Babylon 5 Is a Perfect, Terrible Series | Hacker News Reader

Babylon 5 Is a Perfect, Terrible Series

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Babylon 5 was such an incredibly uneven production. There's award winning makeup production, combined with the worst 90s daytime TV soap level of taste in set design and fashion.

The feeling I get from the show is that it is absolutely earnest. Like a group of a b-tier community theater folks got the biggest budget of their lives to finally tell the story they wanted and they just swung for the fences.

It's a total, glorious, mess of a show that is as entertaining if you take it seriously as if you make fun of it. I love it.

That may be the best description of the show, ever. My fondest memories of it were how detailed the online analyses of each episode were as they aired. All of the speculation, references to previous clues - everything was dissected. And JMS was right in the only fray most of the time, teasing and clarifying and explaining, but never spoiling what was coming up. It was the golden age of Internet synergy with a show, not just trolling and shitposting.

The name of the place? rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated.

(...your phrasing wound up leading into sounding like the B5 intro.)

also the lurker's guide whih I think is how most people got that info.

I think you're forgetting the most important aspect of the show: the entire series was plotted out before the first episode was shot, which allowed for things like foreshadowing and multi-season story arcs that could be more "fundamental" because they weren't ad-hoc.

I was playing Stellaris recently, and a few months later started a rewatch of Babylon 5. The inspiration is striking. B5, despite all its shortcomings, represents a vision of the timeless nature of politics that is in a way distinct from e.g. TNG. Furthermore the characters have a level of depth and complexity that force one to look in the mirror and ask hard questions about what it means to be a good person in the context of titanic forces the we could easily dismiss as being beyond our control.

FWIW, the Star Trek competitor series to B5 (some would say its a ripoff) is DS9.

There is an old Human Giant sketch about a sci-fi show, the producer of which has got a lot of flack for noticing successful shows on other networks and copying them. For example, he pitched a Heroes knock-off called Superpower People. I assume that is a sarcastic nod towards the accusation that DS9 was the powerful Star Trek franchise’s deliberate attempt to steal B5’s thunder.

(Sad that Human Giant isn’t on YouTube like so many other classic sketch comedies of yore. Apparently there are rights issues.)

> I assume that is a sarcastic nod towards the accusation that DS9 was the powerful Star Trek franchise’s deliberate attempt to steal B5’s thunder.

The accusation isn’t that DS9 was an attempt to steal B5’s thunder, its that JMS pitched what later became B5 to Paramount as a Star Trek series, they rejected it, and then turned around and built DS9 around the material they were pitched; that they literally stole it, not tried to steal its thunder.

Thanks, I stand corrected.

And for this, Paramount will never be the Trek fan's friend. CBS/Paramount have done nothing but been hostile towards new Trek ideas and suing fan-films out of existence. Not cool, not cool at all. They are under the impression that it has to be TNG cast or not-at-all. Maybe that's in Jonathan Frake's contract? I dunno but it's gone the way of Mattel and not the Roddenberry way.

> CBS/Paramount have done nothing but been hostile towards new Trek ideas and suing fan-films out of existence.

Are we watching the same Strange New Worlds?

Oof. I tried to make it through the first season and don’t think I’d put “new ideas” near the top of my list of descriptors. But I get that many people are enjoying it.

If you're open, recommend skipping to the first 3 episodes of season 2.

It’s mostly remakes of earlier trek episodes and rip-offs of existing non-Trek stories (as in the The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas episode). In a familiar setting and pulling in (with varying levels of success) characters we already know. It’s had a couple original ones (or, more likely, rip-offs of stories I’m not familiar with) like the amnesia-society-planet (which isn’t quite just a Lotus Eaters type story) but that’s not the norm. The framework for it is the same as TOS and TNG, so that's not new either.

Not one I’d have selected for “new ideas”. Though I am mostly enjoying it. At least it’s not the narrative train-wreck that Picard S1 was.

We are but you seem to be enjoying the carnival ride, while I see a show lacking intellectual depth.

We are talking about Star Trek here...

The bar isn't high.

Its sweet spot has always been good characters/acting + some veneer of plot.

> CBS/Paramount have done nothing but been hostile towards new Trek ideas

Very much not true, much to the consternation of the less flexible wing of the fandom.

> and suing fan-films out of existence.

Despite plenty of legal grounds to shut them down, they were quite tolerant of fan efforts up until Axanar, and even after that the fan guidelines were still generous compared to most media properties.

> They are under the impression that it has to be TNG cast or not-at-all.

What are you talking about? Except for a couple of cross over main cast characters in DS9, and of course Picard, Trek has been basically TNG-cast free but for guest spots through Voyager, Enterprise, three Kelvin-timeline films, Lower Decks, Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and (I think) Prodigy.

>Except for a couple of cross over main cast characters in DS9, and of course Picard, Trek has been basically TNG-cast free but for guest spots through Voyager, Enterprise, three Kelvin-timeline films, Lower Decks, Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and (I think) Prodigy.

Do you hear yourself?

I’m waiting for the day it all goes Mickey Mouse. Then, we’ll get some real Star Trek. What do I mean by that? Take away the special effects for a moment and look at the characters. Picard: There was never a better suited actor to be captain. Kirk: The machismo was sexual assault but somehow his band of rando’s made it out. Captain Sisko: Man who tamed the wormhole, and the politics that went with it. Janeway: Need I say more? She showed that woman are up for the job.

I’m not saying the cast of the current Gen shows isn’t good, it’s that their characters have been Marvelized. Everything’s a big end-of-world event or taps into your familiarity with a previous character to tend credit to the new. I’m a fan until the end but c’mon… Star Trek Discovery is Avengers. Strange New Worlds is trying to bring back the Abrams spark but lacks depth. Cheesy one liners and fast scene switching so that it makes you feel you’re on a ride at the fair.

I’d love for it to slow down, do the character development. How about a different ship during a familiar timeline or some way to explain the now 4 (P/K/AP/AK) timelines?

I really don't know what your real argument is, since you seem to have abandoned the “They are under the impression that it has to be TNG cast or not-at-all” for a bunch of different and directly contradictory arguments, from which the only coherent thing is you don't like new Trek and everything, and that's fine, like what you like and dislike what you dislike, but I don’t think there is anything that supports productive discussion here.

My real argument is that the current trek lineup is vastly different than what trek has traditionally been. Story driven with nods to science that push our understanding of the universe. Examples with counter examples:

- TNG "The Measure of a Man" : explores the rights of androids and non-human lifeforms that are sentient and given a choice. Whether that choice should be honored or not. Where the line of rights of man are drawn.

- Discovery "An Obol for Charon" : A giant all-knowing sphere shows up with "sphere data" that the enterprise must protect like it's a database of user data with PII.

- DS9 "In the Pale Moonlight" : Sisko and the Federation are taking heavy losses in the Dominion War, this episode is about how far a leader will go to accomplish victory, who, or what, they are willing to sacrifice.

- Discovery "Unification III" : Tear jerk for the late Leonard Nimoy.

I'm saying that it's lost its way. While the universe is still amazing and detailed and all, the story/plots are just meh. I mean, we had a whole story arch of Tardigrades. Not exactly riveting science but ok, I'll bite, what about tardigrades? That they are on the moon? No? Time traveling tardigrades, yeah I'm out.

to bring it all in on itself -- this is a premise in a later Farscape episode if I remember right. Some distant alien race is looking for television show ideas and one of them keeps pitching Earth shows until finally they decide upon creating a new Farscape.

They used Stargate cast members as cameos as fan-service towards people who mentioned the likeness of actors between the two series.

> They used Stargate cast members as cameos as fan-service towards people who mentioned the likeness of actors between the two series.

Indeed.

It is weird how much Ben Browder resembles Ben Browder.

Except that in the Farscape segment of Stargate's "200", Michael Shanks played John Crichton while Browder played Stark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCNDdlCo4rA

Ah, and how could I have forgotten Claudia Black and Claudia Black? It's been a few years.

It was good to see both of them get a few good SG-1 seasons on the strength of Farscape.

And then Scalzi’s redshirts takes that idea in another really interesting direction.

I don't know, I think my vote for perfect terrible series would have to go to Farscape[1].

Red Dwarf would be in the list, too, maybe as an honorable mention.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farscape

I started watching Farscape a few weeks ago after seeing many recommendations, critics, and because it's free to watch on Plex. Now i see why people say what they say.

Farscape appears to copy a number of elements from the darker Lexx series, FYI.

I thought I was the only one that watched Lexx. What did it copy?

Oh man Lexx was great. Uniquely weird and initally mostly softcore porn, but great.

I was gonna say Lexx has my vote (though I'm actually a Dwarf fan)

The more I dig into the facts, it appears Lexx was merely two years earlier than Farscape. I think I might feel Lexx cleared the path for Farscape, when it might have mostly been coincidence.

https://tolerabilityindex.freeforums.net/thread/676/lexx-far...

* Living ships

* Motley crew

* Evil empire

* Big bad evil guy causing all the problems

But all of this is also pretty common in other SciFi series.

Living ships - this wasn’t. First one I saw was Lexx (books don’t count)

Both the Vorlon and the Shadow ships in B5 were alive.

Yeah, given the production timelines, even though the release order was Lexx -> Farscape -> Andromeda, its not likely any of them were copying much from each other.

for some time (before having seen either) i thought they were the same series. i have no idea why. there was something about the appearance that made them look similar. i started watching Farscape once i realized my mistake. but i skipped Lexx because it didn't appeal to me.

I had the reverse experience. People keep recommending it and I keep trying to watch it. I’ve never made it past a dozen or so episodes.

I can handle the puppets. It’s bad acting coupled with thin plots and 2-dimensional characters.

Any given character, at least from season 1, can be well encapsulated by 3 adjectives or so.

It’s like a cartoon for adults. Not a bad thing to exist, but also not super-interesting or engrossing.

could not get into it, it seemed as scifi-of-the-week as Stargate but missed something. funny those actors ended up on it.

Blake's Seven surely!

So good and so laughably amateurish and campy bad. Loved it!

Having watched most of ST (1st, TNG, V, DS9) I had no interest in Babylon5.

There's also Silo on now which seems similar in concept to B5. Sets and acting is ok to good but the pace is too slow.

I’m curious what part of Silo reminds you of B5?

I believe they’re both set in long tubular structures

Scorpius is the greatest villain/antagonist/anti-hero of all time.

Anyone who disagrees, prepare for the Thunderdome. The real one that’s coming up this month.

Scorpius is right up there at the top of the list, I agree with that.

But I think that Londo Molari beats Scorpius as a villain because we see every step of his journey from a minor government official in a position that is regarded as a joke back home, his first grasp at real power, his gradually rising self esteem, his surprise and disgust at the bombing of Narn, his attempts to undo his mistakes without losing his new position and the respect of his peers back home, etc, etc. All of this happens gradually across the five seasons of the show.

With Scorpius we only get a single episode detailing his backstory, and he probably customized that heavily to appeal specifically to John. He does stick to his stated goals and motivation even after he loses his power base, so there was at least some truth to it, but it is still a lot thinner.

And all along his slow roll down the hill we understand more and more his patriotism and his longing for a return not only to the height of his empire but also to feeling anything other than depression, guilt, and ennui.

Farscape is an absolute masterpiece

Someone recommended I watch Farscape… maybe 20 years ago at this point. I absolutely did not expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I don’t really go for campy, so I expected to be turned off, but it’s got a ton of heart.

Yeah, too many people dismiss it as “muppets in space” which is so reductive it reflects badly on them imo.

It’s goofy at times but the tone is one of serious irreverence, if that makes sense.

Very much driven by the lead character who seems to be in some ways an audience surrogate going “this is bananas, my life is insane. Can’t take it TOO seriously, or I’ll go mad.”

I selectively rewatched B5 this summer with one of my kids, who had never seen it before.

It holds up very well, actually, once he got past the blocky CGI. The characterization is wonderful, the plotting ridiculously tight -- episodes that look like they are just Monster of the Week filler are not; a few episodes are clearly setting up something Big and then just barely get referenced.

The growth in G'Kar and Vir is amazing; the relationship between G'Kar and Londo legendary.

I did a full rewatch this year. Including some of the obscure feature films.

The series is incredible. I agree with all your comments, but will also add that B5 is probably the best well told time travel story I've ever seen.

> G'Kar and Londo

Elevator scene:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkwF5BBL26I

There are so many wonderful scenes between them, but that may be the best.

I'll always prefer visual effects that are somewhat realistic vs aeroplanes/boats in space that every non B5/Expanse show does

Expanse stands above for being realistic, in my mind. What about it did you dislike? The ships were well designed as far as space crawlers go, with central ladders instead of hallways, accurate acceleration effects, correct orbital mechanics, correct portrayal of vacuum and sound. I could go on. It was hard scifi.

He was referring to everything _except_ B5 and the Expanse.

Londo's arc by itself is remarkable, walking a tightrope between comic relief and villain and sympathetic protagonist. And it all works, it's never trite or forced. He's a great character because he's all those things in different mixes, and you understand him and his changes.

Lots of genre fiction has broadly similar characters, but I nearly always hate them, and I love Londo.

I think that part of what keeps Londo sympathetic is that, for all that he makes terrible choices and goes to some dark places, he's not doing it from self-interest. He wants to do what's best for his people.

In a weird parallel with a later highly-regarded genre character, he actually has a lot of similarities with Zuko from Avatar the Last Airbender. Particularly in the whole arc of rejected chances to do the right thing.

The tight plotting is, in a sense, something that makes it difficult to recommend to people these days. Because there really are some clunky episodes, particularly early on, but they all have something important going on, even if just in the C plot, so you can't easily give someone a simple list of must-watch episodes.

...and episodes like Severed Dreams or And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place just don't land the same way if you've missed those character moments or buildup.

> a few episodes are clearly setting up something Big and then just barely get referenced.

Usually because of cast availability -- Sinclair's girlfriend, f.ex. would have been caught on Z'ha'dum but the actor had to leave, so she was cut; the telepath switcharoo; etc

Vir was a kicked puppy most of the time, ended up with solid steel cojones, somehow still looking like a kicked puppy. When he tells Morden how he wants to see his head on a pike and wave is just a jaw dropping moment. I really enjoyed the series arc. In many sci fi series I find the spicy characters get bland over time as they eventually settle their differences, but B5 always kept that settling hairline-thin, especially between G'Kar and Londo.

If you read the books Vir also draw's a knife on G'Kar.

For anyone that is on a rewatch and never read through them. The Lurker's Guide (http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/eplist.html) for the show is a wonderful companion. The Fandom wiki doesn't have nearly the detail this site from when the show came out (and still getting updated) has. Wonderful behind the scenes quotes from AOL chatrooms, how episodes link to an the overarching plot, and other trivia

The lurker’s guide is one of my favorite living memories of the early web. It is my go to example for high quality amateur content production in the 90s.

I feel the same way about Lexx. It’s awful, I’d never recommend it to anyone. But it’s also always very weird and interesting and the setting is fascinating. It feels like anti-utopian sci-fi. Like sci-fi for misanthropes lol

I'm utterly astounded that show was ever green lit, let alone had multiple seasons. The whole thing was like a fever dream.

The Lexx musical episode was an innovation, recently copied by Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

* Lexx "Brigadoom" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n7iIYhjiSQ

* Star Trek: Strange New Worlds "Subspace Rhapsody" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg3-CgRitwc

I'm still coming to terms with the recent "Star Trek: The Musical" Strange New Worlds episode. The previous crossover episode with Lower Decks softened the blow.

I wish that episode had more Klingons ;)

That part was banana pants! I watched that part a few times!

What did Lexx's musical episode innovate? There were musical episodes before.

One can never defend Lexx, only apologize for it. And yet ...

Lexx had the boldness to be deeply and unsettlingly weird. At no point does the show try to awww-shucks it away. You just don't get a lot of singing brains in television. And our main characters are largely trying to survive and get laid, often not in that order. Yes, each has to some degree escaped the vast machinery of the cruel civilization which housed them ... and they're not the least bit noble for it.

Babylon 5 sat at a golden age of the Amiga/VideoToaster/Lightwave era of TV science fiction show. At the time it was very inspiring to see how visual effects companies were using non-SGI hardware to tell stories.

As a kid, I remember finding the website of someone named Kier Darby, who modeled the White Star and documented the process, and also was super excited because one of the original white star texture arists found his blog and sent over the original textures used in the show. It was really awesome to find and read that back in the day

I’m halfway through re-watching Babylon 5 and I realized that out of all sci-fi shows I’ve seen (and I recently re-watched many), this is the best one in my opinion.

My top 6 are:

- Star Trek: TNG

- The Expanse

- Babylon 5

- Battlestar Galactica (new one)

- Stargate SG1

- Firefly

Not sure how many people actually read this entire post, but...

   SPOILERS!!

... if you're intending to watch Babylon 5 for the first time, don't read this.

Oh, wow! I was just about to comment "I really want this series upscaled with some nice ML." Looks like WB did something along those lines in 2021.

This is the only sci-fi series of note which I have not watched all the way through. The time has come. Thanks for the post OP.

https://www.space.com/babylon-5-remastered-streaming-amazon-...

It will also be released on Blu-Ray December 5, 2023: https://twitter.com/straczynski/status/1681333005082820608 For $100: https://a.co/d/fyRfHEB

Be aware that season 5 is disappointing. JMS didn’t know if there would be a season 5, so he crammed a lot of the season 5 story into season 4, and season 5 ended up a bit thin.

My memory of Babylon 5 is that it was fifty percent great episodes with really good writing and fifty percent "Oh no, Senator Fuckface tripped and fell down a hole and lost their communicator and got amnesia and they're somewhere in the massive ghetto part of the station that exists for some reason."

That is a very cogent summary of my initial B5 experience when I saw random out of order episodes in reruns.

With the added inconvenience that the Senator Fuckface episode will have a C-plot that contains some of the most important lore in the entire show, so you can't just tell people to skip it.

Stargate is the perfect space scifi series, even better than starwars, startrek and the expanse. The best part of it is it takes part in our time and universe. Unfortunately, not many have even heard of it.

I also like how it is scientists today working with alien technology making spaceships and fighter planes.

Of course people have heard of Stargate. It's one of the biggest sci-fi franchises there is, with 17 seasons and 3 movies.

It's one of my favorite series also, but it's hard to compare to something like B5 which is very different tonally.

> 17 seasons

That's not counting the spinoffs right?

It is. SG1 was 10, Atlantis was 5 and Universe was 2.

Most people I talk to haven't, even scifi fans. But it had it's viewership in its time and a following in certain circles now.

The thing I most enjoyed about the stargate franchise was how the alien tech tree was discovered over time. The series didn’t plan for this (I don’t believe) and in later seasons it all got kinda bizarre and wonky. I don’t know of many other works of fiction that took this approach. I think Perry Rhodan series did (I only read a few installments) and the novel Battlefield Earth had this as an element.

I fully hated Robert Carlyle's character in Stargate Universe, and still was sad that the show got cancelled so quick.

Stargate is well known. There's Stargate memes all over reddit and imgur.

Some of us simply don't like it. I find it too corny and superficial to watch personally. If you like it that's ok, we're allowed to like different things, but I think you may be overestimating how many people are in fact familiar with the show and do not regard it as anywhere close to the perfect sci fi show.

That said, the original Stargate movie was an adolescent favorite of mine. I just find the show unwatchable.

I liked the movie and the first season or so of the show.

It didn't keep me long past that. Writing was mediocre at best. I gave Atlantis a few episodes and completely failed to discover why anyone was watching it.

Reddit and imgur are not mainstream like say facebook and twitter.

Perfectly fine if you don't like it. I was like you though, loved the Stargate movie, didn't get SG1 after like one episode so decided I didn't like it. Much later, it was on streaming so I decided to give it another shot and I couldn't get enough of it. Being able to keep watching episodes is a different experience than one episode a week.

Stargate SG1 was consistently OK, but rarely great.

Atlantis was mostly bad, stopped watching it.

Universe had much better characters.

Babylon 5 and Expanse were better though, pre planning plotting, still surprising most shows don't bother.

I actually liked Atlantis best, it was really nice to see the human expedition in a different galaxy. You don't see intergalactic travel even in mainstream scifi that often.

Mustn't forget Battlestar Galactica! ...at least the early seasons.

If BSG had preplanned better they wouldn't have been caught out by the writers' strike and failed somewhat at the end, apart from that, great show.

I am rewatching Stargate with my 9yo. She loves it. It introduces a lot of sci-fi, science, culture, political, and humanitarian topics that are fun to talk with her about. We're somewhere in season 3, so definitely in its prime. TBD how the later seasons go. It can get pretty intense for a 9yo, but it always comes out light hearted and a pretty good message. I intentionally skipped ~2 scenes and maybe one episode from the first season, but really everything else has been fine for a more mature kid.

I finished watching B5 and making my way through Farscape. At the moment it just doesn't come close to what I think she gets out of the Stargate franchise. B5 story was good, not probably not for someone new to sci-fi. Farscape I am still reserving judgement.

I really hope that now that Amazon owns MGM that we will get a new Stargate series. I think so much time has passed that it has to be a reboot rather than a spinoff but I'm ok with that if it is good.

I was always a bit confused about where Bruce disappeared to after Scarecrow and Mrs King. I came to the show late, everyone was telling me to watch it, but I mostly watched a few episodes as a nod to Bruce Boxleitner.

Scarecrow and Mrs. King was a fun show. Sort of a precursor to Chuck, I think.

FYI there's a new animated movie that is being released currently: "Babylon 5: The Road Home"

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27712788/

https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/1121575-babylon-5-the-road-...

When it first aired, it was the only show us in the Computer Room ever talked about, before or since, it was amazing. I remember every one outside of the room talking about some crazy things people were doing. I finally asked one of them, "who did that ?". I was told it was on a show called Seinfeld, which most of us in the room never heard about :)

I re-watched it last year, time for another spin with B5.

On the topic of "I hope the future will be like Star Trek, but I’m afraid it’s going to be like Babylon 5," the very first episodes of TNG loosely tell the story of what Earth was like from, say, 2000-2200. It was very bad. So, even if things are terrible now, we could be tracking towards that militaristic utopia that TNG made us all yearn for!

The eugenics war. Riots. Mass homelessness and unemployment. WWIII where a third of the population is wiped out.

Utopia doesn't happen overnight folks. It's a long road getting from here to there.

There is something almost unbearably tedious about reading contemporary reviews of old entertainment. I am so glad I had seen Babylon 5 before reading this "review". I feel so sorry for folks out there who may not have seen the show yet and instead read this thing.

What is amazing is that the general show had a story for all seasons from day 1. With variations built in depending on cast movements.

However... They had subpar actors which really killed it. I think they were heavily uderbudgeted for what they wanted to do for that time. I think if such a good planned show was to exist today, it would be fucking amazing. But alas were not there.

It was also a bit toooooon soapie. Needed less soap more content.

The presence of a big budget brings along personal that prohibits passion and quality. See modern series and games. Quality is often injected by low budget media like books or podcasts setting expectations.

J Michael Straczynski autobiography "Becoming Superman" is definitely worth reading/listening to.

Still hope he made some of it up though..

From Article >"“I hope the future will be like Star Trek, but I’m afraid it’s going to be like Babylon 5.”"

This is exactly what I'm seeing. Having watched sci-fi for decades, I was pretty idealistic about Star Trek, the future is going to be great.

But it is turning out to be more like Blade Runner. Or the mega corp in Alien.

Recently Re-watch the Babylon 5 episodes on the Right Wing take over of the Earth Government, it was incredibly realistic for its time. It was legit scary how similar it was to our elections, and we are living through it. (not even sure the mind control part is even too un-realistic with the fake AI stories coming out).

I'm actually not sure of any science fiction shows I think are a reasonable depiction of the future. I guess Generation Kill with slightly different equipment for the soldiers and IED/drone jammers stuck to everything?

Just wait for the robocop arc.

It's coming. The police are already buying the little robot dogs.

Having watched B5 in real-time (with episodes out of order and random start times depending on when the local sports show finished), I was excited to see the spinoff Crusade and on at a reasonable time.

The deep dive into the world of technomages (with Peter Woodward as Galen) made this show a worthy continuation - and then it was cancelled.

With some of the best acting in both Andreas Katsulas and Peter Jurasik, the character development, and the various production woes, I’d say it’s a pretty great series, too.

But we can all agree “TKO” was just plain awful. Right?

No. It's not stellar but it's okay and nowhere as cringey as Believers.

I was impressed when two characters walked into an obvious restroom and used a couple of urinals while maintaining their dialog. Finally a show realistic enough that the actors actually piss.

The series is great. It had so many cast changes that required tweaking of storylines that I wonder what the show would have been like if they didn't have to change the cast.

B5 was my inspiration for 3D and digging into lightwave back in the days.

This is just another entry in the common genre of "online article by a media reviewer who won't stop talking about their incoherent politics instead of the media". Nobody needs to hear what an English major thinks about space neoliberalism.

(The #1 example of this is the Kotaku review of the PS5 from 2020 that spent the whole time complaining that no Americans had time to think of a PS5 because all Americans were in grinding poverty, by which the author meant they lived in NYC and had untreated depression. Meanwhile, poverty and income inequality went down in 2020 compared to 2019 thanks to the US getting fiscal stimulus right.)

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