Post
by Raid » Tue Mar 14, 2023 1:35 pm
Babylon 5
I seem to be doing a lot of things lately that I've been meaning to do for a very long time. One of these things was watching Babylon 5, a show I've been told for decades was equal to the 90s Star Trek that I grew up with. Well, it isn't. I think it would have been a good series of novels, but it's such a lacklustre piece of television. The overall story is strong for the most part, but the acting and dialogue isn't. Londo's probably the notable exception, his gloriously over the top performance fits the character and script perfectly, and his character arc is surprisingly believable. The infamous early CGI is actually pretty good, and they managed to do things that obvious contemporary DS9 just couldn't manage with its expensive miniatures, and even after that moved to CGI I still think B5 had the edge in terms of frequency of use.
But its biggest problem is that the script is lousy. I'm generally not a fan of scripts that rely heavily on prophetic language, tales of myth and legend and the like, and the show is absolutely full of it. They set Sinclair up as if he'll be some mystical figure, but then O'Hare's health problems mean he can't continue in the role full-time, so they get another lead in and now he's also treated as mythical. Everything is the worst it's been in a thousand years, it's all ancient this and shadowy that. It's a stylistic choice, but it's one that I just find very difficult to enjoy. DS9 did this too throughout, but mostly as a counterpoint to the science and logic, and it was always treated with scepticism by most of the characters. It too suffered when it took centre-stage, particularly in its final season.
I'm not going to bother watching any of the surrounding films or spinoffs, I'd had enough by the mid-point of season 5, and only really kept going to see if there was a big finale. There wasn't, just multiple episodes of winding down which gave the show a real melancholy ending.