Its great. One of the few shows with O'neil cylinders. The tech is cool, the characters are cool. Londo and G'kar have the best character arcs in literally anything. Would recommend
>What does /m/ think about Babylon 5?
Grossly overrated but its diehard fans but still good. It doesn't overstay its welcome like DS9 did. I know fans bemoan that the Shadow war was cut short, but personally I found it disinteresting and was glad it ended in a timely manner.
I thought that the Earth Alliance blowing itself up and then being set back into the Dark Ages, with the Rangers refusing to help them out and instead just pretending to be monks doing nothing was very meanspirited and cruel on part of the writer.
I feel this way about many protagonists nowadays. Bilbo from the Hobbit. Estelle and Lloyd from the Trails games.
To me, Sheriden's likeability was a hill. At first I disliked him for replacing Sinclaire and for his mary sueness of having blown up a Minbari battleship during the war in which humanity could do jack all against them, Sinclaire included. Then I began to like him more and more as the series went on. Then I soured on him in season 5, first when his adultery was revealed, and then during his handling of the Centauri conflict. He gives in too easily. "If you want war, you will have a war!" and then he wasn't willing to let the Narn and Independent World's fleets get destroyed by the Centauri after massacring their homeworld when he knows that the Centauri were innocent.
>I know fans bemoan that the Shadow war was cut short, but personally I found it disinteresting and was glad it ended in a timely manner.
Ackchyually, that arc ended where is was supposed to. It was the earth afterwards arc that was fricked by the season 4-5 transition. >the Rangers refusing to help them out and instead just pretending to be monks doing nothing
They were helping, they were just doing it slowly so that the people of earth would believe they rebuilt on their own instead of just getting tech dumped on them from space.
Last year I think. Currently the best version is the Amazon one, though we're apparently getting BDs at some point. I say proper HD but the special effect shots are still upscaled, but it's still a lot better looking that the old DVD version.
>How? I thought B5 wasn't filmed in 35mm.
It was. I think the reason we never got a proper HD transfer before now was mostly the CGI being rendered at 90s TV resolution and the original files being lost so they couldn't be re-rendered. Or maybe no one knew where the original film was, which would explain why only the series itself has a new transfer and all the movies on amazon are still the old versions.
Even if they kept the files, they'd have to remake many of the assets to fit current resolutions, and it would cost a lot of money that likely would be lost due to not having a audience big enough. IIRC Voyager has the same issue even though many of the assets are still safe.
>IIRC Voyager has the same issue even though many of the assets are still safe.
Voyager and DS9's issue are a bit more general, that they were shot on film but all of the editing was done from videotape transfers to save money. So there were never any film negatives of the final product that you could take new scans from, just video negatives which can at best be upscaled (with all of the limitations of videotape in terms of stuff like resolution and colour fidelity). TNG was edited in the same way, and the BDs required a lot of manpower to make them look as good as they did, with large portions of the editing and VFX work just having to be redone digitally from scratch over the film masters. It pays off, but it was very expensive, so unlikely to be repeated for those two less-popular entries especially when the TNG BDs may not have actually done all that well saleswise relative to the amount invested in making them
B5 does at least have the advantage of having been future-proofed with film negatives which could then have new CGI interpolated in. It's just a question of 'would recreating the CG at a more modern resolution be a worthwhile investment?'
>'would recreating the CG at a more modern resolution be a worthwhile investment?'
If TNG wasn't I doubt B5 would. I wonder if crowdfunding could be the solution, Hasbro has been using it for specific toys like Unicron and it apparently works for them.
It's been confirmed the TNG BDs have not made a profit, but it doesn't help that they were released just as streaming was becoming the bete noir of Hollywood. I can't think of a single blu-ray I've bought since 2013.
Because letterboxed 90s CG at TV resolution doesn't look good upscaled to 16:9. I rewatched Stargate last year and that stock footage of three hataks in hyperspace looked blurrier as the seasons passed and new cameras were used.
>I rewatched Stargate last year and that stock footage of three hataks in hyperspace looked blurrier as the seasons passed and new cameras were used.
They kept using the same footage of the gate activating too.
Last year I think. Currently the best version is the amazon one, though we're apparently getting BDs at some point. I say proper HD but the special effect shots are still upscaled, but it's still a lot better looking that the old DVD version.
>proper HD version
How? I thought B5 wasn't filmed in 35mm.
That was a myth started by mallgays. It was actually shot on the precursors to the modern IMAX cameras.
/t/ delivers, went straight there after the anons posting about it to check if someone has it. >
Kind of good. Very 80s, not 90s at all. I consider it the last gasp of classic science fiction before everything changed post-9/11 and Western media focused on grimmer and grittier sci-fi.
It does not hold up to time, particularly S4 because of the rushed nature of S4 and S5 because S5 didn't need to exist.
I will eternally seethe that season 4 was rushed. We could have had another season of kino slow burn build up. Season 4 is still a masterpiece, but ugh, what could have been...
The first half of season 5. Which was shit because JMS wrapped up more stuff than he was planning to at the end of season 4 because he thought he weren't getting a season 5, so the plot that was supposed to be there was already finished and the Byron stuff that was supposed to be a minor b-plot ended up being the main plot.
The season does have a bad reputation but the later part of it improves because the planned arcs start getting back on track.
Season one was pretty good tbh, it was very atmospheric and didn't have very many outstandingly bad episodes iirc, though it certainly takes a bit of time for the plot to get going. I definitely prefer Sinclair as captain as well.
>Season one was pretty good tbh, it was very atmospheric and didn't have very many outstandingly bad episodes iirc
Londo and G'Kar getting into wacky sitcom antics is great too. And generally lots of very subtle bits of foreshadowing that can only be picked up on rewatch.
The main take-away I'm getting from the trailer is that I will struggle to watch it because I'll be too distracted by how little the new VAs sound like the late actors they're replacing
Except Phil Lamarr, it sounds like he's actually doing a pretty solid Richard Briggs impression
Who else are we missing? Katsulas and O'hare? The guy they got for the latter seemed... ok, and I don't think anyone can really live up to Katsulas (though that's going to take me a while to adjust to, I'm sure).
There's only one actor left who was in the entire run of the show
10 months ago
Anonymous
the best one (and Katsulas)
10 months ago
Anonymous
I doubt many people watch the series and and come away not thinking those two were the stars of the show.
For it's flaws, those two are a big part of why I enjoy the first season so much when I rewatch the show. Seeing how the two characters where at the beginning and knowing where they end up later. G'kar being almost a hammy villain while Londo's a washed up alcoholic who often gets played for comic relief.
10 months ago
Anonymous
They've got some of the most sensible and surprising character development in possibly anything I've ever watched or read. Genuinely wonderful.
I think I glanced at one at a super discount sale? I vaguely recall it being like the shit trek kits where it's just a solid bland blue or something?
Season one was pretty good tbh, it was very atmospheric and didn't have very many outstandingly bad episodes iirc, though it certainly takes a bit of time for the plot to get going. I definitely prefer Sinclair as captain as well.
>Season one was pretty good tbh, it was very atmospheric and didn't have very many outstandingly bad episodes iirc
Londo and G'Kar getting into wacky sitcom antics is great too. And generally lots of very subtle bits of foreshadowing that can only be picked up on rewatch.
I had jumped in at Season 2, was a guinea pig for my nerd crew to see if the "oh hai captain newguy, here is a bunch of exposition" at the start worked, I suppose one day I'll go through all the way.
Jerry Doyle (2016), Stephen Furst (2017), Jeff Conaway (2011), Tim Choate (2004)
seriously this show racked up a body count like The Searchers or Monday Night Wars era wrasslin
>I suppose one day I'll go through all the way.
The show finally getting a decent remaster that I don't think anyone expected seems a good excuse.
The first season is like early DS9 in that it's more of a calm before the storm, episodic every day adventures on the station with random incidents and passers by. Though because things were planned there's a lot of subtle set ups and foreshadowing sprinkled around that DS9 wasn't able to do to the same extent.
Yeah as much as I love DS9, Babylon 5 really just blows it out of the water in terms of atmosphere, pacing, and, world building. Just imagine what Babylon 5 could have done with 7 seasons and DS9’s budget
>The show finally getting a decent remaster that I don't think anyone expected seems a good excuse.
yeah I was on the DVDs, so when I got the Psycorps ad and it was cropped all shit it triggered my tisms, then I got an LD of that one and got a real idea of what a hackjob the DVDs were so I postponed serious rewatches
back in the day I knew a guy who was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too into cataloging celeb nudes, he claimed that the blue chick was in some random nudist mag when she was like, twelve or something similarly very underage, but still noticeably her in the face
for understandable reasons I never investigated his claim
>It has exceptional puppets
I really wish the Jim Henson company got to do more sf shows or movies. The Farscape puppets aren't only great and lifelike in motion, they were well built enough to handle actual physical interaction with the cast.
If you look up interviews with Ben Browder he talks about getting into trouble for being so rough with Rigel
They're both carried by surprisingly strong character acting.
Even if their tones are miles apart.
Will say, Farscape has one of the better first episodes of a sci-fi series I've seen. It sets everything up quite elegantly. and then episode two is probably the weakest in the series.
They're both carried by surprisingly strong character acting.
Even if their tones are miles apart.
Will say, Farscape has one of the better first episodes of a sci-fi series I've seen. It sets everything up quite elegantly. and then episode two is probably the weakest in the series.
Farscape also has surprising strong continuity, especially for a show that by all accounts was written and adlibed entirely on the fly.
I was really obsessed with it while it was airing, but haven't watched it since. I'm sure it's still good, but I'm not sure I can go back.
Those beautiful early days of hanging out on the internet with fellow fans when that was a new and exciting thing to do, though...pawing through pages and search results and having them mostly be informative or fun fan pages...the Lurker's Guide... Those times can never come back.
>I was really obsessed with it while it was airing, but haven't watched it since. I'm sure it's still good, but I'm not sure I can go back. I was born the year it started airing and I've been a fan of it since I was in highschool
Great show and was on pace to be top 3 all time to me after the first season, but then things out of their control slapped it back down into somewhere lower in the top 10. I have to applaud them for still being able to make such a great show with all that was against them.
Sinclair was 10000x better and it was a huge bummer seeing all the character and relationship building in S1 have to get tossed, and they never really bothered redoing it with his shitstain replacement. Sheridan never became likable and always felt like the detached butthole boss to everyone outside of the forced waifu plot.
I personally stopped watching after season 4 ended. Nothing felt like it could follow up the ending, the story just seemed complete after the end of the Shadow War and the scouring of the shire type follow up.
I love that moment, one of those great little scenes in S1 where the show really starts to show its hand. That and the ending of Mind War always stood out to me as some of the first really solid character moments in the series
>watching as a kid
FRICK YEAH SHERIDAN GET THOSE DUDES
>watching as an adult
I HATE YOU SHERIDAN YOU FRICKING TRAITOR
Lochley pls
why the shift lol
Its great. One of the few shows with O'neil cylinders. The tech is cool, the characters are cool. Londo and G'kar have the best character arcs in literally anything. Would recommend
>What does /m/ think about Babylon 5?
Grossly overrated but its diehard fans but still good. It doesn't overstay its welcome like DS9 did. I know fans bemoan that the Shadow war was cut short, but personally I found it disinteresting and was glad it ended in a timely manner.
I thought that the Earth Alliance blowing itself up and then being set back into the Dark Ages, with the Rangers refusing to help them out and instead just pretending to be monks doing nothing was very meanspirited and cruel on part of the writer.
I feel this way about many protagonists nowadays. Bilbo from the Hobbit. Estelle and Lloyd from the Trails games.
To me, Sheriden's likeability was a hill. At first I disliked him for replacing Sinclaire and for his mary sueness of having blown up a Minbari battleship during the war in which humanity could do jack all against them, Sinclaire included. Then I began to like him more and more as the series went on. Then I soured on him in season 5, first when his adultery was revealed, and then during his handling of the Centauri conflict. He gives in too easily. "If you want war, you will have a war!" and then he wasn't willing to let the Narn and Independent World's fleets get destroyed by the Centauri after massacring their homeworld when he knows that the Centauri were innocent.
>I know fans bemoan that the Shadow war was cut short, but personally I found it disinteresting and was glad it ended in a timely manner.
Ackchyually, that arc ended where is was supposed to. It was the earth afterwards arc that was fricked by the season 4-5 transition.
>the Rangers refusing to help them out and instead just pretending to be monks doing nothing
They were helping, they were just doing it slowly so that the people of earth would believe they rebuilt on their own instead of just getting tech dumped on them from space.
I like it. Planning to rewatch it now that there's a proper HD version
There is? When did that come out
Last year I think. Currently the best version is the Amazon one, though we're apparently getting BDs at some point. I say proper HD but the special effect shots are still upscaled, but it's still a lot better looking that the old DVD version.
>proper HD version
How? I thought B5 wasn't filmed in 35mm.
That was a myth started by mallgays. It was actually shot on the precursors to the modern IMAX cameras.
>How? I thought B5 wasn't filmed in 35mm.
It was. I think the reason we never got a proper HD transfer before now was mostly the CGI being rendered at 90s TV resolution and the original files being lost so they couldn't be re-rendered. Or maybe no one knew where the original film was, which would explain why only the series itself has a new transfer and all the movies on amazon are still the old versions.
Even if they kept the files, they'd have to remake many of the assets to fit current resolutions, and it would cost a lot of money that likely would be lost due to not having a audience big enough. IIRC Voyager has the same issue even though many of the assets are still safe.
>IIRC Voyager has the same issue even though many of the assets are still safe.
Voyager and DS9's issue are a bit more general, that they were shot on film but all of the editing was done from videotape transfers to save money. So there were never any film negatives of the final product that you could take new scans from, just video negatives which can at best be upscaled (with all of the limitations of videotape in terms of stuff like resolution and colour fidelity). TNG was edited in the same way, and the BDs required a lot of manpower to make them look as good as they did, with large portions of the editing and VFX work just having to be redone digitally from scratch over the film masters. It pays off, but it was very expensive, so unlikely to be repeated for those two less-popular entries especially when the TNG BDs may not have actually done all that well saleswise relative to the amount invested in making them
B5 does at least have the advantage of having been future-proofed with film negatives which could then have new CGI interpolated in. It's just a question of 'would recreating the CG at a more modern resolution be a worthwhile investment?'
>'would recreating the CG at a more modern resolution be a worthwhile investment?'
If TNG wasn't I doubt B5 would. I wonder if crowdfunding could be the solution, Hasbro has been using it for specific toys like Unicron and it apparently works for them.
It's been confirmed the TNG BDs have not made a profit, but it doesn't help that they were released just as streaming was becoming the bete noir of Hollywood. I can't think of a single blu-ray I've bought since 2013.
JMC anticipated wide format and shot B5 accordingly. The problem was WB losing the archive tapes of the compositing instructions.
Babylonian Productions did everything they could to ensure a future high def version and WB wanted it to die.
So why can't they do this with DS9 and just upscale the CGI?
Because letterboxed 90s CG at TV resolution doesn't look good upscaled to 16:9. I rewatched Stargate last year and that stock footage of three hataks in hyperspace looked blurrier as the seasons passed and new cameras were used.
>I rewatched Stargate last year and that stock footage of three hataks in hyperspace looked blurrier as the seasons passed and new cameras were used.
They kept using the same footage of the gate activating too.
/t/ delivers, went straight there after the anons posting about it to check if someone has it.
>
Kind of good. Very 80s, not 90s at all. I consider it the last gasp of classic science fiction before everything changed post-9/11 and Western media focused on grimmer and grittier sci-fi.
It does not hold up to time, particularly S4 because of the rushed nature of S4 and S5 because S5 didn't need to exist.
>international collective action and intervention (led by us, of course) is both cool and good and will not go wrong
>not 90s
I will eternally seethe that season 4 was rushed. We could have had another season of kino slow burn build up. Season 4 is still a masterpiece, but ugh, what could have been...
Which season was the season with Byron?
Frick that season.
The first half of season 5. Which was shit because JMS wrapped up more stuff than he was planning to at the end of season 4 because he thought he weren't getting a season 5, so the plot that was supposed to be there was already finished and the Byron stuff that was supposed to be a minor b-plot ended up being the main plot.
The season does have a bad reputation but the later part of it improves because the planned arcs start getting back on track.
seasons 2, 3, and 4 were really great
the other things existed
Season one was pretty good tbh, it was very atmospheric and didn't have very many outstandingly bad episodes iirc, though it certainly takes a bit of time for the plot to get going. I definitely prefer Sinclair as captain as well.
>Season one was pretty good tbh, it was very atmospheric and didn't have very many outstandingly bad episodes iirc
Londo and G'Kar getting into wacky sitcom antics is great too. And generally lots of very subtle bits of foreshadowing that can only be picked up on rewatch.
my shoes are too tight but it's OK, I have forgotten how to dance
Friendly reminder
God it looks like shit.
Honestly should've stayed dead so we could honor its memory instead of staring at its reanimated corpse
MY EEEEYES
Marvel tier
The main take-away I'm getting from the trailer is that I will struggle to watch it because I'll be too distracted by how little the new VAs sound like the late actors they're replacing
Except Phil Lamarr, it sounds like he's actually doing a pretty solid Richard Briggs impression
Who else are we missing? Katsulas and O'hare? The guy they got for the latter seemed... ok, and I don't think anyone can really live up to Katsulas (though that's going to take me a while to adjust to, I'm sure).
Furlan too, but we don't get much of the new actress in the trailer
Ah, damn, I forgot about her. That'll probably be a rough match as well.
Jerry Doyle (2016), Stephen Furst (2017), Jeff Conaway (2011), Tim Choate (2004)
I remembered Doyle and Conaway (assuming he was the other security guy) after my other post, but damn, that really is like half the cast gone.
There's only one actor left who was in the entire run of the show
the best one (and Katsulas)
I doubt many people watch the series and and come away not thinking those two were the stars of the show.
For it's flaws, those two are a big part of why I enjoy the first season so much when I rewatch the show. Seeing how the two characters where at the beginning and knowing where they end up later. G'kar being almost a hammy villain while Londo's a washed up alcoholic who often gets played for comic relief.
They've got some of the most sensible and surprising character development in possibly anything I've ever watched or read. Genuinely wonderful.
i want a proper Crusade ending...
based alien britbong empire.
Have you ever tried the model kits? I think they are super hard to find now.
I think I glanced at one at a super discount sale? I vaguely recall it being like the shit trek kits where it's just a solid bland blue or something?
I had jumped in at Season 2, was a guinea pig for my nerd crew to see if the "oh hai captain newguy, here is a bunch of exposition" at the start worked, I suppose one day I'll go through all the way.
seriously this show racked up a body count like The Searchers or Monday Night Wars era wrasslin
>I suppose one day I'll go through all the way.
The show finally getting a decent remaster that I don't think anyone expected seems a good excuse.
The first season is like early DS9 in that it's more of a calm before the storm, episodic every day adventures on the station with random incidents and passers by. Though because things were planned there's a lot of subtle set ups and foreshadowing sprinkled around that DS9 wasn't able to do to the same extent.
Yeah as much as I love DS9, Babylon 5 really just blows it out of the water in terms of atmosphere, pacing, and, world building. Just imagine what Babylon 5 could have done with 7 seasons and DS9’s budget
>The show finally getting a decent remaster that I don't think anyone expected seems a good excuse.
yeah I was on the DVDs, so when I got the Psycorps ad and it was cropped all shit it triggered my tisms, then I got an LD of that one and got a real idea of what a hackjob the DVDs were so I postponed serious rewatches
I am really liking Faracape. A lot.
It has exceptional puppets. Also basically everything else. And PK tech girl.
back in the day I knew a guy who was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too into cataloging celeb nudes, he claimed that the blue chick was in some random nudist mag when she was like, twelve or something similarly very underage, but still noticeably her in the face
for understandable reasons I never investigated his claim
>It has exceptional puppets
I really wish the Jim Henson company got to do more sf shows or movies. The Farscape puppets aren't only great and lifelike in motion, they were well built enough to handle actual physical interaction with the cast.
If you look up interviews with Ben Browder he talks about getting into trouble for being so rough with Rigel
I want to give it a try but I haven't find any torrents
Amazing how many people enjoy B5 and Farscape despite being diametrically opposed
They're both carried by surprisingly strong character acting.
Even if their tones are miles apart.
Will say, Farscape has one of the better first episodes of a sci-fi series I've seen. It sets everything up quite elegantly.
and then episode two is probably the weakest in the series.
It's called good taste
Farscape also has surprising strong continuity, especially for a show that by all accounts was written and adlibed entirely on the fly.
i like it more than SJW Trekkies, but it's not animes. and it's not half as gritty cool as WH40K.
I was really obsessed with it while it was airing, but haven't watched it since. I'm sure it's still good, but I'm not sure I can go back.
Those beautiful early days of hanging out on the internet with fellow fans when that was a new and exciting thing to do, though...pawing through pages and search results and having them mostly be informative or fun fan pages...the Lurker's Guide... Those times can never come back.
>I was really obsessed with it while it was airing, but haven't watched it since. I'm sure it's still good, but I'm not sure I can go back.
I was born the year it started airing and I've been a fan of it since I was in highschool
Great show and was on pace to be top 3 all time to me after the first season, but then things out of their control slapped it back down into somewhere lower in the top 10. I have to applaud them for still being able to make such a great show with all that was against them.
Sinclair was 10000x better and it was a huge bummer seeing all the character and relationship building in S1 have to get tossed, and they never really bothered redoing it with his shitstain replacement. Sheridan never became likable and always felt like the detached butthole boss to everyone outside of the forced waifu plot.
Yeah reality definitely conspired against B5, really was a perfect storm. I still like Sheridan, but he is definitely out of place.
I personally stopped watching after season 4 ended. Nothing felt like it could follow up the ending, the story just seemed complete after the end of the Shadow War and the scouring of the shire type follow up.
I hope you at least watched the finale. It was filmed earlier and then pushed back when they learned they were getting a fifth season.
He did nothing wrong btw. Total psycorp death.
I love that moment, one of those great little scenes in S1 where the show really starts to show its hand. That and the ending of Mind War always stood out to me as some of the first really solid character moments in the series