I started trying to watch B5 yesterday and I'm having trouble staying with it. I like both dark (BSG, SG:U) and lighter (SG-1, Atlantis) sci-fi, but the campiness (is that a word?) and Leave It to Beaver style over the top acting in B5 is just turning me off completely. I only got about 15 minutes in to the first episode of season 1. My question is, will it get better?

Yes, it gets much better. The acting still sometimes isn't the highest quality, but I think the worst acting offender goes away in the second season. I think it builds up nicely, although it doesn't resolve some things as well as I'd like.

The last 2 or 3 episodes of season 1 are good. Then season 2 and on are good. But the show is a little corny from time to time. I still liked it alot.

A resounding "yes" to your question. There are undoubtedly many rough spots with season 1 of the show and most of them are related to the very limited budget that the producers had. Most of the corny acting comes from the second and third rate guest stars and supporting actors that they could afford to hire and Michael O'Hare (Sinclair) wasn't really comfortable with his tv role since he came from a theater background and was used to that. You may have noticed that his acting is rather "wooden". Also, season 1 had a lot of "stand alone" episodes that didn't really tie in to the overall mythology and long-term story arcs that Babylon 5 became famous for. Some of those stand alone stories are can be somewhat dull or corny.

I guarantee you that season 2 will get much better and seasons 3 and 4 are amazing IMHO.

Once Boxleitner gets on there in season 2 and starts yelling at people and talking to himself you can't help but get into it. LOL Garibaldi gets a lot better too.
Season 1 is more or less necessary to learn the races, backtory and politics that serves you well later on. Some very light duty shows that might only had a tidbit or two towards the big picture, and some could be skipped.

Best thing you could do: rent or buy the backstory movie "In the Beginning" and watch it right away. It's about the war 10 years preceding the first season that it all gets built on. It was made to draw the audience in when the show moved to TNT. Really good sci fi, lots of action and fleshes out the history.

Season 2 seriously takes off. More aggressive and all characters use the backstory you learn to build some epic storylines. Acting is a lot better.

Looking at IMDB, the main ones in S1: ep 3, 5,6,8,11,13(big time),17 to 22 (end of season). Ep 20 is epic, but you don't get to fully appreciate it until sometime later. Shows how well thought out the show was.
Watch those, after In the Beginning (and the show premiere The Gathering on the same disc) and you could move on to S2.

Be patient and endure season 1. It will be rewarded in season 2 already.

That said, S1 of B5 was still a lot better than most TV series EVER manage...



The Jedi Master

I vehemently disagree with watching "In the Beginning" before watching season 1 because of the major spoilers with Sinclair. One of the strong points of season 1 is the mystery surrounding Sinclair but if you watch In the Beginning first that mystery is gone.

Perfect time to see it IMO. Plus seeing all of that gives you a taste of how the series will go and you can't help but get motivated from it.

I have to agree with Panzer; whatever you do, Don't watch "In the beginning" as it contains major spoliers, not only regarding Sinclair but about one of the arcs concerning Centauri Prime. Store it until you're ready to begin watching Crusade.

Having said that, when B5 first aired here, I had trouble concentrating on it for a major part of 1st season but viewing the whole series from beginning to end a couple of years back I gained new interest in season 1 and a greater appreciation of O'Hare's acting. He's actually pretty damn good in my opinion! Even better than Boxleitner.

The question has been answered already but yeah, it does get better. A LOT better.


Personally, Season 1 = Babylon Squared. That's THE episode you have to keep close to your chest. Two seasons later ....

+1

Yes, that one too. I should have mentioned that aspect in my initial response! Heck, the entire way "In the Beginning" is framed is a major spoiler with the Centauri but I'll leave it at that.

+2

How many movies have had slow starts, where the first 30 mins seem dull? Think of B5 as one long movie and you'll see the correlation.

Granted the best films manage to make the entire thing engaging, but in B5's case the middle and end are so good that it more than makes up for the start.



The Jedi Master

One of the great all-time sci-fi series, so yes, it gets way better, be patient!

-10

It doesn't say what's going on, and the story also goes on beyond that before the show is over. It's not a spoiler, it's a tantalizer. I'd only seen a few episodes here and there, but then they put that movie out and started showing it from the beginning on TNT, it really got me into the show. Left a lot of questions but I was anxious to find out the answers by watching every single episode. Whenever I re-watch the series, I always lead off with ITB and TG.


BTW, when the show started, Sinclair made me lose interest, but not quite as much as Londo's hair. Oh boy. LOL
I ended up liking Sinclair/O'Hare a lot more later, but he's certainly no TRON...er Boxleitner. Bruce was MADE for this role. The show ends up being absolutely epic.

I would definitely *NOT* watch "In the Beginning" first.

I remember I was very apprehensive about watching season 1 after I watched "The Gathering" for the first time since I thought it had so many issues but it was the character of Londo Mollari that grabbed my interest enough to stick with the show. I'm glad I did!! I've now watched the show in its entirety 3 times.

I concur with the suggestion of not watching "In The Beginning" first.

That's all?!
How's the Farscape project coming along?

I never watched B5 when it originally aired on tv. Heck, I didn't even know it existed! I was too wrapped up with the X-Files back in the 90's.

I didn't watch B5 until I rented the dvd's from Netflix several years ago and then I bought the boxed sets.

My advice:

- do NOT see "In the Begining" until finished Season 4.

-skip episodes 1 to 5 in season 1, instead start with the first good one: S1 Ep.6 "Mind War"

And it gets better. A LOT better!

Part of the weakness with season 1 is that over half of the episodes are "stand alone" and thus don't have very much to do with the mythology and 5 year arc of the show.

Both a weakness and strength.

It allows you to build a following who doesn't feel left out if they haven't caught some of the first episodes, and hook them on the setting before you delve into the deeper meta plot.

For my 2nd hijack of the day, I started DS9 a week ago. Liking it more than I did to begin with, but I just skipped around some for refreshers until season 4 that I'm planning to watch through and until the end.
I like the cast a lot, and the show seems to have picked up more steam at this point.
If you've got amazon prime, it's on there for streaming for free. Don't know why it isn't on netflix, I thought it was at some point.

I must be a complete geek then since I liked all of season 1. Yeah the acting wasn't the greatest at times but my view is cheesy sci fi is better than no sci fi. And there are times where the acting is cheesy as hell.

I think it's good, just by comparison to how epic the next few seasons are, it pales by comparison. Personally I didn't care for season 5 very much. It got too screwed up with the cast changes and quick finish after season 4 when they thought they were gone for good.

The two worst examples of the crappy acting in season 1 that come to my mind are from the episodes "Grail" and "By Any Means Necessary". In "Grail" you had a character by the name of "Jinxo" and the actor who played that role was horrible. In "By Any Means Necessary" the actor who played the Earth Force official investigating Sinclair was laughably over the top in his acting. He was like a caricature.

"Jack" (to avoid spoilers) was a character they could've done without too later on, although not poorly acted. Just cheesy.

And we musn't forget about Byron or how I personally refer to him; "Space Fabio".

I watched DS9 from the beginning, but didn't really get into it until the Dominion war started. I can't remember, but that might be right around season 4. There were good episodes before that, I think some that took place during a conflict with the Klingons for example.

Once the war got started, I thought it was a good series from that point on, with a few episodes here and there that fell a little flat. I even thought the wrap-up at the end was better than most of the series' finales.

It seems the consensus amongst fans is that both TNG and DS9 took a while to get going and to find their footing but once it was found, the shows really became great. Unfortunately that's a luxury shows these days don't have. If they take too long to get going they're usually cancelled (ie SG:U, Caprica).

The Dominion War episodes started in season 2, and slowly built up towards the full war breaking out in season 5. But seasons 2-4 have alot of good episodes of DS9 even if the war is not fully active yet.

Regardless of how one feels about all of the speculation out there about DS9 "borrowing" heavily from Babylon 5, it really is amazing the similarities between the two shows.

I remember thinking "will somebody just kill this guy?"

For me, TNG went from being largely weak to being mediocre with an increasing number of occasional good episodes, while DS9 went from being mediocre to largely pretty good, with a few weaker episodes. The story and characters just seemed much more interesting to me than most of what was done in TNG.

I know there was a lot of speculation on borrowing from B5, especially when the Defiant showed up, but I have no idea how much that really took place. I wouldn't be surprised either way, and I think they were both very good shows, so I was happy to be able to watch them. While there were similarities, there were also enough differences that I didn't feel I was watching two versions of the same show.

Netflix is supposed to have DS9 in October I believe. I'm trying to watch all of Voyager in the meantime

I'm on S6 of Voyager, like the others this was when the show was the best. In fact, the only ST series whose final season wasn't among its best was the original show! S3 had as many weak spots as S1, and S2 was the shining example.

Yeah I also think S2 of TOS was the best. Not only did it have a bunch of great episodes but it introduced Chekov and Scotty became a more prominent member of the cast.

Wish Enterprise had gotten a chance to go 6-7 seasons. Best Star Trek series out of the gate and for the first few seasons IMO, and the cast settled immediately into their roles without needing years to do so. Even TNG didn't manage to do much until year 4. If Enterprise had gotten to kick off another big arc, it would've been excellent. The ending topics were pretty good with the Soong story and Robocop causing problems after that. Worst thing about the show was when it was too much like the other shows--time travel and alternate universe crap.

Had "Enterprise" come out in the 1990's it would have made it to 7 seasons. By the time it debuted in 2001, tv audiences had changed a lot as well as the industry.

Enterprise was great, some of the best episodes of Trek ever. Sure wish there could have been an "Enterprise" movie instead of that re-boot travesty.

Becouse there roles were so mediocre. The show just never went anywhere.

"Enterprise" has a definite love-it-or-hate-it status amongst 'Trek fans.

Phlox was great. Tucker was very good also. Hoshi and Malcolm were easily equal to Uhura and Scotty in TOS. Archer was adequate, probably the weakest link save Mayweather, definitely the least compelling captain of any Trek series. I always wanted to see more humor from him, maybe like a typical closing scene between Kirk, Spock and McCoy. I really would have loved for him to just one time say "Ohhh boy" ah la "Quantum Leap"

"Sim" and "Shuttle Pod One" were easily in the top ten best Trek episodes ever. Not bad for the second shortest series of the 5.

I liked Phlox, Tucker and T'Pol. Other characters were pretty bland.

Agreed in general, but he wasn't THAT bad. Expected a lot from Bakula, but the water polo wasn't the right way to go for the captain. LOL
He wasn't bad compared to typical Star Trek actors, but there were some non-captain cast members that outperformed him, with characters that were a lot more interesting than Archer. The actress that played Hoshi wasn't bad, just a weak annoying character. Tripp and T'Pol were some of the best characters in the ST history. They actually managed to make the engineer they guy you wanted the show to follow. I liked Malcom *because* he was so sterile. It wasn't a dry performance, it was actually the guy's personality by design. Dominic Keating is a good actor and did a great job. Phlox was indeed a good character and well played.

Aside from very good production, the main thing about the show is that it wasn't so utopian and easy. Shuttle pods to get around 99% of the time. Transporters were properly scary. LOL Bulkheads you could bang your head on. The ship had the feel of an actual Navy ship, not a cruise ship. No Prime Directive, no Federation, no holodeck, no shields (on the Enterprise at least). A single person couldn't run the ship on voice command. They had problems with communication, learning cultures and the show had the BEST treatment of Vulcans and Andorians. And they brought in the Marines when the real hand to hand stuff had to take place.

[/geek out]

Agreed 100%, Enterprise was great TV and great Trek!

The first 2 seasons of Enterprise lacked direction and the show suffered viewer losses because of it. There's no doubt S3 was better than 1 and 2, and then 4 was the best of all, but the ratings dropped each year causing the cancellation because they took too long.

I think Enterprise would've survived for 7 years if it had aired in 1987, or 1993, or 1994. Starting in 2001, though, it just couldn't prop up the failing UPN network nor could the network support it when it took too long to move.

When I first watched DS9, I remembered my feeling about the show being "meh until the Dominion War started." I realized when I rewatched the series a couple of years back that the early seasons WERE good as well. The difference being I already knew all the characters, and it's obvious now the actors did as well. Once you know them, the shows are easier to get into and enjoy. DS9's problem, which was shared by Voyager and Enterprise, but oddly not TNG or TOS, was that it took too long to get to know the characters enough.

I always recalled DS9's first season as being very weak compared to TNG, but on reviewing it's apparent TNG was actually weaker. TNG was buoyed by that "oooh, new Star Trek!" feel that let it have the time to gain its footing. Voyager's first year I would put below DS9's, but still better than TNG or Enterprise's.

What hurt Enteprise was basically the casting (it was ok as mentioned, but should've been better), the changing network landscape, the timeframe change (no one really cared about the era they picked, everyone wanted either to go forward from where TNG/DS9/VOY left off or to go back a bit to post-ST6 and the so-called "Capt Sulu era"), and frankly the writing for the first season.
Enterprise failed because it took risks where the viewers didn't want them and it seems the writers had trouble getting a grip on it as well.

The show improved immensely when Manny Coto took over, but he couldn't raise a sinking ship.



The Jedi Master

Holy highjack Batman! From Babylon 5 to ST: Enterprise!

I watched the first maybe 8-10 episodes of Enterprise before I lost interest. The main reason was Scott Bakula as Archer. I just thought he was dull and didn't have that critical "screen presence" that Shatner and Stewart had in spades.

He was just awful, even Janeway was better. And I didn't like here much either.

I'd agree Archer was dull but I would not say he was awful. And I agree Janeway was better than Archer.

But Enterprise had the decontamination room. Not only nice to see in a sci fi show, but just plain nice to see for other reasons sometimes. LOL

Wasn't that just one episode?



The Jedi Master

3 that I can think of, all include T'Pol. Or the ones worth remembering do. LOL

I think they should consider casting Edward James Olmos as the captain in a future Star Trek movie or series. That death stare of his is the absolute best ever.

He's way too serious and has too dark of an edge to be in any kind of Star Trek. That's a good thing.

Maybe they should cast Doctor Who for the next star trek captain.....


They are always doing mindless and ridiculous time travel plots....

Meh star trek is loosing its appeal. (or lost it a long time ago)

I did like the low tech of enterprise and the fact you didn't have people beaming all over the place all the time and shuttles had a purpose. Also i agree it was nice to see a decontamination room as other trek series seems to have forgotten this.

I don't think archer was boring. I would say he was right for the job. He was a hands on captain in a ship for its time that was mostly inferior to the other major species. A time i beleive that the Vulcans were repressing the technological growth of other species until deemed worthy.

I think archers demeanor for the series was very well placed.

However, needless to say startrek is quite dull with endless ridiculous time travel plots and yet they still seem to deem time travel as fantastical rarity yet they do it on an unbeleivable frequent occurance.

Bah Humbug,

Star trek needs to be reborne...... And have some common sense thrown in... And some grittiness and more naked T'pol

It already has been reborn under JJ Abrams and both movie audiences and critics responded overwhelmingly positive to it.

EJO would never do Star Trek. He doesn't believe in acting with aliens. He did BSG because it was just people and people-made robots. Likewise he did Blade Runner because it's similar in that way.



The Jedi Master

bogus specified "some common sense thrown in" that eliminates the JJ Adams film. IMO.

I enjoyed the new movie, but I do wish it hadn't involved time travel and a grossly overpowered MINING ship. What a waste of having Eric Bana on the cast. IMO he should've played Kirk and none of the back to the beginning business.
I know there's off-screen backstory to the movie that goes into what happened to the ship etc, but if it couldn't be put into the movie, then they should have reworked the movie, or lengthened it, to cover it. And giving Vulcan the Deathstar treatment...not sure that was a good idea. This may be a very short lived reboot.

I thought Chris Pine was outstanding as Kirk and Eric Bana was great as Nero even though I think Nero could have/should have been fleshed out a little more by the writers.

Pine was indeed good. I'm sure he will be again. I'd just prefer to see a new series of movies with Bana as Kirk. Keep the rest of the cast, but I wish they hadn't gone quite so far back in age in general--and most of them aren't as young as portrayed in the movie anyway. I think everyone liked Bruce Greenwood in there, but it didn't look right with all of them acting like they were 22 years old next to him. Most of the actors are 30-40. Would do better to have written around that age group.

I loved the reboot Star Trek, it's up there with "The Wrath of Khan" as the best Star Trek movie for me.

My personal ranking of the ST movies.

1. ST II
2. Star Trek (JJ Abrams reboot)
3. ST VI
4. ST First Contact
5. ST IV
6. ST III
7. ST The Motion Picture
8. ST Nemesis
9. ST Generations
10. ST V
11. ST Insurrection

Nero/Bana just needed a few more minutes of screen time, and have a slightly more distinctive look from his shipmates/crew...half the time I couldnt tell if it was Mr. Badguy or Ensign Lackey! Maybe do a longer backstory, showing the anguish over losing his wife and race...pooling into hate and plans for revenge, could have made a good movie even better.

Exactly what I was thinking. Instead we just got a 2 minute scene where Nero was telling Pike his motivation for what he was doing while he was interrogating him.

Yeah, for me the Abrams Star Trek was just kind of meh. I agree that the villain was weak, but to me the overall story was pretty bland. No one seemed to really do anything interesting or clever, and the sets were largely pretty bad. There were some good performances, and there was some good action and effects, but the story kind of let the rest of it down in my opinion.

My short list of things I hate about the JJ Adams movie:

Giant water tubes in Enterprise engineering, lame.

Enterprise in general looks like a Vegas casino.

Kirk/Spock in command of a starship as raw cadets, lame.

Oh and then that command is made permanent for Kirk pretty much the next day.

Chris Pike looks like he is old enough to be Kirks grandfather.

Vulcan is destroyed. Instead of time traveling to fix it like he did for Earth in STIV Spock evidently just thinks "No big deal".

I'd say that covers it very well.

Both of these occured due to extreme and desperate circumstances. Remember that a very big portion of Starfleet was wiped out by Nero so by the end of the film there was most certainly a shortage of captains and Kirk got promoted to fill that need plus he WAS instrumental in saving Earth. So I say that him getting promoted to Captain was quite believable.

Which was lame as well, thanks for reminding me.



What was Kirks "rank", as a raw cadet he should have been the equivalent of an ensign or maybe LtJg, so he skips from O-1 / O-2 straight to O-6?

When has that ever happened in the "real world"? No matter what one did in combat the best you could expect in the real world is a Medal of Honor and a promotion of one rank, maybe 2? So he should have gotten Star Fleets highest decoration and promoted to Lt Commander at best.

1 Cpt. Pike promoted Spock to captain and Kirk to second in command. Kirk had the highest grades in starfleet history at the time but was a bit of a trouble makers so didn't make Caption. If you remember the opening Cpt Pike liked Kirk alot.

2 I agree on the water tubes.

3 Don't agree with Pine looking old.

I don't like what they did with Vulcan and the over all story. But other wise it was a good movie to me.

So how many of us have a wife/girlfriend who cried themselves silly during the montage scene where Kirk's father and mother were talking over the comms as his son was born and he was about to ram the USS Kelvin into the Narada?

Raises hand.

Yup, me too!

Well, in Pine-Kirks defense in regard to the promotion, pretty much all of starfleet got Wolf 359'd at Vulcan by the mining ship.

Key words

LOL

Keep in mind that it was a heavily modified mining ship from over 100 years in the future.

Nope, we didn't know what had happened. It was just magically a major warship. No credit for storyline that wasn't given during the movie. Or was it explained *during the movie* and I don't remember it?

That it was from the future? I don't think that was hard to figure out...

Future or not, it's a *mining ship*. It wasn't from THAT far in the future regardless.
There's more to the story, it's just that it wasn't in the movie and should have been included so it would all make more sense.

Well, it's around 120 years or so, if it is jumping from post TNG back to Kirk's era (2380s to 2260s). That's significant enough jump to allow it to have advanced enough tech to defeat a "warship" from an earlier time period.

Unfortunately if they explained everything that you all wanted explained, the film would be 3 hours long. Then you'd complain it was too long.

Guess what? You didn't like it? That's fine! No one cares.

It made more money than any previous ST film and revived the franchise.
Given what happened with Enterprise and Nemesis it's a wonder ST wasn't buried altogether for years to come. Instead JJ was given a chance, it paid off, and now we'll see more films.

Oh, and Bana as Kirk? Don't make me laugh. Why not Daniel Craig? Or Clive Owens? Or Antonio Banderas? Mike Meyers? The corpse of John Candy? Good actor does NOT equal "good for a part."



The Jedi Master

If they ever make a Starfleet Academy tv show they could cast Justin Bieber as Kirk.

Sounds like Jedi had a rough night. LOL

I liked the movie a lot, in fact the opening scene is one of the best movie beginning scenes I can recall. AND it didn't get followed by a bland movie, unlike SW Ep 1 which had a great intro. I just know it could've been better in some specific ways--like any movie. Another 15 minutes would've been plenty to give more story to help continuity. Dump that intro with the Kirk-kid stealing the Vette and for no reason whatsoever running it off of a handy cliff. There's a few minutes towards something far better.

That was supposed to be representative of the young Kirk's reckless nature due to a lack of direction in his life. A direction that Pike gave to Kirk several years later.

Well, that *was* an example where more explanation would have helped make it more meaningful. The car belonged to his father, and "Uncle Frank" was going to sell it.

You have no idea.



The Jedi Master

That was in the deleted scene on the DVD IIRC. Of course, I couldn't help think he was just going to mentally "push" Kirk into doing it after his stint on Heroes for those years.


The Jedi Master

I think I'm missing something since I never watched Heroes. Who was the voice of Uncle Frank?

Greg Grunberg. I think that's how you spell that last name. He was Matt on Heroes, the mind-reading cop.



The Jedi Master