Babylon 5 Rewatch: Season 1

[selenak]

I'm going to do this at a slightly faster pace than Farscape, what with there being five seasons. So it's going to be two episodes each time, but still weekly, every Sunday. Any old and new B5 watchers are very welcome to join, but be warned: I'm not going to watch every episode. Also, I'm not starting with "The Gathering" but with "Midnight on the Firing Line", due to the fact neither my old dvds nor my newly acquired remastered episodes on streaming have it. (I do have the old video somewhere, but alas it's past rescue.) My schedule for season 1 is this:

December 5th 2021: Midnight on the Firing Line/ Soul Hunter

December 12th 2021: Born to the Purple/Parliament of Dreams

(Sidenote: No, definitely not watching "Infection". Also, the first Londo centric episode paired with the first G'Kar centric episode is how it ought to be. *g*)

December 19th 2021: Mind War/ The War Prayer

December 26th: is Boxing Day, everyone including me will be likely busy with other holiday-ish occupations. Therefore:

December 27th: And the Sky Full of Stars/ Death Walker

January 2nd 2022: Believers/By Any Means Necessary

(No, no "Survivors". It has one good scene between Garibaldi and Londo, but I'm not that keen on the rest.)

January 9th 2022: Signs and Portents/ Legacies

(Yes, skipping over TKO, Grail and Eyes. Despite the Lennier and Garibaldi motorbike cuteness.)

January 16th 2022: A Voice in the Wilderness (Part I and Part II)

January 23rd 2022: Babylon Squared/ The Quality of Mercy

January 29th 2022: Chrysalis

Comments

[muccamukk]

That looks reasonable. I can watch all of the Jeff/Michael scenes you're ruthlessly skipping on my own steam.

[selenak]

:) So you can, and hey, I might watch individual scenes as well, but definitely not whole episodes of those I left out. Just watch me skipping some Sheridan in later seasons, too. :)

[kore]

TKO and Grail, hoo boy. The frustrating thing about bad B5 episodes is they often have great scenes or lines -- like TKO is great for Ivanova, and in Grail IIRC that's one of the first mentions that Babylon 4 went pouf? which is a great throwaway setup for such an important subplot. Plus, "No boom TODAY. Boom tomorrow." And Infection has one of my favourite lines Franklin gets, "Nothing is pure!" which ties in to the human-as-alien, alien-as-human theme I always see in the show. But oy. They're so terrible, and very dated in a way the rest of the show isn't -- it's a real hybrid between character-driven long game serialized storytelling and the episodic structure centered around one hero and minor characters.

All that said, even tho nobody likes the pilot anymore, I'm weirdly fond of it. Creeper G'Kar! Less confident Garibaldi! Delenn's weird flirty power dynamic with Sinclair! Washed-up Londo! Sinclair's "The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship" speech and quoting Tennyson! But the A plot is a mess. Sinclair has to do too many things, and of course we know he's not going to be dragged off for murder. But still, it does show off how different the show was at the time -- everyone including the humans has their own agenda, there's a lot of conflict setup and if it's not quite "Casablanca in space" it's pretty far from the chronicle play type focus it later has on war and the military. And the worldbuilding starting from scratch, without the decades of familiarity Star Trek had at the time, is pretty amazing.

I didn't even remember Eyes and Survivors, lol. They're kind of good character pieces for both Sinclair (his recklessness and alienation) and Garibaldi (his recovery and determination) but it's the kind of development that would get tucked into a scene or demonstrated more? IDK. And of course after Sinclair leaves and Garibaldi has such a much different relationship with Sheridan they didn't have a long-term effect on the show anyway, really.

[selenak]

I'm not anti pilot! But as I said, I don't have a useable copy at hand. Though speaking of first mentions of B4's fate, doesn't the pilot have one of those?

[chelseagirl]

My beloved's favorite. You've heard the news from JMS, right?

[selenak]

Yes, I did.

[redfiona99]

>>No, definitely not watching "Infection". << (Snerk) I was waiting for that. Ah, the period where David McCallum played nothing but sinister on US TV shows.

I think what kore says below is right, and, much like the other space station show, they were learning how to fit individual episodes around the overarching story, while not driving fresh viewers away in the time before streaming.

[gabolange]

I am looking forward to your rewatch and commentary!

And I agree with your skip list, having recently watched all of season one including The Gathering, which was one of a few episodes I hadn’t seen before. And it has some great moments, especially some throwaway lines that are great Easter eggs, but mostly I spent the entire thing wondering how they got picked up! Lucky for us it all worked out.

[selenak]

Lucky indeed. I remember watching the pilot at the Munich Fantasy and Sci Fi Film festival, together with the episode "Mind War", and feeling a mixture of curiosity and scepticism, but curiosity won so when the show was eventually broadcast in Germany I tuned in. I so thought this whole "five years long novel" claim was surely hyperbole, though, hah. Little did I know...

[tree_and_leaf]

Excellent! I just started, but haven't been blogging, a B5 rewatch, so it will be interesting to hear your thoughts.

I'm just coming to the end of S1. I did watch the grail one, but I definitely skipped TKO....

[cahn]

how did I miss this??!! Because YES I am SO here for this :D I have now got the episodes and everything :DDDDD

(Though I miiiiight skip some (or many) of the episodes you indicated to me as "if you have the time," if I start falling behind, which is very likely to happen in December. But less likely after that!)

[watervole]

I recently started a rewatch of my own, and then got sidetracked, so I shall pick up again alongside you.