Babylon 5 Rewatch: Season 4 Masterpost

[selenak]

There's one more s3 episode to go this Sunday, but next week I'll be on the road, and so I'm setting up the s4 masterpost now. You can find my s 1 reviews here, the s2 masterpost is here, and the s3 reviews here.

June 26th: The Hour of the Wolf/ Whatever Happened To Mr. Garibaldi?

July 3rd: The Summoning/Falling Towards Apotheosis

July 10th: The Long Night/ Into the Fire

July 17th: Epiphanies/ The Illusion of Truth

July 24th: Atonement/Racing Mars

July 31st: Lines of Communication/Conflicts of Interest

August 7th: Rumors, Bargains and Lies/ Moments of Transition

August 14th: No Surrender, No Retreat/The Exercise of Vital Powers

August 21st: Face of the Enemy/Interscetions in Real Time

August 28th: Between the Darkness and the Light/Endgame

September 4th: Rising Star/The Deconstruction of Falling Stars

(No, there are no s4 episodes missing. Due to the cursed network interference and the corresponding need to shove one and a half season's worth of content into just one season, you really can't leave anything out. I was a bit tempted with The Deconstruction of Falling Stars due to its nature, but then I thought, what the hell, maybe I'll see it differently now.)

Comments

[cahn]

Information gathering here: so does this mean fifth season is shorter? Does the whole arc last through 5th season or is it the kind of thing where it mostly happens in the 4th season?

[selenak]

No, the fifth season has the same number of episodes. What happened is this: WB told JMS they would cancel the show and he wouldn't get his full five seasons, so he crammed into s4 what he could of the most important storylines. THEN, at the proverbial last minute, TNT came to the rescue and offered to produce a fifth season. This means both that s4 is really without any breathing space episodes (save for the very last one, which was written on short notice to replace the finale what was supposed to serve not as the season but as the show finale, and was indeed shown at the end of s5 instead), and the first half of s5 has the problem that what was supposed to be only a subplot has to be the main plot and events move very slow in comparison. However, in the second half of s5 we're back an track.

There are people who are skipping s5 along with s1, and I say both are horribly wrong. S5 has its downsides (see above), but it also contains some of the best episodes of the show (any "best of B5" list which does not include two eps of s5, possibly three, not counting the overall series finale, is doing it wrong), and also the Londo/G'Kar arc would not have been complete without it But there's definitely a pacing problem due to the very late rescue notification. I'll tell you where, had JMS known in time he'd get a fifth season, the fourth season's story would have ended once we get there.

[cahn]

Ah, excellent, thank you! I was telling D he had to watch it, and he said he had heard it was a show where you didn't watch the fifth season... it makes sense both how he had heard that, and that one actually should watch it :)

[watervole]

The thing that really struck me about 'Into the Fire' is how different it would look with modern special effects. The Vorlon/Shadow conversation could have been done so much better now.