![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Jan. 16th, 2005
After 'Redemption', it's like watching a completely different show. Everyone is sparking off everyone else, saying witty lines wittily. Even Gan and Jenna are good and quite good respectively. 'Deathwatch' is the best episode for the ensemble, but 'Shadow' does particularly well because, with Gan still around, the cast is slightly larger... although I suppose 'Deathwatch' includes Servalan as well. 'Shadow' has particularly fine villains, IMHO. When I become a mobster secretly in the pay of the President, I'll be wearing a crushed velvet suit with a ruffled shirt, see if I don't [1].
I hadn't noticed before that it's really a two-parter stuck together: Adventure on Space City linked in passing to the half of the episode covering the events leading up to the Great Moondisk Massacre. (And we get the two Callys: slightly alarming perpetrator of acts of violence and convenient conduit for alien takeover.)
Two charms, one general to B7 and the other specific to watching on DVD: Firstly, one reason why I love studio-bound drama is that it makes everything feel like it's taking place on a wet Wednesday afternoon in a tiny room somewhere in west London [2], and I love the idea that Being In Space would be just as crap as ordinary life. Secondly, watching a crisp, clean print on an overlarge television lets you see just how much make-up everyone is wearing. Largo and the dreamheads in particular have trowelled on the foundation. Obviously this is because I'm watching it on a telly of far better quality than was ever intended, but I quite like the idea that in The Totalitarian Federation Future, everyone wears lots of slap to cover over their pallid space-faring or dome-bound complexions.
Tenuous-influence-on-other-shows-because-B7-is-source-for-all-other-television-SF: Er, struggling slightly... um, mention of the Syndicate is a bit like the Orion Syndicate in DS9. Yeah.
I watched 'Weapon' too, but I don't have anything to say other than it's brilliant.
***
[1]![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hafren's comment about the good minor characters reminds me that in 'Shadow' we see the difference between the 'minion' and the 'lackey', and the relationship between both. The Enforcer starts out as a 'lackey' and ends up as a 'minion'. Largo starts out as a 'minion' and ends up dead.
[2] The set for Vilaworld in 'City at the Edge of the World' is my favourite example of this. It strikes me as a place where it always feels like the post-lunchtime-news-episode of Columbo or Bergerac has just finished on BBC1, and that you're staring into the blank abyss of the afternoon before Countdown.
I hadn't noticed before that it's really a two-parter stuck together: Adventure on Space City linked in passing to the half of the episode covering the events leading up to the Great Moondisk Massacre. (And we get the two Callys: slightly alarming perpetrator of acts of violence and convenient conduit for alien takeover.)
Two charms, one general to B7 and the other specific to watching on DVD: Firstly, one reason why I love studio-bound drama is that it makes everything feel like it's taking place on a wet Wednesday afternoon in a tiny room somewhere in west London [2], and I love the idea that Being In Space would be just as crap as ordinary life. Secondly, watching a crisp, clean print on an overlarge television lets you see just how much make-up everyone is wearing. Largo and the dreamheads in particular have trowelled on the foundation. Obviously this is because I'm watching it on a telly of far better quality than was ever intended, but I quite like the idea that in The Totalitarian Federation Future, everyone wears lots of slap to cover over their pallid space-faring or dome-bound complexions.
Tenuous-influence-on-other-shows-because-B7-is-source-for-all-other-television-SF: Er, struggling slightly... um, mention of the Syndicate is a bit like the Orion Syndicate in DS9. Yeah.
I watched 'Weapon' too, but I don't have anything to say other than it's brilliant.
***
[1]
hafren's comment about the good minor characters reminds me that in 'Shadow' we see the difference between the 'minion' and the 'lackey', and the relationship between both. The Enforcer starts out as a 'lackey' and ends up as a 'minion'. Largo starts out as a 'minion' and ends up dead. [2] The set for Vilaworld in 'City at the Edge of the World' is my favourite example of this. It strikes me as a place where it always feels like the post-lunchtime-news-episode of Columbo or Bergerac has just finished on BBC1, and that you're staring into the blank abyss of the afternoon before Countdown.