SciFi: Babylon 5

Ok so only ever having watched the occasional episode when it was released I
rapidshare'd the entire fucking universe. Intro, 5 series and 4 films.

I was interested, having read a bit about M.Straczynski, the Story Arch
concept and the herculean task of producing it all. For me it aces any
other sci-fi series and on balance I thought it was excellent. Sure some
episodes rambled and FF was useful but mostly it rolled along and they
avoided a lot of dodgy pseudo science. I liked the limitations on ship
velocity, weapons range, combat chaos etc and for that I'll excuse some
dodgy costumes and Universal English/Bipediness.

I suppose I could put it all up on FTP if anyone else felt So_Sad. It's a
fuckwad of content but the world is awash with bandwidth.

I've downloaded Crusade now, which I'd never heard of until this. We shall
see.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Straczynski

 

Warning: keep your expectations low. JMS is a chronic sufferer of TV
executive-itis, with the beancounters constantly meddling...

As you've seen the 5 series, you'll notice the lack of quality in the final
one. That was because he was informed the series was facing cancellation
after series 4 and as a result, condensed the final two series into 1,
(shadow war and earth civil war should've taken a series each).

Crusade suffered even more, the bean counters got all interfery with the
story insisting it was dumbed down and stuff, you can tell the episodes
where they were meddling most because JMS gave the crew a new design of
uniform to signify it...

 

Like you, I've watched it off and on, but mostly lost track.

If you could whack maybe the first couple of series on a dvd for
tomorrow night, I'd be really grateful.

 

Aha right. It still makes the Trekkie clones look like the shite they are
and shows up the hopeless plotting in X files.

 

You have a lot of Hotel time to fill.

I'll try. And a laptop would quickly suck the rest from my Gig home switch.

 

Fangurl. I suppose you'd like Serenity, too.

 

You have no idea. I'm here till July. In 2008 I was at BAE for three
months and got through the whole 7 series of The West Wing.

I could bring a USB harddrive to the pub if you can bring a laptop
with it on or something similar. I'd leave the USB drive with you,
but I need it for work.

 

My front garden isn't mined.

Well, it may be but I can give you a map.

 

Well I should be into the new gaff May which has a few spare
bedr^h^h^h^crash space and is mostly already refurb'd.

Did you catch my comments about the train fares? Itr should look something
like this:

Mon 22/03/2010
09:30
Birmingham New Street
11:45
York

Fri 26/03/2010
16:25
York
18:28
Birmingham New Street

£48.90

Which if you don't pay for it is a breeze.

 

I may download a bit of Firefly and sample it.

There are some fucked up metrics around. Considered a failure for only 4.7M
viewers an episode. Four point Seven Million, for a sci-fi series, smells
like amazing success to me FFS.

 

'Hog said:

Yep, remember it all first time round and enjoyed it, currently
rewatching it on FX every night at 6 so its on series link.

Not as good this time round, well some of the acting anyway but still
enjoying it.

As for crusade, I remember trying to get into it first time round,
probably only watched 3 episodes then gave up :-/

 

Hold on a min. I agree DS9 was a bit wank and Enterprise not much
better, but Voyager was a rose among thorns.

7of9, Kes and at a push Janeway. Some good characters, if only they'd
dropped Neelix off early in the series.

The annnoying twat ...

Paul.

 

I preferred DS9. At least it had some plot lines that ran for more than
about 40 minutes. Voyager I found was basically a variation on Star Trek and
Star Trek TNG. I thought the aliens especially were just the same ones
trotted out under new names.

One of my favourites was Farscape although it did get a bit soap opera ish
towards the end. There were some great episodes though especially in the
first series.

Lexx was interesting though it did seem to get a bit up its own arse after a
while

--
Malc

Rusted and ropy.
Dog-eared old copy.
Vintage and classic,
or just plain Jurassic:
all words to describe me.

 

Every series mentioned so far is shit compared to the battlestar
galactica remake.

 

Not seen that either

 

Well I do admit 7of9 has some redeeming features

 

[snip]

I thought we'd done with Bear, by now...

 

actually, strike that one ; that was "Farscape", not "Babylon 5".

 

wait for strike 3 - that'll be the one to watch.

 

I'd recommend Battlestar Galactica - excellent storylines and themes
(suicide bombings, genocide, internment, torture etc) - Caprica (the
prequel to BSG) looked quite promising too.