Babylon 5

[Toph]

I'm through most of the movies.
Even though they are made for television, use the same cast, use the same sets, makeup, and effects, they honestly do a better job of feeling like actual feature length films over large episodes than the TNG films do.

Starting Legend of the Rangers now and OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD

[blueshift]

Jan 5, 2020 22:18:31 GMT Toph said:

Starting Legend of the Rangers now and OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD

Oh noooooooo

[Toph]

Was their budget five dollars? Was it filmed by Saban?

Even G'Kar's makeup is a huge step down.

[Toph]

WTH?!? They punch and kick to fire the weapons?!?
They power ranger thebadguys through overacting??

[Toph]

What the hell was thaaaat??

Did they read the title and assume Rangers meant Power Rangers??

[Toph]

They could afford to pay Andreas Katsulas to say exactly 9 lines, and one of them was to make kissy faces at other ambassadors.

If nothing else, it was worth sitting through just to see that.

[Toph]

I have had the better part of 24 hours to process The Legend of the Rangers, and apparently Myriam Sirois wildly screaming, kicking, and punching the air like a madwoman is seared into my mind, as I have been able to think of little else, since.

My walk away lesson from this, is that I am glad I decided to watch B5 in (mostly) chronological order instead of release date order, so LOTRangers won't be my final memory of it.
I still have one more movie, Crusade, and Lost Tales to go.

[Toph]

I have moved on to A Call to Arms and Crusade.

Only seen the first ep, and not sure how I feel.

[Andy Turnbull]

It will not go well for you.

You have our sympathies.

[Toph]

Okay halfway through and I have... thoughts...

1) How is this somehow campier than B5 season 1? At least it's not the upcoming Legend of the Rangers.
2) Their budget wasn't as bad as the upcoming Legend of the Rangers. But it obviously was pretty tight.
3) How do they mess up their own timeline so badly? Events happen in the wrong order, and it can't be chalked up to episodes aired/placed in the wrong order because their uniforms change!
4) I don't understand how that tram car tube works. The whole think seems oversized and excessively complex to just send a tram car along the length of the ship. They could have had a whole entire deck full of labs, storage, and living area, if they just had a couple tubes that go back and forth like normal.
5) At least that poor woman doesn't have to have a stroke just to fire the weapons.
6) So it could be worse.
6.5) ...could also be better.

[KnightBeat]

Jan 9, 2020 2:12:19 GMT Toph said:

Only seen the first ep, and not sure how I feel.

Don't operate heavy machinery after watching these episodes!

By coincidence, I've just thrown away the VHS box covers for these episodes. The gold Crusade logo is quite impressive, though the grainy screen captures used for the covers do it no favours. That said, many of the Star Trek VHS tape covers were equally bad.

[Toph]

That's IT? It just ends???
I mean, I know he had an entire five seasons planned out, and these 13 episodes probably were only half of the intended first season. But when B5 was ending in season four, he gave it a proper resolution, until TNT rescued them.
I would have figured he'd at least have given some sort of closure.
Though I admit that unlike B5, he may not have been given a chance.

Okay so the weird timeline is a result of it being aired out of filmed order.
They started the series, filmed several episodes, then TNT decided to up their budget, and told them to film a proper pilot episode that introduces all the characters.

So with that new influx of funds, as well as new sets, they designed new uniforms (the black ones). Following the new uniforms, they just continued to film the scripts with the new uniforms and sets. Only they frontloaded all these, then had (stupid) scene to explain why they were switching to the grey uniforms (the earlier episodes), with the plan on switching back to the black ones.

This is all a very stupid and convoluted solution to a problem that wouldn't have existed had they just shot the pilot with them wearing the grey uniforms.

All that said, it's a pity it failed. There were nuggets of good stuff that never got explored. Hopefully the effects would have improved, and the camp feel would have faded.

I am glad they just flat out skipped the telepath war. I was not looked forward to that. The telepath stuff and Psycorps was my absolute least favorite element to B5.
I wish they had given Daniel Dae Kim more to do, though.

[Toph]

Finished Lost Tales, and I am now officially at the end of the Babylon 5 universe.

Lost Tales was really good. Weird, but good.
The G'Kar and Franklin are "exploring together beyond the rim" line made me tear up a little.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Now you have to read the 'Legions of Fire' trilogy of novels by Peter David which tell the Drakh War.

babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Novel_list

I guess you'll want to skip the Psi Corps trilogy, but they are all apparently officially JMS-plotted canon, so...

Martin

[Toph]

Oh god, just looking at the titles of those Psi Corps books just makes me groan.

To be fair, I dislike none of the individual telepath characters? (Well, except the creepy dude that Lyta was shacking up with)
And Bester himself was a great villain.
I just... The general plot of the Psi Corps and the telepath war couldn't possibly be less interesting to me.

Does the Drakh War trilogy wrap up the virus plot?

[Philip Ayres]

The third Psi Corp book tells you how it ends.

Rather fond of the Psi Corps books, especially book one which gets us from here to there.

Legions of Fire is much more Centauri than Drakh.

Technomage books explore some of the Crusade themes which were only just starting to come to screen when the axe fell.

[Philip Ayres]

I think one of the very first conversations Martin and I ever had was about these books while we waited for respective trains after a toyfair at the NEC c2003

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Jan 15, 2020 7:54:47 GMT Toph said:

Does the Drakh War trilogy wrap up the virus plot?

Jan 15, 2020 8:22:27 GMT Philip Ayres said:

The third Psi Corp book tells you how it ends.

Phil's memory is better than mine. I can't remember what was resolved where, but babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Drakh_plague suggests it was indeed 'Final Reckoning - The Fate of Bester' that resolves the plague thing.

Martin

[Toph]

Thanks guys

[The Doctor]

Crusade has the unique claim to fame of being cancelled not once but twice before it even aired! The first time was why the uniforms, etc were changed.

It's amazing that the two different versions of the show even got an airing.

-Ralph

[Philip Ayres]

Mira Furlan, who played Delenn, has left us :-(

https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/mira-furlan-dead-babylon-5-lost-1234890117/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/FurlanMira/status/1352421126496894976

Twitter: https://twitter.com/straczynski/status/1352465912255770624

[Toph]

Okay, this one hurts.

I had such a huge crush on both her and Delenn when I was a kid.
And my rewatch of B5 only reminded me how great a character Delenn was, and how marvelous her performance was.

I had no idea she was so sick.

[Philip Ayres]

I was trying to work out which of the regular cast were left: Bruce Boxleitner, Claudia Christian, Peter Jurasik, Pat Talman, Jason Carter, Andrea Thompson, Bill Mumy & Tracy Scoggins.

Gone: Michael O'Hare, Jerry Doyle, Mira Furlan, Richard Biggs, Stephen Furst, Andreas Katsulas & Jeff Conaway.

[Philip Ayres]

BBC www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-55763658

I'd never heard of what she had before en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Nile_virus

[Toph]

West Nile is a plague here in the states. The Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex is one of the worst areas in the country given that we're borderline tropics.
Until President Loser, we had been really diligent about it. Spraying mosquito hotspots every year, consistent reporting on the local news.

I just now realized I haven't heard about any of that stuff for a few years.

We have another one that's really bad in a different way, called the Zika Virus
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zika_virus
It's carried by the same species of mosquitoes, but it can also be sexually transmitted. And it was an epidemic here.
it's effect is that babies of anyone infected are born with microcephaly (they're brains and heads are massively underdeveloped).
I also now realize I've not heard about this one in some time.

[Philip Ayres]

Reboot

deadline.com/2021/09/babylon-5-series-reboot-j-michael-straczynski-development-cw-1234845022/

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Urgh.

Martin

[Toph]

Woot!

[The Doctor]

Many, many revivals of B5 have been announced (sometimes by JMS himself) and nowt happened. I will believe this when I see it.

-Ralph

[Toph]

With CW behind it, this one seems more promising.
· CBS has Star Trek
· Disney has Star Wars, and The Orville is locked away with Disney
· Universal seems uninterested in using or letting go of Stargate
· Syfy had Battlestar and currently has The Expanse

WB probably wants a big space epic with a credible background. Something they can also put on HBO Max, and something that's different than more superheroes.