Contains a Babylon 5 spoiler
When I think of Walter Koenig, I think of Bester, not Chekov.
To be blunt, whenever I watched Trek I never got the impression he was particularly good. But then when I saw him in B5, I thought "Damn he can act. Why didn’t the Trek show runners take advantage of this?!"
Bester was supposed to be a one-off villain! They brought him back because he was amazing!
Bester is also still a unique character, and Koenigs delivery is unique.
I’d love to watch it (I only caught a few episodes when it was first on TV), but I haven’t been able to find a cheapy DVD boxed set nor a useable copy on the dodgy streaming sites :-/
https://www.amazon.com/Babylon-5-Season-1/dp/B000I5SYHS
Here. If you want it legally, at least. Believe it or not, Pirate Bay has the fandom-produced 1080p upscale. It looks really good, whoever did the render really put some love into it.
It looks like there is an official 1080p Blu-ray. Is the fandom version better, or is it just that it came first?
Blu-ray is way better. I checked.
Yes, the new bluray version is the one to get. It is based on the original analog film which is high definition (heard it was closer to 2k ish). This is the same as the version that was available on HBO a few years back. The old DVD version was a cropped (and stretched) version of the tv broadcast version which was cropped from the original source. Anything based on that will look pretty bad.
The only thing that is lower resolution in the bluray version are the scenes where actors and CGI are mixed. They lost the original 3d models so there were no cheap and easy way to fix those.
I can also recommend the Lurkers Guide viewing order. There are also some tips on episodes that can potentially be skipped.
Thanks, unfortunately the shipping on a boxed set from the US would be brutal :-/ (and the last thing I bought direct from the US got “lost” at customs)
I’m not able to torrent stuff because I live in the middle of nowhere and use my phone for internet … the dodgy streaming sites have been a godsend TBH, since I can nibble lower res copies of things one episode at a time without the expectation of seeding :-)
It’s available for free with ads, though thankfully the ad breaks are where they are supposed to be, on Tubi
Thanks for the tip, unfortunately tubi isn’t available in my country and when I’ve tried going through a proxy I’ve run into problems :-(
They say piracy is an access/service problem, not a price problem.
You had me at “20th century understanding on how eye contact works in a video call”.
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.
It’s how its shot. Star Trek (and anything modern I guess) is green screen and the second person edited in later. The actors are talking to nobody
B5 uses CRTs, both actors are sitting in different parts of the set talking to each other live, because they could record that.
The difference it makes is crazy. So much conversation is so much more natural due to it. Wish shows would make it happen again somehow
I think that The Expanse did a great job at leveraging the green screen thing for comms. Because they don’t have FTL, the less conversational feeling really works because, in-universe, they’re basically never speaking in real-time.
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?
There are viewscreens in star wars:
Ohhh I forgot about this! And somebody said Andor broke the bible with their 2D video
Maybe the holograms aren’t really 1:1 “images” but, instead, like avatars. This would also help to explain what the problem holographic communicator is able to get the whole body, including the back.
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.”
I came to write exactly this, I laughed out loud at it
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.
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.
Love Babylon5, excellent series!
Is there a Babylon 5 Lemmy community? If not, can someone please create one? Thanks.
Pretty much every scene involving Londo and G’Kar is solid gold. Although every time Peter Jurasik appears on screen with his very odd accent for Londo, my mind goes like: “Oh, here’s The (space) Count from Sesame Street again!”
It has been a while since my last rewatch.
It was the dawn of the third age of mankind – ten years after my last rewatch.
Came for the interspecies sex, stayed for the drug addicts.
I don’t have a stim problem. They’re legal. I have it under control.
RIP Garibaldi
Dude, the way that show handled not one but two addiction arcs. In the 90s.
There is an animated spin off? How is it?
It’s just a one-off film from 2023, not a series. And it is also not really a true “spinoff” like Crusade, as it does focus on the same main characters from the series, just during an unexplored time period that had been glossed over before the series finale.
As for how enjoyable it is, I thought it was fine, but I am no film critic. Taken from Wikipedia:
On Rotten Tomatoes it has a score of 83% based on reviews from 6 critics.[12] Tara Bennett of IGN Movies rated it 7 out of 10 and wrote: “J. Michael Straczynski’s script stridently wears its heart on its sleeve, which will likely land for nostalgic old-timers but play a little cloying for those without prior investment.”[13] Rob Owen of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review wrote: “As stories go, The Road Home is pretty meh, standard sci-fi fare with a sappy, humanistic overlay.”[14]
Nah it was the latest film, done in animated form
I thought it was pretty bad. I got together with some friends to watch and we barely made it through. It was just boring.
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.
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
Given the budget that Fox gave them to film this, I’m not going to whine about it when I’ve watched community theater productions and enjoyed them. If the visual realism is a hard sticking point, then unfortunately, you just kinda have to sigh and live with it. Enjoy the story, and maybe try making fandom cosplay and give it a try for yourself.
That isn’t a dig, btw. Being able to make costumes of similar (but lesser) quality made me appreciate the hard work that goes into this more. And being involved in it helped me learn willfull suspension of disbelief. Or course you can see the seams in the costume. The actor is ignoring them and doing their damn best for a good script. I think that effort deserves a little grace.
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
Fuck. I have to start another rewatch of the series now.
S4 is a really interesting watch given the current political climate in the US. I just embarked on a re-watch this month. Agree G’kar and Londo scenes were great. My favorite duo in the show.
God, this. This fucking show was absolutely prophetic. I wish more politicians watched it in the 90s and got the fucking hint.
You forgot fighting against fascism
This was one of the shows that taught me what it looks like and why I should fight like my life depends on it.
Kirk fought literal Nazis. Sheridan fought future Nazis. Why did you get downvoted for this comment?
Obviously for bringing politics into a discussion about my beloved politics show
Don’t forget Archer fighting literal Nazis
I think Archer and his crew were the only ones who fought literal Nazis. Everyone else was fighting some other organization that had just adopted some of their philosophies.
Well, I guess the Nazis Kirk fought weren’t humans from Earth from the 20th century, but I recall they wore exactly the same uniforms and had the same symbology.
Probably Dukat’s account downvoted.
He’s probably still salty he didn’t get his statue on Bajor.
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.
And the show blew me away with how it showed exactly how Londo would die in the first season, and his death was both exactly, and nothing at all, like it was foretold.
The way he gained a soul the hard way just to trade it, fucking amazing journey
