Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🌮 🚀 🌗
"I'll just watch a fun adventure episode"
<Voice in the Wilderness>
OH NO.
CGI spaceships! Krell machinery! Space Jesus!
Seriously why don't more SF shows or movies rip off Forbidden Planet? It's still better than anything that was ever done on other shows.
Space Jesus is better than Earth Jesus because he's Tang flavored, the astronaut drink.
Gotta love the Minbari aesthetics, compared to Human functionalism. Fish-like ships outside, Fisher-Price/JEM Princess of Crystar inside.
I've found the solution to Discord! We should all have these pitch black rooms with nine glowing spotlights, and you stand there and talk. It solves every use-case of Discord that isn't covered by IRC.
#babylon5
Sheridan is so goddamned stiff. I miss Sinclair already; yes, O'Hare had mental health problems, couldn't continue. I would've preferred Joe to just recast him, not switch characters.
I mostly like Boxleitner, TRON fights for the users… but he's inherently kind of a dick. And IIRC it takes him well into S3 or S4 before he grooves in a bit more.
#babylon5
Joe on Michael O'Hare's departure:
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/misc/sinclair-leave.html
Video 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwSejvufC3M
(in between coughing fits)
Video 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwyAo_YjtdM
#babylon5
Oh, sure, Shadows, everyone dies, treachery, murder, but the thing I think is important:
LOOK AT THAT UI! Dude, remember when computer interfaces had big, sharp-edged buttons that looked like buttons you could push? Well, we only have to wait for 233 more years before good UI rolls back around, baby!!!
I got thru the episode a little fast because I hit double-speed on any scene with Sheridan and his "explain the plot to me" sister/dead wife. And then he's just chirpy and stands wherever the plot needs him to be.
He feels like the RPG cliché: A player's main character died, he rolled up a new guy with a vapid backstory to fill the same role, so now he's "in the party" but he doesn't fit or deserve the old character's stuff.
#babylon5
Such a great title, for an all-B-plots ep.
Second occurrence of Ren Faire wannabes after Grail, a Techno-Mage named "Elric"! Because that's fucking serious! Just FYI, my Techno-Mage name will be "Kane", after Karl Edward Wagner's guy.
And the Drazi:
"Green must fight purple. Purple must fight green. Is no other way."
They are exactly as stupid as Humans, just choose colors by bucket instead of where you're born, and I love them enormously & unconditionally.
#babylon5
Joe really didn't think Sheridan was the blowhard talks-to-himself lunatic the rest of us saw:
> Excuse me, but has *anyone* here considered that Sheridan just might still be talking to the same tech he was speaking to not *five seconds earlier*? He wasn't talking to himself, so much, or the audience, though the push-in (the only shot we had) worked against that. He *was* talking to the tech. Honest.
<
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/guide/025.html
#babylon5
> Excuse me, but has *anyone* here considered that Sheridan just might still be talking to the same tech he was speaking to not *five seconds earlier*? He wasn't talking to himself, so much, or the audience, though the push-in (the only shot we had) worked against that. He *was* talking to the tech. Honest.
<
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/guide/025.html
#babylon5
A nothing episode, but written by D.C. Fontana.
Dr Jacoby from Twin Peaks, has a giant exploration ship, named Cortez, ominously for any bronze-age humanoids (which has been mentioned before!) they discover.
Delenn is disrespected for being a hairy ape, and can quote Carl Sagan.
But it has a pretty good primer on hyperspace, and Shadow presence within it.
#babylon5
Monster of the week! Howlin Mad Murdock! Alien food! Enigmatic aliens! Ancient cryo ships whose timeline doesn't make a lot of sense! "This place is a tomb." Shitty "monster from the id" ripoff! This ep has fucking nothing!
Except the last line, where we learn the "thing" was headed to Z'ha'dum.
They rerecorded Sheridan's title voiceover and it sucks a bit less now, but it's still the worst voiceover of the series.
Adrienne Barbeau!!! I love you.
Talia ranges from ice queen to almost person in this one, improvement on her usual role.
Cyber experiments! Humans can't function with machines in their heads. UNLESS THEY'RE DEAD.
Which this chick's gonna do.
#babylon5
BUT!!! MORE AWESOME UI!
And Sheridan reveals gov't conspiracy because he's a loon as well as super boring.
He says the episode name! That almost never happens!
#babylon5
In which Talia and Londo face the consequences of past bad romances, and Delenn has to get montage-prettied up by the serious girl so she can go to the prom/Londo's party where he gets poisoned.
90% of a nothing ep, except Delenn becoming closer to Human woman.
#babylon5
Also, some great single moments, even if the ep means nothing.
G'kar *is* married to Londo, in a real sense, and we are all concerned.
Talia, Psi Corps scares everyone.
#babylon5 #beseeingyou
Let's go to Mars, have a few laughs…
Why does Mars use EST?
EARHART'S pilot's bar, where you get stranded & eaten by crabs apparently.
The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father. Super grim jackbooted thugs episode.
But the weird little mutant is the kid from Stargate, Gianin Loffler!
See in the show: Talia & Ivanova in lingerie, multiple times. No men *EVER* appear in lingerie, or even shorts; G'kar in some eps wears his post-fucking robe.
#babylon5
Centaurilot! (It's just a model!) No, it is a silly place.
Well this far it's optimistic, right?
#babylon5
Also, see Joe's comments on the Hugo, and SFWA and "Dramatic Nebula".
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/guide/031.html
> As I told the organizer, I wouldn't go into the SFFWA suite for this if I were dying of lung cancer and they were offering free chemotherapy at the door.
<
#babylon5
I barely watched GROPOS, it's just the worst ep ever, buncha "spacegrunts" wreck the place then die.
"In and out, what could go wrong?" just tempts fate.
Abducted by "Streibs"*, alien deathmatch. Delenn loses everything. Ramirez bets on the Dodgers *and* loses everything. Military goddamned conspiracy to save their government, which we needed in this timeline. Alas.
* (Whitley Streiber's "Communion" was a big UFO abduction story book back in the day)
#babylon5
Making treaties with racist assholes, never a good idea. Londo is so sad; so are all his victims. G'kar beats up idiots who start knife fights. Ivanova HAS SEX.
> Claudia loved the scene when I first described it to her, prior to finishing the script. She was dying to do it, and kept sort of "doing" it around people for some time prior to filming.
<
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/guide/034.html
#babylon5
In which Daffy & Bugs, er, Garibaldi & Franklin, try to keep Bull from selling Socrates to John Slade.
Kosh actually has a conversation! It sucks, he's worse than The Sphinx, but it's question, answer, response like a person!!! Has anyone considered that the Vorlons are dumbasses with spooky vibes?
JimijamflimflamWent to eBay and folks are asking at least twice the advertised price for the coffee mugs. Now I kinda feel nostalgia pulling at my wallet to get one.
Ambient Sponge@mdhughes Keith Szarabajka!! He was great in that episode.