posted
That'd be pretty cool actually... JMS is great with plots but his dialog is sometimes cringeworthy. Joss could really fix that up.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: JMS is great with plots
...unless they involve Gwen Stacy having a sexual fling with the Green Goblin, then giving birth to rapid-aging "Grey Goblin" children. Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Don't get me wrong, I'm a Buffy and Firefly loving guy as much as the next Joss fan, but the last thing I want to see is Joss style dialogue mixed with B5.
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Hm...I never watched more than an episode or two of Babylon 5. Is it worth restarting my Blockbuster subscription to catch up on this show?
Posts: 1099 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Yes but be warned Season 1 is kinda slow but season 2 is more then worth it.
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I'm only partway through season 2, but I would say go ahead and watch the first season. A lot of important things are set up in it, so even though parts are pretty silly, I think it's worth watching. Just don't watch the movie prequel to start, because it's very boring, and half the characters are dropped in the actual show.
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Yeah, you need to see the first season. Like The Pixiest says, it's like the first chapter of the novel. You may be able to make some sense out of the rest of it without Season One, but it won't be as good, or as fulfilling.
And I'm going to point you back to this thread where I basically asked the same questions, and got really good answers. Beware, the thread gets spoileriffic eventually, but starts spoiler-free.
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
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quote:Originally posted by BandoCommando: Hm...I never watched more than an episode or two of Babylon 5. Is it worth restarting my Blockbuster subscription to catch up on this show?
Only if you can tolerate terrible dialogue. The underlying story is pretty good, although it takes several seasons for it to pay off. The dialogue, however, is largely bad, cheesy, or both.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Bad like Reed Richards droning on about his poor, persecuted communist uncle?
(Along with making Reed Richards into God, the Civil War tie-in issues were probably the low point of JMS' Fantastic Four run.)
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
It may be bad, but you build an immunity to it. After a while, you really only pay attention to story (which is great) and the characters (which are usually great). Not what they say (which is lame), or how they say it (which is awkwardly).
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
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Bad like the love scenes in the Star Wars prequels? Cause that'd be pretty bad...
No not that bad. Personally I think B5 has some fantastic dialogue, and some really funny stuff. It's nowhere near as cheesy as some of the Star Wars dialogue. If anything it might lean too hard on thick dialogue, rather than cheese. But once you get past the first season (actually, once you get to Bruce Boxleitner (sp?) I think), it picks up in quality and delivery. It falls off in the fifth season.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by twinky: Only if you can tolerate terrible dialogue. The underlying story is pretty good, although it takes several seasons for it to pay off. The dialogue, however, is largely bad, cheesy, or both.
And a lot of the acting is pretty awful. Oh, and so are the special effects.
I'm only in the fourth season right now, but it's occurred to me more than once that the show might be a good candidate for a remake eventually.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
The best part of season one (or at least the part that was endlessly amusing for me) was the opening monologue, where Sinclair is being all noir. There's a pause after he says, "Humans and aliens wrapped in two million five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night." I would always quickly add, "My name is Sinclair. I carry a gun." Try it, it's fun!
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JMS does some things really really well, and some other things really really badly. IMO Josh Whedon is the superior writer overall.
I loved Babylon 5 but it wasn't perfect by any means: though some of the badness was because of JMS having to change plotpoints due to executive meddling or actors leaving (the abrupt removal of Sinclair, the removal of Lauren Takashima and Lyta Alexander, etc)
I'd love to see a rewrite of B5 one day that will stick closer to the original ideas of Babylon 5 : Hermaphroditic Minbari. The second-in-command being the hidden traitor. Lyta Alexander rather than Talia Winters. Sinclair rather than Sheridan. No Lt. Keffer.
Posts: 676 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
I may note that the two do pretty different work. IIRC, JMS wrote the entirety of season 4 and the vast majority of season 3. By comparison, Joss Whedon is much more hands-off, although I would also note that his approach is much more successful at creating 'secondary' writers whose episodes are largely indistinguishable whereas 'secondary' writer episodes in JMS shows tend to be painfully obvious.
Whedon shows also tend to grow organically, from season to season, with a "little-bad, big-bad" structure whereas Babylon 5 (and to a lesser degree Jeremiah) have a multi-season structure.
The tone is largely different too. The kinds of quips that sound well coming out of Buffy, Faith, and so forth would only really naturally fit in a couple of B5 characters, maybe Ivanova. And I wouldn't trade the kind of dry humour that comes from Bester or G'kar+Londo, for anything else.
For most other characters, it would probably be fairly out of place, Storm's toad quip in X-Men.
So, honestly, I don't think mixing Joss Whedon dialogue into B5 would have helped things really.
Edit to add: Theoretically, the kind of big improvements that could be made to Babylon 5. Better special effects, tightening up the storyline by removing Talia, Keffer, expanding the Minbari Civil War, changing/removing the entirety of the Byron storyline, aren't really a matter of lack of wit.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:The tone is largely different too. The kinds of quips that sound well coming out of Buffy, Faith, and so forth would only really naturally fit in a couple of B5 characters, maybe Ivanova. And I wouldn't trade the kind of dry humour that comes from Bester or G'kar+Londo, for anything else.
For most other characters, it would probably be fairly out of place, Storm's toad quip in X-Men.
So, honestly, I don't think mixing Joss Whedon dialogue into B5 would have helped things really.
This is precisely my problem with it. I don't necessarily have a problem with remaking it, as yes, the special effects would be really cool if they used modern CGI to render it, and removing Talia, modifying some of the stuff with telepaths, maybe stretching out the fourth season and shortening the fifth and what not. But the tone I would absolutely want kept the same. G'Kar/Londo and Sheridan/Kosh are the two more interesting relationships in the show, and I think really in all of sci-fi television. I'd be extremely worried that Whedon would ruin the essential elements of those relationships. I also worry that his quippy dialogue style, which works great for his own creations, would be goofily out of place in B5 with, like you said, the possible exception of Ivanova.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Maybe Ronald D. Moore would be a better candidate to remake it. Of course, I'm sure he doesn't want to spend his whole career remaking sci-fi shows.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
I'll reserve this post as my personal space to comment on that after BSG ends.
I'm still not entirely sure how the long-term plot lines are going to be resolved in BSG, but I look forward to finding out.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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But there are obvious Exceptions, I like Firefly and Serenity but I didn't like Buffy/Angel. I watched those only because there was nothing better and I didnt have a computer at the time.
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