Babylon 5 season 5 poll

[altariel]

I've been hugely enjoying my rewatch of Babylon 5, and I've just started on season 4. Watching the first episode, 'The Hour of the Wolf', and remembering that all Cartagia-Centauri Prime doesn't particularly press my buttons, I'm starting to think that I've now seen all my favourite bits of the show, i.e. the build-up to the Shadow War. I'll keep on watching till the end of this season, because I also remember enjoying the resolution of the Earth plotline. My intention hadn't been to get season 5 at all - but is it worth it?

[Poll #522839]

Comments

[steverogerson.livejournal.com]

Season five was not as bad as some people claim, and it had some really good episodes - The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father for example.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I think it has the Neil Gaiman one too, IIRC. I just don't remember being all that involved in the stories.

[crossbow1.livejournal.com]

The episode Gaiman wrote is called "Day of the Dead. It's not in season 5; I THINK it's season 3. Not sure.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

It's season five. Lochley was in it, remember?

[crossbow1.livejournal.com]

You're right, it's episode 5x8. I forgot about Lochley.

I just looked up all the episodes here:
http://www2.warnerbros.com/babylon5/chronicles.html

I wasn't thrilled with any of them except "The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father. I liked "Day of the Dead" but I definitely think Gaiman has done better work. "A View from Gallery" is cute. The one about Londo's Heart attack I WANTED to like, but I ended up hating it. (Except for Vir's speech at the end about how the soul has to be angelic and the body has to be completely evil, and then he suddenly realizes he's talking about Londo and tries to backtrack. Hee! I replayed that scene a lot.)

So like I said, there were some really good moments in season 5, and I recommend watching it, but going to the expense of buying it? No. If I were to buy any seasons, they'd be 3 and 4. I love the Centauri story arc with Caligula Cartagia, and the episodes "Falling Toward Apotheosis" and "The Long Night" are some of my favorite TV moments EVER. But then, I'm fixated on the Centauri. I suppose that's not everyone's thing.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I had completely blanked on Lochley. Blimey, completely.

[izhilzha.livejournal.com]

Wish *I* could blank on Lochley. That should have been Ivanova there, dangit!

I dont' know if I'd recommend buying season 5. The episodes already mentioned are about the only good things I recall.... Well, except for the obvious: you might want to own "Sleeping in Light."

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I think I still have 'Sleeping in Light' on tape somewhere around the house... I'm going to try to look for bargains on the DVDs, I think.

[crossbow1.livejournal.com]

Strangely forgettable, isn't she?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Season 5 is my favorite season.

Now that, written by you, is good enough reason alone!

I haven't seen it since transmission (five years?); it's possible I'd respond to it completely differently now. Cool!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I was definitely most absorbed in Ivanova and Garibaldi on first viewing; this time round I'm mostly watching for G'Kar and, to a lesser extent, Vir. And I have been watching Lennier closely because I want to read your fic.

[crossbow1.livejournal.com]

I liked Byron OK, but I sort of felt like that whole telepath plotline didn't really make that much sense.

[crossbow1.livejournal.com]

PS.

And Londo's hair looks like a pice of rubber tire.

[kradical.livejournal.com]

Season 5 of B5 was about five or six hours of good television. Unfortunately, there's twenty-two hours of it. The season was done in by two disastrous casting decisions: the wooden Tracy Scoggins as the thoroughly uninteresting Elizabeth Lochley (Lochley actually worked better on Crusade, where she had Gary Cole to play off of), and the don't-hate-me-because-I'm-beautiful Robin Atkin Downes as the unconvincing underground leader Byron (I kept wondering, if he's been living in Downbelow all this time, where did he get the hair gel?????)

There are individually good episodes, but the fifth season is (pardon the pun) a shadow of a great show's former self -- particularly coming after the slam-bang fourth season.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I'd remembered Byron but had completely - and I mean completely! - managed to blank out Tracy Scoggins! Good god, I can't believe I forgot that!

[selenak.livejournal.com]

As to why you should buy it, see my answer. But it baffles me why you don't like the Centauri Prime scenes in early season 4, because I regularly fast forward through everything else. Not because everything else during those six episodes is bad, far from it, but because the Centauri Prime scenes are so good. Love and adore beyond measure Londo and G'Kar and Vir and Cartagia.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Damn, I wrote a long reply to this last night and it got munched.

I've not seen season 4 since transmission, so I bet I'm forgetting a great deal about the Londo-G'Kar-Vir scenes: I just remember disliking the Cartagia plotline. (I think I found it too nasty - I'm a bit of a softy, really. I can't watch the Caligula bits in I, Claudius either.) So it might be I'll watch them after this gap and find I really like them. Adore both G'Kar and Vir.