Contains a Babylon 5 spoiler
G’Kar was the wrong character to show for the prosthetics poke. The Narn prosthetics are actually shockingly good with a surprisingly high degree of articulation allowing for lots of emoting and facial expressions. Some of Delenn’s head bone prosthetics, on the other hand, are just terrible.
Optic Nerve won a damn Emmy for their prosthetic work on B5, not sure what op’s on about with that one…
Shoulda gone meta with the drazi and the human mask
G’Kar can’t even turn his neck. Reminds me of how the Cardassian prosthetics pull me out of the realism and make me painfully aware that I am watching TV.
Why must an alien species have developed the ability to turn their head?
That’s just a guess as to one reason why these types of alien prosthetics are so immersion-breaking
You know what? You convinced me, I’ll give it a try.
It took me a while, so I’ll tell you it starts to pick up steam halfway through first season and hooks you before the first season finale.
You know the episode of DS9 where Sisko and Garrick commit war crimes?
It’s like that episode, the show.
Only scifi show I can think of to present peace negotiations with the same degree of dramatic tension as they give to the rest of the war.
The first season is pretty bad, but necessary to set up the various arcs.
Season 4 crammed the final two major plot arcs into it because they thought they were getting cancelled. But then they didn’t. Season 5 is almost entirely filler.
In fact, once you finish Season 4, I’d recommend jumping right to the series finale (last episode of S5) and watching that. Then watch Season 5 from the beginning and think of it as a spin-off show that didn’t go anywhere.
This was how I went through my last rewatch of the series a few years ago and it was perfect.
S1 is overall more watchable than I usually give it credit for, but there is some atrocious acting at times. And some of the sets are rough
And maybe just skip the pilot.
The pilot is an odd one. On one hand it does start some story arcs. On the other, the production is a rather large step off.
Maybe it’s one to go back and watch at the end of S1.
It is, wholeheartedly, one of my most favorite shows of all time. It’s one of the ones that shaped me as a human being.
Just try and give the exiting actors and resulting plot hiccups a little mercy. There was a lot happening in the real world for all of them, and some things are more important than television.
Just try and give the exiting actors and resulting plot hiccups a little mercy
Sinclair > Sheridan
Though I get that the actor had mental health issues and decided he would rather quit entirely than stall production and possibly lead to the show’s premature cancellation.
deleted by creator
Came for the interspecies sex, stayed for the drug addicts.
Dude, the way that show handled not one but two addiction arcs. In the 90s.
I don’t have a stim problem. They’re legal. I have it under control.
RIP Garibaldi
See, that was their problem. Their last best hope for peace was a truck stop? That is not where you get peace. That is where you get the opposite of peace. They could have only done worse if it were a space waffle house.
last best hope for peace was a truck stop
Picture I found of Babylon-5:
Ds9 was a truck stop, the babylon stations were UN convention centres with bazaars did you even watch the show
The Centauri: “You call this a convention center? I would not host my second cousin’s baby shower here; it stinks of commoners.”
(which is to say, i watched it two decades ago)
goofy hairstyles
Look how they massacred my boy Londo.
First real character I remember in sci-fi. He’s a highfalutin blowhard from a noble house, who’s fucking broke and has to lose two of his wives.
Then he picks the one that treats him the worst because she lies the least.
Then he goes on to sell his soul to make his planet great again which of course if goes all monkey paw on him.
The dude is a walking pile of contradictions. There’s nobody like him in star trek sadly.
The way he gained a soul the hard way just to trade it, fucking amazing journey
You had me at “20th century understanding on how eye contact works in a video call”.
One of the wonderful little details from B5 was the holographic recording Londo made for [REDACTED] where he’s making his grand speech about how and why he’s having him [REDACTED]. The recording is constantly looking in the wrong direction, pointing accusingly at the wall, moving through people, and just obviously not lining up with the room it’s being played in because it’s just a recording.
Then the gospel choir kicks in and the episode officially becomes my all time favorite.
An account created three months ago, named after a Babylon 5 character, and your very first comment is under this post about Babylon 5. Checks out.
That is something that has bugged me since I started watching sci-fi (yes, I am relatively new to the genre), and I don’t think I have ever seen anybody talk about it.
Star Wars is so much worse on that than anything Trek-like… so much that some times people mention it. But yeah, I’ve never seen anybody mention it about Star Trek or B5.
I assume the logistics are entirely different with a hologram compared to a 2D viewscreen. Or are there viewscreens in Star Wars as well?
EDIT: Oh, this question probably does a good job summarizing the type of inconsistencies you are talking about
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/108609/how-do-star-wars-hologram-communications-work
Starting at 2:46 in Clones Wars season 2 episode 7 we see both ends of a hologram communication. I’ve always wondered how people somehow manage to maintain eye contact while using holograms to communicate since often, as in this case, each are viewing images of the other that greatly vary in size. Obi-wan Kenobi and Ki-Adi-Mundi are in a large room looking down on a 2-3 foot image of Luminara Unduli.
Master Unduli however is holding a mobile jedi holoprojector looking down at 1 foot images of Kenobi and Mundi.
How can they both be looking down at projections less than half the height of an average humanoid while still maintaining eye contact with the person on the other end?
Stranger still, at 3:16 when Anakin Skywalker enters the room, joining the other two Jedi, we see the 2-3 foot image of Unduli in the center of the room turn her entire body about 90 degrees to face Skywalker.
Then Mundi speaks up at 3:25, prompting the small Unduli image to do a 180 degree turn to face Mundi.
However we then immediately see at 3:29 that she never needed to turn since they’ve only been two little images in her hand all along.
It makes no sense for Unduli to turn right and left to face people she’s essentially holding in her hand. Curiously, Skywalker’s image is absent from Unduli’s mobile holoprojector even though we saw her turn to face him. Did he race out of the room the nanosecond he finished talking?
Daaaaaamn, a real nerd! Got the screenshots for it too!
This is actual praise, holy hell, I did not expect to see this kind of effort for a comment. I fucking love Lemmy, I hope it stays this good for as long as possible.
This was one of the issues they ran into early in the Clone Wars. In my head, I justified it as a more advanced version of modern video chat software filters. The ones subtly shift your pupils to look like they’re looking at the camera instead of the screen. I think in later episodes, I remember seeing holograms scaled to eye level, and communicators being held at eye level as often as feasible.
But this is obviously retrospective justification, and the reality is probably “idk, it just looked better to the one or two animators who worked on this shot.”
There are viewscreens in star wars:
Ohhh I forgot about this! And somebody said Andor broke the bible with their 2D video
I have always wanted to like b5, I have tried to watch it multiple times over the years. I get 3 or 4 episodes into it and lose interest. Maybe it is time to try it out again
It definitely blends action, drama, politics, and philosophy like Stat Trek does, but leans far more into drama/politics. I can understand why one might lose interest early on.
