thoughts on Babylon 5, a year or so later

[jazzfish]

J. Michael Straczynski (dev.), Babylon 5, most of.

General: Groundbreaking but flawed. Fatally hamstrung by attempts to tell a single story over five seasons through the loss of actors and network sabotage. (Full disclosure: I also despise bound book-fragments and have trouble reading individual issues of comic books rather than full storylines.) I don't regret having watched B5 but I doubt I'll go back to it.

S1: Occasionally cringe-inducing, but decent. I'm enjoying Sinclair, and the Sinclair/Ivanova/Garibaldi triangle. G'kar is a jerk and Londo is mostly kinda sympathetic. Delenn needs more to do. Vir and Lennier are great. Needs more Kosh, and more Morden.

S2: Sheridan feels like a nonentity; half his appearances make more sense if I think of them as written for Sinclair's background instead, and the other half lack personality. Londo's transformation to jerk is complete and I find myself sympathising with G'kar. Needs more Kosh, and more Morden.

S3: Looks like Londo will suffer no consequences for committing fucking GENOCIDE at the end of last season. On the bright side, Sheridan developed a personality! Also the return of Sinclair, who... I can understand why the actor had to be replaced. On balance this is probably my favorite season. Needs more K-- DAMMIT.

S4: Meh. The conclusion of the Shadow War feels rushed. The quick and easy resolution of the civil war even more so. I cannot believe that the people of Earth just said "Oh, we've been duped into believing the xenophobic crap Clark was selling us, our bad" and embraced Sheridan with open arms. I also disapprove strongly of G'kar suffering for Londo's sins.

S5: No Ivanova. No real point to the story. We abandoned ship not quite halfway through. I've been meaning to at least watch the Neil Gaiman episode and the closer for over a year now and haven't managed to work up the desire.

(Currently watching Futurama, which holds up surprisingly well.)

Comments

[andrewducker]

Season 5: Centauri bits Good, Psi-War bits bloody awful.

[reedrover]

I keep telling myself that I would watch these someday...

[blaisepascal]

There were definitely some changes made on the fly that didn't help. Michael O'Hare was let go because he started to have mental health issues which affected the show (this wasn't publicly revealed until after his death), contract issues led to Lyta being replaced with Talia, who was replaced with Lyta.

There wasn't so much network sabotage until after the 5 seasons (the sequel was killed by network sabotage), but the real problem with the network which hurt the show is that the network plain up crashed, forcing JMS to scramble in seasons 3 and 4 to make sure that the main story was told before the network went bankrupt. Season 5 was on a different network simply because PTEN didn't exist anymore. JMS set a record for most consecutive episodes of a TV series written by one writer trying to get the stories out. Season4 felt rushed? That's because it was.

As such, the main story was told by then end of season 4, and season 5 was mainly leftovers, one-offs and arcs which would have been told in the previous seasons if the original schedule had held.

Ivanova went away because it took so long to get season 5 sold that JMS had to ask every member of the cast and crew to voluntarily extend their option for season 5. All did, except Claudia Christian, who played Ivanova, so when her option expired, JMS was forced to either renegotiate her contract (and be forced to renegotiate everyone's contracts) or let her go. He let her go, and the show suffered for it.

Gaiman's episode is fairly standalone, so if you know who the characters are (which you do from watching the first few episodes),

One bit I noticed when recently (a couple of years ago) rewatching the first season was that while I initially felt that the first season started off mainly episodic and wondered when this promised grand arc would get going, upon rewatch, knowing how things went, I could see the pieces being laid out starting with the very first episode, in things I didn't notice the significance of the first time through.

Hmm, perhaps I'm a bit over-enthusiastic about this show...

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

Gaiman's episode is worth watching, and really does (mostly) stand on its own.

[candle.livejournal.com]

Heh. If you think that's bad, the attempted Rangers spinoff was even more cringeworthy.

There's a still a few B5 episodes I might go back and rewatch, but as a whole I think it's best as a giant whose shoulders the much better new stuff stands on. Have you watched any of Sense8? I've heard good (but still mixed) things about it but haven't made the time.