100 Reviews: 82
Jan. 11th, 2014 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urthOkay, so over the last few years I’ve tried to do a couple of structured rewatches of B5. With other long time fans or with a newbie buddy (both short lived attempts can be found at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
b5rewatch but now it is well past time to do a watch just for me. If anyone wants to join in with me they’re welcome to, but I love this show too much to go so many years without really rewatching it.
(I’ll probably do reviews until such time as taking time out from watching to write them becomes a hassle.)
Babylon 5 0x00: The Gathering
(Great Maker, I already don’t have a clue how I would number the other movies, guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.)
So I’ve written several different reviews of this, each time I try and get a rewatch going, so there will probably be some repetition here. Still, I’m a start at the beginning person, so here goes.
As I always seem to ask, I wonder if I could find a copy of the original edit of this one, because I’m curious what it was before. I’ve heard JMS really regretted the original cut and it was big deal to him that he got a chance to go back and reedit it. And I have like four different copies of the reedited version and I’m sure it’s better than the original. But still, I’m surprised how hard it is to find something like this out on the interwebs.
I end up wondering if the effects are what they were originally of if they went back and plugged in the establishing shots used throughout the series instead. The quality of the CGI does look a little inconsistent between the shots that will get a lot of work and the ones specific to the plot of this episode; not a lot noticeable but enough to make me wonder. I’m pretty sure the voiceover stuff during Sinclair’s Battle of the Line monolog is from ‘And the Sky Fully of Stars’ but I’m not positive (I’ve heard that whole scene got cut from the original edit which...seems silly but not out of the realm of possibility). And (not that the old cut would help with this) it’s been ages since I looked into it but I always wonder if the “En’til’zah Valen” greeting was even scripted at the time. I have a hard time believing it was in the original cut (and am pretty sure it wasn’t) but was it even in the script? Most shows I’d call it major retconning to try and sell after the fact that there had been a plan, but with show I actually do wonder if it could have really always been part of the plan.
Okay, so the episode itself. Pilots are usually weird to go back to once the show is established, and this one definitely is. It’s a weird combination of unfinished (especially in the look of it) and feeling like you’ve stepped into a world that already exists and has been loved in. But then add the weirdness of how much the characters are going to change over the next five seasons (one advantage of it being so long since I watched the later seasons, it’s less fresh in my mind all the changes that happen) and the disconnect sharpens more than just the fact that nothing looks quite right yet. There’s some roughness in the performances too, which is to be expected, in general because it’s a pilot so everyone s feeling their way and then especially knowing some of the complications between theory and practice of what was to happen here.
But there’s some noticeable flaws in the script where it raises issues with the plot but never resolves them.
One being the issue of the transport tubes logs and the stop that kept Sinclair away during the assassination attempt, thus making him a subject. This one I know was meant to be a longer term mystery and supposedly there are clues in the episode to hint at the answer but that the episode raises the issue and then never goes anywhere with it is kind of an issue. And since it was supposedly meant to be Laurel we never do get a resolution, and I’ve never been entirely sure her involvement in that conspiracy quite fits with her other actions this episode; the fact that it isn’t there in her performance might be explained away as being good undercover if we’d actually gotten to see this plot play out but as it it’s also noticeable as not quite jiving with the story we’ve been told was happening here.
The other big issue I see is, how did the poison get inside Kosh’s encounter suit? Dr. Kyle raises the issue at one point, but we never get an answer. Did he reach out with his gripper thing and bring it back inside to come in contact with his body? Do Vorlons even have hands for Lyta’s ‘back of the hand’ location to be any help? And if for some reason Kosh got out of his encounter suit (and back in by the time the command staff entered), I have a hard time believing any Minbari, even a pissed off member of the Warrior caste would have gone through with attacking him. Okay that part is only at all discussable in hindsight, but the issue of him not having hands and being contained in the encounter suit is obvious even in this story and never actually addressed.
What did happen to Delenn’smagic gravity rings? I can probably believe the Minbari have that kind of technology, but that it never comes up again makes it hard to defend this as anything but random.
Some of the dialog may be a bit clunky, but the little speeches are mostly pretty good. Londo in particular get to show off a lot of sides to his character just in this one episode, the seeds of all the tragedy that will come already sown. And there’s clearly a lot of potential in this world and for all these characters. It’s unfinished, it’s *very* unfinished in fact, and it really looks it, but there’s promise in it; the seeds of all that is to come are already planted. And that’s the strongest thing about the pilot, I hope for people who saw it all those years ago and even on returning to it when I finally got to see it a few years later (it was the mid-90’s well before I could go online and start from the beginning), the world feels like it’s already there to explore and we’ve just scratched the surface here. As rough and unfinished as it is at the moment, it’s waiting for us to explore it and fall in love with it.
And I mean to do just that, all over again.
Next time:
I’m digging in for some B5, maybe even still more tonight.
But the request list is always open
b5rewatch but now it is well past time to do a watch just for me. If anyone wants to join in with me they’re welcome to, but I love this show too much to go so many years without really rewatching it.(I’ll probably do reviews until such time as taking time out from watching to write them becomes a hassle.)
Babylon 5 0x00: The Gathering
(Great Maker, I already don’t have a clue how I would number the other movies, guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.)
So I’ve written several different reviews of this, each time I try and get a rewatch going, so there will probably be some repetition here. Still, I’m a start at the beginning person, so here goes.
As I always seem to ask, I wonder if I could find a copy of the original edit of this one, because I’m curious what it was before. I’ve heard JMS really regretted the original cut and it was big deal to him that he got a chance to go back and reedit it. And I have like four different copies of the reedited version and I’m sure it’s better than the original. But still, I’m surprised how hard it is to find something like this out on the interwebs.
I end up wondering if the effects are what they were originally of if they went back and plugged in the establishing shots used throughout the series instead. The quality of the CGI does look a little inconsistent between the shots that will get a lot of work and the ones specific to the plot of this episode; not a lot noticeable but enough to make me wonder. I’m pretty sure the voiceover stuff during Sinclair’s Battle of the Line monolog is from ‘And the Sky Fully of Stars’ but I’m not positive (I’ve heard that whole scene got cut from the original edit which...seems silly but not out of the realm of possibility). And (not that the old cut would help with this) it’s been ages since I looked into it but I always wonder if the “En’til’zah Valen” greeting was even scripted at the time. I have a hard time believing it was in the original cut (and am pretty sure it wasn’t) but was it even in the script? Most shows I’d call it major retconning to try and sell after the fact that there had been a plan, but with show I actually do wonder if it could have really always been part of the plan.
Okay, so the episode itself. Pilots are usually weird to go back to once the show is established, and this one definitely is. It’s a weird combination of unfinished (especially in the look of it) and feeling like you’ve stepped into a world that already exists and has been loved in. But then add the weirdness of how much the characters are going to change over the next five seasons (one advantage of it being so long since I watched the later seasons, it’s less fresh in my mind all the changes that happen) and the disconnect sharpens more than just the fact that nothing looks quite right yet. There’s some roughness in the performances too, which is to be expected, in general because it’s a pilot so everyone s feeling their way and then especially knowing some of the complications between theory and practice of what was to happen here.
But there’s some noticeable flaws in the script where it raises issues with the plot but never resolves them.
One being the issue of the transport tubes logs and the stop that kept Sinclair away during the assassination attempt, thus making him a subject. This one I know was meant to be a longer term mystery and supposedly there are clues in the episode to hint at the answer but that the episode raises the issue and then never goes anywhere with it is kind of an issue. And since it was supposedly meant to be Laurel we never do get a resolution, and I’ve never been entirely sure her involvement in that conspiracy quite fits with her other actions this episode; the fact that it isn’t there in her performance might be explained away as being good undercover if we’d actually gotten to see this plot play out but as it it’s also noticeable as not quite jiving with the story we’ve been told was happening here.
The other big issue I see is, how did the poison get inside Kosh’s encounter suit? Dr. Kyle raises the issue at one point, but we never get an answer. Did he reach out with his gripper thing and bring it back inside to come in contact with his body? Do Vorlons even have hands for Lyta’s ‘back of the hand’ location to be any help? And if for some reason Kosh got out of his encounter suit (and back in by the time the command staff entered), I have a hard time believing any Minbari, even a pissed off member of the Warrior caste would have gone through with attacking him. Okay that part is only at all discussable in hindsight, but the issue of him not having hands and being contained in the encounter suit is obvious even in this story and never actually addressed.
What did happen to Delenn’s
Some of the dialog may be a bit clunky, but the little speeches are mostly pretty good. Londo in particular get to show off a lot of sides to his character just in this one episode, the seeds of all the tragedy that will come already sown. And there’s clearly a lot of potential in this world and for all these characters. It’s unfinished, it’s *very* unfinished in fact, and it really looks it, but there’s promise in it; the seeds of all that is to come are already planted. And that’s the strongest thing about the pilot, I hope for people who saw it all those years ago and even on returning to it when I finally got to see it a few years later (it was the mid-90’s well before I could go online and start from the beginning), the world feels like it’s already there to explore and we’ve just scratched the surface here. As rough and unfinished as it is at the moment, it’s waiting for us to explore it and fall in love with it.
And I mean to do just that, all over again.
Next time:
I’m digging in for some B5, maybe even still more tonight.
But the request list is always open
