.com.unity Forums - Babylon 5 Mod

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I have a question to all you Bab5 types out there. I've never seen the series, but I noticed tonight that netflix has up to season 5 and "the gathering" (whatever that is).

"The Gathering" was, as others have pointed out, the pilot. It isn't considered part of the first season, it is a 2-hour telemovie. It has some pretty rough edges, but sets up the main Season 1 plotline with the phrase "there is a hole in your mind." That hole isn't really resolved until the end of season 3.

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Every now and then, when my wife is out of town, I have time to watch things like this. Realizing I might be asking the converted, Are these worth getting into? Is the long-term time investment worth going through all 5 seasons to the end? And how many seasons were there (I don't want to rent them if I can't follow it through to the end)? And what is the gathering? And please don't give me any spoilers, just the facts ma'am...

Dunno if it would be worth it to you, but there are some things that make it worth the risk:
1. This show is the complete brainchild of one man, JMS (aka Joseph Michael Straczinski, but JMS to everyone via his usegroup tag). He was dedicated to showing reasonable science (no "particles of the week," no plots resolved by inverting the phase transducers of the particle emitters, no technospeak at all). This is just pure storytelling.

2. There are no cutesy kids or cutesy robots. JMS hates cutesy. There is real comedy, but of the bitter, adult sort. You will laugh out loud, but it will be at lines like
Charactor 1: "I hate my life"
Charactor 2: "I hate your life, too."

There is true wisdom as well. The lines from the show sound trite outside their context, but you will really ponder after watching the show such lines as "The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us....

We know only that it is always born in pain.'"

3. It is a complete story. It was always scheduled for 110 episodes, no more, no less. Popularity of the show wasn't going to make it have a sixth season, period. There was a minor glitch halfway through the fourth season when the Warner Brothers execs told JMS to wrap the story by the end of the fourth season, and so the ending of the story's main plot points is accelerated to complete them by season's end (and only after that was the show bought by TNT and goven its final season) but the ultimate episode was luckily banked and saved until the end of Season 5. Season 5 is thus less even than the others, as it includes stories that should have been brought out in season 4, but by the time you get to that opoint you will either be hooked or turned off, so it isn't an issue.

4. JMS wrote 90% of the stories himself (and every one of them between halfway through season 2 until early season 5, something like 70 of them in a row) and all of the "wham" episodes of the earier and later seasons. Plus, he coujd change any of the other scripts as he needed. Plot and dialogue are absolutely consistent. There are no loopholes, nothing unresolved, no anomolies. No convenient timetravel, no planets with Nazis, no changing the basic honesty of the concept.

5. It is a story about charactors. It would work in the Wild West, in Victorian England, in Ancient Egypt. The story is about 3 things: the choices that are made, the consequences of those choices, and the ability of people to accept the responsibility for those choices. The SF angle is just a storytelling device. Never does science or fiction come between the charactors and their choices.

6. The music is a huge part of the appeal. Christopher Franke is a master muscial storyteller, and he had access to a full orchestra and chorus. Money was saved by having skimpy sets, but never by having skimpy music. JMS allowed Franke to do his thing. At one point, in the only episode JMS directed, his instructions to Franke were simple: "Just make me cry." You will cry at that point, at well. And at many points along the way. Each season, the theme music gets deeper and more complex. By the fifth season, you will be rewinding just to hear the theme again.

7. Rewatchability is extraordinary. JMS loves - just loves - to lay out plot lines that are not resolved for two or three seasons. The pilot is chockablock full of things that only make sense after three or four seasons (and one casual line isn't resolved until season 5). You will want the whole set so you can go back and see how the whole story is told to you in advance, only you didn't understand the references at the time.

7. JMS laid out everything on the web a long time ago, and has continued to be an active web poster on the tpic to this day. The depth of thought that went into B5 is extraordinary, and it shows by the way JMS can explain everything. There are some really special websites out there (PM me for details) that discuss this with JMS and other fans all the time, and I still learn new things daily about a show that premiered ten years ago. It is that deep, and JMS is that accessable.

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I tried FarScape and found it a bit too corny for my tastes. I much prefer linear and epic plotlines, with beginngings, middles, ends, and character development. Farscape really didn't seem to have that...I'm hoping Bab5 does...

Two completely different ideas of what an SF show is, and not comparable. B5 is more like everything that was good about DS9, but distilled.

You may have noted that I am a fan. What can I say? The whole series is really remarkable for two things: the dedication is its creator to his vision, and the ability of the crew to accomplish miracles of vision and sound on their budget. The latter may someday recur, but the former never will. The human cost is simply too high. JMS was physically destroyed by the experience - his health will never be the same. He will be the poster-boy for excesssive dedication to artistic vision in the TV medium for our lifetime, and the show is worth seeing in it entirety if only to show what one man can do if he simply stops having a life in pursuit of an ideal.

BTW, post 200 for me. Do I get promoted?