221–230 of 379 posts
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fwiw the whole thing is free to watch on Tubi and the quality there is very nice.
It was just pulled from Tubi a few days ago. Still on the Roku channel, though (for now).
Excellent news. Babylon 5 is underappreciated, but it has mainly good episodes and several amazing ones.[0] However, if I can be cynical for a moment: The article title is misleading. Only a few episodes have been uploaded so far. At the current rate of one episode per week, it will take until March 2028 to conclude all five seasons. That's assuming they post every episode, and allow the episodes to remain up in the…
Babylon 5 has never been easy to watch which is a large factor in the underappreciation. Hard to appreciate something you can’t watch legally
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> The Blu-ray collection appears to be available for about $100. It saddens me that people aren't willing to pay a pittance in cash (about $1 an hour) for entertainment. They're willing to spend their time, but not their money. This isn't just buying a 100 episode box set, it applies to people complaining "I'd have to spend $10 on $streaming_service to watch that 5 hour miniseries, that's terrible" too.
I'd be delighted to spend that for a Blu-ray of the series but I'm afraid of getting the mangled version that they released on DVD. For background, JMS knew the widescreen transition was coming so filmed everything in 16:9. As he put it at the time, it didn't really cost more, you just had to pay more attention to lighting at the wings. All CGI was done in 4:3 because it was thought to be easy to rerender in the futu…
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I have a bunch of friends that either never made it completely through Season 1 or complained all through Season 1. Season 1 is rougher than normal. The problem though is that while it is easy to tell people "Skip Season 1 of TNG or DS9" (which is relatively common advice for both shows), Season 1 has so many moments of character building and foreshadowing that pay off in later seasons that even the "worst" episodes…
It pains me how important TKO is for Ivanova's character because it's otherwise got to be one of, if not the worst episodes in the whole show's run.
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Having been alive at the time, I can tell you that the effects were amazing then. B5 was one of the first shows to use computer graphics and partially-virtual sets. It wasn't limited by the number of times you could re-composite a handful of models together, so it showed whole armadas of ships. Windows didn't open onto a black felt field of stars but a green screen that allowed ships to pull up right outside the wind…
Having also been alive at the time, I can tell you I thought the effects looked hokey and cheap.
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TNG, because it’s about the future, about science, rationality, open-mindedness and new perspectives, whereas B5 is really about the past (and present), about politics, recurrence and mysticism. It’s a bit like which do you prefer, science-fiction or fantasy? Much of B5 could have been done in a pure fantasy setting.
B5 in a fantasy setting wouldn't make much sense, the key issue is the namesake. What would be the equivalent of B5 in a fantasy? A floating sky island? A neutral world in a multiverse? Both have been done, but I've never heard of one actually being the centerpiece and the namesake of a series. There's also the issue of "porting" B4 into such a setting. Having a series of "prototype" worlds or prototype floating isla…
Imagine a typical fantasy setting in which humans live amongst other races - elves, dwarves, goblins and the like (but substitute them for aliens, the archetypes are mostly the same) Humans are still venturing out into the greater world and were nearly being wiped out in a war with the elves (Minbari) when their intitial meeting went poorly. Humans create a city called Babylon where representatives of various races could come together to talk, trade and interact peacefully at the outer boundaries of what humans knew to be "the world," near the countries of wild magic where eldritch and ancient things were known to dwell, which even the older races fear to speak of.
The fourth Babylon vanished without a trace. Humans have barely begun to master even the simplest of magics but this is far beyond their understanding, and the elves, who always seem to know more than they say, say nothing. But, humans being perhaps too stupid or prideful to know when to quit, simply built it again, and tried again.
But there are prophecies of an ancient enemy called The Lords of Shadow which have slumbered deep underground for so long that they have become mere legend to all but the oldest races, if not forgotten altogether. A profane force of the deepest and darkest magics which was beaten back by an alliance of older races and the Lords of Light, the divine high elf mages who still watch over the younger races and regard humans with bemusement.
Or they seem to. It's hard to tell with them. Their faces are always obscured by masks, and everything they say is a riddle.
The prophecies say the time is drawing near for the Lords of Shadow to awaken again, and the dark magic to return... and strangely enough, within this city where humans, elves, dwarves, angels and devils all walk amongst one another, the key to the fate of the world and the coming of the New Age may be this weak, naive, plucky race called humans, whose nature seems to stand between the darkness and the light, and in whom the Elves have taken a particular interest, for reason they refuse to reveal.
It really isn't that difficult. Not every element has to have a precise 1:1 match, so many of the themes and motifs are right out of fantasy. You have an ancient immortal named Lorien, a mysterious broker of dark wishes named Morden who serves the Shadows, a group of elite warriors called Rangers who trained under the Elves (Minbari) and fought in the last great war against Sauron-sorry The Shadows. The Technomages are literal space wizards.
You could do some Norse Mythology thing and say "hyperspace" is a magical form of travel between the "realms" of these various races, and have the story take place when humans have just discovered the magic that allows access to the world tree. Add a Tower of Babel analogy and say the city of Babylon already existed and was already a place where different races commingled because it's where the portal was, making it both an international and interdimensional hub, but one day the old Tower of Babylon (which is where the portal is) just disappeared (probably those damned elves) but they built a new one.
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I'd be delighted to spend that for a Blu-ray of the series but I'm afraid of getting the mangled version that they released on DVD. For background, JMS knew the widescreen transition was coming so filmed everything in 16:9. As he put it at the time, it didn't really cost more, you just had to pay more attention to lighting at the wings. All CGI was done in 4:3 because it was thought to be easy to rerender in the futu…
Blu-ray version is definitely not perfect but I wouldn't call it mangled. It is presented in 4:3 which might be an issue for some viewers but it is absolutely the best this show has ever looked: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Babylon-5-The-Complete-Series...
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Having been alive at the time, I can tell you that the effects were amazing then. B5 was one of the first shows to use computer graphics and partially-virtual sets. It wasn't limited by the number of times you could re-composite a handful of models together, so it showed whole armadas of ships. Windows didn't open onto a black felt field of stars but a green screen that allowed ships to pull up right outside the wind…
Having also been alive at the time, I can tell you I thought the effects looked hokey and cheap.
You can say they were too early, but not that they didn't lean in on technology and use it to their best advantage. It had weaknesses, but also strengths.
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Having also been alive at the time, I can tell you I thought the effects looked hokey and cheap.
It is extremely difficult for me to believe that someone watching Babylon 5 as it aired on a typical sized CRT television thought the effects looked "cheap". Hokey? Okay, maybe, that's subjective enough to be non-debatable. But "cheap" in the context of a television show? The shots were so much more dense and dynamic than what Star Trek was doing at the time, which is the obvious comparison. It's the season one actin…
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So just what is the optimal way to watch this show
Take it from someone who saw it when it first aired on standard definition analogue TV: it doesn't really matter all that much. The performance of the actors and the story is what's important!
https://www.insidehook.com/television/seinfeld-netflix-aspec...