Babylon 5

[Khaldun]

JMS' loyalty to actors was actually a big problem even in the original run. Not only did he keep scripting subplots for actors who manifestly could not handle the attention, I think he really went soft on some of the harsher fates hinted at in the early foreshadowing because he liked the actors so much. That's part of the problem with the falling action, too: all the implied tragedy of the rising action goes out like air from a deflating tire. Even the G'Kar/Londo stuff loses some of its possible bite with the convoluted introduction of the Shadow allies, but at least that does the job of making something we saw early in the show have an interestingly different meaning.

[calapine]

The show had a lot of great little things that made it enjoyable.

And some good scenes too, although I wouldn't say that was the main attractions.

What do you want?

Did you know that Lemberg, Ukraine was once Austrian?

No WW1 if you hadn't shot our heir. No WW2 either of course. No post Sykes-Picot middle east, thus no Israel-Palestine, Iraq-Iran war (2nd, 3rd), no cold war, no Sebrenica

I WANT IT ALL BACK!

[Hoax]

Fairly certain not serious but I was taught that WW1 was happening no matter what Germany, France and England (especially Germany ofc) wanted a war and were basically just waiting for something to kick it off.

Also wiki says Lemberg belongs to Poland if not Ukraine.

[satael]

Fairly certain not serious but I was taught that WW1 was happening no matter what Germany, France and England (especially Germany ofc) wanted a war and were basically just waiting for something to kick it off.

Also wiki says Lemberg belongs to Poland if not Ukraine.

WW1 wasn't inevitable. Alot of how it escalated had to do with Germany's warplan which required a full-on commitment right from the start (to attack in the west while Russia was still getting ready). As for the politics of it most of the world thought that a world war was impossible since the world had become so prosperous thru trade where everyone (with modern weapons) profited from it so they wouldn't risk it all in some folly.

[Teleku]

Also wiki says Lemberg belongs to Poland if not Ukraine.

And Southern Poland use to belong to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (they helped partition Poland, along with Russia and Germany).  The province was called Galicia.

[calapine]

Fairly certain not serious but I was taught that WW1 was happening no matter what Germany, France and England (especially Germany ofc) wanted a war and were basically just waiting for something to kick it off.

Also wiki says Lemberg belongs to Poland if not Ukraine.

Not, quite serious no. I have been reading 'the sleepwalkers' (and some polandball...), so it was on my mind.

But yes, even though the assassination of the archduke Ferdinand was a classic example of trigger (as opposed to root cause), I don't think WW1 was really inevitable. If you add to that the plans of federalisation that Franz-Ferdinand had ("United States of Austria"), it makes for some interesting What-If scenarios.

Hitlers's (and the Nazi) rise was so closely tied to WW1. (Even after that it hinged on quite a few chance events, something little as not calling early election in 1930 could have thrown a spanner into it.) Or the Russian revolution. While it's certain that a revolution would have happened at some point, but the radicalisation of it n and takeover of the Bolsheviki was not. After the February revolution the czar was already gone, but being forced to continue the war was a main reason for the fall of the Mensheviks/bourgeois faction which lead to a second uprising in October.

In retrospect it seems the actual events where the worst possible outcome that could have happened.

[Khaldun]

Welcome to one of the longest-running mudfights among scholarly historians, which still is anything but resolved.

[jgsugden]

As mankind, generally speaking, is just a giant collection of assholes, WW1 was inevitable ... as our eventual destruction at our own hands.  I just hope we get a few more good movies before that happens.

[Hoax]

Also wiki says Lemberg belongs to Poland if not Ukraine.

And Southern Poland use to belong to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (they helped partition Poland, along with Russia and Germany).  The province was called Galicia.

So to recap the region was its own entity up until the 14th century:
-Annexed by the King of Poland and eventually rolled into the Poland-Lithuania Commonwealth.
-1772 the first partition that gave away tons of Commonwealth land because Russia was controlling the commonwealth anyways, and france, and that's how it was done helpfully gave the region to Austria.
-1815 Austria has been slowly taking over the rest of "Polish" land despite attempted insurrections against Austrian rule.
-1848 Revolution in Galicia and Krakow against Austrian rule
-1861 Galicia has won limited autonomy from Austria
-1918 Post WW1, the Poles and Ukrainians are asserting national independence and they fight each other over Galicia. Poland wins.
-1919 Paris Peace Conference gives Galicia officially to Poland until something something
-1920/21 Poland and Ukraine sign treaties signaling an end to the dispute. Galicia is Polan's clay they agree.
-1939 Russia surprise steals Galicia from Poland because they need to protect Ukrainian and Belarusian minorities. Stop me if you've heard that one before. According to wiki this was actually because of a secret pact with Nazis.
-1945 Poland and Russia sign a treaty where Poland accepts that this is how things will be. Galicia is now Ukraine. All the jews are dead.

How did I do? I'm still failing to see how Austria can try to make a claim? They had a claim once upon a time by the slimmest of margins. They can't claim they had it first, they can't claim they had it longest and they can't claim they had it most recently. That's Poland, Poland and Poland.

brb installing CK2 

[Teleku]

Oh, I wasn't trying to imply Austria had any legitimate claim to it.  Just saw she mentioned that it use to belong to Austria at one point, and was pointing out she was correct.  But yeah, here in Poland they are still rather bitter over the loss of Lvov.  But never let it be said Stalin was unfair.  To make up for expelling/exterminating all the Poles from Lviv so they could never claim it again, he expelled/exterminated all the Germans from one of their cities and said it was apart of Poland now, then sent the remaining Poles left living from Lviv to live there.

Problem solved.

[Ingmar]

They also had a (questionable) claim to the throne via their inheritance of the Kingdom of Hungary in the 1500s. Took them a long time to press the claim, which probably doesn't say much for the strength of it.

[Sir T]

All we need is for Shephard to introduce humanity to the joys of bisexual alien psychic hotties and everything will be fine.

[calapine]

I'm still failing to see how Austria can try to make a claim? They had a claim once upon a time by the slimmest of margins. They can't claim they had it first, they can't claim they had it longest and they can't claim they had it most recently. That's Poland, Poland and Poland.

Po...who? I can't find this place you speak of!  

More seriously, the empire was a pre-nationalist entity, so any claim wasn't by a "people" to it's homeland but from the house Habsburg.

But as Teleku pointed out, I was only stating the fact is was within the borders once (to further the joke), not making a claim. I am not a monarchist.  

But yeah, here in Poland they are still rather bitter over the loss of Lvov.  But never let it be said Stalin was unfair.  To make up for expelling/exterminating all the Poles from Lviv so they could never claim it again, he expelled/exterminated all the Germans from one of their cities and said it was apart of Poland now, then sent the remaining Poles left living from Lviv to live there.

Problem solved.

There is the famous anecdote with the three matches at the conference of Teheran. Churchill used them to represent the borders of Russia, Poland and Germany respectively. Then moved all three to the west. Russia expanded into Polish territory and Polands border moved into Germany as compensation.

[Shannow]

Nothing like a slice of Polish history in your Babylon 5 thread. 

[Teleku]

This is frankly a much better direction than I thought a thread about a remake of Babylon 5 would go.

[Surlyboi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zJsrjOytG8

[Setanta]

Nothing like a slice of Polish history in your Babylon 5 thread. 

... people shit up the GoT thread, why should this be any better.

[calapine]

Nothing like a slice of Polish history in your Babylon 5 thread. 

... people shit up the GoT thread, why should this be any better.

Bah. I am sorry.

[Khaldun]

How is this shitting up? Keep going. Hell, the Centauri Emperor in the first season more or less explicitly invokes WWI...

[Phildo]

This is the perfect place to quietly discuss history, I only clicked on it by accident or would have totally missed the conversation.

[Surlyboi]

This thread has prompted me to buy all five seasons of the show.

[Teleku]

I've never seen any of this other than that prequel movie, which I liked quite a bit.  Does.....the series hold up ok?  It's always hard sometimes to go back and watch low budget Sci-fi.  Went back and watched first few seasons of next generation, which I loved as a kid, and it was rather painful.

I hear a lot of great things about the series though, so I'm tempted to buy it.  At the very least it will give me something to watch when I have no internet.

[Ingmar]

Keep in mind that the pilot movie is COMPLETELY DIRE. It is so bad you question how the show ever got made afterwards. So, don't give up after watching that.

[Khaldun]

Just can't emphasize enough: unless you're a completist, follow someone's guide to what to watch and not watch. The weak episodes are really weak and there are enough of them that anybody but a hardcore completist would give up in the early going.

To use an earlier analogy from my own writing, the only way kids stayed glued to the tube for all of a Saturday morning in the 1970s is through carefully honed strategies for navigating through dire periods of crap to get to the good stuff. Same here.

[calapine]

I've never seen any of this other than that prequel movie, which I liked quite a bit.  Does.....the series hold up ok?  It's always hard sometimes to go back and watch low budget Sci-fi.  Went back and watched first few seasons of next generation, which I loved as a kid, and it was rather painful.

I hear a lot of great things about the series though, so I'm tempted to buy it.  At the very least it will give me something to watch when I have no internet.

Babylon 5 introduced an overarching plot-line and seriousness into a SF show that made re-watching Startrek TOS look clichéd and a bit like a kids show. Now in 2014 I think there is a similar gap between BSG and B5 - in overall production values and "acting-polish", so yes, it has a aged a bit.

But it's still a great show.

[Fordel]

B5 'invented' a lot of the shit we just assume is part of TV now. It's also really fucking old and its age shows. Still has lots of great in it.

[HaemishM]

I think you should watch all of it, the good and the bad, because there is a lot of stuff buried in episodes that makes sense later on. Even the dire pilot movie.

[Numtini]

They need to get this thing on netflix because I'm a huge fan and even I'm not willing to cough up $120 for it.

[jgsugden]

Are the disks not on Netflix?

I still consider everything B5 to be watchable, even if some of it is only watchable because of how it complements the good stuff. It is best enjoyed immersively, without long gaps between episodes. The effects are aged, but they were some of the first real attempts at TV CGI...

I doubt anything will ever replace it as the most treasured SciFi  I've enjoyed. Even if this movie gets made and ducks, it won't tarnish B5 for me.

[satael]

Babylon 5 is still my favorite epic scifi tv series and very few have since come even close to it in telling a story that grand in scale (nevermind so well). I'll be happy  content (happy if it isn't a total fail) with any new material.

[Johny Cee]

B5 'invented' a lot of the shit we just assume is part of TV now. It's also really fucking old and its age shows. Still has lots of great in it.

B5 is the closest televised thing we've ever had to an old fashioned golden age Space Opera, with the good and bad that comes along with Space Opera stories.  It has Big Damn Moments, escalating stories and weapons/tech, and isn't afraid to monologue.  On the other hand, there is very little subtlety or ambiguity.  White Hats and Black Hats.  When characters/factions switch sides they go from reasonable to giant monsters.  Some of the themes are cloying.  Rampant borrowing from other material (LOTR stands out).

The saving grace is the Lando and G'Kar arcs which are really a testament to the ability of those actors.


Many of the claims of innovation are pretty overblown, though.  Story arcs?  Blake's 7, evening soap operas like Dallas, even shit like Pro Wrestling.  It's also a callback to old serials.  The "series long arc" stuff has been kind of debunked, considering JMS' original leaked ideas called for 3 series of 5 seasons each with a pretty different story.  Yah, he had general ideas and some specific moments planned but there was far more improvisation going on then JMS likes to admit.

I'll admit I've been pretty soured on the whole "genius of Babylon 5" by the bloviating and back-patting that JMS has done since the show ended.


The first season is atrocious, in general.  Second through fourth have some great moments and overall are pretty good, though you have to look past some pretty terrible storylines and whatever the fuck was wrong with the direction/writing that made many guest actors and stand-alones episodes bad.  The fifth is also pretty bad, such that I didn't bother to pick it up when I did a rewatch and posted on it here.  There was some good stuff and a couple of standout episodes, but I didn't have the willpower to batter my way through it after season one nearly broke me.

The effects are pretty bad the first season or two, but get an upgrade to passable some time around season two or three.

[Merusk]

Many of the claims of innovation are pretty overblown, though.  Story arcs?  Blake's 7, evening soap operas like Dallas, even shit like Pro Wrestling.  It's also a callback to old serials.  The "series long arc" stuff has been kind of debunked, considering JMS' original leaked ideas called for 3 series of 5 seasons each with a pretty different story.  Yah, he had general ideas and some specific moments planned but there was far more improvisation going on then JMS likes to admit.

I'll admit I've been pretty soured on the whole "genius of Babylon 5" by the bloviating and back-patting that JMS has done since the show ended.


The first season is atrocious, in general.  Second through fourth have some great moments and overall are pretty good, though you have to look past some pretty terrible storylines and whatever the fuck was wrong with the direction/writing that made many guest actors and stand-alones episodes bad.  The fifth is also pretty bad, such that I didn't bother to pick it up when I did a rewatch and posted on it here.  There was some good stuff and a couple of standout episodes, but I didn't have the willpower to batter my way through it after season one nearly broke me.

The effects are pretty bad the first season or two, but get an upgrade to passable some time around season two or three.

No, he had a 5 year plan from the get-go.  I recall reading that shortly after the TV movie was aired and the first season was approved. I was thrilled, it answered my one biggest problem with TV shows - that they all run past the point they were interesting.

Did he have to modify it? Sure, but it was conceived with a beginning, middle and end unlike the other shows you mentioned. Sure they had arcs, but the idea was to keep the show running as long as possible, like all TV shows.  B5 was indented to tell its story and then end, which was the revolutionary part.

From my memory it's also the first show with truly alien aliens as central characters. Star Trek had Spock, but he was half-human and acted more like a human than anything else. TNG had Worf but he was human-raised.  These were totally different cultures meant to be seen and acted as such, not filtered by human experiences and were central to the story rather than being novelty characters.  THAT was big.

[Khaldun]

I do agree though that if you followed him regularly, JMS' "bloviating and back-patting" (nicely put)  tended to cost him a lot of potential goodwill. Plus he tended to back himself into corners both in terms of what he wrote into the show and in terms of claims he made about the show.

[Johny Cee]

Many of the claims of innovation are pretty overblown, though.  Story arcs?  Blake's 7, evening soap operas like Dallas, even shit like Pro Wrestling.  It's also a callback to old serials.  The "series long arc" stuff has been kind of debunked, considering JMS' original leaked ideas called for 3 series of 5 seasons each with a pretty different story.  Yah, he had general ideas and some specific moments planned but there was far more improvisation going on then JMS likes to admit.

I'll admit I've been pretty soured on the whole "genius of Babylon 5" by the bloviating and back-patting that JMS has done since the show ended.


The first season is atrocious, in general.  Second through fourth have some great moments and overall are pretty good, though you have to look past some pretty terrible storylines and whatever the fuck was wrong with the direction/writing that made many guest actors and stand-alones episodes bad.  The fifth is also pretty bad, such that I didn't bother to pick it up when I did a rewatch and posted on it here.  There was some good stuff and a couple of standout episodes, but I didn't have the willpower to batter my way through it after season one nearly broke me.

The effects are pretty bad the first season or two, but get an upgrade to passable some time around season two or three.

No, he had a 5 year plan from the get-go.  I recall reading that shortly after the TV movie was aired and the first season was approved. I was thrilled, it answered my one biggest problem with TV shows - that they all run past the point they were interesting.

Did he have to modify it? Sure, but it was conceived with a beginning, middle and end unlike the other shows you mentioned. Sure they had arcs, but the idea was to keep the show running as long as possible, like all TV shows.  B5 was indented to tell its story and then end, which was the revolutionary part.

From my memory it's also the first show with truly alien aliens as central characters. Star Trek had Spock, but he was half-human and acted more like a human than anything else. TNG had Worf but he was human-raised.  These were totally different cultures meant to be seen and acted as such, not filtered by human experiences and were central to the story rather than being novelty characters.  THAT was big.

Google it.

His original story outline was three shows, with five seasons each, covering two generations with the "magic kid" of Minbarri/human finishing it in the third series.  I think it was more tragic originally until Magic Kid fixes his parents mistakes in series three.  Basically JMS has been spending his time since patting himself on the back and talking up how much of it was groundbreaking and what a genius he is.  It's tough to disprove because he did pretty much all the writing.

I'd argue his output since then, leaving aside the counterpoint that he might be a one work genius who exhausted his talent finishing the series, has been mediocre at best.  In many cases it's been pretty bad.

I'm not saying that many of his original ideas didn't stick around from his manifesto, but it's pretty obvious that he readily adapted what he could and adjusted everything on the fly as well because reality, financing, and actor contracts don't let you do what he wanted to do.

Also, I'm not sure about "alien" aliens.  Most of his alien races were typical "planet of hats" (see TVtropes) types pretty similar to World cultures/empires (Narns were Soviet Russia, Centaurans? were declining Roman Empire).  ST did alot of "planet of hats" types and "rubber forehead aliens" types, but they also did the weird people that spoke in metaphors in TNG and the blob monster that was eating miners in TOS (turned out the miners were mining its eggs until Spock mindmelded it).  Even the Shadows and Vorlons, which did have a fair amount of alienness about them, were distilled into kids with abandonment issues as the resolution (and destroying their weird alienness) to that plot arc.

I'll say some good things about it now:

It is the "truest" Golden Age Space Opera we have ever had in TV, right down to stuff like in the future we have psychics and all that that used to be popular in the '50s/'60s when paranormal research/esp was more reputable.

It wasn't afraid to do Big Moment corny cheeseball stuff, which actually worked.  Big thanks to Boxleitner who sold the shit out of it.

Londo and G'Kar were amazing characters with amazing arcs.  When I did the rewatch, those two kept me in it despite the pure distilled terribleness of some of what went on around it.

It has all the giant space battles you ever wanted since you saw Return of the Jedi and wished that the Battle of Endor in space could have gone on for another half hour, and which hasn't been done too much since.


If you like SF, you should definitely give it a watch.  Just keep in mind that there are some pretty dodgy bits to it, and you will have to suffer through.  The payoffs are there.

Edit:

As a disclosure, personally I am very pro "evolutionary" versus "revolutionary".  I'd be the one who, when someone talks about how revolutionary X is, would talk about how A, B and C really paved the way for them and set the stage for X to be a big deal.

Especially in this case because the genius of B5 has been played up online since it ended by the diehard fan brigade and JMS spouting off about how amazing he is. 

[Numtini]

I can recognize exactly how cheesy some of the monolog stuff is on an intellectual level, but I am totally JMS' bitch. I buy it every time whether it's the Shadow War or Spider Man.

One thing I absolutely love about the space battles is the big ships, particularly the Earther ships, slogging it out.

His script for World War Z is brilliant. It never got made, but it was brilliant.

I agree about the "planet of hats." I don't even know that the Londo/G'Kar arc was all that incredible or that it's just how great the actors were in the parts.