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Welcome to Show #194!
Podcasting + Copious Amounts of Alcohol = Potential Trainwreck. Adjust Expectations Accordingly!
Rumors are confirmed that JMS will be making a cameo appearance in the upcoming Thor feature film, in addition to him writing for both the “Wonder Woman” and “Superman” comics.
Alas, because of all of these other projects, Tim is feeling abandoned because of the lack of forward progress on the Lensman feature film project.
Deep Geeking: Tim, Summer, Jeffrey and Bret discuss the story they love, in particular the moments or story arcs that they each would have liked to have seen more of (or seen much less of) during the course of the series.
The missteps, the grand designs, the twists that worked and the ones that didn’t, we open several cans of worms, and still manage to leave enough material untouched to continue this discussion at a later date.
Summer will definitely have to re-read the Chronologies for more info on the details on the construction process of stations 1-4 to determine whether or not that would have been a worthwhile story addition to see on screen.
Make a list… we’re definitely going to continue this show sometime in the future!
What will we argue about more in the near future: “Day of the Dead” science, or the reasons given for why the station was blown up?
Parody/Filk Songs Wanted: If you know of any B5-related fan songs out there, definitely let us know, so we can let other B5 fans know where to buy them! If the CDs are out of print, let’s brainstorm on ways to get those songs back out there for fans!
Babylon Podcast Social Communities:
Twitter: @babylonpodcast
Babylon 5 Information Gathering: If you know of a dead or abandoned B5 related website that may be in need of a new home, let Summer know! Maybe we can mirror it here or house it on a sister site.
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Promo: The Gmail Podcast
Promo: British Invaders
Tim – to your point. Upon first watching the series, my girlfriend exclaimed – The premise of this story is preposterous! There is no way they would build 5 space stations! No government, especially representative, would ever be able to justify funding for 4 much less 5 multi-trillion dollar space stations (or whatever inflation is in future)!
Plus from a practical standpoint – with your military in shambles and no doubt high debts incurred from the war, how could you ever be able to push such a plan through any body that elected government officials rely on. Imagine trying to push through healthcare reform successfully 5 straight times in Congress! It’s JMS’s biggest and most glaring plot “whoops.”
Thanks for the great show guys!
About the Shadows and telepaths: Summer is totally, totally right. Listen to her. The Shadows didn’t like telepaths because they disrupted the connection between the human CPUs and the Shadow battlecrabs they were merged with. So this time around the Shadows were going to use telepaths as CPUs so they would be able to defend against that–fortunately, that shipload of telepaths was intercepted.
Re: the Telepath War: jms is saving that for the feature film; that’s been clear for some time from the way he keeps dancing around it. Feature film is the one thing that he retained the rights to in his contract with WB; they have the rights to all other outlets.
One of the things that makes this show unique is how little hints of things to come are sprinkled though each show. The first season was filled with them. One of my favorites is after watching the series and knowing the Sinclair arc, go back and watch ‘The Gathering’ again. At the 46 minute mark is the scene where Kosh meets who he thinks is Sinclair. Listen to what he addresses him as (funny the line didn’t make the subtitles). Entilza Valen! It really goes to how well thought out the storyline was.
JimJohnD:
Actually, that line was added into “The Gathering” when it was recut/remastered in preparation for the TNT run. It wasn’t there in the original!
I would have liked to have gone back with Zathras and Sinclair to see the first shadow war. Obviously Babylon 4 got taken back through time at the tail end, so I would have liked to have seen the whole build up to it as well.
I have never been convinced by the building of 5 babylon stations. It would make more sense to have more than 1 station built because space is BIG and needs more than 1 station to cover vast volumes of space and races involved. The first 3 stations were as one of the reviewers said were a bit of a sidebar and not really expounded upon.
On reading many years ago before i saw babylon 5 Gerald K O neills science book about space habitats mentions lagrange points. These lagrange points are coordinates in space where it is best suited to place a station or habitat which is a kind of point in space where the gravitational effects balance out between bodies. If memory serves me correctly Lagrange 5 is described by O’ Neill as a suitable point between the earth and the moon ideal for an orbiting space habitat. it always seemed to me that lagrange point 5 and babylon 5 were synonymous. To avoid complications i just think JMS decided to invent an excuse for having previous stations so as not have to explain the concept of lagrange points and of course B5 was not in earth orbit anyway. of course epsilon 3 would have different lagrange points but these would obviously be numbered.
The destruction of B5 was odd too. The station was prophesised to be destroyed early on in season 1. i suppose having it ‘demolished’ by explosion fitted that category. The reason for the destruction was poorly realised. The excuse was that the station was a menace to navigation. This is utterly preposterous as i suppose eventually the station over time would eventually degrade its orbit and fall into epsilon 3, mostly burning up and mostly crashing into an uninhabited planet. By blasting the station into several million fast moving pieces flying in all directions surely that is more of ‘a menace to navigation’ than leaving it intact orbiting a planet which is to all intents uninhabited. It was merely dramatic effect. if anything the station would have been dismantled for scrap purposes if anything?
“Alex G. says:
April 19, 2010 at 6:01 pm
I would have liked to have gone back with Zathras and Sinclair to see the first shadow war. Obviously Babylon 4 got taken back through time at the tail end, so I would have liked to have seen the whole build up to it as well.”
At one time Babyon 4 was the possible spin-off series according to Mojo who told me this at a convention.