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Babylon 5 Coming Back?
SaturnTim writes "Babylon 5 fans rejoice! It appears that our favorite space outpost is back. It will be returning soon in a series of direct-to-DVD 20min episodes, each featuring the past of one of our favorite characters."
You are correct, it would not be the same without Andreas Katsulas, who died of lung cancer on Feb. 13 of this year. Similarly, the death of Richard Biggs, who played Dr. Franklin, should not go unmourned. He died of an aortic tear back in 2004.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
It has the distinction of being possibly the best planned series of any kind in history. From what I've read, they had the entire 5 year story arc fully plotted out before they started shooting the first episode of season 1. Sure they had to wing it on a few things where there were unforseen circumstances, but for the most part it's a stunning example of what you can do when you actually planned the full 5 seasons, and managed to actually produce all five of them before someone dropped the axe and made you rush your plot to close in like, season 3 or 4.
.... THAT'S why he did that!!", remembering that would tie in maybe an entire season or two later as a very important plot arc. Good lord, how long did they push that "there is a hole in your mind!" before letting us in on it?
I have the entire box set of all seasons, and I still enjoy watching it from the start. Time and time again I spot something, some subtle hint, puzzling comment, even a look from a character in reaction to something seemingly harmless, only to realize "oh
I rather doubt these new minis will be very good, as most of the time such similar minis are almost worthless, but I'll probably still watch them, if nothing else than to revisit the past. I'm sure they willl continue to backfill missing or mysterious plot elements from the original series with these new additions, and that alone should be worth the watch.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Not that he was a major character, but Tim Choate also passed away a few years ago. Luckily he's survived by his brothers Zathras, Zathras, Zathras, and Zathras.
I really hope that your comment is a troll. Andreas Katsulas is a Shakespearian actor. Few actors, past and present, are able to capitalise on the grandeur of that training as dramatically as he did. JMS should allow G'Kar to die, or more specifically, rest in the noble peace that stoic noble heroes deserve.
This is a boring sig
You aren't the only one. To quote from Gregg Easterbrook (probably best known to the slashdot crowd for his 5...4...3...2..1.. goodbye columbia article: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/800 4.easterbrook-fulltext.html)
One of my problems with Battlestar Galactica is that the men and women in the show are depicted as so astonishingly across-the-board stupid, it's tempting to root for the robots. The military officers are stupid; the politicians are stupid; the civilians are stupid. In the pilot, we learn that the entire defense network of the human society could be deactivated by one single numeric code. The evil robots, called Cylons, obtain the code, transmit it, and instantly all the human society's military equipment shuts off. Planets are left defenseless as the Cylons bombard them with nuclear bombs; numerous powerful battlestars are shown hanging in space helpless, their engines and weapons shut off, as the Cylons smash them. (The Galactica escapes via plot contrivance.) Now if you were an advanced society capable of building gigantic faster-than-light outer-space battleships, would you design them so that one single numeric code renders them all totally useless at the same time? Plus the numeric code that instantly shuts off every military device in the entire human society has been entrusted to a psychologically unstable computer scientist, who accidentally gives it to the Cylons. Halfway through the first season, the computer scientist became vice-president of the survivors' government, and everyone -- including military intelligence -- is so astonishingly stupid as to never realize that since scientist was the only one who had the code, he must have been the one to give it to the Cylons.
Next, the show has premise problems that appears unsolvable. One aspect of the premise is that there are no other intelligent beings in this part of the galaxy -- just the beleaguered humans and the malevolent Cylons. This means there are no aliens to meet in various episodes, no alien societies to depict. True, it must be hard at this point to come up with new alien ideas for sci-fi. You can imagine the scriptwriters' conference: "Okay, how about they find a planet where people can only speak when the sun is out?" The other premise problem is that the Cylons are depicted as having become so powerful, Galactica cannot hope to defeat them. If the characters can't overcome the Cylons and can't meet interesting aliens, to create dramatic tension the scriptwriters are forced to have the humans fighting each other, which is what happens. Almost every episode concerns internecine fighting inside the human fleet: plots, mutinies, martial law, claims of treason, everything but people accusing each other of witchcraft. Galactica story lines have become so similar that I have trouble telling whether an episode is new or a repeat.
Claudia recently recorded a Big Finish Doctor Who audio... The Reaping with the Cybermen.
(Peter Jurasik was in "Winter For The Adept" back in 2000.)
I remember when B5 was on the air and I mentioned the whole "story arc" thing to a Singaporean coworker. He looked at me like I was crazy: "So? Half the shows back home are like that." Since then I've watched several Chinese TV shows and I have to say he was right; not to diminish B5 in the least, but some of those shows have every bit as much foreshadowing and plot twistiness. (But usually, in the case of fantasy stories, much cheesier special effects than B5 at its worst.)
B5 was shot widescreen. The CG was rendered 4:3. I believe part of the deal was that the CG would be rerendered for the DVD's (but I'm not positive).
Warner lost the model files. Many conspiracy theories surround this.
The DVD's were made by combining the 16:9 live action footage with CG that was cropped to 16:9, then scaled vertically (to achieve full anamorphic resolution). So scenes that combine live action and CG look a bit weird.
If iTunes is 4:3, it's probably the original broadcast version, where you're missing the sides of the field in live action shots.
(This is an entirely different issue from the first Sci-fi "widescreen" reairing, where they did indeed mess up and just mat out the top and bottom of the original broadcast.)