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Babylon $4.95
Jul. 8th, 2004 11:06 amB. has been borrowing the DVD sets of Babylon 5 from a friend, watching episodes usually when I'm otherwise occupied. But I took the time to watch the first episode of season 2, or rather part of it. I watched B5 very irregularly when it was new, and hadn't seen any since. In the meantime came the entirety of my exposure to Buffy, and I realize now that good television has really spoiled me for ... not-so-good television. Like Trek Classic in its day, B5's virtue seems to me to consist of not being a total insult to the intelligence as most other televised SF is. But aside from that ...
What struck me about it is that, except from the brightness of some (not all) of the comedic scenes, the acting is stiff and amateurish and not very good, the writing is dull, pompous, and not very good, and the plotting is silly, melodramatic, and not very good.
What's worse, at times it's the kind of SF that You'll Never See in Galaxy. I was especially taken with the scene in which the new commander ... uh, Sheridan (I can never remember which one is Sheridan and which one is Sinclair) ... reveals how he won a battle against the Minbari in the late war. "I hit on the idea of mining the asteroid field," he says in gratingly mock-humble tones, specifying the one "between Jupiter and Mars."
This is rather like defeating the Japanese fleet in WW2 by hitting on the idea of mining the Pacific Ocean. The one between Japan and California.
Pick up remote. Click the off button.
What struck me about it is that, except from the brightness of some (not all) of the comedic scenes, the acting is stiff and amateurish and not very good, the writing is dull, pompous, and not very good, and the plotting is silly, melodramatic, and not very good.
What's worse, at times it's the kind of SF that You'll Never See in Galaxy. I was especially taken with the scene in which the new commander ... uh, Sheridan (I can never remember which one is Sheridan and which one is Sinclair) ... reveals how he won a battle against the Minbari in the late war. "I hit on the idea of mining the asteroid field," he says in gratingly mock-humble tones, specifying the one "between Jupiter and Mars."
This is rather like defeating the Japanese fleet in WW2 by hitting on the idea of mining the Pacific Ocean. The one between Japan and California.
Pick up remote. Click the off button.
