I’m flying out to Minnesota on Friday, and then riding back with family next week, so maybe I should consider taking the first season or two along with me. Nothing like 30+ hours in the car to give you an opportunity to catch up on some television.
Otherwise, I plan on plowing through Life on Mars and Arrested Development.
And reading, of course, but you can do that after nightfall. Not without a stupid booklight.
Hahaha, well played sir. But Babylon 5 was a show of grand highs and awful, soul grinding lows! As unwatchable as the Invanova sex style is, there are episodes of B5 that are just as good as that one is awkward.
i LOATH the boxing episode, follow closely by the episode regarding the deliusional King Arthur and Franklin’s dying singer love story. I recently rewatched the series and i can think of few shows that have episodes that draw such contempt from me. So i think it says a lot when I say as a whole B5 is still my favorite sci-fi series as a whole. I thought that BSG would surplant it, but the multiple incidents of jumping the shark and then scrambling to undo the damage…keeps it from earning that spot.
You don’t know about the B5/DS9 thing, do you?
You should rephrase that. The ONLY thing wrong about that episode is that scene. The G’Kar plot in the same episode is awesome, and even the rest of the Ivanova plot is cool, with the alien’s extreme views on evolution, his argument with Franklin, etc. That scene just kills it, but it’s still worth watching for everything else. Hooray for fast forward.
TKO, on the other hand…
Somewhat, but since the acting was better, the writing was better, the special effects were better, and the story was better I guess I am going to have to say that DS9, while copying some elements of B5, was a much, much better show.
I tried catching up to it via DVR, but the channel I was recording them off of kept jumping around and showing episodes out of order, making it hard to follow, and it was taking forever to collect enough to get stretches in the right order. I’d be tempted to pick it up on DVD except for a bunch of other box sets I’m still going through…
I did like what I did manage to catch, though.
While I will admit that this may be the wrong thread for DS9 fans to come out of the woodwork and stolidly defend what was easily the best sci fi show of all time, you started it, kerzain. So apologize and we’ll go back into our holes. And don’t start none again, cos Niners represent, fool.
All G’Kar plots are awesome.
That’s just, like, your opinion, man.
Besides, where DS9 was tired and sluggish, B5 was epic and unpredictable – willing to do more with a story, and really pit it’s lead characters against one another. And all this on a shoe-string budget. Wow, truly amazing.
Wait, which is my opinion?
That you started it? Cos you did.
Or that Niners represent? Cos we will.
That this isn’t the thread for DS9 fans to boast about the quality of their favored show? Cos it really isn’t.
Or that DS9 is the best sci fi show in the history of the medium? Cos that’s just a stone cold fact, motherfluffer.
Well of course it is all opinion (but that doesn’t stop people from arguing!)
I didn’t find B5 that epic or unpredictable. Not true, I did actually when Sheridan jumped off the edge in season 2 (I think) but the cheesy way they brought him back really sucked some of the wind out of my sails.
B5 was epic and moving and felt like a novel, not a great one but a novel with some really interesting moments. For me DS9 was episodically more solid than B5 and as DS9 series went on, it developed a arch that was interesting. It however never felt as epic, like the whole world you were watching could really change and you couldnt see a way back and this would was seemingly forever transformed. Of course, B5 did find its way back, but only partially, and the unspoken truth was that for as evil as the show potrayed them, shadows were right! In fact, Sheridan, slip into Morden mode in season 5 for a few moments to finally pull them altogether by minuplating what the league worlds by directing them in the question the Shadows always asked "what do you want?'. Bottom line, they were stronger as a result of the conflict and adopted characteristics of both the Vorlons and Shadows to maintiain the allaince! DS9 had many of those same moments but it didnt always go as deep, and it never felt the world was really in jeopardy and the changes were a lot more transitory than in B5.
I really enjoyed DS9 my first watch through, but personally I never felt the need to commit to rewatching it. Despite all its flaws I’ve rewatched B5 4 times now, every few years. It felt like a novel! Even the ending felt like a series I really love/hated as a kid. DS9 felt more like a more polished version of B5 meets Star Trek. Which is what it was, but the Star Trek, includes all the implied baggage of its source. Don’t get me wrong i love Star Trek but they didnt really have the latitude to recreate the world and turn the characters against each other with their own agendas like B5 was able to.
Ack, you just made me throw up in my mouth a little, mentioned that Piers Anthony dreck in the same thread as some very good television.
lol, well keep in mind I read that series when I was 13. So, at the time, it seemed profound, deep, and engrossing for me. I tried to reread it a few years back and it was…less…lol
However B5 elicited those same feelings of deep stories and unspoken moments that I recall being so impressed with when I first read the series, verse how it reads as a adult.
I can see some of that really I can but I find the world of DS9 richer. I felt like I really got to know quite a bit about Bjoran, Cardassian, and Dominion culture. I never felt that way about the races in B5. Some of the individual characters yes but not the culture. Heck I never felt like I knew anything about the shadow. They were just evil. That is all. No idea if they had a culture, or families, or heck art. Meanwhile I found out a ton about the Founders (about the closest bad race in DS9) The struggle to bring Odo back, then all the problems he caused, the use of their powers etc.
B5 did feel more like a novel - compact contained. DS9 felt like a whole universe.
What is this Ivanova sex scene stuff? I wasn’t old enough to really store any absuridities like that when I watched it, so I’ll have to check it out tonight.
You know I’m finding the show quite entertaining it just listening to it via Hulu while I work in the office.
The visuals were never really B5’s strongpoint anyway :)
Course I’m in Season one. That’ll probably change as the show continues.
I find that true and interesting. In the end DS9 was more about the transformation of a few people; Sisko into the Emissary, Dukat into batshit evil thing, Kai Win into power monger whore where as B5 really was more about how the whole universe (or at least known societies) changed.
I was always a Trek fan, but recently, with the demise of BSG, I’ve been giving B5 a crack. Good god is the first season terrible, even compared to DS9’s first season (which I watched less than a year ago). Everything from the writing to the acting to the effects and set design is awful. I’m sticking with it, because I’m told it gets better, but wow.