looking for something to binge while i recover from surgery and man the acting is stiff so far
also why is the hbo max version im watching in 16:9. how’d that happen
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they finally remastered it like last year or the year before, there used to be a fan remaster that was 16:9 upscaled but all the effects shots were still 4:3 and it looked weird and smooth, so the HBO max version is a huge upgrade. babylon 5 rocks, it’s one of the best 90s tv shows, it’s super stilted and unsubtle sometimes but ive always really loved the community theater vibes and how rewarding the plot is. there’s important shit in every single episode
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they act like videogame cutscenes i love it. a non videogame thing i think about a lot is when lennier (WHO SANG THE FISH HEADS SONG BY THE WAY) zips away on a motorcycle but hes just tweening away and getting smaller. its so amazing. also a babylon 5 invented the galaxy brain meme. i wont believe anything else
g’kar is the uncle in hellraiser that gets ripped apart
ivanova was in the hidden
londo was in tron
i ended up caring for everyone on that show by the third season which doesnt happen often
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to the end of season 4 is “the good stuff” but i’d say the series peaks with 3. 5 is… okay. strictly for completionists.
g’kar and londo are all-time classic enemies-to-lovers, but my main complaint with B5 is that the characters don’t really change much. they go through the motions of changing, sure, but they finish them… reaffirmed to their original path. g’kar and londo being the exception (hence why i like them so much)
but it’s one of 3 sci-fi tv shows i recommend to everyone (DS9 and Farscape being the other two) for a reason. fun plots, great production design, crazy bullshit all the time, the smugness of a showrunner who has thought everything out 10 steps ahead, and some shockingly pragmatic politics. it even gets into some truly fucked up mental / emotion shit!!! and despite some of the character writing being a bit stiff, you do genuinely grow to like them all, even the most despicable.
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the guy who plays dr. franklin has such fucking intense Command & Conquer briefing cutscene energy. he is so awful at acting and it’s extra hilarious when he keeps getting put next to people like andreas katsulas and peter jurasik who have insane charisma
some respect for zack allan plz
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my enduring memory of the show, other than that scene where an extremely cold drink gets placed on molari’s tentacular dick which he was using to cheat at cards with
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the commander has all the stage presence of wet cardboard so far
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oh… uh… i see,
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wow i can hear it in his voice
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Is babylon 5 good? This is one of the most challenging questions in all of science fiction fandom discourse. Is it worth watching? Yeah, I think so.
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okay i hate him less now that ive finished the pilot but im disappointed the assassination was a fakeout, i already thought he looked like admiral ross x american psycho and that would’ve been a lot more fun
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ive only been interested in this show because of its connection with ds9, which i just want more of tbh to the point that ive had a dream that was just a full on quark/odo episode
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It is a show
For all the hard sf posturing, it’s lord of the rings on a space station. I think it’s a treat to watch but it’s definitely a rung below ds9 and farscape
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I mostly missed it somehow when it was actually airing, and watching it for the first time now I find myself appreciating the extremely 90s “this is what this episode is about. Hello, I am Character, and this is my perspective on this situation. It is different from Other Character’s! Therefore we are in conflict!” I guess it’s probably just like TNG or any other contemporary but at the moment it is a big breath of fresh air from prestige TV emotional realism or whatever the fuck. Extremely d&d campaign vibes
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I have never finished Babylon 5 but I did enjoy it. Ironically I got derailed from completing Babylon 5 because a friend of mine said “just watch DS9 already” and I got completely sucked into that show instead, haha.
I do love the d&d campaign/command and conquer energy. I seem to remember that people do a lot of snarling and proclaiming, which are two of my favorite ways for a guy in a rubber suit to communicate information.
I should finish it huh
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is farscape the one whose second episode is all about Sex or was that some other schlocky sf i watched
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HOW MANY OF YOU ALL LIKE SEX
IN SPACE
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okay i was almost certainly thinking of some other syfy show but this has jim henson puppets so this is a farscape thread now
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Q: “is babylon 5 any good”
A: “farscape”
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that’s star trek, both TOS and TNG haha. farscape’s second episode is about the main character being an ET for a planet that hasn’t discovered space travel yet. farscape definitely has more episodes about sex in general though.
farscape’s general vibe is “imagine every character going crazy every episode”. it really leans hard on people going Absolutely Bonkers™ and chewing scenery. the relationship at the center of the show - after season 1 anyway - is explicitly a gay BDSM thing too. but it swerves hard hetero in the last season which is a bummer.
i love farscape a lot and the first 3 seasons are prime sci-fi tv to me. it’s extremely bizarre in a way that Shrek Trek and Lone Baby 5 aren’t, and the characters have more explicit conflict. it’s also the only one of these shows that does “found family” well. the closest thing to high-quality, genuinely queer sci-fi i’ve personally seen.
yeah this is my general feeling on it. babylon 5 is very concerned with “the battle between light and dark” so everything is sorta squeezed through that metaphorical tube. there’s some real banger episodes tho and the general vibe is impeccable.
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