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As some of you may have noticed from other threads i'm a bit of a sci-fi fan.
I love BSG, Dr Who, Star Trek, farscape. . . .the list is almost endless but my favourite show is Babylon 5.

It was groundbreaking in many ways from special effects to telling a lengthy story arc instead of bite sized stories that were neatly wrapped up by the time the credits rolled.
I could probably recite every line from every episode, i've even worked out what each character is thinking inbetween their lines (I know that's probably taking it too far).

Are there any other Babylonians on this forum or am I all alone in the night?

I be.

Well, I've only seen the first two seasons, but I'm going to watch them again soon, as a friend will lend me the rest once I've reminded myself what the hell is going on.

Full of great characters.

If you get the chance to watch the movie "In the beginning" before you get to the second half of season 4 then I advise you to wait, you'll get more mystery if you watch it later.
That film ties up loose ends about the Earth - Minbari war.

Season 4 goes at a breakneck pace because Warner threatened to pull the plug so JMS brought things forward by 6 episodes to leave as few loose ends as possible, this means that season 5 is almost self contained due to so few threads being left to deal with.

The final few episodes have some real tear jerking moments & the last episode still makes me cry to this day.

I did have every single official B5 magazine in mint condition, a 3 film boxset signed by Claudia Christian & every film & spin off, then my landlord nicked my stuff & all I have left are the B5 books.
if you can find them then dig out these 2 books as they are stories that JMS didn't have space to put into the series but he wanted these tales to be told:

Book 9: To dream in the city of sorrows, this fills in what happened to Sinclair whilst on the Minbari homeworld

Book 7: The shadow within, This is about the awakening of the shadows & concentrates on Anna Sheridan

Still  watch it every year :) Startrek with more depth.

Quote from: BlonT on October 21, 2012, 04:06:06 AM
Still  watch it every year :) Startrek with more depth.

I agree, I love Star Trek but is's shallow by comparison.
B5 pushed sci-fi forward. after B5 arrived Star Trek started doing story arcs & they dropped the constant use of that reset button at the end of each show.

Some peopole say they hate B5 because of the acting, I pointed out to my ex thta 9once you get through the first few episodes the acting improves vastly as the actors realy get into their parts.

Have either of you watched Star Wreck In the pirkinning? It was made by a bunch of sci-fi fans & is a lampoon of Star Trek & B5.
The acting is terrible (I'll skip the first 15 minutes when I watch it again) but it's very funny, especialy when they get to the B5 bit. Captain Sherrypie launches into rambling speech at the drop of a hat, his first speech is a killer & starts like this "When I was a boy my dad said, son, you'r not very bright you'll bever marry onto money so join the military........"  ;D

The special effects are very good considering it's been made by fans & it's free to watch on you tube

I love Star Wreck. I watched it first time round before I'd seen B5 and had no idea what was going on. 2nd time found it was twice as funny. I especially loved Karsh taking his head off, and the interminable speech-making commander :).

I've got a frienmd whorefuses to watch it as it's sacralige to him, | just think he needs a sense of humour

Well, a lot of it is pretty adolescent, but it's still funny - and the parody-factor is high :). We probably miss a lot of the Finnish jokes that get lost in translation. I love that the ship is called the Kickstart.

Oh, and the female officer is hot 8). Actually, so is Sherriepie.

I was there at the dawn of the third age of mankind. And TOTALLY obsessed with the show.

Sad to see so many former cast members have passed already.

Babylon 5 is awesome.

And the men are yummy.

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Quote from: Misato33 on October 21, 2012, 10:15:05 AM
I was there at the dawn of the third age of mankind. And TOTALLY obsessed with the show.

Sad to see so many former cast members have passed already.

The last I heard it was Anreas Katsulas & Richard Biggs who had died, please don't say more of these fantastic actotrs have passed away.
There are 2 tribute videos on you tube, they are like farewell speeches from these two actors compiled ffom bits of the show, both of them make me cry but the G'kar one is really hard to watch.

Here's the Richard Biggs tribute, i've just watched it again & the tears welled up.
Babylon 5: In Memory of Richard Biggs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyD4L8yNtsA#)
When Franklin was fighting drug addiction it inspired me to pull my life together, thank you Richard

Here's the Andreas Katsulas tribute, due to the amount of great & moving speeches G'kar gave over the years this is possibly the most emotional tribute i've ever seen
Babylon 5: In Memory of Andreas Katsulas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2UQ2l9NPIg&feature=relmfu#)
I miss G'kar, I was an angry person when I started watching B5, as G'kar grew he realised the futility of anger & embraced compasion & understanding, he became a very spiritual being. I've tried to follow his lead, to shake of the anger that threatened to consume me.

Well Andreas, if your spirit is aware of this then know that the part of me that stayed very much misses the part of you that has gone

Sorry, Michael O'Hare end of September.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/30/michael-ohare-dead-heart-attack-babylon-5_n_1925947.html (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/30/michael-ohare-dead-heart-attack-babylon-5_n_1925947.html)

I always wanted to give Garibaldi a big hug, he's got a lovely smile.

Sinclair fascinated me, he was such a deep & thoughtfull man that I could spend hours or days just listening to that gorgeous voice as he explains his view on the universe, unfortunately i've just found out whilst on you tube that he is sadly no longer with us, goodbye old friend

As for Sheridan, I met him & have his autograph, he came to Bristol for a book signing, I waited for an hour & suddenly we heard this booming voice echo through the shop "Well, lets get this started" my knees turned to jelly, by the time the line got me to him I could barely speak, what a man!!

I liked Marcus & cried buckets when he left the show but never fancied him

If you want to discuss characters that you fancied then prepare to recoil in shock, I had a major crush on G'kar. I didn't like him at first, he was loud, aggressive & consumed by hatred.
As the show went on he changed, he realised that anger would never be a solution, he knew he had to save his people without war & retribution to truly save them, as this new G'kar emerged I started to fall for him, I know that Narns aren't attractive to look at but what G'kar carried inside him means more than the wrapping.

Padma, I thought most people wouold have seen this as it's quite old, because you haven't seen much then i'll try to avoid spoilers.
If I do mention anything that I consider a possible spoiler then i'll put a clear message so you can skip that part, it will look like this

SPOILER ALERT
Spoiler will be here & then at the end i'll put
SPOILER ENDS

This will make it easier for you to avoid ruining the mystery before you see the full show.
I believe that one of the greatest things about B5 is the mystery, JMS would drop throwaway comments in that would come back & reveal themselves as major lines years later, genius

Now re-watching the first series - it's strange coming back to it mid-transition, I was still "being a man" when I first watched it.

Does it stay this profoundly heterosexual all the way through all the whole thing, out of curiosity? So much for progress...

I love Babylon 5, too :)

I enjoy most scifi series I've seen, but B5 was my first and therefore the one with most nostalgia associated with it. I especially liked G'kar, his aggression and later character development made him fresh and interesting. Of the others I got really fascinated with the Minbaris. I remember most of my friends thought Delenn was annoying, I just thoroughly enjoyed the androgyne look she had. Not a wonder, really ::)

But I haven't watched the show in years. After finishing BSG again, I guess I have to. It'd be interesting to see how I feel about it and especially if the heterosexuality feels more irritating. Usually I'm frustrated in shows because so few have any meaningful same sex relationships, and I do remember B5 being somewhat old-fashioned in this.

I can't think of any mainstream tv scifi series before Torchwood that had any meaningful same-sex reference in it at all. But 20 years without a tv means I may have missed out :).

Padma, i'll try to answer your question without giving much away, there are mentions of gay marriage in at least one episode, the two people involved are very relaxed about it even though one is enjoying it more than the other as he pulls the other persons leg, I think the subject is well handled showing people of the future being comfortable about sexuality issues.

There is also a homosexual relationship (towards the end of season 2 I think), I won't say anymore as it's a great episode.

As you're watching through again Padma I thought I should bring this to your attention.
Several episodes were shown out of order when aired on TV, this error then went into the videos & DVD's (it may have been corrected by now)
These are the episodes in question & the correct order:

Straczynski has confirmed that the episodes "TKO" and "Legacies" in Season 1 fit between "The Quality of Mercy" and "Chrysalis", and that, in Season 2, "A Race Through Dark Places" should precede "Soul Mates", and "Knives" should precede "In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum

These mistakes may have been corrected in later DVD boxsets but I don't know, my boxsets were bought on day of release

Entil'zha veni, in Valen's name

I had a major addiction to the show when it was still being broadcast, I'd endlessly rewatch the episodes on video until the new season started, then get it on video and watch that till the new season stated, and so on.  It's definetly one of the most influential shows in US television history, it really changed the landscape of television there, before you'd have the reset button between episodes so that every episode was stand alone and you didn't need any prequirements in order to watch the show, but after B5 almost every show to this day tends to have a large cast with a complex ongoing story arc, without B5 we'd have no Lost, no Heroes, no Alias, no Battlestar Galactica or Caprica and certainly no Game of Thrones.  Just about everyone in the media at the time said the show would fail but it succeeded and I'm grateful that it did because it forced television companies to make intelligent and compelling shows rather than just churn out disposable chunks of whatever they felt like making that year.

I do like G'Kar and I think he gets all the best lines, such as:

Narn Courier: Are you Ambassador G'Kar?
G'Kar: This is Ambassador G'Kar's quarters. This is Ambassador G'Kar's table! This is Ambassador G'Kar's dinner! Which part of this progression escapes you?!

I was so hooked that I had a huge argument at work one day about it, my boss insisted that I had to work late due to a rush job & I stated that I was leaving bang on 5 pm so i could get home for the new episode of B5, he told me that if I didn't work late then I may not have a job to return to! The look on his face was priceless when I told him that B5 was more important to me than the job.

I'd also like to mention a dishy actor from the show who hasn't been mentioned yet, Ed Wasser (Mr Morden), what a smile he has, during shooting of an early season 3 episode he had skin flakes glued to himself but they were edible, he apparently sat in the canteen peeling the flakes off & eating them to freak out the others, I love a good, warped sense of humour  >:-)

  Must not forget Walter Koenig, Pavel Chekov of Star Trek OS, as the telepathic Psi Corps head Alfred Bester.  "You must wear the glove!"  This to protect the Telepaths from the Mundanes and vice versa.  Alfred Bester, 1913-1987, was also a science fiction writer and has written some story lines for DC comics. 

  Joelene

It's shame Crusade got cancelled when it did & ended on episode 13, JMS had the script written for episode 15 featuring Bester on the run, I would have loved to have seen him on the run & desperate, survinving by his cunning & wits, he was such a brilliant character brought to life by a brilliant actor.

  Sheridan did get a good one to Bester when Bester said that he could make Sheridan do something that would cause his own death. And Sheridan replied: "Been there, done that!".

  Joelene

I love B5. I also cried buckets when Marcus died. I had massive crushes on both him and Ivanova.

Londo & G'Kar were awesome, and I loved Vir to bits.

Favourite episode: The Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place.

Don't fret, there's hope for Marcus yet. If you look closely at the end credits of "sleeping in light" you'll see that Marcus has been placed in cryo suspension at the request of Susan Ivanova, so some day (if a new series ever gets made) he may be revived with the right technology

Quote from: Jayne on December 03, 2012, 10:22:23 AM
Don't fret, there's hope for Marcus yet. If you look closely at the end credits of "sleeping in light" you'll see that Marcus has been placed in cryo suspension at the request of Susan Ivanova, so some day (if a new series ever gets made) he may be revived with the right technology

Yeah, I saw that. It's still so sad though. Ivanova has to lose 3 people she loves in the course of the series, so I feel for her big time.

Time for a random B5 background fact:

Did you know that during production of B5 JMS ((Stracxynski) was approached by NASA with a request for them to "borrow" the Starfury design? NASA said it was the most practical design they'd seen & would be used as a combination of forklift & tug. JMS gave permission as long as the vehicle retained the name Starfury, NASA agreed to this stipulation but to date no designs of this proposed craft have surfaced. . . . . yet

The fact about the Starfury design was widely circulated at the time, whilst double checking the facts I stumbled across this claim:

Delenn was originally going to be a male character. The "transformation" at the start of season 2 would have been from a male character to a female character - both incarnations were to have been played by Mira Furlan. This is why, in the pilot, Delenn's appearance is much more severe and masculine than in the first series. The plan was to electronically modulate Furlan's voice into a lower register, so her voice would sound male. JMS wasn't happy with the results, so the male-to-female idea was dropped; Furlan's unaltered voice was used for the pilot, and her makeup was made more feminine for the series.

Hmmm, interesting

I knew about both those facts, they're cool ones.  :)

I'm amused by the one about how the network loved the show, but told JMS to get rid of Michael O'Hare (Sinclair), or they wouldn't let him make more of the show. They thought he was such an awful actor that they made replacing him a mandatory condition for getting permission/funding for further seasons. No wonder he looks so bitter in his later appearance!

SMALL SEASON 2 SPOILER

JMS dislikes the hot shot pilot stereotype so when WB instructed him to add a hot shot pilot JMS decided to kill him off ASAP, after that WB stopped poking their noses in & let JMS get on with making his show his way

Quote from: Jayne on December 03, 2012, 10:22:23 AM
so some day he may be revived with the right technology

JMS, the Great Maker himself, penned such a continuation in the form of a short story - Space, Time and the Incurable Romantic http://bookre.org/reader?file=194501 (http://bookre.org/reader?file=194501)

Thanks for the link, i've been re-watching B5 over the last few weeks & got to Marcuss's exit episode last night so your timing is perfect for me.

It is probably my favorite show that ever aired on television.