Just because. Those who have not seen the Babylon 5 series have not seen science fiction. Hard to believe its been off the air for 23 years.
Friday, April 19, AD 2024 11:26pm
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Just because. Those who have not seen the Babylon 5 series have not seen science fiction. Hard to believe its been off the air for 23 years.
Ray Bradberry’s Martians,
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy.
Soap operas not.
Still prefer Deep Space 9, but dear heavens, did they have some well justified scenery chewing!
They were the bad guys, as you say, and we were the good guys. And they made a very satisfying thump when they hit the floor.
Deep Space Nine is my favorite Trek series after the original. War and diplomacy were never handled better in the Trek universe than in Deep Space Nine. The Cardassians were great villains who ended up fighting on the right side eventually and the Ferengi were a great comedic race that could occasionally be used well as drama. The Klingons were never better presented than in that series, with the possible exception of the Next Generation episode where Riker was seconded to serve as first officer aboard a Klingon ship.
DS9’s similarities to B5 reportedly disturbed the B5 developers, and there were even unconfirmed reports of legal wrangling and a settlement. In any case in light of those similarities it is unsurprising that there was substantial overlap in their audiences.
Although a fan if sci-fi I never watched either, but have not put the B5 disc set on my Amazon wish list.
Oops — “now” not “not”.
My wife is a real fan. We/ve been rewatching and are up to episode 20 of year 1…Mr. Morden has appeared to each of the species. There is a scene in the 3rd or 4th year in which a cross appears as a reflection… The good lady says this is an epic for our times. For my taste, too much action and deviltry.
While DS9 is very similar to B5, and I would be very surprised if the DS9 writers were not at least aware of the similarities, there are some big differences in focus (as I discovered watching them close together). For example DS9 has a big focus on the civilians and businesses on the station, through Quark and related characters. In Babylon 5 we rarely see anyone outside of station staff and the various alien diplomats. Conversely, diplomacy is a very small part of DS9 (even though you’d think that would be a bigger part of a Star Trek show). Similarly DS9 has tons of basically “away missions” to various planets, where it is common for B5 to go several episodes without having a single scene take place outside of a spaceship or station, and even when we do see a planet it’s usually Earth or an alien homeworld that the B5 crew don’t visit. There’s also the difference in frame that you get from being in the Star Trek universe: while DS9 shows that the federation can be cutthroat due to things like Section 31, it’s a big contrast to the public image of the federation. In B5 political squabbles among humans are just par for the course.
So while I wouldn’t be surprised at all if DS9 copied a lot from B5, I’m glad to have both.
The guy who wrote B5 insisted that DS9 was stolen from him, because he tried to sell B5 to Paramount. (or whoever was producing Trek at the time)
I have pissed off a lot of people by pointing out that gosh, when the ISS was the big shiny thing for space, two different scifi products were set on… a space station.
And DS9 had a heavy Islamic and Irish terrorism vibe, including using some of the garbage the Muslim terrorists used to show that their Bajoran terror group was bad, mmmmmk?
At least nobody has tried to sell me on Garak being a rip-off of G’Kar. (Cardassians were introduced in ’91, and were Definitely Not Narn.)
And looking at the memory alpha site, they also didn’t try to tell me that secret organizations in the Federation and other groups was invented by B5. Good thing, I would have been howling.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Babylon_5
Oh, and while it made sense for what amounted to a very small floating base in the middle of nowhere to be a commander, less obvious for the commander of a big, multi-national base to be that rank. (Justified in B5 because he was in charge of a ship before, so there must be less rank inflation.)
Stop talking about your golf-game and your stupid ties and your stupid polo shirts
and get back to the real issues!
–A long time listener/first time (drive-by) caller
I think a series of posts on Renaissance etchings are now in order.
🙂
Don’t make me cancel my subscription!
As an outsider to each of those fandoms, I have found their fans’ battles interesting. When the shows first came out it was the year we bought a wreck of a house and turned it into a home, it was the year our first of four was born. We simply had no time. Lots of friends loved them, but there simply wasn’t the time. Now, there is less of a desire to watch them. Maybe one day….
BTW, the clip from B5 at the top of this blog is the most I’ve seen of it, but I probably seen 5 or 6 complete DS9s. Of course that does include the episode when they went back in time to Kirk’s fun with tribbles.
There’s a post for you, Don! Shows with the best lawyer jokes.
I think Simpsons is pretty top there with almost no challenger. Futurama had more jokes about lawyer characters than the profession itself. Even King of the Hill didn’t touch on them as I recall (did do an episode about Catholics once – though not at their expense). DS9 had an episode about klingon law that is classic.
Better Off Ted… well they ran with a billable hours joke all the way to the end of the line.
Mollari and G’Kar are two of the finest character studies in science fiction.
Nate-
House of Quark?
I’d think that Night Court would have the best lawyer jokes.
A Babylon 5 episode that I like is “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars.” in season four. It had a take down of some academician types.
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A clip of it titled “Babylon 5 scene: He was a good man” is available on YouTube at:
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@Foxfier – No, Rules of Engagement.
Though House of Quark is entertaining. I always suspect Don should have visited many a courtroom with Bat’leth in hand.
And you’d like Night Court would have some jokes but thus far what I’ve caught on reruns (and there have been blocks of them lately on antenna), not as many lawyer jokes as you’d think. It seems to have been far more about the characters navigating the world (like the time Bull became a professional wrestler).
Kind of like how Newhart was far more about the character than jokes about owning a hotel (though one of those would pop up sometimes).
Now coach? That was a great series that had a good balance between characters and football for the humor IMO.
Coach was the first show I ever noticed as being strongly anti-male. I remember one scene where Coach pushed back against Christine and the audience exploded with approval, which made me realize that “hey, other people notice this as a problem, too”.
I’ve been re-watching some of the newer Battlestar Galactica, and it really is noticeable how sci-fi gives writers room to explore. It’s a flawed show. It’s almost like the opposite of B5 – it’s got a sloppy overarching story, but some of the best self-contained episodes I’ve ever seen.
Man . . . All I’d have needed was a snort and an “actually” and I’d have been right back at the high school cafeteria geek table.
“actually”
My favorite word back in High School 1971-75
It’s more socially acceptable than “holy (bleep), you’re so (bleep)ing full of (fecal matter) that your eyes should be brown. Quit (bleep)ing off and either shut up or get decent information.”