What seems to start as a cheesy Star Trek monster of the week ripoff turns into amazing character development and years-long plot developments from an era where that’s not what TV was.
The Penn and Teller episode was amazing. I can’t think of a better use of comedy in science fiction. There may be funnier shows, but this one actually dealt with humor as a part of people’s culture.
AFAIK the visuals were designed for a 3:4, SDTV world. The problem is that when they filmed it they framed it for 4:3 but they included some content to the sides so it could be used in a 16:9 format. The problem is that the CGI was all 4:3, so when they released a 16:9 DVD they had to do something about the CGI stuff, and they made a horrible decision. Instead of having vertical black bars, they cropped and zoomed the 4:3 CGI scenes so they had a 16:9 ratio. That meant they took something that was already in SD, then cropped out 25% of the content, and zoomed in so you couldn’t see the whole frame.
😂 that being said, is crazy to think that that was actually cutting edge CGI, pretty sure we still called them Silicon graphics at that time maybe. B5, ReBoot, crash test dummies, those three were pioneers from a tv show production CGI.
I’m curious what those first shows in other countries were like
I stopped B5 after the resolution of the shadow wars. which apparently only needed a plucky American to explain that that whole thing was pointless and they all just went away.
Yes. And do so knowing that the whole thing was supposed to be a five season arc, then they got told “no you get four” so hastily wrapped up the war only to be told “have another season!”
So they pulled an entire season out of their arse on the fly and in this year it is very. Very relevant
That arc is great. The followup is the earth civil war arc which is pretty great. You won’t enjoy the last season, even though I find a lot of it good.
Babylon 5 is great for those looking for a series.
Yes! B5 is awesome!
What seems to start as a cheesy Star Trek monster of the week ripoff turns into amazing character development and years-long plot developments from an era where that’s not what TV was.
Preach.
I think it’s time for another rewatch.
I’ve been watching that and Deep Space Nine.
DS9 is the more well known, but I think Babylon 5 was more hard sci-fi
They’re both good
Farscape was also on TV way back then right after so it was amazing
DS9 was Babylon Five Lite.
The Penn and Teller episode was amazing. I can’t think of a better use of comedy in science fiction. There may be funnier shows, but this one actually dealt with humor as a part of people’s culture.
I read that as “great looking” at first.
Yeah it uhhhh has some rough visuals lol. Works well though, and the uniforms are mostly incredible
AFAIK the visuals were designed for a 3:4, SDTV world. The problem is that when they filmed it they framed it for 4:3 but they included some content to the sides so it could be used in a 16:9 format. The problem is that the CGI was all 4:3, so when they released a 16:9 DVD they had to do something about the CGI stuff, and they made a horrible decision. Instead of having vertical black bars, they cropped and zoomed the 4:3 CGI scenes so they had a 16:9 ratio. That meant they took something that was already in SD, then cropped out 25% of the content, and zoomed in so you couldn’t see the whole frame.
😂 that being said, is crazy to think that that was actually cutting edge CGI, pretty sure we still called them Silicon graphics at that time maybe. B5, ReBoot, crash test dummies, those three were pioneers from a tv show production CGI.
I’m curious what those first shows in other countries were like
Crash dummies is basically unwatchable hahaha. I remember watching it so many times.
B5 also notably has inertia physics in space, mostly, which was unique
Was later on, but Space Above and Beyond handled inertia physics well iirc
I stopped B5 after the resolution of the shadow wars. which apparently only needed a plucky American to explain that that whole thing was pointless and they all just went away.
Seems pointless to continue after that.
Should I continue?
Yes. And do so knowing that the whole thing was supposed to be a five season arc, then they got told “no you get four” so hastily wrapped up the war only to be told “have another season!”
So they pulled an entire season out of their arse on the fly and in this year it is very. Very relevant
That arc is great. The followup is the earth civil war arc which is pretty great. You won’t enjoy the last season, even though I find a lot of it good.