha'Dum are great precisely because of all that has come before and been building toward it. I think JMS sort of struggles when faced with coming up with a 90 minute story that gives a satisfying, self-contained plot while simultaneously giving suitable attention to his large casts of characters.

This does give me some worry about the new B5 project to be announced in May- since it looks to be a movie or mini-series I worry if JMS can make something satisfying with a relatively limited running time, paricularly based on the substandard opinion of prior B5 movies. On the other hand, I'm happy it isn't a series because I fear that it would never run long enough to complete its arc in the current television environment. I really hope that its a decent length mini-series. I'd love to see something of a length similar to Band of Brothers or Taken: 10 hours would be the perfect amount of time to tell a suitably epic story without worry of impending cancellation. Ten hours would be roughly equivalent to an arc-only season of B5.

 

[Mike Broadman]

I absolutely agree with that whole post.

 

[MikeMcNertney]

Maybe we can hope for a direct-to-dvd "tv" series

 

[Holadem]

Eh... you're kidding but you may be onto something. Seriously.

--
H

 

[MikeMcNertney]

I was only half kidding really. I'd buy a new series by JMS sight unseen.

I'm actually expecting within the next few years for a show which gets canceled but then develops a following on DVD to try the direct-to-dvd idea. Something like Firefly could possibly pull it off, if the dvd sales numbers are not enough to convince the TV execs that the show might be worth picking back up

 

[Kevin Grey]

I've thought about the prospect of Straight to DVD sales for shows like B5, Farscape, and Firefly but its hard to get the numbers to pan out.

The difficulty is in finding the magic pricepoint-

Let's say they were to make a two hour B5 movie straight to DVD. Assume MSRP is $19.99. I don't have hard and fast numbers but I'm guessing approx $12.00 of that would go back to Warners (I may be completely wrong). Assuming that the DVD sold approx 300,000 units then it would net Warners $3.6 million. The TNT B5 movies cost approx $3 million a piece and that was with existing sets and computer models. Just considering inflation I doubt that $3.6 million would be enough to cover a new B5 movie.

A four hour B5 DVD miniseries might be a bit more feasible- Assume MSRP is $29.99 and that $20 for each copy sold goes to Warners- Now Warners would get a return of $6 million. Production costs are going to increase a bit as the length of the movie increases but if the movie could be made for $5 million or less, Warner Bros could see a profit.

For more expensive shows like Firefly prospect of profitability gets worse.

In all of the above scenarios Warners could mitigate some of the potential loss by airing it on TV first, using the eventual DVD revenue to assure profitability.

 

[DanielKellmii]

What is your opinion of the sound processing? The Dolby is very appreciated, but I find that I have to turn up the center channel to hear the dialogue clearly. Does anybody else do that? Considering that this wasn't made for 5.1, the sound came out pretty good.

 

[DaveGTP]

I don't have any problem with my center channel volume being too low (Onkyo TX-SR601, Fluance AV-HTB). Have you calibrated your setup? That could help.

 

[DanielKellmii]

Have you calibrated your setup? That could help.

Yup, I even found the analog SPL meter.