Star Trek vs Babylon 5

[The Legendary Shark]

Picard is better than Kirk.

Obvious Troll is not even trying.

All right then {rolls up trollsleeves} JMS is better than GR and B5 is better than ST.

[Professor Bear]

Still not trying.  It was outside talent that made Trek great, not GR himself, he just came up with the concept, though JMS is a polarising figure, so you might get someone who hates him enough - and there are plenty - to bite on that one and tell you that GR wasn't just a poon-hound who got lucky.
As for B5 being better than Trek, I'm afraid you're trying too hard with that one, as in order to successfully troll, one must seem at least remotely sincere rather than just throwing out huge, laughably wrong statements in the hope someone is infuriated by them and doesn't view you with pity and concern. 

[The Legendary Shark]

But B5 is better than ST. It's better written, better acted, better realised and has better continuity. I'd put the best episodes of B5 (like The Coming of Shadows, In The Shadow Of Z'ha'dum, Into The Fire, Endgame, The Deconstruction Of Falling Stars, Intersections in Real time, etc., etc.) up against the best Trek episodes any day. A great episode of Trek virtually always re-sets at the end - although they did try harder with the latter seasons of DS9 - whilst B5 evolves from episode to episode, taking the audience on a proper '5 year mission' instead of just faffing about week by re-setting week.

I'd also put the first B5 movie In the Beginning above every Trek movie except Wrath of Kahn and (maybe) the 2009 re-boot. Admittedly, the other B5 movies are not quite as good but are still better than the odd-numbered Trek movies.

Don't get me wrong, I do like my Trek and the series has inspired both real and fictional science since the Sixties, but just because it's been around for longer and broke some ground in the past doesn't make it unassailable.

B5 is better.

[Mardroid]

Not meaning to be a troll.... but I largely agree.

That being said I really like the Star Trek films (even the bad ones, The Motion Picture being an exception, but I'd even like to give that another go) and the universe they created.

Actually it would probably be more accurate to say, I like Babylon 5 better in some ways than Star Trek.

Strangely, I was put off by B5 on seeing the first series when it first came out. It seemed just like a soap opera set in space. I didn't watch it for a good while after that, then caught it later when it was getting really exciting. On watching the episodes, including the older stuff, I was struck at how good it actually is, especially from a series arc perspective.

Some of the characters are a bit corny with their speechifying, but that's true of Star Trek too.

[TordelBack]

It's a tricky one.  I'm a lapsed trekkie, but I rate later B5 as some of the best SF TV ever produced - most of Season 4 is gripping beyond description, despite some execrable acting and dialogue.  Trek however offers up some magnificently entertaining individual episodes (where its strength really lies) and some great character interplay, even excluding hopeless nonsense like mid-series Voyager.  For my money B5 is the better ongoing epic drama, ST the better series of individual teleplays.

I actually dislike ST when it gets stuck into ongoing war stories - all-out war has no real place in the ST universe, it's meant to be better than that: Trek threats should be cosmic, tactical or moral, not all-guns-blazing tests of relative strength.  How do you square episodes like TNG's 'Coming of Age' (where we learn only one candidate from each Starfleet Entrance Exam intake can go forward to the Academy) with the destruction of several Galaxy-class ships (over 900 crew) in a single engagement (of many) in later DS9?  It just doesn't work for me - the Federation should always be able to avert total war.

[HOO-HAA]

Spock is better than Data but Picard is better than Kirk. Then again Scotty is better than Geordie, Dax is better than Chakotay, Archer is better than Janeway and Tuvok is better than Checkov but Paris is inferior to Sulu.

The Trek Universe is indeed an odd place.

What do you call the hot little Kingon from Voyager? I liked her

[Daveycandlish]

Put it this way;

I have most of the Trek movies on DVD (I even love TMP) but none of the series. I have all of B5 boxset, and some of the spin offs.

Proving... sod all really

[TordelBack]

What do you call the hot little Kingon from Voyager? I liked her

Lt. Torres - the certainly rather lovely Roxann Dawson, but that make-up was truly awful, and her supposed personality... gah!

[The Legendary Shark]

...only one candidate from each Starfleet Entrance Exam intake can go forward to the Academy...

When it comes to stuff like this, I tend to rationalise it in my own way. I'd imagine that the one successful candidate would go through to Academy Officer Training and the rest just learn how to be redshirts - which seems to be mainly about learning how to wander off and get yourself killed. I'd add to that the sheer number of scholastic institutions throughout the Federation (imagine just how many schools there are just on present day Earth alone) where the entrance exam could be taken and that gives many, many successful single candidates. Once actually at the Academy (and surely there must be more than one Starfleet training facility throughout the Federation), then the single Officer Candidates would either succeed or fail allowing the ones who came second to work hard enough to be moved up a level.

Oh God. I can't believe that I've even thought about this

Furthermore:

is better than but neither is as good as

[Professor Bear]

But B5 is better than ST. It's better written, better acted, better realised and has better continuity.

This is much better trolling, but you haven't even tried to defend Legend of the Rangers, which I feel is a missed opportunity on your part.

I enjoyed B5 as a whole, but it's important to distinguish that from the componant parts, because on almost every level B5 was barrel-scraping stuff and no amount of Voyager episodes where Tom Paris drives his space-car too fast and turns into a walrus will ever change that - B5 was a one-trick pony.  You have a point that Trek tripped over continuity now and then, but it also made an occasional virtue of its episodic nature with episodes like The Visitor or The Visionary - alternate-timeline episodes whose outcomes rely upon the viewer knowing for a certainty that the reset button was gonna happen - or The Quickening, an episode that takes the classic Trek staple of the crew flying in to solve an entire planet's problems in forty minutes and then failing to do so.  B5 had that episode about space-kickboxing and that other one about the 13th floor, which were... well, they were definitely episodes of a television series.  I'll give them that.

I actually dislike ST when it gets stuck into ongoing war stories - all-out war has no real place in the ST universe, it's meant to be better than that:

It was established as early as The Cage that Starfleet regularly engaged in all-out warfare (the death of the first officer in a land battle is why the Enterprise originally had a female XO - she was a field promotion), and even well into the film series Starfleet was painted as the military arm of the Federation - even the Bajor stuff (which included the Cardassian War) started out in a TNG episode.

[TordelBack]

It was established as early as The Cage that Starfleet regularly engaged in all-out warfare...

I'm not saying there isn't war in the ST universe, I'm saying that depciting it doesn't fit well with the style of the TV show, which is largely optimistic.  My preference would be that it certainly shouldn't be on the scale of the Dominion War, or a focus for the series.  Having something like the Battle of Axanar providing backdrop for a story, or cold-war style ship-on-ship Neutral Zone action is cool, as are the repercussions of O'Brien's and Ro's Cardassian backstories, even using Picard's or Kirk's actions as a pretext for war, I just feel it worked much better when the objective was preventing large-scale conflict, not showing it.

[Professor Bear]

I agree.  Can someone start a "Babylon 5 Is A Load Of Shit" thread?

[Beaky Smoochies]

Spock is better than Data but Picard is better than Kirk. Then again Scotty is better than Geordie, Dax is better than Chakotay, Archer is better than Janeway and Tuvok is better than Checkov but Paris is inferior to Sulu.

Bloody hell, Shark dude, that post made my head hurt...

I'm not saying there isn't war in the ST universe, I'm saying that depicting it doesn't fit well with the style of the TV show, which is largely optimistic.

I agree, Star Trek should be a largely cerebral and optimistic sci-fi saga, leave the epic intergalactic war saga on telly to Babylon 5, which (despite a ropey first season) went on to be one of the greatest pieces of television drama in the entire 1990's, if it had been an historical show and not a sci-fi one, it would have been hailed as a work of genius, snobbery as usual...

Can someone start a "Babylon 5 Is A Load Of Shit" thread?

That's it, outside, NOW... "we live for the One, we die for the One" (been waiting years to use that quote)...

[Emperor]

I agree.  Can someone start a "Babylon 5 Is A Load Of Shit" thread?

This'll have to do for now.

Have at it.

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

Star Trek reflects the American Dream.

When America is doing well there's lots of Star Trek on TV the ie: the 1980's,1990's. When America is not doing so well and things look like shit and there's not a lot of optimism about there's less Trek on the telly.

Notice how the recent TV series Star Trek Enterprise was cancelled after the 4th series. Post 9/11 and the subsequent Wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq weren't exactly 'lets' understand our cultural differences with our neighbours moments.' 

More aggressive series like Stargate replaced Trek with it's much more gun ho militaristic style and the obviously middle Eastern inspired Goa'uld were little more than cyphers for Americas dislike of Arab type cultures generally. 

There's the re imagining of the original series in the new Films but that's a different medium being much more expensive to produce. It was more spectacular than any TV series could have been but it was basically a re make of a TV show first aired in the 1960's an expensive upgrade.

It had none of the 'live and let live' baby boomer bullshit the original series had though. They simply had an enemy who had to be destroyed.

Lot's of progressive understanding and cultural respect there.