Babylon 5
 

Mod Edit (Tez): This thread contains the majority of the B5 posts from the ST:Enterprise thread, split from said thread by Pem :)

(there may still be the odd ST post in this & the odd B5 post in the ST:E thread though, due to the problems of trying to split a thread which was as mixed as the ST:E thread. Also, Pem has made a seperate thread for the posts about Richard Biggs' death, HERE)




So far I've got 1 2 and 3.... (only 34 episodes left to watch :))

I'm definately getting season 4. I suppose i'll end up getting season 5 - but just to have the whole set :)

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

Sad really that happened, also sad that Crusade was scrapped (even though it was never as good as B5 it had its moments).
B5 was at its best from the beggining of s3 right through to the end of s4 IMO :)
Im just upto the episode at the moment when they have destroyed the super Omega destroyers and Ivonova is dying.

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

1) the didn't try to copy star trek
2) their is a new series in pre-production

like you said - nuff said. ;)

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

Actually DS9 copied B5 far more often than B5 copied anything startrek did, and other than the slight similarities that B5 and DS9 shared I would say they where very different.
Also by your logic was TOS, TNG, DS9 & Voyager crap?? coz they dont make them anymore either... nuff said :)

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

Haha yea right

yea of course like the spin off called Excalibur. Oops no that flopped big time didn't it

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

Sorry, got to disagree there.

It was not trying to copy ST. B5 had a couple of series long story arcs, unlike ST where things were forgotten in the next episode. It didn't solve their problems by using technobabble and (I know, cynical) not a utopian view of the future of mankind.

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

Laughing at me doens't mean you're right. If you honestly believe that B5 was trying to rip star trek off then you need to open your eyes a bit. Aside from both being on a space station - there are numerous differences....

Mostly it looks like Enterprise is currently trying to copy B5 - with a story arc format.

And you can't tell what the new series is like until you've seen it.

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

Hmm okay then you dont wont to talk about Excalibur then well thats understandable nuff said

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

And you don't want to mention the other points raised since your post - that's understandable - nuff said.

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

JMS started writing it back in the 80's before STNG came out.
It had plot and story line and continuity, which weren't in ST so couldn't have been copied :D
JMS wrote it for 5 series, that's why it finished, it wasn't canned.
Bab 5 came along and showed DS9 how to really have a station based show.
Voyager also copied the shadows with the borg killing species, you know the one which Kes said were planning to wipe everything in our galaxy out, but suddenly turned out to be really nice chaps after all. :rolleyes:

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

Just because Excalibur flopped, doesn't mean that the original B5 was crap or a failure.

B5 was a very well made series, with a well-done over-arching story (JMS even had a "bible" for it, rather than just make it up as he went along).

But, anyway. B5 & the various Trek series each had their own plus & minus points. I like both Trek & B5, for different reasons.

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

Too right - I like both and each for their own reasons.

I do think that Enterprise will end on season 4 tho.

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

I think B5 was the BEST SF series EVER.It had no continuity problems either because it was written to finish in a certain time and place unlike the never ending cash cow of the ST universe.

I'm sure Excalibur would have done the same if it hadn't been pulled by yet another bunch of stupid,woolly,lame brained suits that wouldn't recognise a high class SF series if it tripped them up saying please put me on the tv. Of course if programme schedulers could actually stop switching SF programmes about it might help.As soon a show gets put into another time slot or gets shifted earlier or later it's bound to lose viewers.

Have you seen how many SF tv progs have been axed recently?Replaced by what?Bluddy Big Brother!!! and little brother,sister,cousin,aunty and uncle reality show. :mad:

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

Agh, I hate that. C4 always did that to B5 :mad: (& they & the BBC are just as bad with other things too)

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

I could have sworn it was called cruisades (spelling??) not Excalibur, wasnt Excalibur the name of the ship?

Ive got a background book about babylon 5, quite fun to read, its interesting reading about first contact between Earth & Naans and what happened to the first three stations (I know it tells you what happened during the series but this goes into a bit more detail)

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

LOL, you're right :dunce:

The series was "Crusade", while the ship (captained by the guy from Midnight Caller!) was the "Excalibur".

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

Didn't he play the Devil in 'American Gothic' as well?

Edit : Gary Cole, that's his name

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

I came to the conclusion that unless you cast Gary Cole as a disc jockey your show is doomed to be cancelled before its time.

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

Well, I could score cheap points by pointing out that Crusade, technically speaking, was never cancelled, merely put on a production hiatus. ;)

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

B5 best villain - Has to be Bester, no doubt about it. The Shadows you can`t really cast as the villains, I don`t think, as that was simply what they were. I thought Bester had great depth to him, and while he was an objectional little sod, he wasn`t quite totally evil and at times you could almost sympathise with him, all the stuff with Carolyne Sykes for example.

Best B5 Good Guy - G'Kar by a long mile. Sure, he didn`t start off as the nicest of characters, but his gradual evolution into an incredibly noble figure made his eventual siding with the forces of light that much better.

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

Damn, yes, good point. He was such an utterly self-righteous ba$$$$d at times "I'm a people person, how can anyone not like me" he was almost like a modern Torquemada.

Another good point. All the Trekkies who were claiming that B5 was just a rip-off were saying things like "Oh the Narn are a copy of the Klingons, the Centauri are the comic relief like the Ferengi, the Earth Alliance is like the Federation" etc etc, boy were *THEY* ever *WRONG*...!!

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

Be seeing you

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

D'oh, I had to stop for a minute there before realising you hadn`t gone off on a tangent with The Prisoner.

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

Would you like some Spoo? It's quite fresh...!

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

"The avalanche has already begun. It is too late for the pebbles to vote" whoosh, clang, wheee, jingle

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

They couldn`t have called it the Excelsior. As the first ship in its class (NX-01) then that would have to be an Excelsior class ship. We don`t get those until Kirk's time.

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

<Warble> "April Fool!" <Warble> said Kosh as Sheridan Jumped...! :D

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

Its so true, in B5 nothing is clear cut. In most SciFi you are given basic ground rules, these are the bad guys, we are the good guys etc, but B5 has this whole grey area. This really works for the storyline, like towards the end of the shadow war when you find what the shadows true goal was (sure they went about it the wrong way, but where they really bad??), and when the super good guys (The Vorlons) decided to go on a rampage destroying entire planets because one of them was killed and as such they became far more evil then the shadows.
Was it ever explained what Kosh was? was he the leader of the Vorlons? all it took was the word of Kosh for the Vorlon fleet to openly attack the shadows, and all it took was his death for the Vorlons to loose thier sanity (Just like when the minbari attacked the humans).

As for my favorite SciFi im torn between B5 and Stargate SG-1.

Now those are two I really hadnt thought of, you gotta love G'Kar (especially when he gets drunk in the king arthur episode 'a late delivery from avalon' )
Bester is far too weasily for me to rank as No1 bad guy but hes certainly in the top 3, especially after what he does to garibaldi.

couldnt agree more :)


Kosh himself was never like his replacement though, he seemed gentler, as I said above I think he may have been thier leader or at least one of the oldest of the vorlons.
I awlays had a feeling they where going to elaborate on this slightly, the vorlon that replaced kosh is clearly the same vorlon that is with Kosh in Dukats quarters in the movie 'In The Beggining' I was wondering if maybe there are two sides to a vorlon (A dark and a light) and the Kosh on B5 was the light side, wich kept them in balance, when the light was killed all that was left was the dark side wich is why the new Vorlon was kinda crazy. (just an idea but I would have liked to have seen some more insight into why the new vorlon was so mad)

I did like Marcus, but he was never a favourite of mine, the charactor itself wasnt the problem its that at times he was too English to be English, reflecting the typical stereotype Americans seem to have of us (dont get me wrong I think hes cool, Its just some of the things he said could make me shudder, not because of what he said but because of how he said them).


And finally a quote any B5'er worth thier metal will know "Sweedish meatballs" :D

EDIT: Ive reconsiddered my favorite SciFi baddie, it has to be Apophis from SG-1, that guy is like a cockroach, no matter what they do he always seems to come back, it really wouldnt supprise me if he was the new badguy for S8 (that is assuming Anubis is actually dead himself)

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

Mr Morden

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

Oh gods, tell me about it. Also (although B5 is also somewhat guilty of this) you get alien "monocultures". There's lots of variety where humans are concerned (and who, of course, come from Earth, not "human), but you get Romulans from Romulus, Klingons from Klingon (although later ret-conned to Q'ronus or whatever wierd spelling it is), Narns from the Narn Homeworld, and Centauri from Centauri Prime and the ones you see on screen are a sort of archetype (or cliche) of the entire culture.

I don't think it was quite that, but since the Vorlons and the Shadows had been fighting through intermediaries for so long that maybe it was just that they decided that now the gloves were off they were going to win this thing once and for all.

From what I've read of the background to B5 (which is a fair bit!), originally JMS planned on having the Great War being effectively a civil war between the two "halves" of the Vorlons which was why the Minbari with the Changeling net was able to poison Kosh in the Pilot episode, because he knew the "weak spot" in Kosh's encounter suit.

Ok, yes, I can see that, but it wasn't really his fault was it? And *NO* American could *EVER* deliver that wonderful line "Bloody hell!" right!

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

"What do you want?" :devsmoke:

I once considered getting a T-shirt made up with that wonderful pic of Morden's face (did anyone else notice that he was often lit with a slight "up-light" effect that makes someone look so evil?) and underneath the slogan:

Morden and Associates: Call 1-800-WHAT-DO-U-WANT? :D

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

The reason that Kosh's replacement was so awful was because the Vorlons interceding on Sheridans request led to Kosh dying.This meant in turn that the Shadows were on to the influence of the Vorlons and thus the 1000 year 'peace' between the races was off.Then the REAL nature of both species was then revealed in the totally ruthless behaviour of the 'new' Kosh in dealing with everyone and the way the Shadows stepped up the annexing of planets.It was this change that partly allowed Sheridan to really discover what was at stake and to come up with a way of finally persuading both species that it was time the younger races decided their own fate.

Incog :D

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

This vorlon behaves in a similar fashion in the movie 'In The Beggining' and that is set more than 12 years before Kosh dies, this Vorlon always seems more agressive whenever it speaks.

Just as an example what I mean :) though I do agree with the rest you said.

Note: Even though Ulkesh says its name is Kosh it is actually credited as Ulkesh so I figured I would use that name to make it clearer.

Re: Star Trek : Enterprise
 

But "We are all Kosh"

Of course "I have always been here" too...!

Re: Babylon 5
 

This thread contains the majority of the B5 posts from the ST:Enterprise thread, which Pem has split from the ST:E thread :)

[there may still be the odd ST post in this & the odd B5 post in the ST:E thread though, due to the problems of trying to split a thread which was as mixed as the ST:E thread]

So, post away :)

Re: Babylon 5
 

Thanks, we did kinda Hijack the Enterprise thread :) though I notice you forgot to copy over the posts about Richard Biggs untimley death.

Re: Babylon 5
 

No I didn't - you just missed them > http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...ad.php?t=12975

Re: Babylon 5
 

If I remember my rumour's correctly. The reason Crusade did'nt get a second season, was because of wrangling between the production company and Fox (I think). Basically, they spent so much time arguing about the story arc that a number of the actors contracts ran put, so they went on to other projects. Leaving a promising show to die.

Bloody Fox. :mad:

Re: Babylon 5
 

Do they still make this???
Wow, I remember when it started, they used Amiga 4000s to create the special effects. :eek:

Re: Babylon 5
 

It wouldn't surprise me. Fox likes to mess with good shows, it also likes to cancel them.

Nope :(

Babylon 5 ran for only five years - but this length was planned originally by its creator, J Michael Straczynski (sp?) (he wrote a proper 5 year story arc, rather than just make it up as he went along).

It has had a few different TV movies, set before & after the original B5 series.

There was also a shortlived spin-off series, called Crusade. I think there may have been plans for another too.

LOL, yeah. A4000s running Video Toasters IIRC.

Re: Babylon 5
 

Oh I see, it got a new home of its own :) silly Me :D