Babylon 5

[Tezcatlipoca]

Originally Posted by ZrByte

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

LOL, you're right

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

[Mr_love_monkey]

Originally Posted by Tezcatlipoca

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

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

Edit : Gary Cole, that's his name

Originally Posted by Mr_love_monkey

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

Edit : Gary Cole, that's his name

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.

Originally Posted by Defiant

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

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

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.

Originally Posted by dr wadd

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.

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.

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 feature made his eventual siding with the forces of light that much better.

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*...!!

[Xaccers]

Be seeing you

Originally Posted by Xaccers

Be seeing you

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

Originally Posted by Xaccers

Be seeing you

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

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by Graham

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

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

Originally Posted by keithwalton

Excelsior would of been a fine name.

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.

Originally Posted by Xaccers

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

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

[ZrByte]

Originally Posted by dr wadd

When I first started watching B5 it was "so obvious" to me that the Centauri were going to be the bumbling comic relief and the Narn the bad guys in "evil" looking makeup. The gradual revelation of who these two races really were threw every Star Trek cliche out of the window. Sad to say *I* was one of those Trekkies. I soon learned not to take anything in the show at face value.

B5 has since become by far my favourite TV show of all time. Sorry Defiant, I`m as big a Trek nerd as they come, but it can`t hold a candle to B5.

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.

Originally Posted by dr wadd

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.

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.

Originally Posted by Graham

Again, agreed. "Messages from Earth", "Severed Dreams" and "Point of No Return" are three of the most powerful episodes with their own mini-arc that *really* drive home the point that there is just *no way back* for the B5 crew. I also loved the Series 3 intro monologue:

"Babylon 5 was our last, best hope for peace.

"It failed".

couldnt agree more

Hmm, not so sure here, after all, the Vorlons weren't so good after all, even though Kosh ended up more helping the good guys.

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)

For me in B5 it's Marcus Cole, he was just *sooo* cool!

Disappearing on B4 and then popping up saying "well, that would be the most inconvenient time for us to be captured, so it was most likely to happen"

And I loved the Minbari fighting pike!

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"

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)

[Xaccers]

Mr Morden

Originally Posted by ZrByte

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,

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.

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).

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.

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)

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.

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).

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!