Babylon 5: Should I invest my money and time? ANSWER IN POST #500 - Page 9

Glad your enjoying it Ron and please keep us B5 Junkies fed with your reports. I agree too that the make-up, especially the bug man you mentioned in Season One was a bit cheesy but as it has been pointed out many times it will get better in Season 2 just like the show and the SFX.

Believers was a great episode: in my view, the best of the non-JMS scipted episodes.

If your unanswered questions about Sinclair relate to the B2 episode, as I assume, you've got a bit of a wait for an answer to that. But when you get to it, you'll find yourself sitting there going "Oh my gosh."

This is the beauty of B5. JMS has the ability to answer before you even have the question, but you did not realize it. And by the time you do realize it, there are so many new layers to the question, that you just have to smile.


Andy

The resolution to the "Babylon Squared" story is in season 3, and is one of the best time travel story ever done ("The City on the Edge of Forever" and "Yesterday's Enterprise" are my other two).

semi-pseudo-spoiler
Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

I really hate when people discuss or even mention Babylon Squared to newbies and say stuff like "just wait for the big payoff, you're gonna be like whoa!".

Just relax folk, he will get there eventually... nothing can ruin a good show like unrealistic "there is this huge payoff" expectations.

Remember, it worked best for us because we didn't even know there was a payoff. So let's stop setting people up for dissapointments.

Sorry, just a big pet peeve of mine, and it applies to any show, not just B5.

--
H

I'm glad you like it so far, Ronald...

Londo & G'Kar were always my favorites as well.
My favorite season 1 episodes:
"And the Sky is Full of Stars" (the first episode I saw, hooked me right away)
"Chrysalis" (the finale).

I think you'll enjoy season 2 even more. IMO it is a major step up in quality in every aspect over season 1.

BTW, I personally coverted many friends to B5 fandom by showing them the S1 finale and the first two S2 episodes. These three episodes can be considered a loose three-parter.

(And I agree with Holadem - lets not overhype or spill the beans ahead of time)

I didn't care too much for that particular episode, but it did have one of the best Kosh lines. "The avalanche has already begun. It is too late for the pebbles to vote." In case you didn't catch it he's referring to when the humans operated on him in The Gathering despite the objections of his government. The precedent has already been set and nothing him or anyone else says is going to stop Franklin from operating.

Well done Ron, you've cottoned on to the truth - G'Kar and Kosh are one and the same person. They never talk at the same time, nor have a simple conversation; G'Kar controls the Kosh suit by remote, and throws his voice whenever Kosh needs to say something enigmatic. The Masked Magician will reveal
Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)
in an upcoming exclusive on the Sci-Fi Channel, which will also unearth a dark secret from G'Kar's previous career as a ventriloquist.
[/silly mood]

I love Deathwalker (the one with the war criminal) for the same reason.

--
H

Oh, please, like it's not obvious that there's going to be a later payoff to that episode! The first time I saw it I knew it was going to be resolved later, I just didn't know when (until I watched the previews for the particular episodes in question -- oops, did they ruin it for me?). And, boy howdy, if you read the liner notes to the DVD sets you'll find out exactly when the payoff occurs. What I put in the spoiler tags has more to do with how JMS created the episodes that the shows themselves.

This, I believe, was one of the best standalone eps. Especially for S1. A dilemma like that would normally never end up in a sci-fi show. A good story about the dilemma that religion can bring to the table when it conflicts with life & death. How far does religious freedom go? How far should it go? A good episode that doesn't exactly preach one way or the other.

Believers is one of the better S1 episodes that I missed the first time around (I sort of bailed for a while after the David McCallum episode with the ancient armor whose name now completely escapes me), and didn't catch it until the show was rerun on TNT (or was it Sci-Fi, I forget which station ran the eps five nights a week).

Well, it would, but it wouldn't end like that. I still have a hard time watching it.

Another similar thing is the Farscape episode, "...Different Destinations", which admits that in Time Travel, once you mess things up, you aren't going to get it right again, and the cost could be high. There is no reset button here.

Jason

I just watched this episode last night....My God, if everyone here wasn't promising that it will get better, I would have heaved the whole set into the trash. Sinclair talking to the monster was the most inane, childish, preposterous piece of drivel I have ever sat through. It made Enterprise's worst moments look like a performance by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The episode is Infection and it's the lowest rated episode from the entire 5 years.

Yeah, that one. I skipped it on the DVD set too. I saw it but once, when it originally aired, and have no desire to see it again.

Indeed! I thought that as soon as you spoke of episodes 3-8. I just bit my lip, and lo-and-behold, look at your very next message.

I'm just gonna keep my mouth shut, and continue to read your impressions Ron! Enjoy!

Yeah, that episode really upped the stakes. And you have to love Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

Most seasons start slow to give new viewers a chance to get in.

I think season 1 is the most uneven of the seasons. Later seasons do even out quite a bit. You're reaching the point when even most of the filler episodes are good. Maybe not edge-of-the-seat material, but some of the worst rated episodes are from season 1. In fact out of the 10 worst, 7 are from season 1.

It was also the first episode filmed (aside from the Gathering). There was a pretty large gap between the filming of the pilot and Infection (as well as a bunch of cast and crew changes) so you can tell everyone is still getting their bearings.

I did enjoy Infection though but I definitely seem to be in the minority on that.

Often the problem isn't that the follow on episode is particularly bad but there has to be some sort of downward slope after a peak. GROPOS is an excellent example- pretty good episode,I thought, but after TCoS anything will disappoint.

Ron, you will find several sequences of edge of your seat episodes as you continue through the seasons.

Holy jeebus, are plowing through these sets or what! But I can relate, I went through a similar pattern with the first couple of seasons of Buffy (5, 6 eps a night).

Well, what show has?

TV on DVD does dramatically changes the enjoyement of a show. Sure, you don't have to wait a week between each eps, but that has it's drawbacks, as characters often don't have much time to grow on you within the few minutes between episodes. Filler episodes, which usually give some insight into characters or environments get somarily dismissed in the hurry to get to the next big arc ep.

The Coming of Shadows is one of the most perfectly realized episode of any show I have ever seen. It's one of those eps where everything just comes together, plot, acting, direction. It is also the title of the second season, and therefore, kind of it's point.

Season 3 (titled Point of No Return) is IMO the best.

--
H

The thing I loved about "Believers" is that it had an ending that most shows would never have gone near. Of course the doctor would operate on the boy and the parents would bow to the superior wisdom of Our Heroes (tm)

Not on B5. The kid dies because that is the logical outcome of the doctor's actions. No technobabble solutions here.

This is not your father's SF show. (A fact made all the more obvious by the fact that David Gerrold, who wrote "Believers" based on a premise assigned by JMS, is a writer who made his very first professional sale to the original Star Trek and the man who wrote the season one Writer's Guide for ST:TNG season one.)

As for "Infection" - like most "bad" B5 episodes it isn't inherently awful or especially badly made. It is ordinary. It is routine. It is your father's SF show. It is the only script in the entire series where you could white-out the names, change a few details, and shoot it for any of the various Treks with no furhter alterations. On any other series this would be a pretty good, if conceptually trite, episode. But on B5, because the best episodes are so good, an "Infection" seems really bad.

"Infection" is like the other universally-disliked episodes (which don't number more than a half-dozen or so out of 110) in another respect - there is some gold in all that dross. The ending, where EarthForce Bioweapons division shows up to collect the Ikaaran technology, is chilling and again reminds us that we are not in the safe, sterile, future of the later Treks. And there are several moments in the episode that touch on the arc, although these are not always obvious the first time you see the series.

One of the remarkable things about B5 is the way in which the early episodes take on a completely different significance in view of later events. Watching S1 after having seen the final episode of S5 is an utterly different experience than it is the first time through. That's why DVD is such a great medium for the series. It was made to be watched over and over, from the beginning and by design. Heck, there are headlines in "Universe Today" in the very first episode (you have to freeze frame to really see them) that point to future events, and plots already in motion.

Regards,

Joe

One thing to keep in mind is that JMS had originally envisioned the series to be structured as follows:

Season 1 - 25% "WHAM" episodes
Season 2 - 33% "WHAM" episodes
Season 3 - 50% "WHAM" episodes
Season 4 - 75% "WHAM" episodes
Season 5 -100% "WHAM" episodes

Because, by the time it got to the fourth season, PTEN, the show's syndicator was about to dissolve, there was a lot of uncertainty that the show would make it to year five, so season four is pretty much 100% "WHAM" episodes, and the fifth season unfolds at a more leisurely pace.

In this way, the stakes are essentially "upped" each year. It also allows new viewers to jump in and follow the storyline easier during the earlier seasons.

Speaking of "The Coming of Shadows," the sheer brilliance of that episode is that very little actually happens in it, but once the actions in that episode take place, you just know Hell's coming to town.

I watched the show during it's original run, and through most of the first two years, it was on a casual basis. I thought there were some visually interesting things and some interesting concepts, but I always thought of it as the poor man's Star Trek.

And then I saw this one episode -- I won't name it, but you'll know it if you've seen it -- late in the second season that just stunned me. I had never seen anything of that scope on television, and even rarely in movies. The script was just incredibly well-written, and it had two (at least, IMO) Emmy-caliber performances in it. As I was watching it, I was just riveted to the screen; horrified, frustrated, and utterly fascinated by what was unfolding before me.

And that's what finally hooked me on the show.

This is also what I believe is the thing that fascinates those who have seen the show with watching the reactions of those who just now discovering it for the first time. We can only watch it for the first time once, and can only vicariously experience the same sense of awe and mystery again. I remember getting hooked on it, back in 1995 or so, and just becoming obsessed with the show. Reading everything about it that I could (and this was before I had internet access, even), trying to find episode guides for shows I'd missed, piecing together all of the details to try to see the big picture.

I'm just glad Ron is liking it. I was kind of worried we'd all over-hyped it and he would come after us and demand that we pay him back for the time and money he wasted!

Quote: "Just watched Season II Episode #9, The Coming
Of The Shadows. What a great episode. Things
are really starting to jump into high gear."


...And so it begins.