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The greatest space opera story ever told


Outlaw
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I have to tell you, nothing gets me emotional than watching the B5 series over and over again and having to shed tears in my eyes when Sheridan dies and when Londo becomes a puppet to his parasitic Keeper. Although the B5 movies were good and all, I just hope they can deliver with the upcoming movie about the rangers. How do you feel about B5 and its future?

[ 04-11-2001: Message edited by: Outlaw ]

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First off I have to stay true to tradition...

***MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW***

Best TV I've ever seen. It's rare that I actually watch anything on TV, other shows include South Park, Simpsons, Red Dwarf, Max Headroom, Indiana Jones Chronicles (wow did those have good production values), The Twilight Zone series form the 80's (JMS Even wrote a few episodes that I remember seeing), and Robotech. B-5 surpased all of them.

The writting is unbeleavable. As a small example; there's an episode in 5'th season where you learn that the Centauri find fresh spoo to be repulsive, I believe they can't digest it until it's aged or something like that. In the very first episode of the series there's a scene where Londo gets angry at G'Kar and finds him at a table eating spoo. G'Kar says something like...

"Ahhh Londo, care for some spoo? It's quite fresh this morning."

"FRESH IS IT?!??" And Londo spits into the bowl and knocks it out of G'Kars hands (as memory serves).

An insult that's thrown in the first episode and you don't even know about it until 5'th season.

I've shown this series to new friends in a 3 month long marathon and watching it a second time was really wierd. It's still a new show in alot of ways because of scenes like the one above.

I really think JMS still has it in him to continue the series. Alot of people where critical of Crusade but no one really knew where it was going to go. There's a scene at the very end of an early episode called 'The Long Road' where Galen speeks to another techno-mage. I can't remember the specifics but if you see it try and determine if they may be discussing events that haven't occured yet (remember these are two techno-mages talking, they knew of the shadow war before it happened). The conversation becomes very dark if you take that viewpoint... becomes a discussion of a coming darkness, etc.

Anyways, looking forward to anything new B-5 as long as it's being handled by JMS and crew.

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Hell yeah, Babylon 5 kicks ass. You just gotta love Londo Molari....

Londo: "I don't know how they see out of them anyway! Tiny, beady, squinty little things aren't they?

Drazi Ambassador: "Ambassador!"

Londo: "No, the Maker has not been kind to you. Must be terrible trying to fly at night without running into entire planets."

Drazy Ambassador: "Are you saying the Centauri do not know what ships are patrolling their borders?"

Londo: "No no, of course WE know. The Maker has gifted us with great big eyes. And great big scanners. And great big- ..... uh.. well, that is no concern of yours. Look, isn't there someone else you can harass? My life is so full of joy as it is!"

By the way, a bit of time ago I picked up a collection of Babylon 5 Bloopers. They're all saved to my HD and are around 114MB alltogether (not for the bandwith impaired)... drop me a line on ICQ (1293359) if any of you have some big bandwith though and want to check them out, they're hilarious Found them on the FirstOnes.com forums awhile back, not sure if they'd still be listed in the archives...

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I like J'kars speeches at the end/start of episodes. Real good.

Mollari is my favourite character of all times. In fact, I think the ONLY place where B5 went wrong is by putting the human characters into such solid, unchanging roles. Everyone changes in that thing except the humans.

Want a good hint the whole B5 plot was written from the start? Look at one of the very first episodes, when Kosh has his assassination attempt and the 1st doctor of B5 has to open the encounter suit.

When the telepath scans Kosh to look for the assassin, they show kosh greeting Sheridan with "Greetings Entilza Valen".

Very, very well done JMS!

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WOW ! I remember B5, I used to watch all the time, all the way to the last episode. Man, this was a space opera I loved, just my taste, a center for all racial and political conflicts, getting biger all the time...

Shit, havn't seen it seence the first rerun of the series.... God how I miss the mood. Althought I liked better the firsts seasons where it was more talking about conflicts inside the station than the later seasons with more intergalactic conflicts...

Been a long time I've seen it, but I remember the last time I've seen it. It was the 1st rerun of the serie, and it was the episode where we followed the life of B5 throught two maintance workers. The way they where kinda ignored in a way even when having this crucial job.....

This was the last time I ever so an episode of B5. Then it was summer brake, and in September they stoped broadcasting it, never to be seen again on a norwegan channel...

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B5 has a good story albiet a lot of it lifted from The Lensmen saga.

One thing if you look at B5 with a critical eye is the cheapness of the sets. And the fact that it seemed that Deleen and Sheridan ran the goverment out of their bedroom. A lot of this had to do with the amount of money JMS had to work with.

If you want to see a real good looking series try to catch Farscape. Stories aside it has the best sets/effects/creatures that I have seen on any SF TV series and that includes the Trek series which have always had high production values.

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FARSCAPE rules. Great stories. Great characters. Great F/X. Great character interaction. And then there's Claudia Black (Aeryn Sun)... Aaaah.

It's the best sci-fi show out now. Stargate SG-1 pulls a close second (when there are new shows )

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I don't like Farscape. It has little or no global plot. Good special effects, the actors are good... but its still lacking in the storytelling part. Its like ST: Voyager, start with a purpose for the characters and make a mindless set of episodes leading to nowhere.

Stargate SG-1 is a GREAT show.

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quote:

Originally posted by Akira:

FARSCAPE rules. Great stories. Great characters. Great F/X. Great character interaction. And then there's Claudia Black (Aeryn Sun)... Aaaah.

It's the best sci-fi show out now. Stargate SG-1 pulls a close second (when there are new shows )

I have to agree. I LOVE Farscape. The annoying part is, it's filmed on a lot about 30 minutes drive from where I live, but we are seeing it over two years behind the US. AAAARGH! And I missed the last ep of season 1. Bring on season two out here in Australia!

MMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmm Aeryn Sun....*grin*

As far as storyline is concerned, there is certainly an ongoing storyline (a dual one, in fact), but it takes much less precedence than Bab5's (I've only seen a few episodes of B5 but I realloy loved what I saw). The ongoing wrangle over Wormhole technology, as well as Moya, her history, and her offspring, are the ongoing story, and, reading the episode summaries on the 'net, a lot of the stories earlier in the series which seem relatively unrelated are brought together in the third series.

SG-1 is another cool show, who would've thought RDA (MacGuyver) had it in him to play a serious scifi role...*grin*.

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Hell yeah! Farscape is my second favorite sci-fi show and the characters and acting are great. Ben Browder's character as Crichton is so cool especially when he's always so paranoid and crazy. Also the funny moments when Scorpious pops up to torment Crichton and the episodes when it all becomes an acid trip to the senses. The other characters are great as well especially D'argo and Aeryn.

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Aeryn: "She gives me a woody."

Crichton: "What!?"

Aeryn: "She gives me a woody. It's a human phrase. I've heard you use it before when someone makes you feel unformfortable or nervous."

Crichton: "WILLIES! You mean, she gives you the WILLIES!"

*BEG*

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Tac... I said the same thing about B5 when it first came out. It was impossible to know what the story arc was until late in the 3rd season when JMS was having to rewrite the 4th season to include the 5th season that wasn't going to be optioned by WB... then he had to rewrite the 5th season for TBS and, aside from the final ep, it showed.

Hell, Crusade was the same way. No one knew what the hell was going on because the bigger picture was slated to start at the first ep of season 2(or last ep of season 1).

Voyager always had an obvious story arc: get home... BORING. I really hated ST S9 for it's terrible acting and poorly written shows, but it's arc (impossible to know til the end of the 2nd season) was pretty cool once it wrapped up.

Point being: You can judge a book by its cover, but you'll never be a reliable critic 'til you've read it all the way through.

------

DeSylva, man it's great to have you back I agree, the tension created by the stories are intense. Season 2 is amazing. I won't tell you what happens because it's just an emotional rollercoaster for all involved. If you have a decent connections you can usually find the shows for dl from one of the alt.binaries newsgroups.

Or, you could easily get the whole of both season 1 and now 2 on DVD. If you're the same region code as Brit'land. Sadly, they just started releasing season 1 on DVD here in the states

Anyway, i'm out. Happy Easter to all and happy TAX day tom. to all you Americaners.

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Just found this today... http://www.scifi.com/cityofdreams/

It's a series of radio dramas written by JMS. They have a heavy Twilight Zone theme to them, but if you ever saw the new episodes that where created in the 80's you may have seen some of JMS'es work.

One I remember was called the Cold Equation. The entire episode is a conversation between a stow away and a pilot on a small shuttle heading for the earth's lunar colony to deliver medical supplies due to some sort of disaster there. The stow away (a teenage girl) thinking she would get to see her father (if I remember correctly) who's currently working on the lunar colony unkowingly offsets the ship's pre-calculated mass. The pilot is left with the simple truth that there's not enough fuel to handle the landing and can't dump any of the supplies as they are desperatly needed for the victoms, and he can't sacrifice himself since the girl has no idea how to pilot the shuttle. The title of the episode spells out the ending (hope you can see why the episode has stuck with me for so long).

It sounds like the fan favorite is Night Calls, though I haven't heard that episode yet. Check it...

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